Guild Wars 2 On Designing and Writing the Sylvari
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There's one big root to the design direction of the sylvari that I hold most dear: it all must stem from anatomy. However, researching this design proved to be very tricky. It seemed that most images of plant people fell into one of two categories: painted humans with leaf accessories or outright plant monsters. The elf concept was most prevalent, featuring flora jewelry and clothing. They may have sported leaf coiffures, but they were little more than humans with an affinity for nature.
Next, I entered into dryad territory, where most of the examples paint various leaves or bark textures onto the skin to infuse plant-like detail. For me, this felt like stage makeup and didn't really bring forth the potential of a plant race.
At the far end of the plant spectrum were all of the ents and forest monsters, composed of many root, leaf, and bulb materials that merge together to create a humanoid form. Overall, this direction is too far as it pulls away from the beautiful humanoid we wanted.
While researching the distance between dryad and plant creature, I found the results were still very separated; most often you'd have a supermodel-beautiful girl with literal winding plant vines and leaves coiling around her. The plant side stayed plant while the human side stayed human, and there was no true marriage of the materials or the anatomy. Strip any of that stuff off the girl and it's plain to see that she's just wearing very planty parts. It wasn't even skin deep.
The sylvari are a race of true plant people. They are described in our lore as a noble, attractive humanoid plant race, so it became clear that what I needed to design first was their concept of anatomy. This definition lead me to first consider wrapping vines and stems to follow human musculature. However, I quickly realized that this was going to have a couple of unwanted effects: one, the body looked too sci-fi, like cyborg body suits; and two, it made them look as if their skin had been peeled off. It was creepy. This extreme concept made it obvious that whatever anatomy I created would have to be attractive and may have to bend the fantasy rules of evolution, if there truly are any such mandates.
The Sylvari soul deals with the race's writing, and includes some soundclip:
All the races of Guild Wars 2 are fun to write, but sylvari rank in the top three for me. I love how their virtue blends with their innocence and then contrasts with the darkness of the world surrounding them. This disparity illuminates the sacrifices, gallantry, and tragedies of Tyria's war with the dragons.
Remarkably, the sylvari race didn't come into existence until 25 years ago (in game years) when the twelve firstborn awoke. Since then, new sylvari have continued to awaken on a regular basis, their numbers growing as time advances.
Sylvari arrive in the world fully grown. They emerge from pods that grow on the Pale Tree: a magical, sentient tree with its roots deep in Tyria and its branches in the Dream. They leave the Dream a mystical place where sylvari memories are collected and incubate in their pods, then emerge into the world. They bring with them a spectator's understanding of how the world works, having witnessed aspects of it while in the Dream. Their first few days in the world are critical, and they're met by mentors and other newly awakened who help them find their way.
