Why does The Great Bridge exist in lore?

I said 'probably' because I wasn't sure if that was actually confirmed. What I remember is that the secret discovery implies that Bob's mother was an Olm, the sign in the dungeon states Witherhead is female, and she says humans could not save her (just remembered that last part). So Witherhead is implied to be not human (although she is corrupted, which would be a valid way to perceive oneself as not human), and is the same gender as Bob's mother.
I don't think it's confirmed, and I couldn't think of anything that directly connected Bob's mother and Witherhead other than circumstantial details.

 

(it's confirmed.)
(we know witherhead gave birth to a boy in the sewers before dying and transforming into witherhead)
(we know bob was born in the sewers)
(we know bob was adopted because his mom died of childbirth in the sewers)
(we also have the lore for witherhead's talisman)
(even at level 5 i figured that out)

 

It is canon

 

Is it written directly anywhere?

________________________________

...

Oh, it's the talisman. Makes sense.

 

Wait when did Bob become an Olm

 

half olm.

was it never strange to you that he has, y'know, GRAY SKIN, and he's lived for over a hundred years.

________________________________

 

I mean... slykaar has lived for like 200 years right (something something shaman magic i know i know)

 

Actually now that I think about it, we never officially got the life expectancy of people in Wynncraft. I always assumed life expectancy was about the same as the Middle Ages, but then again this world also contains magic and literal robots. So child mortality may be nonexistent in most places and people on average have the same life expectancy as the modern day.

 

On the other hand, Wynn is infested by massive quantities of corrupted, so it's probably got high mortality at all ages (especially childhood) bogging down its lifespans. Gavel's probably a lot safer, as long as you live in Llevigar or Cinfras. Ocean's good too. I'd assume that villagers in Gavel have significantly improved lifespans than humans in Wynn just because of the background corruption.

This feels like something that should be explained. As far as I can guess:

• Real-life human lifespans are hard to pin down since we've got a lot of medicine mixing things up. If we pin a normal human maximum lifespan at around 70 or 80, with significant numbers of deaths starting around 50 or 60, we could translate that to Wynn with some reduced average lifespan to account for corruption.
• My gut instinct tells me villagers probably have longer natural lifespans than humans, but nothing in-game implies this.
  
• The natural lifespan of elves is 1000 years, judging by the graveyard, but for some reason, Aldorei elves aren't content with that and so Aldorei Valley makes everyone in it totally immortal, an effect that dissipates in settlements like Efilim.
• Not sure if anything is written about natural dwarf lifespans, but I'd estimate, based on my background fantasy awareness, it to be around 200-300 years, possibly with heavy input from how the dwarf lived their life.
• Doguns are probably ageless, and certainly can live for extreme lengths of time. Since they're magma-rock golems, I'd guess them to be immortal.
• Demons like Garaheth are probably immortal. Unsure where they come from. Probably a similar place to the elven god Entia, assuming Entia, the character referenced, like, once (excluding an old item from From the Bottom), is real and not just a religion thing.
• The literal dozens of random sapient or half-sapient races in Gavel (with a dozen in CotL alone) probably have a random smattering of lifespans.
• Nauter show up in one quest and are criminally underused for how cool they could be. I have no idea what their lifespans are.

 

notice how we barely see any old people in Wynn and scatter info suggest how hostile and shitty Wynn province environment is?

yeah it likely the life expectancy is similar to that of our own middle ages consider the environment of wynn even with villagers' help. There is reason why Fruma recruits are seen as welcoming help from Fruma to replenish their numbers. It describe as war torn for a reason because even the corruption not being a threat as much as during the corruption war, its remnants still a problem within wynn due to the corruption can basically corrupting anything which imply they might have problem like foods. water. and more.

Also keep in mind, magic were being INTRODUCE to the majority of people of Wynn by villagers so it likely not accessible to everyone with some people within the province describe our magic as "fancy". Slykaar likely the special case due to him being shaman therefore access to magic compare to average people in Wynn province. Also child mortality likely high like consider how fucked up the province is with other issues mention before.

 

The corruption in Wynn is shown to be extremely powerful. Some areas have more corrupted enemies than others (the west and central Wynn Plains, excluding Nivla, are almost entirely corrupted, while Almuj and Troms have more enemies themed after their biomes), but the only place in the province that's safe, ish, is Nesaak - and IIRC there's still undead there. Considering that apples and pieces of coral can be corrupted (and those are just in the Coastal Trail and Detlas Suburbs), it's reasonable to assume a lot of petty, mundane issues pop up from the Corruption. Sure, every death brings forth a zombie, which are possibly unkillable (if you believe that a dead zombie can be reanimated again), but that's a lesser issue compared to constant corruption-based attacks on food supplies, fresh water, and amplification of disease.

Also, remember that some of the first corruption lore you get tells you that corruption can set in to any injury. The less healthy you are, the more the corruption can influence you, so that's basically an exponential death spiral from the moment you get even a bit sick.

 

When someone dies they replace them with a recruit from fruma like they never died

 

You’re not wrong per se, but another thing to keep in mind is by that logic half of the NPCS should also be kids and teenagers because of the higher birth rate (demographics back then represented a pyramid), but we rarely see kids in the world. But I would chalk this up to engine limitations and the fact that children are usually underrepresented in RPGs since adults do most of the work and make sense to interact with the player the most. And it would also be kinda awkward for the “hero” of the province to be able to kill kids like the regular citizens.

Basically we shouldn’t assume life expectancy from the amount of young or old people represented in game. If I had to revise my last guess, it would be this:

Life expectancy by province:
Wynn: 35 years
Gavel: 55 years (Villagers only)
Corkus: 75 years (not including the Avos)

 

To be fair I didn’t make the connection either
I legitimately thought that the gray skin was just a strange pale anomaly and not like, you know, a result of being a hybrid of a completely different alien species

Because I don’t think that would be the immediate first thing that you come up in someone’s thought process when they’re wondering about his skin color

________________________________

(Also the age thing assumes that we know the average life expectancy of a Wynn soldier. I might have made the same misconception subconsciously since Harry Potter Wizards have a far longer life expectancy than non-magic people (way over a hundred) and the fact that magic is precedent throughout the provinces might have implanted that idea within me)

 

I mean, magic was something the Villagers introduced, apparently. Before them, it was just Twains or other random magic users.

Which in turn means that Wynn held out for 9 centuries against the corrupted with minimal magic on the human side, which is pretty epic.

Bob's half-Olm nature can be pieced together from the lore around the Decrepit Sewers, but nothing else hints towards that. Also, 'lived for over a hundred years' is suspect because he's been gone for over a decade.