10,000 YEARS will give you such a crick in the neck

Lore Story Forum
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Funnily enough, it might have. We’ve seen that the Night Elves are willing to make deals for logging rights, and the Warsong didn’t seem to have any problem working with the Darkspear, or the Goblins in Ashenvale. In fact, all the outbursts of violence Grom had were in relation to either his hatred for humans, or when he was already besieged by the Night Elves. If Grom was willing to work to work alongside the Darkspear, and willing to honor a deal with the Goblins, whose to say the Night Elves (who we have many examples of allowing logging when asked) wouldn’t allow the Warsong?

Hell, the Warsong were there gathering lumber because they were going to construct the settlement that Thrall wanted. Had they known the supposedly empty forest was actually full of Elves, giant sentient trees, and had a literal demi-god protecting them, whose to say he would attempt conquest, when Thrall had been explicitly taken them to Kalimdor to avoid conflict.

Do we? We don’t have much to go on about Grom after the second war up to the events of Warcraft 3. What we do know is that he spent fifteen years living in the wilds of Lordaeron, hiding from humans, eking out a living. After being inspired by Thrall, he worked alongside Thrall and Ogrim to rescue the Orcs from the internment camps. When Ogrim fell, he accepted Thrall as Warchief, and was happy to follow Thrall to Kalimdor.

IconSmall Thrall.gif Thrall : “Grom, are you alright?”

IconSmall Grom.gif Grom Hellscream : “I’m fine, little brother. Luckily, they only injured my pride.”

IconSmall Thrall.gif Thrall : “Great, 'cause we’re getting out of here now. We’re leaving the human lands for good.”

IconSmall Grom.gif Grom Hellscream : “Finally. Follow me. I have an idea.”

From the sounds of it, Grom hated the humans and wished to have nothing to do with them. Given he spent the last fifteen years in constant conflict, followed Thrall who went to Kalimdor explicitly to avoid conflict, and attacked the humans because of his long history and hatred for them, a diplomatic attempt from the Night Elves doesn’t sound doomed to failure to me.

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Nothing about Grom says ‘Calm, cool, collected’. He’s never been that character. It would actually be a breach of his character to not immediately want to fight the Night elves and take what he wants. His clan name is Warsong. They make war. They fight whenever get they bored. They’re the cause of the conflict with the Silverwing in Vanilla even without Grom’s influence, and in the AU (Which is supposed to be almost close enough to be main timeline) they were beating the piss out of each other because they got bored of not fighting.

Grom didn’t listen to anyone. Even when his advisers told him to stay away from the demon blood, he drank it anyway because that’s the kind of cocksure character Grom is. If Grom was reasonable enough to accept diplomacy he would be reasonable enough to withdraw or hold his position against the Night elves despite them initiating first contact. He would have surrendered when he was inevitably overrun by the Night elf defenders or stayed behind while his clan retreats to die a warrior’s death like he did on AU Draenor. He would have assessed the situation and attempted to deescalate. But he didn’t do any of those things because he’s not a reasonable character. Trying to make him out to be a reasonable character is just trying to make him not Grom.

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Nelf society is one with nature. They use magic and divine blessing to eliminate all hunger and poverty without dominating and destroying entire ecosystems. Sounds pretty advanced to me… Why do people think that any society that doesn’t dominate nature is “Stagnate”? Use your brain.

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This isn’t even getting into the fact that the Night Elves also knew the humans were in the areas. They likewise chose not to approach them in a diplomatic manner either. Whether or not Grom would or would not have been open to talk (I think he would, he was open to talking with the Goblins), the Night Elves clearly didn’t care about diplomacy with anyone until the greater threat of the Legion and Medivh’s peace brokering hammered the situation home.

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127

And then the First War, followed by the Second War, and finally fifteen years of hiding from the humans happened. Grom and the Orcs were corrupted by demon blood, and were driven into the most extreme blood rage they’d ever experienced. And when that faded, an extreme lethargy that reduced so many of the Orcs to apathetic thralls. Was Grom the hothead who rushed headlong into conflict at the drop of a hat before any of that happened? Yes. But in the twenty or so years that the orcs invaded Azeroth, lost, were stranded on Azeroth, and struggling just to maintain the will to survive, much less survive in general… To say that the Grom who traveled to Kalimdor with Thrall was the same Orc he was when he first drank the demon blood and invaded Azeroth, is like saying Jaina is the same girl now as she was when she and Arthas were starting a relationship in Lordaeron.

Grom drank the demon blood because he was cornered. Cenarius had lead the Night Elves in a massive counter act that destroyed all the outposts the Warsong had created and pushed the Orcs all their way back to their main base in Ashenvale. The Warsong were surrounded and were only barely able to repel the Night Elves attack on their main base. Defeat was all but guaranteed, when he’s informed of a dark power nearby. At this point Grom was desperate, the Night Elves were relentless and Grom would have been defeated for the first time since coming to Azeroth. These savage warrior women would take no prisoners. Cenarius says so himself.

  • IconSmall Cenarius.gif Cenarius : Demon Spawned Wretches, you will all die!

At that point, Grom had two choices, the dark power emanating from the woods, or to perish before Cenarius. Victory or death. Grom chose victory.

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You do realize you joined into this conversation on speculation, right?

Any answer to this is pure speculation indeed.

Here are some quests from Classic on Teldrassil:

    If the grells have become tainted by the Fel Moss, one can only imagine what has become of the Gnarlpine tribe of furbolgs who once lived here.

    The Gnarlpine tribe has been corrupted!

    The once peaceful furbolgs have turned against the protectors of the forest. They ambushed me as I left for the Ban’ethil Barrow Den and proceeded to pillage Starbreeze Village. Ursal the Mauler, their chieftain, is using the evil powers of the Fel Moss to drive them mad.

The Orcs also kill some Wisps. I think we’d have to watch a play through of the mission to get a better grasp of who said what when than just the transcript can provide. I’ll look one up when I get home unless you can find one before then.

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You’re right, but I think my speculation had enough outright facts to warrant it (I think). Failing that, I’m not against admitting that I’m accidentally hypocritical sometimes.

My problem with these quests are the ambiguity of what the Fel Moss even is, and the fact that this Ursal the Mauler is “using” it to drive other Furbolgs mad. It sounds like Ursal was driven mad by it first, and is now trying to drive his tribe mad as well. Did he have to come into contact with it, even ingest it? Was it just… around, and corrupted him? The fact it was growing there would suggest to me there must have been some other fel taint in the area to facilitate that growth, since I don’t recall fel occurring naturally. It’s vague enough that I’m not confident it confirms how little fel is needed to corrupt Furbolgs, but it definitely suggests a whole new low I wasn’t aware of.

Oh ho ho ho! Now we’re back to the material I’m real familiar with!

As shown here, Orcs killing any wisps before the Night Elves attack is only a possibility. The actual trigger for Night Elves attacking in the map is cutting down that line of trees, which open up the rest of the map and the Night Elves just behind it who rush in to attack. At two minutes and ten seconds into the video, eagle eyed viewers might notice the Peon gathering lumber from the same tree a Wisp is currently occupying, but funnily enough, units can gather from trees a Wish is occupying and won’t actually damage the Wisp unless specifically instructed too. They can even cut down the tree and the Wisp will be unharmed.

The wisps are totally marked hostile and nearby units will attack them if they’re close enough, but none of your units actually start out close enough to begin attacking any of the Wisps unless you command one of them to move closer.

As you can see from the video, Orcs definitely could have attacked Wisps before the Night Elves attacked, but that’s purely on the part of the player initiating that combat. Essentially, I don’t think we can say whether or not the Orcs killed some Wisps first. It’s very possible, but not a guarantee.

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From what I remember, attacking wisps is optional.

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Classic was super vague about how Teldrassil was being corrupted, in that I don’t think they had a full picture envisioned yet. Eventually with Stormrage and the Cataclysm revamp they switched it over entirely to being Nightmare corruption instead of Fel.

Chronicle does also confirm that the Night Elves did attack because the Orcs were stealing the lumber. I think it was wrong to attack the Orcs without talking first. But I also acknowledge that Night Elves do not necessarily hold the same moral values that I do.

Though, going back to the Goblins, what upset the Night Elves might have been the theft, not the logging in of itself. Of course, no one told the Orcs they were stealing, either, so I agree that the Night Elves should have said something before attacking.

Probably wouldn’t have made for the kind of gameplay Blizzard was looking for in Warcraft III, though.

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Not really a good excuse for him to turn to demon blood. Especially when Orcs have a culture about dying with honor even when cornered and outnumbered. He also could have fled well before it got to that point. But he didn’t because he’s not a rational actor, which proves my point about him not being the type to be open to negotiations. That’s not who Grom ever was. From his perspective might makes right, so why bother being diplomatic? Again, if Grom isn’t even willing to listen to Thrall’s orders to stand down (him hating humans is a terrible argument, Thrall suffered just as much and was more willing to be tactful in his approach up the stonetalon mountains) why would he respect the wishes of elves he’s never met? He considers Thrall his little brother; family. And he still doesn’t listen to him.

Grom had an obligation to deescalate if he was a rational actor. The moment he was attacked he could have pulled back his troops and notified Thrall about the Night elves. But he didn’t, because he doesn’t have that faculty fully functional.

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They already addressed this.

That is a huge presumption when being attacked by ‘perfect warriors’ making no attempt at diplomacy, using a surprise attack, and in what seems to be territory. And who start specifically noting, ‘you will all die’.

Except he was also there in the first place on a mission from Thrall. And the Night Elves, as aggressors, have the responsibility to deescalate.

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Don’t they in the end? Grand Alliance and all? Except the Warsong keep trying to take from Ashenvale even after that.

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Eventually, yes. I think I noted in another post, they finally are kind of forced to with the coming of the Legion in force and Medivh’s peace brokering.

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And then the Warsong decide to re-escalate the situation.

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137

You are acting like you have an agenda to press.

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Often you do as well?

Legion was defeated, and Night Elves ally with the Orcs, and the Warsong continue their invasion:

    The gleaming purple-and-emerald forests of Ashenvale are more than just pleasant woodland. To the Warsong orcs who name themselves Outriders, they’re a prize cache of building planks; to the night-elven Silverwing Sentinels, they’re home. Where the turned soil and tree stumps surrounding Horde lumber mills start to encroach on Ashenvale’s timberlands, these two factions clash.

    Each group recruits heroes from far and wide – the Horde to batter back the defenders and clear the forests, and the Alliance to shatter the aggressors and stop the disappearance of their precious land.

    Whoever holds their defeated foes’ banner will show all who look upon the forest that their claim is the strongest – and dictate the future of one of the most important, ancestral lands of the Kaldorei.

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I admit I’m usually trying to convince people to agree with my point of view (since I think it is correct). But you are the one who has noted you do not care to convince people. Your point has been said, yet you have repeated it three times specifically to me.

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I felt you were overlooking additional parts of the lore and presenting an incorrect picture for it. It is not so much trying to convince you, as much to annotate additional information for anyone who might read the posts.

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To be entirely clear, if it was not, I hold both parties at fault. With the Orcs arguably sharing a larger portion due to unintentional wrongdoing in the first place (not that I would call it aggression) and their later aggression. I’m only focusing on the Night Elves because Vildaryon’s intent seems to entirely hand-wave their wrongdoing with a ‘maybe they shouldn’t have started murdering random refugees in their forest.’

I think the bigger issue for why I shy on future events is the ‘just being lucky’ aspect, or being right based on a bad thought process. The same reason why I dislike the whole argument of ‘Daelin was right’. If a person sees someone on the sidewalk and thinks, ‘that guy looks like he is a murderer’ based off little evidence and they shoot him and he happens to be a murderer? Were they right? Technically. Do I still disagree with their thought process that the person ‘looked like a murderer’? Yeah. The Warsong did later attack them. But I don’t think the Night Elves really had nearly enough evidence to launch a surprise attack based on that. And, once more, not even addressing that they did that to the humans as well.

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Oh, I’m certainly not defending Grom’s choice to partake in demon blood again, I’m explaining what would drive him to do so.

Thrall didn’t suffer from the same blood curse that Grom did. Grom directly partook in the blood, Thrall didn’t. In addition, Grom says to Thrall he can feel the Legion’s presence. That feeling of the demons being near would, at the very least, be enough to put Grom on edge. It’s a feeling going back to the darkest part of the Orcs history.

IconSmall Thrall.gif Thrall : Have you lost what’s left of your mind, Grom? I gave you a direct order to leave the humans alone! What the hell is wrong with you?

Grom runs up to Thrall.

IconSmall Grom.gif Grom Hellscream : Don’t lecture me, pup! The wretches deserved death! Don’t you feel it, Thrall? It’s like the old days… like the demons are near.

IconSmall Thrall.gif Thrall : I don’t know what’s come over you and your men, but this bloodlust is a liability that I can’t afford.
Note that Thrall doesn’t understand what it is Grom is talking about. He doesn’t suffer the same affects Grom and the others who directly partook of Mannoroth’s blood, do.

I want to reiterate, I’m not trying to excuse the Orcs of having done no wrong. Mistakes were clearly made, but the Night Elves made mistakes as well. Perhaps not as severe as the mistakes of the Orcs, but substantial enough that I think it’s a bit dishonest to call the Night Elves innocent.

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