A Light Take

Moon Guard
1

The Scarlet Crusade didn’t need a dreadlord to corrupt them; the Light itself was already a strong enough primer to drive their fanaticism.

There. I said it.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the Light lately, and how it rewards devotion and obedience. Its followers are expected to have absolute faith and unwavering dedication to its singular path. The Lightforged and the Scarlets are on the same path of zealotry, and that’s exactly what the Light wants. It doesn’t care about good or bad. It only cares that you have unwavering faith in it. That is, if it cares at all. We still don’t know if the light is merely a cosmic force or something more.

It’s a fascinating idea and makes priests and paladins very interesting to me, and I’d love to know what’s actually written in their hymnals. A previous guildie once compared the Light to domination magic, and the further I’ve dived, the more I’m inclined to agree with them.

Anyhow, I don’t know what I’m saying, I just wanted to say it.

There’s my take. Thanks for reading. <3

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I don’t like this idea very much at all, and I can’t say I particularly agree with it in any real way. That isn’t to say it’s wrong, or that I want some hidden implication that it’s intended as a slight against OP to manifest. On both accounts, it is not.

This is an idea that is fostered somewhat in the lore since Legion, and is coincidentally one of the reasons I do not like that expansion nearly as much as most people do. Light and Shadow are moral absolutes, objective manifestations of Pure Good and Pure Evil. They cannot exist in reality, but they do influence it and everything is dictated by different admixtures of these absolute forces to create nuance and gray areas.

Compassion. Respect. Tenacity. These are the Three Virtues of the Church of Holy Light and, in the disposition of every Paladin we’ve seen written before Legion are emphasized in their conduct and bearing. Even the Scarlet Crusade and Argent Dawn, organizations ostensibly decried as heretical to the Church, still adhered in a manner to the Three. Some may have prioritized others over another when the philosophy of moral hierarchies came into question, but they were always considered in the running when it came to using it as a way to dictate the “right” course of action.

This interpretation was seen as valid enough that the Draenei, guided by one of the oldest creatures known to existence that bore unquestionable benevolent prescience, adopted it for their own Vindicators use. This is all foundational to what, in my eyes MADE the Scarlet Crusade so interesting. I want to emphasize the past tense of that statement as well.

The Scarlets genuinely believed in the righteousness of their course. They were extremely successful in their efforts, at the very gates of almost literal hell-on-earth they were able to win straight up fights while taking and holding territory. Utterly unprecedented victories against a seemingly implacable and unending evil. They could and should have been a beacon in the darkness against the dying of the light.

Instead it was all a deception, a lie, a manipulation by an agent of an extension of pure evil actively using the better inclinations of good people to render them mad with paranoia and an unending spiral of chasing perfect purity. If we take away that tragedy, the brutality of manipulation, what do we have except a Silver Hand that is arbitrarily dictated to be the bad guys? Blood Knights without their siphoning of a font of power. Sunwalkers without their veneration of the Sun as a manifestation of divine benevolence.

Heroism borne of deceit leading to magnificent tragedy is the backbone of what made this faction extraordinarily unique and interesting. With the revelation of what it was, it became a hollow shell that didn’t need to exist any longer. Actively removing that core from what they were only retroactively degrades something just a little bit further that is already unfortunately a dozen or so years past a death certificate narratively earned.

5 Likes
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Honestly? Valid take.

That’s part of the thing that’s interesting to me, is like. The lore of today is VERY different from the lore of vanilla WoW. They’ve made a lot of changes and added a lot of new ideas, and in doing so left something of a plot hole behind. Sure, the crusade has been twisted and tormented into turning against humanity itself, but even so, they still worship the Light, and believe they are doing its work, and the Light still answers them.

Scarlets aside, I don’t agree that either magic is “pure good” or “pure evil”. As ye olde lore says, The Light sees a single, predetermined perfect path for the future and rejects all others. We witnessed Xe’ra attempt to force that path upon Illidan. Is taking away someone’s free will a “good” act? As far as we know, the only requirement to wield the light is the will and belief that what you are doing is right, no matter how morally wrong you might be. One can twist compassion, respect, and tenacity into whatever form serves them.

I guess maybe it’s a little off topic, but also sort of maybe on topic, but I enjoy this sort of lore nerding. Like there’s no question that the Church the Holy Light has done countless good deeds and brought comfort and shelter to people in their darkest hours. But they’re also producing Light Warriors™ whos greatest honor will be to eventually become martyrs for the Light’s righteous cause.

And now we’ve got The Sacred Flame. We’re raising zombies now with the Light. Yikes.

Anyway, keep going. I’ve been wanting to talk to people about this stuff forever haha

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Can you not see it, brothers and sisters? There is but one way to wipe the Scourge from the face of Azeroth…

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Respectfully I disagree.

The Scarlet Crusade wouldn’t exist without Balnazzar killing and possessing Saidan Dathrohan’s corpse. He truly is the thing that set all of the events in motion that led to where the Crusade is now. It’s part of what makes them such a tragedy. Survivors bound together with good intentions being misled down a dark and evil path by forces unseen, ultimately working against their own survival.

It was Balnazzar’s corruption that led to Alexandros Mograine’s death, the knights being pitted against one another, Abbendis’ racial dogma being allowed to fester and Fairbanks’ outting of Renault which caused even more of the former Knights of the Silver hand to depart and form the Argent Dawn.

Keep in mind, many of these men and women were the same people who stood adamantly with Uther’s decision to refuse Arthas’ orders to cleanse Stratholme. They defied the crown on moral principles alone. Had they been as insane and vengeance driven as Arthas, they’d have gladly put the city to the torch, but they weren’t.

If it was the Light that drove them to such extremes, then the same would have happened to the Argent Dawn, or later the Argent Crusade - organizations that existed solely because of Alexandros’ death. But it didn’t.

Saying that they would have eventually become corrupted and evil simply because of their devotion to the Light takes away the importance of the Dreadlords to me. It makes the notion of corruption much less impactful to me. I prefer the idea that it was all because of an elaborate, well orchestrated plot to take advantage of well meaning people at the worst point in their lives over “the Light inevitably corrupts all things”.

That is not to say that the Light cannot be used for evil. It absolutely, undeniably can. Just like the Void can be used for good. I merely disagree with the notion that the Crusade would be as it is now without the Dreadlords, because quite simply the Crusade wouldn’t exist without them in the first place.

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I don’t wanna get into it all, even if this is an interesting discussion.

I just want to take this single point right here… And just say how stupid it is. This should not be a thing, and I don’t give a damn about the lore now saying necromancy isn’t it’s own form of magic or whatever BS they spun in Shadowlands. The Light should not be able to raise zombies or undead or anything.

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If I remember right, the old Scarlet lore also hinted at them tapping into a type of divine magic that no one really understood (ie brought up once then never developed). Like you could branch from the Light to other “divine” sources with their own rules. This was back when you could have multiple schools of magic that sometimes overlapped instead of everything being crammed into a cosmology chart, and each flavor of magic lined up with the DnD morality system to some degree.

Everyone copied DnD to fill in the blanks, which was the style at the time.

Back then, it seemed like the Light would drop you like a bad habit if you did a major whoopsy, and the faithful would either crash out or start believing even harder and picked up powers they “thought” was the Light.

This was how Blizz originally explained why a bunch of holy nutballs didn’t realize their leader was actually a ten foot tall vampire demon who never skipped arm day, when the Light was supposed to be able to doxx demons. And why they didn’t lose their powers when the Light still had the whole “works in mysterious ways” schtick going on.

In short, the Light wasn’t keen on the Scarlets torturing the innocent, it started to leave them, so the Scarlets believed even harder and somehow believed their way into a Light-esque source based on will power.

Skip ahead, Legion drops, Scarlets aren’t in style, obscure lore is forgotten because it’s obscure, and now all types of magic are morally grey. Because subjectivism, or something. Which means nu-Light fits in with the Scarlets believing they’re good enough to use it while Classic Coke-Light left way too many questions.

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I was going to touch on this point myself but you explained it quite well already.

In my opinion, the Scarlet Crusade’s righteousness and devotion was misdirected by malevolent forces to achieve evil ends.