So the Highborne are settled in Quel’thalas and become High Elves, we know this right
But do we know if
A. The highborne slowly mutated into the Quel’dorei, changing their aspect as the energies around them influenced them
or
B. The children of highborne were slowly becoming more and more Quel’dorei-y, with the oldest Highborne remaining mostly the same
or
C. The highborne were slightly affected by the energies around them, and their children had bigger changes to become more Quel’dorei-y
or
D. None of the above
Basically, when Dath’remar died, did he look like a high elf, or like his original highborne Self?
In one of the old manga, the transformation was nigh instantaneous the moment the Sunwell was created. Most sources indicate the change was gradual and began the moment the Highborne were exiled from Kalimdor and cut off from the Well of Eternity on Hyjal and changed to a diurnal cycle.
Fairly certain that this got overwritten by the new end-all be-all lore bible that stated it was a gradually change. Realistically, it should be a slow shift that happens over multiple generations
To me, it’s probably a mix of these two. But Blizzard has kept it vague enough to where all we really know that it happened “gradually” IIRC
There must be some element of transformation among living elves: Kael’thas is only 4 generations separated from Dath’remar, so unless mothers are giving birth to complete mutants every generation, they have to be slowly changing even as they’re alive. From the perspective of many elves, Quel’thalas is pretty new, and many of them saw the earlier days of the nation.
This has always been such a strange and unnecessary retcon. Just have the Quel’dorei with normal lifespans. I hate modern fantasy settings that have races who live for hundreds to thousands of years old.
IMO outside of Tolkien’s work, long-lived, thousands-of-years-old elves tend to be detrimental to the vast majority of fantasy writing and introduce more problems to the story/setting than there would have been if elves were just as long-lived as humans, or were instead replaced by an ancient human empire.
Lorash sunbeam, He claims to have been among the exiles when they sailed from kalimdor to the eastern kindgoms, he was there when they attempted to settle tirisfal but it just drove them schizophrenic and was there for the founding of quel’thelas
The wiki says that he claimed to have been born in born Tirisfal, but the whole idea of a 10k year old Quel’dorei/Sin’dorei is extremely dumb. He should have been a Kaldorei Highborne Horde convert or something like that
idk his whole beef with night elves is cause of the exile of the highborne and how he lost family to it, Kinda can’t have that happen if he wasen’t atleast young enough to comprehend it.
I don’t know about the Thalassian elves, but the Nightborne were in a similar situation, and the were transformed directly. Both Thalyssra and Oculeth were alive during the War of the Ancients, and we know what Thalyssra used to look like.
Than make him a Kaldorei Highborne and you’ll get the same thing along with the added benefit of it making way more sense. I can’t help but roll my eyes whenever someone imagines a dude seething about a group of people he has never met for 10k years.
Sounds perfectly reasonable to me, he’s seething cause the blood elves suffered tremendously during and after the exile. You can’t expect someone to go through that and not hate the country that did that to em.