While questing in Burning Crusade classic I came across a blind Draenei Priest. His quest text made me stop and think for a moment.
“The stubborn close their mind and convince themselves of one truth. The wise keep an open mind to the different possibilities leading to and stemming from the present. Take this relic with you to where you found Sedai. See not with your eyes, , but with your mind.”
Though he looks like a holy priest his use of the mind is quite peculiar as in WOW is associated with shadow magic. The forces of the void at least in later Wow are those who keep their mind open to all possibilities while the light would be the stubborn ones who are convinced of one truth.
The simplest explanation is he was created before blizzard thought of the dichotomy of thought between the forces of the void and light though the burning crusade also connects the void with light through the Naru so I don’t know. We also are not given much backstory to this character as to why he is apparently blind and his eyes frightening enough for him to tell us earlier not to be afraid though his model is pretty normal.
I’m not necessarily sure it’s comparable to the Void’s worldview. The Void doesn’t just keep its mind open to all possibilities; it outright believes all possibilities to actually be true.
Amaan doesn’t actually say there is no one truth. He’s just stating how easy it is for many to convince themselves that a particular truth is the real one, and in the process blind themselves to the possibility that they might be wrong.
I.e. just because there’s only one true reality, that doesn’t mean it’s the reality that someone’s latched onto. The nature of people is that they tend to crave certainty when addressing the world around them, so grasping blindly onto a surety in this or that understanding to the exclusion of all else is extremely tempting.
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Keep in mind that the current lore with the Void and Light is actually relatively new, and is a departure from what the lore had been for years prior. It was only in Legion, and then Chronicle Volume 1, that the Void and Light became diametrically opposed and wielding Shadow was enough to drive someone insane if they went too deep. Prior to this, there were no Void Lords, and the Old Gods were the be all end all. And while they did use Shadow magic and could drive people crazy, the fundamental magic type used by their followers was Twilight magic, which was a twisted amalgamation of the elements in keeping with their desire to corrupt Azeroth itself.
Shadow up until Legion was not regarded as inherently evil but rather a building block of creation that shared the same status as the Light, without necessarily being diametrically opposed. While it was frowned upon in some circles, and considered dangerous, it certainly wasn’t considered the same as Fel magic, or as I said prior, Twilight magic. Forsaken priests, for instance, were canonically pretty much all Shadow priests, barring a few outliers who had the willpower to chuck around Light and deal with the pain that came from that. Before Chronicle laid out the cosmology, magic just flat out had a lot more overlap with the various types in lore. This is even evidenced in MoP, where Anduin, aka Lighty McLightface, uses Shadow Word: Pain as well as Mind Control over the course of the story and no one bats an eye.
TBC was no different, and Draenei had more nuance when introduced when it came to their lore, they weren’t just pure Lightmongers, nor were they as virtuous as they’ve been shown now. The Auchenai, for instance, were much darker than we saw in WoD, and while that likely had a lot to do with Auchindoun being destroyed, much of what they did was still implied to be in line with Draenic tradition, just twisted somewhat. And of course we have the finale of TBC, where Mu’ru shifts into a Void being and Velen says that this is a perfectly natural cycle for naaru.
You’ll find a lot of things from the old lore are more complex and styled akin to D&D as opposed to the Pokemon style magic types we have now.
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Blizz has never explained it too well but all Priests at least dabble in the Shadow. Even Boyscout Anduin used psychic scream in his bossfight.
You can’t really have one without the other. So it seems Priests are expected to familiarize themselves with both. In Deathknell at least the Shadow Clerics instruct new Priests that while they are of the Shadow, only a fool would discount the Light’s power.
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So what I’m gathering here is he’s a Disc Priest rather than a Shadow Priest.
https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Herald_Volazj#Quotes
Gaze into the void. It is the perpetuity in which they dwell.
The Old Gods were aligned with the Void since WotLK!
That’s lowercase void. It’s referring to an abyss of madness, not any sort of actual Void power. They were certainly more aligned with dark magic, but the Void as a hostile force didn’t exist until Legion, maybe WoD.
Void has existed since the beginning of the game, it just wasn’t expanded upon until later. Keep in mind that Shadow and Void are relatively interchangeable, and Shadow also existed since the beginning and was much more explained.
Always a thing. In fact, the forsaken resistance to the void whispers is what made them particularly adept shadow priests.
You’re talking about the TBC quests though. At the time if you talk to, say, NPCs and class trainers in the starting draenei zones, you’ll see phrases like"
“many are the paths of the Light”
“Light walks many paths”
Also, you can read the Cata Velen story and try to find yourself in the description something that looks like “one path”.
Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
Prophet Velen: In my life, I have witnessed many visions. Some filled me with hope… others, with despair.
Victory over Kil’jaeden lies within our grasp. I have foreseen it. But visions only show us where our path might lead.
So, who knows what the devs will do to all of those stories.
gl hf
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