I know how Nos feels about Calia, the council, and the peacetime. I’m looking for the opinions of some of your characters on these matters.
The Gilnean Reclamation is the latest update and there will be various opinions on how that played out. That’s going to be the main topic for the next Forsaken Talk event and I need to hear other perspectives to build a more compelling speech. So, please leave your thoughts on the Worgen homecoming and/or your character thoughts on the dynamics.
Also, y’all noticed on Horde side they called Calia queen in the quest sheet?
Welcome to the honorable fellowship of factions with toothless leaders, friend!
You are going to love watching your leader wistfully sigh at the distance and lament the atrocities of war instead of actually doing anything about it.
Incomplete is too obsessed with her own ambitions to become a cool metal skeleton. So, she honestly cares little for Gilnean Reclamation. If the council or Calia approve and fund her projects, then she will be hail Queen Calia and whatever to keep that funding secured but otherwise, her actual interest in the recent events are minimal.
If Versca wasn’t a pile of bones laying in a ditch somewhere in Darkshore, she’d be fine with a council but she won’t kneel or call Calia Queen. She’s originally from Alterac so her opinion on the Lordaeron royals is not the most positive, given the whole Arthas thing and the destruction of her own home at the hands of the former Alterac King and the Alliance under Loraderon leadership. So she’s not big on loving royalty. Given her current state as a pile of bones, she doesn’t really have much of an opinion on Gilnean Reclamation either.
My Forsaken, Sarestha, would be excited and proud to call Calia Queen. Rightly said, Lordaeron ought to have a monarch, in her opinion. She’s a fan of the Pallid Lady due to Calia’s instrumental role in the reclamation of Lordaeron City, her home. Not to mention her commitment to the Light, something that Sarestha has always held to, unorthodox as it is in the Forsaken society.
Welcoming the Alliance right to Lordaeron’s doorstep while the Forsaken are still recovering, though? She’s got major reservations about welcoming the Alliance so close to a very vulnerable Lordaeron. Even more so about offering them support in reclaiming it. It’s one thing to surrender territory as a condition of peace, it’s quite another to use Forsaken soldiers to sure up the enemy claim. It doesn’t escape Sarestha’s notice that the Forsaken received no such support when faced with their own recent Scarlet dilemma.
So right now Sarestha is concerned that Queen Calia is being naive about this issue, lacking the brutal experience of two world wars in which the Gilneans were fierce adversaries of the Forsaken. She’ll still stand by and support her Queen, hell she was probably involved in the forces that supported Gilneas, but she’s concerned that the Alliance will one day strike at the Forsaken, and this time the Forsaken will not be ready. She fears that day, and will vigilantly patrol the border… just in case.
Besides, book lore suggests the Alliance has resettled Southshore. Sarestha would see the Alliance’s failure to withdraw from historic Lordaeron entirely as hypocrisy, and a threat. They’ll use Lordaeron’s most strategic seaport alongside Gilneas as a forward base for an invasion when it suits them, just you wait.
On an OOC note I find it jarring and frustrating how quickly we’ve gone from massive, atrocity filled warfare to all holding hands and being besties. It’s giving me whiplash lol.
I’m all for taking a break from expansions that revolve around faction wars, but after all these years and all these reasons to hate each other, I find it so unusual that there’s ZERO tension now. Genn’s the only guy who even hints at a bit of faction tension, and his arc seems to be "I guess I’m a hateful bigot now, guess I’ll let the next generation take over " which isn’t ALL bad but… it’s certainly a weird tonal shift.
If I may use a real world example, half of the USA seems to hate the other half at the moment due to several strongly held differences of OPINION. How much more hate would be present in the wake of several atrocity-ridden wars? I just find it boggles belief how quickly the tone has shifted. I’d prefer a cold war vibe, myself. Tension and wariness, maybe even some espionage, with reluctant cooperation here and there when faced with major mutual threats. Otherwise let the factions deal with their own problems.
Oh I like your responses which made me rethink my own.
If Versca wasn’t a pile of bones in a ditch somewhere in Darkshore she would hold similar reservations. She still wouldn’t be, wooo Queen Calia but would be very pessimistic about another out of touch Royal making poor decisions that will only hurt the every day unbreathing people. She would question if the new Council is being swayed by Calia because of her title and if efforts need to be made to ensure the Council is not failing the people they are supposed to represent.
They tried to do it by bringing in the Scarlets to be the punching bag again.
Scarlets have been so overused they’ve lost any sorta oomph they had because they’ve repeatedly been the bad guys we kick around over and over. Imagine how different and even interesting it would have been if instead, it was the Scarlets shoring up the support for helping retake Gilneas.
Could have some interesting dynamics, perhaps the Scarlets have some ulterior motives and hoping to use this opportunity to establish a new stronghold for them. The Gilneans could weary of the Scarlets turning on the afflicted population. Perhaps even a divided between afflicted and non-afflicted is hinted at.
Which would then lead to a fun dynamic for the Undead to be concerned knowing Gilneas and the Scarlets teamed up and are now right outside their backyard.
I think part of the problem is WoW being restricted by being a MMO. Gotta make sure everyone gets to participate so we get these kinda weird inserts with the Horde helping the Gilneans and Kaldorei. Curious how this would and a lot of the game story beats have played out if the story was told through an RTS instead of an MMO.
Oh, i wonder how many Forsaken in the Gilnean event fighting on the frontline thought they were going to keep the city?
Like I’m sure they knew we were attacking Scarlets because we just delt with them in Silverpine and now we are pushing them further south. But, did they know that we were doing on behalf of the Gilneans?
I know logically it might seem like they knew, but if the real Forsaken populace was as divided as the player base, then it seems to me the council would have left the last part out so they wouldn’t have a portion of their forces dip out on them.
While Richter feels that Lordaeron ought to have a monarchy once more he is very skeptical of the current heir to the throne as well as the ruling council as a whole. He sees no reason we should have handed Gilneas back over to the Worgen after we fought so hard to take that land. Even if some fanatical zealots of the Crusade have snuck in.
And Menehtil being named Queen without any notice or discussion? BAH, she’s not even a true forsaken no matter whether the SL says being risen in death is the same even if its in different ways. Give us a true Forsaken ruler once more.
Every seems perfectly fine to accept me in polite society after melting down several paladins for scrap ingots. It has barely months since I betrayed my former allies, and I haven’t even apologized to the families of the fallen.
I feel like “Queen” Calia is a typo and there may be a forthcoming explanation that she’s still just a member of the desolate council. Not that it really matters - it isn’t like Belmont or Faranell are going to become new faces of the Forsaken, and Voss’ history is too up and down and over-around for her to even be on the ballot. These icons were all just tools in Sylvanas’ kit, so it makes sense that they need a queen to lead them.
From a tactical viewpoint, Lance doesn’t like that the Alliance just came in and reclaimed some turf unopposed. Peace is a great mask for these developing moves that will set the stage for whenever war breaks out again, and it doesn’t make sense to give up lost ground without much consideration, let alone assisting in that loss for whatever vain attempt at reconciliation the forsaken could muster.
But on the other hand, maybe there could be some lasting peace because of this gesture. You need to have neighbors to find out if you can tolerate them, and if the forsaken and worgen can get along, then maybe they can set an example for the rest of Azeroth that orcs and humans couldn’t.
It is a nice idea, but not one Lance will put any stock into. He’s also on the other side of the world, so his opinion doesn’t matter much at this point. But he’ll participate in the conversation if it comes up at the bar when he’s had a few drinks and feels like airing his opinion to everyone who wants to hear it.
Where oh where have you been? Doing deep research somewhere?
But yeah, would Gastley have been on the front lines with the Forsaken distraction force of the Gilnean fight? Or was he away entirely?
Does he feel unsettled enough to express these concerns in a public talk?
I had the thought that maybe it was not a typo, but more an homage to her inherited title as Queen of Lordaeron as the only surviving Menethil. She isn’t the queen of the Forsaken, just someone on the Desolate Council that people call “Queen” like folks still call ex-US Presidents “Mr. President.”
These are my hopeful thoughts, anyway. I don’t feel like Calia has enough genuine connection to the Forsaken and development as a character to be a full-on actual queen just yet. It feels abrupt.
A title for an elected official doesn’t necessarily follow the same rules as inherited titles. In this case though, wouldn’t she be called princess because she has no kingdom. Even if it’s not a title and it’s for respect of her, then Blizzard made it worse because she has yet to do something worth that level of respect.
Oh, for sure. It’s a misnomer either way. Even princess would be odd, since as you pointed out, she’s princess of a destroyed kingdom.
The other explanation is the quest dialogue writer either messed up or got ahead of themselves, and Calia is intended to be royalty again in the coming expansion. QA or whoever is responsible for such spoiler slip-ups missed it this time around.
Or maybe they don’t understand how royalty works, like I apparently don’t.
It’s far too much, far too soon, far too quickly, but I did feel it was time to reset the scale, so to speak. If the Dragon Isles have taught me anything, it’s that the time for flouncing about in the shadows is long since passed. Trepidation is natural given the complications of the Windrunner era, but as is oft said, it’s not where we’ve been that defines us, but where we’re headed.
But yes, it’s all a bit bone-rattling, I should think.
Why exactly were the Scarlets in that city? Was it just because they were pushed south after the Silverpine attempt?
It would have been much better if there was some sort of power or relic there which they needed. So that even though we beat them, they at least achieved something. After all, if they are going to keep using them as punching bags, have them win in somethings to make them worth the effort.
" which isn’t ALL bad but… it’s certainly a weird tonal shift.