Baine’s response to Taraujo was LITERALLY build a big wall to reinforce Mulgore’s borders and being sated with the death of Hawthorne (the Butcher of Taraujo) and nearly all of his men. Heck, in “Tides of War” they even raise Northwatch to the ground. That seems perfectly reasonable and measured; which is a nice change of pace when normally “Justice” is overdone and becomes “Vengeance”.
As for him showing empathy towards the people of Theramore. Considering it was Jaina and Theramore that gave him asylum and the funds needed to take back Thunderbluff during the Grimtotem Rebellion, maybe the dude felt a bit guilty that despite Jaina helping him reclaim HIS home … he just helped utterly destroy hers. Oh, but sorry, guilt and empathy are “Human” emotions.
I hope to god that they end it well.
Nothing would be worse than having Sylvanas become horde’s excuse for everything and once again Horde players show up to take quests from neutral Alliance organizations like Cenarion Circle like just one expansion ago that same Horde player was not fighting for the Forsaken and Sylvanas in Darkshore. https://giphy.com/gifs/i4OfVOFke0jxm
TOW doesn’t mesh with in-game questing. It may as well have been an alternate universe. I already called you out on this BS interpretation. Do you have a response?
Like I said before, Baine, in TOW, (IN THE CONTEXT OF TOW - NOT IN-GAME QUESTING) exiled a few vigilantes compromising the efforts of the Horde leadership to deescalate faction conflict that had yet to reach open warfare. The Alliance attacked Taurajo because they had (false) intelligence saying the Horde planned to attack them first and is otherwise not mentioned aggressing against the Tauren.
I don’t like TOW, but Baine’s decision made sense considering the context of TOW.
Well nevermind then, maybe he was feeling a bit marrose at the realization that his Warchief just got a ton of his own people killed. People somehow continue to blame Baine’s warning to Jaina to get her people the hell out for the Horde deaths at Theramore, but Baine is right. Garrosh’s choice to wait allowed the city to reinforce and turn into a Horde meatgrinder (and Garrosh himself used the Horde infantry as merely a distraction to allow for the Mana-Bomb to be dropped).
Garrosh was responsible for those Horde deaths, but because that’s inconvenient for the Baine hate (and Garrosh sacrificed those troops to kill Alliance) we’ll ignore that.
He wanted the Alliance to find out and send reinforcements so he could kill more of them. He had ships wait just outside Theramore’s waters for days. He made sure the army gathered at Northwatch would be seen.
Except you use your servers data like searching whos online at a certain time of day or ask your local trade chat like a survey to reinforce one argument or another.
Both of which are hilariously weak if anyone has spent 15 minutes studying statistics.
Alliance. Theramore is Jaina’s sovereign territory but she is a member of the Alliance. (Hell, she might even have sworn fealty to Varian, idk.)
Alliance did have territories. Theramore, North Watch, presumably Fort Triumph, Bael Modan.
It’s an invasion regardless. They invaded a Horde camp and killed people.
I agree it’s an invasion.
These points don’t matter.
What matters is this:
Yet of late, escalating tensions have pushed the two factions closer to open war, threatening to destroy what little stability remains
This is from the TOW summary. As we see, the factions are considered not yet in open war.
Because of that, Baine, Vol’jin, and even Sylvanas oppose Garrosh’s plans to attack Theramore - which seems totally acceptable if the factions really were in open war. Sylvanas says she is afraid that destroying Theramore would only encourage the Alliance to attack her territories. Which you’d think they’d already do, considering she blighted Gilneas. Vol’jin says they can’t attack Theramore because the Alliance would invade them. Which you’d think they’d be concerned about seeing as how the Alliance had already invaded the Barrens. TOW just doesn’t make sense, pal. It insists the factions aren’t in open war when in-game questing clearly makes it look like they’re in open war.
Additionally, there’s no mention of the Alliance attacking the Great Gate. So they weren’t actively killing Tauren when Baine exiled the vigilantes for seeking revenge against the Alliance.
The whole point of exiling the vigilantes was because the Horde and Alliance had a chance to avoid further violent conflict. (At least so the book insists.) The vigilantes would only lead to more reciprocating violence and get more people (including more Tauren) killed. Baine was trying to quell faction conflict (along with almost everyone else, except Garrosh) in TOW. That means he had to get the Horde to avoid violence as well.
All of them but Fort Triumph had been killed to a man, only to be repopulated during Cataclysm’s war. Fort Triumph is brand new during Cataclysm.
They do matter though. They reinforce what you said: ToW doesn’t make any sense. The factions are already at war. Baine is unwilling to accept that and would rather punish his people than accept reality.
ToW is an attempt to push all blame onto Garrosh for the war, when he’d already started it in Ashenvale twice.
We understand that it makes sense if the factions are at war, but the book insists they aren’t. It is effectively a different universe.
So what you have is a not-war scenario where Baine is trying to preserve peace by ending reciprocating violence and none of the Horde leaders except Garrosh will defend Kalimdor because the book is telling us Garrosh attacking the Alliance is actually an act of aggression that’d ignite a war.
It should be noted that Baine didn’t exile those Tauren calling for revenge out of Mulgore, he only had them removed from Thunder Bluff. Those people were not dumped into the middle of the Barrens to fend for themselves … they were still clearly within the protected territories of the Tauren.