The point is that they would have made it impossible to fight back, not that they are “evil”.
ToW’s presentation (all 2 paragraphs of it) is that there was no active war, Baine built the Great Gate in response, and most of the tauren were content with that. A very, very few wanted to lash out at the Alliance anyway and those people who didn’t want to follow his direction were expelled from Thunder Bluff. Only Thunder Bluff.
Question: If you were in Baine’s position and you ordered your soldiers not to pick a fight with the enemy forces, and they disobeyed you and attacked anyway, how would you punish them?
Baine was played like a fiddle by Garrosh but he’s still a traitor. He willingly gave the enemy a heads up about an attack in order to save Alliance lives. Whether or not the heads up was useful is irrelevant. Baine thought it would be useful enough to send the message to begin with, and that makes him a traitor.
My point is that the Tauren are not a monolith, and have a patchy relationship with both the Horde and Alliance (in that they have been hurt, and helped, by both sides of the Faction Conflict). The Darkspear are sort of the extreme of this, where they have actually been hurt MORE by their affiliations with the Horde than they have the Alliance (but that is a different topic).
Long story short, the when you have Factions of Tauren pulling you in two different directions, you choose a middle path. You have one group that wants to fully immerse the entire Tauren people to sate their personal quests for vengeance, you have the other (and as it was described, larger faction of Tauren) who want nothing to do with the Horde anymore; let alone get dragged into the HORDE’S war against the Alliance). The path Baine chose is not the worst considering the Grimtotem rebellion.
Hell, the Sin’dorei should be able to sympathize, they have little reason to be invested in the faction conflict either (which is why they also considered leaving during the MoP era).
ToW’s presentation (all 2 paragraphs of it) is that there was no active war, Baine built the Great Gate in response, and most of the tauren were content with that. A very, very few wanted to lash out at the Alliance anyway and those people who didn’t want to follow his direction were expelled from Thunder Bluff. Only Thunder Bluff.
How does any of that matter? It just makes the Tauren as a whole look stupid and Baine look like chief of the dumbs.
Question: If you were in Baine’s position and you ordered your soldiers not to pick a fight with the enemy forces, and they disobeyed you and attacked anyway, how would you punish them?
I wouldn’t choose not to retaliate against an enemy that already picked a fight with us to begin with.
First off, the Tauren are PART of the Horde. They don’t get a choice to not be involved in the Horde’s affairs, especially when the Horde is sending people to fight for THEIR lands.
Secondly - How exactly is the Alliance even supposed to differentiate between the Tauren that did nothing, the Tauren that were already fighting on behalf of the Horde, and the Tauren that were exiled and went to fight against Baine’s wishes? Because Baine didn’t stop anybody from fighting, he just told people not to advocate for it in front of his face and sent them on their way.
Seriously, how was what he did in any way “not letting his people get dragged into ‘the HORDE’S war’”, when the Tauren are already part of the Horde, it was their lands getting invaded, and MANY Tauren were already fighting as part of the Horde’s forces? It makes no sense whatsoever.
Because the Tauren don’t see their loyalty to the Horde that way. From what it sounds like, unlike Orcs, their LOYALTY to the Horde is not intimately tied to their conception of Honor. In fact, Runetotem outright states that Baine is not bound by the oath that Cairne swore to Thrall (as the Tauren perceive it, at least at that point, they had sworn no Oath to the Horde … they swore it to Thrall). If they perceive the Horde as being different to the one they signed up for (like when it comes under new management), they have the ability to feel their oath is rendered mute.
As for “how the Alliance knows the Tauren did nothing” , they do through Baine keeping lines of communication open with them. You don’t think that if Baine were to lead his people into leaving the Horde (and even if he simply chose neutrality, rather than siding with the Alliance) the Alliance would cease to be in conflict with them immediately (with Jaina and Anduin’s relations with Baine are)? Baine could get his people out of the crossfire in an instant if he chose to leave.
It makes no sense to you because you’re clearly turning the Horde into a monolith, and ignoring the fact that it is an incredibly diverse faction (not just in physical race, but also in terms of culture, ideals, and ideas). The Tauren don’t really have much a personal dog in the Faction Conflict (neither do the BEs), outside of their affiliation with the Horde. Should they decide to end their relations with the Horde, their contentions with the Alliance largely end as well (outside of the Kaldorei).
Not to interrupt the Tauren talk, to be honest my opinion on the race has always been rather ‘meh’ and i’m not an expert on their diplomatic interactions, but I would point out the Blood Elves do have a tangible reason to be in the faction conflict.
Ever since Garithos there’s been a functional diplomatic shutdown between the Blood Elves and the rest of the Alliance primarily because the Blood Elves association with the Naga and fel magic riled up all the ignorant peasant folk of the human nations. Naga were generally seen as aberrations, that’s why Garithos had such an easy time of imprisoning the Blood Elves in Dalaran after, and it’s safe to assume that it left a lingering bad taste in the Elves mouth.
Course Garithos and presumably his army are dead, but since then the Blood Elves had to resort to escalating levels of dark magic to keep their society afloat. Hell while they seem to be fixated on the Light right now I still doubt your average Stormwind citizen would take kindly to them mashing up the organs of other beings and shoving them into mechanized potion bottles with arms.
The Blood Elves were about to rip this stigma off themselves but then the Purge of Dalaran happened and it’s safe to say that made the population of Silvermoon, and it’s leadership for that matter, pretty angry. Anyone who still sympathized with the Alliance presumably went with Umbric on his zany adventure into the Void.
Garithos … yeah, he has turned entire world against them; but in reality part of what hurt the BEs so drastically with Arthas was due to their own isolationism (hell, despite hundreds of humans dying to protect THEIR lands in the Second War, they blamed Humanity for the losses they sustained to the Amani; and used that as justification for leaving the First Alliance). Its not like the Bad Blood was one sided there (hell, part of Garithos’ racism towards elven-kind was due to those very events).
However, Jaina was not acting as a representative of the Alliance when she went all vengeance-monkey in Dalaran (she actually bit Varian in the butt pretty hard there due to her temper-tantrum). She brought the Kirin Tor officially into the Alliance AFTER that event however. Though, to the public of Blood Elves, I doubt that reality means much to them.
Can we just agree that, the Horde might be in the wrong for this war, but at this point the Alliance has so many people bucking orders that at the very least there needs to be a command restructuring to not consider them a threat to our existence? >.>
Hey man, I’m still rooting for the Mathias Shaw being Mal’Ganis (no way Shaw should have survived being captured by Datheroc). Lets throw a real wrench into this whole Faction Conflict by having SI:7 being nearly entirely consumed by a Dread Lord (who’s been doing exactly what the last False Shaw wanted, to push the two factions into a War when they could least afford it).
Everything will be falling apart, Anduin will be walking into his throne room, and there dying in a puddle of his own blood is Genn; surrounded by SI:7 members (Anduin’s own secret police); while sitting in the Throne of SW sits Mal’Ganis: “I have been waiting for you, Young King. I am Mal’Ganis. As you can see, your people are now mine…”
Well, the point is the lightforging process, not the light itself. When we helped T’paartos, we helped him kill his corruption or evil or whatever. The… thoughts, emotions and ideals that didn’t correspond to the light. Presumably, one would be fear. I think a questchain helping Baine through the lightforging process would be dope, and killing his Cowardice would be awesome.
The Tauren aren’t one thing. The Grimtotem make up a large minority of Horde Tauren even after Cataclysm and people tend to forget that.
I mean … a lot of his “cowardice” as its been presented is he’s afraid of his own rage. This is a guy who’s been established as so physically strong in “War Crimes” that his AU self (that gave into his anger over Cairne’s death) had enough strength to not only defeat Garrosh in Mak’gora, but rip him in half with his bare hands. I’ve always wanted to see Baine let loose one of these days, shame he’s always forced to stay passive so often.
Yeah, and it would be great if it was lightforged rage and turned on the Horde with a bunch of Orc, Tauren and Troll defectors charging vanguard behind him. If we’re gonna fight the Warchief again, I at least want it to be of political consequence.
Then they’re very wrong, and it has nothing to do with their conception of honor. It doesn’t matter what some higher ups like Baine or Hamuul thought about their loyalty to the Horde or that Tauren shouldn’t be advocating striking back at the Alliance in Thunder Bluff, because countless Tauren were actively fighting on behalf of the Horde across Azeroth including right outside their own gates.
Ultimately Baine didn’t do anything to stop the fighting or pull the Tauren back from the Horde, he just hindered their efforts in a treacherous manner. The only reason the Alliance didn’t break into Mulgore is because of the forces Baine denounced. He comes across as utterly sheltered and idealistic to the point of pointless self-sacrifice, because nothing he did stopped the Tauren’s involvement in the war.
Do you really think the Tauren would accept that? Even in the Barrens at that very time when Baine had exiled people for advocating fighting, there are Tauren fighting at every front.
That is a major tie to the conflict.
You think Tauren would just up and forget every time they’ve fought with the Alliance? They’ve been part of every Horde war effort since WCIII.
For starting it? I don’t agree; I think that the attack at Stormheim was a declaration of war for any sane person. The Alliance ambushed a Horde army and tried to assassinate its head of state. Sylvanas couldn’t let that stand.
The Horde is just in the wrong for how they prosecuted the war. Specifically, for murdering an entire city of non-combatants. That’s way past any grey area.
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