When we last left the Court of Farondis in Azsuna during the Legion expansion, they were still experimenting with various alchemical concoctions that would break the curse of undeath Azshara placed on them.
Fast forward to patch 8.2, the defeat of Azshara, arguably the most relevant opportunity to grant Farondis and his people freedom from their curse and yet they weren’t present in any capacity or even mentioned.
Even though this story thread may not be of the highest importance in the grand scheme of things, I still hope it doesn’t remain buried in Legion to be forgotten. Is there any hope for this story to have a fitting conclusion?
You would think that, with as much trouble Azshara has been over the past ten thousand years for the whole of Azeroth, there would be a little bit more urgency over the fact that she’s nowhere to be seen and is clearly up to something.
I understand that Sylvanas is the FOTM, and the Alliance and Horde were tearing their hair out looking for her in the lead up towards the Shadowlands, but c’mon. The moment we stop this whole threat, she’s going to pop up somewhere with a whole new kind of McGuffin and the Elves will be like, “I can’t believe we forgot about Azshara!”
Well, it does coincide with Game of Thrones, where Daenerys “forgot” about the Iron Fleet after defeating the Army of the Dead. The current writers do think that material is praise worthy.
Honestly, took me questing through azsuna 3 or 4 times to finally realize what is happening.
I never noticed that the “drink” Garuhod was doing, was a potion to free his soul, and not some beverage, it always seemed weird that Farondis would mention garuhod during those quests.
Anyways, we’re going to the shadowlands, there could be a simple questline where we find Garuhod and ask what is the actual recipe (even though we should know from the original quest), and just save the Azsuna souls.
I had kind of hoped the Night Warrior would do it. Since, when introduced in Cata, the Night Warrior was more the psychopomp of fallen Night Elves, than an incarnation of vengeance.
It is wildly absurd that the player character knows of the exact ingredients that would allow Farondis and his people to be free of their 10,000 year curse, yet for whatever reason can’t or won’t help them. Garuhod was referred to as a lush, so I suppose his stumbling upon the exact combination of ingredients that would free him from his curse was meant to be an immense fluke.
Still, though, I hope this storyline isn’t shelved entirely. The Shadowlands is in need of anima, and the souls of Farondis and his people would provide exactly that. It makes for a perfect trade.
I understand that Tyrande had more pressing matters during Legion with the corruption of Val’sharah and Malfurion’s abduction, but it was strange to me that she wasn’t included at all during the questing in Azsuna.
Personally, it wouldn’t surprise me if from Tyrande’s perspective, she feels the Highborne of Azsuna deserved the curse for their misdeeds and association with Azshara. Of course, we’ll never know either way if this storyline gets buried.
I feel like that’s kind of mitigated by being cursed into undeath in the first place for Farondis’s plot to rebel against Azshara. Besides, Nightborne plot contrivance aside, Tyrande can get pretty chummy with the Highborne, from her interactions with Kael’thas to her re-acceptance of the Shen’dralar.
Also, she wasn’t the Night Warrior yet, in Legion. Though I suppose you might not have to actually be the Night Warrior to ask Elune’s Night Warrior aspect for aid.
What exactly is a Highborne seem to be changed over the years.
From reading the Well of the Eternity, highborne were just the highest nobles that lived close to Azshara, other nobles in other places weren’t Highborne.
Now, every time there is Night Elf Mage and Ancient in the same line is a highborne.
Has azshara really been that troublesome for the last 10k years? We barely know anything of her activities from basically her becoming naga etc to well WoW or so, I mean the old gods told the coilskar to join Illidan not Azshara.
Then under this criteria, Farondis and his people are definitely Highborne. In life, Prince Farondis was an advisor to Azshara.
Legion Zone Overview: Suramar - In the northeast, we have the Moonguard, the remnants of an ancient order of super-powerful mages. They have this deep history, and Illidan had even been one of them—a commander of the Moonguard. At this time, everyone who was born with yellow eyes was taken to join them. It was a great honor to be trained to become one of them—they were a really powerful force.
There is an association with the Highborne as having pale skin and golden eyes, and only golden-eyed Night Elves were admitted into the Moonguard. Are all golden-eyed Night Elves Highborne? Perhaps not, but these features have become inextricably linked.
I believe the Moon Guard didn’t have highbornes, plenty of nobles, but no highbornes.
I’m down with Farondis being a highborne that didn’t side with Azshara, but the idea that there was highborne in suramar and that the nightborne were highbornes is the one that sounds weird to me, the idea i got from the books is that Highbornes were all in Zin Azshari, Suramar had plenty of nobles and mages, but not highbornes.
But that was changed it seems, since we had Highborne in what is known as Dire Maul today, I’m just going to assume that every arcane oriented Nelf was a highborne by today’s standards.
Is it necessarily evident that Azshara is still scheming ? I assumed Azshara being sucked into that void portal was some horrible eternal punishment by Nzoth for her betrayal.
Azshara likes being the center of attention, and she still believes to be the rightful ruler of all Kaldorei, even though she has been a naga for over ten thousand years.
She will become a problem in the future, for sure.
Not only was the Court of Farondis forgotten, we got introduced to even more Night Elves cursed by Azshara with the Drowned that had refused to become Naga and weren’t allowed to move on in the same way as the Court of Farondis.
It is interesting that despite being focused on arcane research rather than nature, the Court of Farondis might still have a connection to the nature based Ardenweald for their afterlives:
The Academy was the center of magical knowledge before Queen Azshara sundered the Tidestone of Golganneth, which caused the curse. Basically, it killed all of the elves and doomed them to an eternal existence—rather than turning into wisps and returning to the Great Tree, they’re stuck here as ghosts.