Woo 300th post.
And yeah. Dalaran, the High Elves’ staunchest ally, straight up OK’d a known bigot and Human Supremacist to up and have every single high elf soldier executed as traitors, to the point that the prison guards were gloating about, and I quote, the knife ears finally getting theirs.
Probably the reason we have a NEW council of 6…
Jaina: I CAME IN LIKE A WREEEEEEEEECKING BAAAAAALL!
I think the bigger thing, from my Void Elf’s perspective at least (ironically my formerly Alliance distrusting elf became a void elf, RIP) is just how quickly former allies and friends turned on the Blood Elves - and more than once. Like Garithos was one thing. The man was a self-important bigot who thought himself far more important and intelligent than anyone else.
But the Elves had been important “allies” of the humans for a very long time. In Dalaran especially, they maintained a fairly high population, and willingly shared magic with their human allies ever since the Troll Wars, thousands of years ago timeline-wise. They’d fought alongside the Alliance during the Second War, although admittedly only dedicating part of their strength to the overall Alliance forces. Even when no official diplomatic alliances were in place, the Elves and Humans were never really at odds with each other. They were never enemies.
Then, the Scourge decimates Lordaeron, Dalaran and Quel’thalas. Stromgarde falls to political instability, Gilneas isolates, as does Kul Tiras. Stormwind remains the sole human power in the Alliance, and it is distant and plagued by instability of its own with the Defias and their own Scourge threat (albeit a much smaller one) in Duskwood. Gnomeregan is taken in a coup. Ironforge stands strong, but simply unable to save ALL of its neighbours. Chaos reigns. But in all this chaos the newly-named Blood Elves of Quel’thalas (who lost 90% of their population, by the way) take their most ELITE forces AWAY from their homeland (which was still in danger from the Scourge) to support their nearest allies during this time of turmoil. However you want to paint it, it really was a VERY selfless gesture of friendship and unity on Kael’thas’ part.
Put yourself, then, in a blood elf’s position. You’re the elite of Quel’thalas. You’re very qualified to fight the Scourge. Instead you’re relegated to deliberately demeaning tasks like repairing damaged buildings. Then, when you finally get the chance to fight the Scourge, all reinforcements are pulled away. You manage to endure and defeat a major Scourge offensive by accepting boats and a small amount of soldiers from some Naga, who were willing to help and did nothing untoward or deserving of distrust, at least in this incident. (Keep in mind, the naga were fairly unknown in the world at this point in time). You WIN, a great victory. Then Garithos rides in and says “You consorted with naga!” He actively orders his soldiers to forget about said naga as they escape, to ignore them. He doesn’t really care. The naga were an excuse, and nothing else.
On the site that for thousands of years practically existed to commemorate cooperation between humans and elves… Garithos orders the immediate arrest and execution of every elf present.
Shocking in and of itself. But no one man has the means to arrest Kael’thas’ entire army, and an army it is, later providing a good chunk of the Illidari forces on Outland. The soldiers, it seems, follow Garithos’ orders unquestioningly. The Kirin Tor are either too weak or simply not present and organised enough to really intervene. EVERY Blood Elf in that army is placed under arrest. Not only did Garithos’ soldiers go along with this monumental betrayal, but
Again, put yourself in Blood Elven shoes for a moment. You leave your own homeland at risk to help these people rebuild, and they celebrate by locking you up and gloating about it as they prepare your execution. You’ve done nothing but aid these people, and they spit in your faces.
THAT’S why it’s a big deal. Genocide is never achieved by one person, by one evil or irrational being. It’s put into motion by the support, implicit or explicit, of the people who follow them. Garithos was one man… but he did not act alone. That’s what made Dalaran a big deal. The Blood Elves of Quel’thalas risked everything for a people who betrayed them in the most horrific of ways. It’s hard to rebuild trust after something like that. Even harder when history at least seems to repeat itself several years later, in the same city, when the Sunreavers were purged from Dalaran.
We never talk about how Pandaren mercenaries assisted Garithos in his efforts to slay the escaping Blood Elf civilians. SMH
https://wow.gamepedia.com/Garithos%27_Elite_Guard
Madam Goya was bankrolling Garithos headcanon confirmed.
I mean … You want irreplaceable artefacts, the society that made them going extinct just ups the price.
Same as dead artist memorabilia, I guess…
I believe he resigned when he left Dalaran after hearing about Quel’Thalas being destroyed.
I wish Blizzard would give us an answer on whether or not Garithos was under the control of the Dreadlords before or after all that nonsense with the Blood Elves. They never outright state when he was under their control, but once he snaps out of it he doesn’t have a problem working with an undead elf and her pet Dreadlord if it means he can fulfill his duty. Makes it seem weird he’d have tried to kill the Blood Elves that hard, just by comparison.
So, this is another common viewpoint, IC and OOC too, that I don’t get: people assuming Turalyon is a Light zealot who’ll crusade against all of existence because someone whispers, ‘For the Light.’
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/the-userper-spoilers/575200/6?u=crowngarde-wyrmrest-accord
To add onto what is above, in the recent Shadow’s Rising novel he’s specifically chosen by Anduin over Genn to lead the Alliance’s forces because when they discovered the bodies of the SI:7 agents and examined them in the Cathedral Crypts, Genn saw it as justification to believe the Horde was still harboring Sylvanas, in Zandalar, and that the Alliance needed to launch a full scale invasion immediately, while Turalyon didn’t agree, and felt stealth and reconnaissance was the better option.
Don’t get me wrong, I do think Turalyon would go to war if prompted. If the Horde throws a punch, he’s not going to turn the other cheek over and over like Anduin would. He’d throw a punch back twice as hard.
But he isn’t some Fanatical Light Zealot. I think being Lightforged may leave him more exposed to becoming Lightbound if another fanatical Naaru like Xe’ra shows up, but Turalyon himself isn’t that way by his own nature.
That the Orc and Forsaken have any justifiable reason to continue to exist. Both of these should have been wiped long, long ago and majority of Azeroth’s problems wouldn’t exist.
The others that did rise would have been easily wiped by a unified group, and we’d be advancing stronger with technology and what not. Orcs/Forsaken have done nothing but destroy, continue to do so, and yet the “they’re not all bad!” angle still gets played. Certain races were merely forced into all of this just due to Orcs, and some of the excuses to even join the Horde are super weak at best.
Other than that, there are many scenes where my character would not have just been like “ok ya, cool”.
I would personally chalk this up to Dreadlord savviness, and I personally sorta like that we don’t know for sure. Garithos was probably already ‘like that’ before any psychic influence, which makes it that much more believable to the xenophobic troops that go along with it, which in turn helps influence further negative cultural opinions that in turn further divides the nations of the whole continent. Influence a public figure that already has ideas, who then does the work of influencing the rank and file with more mundane means. A soft touch pulls more strings, if you do it right.
Why any Sindorei would still feel kinship with the void elves.
Look, this one needs to be said because it is a truth of what Blizzard has displayed to us in the game. The Sindorei should only view Ren’dorei at this point as abominations and a titanic security risk that cannot afford to be permitted anywhere close to Elven lands.
The Void Elves (even if not intentionally, which you could argue makes this a bigger reason to keep them out) nearly put a void lord in the Sunwell during the Nightborne recruitment scenario, they joined the group who had betrayed them numerous times and did nothing to mend that, there is plenty of evidence that the Void elves are ticking time bombs, when we see them in action on Zandalar they are literally running around and corrupting everything with the void -like old god cultists- and think they deserve to be treated better and, finally, there was this whole Void invasion caused by N’zoth which, at the end of the day, would only reinforce that in the long term, the void elves cannot be trusted since it’s more void invading Azeroth with nefarious intentions.
See, if it was the Dreadlords, that makes them a whole lot more cunning and threatening. It’s the sort of tactic they excel at; divide and conquer. A magical race like the Blood Elves no doubt would be a threat to their dominion over the Alliance remnants as well, so getting rid of them was in their own interests.
With that in mind, it also explains why Garithos immediately declared the Naga to be enemies. As far as I know, he’d never seen them before. He had no clue if they could even be friendly. Yet, he immediately declared them as enemies. Why? Well, Vashj and her Naga were serving Illidan, who was the enemy of the Burning Legion. To everyone else it could easily be based on appearance; they look too inhumane, they must be monsters and need to be destroyed.
But I do wish we had an answer. It doesn’t really change anything as far as the story goes, but it does give us more understanding into the character of Garithos, as well as the sheer cunning and skill of the Dreadlords.
I am generally peeved at the “X Race is Kill On Sight for Y Faction” mentality. It makes very little sense, and is almost entirely the product of game mechanics and a lack of interpreting races as a wider and more populous thing than presented in game.
I could accept it if you are explicitly an active duty guard somewhere of high strategic value, but treating another character’s race as a hostile military uniform while out getting drinks is silly, especially if it’s a neutral location. I’m all for adversarial RP and differing opinions in character, but saying “that’s the way it is because your RP race is KOS” is lame and boring.
It’s worth noting that greater Azeroth did not know that Illidan was a true enemy of the Burning Legion until quite recently. That’s why Horde and Alli invaded the Black Temple of Outland, believing that Illidan was some figurehead of the Burning Legion. So I sort of see this one being iffy.
My point was that the Dreadlords, in control of Garithos, saw Vashj and her Naga as their enemies, and thus has Garithos declared them to be enemies of the Alliance. Garithos otherwise had no reason at all to declare the Naga as foes, and thus Kael’thas’ cooperation with them as treason. Of course the reason everyone around him would accept is that they looked too inhuman, and that is part of the cunning of the Dreadlords to have taken command of a puppet who could go off the rails like that, and no one would question it because of his bigotry.
To summarize, Garithos the human had no reason to declare the Naga as enemies other than they looked too inhumane. The Dreadlords had every reason to declare the Naga as enemies because they were allied with Illidan who was their enemy.
Ah, sorry, I get you now. Still a bit off though because Illidan was supposedly cooperating with Kil’jaeden at the time still, because Arthas was acting up. So it would’ve had to be some weird internal conflict, unless I have my timelines confused.
Well, the Night Elf campaign happens first. In it, Illidan fails to destroy the Frozen Throne, and then tries to go into hiding because his failure amounts to treason to the Burning Legion. Illidan and the Naga basically went rogue, and given his past track record with the Legion, it didn’t look good. That’s why when Kil’jaeden confronted him at the Black Temple Illidan had to create a story about still working towards ending the Lich King; the Legion had assumed he’d failed and turned against them.
Kil’jaeden did reconnect with Illidan to say “ok this time is your last chance” though, it’s mentioned in the novel as well, not sure if that’s in conflict with the RTS or present WoW lore. All timelines with Illidan in general feel pretty confusing unfortunately.
The great woes of them clutching singular characters so hard for so long.
Well like, even if they dumped Illidan and made someone else take up his mantle as leader of the Demon Hunters, that doesn’t address the big question: if he was imprisoned for so long, how did he train other Demon Hunters? Because not all of them were created in the wake of the Third War.
It’s a multi-faceted issue in a way, isn’t it? Orcs and Forsaken have caused more than their fair share of destruction and death as parts of their respective nations. But Thrall is an orc who saved the world, by defeating Deathwing. Beyond just that the game and other lore shows us plenty of examples of everyday people who are orcs and forsaken just going about their lives. Forsaken blacksmiths, Orc fishermen, whatever, it goes on and on. Should they be held accountable for the actions of their governing political body, to the point of obliteration? Especially now when they’re showing signs of reform?
It gets tricky when you start looking at the extermination of entire races based on politics.
I’d dispute it purely because of the direct ties people have.
Take the American Civil War, for instance. There were quite a few stories of families split along both political and moral lines. They were prepared to fight each other for their causes, yes. But it wasn’t necessarily easy. These were family members they were fighting. People they grew up with, people they loved. It’s difficult to switch off from that, even if you despise what they have become, as it were. I think it’s a similar struggle for the blood/void elves. They’re enemies, but that’s not necessarily easy to bear.