It was one of several devices credited to Heron of Alexandria.
This is a 3D mockup of a possible version of the device/setup.
3 Likes
See, that i believe is 100% true despite his work being lost.
2 Likes
Who is carhagen?
Regarding the Khadgar thing.
If Khadgar, despite generally being a positive character, was going to have any prejudices against another race, trolls make sense for him. He would either have grown up during or slightly after the conflict between Stormwind and the Gurubashi, which would have shaped his world view surrounding trolls immensely.
But disregarding that, I think that it comes down to the fact that this is a video game universe and greater access and control of magic is ultimately tied into intellect and wisdom. So yes, while modern trolls might be just as intelligent as Night Elves, the explanation that the well of eternity put the night elves ahead of the trolls of the time intellectually isn’t that farfetched and would explain how the dark trolls/night elves went from 0 to giant empire that forced the trolls into decline relatively overnight.
And that isn’t necessarily a good thing either. Leapfrogging the natural process of accruing knowledge and magical power over time via drinking super azerite juice is also what led to the hubris that resulted in Azshara contacting the legion and almost wiping out the planet.
I find it hard to believe that Khadgar would consider any of the modern races intellectually superior though, but that isn’t what he is saying in the book anyway.
2 Likes
Personally I never liked the old lore of the WoE “elevating” the dark trolls from an underground race into upright, “more intelligent” life forms as the night elves.
Not only does it border on elitist western (and now globalised) perceptions of beauty and perfection (note that east Asians also generally fall into these standards, but often darker skin toned people do not) , with a touch of thinly-veiled racism, that trolls obviously do not fit into, but it also implies the night elves needed the font of World soul blood imbued with titan magic to reach any semblance of intelligence akin to the other traditionally intelligent races (humans, draenei etc.).
If anything, depending on a source of power/magic should’ve made the night elves and other elves after more dumber, because they need magical wells (drugs) to cast spells instead of using their innate abilties.
Makes me think of the stoned ape theory, which drew heavy criticism from scientists but many people still take it as a credible theory, although the scientific basis behind it is completely lacking…
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Stoned_ape_theory
2 Likes
The thing about the Khadgar situation from the book that kinda bothers me is the fact that wording they decided to go with is completely unnecessary and they could have literally worded any other way to make it fit.
It’s stupid because we know trolls are a really intelligent race. I mean, we’re talking about a people who built empires and came up with ideas like enchanting armor and weapons to make them deadlier against their enemies.
It’s also kinda annoying that blizz keeps using racists and making traditional good guys racist alliance to justify their obession with dunking on the horde races every chance they get. It makes playing team blue suck and I already hate playing them, I only do because I happen to love the worgen.
2 Likes
But that’s the thing though : access to an endless fount of extremely potent magic and newly acquired mastery of Arcane are what triggered the meteoric rise of the Kaldorei empire. That’s a matter of ressources and power. Not a matter of intelligence. So let’s not phrase it as a matter of intelligence.
7 Likes
So what’s the rundown on this with respect to Tauren? If Ysera made dreamwalking easy for Nelves, does that mean Tauren druids are more studious and hardworking in their calling, as they’re playing on hard mode by default without Ysera’s blessing?
3 Likes
I agree that would be the ideal way to phrase it. But its also an issue with the entire genre equating Magic and Intelligence.
1 Like
Blizzard really hates trolls for some bizarre reason. To this day, I still don’t know what their issue is, but they always come up with racists ways to describe trolls
They did it with Zekhan in the exploring Kalimdor book and now they just used Khadgar as their mouth piece to say the entire troll tribes were actually really dumb
3 Likes
The troll empire’s decline wasn’t that they were magically inferior though. The Zandalari empire lost significantly when they followed Lei Shen to Uldum and got wiped out. But that history has been largely censored by the Titans. A lot of troll history has been lost to the ages and they only reason Kaldorei lore withstood that upheaval was because they were a titan aligned race.
Titan bias is still a huge factor in how WoW lore is presented to us.
I think it stems in how Trolls were always supposed to follow the dnd monster race. Dnd trolls were described as being a savage monster race. And by giving WoW trolls irl racial ties they went and shot themselves in the foot.
There’s no way to salvage it.
1 Like
My years of constantly posting about her might pay off? 
Personally I would like her as an ally instead of an antagonist.
It’s just weird that this is only an issue for the horde races and none of the alliance races suffer from this
They shot themselves in the foot alright, the problem is instead of stop shooting themselves in their feet, they keep finding new and better ways to shoot themselves in the foot
4 Likes
Presumably arcane magic makes you smarter. Hence why “arcane intelligence” is a buff from mages increasing our intelligence. So its a feedback loop, arcane magic makes you smarter, thus makes you better at arcane and so on and so forth.
1 Like
You can also compare the Jinyu to murlocs.
Since the Jinyu were murlocs that settled on the shores of the Pools of Power in the Vale of Eternal Blossoms.
Except for the fact that Lei Shens defeat in Uldum was first described in Chronicles vol 1. A ‘biased text from the titans pov’.
So how are they censoring something that they actually provided in great detail?
2 Likes
Indeed the Titans provided great detail but the Mogu of Lei Shen’s Empire were quite different having passed Lei Shen’s demise as being of old age.
They were like, “Highkeeper Ra dissapeared for a millennia leaving the Mogu to fall to the Curse of Flesh” meanwhile we know he was expirementing with Old Gods in Nazmir with the rest of his Titan buddies.
They didn’t want us to know that bit.
If you need sources. Chronicle Vol. 1 page 59 The Vanishing of Ra and page 80 The Thunder King where Ra resurfaces 16000 -12200 years before the Dark Portal. He was missing since the betrayal of Loken.
What was he doing? The Titans don’t say.
- How does that have anything to do with Lei Shens death? You know, the thing you claimed that the Titans censored.
- Highkeeper Ra did not know about Uldir, since he did not know about M.O.T.H.E.R until he got involved in patch 8.3. In fact we do not know when Uldir was constructed relative to the other titan complexes.
Highkeeper Ra abandoned his duties since he found out that the Titans died. It is why he thought showing Lei Shen that via the soul fragment he had of Aman’thul would convince the future Thunder King that continuing the will the titans was pointless. Obviously he was wrong since Lei Shen did not care if the Titans had died to Sargeras. Ra-dens train of thought continued and got worse by the time we find him in MoP.
Also nice way to avoid the points I made.
1 Like
History is full of places where it could of gone Very Differently. The Greeks realizing the potential of their basic steam engines is one such spot. The knowledge of Electroplating and Advanced Machining the Egyptians seem to of had not being lost is another. Some of the holes we have found bored in granite Egyptian structures have such tight feed rate tool marks that modern power tools would struggle to match it—Still baffles modern engineers how they pulled it off.
1 Like