Most of you are American, so this might flow:
So, lock away your enemy, not even a criminal, just someone you don’t like in this case. Don’t take their powers away, just statis them.
And then what? Hope it the problem solves itself after 10k+ years? No interaction, just caged with their own thoughts?
Odyn was right was right, Dragons are dumb.
Something happened to make the dragons abandon the island that even poor Umbrelskul suffered.
Eh, I’ll provide an alternative thought process.
You (Aspects) are born into a family that has a pretty cultish religion (not going to name one so as not to bash on any, but this feels like a poignant enough example for anyone in RL to follow). Someone comes along (the Titan Keepers) and basically offers you a chance to be lifted out of poverty and enjoy a better life. It’s an offer for you, and your siblings. The guy making the offer seems pretty legit, even if some of his co-workers don’t.
You decide, “Hey, you know what? I want that for me and any kids I may have in the future.”
But, your more hardline siblings who bought into their cult raising berate you. “What the hell is wrong with you? These people are unnatural. What you’re doing is a sin!”
By this point you’ve had enough outside experiences to realize that old cult way of thinking is flawed in so many ways, that its no longer worth taking that seriously. You keep on going with your new job, and its turning out pretty great. Then those hardline siblings of yours decide they’re going to bomb the place you work at because, “it’s evil!”
Well, that gets foiled, but they’re still your siblings so you don’t want to see them get the death penalty. In the end, it’s agreed that jail time is the best solution. Let them sit and cool their heels and think about whether or not their actions are right.
Basically, it all boils down to the Dragons not wanting to kill their own. I’m not sure removing the power of the primals is even an option.
There is a few flaws with this. The native dragons, they weren’t cult like, they were following instinct. It’s who they were. Someone outside coming along saying “you could be different” is very alien, agreed.
But the solution to imprison your siblings, it still has no basis. Most people don’t realize, but prison isn’t supposed to be “time locked away, staring in the corner.” It’s actually called rehabilitation. You are trying to reform the inmate. The Aspects made no attempt to suede their peers to seeing “order.” The just put them in perpetual stasis.
So again, what was the plan? Feel bad and submit?
I don’t know. Everything I’m hearing from the primalists in game feels very cult-like in a lot of ways. Granted that is also a matter of perspective. To their point of view, the Titans would’ve been a cult as well.
Well, as this is WoW and rehabilitation is off the tables because we need raid bosses, my guess is imprisoning your siblings rather than committing fratricide is preferable to the likes of Alexstraza.
Not saying it was a good plan. Just saying, they didn’t want to kill their kin.
You are starting to move the goal post. Primalist are complete idiots. There is no logic in their motives. They are on the level of old god fanatics. There really is no end goal.
I think we had a post about how Malfurion imprisoning Illidan was worse than execution. Solitary confinement is brutal. It’s worse than a beating.
It’s clear the Incarnates were conscious during their imprisonment(they sensed Deathwing’s fall). Without any sort of rehabilitation, all the Aspects did was let that resentment fester. It’s really naive and quite possibly the worse solution she could have chosen.
Illidan wasn’t really in solitary though. Pretty sure the Wardens regularly taunted him. Otherwise, I agree, he is an example of why it’s not a great option.
To be fair, I don’t think Alexstraza and the other aspects anticipated being cut off from the Dragon Isles as long as they were.
Very true, but the dialogue from Alexstraza about hoping the confinement would temper Raszageth, shows she absolutely had no idea what she was subjecting her “clutchmate” to.
To be absolutely fair, Dragons are not humans. Illidan wasn’t human. Humans may break after so long in complete isolation, but these other races?
Maybe Alexstraza knew better than you or I.
Or the writers just don’t think these things through.
Who is this?
That’s what sucks about it. Odyn is so terrible and has made such bad decisions and done truly vile things. Helys was a titan keeper too. It was she and raden who made the elemental planes and sealed the elemental lords in them. He straight up murdered her to be his first Valkyr yet even a thing like that a monster like that could see what a monumentally terrible idea it was to empower proto drakes. But it goes even further. If you finish the main campaign with the drsgonscale expedition you see that Tyr experimented with elemental magic on them first to see how effective the process of infusing them would be. Turns out a dragon can be turned into an Incarnate of any kind of magic. And it doesn’t explicitly say so but it’s quite possible he made the incarnates and they don’t even know theyre just another titan experiment
In this example, the aspects are the cult.
Alexstrasza is the life binder and I guess they wanted to show her reluctance to end life way back when she was younger and they were imprisoned.
She has since grown as a character, she even made the hard decision to kill Malygos and Nelthation.
She was not able to return to the dragon isles after the isles were sealed, so even if she wanted to, she could not go back and change her mind.
A lot of fantasy stories involve a main heroic character taking pity on a villain and paying some kind of price later.
Since her imprisonment was a makeshift job cobbled together by Neltharion and Malygos, it’s possible only Raszageth was actually aware of the passage of time during her confinement, which is probably why she was so reckless and unhinged. The other Incarnates came across upon escaping like they were probably locked in a better prepared form of stasis that kept them consciously “frozen” and unaware, so to their perception no time at all may have passed between being imprisoned and being set free.
I support prison abolition irl. Warcraft prisons are often even more inhumane than irl prisons. People often try to imprison immortal or long lived beings indefinitely, which is exceptionally cruel. Illidan, for example, was imprisoned twice, both before and after he died, and the sentence was meant to be eternal each time. Though, since he was a Demon, he would’ve reformed if they killed him, so that was more grey. Killing the Incarnates, on the other hand, would’ve probably been more merciful, and would have also avoided this expansion’s biggest conflict.
I never liked these dragons, they are boring.
But some folks like this kind of narrative involving dragons because they are usually peak fantasy for them.
I myself would always preffer narratives centred in the mortal races of Azeroth.
About them being dumb, that’s not surprising at all, in Warcraft dragons are always Disney princesses or Disney villains, they have zero depth.
It feels like most of this conflict and war could’ve been avoided by just agreeing to disagree and going your separate ways.