Dumb Thoughts: the Holy Flame was teased ages ago

Wyrmrest Accord
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Something that has been bugging me for a while is that the Holy Light kinda just came outta nowhere, that the ‘Primal Powers’ are inherently unstable on their own, so seek to ‘bind’ to a secondary source of magic to stabilize themselves.

Furthermore, the Arathai also see all magic as ‘elemental’ in nature, and while they do mention both Demons and Old Gods using a singular form of magic, they infer this is cultural rather than the ‘nature’ of this magical energy or ‘element’.

((See https://www.wowhead.com/beta/item=225216/palawltars-codex-of-dimensional-structure for their ‘evidence’))

What’s rather telling is that they apparently either have fought, or have encountered records of, Old Gods, and the Legion apparently has had the ability to invade all of Azeroth, not just our side of it, but that’s a different topic.

Their whole theory sounds like absolutely bupkis, until you stop and look at their argument.

The Firelands isn’t just fire. There’s earth as well, though Earth that’s been consumed and infused with the energy of Fire. There was water in Deepholme, which supported life and allowed the formation of certain types of gemstone/crystal structures as well, as well as the stalagmite/stalactites of the realm.

We’ve seen Elementals driven mad by the Fel or the Void are similarly afflicted. Fel-infused Fire Elementals are composed of Fel-flames, Fel-infused Water Elementals turn acidic or into slime, Fel-infused Earth Elementals look almost like Inferals, or are riddled with green magma. We’ve yet to see Fel-Infused Air Elementals, but that Element might be too fragile and fleeting to survive bonding with the Fel.

We had a whole expansion or nearly so of dealing with the nightmare of Void and Fire becoming a single source of power and becoming a parasitic force within Fyrakk, so we’ve seen how that plays out, and we’ve seen Void-corrupted or controlled Elementals look thin and sickly compared to ‘natural’ Elementals, with thin, wavy spines, collars and chains and shackles dotting their forms.

We’ve even has Para-Mentals, Quasi-Mentals and Omni-Mentals all the way back in Vanilla, being two-Element hybrids, three- or four-Element hybrids and hybrids of all known Elemental types, although the latter are exceedingly rare and tend to be shunned by the other Elementals for not belonging.

And we kinda killed off the Firelord that we had just put into power during the final days of the Dragonflight Expansion. Meaning either Fyrakk’s elemental spirit is fighting for the position, or whatever the Holy Flame is might be gunning for the position, and with an army of zealous mortals both feeding it power and fighting for its cause, might be able to take the throne of the Fire Lord directly.

It also begs the question, what if the Light does try to bind to the existing Elemental Lords? Would we challenge this? Because if the Light in its purest, less-Prime Naaru-y form gets involved, that seems to be in everyone’s best interests (for now…), but we also saw that the Titans actively chained up the Elemental Lords rather than try to infuse them with the Arcane, and we have two Titans in the Pantheon who have significant ties to all 4 of the 4 Elemental Lords.

Golganneth, Titan of Sea and Skies, who would have a vested interest in the Elemental Lords of Air and Water signed on to Team Tian, and Khaz’goroth, The Titans’ ‘smith’ and the 'Forger of Worlds, whose command of Earth and Fire would have certainly cowed the Elemental Lords of Earth and Fire.

It could be the sheer chaotic nature of the Elements of Azeroth prohibited the binding of Arcane energies to them as that could have either killed or destabilized the Elemental Lords, and since all Elementals are, in some way that’s never been clearly defined, ‘linked’ to the World Soul of Azeroth, but I think they were already corrupted by the Void, and Aman’thul had them sealed up and set to be slowly purified, separated from the Old Gods and the Void they served, until such time as the Elemental Lords could be stamped with the power of the Arcane and brought to heel.

Or … whatever this Holy Flame is, it might predate the Titanic claims of Azeroth and fearing that the Light, while a fellow agent of Order, might use the Elemental Lords and their connection to the World Soul to twist Azeroth to serve the Light, and not the Titans, took the Elemental Lords off the table to prevent them being used against the Titan Watchers and Keepers, and whatever this structure called ‘the Manifold’ is meant to be doing.

But it strikes me as odd since most Elementals prefer balance and harmony. Admittedly, a lot of Elementals do fight one-another, but that seems to be more trauma from their enslavement under the Black Empire and the Spirit Energy issue with the World Soul than any innate hatred of one another. Frustration and irritation, but most Elementals prefer to avoid fighting one another unless riled up by Dark Shamans, the Void or the Fel.

So why only the Holy Flame? Why not a balanced Court of Holy Elements? Holy Flame for the Warriors, Holy Earth for the Farmers and other people of the ‘earth’, Holy Wind for the messengers and aerial units, Holy Water for the navy, fisherfolk and such?

Because we know that the Arathati tribe of Men and their ilk, before the High Elves taught them the arcane and before the Light reached out to both races, used primitive Druidism and Shamanism they’d picked up on their own and stolen from the Forest Trolls they fought against.

We know that Troll Loa run the gamut from dead relatives to Wild Gods to even Elementals, and the easiest way to be a Shaman is to make a ‘pact’ with an Elemental, in which it gives you access to its power in exchange for you acting as its mortal servant and protector.

We know that Loa can rise and fall based upon the faith of their followers and the offerings they receive. We’ve seen both the body and all the belongings are offered to the Holy Flame upon death. We’ve seen constant prayers to the Holy Flame, be it at times of conflict, peace or cowering from the shadowed form of Beladar.

What if the Holy Flame is some crude Shaman’s Pact Elemental who tagged along on the journey, got Light-Forged/Bound and, fed with thousands of years of worship, souls and offerings, has become an Elemental Lord-like entity all on its own, and given that frustration and irritation that Elementals of different types have with each other, and given how the Light reacts strongly to absolute belief, this Holy Flame Elemental has actively avoided the balancing effect of Shamans because it can feed both on the Light and the souls/offerings of the Arathai faithful and spare its Elemental energy for subjugating and ensuring the compliance of its non-Light affiliated kin, both Fire Elementals and the other types as well?

What are your thoughts?

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so…like a naaru?

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I think about that a lot, actually. What happened in other areas during Legion?

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The Argonians stormed through the Oblivion Gates and fought the Legion on its home turf, being so effective against them that the gates were closed from the Legion’s side.

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The Black Marsh’s response to the events of Elder Scrolls : Oblivion is the only part of the canon I find palatable. ((Edit: From the Oblivion game, not the whole Elder Scrolls series. We will be here until the Heat Death of the Universe if I’m allowed to rant on that little subject …))

“FOOLISH MORTALS, YOU WILL BE OUR SLAVES!”

“… What’d you say?”

“Foolish …?”

“No, the s-word.”

“Oh, yes, slaves, its all you mortals are good for.”

“… aight. Square up, you Walmart-brand Darth Maul.”

And literal Hell had to bar the gates and abandon thousands of their own because the Argonian message was “NOT THIS TIME!” and pulling the angriest uno reverse in all of fantasy fiction.

I mean, while the Naaru portray themselves as entities of Pure Light, they do have a very high likelihood of being infested, infected, warped and consumed by other entities and power sources, don’t they?

Their ‘natural’ life cycle includes falling into a Void State where they must consume souls/anima to restore themselves to the Light, hence they tell their followers that Light and Life can be exchanged and lose nothing in the process, when we now know that they’re skimming anima off the souls/life in the process and cheating the Shadowlands of their due.

We’ve seen a Naaru in Revendreth that was tainted permanently with the energies of Death, and remarked that it could never go home again because its kin would kill it on sight as an abomination.

We’ve seen Void Naaru beneath Oshu’gun Mountain and in that temple on Argus that were still physically Naaru but had been so steeped in Void they’d become crystalized Void instead of crystalized Light.

A Naaru that got consumed by a Fire Elemental and took it over from within, or was trapped in the Elemental Plane of Fire when the Titans came because it might have been ‘of’ Order, but it wasn’t part of the Pantheon and it could have reported back to the Light on what the Pantheon was doing to the World Soul, is an interesting twist. So slap it with Fire Elemental subtype and make it so reviled by the ‘Pure-Strain’ Naaru that they refuse to listen to it or allow it back home and thus ensure no matter what, they buy time for the Manifold to be built and the World Soul to be ‘convinced’ to become a Titan when it finally awakens and ‘hatches’ from Azeroth.

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ChatGPT, please summarize this post :

“The author is frustrated by the sudden appearance of the Holy Light and its relationship with unstable Primal Powers, which seek to bind to other sources of magic. They explore the Arathai’s view that all magic is elemental and discuss how Fel and Void corrupt elemental beings. The possibility of the Holy Flame rising as a new force after the Firelord’s death raises questions about the Light’s influence over Elemental Lords, contrasting with the Titans’ past actions. Ultimately, the author speculates that the Holy Flame might be a powerful elemental entity shaped by worship and offerings, disrupting the usual balance among elemental factions.”

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See, this is what AI should be used for.

And the thing a lot of people gloss over is that the Legion has orbital space ships that could fly down and fuse to the ground, becoming permanent fixtures that could then be used as small Gates for the Legion to shuttle followers and supplies around at their leisure.

Demons, as a rule, don’t need to breathe. They can reshape and reform their members at will to suite a specific battlefield, and specific types of Demons will appear and disappear as required for specific battle-fronts. For all we know, Legion forces stranded on Azeroth are still embedded in hidden areas of the world we’ve never encountered yet. If the Titans have only begun installing the ‘Mantle’ on our side of the planet, then what controls the other side? The Light? Life?

We’re told that there’s only four Elemental Lords, but we’ve seen that there’s no shortage of rivals for those lofty thrones, and for the most part, the Chronicles, our main source of information, is full of half-truths and carefully curated reports that can only paint the Titanic Pantheon in a benevolent and noble light. For all we know, only 4 of the Elemental Lords were taken by the Old Gods, and the rest remained free and assisted the Titan army.

The fact that the storm that separates our half of Azeroth from the rest is an unnatural storm and churning seas makes me think at least one of the Titans, Golganneth, might have done this to keep the Elementals separate from the Mantle and the Titanic facility, implying that there are no Elemental Lords of Air and Water on the other side of the planet that are strong enough to defeat this defence, or would not be critically weakened by doing so (being composed of opposing Elemental attributes that might be eroded, quenched or consumed by the conflux of Air and Water) and left vulnerable or dying in the aftermath.

We are told that there have been situations where the Arathai Empire had to go put down uprisings. Were these rival Elemental faiths, or ‘heretical’ groups like Titan mystery cults like what popped up every now and again amongst the Explorer’s League, or the Demon Cults that plagued the Eastern Kingdoms for centuries and spanned all races, from Men and Elves, Dwarves and Gnomes, Trolls and Gnolls and more.

And heading back to the original concept Kirsy brought up, everything that the Legion uses is repurposed, never their own invention. Its always corrupted/repurposed Titan technology, Eredar magi-tech, the Gan’arg-caste Mo’arg Demons’ unstable Fel-tech, or stuff they’ve taken, copied and repurposed from the other worlds they’ve taken and consumed.

And you know what else is fused to the earth like the Legion Voidships from the Legion expansion?

Beladar.