Something that has been percolating at the back of my head for a while, and it got brought up quite succinctly when Anduin and Genn were discussing the dead brought back from Lordaeron after attempting to capture Sylvanas and the Forsakens’ capital.
“We’ll be calling up the farmers next.”
Every war that Azeroth has faced, from the 1st and 2nd Orc Wars, the Chaos Wars, the Outland Counter-Offensive, the Northrend Offensive, the Cataclysm War, the Iron Horde Invasion, the Third Legion Invasion, the War of Thorns and then the Shadowlands Campaign, the death-tolls have been staggering. Whole generations wiped out. Massive death-tolls to the point even the people necessary to produce enough food for the nations to survive as something other than hunter-gatherers had to be called up and forced to fight.
How many people went home? Compared to how many shipped out? How many people lied about their age to stand up and fight for their people and country, and how many officials turned their faces away because the dire necessity of the situation meant every available hand was needed on the battlefield?
Re-reading the First Thunder series from DC (Seriously, get it, it is one of the better depictions of super heroes and how they struggle with the cost of their heroism) and I came across this infamous scene.
What does the veteran do when they come across someone of their own faction who has screwed up badly, goes to chew them out and sees … a youth. Still round-faced and soft, not yet old enough, surely not old enough to be enlisted, too young for this burden and nowhere near prepared for the cost of it all.
Do they rage at the new recruit for putting themselves in harm’s way, or do they take them under their wing? Do they take chunks out of the officials and generals who allowed this to take place, and force the youth back into civilian life, or do they insist on taking all such ‘new recruits’ into their service, to ensure they do get the chance to grow up, and go home.
Do you have a character who lied about their age to sign up to the fight, only to find it wasn’t all honor and glory, parades and medals like the bards and war-chanters spoke of, but holding your friend as their ruptured guts boiled out of the ragged hole in their belly, or feeling that first, sickening vibration up your arm as spear met flesh, that awful resistance for a half-second before the weight and momentum carried it through, and you stared up into the eyes of your enemy, wide and wild with shock and fear and pain and saw your bloodied reflection in them?
Or are you a veteran who has seen it all before and has become jaded to the loss, the suffering, the muffled crying and the retching at the sight of a corpse from these far-too-green new recruits, and tries not to get too close, knowing all too well that most won’t make it through the next month at best. Or do you instead force yourself into their midst, becoming the Team Dad/Mom/Parent, desperate to keep them alive, whole and sane, trying desperately to hammer in your hard-won and blood-soaked knowledge of how to survive on the battlefield to these naive and bright-eyed foolish children who have no idea what they’ve signed up for?