Firstly for any with middle child syndrome, my apologies and condolences.
When Elune made this reference in SL, I couldn’t help but find it a bit odd.
Let’s consider the trolls first. We see in their society they had a connection to nature and utilised her power prior to the night elves even existing. She would later also grant Night elves the power of the night warrior to cause large damage to the Zandalari during the night elf conquests and expansion of their empire. Admittedly the entire concept for Druids in troll and Zandalari society is odd. They have the animal loa they praise and gain shapeshift power from, but the Zandalari for example are distrustful of those that worship the moon and don’t see Elune as a loa…which there is very little story as to what happened there.
Now let’s consider the Tauren. An incredibly ancient race with it even said they had Druids predating the night elves. Their absolute reverence for all things natural, including the Moon and Sun, is on par or even higher than the night elves.
With this all said, why would Elune specifically choose to favour and create a closer bond to Night elves than the others? It seems odd for her to say such a line of who her favourite race is.
Edit:
For further discussion of Elune and her relation to Nature and Life, I’ve made a separate thread for it.
Yeah it is what it is I guess. Sure, Elune is clearly associated with the Night Elves since WC 3, and the fact that she has been expanded upon for the MMO should not dilute or divorce Elune from the Night Elves. I can understand that.
But it is kind of a bummer that they have the one mysterious God like creature who favors them. At least it sort of colors in the reason why Trolls don’t consider her a Loa when they consider almost any thing, even wisps, a Loa - because Elune was mean to them and helped the Night Elves.
I can understand the Trolls and Elune having a strained relationship, but the Tauren get kind of a raw deal. They have been quiet and well behaved. I guess they will always be second fiddle when it comes to Druidism. Thank the Loa the Zandalari have a little independence in their Druidism.
And since the Night Warrior has existed on various worlds throughout the cosmos, it sort of says “all these other worlds and the races they may have contained were beneath the kaldorei in the eyes of Elune”
The first Druid was Malfurion, full stop. So… Tauren Druidic traditions do not predate those of the Night Elves.
I didn’t.
Elune’s statement seemed to be taking into account the entire cosmos. I’m not 100% on how canon this is anymore, but it was lore at one point (if it isn’t still) that she reshaped the trolls into her own image when they discovered the Well of Eternity, and in the process, that’s what created the Kaldorei.
Moving past that is the fact that the Night Elves are her race on Azeroth, which has been the epicenter for… everything significant to the greater cosmos for a long, long time now. Everyone wants Azeroth. I doubt Elune doesn’t want Azeroth. The Night Elves also successfully repelled the Burning Legion and protected it. So, yeah. Not surprised she pays lip service to favoring the Night Elves when they did what no other of her followers could, and are firmly entrenched on the most valuable real estate period.
As another thought… how many other followers does she have out there among the stars anyways? If the Kaldorei are the last of her followers then… that statement is a bit like the parent of an only child going, “They’re my favorite son/daughter.”
At least three other races, and then you have tauren and a small subsect of Zandalari on top of that. So 5 others in total that we know of.
Though it was darkly funny that those three unknown ones were there to watch Elune personally rescue someone else and call her her favorite race while the rest all died.
But are they alive? Sorry, I didn’t really note that as the question I meant to ask. Elune could have had thousands of other follower races, but if the Burning Legion wiped them all out, then what if the Night Elves are it?
As for the Tauren and Trolls, I’m not entirely sure they’re worshipers of Elune. Their systems of faith include her, but not exactly as the primary deity. It’d be a bit like, say… a priest of Zeus saying they’re also a priest of Aphrodite or something in ancient Greece. Sure, there’s a pantheon, but you have to pick your god.
With that in mind, I wouldn’t call either the Tauren or Trolls followers of Elune.
I mean, I’d say it was a dick move but… Elune isn’t exactly the goddess of butterflies and rainbows anyways. This really doesn’t feel out of character for her. I mean, she let most of her favorite race burn to send her sister some souls. She also accepts sacrifices of flesh, if those Desolace quests were anything to go by.
Oh. Then I couldn’t say either way for certain, but I’d assume there are still more followers out there because the dialogue would be incorrectly delivered if there weren’t. The game previously set up that Elune’s worship is all over the universe but didn’t say that night elves were her remaining children, just her favorite.
I don’t think you have to worship one exclusively to be a follower, especially if the beliefs of the deities you worship align. Having said that, the whole An’she sunwalker stuff is, in-universe, a reactionary move to how tauren were only revering Elune through their druidic practices, so I’d say they count in a “forgotten / ignored child” kind of way. But the Lun’alai Zandalari are explicit in worshiping her, even going so far as suggesting that she’s superior to their own race’s loa because she cares for balance and gives freely, instead of expecting bargains.
This would be something for the deity to decide, I imagine. In which case, Elune may well be a jealous Goddess, and if someone isn’t worshiping her as their primary deity, doesn’t consider them to be her child/worshiper.
With that in mind, the Tauren don’t worship her as their only deity. Their true Deity is the Earth Mother. Elune is only one of the Earth Mother’s eyes.
As for the Lun’alai, they’re a very small minority of the trolls. You can’t really compare them to the vast majority of the Kaldorei race.
If that’s the case, then I think the question becomes self-defeating since we have no way of knowing what qualifies as a true follower of Elune and who’s just deluding themselves into thinking she cares. Since we do know she says “favored” and not something like “remaining”, I think the only remaining safe assumption becomes “more than one race”.
I think it is because as far as we know, no other race has elevated Elune as their primary focus.
We can speculate that among all trolls, Dark Trolls were basically strictly nocturnal, more pacifist and attuned to the natural world. We know they started revearing Elune and slowly moved away from other Loa. That alone planted the seed of a deeper conection with the Moon Goddes.
It is perhaps the reason why Dark Trolls and no other tribe got the attention of Elune and she in turn took them in and reshaped them in her image with the help of the Well of Eternity.
We cannot be sure about how other races across the cosmos who worship Elune look like but it’s almost safe to say that Night Elves indeed look like her if we take Cenarius/Keepers of the Grove and Dryads because they already look like Night Elves and they are direct descendants of Elune.
Indeed. At most, I would say they would have to acknowledge her at least as their primary deity in a pantheon, if not their sole deity.
I don’t disagree, and I think it’d be interesting story potential in the future. If we go to other worlds, seeing Night Elves connect with these other races whom worship Elune could be interesting.
Maybe it’s for the best that tauren move away from Elune because I’m imagining a mid-way evolutionary point that’s just a night elf’s head on a tauren body except the torso has the nelf’s weepy taffy pectoral region and it’s giving me the willies.
That’s because Troll Druidism is completely unrelated to Elune/Mu’sha as far as we know (that is, except for the Lun’alai). Same goes for the Harvest-Witches and the Thornspeakers’ Druidism. Only the Kaldorei and the Tauren have their druidic practices rooted in the worship of Elune/Mu’sha. Druidism doesn’t necessarily involve that specific entity.
Clearly Malfurion is to be understood as the “first mortal Cenarian Druid” rather than “first Druid”. Many races never learned Druidism at the contact of Cenarius.
So actually… Only the Tauren should be upset about the Kaldorei being Elune’s favored children. The other races of Azeroth have literally no reason to care because Elune doesn’t exist in their practices.
Also we have to keep in mind that this whole Elune/Tauren/Druidsm has been retroactivelly retconed. At first Druids were a Night Elve exclusive class if we go by WC3. Druids had dominion over Nature and nothing to do with Moon and Stars as that was a thing of Priestesses of the Moon. Then by the beginning of World of Warcraft and for balance they included Tauren.
All that lead to Tauren being dragged to somehow Worship Elune.
It is a common misconception that Druidism is Elune magic. It isn’t, it’s just Life/Nature magic. Elune is a Life/Nature-based entity, probably the most powerful one we know of yet by quite a significant margin, but there are many other Life/Nature-based entities out there. Wild Gods are an example. Trolls (both Darkspear and Zandalari) specifically learned Druidism from Gonk, and neither Cenarius nor Elune were ever involved in the process. I don’t think they have a strained relationship with Elune—I think they don’t have any relationship with Elune whatsoever.
Absolutely no form of magic in WoW is inherently tied to a single deity or pantheon, because deities and pantheons are but beings imbued with a specific cosmic force. Paladins aren’t users of Xe’ra magic, but of Light magic. Shadow Priests aren’t users of Void Lord or N’Zoth magic, but of Void magic. Mages aren’t users of Titan magic, but of Arcane magic. Warlocks aren’t wielders of Mag’theridon magic, but of Fel magic (for the most part)… etc. Druids are no exception.
That’s not quite what I remember? I thought Gilnean harvest witches were explicitly lesser forms of druidism. And while Darkspear druids come out of nowhere with Gonk, you’re explicitly told to go to the Cenarion Circle in order to continue your training. That would mean learning how to be a druid the nelf way.
It’s also somewhat built into the class, both with its moon-related magic and the fact that all druid forms are sporting her symbol on their bodies.
At least since Shadowlands and sending her "favoured children"as fertilizer to her sister ( and in truth right to hell although she didn’t know this ) I could imagine Elune has lost some of her appeal, yeah.
Yeah, lesser forms of druidism, meaning lesser Nature magic. Harvest Witches are basically just the remnants of the ancient, pre-Light Human ways, according to Chronicles :
In the early days of humanity and its civilization, many tribes of humans had primitive belief systems that incorporated simple nature magic, practicing crude forms of druidism and shamanism.
Then, when they became Worgen, their Life magic abilities were somewhat amplified. Then they made first contact with the Kaldorei, who introduced them to the Cenarion Circle.
Well yep, that’s due to Legion and the Class Order mechanic that centralizes class identity. Now the Cenarion Circle is apparently the World Druid Organization so Druids from every tradition must join it (even the Thornspeakers) for the sake of some sort of “protectors of Azeroth” sacred duty. But it doesn’t make them Cenarian Druids or followers of Elune.
(also it freaking sucks but that’s another debate lol)
That’s just a matter of gameplay and lack of glyphs. Class abilities are filled with stuff that make absolutely no sense from a gameplay perspective.
The Shadowlands Elune stuff is all over the place and it was almost like the writing team was sprinting away from any path to reconciling their new lore with the old stuff. Kaldorei being Elune’s favoured children doesn’t really work with the idea that she’s a universal deity. They had many different options in terms of choosing her nature and they chose the one that’s the most unwieldy.
Having her centered on Azeroth entirely, but powerful enough to stonewall Archimonde, was more than enough to make her a ‘true goddess’, and to have the kaldorei be her favoured children while still having some measure of power given to other groups. And myriad explanations could have been concocted about why she can’t always intervene.
Why she favours them could have been as simple as they were linked to her prior when they were Dark Trolls, and she grew with them as they settled around the Well of Eternity. Gods in the classic fantasy sense play favourites all the time, sometimes for totally mundane reasons.