High Elf Allied Race Megathread (Continuation)

If High Elves are ever a thing I want to see two NPCs duking it out one being Casmir or Alamara the other being Lyndon. The two threads are massive, I’ve never seen anything like it and they’re at odds with each other.

10 Likes

Because we know exactly where it came from and who taught it to whom.

They where rebuilding it…

This has been explicitly stated.

11 Likes

Actually, In the Shadow of the Sun does mention that High Elves’ pangs of withdrawal are lessened with the rebirth of the Sunwell. But it gets tricky, because it’s referring to the Quel’Lithien Lodge, which is just beyond the border of Quel’Thalas. So there’s an argument that could be made that High Elves further south may not have felt anything at all. *

That being said, the years of the Sunwell being dark set up both groups to have very different attitudes and behaviours even after the Sunwell was relit, so both groups have different relationships with the Sunwell now. Blood Elf society and culture still heavily revolves around it in a way that it can’t for High Elves anymore due to the whole pilgrimage aspect.

*-though I recall someone mentioning a source that stated that the High Elves were sated by the Sunwell even as far as Outland, which is confusing, but if there’s a source that states that so be it, but It seems odd to me.

10 Likes

You are incorrect, it is stated explicitly tuat the sunwells power radiates thtoughout azeroth. Alk thalassian elves fall under its effects which is why all thalassian elves began to suffer magic withdrawal.

They make pilgrimage to it because they are exiles and normally cannot, it is considered a holy place to the culture of thalassian rlves and they are attuned to it.

Oh and yes, it did affect the elves on outland. All the elves were sated by the rebirth of the sunwell. Their attitudes regarding magic vary, but again, its political not full cultural.

As much as everyone is aaying high elves didnt learn mana tapping that is incorrect. It is ex pl licitly stated rommath taught the elves how to use it.

The elves that didnt respond initially to quelthalas to return after the third war largely responded after the fall of silvermoon. Even if a few didnt they still learned how to draw magic from artifacts because without magic, they were weak.

What happened was a plothole.

All thalassian elves went YEARS without magic before Rommaths teachings. If abstinence had worked then it would have done so because fel crystals werent used until after silvermoon was reclaimed.

Kaelthas wouldnt have been so desperate if simply avoiding the usage of magic was a viable option. It goes against the lore to suggest high elves dont need magic especially because their mages were in dalaran and they suffered the most debilitating effects of all.

4 Likes

You both are right. i will try to think of better theories after some research

5 Likes

Do you have a source on this? I feel like I’ve seen something to that effect but I really can’t place it, so I’m genuinely curious now.

Is it explicitly stated that High Elves learned it, though? All I can seem to find is that Rommath came back to the Blood Elves in Silvermoon and taught it. There’s nothing I can find that mentions that High Elves learned it or used it. Isn’t there a High Elf questgiver in Outland who mocks Blood Elves for mana tapping? It seems like something they’re against. Again, genuinely asking.

Eh? The fall of Silvermoon happened during the Third War.

And see my previous posts where I speculate on artifact use. It’s a grey area.

You say ‘YEARS’, but it was only five years between TFT (around which point the Blood Elves learned to siphon magic from Illidan) and TBC (when the Blood Elf status quo is firmly established). Given that Rommath’s return heralded the beginning of the reconstruction of Silvermoon (so we have to factor in the reconstruction of an entire city, magically aided or not, into our maths), it’s more likely that Rommath would have returned to Quel’Thalas somewhere between less than a year or two after the events of TFT, or (more likely) in the same year, due to Illidan and Kael falling out catastrophically after Icecrown.

And again, Kael’thas was not only desperate to help his people, but he didn’t understand the affliction either. Remember, he had to have it explained to him by Lady Vashj that his people were addicted to magic. Kael didn’t understand the affliction - he only knew that the Naga - and Illidan - were equipped to help his people, and so in rash desperation and a bit of naivete (recurring traits in Kael’Thas), he jumped at the first answer offered to him.

The Blood Elves, as a people, didn’t really even consider alternatives. They didn’t have a chance to. And that’s part of what the Warcraft Encyclopedia is saying, in that the magical addiction and withdrawal the Elves suffered was poorly understood and not studied half as much as it should have been, because it wasn’t as lethal as Kael feared, and could have been survived and overcome had he not jumped at Illidan’s offer for an easy, instant cure - a decision that led to Kael’thas’ own addiction driving him mad.

11 Likes

I’m sure it does. I remember someone saying that the sunwell affects all space and time. Which is why the blood elves were free to roam Dreanor in the past. Which is incredibly dumb, because has long has one sunwell exists in some reality, the elves should never go thirsty.

It actually makes me kinda mad. Because they also said that there is only one legion throughout the multiverse. Meaning for every orc corruption story, Mannaroth or some other pit lord’s gotta travel to that reality to make the pact, knowing full well it might bite them in the rear.

8 Likes

So you want more Blood Elves. Gotcha.

1 Like

Wouldn’t that mean that the wretched shouldn’t exist? Talk about a continuity error!

7 Likes

I feel like I’ve said this like ten times in this thread.

Elves become Wretched when they consume too much magic, not too little.

1 Like

Yeah, I’ve got to say, if that’s the case I would 100% be okay if the Sunwell’s ability to somehow span all time,space and reality was nerfed or retconned at a later date, because that’s just absurd.

8 Likes

They only reason they decided to make the Sunwell work through all space and time was so they wouldn’t have to think when writing about Blood Elves.

9 Likes

I think it was one of those plotholes that didn’t really need to be closed tbh. Like, the explanation raises more questions than the existance of the plothole does, so it’s a sloppy fix.

‘It’s time-travelling AU Draenor. The same rules don’t apply because MAGIC’ would have been more than enough.

7 Likes

Like… Why does the Sunwell have a power the Well of Eternity didn’t even have?

If the Sunwell can reach anywhere why don’t they use it to power more stuff?

Just a single “Sun Crystal” in your garrison would have been enough.

10 Likes

The Alliance thanks the brave Quel’Dorei who’ve been faithfully among our ranks ever since the beggining, to this day, and forward.

10 Likes

lol, seriously. How is the Sunwell exponentially more powerful than the Well of Eternity? It’s a bit odd.

8 Likes

I headcanon it as Nordrassil dampening the Well of Eternity’s power. It was planted there for a reason, after all.

But this “Sunwell is linked to all thalassians” is non-sense to me anyway. Seems like an arbitrary rule made out to force a plot device. The canon was perfectly fine before they came out with that.

14 Likes

Fair point on Nordrassil, but still. The power scaling’s a bit out of whack.

Though, like I said, I’m pretty sure there’s something somewhere about Outland or Draenor somehow still ‘powering’ Blood Elves so I don’t want to get into a fight with canon, but I do agree that it’s a bit odd and I wouldn’t be opposed to something eventually rewriting that information to make it a bit more sensible. (provided what I’m thinking of does in fact exist of course >.>)

7 Likes

The ruling on the Sunwell sound like the “there’s one Legion for all dimensions” idea that was introduced in WoD: a lazy idea made out to explain one particular detail of a story but makes no sense in the greater context of the setting.

The “One Legion” rule was made out so alternate Gul’dan would be serving our main Legion all the time, but then it meant one Kil’jaeden was hunting down infinite Velens, or one Sargeras was corrupting infinite Kil’jaedens and Archimondes… makes no sense.

The “Sunwell everywhere” rule was introduced, I think, in Blood of the Highborne, released in 2014. Seven years after TBC launch. Before that, we just understood that the elves got addicted because of living in the magic-rich environment of Quel’thalas, which was powered by the Sunwell. The “Sunwell everywhere” ruling was made out to explain why elves couldn’t just leave Quel’thalas to escape the corruption of the Sunwell, but it ended up creating very bizarre consequences for the whole setting.

13 Likes

Oh god, I’d forgotten about the ‘One Legion’ rule.

Someone please save Blizzard from itself.

13 Likes