Speaking for the sake of lore accuracy, how likely would it be for a night elf born into the Highborne caste to deflect from the caste and Queen Azshara during the War of the Ancients, once her corruption became more apparent? I have an idea for a night elf druid character who abandoned arcane magic for druidism after arcane magic was outlawed in night elf society, but given how majority of Highborne became either naga, satyr, or high elves post-sundering, I’m not sure if it’s all that plausible…
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That’s 100% lore plausible. There’s nothing in the lore suggesting that the Highborne Magi could not have become druids. The Exile of the Highborne whom defected from Azshara and turned against her didn’t happen right after the Sundering. There was quite a bit of time before that.
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The Sundering was 10,000 years ago, and the exile of the Highborne happened approximately 7,300 years ago. There’s plenty of time in between the two events for an individual elf to change who they associate with and what form of magic they use, and there probably were many who did decide to accept the limitations of the ban.
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Virtually all of them lacked the necessary humility to do so. They would have had the same problems Illidan did. The attitudes and worldviews of mages and druids are almost in diametric opposition to each other.
Hard disagree. Arrogance and lack of humility are just as much a flaw for Druids as it is mages. Naralex and Fandral are some pretty big examples.
Conversely, there are plenty of humble mages. Just look at Dalaran, a nation of mages more interested in the academic pursuit of magic and in other cultures, with an emphasis on tolerance.
Arrogance, pride, lack of humility, etc… aren’t class flaws. They’re personality flaws.
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What are the fundamental approaches to each class?
A druid works with nature and talks it beckoning it to a desired end.
A mage bends the world with force of will, imposing a desired shape on the world, the process of using the arcane brings on an addictive rush. And many mages succumb to that rush and wind up on a craving for more. The Highbourne without exception succumbed to that addiction to power.
Well, a Druid bends the world around them with force of will, imposing a desired shape on the world, such as Naralex deciding that the Barrens needed to be restored to how it was prior to the sundering, or Fandral deciding to plant a new World Tree so the Night Elves could have their immortality back.
By contrast, a mage is a student of the fundamental laws of creation, working with the forces of the universe as intended to produce a desired end.
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A lot of the original druids Malfurion trained were highborne, particularly from the Moonguard. It is just the ones who refused integrate who got exiled.
Also the way I would put it is Druids work within reality’s natural patterns. Mages twist realities hand behind its back until it screams uncle. They forcefully overwrite reality to suit their needs. Which is why Magecraft has this nasty habit of sometimes going boom.
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And look where that got him.
Not only is this possible, the lore explicitly says some sorcerers turned from the arcane to druidism in this manner.
Meanwhile, Malfurion continued fostering a culture of druidism among his people. Having abandoned arcane magic, many former sorcerers embraced Malfurion’s teachings and devoted themselves to living in harmony with nature.
So a Highborne, even a sorcerer, could absolutely have turned to druidism.
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Again, hard disagree.
Magic is a science. If a mage performs the same spell twice, in exactly the same way, they will always produce the same results. In a way, they work within the bounds of reality’s laws and patterns far more than druids do. Mages do not overwrite reality to suit their needs; they understand the laws of reality and work within it.
Point was, arrogance, pride, lack of humility, etc… are not class traits. They are personality traits. As has already been noted, plenty of Highborne mages did, in fact, become druids after the Sundering.
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It is very possible and even likely, the highborne under Sunstrider joined the rebellion because they saw how the demons destroyed everything and thought it would even turn on the highborne. For example one of the events that soured many highborne on the idea of working with the legion were when several of them were slain by demons as a punishment because they failed to perform a ritual despite working themselves to the bone studying and working on it for the legion.
Suramars highborne only rebelled once they noticed that the demons tried to open a second portal on the broken shore which would have ravaged the remaining highborne areas of Suramar, as essentially all of the lowborne areas would already have been in ruins, they didn’t join the rebellion though but instead shielded themselves.
The common theme here is that the highborne that rebelled didn’t really do so for a greater good, but rather they realized that they would be next on the chopping block. The vast majority didn’t rebel though and kept loyal to Azshara and the Legion.
The highborne that remained in kaldorei society had quite a few of them become druids, but those that refused to give up magic eventually went to found Quel’thalas.
Keep in mind that until the third war all druids would have been male, the night elves had a gender divided society, where the druids were exclusively male, while the sentinels, watchers and priestesses of Elune was female.
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That has since been retconned.
There’s a couple of Night Elven women who are Druids and have been so for a long time now.
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Ivuss’ caretaker was a female Arch Druid and she was first seen in Alteraac Valley. She was killed in the War of Thorns and Ivuss went insane as a result.
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Druids work with a fluid living world not cold dead incantations. The results will vary because Nature’s moods do.
Thalyssra, who was alive to remember the events leading up to the War of the Ancients and the raising of the barrier around Suramar makes this statement to Shandris about the Highborne’s intentions in the WoTA:
First Arcanist Thalyssra: Shandris. We sealed off Suramar to keep the Pillars of Creation free from Azshara’s grasp. The power she holds with just the Tidestone…
The barrier both denied Azshara access to the Pillars of Creation that were housed in Suramar and kept the Highborne alive.
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Can you present these night elven women druids to me? All women druids we’ve seen have been post the third war with no mention on how long they’ve been druids as far as I know.
Her first appearance is after the third war and we don’t know her backstory or how long she’s been a druid. And no, her having the title archdruid is not enough as we’ve seen an example of a character starting to studying druidism after the third war and having achieved the rank of archdruid by the time of vanilla wow. Hamuul Runetotem only started to learn druidism after the third war when he asked to be trained and when we meet him in vanilla he’s an archdruid.
This does not contradict the late rebellion of the highborne or having it be out of self interest. Why would the highborne want to keep the artifacts out of legion aligned Azshara’s hands? Let me quote chronicle.
Though Suramar’s elite Highborne had pledged their undying loyalty to Azshara, their views on the queen began to shift as the war dragged on. The group’s leader, Grand Magistrix , feared that the Legion did not have the Highborne’s best interests in mind. The monstrous demons had already destroyed much of the night elves’ glorious empire and poisoned the surrounding land with their fel magics.
Elisande’s distrust of the Legion only deepened when she discovered that demons were planning to transform Suramar into a new staging ground for the war.
Legion agents had begun forming a gateway to the Twisting Nether within the city’s most prominent structure, the Temple of Elune. Once open, this portal would allow the Legion’s reinforcements to storm into Azeroth and crush the night elf resistance on a second front.
Yet Elisande thought that such a portal would likely destroy Suramar and everyone
who dwelled within. Thus the grand magistrix and her followers formed a plan to
sabotage the Legion’s efforts. They severed their ties with the other Highborne and
moved to seal the demons’ new portal.
This clearly shows that it wasn’t until the war dragged on that they started to get suspicious that the demons didn’t have the highborne interests in mind, not that Azshara had launched a genocidal war to “perfect” Azeroth. So clearly they were on board up until the point they realized they were also on the chopping block, which I stated in my earlier post.
And then which they raised the shield to stop the portal as well as keeping the powerful artifacts out of their former Queens hands.
Drahliana, I have already corrected you on this once before. Archdruid Elerethe Renferal, who was Ivus’ caretaker died in The Shattering Novel, not the War of Thorns. In fact she is a boss in the Emerald Nightmare raid which references her death.
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The one I was thinking of (from Wrath) apparently doesn’t have lines mentioning that she was a Druid prior to the Third War, as I had thought. Either the wiki failed, or my memory has. Regardless, there’s a few other sources that might interest you. One of which is very old (the encyclopedia), but the other of which reaffirmed the Encyclopedia at about Cataclysm.
https://warcraft.wiki.gg/wiki/The_Warcraft_Encyclopedia/Cenarion_Circle
https://warcraft.wiki.gg/wiki/Druid_and_Priest_Statue_Set
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All that means was that the Circle was a boys club. The statement refers to “all druids in the Cenarian Circle” not all Druids. Female night elves might have found the path on thier own and were simply not allowed to join because of the “No girlsz” sign on the door.
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