Baines racism against the centaur?
I mean this is bait but also it’s like kinda funny given he is a leader surrounded by former enemies so I don’t really get it personally so I am kinda serious as well
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Is it like the “I can forgive the grimtotem and be nice to the quilboar when Garrosh wants to kill them, but THOSE guys aren’t even the same centaur so i hate them…” kind of racism?
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It’s the hooves
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Right right. Like I get the moral story of it but like it makes NO sense for baine to feel that way rationally Imo
Baine was born prior to the orcs arriving in Kalimdor, so existed at least as a child at point when the tauren’s safety was threatened by the centaur. You would assume that even if he is not the one developing an attitude towards the centaur as a result of this, he is surrounded by people who already have preconceived notions. And in a pre-industrial society, you would almost definitely believe whatever your in-group believes in. As a matter of survival and belonging, if not for the fact you have nothing else to tell you otherwise.
Prejudice grows in environments where education about different groups doesn’t exist.
If Baine has only ever heard the centaur are bad, and dangerous, and hate the tauren, why would he develop anything other than a poor attitude toward them. And when that attitude is pointed at a group, naturally it coalesces in prejudice and discrimination.
I’d honestly argue the opposite. As opposed to humans or elves, there hasn’t been any reasonable reconciliation between the tauren and the centaur in the past 20-30 years since the orcs arrived in Kalimdor. So why would the attitude a tauren has toward the centaur change?
It’s bad and immoral, but it’s rational and logical that someone who grew up in an environment of prejudice with little to nothing to stop or change that attitude, you’d assume that person would still be prejudiced. That’s more or less how it exists in our world, too.
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I guess just like why my elf hates the orcs and horde purely because of well, like the last however many years they’ve been chopping away at her home.
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To put it in blunt terms, the Alliance flat out haven’t done nearly as much to harm the tauren as the centaur of Kalimdor have. We can talk about Bael Modan and Camp T until the proverbial cows come home, but not only were the perpetrators of those acts very much killed to death, they’re still not as extreme as what’s implied to have been done by the Centaur.
Baine likely grew up in a time where it would be a regular thing to hear that an entire tribe was wiped out by the centaur. The Barrens are huge, in lore, and yet the Centaur still were seemingly able to systematically hunt down the tauren and even kick them out of Mulgore. Baine probably lost many family members and friends to Centaur before he was even an adult, and lived in a time when Mulgore was just some promised land that wasn’t attainable. Baine has very likely never met a single Centaur who wasn’t actively plotting to kill him, or trying to do so immediately, and unlike with the quillboar, who fight over land, the Centaur seemed to hunt the tauren out of active malice. They’d essentially ‘won’ the war by taking Mulgore, but then spent years killing tauren in the Barrens.
So yeah, to me it makes sense that he’d have prejudice against them. Presumably if their potato models were updated, the Kalimdor centaur would look very similar to the Isles ones, and both have similar aesthetics when it comes to their armor and culture.
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This is really deep and very true, especially in this case.
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wasnt baine captured and tortured by the centaur in wc3?
I dont remember that part of the game myself, but some parts i just didnt pay attention to
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His people were almost driven to extinction by the Centaur back home AND he was captured as a youngling, and very likely put through a lot of horrible stuff during that time and had to be rescued. Then his rescuer suddenly gets captured by different Centaur.
I think its fair to explain his actions as very valid PTSD.
Personally, I think all Tauren should feel pretty wary and unamused about teaming up with these new Centaur, all things considered.
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Fair warning, I have not done the quest, but let’s look at this from Baine’s perspective.
TL:DR, Baine was a young teen, if not a child, when it happened. He was captured by a Centaur raiding party and dragged away to Desolace by the very same monsters that had been hunting down, skinning and eating his people for centuries if not longer, whittling the many Tribes of the Tauren down to a dozen or less as they did so.
As the Chieftain’s son, he probably had guards and playmates with him, meaning he got to watch those nearest and dearest to him get viciously murdered right in front of him, as well as growing up as a nomad and always having to try and evade these half-man half-beast abominations while moving from one temporary safe haven to another. Either way, Baine has known to fear and despise the Centaur from the moment he was able to understand either concept.
And the individual he’s chasing after? One of the people responsible for saving Baine as a child, and a dear friend and confidant at that.
Technically, the Horde has blessed the Centaur Tribes of (those that remain, at least) as allies of the Horde and recognised their sovereignty of Desolace. Unfortunately, later on in the Cataclysm, one of the WoW Comics/Manga centered on the Horde force known as the Garad’kra would be mobilised to stop the High Khan of the Desolace Centaur, whom had been born from an Earth Elemental deep within Maraudon who blamed all Mortals for the chaos of the Cataclysm, not Deathwing and the Old Gods, and birthed a ‘Perfect One’ strain of Centaur that are eerily similar to the Centaur we find in the Dragon Isles.
Like, nearly gorramn identical.
And we have a Centaur within the Horde, if the Manga/Comic is taken as canon, one Dorthar, a Centaur who rebelled against this insane purging of the ‘mongrel’ races of Azeroth to be replaced with the ‘Perfect Ones’.
But I’m drifting off topic.
Baine has always been the voice of reason, compassion and healing within the Horde … but who has healed him? Mayla certainly tries, but Baine’s wounds are many, both physically and emotionally. He’s had to turn the other cheek time after time after time, and as the High Chieftain, has been painfully aware of how many losses his people have suffered, and by whom those blows have been struck.
The last time the Horde trusted the centaur, some mad creature nearly tried to wipe the Horde out while it was distracted by the Cataclysm. The Desolace Centaur certainly want no smoke, but they have a histories of centuries of enslaving and eating Baine’s people. And now, one of the few people in his life that Baine doesn’t have to constantly say “No, genocide bad, put that down!” is in trouble, and the people responsible are the same monsters that haunt his nightmares and have so much of his people’s blood on their hands? So similar to the ‘Perfect Ones’ that threatened to finish the genocide started by their misshapen kin? And the fact that the Centaur of the Dragon Isles just take the constant internal strife between their Clans as just the way of things, that a strong Clan will rise up and kill their enemies, or a weak Clan will die off and be forgotten, or that the Clans could war for years and still be expected to put down their weapons when entering the sacred capital of their kind? In some ways, these Dragon Isle Centaurs are more bloodthirsty and savage than even the Orcs were back on Draenor.
I think its actually a good thing that Baine is doing this. He’s not just Token Good Boi, he’s struggling against his fears and prejudices, and having those prejudices and perceptions shaken by the fact that the Centaur of the Dragon Isles probably have more in common with his people than any other race or nation within the Horde, but they’re still obsessed with strength and killing, although I will give ground on the fact they’re sharing space with bloody Proto-drakes, which is a dicey situation at the best of times, and being able to murder something on command is a necessity when dealing with that level of super-predator in your day-to-day life.
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Honestly, I’m taking shots in the dark because my messed up arms are stopping me from getting to this bit of content.
But speaking on the topic in general, I thought the magram, gelkis, and kolkar kinda chilled tf out because of the two rep options. I guess that was never brought forward.
It kinda was, but you’ll notice that very, very few Tauren are involved in this zone, and its mostly the Orcs going “Yeah, you’re okay, you get Desolace now.” to the Centaur.
To give folks an idea of how traumatized, as a race and as a society, the Tauren are thanks to the Centaur of Kalimdor, let’s have a look at this children’s rhyme that pops up during the Baine Questline in 10.0.7
The thing about children’s tales and fables, they were originally intended to impress upon children behaviours and knowledge in such a way that the children would remember and be able to process the lesson that the fable was trying to convey.
This is a rhyme telling Tauren children to go run and find other adults because their parents are going to make a last stand and draw attention away from the children because the Centaur are coming to kill them all.
Baine is certainly valid in his hatred and contempt for the Kalimdor Centaur. His caution and mistrust is understandable, but misplaced. It would be like blaming the Shal’dorei for the Sundering, when they were just some random city with no real ability to influence the war. It is like blaming the Draenei for the depredations of the Eredar within the Legion. It is like attacking the Darkspear on sight despite the fact they had nothing to do with the other Jungle Tribe Trolls and had even left the mainland to avoid fighting other peoples.
I adored the questline. They sent out Tomul.
Tomul.
The Centaur so abrasive and smug that even her own Clan barely tolerates her, and that only because of her great skill as a tracker and hunter … which she had to learn because she is so abrasive and smug that she has no friends, no lovers, no companions, only a begrudging respect from her own people.
And we brought in Baine … somebody who the Fates have apparently decided gets to be beaten down every other minute and have his noble and friendly nature misused, abused and dragged through the mud by his so-called friends and allies, over and over again.
These two were never going to develop a working relationship, even under the best of circumstances. And with Baine having these feelings of absolute hatred and contempt, and deep, abiding fear, of the Centaur churning within him, and after years of having to turn the other cheek over and over again just to keep the Horde his father and friends built alive and not turning into a murder machine, and then having to watch whole generations of his people get churned up like so much ground beef in senseless war after senseless war, this needed to happen.
The deaths were horrible, yes, but the whole mission cut those emotional wounds open, dredged up and drew out all the spiritual pus of rage and fear, and allowed Baine to finally admit he wasn’t some perfect paragon of Good Boi, but a leader, noble and well intentioned, but as flawed and ‘human’ as anyone else. It headed off the inevitable Flanderization of the character and gave him some flaws and personality constraints that he’s going to have to work through … and trauma on the scale Baine has gone through?
Being kidnapped and tortured by Centaur as a young boy.
Watching the Horde go to war over and over and knowing countless members of the Tribes that looked to his father, and then him, would die needlessly or futilely in the process.
Having to work under the Orc who not only killed Baine’s father, but betrayed everything the Horde stood for while having to do things the ‘Orc’ way because the Orcs outnumbered his people 3-1 and if Garrosh turned the might of the Horde on Mulgore, there would be little the Tauren could do to stop them.
Watching Vol’jin die and name Sylvanas as the new Warchief.
Having to go through the same thing he went through under Garrosh, but now with Sylvanas, who is 100% more talented and skilled with deception and political maneuvering, and 100% less honorable to boot, and knowing that if the Tauren try to break away or refuse to follow orders, if Sylvanas will Blight her own city and throw Saurfang to the Alliance as a distraction, the horrors the Tauren Tribes would face from her forces would be beyond nightmarish.
Potential years of torment, torture, abuse and brain-washing by the Jailer in the wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey reality of the Shadowlands, which can feel like an eternity of agony but only a few actual years have gone by.
Coming back to Azeroth to find a great many of his people have mourned him as dead while he was captured.
There’s not many Main NPCs who’ve gone through as much horror and torment as Baine while still maintaining their moral compass in a good way.
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unfortunately, most races end up as some kind of human
Like the Belves, we’re just long eared humans now
There’s an entire outpost in Desolace run by tauren? Even in cata, you see a whole centaur chilling right in karnum’s glade. Headed by Karnum, a tauren. Like I get what you’re trying to say in essence, but it still comes off weird.
Also apologies, I’m not reading too much more because I don’t want to be spoiled much on the quest.
I’m never sure what this criticism means.
Sometimes it reads like “all characters and races have the same vaguely defined motivation and values” and I almost get it, but then sometimes it reads like “my Orc felt compassion, that’s not an Orc emotion, we’re just green humans now” and I don’t.
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pretty much. everyones all “For Azeroth!” but not much else is there
Especially when it comes to the Light
the belves attracted me cause they were beaten down and decided to become their own masters and that included the light
sunwell got restored and now were just back to the standard worshipping
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Okay, yes, I completely agree with that. Everyone seems to have the same attitude toward strength, honor, blippity and bloopity.
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Desolace and honestly central Kalimdor has greatly improved since the orcs and trolls arrived in WC3. Desolace is still harsh but not has harsh as it was before. Yeah, there are some Tauren but given the region’s history, there probably would be more. To fully understand the Tauren reactions within the questline, we need to look much further than Cata and even vanilla.
For the Tauren, there is centuries of war and extermination by the Kalimdor Centaur. I cannot remember for sure if it is lore but I vaguely remember that the reason for the Tauren nomadic culture was not just to follow the kodo herds but because the Centaur would not allow them to settle any permanently. That is honestly a huge impact to have on a culture. Plenty of generational trauma to be passed down as the Tauren struggled to survive. That children’s rhyme spoke volumes to me.
Desolace is where the Kalimdor Tauren emerged into the world. The birthplace of these specific Centaur. It was their seat of power for many centauries. Their homeland. The Tauren originally there, if they had not left due to the region’s drastic climatic change, would have been forced to flee or be killed by the Kalimdor Centaur.
With a little more world building on Blizz’s part, I could see it as being some ‘Forbidden zone’ like in Planet of the Apes. A place that no one should go as it meant certain death.
In my personally head canon, I like to say that the Tauren were not just in the Barrens but spread out a bit in what would be called Durotar, Stonetalon Mountains, Dustwallow Marsh, Thousand Needles, and Feralas. However, when I meet a Tauren character that states they are from Desolace, I do not discount it but comment on how tough it must have been to live there. Because if any Tauren had been born and lived there, to still be alive would be a great feat for the reason mentioned above. Otherwise, I never say my characters were born or lived there.
I hope this along with some of the other great posts above helps people understand Baine and the other Tauren reactions, or will help when you experience the quest yourself. I think Blizz did a wonderful job with the questline.
The centaur hate the Tauren.
The quilboar hate the Tauren.
The harpies hate the Tauren.
Is it possible that the Tauren are just insufferable to live with? Even the Orcs started beating the tar out of them a couple of times.
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