More like “vanished in the raging sea of millions of Scourge” that still controlled that half of the continent.
Well, it would certainly have to involve mind control. I feel like I know Garithos’ character well enough to say that he would be done working with the Forsaken once he doesn’t need them.
And attempting to contact the rest of the Alliance while Garithos still exists in a position of power and authority would definitely involve him. And he’d probably say “They’re INHUMAN!!! Of course we shouldn’t ally with them!”
So the only way I could see anything like your suggestion working would be via mind control. And that, itself, has its own issues. Because if the truth ever gets out, then they’re completely screwed.
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Then arrange an accident for the guy once he’s already contacted Stormwind and the forsaken emmesaries reached the city safely. Blame it on the critters, legion remmants or whatever the call.
Sylvanas is a smart girl, if she could keep her experiments, the BtS gathering and -possibly- the wrathgate underwraps then she can figure something out.
Much, much bigger asspulls have happened in the story of this setting, idk why some you ppl refuse to believe that maybe, just maybe Sylvanas jumped the gun here.
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Garithos was not a good guy, but firstly, we have no reason to believe Sylvanas knew of his racism towards non-humans, merely his distaste for the undead, which is nothing new. Secondly, the two struck a deal, and when the time came for Sylvanas to fulfill that deal, she stabbed him in the back and let the Forsaken eat him alive.
I don’t expect anyone to like Garithos other than as a hateable villain, and I don’t expect anyone to feel bad for what happened to Garithos, but lets be reminded that this affected more than just Garithos. His men, who may or may not have harbored the same flaws as him, likely suffered a similar or worse fate.
This is why I just can’t bring myself to believe that the Forsaken can be morally good, save for the occasional outlier. They have no value for life, being a Prisoner of War for the Forsaken is a fate worse than a death on the battlefield. The best you can hope for is being raise, the worse you can hope for is being eaten alive, enslaved, experimented on, or your body used to make an abomination.
If any other race was to treat POWs or Civilians in this way, they would be near unanimously dubbed as monstrous, but for some reason, a number of people give the Forsaken a free pass?
I understand WHY the Forsaken are the way they are. I understand the hate and resentment they have for the living, but that does not change the moral weight of that. Near every villain believes their actions are justified, the belief in the moral rightness or justification of your own actions is not enough to make said actions good. That is why the Forsaken are more prone to being evil than good, and that has ALWAYS been the case, clearly pointed out in WC3, with what happened to Garithos.
We are not supposed to feel bad for Garithos, quite the opposite. However, does that change the fact that he and his men were lied too? That Sylvanas used him and struck a deal that she had no intention of keeping? Did Garithos get what he deserved? After all, it wasn’t his bigotry that led to his downfall, in fact, it was the opposite. Had he been more racist, and been less willing to strike deals with the undead, he might still be alive. That did not happen though, and the big take away here is that you cannot trust the undead. They are more than willing to lie, cheat and deceive to meet their nefarious goals.
Blizzard says this explicitly in the pre-cata Forsaken introduction:
“Harboring no true loyalty for their new allies, they go to any lengths to ensure their dark plans come to fruition. As one of the Forsaken, you must massacre any who pose a threat to the new order, Human, Undead, or otherwise.”
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For the Night Elves I just expected stormwind to have reached out to them after hearing about the result of the third war.
if they revisit it, i’m curious Commander Lionheart (A Commander from Theramore who was murdered by shandris) will ever get brought up, Shandris still runs around the Alliance army like nothing happened granted he was technically a general for both orcs, and humans but he was still one of the surviving Paladins from Lordaeron, and a member of theramore (despite it being destroyed later)
But then what’s the point?
If the only way to overcome the living’s “bigotry” against your kind is to murder, manipulate, and mind control your way past it, what does it fix?
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Because there is very tangible difference between brainwashing one a-hole for the greater good and possibly sacrificing him later than to stab him and his men (who unlike him, we dont know if they deserved to die) in the back, slaughtering them and feeding them to the ghouls.
Now, if you excuse me, im waiting for darethy to reply to me and check my candy *** (forums wont let me swear) into smackdown hotel- something you ppl have failed to do so far ![:stuck_out_tongue:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/stuck_out_tongue.png?v=6" ":stuck_out_tongue:")
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Evidence points to the opposite rather. When he broke free of the mind control he went straight back to being racist and an @$$hole at times where he shouldn’t be one. Thus can prove that working with the Forsaken was him going “The enemy of my enemy is my friend, for now.” Had he been less racist and more sensitive in diplomatic terms, that could weigh in proof. Even realizing that the Dreadlord sullied his name and attempted to mend bridges would have been a bonus. However he was not, and was using the Forsaken for his own ends and was more than likely planning a backstab. Was he planning a backstab? We will never know and can only guess with good evidence, for Sylvanas just shot first.
Haha second I heard goofie’s voice, that broke me. Glad you technically agree with me. 
no problemo for posting.
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Thinking about it, it’s possible Sylvanas might have been familiar with Garithos and his distaste for non humans.
Othmar Garithos was the only son of a baron who ruled the lands bordering Quel’Thalas. After growing up in the town of Blackwood, Garithos joined Lordaeron’s army as a knight during the Second War. While he was fighting to defend Quel’Thalas, a small band of orcs broke off from the main invading force and put Blackwood to the torch, killing all of its inhabitants. Othmar’s family perished trying to defend the lives and homes of their subjects. Garithos blamed the elves for the loss of his home and family, believing that they had diverted troops that could have been used to defend humanity. After the war, Garithos inherited his father’s title and continued his service in Lordaeron’s military.
Sylvanas wouldn’t know about Garithos’ attempted execution of Kael’thas and his people, but given her status as Ranger General in life and her relationship with Nathanos, I wouldn’t be surprised if she heard about this elf hating Grand Marshal from Blackwood, a territory bordering Quel’thalas.
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Okay so fair warning, this is going to be a gigantic wall of text. I’m going to try and concisely put down not only why I think what happened to Garithos doesn’t make the Forsaken deserving of their reputation, but to an extent why the Forsakens actions up this point may not of been good, but are in many ways justified, so brace for a lot of text about that.
So where to start off? Well the morality of the deal and the betrayal in and of itself. Often we come back to the same point over and over again that when it comes to Garithos it was ultimately Sylvanas who had control over the terms of agreement, and it was ultimately Sylvanas who chose to kill him and his men rather then engage in any form of diplomacy. I actually kind of agree with this assessment, in particular I agree with the second portion that Sylvanas more then likely has at least some innocent blood on her hands from the ordeal unless Garithos unit was a monolith.
But when it comes to the terms of agreement itself, that being that there was an opening for the Forsaken to get something better, i’m not so certain that was ever a thing that realistically was going to be on the table with Garithos. The best solution i’v heard is the idea of possessing him with a Banshee and pulling the army away, but Banshee possession has always been one of those finicky things we’re not quite sure of in how exactly it works. Sure she could control him for a time but like…Banshees have to leave that body eventually right? and they can lose control even with possession, years happened between WC3 and vanilla where Garithos could of broken control, gotten angry, and definitely marched back to fight the Forsaken and if you’re basing diplomacy with the Alliance on that, the sudden realization the cornerstone of that diplomacy was mind controlled would probably be pretty bad.
Well, beyond that, what about negotiating for a better deal? After all that’s definitely Sylvanas’s fault right? Pretty much went right off the bat offering Garithos Lordaeron as a whole in return for her services. Maybe she could of negotiated for half and half of the kingdom, maybe they could of asked for help taking over Strath, etc, there are many other things she could of said or done. Which is true to a degree, she could of done those things and be objectively morally correct, but i’m not terribly sure that would of been smart to do, nor do I think the Forsaken are wrong for going with her plan from the beginning.
See for obvious reasons WC3 was limited in what it could portray and the Forsaken weren’t even slated to be a playable thing until fairly late in Vanilla WoW’s development cycle, it’s only after in Edge of Night where we see more about Forsakens initial mentality and what was going through their head, primarily that they were a scared huddled mass of confused recently raised walking dead for whom some were already starting to separate their identity from humanity in general. One of them asks what exactly they are going to do with Garithos, to which Sylvanas gives the vague answer they will serve for now, so yeah they did know what was going to happen.
However in regards to the killing itself they more then likely went along with it both because at the moment they were trying to cope with what they were, and because of the assumption that humanity would kill an undead abomination like them if given the chance. I mean why wouldn’t they think that? many of these people were former Lordanian citizens who knew very much how the Light viewed undead, fanatical Scarlet Crusade sects were popping up around Lordaeron in the early stages of the outbreak before the Forsaken were even a thing.
And maybe i’d be sympathetic to Garithos and condemning the Forsakens actions if literally any other words rolled out of his mouth before he died. It didn’t even have to be ‘I regretfully must ask you to leave the city.’ it could of been ‘Alright, time to pony up on the end of your deal’ and that would of been way better then ‘You wretched animals, get out of my city!’ simply because those were his last words before getting bodied, I have to assume that getting a better deal was never on the table for the undead and their assumption was a hundred percent correct. That if they even gave Garithos and inkling of the idea they wanted to live in Lordaeron he would of immediately opened fire on them.
Yeah you can say well it’s still Sylvanas’s deal, it’s her choice break her word and breaking your word is wrong, but that’s a very uncomplicated view of morality for people who were in a very complicated situation. It’s doubtful to me that the Forsaken could of convinced Garithos to let them stay anywhere, and at the moment the Forsaken without a base of operation probably equates to them simply dying. They need shelter to protect their bodies need resources to protect against both the scourge and the young Scarlet Crusade, and all of that’s in capital city…which they just cleared out and are only in competition with Garithos and his men for.
It wasn’t guaranteed death, but the notion that Sylvanas basically saved them outright from death in that moment is something that I would give as more then a fifty percent chance of being correct.
And this is kind of my problem with humanity in general in World of Warcraft when we get to the macro scale of why do the Forsaken and the humans keep fighting with one another. Yes people keep observing that Sylvanas has basically setup an authoritarian state that is basically ‘Othering’ the humans in the same way that the NatSocs used to do a slew of minority groups, but they keep missing a key difference between the situations. Sylvanas doesn’t really need to try hard to ‘Other’ the humans into monsters out to kill them, humans have a habit of vindicating the Forsaken beliefs about them and Othering themselves.
Unlike the Jews, the Gays, the people of color, the idea that humans were out to murder the Forsaken were not the fever dreams of a madman brought to life in order to control a despondent economically broken middle class. They were real and be it the Scarlet Crusade or the Alliance, villages chasing Forsaken out with torches and pitchforks was a very tangible outcome to trying to communicate with the living.
Maybe i’d be more sympathetic to Stormwind too if they had a little side note of how the ambassadors from Undercity were rejected to the Garithos incident, i’d still think the Forsaken had justification to do what they did but I wouldn’t think the humans in the setting were just outright wrong, but that’s not really what happened is it? At the end of the day, by all indications from Vanilla, to Cata, to even now in Before the Storm, humanity hates undead simply for being undead.
Sylvanas doesn’t need to have an army march in lockstop out of UC to display her power, she doesn’t need to film Triumph of the Will and distribute it to Undead citizens as required watching to learn about the human menace, because her propaganda isn’t even really a lie: It’s easily observable information. One that came about not only from the distrust between the greater governments of UC and Stormwind, but also from numerous micro aggressions off camera where the Forsaken were at best taken in with a wary eye from Dalaran and the Argent Dawn, and at worst violently attacked and nearly murdered.
I cannot empathize because it’s been nearly a decade now and even Anduin was skeptical in BtS, and if perfect boy ray of knowledge Anduin doesn’t know on the Alliance, it leads me to believe the Alliance literally has not tried any serious attempt at diplomacy if they even recognize the Forsaken as a nation in any kind of capacity, even on the small scale. And for that they are as much to blame, if not a great deal more to blame, then the Forsaken for their current situation.
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Oh please, the Blood Elves betrayed Garithos by accepting help from the naga. Kael knew that the Naga captured human Paladins in Dalaran, an extremely hostile act that Garithos most likely knew about which is why he was so pissed that Kael allied with them.
Garithos put the Blood Elves in a horrible position, but let’s be real, Kael threw his lot in with the Naga, not the humans.
Kael threw his lot in with THE LIVING, while Garithos seemed to be working for the Scourge. Which I guess shouldn’t be surprising since when we next see him he’s literally working for Balnazzar and the Scourge.
That was his first mistake. Instead of dying like he was ordered by his commander (which would assumedly lead to him being raised as a powerful member of the Scourge), he tried to not die (selfishly). Obviously this upset Garithos, likely a member of the Cult of the Damned.
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Some even whisper that Garithos was the one who was supposed to fuse with Ner’zul to become the new Lich King. Unfortunately, the Helm of Domination couldn’t fit around his chin, so they had to use Arthas as a back up.
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Okay, so, time to unpack this.
You and I have discussed this a lot already, so I have a general idea of what your perspective is without even reading this. Reading your post just reaffirms what I already expected, and in all honestly, I think your bias leads you in these mental gymnastics here.
Its important to keep in mind, prior to BfA, when the Forsaken gave me a reason to dislike them, I actually liked the Forsaken a lot. One of my favorite races actually. I don’t really consider myself an Alliance player as much as a Night Elf player. Over the years, I slowly started to hate humans in WoW, mostly because how human culture seems to monopolize the Alliance. I dislike Orcs for the same reason on Horde side.
So while I don’t claim to be unbias here, whatever bias I might have is not obvious to me. For me, the moral blackness of the Forsaken was exactly what attracted me to the Forsaken to begin with. I am not a moral relativist, so what really annoys me about Blizzard’s story telling right now is how dishonest they have become with the moral alignments of the races and factions. Rather than just saying “These aspects of this culture is evil” Blizzard will tip toe around the issue completely.
I have been playing a lot of Witcher 3 lately, which offers some real morally challenging scenarios. Such as, do you help the devil claim the soul of a wicked man? You don’t really want to help either, but when your hand is forced, which is the morally right thing to do? Help a wicked man or help evil incarnate? Or the “Trail of treat” when a peasant family doesn’t have enough food for all their children, so they lure a child or two into the woods to die so they can feed themselves and the children who remain. These are those “No good answer” scenarios that make for good story telling with moral substance and can even serve as a world building tool as well. But let’s not kid ourselves here, there are NO good answers here. There is bad or worse. In there lies the difference between what is justified and what is morally right.
The Peasant family might have enough food to feed their family now, but they still sent a child out into the woods to die. Now imagine a communal village, where food is stored in a barn or storehouse, and the Village had to make a collective decision on who is to be sent away. The Village chooses someone’s children to send away, much to the dismay of the parents. Is that justified? For the survival or the entire village, it might be. Is it morally right? I am inclined to say it isn’t.
So you say what Sylvanas did to Garithos is justified… Which is arguable but let’s assume it is. Does that make it right? Does it make it right that Sylvanas made a deal without any intention to honor it? She didn’t even attempt any other options, she opened up with a false promise. And sure, seeking a more diplomatic solution might not have been smart, but that’s not what is being argued.
In addition to all this, I find it hard to accept the Forsaken did what they did because “They were still coming to terms with what they are” as any kind of justification. I surely understand why the Forsaken feel the need to kill the living in mass, but you also have to remember, the fascists in Germany felt threatened by the Jewish social elite. Is that justification? And even if it is, does that make it right?
I don’t believe there is any justification for mass murder, enslavement, and unwilling human experimentation. Even if you could justify it, there is no moral rightness about it. And that is why I fully subscribe to Blizzard old intro for Forsaken:
“Harboring no true loyalty for their new allies, they go to any lengths to ensure their dark plans come to fruition. As one of the Forsaken, you must massacre any who pose a threat to the new order, Human, Undead, or otherwise.”
It’s an unapologetic admission of what they are, and that’s cool, that makes them unique to all other playable races. They are the playable evil race, and frankly, I think trying to frame the Forsaken as some kind of morally misunderstood thing kind of declaws them, and makes them much less interesting and cool.
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I mean, I literally addressed the similarities to German fascism and why it’s different, and how coming to terms with what they are is more complex then merely accepting you’re undead. It’s also understanding you are now a thing that most other humans are going to fear, and likely attempt to kill, on sight. It’s not like the Forsaken have never tried to reach out to humanity to disprove that notion, but the same is not true for the reverse.
And while there is no justification for mass murder, enslavement, and human experimentation not every Forsaken, not even every Forsaken in their army, participates with that sort of thing or thinks that it’s right. Ultimately with most people what matters is protecting themselves and protecting the people they ae close to, and they might disagree with the state but that doesn’t stop them from seeing the very obvious fact that humans are going to torture and kill them whether they do or don’t.
Like the ‘Jewish Elite’ here aren’t a minority group, they are the majority of remaining humans who ARE armed, who ARE dangerous, and who may or may not care if you come to them in peace. If there is a reason to start empire building and fortifying your holdings, that is it, and frankly I think if they had not done that they would probably be dead at the moment.
And that is when morality and intelligence collide, when there is a more then even chance that the people you are talking to are not just going to kill you, but everyone around you, you have to act for what is in the best interests of your survival and the survival of your friends. I won’t judge anybody for making that choice when the chance of death if you make a dumb choice is over half.
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See, i’d prefer if we didnt use real world examples bc that tends to get ugly and derail things sometimes
But other than everything was pretty much spot on save for:
I already talked about this with really happy and hackbrew, even if a banshee didnt cut it then Varimathras certainly did.
And
I guess, we wont really know until reforged comes out wont we?
The only thing we know now is that Garithos was the one that held his end of the bargain (even though he was a total dick about it)
No, the actions of the forsaken is what make them deserving of their reputation.
Sure, the forsaken civilians seem to be more or less normal ppl but seriously… have you seen what the forsaken do to their enemies? Each expac was a slow slide into Jason vorhees territory with a sudden plunge into scourgelite around cata.
Its a self fulfilling prophecy.
Listen, like you said, i understand why frank castle kills criminals, but that doesnt stop me from believing hes a dangerous madman who should be stopped.
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Yeah, but you are wrong. Because the holocaust happened in Germany specifically because the German people feared the Jewish strangle hold on German banks and the Elite social class. It’s much more similar than you realize.
Literally the first time the Forsaken did that, the de facto leader of the Alliance was eaten alive, and god knows what became of his soldiers…
… Yet, Forsaken are pickachu facing whenever they try to be diplomatic in the future… ![:thinking:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/thinking.png?v=6" ":thinking:")
Perhaps not, but they are outliers. Slavery has been part of their culture since before they were even undead. Abominations are common enough to be city guards, and there is an entire quarter of their city dedicated to human experimentation. It’s ingrained into the culture.
The Jewish Elite in Germany had most of the German wealth. Just because they were a minority doesn’t mean they were powerless, in fact, it was that power that made them a target.
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I only wind up blaming the alliancs if its a generic guy or im stuck arguing with people who blame the entire horde. I often find myself going after individuals (i actually feel stormwind is under developed do to the focus on the wrynns) unless their the SI:7.