And rest assured that he will know of the Frostwolf clan’s treason! - Crommush
She is no orc, but the warchief shows strength by punishing that tauren who deceived and betrayed her - Geyarah
I’m shipping it.
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Not sure I’d call it naive. Nazgrim had the same rationale. Orcs seem divided if loyalty is higher or lower on the demands of honors.
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Yaas if only this means I get to see wayyy more of High Warlord Cromush. He’s been a favorite since he was introduced.
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High Warlord Cromush says: WHAT HAVE YOU DONE, GODFREY!
Lord Godfrey says: Something that should have been done a long time ago, you filthy animal.
Lord Godfrey says: Gilneas belongs to me, and so soon will the rest of Lordaeron!
Lord Godfrey says: NOW JOIN YOUR MISTRESS IN DEATH!
Lord Godfrey’s group joins in combat, attacking Cromush and the val’kyr. Eventually they are defeated.
Lord Godfrey yells: FALL BACK, BROTHERS! TO SHADOWFANG!
Lord Godfrey yells: This land will quiver and shake in the wake of our destruction!
High Warlord Cromush says: Fix her… FIX HER!
Cromush is great. You can almost feel the genuine shock and pain in his voice after Godfrey shoots Sylvanas. Can we make him an honorary Forsaken already?
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I suspect the “shock and pain” was in no small part due to the likely punishment he’d have received from Garrosh if the offensive had fallen apart on his watch because he let Sylvanas get killed. Cromush had no actual loyalty to Sylvanas; he was mainly there to keep an eye on her and step in if she started doing anything Garrosh wouldn’t have approved. Costing them the war by dying was such a thing.
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Doubtful. Garrosh probably saw Sylvanas as a future threat, if anything. He’d probably have pinned a medal to Cromush’s chest himself if he didn’t have the Valkyr resurrect her. Then he could’ve run the Forsaken war machine into the ground like he was going to do so in Edge of Night.![:upside_down_face:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/upside_down_face.png?v=6" ":upside_down_face:")
Cromush was initially dispatched to monitor Sylvanas and keep an eye on the Forsaken but he always came off as being far more trusting and tolerant of them than most orcs.
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Garrosh didn’t like Sylvanas, but he wasn’t about to accept a defeat for the Horde just to be rid of her. Cromush was staring down the barrel of having to report to Garrosh that a trio of powerful traitors had just beheaded the Forsaken advance before they could actually move in to secure the Horde’s victory in Gilneas.
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You mean he’s not?
Also, remember that time DiF suggested that all Cromush needed was a “gangsta backstory” to be the Orc Racial lead? It’s not like the orcs deserve a lead who actually embodies their race and not someone else’s race or anything.
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Sort of like people suggesting Calia become the new Forsaken leader? Someone who doesn’t understand the Forsaken nor embody any of their values or aspects of their race?
Yeah, I can see how that’d be grating.
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Would it be a defeat? That was actually following a major defeat for the Gilnean liberation front and by extension, the Alliance. Garrosh literally convinced the Forsaken assaulting Gilneas to throw away their own lives in a suicidal frontal attack. Hed get his victory and be rid of a potential problem. That’s why I appreciate Cromush, because he wasn’t unaware of Garrosh’s distaste for Sylvanas and the Forsaken and still ordered the Valkyr to try and bring her back.
Only bad people suggest this. Only bad people.
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Someone’s going to have to lead the Forsaken after Sylvanas falls. Might as well be the last remaining heir to the Lordaeron throne.
I was largely keeping out of these threads because i’v found the factional debate to largely be exhausting lately, but this one comment felt like something I might be able to…if not get you to agree, at least understand my perspective on why I don’t think she’d omit information.
One of the extremely frustrating aspects of me for BfA as someone who liked Sylvanas Windrunners character is that aside from Darnassus, i’v largely agreed with the way that Sylvanas has chosen to run her war and find it consistent from a character perspective with her previous portrayals. And even then the part that frustrates me the most about Teldrassil is not that it happened, but rather it happened with such little calculation on Windrunners part that it verged on being out of character for her. Sylvanas has always been emotional yes, but she’s also always been shown as someone who weighs everything in terms of gain and cost.
I don’t think Sylvanas would withhold information from them because that would be stupid, it’s easily accessible and can be gathered from virtually anyone who was involved with the battle or indeed on all of Kalimdor. If the Allied Races suspect she is holding back on them then they will immediately fracture and turn on the Horde, if she is absolutely honest then they may disagree but they won’t immediately come to the conclusion they need to turn on the Horde.
People thought Baine would be executed in secret, but I knew from the moment I heard about it that Baine would be made into an example instead. Why wouldn’t he be taken care of in the open? you can’t just hide that a faction leader has disappeared and when the Tauren found out that would of ENSURED that the Horde split right then, right there. Plus, it’s not like she needed to trump up charges, Baine was a billion percent guilty and everyone knew it. If she has to hold a trial to imprison him she can readily just point to the people who SAW it happen, and Baines own admission to doing it with no contesting said guilt, and throw him into jail.
Yes the other Horde leaders will be upset, but no she won’t have them turn on her right away. In that sense the statement ‘She would view Garrosh as an armature’ is accurate. Were he in charge he would of overstripped his bounds by trying to slice Baines throat in secret and suddenly find himself struggling to hold the Horde together. Sylvanas had done FAR more damage to the Alliance then him and has done so while keeping the Horde largely together, are they doubting? absolutely, will they turn on her at some point anyway? probably, but by simply being transparent she didn’t doom the war campaign on the spot.
In that capacity it’s close to the Sylvanas I loved in Cata, some who did evil things yes. But who wouldn’t do said things recklessly and without purpose as she once was in Wrath and before, indulging in evil just for the sake of indulgence. Which is the impression I got from her ever since I saw her let Darius Crowley and his army go, rather then spending unlives to crush a battle they were losing, because in the long term keeping her resources intact was more important.
In that sense BfA is very true to her character and makes her just as compelling for me now as she ever was, I just am irritated with Darnassus because compared to everything else it seems so poorly executed just to ensure that Sylvanas can’t be construed as being correct in this war.
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Not that I disagree, but doesn’t her intent with the Burning of Teldrassil really ultimately depend on what HER personal motives for this conflict are?
It did sort of feel like (at the end of “A Good War”) her decision to burn the tree came just as much from a place of personal objectives beyond the war; as it came from a place of the needs of the war itself. Hell, the entire tone of that scene felt less like she was shocked she would have to do something like that event, and more like she was surprised that it had to happen so soon (she even goes so far as to say she expected Saurfang to eventually betray her; and she was intrigued to see if he surprised her or not). It was more of a “wow, this happened fast, no going back now I suppose ….”
We know she has personal motives for this conflict, beyond what she used to convince Saurfang to invest in a plan of attack. We can surmise that she at least feels the other members of the Horde wouldn’t agree with her (or wouldn’t understand) if she was open about such plans; based on the fact that she’s stayed very tight lipped about them. We also know that whatever they are, they’re pretty extreme; as she implies that even entities like Elune may try to interfere. We just don’t know what those personal motives are (Sylvie is remaining her classic very secretive self).
As such, its hard to say outright if the “Ends do not Justify the Means” when it comes to “The Burning of Teldrassil”, when we don’t likely have a complete picture of what HER ends look like. Beyond that, I do agree (for the most part) that I haven’t had issues with how she’s run this war (except for “maybe” Derek, and that’s only because it reinforces my belief that Sylvie has never really been bound by the “Free Will” mantra of her people; and unless she’s using Derek to try to kill Calia, a single, obvious, sleeper agent seemed like a desperate and unreliable act).
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I also personally have a problem with Derek, but I don’t strictly view it as a bad story choice. Hypocrisy in the context of winning a war is fine with me, especially if the narrative doesn’t wind up just boiling it down to ‘This is a slippery slope’ and can actually address the other side of breaking your own rules for the sake of survival. I do however worry it’s only going to be the former, with only strawmen of the latter.
For that same reason I also worry that Sylvanas’s personal motivation is going to wind up being ‘She served N’zoth the whole time!’ or an equally bad Kerrigan of ‘I needed to do X to save Azeroth!’ my main issue is I get the sneaking suspicion that reveal will be about as nuanced as a brick to the back of the skull.
I don’t know that yet, but…yeah.
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Honestly, if I had to pick an Old God that Sylvie had some connection to (with how she’s been saying things like “Hope is a disease and I must cut it out”, and claiming that she can “Kill Hope”) I’d put my money on Yogg-Saron “Hope’s End”; rather than N’Zoth “The Corrupter”. She crucified herself on Yogg’s blood; I’m fairly certain that her Val’kyr’s origin are Helya (prior to their enslavement to Arthas); and Helya has connections to Yogg through Loken (who was corrupted by Yogg himself, and who according to Xal, did a wonderful job “turning” Helya). Plus, didn’t Helya look a little “fleshy” to be a titan-watcher? And her forces are constantly shown waging war on the Naga, which suggests she’s not in league with N’Zoth herself.
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Absolutely true, but there’s a few different things that point to N’zoth for me as well: Lordaeron, classically speaking, is N’zoths domain during the hayday of the Black Empire with the Eastern Kingdoms being the centerpiece of his part of the empire pie. We also have a lot of signalling to the Emerald Nightmare being empowered by death, which became explicit to me with Gren Tornfur using Nightmare animations in Darkshore.
So to me, it’s a coinflip between the two.
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Hmm … I suppose I also place more money on Yogg being the one she’s connected to, because with Vol’jin being stolen from his destined afterlife; I find it equally possible that Sylvanas is the victim of the same. Regardless of how much of this has changed since Cata, a large part of her motives for what she does these days is a desperate need to avoid her eternal torment after perma-death. She’d do almost anything to avoid it, and she did make a deal under duress with her Val’kyr to get out of that situation (Val’kyr that were conveniently there and gave her a really good deal when they held all the cards).
While I’m certain the place she went is a real realm within the shadowlands, the idea that Sylvanas has been given a false motivation with her afterlife, and that she’s being played by her own Val’kyr (and by extension Heyla and Yogg) is a feeling I just can’t shake. If this is the case, I’m also interested in Sylvanas’ reaction should she find out the truth … and am curious what she would do. Lets just say that … Vengeance has always been a pretty color on her.
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Potentially, it’s a theory i’v entertained once or twice before. The Val’kyr have always been something of a mystery lorewise with Helya being rather fleshy for a Titan Watcher, though i’d also point out that Helya has more then a few ties to the ocean visually and I tend to view Yogg as the originator of the Curse of Flesh but not strictly it’s sole distributor. The same way that Yogg was the one who opened the doorway for the other Old Gods to access the Emerald Nightmare but N’zoth was the one who had the greatest strength there.
It certainly would, at the very least, fit the descriptor of Death entity if it’s Yogg-Saron.
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