So I was exploring the Emerald Dream and on of the islands at the bottom of the map, I found an unexpected couple: Rannal Dawnsong and Zelley, a night elf and the zandalari.
I thought it was interesting, so decided to share.
I have to admit that it makes me wonder if we’ll other unexpected race pairings in the future.
Interesting for sure… I’d have imagine for Night elves to mingle with Nightborne because they are essentially the same race but Zandalari Trolls on the other hand…
At least all elves were Trolls once so I guess there’s nothing wrong about that.
I assume they are both Druids who met in the Emerald Dream.
I think it is a fine pairing, in my book.
The Gnome and Goblin pairing in Before the Storm annoyed me mostly because the Horde was clearly being portrayed as evil through Gallywix’s bullying. While later the Alliance gives the Goblin comfort in Battle for Azeroth, as he tags along with his wife. I didn’t care about the cross faction relationship- that seems totally plausible. My objection was to the Horde being evil and intolerant once again, and the Alliance being the welcoming place for even Horde members who are loved by Alliance members.
That rant aside… this seems like a fine pairing. And that they are both Druids is interesting. I hope she occasionally contrasts Zandalari Druidism to Night Elf Druidism, so we can learn more about it.
I think if they made it a standard Darkspear Troll, that might be more… problematic for some. At least the Zandalari had no hand in the Burning of Teldrassil, while Darkspear Mages and Shaman gleefully participated - though maybe the Darkspear Druids were less involved.
I’ve always felt like Trolls (particularly Zandalari) & NE have much more in common than NE and the other elven offshoot races.
When you strip down any past animosity and differences in aesthetic, They are both cultures that revere beings of nature as their pantheon and put emphasis on living in harmony with the natural world. Albeit, there are tons of differences, but their core spiritual beliefs are pretty aligned.
Honestly, I’d find a “traditional” (ie: non-Highborne) NE & a Thalassian elf pairing much more jarring.
Crack pairing. What exactly brought them together? Zandalari didn’t even have a reason to be there.
Nelves Worship Elune, Zandalari see Elune as a fake god.
Zandalari see all elves as a race beenth them, heck even other tribes are beneth them.
Nelf druids were fighting against Zandalari recently, and participated in Zandalar invasion.
Zandalari worship specific Loa which are alien to Nelves. And Nelves don’t particulary worship the Wild Gods.
Troll druidism shouldn’t be the same as the druidism that nelves practice, these two societies are alien to each other, and have completely differet practices, priorities and mindset. Zadalari druids are used for War, hence wardruid title. There should be focus on making druid sects different, NOT homogeise them even more.
So what exactly would be the thing that would bring them together?
And I’m hoestly sad that there wasn’t Darkspear x Zandalari pairing first. To Highlight the bond between two tribes, and how much they helped each other, Both of them are followers of Gonk, both of them stayed loyal to each other, both of them were against peace treaty, something that would be meaningful and would be a natural progress of thingsbut we have this contrived weirdess instead that came out of nowhere.
What upsets me the most is the constat effort to dillute any form of animosities between 2 opposig factions, where it should fine to have groups that aren’t friends and don’t even intend to be friends.
Second thought - I always found the love between long living races ad short living races to be super silly. Because one will outlive another in no time.
And ofc there is never mention of the scorn their socities would give them.
“Our love for each other brought us together” C’mon who’s writing those? Sounds like they met on a dating app. But I guess it’s too much to ask for more background information on the first ever known Nelf/ Zandalari pairing
While I dislike this pairing for the reasons you’ve posted, I’m not particularly passionate about it.
I just find it weird that it randomly appears.
In zandalari culture a night elf head is considered a nice trophy to display or to be used in games in place of a ball.
The relationship between the two races is not great, to say the least, in my book, it’s like seeing a relationship between a night elf and forsaken without any context, it’s just strange.
And the zandalari are very traditional to boot, and there are lot of societal rules that they have to abide by, they even have a caste system! I can’t believe marrying a night elf would fit well into that.
Agreed, and it’s not only the first romantic pairing but we’ve not even seen a pair of zandalari/night elf friends before.
Edit: The only reasoning I can find is if the zandalari is part of the Lun’alai, since they’ve always been a bit weird by zandalari standards, or someone not part of regular zandalari society like someone banished to Vol’dun.
You’re right, it could make some sense if she were a Lun’alai. I hadn’t thought about that and I’m pretty sure the writers forgot about them completely.
Or if she was an outcast in Vol’dun, I remember a quest where Shandris has the alliance player kill those- maybe that druid was there and saved her. It could make for an interesting story.
But that’s just the thing, I feel like the writers nowadays are too lazy to tell these kind of stories and leave it all up to our imagination. We’re all friends and differences between the races are only cosmetic in nature.
Which I do think is a nice RL message and all but not what I’m looking for in a fantasy world.
Trolls are only short-lived due to their tendency to die by violence. Their lifespan is probably comparable to that of a non augmented night elf’s.
In Pathfinder btw one of the backgrounds for an Elf is Forlorn… having gotten used to having your short lived friends die around you toughens you up.
Having lived outside of traditional elf society for much or all of your life, you know the world can be cruel, dangerous, and unforgiving of the weak.
Benefit: You gain a +1 trait bonus on Fortitude saving throws.
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/traits/race-traits/trait-race-elf-forlorn/
Trolls most likely live for roughly the same length as humans, since Rastakhan’s life was artificially lengthened by loa blessings and he ruled for 200 years which was stated to be several troll lifetimes. And that Talanji was a young adult by the time she was 18.
We have no other statement of their lifespans. So clearly they don’t live as long as a non augmented nelf.
Edit: I just remembered Zulathra as well from ancient zandalari history.
He ruled for 2,8k years after his lifespan was artificially lengthened by Lei Shen’s flesh-shaping magic.
If nothing else, it’s progressive and I think most anything that moves people away from being racial hiveminds is good.
Zelley’s eyes are kinda creeping me out but I want them.
Nightborne silly on Tyrande
“Do you know if she’s seeing someone?”
Suramar must have had the most dysfunctional gossip network ever.
I guess Zebu’tan walked so Zelley could fly.
So. What they actually have to say is brought up barely, and it was called silly. Here is what they both say.
Zelley
This world, every day, every hour, every precious moment, reminds us that our existence is fragile. We may not know what will come, but Rannal and I, our love for each other, has brought us together to spend a perfect moment hoping for a better future.
Rannal
This war, it made me, us, understand that life is sacred and that we should celebrate every day. Regardless of who and what you are, there is someone out there who is waiting just for you, and war… the war can take them away.
They’re just two people that have seen a lot of death, destruction, and war. Two people that found a light in each other. Do they say sappy things? Maybe. Never listened to two folks in love? They say a lot of sappy stuff. Both of them have come to a truth, that life is fleeting, even if you can live to be ancient doesn’t mean you will. In a world like Azeroth, with constant wars, invasions, and a slew of other stuff, that pretty much creates a really good chance you’ll die long before your age kills you.
It’s a lot like real life. Some people go through horrible things, and it makes them appreciate the good things more. For others, it destroys any idea of good, that anything or anyone can be good and caring. These two are an example of the former. They’ve decided to hold strong on to hope.
In my eyes, my opinion, that’s a little bit of beauty in a world made ugly by war and distrust.
Cheers for posting the quote, but it does not explain the circumstances of how they met. I’d also love some comments on how their cultures view it. I don’t mind some one-off individuals doing this, but I want to know the story when they’re both from cultural backgrounds that tend to hate each other.
This really could give some meat to the relationship, who doesn’t like a good Romeo and Juliet story, but that’s not what happened currently as we have no information at all about them.
Most these things stop mattering when you view people as individuals and not a monolithic racial stereotype.
Which the WoW community is very incapable of doing with this games races. But to be fair, Blizzard writers suck at it too.
I agree with that. I’d love to know the backstory of the two. But Blizzard is known to put these types of characters in the game and not follow up on it. Best I can figure, is that you wouldn’t really know, everyone has a history, but you’re not privy to them all.
I heard this excuse multiple times to justify bad story. The problem with this game is that everybody in this expansion is actually having a hivemind mentality - everybody thinks the same, everybody is likeminded, everybody is accepting. There no single NPC among Horde or Alliance characters that shows any form of disssent, animosity or even complaint.
I would rather see connection between Darkspears and Zandalari grow stronger because that would be a natural progress, and it would be actually meaningful. This came out of nowhere and it’s cringe. Because they picked two chatacters from societies that were the most upset about War consequences and just crammed them together without taking into consideration plenty of additional factors that would matter - such as what do they actually have in common? This feels like a cheap check box.
And I would rather if this game allowed certain groups to not be in friendly terms - that would be actually realistic in the setting. Not everyone has to be accepting and tolerant. And I would rather if devs didn’t deviate this drastically from certain traits that are associated with playable races because all these buildup and descriptions are meaningless.
pepperidge farm remembers when there were different languages in the world so canonically even trolls and orcs wouldve used interpreters or something
another step towards a boring united world of peacecraft