I had a potentially interesting idea about a Nightborne warlock and wondered if it was feasible. So, they’d have to be “young” (for an elf of course) but say their Legion/Elisande-supporting noble parents are training them in Fel magic. They start advancing and learning more about the Fel, but as the Dusk Lily Rebellion spreads they’d sympathize with the cause. They’d try delaying their own entry into the fight on Elisande’s side to continue their studies, and they finally find an opportunity to slip away and join the rebellion. I’m not sure if their usage of fel magic would prevent them from entering…maybe they’d hide it and simply hide out in Shal’Aran?? Either way, when Elisande is overthrown and the Nightborne join the Horde, they’ll start lending their knowledge of Fel to a better cause. And with BFA, SL, and the DF time-skip they’d be several years older as well, the time perhaps spent trying to deal with their parent’s role in the Legion’s final invasion and coping with their conflicting thoughts about using fel magic as a Nightborne. Does this make any/enough sense to work?
That sounds pretty good to me.
Checks out as a roleplay idea.
Concepts that go against it:
When doing the Suramar campaign they generally had it pretty black and white on the Nightborne that were fel influenced seemed to all be evil.
Note that the Dusk Lily allies, the ones we garner don’t exactly have fel armor. It’s unlikely there are Warlocks in their ranks.
It is Guldan himself the first warlock is the one that contacts Elisande. Willing warlocks in the context of Suramar are highly unlikely to be double agents given the terror they’d likely have to inflict to play the part (have demons order people about/torture)
Concepts that support it:
Exploration of the idea of using evil against itself has been prominent in WoW for ages. From DHs/Belves/Forsaken/Orcs all being cursed somehow and turning it around in their master. I don’t see an issue in it again being the case here.
Thalyssra trains the withered into fel tolerance and this is often through exposure. The roleplay character could instead of being a double agent be a nightborne that is a magic user and becomes a warlock through fel exposure also (hey the first warlocks were fel corrupted shamans!).
Blood elves are assisting the Nightborne and have a long history of Fel usage. The Nightborne character could gain new insight into using it from them and gains a new perspective from them during the insurgency campaign.
Note that the Dusk Lily allies, the ones we garner don’t exactly have fel armor. It’s unlikely there are Warlocks in their ranks.
Yeaa, unfortunately, it would be a reach. I suppose as I mentioned maybe they hid the fact they were warlocks when they fled to join? Although that’d be pretty difficult and being found out would likely not garner the best reaction…
It is Guldan himself the first warlock is the one that contacts Elisande. Willing warlocks in the context of Suramar are highly unlikely to be double agents given the terror they’d likely have to inflict to play the part (have demons order people about/torture)
Yea this is something I was worried about. It was why I thought maybe if the character was young at the time it might help them avoid those kinds of tasks and instead simply trained further but it is kind of a stretch.
The roleplay character could instead of being a double agent be a nightborne that is a magic user and becomes a warlock through fel exposure
Oo, interesting. I actually never thought about that! I’m not sure how exactly that’d happen though. Perhaps some sort of freak accident during withered training? Or maybe even an intentional experiment.
Anyways, thanks for this post! It’ll take some more thought to make it work but I’m definitely going to try and make it happen 
My nightborne was a former arcanist who was wrongfully accused and was handed over to the legion by Elisande’s forces. She was starved until she went withered with her eventual fate being as fuel for a legion soul engine. Though one day a group of nightfallen rescued her, bringing her into the rebellion. After her time imprisoned by the legion she took an interest in fel magic, cautiously using it to sustain herself in the absence of mana crystals. Her interest only grew from there and after tasting the Arcan’dor devoted herself fully to the craft.
My pleasure! It’s very fun to build a TRP profile and I was just running ideas based on what we know.
GL on your Journey!
Better then what this billion dollar laughable company can do
The best part of being the player character is that we’re not tied down to set lore and culture. For example, the rest of the Night Elves may be tree hugging moon worshippers but there’s nothing to stop you from being a Night Elf Engineer who leans heavily into the Gnomish side of WoW.
Now if you start getting crazy with it like “I’m a half dragon, half Nightborne, half Gnome” then you might start running into problems.
So yeah, go with it.
My opinion is…
Do what you want.
If what you want is to have a character that fits neatly into the lore, almost no player characters do that unless you head out to a farmstead near your race’s origin point and dig up potatoes all day, every day. Our characters are outliers and special exceptions.
Fit your character into the lore to your own personal degree of comfort, ignore the stuff that doesn’t make sense to you, and if you have your heart set on an ancient Nightborne Warlock do it and don’t worry about if it “works” for other people. Other people aren’t playing your character, you are. Make it work for you, and that’s all that it needs to do.
It also tends to serve as a good screening service - if people will decline to interact with you because of the exact timing and circumstances for how your character became a warlock, you weren’t going to be able to satisfy them anyway. You’ll find your people who enjoy what you do, and have similar preferences, by just doing whatever you want.