Oh dear. Elune is a First One, isn't she?

Lore Story Forum
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I think we’ve come to a point in the story where we have enough scraps to piece together what Elune actually is: a First One. We’re at a point where wild theories and fun headcanons (RIP mine) are very likely incorrect, at least if they aren’t that she’s a First One. This will be long so apologies in advance. TLDR Elune ayy lmao. Let’s take a look at some of these aforementioned scraps (be warned, I’ll be throwing in some wild tin foil views of mine along the way):

  • Khadgar finding some tome that says that Elune created the prime naaru

This one’s tricky, since I don’t think they had the concept of ‘the big boys’ of each realm (i.e. Eternal Ones for the Shadowlands), and they intended that prime naaru were the void lords to the void realm/the Eternal Ones to the Shadowlands, and ofc the prime naaru could be the big boys of the Lightlands, but imo it’d be very weird for it to be so. Regardless - Khadgar thinks Elune helped make 'em. The First Ones created Oribos, the main nexus of the Shadowlands, and Maldraxxus - if Elune supposedly created the prime naaru, I’d posit that the First Ones had a hand in creating every “zone”. Elune has a clear connection to the titans, the big boys of Arcaneland, so it’s fair to say she had some influence there as well. Moving on:

  • Eonar taking shelter on a world called Elunaria

An interesting one, with some more wild possibilities with new info from SL. We can go two different ways from here. The first is that on it’s ‘life’ oriented because of Eonar’s influence, and the second more ridiculous thing I can think of is that it’s life because of Elune’s influence on the Garden of Life, and for whatever reason it looked like that before Eonar got there. Idk, it’s still Elune discourse, so it’s going to be nonsensical regardless!

  • Elune is worshipped across the cosmos, not just on Azeroth

The universe is rather large, so much so that Sargeras was hooning around for a considerable amount of time (presumably quite fast as well). The fact that Elune was worshipped on two unrelated worlds in the same way (Night Warrior, at some point Elune’s directly communicated with each) is no simple feat, and I’d say reinforces that she’s a First One.

Piecing this together in a coherent manner, let’s see what we can do. Frankly I don’t really know what the Ordering of Light and Shadow could actually mean at this point (is this the creation of the Lightlands/Voidlands? Does this signal the actual creation of everything; is this when the First Ones created the Shadowlands and every her zone?), but Elune had a hand in it as she created the prime naaru (allegedly). So we have one confirmed zone (SL/Death) and two ‘probably’ (Light/Voidlands). Xal’atath calls Elune a ‘deity’, which is a pretty rare word to see in WoW. Xal’atath also isn’t a cryptic loon (at least compared to the old gods), and she explicitly knows what Elune’s power is and how beneficial it would be to claimsome of her power. Why she calls her an ‘upstart goddess’ is beyond me, but maybe it’s some mummy issues RE the void being ‘bad guys’ and that not all the First Ones’ kids were created equal? Idk. Meme. Time for a paragraph break.

That leaves Arcane. She has a very well documented relationship with the titans - a Pillar of Creation, Eonar being on Elunaria - so that’s her Arcane connection. Life is tricky and I don’t have arms long to make any reaches there. So, apart from Life, we have Elune’s influence in all the major ‘realms’ (not including Fel here for obvious reasons).

So, that’s that. I’d like to hear everyone’s thoughts!

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Would somewhat make sense, bear in mind that Elune messed with the order of the afterlife by sending Ysera to Ardenweald as well as is considered more of a “god” than anything we’ve seen prior…given that we had seen Titans and Old gods by that point that’s a pretty bold statement to make…

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Where should Ysera have gone? The machine of death wasn’t broken when she died, and Ardenweald is rather fitting for her.

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The thing is, we don’t actually know what a First One is, so it’s hard to say with any certainty whether Elune or anybody else is one or not.

We know they seemingly built Oribos and the associated foundations of the Shadowlands as we see it, atop which the Eternal Ones’ domains reside, but beyond that nothing else concrete is really known.

With as little as we know, at this point it’s as possible for them to be a Precursor-type situation as a case of top-level cosmic agencies or literal creator deities.

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I don’t know what Elune is and I never want to. Especially with this current group of chuckleheads that are at the top of the writing team totem pole. Every time they even tangentially touch on Elune they ruin something about her.

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Thanks for your input!

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I remember when folks were just as diehard certain that she was one of those cosmic chandeliers.

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All that we know is:

  • The First Ones are in some way above many of the “rulers” of specific parts of the cosmology, as they have/had tech that beings like the Jailer don’t understand and can’t control. So it’s natural to think that they’re deities above most that we know of
  • Elune is implied to above the Naaru, and also deals in most of the magics of the cosmology, not restricted to any one like Void Lords or Eternal Ones or Naaru or Titans.

I think almost everyone here would agree that Elune is a First One with almost absolute certainty, and has for quite a while now, but speculating on the nature of the First Ones is almost hopelessly pointless right now.

While Blizzard often flies by the seat of their pants, I bet much the cosmology around the First Ones is already fully written and we’ll see more soon enough. They tease phrases like the Garden of Life and such, so they probably have it mapped out already.

The point being, Elune is not a unique entity, and there was never any chance that she was. The people arguing for Elune being a unique and supernatural (as in, outside physical explanation, not natural) deity above all others were always secretly arguing for their realy-life monotheistic religion to be forced down everyone’s throats in a fictional game, but they would never admit it. And as such, anyone arguing for Elune being a Naaru was just arguing against that; they weren’t really claiming she was a Naaru with certainty.

People rarely say what they mean. It’s always code.

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I feel like at this point, there isn’t really anything else she can be, unless she’s a true wild card… but that’s what we thought before, so who knows.

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I definitely think that was Metzen’s ultimate intent, but he’s gone.

But since Legion, given the way Legion was handled, and with Metzen already out, I figured they moved away from that concept and never bought the Naaru theory.

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First ones are conspicuously absent. I’m inclined towards the view that Eternals are the highest order of being currently existent in the cosmos.

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Eternal Ones are the big leaders of the Shadowlands, not the cosmos.

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Ion and Danuser have literally already said the Eternals are the Pantheon of Death, parallel to the Titans being the Pantheon of Order lol

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No people legitimately believed Elune was the Supreme Mother of the Naaru or something, a crystal chandelier of white

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The only thing blizzard has claimed about elune from the very beginning, and it hasn’t changed, is they said she’s One of azeroths true deities. Whatever that’s supposed to mean nowadays is anyone’s guess.

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Probably.

Thing is though if there’s one constant in WoW its that deities become less interesting in inverse proportion to how much we know about them.

This wasn’t true of the Loa, but they strike me as the exception that proves the rule. The Old Gods being actually quite new, relatively speaking, and more space cancer flung into the stars to duck up the Titan’s Minecraft game really didn’t do them any service. And the Titans being big computer programmers who apparently just lounge in a gargantuan space porch most of the time didn’t exactly thrill me either.

Less is more with stuff like this. Keep the capital G gods obscure and inscrutable.

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E’lune is a greater prime naaru

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excuse me what

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Nah. Hard World Building is infinitely superior to Soft, it’s why Tolkien is bigger than Lewis, and why Tolkien has had more effect on the world than Lewis with how many derivatives he inspired.

THE PROBLEM, imo, is that Tolkien was able to create a cohesive, nuanced world that combined Catholic theology, Abrahamic mythos, Western European folklore, and even some Lovecraftian beings (Watcher in the Water was a Lovecraft derivative) was because Tolkien was one man with a clear sense of what he believed in and what he wanted to potray (original intent was to create for the Anglosphere what Dante did with his Divine Comedy for the Italosphere)

This is not the case with Blizzard.

Lydia Bottegoni is not Metzen, they are different people with presumably different backgrounds and different ways of looking at the world, and to be honest I’m not entirely sure (in fact, am confident this is not the case) Metzen from the 90s had a clear self-knowledge of what he believed and what he wanted to potray in the construction of WoW.

And then there’s the conflicts in vision we’ve already seen between certain people (e.g. Afrasiabi regarding Garrosh), lack of vision among story leadership (e.g. Taliesen confirmed that Golden suggested Calia for the role of “new undead via naaru leader”, Blizzard was planning on introducing a new character with those characteristics), as well as general inconsistencies (e.g. Danuser, repeatedly).

Lydia clearly prefers Hard Worldbuildings, Metzen clearly preferred Soft Worldbuilding. We can see that in how the story developed under each.

But something tells me The Boys (Danuser, etc) have been resisting this direction Lydia is encouraging.

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The stuff in legion basically implied she created Xe’ra a prime naaru so she is probably greater than that hence greater prime naaru, now outside of the whole “light vs void” as the big bang stuff idk.