Primalists motives don’t make sense

They want to “remove the Titan stain” from Azeroth. Did they forget if it wasn’t for the Titans then Azeroth would still be under the rule of the Old Gods? Most of them wouldn’t even exist since races within the Primalists are either descendants of Titanforged or evolved because of the Titans. The elements were also enslaved to the Old Gods, so you could say proto dragons would have never existed either

2 Likes

What’s not to get, they are a group of dumb dumbs.
Generally, the more evil a villain is the less their motives make sense. There becomes a point in the villain axis that goes so far into self-serving it starts to become self-destructive. Primalists are probably the best example of this. The term is “slugs for salt” other examples of this trope would include Twilight Hammer and Cult of the Damned.

2 Likes

They don’t seem to oppose the titans getting rid of the old gods, rather that the titans started ordering the world after instead of letting it return to the elementals. In their point of view, they traded one master for another.

Proto-drakes are direct descendants of the elementals that turned to flesh over time. It’s a good question why creatures that aren’t elemental in origin support them though. But then again we’ve seen that mortals can turn into elementals, as seen by the elemental ascendants way back.
I’d give trolls and by extension elves a pass since their origin is unknown and may be elemental. Personally, I think it’s even likely due to how old trolls are and both elves and trolls adapting ability, which is not that far off from proto-drakes affinity to take on attributes by being exposed to any cosmic power from what we’ve learned in DF.

2 Likes

I never understood it either but it’s possible their motivations were twisted by the same powers that corrupted whelpings, spa guests, and the furblogs. Maybe even the Incarnates were victims losing their minds when they were imbued. :thinking:

1 Like

I said this in another thread. We have people who vocally and loudly advocate for their own detriment today, just because they few it as ‘natural’.

Some people are just misanthropes and they would flock to a group like the Primalists. Or the Twilight Hammer cult. Or any explicitly evil faction.

5 Likes

I get the Cult of the Damned. You do your time, and the carrot on the end of that stick is Lich-dom, or a glorious Valkyr, or a mighty Death Knight. We (the heroes) know that you’re probably just gonna get mulched and end up part of an abomination’s left thigh. But I see what they’re going for. :white_check_mark:

The Twilight’s Hammer are literally insane. Worshiping actual mind-bending Lovecraftian horrors. There’s an air of nihilism to them, too. They worship the void, they want all things to be consumed. Maybe then the whispers will stop! It checks out. :white_check_mark:

Vault of the Incarnates make it pretty clear that they don’t care at all for their followers (The Primalists). They’re only allowed to exist only so long as they’re useful. That any power they’re granted will ultimately kill them. The Primalist Future world that they’re striving towards is very clearly hostile towards living things, themselves included. :x:

4 Likes

Villain’s motives don’t need to “make sense” for it to be well written. The Primalists are a group of moronic zealots who want to create a darwinist future. This isn’t any worse than the Cult of the Damned who wanted the world to be overrun by the Scourge or the Twilights Hammer that wanted the world to fall to the Old Gods and be destroyed.

People just take their motivations for granted because they’ve been around for so long while Primalists are new. Honestly, Primalists are at the very least not a death cult and have an actual goal that isn’t just their own death.

1 Like

For some reason I get the sneaking suspicion that Blizzard is preparing to pull the rug out from under us and prove the Primalists right despite the fact that they come off as raving lunatics.

There will probably be more nuance to them than we’ve seen so far. Part of me suspects that Iridikron is going to need the Valdrakken Accord AND the remaining Primalists to defeat considering what they’ve said about him after the raid.

Were the primal incarnates around during Galakrond’s reign? I read the book about Galakrond and nothing indicates they existed. I don’t know much about them myself.

1 Like

I feel sympathetic to them honestly. Some aliens come down and offer mysterious powers that they can’t comprehend, they start to change the land and its creatures and stick their buildings everywhere inside the planet. Some submit and become aspects and then start to act superior. The main complaint from Raz seems to be that she was literally imprisoned by the dragon queen for tens of thousands of years after she received such powers. Thats even longer than Illidan.

There are hints that Iridikron was deeply corrupted without the other incarnates knowing. He’s basically a copy of Deathwing.

2 Likes

I’d feel more sympathetic if they had a better backstory. As it stands they believe other races should be subservient to dragonkind. They don’t want to be protectors, they want to be rulers.

I really hate when Blizz does this. They try to be cryptic and only give us half the story. Noz clearly knows exactly what Iridikron did, but he only “hinted” at things. Likewise the Eternal Ones know Zovaal’s motives, but never told us. I’d bet at some point Noz is going to tell Khadgar all about Iridikron, but do so in private and the players will never know

2 Likes

I’d settle for a Backstory.

We know why the incarnates are pissed.

We know why the Sundered flame are pissed.

Who the hell are these primalists? There is no origin, for all we know Azeroth actually does have a problem with order trying to control everything and a bunch of Earthen Ring volunteers in Silithus got radicalized after being so close to Azeroth’s open wound.

2 Likes

You’re a young mage. You have an interest in history. You start to read some tomes in the Kirin Tor Academy or whatever passes for formalized magical instruction in Azeroth and you start to learn about the Titans, the systems they imposed, and the relics and wonders they left behind. But instead of seeing them for what they are - the systems of the Arcane that allow for the understanding of creation, the wonderous ruins that just demand to be explored and understood, you only see the horror. You see the magical energy that first attracted the Legion to Azeroth and caused all that death and suffering over the centuries. You see horrors locked in underground vaults by absentee gods and ancient mechanisms failing in horrible and destructive ways.

Your reaction to this information may be one of fear. May be one of anger. And sometimes you may be prone to whispers of the forces the Titans sought to suppress: the elementals who want to be free from the chains pushed on them or even the Old Gods who promise you “it wasn’t always like this, you know”. You might immediately dismiss these whispers or these thoughts as nonsense but then you remember that it was the Titans’ creations themselves that told you to fear the raging elementals, to fear the Old Gods.

And then you remember your brother, a footman, a grunt, shipping out to the Broken Shore and dying in fear and terror as his soul is ripped from his body by a creature wrought and commanded by one of the Titans themselves. You remember your sister, fighting and dying in one of the countless nameless Fourth War battles brought on by that same Titan stabbing the very planet you live on.

That’s how a Primalist is born. They’re not a cult, they’re not an “organization”. They’re disaffected people who’ve seen the chaos that follows in the wake of the Titans’ “order” and who don’t have the full omniscient picture that our hero adventurers do, and so when an angry dragon promises a way to fix it, they follow her. Because not everybody has the fearlessness to look god in the face and Charge the way our heroes do. Because Raszageth offers them something that they desperately want: some hope that their children and their grand children and their great-grand children won’t have to suffer like they did. The Old Gods, the elementals, they may be lying to you about what they can do, what they promise. Raszageth herself may be misled. The stories that the Titans’ creations tell you about their horrors may be true. But the Titans themselves are the source of so many more horrors that you have direct, personal experience with and well, sometimes the devil you know isn’t always the better option.

My theory.

Primalists have been promised a new Utopia of eternal life through infusion of the elements and ascension to a `higher’ state of being.

Magatha is behind it all. With access to the shaman class hall she was able to seduce/recruit other members.

She then recruited Twilight cultists and druids of the flame to her cause, and the latter went on to recruit dispirited and disillusioned survivors of Teldrasil.

Vulpera angry at being set on fire heard about this and are out for revenge.

1 Like

They’re a loose organization of desperate, disillusioned people who have nothing left to lose. So they’re willing to sacrifice everything in order to show the titans that last middle finger before the world is drowned in elemental chaos once more. It could be that they were promised to ascend as elementals upon completing their mission. Who knows? Despite Blizzard agreeing that keeping us in suspense for too longin the last two expansions was a bad move, they seem to be doing the exact same thing this time around as well.