I want to talk about the Scarlet Brotherhood Pamphlet “The Cursed Old Wolf” and the potential future spoilers it could hold.
The SB claim that Anduin is a traitor to his own race, this was in regards to his plot in Before the Storm where he tried to bridge the gap between humans and Forsaken by planning the Gathering. The running sentiment in these pamphlets is a very strong anti-Forsaken rhetoric. There were a few people in BtS who were very outspokenly anti-undead.
The plan has been revealed, infiltrate the Gileans, help them attack and wipe out the Forsaken and then they will turn on the Worgen. The end goal is to replace Turalyon with who they claim is the rightful Menethil heir.
I believe there is potential here to have conflict within the Alliance story. It will start small, technically it has already started in Before the Storm, the first was to create doubt in Anduin and his leadership abilities by focusing on his empathy for undead. The second would be to create a divide between the people in Stormwind who support, Turalyon as leader vs those who support Genn. The Scarlet Brotherhood supports Genn only because he’s anti-Forsaken. Third, there is going to be some conflict now that the Forsaken questchain in 9.2.5 has established that Calia went behind the Desolate Council’s back to gift Genn Gilneas. placing the infiltrators of the Scarlet Brotherhood, right where they need to be to attack the Forsaken and then turn their blades on the Worgen.
We may see a temporary truce between the Worgen and Undead once they realize they have a common enemy. Turalyon though may become a problem if he begins to believe that the Scarlet Brotherhood do in fact have a legitimate heir of Lordaeron who has a better claim to the Kingdom of Stormwind than he does. This heir seems to be a long term adversary that Anduin may need to confront to get his kingdom back from a usurper.
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This would be so good.
For one, it would FINALLY give the Alliance some much needed villain batting plus we all know Turalyon is a little TOO righteous for his own britches so it would really wouldn’t be outside of the scope of his character to get a little light zealotry flowing through him.
It would also push the narrative in the direction that Blizzard seems to be going toward which is tolerance between the factions at least at an overarching level.
Plus, who doesn’t love all the cool imagery from both the Forsaken, Worgen AND the Scarlets? Think of the mog sets people, THE MOG SETS.
This could also get them out of this pity party Anduin crapshow story they’ve been telling with his character. His moping around is getting old and I can’t unsee his dumb sad eyebrows in literally any iteration of him. Any kingdom with half a brain would’ve usurped him by now… give us a reason not to.
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Whatever plan that was setup before BFA launch must have been canned.
The lack of direction existed since BtS was released and every subsequent story update has only compounded that. I don’t think its possible to speculate anything because I don’t think anything that they had planned survived the purge after Alex and the disasters known as BFA and Shadowlands he set blizzard up for.
villain bat? where? lol.
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Yeah, probably wishful thinking on my part. I’m sure Turalyon will just sit up on the Stormwind throne like some kind of gaudy gold Christmas bauble for a couple expansions before Anduin comes back to try and make everyone feel bad for him again.
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Either way it will be nice to have Alliance central focus for an expansion. I’m tired of Horde always having to be the introspective faction and internalize past deeds.
Having tye Alliance deal with thier own political instability for a bit will be a nice change of pace.
Not sure if Turalyon will get the bat
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The Alliance’s hatred of all undead, Scourge or otherwise, should have been a prominent plot point before WotLK. Also, it would have made Garithos less of an outlier in retrospect. The death knights just strolling into Stormwind and talking to the King threw a wrench into that potential story, imo.
I do think the idea of Anduin’s potential lack of popularity with his people, in particular with his choice to sue for peace as well as how many feathers he ruffled with the Gathering should have been explore more, but that has more to do with his leadership than the undead in particular. I’d actually like to see more Gathering-like scenarios between humans and Forsaken just to see how much bad blood there is between the two groups, especially after SL.
That’s a much needed development. Friction or politicking by different member groups, anything to show breaks or strains from within the Alliance would be most welcome.
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Now that the trading post is offering Scarlet Crusade themed gear there’s some well known names on Twitter claiming this speculation as their own. Read the timestamp - June of last year, I think I deserve credit for my own contributions to speculation in the story forum.
This isn’t even the earliest time I had posted this theory- I’ve been a broken record about it since the end of BFA.
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I have to admit, I don’t see how it’s “villainbatting the Alliance” to outsource all the (reasonable) anti-Forsaken sentiment in the worgen, as well as all anti-undead/Horde sentiment Turalyon might harbor, to some goofy accelerationists. It would just be the narrative absolving them of the crime of having any in-group bias whatsoever by blaming it on a third party.
It would also just make them look stupid. If Taran Zhu can find time to read up on Grom, Turalyon and Genn have the means to know that the Scarlets were famously outed as demon puppets three times over before they started dabbling in quack monarchism.
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Personally, I think it’s because of the framing. Newer material tries to sort of sweep a lot of the things Forsaken have done under the rug to really try to beat into your head that they’re not that bad. Which, while I understand the motivation behind it, is kind of hard to do since they’ve pretty much always been like that crazy scientist on Naboo making the super virus lmao. If they were equally acknowledging that they have done some pretty irredeemable crap and are full of people who likely do not even care that they did it, I think it works better.
But it really just shouldn’t be the Scarlet Crusade. Like at this point, let that organization die, and just start worldbuilding. Because as much wank as Stormwind gets as ‘the guy’ of the Alliance’s lands, it has barely anything interesting about it’s current depiction. You don’t even need to make giant reaches to facilitate some of this: at -worst- you’d be handwaving populations, which WoW has done since Vanilla to avoid Orcs only having a couple of boats worth of people on Kalimdor lol. Stormwind’s people had to flee their last major city burning, settled in Southshore, which got burned to the ground in Warcraft 2. There is absolutely no way that a huge population of Stormwind did not intermingle in their times as refugees, and there’s no way that their adult population returning to such a size so quickly wasn’t at least decently spurred on by members of other kingdoms coming south and settling. You could even easily say not everyone in Southshore died, or how many Lordaeronians fled even before that, in the gap between Reign of Chaos and WoW. It’s global human politics would instantly become more interesting and filled with potential. The storyline possibility expands to make Stormwind’s involvement in a lot more things, far more personal relative to barely having a reason to be involved in most of what happens in the world. There’s so many better ways to expand this kingdom, than just MAKING MORE SCARLET CRUSADE WANK.
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If they would be less bashful about how loose Sylvanas’ idea of “free will” has always been, and that her people and fanbase were always pretty blind about it, it would be easier to imagine her Vanilla-Cata leftovers finding any kind of solidarity or common ground whatsoever with the likes of Derek or Sira.
When it comes to Calia, though, if anything that was the kind of breakthrough a seventeenth Scarlet Crusade revival tour needed. Too bad Christie Golden got to her first.
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