I always thought Drathir was a forgotten relic. They could have done so much more with that. He totally had the darkfallen skin too.
I got some inspiration to type up a brief scene of what it would be like to see Lor’themar accept the San’layn and to speak for them joining the Horde. This would be under the assumption that the San’layn would have been assisting the Horde in a recent event and have shown interest both in joining the Horde and reconnecting with the Blood Elves again, as well as not really specifying who their leader would be since it is just a concept I wanted to share for inspiration. It could be the lead-in to last part of a questline to unlock San’layn as an allied race also.
Here is what I came up with:
Lor’themar: "When I think of the San’layn, I can’t help but think about the Forsaken. Both were once fearsome minions of the Lich King, being slaves to a horrible fate against their will. Even when the shackles were cast, they found themselves in a world against them, struggling both with those who saw them as monsters and their undead state.
However, for the Forsaken, what was once a tenuous and strained partnership has blossomed into loyal and valuable allies. Even the insidious actions of the Banshee Queen did not deter the Horde’s views of them or their dedication to our cause.
I can’t help but think about what the Forsaken have gone through. Being rejected by their loved ones and losing the only place they called home among other things. I also think about the San’layn’s vampyr curse and their struggles with it. I’m reminded of what we went through, as well as the Nightborne’s plight. If it weren’t for the Horde, it would be hard to imagine what we would’ve become on our own. I’d hate to think about our kin in such a state. Rejected by former loved ones and tossed aside to struggle to survive in a world that rejects them. I can not accept that with a sound mind.
It is true that the San’layn were once followers of Kael’thas in life. However, I can’t fault them, as they were just performing their duty for Silvermoon. We had no idea at the time what he would’ve become, and we lost many heroes in our battles against the Lich King.
I feel that turning them away would make us hypocritical. We let the Forsaken roam our city freely and even accept our kin who have been risen as Death Knights or those risen as Dark Rangers back into the fold. As such, I don’t see why we should reject the Darkfallen as well, given that they’ve proved their dedication to the Horde’s cause and their wanting to rejoin us. There is no doubt that they are one of us. Moreso having their curse of feeding upon others under control.
It will take time for Silvermoon to fully accept them, but given the undead siege against our city, no thanks to the Banshee Queen, and the potential return of ambitious Scourge or otherwise, it would be invaluable to have allies take up residence in the Ghostlands. Not to mention that we never know if the Alliance may try to move in on our territory or spy on us should the drums of war sound again.
Champion, I ask that you take this missive to the Blood King. Tell him that the Blood Elves stand by the San’layn, and that we will speak for them joining the Horde. Have them meet us outside Orgrimmar. There, we will march with them to meet with the Horde council about their membership.
It feels as though Silvermoon is one step closer to feeling complete again…"
Not perfect, of course, but I did my best to try to capture his reasoning for accepting San’layn into the Horde. There is always a chance I misinterpreted something or got something wrong, but I had to try while the creative juices were flowing. 
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Now that’s the Lor’themar we deserve.
May the Darkfallen rejoin their kin.
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As a Blood Elf fan from the old WC3 days, the man needs to step up.
Blood Elves are friends with Forsaken and renamed themselves after their fallen.
San’layn are like the Forsaken and ARE their fallen.
It just makes sense!
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To make it more relevant to the expansion you can add some plot points. Like the scourge attacking the San’layn as well. Them wanting freedom but the scourge trying to control them (Jailer). And fighting forces within there own ranks that have been mind controlled by the Jailer.
Them reaching out to the horde in BFA (via their trial run under Slyvannas) and finding Kael’thas is helping the horde would be a great way for them to seek former allies in the horde. Since the first San’layn were the most loyal to Kael’thas.
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I really hope we do, personally. I mean, the scourge is rampaging, and Azeroth is our home. I don’t want to just abandon that plot thread for shiny new stuff. At least with the Legion stuff, we still had things to do that was tied to Azeroth. That can even be said about Battle for Azeroth, as much as I hated it (though they did a wonderful job as usual with art. And I adored the zone stories… which makes me sad because I have no love for BfA, but the zones and people there like Sethrak, Vulpera, Zandalari, & Blood trolls were so interesting, and I even liked the Alliance story with the pirates & drust.)
In Shadowlands, I just feel a complete disconnect. I haven’t been paying much attention to the story at all. Hoping for more good stuff come 9.1.
I LOVE San’layn art. So much. It’s one of the reasons why I’m trying to learn myself. I’m not very good yet. But in a few years, I might be! Meanwhile, sharing commissions I get of my characters, and when I see other stuff in passing, is fun. In fact, this is a neat design I saw on Twitter the other day:
by https://twitter.com/Nise_Loftsteinn
Looks awesome by the way! Love the color you added 
Took a while to say anything in this thread, but eh, spirit has been low. Love seeing art progress though
I love this whole thing! As I always say, I do hope someday Blizzard looks at this thread, if they don’t already (who knows) and into the ideas your share. Here, and for other allied races. But yes, this is logic, right here, and something I’ve been trying to emphasize myself when it comes to the San’layn. I feel Lor’themar would be logical in this approach, and this is appropriate for his character.
I did some of my own art recently:
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/419589093593317377/804236005473386506/Dancing_crow.png
It’s of one of my vampires in his crow form. He’s “The Dancing Crow” and loves having fun. I enjoyed this piece a lot. Figured it’d be adorable to share!
Finally, I got wings for my other San’layn!
Admittedly, I could have gotten them a while ago, but cough you know… I’ve been slacking hardcore, and have too much on my plate. I wish we could switch covenants and keep the wings–especially since those ones are exalted with Undying Army. Since it’s exalted, you’d think we could use them–we can use the mounts we get, after all. But alas. Despite Revendreth’s ‘Door of shadows’ being PERFECT for San’layn, and that character (Elias)… the wings are amazing and fit him well.
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This was a big reason for my reluctance to the idea of Shadowlands to begin with. We were kind of already in the middle of something (Sargeras’s sword) when suddenly the Scourge attack. Now we’re in the middle of a Scourge invasion when we’re whisked off to the Shadowlands.
So we get interrupted by something, only for that thing to also get interrupted so we can go do stuff in a different dimension. It’s annoying.
That being said…
I actually loved the Shadowlands main story campaign. Totally surprised me, and I actually like the whole Shadowlands concept now. I also enjoyed the few chapters I’ve done so far of the Kyrian campaign.
Of course, burn out hit pretty hard, and the nature of the Covenant campaigns being locked behind grinding didn’t really encourage me to continue.
Not to mention the way the story is split out of order between the four campaigns, world quests, dungeons and raids, making experiencing the whole thing in order a total nightmare, if not impossible.
Lately I’ve just been taking a break from the game. The odd time I log in, it’s usually just to run Kara for a shot at the mage tier 4 helm and Attu’s horse.
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@Fallynn - Liking the art. I see improvement on your shadows which is nice. And your animal fur is almost as good as your hair IMO. And your Kitsune isn’t a nine tail?
I wanted to call my Vulpera Kitkatkitsune but I think it wouldn’t allow the last letter, lol. Ended up going with Infoxicated for my monk which I deleted and gave the name to a community player. Also had Sharpeyes, Gloomtail, and Axess. I still have Sharpeyes for storage but the other two I gave up. The only Vulpera I have is a priest I called Nobletail.
Really haven’t done much art lately. Can’t sit for longer then maybe 2 hours before I get really uncomfortable.
I finished a very basic color of my Orc Bard. Added in a quick background also.
[Orc-Bard-08-Color — ImgBB (ibb.co)](https://ibb.co/XSNH8Br)
A lot of things wrong with this from the notes being too small and disproportionate to his lines not being straight like I prefer and some parts blended while others are not. Not to mention he still has the outlines on his leg armor which needs another strap on his left leg also.
This is just the DPS guitar but I also want to add in the support mic, A.K.A. him singing, and the tank drums in the background so you can see all three specs.
Something else I started was my goblin engineer. It is just a jumble of ideas I threw onto the canvas.
The mechsuit in the back will be turned into an exosuit now. The mechsuit doesn’t fit as well as a exosuit for tanking IMO. The table in the back is an alchemy table with only one bottle at the moment. The crate next to the table is for healing grenades. The turret is the DPS spec turret. Everything in the scene is just a place holder. And the chains are going to hold different exosuit attachments.
The whole scene is off IMO. The angles are not right and the depth of everything, especially the background, is off. It needs to have a deeper feel then just a room. This is suppose to be a goblin workshop not some closet, lol. I need to start working with non-square pictures since I want more width to my scenes and feel too cramped with equal distance square shapes.
[Gobline-Engineer-00 — ImgBB (ibb.co)](https://ibb.co/cw09hhb)
The scene is suppose to have alchemy on one table with books open all over the place and chemicals bubbling. While the table she is at should be the tinkering table with gears and tools and such. She should also have a very crazy smile on her face while tinkering with some gizmo.
And the background is suppose to be littered with her experiments and inventions with some explosion marks here and there. This will probably be the most detailed picture I will attempt thus far.
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I get that we’re suppose to have been sent in while everyone deals with the impact of the undead while we try to explore and figure things out, but I would like to know the consequences of not having a Lich King control the undead that several NPC’s worried over. So far, it has been barely shown, outside of a cutscene or two in some covenant campaigns, so it’s hard to really imagine just how dire the situation is. I mean, the Horde doesn’t even question me when I leave the Shadowlands to go have fun in the Darkmoon Faire, chill out in Pandaria, and such for all the hooplah of crazy undead.
Part of me wonders if we may see a future patch involve some older areas get an invasion version, similar to N’zoth and Vale of Eternal Blossoms and Uldum, where the Jailer attacks and there are a bunch of his minions and crazy cults involved. People getting grabbed, tossed into the Maw, whatnot. Seems like it’d be the only thing we’d see back on Azeroth unless we do get events that occur that we detour back to.
Either way, I’m not sure what to expect going forward.
This would be my biggest problem with Shadowlands. Honestly, despite some of its problems and all the systems involved, I can still have some fun logging in and doing a daily routine for a bit and then moving on to something else.
The biggest thing that really turned me off from it is being in the afterlife and having it defined, as opposed to keeping the mystique and making death more meaningful. If all the systems were kept in place, but it takes place in the living world, I’d feel a lot better about it.
Honestly, the whole idea of exploring the cosmology of the world (of Warcraft!) doesn’t personally interest me. I get that there are only so many islands or continents we have yet to go to that they could add, but I’m much more interested and invested in storylines, themes, and characters in the living world. Preferably in our universe.
As one of the weird people who likes and plays for story in the game, I do worry about future expansions and such with how the afterlife has been treated and more-or-less devalued. At least with Outlands, that expansion had ties to Warcraft 3, and WoD at least felt Warcraft (and we got Mag’har Orcs out of it), but with Shadowlands, it just feels like we go to the afterlife and all we got is this lousy t-shirt. It’s hard to just see us dusting our hands off and going “welp, we saved Azeroth! What’s next!” after the fact, too.
To be clear, I still enjoy the game, but this expansion just isn’t doing a lot for me. I think when we move on, preferably with more familiar territory that feels like actual Warcraft, I’ll feel better.
All my own personal opinion, of course. If you’re having fun with the game, I’m happy. Please keep enjoying the game and don’t let the ramblings of a grumpy nerd like me ruin your fun. 
Well, not all of my ideas are perfect, though being passionate of my wanted races does help. I hope they do look at the different race megathreads and see all the neat ideas others have in general for some future playable race inspiration.
With WoW, it’s neat to see the Horde and Alliance grow and evolve. Getting new members is pretty awesome and meaningful. It’s also fun to do stuff for megathreads and seeing what all they come up with for support. Not to mention that getting my wish of getting playable Ogres and Saurok on the Horde would be one of the most exciting game announcements of all time for me.
As I said before, Blizzard is welcome to use my ideas. Since my ideas involve making some races playable pretty much, getting them playable is about all the thanks I really need…well, more character slots per account would also be pretty neat, too.
Anyway, sorry to grump so much here, though it does feel good to let some of it out.
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WOW! This art for san’layn is how can I say … subarashi?
A beautiful dress. And I loved how the hair was done.
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I DONT WANT TO CHANGE MAIN, make this a customization, not an allied race…
I’d change main in seconds
Lor’themar actually being accepting of someone instead of exiling them for disagreeing with him?
If you’re going to justify it at least try to make it believable.
In terms of Quel’lithien, Quel’thalas was in shambles at the time and really needed to be united if it were to survive. Even then, exiling them was something Lor’themar really didn’t want to do.
In terms of void elves, Lor’themar convinced Rommath to downgrade their execution to expulsion instead, so he actually saved their lives.
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That doesn’t change the fact that he expelled two factions of elves for not agreeing with him.
If you wanted to be realistic, San’layn would be Alliance after they tried to join the Blood elves but Lor’themar kicked them out for wearing too much black.
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Ew. No. Never.
Alliance San’layn is just about the stupidest thing Blizzard could do, both storywise and in terms of what players want.
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And how is that any different from all the other allied races the Alliance has been given?
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How much one likes a given Allied Race is subjective.
I’ll give you Lightforged Draenei aren’t very original, but their counterpart are Highmountain Tauren, who are pretty much in the same boat.
Dark Iron Dwarves are great and seem to be popular.
Kul Tirans were made to allow us to play as the race of the main hub, as a more logical counter race to Zandalari. They also took the most work of any AR, since they actually have a unique model.
Mechagnomes, being cyborg gnomes, are a logical AR counterpart to gnomes.
And void elves were created because the devs liked Alleria’s void plot. Sure, they weren’t the high elves people had been asking for, but they ended up as the most popular AR regardless.
Also keep in mind they now have non-blue skin which pretty much visually gives playable high elves, and Blizzard already said more options might be coming, so they also do appeal quite well to that crowd now too.
That and I can’t help but notice you’re posting on one.
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