So Anduin dispatches Alleria and Turalyon to figure out where Sylvanas is and bring her to justice. They get a tip that leads them to Arathi, and soon enough they have a very… effective means of getting information out of the sometimes-uncooperative civilians they find. Turalyon chains them down with the Light while Alleria uses the Void to get inside their heads and extract any information she can. And it works - quickly and effectively getting them the info the Alliance needs to make their next moves. And they heal them afterwards with the Light and get their minds back to like 95% of what they were, so it’s all good, right?
When Jaina ports in to observe their progress, she decides right away that Anduin needs to know about this. Obviously his compassion won’t stand for outright torture, right? What does it say about the Alliance that this happens under their banner?
“What does it say?” He sounded almost offended that she had to ask. “It says that we will do whatever we must to bring murderers to justice. It says we will not forget those lost in war. It says we will not forget Teldrassil, or Lordaeron. It says that we will not forget the flames blazing over the Veiled Sea, or the fires reflected in the eyes of a thousand mourning children.” His hand closed into a fist, with every word his determination grew, rising and rising, a crescendo that nearly reached a shout. […] “Difficult decisions have to be made, and I trust Turalyon and Alleria to know where the line of decency is and not to cross it. Would their statues preside over our city because they are without honor?”
We’ve come a long way from King My-Bones-Hurt-When-Bad-Things-Happen-Near-Me. Does this herald a new, more pragmatic leader of the Alliance, or is this a one-off from one writer’s interpretation?
Anduin needs to make much more in order for me to even start acknowledging him as a true competent leader. A step in the right direction for sure but we’ll see where he goes from here.
Obviously the solution for his problems isn’t making him a dark version of himself. He should remain true to himself and his beliefs but those shouldn’t have to compromise the integrity of the Alliance.
That being said I still disagree with him being the faction leader or at least not during the next 10 or 20 years of his life.
Let me know when he does something that meets the following conditions:
-Something irreversible. Something with consequences he can’t fix and can’t ignore.
-Something without plausible deniability. In other words, no hiding behind other people and their judgement / reputations.
Is it torture though? Are the individuals being, ‘interrogated,’ actually in pain?
Regardless it certainly represents a massive breach of personal liberties, and a darker side of the Alliance, but to that all I can say is, ITS ABOUT BLOODY TIME! Void Elves should’ve been doing this kind of mental extraction throughout BFA! THAT is something I’d have loved seeing them do! And the idea of the Lightforged being part of it under the pretense of ensuring the Void Elves don’t go too far, but being just as bad when looking at it objectively, is just the icing on the cake!
This is what we needed more of. A LOT more of. Good signs for things to come.
That’s hilarious because a ton of Alliance posters (and apologists) say the Forsaken shouldn’t be doing Forsaken things now that Sylvanas is gone. Oh, but Void (which I heard was very bad) Elves can do Void (again, very bad) stuff because they’re Alliance.
How does that have anything to do with Void Elves? I don’t give two figs about what Forsaken do. About all I care there is that actual Forsaken players and fans have their race taken in a direction they desire. Everyone else can sod off.
I mean, if you want to compare Void Elves to Forsaken, the issue there is, Forsaken have existed since before WoW even began. The laundry list of awful things the Forsaken have done, and with malicious intent is going to far outweight the list of awful things the Void Elves have done, with the intent to be responsible and minimize/eliminate potential corruption/drawbacks.
Torture is always dark.
Unless they also give those people a nice mind-wipe for their troubles they’ll always remember the pain. Assuming there even was pain. But healing them after the fact does go back into the Void Elves’ whole reason d’etra: responsible use of the Void.
Responsibly torturing people doesn’t mean its not torture.
We kill people and things in the Warcraft Universe for the flimsiest reasons. What the OP is describing is not dark at all. You, yourself are even commenting on how there may not even be any pain involved. Again, Alliance agents were killing Horde civilians in the SoL.
This “interrogation” stuff is the writer’s attempt at saying the Alliance is darker than people give them credit for. But it sabotaged itself.
Now if Alleria was sanctioned to Void torture people and left them catatonic, drooling wrecks that may be something different.
I guess I appreciate that Anduin is finally showing an emotion rather than “calm and peaceful.” I’d actually rather see him really just struggle with the politics of the Alliance in the aftermath of the Fourth War, and see him not be right. This is an interesting move forward in some sort of character development, so we’ll see.
I read a more detailed explanation of what Alleria does in the interrogations on an MMO Champion thread. The interrogations are painful. Alleria tortures an Orc mother with her crying child watching, and the end result causes her to be half conscious and blabbering gibberish. The Void then lets Alleria know that the mother will eventually recover but be mentally scarred. They do the same to a Human smuggler later, which is what Jaina sees.
Turalyon has done this before. In the second war when the Alliance captured one of Guldan’s DK he tortured him with the Light so they could figure what the Orcs were up to. Khadgar and Alleria also participated.
“Not dark.” Look, if we go by Horde standards then sure, this is just ants at a picnic levels of bad, but for the Alliance, this is pretty bloody dark, and even ignoring that it is downright atrocious! Let the Alliance just HAVE this one!
Yeah, the forum arguments about this (if they ever happen) will mirror those about Jaina in the Purge of Dalaran. “Anduin/Jaina didn’t actually do anything bad! That was all Vereesa/Alleria.”
The Windrunner sisters have now achieved the scapegoat trifecta.
