In light of our recent mission to ask the Kaldorei for help, Maiev has been giving us a hard time, saying we’re fools for trusting in sources of power like the Sunwell… Shandris advises Lor’themar to let go of the Sunwell and find other ways to keep us from going mad.
And you know what? I have to admit that Shandris is right.
But before my Sin’dorei comrades brand me as a traitor, think about it for a second… We Quel’dorei fell because we blindly trusted the Sunwell, the power of the Arcane… and the blood of the Sunstrider. Now we’re heading down the same path, believing we were the children of the light, trusting the naaru and the Sunwell. Trusting only, in one path.
Where has the true path of the Sin’dorei gone? The one where we draw power from any source—whether arcane, fel, void, or light? Where have the mana reserves gone? Where has that impulsiveness gone—to use mana forges and steal cutting-edge technology to make it our own? We could return to that Sin’dorei path, where the source of power didn’t matter—we’d use it as a battery, implement cutting-edge technology to protect ourselves, shield ourselves with it, and arm ourselves to the teeth. We could return… without a doubt, to the path of the Phoenix.
I think there’s been a severe misunderstanding about Thalassian peoples’ need for the Well.
Lor’themar says they were “weak and powerless” without it, but that’s not right. They don’t need it out of some weird power boost. It might have been that for them when Dath’remar made it, but it’s become far more intrinsic to their being now.
Big ‘ol fonts of power, while useful and mighty, are perhaps a tad too vulnerable to switching to the allegiance of whoever most recently dunked their toesie woseies into it.
Reject the sundawntwilighthighnoon3:47pmwell, return to nethermancy!
There’s a big difference here between a “power boost” and something the elves describe as being as natural as “breathing.” The Sunwell is the elves’ direct connection to magic itself… and certainly, speaking in simple terms and using references that may not be entirely accurate… I see it as having a stream of fresh water flow into your mouth without having to get up from your seat or move your hands to catch it… Once you take that away from them, they don’t know where to get water. You can go to Walmart, you can drink it from the sink, you can even steal it. But in the end, the elves will want to get their little stream of water again without having to move their feet, and that made them dependent.
They became mana-vampires after the Sunwell was destroyed by Arthas. They know where and how to get the proverbial water in this scenario.
The main issue is that Blizzard doesn’t understand what to do with any of the elvish races except to rehash repeated storylines.
Shandris’ entire advice also stems from a position of hypocrisy because the Night Elves literally made a new World Tree twice now. (Teldrassil and now Amidrassil).
Teldrassil was entirely artificial and made because of their own hubris and desire to return to being an immortal race. I forget what purpose Ammidrassil serves within the game’s lore, but I’m fairly certain that it is once again another artificial World Tree that serves no other purpose
World Trees aren’t giant fonts of magic power. Shandris was comparing the Sunwell and the Well of Eternity and how the Night elves don’t need the Well of Eternity to survive. They been doing well without it
I would like to say, technically is a source of power… A nature source… the problem with kaldorei is that they reject everything but Nature energy itself… and whatever elune feeds them with.
Their dependance on the world tree was just as significant as the Sunwell.
A big part of Vanilla WoW, questing in Nelf Zones, was dealing with the blowback of the loss of Nordrassil’s blessings. It wasn’t just immortality, but rapid aging for the older generation, susceptibility to disease, a loss of vitality and rapid healing, which also extended to the land, greatly slowing the recovery of Felwood and Darkshore. They also lost some of their connection to the Emerald Dream, which is why they started enlisting the help of Non-Nelves.
And the Night Elves made this sacrifice willingly for the sake of Azeroth as a whole. In Kaldorei culture, they see themselves as partly divine in the image of Elune, but that superiority also comes with a greater responsibility. This is the cultural disconnect between the Night Elves and the Highborne and their decedents.
The Highborne and High Elves want a fount of power strictly for their own vanity. They are the decedents of the Night Elves that failed to understand the lessons of the War of the Ancients, and that is perfectly showcased in the Kaldorei’s willingness to sacrifice Nordrassil at the end of WC3, and the High/Blood Elf complete dependance on their own founts of power.
If anything, the Sunwell only serves to hide what Blood Elves really look like on the inside.
The irony is this is the void elf philosophy. The prevailing blood elf one after TBC was that Kael’thas and Dar’Khan were wrong to forsake the arcane for fel and void. And dead, as they figure the rest of their race would be, had they let Kael’thas give them the full fel fist.
In typical Blizzard fashion, though, we can no longer both-sides the point, because the void elves were ultimately vindicated and rewarded for corrupting themselves with evil magic where the blood elves were villain-batted and redeemed. So it goes.
No. Opposite, the Well of Eternity originally was what made the Night Elves immortal, and when the Night Elves chose to seal the second Well of Eternity to replace that immortality Nozdormu blessed Nordrassil with some time magic. Only for the Night Elves to ignite that blessing to cause an explosion to kill Archimonde and gave up their immortality again.
None of the other world trees have ever granted immortality, despite whatever the Void whispers told Fandral.
This! Is one of the big mistakes on blizzard… And to be honest, the reason why I consider the origins of the void elves as lore-breaking and a bunch of nonsense.
The original ideology of the Void Elves is well-founded: to study the energy of the Void as a means of ensuring that Quel’Thalas is not left defenseless. Rommath’s foolish decision to abandon those studies is, broadly speaking, what completely ruined this character, since before BFA he was a magister who believed “the end justifies the means,” in addition to being the one who brought fel magic and fel crystals to Quel’thalas. Which is surprising coming from Rommath, since that’s not the kind of thinking a Sin’dorei—let alone a Magister, and certainly not the Grand Magister—should have… Solutions and plans for containment, or for controlling the ramifications of magical studies, would have made more sense if they had been applied in this case.
What’s wrong with the Ren’dorei—and with Umbric—is that they’ve allowed themselves to be completely consumed by the Void, that they’ve allied themselves with the Alliance and Alleria so quickly, and that they don’t hesitate to kill former comrades. For what? For the sake of their magical studies? I might believe that of a totalitarian anti-Sin’dorei Quel’dorei who uses Void powers solely to gain more power to murder his own kind… But the people of Umbric? That’s ridiculous, too.
While it’s well known that you can’t judge both sides of the same coin—because there really aren’t two sides—everything is certainly poorly done, rushed, and riddled with gaps and inconsistencies for both the current Sin’dorei and the Ren’dorei. Do the latter carry the legacy of what the Sin’dorei of Kael’thas originally were? Perhaps, but in my view, the original Sin’dorei were so unique that you could have a battalion made up of a Felmaster warlock, a Blood Knight jailer of the Light… an arcane ranger, and a Voidwalker, and they would all treat each other with camaraderie because, in the end, all four are fighting to preserve Quel’Thalas and the Sin’dorei… clearly, that isn’t reflected in the current Sin’dorei, much less the Ren’dorei.
Another thing about the night elves, is that they still have their wells. They’re not the size, scope, and power of the Sunwell. But the moonwells do the same thing for them that the Sunwell does for Thalassians on a much larger scale.
Night elves are more lightly intrinsically addicted to magic than Thalassians, but still intrinsically addicted to magic. If you had a night elven settlement outside of Azeroth and no moonwell, they would start to feel its absence.