To be fair Saurfang never got the reveal that she was working for the Jailer. Which is why without the Jailer motive she actually is a failure.
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I know, I was just saying that apparently blizz forgot that cinematic exists and to salvage the situation, blizz came out with the reveal she was working for the jailer this entire time
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I mean ⊠no? Its very clear going into BfA at least that her working for the Jailor was always the intended path? Hell, at bare minimum this was an idea that was floated since Stormheim in Legion. Even beyond that, considering how overly convenient and sketchy her Primeâs deal was with her, I had actually just assumed she was working with/being manipulated by Yogg-Saron after that zone. But the Jailor fits a near identical role.
Also, using others as tools for personal objectives, then discarding them the moment the cease to be of use, could not be a more Sylvanas thing to do. Sheâs been doing exactly that since WC3, its just she did it to scumbags so nobody cared. Her also hating having to rely on others (but feeling forced t) for her personal safety, or goals, also could really not be more her; especially after failure after failure of her Bulwark to actually protect either her or those objectives.
BfA mechanically does operate like an excuse to merely settup Shadowlands at the very least. That was what this expansion was intended to do.
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Call me dense, I didnât see it coming.
To be fair, I donât think a lot of people saw it coming. I certainly didnât, mainly because Sylvanas has ALWAYS been sketchy as hell and turning on people since she became a banshee.
I got admittedly very lucky, and Iâm not overly happy I ended up so close to the Target. The only reason I got queued into this sort of path being a major prospective one for her is because EoN did so much to recontextualize her relationship with her Forsaken leading up to WotLK for me, that I used that short story as a lens to judge her actions from that point on.
This bitter, brutal, selfish nihilist, who uses others as mere tools for personal objectives; then discarded them when they ceased to be of sufficient use. And while she may come to care for them in some twisted way, to some degree, its never to the point where that care overrides their functional needs to be her tool. Thus, its a âpossessiveâ love/care. Iâve essentially just been waiting around to see if they ever answered the question âIf ever comes a time her Bulwark becomes as valueless to her as her Arrows did, would she discard them?â And hell yes she would.
Then we had Stormheim where she pulled a line about âA New World Orderâ, which is a homage to the one Arthas uttered when he killed his Father. And she only says that to the Alliance PC btw, not the Horde. If that wasnât a teaser that Warchief Windrunner was going to be bad news for the Red Faction ⊠I donât know what is? She was there to stir crap up, not to be a good leader.
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Meglomania is a routine path in wow stories for anyone who once had a bad thought.
What we didnât know at the time doesnât have any relevance to the story as it is now. Both in that Blizzard has now made it so that Sylvanasâ Valâkyr had been working for the Jailer even at her suicide, and that what what we didnât understand at the time just means we didnât know what was going on, as even earlier in A Good War, before the Horde even made it out of Ashenvale and onto Darkshoreâs southern border, Sylvanas has another internal monologue where she gives away that she was planning on burning Teldrassil all along:
- The kaldorei knew they were outnumbered. They knew their homeland was lost. Maybe a few of them knew in their heartsâjust as she knewâthat Darnassus would one day burn to ashes.
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Iâll clarify:
We did not know, because nothing suggested, that her motive to lead the Horde to victory was not her true intent. We did not know her true feelings of the Horde until the Mokâgora with Saurfang and did not know what her motives for instigating the Fourth War was until the reveal of Shadowlands.
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We have known her true feelings on the Horde since the Vanilla intro. That being said, the biggest issue with Sylvanas as a character is that since EoN she has been a character will do and say one thing, but be thinking something completely different.
She didnât lead her Arrows in her Quiver through WotLK by telling her Mongrel Race of Rotten Corpses that they were expendable tools for her own personal revenge; that sheâd throw in the trash. She didnât lead her Bulwark Against the Infinite in Cata, by telling them to their faces they were her meatshield against her own afterlife. She didnât rally the troops at Lordaeron by screaming âFOR ME!!!â Even if perhaps in all of those cases, the latter was true. Sheâs good at putting on a show to inspire people into doing what is convenient for her at the very least.
And while there have been brief moments of internal dialogue that conflict or even contradict this, they are fairly few in comparison. There were also aspects of her characterization that absolutely could have taken her other ways, but this sort of path too existed. However, there is quite frankly nothing more in character for Sylvanas Windrunner than using others as tools for personal objectives and discarding them should they ever cease to be of sufficient use. It is her trademark.
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This is a pointless argument, as both Amadis and Droite are convinced of their clairvoyance in that âSylvanas had no other path but thisâ when thereâs actually a lot of evidence to the contrary. Pursuing this is running your head into a brick wall (or a lawyerâs briefcase, for Amadis).
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I re-read it.
Itâs obvious that Kosak intended for this story to accomplish two things:
- Provide a new motive for the Forsaken after their pursuit of the vengeance against the Lich King had been fulfilled.
- Develop Sylvanas from simply using the Forsaken for her own ends and finally embracing them as a nation, and her role as their leader.
Sylvanas insists that she doesnât care about the Forsaken until sheâs given visions of what would happen to them without her. They show her the results of her passing. She continues to insist that she doesnât care, and then sheâs flung deeper into what we now understand is the Maw. At the time this was believed to be all but confirmation that this was the fate of not only herself, but all Forsaken that perished.
There are statements of fact that are not from character dialogue, not an internal monologue, but by the author. Especially this one:
But they were no longer arrows in her quiver, not anymore. They were a bulwark against the infinite. They were to be used wisely, and no fool orc would squander them while she still walked the world of the living.
It breaks the rule of âshow, donât tellâ, but thatâs exactly what itâs doing.
Itâs clear that Kosakâs vision of who Sylvanas was and was meant to be after writing this is different than what has actually become of her. It was written nearly a decade ago already, and half a decade before Danuser was even a quest designer. Kosak is no longer involved with the Warcraft team and is now heading the Hearthstone team. What we have here is not a matter of consistent character building or laying down the groundwork for what was to come, but Danuser hijacking the character to take her somewhere completely unforeseen. And also to shoe-horn the Jailer.
Argumentation and debate is not to convince the opposite side, but the undecided in the audience. I enjoy grappling with their ideas, and donât pretend at all that I gain anything in changing their mind, or lose anything by failing. Itâs not what Iâm setting out to do.
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Actually Afrasiabi claims to been writing her character in the Game not Kosak.
Kosak only wrote Edge of Night while the actual Ingame writing for her in Cataclysm was by Afrasiabi.
Kosakâs only ingame writing for her was to make her Warchief only for Kosak to move to Hearthstone allowing Afrasiabi to rerail her back into the role he had originally written her in!
Kosak(who was equal in power to Afrasiabi before moving to Hearthstone)'s vision of Characters has always clashed with Afrasiabiâs vision of Characters and now Afrasiabi has control and will write his Characters as he sees fit!
In the end Blizzard has, well after the fact, assumed events in the Edge of Night that a reader could not only not have guessed at, but are contrary to the narrative thrust of the story. They claim they intended this all along so, so it isnât a retcon, they just deliberately mislead us. Right.
That fact is that the Sylvanas story is so filled with contradictory elements, that, until the villain bat in BfA, one could support any characterization merely by picking and choosing what you focus on.
I had hoped that they were trying to construct a complex and truly grey character. Instead they were just playing âpull the rugâ on the player.
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The exact details of Afrasiabiâs work and how much of Warcraft is his vision and not someone elseâs is nebulous and vague. I can only go by what we see. Until that guy decides to speak more about it, parsing out whose vision is who appears to be a lot of guesswork.
What we know is this: He was Lead World Designer in 2008, whatever that means, and didnât become Creative Director until two years after this was written. Who takes directive from whom is unclear, and even saying that they were âequal in powerâ is speculation.
He became Creative Director in Legion, but we donât what that actually means, and why Narrative Designer is necessary. My guess is that Creative Director delegates the narrative elsewhere, and gives approval and suggestion, but not the substantive details like events, dialogue, and character progression.
I think it has a lot more to do with different people writing different things at different types.
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Tell that to Blizzard.
The funny thing is, nowhere does this imply that the Forsaken are any less of tools. In fact, it states quite the opposite, that they are literally her âBulwark Against the Infiniteâ; or more accurately her âMeatshield Against her Afterlifeâ. By all indications the story outright tells you that all she really did was repurpose the tool she once attempted to abandon, because SHE once again needed THEM. In this case, to avoid the hell she believed she was destined for; one that if it didnât exist she would have left them all to slaughter. She didnât come back FOR them.
She becomes invested in cultivating her âBulwark Against the Infiniteâ, because by having it grow it improves the strength of the meatshield that was intended to protect her. Thus, her expansion of them in Cata, and her attempted acquisition of Eyir in Legion. They were also âto be usedâ, and âno FOOL ORC would squander themâ ⊠doesnât mean she couldnât squander them herself. People truly only took this as a positive change in her relationship dynamics with her Mongrel Race of Rotten Corpses by being really overly generous with their interpretation of it.
It also even tells us that her investment in them is finite, and that should she ever cease to âWalk the world of the livingâ ⊠then they once again could be squandered and discarded. They can be thrown away to their fates. Just as she attempted to do at ICC before ending up in hell. Well, as of Shadowlands ⊠sheâs no longer âwalking the world of the livingâ; and BfA was prep for that.
EDIT: And as a reminder, this was her true reaction to finding out what would become of her people in her absence; BEFORE she ended up in Hell.
Sylvanas thought about her people. They had come far from their decimated origins, the yearning, confused mob of fresh corpses huddled about the ruins of Lordaeronâs wrecked capital. The Forsaken were truly a nation now: a fetid, gore-caked, hideous mass of lifeless husks, skilled in combat, devastating with the arcane arts, and unhindered by fetters of morality. They had been honed into the perfect weapon. Her weapon. And they had struck the killing blow for which she had built them. She cared nothing for their fate.
"Let them perish!" Sylvanas cried. "I am finished with them!"
Weâre not speaking to each other until they add Sanâlayn as an AR.
This story reads to me as a crucible narrative, where the intent is to show a character burning away a part of themselves to make way for the new. The crucible here is the Maw, and laid Sylvanas bare. Sylvanas is described as feeling regret, horror, fear. Broken, small, naked. Anything she did, said, or was before casting herself from the Citadel, if you view this as a crucible story, should be considered done away with, burned away like deadwood to make room for growth in a new direction.
Sylvanas explicitly tells Garrosh to her face: âI was once like you. Those who served me were tools,â. The story deliberately props up Garrosh as using the Forsaken like tools to compare and contrast to who Sylvanas is, and who she was by the end of the story.
You can take the interpretation that sheâs lying to him, but if my interpretation is to be followed, again, who she was before the crucible has been presented as burned away. She is no longer that person who used the Forsaken as tools. The Forsaken are her bulwark against the infinite, but just before that, the words coming from the narrator, not her words or her thought bubble, are âthey were no longer arrows in her quiverâ. Iâd say the last page is written specifically as to discard the idea that Sylvanas no longer thinks of the Forsaken as mere utility.
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Quote the entire part why donât you:
âThe army of undead that surrounded and protected the Dark Lady was still hers, body and soul. But they were no longer arrows in her quiver, not anymore. They were a bulwark against the infinite. They were to be used wisely, and no fool orc would squander them while she still walked the world of the living.â Theyâre still tools! Just with a different use.
And youâre right âThose who served me were tools. Arrows in my Quiverâ. But what are they now? Does she ever say? Also, Garrosh may have been a bigot, but he never once saw his people as mere tools. Or, more specifically, those he actually considered âHis Peopleâ, part of âHis Hordeâ. Everyone else were enemies or cannon fodder. Not even âtools worth relying onâ.
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