The Arathi Empire. Pretty simply concept, imo. Scarlets were dead and buried since MoP other than a brief attempt to revive themselves during Legion. Yet, all of a sudden, they’re back in force and have appeared multiple times to make themselves a nuisance to the Forsaken.
Meanwhile, we now have the Arathi Empire which, aesthetically are very similar to the scarlet. The Arathi we know from Hallowfall are friendly enough, but there are hints that the wider Empire is rather expansionistic and less than friendly. This combined with the fact that we have no confirmation that they only sent one expedition across the Stormwall makes me wonder if there is some sort of advanced Arathi force pulling the strings of the newest Scarlet Resurgence without making themselves known to us.
Why? Well, the entirety of the Northern EK seems to be the homeland of the Arathi which are a mix of ancient Arathor and Quel’thalas. It makes sense that an expansionist empire would want to annex their ancestral homelands back into the fold and I could easily see an empire built on Light worship seeing the Undead occupying Lordaeron as a nuisance to be wiped out to clear the way for their return.
I’m not saying the Emperor directly ordered his forces to ally with the scarlets. It’d be more like an expedition made it back to Northern EK and found the scarlets and decided to use them.
They are back in force, yet they are only back in force because they spent the eight years between Legion and DF slowly rebuilding their strength by recruiting / kidnapping and converting disenfranchised humans; they are only back in force and menacing the Forsaken because the Forsaken are themselves at their weakest point out of their existence bar the first few weeks of their free-willed existence.
They are entirely unrelated to the Arathi and wouldn’t work with a non-human regardless.
Hmm, you speak so definitively on things that have been purposefully left vague. We’ll see what happens when Blizzard comes back around to the Scarlet Crusade. Personally, I think there’s more to it than we’ve been shown so far. Especially when they made a point to have the Forsaken characters be so surprised by their resurgence.
Everyone would be surprised by their resurgence given that it has been eight years as of DF when they launch their attack on the Undercity since anyone last heard of the Scarlet Crusade. How they came about Blizzard made clear, what their purpose was had been made clear, and they failed. There really isn’t anything secretive going on behind them.
Is it really out of left field? The first thing I thought meeting the Arathi in Hallowfell was “Wow, blizzard finally made good guy Scarlets.”
The thematic similarities are there and I promise you they aren’t an accident. And they aren’t setting up a giant overseas empire to not be Warcraft’s version of Seanchan from Wheel of Time.
I guess when you put it that way, it’s really not that far fetched of an idea. Not going to lie and say there aren’t any similarities, because there certaintly are.
I personally hope they’re more like the Empire from Warhammer Fantasy and their emperor is similar to Karl Franz. But that’s me
I think there’s going to be more too them than “Light good, non-humans bad” but yeah, definitely going to be opposed to us in the long run imo. And I think it’ll be more God Emperor of Mankind than Karl Franz.
Hopefully they get around to making Anduin more like Hammerman over time. He’s kind of been set up to be like Karl Franz, he’s just been too soft so far.
Imagine Anduin saying something like “Summon the faction leaders”
I made peace with the fact that the Scarlet Crusade will continue to return all the way back in Legion, the reason I don’t want to have them returned anymore is because they are one of my favourite factions in this setting and they’ve been thoroughly overused.
The only similarities is that they are both fanatical followers of the Light.
They aren’t human and per the Hallowfall Arathi don’t have any issues with races that don’t attack them first and the wider Empire isn’t tolerating of races / classes that most people in Azeroth barely tolerates to begin with.
A bunch of the Arathi gear has 1:1 the same color scheme as the scarlets do. And the Priory of the Sacred flame very much looks like a modern Scarlet monastery. If you don’t see the similarities I suggest consulting your nearest optometrist.
Red, gold and white and any combination thereof is a colour scheme used by many factions in this setting.
It also looks like a modern Cathedral of the Light, Northshire Abbey, Light’s Hope Chapel / Sanctum of Light and the Light’s Dawn Cathedral.
They both descend from the same Light worshipping culture, of course there are going to be similarities in aesthetics. But said similarities are shared by other people too.
No. It very much looks intended to specifically evoke Scarlet Monastery which, unlike your other examples, was red brick just like the Priory, prominently features courtyards on its interior similar to the courtyard on the Priory’s exterior, and also is a dungeon comprising of light worshippers so zealous that they’ve lost their minds in their furor.
As for your denial of the colorscheme similarities, I’d love to know what other factions use red gold and white in a similar ratio to the Scarlets and Arathi. Closest I can think of is the Blood Elves, but they tend towards black rather than white and also regularly throw fel green into the mix too.
The Priory does look a lot like the Scarlet Monastery more than any other church building we’ve seen ingame and I doubt that it was on accident too.
Intentional or not, there are a lot of similarities between the Arathi and the Scarlet Crusade. At least before the scarlets went completely off the deep end that is.
