If we’re going off of almost purely aesthetic similarities and both happen to be fairly intolerant people, I’m going to say its going to be a miss on this theory. As far as we know, the only expedition sent out from the empire is who we meet in Hallowfall.
Any returning Scarlets would be, as mentioned, a natural resurgence and growing of the group from radicalized and dissatisfied humans, likely from Shadowlands since we, according to story, had a whole Scourging 2.0 across the world which could lead folks that way or we’re simply pulled out of nowhere for heritage questlines because they had little idea what else to do and figured ‘why not an oldy but a goody.’
Lastly, if we’re going by modern Scarlet standards then they’d get one whiff of a half elf from the empire and put em to the stake. So pretty safe to say they are unrelated. Doesn’t mean we might not see a cross over in the future, but as of now they’re completely separate entities
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The Priory isn’t red bricks, it’s white. Just like the Cathedral of Light, Light’s Hope Chapel and the Sanctum of Light beneath it. The lighting inside is reddish, but that’s about it.
Light’s Dawn Cathedral has courtyards in front of it, Light’s Hope Chapel has a courtyard / graveyard around it, the Sanctum in old Stromgarde had as well.
For all intents and purposes they are common facets of the aesthetics used by the Light as a religion.
Which is fair, but doesn’t speak for the Arathi as a whole.
I’m not denying it, only pointing out that they are not the only ones to use a combination of red, gold and white. Stromgarde uses red and white, but there’s also gold with the League of Arathor. The Stormpike Clan is red, gold and white.
They were formed in the deep end, so always. The only similarities pointed out thus far are most likely just from the shared origin both have as followers of Mereldar’s religion and the Arathorian Empire.
Blizz can contrive any number of circumstances that would introduce Scarlets to the Arathi. And all it takes is the Scarlets saying “our ancestral home is overrun with the undead, fellow Light extremists,” to kick off some holy crusade to retake the ancient homeland.
I’m hoping one of the Scarlet Monastery dungeons is a key for TWW season 2 because of Priory. Also on a side, Stromstout Brewery due to Cinderbrew Meadery.
I wish the dungeons chosen for the season match thematically. Sometimes Blizzard does that, such as Grim Batol and Stonevault. If only Blizzard replaced the troggs with Skardyn. Although sometimes it is less obvious and feels like wishful thinking. Such as Mists for this season. Mistcaller’s encounter is thematically linked to Ky’veza as both encounters have you fight against a decoy. Meanwhile the final boss of Mists is a bug that wants to ‘ascend’. Likewise Necrotic Wake is linked to Ara-kara as both involve the antagonists harvesting ‘materials’ needed for their ‘experiments’. Whether that is the Black Blood (Ara-kara) or Kyrian corpses (Necrotic Wake).
I think the Scarlet Crusade being strictly humans only and the Arathi being part-elf would be a major roadblock to any Arathi/Scarlet Alliance. Also, imagine how the Scarlet Crusade would react to what was happening in the Priory with Light-infused undead.
The priory is an isolated instance that is put down by the players with the other Arathi present being horrified by it. Not hard to assume that the wider empire probably isn’t cool with necromancy.
Also, the Scarlet Onslaught already bent their rules and let rogue death knights, shadow priests, and mages into their ranks to help fight the scourge on Northrend.
Scarlet Crusade looking the other way for a bit of elf blood present in their new theoretical benefactors isn’t the biggest stretch by any means.
The Scarlet Crusade are human supremacists/racial purists. I highly doubt the Empire of Half-Elves from across the planet are people they’d want to mix with. If anything, I’d expect them to collect Arathi Ears as trophies to demonstrate their dedication to purifying the human race, and declare the, ‘Sacred Flame,’ to be a perversion of the Holy Light, a heresy that needs to be extinguished.
I’m not sure about this. Zealots can betray what morals they have for a cause, but when those morals are tied to the cause, that’s different. Plus, they’re also racists, and in their eyes the part-elf Arathi would be shunned as race traitors at best, branded abominations to purge at worst (bigotry I’m quite familiar with being mixed race myself), which racists hate at least as much as whoever they’re bigoted against (ie; typical Klansmen response to interracial relationships was to murder the couple).
The Scarlet Crusade at one point wished to use Genn and his Gilneans to retake Lordaeron given their hatred of the Forsaken; despite being 100% human afflicted with a curse, the worgen curse, being night elven in origin, made them inhuman beasts that were to be purged the moment the Forsaken were defeated.
If they could barely stand being allied with humans suffering from a magical curse, they are not going to be kinder to the Arathi.
Mal’ganis had a much more direct and effective grip over the Scarlet Onslaught given that unlike Balnazzar he didn’t sequester himself away deep inside of Scourge territory where his only direct demonic influence over the wider Crusade was through Demetria. The death knights we know nothing about beyond their mere presence, certainly not enough to say whether they were “rogue” or not, the Raven Priests were believed by the Onslaught to be wielders of the Holy Light, and the Crusade always had mages.
The much more direct control Mal’ganis had over the Onslaught makes it a fundamentally different organisation from the Scarlet Crusade, but even in cases that both wield darker magic it is either because they are in direct connection with the demonic leading the Scarlet Crusade / Onslaught, or have been tricked into wielding it believing it to be the Light or regular arcane magic.
https://imgur.com/a/ZktKg9T https://imgur.com/a/1agB0oK
It’s a fairly huge stretch when you actually look below the surface.
I think it’ll be cool if we see the Scarlets revived as an antagonistic force with the backing of the Arathi Empire. I personally love the nostalgia of the Scarlet Crusade as an enemy so I like whenever they show up in the story, but their most recent appearance in Gilneas felt like a bit of a lazy butt pull on Blizzard’s part.
It’d be cool if they took a more expansionist/reclaimant angle toward the territories of Quel’thalas and Lordaeron rather than continuing their whole racist zealotry shtick. (Although, having that be an aspect of their organization makes me feel very smug and satisfied about punching a bunch of them.)
The Scarlets were interesting antagonists back in Vanilla. Their resurgence in Wrath felt like the right time to close the book on their story. Somehow, they kept coming back after that, over and over, and it’s felt repeatedly like an utter lack of creativity on the part of the Devs that they keep using them. The more egregious example is Gilneas.
Unless Blizzard were to attempt a redemption, there’s not much they can do with the Scarlets that isn’t the same old story retold a dozen times over the course of WoW’s lifespan.
and that’s fair, this is just a forum of opinions afterall.
Although, I don’t think an enemy faction really needs any sort of redemption or explanation or really anything. Blizzard is not exactly awesome at making compelling enemy factions these days anyway (See: the Primalists) so I’m not gonna be sad if they stick to the country classics, even if they are played out. I enjoy punching zealots, but I can understand if people don’t and want something new.
Worgen are a far cry from the Arathi who are just human with pointy ears. They don’t transform into monsters and they worship the light. If there is any group the Scarlets would be willing to bend a little it would be half-humans who also worship the light and share in their ideological and political goals. Not monstrous wolf-men who can barely contain their rage and don’t share their fanatical belief in the light.
We will see, but I would bet money that the Scarlet will act as proxy troops for an Arathi invasion, likely in a sort of pre-invasion event before we ransack their continent.
Worgen are just humans suffering from a magical curse, most of the time you can’t even know if they are worgen if they shapeshift and they too worship the Light. The Arathi are not half-human, they are not half-elves, they are simply Arathi. A hybrid race that gives birth to others of their own kind.
They are fanatics worshipping two very different forms of the Light, with it being stated that the Sacred Flame as wielded by the Arathi is more akin to how the Blood Knights wield the Light than the priests and paladins of Stormwind, and thus by extension those of Lordaeron and the Scarlet Crusade as well. Their ideological beliefs would put them at odds with one another and that is without accounting for the Scarlet Crusade’s human supremacist political goal which at its most extreme is the complete world-wide eradication of non-humans.
After Anduin stepped aside and let Turalyon continue to rule…. I have speculated that somehow, Turalyon would receive messages from “the Light” and summon Yrel and her angry Lightbound army into the heart of Stormwind. Then, she takes the city by force and uses it as a staging ground to conquer Azeroth - giving the Horde a reason to raid and save an Alliance city.
So, this whole Arathi story is intriguing. It seems to begin to answer the question I and others have been asking:
“There is a massive army of the Light out there, eager to pick a fight with the Maghar who fled to Azeroth - but they are trapped in a dying AU. How do we move Legions of Lightbound soldiers around the cosmos without Legion/Void/Arcane type dimension hopping portals?”
I think that is one of the more intriguing things- we now know “the Light” is capable of transporting entire armadas …even though they needed space ships to save the Draenei on Argus?
To tie that all together - I did find it strange during the liberation of Gilneas that the end boss seemed to be focused on the flame so much. Also - they do have a little flame thingy on their tabard.
On top of that for how different the two groups are, the founder of the Scarlet Onslaught renounced the Scarlet Crusade when she started the Onslaught. The Scarlet Crusade’s main goal was reclaim Lorderaen… while the Scarlet Onslaught abandoned Lorderaen.
A lot of people are huffing copium because they want an excuse to beat up the Scarlet Crusade no matter how stale it is.
I think they can be their own stories. We don’t need to tie the “Alliance villains” to “Light fanaticism”. Keeping them separate allows both arcs to be fleshed out more.
The Lightbound might not be eager to pick a fight with the Mag’har who fled AU Draenor. They might figure “Okay they’re dead, disappeared or converted. Victory!” and just focus on their alternate universe.
Plus, Yrel and co have no idea where they fled. We were only able to access that alternate universe with the help of bronze dragons (Kairoz and Chromie)… and there are none on AU Draenor. We’ve never seen people use the Light for time travel, and going that route with the Light would open up a major can of worms and plot holes (on top of the plot holes that already exist in the Lightbound - ie; why wasn’t Yrel herself Lightforged? Why didn’t Light users do that to get more wins?). Plus, if things can’t be changed despite time travel, that implies predestination, which Blizzard is very much against in this setting.
Finally, the Scarlet Crusade would not work with the Lightbound who have NO HUMANS in their ranks (all Lightbound are either Draenei, Orc, Ogre and maybe Naaru) and are led by a DRAENEI, as the Scarlet Crusade are HUMAN SUPREMACISTS.
The original cause of the war between Mag’har and the Lightbound is that Draenor is dying for unknown reasons, and both factions blame each other.
However, Chronicles states that alternate timelines are natural but unstable and will eventually dissipate into nothing if left alone. Perhaps this is the real reason for Draenor’s death, and if so, the lightbound storyline will most likely be dropped. They’ll all die (or find a way to escape to the original timeline, like reviving Kairoz or something)
Most likely and iirc the stuff about alt timelines dissipating into nothing was first mentioned in Thrall: Twilight of the Aspects?
We know that MU Draenor was dying because of Fel magic with the big catalyst being Gul’dan completing his spell with the Cipher of Damnation. We foiled that in AU Draenor so it has to be another reason. AU Draenor losing its connection to the MU could be a plausible explanation.
It would be interesting to see Yrel and her Lightbound coming over and instead of going after the Mag’har Orcs that fled, they become conflicted when they see Man’ari Eredar along the ranks of the MU Draenei and MU Velen is okay with it. But knowing Blizzard they might screw up that drama like they did with Maiev and the Highborne from Dire Maul in Wolfheart.
