What happened to the Scarlet Onslaught? They’re not gone, but there’s not much of them left. I don’t think they’re a major presence in Northrend because it doesn’t make sense for them to be in a strong position or anywhere other than on the backfoot. The reasons are;
They only accept humans into their ranks.
They’ve made enemies of other human factions in and outside of Northrend, so winning converts will be hard at best.
There’s no talk of them having children to increase their numbers. Even if they did, those children aren’t going to be combat ready for awhile (Even if the members started reproducing in Wrath, by Dragonflight those children would be twelve at the oldest).
They reduced their numbers further in Legion when they got more fanatical and started killing their less fanatical members (some of who Priest PCs rescued, so they’ve left the Onslaught).
Since arriving in Northrend members have been killed in fights with enemies such as Horde soldiers, Alliance soldiers, Scourge remnants, Vrykul or Ice trolls.
Members could also be killed by the wildlife, weather or environment of Northrend.
In the canon story of Stratholme, the Scarlet enclave their collapses after you defeat the demon that possessed the body of their leader. The undead start swarming the enclave immediately afterward.
History repeated itself with the Onslaught but that was at the end of a quest chain, not a dungeon run. So presumably the Champion brings that group to an end.
Twice in fact. First by you as a Death Knight in the Plaguelands origin story and then decapitated by the Champion in Northrend.
There’s enough ambiguous survivors if Blizzard wants to recycle them yet again, but it’s been a long while since Litch King and that hasn’t happened yet. In fact the Northrend group was founded by survivors of the aforementioned Death Knight attack.
The Scarlet Crusade and their offshoots have lost what made them good and been reduced to narrative punching bags. Maybe Blizzard should just let them die.
No, the Death Knight PC fought the Scarlet Crusade, not the Scarlet Onslaught. Much of the starting zone revolved around learning about the Onslaught, though.
Exiting the rowboat upon the beach, I planted our banner and was overcome by the Holy Light, which spoke through me. Today is the Crimson Dawn - the great day that we’ve waited for. This is to be the site of New Hearthglen. We are no longer the Scarlet Crusade. We are now the Scarlet Onslaught!
Also, the Crusade wasn’t wiped out during the starting zone.
See you say this like they were ever anything but.
Like, pretty much from their inception they were nothing more then a bunch of zealots that the dreadlords were using as pawns to try and undermine sylvanas (because she whooped the crap out of them) and/or get a whole bunch of the alliances finest shoved into a meat grinder.
Which isn’t really a sound military reasoning, still requires a guard rotation to be set up in case they do try anything. It’s a drain on usable manpower when simply assaulting and removing the threat would be easier.
If WoW has taught us anything it’s their approach to statics is of the Whose Line Is It Anyway variety; IE they points are made up and don’t matter.
If they want there to be a Scarlet Onslaught, there’s gonna be a Scarlet Onslaught. I personally just hate the name as for whatever reason they seemed to want to remove the negative connotation from the word, uh, Crusade.
And speaking as someone pretty well versed in histography, theology and spent 8 years in a Catholic school I think I’m within my rights to officially say that the whole Crusade thing was kinda a bad idea.
And mainly rooted in Urban II trying to sure up his Papal legitimacy because there was a rival Pope in the South of France. Because it’s kinda hard to argue the validity of your authority when it’s based in “God said I was” because good luck disproving that.
And it was just a complete ish-show that was perhaps the most confusing and loosely organized military operation of it’s scale of all time.
And that first one was the only one that could be considered successful. Then things got increasingly weirder until you had a random German and French noblemen going rogue and deciding what would really turn the tide is an army of literal children. This went even more like you’d expect than you’d expect.
Anyway I’ve kinda meandered here but anyway Make The Scarlets A Crusade Again and also soldiers arent born from wombs but spring fully formed from buildings in this setting. And last I checked New Hearthglenn had like 3 of them so. Presumably they’ll just be enough.
While I mostly agree with you, why do so many people keep going on about them and want them back? Personally, I think they just want zealot punching bags.
It’s easy to claim expertise online. Other motivations included the violent persecution of Christians by Muslims at the time (eg; bandits killing pilgrims and the Byzantine-Seljuk wars) and being kept from the Holy Land.
