Hey. So I finally decided to catch up with the one book I simply never found the will to read…and found something that raised my eyebrow.
Needless to say, spoilers from the book for anyone who hasnt read it.
When Nathanos and Sylvnas first meet, its either before or during the second war, and he mentions that the Sunwell “made you shorter than the night elves youre descended from”…
So…am I wrong to assume Nathnos has about 0 chance of knowing Night Elves even exist? . . .
I mean, I wouldnt be surprisedif it was a chronology error…bit still had to point it out. Maybe some umans did know of nelves …err …dunno.
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From what I can tell this is a continuity issue.
And it’s one Blizzard continually plays around with.
The H/Belves seemed to have some understanding of a western continent that their ancestors came from per TBC dialog and questing…
However knowledge surrounding the existence of Kalimdor and Night Elves by people of the EK (particularly humans) per what we understood from WC3’s story didn’t exist.
Though this is all kind of thrown for a loop when certain Belf characters mention remembering the exile of the Highborne, or being people who had been part of that exile.
And of course, characters mentioning Night Elves or Kalimdor prior to the events of Warcraft 3.
Honestly, this is just another weird continuity issue that’s relatively small, and Blizzard has often had trouble with keeping a standard story on. Likely a product of so many different hands writing for this one big story, and not all of them knowing every facet of it so mistakes like this are never caught.
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to add to this, honestly, Kalimdor being a big mystery… doesn’t really make sense with the way the world has been portrayed.
- There’s a big goblin base there since at least the Second War and fairly well-established human nomad and pirate civilizations in the south
- Zandalari are in contact with troll tribes there
- Was never shrouded by mists or magic and Kul Tirans are supposed to be the foremost maritime culture
- There have been no apparent big jumps in shipbuilding technology to enable reaching Kalimdor suddenly in this timeframe
The night elf isolation doesn’t make sense if everyone knows about Kalimdor before WC3-ish but Kalimdor as we’ve seen it even in vanilla WoW does not make sense if no one knew about it before WC3-ish
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Most WC3-Vanilla era Kaldorei lore does not make sense with what they put out after.
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I think it would have been pretty salvageable if Tanaris (and Gadgetzan) had instead been South Seas Islands and a way point between Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms, with Kalimdor having been initially unreachable with common ship technology on a straight line trip from the EK.
- The Kul Tirans might have heard a few stories but if they don’t have a friendly presence with the goblins to use as a waystation, they may not have felt it worth the effort to chase a few rumors so far away across the sea.
- The goblins might have had a few landings but no success with a lucrative business venture with trolls, quilboar, centaur, and nomadic tauren
- The Zandalari aren’t especially friendly with anyone so they wouldn’t necessarily pass much info on.
Tanaris is the bulk of the problem and feels like someone stuffed it in because they weren’t sure they’d get to use South Seas ideas otherwise.
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As an unrelated tangent, I wonder what the EK humans thought when they saw the night elf ruins in places like the Hinterlands and Duskwood. Just a weird night elf-adjacent world quirk I’ve often thought about.
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I’ve thought a lot about that too and my best guess is they probably chalked it up to high elf stuff, with a few scholars being aware of the elfenforken¹ in the deep past
¹ very precise academic term
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I wonder how much of that early lore was written with an entirely different map as a basis.
This map makes for a very different end result with your lore.
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I didn’t have this precise map in mind, but I was aware of earlier drafts that had Kalimdor as a much smaller landmass which is part of where I drew this idea from
I’m not going to lie, I think that would have been a much more interesting map than the one we got. Kalimdor’s present size feels like a rushed jumble to give the Horde (and the Night Elves) more space. I’m of the general opinion that a lot of WC as a setting was damaged by the decision to make Alliance and Horde two co-equal rival player factions that were the primary framing for the setting – a half-baked idea followed by half-baked execution that has repeatedly failed both sides of the playerbase.
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This is my favorite early map, from what I can tell it is the first one that was drawn of the whole world. It is from before they stopped using ‘Dark Elf’ and used Night Elf instead
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Well, during WC3 Kalimdor was said to have been shrouded in a concealing mist that made it difficult to reach.
Plus back then the Maelstrom was treated as more of a hard barrier against readily traversing the span between the EK and Kalimdor, as it was supposed to constantly toss out a ton of unnatural storms that sank anything trying to get across the Great Sea.
Together, these were framed as what scattered Thrall’s fleet en route to Kalimdor, forcing his landing at the Darkspear Isles to wait out a storm and separating a bunch of Horde ships prior to arriving on the continent, while shipwrecking several in the process.
Since then, WoW has pretty consistently just ignored the threat of the Maelstrom to maritime travel, with the map’s portrayal of ships’ travel paths just seeming to casually swing alongside and past it with no real issues.
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I thought i vaguely recalled something about those elements, but the wikis don’t seem to mention them anymore (and I’m still very early in my WC3 playthrough – something about it doesn’t stick with me as well as Starcraft)
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I think knowledge of the Night Elves was not common knowledge within the human kingdoms.
Because the Orcs never learned about them until Grom and the Warsong clan started chopping down trees in Ashenvale. If it was common knowledge, there would be a high chance that the orcs would have learned about them. Mainly Thrall in particular since he did read a lot in secret during his time as a slave to Blackmoore. He sent the Warsong clan to become lumberjacks to calm them down after all.
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I actually used this to explain my Kaldorei raised Wildhammer Dwarf here.
Except that one is not exclusive with the other. History not withstanding several of the races knew of another landmass, the least of which not withstanding being the High Elves whom some of which apparently still remember the greater Kalimdore before it was split along with their former allies. Them being the outliers.
So taking in the Xenophobic nature of the Kaldorei, it’s likely that short-hand of native races, such as local Trolls, Tauren, and maybe Quilboar, it’s unlikely the EK natives ever came across the darker elves prior to WC3. Doesn’t mean they were not aware of the “invaders” in their lands.
Medivh mentioned the Kaldorei by name in The Last Guardian and Khadgar a novice Mage knew of the Sundering though not the name of the Race that caused it.
The Night Elves were known to the Elves and those who were able to get info from them or high ranked Magi of Dalaran would know of the Night Elves yet not the full details.
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Equally weird was this bumpkin human’s knowledge that Dath’Remar Sunstrider had stolen a WoE vial to create the Sunwell. You’d think the guy would have made an effort to bury that sordid little detail of his kingdom’s founding, or one of his descendants to have bothered these last seven thousand years.
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Once again its up to me to clear up what is now a lore misunderstanding.
“Kalimdor!”
Medivh looked at him, and Khadgar continued “It is an old legend in Lordaeron! Once there was an evil race who meddled foolishly with great power. As punishment for their sins, their lands were broken and set beneath the waves. It was called the Sundering of the World. Their lands were called Kalimdor.”
“Kalimdor” repeated Medivh. "Though you have the child’s version of the tale, the bits we tell would be mages to stress the dangers of what they were playing with. The Kaldorei were foolish and destroyed themselves and nearly our world. And when the Well of Eternity exploded, the magical energies within scattered to the four corners of the earth, in an eternal rain of magic. And that’s why magic is universal-it’s the power of the well’s death.
This goes on and on and talks about the high elves part in all this but bottom line, not only would the common people know about the night elves/Kalimdor(abeit as legends) the information about the story was given to Khadgar and presumably he would have spread it considering how important it was to the war.
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What’s even more weird as of BfA is that a vial worth of the WoE is considered powerful enough to create a new Well at Hyjal and the Sunwell, to the point that they can infuse entire races (moonwells and the global Sunwell effect) while in BfA we are just chucking around its equivalent like snowballs…
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Three vials for the Mount Hyjal well. A single one for the Sunwell, yeah. There are rituals done with the Moonwells, though.
If I remember correctly, Malfurion, Tyrande, and Maiev chased Illidan all the way to Lordareon.