Teldrassil Retcon Proposal

Lore Story Forum
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Credit to Kisin’s post back here for inspiring this thought.

To preface, though, no, I do not believe there is any realistic chance that Blizzard would put anything like this in the game. But I propose this nonetheless.

    Dentaria Silverglade in Lor’danel oversees the evacuation of the Teldrassian survivors to Azuremyst.

https://www.wowhead.com/mission=1926/teldrassil-evacuation

This was often a lore disputed mission during BfA. People’s protests were that Teldrassil was a burned husk, so clearly there could be no survivors on it or evacuations still going on while we were in Kul’Tiras and Zandalar. But as Teldrassil was set as a skybox that could not actually be approached by the player, I say that we simply could not have seen if there had been survivors or if evacuations were still going on.

And to that end, I propose that members of the Horde had been allowed to actually help evacuate survivors from the burning.

Specifically Morka and Hiamo from the A Good War novel.

These two characters, along with other Horde soldiers that had followed them, raided and captured returning Night Elf ships towards the end of the War of the Thorns, and had force the then hostage Night Elf crews to sail towards Teldrassil in expectations of meeting other Horde forces to land there shortly after.

Instead what Morka and Hiamo faced was a front row view of the Horde’s catapult volleys hitting Teldrassil and lighting it aflame, with full view of people at Rut’theran Village dying to the assault. The last we see of these characters is them having the Night Elf ship crews dodging burning branches falling off of Teldrassil and retreating away back out into the Veiled Sea.

And that’s it. We never hear from Morka or Hiamo again. Never get their perspective on just having watched Teldrassil burn. They just sailed right out of the story and never came back.

But two Night Elf characters that had formerly only been in Elegy and A Good War, Anaris Windwood and Ferryn, are now in the game in the Night Fae covenant in Shadowlands. As such, I propose Morka and Hiamo be put into the game, too.

Like Bradensbrook showed us a previously unknown group of Gilnean survivors that had sailed away, what we could find out is that after dodging the burning branches of Teldrassil is that Morka and Hiamo and the Horde soldiers with them released the Night Elf sailors and actually accompanied them back to Teldrassil on the off chance that there were any survivors to be saved. And that there were. And that the Night Elf ships had been filled up with evacuees.

With Darkshore’s beach lined with Horde catapults, and Morka and Hiamo and the Horde soldiers not knowing what to make of the Horde any more, they would just sail away with the Night Elves as far as they could until they felt safe, and had just been out there wherever they landed, well away from the going ons of the Fourth War and BfA, and we could find them there later, to have an example of Horde that did do the right thing right away after the burning of Teldrassil instead of just the example of the Horde that Blizzard locked into inaction for the entirety of the expansion.

And, yes, technically the title of this thread is inaccurate, as this wouldn’t actually be a retcon, as much as just new lore we would only be finding out about later.

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I’m not sure if it really helps for the ‘Good’ Horde to have just sailed off and not participated in BFA.

For them to serve as an example of ‘The Good In The Horde’ they’d need to actually be IN the Horde when it mattered, participating in conflicts over identity. With their big act of redemptive resistance being to walk away from the problem (even in a productive way like saving civilians), they run right into the Saurfang/Baine problem - the writing doesn’t let Horde act on their own initiative towards flaws in the Horde because they need to participate in a joint-faction resolution. That makes them suck because it requires them to cede all initiative and agency. These Good Horde who saved civilians don’t fight for their ideals, they express them in a moment of opportunity and then vanish.

The issue is that Blizzard constantly denies the Horde agency when it’s relevant to their own self-identity. They only ever have agency when they need to use it to serve as a function for other stories.

So while I like this as a small side story (cheers for the thread, I didn’t know about these two) I don’t think this addresses the core issues of the Horde reaction to Teldrassil.

You know what does? Just everyone pretend Teldrassil never happened. Have good stories instead. I know what you’re thinking, but stop it - no thinking. Just good fun times.

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Ah, yes. No, I agree with you, this proposal does not address the problem of Horde player’s lack of agency.

I rather admit I made this proposal from my Alliance perspective to address the ongoing discussions of “Night Elves are being shoehorned into working with the Horde again in the Night Fae campaign. Why would Night Elves ever trust races of the Horde ever again?”

I mean, you can more easily pretend Teldrassil never happened if you take the Maldraxxus or Revendreth covenants (I think, I haven’t started either of those two yet, but hope to in a couple of weeks). However, if you want to just have fun times and not think, even the Night Fae campaign works out if you take that approach.

“Oh. Tyrande just said I atoned for the entire Horde on their behalf by saving the Night Elf souls in Torghast. We’re the heroes again!”

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Not just the player. What I mean is that there is a structural need for the solution to the Horde’s villainy to come from cooperation with the Alliance.

The Alliance player/characters have a stake that needs to be resolved, and as the Horde’s antagonism forms a key expansion story thread it is literally a source of treasure and glory. The Alliance can’t be left out. This means that Saurfang can never do what he should, and challenge Sylvanas on the beach at Darkshore.

Do you see what I mean? The Horde is set up to fail by the very nature of the story they are in.

Horde leaders like Saurfang and Baine are doomed to come across as weak and indecisive, at least without deft writing and an awareness of this issue ( :clown_face: ), which we don’t get.

I don’t agree, because the nod is still indulging the relevance of BFA beyond any actual deserved import. The Horde player should not want Tyrande’s approval, mercy, consideration, or whatever. Tyrande should be free to go on to better stories. Sylvanas should be free to go on to better stories, frankly, but that ship has sailed and we just need to see where it washes up.

Just pretend it never happened. Not in an ‘you can ignore it’, just bash the setting around the head until everyone forgets it. Even the dead nelves. Everyone. Spare them all the tainted legacy of this clown care - literally everyone is better off, unless you’re invested in the value of the victimhoods that BFA created. Which is creepy and shouldn’t be encouraged.

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I like the idea. It might not change the Horde PC’s lack of agency or the other bologna with the Fourth War, but it makes for a compelling story that shows a bit of the perspective of how some low level grunts on the ground (well, water) felt about the event, which in my mind is just as valuable as what the big names felt like. It also shows that the Horde races are capable of basic humanity, which is kind of important to maintaining pathos for the Horde as a whole.

I could see it making for a particularly heart wrenching short story too. More stories from one-off characters is just all around a good way to do more world-building.

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Blizzard already gave the Horde that out, though, in having Tyrande telling Thrall that the Horde just needs to go after Sylvanas and then they’re good again.

Apparently some Horde players do, though. I wouldn’t tell them what they should or shouldn’t want.

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But what Tyrande thinks shouldn’t be presumed to matter. It matters to her and she can speak for Night Elves to frame their own investment. But the Horde as a polity should want to be its ideal self on its own terms, it should have its own need to seek restitution and resolution, not purely out of fear of Tyrande or some sense of guilt. The Horde as written post-wrath exist purely as negatives, it has no conception as an ideology or society of ideals.

The Horde’s sense of obligation to the Nelves is just that - obligation, it’s not even framed in terms of some STAIN ON HONOR that only GOOD HONOR can cleanse. Saurfang’s hilariously moronic speech to Anduin was Blizzard taking a massive cop-out about the Horde’s past and their inability to write them.

Clarfication: The Horde player should not be assumed to want Tyrande’s approval. But the writing is warped around this sense of unforgivable transgression.

I don’t think it’s unforgivable. But I do think it’s extremely forgettable. Just ignore it. It’s less problematic for the story than having the team that brought us BFA Saurfang and Quantum Sylvanas try to fix it.

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Since not a lot came out of the Teldrassil justice plot, I propose that they just say that most Night Elves survived Teldrassil and that they were already mostly evacuated before it was burned down?

It wouldn’t make a difference for the rest of the story at all.

Wasn’t there even a Horde version of that mission, in which they actually attacked the surviving refugees? That was quite unnecessary.

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It would be nice if it was most elves escaped, would have still been bad and worthy of causing a war but it didn’t leave the horde past the point of no return.

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It’s why I’m pretty doubtful of the canonicity of the mission. Ontop of the fact that it says Dentaria is directing the escape from Lor’danel, which should have been under Horde control until 8.1, when the Night Elves returned to push them out.

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Well… In a sense the Horde has expressed this as well, though it has been through fan-favorite Calia (sarcasm) talking to Thtall and Lor’themar about how she hopes her therapy on the Undead Night Elves will help bring Tyrande peace again - yet both times Calia has seen Tyrande, being at Nordrassil and Icecrown, Calia hasn’t actually brought it up.

I mean, Shadowlands does provide players with choice of covenant storylines for once, so for players actually do have a bit of agency now of all times.

The version I linked was the Horde version.

Missions would have taken place during 9.0, and in-game after the burning of Teldrassil there were Keepers of the Grove and Dryads and Ancients that made it down from Teldrassil to reinforce the Night Elves in Lor’danel, which could explain why the Horde had to turn to more drastic measures of blighting the town afterwards (though, given Stromgarde’s reconstruction, I am upset that Auberdine wasn’t rebuilt for its warfront, too, so the unnecessary blighting of Lor’danel was just more insult to that injury, but that’s a tangential matter).

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There’s room for an explanation. After Teldrassil burned, there were daily follow-up quests, and a new environment to match. After one of these, Night Elf forces appear to have encircled Lor’Danel. The mission table may be referring to this encirclement, or they may have closed the pocket but eventually were compelled to withdraw along with the rest of the army so that Anduin could use those forces at Lordaeron.

What I can say is that subsequent lore is not necessarily a decanonization of prior material, and that we can look for ways to harmonize that material instead of presuming that a contradiction must exist.

More to the topic specifically, despite my comments in other threads, I like the contours of this - and I could see that existing as future content. While I’m here, I’d like to propose a few other clarifications.

1. The evacuation was extremely successful

I think Elegy supports this already, but it wasn’t presented this way in the game or in visual media because they were trying to hype up the sense of tragedy. Well, time has shown that such was a bad idea, so it might pay some dividends to ratchet that down somewhat. Elegy makes it clear that refugees covered every available surface in Stormwind, and then after that, spilled out into the areas surrounding it - and the Night Elves were described as not being a populous people. It would be a simple thing here to say that while yes, Teldrassil was a tragedy, it was also a heavily mitigated one.

2. The Mission Tables were Canon.

The post-Teldrassil mission tables heavily dispute the idea that the Horde had control over Northern Kalimdor, and were a fly in the ointment for the idea that the Horde simply showed up and conquered everything. The nature of their push meant that they abandoned a lot of what they took (Astraanar for example), and likely had to bypass a lot of resistance. This opens the door for the mission table content to be better explained.

3. Ashenvale was retaken

Those of you who know me knew that this was coming. I am sick of having the NIght Elf defeats showcased and inspected with a fine tooth comb while their victories are hidden away, clarified in tweets, or can only be worked out from extrapolation and headcanon. The method that comes to mind would involve some kind of dungeon or scenario in a caverns-of-time style where we perhaps learn something about the Night Warrior that we’d need for some reason in Ardenweald. Perhaps we follow a spirit through several stages of that event, seeing several battles, and, tying into point 2 - seeing things like hidden and reserve forces jump into the fight at various points. I hadn’t considered this option until today, but this could be a way to give the NIght Elves that big onscreen win that I certainly have been asking for without kicking off another faction conflict.

4. The Horde’s leaders did not passively accept Teldrassil

I’ve seen this proposed in other threads, but something has to be done about the Horde appearing to be complicit in Sylvanas’s plan - and I don’t think the explanation that they were afraid of Sylvanas says very good things about the remaining leaders. Lor’themar, Thalyssra, and Baine in particular need some explanations for what they were doing during the conflict. Again, we could follow a spirit around, explaining their last days, to give us an insight into matters like this one.

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To be fair to Elegy, the physical collector’s edition had page large pieces of artwork visually showing the description of the Night Elves flooding into Stormwind, but that was locked away behind a purchase (or, as I didn’t want anything else from the collector’s edition and saved myself a lot of money, eBay).

https://i.imgur.com/Ss90wbL.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/esbdYPC.jpg

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Yes, and I’ve seen those pictures. But as you pointed out, it was hidden away in paywalled transmedia material. The existence of said pictures, nor the material providing context to them doesn’t stop what appears to be the majority of commentators from believing that the race has all but gone extinct due to Teldrassil.

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I do admit that this is a highly unfortunate case, and hence why I took those photos and share them whenever it comes up.

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One small question: how much of the rescued population of Teldrassil are worgen? Purely so that it would not turn out that the worgen occupied all of Stormwind and the path to Goldshire, and a couple of taverns were not left for the night elves. Yes, all the worgen fit into one Howling Oak, but you never know.
I AM NEFPA. So … Hi! I am a little lost in the topics, but I know that one or two exactly discussed the victims of Teldrassil.

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Considering those two pictures from elegy are nothing but Nelfs and talks about how it was Nelfs that over ran SW after the evacuation it’s safe to say there was more Nelfs then worgen.

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No proportion was given.

Edit: Although I will say - I’m a little confused by the framing of the question. Maybe I’m not reading this right - but it almost pitches the idea of a higher casualty count as a good thing - and I’m not sure that from any perspective that’s true - but I’d like to know if I have you wrong here.

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And will more than likely never be given, only population we have vague numbers on are blood elves and they’re sitting at 10% of their original population.

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While we’re here - that ought to get retconned too. If memory serves, we know that because a dev flippantly threw it out in an interview - and it’s caused nothing but confusion ever since, especially as we try to work in things like void elves and high elves and Kael’thas’s elves, etc.