That explanation has always felt kind of hollow. Garithos is no basis to make assumptions on what the humans of Stormwind thing is acceptable. He’s not even a good representation of Lordaeron, he was the last man standing alive. Not to mention that in contrast, Tyrande, who did lead a race of the Alliance, personally was willing to sacrifice her life to protect the blood elf refugees including Kael’thas.
If anything it’s kind of a plot-hole he even had the authority to do that in Dalaran after WoW decided the Kirin Tor would remain and still had big names like Krasus and Rhonin around the area.
That’s an analysis outside of the fiction. Garithos is not alone in being a terrible human being among the lords of Lordaeron. How he is remembered now isn’t going to change that their heads (the blood elves) were on the chopping block for no justifiable reason then. Fast forward to Pandaria and Dalaran is set on executing and imprisoning their kind without justification yet again. We can point out how much or how little sense something makes, but these are things that happened in the game’s history. If they wanted to let sleeping dogs lie, it would be one thing, but here we are in a patch where the Dalaran survivors are airing out their dirty laundry and addressing the skeletons in their closet; No mention of Kael’thas, no mention of The Purge, but we’re dredging up Thalen and mana bombs?
The Night Elves were not members of The Alliance when they aided Kael’Thas, either. Although, amusingly, when The Night Elves sought aid from their own Alliance they were denied by the Chinlette.
Eh, we know from WoTA that Rhonin and Vereesa were in fact not in Dalaran proper and were hiding in the mountains. I am not even sure he knew about Garithos until after the fact.
Members of the Kirin Tor like Jailer Kassan bent the knee to Garithos, stood guard as the Blood Elves were in the dungeons for slaughter, and actively fought Kael’thas and the Blood Elves when they escaped the Dungeons of Dalaran. At the very least mages of the Kirin Tor actively sought to enact Garithos’ will and have the blood elves executed.
However the exact status of the Kirin Tor as a whole during this time is murky. We have Aethas vouching for their innocence, but they were said to have been in partial control of the city. However it was also said that destruction of Dalaran was a massive blow that scattered the surviving members and left their leaders in disarray. Though we know that Rommath believes that Modera and Ansirem looked the other way when Garithos ordered for the Blood Elves execution, suggesting that the the Kirin Tor did have leaders in the city.
It’s only acceptable for him to come back if he’s become entirely unhinged and made mana bombs his entire personality. Like his quarters have mana bomb action figures and he has a mana bomb body pillow, his bathroom soap is mana bomb shaped and he spends the entire encounter talking about how great and amazing mana bombs are and he shows the photo album he has which is just pages and pages of selfies with the mana bomb.
But it’s also revealed he doesn’t, in fact, know how to make a mana bomb nor was he the one who made the original one, he just took credit.
Also good to know that this forum still can’t objectively discuss one of the only morally grey events in the lore without aligning with their imaginary team colours.
Thalen actually didn’t invent mana bombs! He may have been the one who figured out how to utilize the Focusing Iris in building the extremely powerful one that took out Theramore, but the basic technology was developed by Kael’thas’ Sunfury forces in Outland. It’s a pretty safe assumption that at minimum the basic technology is still known by at least a few people in Silvermoon.
Well, our quest writers are so terrified of revisiting the Purge they won’t even let Jaina and Aethas discuss it, so at this point I’m halfway on board with Gornur’s “friendly Thalen” idea. It’s no more egregious than the principal heroine of the franchise memory holing a population purge significant enough to warrant a proper noun in the lore.
Yep, I also happily slaughtered my fellow elves back in the day for signets and cloth (Kael’thas’ elves were also practically the only source of cloth drops in Outland). I would imagine the PC tailors alone were enough to keep their population in check.
It’s because people view it through meta knowledge of the plot and the story, as opposed to through the lens of what the characters knew and didn’t know. They do the same thing with the orc internment camps, and the same thing with the orcs themselves and the original (better) lore before Chronicle decided orcs are just jerks at all times.
Much of this forum in particular is just about arguing, there’s not much objective care for the lore or just a desire to have a bit of fun with story concepts. When the usual suspect complaints are actually addressed things get suspiciously quiet around here until the coast is clear. So it’s no wonder the writers are scared to address things in the lore, it would mean nothing to the ‘story buffs’.
Lor’themar says outright in his short story that the surviving Sunfury forces post-Sunwell Plateau rejoined Silvermoon society, so at least some made it out. Both Sunreavers and Kirin Tor use small mana bombs on the Isle of Thunder as well, so the basic tech still survived.
tbh, despite Sunfury being a mage spec now, it could be pretty vague. I doubt the botanists and farstriders on Botanica had much of anything to do with the bomb for example.
You make a fair point. The stronger evidence that the basic tech is still around is the use of smaller bombs on the Isle of Thunder. In any case, I would be shocked if Rommath didn’t have his own pile of detailed notes on the matter stashed somewhere in Silvermoon, since it would deal with just regular arcane magic rather than any icky void stuff. You can’t tell me that any surviving Sunfury who reconciled with Silvermoon didn’t get thoroughly debriefed in order to figure out as much as possible about Kael’thas’ motivations.
Considering Jaina was never interested into catching the actual responsible people and enacted capital punishment on every blood elf in her way I have zero sympathy for her current situation. Give other characters time to grief for real damage. Actually make that the main theme of Midnight and have the largest Sin’dorei self finding trip the franchise has ever seen.