Apparently I am not allowed to post links either. Blizzard seems to want to make it very hard to share things with people.
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If you put ` around links you can post them and the forums won’t pitch a fit.
www.youtube.com
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I don’t understand your point about “relocate.” The Night Elves already live on Mount Hyjal. And mind you, while game scale leaves everything very questionable, over all the zones I mentioned there is probably significantly more land and Night Elves than there is space and Amani in Zul’Aman alone.
Zul’Aman also is a good example of a capital being displaced and re-established elsewhere. Zul’Aman used to be located, according to Chronicle, at the edge of Darrowmere Lake, and later reestablished farther northeast to where it is now.
Teldrassil was also relatively extremely new compared to the Night Elves’ time between the Sundering and the Third War. And so another city could be made as well, so that, like Zul’Aman could be reestablished, so could a Night Elf city.
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Thank you! I did not know this.
https://pm1.narvii.com/6075/4ce3176c8e4cbc5dc5b3330993bee8dc5a3e36fe_hq.jpg
https://gamepedia.cursecdn.com/wowpedia/thumb/8/8c/Chronicle2_Eastern_Kingdoms_Before_the_First_War.jpg/300px-Chronicle2_Eastern_Kingdoms_Before_the_First_War.jpg?version=4e7edcb7574c31bdd1bb86f5f2008884
If you would be so kind.
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Oh boy, an excuse to post the forum syntax post!
There’s a lot of stuff you can do that Blizzard never thought we needed to know.
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I got buddies I’ve been playing with since '07 or earlier.
That’s about it.
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“just wait and see. And keep paying that subscription.”
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Mind you, these maps are kind of… odd. They don’t take into account that the Humans were the ones in Tirisfal Glades, as the Highborne originally encountered Humans there, not Trolls, as per Chronicle: Volume I, Page 118:
- The Highborne’s determination was rewarded when they made landfall on a new continent some years later. This region, filled with lush wildlife and woodlands, would lone day become known as the Eastern Kingdoms.
The Highborne traveled on foot for months before finally settling in a place marked by a strange silver hand–a land called Tirisfal by the tribes of primitive humans that inhabited the area. Initially, these humans rarely interacted with the Highborne.
Lead by Dath’Remar, the Highborne made a new life in Tirisfal Glades. For a time, they dowelled in pace and revealed in their independence. Yet as they tapped into the area’s latent magic, they found shade of dark energy. These shadowy powers drove some of the Highborne to madness. They began to argue that the humans had built their settlements atop the most potent ley lines in the region. Therefore, the Highborne should force them to relocate . . . or even conquer the primitive beings outright.
This is true, but as the maps and this information are both from Chronicle I kind of assume Tirisfal was nominally controlled by the Amani and they just didn’t care there were human tribals living there.
After all, even the Drakkari lived alongside wolvar tribes in Northrend. Trolls aren’t inherently genocidal to any and all non-trolls in their territories.
Either that or Chronicles was already contradicting itself from the point of being written. Which admittedly is the funnier of the two possibilities.
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What’s even odder is when we factor in the Night Elf empire had also overlapped this area before the Sundering, as far out as possibly Seradane in what would be the Hinterlands.
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This is, I think, something that isn’t really being explored enough. If the natural response is general violence, then…that kind of colors everything else. Especially given what’s been discussed even in this thread.
One of the common things people have used to substantiate their position of wholesale slaughter is that bit which mentioned something about the high elves killing any Amani they encountered. Yes?
Okay, but if you add in that part about the Amani immediately reacting with violence, does that not add some context? It’s not like high elves were going out of their way to attack a peaceful people. They landed, then people started shooting at them. If this is something that continued, unabated, for the entirety of their existence on that continent, I’m not going to fault them defending themselves.
And yes, I’m also going to stand by my point that immediately shooting at someone is going to tank any future attempts at diplomacy. Especially if it won’t stop.
This…I have a few issues with this.
For one, if memory serves, Zul’jin was something of a special case. For one thing he was actively torturing and killing high elves. I’m not saying that that makes it right; actually, quite the opposite. But your comment made it sound a bit like Zul’jin was some random hero, and not a man of sadism himself.
As far as assuming they did it to more people…I’m a bit dubious on that, too. Liadrin, for example, told him to just kill Zul’jin, and be done with it.
Again, this is quite a reach. Do the high elves hate the Amani? Yes. The Amani also hate the high elves. But that’s a leap to go from hate to what’s being suggested here.
And again, those two maps? There’s a 3,000 year difference between them. During that time, the boundaries were formally established. I would argue that the “expansion” was due to that treaty or whatever with Terenas.
It can certainly be difficult to contend with being forced into a war, especially if you didn’t really want it to begin with. Though I suppose that if it’s examined with a bit more scrutiny, it becomes apparent that things aren’t necessarily black and white.
I suppose this raises an interesting question. The Amani won that land during the Aqir and Troll War, yes? Does that mean that the Aqir still hold claim to that land?
Are the Amani trespassers upon the holy ground of the Black Empire? When the roused C’thrax from his slumber, and it beckoned allies to fight them…was C’thrax not defending his home? Because even if the lands had been in misuse, it was still sacred to the Aqir, right?
Is that accurate? Or do we say that the Amani won the land via war, and then they inhabited the area for thousands of years, gaining ownership of it?
“Slaughter”. The thing I’ve seen that’s documented is that that humans and elves killed every Amani soldier as they were fleeing during the fallout of the Alterac conflict during the Troll Wars. That’s as close to any actual “slaughter” that I’ve found.
Everything else seems to boil down to “I think this is what happened, and it should be accepted”. And that’s something I have a difficult time doing, especially when it goes against what I’ve seen in the past.
But, more to the point…consistent aggression makes it incredibly difficult for any kind of humanity. If you’re losing a boxing match, and the ref calls it, and you keep swinging? At some point, you have to accept responsibility for not stopping. If your approach is not working, why not try something else? Anything?
I think we’re having a lot of different discussions at the same time, and I think they’re related. Which is what’s causing some overlap. I think.
Framing. “Then the Troll Wars where the Amani tried to wipe the high elves out of existence, attacking them on lands they had lived on for 4000 years, forcing them to potentially endanger the world by teaching humans magic in a desperate attempt to not die”.
I wouldn’t frame the Troll Wars like that, either.
Still, on the actual point, there is a difference between civilians being killed and a campaign to kill civilians. Someone had mentioned earlier something along the lines of “If the high elves/humans even recognized that Amani could have civilians”, which could use closer examination after the earlier claim that Amani react to most issues with aggressive violence.
As far as the collapse of the Amani empire, there is no possible way humans could have expanded that quickly into that much land. Half a continent, yes? A lot of the discussion seems to operate under the impression that it was end of the Troll Wars one day, the nation of Lordaeron the next. Those maps below? 3,000 years apart.
I have a hard time believing that the remnants would just sit there and wait to starve to death. It seems far more likely that they would migrate elsewhere, especially as the humans continued moving north. This is, again, after splintering into different tribes.
I’m going to go ahead and state my claim that forest trolls can probably survive in a forest.
This is probably why we’re still being asked to do those things. And if they’re still at war in their minds, then…are these civilians, or…?
Oh.
Oh, crap. Oh, I really hope that’s not what was happening.
Because if that’s true, that means that the Amani were explicitly attacking elves, and not humans. Which is pretty much like they declared war on the high elves.
Which changes things from “cut a path through the sovereign territory of someone else” to “advanced northward during the war they waged”.
I genuinely hope it’s just a case of a retcon, or some literary mistake.
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Unfortunately, there will always be an element of wait and see. And there are no guarantees that the wait will be worth it. I can’t say that I have been happy with BfA’s story for a number of reasons. However, if we’re going to flog Blizzard for that 8.2 quote, then we should provide the full context of what they have said since.
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Official Story Forum merchandise:
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Yes, this is the way Chronicles frames the event because it is explicitly written to try and validate the mass slaughter of the indigenous peoples that were there before the high elves arrived.
The lore bends over backwards to justify the elves. But that isn’t what we’re discussing. Or at least not what I am discussing.
The difference is fairly small when the result is a mass culling of a huge segment of a population regardless of the intent behind it. Whether you can technically call it genocide or not I think we can all agree that troll civilians absolutely would have died as elves and humans rolled over their empire and displaced their population.
The Troll Wars did not occur over the span of 3,000 years. The first map is the lay of the land at the start of the Troll Wars and the second at the end of the Troll Wars.
EDIT: Wait, sorry. I see what you’re saying. My head is kind of fuzzy today and I think I’m coming down with something. The second map is indeed 3,000 years after the Troll Wars as it is of the Eastern Kingdoms prior to the coming of the Horde. I’ll leave my math here anyway because I think it is useful info. Regardless though, that just means the extermination of the Amani Empire was a slow burn rather than all at once.
Doing some quick math (which means it very well could be wrong, I am being loosey goosey with dates) if we take the “10,000 years since the Sundering” as literal, calculate that it took 2,700 years for the Highborne to be exiled and that there was another 4,000 years between the invasion of Amani territory and the eventual Troll Wars. Plus the Troll Wars ended 2,800 years before current day.
That leaves 500 years for the Troll Wars to occur. Give or take some decades as the Highborne did spend many years at sea before even finding Tirisfal.
I don’t really get your point here.
Are you suggesting that the expansionistic Arathi Empire waited for the trolls to peacefully migrate out of those controlled areas before moving in?
So WoW likes to talk a lot about the “cycle of hatred”, yah?
Well, they don’t usually like to address how it effects the trolls. The reason the trolls are hostile is because for thousands of years they’ve had humans and elves going into their villages to kill them. Of course the Witherbark aren’t open to joining the Horde. We’ve been killing them ever since the game started.
The Amani didn’t attack the elves in Tirisfal. They attacked them after the elves left Tirisfal to begin their journey through Amani territory to build a city on their holy site.
So it depends. Do you consider it NOT an act of war to march an army through someone’s territory without their permission?
Because in most strategy games I’ve played you need an Open Borders agreement before that sort of thing isn’t at least grounds for a declaration of war.
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Oh no, what? A continuous story continues, what a shocking revelation
I know you have difficulty with nuance so let me help you.
What Anya means is that the wait and see payoff is not worth the waiting.
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Oh so you have the shadowlands script? Please leak it
No I just have over 15 years of WoW experience.
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There’s still something that’s missing from all this, as I brought up earlier. From what I can tell, these are the significant dates:
-1X,000 Humans settle in Tirisfal Glades
-16,000 Troll Empires with Map
-15,000 Night Elf Empire with Map
-10,000 Sundering with Map - Zul’Aman displaced further northeast.
-7,300 Highborne land in Tirisfal - only interact with Humans
-6,800 Founding of Quel’Thalas
-2,800 Troll Wars with Map
I’d like to make special mention of the Troll Empires and Night Elf Empire maps, though. Because neither of them take into account that the Humans were at Tirisfal Glades. Here are the maps overlapped to show where the Night Elf Empire had pushed the Trolls out of:
As we can see, the Amani had actually lost the land around and west of Lordamere Lake, which would be Tirisfal Glades, to the Night Elves before the Sundering even happened.
Yet there is no mention of what happened to the Humans here during that time. However, after the Sundering, the Humans were still there, as the Highborne encountered them when they landed there some 2,700 years after the Sundering.
The two ways I see this, either the maps are just not taking the Humans into account at all, and this is a considerably oversight in Chronicle, or in the 4,000 years between the Founding of Quel’Thalas and the Troll Wars the Amani had actually invasively expanded into Tirisfal Glades again.
And yet, notably, even in year -2,800 Humans were still living in Tirisfal Glades, as one of Strom’s generals was described on Chronicle: Volume 1, Page 127 as the following:
- Thoradin’s other favored general was Lordain, who hailed from the heart of Tirisfal Glades. He and his regimented warriors were considered more refined than Ignaeus and the other mountain folk. Knightly in appearance and mindset, Lordain’s forces thoroughly patrolled the edges of Arathor’s norther boarders. On the rare occasion that Amani raiding parties approached the kingdom, Lordain put them to the blade.
Both Lordain and Ignaeus often returned to Strom with tales of a horrific conflict brewing between the Amani and the high elves far to the north. There were also whispers of something else stirring in the darkened forest–tales of strange voodoo rituals and supernatural beings prowling in the dead of night.
Though the reports unsettled them, Thoradin and his generals agreed that they would not risk their own kind or send any aid to the reclusive high elves. For the time being, they kept the bulk of their forces behind Strom’s massive ramparts, confident they could withstand any foe.
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