I realize most of you are probably sick of hearing about Elf posts, and even more sick of seeing me advocate for blue eyed Belves or Belf/NB druids.
But I was recently pointed on to a Black Blood Elf currently in the lore. This character comes from a 2011 book by Christie Golden, “Thrall: Twilight of the Aspects”.
I know a lot of WoW books lost cannonicty after Christie took over as a more front line author. However since she wrote this book, I think it’s safe to say it holds up.
This book covers an alternate universe, and in it we see the dragon Krausus has a High Elf apprentice named Devi. She is described as having an upfront nature that Krasus liked, but the Kirin Tor found her to be impudent because of it. Beyond that she is said to have raven black hair, and dark skin. Beyond that, we know almost nothing of her, because she was a very minor character in the book.
The book apparently seems to point to the universe collapsing, but CG later clarified it is more so signifying that Thrall and Nozdormu escaped it’s grasp. Although I’ve personally not read the novel.
This leaves us 2 lore bits for all black Blood Elves, if we even get a lore reason in game:
The more likely one, is that they’ve always been around, just in a smaller number, and are possibly a genetic mutation, similar to how blue eyes are in humans.
They come from an Alternate Universe, as we don’t know if Devi exists in the current universe.
But for those of you who wanted some kind of lore for them, that’s what we have so far.
Edit: When I reread this to myself, I couldn’t help by read it in Talessin’s voice, lmao.
Yeah… i don’t know why everything needs a convoluted explanation to it. I remember when people thought there was some explanation to Kultirans being fat.
Nope, it’s simply just the way it is.
Some Blood elves got darker skin and some humans have a different diet or lifestyle.
The interpretation could be that they had dark skin, for a High Elf, who y’know, tend to be pretty darn pale. Pretty much every mention of High/Blood Elves skin colour usually paints them as just as pale, if not much paler than most Humans and Dwarves.
Skin colour feels like a pretty odd choice for an expansion of Blood Elf customization. But whatever I guess, it’s not like they forcing people who don’t want to be black Blood elves to be black Blood Elves.
I mean, they want to give more customization this xpac, so all races are getting skin colors, and since they have human skin colors, they went for it.
I realize lore says they are mainly pale, with tones being olivine and even hispanic. I also realize just saying dark skinned is vague, but hey it’s something at least.
She has been hired on as a main story writer around Legion I believe, and it was her call to make Calia Menethil a LF/Lightbound Undead/Forsaken. Originally she was supposed to use a random character for it, but she pushed for it to be Calia instead of a rando, which I think was a good call personally.
Yeah, I get why they did it. Even though Forsaken exist, Blood Elves are still the most analogous to Humans on the Horde.
But ultimately it feels like a weird choice. If I had to come up with things to customize about Blood Elves, “make them Black” probably wouldn’t have crossed my mind.
That’s true, it probably wouldn’t have crossed my mind either, but it takes some of the heat off of them getting blue eyes, and makes me think of the Sunfire Elves of Dragon Prince. Or even just Irridessa from the Disney Fairies franchise, as the Female Belf face reminds me of an angry Tinkerbell anyhow.
Chances are they don’t explain where they came from and how it happened, and I don’t mind that personally. There are new additions to the lore all the time that aren’t explained right away but get more explanation down the line. It is in one part of the book that was mentioned earlier, but they probably aren’t gonna go with that because i’m guessing about a tenth of the WoW population actually bothered to read it.
