A god is not All knowing and all powerful in most Fantasy definitions of the term.
Lowercase g. Think Greek, not Catholic.
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The Void Lords want everyone, any Titan, anything to be corrupted. By that logic, the Void corrupted Titan that Sargeras destroyed initially was just as important as Azeroth is.
Sargeras was a Titan and thus succumbs to the same arrogance and sense of importance as the rest of the Pantheon. Of course a powerful future Titan is the most important thing in the universe to him.
And Azerite is powerful, but we don’t have a frame of reference for what the blood of other Titans is capable of… except for Argunite, which is used as fuel and is apparently fairly potent, even though Argus was in really bad shape and basically dying. So we can assume it’s a pretty common trait of Titan worlds and thus doesn’t make Azeroth special.
For the record, I do believe that Azeroth is certainly going to be the saviour of all creation when she wakes up, but from an in-universe perspective, when we’re talking about things like cosmic beings and the afterlife of every single soul who ever lived in all the known universe… she’s more like the universal equivalent of mortals from Azeroth. That is, the underdog that has a lot of potential but seems fairly run of the mill otherwise, who through sheer determination and ‘how the hell did you even think to do that what is wrong with you wait WHY IS IT ACTUALLY WORKING?!’ attitude, defeat things much more powerful than they are.
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The void lords specifically want her because she’s the last titan beb of which we are aware, and only titan bebs can facilitate the void lords’ entry into our realm of existence.
I just don’t think anyone can make that claim with the first one’s devices responding strictly and only to her. Seems like they had the gift of prophecy and made their stuff attuned to her or something.
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Elune we know now is operating on multiple planets, meaning her attention and power is certainly spread out. No one has ever said Elune was omnipotent, nor omnipresent. Elune’s Deity status could be more akin to say, a greek goddess.
Ignoring that, and going with the idea she is one of the “First Ones” who set up the Warcraft multiverse, she could very well be confined by non-intervention rules set up by her own peers. Think of the Ancients in Stargate as an example of how that might work out. She does meddle in events involving no more than a handful of people, but she has never changed the fate of thousands all at once. Remember, she did not save anyone in the Sundering, either. She seems to be able to make fate pivot but not altogether change how the machinery of the cosmos ticks.
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Considering how we don’t know what “True God” entails in the Warcraft Universe, I don’t see the paradox.
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Elune can easily be defined as a “true” god as it is a statement without absolutely any meaning whatsoever.
This applies to Elune, and any god who claims to be the creator.
“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then (s)he is not omnipotent.
Is (s)he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is (s)he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is (s)he neither able nor willing? Then why call him/her God?”
― Epicurus
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There are a few arguments you can make. If she is as many suspect a First One then she would have peers. Elune seems likely to of only had a significant part to play in the Arcane, Nature, and Light parts of the cosmos. That makes the Dynamics a lot more complex than if she alone was a supreme power that created all. What’s to say the First Ones didn’t agree to a strict non-intervention policy at the start of creation, which Elune is working around in the small ways she can?
Elune has never acted to directly save more than one person at a time, and usually only if they are incredibly important to swaying the course of history and there is no other recourse. The only other examples all earned it through self sacrifice. Usually she gives you the tools to save yourself, but it is up to you to actually accomplish things.
There is also the fact it seems like Elune at least had a hand in a number of systems meant to help provide some degree of order and stability to the cosmos which could, again, be a way of acting indirectly. The Naaru have the most lore support, but I think you can argue she had a hand in the Titans as well. If she taught the Early Kaldorei Titanic words, perhaps that is because she is the one that taught them to the Titans to begin with.
Yeah you forgetting that there are multiple gods on this setting some which are evil
Hate to be the party pooper but all speculations on Elune are meaningless. She was invented as a god before the rules of the universe we’re made more structured and thus fits nowhere at the moment.
She will either be depowered into a being that needs rescuing or turned into a villain like most old lore scenarios that the current writers cant fit into their new narration.
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There are many more options than this. These are just the only two you want to consider.
If Elune is a true God with a capital G, that means she knows everything, including what’s coming.
So it’s entirely possible that Elune knew that nothing short of the Nightwarrior would be able to stop the Jailor’s plan, but also knew nothing short of the burning of Teldrasil would push Tyrande to become the Nightwarrior.
So she allowed Teldrasil to happen, and made sure those lost in the tragedy would die painlessly and later be saved, to ensure Tyrande made the choices she had to in order to save everything.
And that’s just one explanation. There could be hundreds. Maybe Sylvanas’s plan B for starting the war would be way worse than plan A, and letting her burn Teldrasil saved more lives in the long run. Maybe letting Teldrasil stand would have allowed N’zoth to succeed in corrupting the world and it had to go.
The point is you’re trying to use your short sighted mortal brain to assign a motive to the actions of someone who has more information about it than you do, by a few thousand orders of magnitude.
Omniscience isn’t a universal characteristics in all IRL religious mythos lol
Or we just have a few Good First Ones and One Bad First One.
yup
Yall are bad at religious studies and making all sorts of weird assumptions specific to the dominant culture of Anglophone Western Society, and specifically Abrahamic Religions and New Atheist responses to them, which is tedious to import into a fantasy game in general and especially with regards to a deity that takes inspiration more from pagan/neopagan religiosity and Tolkien Mythos (specifically Varda).
This is on par with the annoying “BUT WHY HUMANS BLACK?! HOW DOES EPIGENETIC PHENOTYPIC DIVERGENCE OCCUR ON AZEROTH?! EVOLUTION!?!” when in-game humans are all robots of rock and metal made by giant star beings turned into flesh by a Lovecraftian tentacle monster from space.
Epicurus is not relevant when discussing Elune, it’s corny, it’s tedious, don’t make no sense.
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There is some quest in bfa that implies that elune was being blocked from interfering in the burning of teldrassil, I don’t know the name, if anyone could help, it would be nice.
It seems that the writing team responsible for warcraft isn’t making any creature all powerful and all knowing.
Elune being a bigger thing than the most powerful cosmic forces we know now (Titans) is more or less confirmed, but we still don’t know how she compares to let’s say… Void lords.
Still, she had a son with a giant stag, so she probably has some physical form.
I actually had been thinking about this. What if Cenarius’ mother was an Ancient night warrior? As the Night Warrior is an avatar of Elune it would not be strictly untrue, if not quite correct at the same time.
With the Night Warrior, you can add Death, and maybe Shadow, though they’re not as predominant as the others. Although, that could just be a choice on the part of her mortal clergy, given the more dangerous nature of those two.
The only thing she really doesn’t seem to have a hand in is Fel. Unless the Illidari are part of some long game she’s playing.
I feel like they’re probably going to walk that back from Elune and Malorne physically bumping uglies, to them “mingling essences” or something suitably metaphysical for Elune’s station in the cosmos (and the T for Teen rating).
There’s a fault assumption here, and I’m sure someone has pointed it out already so I’m’a do it again.
You are assuming gods are, by nature, massive interventionists who feel emboldened to hand-hold their worshippers all the time and prevent every bad thing from happening. No religion depicts gods in that light, so why would WoW?
Elune cares for her followers, but they are at the end of the day still mortal. They die. It could be (since WC3) from old age, or it could be from a tragic accident in a spider cave. Or an army of zombies marching across the land, or just an army led by a zombie. They all, eventually, die. And Elune understands that, understands there needs to be a balance.
Calling her bluff on her godhood over Teldrassil is disingenuous. Lordaeronians follow the Light, and the Light didn’t stop the Scourge invasion. Do you call bull on that? Azeroth’s other higher beings/cosmic powers have never been portrayed as interventionists, save for the naughty ones, so why presume Elune is a pile of bullcrap for following the trend?
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Thank you! For pointing the similarities of Lordaeron and Teldrassil. Also don’t forget to add about the Draenei also worship the Naaru and look what happened to them.
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I’m still of the mindset Elune is a First One, a goddess of balance who travels the universe to bring balance. She likely has a humanoid form as well but can appear as anything.
My theory is that she came to Azeroth after the Old God was yanked out and left the giant wound in Azeroth, that would become the Well of Eternity, and was there to cleanse the Void taint and that is when she met the primitive Dark Trolls.
I am guessing they were tainted by the Void and Elune being benevolent likely cleansed them of the taint and in the process “made them in her image” as the Kaldorei believe.
Also the stories that Elune “slept in the Well of Eternity” during the day was likely the times she went into the gaping hole to cleanse the Void taint.
That’s my guess on what Elune is.
Elune…doesnt do much. In the war of the ancients, she gave tyrande the power to heal demonic wounds and gave her a pally bubble when she was captured. other than that? not much, certainly not enough to turn the tide of war, and that was against a world ending threat.
She seems to take a mostly hands off approach.