At least in regard to modern fantasy storytelling, is after all this buildup and all these alluding to the Arathi empire as being some xenophobic, dogmatic religious stand in…
Is to genuinely make them a beneficial and positive influence upon the Alliance without evil church/evil faith/religion bad undertones.
I would genuinely take that curveball to the teeth. A breath of fresh air in western storytelling.
Yeah, after over 20 years we finally have a major villain being set up that channels Alliance aesthetics instead of Horde, so let’s break the mold and make them… the good guys again?
Of course the faction war nerds WANT TO RUIN IT
You are getting undermine
Let me have a good church.
Besides we already have an evil light faction, two in fact.
The obvious being the scarlets, and then Yrels Light Reich.
If Blizzard is insistent on making everything “we subverted your expectations!!” it would genuinely be more surprising for them to be good guys because they’ve been doing “Light Bad” hard since Legion and it’s just expected now.
That’s not going to happen though. When they “reveal” that the Arathi are Scarlet Crusade 2, they’re going to act like it’s the biggest most unexpected twist ever instead of the most obvious thing in the world.
Which is so annoying because they already showed a foil to the sacred flame being the nightfall and the priory zealots.
Blizzard.
Papi.
Please. Im begging you.
Be different for a third time in your life.
Is it a twist though? We’ve already entire threads dedicated to determining how tolerant an arathi empire would be and, generally, the consensus is they’re not given the dialog we’re already given in game. So if anything, it would be expected.
Beyond just the dialog we get, we’ve gotten that the light sees, typically, one single truth they strive towards that. What one’s singular truth is may vary, but its been established as fairly my way or the high way.
We already have the Church of the Holy Light, and they encompass most any lore related to the Light already.
Yrel’s Lux Vult stuff was best as I can tell only relevant in WoD. Which I didn’t play so I’ve only seen them for all of two minutes in the Mag’Har unlock quest. So they seem pretty irrelevant considering their trapped on an alternate universe.
The Scarlets menaced 4 zones, were only really a major villain for the Forsaken and were essentially defunct until very recently where they again mostly just got slapped around by the Forsaken.
Beyond that everyone else from the Argent Dawn to the Church of the Holy Light to the Naaru to the Army of the Light to the (post BC) Blood Knights to the Knights of the Silverhand to even subsets of the Scarlets like the Scarlet Renegades have been good.
Light based organizations are lawful good 9 out of 10 times and the few times they aren’t they’ve been a fairly localized threatm
No, 40k fans, making the god emperor but good is not a cool subversion.
None of it is a twist really.
The Arathi could end up being good and it wouldn’t feel shocking.
The Arathi could end up being evil zealots and it wouldn’t feel shocking.
Both tropes have been used enough that I wouldn’t really call either a subversion or surprising.
Don’t you dare compare the god emperor to some mortal.
And here I thought (or at least hoped) the accusation might turn out to be wrong. You can keep the space great horned rat.
It says something about where modern storytelling is at, when not subverting expectations is a subversion of expectations.
Honestly I want them to be Lux Vult maniacs because we pretty much never get guilt free human slaughter.
Even with the Scarlets there’s good ones you aid or rescue and oh also a literal devil pushed them down the path of the corruption. And while I think the Forsaken are perfectly just in cutting off any Stormwindian hands looking to encroach on their rightful rule of Lordaeron Blizz still makes you look like the bad guy. Can’t even have a proper battle for Andorhal without Sylvanas pulling a Darth Vader on the commanding officer just to have an exceptionally weird undercover boss episode.
So yeah I’d very much appreciate being able to crash into a church with a giant bat that vomits acidic, noxious gas without getting finger wagged for once. Don’t get me wrong I don’t mind being naughty but it gets a little tiresome when everyone else is speed running Geneva Code violations but you’re uniquely bad because you’re doing it with a Spirit Halloween aesthetic.
Save that after driving the Mag’har to Azeroth, Yrel’s group has marched off to the sunset of irrelevancy.
Its not an unexpected subversion at all, you have a good church, let us have a enemy to fight, where for once we don’t have to worry about the alliances fee fee’s
I agree. I feel the deconstruction take isn’t as profound as people make it out to be, especially in a setting like Wow. It would also work better in a universe created to explore such themes.
Sister Etna Blayze has some interesting lines about the priory that could shed some insight into the beliefs regarding the Sacred Flame. The rampant militarization of the priory goes against the purpose of its founding as a place of contemplation. Ironically, the modern priory are the heretical ones.
In otherwords neither the 3 Groups of Arathi we’ve seen are like those of their Homeland!
1 Group is nicer than the original Group while the 2nd is more willing to blaspheme the dead than the original for the sake of military conquest because Beledar’s Light inspired them to do so and the 3rd is more willing to use Void Magics than the original because they believe that is the desire of Beledar!
The 2 Evil Groups of Arathi are Arathi who got too spiritually close to Beledar rather than treating it as a mere symbol separate from the Sacred Flame like the other Arathi!
Void or Light it makes no difference! Beledar is aligned with Necromantic Death either way(the Void-corrupted Elementals of the Beledar visibly use Death Bolts, Death Novas and Death Rain) and thus getting spiritually close results in Heresy!
i really hope this doesn’t sound fawning but i gotta say this post cracked me tf up
also just for what it’s worth if the arathi do turn out to be BBEGs for a later expansion, y’all know there’ll be a ton of ChurchBased and Lightpilled arathi with whom everything is fine and dandy. the church of the holy light has suffered* pretty much no consequences despite being apparently pretty friggin’ saturated with twilight’s hammer influence, paladin orgs are healthy and active, lawful good light users aren’t suddenly scarce