Since both of these organizations are now part of the Alliance, shouldn’t the Silver Hand want to join the Army of the Light, and shouldn’t they, and pretty much any light worshipper in the Alliance be seeking to earn the privilege of becoming a lightforged?
Wouldn’t following in Turalyon’s footsteps and becoming a Lightforged be seen as the ultimate “final form” of any light user, since it’s probably as close to the light as you can get as a mortal.
I’m sure plenty of Silver Hand members just want to defend their homeland or whatever, and not be whisked off into space to help aliens fight their space wars.
On top of that, there are plenty of non-Lightforged Draenei Paladins who seem perfectly content to not go that way, so surely there’s some rational set of motivations that keeps people from making that choice.
From everything we’ve seen, there is no known downside to becoming a lightforged, but plenty of upsides, not least of which is immortality. The lack of people who attempt it may have more to do with how difficult it is to attain.
Though in the Drustvar-assault you can find ‘Purified’-soldiers from several different races, who all wear typical ‘Army of the Light’-armor from Argus. I simply presume that these soldiers have taken their first step to actually become Lightforged.
It’s similar to the worgen-curse which had a similar problem. The negative effects of the curse with anger, bloodlust and all the other fun things were mostly informed attributes at best and you could legitimately ask the question why not all humans became worgen. It wasn’t until the heritage-questline where these problems were actually discussed.
My guess is that we will learn about the problems/downsides of becoming Lightforged in the inevitable ‘Light’-expansion. We all know it’s coming sooner or later.
Canonically, Turalyon leads the Order of the Silver Hand during the Battle of Stromgarde. That said, why actively encourage homogeneity in the narrative by forcing every Alliance Light-user under a single ideological umbrella? That’s boring. Not every Light wielding individual or organization in the Alliance should support the Army of Light, especially given the factionalism exhibited in the past two expansions.
We should logically see dissident groups begin to form and splinter given that Turalyon’s methods have been deliberately illustrated as questionable and are meant to represent a clearly more authoritarian form of Light worship. Given what we’ve seen in Legion, BfA and Shadowlands, a religious schism, even if it’s just a small sect, is a more logical (and narratively preferable) outcome than having all of the Light worshipers in the Alliance further homogenized.
Is the Army of the Light even a thing anymore? I mean, the Lightforged Draenei are, and they’re recruiting, but the Legion has been defeated. Maybe the Army of the Light was absorbed into the Knights of the Silver Hand instead.
I hope not. The entire “army of purity pure goodness vs the horde of dark, evil superdemons” struck me as really boring. However I wouldn’t be surprised if the current habit of throwing out the Chronicles and so much other established lore is going on because they are trying to sell Velen’s old prophecy to all the people who aren’t interested in a old timey light vs dark story.
It reminds me of the light vs dark story from Babylon 5. Except I don’t think you can re-create that nuance in an MMO, Babylon 5’s characters and factions were actually morally grey and had depth. Nor do I think the writers have the talent of J. Michael Straczynski.
The LF recruitment quest does make a point about how if you go in with a modicum of doubt, you’ll probably get “shattered” by the experience, whatever that means. Half the recruits signed up for the experience opt out at the last minute.
Lightforging is not entirely unlike undeath, in that it narrows your emotional spectrum. The Lightforged are incapable of feeling doubt, remorse or fear.
If you’re okay with spending the rest of your life as a living weapon of the Light, then that’s all fine, but if you want to remain a person, it’s sketchy.
I guess that would depend on the implementation details. If having fewer entities would result in better stories for them, that could be a worthwhile trade-off. But since no guarantees of this kind could be given, that is a risky proposition.