Turalyon retcons Incoming [Midnight Spoilers]

Lore Story Forum
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So in the most recent stuff involving Arator’s journey to find himself and our handholding this 40-year-old “kid” and his weird haircut, we get some drastic shifts in Turalyon’s personality. And not just in the present tense with the influence of the Sunwell and whatever else.

In placeholder flashback cutscenes, text reads:

FLASHBACK: Kurdran and Danath narrate the infamous Battle of Blackrock Mountain that occurred 30 years ago between the Alliance and the Horde. Turalyon and Lothar fight back to back, but Orgrim Doomhammer destroys Turalyon’s shield, knocking him down.
Orgrim kills Lothar and Turalyon goes berserk - the first instance of Turalyon’s Light turning to wrath and blind rage.

For context, here is a snippet from the novel Tides of Darkness covering that moment.

For months Turalyon had been struggling with his faith, and with one particular question: How could the Holy Light unite all creatures, all souls, when something as monstrous, as cruel, and as purely evil as the orc Horde walked this world? Unable to reconcile the two he had been unsure of himself and of the Church’s teachings, and had looked on in envy as Uther and the other Paladins gave blessings and shone bright with zeal, knowing he could not match their abilities.

But something this orc, this Doomhammer, had said just registered on some level below conscious thought, and Turalyon tried to trace it. “Until your world belongs to us,” the Horde warchief had gloated. “Your world,” not “our world” or even “this world.”

And that was the answer.

“By the Light, your time here has ended!” he shouted, rising to his feet. And a brilliant glow sprang up around him, so bright orcs and humans alike turned away, shielding their eyes. “You are not of this world, not of the Holy Light. You do not belong here! Begone!”

The Horde warchief grimace and backed away a step, a hand shielding his eyes. Turalyon took advantage of the moment to crouch again beside Lothar’s body.

“Go with the Light, my friend,” he whispered, touching a forefinger to the fallen Champion’s shattered forehead, his own tears dripping down to mix with the dead warrior’s blood. “You have earned a place among the holy, and the Light welcomes you into its loving embrace.” An aura sprang up around the body, glowing a pure wide, and he thought the features of his dead friend relaxed slightly, growing calm, even quietly content.

– and the ruined weapon slammed hard into the massive warhammer’s black stone head, the impact traveling down the heavy wooden handle and shaking it free of its master’s grip. The hammer fell harmlessly to the side. Doomhammer’s eyes widened as he realized what had happened, and then he closed them and gave a faint nod, waiting for the rest of the blow to fall.

But Turalyon had turned the blade at the last second, and struck the orc with the flat instead of the edge. The impact drove Doomhammer to his knees, and then he collapsed alongside Lothar, but Turalyon could see the rise and fall of the warchief’s back.

“You will stand trial for your crimes,” he told the unconscious orc, the light building around him. “You will stand in Capital City, in chains” – and it was brighter than brightest day now, and every orc turned away, cowering from the blinding light – “as the leaders of the Alliance decide your fate, and there you will acknowledge your full defeat.”

Kneeling before and shedding tears over a dead friend before taking his killer captive for the purpose of enacting justice doesn’t quite seem like “blind rage”, does it?

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I said back in another post that Blizzard will turn Turalyon into an antagonistic jerk for the Horde to find a way to spark more conflict.

That makes sense during the intro scenario for the Defense of Silvermoon where he doesn’t care about anyone and is only focused on destroying his enemies.

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The blind rage part is so odd. I know it is trying to sway the incident as Turyalon not having a just reason to go “lightblind”, but in the book he just watched someone close to him die and the one responsible threaten his entire world.

It is funny because during the Amani scenario he suddenly deeply cares for Silvermoon because of what the Amani did. Yet, during the Void invasion he is more distant about civilians.

And why does the Light make him go blind here, when the Void was arguably the bigger and more pressing threat?

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Well… we’ve been playing world of retconcraft for several years now so we cannot be sure what’s real or not anymore.

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True. Wow has been consistent in being inconsistent. I think it just more apparent after Chronicles because that was supposed to be the thing that patched the story up.

The one good thing is we are just as likely to do a 180 again.

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Pretty sure he isnt getting villain batted. He however is getting the Luke Skywalker treatment with Arator playing the role of Rey.

Being I was never a big Star Wars fan I never quite understood the hate, now I get it.

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Now I have to go find out what all that means. I’ve never really watched any Star Wars movies.

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Assuming you have never watched it, SPOILER, but this questline gives me this vibe:

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I think it is supposed to be the trope of the novice telling the wise old veteran that they have lost their way. But now there is the added element of the “enlightened” novice being morally superior and explaining to the vet that they don’t understand the thing they are supposed to be the expert on.

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Arator is just an Anduin rerun. Cosmic stuff is going to ignore the setting to be a vehicle for some social commentary on something. Aratar/Anduin exist to show us what the correct opinion is on said social commentary. There’s probably some element of resentment at the previous designers and developers mixed into the pot as well, which might partly explain why it feels like the current writing seems to hold old lore in such contempt.

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With any franchise spanning decades and multiple writers, things are going to be confused or forgotten. Yet it felt like old Wow’s most common retcon type was the rule of cool. Now it seems like an active deconstruction of the universe.

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I dunno, maybe. Maybe a slightly better choice of words would have been appropriate, but I understand the sentiment they’re trying to convey, as other snippets of text in the book (which you conveniently don’t include) clearly state that Turalyon is driven in part by pure racism, a belief that Orcs are somehow light-forsaken and unholy, “subhuman” for lack of a better term.

Blind rage is a bit weird, yes, but this is a little bit of a nothingburger here.

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Orcs were demon infused alliens sent to Azeroth to destroy everything in their path. I’ve never seen any allien invasion movie where humans are framed as racists for killing in self defense.

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I mean the text is rather explicit in that he feels compelled to exterminate all members of the races that aren’t from Azeroth. I think ultimately, had that stayed consistent, well

But also remember that last patch, Danath Trollbane was used to retcon the Sons of Lothar as being an organization centered on love and light and unity lmao

Retconning Turalyon’s cold rational conclusion on racially motivated genocide (regardless of circumstances) to being “blind rage” and “going beserk” (ie, irrational, and thus no longer motivated by racism) is part of that same pattern

They will actively retcon all negative elements of Alliance lore.

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I don’t like what Danath said about these new Sons of Lothar. I almost puked. There was nothing bad with them in the first place so nothing needed to be changed.

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The Sons of Lothar as an organization would not have accepted Thrall’s Horde if the writing had stayed consistent

But they chose to defang everyone on the Alliance.

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Thrall was the one good thing that came from the Horde and even he was not enough to make them stay good.

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Non sequitur

Alliance being defanged and Horde being villain batted is the only consistent writing in this game.

This framing of Turalyon’s actions, as with Danath retconning the Sons of Lothar as being an organization about love and tolerance, should not be pushed further.

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Danath Trollbane will be the one to convince Lor’themar and Liadrin that the Amani are good people and deserve to be treated with respect and dignity.

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And once the quest ends he will forever more be known as Danath Trollfriend!

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