Elune has always interested me and when Tyrande did what she did, I was pretty excited. But then, I thought about the Nightborne Elves. No one has “confirmed” it since they don’t talk about it in any quests, but I have photos, pretty detailed photographs, showcasing that the Moon Goddess isn’t just for the “Night Elves”.
There are around six Nightborne, clearly kneeling in front of that moon statue.
Despite not mentioning Elune at all, I think it’s pretty clear. Why bother having a statue, with people kneeling, in the starting zone, if they don’t somewhat worship Elune?
Time for Tyrande to share Elune’s power with the Nightborne. Elune can’t play favorites with her “children” after all.
I can’t see Elune being too happy with the ones who helped make Teldrassil burn though. Or the ones who continued to support Sylvanas’ Horde after that.
The Shal’dorei are incredibly interested in astrology, and with Elune being a cultural thing of the Kaldorei, it makes sense that they would at least study her. I doubt there would be any reverence for her, outside of a few outliers.
There are a lot of stars, moons, comets and other stellar motifs with the Nightborne. It comes with being obsessed with chronomancy and teleportation magics.
It could just be forgotten about and they just kept the art style. There’s a crapton of stuff we still use today, most people have no idea on their origins.
I think the moons are just part of their cultural architecture, I feel like after isolating themselves for 10k years from the moon they either became atheists or agnostic, besides as @Jank have pointed, they are extremely interested in astrology, so it plays a huge role in that as well.
They are not her children, they took part in the desecration of the NE lands, the defiled the lands and turned a blind eye to the Forsaken raising fallen NEs into undeath instead of allowing them to pass on to be with their families.
They are the [removed the word because the mods are to over reactive to risk another silence] children and they will be smited by her wraith!
Considering many nightborne were alive for the War of the Ancients, it makes sense if many of them continued to worship Elune. It kind of bothers me that Blizzard left this unaddressed as far as I know. The inclusion of priest on nightborne makes me think they left it open to interpretation.
If Elisande, say, had outlawed open worship of Elune after the Sundering, it might make more sense, but if you followed a faith in your immortal lifetime, I see no reason to just drop it if you’ve followed it for thousands of years. Even night elves as a whole haven’t dropped Elune even though they might have every reason to after they lost Teldrassil.
I’ve come to think that Nightborne actually revere stars, instead of the moon or Elune herself. They have many more stars and celestial bodies of that kind referenced in spells and npcs.
ex:
Based on Thalyssra’s comments at Baine’s Arrest and how readily she defies Sylvanas in a truce with the Alliance while taking down Azshara, I don’t think she’s loyal to Sylvanas. The second there is another contender, she’ll jump ship.
To be fair, teaming up with the enemy faction to take down The Bigger Bad ™ has been a thing since WC3.
It is pretty clear, though, that Thalyssra’s decision to join the Horde has mainly to do with the Blood Elves and how they understand each other’s plight, and they have far more in common, being from the old Highborne caste pre Sundering, than they do with present day Kaldorei.
I can see this, Thalyssra has a dialogue somewhere along the lines of ‘stars save us’. There is, however, a deep seated cultural reverence for the stars with Kaldorei, too. The word “kaldorei” means “children of the stars”, and night elf npcs have a farewell quote “stars guide you”.
Worship of Elune and other astral bodies are not exclusive of one another.
Can’t really disagree with that, but in the case of the nightborne, Elune is deeply connected with druidism and Malorne, which could be the reason as to why they would stray away from that path, to further differentiate themselves from the Kaldorei.
I can see that, too. There’s plenty of cultural difference for them to want to maintain their own identity instead of giving it up like the Eldre’Thalas highborne may have had to.
Trouble is, we shouldn’t need to speculate, Blizzard really ought to have addressed this in Suramar through sidequests or somesuch.
Edit: Not particularly elf related, but Elune has Zandalari worshipers through the Lun’alai. If Elune can accept Zandalari (who aren’t even the dark trolls that became Kaldorei), Elune can accept nightborne. I’d like to see something that addresses whether or not the nightborne keep on with Elune.
So the Nightborne choose to worship Elune by making enemies of Elune’s chosen High Priestess, the woman who directly communes with Her and receives Her guidance and instruction.
![:thinking:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/thinking.png?v=6" ":thinking:")