Muh familuhhh
Seriously. They actually do an excellent job of showing why it’s a fairly good system.
In the Maldraxxi questline you go to Bastion with Alexandros to sort out that rogue Lich incursion.
And he asks them - why aren’t I here? This is pretty damn Paladiny afterall. Was his soul cursed by undeath? What’s the deal?
Well they show him. His experiences, even his worst ones, were instrumental in making him who he was and is. Alexandros is horrified at the idea of being forced to forget his wife and children and does concur Maldraxxus was the right move.
What’s worse though is as that and indeed the whole storyline demonstrates- you can go to other afterlives. I can see why they’d discourage that sort of thing generally speaking. But there isn’t anything actually preventing souls from visiting.
So idk. Can we at least try to see if we can reform this to allow visitation first? Blowing it up at the first sign of trouble seems a bit much.
And it really is just weird Sylvanas just took Zoval at his word. Slyvanas you know how to BS people. You’d think of any character she’d tried to get some more Intel or perspective before declaring war on the concept of existence.
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She was reluctant at first to join the Horde because they murdered her family. She naively believed that the humans would just welcome the Forsaken back and families would be reunited, basically why she later became so opposed to the Gathering.
The Forsaken are sold as a powerful ally that could give whichever side chooses them a finite amount of soldiers who were unable to be felled like a mortal, so the Forsaken had something huge to offer to which ever faction chose them. She sent four emissaries to the Alliance, one was from Stormwind and having living relatives there. They were all heroes of the Alliance she selected, none of them returned.
When she presented the Forsaken to the Horde She actually has doubts she says “How can, I trust the Forsaken to those orcs who have so much blood on their hands” (ha!) It was Nathano’s suggestion that she really doesn’t have to give the Horde anything, and they could be an alliance of convenience. Her dad being a diplomat taught her, “you can’t accomplish anything unless people are willing to come to the table.” She sent spies first to confirm that Thrall’s Horde was different from the Old Horde, and she settled on the Tauren because they were not orcs and had a peaceful nature. She sends an emissary to the Tauren and actually gets a reply, she’s invited to Thunder Buff, (same story we all know) to present her case in front of Cairne, Baine and Hammul.
When she gets to Thunder Bluff she is asked to leave her weapons and her rangers, she calls them arrogant cows in her internal monologue, she’s lead unarmed into a room and is startled by Thrall, an orc, and she’s unarmed, so she bristles a bit, Golden wastes no time
with her shipper heart having Thrall invoke Jaina and how he’s okay making human friends. He judges the Forsaken for being once part of the Scourge, a faction that did terrible things, and Hammul reminds Thrall that the ORCS did terrible things.
Hammul thinks the Forsaken were created to teach the world empathy.
Sylvanas is absolutely insulted by this notion, obviously, because she doesn’t want to be some philosophy for the Tauren to talk about amongst themselves.
She chooses in the end to try and spin the Forsaken as a people who are trying to understand what lies beyond Death, because Hammul confirms that death is not the end . Thrall thinks about if for a bit and says that he’ll accept the forsaken, but he won’t trust them right away and Sylvanas is like “gee thanks, I don’t trust you either.”
Thrall basically says if the orcs can be redeemed, the Forsaken can be redeemed.
Sylvanas then monologues on how the Horde can now be her weapon against Arthas.
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Considering her very first act was betray Garithos(as much as he deserved it) I am not sure exactly what she was thinking.
Again, this leaves alot to interpretation. For all we know they were killed by some random humans or got offed by Varimathras/Onyxia who would not want a united continent.
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Interesting. I want to believe Thrall’s hesitation concerning the Forsaken is a nod to his (glossed over) prejudices in WC3; I still remember his loathing for the Amani trolls.
Anything about how she brought the blood elves into the Horde? How did she feel about dealing with Lor’themar and Halduron again after realizing just how far she’d fallen in their eyes?
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With regards to the Battle of Gilneas it was meant to be a lesson of unfairness that the jailer wanted her to experience. She was meant to see herself in Liam Greymane and how he jumped in the way to protect his father, because she did something equally dumb to protect her sister and she would have done the exact same thing to save her own Father.
There’s a lot of repeating patterns here that’s hit home in her story. Life is unfair, and she can see herself in everyone else’s suffering. She sees Genn as an equal and wants to punish him because she wants to punish herself most of all, and she sees herself in him.
It also doesn’t help that she also has the jailer breathing down her neck trying to convince her that life is unfair and meaningless, because he’s a master manipulator.
The Battle of Gilness wasn’t really about the Gilneans, to her. Yes, they were mirrors of her own suffering, but her real enemy was Garrosh. She really hated Garrosh. She doesn’t actually hate Genn, she sees her own father in him, so when Liam dies she’s really upset by that. She’s really moved by Liam’s sacrifice because it was done with courage and love.
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hahahahahaha
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Gosh maybe she should have said “you know, I don’t want to do this. I’d rather fight Garrosh. I should reach out to the Alliance again and tell them the truth”
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Really? Did Golden not play that scenario? Sylvanas couldn’t even help herself in spewing one of her edgelord lines while Liam was dying.
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The invasion already started by the time she gets back from Icecrown. And those Worgen seem awfully cross about something. Little late for negotiations.
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that’s actually really interesting because while she’s accepted the fact that she’s a monster in Lorthemar and Halduron’s eyes and resolves to be the worst kind of monster they’ve ever seen. She also has a soft spot for the Blood Elves he says it’s odd for her to ask him to accept the blood elves because they seem to already have interest in rejoining the Alliance, so Thrall is skeptical of them for valid reasons, mostly because he knows that the Alliance was Sylvanas’s first choice. he accuses her of having a soft heart which she completely rejects. But in the same breath she sells the Blood Elves as similar to the orcs, as a people seeking to be liberated from enslavement, just like the Forsaken saught to be liberated from the enslavement from Arthas. There’s a theme of Sylvanas’s people and her Horde of being liberated from oppressors. And Thrall who was once a slave himself is won over by this.
She also promises that when the BE’s are restored, they will pay back the Horde’s investment in them.
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she felt so bad about what she was being unfairly forced to do that she decided to fully commit to it
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Not just fully commit but outright disobey Garrosh and use the plague.
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Yeah that’s nothing new.
But the Alliance more than likely killing their diplomats and reacting to them with kneejerk homicidal hostility isn’t like, grounds to assume you’re at war or anything.
Don’t shoot the messenger!
Golden wrote that.
I’m not. That doesnt mean I can’t gag at the entire thing.
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There’s no evidence that this happened. Sylvanas made an unfounded assumption and went from there.
Which so far seems to fit the pattern of her just assuming that she has no choice but to make the worst decisions even though we’re told she really really doesn’t want to
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Garrosh wanted their port.
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it’s cringey for sure. Everything is pulled back to her relationship with her family. She committed atrocities because they reminded her of her family and life is not fair. It’s cringe I admit that.
I fully expect her to roll up on Teldrassil like,
I remembe when i used to play under the trees with my family
“Burn it!”
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Oh Garrosh wanted something so she had literally no other options but to do exactly what he says, even though we’re also told that she hates him more than anyone she’s actually murdering
None of Sylvanas’ actions here match what we’re being told her motivations were
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