So, High Elves have the most interesting elf story I’ve ever seen in a game, personal opinion of course, but I absolutely love how they came to be, I really like the Sunwell trilogy.
But something that is always in the back of my head is whether or not the first generation of High Elves, the first settlers of Quael’Thalas looked more like Night Elves with fair skin and light colored hair or the shift to the High elf we know today was instantaneous?
One of the comics show it as being instant. But The Chronicle describes it as more of a slow process. They were, after all, in Kalimdor for several hundred years before they actually created the Sunwell. So I always figured they were full changed into what we consider modern day high elves by that point.
So, getting smaller was a byproduct of their arcane starvation after the war of the ancients? I thought everything that changed them was related to the Sunwell.
Yes, losing access to the Well of Eternity (and later to Nordrassil) was part of why they changed.
Indeed, the Highborne detected potent ley energies in the land - energies that the primitive humans could not detect. It was no Well of Eternity, but the lingering supernatural presence intrigued the experienced arcane practitioners. Some elves speculated that, in time, they could unlock its secrets and restore themselves to their former glory.
They were desperate to succeed quickly. After being exiled from the Well of Eternity, the Highborne began to feel the effects of aging and disease. Their skin had even lost its violet hue, and they had begun to shrink in stature. The Highborne feared that the effects would only worsen over time.
Chronicle page 118.
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Oh, interesting, so that means the Sunwell was a product of desperation for the side-effects losing connection to the Well of Eternity?
In many ways, yes.
On the other hand, there’s evidence that many of the Highborne were physically differentiated before the Sundering.
The ancient drowned city in Vash’jir has quite a bit of statuary. Some of those statues show a High/Blood Elf physique.
It may also reflect an adaptation to harsher conditons and a lessened food supply.
I honestly don’t remember that, but it has been some time since I’ve been down there. I find this interesting because one of my favorite quests takes place soon after you arrive in Jade Forest.
You meet Lorewalker Cho and talk about each other’s ancestors. For Blood Elves, it shows your earliest ones and they are clearly Night Elves.
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So even a forest mongrel can observe that my people were drawn from superior more refined stock than the comparatively ape-like Kal’dorei.
Now that I think about it, imagine if that scene showing your ancestors not only showed your Elven relations (2 gens of Blood Elves and then the Night Elf ancestors), but your ancestors before that - Dark trolls!
Does the current generation of Night/Blood Elves even know they originally hail from Troll stock?
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Well the Night Elves certainly ACT like they do. But the evidence of Vash’jir suggests our people at least, were of more refined breeding than that, even back then. Perhaps the people you know of as Night Elves are a product of experimentation by our ancestors to mold Troll servants into a more pleasing form. perhaps E’lune is a memory of one of our ancestors who may have been responsible.
Unfortunately they could not mold a more refined behavior.
More interesting to me is the conflicting info we have on how their culture evolved. The Sunwell trilogy showed Dath’Remar and co instantly transformed by his creation, going on to personally build the Quel’Thalas we know today from red and white stone, even the green crystals. Some Legion flavour text also references this.
Chronicles had the night elf-high elf transformation be more gradual, apparent as early as their landing in Tirisfal, and the picture it gives us of Quel’Thalas at its high water point draws much more from Suramar than the Silvermoon we know.
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And Vash’jir presents evidence that the High/Blood elf physiognomy was present all along.
Maybe the answer is that over long periods of time the elven form is adaptable. Over centuries the Highborne that rebelled with Malfurion or settled in Kal’dorei enclaves in places like Feralas, may have adopted a Kal’dorei look and may have reverted after the Exile.
Likewise certain groups of Highborne having adopted a more subtle and delicate aesthetic may have changed their features and build appropriately over time, hence the statues in Vash’jir.
The Naga show an exaggerated sexual dimorphism after their change which may be another expression of this. Azshara takes it even futher in her ability to manifest her original Night Elven form on command.
I think the Vashj’ir statues are just reused statue assets that they didn’t bother to change. In lore they probably have Night Elf ears. Similar to how Sylvanas had a Night Elf model until WotLK. She wasn’t actually a Night Elf.
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It’s not just ears… it’s the face and the body, these were new assets created for the setting.
It was likely over time. First with the Highborne being more thalassian-like than the low-borne (Look at the Nightborne for reference). Then there’s the first-generation High Elves, which were like their ancestors, but as described: more pale, light colored hair, etc. Then we have the modern thalassian elves, High, Blood, and Void Elves who all diverged from the not too long ago in the grand scheme of things.
When the age of discovery was at its peak, many of the early anthropologists noticed that tribal peoples were on average more robust and physically able. Everything from their fingernails being thicker, stronger, to even their teeth being straighter.
The frailty of modern man began with the advent of agriculture. Farming is a more reliable food source than hunting and gathering, and as a result led to food surplus. Extra food means that weaker offspring that would have died under normal circumstances were now able to live long enough to at least reproduce.
Smaller, frailer humans in turn required even less energy to survive, than their hulking contemporaries, thus enhancing the benefits of food surplus. This social change began selecting for a different set of genes, and ultimately altering the genetic make up of the society’s proginators.
In the case of night elf high elf, i imagine similar thing happened, only instead of farming, it was reliance on magic. If you look at what magic was able to do for gul dan, more or less a cripple, he was raised to the rank of chieftan. Magic could act in place of those deficiencies which would otherwise be necessary for survival.
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For the little it might be worth - since it could be a case of Blizzard being lazy - the elves in the Suramar cutscene pre-Sundering look like the night elviest elves that elved:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_NzxWGrVaY
I mean Arcane accoutrements aside, Elisande looks very much like the quintessential kaldorei sentinel (the one in the skimpy armour) in the cut of her outfit and bearing.
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They would probably look like Aszhara in elf form (quest in azsuna shows her)
Highborne already had brighter skin
I dunno brewski, all depictions of the big A look pretty blueberry to me!
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