The Alliance condemns Garithos’ actions and wasn’t aware of how he was treating non-humans. It was a literal zombie apocalypse and every major city on the northern half of the continent was destroyed. It was chaos and I doubt the greater Alliance even knew he existed until after he died.
For the second one, they shouldn’t have used neutral Dalaran to get to the bell. That was poor judgement on their part. The previous leader of the Kirin’tor had just died because of the Horde bombing Theramore, using the Focusing Iris they killed Kalecgos’ blue dragons to get (The Horde are damn lucky they’re invited to absolutely anything to be honest). Already lucky that Jaina didn’t take revenge by destroying Orgrimmar, they then use Dalaran, now with Jaina in charge, to steal the Bell. It makes perfect sense to kick the Horde out at that point. In the lore only those who resisted imprisonment were killed regardless of what the quest had you do. Jaina is pretty damn merciful given the circumstances.
Even after all this, there are still Alliance sympathizers in Silvermoon and Blood Elves who are becoming Void Elves.
Oh no, she didn’t genocide the orcs because they hit back at her military base that was attacking them! How noble of her.
You mean the bell that Jaina used the Neutrality of the Kirin Tor to store in the Night Elves’ capitol, and they’ve never been bloodthirsty at all, no.
I can’t find anything on the Dalaran government being involved. Dalaran was already destroyed and presumably the government along with it. There were Kirin’tor mages who were part of Garithos’ group, who probably joined when he arrived to take Dalaran back from the Scourge. But any contact with the larger Alliance military command was cut off.
They helped him and are Horde. If you were a normal Dalaran citizen why would you want them there after learning the Horde killed their leader and they helped the Horde sneak into and use Dalaran for military operations.
They were neutral, until the Horde killed Kalec’s Blue Dragons to steal an artifact, A SUNREAVER turns it into a bomb, used it to destroy Theramore, and kill Dalaran’s leader. Thanks to depriving Dalaran of a leader and Jaina of a city, their actions led to Jaina becoming leader of Dalaran, then they proceeded to use it to steal another artifact under the nose of someone who they just did all of that to. And the Sunreavers let them. It took that much for both Jaina and Dalaran to not be neutral anymore.
When the Horde obliterate a city it’s a legitimate military target. When Jaina obliterates a city it’s genocide. I understand.
The Night Elves found it and brought it to Darnassus to study after deciding not to use it. They simply used Dalaran to transport it and Jaina allowed it, considering the last time the Horde abused a relic it got her city destroyed and killed the previous leader of Dalaran. The Horde SNUCK into Dalaran without permission and used it to steal an ancient weapon FROM the Alliance, which constitutes a military operation.
The Horde wronged the perfect combination of Jaina, Valeera, the Blue Dragonflight, and Dalaran using an ancient weapon. And then they choose to steal another ancient weapon using Dalaran while Jaina’s charge. And the Sunreavers helped with the bomb and didn’t say anything when the Horde snuck in.
She also tells them to leave first before they refuse, people never mention that part. I can try to find it but I remember after the quests came out Blizzard clarified that Jaina killing every blood elf she came across in game was a bug and not intended, and they clarified that she only had them killed if they resisted arrest.
One of the WC3 blood elf missions is them escaping from the Dalaran dungeon where they were being held before execution.
No. One Blood elf did that, the Sunreavers were unaware of the plot completely. The worst that would have happened is that Aethas discovered the plot after the fact and was threatened, but that was bugged and did not make it in.
except when they defended a belligerent Alliance military base against a counterattack, or when they helped an Alliance race secure a magical weapon in their own city instead of the neutral tactic of holding it in their own secure facility in Dalaran.
It was a literal military base that was sending out Alliance forces to attack the Horde.
Used Kiriin tor resources to secure the bell in Teldrassil, including security measures and whatnot.
Like how you leave out the fact that the Alliance side of the scenario has you killing the dragonhawks so that they CAN’T leave?
That’s actually wrong.
They explained that during testing there was unintended aggro from Jaina, and that they decided to go with that and change the story to include it. Otherwise why would Jaina admit guilt when it comes up later?
But that says nothing about some sort of remaining Dalaran government being involved. Garithos was in the process of taking Dalaran back from the Scourge and was using the ruined city as a base, that’s why they’re in the Dalaran dungeons. Because there are jail cells conveniently close by when they had the need to imprison someone. And as for individuals in Garithos’ group, keep in mind Garithos was weaving a story of the Blood Elves working with the Naga, most likely leaving out the part where Kael’thas was left to die.
It doesn’t matter from the perspective of Jaina and Dalaran, they don’t know that. They’re a blatantly Horde favoring faction in a city where the Horde just stole an ancient weapon after already using an ancient weapon to blow up a city. Why on earth would Jaina, Dalaran citizens, or the Silver Covenant believe them? Not to mention before arrests were attempted she told them to leave and they refused.
Not to mention one Sunreaver made the bomb for Theramore, but multiple Sunreavers go to help steal the bell in Darnassus. Not to mention it was a Sunreaver who was sent to defend Theramore who helped break down the defenses. They betrayed them with the bomb, with the defenses, and to steal the bell.
As far as I’m concerned in a war where your city and the previous leader of your current city were destroyed by a faction you tried so hard to get along with, and they continue to betray you multiple times and use the Sunreavers to do it, it’s time to get them out. And if they don’t leave willingly then you arrest those who don’t fight back and kill the ones who do.
You’re just reducing the distance the Horde need to move to steal it. They were always going to steal it back, look at what they did with the focusing iris.
Speaking of the Iris, it was the whole reason that Dalaran was involved, because the Horde stole it and killed Kalec’s Blue Dragons to do it. They sent a few mages down to try and help defend the city from the object the Horde stole. Which is also the reason for getting involved with the Bell, Dalaran tries to prevent magical artifacts from falling into the wrong hands.
So is Orgrimmar. Both are cities and military bases. That’s why I think it’s silly that Horde always defend Theramore by calling it a legit military target but Jaina destroying Orgrimmar would’ve been “genocide”. But she didn’t do it, once again putting her feelings aside even after all of that.
She allowed a faction to transport the bell through the city to keep it safe, as the Horde had proved themselves not reliable with ancient relics and no one wanted to see what would happen if they got it. Because of what happened. Last time. To Jaina. And Theramore. And Rhonin.
Jaina tells them to leave first, when they refuse Vereesa orders the Dragonhawks to be captured or killed.
Well that’s wild because I’m pretty sure they changed it so that Jaina teleports civilians away and only kills Sunreavers who fight back.
In WoD Lady Liadrin and her Blood Knights went to Dreanor to aid the alternate universe draenei in an apparent attempt to “pay it forward” for Prophet Velen and the draenei’s involvement with the Shattered Sun offensive and the restoration of The Sunwell at the end of TBC.
Its not the same group of draenei, or even the same universe but I’ve always liked it.
I love this mindset “Ah you see, the horrible actions taken by certain Alliance figures are ok because they didn’t know better. But actions taken by individual horde actors outside the knowledge of lore figures like Aethas are their fault because you can Kevin Bacon them to the perpetrators.”
So Teldrassil is ok then?
Look, there’s a big difference between the major city of Org and the fortified port of Theramore, which was the point at which Alliance troops from the EK were entering the fray and attacking the horde. There was enough of a gap to allow evacuation of Theramore civilians (and so in the mana bomb, there was like one civilian who refused the evacuation who died in the attack) nevermind the after the fact “akshually Garrosh captured” noise. Whereas Jaina was all in on enthusiastically killing children.
Have a citation for that timeline, since from
"Compliant Sunreavers will be sent to the Violet Hold. Defiant ones are put to the sword.
NONE are to escape.
The Sunreavers keep their dragonhawk mounts on Krasus’ Landing. Take this dust, and use it to render them incapable of flying.
Or kill them. I don’t care."
And since the first quest in the purge for the Alliance is to go into the sewers and as Vareesa puts it:
Jaina’s doing a good job taking care of Sunreavers above ground, but there’s still plenty rooting around in the sewers.
Also just a friendly reminder that the Sunreaver in BFA during the Baine rescue directly cites the murder of sunreavers on Jainas orders / the purge is canon. Since a lot of Alliance apologists try to obfuscate the purge being canon but since that addition of that NPC and convo that takes away that argument.
I just don’t like the narrative of “Horde bad, Alliance good, so anyone good should join the Alliance.” Blood Elves belong on the Horde. I think it’s a failure of the writing that people want this.
I hate the idea of belves and even (silvermoon)darkfallen joining the alliance. It makes it feel like the horrible things they went through don’t matter at all.
It’s a different story if you are talking about high elves that followed Alleria so they were not here to experience those traumatic events that formed the blood elves.
I just think it’s wild that I’m hoping that the writers will some day realize that there should be consequences for the bigotry of Garithos and Jaina’s little ethnic cleansing.
The Alliance doesn’t neef to suffer but I feel at the bare minimum the blood elves should firmly be in the horde and like being in the horde.
“However, Dragonflight seems to focus on looking to the future and healing old wounds rather than dwelling in the past and constantly reopening them, and that can be seen in a purchase that Aethas makes on the PTR.”
True, but in the case of Dalaran, firstly Aethas already had his offering up a major artifact of his people in Legion to get back in (think the fire mage artifact questline) And outside of that Jaina jumped the gun with him, killing his guards without warning and imprisoning him for someone else’s sins. Aethas was in a bad spot there stuck between Jaina and Garrosh’s threats against his people.
I’m not against the idea of reconciliation, but I feel like it would have been nice if they either had it come from Jaina, or at the very least both of them. One of the big problems in the story is the way it treats the Horde almost by default as the villains, so would have been a nice touch to have a sign from Blizz of taking something in which they have had Jaina talk about her bad actions before for her to reach out to a Horde figure she had wronged, instead of once more having Aethas grovel for forgiveness.
I love the mindset of allowing a faction to continue to operate inside your city after they’ve betrayed you multiple times and those betrayals led to the destruction of your city and your predecessor of your current city. And now they’re stealing ANOTHER artifact right under your nose. Guess I’ll just let the Horde steal more artifacts, guess I’ll just keep letting the Sunreavers betray me or stay silent under threat, guess I really don’t see the foreshadowing of a city being destroyed by an artifact and then the Horde sneaking through my new city with another artifact.
Seriously Jaina is one of the most level headed people in the story and it takes losing Arthas and Kael’thas, experiencing the apocalypse, losing Dalaran and Antonidas, stepping aside and letting the Horde kill her father for the sake of peace, her city getting nuked by the Horde with the help of Sunreavers, was about to snap and decided to not destroy Org thanks to Kalec and Thrall, and finally just can’t deal with the Horde anymore after the Sunreavers betray her AGAIN. On multiple occasions they help the Horde either against her or against Dalaran. And even then she tells them to leave first and then begins arrests, only killing when they resist arrest.
We can’t tell who individual Horde actors are, especially during a war, against a maniac who is using super weapons. Sunreavers probably told the Horde about the Focusing Iris, Sunreavers made the bomb, Sunreavers lowered Theramore’s defenses, and Sunreavers helped steal the Bell. All while Aethas knew, he kept quiet because the Horde threatened him! Which I understand him keeping quiet, but in that moment he decided to choose the Sunreavers over the Kirin’tor as a whole, and without the full story they can’t be trusted anymore. Even the way he says “Jaina I did nothing.” sounds like he’s being villainous and lying to her instead of someone shocked or trying to plead for his people.
Any city is a legit military target, they all have military garrisons, stockpiled supplies, etc. Teldrassil was a city in peace time, it was an atrocity because the Horde surprise attacked the Night Elves and destroyed the city. Sylvanas says she doesn’t care about the innocents in the tree and burns it to literally spite one dying night elf and to try and kill hope.
Of course it is. Theramore is ALWAYS different than Orgrimmar huh? Ogrimmar doesn’t deserve special treatment over Theramore, they were both founded around the same time and both were founded by refugees escaping what was happening in the EK. Orgrimmar is a legitimate military target as well, as surely evidenced by how many times both factions have had to siege it. It has the Horde military command structure and probably a ton of troops considering it’s one of only two Horde cities on the continent.
The destruction of Theramore and the Purge of Dalaran are catalysts for the rest of the Horde saying “Are we the baddies?” and rebelling against Garrosh. Your own faction admits they messed up and turn on themselves. Even Baine and Vol’jin try to warn Jaina because of how messed up they already know it’s going to be.
This is AFTER she tells Aethas to take his Sunreavers and leave. The second she teleports into the Violet Citadel she accuses him and tells him to leave. He refuses saying it’s their city too, and then Jaina says fine I’ll remove you by force. She then teleports him away and Vereesa starts giving you orders. The Silver Covenant went off the rails in the sewers, but Jaina proceeds to teleport Sunreavers who don’t resist and killing the ones who did. Blizzard clarified that her originally killing everyone was because of a glitch on her teleport CD and she would aggro and shoot instead. I’m pretty sure they fixed this and she now does the teleporting to anyone not attacking her.
It’s not that it’s not canon, it’s that the Horde blow it out of proportion. They did a ton of stuff that led up to the purge, Jaina tells them to leave and they refuse, she then begins teleporting most of them to the Violet Hold, and any who attack back are killed. He could easily be mad about some of the ones who fought back and were killed, or he could be mad about what the Silver Covenant did in the sewers, which is valid. But he’s on Sylvanas’ side, and was possibly on Garrosh’s. He could’ve been one of the Sunreavers involved in any of their shady stuff and is an extremist.
Why would they like it? Their culture is nothing like the other Horde races except for the Nightborne and the Tauren who have a weird offshoot of the light they use for their Paladins, but that’s it. The Light is even more of an Alliance thing so that being added to the Blood Elves made them even more like the Alliance along with their mastery of the arcane.
Everyone wants to bring up Garithos who was one racist resistance leader who was cut off from the greater Alliance during a zombie apocalypse, but wants to ignore the Human’s help against the Amani during the Troll Wars, and the Alliance diverting forces to help Quel’thalas when the Orcs invaded. The Alliance went out of their way and left their own lands defenseless to help Quel’thalas who was barely even in the Alliance. Which is how Garithos lost his town and family when his town was destroyed by Orcs who broke away from the main army. That’s not a defense of Garithos, but showing that the Alliance going to defend Quel’thalas cost them.
The Horde is the weaker faction with less resources. The Blood Elves are all alone on the Eastern Kingdoms far away from most of the Horde except for a tribe of Forest Trolls (forgive them though right?) and the Forsaken who are a faction of walking corpses who I’m sure aren’t very pleasant to be around. Not to be too rude to Forsaken, but I’d imagine having to stare at them all day is either A) a reminder of the horrors of the Scourge, B) really sad because you feel pity for them, C) scary because a good number are/were unhinged, or D) just plain disgusting and smelly. Undercity probably looks and smells absolutely awful and I’d imagine any non-undead wouldn’t want to be there long if at all. Not to mention the Undead’s position in the EK has been massively shaken and the Blood Elves are probably the dominant Horde power in the region for the moment.
And since joining they’ve been caught up in two Alliance/Horde wars in which they realized they were on the wrong side and had to join an internal rebellion and work with the Alliance anyways. Resulting in losing both wars.
Meanwhile the Alliance has similar institutions, controls most of the EK, is the stronger faction with more resources, and already has High Elves and Void Elves in it, along with races who have all been very familiar with Thalassians for decades if not centuries.
And calling the Purge an “ethnic cleansing” is a bit over the top considering they were told to leave after multiple betrayals, mostly imprisoned after they refused, and those who resisted killed. And most of who were killed were killed BY THEIR OWN RACE when the High Elves went off the rails. It was a faction/loyalty issue, not a race issue.
That’s amazing, I hope they’re able to make up and be friends again.
Garrosh’s Horde snuck through there with one Sunreaver. The Sunreavers as a whole had no connection to the plot. This is just collective punishment.
Yes.
Theramore is a fortified port. It was actively being used as a military base to land EK troops in Kalimdore to attack the Horde.
We were the victims of an ethnic cleansing by a radicalized terror group, we better reflect on what we did wrong to offend their delicate sensibilities.
and kill
Can you link the actual clarification that you claim they did?
Multiple Sunreavers help you steal the Bell, there are like five or six that hold open the portal for you. And one designed the bomb and another lowered Theramore’s defenses. I understand what you mean with the collective punishment, but when this mini faction of Blood Elves who are Horde aligned keep popping up on the radar of people doing shady stuff, there comes a breaking point where for the moment you can’t trust them and the best scenario for everyone would be for them to leave. I fully understand Aethas wanting to keep his people safe by not saying anything, but with that decision he chose the Sunreavers over the Kirin’tor and his friend. If he had chosen the other option then he would’ve experienced the Horde’s wrath rather than Jaina and the Kirin’tor’s. This was a difficult decision and he was screwed either way. But the handful of lines he’s allowed to speak and his tone before Jaina freezes him definitely don’t help his case in her eyes.
Fortified Ports can also be a city filled with citizens, they’re not exclusive. It’s a fortified port based on the circumstances of Theramore and Orgrimmar being founded. They are basically both refugee cities. The only difference between them is that Org doesn’t have a port connected directly to the city, it’s off to the side.
I understand Theramore being a legit military target, but the Alliance’s argument is the Horde shouldn’t have stolen a relic and used it to make a nuke. The same argument we make in real life against countries nuking each other.
This is such a far fetched comparison. Members of a subfaction of Kirin’tor who are the Horde representatives for Dalaran, helped the Horde multiple times in the war. The last straw causes the government of the city to crack down on that sub faction, first telling them to leave, then arrests, and only killing when they resist. The Silver Covenant did stuff, but they are the same race. So I really don’t see how it’s an ethnic cleansing, this is a spin the Horde put on the story to make them seem like the victim middle of a war crime sandwhich.
She kills them when they attack her. I feel like I’m Manray having a conversation with Patrick.
I’ll try to find it but idk where I’m gonna find that info a decade later. The best I can offer are multiple discussions on the purge where many people mention the bug.
"Blizzard has specifically said that was a limitation of the NPC AI. As while the imprison spell was on CD she would resort to casting frost bolts that one shotted the civilians. This was unintended and canonically as she did was teleport everyone she encountered to the violet hold. She did kill the guards of Aethas Sunreaver, but they were seen as enemy combatants. game mechanic limitations =/= lore"
"Nothing was retconned. There was a bug that had Jaina aggro and kill every blood elf she could find while patrolling, but canonically every blood elf was either sent straight to the Violet Hold or killed if they resisted. Under the city, members of Silver Covenant went hog wild though.
The Kirin Tor, based on their reaction to Aethas’ attempt to rejoin the Kirin Tor in Legion implies they were fine with this decision as Jaina was their leader and made a point of Dalaran neutrality.
Now the real fun part is why would Dalaran help the Alliance if they are neutral? Because most people assume being Neutral means totally uninvolved. This is not exactly true. It means not favoring one side over another, you can still make deals and benefit from both sides if that is your thing. In this case, the Alliance got the Divine Bell first and said they weren’t going to use it, and asked the the Kirin Tor and Jaina to help secure this potentially dangerous artifact so it could not be used in the war by either party. Garrosh getting that lone Sunreaver to use Dalaran’s portals to steal the Bell to obviously use it for the war would obviously be a no-no as far as the Kirin Tor were concerned.
Basically look at it like this. If the Alliance gave the bell to Dalaran for safe keeping, and the that lone Sunreaver stole it and gave it to Garrosh anyway we’d still be in the same boat except the Sunreavers would have even less of a leg to stand on."
Jaina used Dalaran’s resources to help the Alliance secure the Divine Bell at Teldrassil. They were allowed to do so, not as a military action but as a neutral party helping contain a potentially dangerous magical artifact.
When a Garrosh loyalist used Dalaran’s portals to steal the Divine Bell for the war effort, Jaina decided to expel the Sunreavers and the Horde entirely from the city. She gave the order to have anyone who refuses to vacate the city locked in the Violet Hold.
There was a bug back in the day where Jaina had I think some of her aoe spells active all the time, so as she patrolled the city she was just one shotting civilians. From what I understand that was not intentional but I also don’t know if it was ever fixed.
The big issue was that the Silver Covenant used this opportunity and went on an absolute tear through the Underbelly of Dalaran, killing a lot of Sunreavers and locking those who they didn’t kill also in the Violet Hold. Once the city was cleared of the Sunreavers, Jaina officially brought Dalaran into the Alliance where they would stay until she left the city during Legion.
Once that was squared away and the Horde managed to rescue Aethas Sunreaver, Lor’themar concluded that while Jaina very clearly crossed the line, they wouldn’t have even been that situation in the first place had Garrosh not ordered the Sunreavers to break their Dalaran neutrality and put them at risk.
Tl;Dr: Jaina effed up but not to the extent of “genocidal maniac”. That comes later. Sunreavers were mostly fine, but Fanlyr Silverthorn effed that up for them. Silver Covenant are absolutely crazy."
There’s actually no confirmed members of the Sunreavers on those quests. You have a named elf who is a member of the Reliquary, and who is assisted by Silvermoon mages.
You mean Garrosh’s spy?
Have a source that it’s a Sunreaver, as I am just finding that it was a blood elf.
It does not help that the portion of the scenario where his role was explained was bugged and left out as it seems to paint him much more sympathetically.
You mean the ones that evacuated?
And again, it was the base point of a whole invasion of Kalimdor, it’s not just like some back lines barracks.
You have yet to prove this. And even if so, does that excuse the execution of civilians?
I think the SC skipped the first two so they could get to settling their grudges.
So just other people carrying water for the Alliance?
Because I remember discussions with devs where they laid out that yes, Jaina reacted unexpectedly while the patch was in PTR, but they decided that they liked it and so they used her aggro as the story of the Purge.