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See I think it’s more lazy writing tbh.
The Void is a lot of things but it is honest. It might speak in cryptic riddles or truth from a certain point of view but it doesn’t lie. That’s why people screw with it. A ranting Void Priest is who foresees the attack on the Conclave in the Priest Hall campaign.
That’s what makes it an interesting counterbalance to the Light, which is more an embodiment of hope. Which is inherently twinged with a bit of dishonesty. Which isn’t a bad thing, we need our sweet little lies, and sometimes the unlikely does come to pass. Everybody gets lucky now and then. But as they say; hope into one hand, poop into the other, see what fills up first.
So it’s less the Void being unreliable and more Blizz being completely incapable of having a plot thought out that far ahead.
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Or yet another abandoned plot arc.
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Turalyon’s been good so far, so that’s not a lie. Il’gynoth’s claim was (I refuse to call it prophecy as that’s giving Il’gynoth too much credit) “The golden one shall claim a vacant throne. The crown of light shall bring only darkness.” Note the part “only darkness”. Even if the writers make Turalyon go bad later, he was still good beforehand, so this so-called prophecy is wrong.
The second one is up in the air, and I’m not sure about the third. While Varian tried to make things right, I can see where you’re coming from.
Spot on! I’ve always been bemused by how many people take a shifty, destructive being like Il’gynoth seriously.
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Well there are people who still take so called ‘Lords Prophets’ like Robin Bullock seriously. Even though they were wrong about Trump winning 2020. Hence why they latched onto the “it was rigged” conspiracy. Because otherwise they would be false prophets. And hopefully we both know what the bible says about false prophets.
Some of the ‘prophecies’ Il’gynoth and N’zoth said did come true. Others were left intentionally vague so Blizzard could do a ‘this is what we meant by this’. I guess that is the point though. They were right about X number of things, so they must be right about the others.
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Funnily enough, Blizzard’s own lore states that neither the Light nor the Void have the full picture of destiny. While I think your explanation is correct, the actions themselves make no sense; when fans dismiss the Light out of hand and treat every word out of Il’gynoth’s metaphorical mouth as gospel.
A broken clock being right twice a day doesn’t mean it should be your timepiece.
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Man, talk about lifting Moorcock almost word for word.
“The moral point of The Eternal Champion is pretty simple but I think it is worth mentioning. Recently, in a radio interview, I was asked if my use of the forces of Law and Chaos was not, after all, merely another version of Tolkien’s or Howard’s Good and Evil. I replied emphatically–I use the ideas of Law and Chaos precisely because I am suspicious of simplistic notions of good and evil. In my multiverse, Law and Chaos are both legitimate ways of interpreting and defining experience. Ideally, the Cosmic Balance keeps both sides in equilibrium. By playing “the Game of Time” (or the Blood-Red Game as Asquiol calls it) the various participants maintain that equilibrium. When the scales tip too far towards Law we move toward rigid orthodoxy and social sterility, a form of decadence. When Chaos is uppermost we move too far towards undisciplined and destructive creativity.”
― Michael Moorcock, The Eternal Champion: The Eternal Champion Sequence 1
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Given that the ‘prediction’ of drowning in a circle of stars turned out to be us just fighting Azshara in an area literally named Circle of Stars as opposed to any grand revelation, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say most of what was said all cryptic-like wasn’t overly meaningful. The last three expansions clearly went through a lot of rewrites, many of them last minute, and much of the plot originally intended is now lost.
See also: Yrel’s “dark secret”.
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I’m only conveying what I see as Blizzard’s intentions, not my own views.
Objective morality is needed for law to exist, so even Law vs Chaos relies on Good and Evil. While Law vs Chaos could refer to randomness vs pattern, not all actions are based on whether they’re random or organized.
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You pretty much ignored everything Moorcock said in that quote.
I use the ideas of Law and Chaos precisely because I am suspicious of simplistic notions of good and evil.
Both Absolute Law and Absolute Chaos are equally destructive as seen in the Eternal Champion novels. Which is why the Champion usually works for Balance by taking the mantle of the opposing force of whatever is dominant. Elric was an Agent for Chaos while Law was ascendant. He would drop that role after Chaos started to overwhelm his world.
There is no “Objective Morality” in the Moorcock universe. There are saints and bastards in both Law and Chaos. Elric himself commits horrible acts in pursuit of his goals. And he is the Hero.
Law is simply Order. All you need for them are a set of rules and the implied agreement, either volountarily or coerced to follow them. You can have rules which are utterly ammoral.
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I didn’t ignore it, I disagreed with and explained a flaw in Moorcock’s views. I explained how even his Law vs Chaos system is subordinate to Good vs Evil rather than independent or above.
I wasn’t denying your description is how his setting is. If Moorcock’s trying to convince others of his worldview with his stories… it’s hard to lose an argument when you control all sides of the debate.
Moorcock’s use of Law vs. Chaos is not meant to be read as a proposed alternative to Good and Evil, but as a critique of the concept; the fact that it partially mirrors Good and Evil is part of the point.
Moorcock himself was a strong believer in the concepts of good and evil, but as effects, rather than causes – that is to say, utilitarian rather than based on motive. The Law v. Chaos structure is used to highlight the issues which come from rigid adherence to the notions of objectively Good or objectively Evil causes.
That is why his Eternal Champion is neither of Law nor of Chaos.
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Good and Evil are generally considered polar opposites in the Weal/Woe scale.
Unvarnished Law and Chaos are equally full Woe, so not a good/evil comparison at all.
The only wealsome alignment in Moorcock is dead center Balance… at least at first until the Eternal Champion liberates all his lives by destorying the Cosmic Balance itself.
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Even Weal/Woe is subordinate to good and evil. An evil person’s prosperity is still weal, and a good person’s suffering is still woe. I wasn’t calling unvarnished Law and Chaos good/evil, I’m saying that Law vs Chaos is a separate things that is still subservient to Good vs Evil. Unvarnished good > unvarnished order.
Moorcock - selfish iconoclast but talented writer. Did he ever show the end result of Elric becoming the Eternal Champion? Did he show what happened in his story after the destruction of his Cosmic Balance?
For me, Moorcock’s work only partially succeeds as a critique of good vs evil. It’s hard to lose an argument when you control all sides of the debate. Good and evil is a product of both result and motive, not one or the other.
Moorcock’s ideal, his ubermensch/“Eternal Champion”, is still the cosmic equivalent of the Golden Mean Fallacy. He’s not black, not white, but varying shades of grey instead of the static grey of the Cosmic Balance. To quote another fiction series I enjoy;
“One person says white, another says black, and outside observers assume gray is the truth. The assumption of gray is sloppy, lazy thinking. The fact that one person is diametrically opposed to the truth does not then skew reality so the truth is no longer the truth.”
Law vs Chaos reflects the fact that there is no such thing as objective good/evil, both terms are for the most part subjective opinion calls, artificial social constructs imposed by humans whereas law vs chaos is modeled on the physical world.
If Good and Evil were objective they would exist independently of humans. Instead, they are exclusively used to define human activities. A lion jumping on a gazelle and tearing its throat out isn’t being evil… it’s just a lion. (or lioness since males seldom hunt)
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All creation groans for redemption, which includes products of corruption like predation and cataclysm (not the WoW expansion, maybe 
). We improve in increments. We have more moral agency than animals (including ones like the Chimpanzee), thus are held to a higher standard.
If there truly was no meaning in the universe, we wouldn’t have been able to figure that out.
Using the Moorcock saga to argue for your worldview would be like me using the Lord of the Rings to argue for mine.
Animals, such as elephants, have been shown to have morality as well. They have even been demonstrated to altruisticly help humans. Even human infants have been shown to have a form of morality, before society can instill any principles into them.
Lions require meat to live, so I don’t think most humans would even consider that immoral.
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Predation isn’t corruption. Predators are built to predate, they have biologies that depend on a totally meat diet. (A fact that I keep banging into the heads of vegans who try to enforce that lifestyle on to their cats)
Morality is a consequence of self awareness. How much of it is exhibited by nonhuman species is a topic of discussion.
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Or designed ahead of time to be prepared for when corruption came (the former being sharp teeth and claws, the latter being only able to metabolize meat).
I agree with you about trying to force a vegan diet on carnivorous animals.
It’s clear our worldviews are opposite to each other, but looking back, we don’t have to actively attack each other (and I bear some blame for that too).