I’ve been playing since early-mid TBC. Clearly I enjoy the game. I started as a Blood Elf Paladin. I have played that since. I thought it was cool when other Paladins from other races got to have mounts or chargers specific to their race. But I realized today that Blood Elf Paladins do not have a racial mount and it’s been ~19 years. Horses are not native to Quel’thalas. I know there was the quest in Dire Maul to get that one horse, but going forward, are we stealing the horses from Stormwind? There are not any native horses in the Ghostlands or Eversong Woods.
The Blood Elf racial mount are the Hawkstriders. We need a Hawkstrider that is Paladin themed for Blood Elves. You have this entire expansion coming, centered around Quel’thalas, and you are updating those zones to some respect, and likely we are going to have more Paladin options. But you need to finish Blood Elf Paladins. If Elekk, Rams, Kodo, and Direhorns can be as Horse chargers, then so can Hawkstriders.
But there is another issue: Where do Hawkstriders come from? There is not one wild Hawkstrider in the game. There are no herds or flocks of them. You can’t tame them or cook them. And yet Illidan’s army had Hawkstriders, special Hawkstriders were reserved for the Argent Tournament, and even Aviana had an Ivory Hawkstrider, which originally was thought only exclusive to Kael’thas Sunstrider, but Aviana was hanging out in the Broken Isles at the time. There are also no Hawkstriders there.
So where do they come from? I want a Hawkstrider Charger, but I would also like to know where my Hawkstrider came from.
Every racial mount in the game can be found in the wild with the exception to (Mecha)Gnomes/Goblins as those are technically built. Hawkstriders cannot. I mean, there are a few NPCs that you can fight in Shadowmoon Valley (Outland) that are riding a Hawkstrider, and upon death, you then have to kill the Hawkstrider. But other than that one instance, they’re only mounts.
How did your URL work? Anyway, Jan’alai was the Loa for Dragonhawks. Loa are Wild Gods or at least on the same like level of power. I would say that Aviana is the one connected to the Hawkstriders only because she is the only “god” that gives you a Hawkstrider mount. The Ivory Hawkstrider is from the world pvp rep in Legion. It’s actually a pain to get and very annoying that Blizzard doesn’t include it in the Legion TW rep buffs.
There however is no connection to Aviana and Quel’thalas that we know about. Kael’thas Sunstrider obviously had his mount because he was the leader for a while. Then when it came to the Argent Tournament, the Blood Elves provided Hawkstriders for that event. The Void Elves I guess just got theirs infected with void magic. Aviana gives you one without armor. So, the source is her, and she is connected to other avian creatures.
Go check out Eclipse Point area in Shadowlands (Outland). There are literally Blood Elves riding Hawkstriders and battling upon them. They are battle mounts. Horses however are not native to that region of Azeroth nor are there any other horses in Blood Elf territory. Not even the High Elves use horses.
Those are mostly around Mulgore and I think an off-breed of them are in Ohn’aran Plains. They look similar, but the ones in the Dragon Isles look more Draconic. Then again, that part of the world was closed off for a long time, so they likely did not have the physical alterations due to evolution based on not migrating. Remember the Tauren race of Yaungol in Pandaria? Whether they looked like that before or after the sundering, this group of Tauren had to become more violent to survive. I’m not sure how that would apply to physical characteristics, but this is a game of magic and gods, so the Yaungol god could have enhanced them so they could survive against the Mogu and Mantid?
I wasn’t sure of the color, but yellow or a soft gold would be beautiful!
Oh and the other player said “they’re not battle mounts” and I literally spaced it on the Argent Tournament where we could battle on Hawkstriders. There were quests where we had to ride them, if we were Blood Elves and didn’t have the option to ride the others yet.
Just got to have the gold there to have the “light” look. I was thinking about Vorquin for my dream of Dracthyr Paladins. Well, Vorquin as the racial mount but Paladin version. There is a current one that is sort of close to the Paladin color scheme but not quite.
I need to look at the other colors of the class hall mounts. I think i only use the basic one and my main is currently Zandalari (got tired of being belf). Honestly, I have race-changed my main so many times because I have been dissatisfied:
Started as female belf. Went male (when you had to pay). Went male tauren. Back to male belf because small doors. Human. Belf. Zandalari. Belf (didn’t like the toe on the heel). Man’ari Draenie (BEST current option, but Alliance), and now Zandalari. I’d be set with Dracthyr for life, but I want all races as visage options (faction specific of course) with all racial customizations including dragon horns and scales over the visage appearance.
She’s not stating that “isn’t her child”. All her “children” are winged, but not all fill the skies. The whole secret questline to get that is from the feathery raptor mounts/pets. But then she just says “oh here’s the unarmored version of this rare drop from TBC”.
So that is one of her winged children, just not one of the ones that “fill the skies”. Almost all of the animals in WoW have a Loa or Wild God associated with them.
Tovi beat me to the reply, but yeah, I hope that makes sense.
Hawkstriders are domesticated. You will no longer find their earlier form in the wild. Sadly, they are no more. Probably because the meanie butts just like YOU that feel they are FORCED to kill the mount because they HAD to kill the rider, dirty warmonger you, went out and KILLED THEM ALL for SPORT.
And just for your information they were never called ‘flocks’ or ‘herds’. The native word for them was ‘chire’ which translates to ‘Giant birds that you could probably ride and that only wants peace and to make your life better. Also, not very tasty so do not eat.’
