Why do night elves shun their troll heritage?

Lore Story Forum
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See, so why attack that empire? Because they did. It should have been seen as suicide. Or they could’ve also taken more resources from the humans and go on another see trip.
Taking refuge next to the humans would have been fine.

By walking through Amani lands, next to Amai villages, way stones, temples… and killing the locals (after first contact). That’s not logical at all. Especially not if you’re people are in need for food and everything.

I gave you at least multiple options. Attacking the trolls was their worst option.

Ah, all those villages razed and destroyed were attacking the Elves now. No. It’s even in chronicles, every Amani village on thee Elves way was razed and destroyed.

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I really need a Colonialism bingo card…

But yeah, this is exactly what Europeans thought when they found Angkor Wat. The complaint they had whenever they kept destroying all these “burial mounds” in the New World.

In fact, this is actually pretty common of all Troll “Temple cities.”

In Zul’Gurub, Zul’Aman, even Zandalar, we see that cities serve primarily a religious/communal function. The buildings made of stone are pavilions, shrines, temples, halls, but no actual permanent residences. That’s because Troll residences -even those of the Zandalari- are actually made of wood and just as often found outside the city.

The cities themselves may fall into relative disrepair, but so long as the stone structures remain, they can continue serving as sites where religious ceremonies are performed, the dead interned, meetings conducted, etc. Because nobody is actually living in them. Being places where people live was never the actual intent.

You actually saw something like that in Angkor Wat. A big stone temple city that was built, but most of the residences at the time were wooden. As the city depopulated, people started building communities around the city, which retained its religious significance.

And one of the first things European explorers concluded when they “discovered” the area were all these stories of a city thousands of years old; left to ruin, abandon by primitive natives who know no better. It wasn’t really not as old as they thought, was never forgotten or lost, as people had continued to live around and in it in various capacity over the centuries, and it still played a part in their religious lives. There were even pilgrimages there.

Also, the idea of preserving ruins of any kind of hard coming to Europe. It was very common to dismantle old European ruins or treat them as trash yards, and when the idea of preservation arose, it was more academic than religious. So yeah, coming from a more Christian European mindset, all this rabble rousing natives made about their sacred sites being despoiled was pretty silly and generally dismissed.

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Why do you hide the fact that the Amani attacked on sight and before any other contact was made the elves were afraid of attacks and started killing every Amani that crossed their path?

which…villages? I opened the site, there’s nothing about every village that was destroyed.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/329694098631950337/728267666808373328/unknown.png

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/329694098631950337/728267994295304272/unknown.png

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If it was suicide then the Elves would of never made it there, which means they obviously didn’t do it seeing as they survived.

And go where? They risked their lives to make it that far.

Humans would of welcomed (tolerated) them for a while but they couldn’t of stay.

They didn’t know they were in Amani land until they started getting attacked. And that was after barely surviving a Blizzard. What choice did they have? Try to go BACK over the mountain that already took so many of them? Or try to press on and try to make it out.

It was the only opinion the Amani gave them.

Citation.

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Thank you Kazthan. No one said or implied anything about perpetual atonement. The point is to look at what happened, acknowledge and accept the truth, and by doing so, do better going forward. That’s the point.

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i agree :wink:

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Genocide is bad, duh.

I mean, I didn’t think I was defending it or trying to make excuses for it.

But for many here, it’s not bad when it’s perpetrated by Humans and Elves and when the victims are Trolls. The Trolls brought it on themselves by not just getting out of the way. That the Trolls are “asking for it”.

Also, the Troll/Aqir wars, the Human/Elf expansion, and the Troll Wars have only ever been explored from a third party perspective. Those of the Titans, by the creators describing it in books, or by us, the audience. We’re not invited to view any of it from the perspective of any participant at the time, let alone a Troll’s perspective.

But yeah, you’re basically trying to argue that the Trolls deserved to be wiped out because they didn’t just roll over and let people come in and settle over their land. Like there was some kind moral justice being meted out in recompense for their bloodthirsty violent ways.

Would you like your “Frequent Colonialist Arguments” card stamped now?

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I don’t, I don’t need to. The Elves were an invasion force. It’s normal for every empire to attack any large groups of outsiders entering their territory. And Troll territory is very clear marked.
In fact the Amani attacked because the Elves went against the treaty with Azshara. It was their land. They attacked because they remembered the Night Elves.
Still the High Elves went on a suicidal mission (which no sane person ever would) and slaughtered every Troll on their way.

Every Troll who crossed their path. It’s only logical they encounterd Amani settlements on their way.

Seen as suicide. You said it yourself. The Amani way way more, had an empire, the Elves were refuge. That’s an insane way to act from the elves.

One if the Hoighborne cities would be a good start. Even a more logical start.
Or again submitted to the Trolls.

Why not? So humans don’t have to accept them, but Amani do?

That’s delusional and clearly wrong. Every Troll land has huge markings, like tikis, way stones and other things on their borders. Roads, villages, cities etc.

The only real war we know from the Amani before this was against the Aqir. Old God minions who attacked them.
Some lesser conflict against others Trolls are possible, but never large scale warfare among them (for long). That’s also a really bad attempt at “the savages deserved it” deflection.

Edit: Almost forgot the Kaldorei Empire.

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Also, they didn’t just happen to land on where Quel’thalas was now, did they? They specifically sought out the location for its leylines, knowing full well it was deeper in Amani territory.

It’s one thing to understand they couldn’t settle in Lordaeron because it was giving off a crazy aura for them, but it sounds like it was just pure greed that made them push further in than they ever needed to go if they wanted to take over their own territory.

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I’m not, I’m just saying clearly, either all bad or none. Every genocide bad or no genocide bad.

I’m sorry to disappoint you, If you are referring to Azshara’s deal, the Highborne have every right to claim this land even as descendants of the government, because only Zandalar was part of the deal. All other land could be taken at will by the Highborne. You can read about it here:

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/329694098631950337/728271917970096168/unknown.png

If they have as few settlements as any people in WOW, then the chance of meeting a settlement is very small. I mean, honestly, one settlement per area, so it shows wow, it’s a bad joke when it goes after every nation has a population density of 0.5 percent something.

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It WOULD of been, if they actually had done it. But they didn’t, so your point is moot.

As far as they knew, all other Highborne cities were destroyed in the Sundering.
The only one left standing was in Suramar, and even if they thought it still survived, they couldn’t make it there.

They didn’t WANT to settle on Human or Amani land.

Which they didn’t see until after crossing the Mountain.
And that’s also why they stayed as far north as they could, as far away from Troll Settlements as they could.

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Really?

I mean, it’s not like they were using the land properly. Most of it was growing wild! They had a history of inter-tribal warfare and conflict. Their life expectancy didn’t match that of the settlers. They conducted sacrifices and prayed to foreign gods. They never built cities or had technology as advanced as the settlers, which eventually came to be the most advanced society on the planet. Their descendents came over to the continent just like the settlers, so they aren’t any more “native”. It’s not like the settlers came with the intent of just slaughtering all them. They just wanted a place to live! Where else were they supposed to go? Why couldn’t they just share the land with the settlers instead of attacking?

And (the best) all of that was soooo long ago. Why are they still mad about it? Just let it go, already!

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So which is it? I say all genocide bad. You say?

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You can do better than this. No the Elves had no right to even go on a offensive, even using their own silly treaties of peace.

Walk from Tor’watha to Zul’aman then we talk again. There are villages everywhere

So entering an empire, killing it’s people forcing your way from the western part all the way to the north in constant battles is not an invasion?
Ok the Troll wars were a friendly visit then.

It still would have been a far more logical decision to go look for those places first.

But they did.

Right after they walked battling the Amani all the way from the west to the North through their Empire. No sorry, doesn’t work.

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No, it wasn’t an Invastion nor did they “force their way from the western part all the way to the north in constant battles.”

They were constantly ATTACKED as they moved north, trying to get AWAY from troll land.

Look for something they thought destroyed? Kind of a foolish venture.

Because they were left with no choice. They were stuck between the sea to the north and the Amani to the South.

Fixed that for you.

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As Irenaus pointed out earlier in this thread, the Amani attacked the Highborne first, not the other way around. The difference that between the Highborne and the Humans and the Highborne and the Amani is that the Humans didn’t attack the Highborne, so Dath’Remar chose to leave the Humans alone, as per Chronicle: Volume I, Page 118:

    Lead by Dath’Remar, the Highborne made a new life in Tirisfal Glades. For a time, they dwelled in pace and revealed in their independence. Yet as they tapped into the area’s latent magic, they found shade of dark energy. These shadowy powers drove some of the Highborne to madness. They began to argue that the humans had built their settlements atop the most potent ley lines in the region. Therefore, the Highborne should force them to relocate . . . or even conquer the primitive beings outright.

    Dath’Remar did not agree. He had no wish to war against a people who posed no threat to his kind.

Page 120 continued with:

    Dath’Remar Sunstrider and the Highborne continued their quest to find a home in the Eastern Kingdoms. They followed the trails of magic essence, seeking the confluence of ley lines that their scouts had spied in the north. The Highborne’s journey proved unexpectedly brutal. A ferocious blizzard stopped the elves dead in their tracks for nearly a month as they traveled, with no way to move forward or escape from the mountain passes.

    The Highborne quickly realized just how vulnerable they had become without the Well of Eternity. For the first time in memory, they began to die of starvation. Only the compassion of some primitive Humans living in the mountains kept the entire expedition from perishing in the winter’s fury.

    Once the storm lifted, the Highborne forged ahead, shaken but determined to find a new home. As they drew closer to the land that the scouts had found, hope warmed their weary hearts. Verdant woodlands blanketed the terrain, and the ground beneath the HIghborne’s feet crackled with potent lines of magic. But the elves soon discovered that another race also called the region home: the barbaric Amani trolls.

    The arrival of the Highborne infuriated the trolls, who harbored a bitter hatred of elves from the days of Queen Azshara. The Amani set out raiding parties immediately, and the Highborne soon learned to fear troll ambushes in the dense forests.

It was the Amani that started the war.

One should not hate the descendants of Europeans for the sins of their ancestors, no. But that’s also not what recognizing those sins is about. It’s about not celebrating the sins of those ancestors. Much in the same way that one should not hate Thrall for the sins of the Old Horde before him, one should not approve of having named places after people from it like Kargath Bladefist.

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This implies that the consequences or even many of the actions, actually stopped centuries ago. That they aren’t an ongoing thing and that many of the attitudes that informed them aren’t still used to justify thinking and actions today.

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Started the war? The Amani were themselves minding their own business when the Elves decided to show up.

I mean sure, the Amani could have asked nicely, but would that have stopped Elves where spears and arrows did not?

And does shooting first mean one instantly forgoes any claims to said land and give any settlers thereafter free reign to settle and kill them back as they please for centuries with the justification that they didn’t throw the first punch X thousand years ago?

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Walking in to an empire and killing every local, destroying their sacred places and building on them taking over land is an invasion.
The High Elves went even against Azshars own treaty with the Trolls.
Defending themselves was the right for the Amani.
It’s interesting what you are demanding from the Trolls, but not from the humans.

Foolish is attacking a Troll empire.

That’s the wrong location. The Elves came from Tirisfal. The Amani were all around them it was their land. Again their were other options.
Why are you for example ignoring submission to the empire? Ah it goes against the “Elves are superior” right?

I’m standing by this.
I can’t walk in to the U.S. start kill the locals and build a town upon a war memorial and then nuke the nation if they attack my town and claim “Oh poor me”.

See my answer above your “you lawn is my lawn”.

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no, they´re not…the treaty was only about zandalar…not the Rest…