Why does no other race has their own Scarlet Crusade equivalents?

Why is it that only humans have a racist religious extremist group when the other factions/races have clearly shown that they’re not above racism nor extremism? And since the Light isn’t the only cosmic force in the setting (and far from the most ruthless), why haven’t we seen racist zealots from those other races or servants of other cosmic powers (or even seen Dreadlords try to manipulate them)? The closest example I can think of are maybe the Mechagnomes in BfA or the Kor’kron under Garrosh. For example, there could be;

  • Some racist and/or fanatical Night Elves; they were xenophobic in Warcraft 3 and after everything that’s happened to them, it’s possible some might get fanatical or become a racial supremacist group.
  • Some Orcs, Trolls or Tauren who fanatically worship the elementals and think only Horde races or even their own are the superior race. At least one of the elemental lords - Therezane - is somewhat xenophobic.
  • Some racist Dwarfs, or even fanatical Titan worshippers.
  • Maybe some Kul’tirans who aren’t keen on the other groups in the Alliance.

In case anyone brings up Yrel’s faction on AU Draenor, let me remind you they’re not racist.

Since the Scarlet Crusade are popular with part of the fanbase, maybe a similar pattern with another race and cosmic force could give a fresh spin on a beloved archetype or a whole new villain group.

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Don’t forget the Adherents of Rukhmar. They do use the Light and despise all non-Arakkoa.

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I was listing alternatives that could come up, but yeah, the Arrakoa fit as an example coming from non-human groups. Side note, I’d love to see the Arrakoa become a playable race.

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I was responding to the title. This thread’s title asks if there are Scarlet Crusade equivalents among other races, and I listed the closest one I could think of. Side note, the Primalists might be similar to your second example.

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I see, I meant to ask why no one else has that. I corrected the wording in the title. But you still addressed my question. Thank you. If there’s any others, or if you have any idea why they haven’t been seen, that’d be appreciated.

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I don’t recall ever hearing/reading that the Scarlet Crusade was rascist. How did you determine that they were?

I have noted a growing faction within our order, Fairbanks. One led largely by Abbendis himself. A faction intolerant of what they deem to be the “lesser” races. It disturbs me old friend. It is not befitting a paladin to treat others unjustly based on their heritage.-Morgraine

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I think of the early Kaldorei Empire we see in the War of the Ancients. They were pretty hard core Night Elf supremacists, by the standards of current lore.

They were not in the Alliance at the time, but it is a part of the kaldorei racial story. The kaldorei worked with the Tauren and Earthen and various other races to defeat Azshara. So they may have calmed down a bit through necessity and lots of time.

Because the Scarlet Crusade is not so much a religious fanatical faction but rather a nationalistic fanatical faction.

That said - you could call the draenei from Alternate Draenor religious fanatics. That is pretty much the Army of the Light had they not met with Illidan.

Illidan’s introduction to The army of the Light was basically a wake up call: “Screw your light-naaru-vision bullcrap, we decide where we go, not this vision from some cosmic power.”

Therazane isn’t xenophobic, but I can see how you could preceive that from how she seems to hate the Earthen Ring. It’s not based on race, but that fact that we, the adventurers, killed her daughter Princess Theradras in Maraudon.

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Racism is, sadly, a part of real human society. To have people react to incidents between that facts with some version of “Look, that just how they are” or “they all deserve it because of what those people have done” is only (sadly) realistic.

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Those are the reasons I can think of :

  • Because the worship of the Light is prone to fanaticism due to its nature : it believes in one transcendental truth, it seeks one path, so from that perspective every other truth, every other path must be fundamentally flawed/wrong/evil. I guess that might be characteristic of monotheistic religions in general. For example, you could probably say that the worshippers of Elune are “fanatical”, though in a different fashion.
    I really struggle to see how Trolls (who don’t actually worship the elements by the way) could be fanatical about the Loa, who are but living entities they seek the protection of in exchange for devotion, offerings and rituals. The closest they could get to fanaticism would probably be what we saw in Dazar’alor, where the followers of Paku and Gonk all argue that they worship the best Loa.

  • The other Warcraft religions are just not nearly as developed. Had it more screen time, the worship of the Earth Mother could have “fanatics”, for example a group of Tauren turning against the Horde because of their lumber milling activities in Ashenvale, or because of the Goblins in general. But it’s just… not developed enough. Similarly, the Cult of Forgotten Shadows is barely even mentioned, and we don’t even know what the worship of the Tidemother really is about.

  • Many things that are called “religions” in Warcraft are more akin to the mere wielding and study of cosmic forces and powers. Like, I don’t think there’s an “Arcane religion” or a “Fel religion” per say.

  • That leaves us with the “Titan worshippers”. The thing is, most Titanforged races have long abandoned the worship of the Titans, since most of them had even forgotten about their own origins before they rediscovered them recently. Among the playable races, only the Dwarves seem to care, and their interest in Titans is more about science and satisfying their curiosity than anything else.
    Honestly, at the end of the day, there just aren’t that many religions.

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If we’re looking at fanaticism then Twilight’s Hammer portion of the Dark Irons would count as such, and you also deal with a sect of Dark Irons that want to serve the Firelord again during the Dark Iron allied race chain.

In general Sisters of the Moon are supposed to be pretty zealous, but not to the point of villainy. They’re inferred to practice sacrifices to Elune, but Blizzard, as mentioned above, doesn’t really like giving agency to any of the other religions besides the Light.

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Mechagnomes are 100% religious zealots, only they are transhumanists and want to become titanforged, even to the point where they would mechanize someone against their will. King Mechagon is nuts. Worshiping technology is a thing right?

Sure is. There are people even in real life, that are looking at ways technology can help them transcend their mortal bodies

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Dwarves:

  • Dark Irons are traditionally pretty xenophobic and extremist. Wildhammers have a touch of that too, as do the Bronzebeards, but we feel it less because they’ve got 40 years of being like ‘okay the humans are a little weird but they’re okay.’

Gnomes:

  • Mechagnomes.

Night Elves:

  • Wardens come the closest, and several individual wardens have been portrayed as unhinged for various reasons. I have a harder time thinking of a reasonable warden than an unreasonable one.

Orcs:

  • Honestly, the Orgrimmar Orcs are the weird ones at this point.

Tauren:

  • Grimtotem absolutely count, as do the Feltotem.

Trolls:

  • The Darkspear and Zandalari are basically the exceptions, again.

Undead:

  • Putress and co. got wiped out and never got brought up again

idk, I don’t feel like there’s a lack of xenophobes represented among the cultures, but the shape of that xenophobia is a little different for each one.

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While there were seeming preexisting issues upon which it was built, what was initially just uncertainty and distrust turned into extreme xenophobia in the Scarlet Crusade due to Balnazzar’s influence, whereby the Crusaders became convinced that anyone not of their order - and especially non-humans - were all carriers of the Plague of Undeath.

Which was ironically the opposite of the case; the Plague of Undeath was actually only engineered to infect humanity, and had a harder time taking hold in non-human species, usually causing overt and visually obvious mutations without actually killing such victims. Hence the Plague cauldrons causing grotesquely altered - but still living - plants and animals throughout the Plaguelands.

Ultimately Balnazzar’s reason for encouraging such a mindset was probably to insulate the Scarlets against outsiders with differing perspectives whose broader knowledge and experience in the world might undermine his control or even recognize his manipulations for what they were and expose him as an imposter.

Arguably some other racially exclusive groups that exist could include the Amani and Gurubashi trolls; while there have been times in the past that the former worked with the Horde, circumstances since have them basically framed in WoW as considering anyone who’s not a forest troll their enemy. Plus when they aren’t banding together to attack everyone else, the disparate forest and jungle tribes don’t really even like with each other. Only the Drakkari seemed to be relatively unified in purpose without a common threat, and have been shown to have coexisted peacefully with non-trolls living nearby (namely the wolvar.)

While there’s a sort of formalized historical exception concerning trolls, besides the Rajani the mogu clans have a pretty generalized belief that any non-mogu races are by default inferior fodder fit only for death, enslavement and/or harvesting as resources for their magics. In similar fashion the native races of Draenor have usually been prone to either xenophobic avoidance of racial outsiders or treating anyone different as food, slaves or both, with orcs being notable for breaking with this standard in recent history when they became the Horde, and ogres on both Draenors ending up forced to cooperate with non-ogres while basically under threat.

Therazane’s initial negative attitude toward the players was kinda two-fold; she’s angry about Theradras’ death at mortal hands, but there’s also a more broad sense that the inhabitants of Deepholm aren’t keen on non-elemental life intruding upon their realm and potentially spreading organic contamination. Which in fairness could be a legit practical concern, as the fungal overgrowth running amok in parts of the zone is attributed to the compromised World Pillar allowing spores to transmit over from Azeroth.

Something to keep in mind is that while the word has become common vernacular in fantasy universe parlance, “race” isn’t really the proper word for such a purpose, so transmitting ideas like “racial supremacy” from IRL isn’t really a natural comparison. They’re basically different species, and even when groups in WoW do hate outsiders who are of the same species as they, it’s virtually always along political, tribal, factional or clan lines rather than what would be considered racial differences IRL. While one might theoretically speculate that any hostility between forest, jungle and ice trolls might count as racially motivated due to the physical differences between them, such hostility is minimally represented due to their geographical separation, and perhaps notably it’s far less prevalent than just the hatred between any two forest or two jungle tribes fighting over the same territory.

Admittedly there does seem to be a streak of supremacist attitude among the Zandalari in relation to the other trolls, but it only manifests as hostility when one of the other tribes becomes violently aggressive against the Zandalari (usually for internal “doing bad magical stuff” reasons), and doesn’t really outlast the cessation of those hostilities.

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I would say the Atal’ai are a good example of fanatical trolls. They were exiled by their own empire because of their fanatical devotion to Hakkar. Even after their newly constructed temple was sunken by Ysera, they continued their devotion and stopped at nothing to ensure that their god returned. Even succeeding in taking over what remained of the Gurubashi tribe and resurrecting Hakkar.

Sadly we murder hobo’s had a role to play in the Blood Gods return back in vanilla… And it wouldn’t be the last time we helped the baddies with their schemes because loot.

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Oh yea I guess the Atal’ai and also the Blood Trolls would fit the definition, though I’d argue that them being written as outright cartoon villains sort of excludes them from the Scarlet Crusade-based definition of “fanaticism” Thadeus was using
It is my understanding that the Scarlet Crusade are more intended to embody an unfortunate slide into blind and damageful devotion

So I initially read the title and couldn’t think of anyone. Then you mentioned those two.

Garrosh and his ilk were xenophobic. While they don’t bring in a cosmic force to it - they were unabashedly racist.

The mechagnomes under the King were basically trying to convert everyone to mechanical beings. I’d put them more in the Apocalyptic Doomsday cult. I don’t recall if it was explicitly pointed out but there’s something to be said about reverting to original state before the Curse of Flesh therefore tying them to the Titans.

The Lightforged have their Light-based crusade (not caring about race but rather faith). It’s similar to Garrosh’s underlying fanaticism but instead based on faith.

The Scarlets though are also portrayed in a different aspect. They are vehemently anti a particular race (though they added a good dash of xenophobia). I’m not sure if there are Night Elves that advocated for removing Tauren from the Cenarion Circle, but even that wouldn’t quite match.

With respect to them using the Light, we have spellcasters using every force both for good and evil purposes so I don’t find that particularly different.

We do have some level of xenophobia based in groups both of trolls (Amani for example) and against trolls, but those are often portrayed more as land disputes and/or claims (with some exceptions for individuals but not really organizations). To some degree there are groups of Tol’vir that behave similarly.

The Mogu come across that way but then in Throne of Thunder we find Zandalari. I don’t really know the backstory though.