The Nightborne have the Nightwell. The Blood Elves have the Sunwell. When they are cut off from their respective wells, they wither away.
The Night Elves have small Moonwells that can be built anywhere. They can’t be cut off from magic. When Teldrassil burned, Night Elves lost many lives along with their World Tree, but still had all of their magic.
Why are they the only ones who can build wells on the fly?
In Legion, we do manage to provide the Nightborne with a new font of magic though so it’s possible. You’d think the Bloodelves would learn how to make smaller Sunwells (or at least make the one Sunwell the most heavily guarded place in Azeroth!).
The Nightborne got rid of the Nightwell. They’re now dependent on the Arcan’dor.
They also function differently, as the Night Elves don’t need a massive well to sustain them any longer after they commune with Nature.
The first step to establishing a moonwell is to gain the blessings of the local wildlife. It is their goodwill that enables night elves to peacefully coexist, and a moonwell thrives on such energies. After receiving the blessings they are combined into a ritual bundle and imbue the moonwell, followed by water added from a preexisting purified moonwell. Combined with Elune’s light, a moonwell can purify its surroundings for years.[3][4]
The Sunwell isn’t magic water. It’s built on a convergence of leylines to make it as powerful as it is for all across the lands. I’m not sure if that font of power can be transferred that way? But I dunno!
Though… after this expansion… things may go a little awry for them.
If the Sunwell is destroyed, that should destroy the leylines, as well. And I’ll be interested to see if they go that route.
Can you imagine trying to guard all of those wells by putting them all over the place? They can be used as portals for all kinds of entities that mean to do us harm. It is best to have them established in a single place where they can be watched over.
Yep, it’s possible. That’s more or less how Outland got ripped apart when Ner’zhul opened so many portals. I’m willing to bet that the ley lines destabilized from the amount of dimensional portals and helped along the destruction.
And the Nexus Wars triggered earthquakes when Malygos rerouted the leylines to siphon the Arcane out of the planet and into the Twisting Nether. It could have destroyed Azeroth.
The interesting thing about leylines is that they’re an intricate pattern I think created by the Titans. I’m given to wonder if it’s part of Azeroth’s prison. But I’m guessing not, since Draenor also had leylines, but no world soul. So maybe the Titans mapped them or rerouted them into a pattern? I dunno. But they had the map of them that they gave to Malygos.
I have some ideas, but they are not explicitly confirmed in canon.
Firstly, the Night Elves DO still have the reconstituted Well of Eternity beneath Nordrassil. Although, given the reaction of Night Elf society when Illidan created it, I think it’s unlikely they depend on it the way their cousins rely on the Sunwell and Nightwell.
Though she is still a major mystery in the lore, I think Elune plays a big role in this. I believe the Moonwells gather power sent to Azeroth at night while Elune is above them in the sky. They lack the innate power of the Sunwell, Nightwell or Well(s) of Eternity, but can collect power from Elune, like solar panels.
Gravity does all of the work you know. All that needs to happen is having the materials. Gravity does every bit of the labor all on its own. Thus, they both have the same level of difficulty.
For stars and planets that’s true, but that is just an analogy. We are talking about magic wells here and why the Night Elves have many moon wells while the Blood Elves have only one Sun Well.
If you are looking at ways to create these things it would seem that the sun well would be more complex.
Why did you ask about stars and moons and then immediately change the subject back to the wells? The Sunwell and Moonwells have absolutely nothing to do with stars and planets. They’re just named after them. They’re not actually suns or moons sitting in wells. How do you not know that?
Apparently making a sufficiently powerful font of power to fuel an entire civilization isn’t easy.
The night elves can make moonwells easily because they have unlimited access to the actual well of eternity beneath Nordrassil. The moonwells aren’t actually as powerful as the sunwell or the nightwell though.
I also believe the Sunwell was built on a ley-line nexus, and the Nightwell was just a ley-line nexus being channeled through the eye of aman’thul
As of Exploring Azeroth: Islands & Isles, every Nightborne suffering from withdrawal has been administered an Arcan’dor fruit, so it’s more accurate to say that the Arcan’dor tree is now dependent on the Nightborne.
The maintenance of the Arcan’dor tree is now handled by the newly formed Moon Guard, comprised of Nightborne mages and Night Elf druids.