She should not have attacked Gilneas at all. The presentation of her standing up to Garrosh to take over the leadership of the invasion falls flat when she still does his invasion any way.
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She stood up to him by changing her tactics to win instead of having her people ground up the way Garoosh intended.
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Look, Sylvanas fans can use Stormheim as an excuse to be mass murderers all they want, it doesn’t change the fact that she had already personally attacked the two commanders involved in the past (killing Genn’s son and sacking his kingdom and blighting and destroying of Southshore resulting in the deaths of Rodgers’ family and friends) while facing very little consequences or granting them any restitutions of any sort. On top of that she’s betrayed and slaughtered the remaining Alliance forces in Lordaeron in WC3, has endorsed the practice of human experimentation for years, and recently accused of betraying the Alliance at the Broken Shore. Which yet again, crimes against the Alliance she’s never been made to answer for.(even if she’s since been exonerated from the latter of the 3)
So from the perspective of anyone on the Alliance, Sylvanas has been a clear and constant threat to them for years. Heck, even after SoO when Varian declared a truce between the factions he still acknowledged in his dialogue that Sylvanas as a threat to the Alliance. So without doubt, the Alliance attack on her at Stormheim is not without being at least 80% justified in light of the crimes she has been able to commit against the Alliance and get away with.
What’s just adorable, is how they want to pin blame Garrosh for ordering the invasion of Gilneas even though Sylvanas is still the one who orchestrated it in its’ entirety, not Garrosh. Garrosh didn’t tell her to blight the city(in fact, he told her NOT to), nor did he say to slaughter innocents. All of that is COMPLETELY on her.
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Then again in Varian’s view, ALL of the Horde is a threat to the Alliance. Not that he was wrong.
I mean, I think he was just giving them the benfit of the doubt that time. But in hindsight, he was clearly 100% correct when he was poised to kill both Thrall and Sylvanas at the 1st battle for UC.
Which does not make her tactics any less of an unprovoked attack on Gilneas, and even worse, was Sylvanas actively breaking Horde laws.
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She was ordered to take Gilneas by her Warchief. Who saw Gilneas as a possible Alliance beachhead on the upper Eastern continent. Nations do fight wars of conquest, and they seldom seek approval of their enemies to do so.
That is all factual. And still something I see as wrong to do.
She was also ordered by no less than two of her Warchiefs to not use the plague, and she still broke orders to do it any way. So I don’t think the orders from a Warchief excuse holds up, not that it would be even acceptable in the first place.
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It’s called 1. commander’s discretion and 2. not following all of the orders from the top when I can get away with it, especially if those orders are clearly seen as intended to wipe out my people.
You can’t really argue that Sylvannas is obligated to allow Garoosh to do a Garithos on her people.
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Her use of the plague was well after she had already taken over the invasion and Garrosh was no longer around to waste the Forsaken. Her using the plague was still breaking Horde laws, and actually would have given Garrosh an excuse to kill all the Forsaken if found out:
- The master apothecary lifted up two bony fingers. "But if we could just use a… just a touch of the plague. Just to open a gap. Not even enough to do any— just a smudge! More to cause fear and panic than any actual—"
Garrosh’s backhand ripped through the sky, spraying the tent with a glistening arc of rainwater as it smashed into the side of Lydon’s face. The master apothecary reeled as if he’d been kicked by a horse, but by will alone managed to stay upright after the blow.
“If you’re suggesting using even an ounce of that filth that you’ve got hidden away, I will burn you and your sewer-city to the ground,” Garrosh grunted.
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No… the Gilneans themselves were. Forsaken by themselves are not overwhelming in physical force, especially against a well trained and ferocious defending fighting force.
Sylvannas wasn’t using the plague for funsies,or to twirl her evil elven eyebrows. It was essential and required to WIN that war.
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Your excusing her for not following orders undermines your excusing her for following orders. Neither would actually make what she did in Gilneas acceptable.
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God, I f$&#ing miss Garrosh.
Him I wanted to slowly hug to death.
Sylvanas, I just want to punch in the throat repeatedly until she can no longer speak.
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I’m not sure that the attack on Gilneas was entirely unprovoked or wrong. Gilneas was already in turmoil befor the horde enters there. It’s unstable because of the worgen that Greymane himself ordered to be summoned to use to fight the scourge, which is sort of morally grey. I can’t say if it was right or wrong for him to summon the worgen to fight his battle. I can’t say if it was right or wrong for the worgen to turn on him, or that it was right or wrong for the forsaken to ally with the worgen. I know that someone summoned me into a zombie apocalypse, and expected me to fight for them, I’d consider that a hostile action.
If the horde had reached out to Greymane and asked for access to his port in exchange for helping them eliminate the worgen instead, would that have been any morally better? I’m not sure. The worgen never asked to be summoned into a scourged blightland, and they had Darnassus as a common enemy.
As to how the war was waged after the worgen curse was under control- evacuees were attacked to divert gilnean fighting forces, so I guess if you want to say that’s evil, that’s fine. I don’t think they were meant to successfully wipe out the Gilneans.
My understanding is that the end of the worgen intro, where the city is being blighted, is simultaneous to the end of the Silverpine campaign, ( where we finish gathering the reageants that lethalize the blight) in which case, she allowed a retreat/escape before blighting the city. I really doubt that Gilneas was a genocide campaign.
It turned out that Arugal had been working for Alpha Prime the whole time:
Alpha Prime wanted to be out of his sleep prison in the Emerald Dream, so he was quite happy to be free.
This would have been absolutely morally better.
I think that was the entire point:
- Lady Sylvanas Windrunner says: What kind of question is that? Of course we're deploying the Plague as planned! Let the Gilneans enjoy their small victory. Not even their bones will remain by tomorrow.
Worgen intro happens before the Silverpine storyline, in that the Forsaken take Gilneas and Godrey dies towards the end of the Worgen intro, while the Silverpine storyline shows the Gilneans and the Alliance pushing the Forsaken out of Gilneas and the Forsaken raising Godrey in a last ditch effort to turn things around.
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Blame is something Alliance apologists like to deal in.
The fact is simple. It was Garrosh’s decision to invade Gilneas. That is not placing blame, it is stating a fact.
Chronicles later added the fact that Sylvanas coveted Gilneas and was eager to exploit the situation, as well as minimize her losses. That does not change the fact that Garrosh ordered it.
She did not engage in some Forsaken expansionism all her own. Had Voljin or Thrall or Cairne been Warchief… we can only guess from their personalities that they would not have ordered such an invasion to begin with.
This perspective is at least honest. Posters such as yourselves applaud the extra judicial nature of Genn’s attempt at vengeance.
You lament the fact that Sylvanas was not punished in the past for perceived slights, and use that lamentation as cause to attack her at will, and at any whim. Even after the Alliance and Horde brokered a peace and committed unified military action at the Broken Shore. Even if she is Warchief of the Horde.
I can understand that perspective. It tosses aside any false morality and admits the Alliance is nothing but mercenaries and vigilantes, with zero accountability. It makes Sylvanas’s case better than she could.
All that aside, the Horde was not attacking the Alliance at the Broken Shore or at Stormheim. At the very worst they abandoned the Alliance. Sylvanas did not rain arrows on the Alliance at the Broken Shore. She ditched them to save the Horde.
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Man, I love how you cut stuff out of context, the paragraphs IMMEDIATELY before what you quoted:
“But you can’t just send them right into the central breach in the wall,” Lydon continued. “It’s a… a chokepoint. Well fortified, closely watched. Heavy armored troops on horseback couldn’t maneuver through the breach: they’d be mown down by musketfire from the debris. Surely you can see—”
“Of course I see!” Garrosh answered. "The door is wedged open; now it must be kicked down. This is what your kind is good for." Now the warchief looked directly at the master apothecary, his cool eyes fixated on the pale yellow light that filled the latter’s eye sockets. "You’re already corpses, nearly impossible to kill. You flood the chokepoint, you open the way for the rest of the Horde to come through, fresh and eager. Rushing over a bridge of broken bodies if we have to. This is how fortifications are breached. How wars are won."
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You mean like you cut out the context of the conversation I was having with Drahliana?
If Garrosh was looking for a way to be rid of the Forsaken - and as you point out, he was - Sylvanas using the plague after seeing a vision of Garrosh threatening to burn down the Undercity if they even used a drop of the plague just put the Forsaken in as much unneeded risk from Garrosh as she just took over command of the invasion to prevent.
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Sorry, what I was referring to was the forsaken ships that attacked the evacuees (who were already out of the city). The intention behind those ships was to distract the gilnean forces so that the forsaken army could roll into Gilneas (at least I think this is what Sylvanas is talking about in edge of night). But they regroup into an army and come back to fight, retaking the city, which IMO makes them fair game to siege.
your right, I hate that this story is in so many parts.
It was a big complaint back in the day that to see the continuation of the Worgen storyline you actually had to play a Horde character.
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