Your Lore Hot-Takes

Lore Story Forum
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These hot-takes have been great, really enjoying seeing the variety here.

With that in mind, I’ve returned with more hot takes, fresh out the oven.

  • Calia Menethil is the best thing that has happened to the Forsaken in some time.
  • Elune being a member of the Life pantheon is actually a genius way of connecting all of the seemingly random plot-threads about her, such as her being lunar-themed, Light-related, and Nature/Life-related.
  • Becoming a villain was the most interesting thing to happen to Yrel’s character, there’s only so many times you can play out the same “lawful good paladin” trope with no strings attached.
  • Going back and doing “grounded” adventures where we fight bandits and small-time groups with no greater conflict would be disappointing, most fantasy doesn’t hit its stride until you reach the higher tiers of power and Warcraft is no exception.
  • Wrath of the Lich King’s story isn’t in the top 3 best expansion stories and it isn’t even close.
  • The Knaack books are entertaining reads and we should have seen more from characters like Rhonin and Krasus before they were killed off in books.
  • We don’t need to “put the WAR back in Warcraft”, the current story direction is honestly great, it would be disappointing to devolve the storytelling for the sake of making the narrative more macho.
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C’thun uplifted the Aqir that sprung him out of prison and turned them into the Qiraji. Y’shaarj was dead so he could not have turned the Aqir into the Mantid. The Mantid and the Nerubians were natural evolutions those Aqir experienced when they moved to Pandaria and Northrend respectively following the Aqir vs Troll war.

Can’t wait for Blizzard to try and explain exactly why Elune, a member of the Life Pantheon has a direct connection to the Naaru. Beings belonging to the Light cosmetic force.

Either that or they simply ‘forget’ (aka retcon) that the Tears of Elune reawakened Xe’ra’s core. Which will be the most likely outcome.

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When the Pantheon detected a titan in Azeroth, they missed the mark. They looked at this world, covered in Cthulhus and life and ick and stuff, and assumed it absolutely had to be a titan. The Pantheon hasn’t been shown to be all about investigating things (they totally missed Argus, Aman’thul just ripped Yshaarj out without considering the consequences, they waited way too long to figure out Sargeras was going bad and when they figured it out, they just tried to talk him out of being bad… I could go on). They see, and they do, and they just assume everything will work out fine in the end. And it probably usually does!! But this time, they missed the mark.

Azeroth is not a titan.

But Elune? Elune’s the Last Titan.

  • Titans use Arcane. Elune’s moony magic stuff is Arcane.
  • The titan doohickies from Legion went and included the Tear of Elune, and it worked just fine along with the other titan doohickies.
  • Titans shape life on planets to do their menial work? Elune helped shape the night elves (the WoE did most of the work), and made the moonkin to protect things for her and do other menial work for her.

Elune’s not a Naaru; they will gladly talk to you, and Elune doesn’t do that.

Elune’s not an Old God; I mean, they’re pretty weak on the divinity scale (we’ve killed three and a half ourselves) and Elune doesn’t appear to be weak. They’re also very bad at gifting power to their subjects beyond just making them elemental-empowered.

We don’t know enough about the divine representatives of Life and Fel (except for a heel turned titan) to really make a case here, and Elune’s definitely not an Eternal One.

So Elune’s probably the titular Last Titan of the upcoming expansion of the same name. Just hiding herself from the other titans probably because they’re all a bunch of jerks.

So what’s Azeroth?

A donkey. Azeroth is an immortal donkey stuck in the core of the planet with a megaphone, or maybe a chipmunk.

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Something has to be retconned, her characterization isn’t consistent within the cosmology. As it stands, nothing works, something has to be eliminated. The easiest thing to do is forget about all of that Elune/Naaru/Khadgar stuff, then everything that’s left points to Life deity.

Prediction: Elune is a (or the) Life/Nature deity that oversees a portion (or all) of the Lifelands, and she encountered the Titans at some point, and got along well enough with Eonar that she agreed to allow the Titans to carve out a little chunk/island of the Lifelands for use as the Emerald Dream. Eventually we’ll travel beyond the edges of the Dream and see the transition to the Lifelands proper and see Elune in an expansion.

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I actually have a theory about this - it’s relatively easy to link the moon to the Light, as the moon reflects sunlight.

As we see in Revendreth with the Light burning the vampire-like Venthyr, this wouldn’t be the first time that the Light has been used as a stand-in for normal light or sunlight.

As for the Life connection, there are numerous beliefs that state the phases and presence of the moon to have an effect on the body and mind. For Elune to be a Life goddess and be associated with the moon, is something that makes sense.

That brings the connecting link between Life and the Light, which doesn’t even take too much connecting. We already know that the Pantheons can have some overlap, with Eonar being Order-Life, Sargeras being Order-Chaos (though not initially), and the Winter Queen being Death-Life.

With that in mind, Elune being Life-Light is completely reasonable to expect.

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But to the extent that she could revive the Light Mother? The being rumored to be the First of the Naaru?

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I just don’t think this is true, this is some Yven-level wordplay. The cosmology has six forces, and they are fundamentally separate. The Shadowlands and its inhabitants are made of Death magic/particles and nothing else. The Winter Queen’s agreement with Life is just that: an agreement. It does nothing to change her fundamental nature as a being of Death.

There are no pantheon-deities that exist “between” forces, unless you’re a First One.

You are a being of the force that you were created from. Sargeras is an entity of Order, the Eternals of Death, the Void Lords of Void.

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I agree to an extent, but I think there is a definite overlap there. That said, it doesn’t change what these being fundamentally are. I think I phrased it poorly before.

The members of each Pantheon belong to their associated forces, but the proposed overlap is more of a secondary feature. Their primary element is whatever force they are, but the secondary can have some link to other forces, especially in cases with a thematic or narrative link.

Again pointing to Eonar, she has an undeniable Life motif, but she is fundamentally a being of Order. That said, she still has the ability to perform actions related to Life.

This would make Elune a Life entity, first and foremost, with the Light being a secondary feature.

This is also why I think that the Void is capable of creating Old Gods, I believe that there is likely a member of the Void/Shadow Pantheon that has Life as a secondary feature.

Honestly, maybe. With how much of a mystery Elune still is, the extent of her Light-related powers is something that has barely been elaborated on.

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:dracthyr_sweat:

wat.

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I agree with this one 100% I miss that fat bastard like you wouldn’t believe.

Sylvanas was always overrated, even prior to BfA and Shadowlands.

Yeah, but “Warchief Sylvanas” had a LOT of potential that I’m sad they squandered just to do Garrosh 2.0

Everything else you’ve said are the worst takes I’ve ever heard and I feel like you’re just trying to be edgy.

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I would say there is a BIG different in securing the Bell to make sure it never be used again(Jaina was there when Varian declared all Sha based weapon will never be used by the Alliance) and stealing weapons to use for your war. I would also point out, Dalaran decided at that point to be the new Blue Dragons and make sure no one abuses magical items. I would say that would be part of Dalaran’s agenda to make sure the bell never be stolen/used by anyone, including the Alliance.

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So did Warchief Vol’jin. Particularly how he became a focal character in MoP. But Blizzard did nothing with him in WoD and he was killed off early into Legion just so Sylvanas could be Warchief.

Although I do agree that making Sylvanas Warchief should have been interesting. Taking someone who prefers to scheme in the shadows and thrusting them into the spotlight would be an interesting way to explore their character beyond their hatred of someone who wronged them. Which outside of the conflict with Gilneas in Cata… we rarely saw. Even her internal monologue in Before the Storm shows that she would rather return to the schemer in the shadows instead of having her every action be questioned. She also wondered why Vol’jin gave her the mantle.

But then Shadowlands came along and revealed that her becoming Warchief was something she knew would happen one way or another so /shrug.

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Ok. Here’s my hot take, that isn’t even a hot take.

It’s a prediction.

Except no, because a prediction can be wrong, and this isn’t wrong. This is not a prediction.

This is my hot take spoiler for the World Soul Saga. And it’s something I bet someone else already said, but I’m’a be more long-winded with it because that’s my thing.

Azeroth is not a titan.

Azeroth is a world soul.

That makes no sense, right? Like, obviously all titans start out as world souls, so if Azeroth is a world soul, she must be a titan!! Because Chronicles says…

Actually, Chronicles doesn’t say. We just know the titans start off as world souls and then become titans when they grow up and hatch or whatever.

It doesn’t say all world souls HAVE to be titans. Just that all titans got their start as world souls.

So follow me down this conspiracy rabbit hole that will absolutely be the new canon going forward because my 10000% accurate predicting prediction powers are firing off.

So let’s start with Zereth Mortis and that raid I don’t remember the name of, because if we’re gonna go down the rabbit hole, we might as well race to the bottom. Here we see the 3d printed bodies of the Eternal Ones, specifically their prototypes and an Eternal One husk we eventually help Pelagos climb into. People were up in arms that Divine Beings were just 3d printed robots, but that’s clearly not the case; PelArbiter needed to combine a soul with the shell. The shells “printed” in ZM are, by implication, just a means for these divinities to have a physical form.

We know where PelArbiter’s soul came from. But we don’t know where the other Eternal Ones’ souls came from.

So moving on but sticking to Shadowlands, we have the oddity of two words being uttered; “my sister”. Elune is the Winter Queen’s sister?! How does that even work?? Elune’s not a death god at all, the Miss Winter has a whole pantheon of semi-siblings, so how could Elune and the Winter Queen even be sisters?

So. Over to Void Lords and their fetish for a world soul.

The Void Lords really want to corrupt a titan, because that would be the ultimate bad. Right? But we never see them actually try to corrupt a titan; just world souls. No void whispers telling Eonar about how cool the Curse of Flesh is and maybe she should do that. And given the Void Lords’ plan to corrupt a fetal titan can best be described as “throw a bunch of Cthulhus into space and hope that maybe one to four of them maybe finds a baby titan and maybe can corrupt it all nicely,” you’d think it’s because no other options work.

So. A lot of different conclusions could be drawn from all of this, but I only like this one, so it’s my absolutely correct spoiler for all of you.

World souls are not prenatal titans. World souls are super powerful mega souls. These souls naturally tend to favor one cosmic force over another, but they aren’t all just Order-aligned pre-Titans. Some will be, and probably the world souls favoring Order have a better chance of “hatching” (Life-aligned would be more inclined not to hatch so life on them can continue to grow, Death-aligned ones tend to… Die, Disorder tends to be too chaotic, so forth)

Elune and Winter Queen? They’re two world souls of planets in the same solar system. Hense why they’re sisters.

Why do the Void Lords want a world soul instead of a Titan? Because they can format it to Void and have themselves an actual useful agent working on the material realm towards their goals, which would be very bad because the Void’s “counter force” in the Light doesn’t have a similar being.

Eternal Ones? ZM-printed bodies, but what powers them are world souls. Possibly dead world souls.

Argus? “Born” a titan because at the end of the day, it was a titan who formatted him (Sargeras) and the only way Sargeras knew to make him a fellow Fel Titan was to stuff Fel into him, and similarly with Death.

Why is Azeroth so damn special? Because so far she’s undergone formatting by Order and Void, looked over by whatever Elune is, tied to the Emerald Dream (Life), repeatedly invaded by (infused by?) Fel, and I’m sure Light fits in there somewhere. And yet she seems to have a very effective immune system (adventurers) that repels all recent attempts to forcefully guide her development. My guess, and this one IS a guess, is that Azeroth’s immune system exists so when she hatches, she isn’t aligned to a single cosmic force, but to all of them.

So World Souls are fetal divinities, but not always titans. They can be forcefully aligned to one cosmic force, but tend to just go their own way. And Azeroth will become her own Mary Sue thing that can use all cosmic forces safely.

That’s my theory. My game theory!!

EDIT: oh gosh, this is rambly. I should maybe go to bed soon.

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I know it looks bad, but these are my actual opinions.

Was partially hoping they wouldn’t look too bad if everyone else had comparatively hot takes.

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We are each free to our own beliefs and views.

Jaina having good intentions, doesn’t shy away from the hypocrisy of the matter. To be honest, if Jaina had housed the artifact within Dalaran itself and took measures to prevent anyone from claiming it, then I could easily more accept the matter. The Sunreaver betrayal would have even made for sense as to why she took it so personally and the Dalaran citizens siding with the Silver Covenant over protesting the assault against the Sunreavers.

In that scenario Jaina firmly established the Kirin Tor was keeping a dangerous artifact out of both the hands of the Alliance and the Horde, and the citizens could have seen the matter as the Sunreavers bringing the war to Dalaran. It still wouldn’t be fair (Horde players enter the Purge with Silver Covenant just attacking Sunreavers with the later having no idea what’s going on and then we see a blood elf fed to a shark), but the renegade few do ruin things for the majority.

However instead the Divine Bell was housed in Darnassus, where Jaina joined the war effort in established defenses that caught Horde agents per her own admission, and then acted high and mighty when other members of the Kirin Tor (Sunreaver Hellscream loyalists) made the decision to join the war effort against her.

Side note: I am kind bummed that no one ever realized that Garrosh had played them. After all Jaina discovered a portal leading back to Dalaran when the Divine Bell was directly sent to Silvermoon, while Horde champions took a portal to Domination Point.

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My counterview is I doubt Tyrande would have trusted the bell anywhere in Dalaran, considering there are Horde in said city. And unless Jaina was willing to go to war with Tyrande, I doubt she would have much choice but to make sure the Bell could not be used by anyone.

Even without this it would make sense why she took it so personally. It is simply a whole “fool me one, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me”. The Alliance got to talk to Jaina before the bell and she was 100% willing to give peace a second try only for the divine bell to happen.

I am actually curious about this considering Warcrimes unequivocally mentions that at least one Sunreaver was to blame(and this was Anduin’s internal thought, so I doubt he was lying). So, was it retconned, or do people know Garrosh had a hand but probably don’t care because ultimately the Sunreavers did have a hand in it/any trust was broken at that point?

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It is widely considered that Garrosh used his loyalist in the sunreavers, the same guy who developed the mana bomb that was used on Theramore iirc to cause the purge. Knowing that the Blood Elves were seeking to defect to the Alliance. Considering that Jaina did not know about the backdoor dealings between Lor’themar and Varian until after the fact, it was a perfect ploy to cause friction between the Alliance and the Blood elves.

Basically forcing the Blood Elves to continue siding with the Horde. Now how Garrosh would’ve acquired such knowledge, if the speculation is indeed true, no-one knows. But it is a possibility that Garroshs’ blood elf loyalist might have been in on the dealings between Varian and Lor’themar. Speaking of which. That guy disappeared following War Crimes and is now in lore limbo. Also there is no in-game evidence that Thalen Songweaver (Garroshs’ loyalist within the sunreavers) was involved in the theft of the Divine Bell but he most likely did have a role to play in it.

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Anyway my actual hot take.

THe Garrosh Cutscene in Shadowlands was the lowest point of that character and I have no idea why anyone in their right mind saw it as the one Redeeming thing of that expansion when everything in that expansion was set up to pull that character out from the writer’s Chopping Block they thrust him on to.

Garrosh is a Living Monument to wasted Potential. His Greatest moments in Cataclysm was a mistake or a miscommunication. His character arch in Pandaria ignored literally any part of his TBC backstory. The character flipped from Brick Stupid to Machiavellian depending on the writer and the story. Nothing about him was coherent and it was all steered into making him the ultimate villain.

And then after all that they spent all that time trying to tell us “Oh but this was the worst version of him! In every other Timeline he was SO COOL” and it’s like “Thanks, would have loved to have seen that.”

Then they set up a perfect scenario to yank him out of the hole they shoved him in, and then used it to have him jump into the forever-dead-for-good furnace and chuck weak digs at Thrall all the while.

my biggest /golfclap at the absolute wet fart of an ending to that character.

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Hard disagree. It actually calls back to it the most. I mean the sha realms Y’shaarj ends you and Garrosh into are filled with sha that match Garroshs’ emotional state prior to Thrall showing up and slapping him around. Those being

Doubt: Garrosh was going to be the leader of the Mag’har once Greyah died. He doubted if he could be a strong leader considering what his father did.
Fear: Garrosh feared that if he was given a position of leadership, he would repeat the same mistakes his father did. Shall we say… dabbling in powers beyond reckoning?
Despair: The two above combined made Garrosh fall into depression. Who is he but the son of a coward and traitor? The Orc with the “iron will” that willingly became a slave for more power. Not once but twice (although tbf Garrosh had no idea about the whole Cenarius relapse).

Now these realms happen to be locations that the Sha attacked but there is a reason why those three were chosen instead of say the Shado-pan Monastery for either Violence or Hatred. Even Garrosh himself says so, “See the visions of Fear, Despair and Doubt as I have!”. To give some credit, these do pop up again when Thrall makes Garrosh Warchief, but Thrall assures him that he is in good hands with advisors like Carine, Vol’jin and Eitrigg. And we know how all of those ended up. Garroshs warmongering in the wake of the Cataclysm caused Cairne to challenge him. Vol’jin gave him a death threat since Garrosh was demanding respect instead of having earned it. Did not help that the two had already butted heads during the Cata pre-patch event. Garrosh would later surround himself with yes men like Malkarok. Hell the intro to the Twilight Highlands has an orc praise Garrosh for sending his forces to attack three Alliance ships. Leaving themselves exposed to a counter attack. Which happens when the Twilight Dragonflight attack them.

Garroshs desire to control the Sha was routed in ensuring that no orc falls into the same pitfalls that he did. It is why he sought out things like the Divine Bell and later the Heart of Y’shaarj. When Thrall showed him the vision of Grommash Hellscream killing Mannoroth, it placed a false sense of Pride in Garrosh. Garrosh believed that because his father had redeemed himself, that extended to him as well. It is why Garrosh turns the Tusks of Mannoroth into armor. Did he kill Mannoroth? No. So what right does he have to do that? This false sense of pride is tested by Taran Zhu. Who calls Garrosh out for doing exactly what he feared he would do. Repeat the sins of his father. Just this time it was not some demon but an Old God. And instead of realizing this, Garrosh doubles down. Claiming he does not answer to anyone. Not Thrall, not Vol’jin and not Taran Zhu. He then preseeds to resurrect Y’shaarj via the Pools of Power. (side note, I like to imagine that this happened at the Terrance of Endless Springs since canonically, that is in the Vale and is the Heart of the Pools of Power). This enables the Sha of Pride to finally manifest into a physical form. Just as Garrosh throws away Gorehowl, the weapon of his family to take up an Old God knock off. His negative character arc is now complete.

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That’s cool and all but I feel that someone who lived for almost his entire pre-WoW Life in the shadow of his father’s greatest shame and the isolation that came from it would have been all the misery one would have had to experience to know that external powers are never good

With all the experience colelctively the forces of Azeroth had to contend with, to be as cagey as he was about Demonic powers for fear of tainting their Orcish purity to then turn around and say Old God juice was A-OK is peak “plot serving gameplay.” It can be as pretty and poetic as it was, it made zero sense for that character with his dispositions on corruptive magic.

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