#She gets it from Vol'jin's side

[theaceofskulls]

Fixing WoW's Modern Story: BFA

Got stuck the other day thinking about World of Warcraft story fixes and I've got to get it out of my head.

It began with me thinking of how I've come around to how the faction conflict was handled in Legion, where a complete misunderstanding and actions taken led to two specific members being the ones to duke it out and it shifted into an entire rewrite of BFA and SLands with a quick detour at the start to Legion.

Anyways let's start.

There's very little I'd change about the main story of Legion to be honest (but I have opinions on zones and class halls). But I think the major thing I'd change to start out is not killing Vol'jin.

It feels like it was done for parity because that's something that the community and blizzard at the time were obsessed with. If something bad happens to one side, the other has to get an equal black eye. But it was clear that Varian was the focus with getting Sylvanas into the Warchief seat as the other driving force and I feel like it undercuts a lot of potential down the line.

So to change, he still gets stabbed, he still nominates Sylvanas to take over due to Loa whispers, but instead he's now in a coma. And to add to it, the Horde starts trying everything but his condition keeps worsening. This furthers the bad blood between the two factions as rumors about dark magics being practiced by the Orcs, Trolls, Blood Elves (letting them be edgy again), and even the undead are reaching the Alliance. This also gives the other leaders something more tangible to be working on than the assumption that they're just fighting the Legion elsewhere.

We end things mostly the same way, with Azerite being a thing from the wound but we're going to change some stuff. The big stinger though isn't the goblins mining, it's news that Vol'jin has awoken.

Now onto BFA.

First up, I'm doing this as a fix it, not a replace it, meaning I still want this to be a Faction War xpac with a void twist. But we're going to do some massive changes to get there.

Acknowledging fan discussions done to death by this point, everyone is correct and it's the most common items mentioned: Teldrissal burning is too far and the Alliance has to be the ones to strike first in order for it to play out.

However, we're going to make some changes to things.

First up, let's go to Vol'jin who has come back into things. Sylvanas will attempt to hand over the title of Warchief to him, but he declines, saying that she lead them through the Legion invasion and deserves to command the armies of the Horde. Before anyone can say anything, he then states that the Horde must change and that it will no longer be ruled by a Warchief, but by a new leader. Title pending here but let's go with True Chief.

This rankles some people but others want Vol'jin back. Sylvanas steps back, complicated expression on her face. Vol'jin sees the Azerite found and decides it's time to start mining to fix the damage done by the Legion and to empower the horde. It should be noted that there's a little bit of a mystery on whether or not Vol'jin is benevolent on his return or if there's hidden plans. We'll lean into that later.

Meanwhile the Alliance is now confronted with multiple new items. The Horde emerged from Legion strong. Tyrande fumbled the Nightborne who are looking to join the Horde along with the Highmountain, though they have been bolstered by Alleria and Turalyon, both of whom have opinions on the Blood Elves, the Undead, the Orcs (with the Lightforged also taking some particular umbrage), Theramore, and Genn's reports about the Broken Shore and the mysteries of Vol'jin's recovery.

We make a point here to start to address the concept of the Alliance and what it means and whether Anduin should even be the leader of it. The reports of Azerite being mined add to the fire, as do reports of undead activity (more on that later).

Rather than copying Makani's homework here regarding the undead-be-gone (though it's a great option to also stick here), this does eventually lead to a conflict that escalates to Lordaeron after Blight stores are detonated too close to Gilneas during one of the border conflicts.

One thing that players discover that they're unable to share in time for the battle however is that both alliance troops and forsaken involved in a couple of these conflicts seem... wrong. And some of the damage to the surrounding area doesn't seem like it was the Blight.

Before we get to that we're going to rework Before the Storm into here with some minor tweaks because I like Calia and elements of that story enough to keep and because I'm trying not to toss too much here.

However, a couple of important details here. First up, Sylvanas reveals that despite Vol'jin's proclamation, there have been troop movements in the eastern kingdoms that she hasn't been informed of, including some forsaken, so when Calia appears and the council begins forming, she begins to panic. However, before she does anything, someone else kills the Menethal princess with an arrow that disappears in a puff of black smoke. One of the undead in attendance claims Sylvanas planned this all along to complete her revenge on the family that wronged her, but in the aftermath this undead is not among the captured or dead and no one can identify them.

The Battle for Lordaeron happens. On the Alliance side, we see Anduin take to the field to try and solidify his hold on the fracturing Alliance. During the battle, he is overwhelmed by oddly powerful soldiers after being separated. With his sword knocked from his hand, he tries to reach out for the light only for a darker power to answer, obliterating his foes to his horror. The Light still answers him and he tries to push past this as he regroups with his allies.

On the horde side, we fight a losing battle as something is stopping teleportation magic from working. We suspect it to be Jaina when she's revealed, but the times don't match up. Blood Elf reinforcements along with Nightborne who traveled with them show up but it's not enough to turn the tide of the focused Alliance. As those inside prepare for a last stand, not sure that they would be able to surrender, Blight begins to erupt from the ground. Sylvanas denies this to be her fault to Saurfang (who had been sent with an advance force to hold out), but it's clear he doesn't believe her and at this point it's not clear if she's telling the truth. Eagle eyed players noticed some horde soldiers leaving the battle to retreat underground during the middle portion of the battle before a general retreat inside was sounded.

The alliance manages to teleport away to the surprise of the Horde. While they confirm it's working, they'll never be able to get everyone to the silvermoon gate in time. This is when we see the airships of the Horde arrive, allowing escape just in time.

Vol'jin takes the news poorly as Lorthemar and Thalyssra attempt to console Sylvanas who is fuming about losing her home. It's revealed at this point that a shipment of Azerite was raided, with signs pointing towards the draenei and night elves. Vol'jin declares that he won't have enemies in Kalimdor any more, but promises Baine that he will show mercy to them if they surrender after he objects. Baine is given command to ensure this, enraging Sylvanas who should as Warchief and who is still upset over Lorderaon.

We move towards Teldrassil now, though Alliance players are allowed to learn that the shipment raid is suspicious as it seems to have come from Theramore and the Azerite has vanished completely. An investigation was launched but the ships vanished along the way. Something is wrong but the World Tree is in danger and we have to move to save it.

This battle is more solidly in the side of the Horde. Most of the Alliance's attempts to fight back fail unexpectedly. Dwarven and gnomish ammo and machinery is missing or damaged. Darkshore's nature seems to be working against them for some reason. The Vindicaar is experiencing malfunctions. Something is wrong and it's quickly apparent the battle is lost.

Malfurion stays to buy time for an evacuation but is beaten and captured (I'm not killing him in this because while Night Elves won't suffer as much, I'm not doing that after Ysera went down. Nelves still have to take a black eye but don't worry we'll do better by you before the xpac is over). Unfortunately, not everyone gets out.

True to his word at least, Vol'jin spares those left behind, but Teldrassil is occupied by the Horde. We're going to have some small raiding adventures later for the alliance to rescue people, including some smaller named Nelves to give the feeling of fighting back and a little bit of underdog love to it down the line.

At this point though, it's clear, it's open war now.

We still need our navy plot line but we're heading into this with one big change: It's clear to players who have been following along that someone is pulling the strings.

(Quick aside, we're just going to have the allied races be left alone. I'm gonna be typing too much anyways here and I want them in)

So we'll start with the Horde.

We still have Talanji approach the Horde and honestly we still have Rokhan be one of the primary characters there too along with Nathanos. We're going to edit up the leveling story but this is gonna be a long post so I don't have time for that here. We do raise the question of how relationships will work out between Vol'jin and Rasatakhan all things considered but we're mostly keeping some stuff the same.

When we get to the war campaign, we still have Sylvanas raise Deryk and Baine still gets pissy and eventually sends him to Kul Tiras, but Vol'jin shuts down the plan to use him as a hostage but doesn't condemn Sylvanas for raising him. She does it as she feels she's losing control of the military and isn't actually in command in anything but name and wanted to enact a scheme. She's also concerned that several of her soldiers appear to be MIA or have disobeyed commands.

This culminates in her killing Zelling under the belief of him being a traitor when it comes out that he's the one who alerted Baine to her scheme. Baine is disgusted but it's not enough to make him quit the Horde but he demands she face justice. Vol'jin points out that as Warchief it's in her rights but chastises her as well.

Meanwhile this sets up more conflict between her and Saurfang where the players will eventually pick a side but it's less of an obvious "pick the resistance or the clearly evil tyrant".

Meanwhile on the alliance side we're making some more changes this time around. Sure the fact that Sylvanas isn't in charge changes a lot of the war campaign, but for this side we're starting with some immediate stuff.

The first thing of note is that the theme of Kul Tiras is going to be different. It needs to be about the Alliance being a force of building and healing rather than just gathering up the different nations together to fight together. It still does that part but one big thing is to work on how your actions make peoples' lives better.

(Note: I am primarily a horde player but part of my fix-it for this xpac involves examining the alliance and its justification for continuing to exist after the faction conflict is over. This is not a "The Alliance needs to be the good guys" because trust me that's not going to happen)

Most of the zones need just slight tweaking but Drustvar is where I'm setting my sights on fixing things. Drustvar is so disconnected and while I enjoy it, it also could use some extra touch ups.

To do that, the Drust are just flat out going to be pointed out as a result of a flare up of Death magic. We're gonna do better setup for the next xpac and we're not going to have them be a weird afterthought. We could also maybe use a lore character to weave into here to explore that rather than leaving them until the end but again runtime on this post is too long here, let's keep moving. (I'd pick Vereesa to get her into a story about Theramoore here and have her do something a little more relevant for once)

We do need to weave in more Ghuun things into Kul'Tiras for the raid to make sense though. That's important. We'll eventually have Anduin learn about it and task the players with taking care of it as he's concerned about the Void stuff that keeps popping up.

Going to the war campaign, we're going to work on it in a number of ways. First up, the stuff you don't see on the Horde side is going to appear over there. Horde players will learn about the San'layn and the blood elves using Anima (pandaria era). The San'layn are going to hint that they're throwing in with the horde because events in Icecrown are unfolding.

What we're going to add here is Telaamon as a rising star in the Lightforged army and we're going to have him butting heads with Velen who is looking at finally healing in the wake of the victory over the Legion. Since a large amount of Draenei are vindictaars, more and more have been joining the ranks of the Lightforged, and Telaamon is firmly in the hawk faction of the Alliance at this point, having learned more about Draenor and is furious. Velen is worried that his time has come to an end and that he should step down and let another lead.

In both Kul'Tiras and Zandalar, we're going to have some of those Azerite zones not just have people trying to harvest it, but we'll also have some void stuff going on as an attempt to corrupt it. That's just to hammer home for people who have somehow missed it where we're heading.

We have some patch content to go through now.

Calia has her stuff alongside Deryk but Voss is less... admiring (I charitably considered it shippy but it always came off more as "the rightful heir" until they attempted to change course in SL). Xal'atath is still let go but not due to Sylvanas. In fact this is probably the time to actually have some void elf specific content come up.

We have a couple of reports on the alliance side that the Zandalari fleet is sinking ships, but Shaw and Flynn don't find anything true to that after digging but the ships are missing.

With Vol'jin not dead we instead do a little more with Talanji and him as characters as a questline. Vol'jin will by this point have been a little more aggro than players were expecting and will acknowledge that himself, wondering if the stress has gotten to him.

Quick side trip, let's address Arathi. We're still keeping that warzone but we're building it up more. We're pointing out that the hawk faction is supporting the reconstruction and emphasizing the fact that this was where Before the Storm went down. With the Wildhammer Dwarves and the Arathi Kingdom on the rise, Vol'jin authorizes fighting there, while Anduin is concerned about the human kingdoms splitting. He meanwhile tasks you with finding out who killed Calia. Players will discover an undead corpse, thoroughly corrupted by void magic.

Dazaralor still unfolds though during setup we have Telaamon fight against Saurfang and dies facing the orc but not before rattling him about his actions in the past (because I like that one bit of his story). This eventually deepens his feud with Sylvanas but it's also to allow us to air out the scars the factions have against each other.

Rastakhan is killed, Talanji declares vengeance and things seem worse than ever.

Lastly we have Darkshore with the Night Warrior as a rescue mission (and attempted retaking of the tree, and while the latter isn't successful, we do free Malfurion).

We move to the next patch and we've got to address both of the zones.

Mechagon starts up not because "Bwhaha, I will rule the surface world" but because all of the void corruption that has led to the King deciding that the curse of flesh must absolutely be undone right now.

Mostly things unfold the same way but we fix that zone to be vastly more interesting outside of the dungeon or just make it into just the dungeon.

Nazjatar is a lot different however. Well mostly it's the same. Azshara schemes to get our artifact power to fully free N'Zoth and kill him in one blow but we're doing something fun:

Inciting incident is that both sides have received reports of a giant island of azerite and both rush to get there first. We're keeping the boat the same but we're not having Nathanos leave since this isn't a trap set up by him and Sylvanas. However here's where a lot of the characters learn about the void saboteurs that have invaded their armies and been egging on this war.

While Nathanos and Genn both still want to continue the conflict, when both of them realize that the conflicts that started this fight were done by agents of their own nations with Genn realizing that Gilneas is at risk of being consumed consumed by the void and Nathanos realizing that so much of his queen's suffering has been caused by Azshara's meddling, the two are convinced by their allies to parley. For now.

Btw, the raid happens similarly, and Azshara lives in the same way. Because I love her and support women's wrongs.

Meanwhile, since Saurfang isn't in exile (I don't know what to do with Zappy Boi in this fix but I'm not too concerned with sitting down and figuring out what to do with him since his character seems to begin and end with Saurfang), we need someone else to pull Thrall out of Outlands because we might want him down the line.

And here's where I put Anduin, who has been losing control of the Alliance as the hawk side has begun to really take over as the war has gone on. I'm also using this to parallel down the line for the War Within because let's assume we planned that far ahead.

Anduin goes there in part to try and get someone who Vol'jin respects to tell him about the dangers he's discovered. As the conversation unfolds, Anduin questions if he should just give up the High King position. Thrall realizes the parallel with his own decision to give up the Warchief position to Garrosh, looking to the distance in Nagrand at where the duel in the alternate universe took place. He tells Anduin he regrets the pain he allowed to happen by letting the Horde be led by those who only want war and the atrocities committed because he felt he couldn't be the one to lead it. Both of them leave determined to put an end to the Fourth War.

The Horde players get to have a Saurfang vs Sylvanas questline here as Sylvanas begins executing various people very publicly all of a sudden and the players are asked to pick a side.

Saurfang's side uncovers that Sylvanas has been deteriorating over the course of the war, egged on by the factions own hawk faction such as Gallywix (who has decided to encourage the Warchief in order to help sell more weapons and keep the azerite profits coming), Talanji (mourning her father), Geya'rah (since we don't edit the allied quests too much she's still convinced the alliance is outright evil), and a couple of the sub leaders. Moreover, he learns the Vol'jin isn't blind to the various plots and schemes we see throughout the war campaign and that he's allowing the executions. Saurfang realizes at this point that the Horde will always be at war and feels that the very position of Warchief is to blame, with some shots of him seeing Sylvanas in the same light as the Lich King and shots of his dead son scattered throughout it.

He comes to a decision: he must eliminate the Warchief position somehow if they are to break free from this and finally find peace, with his talk about how honor is a lie being given to someone other than Anduin.

(Sorry I'm robbing anduin of a dad, but he collects those like pokemon)

Sylvanas supporters meanwhile get to see the full nature of how everything was manipulated by the void and learn her executions are targeting void agents. However we also get to learn that there's movements in Icecrown and Sylvanas has been receiving psychic messages from what she believes to be the Lich King, terrifying her. She confides in the player that she has seen the other side and can't die or be enslaved again. We see hints of the death magic radiating off her.

Both of these quests end with Saurfang publicly challenging Sylvanas to Mak'Gora for the position of Warchief with the duel taking place later.

Swapping to the Alliance side, Anduin summons his council. We frame the shot to very clearly show the hawk side is in the majority by this point. Notably, Genn is still among this side. Anduin reveals his findings that the war has been manipulated by agents of the void and Azshara. This is going to be one of those "hard to place if it comes before the raid" type cutscenes so we don't mention Nzoth being freed by this point.

Night Warrior Tyrande points out that while the war may have started under false pretenses, the Horde still hold Teldrassil and still threaten the Alliance as well as how much losses have been incurred by all up to this point. Jaina is the one to break the silence that follows, speaking of her experience back in her home and stating that the scars we gain don't define us, but how we choose to move forward. That continuing to suffer helps no one. She stands by Anduin but most of the hawk faction continues to hold their ground.

Tyrande asks if this want for peace is an order from the High King, asks directly if she and her people, and gestures towards the others, if their people should heed his commands because of his lineage. Another silence follows.

Anduin speaks up sorrowfully and asks "What is the Alliance for? Is it a weapon to strike back against those that wronged us? Is it a shield we only turn to when there are enemies before us? Are we united only by hate, strangers to each other when that is gone? Are we just soldiers who fight alongside each other? Was I a fool to think we were friends and family".

We show several members of the hawks looking to one another. Moira gazes away from the meeting, towards Magni who is waiting a bit away, watching apprehensively. We see a bandaged Mekkatorque looking towards the other members of the three hammers. We see Genn look at Anduin, squeeze his eyes shut before opening them again and striding forward to put a hand on his shoulder.

"We are here for one another when they need us."

Moira comes forth joined by the other two, "We move forward together."

Malfurion looks at his wife and daughter and moves over to Anduin, a look of small surprise on their faces before saying "Together, we protect this world and those that live in it"

Shandris looks at her mother and joins the rest of the others as the slowly drift towards the other side. Squeezing her eyes shut for a second, she opens them and moves forward herself, asking "well then, what path would you have us follow?"

Anduin shakes his head, "Not follow." He gestures to those around him and says "We shall lead our people forward. For the Alliance. For Azeroth."

A smile crosses Tyrande's face only to be interrupted by a messenger bursting into the room with a message, from Vol'jin. The gathered members turn together to hear what he has to say.

(Unfortunately I'm working still within WoW story constraints here so we can't actually sit down and plan what the new direction of the Alliance would be and we still have to have grand but vague gestures to illustrate that everyone is now on the same page but that it's from a position of strength. The forums will still hate it but I don't respect them enough to care).

The duel arrives, and we see a gathered crowd. The horde leadership is seated on a small platform, watching the empty arena apprehensively. As we cut to shots of Sylvanas and Saurfang preparing, a figure approaches the leadership from the side, making his way past the seated leaders, those noticing him showing their surprise on their face. Vol'jin fails to notice as he's observing the arena too closely until the voice shakes him from it.

"Mind if I sit here?" Thrall asks, depositing a chair next to the stunned but slightly gladdened troll.

The two exchange some words but Thrall becomes serious and says "We need to talk. About the Horde."

Their conversation is interrupted by the duel's start. During the battle, which is less one sided but not as much as you'd expect, Saurfang declares to Sylvanas that these wars must end, that the Horde must change. From Sylvanas's side we hear whispers that we can't make out. She blocks one of Saurfang's overhanded blows with her daggers easily and begins to push an advantage, stating that all she's ever done is to protect everyone and that they don't understand the true danger out there. (I'm sorry to those of you scarred by this from the actual story but we're going to have to still keep some vague gesturing right now)

Saurfang rallies, and if we somehow kept Zappy Boi, we'll have the two of them exchange looks before he manages a solid blow and gives her that stupidly small scar. She's knocked to the ground and Saurfang tells her to give up and that she can still serve the horde, but not as Warchief.

We're gonna copy paste the "Serve" bit from the Sanctum of Domination cutscene here, with Sylvanas rising up, whisps of dark energy gathering on her arms. Saurfang closes his eyes regretfully and prepares to charge for the killing blow as the undead elf extends her hand with the expected line of "I will never serve!"

"For the Hord-" We have our blast and Saurfang is dead to the shock and horror of everyone including Sylvanas though she's the quickest to shake it off, loudly proclaiming those in attendance to be blind and that she will be the one to save them before taking off.

Thrall questions if it was void magic only for Vol'jin to say it was something else. Something familiar.

After Saurfang's funeral, Thrall approaches Vol'jin to tell him he needs to end this war, to focus on the true enemy, N'zoth. Vol'jin gets angry with Thrall and during the conversation we see evidence that Vol'jin has a little bit of that void in him, though in a moment of realization, he loudly shouts that this isn't him, and it is expelled by a wave of force. The shadowy figure that emerges from the discarded void energies remarks it's a pity but that all will serve soon enough anyways.

Thrall asks if his friend is alright, and Vol'jin states that he's got one last enemy to fight but afterwards, things need to change. The two nod and say their "For Azeroth"s together before Vol'jin summons a messenger and says he needs to tell something to the Alliance.

Anduin still punches Wrathion cause we gotta though we show the king trying to manage the void corruption with some light magic. Unfortunately 8.3 plays out mostly the same but I'll have N'zoth trapped in the dagger rather than killed outright with the dagger taken by the Light or something at the end.

God that's a massive post. We'll get a part 2 for Shadowlands.

[citrusbunnies]

i love the trope of like magic weapons leaving cool colorful scars like demon hunters having green scars not just from their transformation but from demons theyve fought maybe green black ones like the one on vol'jin? scars from frost enchanted weapons having a blue shimmer and a red one from flame ones or maybe burns from magical fire that shimmer in the light or still burn occasionally like the magic that hit them is still trying to burn them, scars or wounds on forsaken or death knights glowing with the ghostly blue that the lich king is shown to be represented, a different blue than frost scars, by like a permanent reminder of whos service they were once unwillingly tied to, or the scars from nature attacks like solar flare and lunar strike glittering under their respective celestian entity, or scars from the magic like vining puncture scars from vines entwining a druids hands before entangling roots are cast or mages hands being not perfectly flawless like people joke but layered with glittering marks that only show at the right angles from messed up spells or ones too powerful for them to have cast at the time or shamans with magic burns or sharp cuts on their arms from winds kicking up debris and water slicing them at speeds great enough to cut the armor of their enemies that missed a little and hit them too and from restless elementals or people like jaina and kadghar who went grey from exposure to greater amounts of mana than their bodies were supposed to handle their eyes shine purple from the raw arcane in the right light or when casting more powerful spells or tyrande with oh so faint scars slightly darker than the rest of her from where the dark spots from her taking on more of the night warriors power to try and kill sylvanas and and night elf in range if their eyes ever return to normal theyre darker like the new moon still holds them in her hand and speaking of sylvanas her with the great wound from frostmourne in the center of her chest, blue and ice cold to the touch and glittering with necromantic magic no matter how close to the fire she sits, a place she carefully covers with her armor no matter how skimpy it appears she makes sure to cover that spot because she tolerates no weakness especially not from herself, blood elves with ghost blue scars from the blades and claws of the horrors that attacked quel'thalas, night elves with green tinged scars from the fel influences that refuse to leave their forests, and scars from the old gods that seem more purple and black than should be possible without an infection but none show symptoms and the odd scars from the minions of the old gods maybe make people hesitate to be as helpful as they would otherwise because if they left odd scars maybe they left some madness too, anduin and other holy people like priests and paladins and especially the lightforged, their scars tend to heal with a golden tinge like the light itself is intervening to keep them safe, maybe healing from different sources leaves wounds healed oddly like holy healing maybe making someone glitter for a while, not permanently unless it was a bad enough injury to scar even with magic but for a few hours, nature healing leaves someone finding leaves and flowers in strange places, someone with a head wound finding a flower in their hair or leaves dropping off someones shoulder or side after they move once healed and scarred wounds leaving bark growing like the nature magic is trying to protect them from getting hurt again idk im having so much fun coming up with ideas for all of these so maybe expect more later

[eighthdoctor]

How seriously does Sylvanas take her job as Warchief? Is she only trying to do a good job because keeping the position gives her more power to protect the Forsaken? Does she even care about any of the Horde races besides the Forsaken and sin'dorei?

In order: Very seriously, yes, and no.

Let me be clear: She does not find these contradictory. Sylvanas is both very simple and very complex. She has two goals, and everything she does is in pursuit of those--but she's also able to play 3D chess and plan long term about how to achieve those goals.

The goals are:

Prevent herself and the Forsaken from going to hell for things they had no control over or would not have done except for the purpose of not going to hell--and also being once again enslaved to the whims of a megalomaniacal wannabe conquer of reality to be used to destroy everything they love.

Until she can make literally any progress on #1, preserving the Forsaken as a whole.

So when Vol'jin names her Warchief her first thought is along the lines of "the Warchief can't turn us all into cannon fodder if I'm the Warchief" and then the second is how, exactly, to use this to stabilize the Forsaken's position within the Horde.

The more firmly the Forsaken are seen as a part of the Horde, the less likely a future Warchief is to try and wipe them out (again). The more they bolster the Horde, the less able the Alliance is to try and wipe them out (again). The more competent and valuable she is as Warchief the less likely the rest of the Horde is to stand back and watch the next time there's a Forsaken-specific threat.

So she takes her job very seriously and she is very committed to it, because being a good Warchief is The Thing that could get the Forsaken real safety, not just another 3 year truce because they're useful against this expansion's world-ending threat.

Does she care about the other Horde races? No. Not that she hates them, or is trying to benefit the Forsaken at their expense (that'd backfire nastily), but they have their own leaders to represent their interests. Tyrande actually has a similar point of view in Interlude 2.2 (Tyrande and Sylvanas have way more in common than either is comfortable acknowledging.)

Why should we care? Compassion is essential, that is true, but it is also finite. I am the Kaldorei’s protector: It would be a betrayal to do less for them than I am capable of. Of course it will bring harm to the Forsaken, but the Forsaken are not mine.

Reverse that: Sylvanas puts the Forsaken first, protecting them first; she's also now responsible for the Horde but they're second, and the ultimate value in protecting the Horde is to protect the Forsaken. She's not (I am physically pulling her away from Blizzard jesus CHRIST) going to wreck the Horde for the sake of the Forsaken, it's just. Benefit the Horde -> benefit the Forsaken.

And the long-term planning bit is: If there's (random example) an internal trade dispute where the Forsaken come out slightly worse in favor of the orcs, Sylvanas might come down on the side of the orcs, again in order to engender respect and a sense of debt to her, to use in some more pivotal dispute in the future.

So you know. Yes but also no. Helpful?

[mylordshesacactus]

ihz and 12. (also 5, 15, 23, and 24)

Is your OC comfortable in a position of power, or would they prefer to be the one following orders? 

Very funny XD

Ihz is positions-of-power intolerant and actively allergic to following orders.

She is, when GENUINELY NECESSARY, willing to act as an advisor, but she will be uncomfortable the whole time. Her advice will be much less awkward if you can have the high-stakes political discussion while picking out the string's hooves.

What teacher/tutor/mentor influenced your OC the most?

Honestly? Vol'jin.

I wouldn't say they had a mentor-student relationship--it wasn't personal, he wasn't a friend. But he was her leader, and a good one. He didn't know her on a deep personal level, but he knew of her; and knew her, from seeing her around and working with her and because she does maintain very close and emotional bonds with the Darkspear tribe, well enough to know what she needs to feels safe and respected.

One of those things, of course, was being left alone, and he respected it. But like. It wasn't Vaz who recruited Ihz into the rebellion, it was Vol'jin, and he did it because he knew they needed a supply line and he knew she could be trusted implicitly despite her very much NOT being a student or personal friend. Pure professional reputation.

He cared about his people. It showed. She respected that.

What does ‘home’ mean to your OC?

A clear, dry morning on the steppes of Durotar, a good dog at her side, a mount she can trust, a full mailbag, a good line to the nearest source of water, no one in danger, and a footpath that's just challenging enough to be interesting.

What is the one personality trait your OC is trying to get rid of and is embarrassed of?

Those are actually two separate answers!

Ihz is deeply embarrassed by the way her misanthropic facade absolutely implodes the moment anyone gets her talking about anything she's passionate about, but she's not ashamed of it.

The thing she's actually working to change is that she's gruff and irritable by default--which she's fine with, actually--but specifically that she doesn't generally drop that around her family. Vaz is annoying in the way an extremely self-confident older gay cousin who's absolutely drowning in pussy tends to be when you are a deeply awkward asexual mule nerd who hates people and also places and things--but Vaz is also her only remaining family. And Vaz has sacrificed a lot for her, risked a lot in the past for Ihz's sake. She knows in her bones that if she ever needed anything, Vaz would drop her life to help.

She deserves to have Ihz put down the barriers around her. Ihz is trying to work on that.

If your OC could permanently remove any one thing from their world, what would it be? Why?

Rollkur. And/or twisted-wire gag bits.

She's a little embarrassed by that because she's aware her answer should be, like, "bigotry" or "war" or something but actually she literally would not hesitate and she knows this about herself.

[appleciderp]

Hold onto your hats, because I want to rant about how Blizzard fucking sucks with women or any minority rep. And why it'll suck for your fav in whatever MW is coming up.

Fully inspired by this post, I'll be referencing to a few points that @spookykittenwrites made

As I said in those tags, I've been playing WoW since Burning Crusade, so I've known about the company since about 2007. I've not touched overwatch, but according to emp, their rep there is surface-level as well.

It's half me yelling about MW and half me yelling about how WoW fails in representation.

I have 0 faith in them with any sort of proper representation. I'll mostly be sticking to queers and women. I do have a small section about Gaz, but I'm white and keep that in mind.

Onto the bullshit

They're not gonna make any main character queer. This means Soap, Gaz, Price, and Ghost. Farah and Alex by extension. Most likely not Alejandro and Rudy. They won't risk the repercussions.

Hell, Alejandro is implied to have a family, but we skimmed over that part as a fandom.

What they will do, like Laswell, mention that a side/secondary/tertiary character has a partner, but won't put ANY thought into it. Laswell's wife could SHOULD have been talked about by name.

They don't CARE enough about their characters to even solidify her over a facade of rep that will make the queer people happy. It did in a sense, I am happy that she has a wife. But if you're bothering to have a line about her, just add a second. Like Price could ask "Oh, how's Madeline doing anyways?" or "Yea, you've told Jenny you'd stop smoking how many times already?"

WoW-wise, their queer characters are mostly surface-level. Which isn't bad in a world full of queer stories that are queer-centric. The problem is they don't have the balls to upset any fan by making a popular character explicitly queer in their portrayal. Hell it wasn't even THEM who made Matthias and Flynn queer, it was originally put into the novels (I believe Chrissy Golden?)

Here's a quote from an executive producer: "We don't try to put a big focus on it and make it a big deal, we just try to make the game feel comfortable, friendly and approachable for everybody"

I don't know about you, but using "comfortable, friendly, and approachable for everybody" as an excuse for why you don't have more outwardly queer rep (versus "hint around it") leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Because my sexuality or gender identity is uncomfortable for people? My existance is uncomfortable for people, so you don't want to explicitly say it???

but he implied that the devs don't think Pelagos is the first trans character. Fuck you. It's giving JKR saying that Dumbledore is gay, but it wasn't important to Harry's story. What isn't explicitly said in the source material is not canon.

They had, HAVE, the chance to make major players into canonically queer characters, but they're afraid of backlash. Vol'jin would have been so easily bi in canon, especially with his whole thing with Tyranthan in the fucking novel. And that Tyranthan went to his funeral??? even though they're on opposite sides????

Onto the next point, they don't and won't give a shit about the female characters. All I'm thinking about is the disappointing outcome of Tyrande's revenge after the burning of Teldrassil, hell even the whole Azshara thing. I'm not gonna go into detail about how it, just know it led to nothing. She didn't get revenge. She didn't have a satisfying end. Why? Probably because Sylvanas and Azshara are both more popular than Tyrande. Sylvanas probably being the WoW character with the most merch (not to mention the whole thing about a dev loving her).

Farah is gonna be brought up minimally, much like she was in MW II. Valeria/El Sin Nombre and most likely the Vaqueros will be completely forgotten. Maybe brought back (again like Farah was in MW II)

They're not consistent with their characters in the first place, why give a shit about a promise they made. It'll most likely be implied between games that some shit will be solved, or a line or two in the next game. Just so people get closure.

The surface level rep keeps going throughout. We have a bunch of diversity in the operators, but significantly less in the campaign, where the characters need to be fleshed out more than a written backstory and voiced lines.

How often have they shown Alex properly since he lost his leg?

The dudebro's are pissed that they changed Gaz, a mostly 1-dimensional character that died within the first Modern Warfare. Gaz is a good character, there's no reason that they're pissed about him vs them being pissed about any other member of the task force. But I've seen more hate on Gaz than any other 141. Which sadly leads me to conclude that they probably only dislike him due to his race.

But the aspect that isn't giving me much hope is the phasing out of Gaz in additional content. You're telling me the only POC in the 141 is not included in the red team? Out of all the dudes you could have removed?? Like I'm all for including Farah into the red team; but removing the only person of color on the team, one who was canonically in the Ghost Team mission, isn't the win they think it is.

Not to mention the numerous merch of the 141 that have Ghost, Price, and Soap; but not Gaz. With only 1 design containing Gaz.

And don't come at me that "those are the old designs though!" It's in their current website for sale. The 8-bit design is fairly recent within the last few weeks or so. Gaz is a main character in MW 2019 AND 2022. He deserves more than 1 solo shirt that is just the repurpose of the 141 shirt.

Onto the points brought up by @spookykittenwrites

Ghoap

Either won't be mentioned at all or will be excessively "haha we're just pals" kinda vibes.

They WILL play up the dynamic in trailers and such, as it did bring a new group of people to the games, and it seemed to make the dudebro's happy with their bromance.

Death

None of the main characters will be killed off. There's too much opportunity to make money off of their survival. So far the new games have been very light with the major character deaths. In the original games Soap and Price are the only 2 that survive past 1 game.

Roach

They're not gonna make him mute or selectively mute.

I do think they might bring back Roach to kill him off within the same Game though.

Hell, they might not even bring him back.

Farah and Alex

I honestly hope that we see them together, it might not happen. I think they're gonna keep the Farah/Alex line as the raid focus.

As for the no chemistry thing. Depends. If they're seen for 3.5 seconds they definitely won't. Hell, they aren't technically ever stated to be dating in canon AND the dudebro's get pissed that people are shipping them. Again with the not saying anything that'll upset the target audience.

For the Muslim aspect; not sure they even think about their own characters enough to have her religion mentioned in game. (They can't even get the bios straight when they update the game, I'm not gonna complain about this here)

Laswell's Wife

Important thing to remember, the line about her wife isn't even in every playthrough. It's a hidden one.

No doubt about her never being mentioned in my head. It only got past the dudebros because it's a lesbian couple. If it was a dude talking about his husband I doubt it would have gotten into the game.

US can do no Wrong

Definitely, the entirety of the blame will be on Russians. They did in fact blame a real US warcrime on Russians in the past.

Interestingly enough, the most recent info I can find is that the Military took out their funding post-sexual harassment allegations from Activision-Blizzard in December 2022.

Military Propaganda is still Military Propaganda even if the Military isn't funding it.

Moral of the story? The comfort of the dudebros, the target demographic for the game, will always be priority. They won't risk hurting their profits by claiming a character is queer or putting too much importance on a woman. Whatever their comfort level is, is what that we'll be getting.

I'm gonna stop my rant here... Don't go into the next game hoping to get some good rep.

On a slightly positive note: they are getting better. Farah was genuinely a good character in MW 2019. The fact that there's a mention of a same-sex partner, even in passing, is pretty good.

Also, enjoy the Christmas merch shirts that I found of Price and Ghost.

[thefoldedbird]

Orla Lore - Much Ado About Magic (3)

*Major Spoilers Ahead*

Orla does not technically need to eat anymore by the time she completes her second task.

She quite literally can passively siphon so much magic energy from her patron at once that it negates her need to consume food. Early on this is used as a last resort if she runs out of rations on her travels between towns but had side effects such as dulling her senses or constant headaches. This is before she even has one amp gem so she can't siphon nearly as much.

By her second task she can just use this long term but doesn't. It's handy when she goes on research benders that last so long she couldn't tell you what day it is. But by this point she is able to consistently create portals so putting herself somewhere where she can access food has become a non-issue.

The completion of her third task is where this tidbit really shines.

She completes her third task and then shortly after Vol'jin sacrifices his soul in order to bind it to Rezan and reincarnate. After that Anduin basically abdicates the throne to wander the world and process his trauma.

She did not get to say goodbye to either of them before they disappeared.

Naturally she's devastated and beyond grieving. Adding insult to injury, she is now beyond powerful as a mage and once word of her husband's death spreads she starts receiving letters of marriage proposals. She also has to vacate the home she shared with Vol'jin so Rokhan can move in and take his place as the new Chieftain. Feeling as though she no longer has a home in Sen'jin Village, she leaves entirely.

Now, due to an old un-amended clause in the marriage proposal laws, she is allowed to challenge these men who sent her the proposals to what is essentially a death battle. So she spends the next few days slaughtering rich old men or the champions they chose in an emotionless stupor of grief.

This does little to help her professional relationship with the new leader of Stormwind, Turalyon. She has a lot of undue hatred towards Turalyon for taking Anduin's place. That's the grief talking.

One man in particular owns the vacated observatory on a hill just past the church and in exchange for sparing his life in a proposal battle she buys it off of him at a heavily discounted rate. She does this because she is also losing access to the apartment Jaina rented in Stormwind that she allowed Orla to use.

When all is said and done and she's moved all of her things (and Vol'jin's things) from Sen'jin Village, her apartment, and her hammerspace she kinda just collapses in the sea of boxes on the observatory's floor and cries. A lot.

It has been a total two weeks since she left the Shadowlands and she has not eaten since. It's another two weeks of a barely doing more than sleeping and crying before she goes back to Sen'jin Village to check on Zalazane. A funeral was not held for Vol'jin since he had already died once and this second death was in the service of the loa. A small celebration was held instead that she did not attend.

Zalazane is not doing great but he's managing. He notes that Orla is doing much worse and is also kind of an idiot for assuming she didn't have a home in Sen'jin Village anymore. She's not really listening to him about that last bit though. She's convinced herself that since Vol'jin's gone she has to restrict herself to just visits now.

This is dumb and incorrect but she is grieving and very much not thinking straight.

They actually built a small hut for her while she was gone next to the greenhouse that she built for the village but she excuses herself and portals away before Zalazane can even get to that part. He is thoroughly frustrated and after an even longer disappearance on her part actually goes to Stormwind himself to drag her back.

By this point it has been several months. She still has not eaten and the sight of food is unappealing. The thought of eating it makes her sick. She is no longer able to physically force herself to swallow food.

So yeah, big uh-ohs. She gets better eventually.

[airanke]

Happy family~~

[[ Ref ]]

[fitzefitcher]

faction conflict soapbox, pt. 1

okay so it seems like for the most part, there are a couple consistent schools of thought here:

school 1: I'm tired of the Horde being the Bad Guy 24/7

school 2: I'm tired of faction conflict, in general

school 3: Really Deeply wish that the Alliance's crimes would actually be Addressed, At All

school 4: Nuanced Wild Card:tm: opinions that I'll have to tackle individually lmao

so let's get started, obviously this is going to be a long-ass post, so I'm going to preemptively break up my answers to these into separate posts, for readability and also for my own sanity lmao. this will be under my essay tag but also the tag faction conflict soapbox, for blacklisting reasons.

school 1: I'm Tired of the Horde being the Bad Guy 24/7

@lokaror: i dont tend to have much of it these days. But i hate the "Horde is always the bad guy" stuff. When faction war happens its rarely with too much nuance on either side. The group that is primarily outcasts banding together seemingly always having the bad apples chafes too. But i also see from alliance side that it can be just as raw the other way.

The alliance sprang up out of need to for mutual defense, and the horde is the horde because they also need mutual aid and defence. We can't really put too much real world ideals to either, but at its core its always a tinder that can be lit. No way around that.

@chryseis: Long time blood elf player! I still love the horde (even though most of my favourite lore characters are alliance lol) because it feels like more of a community than the alliance with their high king. However I'm getting super sick of the horde always being the bad guy, and the fact that blizz has used the same evil warchief plot twice! Having said that, some of my worst/funniest online interactions have been with men on twitter who play alliance and genuinely (1/2)

Believe that anyone who plays horde is a terrible war criminal and not someone playing a computer game lmao (2/2)

@arkhamarchitecture​:  Feels a lot like Blizzard can't resist making the Horde the villains and even when the Alliance does wrong, it gets written off and excused, like they're not allowed to be the bad guys. Which in turn makes a lot of Alliance players treat the Horde like Blizzard is biased in our favor just because the story is always about us? Even though the story is about our side apparently being full of godawful people? It's really infuriating.

I think a core issue w this is the way that the game often presents the Horde and its various characters without the same empathy that it gives to its Alliance characters (note I said "empathy" and not "nuance" or "character development," we'll get back to that later), so it's not that horde people are incapable of inspiring empathy or aren't empathetic themselves, clearly they are and have evoked that reaction enough from players to arrive at this conclusion, it's that the same sort of steps taken with portraying alliance characters aren't taken with horde characters. like, I've already covered this a bit in my sylvanas essay, but like, we're not really given any opportunity to understand what's going on inside her head, so the actions she takes feel nonsensical, unecessary, or even needlessly cruel, and seemingly as players interacting with this game we have to make a lot of extra effort in order to even attempt to understand it. like, example, the "before the storm" novel portrays her as this horrible, conniving, manipulative Evil Dictator, for not wanting to share vital information about azerite with a faction whose leader has effectively done nothing to curb the warmongering tendencies of its other leaders, when in fact, it's very understandable why she wouldn't wanna do this. But again, the author (Christie Golden, bc of course it is) very explicitly portrays her as Bad Bad Evil Zombie Lady for Daring to think that they can't trust the same faction that seems to take issue with the mere concept of the horde having the Audacity of thinking they Deserve to Live lmao. Like, clearly this is Happening, but's never talked about or formally addressed.

likewise, with Garrosh, our other Bad Bad Evil Dictator Warchief, despite all the weird, wretched, horrible shit he was doing, it unfortunately makes a really terrible kind of sense if examined further.

why did he turn away from the horde leaders? because they had all uniformly rejected him from the getgo. cairne said he'd never accept him, vol'jin said he'd kill him, sylvanas made it clear she would never respect his authority. all before he'd done a single solitary thing as warchief.

why did he turn to war so quickly and so strongly? because nothing else was working. thrall's horde had tried diplomacy for years, and it amounted to nothing, because no matter what he did, no matter how far the horde ran from the eastern kingdoms, the alliances wouldn't stop chasing them and trying to kill them. the alliance would never see them as actual people, they'd only ever see them as twisted monsters and bloodthirsty, mindless beasts.

why did he turn to such violent, inhumane methods? bc the entirety of his first real brush with warfare was in northrend, against the scourge, an enemy that will keep getting up again and again and again until they're utterly annihilated. and before that, all his experiences with conflict were with demons, who were similarly impossible to kill.

like, obviously none of these reasons make it okay for him to do what he had done. just because something is understandable, doesn't mean it's acceptable. but it's never portrayed as understandable. it's never addressed, at all. there is no nuance attached to any of his actions- it is only ever portrayed as Evil, as Manipulative and Conniving and Violent and Warmongering, even though there is a whole slew of reasons for how and why we got here. there is no emotionality, there is only cruelty.

edit: whoops, forgot a relevant ask. added now.

[knicks-knacks]

That character ask I just reblogged for Anduin, Vol'jin, Saurfang and Sylvanas? any or all

I'll do 'em all simply because I'm bored as all hell and nothing better to do to kill time, though I'm skipping the NOTP part for them because I don't believe in that kind of negativity and also I just plain don't have any lol

will put under cut just bc a lil long (shrugs)

Anduin What I love about them: I'm just a huge fan of sweet, pacifist characters who stick to their guns even in a harsh world that disagrees with them - Anduins a very good example of that. What I hate about them: The way they went with his story instead of going with the Shadow/Void set up they had going on like wtf was that blizz 🙃 Favorite Moment/Quote: Probably his conversation with Saurfang and how that boy Did Not Flinch whatsoever when Saurfang threatened him but it's tied with him absolutely decimating a dreadlord. What I would like to see more focus on: His priestly powers for sure, and his relations between the other races - both Horde and Alliance. If anyone can bring everyone together, it's him. What I would like to see less focus on: look giving him Varians sword was very symbolic and cool and tugged at my heartstrings but please stop making him a beefy warrior with a side of Light he's not a stupid Paladin lol Favorite pairing with: Anduin is one of those characters I love so much that I ship him with everyone but I think Saurfang/Anduin is an incredibly interesting one that I love, and was one of the first fics I read when I joined the fandom Favorite friendship: Does pseudo-aunt count as a friendship? Because I love his and Jaina's relationship 🥺 Favorite headcanon: Fuck what Blizz says, he's still got lasting damage from the bell and plenty of scars from it.

Vol'jin

What I love about them: What don't I love? He's the favorite <3 What I hate about them: That Blizz killed him off when he had so much potential, and also Vol'jin sir please stop talking so much about how alive you feel while murdering and get some therapy Favorite Moment/Quote: When he rose up ever so slowly from a crouch in order to be eye level with Varian but was still noticeably slouching low because 🥴👀😳😍😩😏 What I would like to see more focus on: Just... him in general! It's really sad that a character that was Warchief of the damn Horde and has so much background in the game gets constantly shoved aside What I would like to see less focus on: get that egg boy out of his damn EGG I wanna see my little boy Favorite pairing with: Tyrathan, but GOD is Varian a close second because I have had so many Vari'jin brainworms for ages lately. Favorite friendship: Okay, look, not canon, but I think him and Anduin would have hit it off well, and no one can change my damn MIND okay (but for canon, Baine and Go'el :)) Favorite headcanon: He's mischievous, and also a pretty big hopeless romantic under it all :)

Saurfang

What I love about them: I just really think Saurfang is such a compelling character? There's so much depth and history to him that his story is just so. interesting and amazing idk he's just very well written What I hate about them: Until he wasn't well written and Blizz fucked up 🙃 Favorite Moment/Quote: His talk with Garrosh about his trauma has always stuck with me What I would like to see more focus on: It'd be nice to at least see him in Shadowlands, and happy. What I would like to see less focus on: bring him back dude why'd they have to get rid of him 🥺 Favorite pairing with: Already said who! I don't really ship Saurfang with anyone else other than maybe Garrosh tbh :o Favorite friendship: Zekhan my beloved Favorite headcanon: he needs reading glasses sdkjfghjkds

Sylvanas

What I love about them: Like Saurfang, I just think Sylvanas' story is really interesting and compelling! What I hate about them: Blizzards weird flip floppy writing - just make her irredeemable or not pls Favorite Moment/Quote: Def gotta be, and don't hate me for this fandom, but when she pauses and says "... Can't I?" is the BEST SHIT DUDE THAT'S SO GOOD THAT'S SUCH A GOOD VILLAIN QUOTE BIIITTTCHH LET'S GOOOOOO What I would like to see more focus on: I figure they're going for some "well sylvanas' soul was split in two and now she has the second part is back she's good again" is a huge trainwreck that I honestly kinda can't wait to watch lmfao What I would like to see less focus on: Look just... whatever they're gonna do with her, just get it over with already XD I want her story to end already, whatever ending that may be Favorite pairing with: Jaina for sure, but Nathanos a very close second! Favorite friendship: Ngl, that weird sort of friendship and sort of not friendship she has with Thrall/Baine/Vol'jin. The way they interact with each other is so entertaining man. I love when Vol'jin poked a finger at her and told her to stop bullying Baine, they act almost like disgruntled siblings more than a group of leaders lol Favorite headcanon: Her hands are skeleton-y and black and that's why she's always got the gloves :3c

[tanadrin]

So all the terrible retcons and geographic inconsistency (Kul Tiras wtf) and the time travel and the bullshit with the night elves is bad (Illidan is the worst character ever, don't @ me), but the most frustrating part of WoW lore to me is its failure to explore certain complex emotional themes in a really satisfying way--like, the people who expound and expand on Warcraft lore are canny enough to notice that these emotional themes *exist*, but not clever enough to actually work with them or build them out, and so the whole thing collapses into rule-of-cool melodrama. There's nothing wrong with rule-of-cool melodrama; I love rule-of-cool melodrama. But Warcraft lore is *begging* to combine that rule of cool melodrama with some really rich and interesting emotions and character interpretations, it sets them up and is all ready to knock them down, and just... doesn't.

Take the conversation between Saurfang and Garrosh in the Borean Tundra, in WotLK, the one that ends with Saurfang saying "I don't eat pork." I think that's emblamatic of the big theme that unites the Horde, that makes it make sense as a faction. The Alliance, after all, started as a defensive association in the face of the Orc invasion; its renaissance after the creation of Durotar and the invasion of the Scourge is only natural. But what is the theme of the Horde? Is it honor? Strength? Sheer brutality? Well, none of those things. Orcs claim to value honor and strength; the Forsaken are certainly various shades of very dark gray at best, the Tauren and the Orcs *do* seem like natural allies of a sort, but all the races of the Horde have something even deeper in common: trauma. The Orcs are still (cf. Saurfang) dealing with the emotional turmoil of having been both forced and partially complicit in the atrocities of the First and Second War--after which their homeworld was destroyed, they were forced into concentration camps, and they had to rebuild their culture and their identity from the ground up. They have to find a new place in a new world, and there's this tension between the younger generation that doesn't have firsthand experience with any of this and just remembers that the Horde used to be a name that struck fear into the hearts of their enemies (Garrosh Hellscream, for instance) and the older generation that remembers how awful that time really was, and doesn't want to see the old ways revived because it might just destroy their people for good this time. Then there's the Darkspear Trolls and the Tauren, who were both driven out of their old homelands, and fell in with the Horde as natural allies with similar cultural points of reference; and the Blood Elves, whose suffering in the Third War was severe enough to radically alter their culture, coupled with being betrayed by their ruler who decided that joining the Burning Legion and abandoning them sounded like a better time than rebuilding Quel'Thalas.

And then there's the Forsaken. Oh, man, the Forsaken. The Forsaken and Sylvanas are some of my favorite characters in all of WoW, because sure, you could look at it and say, "okay, creepy undead who like green things that go plop and mad science = evil, bad guys." But you'd really be missing what makes the Forsaken interesting. They're not the Scourge--they explicitly broke away from the Scourge when Arthas left Lordaeron. They're not invaders, either. They're in fact mostly the human population of the destroyed kingdom of Lordaeron, the inheritors of that land, but who are treated by the Alliance as interlopers with no right to the very towns and villages they have *always* called home. They're treated as monsters by every living person who ever knew them, and they can't help but regard themselves that way, too. "What are we, if not slaves to this torment?" is one of the casual interaction lines you get when you click on Sylvanas: they do not *like* being dead. But Sylvanas is ruthless and cruel and after Arthas is killed, wins the Val'kyr over to her side so she can keep making more Forsaken. Why?

Simple. Let us imagine: you are an ordinary person, of no unusually great or poor moral virtue. You are hurt, badly. Grieviously. In a way you will never recover from. And everyone you love, all of your friends and your family, the whole society you come from, now sees you as an unredeemable monster that should, no, must be destroyed. How long must you be called a monster before you decide--fuck it, I *will* be the monster they call me. Because, at least that way, no one can ever hurt me again.

The overpowering motivation for the Forsaken is not power or bloodlust; it's not money, or forbidden knowledge. It's making sure no one in the whole world is ever able to make slaves of them again. To make sure they will not be hurt. And the biggest misstep the Alliance ever made was not reaching out to Sylvanas with overtures of friendship as soon as she established her kingdom--because like it or not, she has the support of the people of Lordaeron, and thus a damn good claim to her position. Maybe, if they had, they could have influenced the Forsaken, shown them that they had friends and didn't need to resort to amoral methods to defend themselves. But as it stands, they only have allies of convenience in the Horde (at least until Sylvanas becomes Warchief), and they know that no one in Azeroth is quite happy to see them continue to exist and be free. Everything else about the Forsaken--their use of dark magic, their development of a new, even more destructive plague, their recruiting former servants of the Lich King and raising new Forsaken from among the dead of the ongoing wars--makes perfect sense from the standpoint of a people that knows they are under threat from all sides, and will do anything to survive.

(The Draenei could have been something like this, too, FWIW. Like, a broken people, a people of exiles who are most comfortable in the shadows and with moral ambiguity. But then Metzen had to go make them Righteous Space Goats. I mean, come on. They're just boring now. They were never going to be Horde-aligned--there's too much history with the Orcs  there!--but having a group like that on the side of the Alliance, to help drive home the point that there is not a clear good guys/bad guys distinction here, would have been really nice.)

That actually makes them a pretty damn good fit for the Horde. Moreover, it creates an interesting point of tension with the Alliance, which is clearly *not* always the good guys. I mean, there's the matter of orc concentration camps, but also consider the refusal of leaders like Daelin Proudmoore to contemplate peace (and the subsequent, somewhat... forced turn of Jaina Proudmoore from dove to hawk) and the steadfast refusal of many on that side to deal fairly with the races of the Horde just because they appear monstrous. And arrogance, hoo boy. Dalaran, Gilneas, the Night Elves--huge swathes of the Alliance are characterized by being arrogant and not a little cruel.

And what of Sylvanas becoming Warchief? I don't know where the BFA lore is going (I'm not playing retail anyway), but right now it looks like they're setting up another Garrosh type situation, and preparing for Thrall to retake the Warchief-ship, but if they do that it would be a real pity. First of all, because, well, we saw that already in Mists of Pandaria! What, are we going to besiege Orgrimmar again? Second of all--Sylvanas and Garrosh are *very* different people. Garrosh was, well, Proud; hence the Sha of Pride. He wanted glory and power, he wanted war for war's sake, so he could live up to his father's reputation as a warrior. He was willing to sacrifice everything else that made the Horde the Horde for that. Sylvanas, though, has one overriding motivation: Keep Her People Safe. Punish the people who hurt her is a strong secondary motivation--but it's part of that first one, because if she can make her enemies' victories painful enough, she might discourage them from trying to press their advantage. And her people *trust* her on this: "Dark Lady watch over you," they say when you take your leave. She is not an autocrat--she is their beloved protector. So, she makes the ruins of Lordaeron uninhabitable. She annihilates Teldrassil. Does she spend very many Orc and Troll and Tauren lives doing so? Very well. They aren't *her* people.

I don't think this has to be a tragic flaw leading to her downfall. It sure doesn't make her a good leader for the rest of the Horde, though (even though, on an emotional and aesthetic level, I am 3000% here for Warchief Sylvanas, even more than Warchief Vol'jin, who also had a lot of the creepy threatening vibe that made him a much more interesting choice than either Thrall or Garrosh). But you could make it one, and you could do it very well--they've already mentioned in the tie-ins that Calia Menethil, Arthas's sister, teeeechnically has a claim to the throne of Lordaeron. And, even more interesting, is no longer quite among the living, even if the mechanism of that unlife is happy fun magic instead of evil death magic. Moreover, she has some sympathy for the Forsaken. You could have a squaring-off between them, and you could have a Queen Calia--maybe. If you could bridge that gap and make her understand that the Forsaken feel fundamentally apart from the other human kingdoms now, if she could come to understand just how much evil the Alliance has done to them, if she could really grok what it's like to be them. Then you could have a leader who understands their trauma--but also wants to heal it, rather than lash out at anyone and everyone that might conceivably be a threat. That, too, would be very interesting.

(There’s a reason that, while I loved the Alliance as a kid, I only play Horde toons as an adult. It’s not just that the Horde feel more interesting and vivid to me. It’s that the hypocrisy and the arrogance of the Alliance stands out in much greater relief now. The Horde aren’t good guys--nobody’s the good guys, here--but they don’t lie about their motivations, and they don’t act with cruelty and then play the victim in response. Jaina was an important exception, but they badly mishandled her character in the runup to MoP, which I find very hard to forgive.)

But knowing Blizz, even if they go vaguely that route, they won't stick the emotional landing. There is a very good, if very OTT and melodramatic (in the best possible way), series of fantasy novels or games lurking *behind*, or perhaps parallel, to Warcraft's lore. It is a shame that Blizzard has done so much to obscure it with obnoxious cruft, retcons and timeline compression, repetitive use of the same handful of characters, stupid-ass time-travel plots that create ten thousand plot holes and inconsistencies, shitty tie-in novels (cf. everything by Richard Knaak), and a total failure to make half the world's characters (i.e., everyone in the Alliance) at all interesting. I have a daydream of doing my own version of WoW lore and posting it somewhere like on AO3, but one of the things that makes WoW lore simultaneously so interesting and disappointing to me is that it's embedded in the explorable, realized space of video game worlds. Hard to reproduce that in print, I think. Might be worth it to try.

[frutavel]

kjhhj ok im sorry for sending so many asks but i am so Intrigued about gheist 👀👀👀👀

Hskdhskd don't worry asks are direct fuel for my brainworm, you can send in as many as you want ^^

ALSO GOOD his vibe is suppoosed to be weird in some way or other. I think that covers intriguing too xD

So here's a roundup! The only thing that changed since I made him to where we are now is that he used to be Amani, now he is Mossflayer. This doesn't impact his story at all and in fact makes it a lot easier for me to write him.

The Gheest's weird vibe starts generations ago when one of his great grandparents married an elf. They had children, and their children had children, and they mostly grew up in a weird limbo between elf and troll cultures, some leaned closer to one, some to the other, but overall a pretty mixed culture and creation. The troll died of old age eventually, but the elf stuck aroud for a very long time, because elves live way longer than trolls do and those were her family, whom she loved and cared for, and she wanted to be near all of her children and grandchildren, until one day she disappeared.

Nobody knows where she went or why she left, she might still be out there somewhere, but her absence caused her family to draw away from the elves as a whole and turn to the other half of their root, the trolls. Which lead us to Gheist and his mother, who are the last living descendants of that original couple. Gheist's mother is Amani, his dad was a Mossflayer, and Gheist grew up where today is the Eastern Plaguelands.

The elf blood holds strong in their line after all those years, but since it's pretty diluted (?) by now the only thing thaf implies for the Gheest is his eyes glow in the dark and he might live a little longer than your average troll. The moss that grows on his fur also sprouts red flowers instead of white, which is the usual color for moss flowers, so maybe the elf blood has something to do with that as well.

Life for the Gheest was pretty normal until around his early teens, when he lost his father. From then on it was just him and his mom, and then, when the Scourge attacked, he was on his own.

The Plaguelands are a direct connection to the Ghostlands, and they're messed up Like That because of the Scourge, and the Eastern Plaguelands, where the Mossflayer live, got the worst of the two halves. Gheist's tribe lost a lot, like everyone else in the Plaguelands and as of now a bunch of them are dead or undead. The living trolls managed to hold out in Zul'mashar.

As for the Gheest, he was out hunting the Scourge when it first hit. He was alone in his mission though, because the others of his tribe were understandably more worried about keeping themselves alive, but he did pretty well on his own.

He moved up to the Ghostlands eventually and he got caught with a necromancer's whip around the neck.

That left a scar as we know, and if he didn't die from the attack he would have died from infection, but lucky for him a certain someone was nearby.

Mel hung up her performer cloak while the Scourge was invading because well. The Scourge was invading and she was (and still is!) Very Good at settingthings on fire. She found Gheist and could not in her right mind let him die, so she got one of the healears to help him, and then she took care of him while he recovered.

The thing is he didn't exactly survive that. Bwonsamdi literally had his soul in hand and they it got yanked out of his grasp, and that's a thing that happens sometimes but it left a lasting mark on the Gheest that had Consequences tm.

His mouth constantly tastes weird, sometimes his skin goes numb and he can't feel anything for a bit, sometimes he looks and sees things that he shouldn't be seeing and it's not very fun. Sometimes he gets the chills and sometines he gets the colds wherd no matter what he does or where he is or how hot it is, he can't warm up. Sometimes when he gets a cut that's a little deeper mushrooms and other fungi grow out of it and he absolutely hates it and he cuts them off as soon as he sees them, but they bleed and it hurts to cut them out and if he didn't hate them so much he probably wouldn't think they were worth the trouble.

He didn't have anything left for him in the Plaguelands and he had no idea what the hell was wrong with him so he stayed in Quel'thalas with Melina. She already had Corina, her daughter, at this point and Gheist found not one but two whole friends. Cori is like a sister to him and she will beat up anyone who messes with him.

While he was in Quel'thalas he found a connection to the Amani loa, and it was around then that he became a druid. It was amazing for him to find something he could find solace in, and that helped him deal with his 10% death problems. It didn't cure it, and he's probably not ever going to find a cure, but the loa's blessing sure makes dealing with his occasional hiccups a lot easier.

And then we enter Toothpaste Territory, when Gheist and Corina (and Urhau!) Joined up with the Farstriders and Vol'jin to get into Zul'Aman before the Amani and the Zandalari did anything bad. Gheist has no love for the Amani and he felt that taking them down was the right thing to do, so that's what he did. After that he decided to leave Quel'thalas and see more sights, see if there was anywhere else he could be useful, and that landed him in Orgrimmar, and eventually it landed him a fling with Vol'jin, which landed him where we currently are in Toothpaste, with the two of them getting a little more stable and Tyrathan entering the mix sometime in the future.

And then we have Nightmare Gheist, which is a subject for another post, because this one is long enough as it is and I still need to polish some details on NM Gheist before I go more in depth about him. What I will say though, is that the Nightmare corruption upped his kinda dead status to half dead, and while it back to less concerning levels of dead once he was cleanses of it, it made the side effects he was already dealing with a lot worse for a while, until all of the corruption left and he was somewhat back to normal.

[hadoriel]

I made a long ass post on a Youtube video so might as well post it here lmao

As a Sylvanas stan (pls wait I'm not disagreeing at all--) I REALLY hate how Sylvanas has become so... boring. I've always regarded her as a really cool character with a great backstory and tactically on-point. Legion made me swell with pride for her, though her dealings in Stormheim were mostly ?????huh??? and never really explained until years later... The cinematic of her versus Genn still gives me chills

HOWEVER I don't think Sylvanas is an author insert, she is a Mary Sue, and these are different things. There's Blizz writers going 'see! we always made her horribly evil!' in the background, but I kinda see it as Christie Golden just wanting to set up a villain and failing. I don't know if she ever... liked... Sylvanas? I know she's an Anduin stan. But I really can't tell if she picked out Sylvanas randomly or actually admired her character. You can really tell the transition of reins in the writing room from Metzen to Golden, though, going from Legion to BFA. In Legion she's still charming and sly, behind the scenes setting up for something, shown actually failing (the lantern Genn smashed), given critical time to be thoughtful (when Vol'jin died and she didn't know what to do with being given leadership) and just... a character, well done. In BFA she starts out immediately running to Teldrassil to genocide some people. EVERYONE in this fandom, game community, whatever - EVERYONE was ???????????!?!?!?!?!? WHAT??? to that. Blizz told us it was 'more than it seemed' and it never was. She torched it in wide viewing of everyone, dropping any tactics, killed her own people and ran off. WHAT???

And, as a Sylvanas stan, these are basically my quick thoughts after that:

- Lordaeron: I thought this was... fine in parts, bad in others. I thought it was stupid only Saurfang rebelled against her, and the rest of the Horde was seemingly blind to her just killing and resurrecting at random. Garrosh wasn't that long ago, and many Horde players would probably agree that the leadership should've come together much quicker to address it. Lor'theron even passively mentions it but never?? does anything?? Baine rebels but is never joined by any other leaders besides Saurfang and uh Anduin I guess. On Alliance side, I think the Blight should've been more serious, instead of Jaina just going 'oh poof we good now'. A lot of fanfic has addressed it instead, but Anduin really should have suffered from AT LEAST PTSD and a reminder that he's physically disabled. But I guess he's Golden's perfect little boy so he just... doesn't get hurt

- Darkshore: Lmao Blizz said 'Tyrande won' and never showed it. I hate that. I wish we had AT LEAST wounded Malfurion, if not killed him, and allowed Tyrande the full spotlight. Shadowlands seems to imply that the Alliance will abandon Tyrande for 'going crazy' and that's just sad, imo. We should've had a lot more focus on her and the Nelves, maybe at the same time as BoDA? Maybe instead of BoDA?

- The end of the campaign: I hate Saurfang. Lemme just get that out there. I hate him because he was forced into a very specific 'I am this opinion and that is my whole character' trope. I'm a Horde main and wanted to shut him up after the third cinematic of him whining about HONOR and the TRUE Horde. It just dragged on and on and nothing was interesting about him. When he got exploded, I GENUINELY laughed. It was so sudden. I clapped and laughed. I feel so bad that Blizz wanted me to like this dude so much that they made him unbearable and actually make me laugh at his death. Oof

- Shadowlands trailer: I love the guys whining about Bolvar losing. Yeah, Sylvanas is dumb OP, and I hate what they've done to her, but I think a lot of people miss the point that the Lich King ISN'T Arthas anymore. Bolvar is a whole different person we've barely seen fight. All we know is he was a paladin, was a weird surrogate dad to Anduin, almost died at Wrathgate, got tortured, apparently had a daughter he left behind and decided to sit on the Bad Chair and wear the Bad Helm 'cause he was basically dead anyways. If he had been more fleshed out, I could see the complaining as valid. But he was a goody paladin and hasn't ever really used the Lich King skillset. Sylvanas has been active forever, versus guy who hasn't, as far as we know

(Also, it would be really bad to end Sylvanas with any Lich King, imo. I know lots of people want her to die to Arthas again (despite him not being in the Shadowlands) but that's just really... not a good ending. It closes her story in a way that has no effect, you feel me? Just a crazy lady getting killed by a crazy dude and people wanting to celebrate the crazy dude. I think her ending would be best put in either the player's hands (as a raid boss maybe?) or a representation of the Horde, or the unity of Azeroth. And, ultimately, I think she's right about SOMETHING and just went about it wrong. The most satisfying conclusion would be for us to come together, kill her, and have us go ... oh shit she maybe had a point. That would at least close her out as not a 'totally crazy' character (we've had SO MANY of those I'm BORED) but not justify her actions, either. Too bad it's Blizz and they can't write for crap! I fully expect that Golden is just writing her as evil and OP as possible to prop against other characters. I mean, we got like ten cinematics of Saurfang. They really wanted us to like Saurfang. But it would be neat to pull the rug out a little and surprise us that, despite all their pushing of Sylvanas being completely unhinged, she did have some sort of good idea or goal buried in there somewhere)

OKAY THAT'S MY LIKE EIGHTY CENTS... Don't @ me if you wanna defend Blizz or Saurfang or Bolvar without... actually reading... :C

I hope I gave some good points and some people see clearly what I mean. Again, it's bad writing! It's SUCH bad writing! But I think the anger at Sylvanas is a little displaced sometimes and it's just... The writers are bad lmao

[alittlepieceofwarcraft]

Tauren: A Character Guide

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History

Evolution (Before Year -150,000): It is speculated that the tauren originate from Niuzao the Black Ox August Celestial, a form of Wild God, created by titanic Keeper Freya during the Ordering of Azeroth. From him came the ancient form of yaungol, and in turn the modern yaungol, a race that lived in peace with the demigod Cenarius before being enslaved by the mogu. It is unknown exactly when these beings first emerged but they must have occurred somewhere between Year -15,000 and Year -12,000 to participate in the rebellion that overthrew the mogu empire in the latter year. After they regained their freedom, they found themselves wondering towards areas surrounding the Well of Eternity, transforming them into the tauren we know today. They are also relatives of the taunka, an offshoot race also coming from the yaungol. A direct descendent of the tauren are the Highmountain tauren. 

A Really Old War (Year -10,000): Originally, the tauren never took place in the War of the Ancients, however Krasus’ interference when experiencing past events by falling through a hole in time led to an altered history. He and his companions managed to convince Huln Highmountain to join the efforts of repelling the Burning Legion, however Desdel Stareye, night elf commander, refused to allow them into their forces due to his bigotry. After his death he was replaced by Jarod Shadowsong who deployed the tauren forces. After the war, Cenarius blessed the tauren under Huln (the Rivermane, Bloodtotem, Skyhorn, and Highmountain tribes) and were given the Horns of Eche'ro: moose-like antlers. Due to the bravery of Huln, they renamed their home Highmountain in his honour. As well as this, the holiday known as the Lunar Festival began. 

Centaur Incoming (Year -1,100): The years after the war allowed the tauren to wander peacefully and especially within the region of Mashan'she, a grassland considered sacred to them. After hearing whispers, shaman were convinced that this is where the Earth Mother resided and spent decades trying to wake her. They succeeded by quickly realised that it was not their Goddess’ voice they heard but those of elementals and that they’d roused earth elemental Princess Theradras instead. She drained energy from the land to replenish her own, leaving it to be renamed as Desolace. The loss of life rippled though the Emerald Dream and Zaetar, son of Cenarius, came to investigate. He fell in love with Theradas and the two become mates, beginning the centaur race that would murder their father and drive the tauren out of their home.

Green Is Good (Year 20): At the brink of extinction, Cairne Bloodhoof was desperate and readily accepted aid from the newly arrived Warchief Thrall and his orcs. Along with the Darkspear trolls, they composed the beginning of a new Horde and with their help were able to drive back the centaur and claim Mulgore. They repaid their debt to Thrall by fighting alongside him, the night elves and the humans in Mount Hyjal to defend Kalimdor from the Legion attack. Overtime, the tauren tribes were united under Cairne’s leadership, aided by Archdruid Hamuul Runetotem and the elder crone Magatha Grimtotem, although many of the Grimtotem tribe were hungry for power and attemped to usurp Cairne many times. 

Betrayal From Within (Year 28): A peaceful summit between night elves and tauren was sabotaged by Twilight's Hammer cultists that posed as Horde members and Cairne believed the new Warchief Garrosh Hellscream,to be responsible, thus challenging him to a fight to the death known as mak'gora. Magatha took this opportunity to attempt to take power over the tauren and poisoned Garrosh’s axe Gorehowl, ensuring Cairne’s death. The Grimtotem then seized the capital of Thunder Bluff, later to be driven out by Cairne’s son Baine Bloodhoof who was given the mantle of Chieftan. The Grimtotem did manage to corrupt several wells within Mulgore, however with the aid of adventurers, Baine managed to stop them and kill their invasion leader Orno Grimtotem, Quilboar then began attacking caravans, with Garrosh and many tauren wanting to strike back whereas Baine wanted a more diplomatic approach. Still, many believed that Baine was too compromising with Garrosh, thinking their chieftan was bowing down to his every command. Greyhoof Farwanderer and other began to prepare to leave both Mulgore and the Horde. Another quilboar attack erupted with Garrosh and his Kor'kron assaulted the quilboar, only to be overrrun. Baine, with the aid of Hamuul and the Sunwalkers managed to free the orcs. He stood over the defeated quilboar and demanded that they stop raiding the caravans, and in return they would provide any food or water they needed. Greyhood and the others witnessed his victory and asked for a pardon for their near-defection. Alliance forces invaded the Barrens, Camp Taurajo was burned to the ground, leading tauren to build  the Great Gate. 

This Is Not Amoosing (Year 29): When Baine is informed of the planned attack upon Theramore, he initially protested before relenting to protect his people. He led his people through the Great Gate to join Vol'jin and his Darkspear to take Northwatch Hold, ordering his tauren to not desecrate any Alliance bodies. Before they moved to Theramore, Baine send Perith Stormhoof to tell Jaina Proudmoore of Northwatch’s fall and warn her of the upcoming attack against Theramore. After the destruction, he and the tauren returned to Thunder Bluff. Upon learning of Pandaria;s discovery, he sent Sunwalker Dezco and his Dawnchaser tribe to explore the land and managed to find their way thanks to Dezco’s wife Leza. They moved around and established settlements including Thunder Cleft. The tribe continued on, finding the Vale of Eternal Blossoms and staying in Shrine of Two Moons. When Vol’jin declared open rebellion against Garrosh, Baine pledged loyalty to his cause.

Family Reunion (Year 32): The tauren assisted the Horde during Battle for Broken Shore. They reunited with their Highmountain cousins and introduced them into the Horde

Physical Traits

Life expectancy: It is unknown when tauren consider themselves to be adults, however they are old around 95 and vulnerable to death around 110. Oldest of the tauren have lived passed 100.

Height: Female tauren can grow to be around 9 feet tall whereas males can be up to 10 feet.

Eye colour: Tauren have a varying range of brown shades for eye colour

Cosmetics: They are covered in fur in black, gray, white, red, brown and tan that tend to go white upon ageing. They also have long tails and horns. 

Personality traits

Gentle Giants: Tauren are known for their mild tempers and level heads despite their massive size. This is likely as having dignity is important to taurens, leading them to control their anger and balancing strong emotions, as well as their peaceful nature.

Nature First: Tauren are deeply caring when it comes to the earth and nature. A Tauren, similarly to night elves, are unlike to litter, support deforestation, torture their enemies or mutilate the dead. 

Honourable Fellows: Part of their attraction to the orcs is their shared reverence of the concept of honour: fair combat, respect for elders, and a need for justice.

Other races: As mentioned before, orcs and tauren see eye to eye on many ideals and appreciate the much needed aid of Thrall when they first met.  Forsaken are surprisingly well accepted by kind-hearted tauren, with Hammul seeing redemption within them. Forsaken and convincing Thrall to allow them into the Horde in the first place. The Elder Council wish to find a cure for their undeath and Bena Winterhoof claims that the Earth Mother herself gave her a mission to save their new allies. On the Alliance side, they have poor rapport with dwarves of Ironforge due to either constant digging of Azeroth and they view this as scarring their Goddess. The Stonespire tribe were almost wiped out by the dwarves of Bael'dun Keep, and as a result Gann Stonespire cut ties with the Horde. As well as this, they don’t get along with the Wildhammer clan as it was their gryphon riders that bombed Camp Taurajo. On the other hand, they have a very good relationship with the night elves given their shared history and love of nature. Malfurion Stormrage, co-leader of the night elves, taught Hamuul the art of druidism. 

Other creatures: Kodo are the racial mount of the tauren, as well as wyverns for flying which they consider sacred. 

Culture

Languages: Their native language is Taur-ahe but they’ve also learned Orcish in light of their alliance with the orcs. Taurens have also been known to learn other languages to help with trading between races.

Government: Before joining the Horde, tauren were split into many different tribes: Bloodhoof (previously led by Cairne and now his son Baine), Cliffwalkers (led by High Chieftain Cliffwalker), Cloudsong tribe, Dawnchaser tribe (led by Dezco), Dawnstrider tribe, Eagletalon tribe, Farwanderers tribe (led by Greyhoof), .Grimtotem tribe (led by Magatha), Highmountain tribe (led by Ornamm or Sulamm), Ironhoof tribe, Mistrunner tribe, Ragetotem tribe, Runetotem tribe, Stonehoof tribe, Stonespire tribe, Thunderhorn clan, Wildmane tribe, Winterhoof tribe. Now, they are collectively led under Bloodhoof leadership.

Military: Most forces collectively serve the Horde, however there are tauren-specific factions that solely follow tauren orders. Longwalkers are scouts and messengers that only report to the Bloodhoof tribe, Outrunners ensure the safety of those who travel through Mulgore and Sunwalkers are a section of paladins led by Aponi Brightmane. 

Religion: The tauren worship the Earth Mother. According to myth, when she saw her children listening to the corruption of the Old Gods, she tore out her own eyes and threw them down. Her left eye became Mu'sha, the moon, and her right eye became An'she, the sun. Due to night elven influence, they only revered Mu’sha for a long time (the night elf equivalent being Elune), until Aponi engaged in a long theological discussion Tahu Sagewind that resulted in them restoring a balance with acknowledging the sun. They also believe in an entity called the Sky Father. As well as this, they highly respect the earth and tauren originally founded the shaman organisation known as the Earthen Ring.

Traditions

Young tauren perform the Rites of the Earthmother in order to become braves and gain the respect of elders. These are: Rite of Strength (the first ceremony, proving physical strength), Rite of Courage (to prove bravery in the face of the enemy), Rite of Honor (to uphold the honor of your people), Rite of the Winds (willingness to seek the unknown), Rite of Vision (willingness to follow the guidance of the spirits and the Rite of Wisdom (to honour one's ancestors). 

They do not bury their dead, instead burn them on pyres.

The totem poles of the tauren people represent a link to their pasts: the carvings depicting heroic deeds or famous tales.

Tauren villages use smoke signals to coordinate hunts over great distances, or to signal danger/call out distress.

One respectful greeting gesture of the tauren is to touch one's heart, then forehead.

The use of smoking pipes is common in tauren ceremonies.

[indiikaa]

Wanderer

Little thing about Aeroshot doin some good for once.

Characters:

Nebulous Aeroshot - Blood Elf Hunter Hercules the Black Lion- His companion  Talanji B’wansomdi A secret player.

The lion beside him seemed to growl whenever one of the Death Guards walked by, patrolling the outside terrace of the Great Seal. He had requested an audience with Talanji; but that had been three hours ago, and even though he knew she was busy,  this was important. She would listen to him, he knew she would, but he feared it may already be too late.

Hercules looked back up to his master, the black-haired Sin'dorei reading through one of his journals. The mighty black lion had stayed by the Hunter's side since he had found him in the Ghostlands a decade ago, unconscious and with no memory of who he actually was. Hercules and Nebulous were inseparable by this point, and none were as foolish to think of separating the two.

It had felt like an eternity until he heard the clinking of the Zandalari Guard's armor walking towards him. Nebulous lifted his head from the book, looking up to the guard with a raised eyebrow.

"Queen Talanji has agreed to see ya now, Speaker of de Horde" The guard spoke, looking down to the Blood Elf.

"Thank you for informing me," Nebumous nodded, standing as he closed the journal. He placed it back into his satchel, looking down to the lion. "Come along now, Hercules. We shouldn't keep a Queen waiting," With that, the black lion yawned, standing up from the ground beside where the archer had been sitting. The two made their way through the open doors of the Great Seal, walking up the stairs and to the lift. Hercules stayed beside Nebulous as he always did, weary of the Undead guards that stood by each door. Again, he would growl in their direction, and Nebulous would scratch behind his ear gently to tell him he knew of the dangers. The two boarded the lift as it came down for them, the archer waiting until they were moving and alone to look to the lion.

"You and I both know that this needs to be done, and she needs to know. There's no denying it," he spoke quietly, still unsure if they were being listened to. "I promise that nothing bad will happen, alright?" He asked, kneeling down to look the lion in the eyes. "If anything were to happen, though, I have you behind me so I wouldn't have to worry" he grinned, scratching under Hercules' large mane. The lion pawed at him gently as the lift came to a stop, the two exiting and walking up the stairs towards the Queen's throne.

"Aeroshot! To who do I owe de pleasure of your presence?" Talanji would give a small smile if she could, but the look on Nebulous's face seemed to worry the young Queen.

"Talanji, what I'm about to tell you is important, and you must take my words into consideration." He spoke, stopping just short of the throne. The Zandalari Queen looked to him, a questioning look on her face.

"What is it, Aeroshot?"

He took a breath, closing his eyes for a moment before opening them and looking up to her. "Do not trust Sylvanas's words, Talanji. You and I both know that she is not here to help the Zandalari with their plight, she is here for her own gain," He began. "She lies and deceives and murders for her own power and gain; and she is no better than the one who killed and rebirthed her back into existence."

"What do you mean by this?"

"The Banshee Queen is no better than those who threatened your father and betrayed him. She will betray you and I fear for what could be lost because of it." He replied, looking up to her.

"How do you know dis?"

"I have seen it first hand, Talanji. I was there when she ordered Teldrassil burned, and I was there when her dog Nathanos burned it into the husk that stands now. " Nebulous looked down, shaking his head. "I joined the Horde because I was promised answers to my own past, promised answers to questions... promised a home, a family. Ask me what I see now, though..." he stopped,  his eyes trained on Talanji. "What I see now is a bastardization of what the Horde once was and what it stood for. Talanji..." He took a breath. "Do not trust the Horde."

Talanji looked to the Blood Elf. Aeroshot had come on behalf of the Banshee Queen and Warchief of the Horde when they first arrived in Zandalar, and had promised that the Horde would be behind them with their plight against the Kul Tiran. But now, Aeroshot stood before her, pleading for her not to trust the Horde. His change of heart startled her.

"Den what does she want from us?"

"She wants the Azerite under our feet. She wants to create weapons from it that would destroy anyone who stands in her way." He replied. "She bombed her own city and killed countless people in doing so, just out of spite. She burned down a tree that housed an entire race just because it sat on an Azerite deposit. What do you think she is going to do to Zul'Dazar? Or Voldun? Nazmir?" he asked. "She is going to destroy everything to get what she wants unless you help stop her."

Talanji stayed quiet, watching the archer as he spoke. If what he said was the truth, she would be putting her people in danger. Her eyes narrowed before she spoke again.

"Aeroshot, you are de Speaker of de Horde, and you speak well. I will take your words into consideration, and think about dis. I will send for you when I have decided what to do." Talanji looked to Nebulous, who nodded.

"I will be in Nazmir for the next few days, but after that, I do not know where I will be" He nodded, moving to leave before stopping. "Talanji,"

"Yes?"

"I was never here. Blightcaller cannot know I told you this."

"I have heard nothing but what de wind told me" She replied. "May your Loa watch over you."

"And may yours... well, I would say watch over you but B'wansomdi has his claws in everything, doesn't he?" he asked with a small grin. Talanji smiled a bit at this, watching as the Blood Elf walked off.

 *

 The Necropolis loomed in the dark fog, the energy here felt different, strange. This wasn't the first time the archer had been to the land of the dead, but this time was different. He had a deal to make with the Loa who called The Necropolis home. Spirits walked as if still living, unaware of his presence as he entered the large building before him.

Once inside, he walked down the stairs and to the platform. He could see the Loa hovering in the air, contemplating. Hercules roared, gaining the attention of the Loa.

"The Demon Archer wishes to speak with me, don't he?" B'wansomdi turned, looked down to the Blood Elf.

"I have come to make a deal with you, B'wansomdi. A deal that you have wished for for some time, it seems," Nebulous spoke confidently, his eyes trained on the Loa of Death.

"And what is dis deal dat ya offer, elf?"

"At Talanji's coronation, you said you always wanted the soul of a Horde Warchief, did you not?" He asked, raising an eyebrow. "What if I can guarantee that?"

"A Warchief in my collection would be a sweet victory." B'wonsomdi floated forward, the troll Loa landing to sit upon the alter that Nebulous stood in front of. "But, what is de cost to me?"

"In return for a Warchief's soul, I ask you to bring a Warchief back to life, one of my own choosing," Nebulous replied, watching the Loa. In dealing with these mystical gods, he had learned how to speak to them, but B'wansomdi was the tricky one out of the Loa.

"Ya wish to return de former Warchief to life, de one who's ashes ya stole." B'wansomdi grinned. Nebulous's eyes narrowed, looking up to the Loa.

"How did you know I stole the ashes, death dealer?"

"I have my ways," B'wonsomdi chuckled, tilting his head slightly. "Dere is something else ya want to bargain, I can sense it on ya"

"There is nothing left for us to bargain, Loa. A Warchief for Warchief, that is it."

B'wansomdi's eyes narrowed as his laughter hushed, and he held his hand out. A light came from it, and the Loa seemed to grin.

"I see now, dis is what ya truly want..." He spoke, watching as the light seemed to fade. "I will make ya a different deal, 'Demon Archer'."

"What deal? I am only here for the one I have offered you,"

"Ya bring me de soul of the Horde Warchief, and I give ya back ya past life, de one you been lookin' for,"

A sharp breath in came from Nebulous.

"I see I have ya attention now," B'wonsomdi continued. "If ya bring me Windrunna's soul, I will give ya back the memories ya lost and couldn't find."

Was it worth it? An answer so close but so far away? This was what he wanted, wasn't it? Since he had woken up to Hercules watching over him all those years ago, he had wanted to know. But now... it was different.

"No," he spoke after a moment of thought. "Warchief for Warchief. Whatever life I lived back then, I do not want to know about. I am no longer who you see there, I am me, and I am here to bargain my deal with the Loa of Death." He replied. "Unless, the Loa of Death cannot fulfill the bargain, that is."

B'wonsamdi's eyes narrowed, a hand extending to the Blood Elf. "Windrunna's soul for de one ya call Vol'jin, den." Nebulous took the Loa's hand, nodding. "Windrunner for Vol'jin."

They shook hands, and Nebulous walked out of the Necropolis. He took a breath, sighing before closing his eyes.

"I made the deal with B'wansomdi, and you were right - he tried to bargain my past. Thank you for the heads up, old friend." he spoke, eyes opening as he looked to the left. Through the scores of undead souls floating around, the one that stood to his left was the most familiar. "He wants Sylvanas's soul, but I doubt she has one; that's why he made the deal with me."

"He will own ya until de day ya die," the familiar voice came to the Blood Elf's ears, but he shook his head.

"He can try, but I won't go lightly. Who knows, perhaps when I die, I'll become whoever I was before; and whoever that soul is, isn't me." He replied as he began to walk, the spirit floating behind him. "Honestly... I was surprised to see you at Talanji's coronation... but when I did, I had hope. I had an idea and I had to do it. You kept me in the Horde for a reason, and I intend to rectify what happened to you, old friend."

"Ya may want to watch ya back now, stay with ya Loa for a while. B'wansomdi be lookin' for ya to pay up,"

"Good. When he finds me to pay up, I'll be ready." he grinned. "Right, Hercules?" He asked, turning to look to the lion, but stopped. Hercules wasn't at his side, nor was he anywhere around.

"Hercules?"

[anthai-of-stormwind]

Zero Chill: A Tale of Two Mages

Ever wonder how Sumeri and Anthai got to be best friends? No? Well, let's find out anyway. This story takes place during Patch 5.3, the Darkspear Rebellion.

This was absolutely the last thing Anthai wanted to be doing.

She'd joined the Templars because she'd heard things around Stormwind, rumors that this group would be part of the Alliance's strike force into Orgrimmar. Getting the opportunity to set Garrosh Hellscream on fire (and then maybe setting that fire on fire, just to get her point across) made Anthai all but giddy. So what, pray tell, was her first official mission as a bona fide Templar of the Rose?

"How many Kor'kron are down there?" Sumeri asked, crouched beside her on a hilltop.

Working with the thrice-damned Horde to gather siege supplies.

It wasn't as though it was grunt work. Even the higher-ranked Templars were in the Northern Barrens assisting the Darkspear Rebellion. Besides, she wasn't about to throw a tantrum about the Orcs her first day on the job. She was a weapon. Point and shoot her. That's all she wanted, really.

"I count seven. You need me to, ah, point you anywhere specific, or...?" Anthai didn't know what to make of her fellow mage's disability. You had to see your target to hit it with your spells, right? Did Marshal Emberstone assign her to babysit this one, or...?

"About how far away are they?" Sumeri asked.

Ohhhh boy, this was going to be an adventure. "Look, I've got this, if you want to stay here where it's safe--"

"How far?" Sumeri repeated calmly.

She had to be joking. "About...I'd say forty yards, give or take a few feet."

Sumeri nodded. She concentrated for a moment, then coalesced the ambient moisture in the air into a water elemental, binding it to herself. "You turn me towards them and go invisible. Sneak down there, and I'll conjure a blizzard. Reappear and blink to the other side to lead them into it."

"Okay, yes, or, bear with me here, you know what works great on Orcs? Fire."

"Anthai, no, wait--" Sumeri began, but then heard the shimmering sound of an invisibility spell. She sighed to herself. "'Keep an eye on the new recruit, Sumeri.' 'She seems like she could use some guidance, Sumeri.'" The frost mage pinched the bridge of her nose in frustration. "This is why I worked at a bar."

Anthai had only a few moments before her invisibility spell dropped off. Several yards in front of her were three Kor'kron incinerators, their backs to her as they guarded a precious supply of oil. A wicked idea came to her. The Alliance forces were supposed to deliver the oil to Vol'jin's Darkspear, but...just this once...

She couldn't resist. Dropping her spell, she ignited the barrels with a flamestrike. Waves of viscous flame poured out onto the unsuspecting Kor'kron, and Anthai laughed as the other four roared and charged her.

"Boys, boys. There's enough of me to go around," she taunted, conjuring mirror images of herself that confused the Orcs. An overseer swung his heavy axe into what he thought was the mage's head, only to stumble forward as his weapon went through empty air. Anthai dispatched him easily with a fireball to the face, then turned and ignited another Orc who was cursing her in his native language.

Too bad Sumeri can't see this, she thought as she placed a living bomb on the last two Orcs. Flames skittered up their chests just before they exploded in a shower of burnt flesh and cinders. Anthai surveyed the smoking corpses around her and buffed her nails on her cloak. "You missed out on all the fun, Sumeri!" she called back to their hiding spot. Honestly, it was a shame about the poor girl, but she supposed with a little training, Sumeri might be able to at least conjure a few flurries here and there.

Anthai frowned. Where was Sumeri? "Hey, partner, I'm sorry about the oil and all, but you didn't have to lea--"

"LOK'TAR OGAR!" roared a voice far too close to her. Anthai whirled just in time to throw up a barrier against the knife plunging towards her heart.

"Shit!" Anthai blinked away as fast as she could, her heart pounding. This Orc was obviously a rogue, clad in black leather and sporting two evil-looking daggers.

"Little pinkskin," the Orc cackled in heavily-accented Common. "You face Greska the Scorned. Come, fight the blade of Garrosh Hellscream!"

Anthai gritted her teeth at the name. "Yeah? Well, you face Anthai the Really Pissed Off." Her hands crackled with mystic flames as she prepared to launch a fireball at this loudmouth. Greska grinned and vanished before her eyes. Damned rogues, Anthai thought. Where--

A burning pain shot through her back, and Anthai screamed as Greska's blade sliced across her flesh. "For Hellscream!" Greska cried out as Anthai pitched forward, clutching at her back. She gasped, her limbs moving far too slowly, crippling her. Poison? Must be... She stumbled as she turned back towards the rogue, trying desperately to cast a spell that would turn this damn Orc into a sheep she'd roast for dinner, but her hands were too slow, and Greska was right there, and she was furious that she was about to die here in this stupid desert--

And then a series of hailstones the size of gnomes struck Greska, pummeling her over and over again. The rogue roared in anger and pain. Hail? Anthai thought hazily. But how...?

Sumeri appeared between Anthai and Greska in a swirl of freezing wind, swinging her staff in the rogue's direction. Ice immediately shot up the Orc's legs, freezing her in place.

It had been raining earlier in the Barrens. They weren't too far from a nearby oasis, and there was still some lingering humidity in the air surrounding them. It was enough for Sumeri to take hold of, to condense and freeze into razor-sharp spears of ice, rocketing at high speed towards Greska's body.

The Blade of Hellscream's eyes widened and a trickle of blood seeped from her mouth as the ice lances pierced her body. The ice trapping her feet vanished, and Greska toppled to the earth, her skin already cold and tinged bluish-green with frost.

Sumeri held out an anti-venom and a bandage, and Anthai slowly got to her feet and took them from her, applying the salve to her wound. "There're probably more on the way," Sumeri said, resting the butt of her staff back on the ground. "We should move."

"You...but how...you can't even..." Anthai sputtered, not quite willing to believe what she'd just witnessed.

Sumeri smiled, said nothing and walked away, one hand placed gently on her elemental, letting it guide her steps.

"No, seriously, how did you do that?" Anthai insisted, following Sumeri.

The frost mage turned towards the sound of Anthai's voice and grinned. "I know how to keep a cool head."

Anthai stopped dead in her tracks and glared at Sumeri. "I hate you more than anything and also you are my new best friend."

"Cool by me."

"I swear to--"

"It's an ice gesture on your part."

"WOULD YOU STOP THAT."

"No."

[azureflight]

Geopolitics of the Faction War: Why do Horde and Alliance Really Fight?

TL,DR: Lacking the safety nets available to the Alliance, the poor lands and systemic shortcomings of the Horde condemns its population to chronic poverty, which brings constant social unrest with it. In order to cling onto their power, the Horde leaders fall into a populist and accusatory rhetoric targeting the Alliance, which eventually forces them to start wars due to public pressure.

Unwilling to help the Horde with its economic problems and unable to form a united front in international relations bar warfare, the wealth of the Alliance is virtually worthless in times of peace. Once the wars start, it is used to hold onto whatever Alliance already had, wasted to not lose wars that it could have prevented in the first place. At the end of the war, the Alliance is spent, once again unable and uninterested in helping the Horde. Thus the cycle continues.

When it comes to the reasons behind the perpetual faction war between the Alliance and the Horde, unfortunately the conversation usually devolves into a blame game of “who started it”. Regardless of one's opinion on the matter, however, two facts remain: Neither side is supposed to be bad. Neither side is made up of evil people doing evil for the sake of evil. And both sides manage to drop their quarrels and come together to fight greater foes.

With these in mind, our question is then transformed: If neither side is evil, and both sides manage to work together, build bonds of camaraderie and come to understand one another, why do they keep falling back to killing each other? And the answer to that question lies in the political and economic structures and behaviors of these two factions.

When the First Horde came to Azeroth, it was more than just a plot by the Burning Legion. Beyond their schemes, there were two reasons compelling the Horde: Orcish homeworld Draenor was dying. They were suffering from a scarcity of basic necessities required to sustain their population. They were also in constant infighting. There was a need for an outside enemy to unite against. Much has changed about the Horde since those days, but these two aspects didn't really go away. Today, the Horde remains a faction suffering from chronic abject poverty and social unrest. The reasons behind these conditions have several layers:

The lands the Horde had settled on is mostly barren or very limited in resources required to sustain life. They are either really infertile or corrupted by the Scourge and/or other usage of weapons of bio-chemical warfare.

Majority of Horde's population is made up of hunter-gatherer societies, not agricultural ones. Agriculture is the most crucial step in a society's survival and advancement, because it largely solves the greatest and the most basic problem for all living creatures: Food security. Agriculture means a community can produce its own food, in much greater abundance, in rather protected areas without a need to compete with other predators, and can do this reliably. Agriculture uses land, in terms of food production, much more efficiently and allows societies to store excess food for down times and potential future scarcities. Majority of Horde's population lack this basic safety.

Combined with the already poor lands, this causes most of the Horde's population to live under a constant threat of famine. Their control over their own food supply is limited. Even if they have it good one year, they have no guarantees for the next year and even those who have it better than the others on average, still have no safety. This creates a permanent fear of starvation, a very real and core fear of death. This fear then turns into frustration and anger, bringing social unrest with it, creating a volatile political atmosphere.

These problems can actually be solved by enacting large scale reforms regarding core cultural attitudes and traditions of the Horde societies, along with major environmental remediation projects that could tansform the poor Horde lands into cultivable soil. However, such fundamental changes to the way of life and expensive, long term projects require a great amount of political capital. The type of political capital the Horde leaders simply do not have. Their power and control over their people is so lacking, it can almost only be used to keep themselves in charge and nothing more:

Baine Bloodhoof had to fight a civil war to succeed his own father, less than 5 years ago. He had to get financial aid from an Alliance leader, Jaina Proudmoore, in order to rally an army.

Lor'themar Theron is just a regent, appointed by the last monarch of a now extintc dynasty who turned traitor. He doesn't have the 7000 year old tradition of Sunstriders to support him and within 10 years, he was forced to order two pogroms, of High Elves and later Void Elves, in an already decimated society, simply because he cannot handle internal divisions.

Orcs went through 3 leadership changes in the last 5 years and it looks like they will go through a 4th one in BFA.

The major Troll leader who was also the Warchief of the Horde, Vol'jin, died after just one year in charge, current leadership is in limbo.

Gallywix is a major uncertainty himself. His power relies on deciet, fear and money. He could rule for decades unchallenged or could go down in an assassination the next week.

Sylvanas, who seem to be the safest in her position due to her almost deified cult personality among the Forsaken, still faced an open rebellion just 5-6 years ago. Furthermore, just a year after her appointment as Warchief, she is already facing political opposition within the Forsaken, in the form of an organization called the Desolate Council. And she was not a popular choice for Warchief among the Horde leadership in the first place.

This insufficiency of power limits the options for the Horde leaders. Unable to provide real solutions to real problems, instead the leaders resort to populist rhetoric in order to consolidate teir control and divert public frustration away from themselves onto other parties, often onto the Alliance. This diversion, however, boomerangs onto the Horde leadership, in the form of a massive public pressure to wage war against the Alliance.

So far, Thrall, who probably had the highest amount of public credit within the entire leadership circle, is the only Horde leader to attempt a substantial change in the way of life within the Horde, and it cost him. He also tried to turn the Barrens into a more cultivable land, but it took too long to get tangible returns. As a result, when Cataclysm hit right after the Northrend campaign, taking the already stretched resources of the Horde to new lows, he faced the very real threat of an uprising, eventually forced to semi-abdicate. This situation set a dangerous precedent: Long term plans and challenges to Horde societies' way of life are deemed as political suicide. Instead, it seemed better to shoot for short term glory and promise of wealth and victory through conquest. And it appears, after Garrosh, Sylvanas is adopting this approach as well, with the hopes that this time, the conquest will succeed and it will actually solve the economic problems the Horde faces. However, history suggests it is very unlikely to work:

War is an expensive endeavor. Horde is already suffering from a scarcity of essential goods, and warfare only exacerbates this situation.

The way Horde wages war often destroys the very lands they are trying to take over, diminishing the returns they were supposed to get. Burning of forests, Blight bombing, mana bombing pretty much always renders the environment uninhabitable, nullifying all of their gains.

Even when the Horde has short term victories, their systemic shortcomings that cause them to use land inefficiently mean they are unable to reap the benefits they need.

Longer the war lasts, greater the toll it takes on its participants, both in terms of resources and in terms of psychology. Horde, being the side that is plagued by internal divisions and scarcity, often unravels as conflicts drag, its members turning against one another as their war effort collapse in on itself.

With too much spent and not much gained, end of the wars sees the Horde population exhausted. This exhaustion brings a short lived peace as people try to rebuild. However, with the problems that started the previous wars still unresolved, tensions begin to rise once more, perpetuating the cycle.

At this point, even if the Horde were to have all of Azeroth to themselves unchallenged, they would still face widespread famine and internal turmoil within a few decades. The core of the Horde's problems lies withing itself, as well as its solution, however, the political willpower needed is nowhere to be found.

On the other side of the medallion, we have the Alliance. The problems they face are completely different from the Horde, yet they have no smaller part in the seemingly endless cycle of war between factions. Because if the Horde is the side starting all the wars, the Alliance is the side failing to keep the peace.

As an institution and a society, the Alliance is as stable as stable gets in a world like Azeroth:

Wrynn dynasty has been ruling Stormwind for centuries and are quite popular.

Prophet Velen is the unquestioned religious and political leader of the Draenei, who just recently managed to deliver the victory over the Burning Legion.

Gelbin Mekkatorque has been ruling over Gnomes in what is an elected position at least for decades.

Council of Three Hammers itself may be a new and shaky organization, but the individual leaders and their control over their respective tribes are mostly unchallenged.

Tyrande Whisperwind has been ruling Night Elf nation for over 10000 years, lead them through several global and interdimensional wars, winning all of them. Her political capital is so much that she managed to force several fundamental changes to extremely rigid Night Elf society just within the last decade and bar for a personal vendetta from Maiev Shadowsong, she is practically unopposed.

Genn Greymane is the only one who can be said to have a weak position, due to the civil war his nation had just 5 years ago. However, that war ended with the rebels rejoining him and his current rule has the support of both Stormwind and Night Elves.

From an economic standpoint, average Alliance citizens have a much better living standard than their Horde counterparts. The lands the Alliance controls are made up of mostly lush forests and fertile fields. Pretty much all Alliance societies are agricultural ones, providing greater food supply and food security. Along with the magics available to them, they are able to use the land much more efficiently and preserve it for a long time, achieving vital sustainability. Not everything is peachy, as  proven by the crippling poverty in Westfall, yet even with one of its former breadbaskets rendered fallow, neither the kingdom of Stormwind nor the greater Alliance suffers any overreaching effects. Yet for all of its wealth, for all of its political stability, Alliance projects amost no soft power:

The past pains weight heavily on the Alliance nations. Distrust and even outright enmity towards the Horde is in abundance. This makes the Alliance unwilling to extend a helping hand to the Horde, even though doing so would be of greater benefit in the long term.

As a military alliance of independent nations, the Alliance lacks unity and coordination in all forms of policy other than warfare. Unable to put forth a united front in trade and other international relations, all of its power is divided, often used in unrelated areas and sometimes on opposing ends.

The lack of coordination combined with the lack of willingness, means that the times of peace are times of inaction for the Alliance. The inaction means they are unable to affect the Horde and its politics in any shape or form, as a result, all of the decision making lies in the hands of the Horde.

With decision making ceded to the Horde, the Alliance loses the initiative to them in every single conflict. Forced into a reactive role due its own lack of direction and will, the Alliance starts every war on the back foot. As a result, all of its accumulated wealth is used to catch up to the Horde, dissolving the advantages the Alliance had on paper.

With its wealth used up to not lose wars, the Alliance is unable to bring decisive ends to conflicts. When it all ends, they focus on rebuilding themselves and regress back to a state of international inaction. Once again unable and unwilling to help the Horde solve its chronic problems, the Alliance loses the opportunity to eradicate the very core reasons of the faction war, continuing the tragic cycle.

When she was the Lady of Theramore, Jaina Proudmoore did try to use soft power in order to establish a lasting peace between the Alliance and the Horde. Her city was open to trade and transport for Horde merchants and other non-military Horde citizens. She acted as an intermediary between the fledgeling Kalimdor Horde and the Night Elves, helping the Horde secure trade deals essential for its survival. She secretly provided monetary funds to Baine Bloodhoof in order to secure and stabilize the Tauren nation. She acted as a guarantor between two factions in order to preserve the trade between the Horde and the Night Elves as well as the old peace deal. However, since she was the only one taking these steps, in the end her efforts were insufficient. So far, no other Alliance leader showed anything close to her cooperative attitude.

With all of these in mind, we can come up with a road map for long lasting peace between the Alliance and the Horde:

The Horde leadership needs to bite the bullet and push for the systemic reforms and soil remediation projects.

The Alliance leadership needs to move past its old grudges and support the Horde leadership, both financially and politically, in these endeavors.

Leaders on both sides need to avoid giving into populist and inflammatory rhetoric, and instead actively push against such movements, by force if necessary.

Mutual partial demilitarization is essential to both reducing tensions and relieving funds for the Horde to use on social security policies.

Whether these strategies will ever be applied or not, we cannot know. With a known advocate of peace as the High King of the Alliance, end of this coming war in BFA could see a break from the cycle for the better. Or the situation could escalate to the point where devastating magics and weapons bring about the danger of mutually assured destruction, forcing a regressive stalemate where both sides spend all of their resources to upkeep ever-hungering war machines. Or, one side does win and utter devastation follows for the other, leaving Azeroth in ruins. Or they repeat what they had already done after all the former wars, and fall back into the same habits and brew in their frustrations and grudges until it is time clash once more. We shall see.

TL,DR: Lacking the safety nets available to the Alliance, the poor lands and systemic shortcomings of the Horde condemns its population to chronic poverty, which brings constant social unrest with it. In order to cling onto their power, the Horde leaders fall into a populist and accusatory rhetoric targeting the Alliance, which eventually forces them to start wars due to public pressure.

Unwilling to help the Horde with its economic problems and unable to form a united front in international relations bar warfare, the wealth of the Alliance is virtually worthless in times of peace. Once the wars start, it is used to hold onto whatever Alliance already had, wasted to not lose wars that it could have prevented in the first place. At the end of the war, the Alliance is spent, once again unable and uninterested in helping the Horde. Thus the cycle continues.

Sources: Chronicle Volume 2, Cycle of Hatred, The Shattering: Prelude to Cataclysm, Wolfheart, Tides of War, World of Warcraft (game), World of Warcraft (comics), Before the Storm (sample chapter), Battle for Azeroth Alpha and datamined content.