World Of Warcraft

Blizzard has released a new WoW audio drama. It's about what happened to Turalyon and Alleria between WC 2 and Legion.

I forgot they did these. Was the last one Gul'dan and Khadgar in the Tomb?

Also, it's funny that we have all this discussion about the Light being evil as well...and nobody wants to talk about the Obviously Evil Locus Walker? I don't trust this guy at all.

It's quite good so far. Looking forward to the next installment.

I "watched" the audio drama and it is indeed exceptionally well done. It explains a lot of what I had been asking as I went through the Argus campaign, including but not limited to:

• How have Turalyon and Alleria been fighting in the Army of the Light for a thousand years when it's been only a few decades on Azeroth? Time works differently in the Nether.
• How has Turalyon not died of old age during that time? He was "reforged in the Light" by Xe'ra, becoming ageless.
• How did Alleria first encounter the Shadow and Locus-Walker? As the Light is Turalyon's destiny, so the Shadow is hers. While the two are trapped by demons on Argus, she opens a rift to the Void so they can escape.
• What was that business with Xe'ra imprisoning her? After she saves Turalyon and Lothraxion from an Eredar assassin using her new Void magic, Xe'ra relents and has her locked up in the Xenedar rather than killing her on the spot.
• What does the Burning Legion fear if not the Light? The Shadow.

edited 22nd Sep '17 3:48:49 AM by Fighteer

So Dadgar had his youth stolen by Medivh and Turalyon was made ageless by the Light.

Fate has a funny sense of humor.

Indeed. The audioplay also dramatically hammers home the theme of Light and Void being equally blind in their own ways, reinforcing my belief that the conflict will ultimately not resolve in favor of either, but with some sort of merging or compromise.

To paraphrase, the Light sees one single true path and refuses all others, while the Void sees infinite paths and regards them all as true. This means that the Light is constantly caught off-guard as Fate does not turn out as it had foreseen, while the Void can never have any definite goals or plans. The Light cannot see that it might be wrong and the Void cannot see that there might be anything true.

The Void-prophecy that Alleria will kill N'zoth and take its place is, however, both fascinating and absolutely terrifying at the same time.

Edited to add: I continue to have a problem with one aspect of Xe'ra's story. She claims Illidan is the Child of Light and Shadow, implying that his dual nature partakes of both extremes. But Illidan never took the Void into himself; rather, he studied the ways of demons and absorbed the Fel. Chaos and Void are different aspects of reality, so it would be more accurate to call Illidan the Child of Light and Chaos. Is Xe'ra conflating the two, or is there something that I missed?

Heck, given that Illidan was a mage, which channels the Arcane, before he became a Demon Hunter, it would be even more accurate to call him the Child of Order and Chaos. Methinks that the Arcane and the Light also get conflated more often than they should...

edited 22nd Sep '17 4:33:00 AM by Fighteer

And even then, Illidan isn't a child of either. He willingly, knowingly abandoned arcane magic in favor of fel magic when he absorbed the Skull of Gul'dan. Every time he's described as casting spells in the novel, it's draining life force or power from elsewhere, like when he sacrifices Maiev's forces to open the gateway to Nathrezar.

Illidan is basically a warlock with good PR.

Anduin has a better claim on being the Child of Light and Shadow, and all he did that was vaguely shadow-y was mind control a dwarf that one time.

edited 22nd Sep '17 4:53:29 AM by math792d

He abandoned the Arcane and absorbed the Fel way before absorbing the Skull. He started directly using Fel when he lost his sight I believe.

The point is that Illidan never wielded Holy or Void magic, so calling him the Child of Light and Shadow is doubly wrong, unless one is merely being poetic.

It doesn't seem likely now, but when I first heard about Alleria's void powers, I thought that the twist was going to be that Arator was the real Child of Light and Shadow considering that's kind of literally what he is.

edited 22nd Sep '17 5:16:37 AM by LordVatek

You're not alone. The thought did occur to me as well.

The thing about Arator is that he hasn't gotten much if any characterization in the game, unlike Illidan (and now Turalyon and Alleria). Sure, there are the tie-in novels, but to have a character from those suddenly swoop in and satisfy the prophecy would be really incongruent.

We know that the final stage of this expansion's narrative is going to put major focus on Turalleria (Alleryon? They need a Portmanteau Couple Name), so hopefully this'll get resolved.

edited 22nd Sep '17 5:18:45 AM by Fighteer

The idea that the Legion fears the Shadow (presumably the Void) is interesting to me. I picked up on something about that during the Destiny Point quests on Argus (where you pilot the Warframe Mecha).

One of the quests has you killing a pair of Shivarra and one of them, upon death, cries out about how the Shadow will prevail.

Remember that Sargeras fell to Chaos and created the Burning Legion for the specific purpose of combating the Void, which he foresaw would unmake all of Creation. The Legion has always seen the Void as its true enemy, and the idea that the Army of the Light would use the Void against it is absolutely terrifying to them.

I thought Sargeras himself wanted to unmake all of Creation. :S

Maybe both? Sargareas isn't exactly sane, iirc.

No. He fell to the Fel because he saw the void corrupt a planet, killed that planet which caused him to be kicked out of the Pantheon. He then became a Well-Intentioned Extremist via releasing the demons imprisoned in Mardum and transformed them into a respawning army under his command.

The Titans tried to stop him and their Arcane and Fel powers clashed on various worlds and Fel won. However he saw that the demons were idiots and sought out Argus to corrupt the Eredar to be their leaders.

If there was any sign of corruption the Legion showed up and destroyed or corrupted the planet to prevent the Void from taking hold.

edited 22nd Sep '17 7:03:01 AM by Memers

So Tedd Shoemaker's right, demons really are painfully incompetent?

Not exactly. This gets a bit technical, so bear with me.

In the tapestry of Creation, the Titans are the agents of Order (the Arcane pole of the universe's metaphysical alignment). Titans send "seeds" out into the universe, which form planets around them. These planets are eggs and the seeds are new Titans. As each Titan is born, it continues the cycle of Order.

The Void Lords are the agents of Void (the Shadow pole of the universe's metaphysical alignment). The Shadow exists in eternal struggle against the Light, attempting to return all of Creation to the Void, but their masters cannot manifest in our universe. To overcome that problem, the Void Lords seek to corrupt the Titan embryos so that when they "hatch", they will become Void Titans that will stamp out everything that exists.

Sargeras discovered this and fell into despair. He saw the destruction of Creation by the Void as inevitable, since the Titans were blind to it. They could not comprehend the true purpose of the Void and simply sought a band-aid approach whereby they'd periodically scan each planet for corruption and "re-originate" it, but that wouldn't be enough. They would ultimately fail. So Sargeras abandoned the path of Order and sought allies in the path of Chaos. He resolved to conquer the universe with Fel energy, burning out the corruption of the Void before it could take root.

The Legion vs. the Void is essentially a case of Evil Versus Oblivion.

edited 22nd Sep '17 7:08:27 AM by Fighteer

Or ending the world vs enjoying a world filled with Happy Meals on legs?

He almost sounds like Illidan on a grander scale

edited 22nd Sep '17 7:14:04 AM by sgamer82

Oh yeah, they are really dumb without specific leadership.

Sargeras beat every single demon in existence originally and saw they revived in the nether and they came back to fight again, hopelessly disorganized. He then easily beat em again and imprisoned them in the planet so they couldn't revive elsewhere.

The Nathrezim are supposed to be at least semi-competent but prone to be Stupid Evil at times when left to their own devices.

He is exactly that. Even to the point he fell from Arcane to Fel.

edited 22nd Sep '17 7:15:10 AM by Memers

I think this explains to me why Argus is called the Legions seat of power vs just another conquered Legion world.

I'm still a little bit unclear on the exact mechanism for demons to respawn.

In one telling of it, the Twisting Nether just sort of naturally respawns any demon who dies anywhere else. Their souls return to it and it reforms them after a period of time. In another telling, this immortality is an effect of the corruption of the fallen Titans themselves: Titanic energy is being perverted through Antorus to regenerate the demons.

These are difficult to reconcile. If we destroy Antorus, is that it for demons? They stop respawning, always and forever? Or does this apply only and specifically to the once-mortal races like the Eredar and Nazrethim who were impressed into Sargeras' army?

edited 22nd Sep '17 7:26:34 AM by Fighteer

I take it as they can respawn naturally but it takes eons. Antorus makes the process much faster.

That's the impression I get. Turalyon and co. treat dealing with Antorus/Argus as putting an end to the Legions infinite army.

Perhaps Antorus speeds up the revival process or acts as a major if not single rallying point (or graveyard) for demons to respawn from. Otherwise the pop up anywhere within the nether.

Either would put a huge damper on any infinite armies.

Sargeras motivation is to cause a Class 6 Apocalypse to all planets to prevent a Class X-4 from happening.

Demons could regenerate before Argus was captured which seems to be imply that Anthorus just speeds up the regeneration process significantly.

edited 22nd Sep '17 7:28:38 AM by Kiefen