World Of Warcraft

Arthas wielded the Light until the very moment he took hold of Frostmourne. If the Light didn't forsake him when he massacred his own people on the shores of Northrend, it clearly wasn't being very attentive to his motives. Rather, the strength of the Light seems to be based on one's conviction, and he had plenty of that.

Think I mixed up some of the book canon and game canon since Arthas still uses the light in northrend in contrast to the book but the point is Arthas’s evil stemmed from his lust for revenge while Yrel turned evil because she wanted to force the light on the unwilling. With implied influence from her version of Xe’ra.

Two different flavors of light users falling from grace.

Edited by RedHunter543 on May 1st 2021 at 5:03:31 AM

Those are both ways that the Light can fall into error, yes. In fact, there's a Paladin specialization named after Arthas' motivation: Retribution.

I haven't played the Mag'har storyline myself so I haven't seen the Y'rel events, but it seems like the best way to sum up her motivation is Purity. "Look at all the horrible things wrought by Chaos on our world; we must convert everyone to the Light so it never happens again." Sad, but very believable.

Consider also the Naaru we free in the Sanguine Depths dungeon in Shadowlands. She was part of a massive invasion force that attacked Revendreth for an as-yet unclear reason, got captured, and was forced to serve Denathrius. Even after being freed she says that she can no longer return to her kind because she is "tainted" by Death. That drive for purity is another trap of the Light, but it's exactly what Y'rel fell into.

The Light leaves all these little victims by the wayside as it crusades through the universe. Ultimately I think the intended message is that any one of these cosmic forces can be harmful if it is allowed to operate without restraint. Harmony is achieved with balance. This seems to be the moral of the interchange between Velen and Illidan, doesn't it?

Edited by Fighteer on May 1st 2021 at 5:11:01 AM

Keep in mind that back in WC 3 they hadn't had the primordial forces figured out so things like Light vs Void might as well not be a thing to them at the time and the Light was a generic good guy power.

WOW already showed that light could be wielded by evil people like in the Scarlet Crusade. But it wasn't until Legion that the light started to steer towards Order Is Not Good territory but that's more or less to make the Light vs Void conflict less Black and White.

Light is still one of the more benevolent primordial forces outside of maybe Life and Arcane but it's flaws are far more noticeable.

As a quick refresher for me. Void is the ultimate force of evil, Light and Arcane are the good-ish forces that oppose the void and shape the universe, life and death are the ones that control the organism and dont really have an alignment of sorts and Fel is the odd one out only hellbent on pure destruction and opposing all the other primordial forces.

You're correct about the lore evolving, but I'd like to clarify a bit on the above. Warcraft cosmology occurs on three axes: Life <-> Death, Order <-> Chaos, Light <-> Void. There are elemental damage types that are strongly associated with each of those but it's not an absolute or one-to-one match.

• Life and Death are treated as more of a natural cycle than forces in fundamental opposition. However, that's been disrupted of late by things like the Plague of Undeath and of course the Jailer's shenanigans.
  • Life is associated with Nature magic and makes its home in the Emerald Dream. We know virtually nothing about the being(s) responsible for it, save that it's strongly associated with Elune. Shadowlands contains some interesting clues to this relationship that are presented in the Night Fae campaign.
  • Death is based in the Shadowlands, of course, and this expansion is exploring it for the first time. The souls of living beings feed their anima into these infinite realms, each overseen by a First One. It doesn't have a direct elemental representation; "Death" magic is not one of the traditional types.

• Unlike Life and Death, Order and Chaos are in opposition to each other: one seeking to create and structure, the other seeking to unmake and destroy.
  • Order is associated with Arcane magic and is responsible for the fundamental structure of the universe: stars, planets, moons, the construction of worlds and their inhabitants. It is represented by the Titans, who use planets as "eggs" to produce more of their kind.
  • Chaos is associated with Fel magic and makes its home in the Twisting Nether, the birthplace of demons. It has no natural masters, but the fallen Titan Sargeras made it his home and led his Burning Crusade to unmake creation.

• Light and Void are also in opposition. Light seeks purpose and unity in the cosmos, while Void seeks madness and dissolution.
  • Light is associated with Holy magic and it is not clear where its home lies. I've described its purpose earlier in the thread. Its representatives are the Naaru. We don't know if there are higher beings. The Naaru live in a cycle of light and dark. When they die they are reborn as Void creatures, and when those are defeated they return to Light.
  • Void is sort of associated with Shadow magic, although it's not really firm. Its home is, of course, the Void, populated by eldritch horrors of a Lovecraftian bent: Old Gods and their masters the Void Lords. They thrive on lies and madness, seeking to corrupt the world of Light and bend it to their will.

If we want to line these up along classical alignment axes, then Light would be Good, Order would be Lawful, Void would be Evil, and Chaos would be Chaotic (natch). Life and Death would be a third axis perpendicular to the other two, occupying the Neutral space. It's not quite that simple, though.

Edited by Fighteer on May 1st 2021 at 8:15:23 AM

I don't think the First Ones are doing any direct overseeing. They seem to be to the Shadowlands what the Titans were to Azeroth. I don't think the Winter Queen, the Archon, the Primus, etc aren't First Ones if that's where you're coming from (The Jailer refers to the waystone we use to go to and from the Maw as a relic of the First Ones).

That's been my understanding, at least.

Edited by sgamer82 on May 1st 2021 at 6:46:11 AM

Sorry, Eternals. I'm still not clear what the difference is.

The main thing we know about the First Ones is that we don't know much. We know they built Oribus and Korthia, as well as the Waystone we use to escape the Maw, and are somehow responsible for the Shadowlands being the way it is.

Beyond that however, we know nothing^note unless I'm missing some details from the PTR, which is very possible as I've only scratched the surface and am otherwise avoiding spoilers. They probably created the Eternal Ones and the Attendants, but even that is conjecture to a degree.

Hence my comparison to the Titans, who fulfilled a similar role for Azeroth until Legion.

Edited by sgamer82 on May 1st 2021 at 7:27:49 AM

Like I said before, in the novels turalyon have a crisis of faith about orcs and what to do and he resolve be by thinking orcs dosent belong to azeroth, ergo they dont deserve mercy.

that it, turlayon resolve is crisis by using racism, which mean fighter is right, light isnt draw by goodness but by conviction.

So apparently there's a ton of juicy spoilers in the PTR. The Runecarver regains his memories and returns as the Primus. The Nathrezim are confirmed to serve Denathrius and have infiltrated the Shadowlands, busting Denathrius out of jail. There are reunions between Kael and Vashj and Thrall and Draka. Uther has a bunch of flashbacks and argues for showing compassion to the former Forsworn. Pelagos becomes the new Paragon of Devotion and you can now keep your memories if you want to. Elune is confirmed to be the Winter Queen's sister. Some Shadowlands npc's are revealed to be former Night Warriors, and Tyrande loses contorl of her powers but is cured.

So what happens to our favorite former war chief?

Garrosh?

I don't think that's confirmed yet?

One of my lore videos from the last page has a theory about that question:

Edited by sgamer82 on May 2nd 2021 at 8:18:48 AM

Aaaagh! It seems like 9.1 is a huge story dump and I'm trying to avoid too many spoilers. The stress is going to kill me.

I think the most horrifying spoiler was Jaina being a dreadlord the entire time.

Yeah, don't look at Druple's post.

Edited by RedHunter543 on May 2nd 2021 at 10:55:43 AM

There's a reason I'm foldering on top of spoiler tagging.

Edited by sgamer82 on May 2nd 2021 at 8:19:02 AM

Come to think of it, have we ever had a character possessed by a Dreadlord (or under any sort of possession) and it not be revealed within the same patch?

Sure it could technically happen, but Blizzard doesn't really do that level of subtlety.

I'd imagine it creates the risk of them being accused of retconning that fact. Blizzard's writers are sort of in a no-win situation there.

Blizzard isn't really afraid to retcon things either though.

Heck later this year they are going to be releasing a Sylvanas novel that will likely be retelling all of Sylvanas's story with the additional context of her being in league with the Jailer since around the time of Cataclysm...despite the fact that I strongly doubt that Blizzard actually had the story planned out this far in advance.

I don't really think the current Sylvanas arc was planned in any meaningful capacity prior to Legion. That's when we got our first hints of something lurking in the Shadowlands and had Sylvanas acting super shady after not doing a whole lot for the previous 2 expansions.

It's just that I've noticed that the "X character is secretly possessed or an imposter" idea is something that shows up in fan theories, but hasn't really happened in lore. And while the Jaina theories are mostly done in jest, the "Malkorok is a dreadlord" theories were actually pretty strong for a while...despite the fact that the novel that introduced Malkorok had him as a PoV character that made it abundantly clear he was just a Blackrock Orc that happened to be a former member of Rend Blackhand's inner circle.

So Dreadlord aren't fel created demons but just agents of Denathrius. Makes sense

They have infiltrated Fel and Light. I wonder if there are void dreadlords.

Edited by fasoman1996 on May 2nd 2021 at 10:53:53 AM

If you are responding to what I think you are responding to, that needs to be spoiler tagged.

I see you beat me to it. Thank you.

Edited by Falrinn on May 2nd 2021 at 3:55:11 AM

Apparently it was the discovery of void-using Dreadlords that made Sargeras first aware of the Void Lords existence, though he presumably wiped them out fairly quickly.

Are you guys saying that that one Light Dreadlord isn't really interested in helping/being part of the light? Cause I was kind of hoping he was. It would've been interesting to have a member of a race not be literally the exact same as the rest of them just with a different coat of paint.

Welp, that's sad. I liked the idea of that Light Dreadlord, it showed that the race wasn't all the same, that it could be different and was only united by the force of the Legion (similar to the Draenai/Eredar). Them all being servants of death and only death, with no real agency on their own, kind of lessens them in my eyes.

Edited by DingoWalley1 on May 2nd 2021 at 9:00:36 AM

There's an item you can find on the roof area of Sinfall that specifically outlines tricking the Light by convincing it that one of them had turned to its side.

Edited by sgamer82 on May 2nd 2021 at 5:14:27 AM