Sunday, June 9, 2013

The Undead, Elven Elephant in the Room

The Horde has got a huge problem that is not Garrosh Hellscream. Sure, the current conflict centers around the fact that the Warchief is so bloodthirsty and jingoistic that he's turned Durotar and the Barrens into a battlefield, but ultimately, this is just Orcish politics as usual.

No, the problem the Horde has, and I think that in the long run it's a bigger problem than Garrosh, is the Forsaken, and specifically Sylvanas.

All that we accuse of Garrosh - that he is merciless, that he disdains peace, that he has inflicted totalitarian tyranny on his people - we can equally see embodied in Sylvanas. Garrosh uses Blackrock Clan brutes to intimidate dissenters. Sylvannas murders or mind-controls them.

The Forsaken have gone through different tragic stages. First, there is of course the inevitable tragedy of undeath - the idea that they have been twisted, and that the lives they originally enjoyed are stolen from them, yet they must still be conscious enough to know the pain of that loss. With their minds, will, and souls restored to them, they are people once again, and people who can suffer, unlike the majority of the Scourge, who I imagine to be practically machines, with no inner life, or at least an inner consciousness so welded to the Lich King's control and the animal-like instincts of undeath that they do not think to consider how wretched their state is. The second tragedy is the way that their former friends and countrymen, and even family, see them purely as monsters to be destroyed.

Sylvanas gave them strength, and created a new identity - the Forsaken - that gave these poor souls a place to inhabit in the world. But while there have certainly been Forsaken heroes, the subjects of the Banshee Queen also seem unable to shake the brutality, ruthlessness, and callousness of the Scourge.

And in this way, in a final, most terrible tragedy, the Forsaken - who by all rights should be the world's greatest champions for freedom, individuality, and choice, given that they know how it feels to have such things taken away from them - have become a lot like the Scourge from which they broke away. When Garrosh asks what makes her different from the Lich King, Sylvanas merely replies that she serves the Horde. There is not even an attempt to justify her actions on a moral or ethical level.

Admittedly, Sylvanas reveals at least what she claims to be her motivations for her methods. She claims that, with the Lich King gone (or rather, with the new Lich King reigning the Scourge in) there is no source for new members. She had always envisioned the Forsaken as a race in its own right, but as creatures of death, they cannot reproduce the way that the living does. Sylvanas laments that her people will inevitably die out over time if action is not taken. She uses this logic to justify the murder of humans throughout Silverpine, Hillsbrad, Arathi Highlands, and attempts to do so in Gilneas (though the Forsaken never get a truly solid foothold there.)

Using Val'kyr that she recruited after Arthas' fall, Sylvanas raises the human dead in the lands she conquers. However, it is here that her hypocrisies become apparent. Every new Forsaken raised immediately becomes loyal to her. Now, Blizzard claims that this is due to the shock of the transformation, and perhaps that all these people realize the inevitability that they will now only be accepted by the people who killed them.

Still, I think this suggests one of two things: a completely tyrannical police state that will stomp out any resistance at the first sign of trouble, or magical mind-control built into the raising process. It's even possible that the Val'kyr do the latter without Sylvanas' knowledge.

The problem stems, I think, from the fact that Sylvanas envisions the Forsaken as a new race, rather than as a sort of robust support group for those who are afflicted with undeath. It strikes me that there must be members among the original Forsaken (before the Val'kyr) who were content to let themselves eventually die out, perhaps expecting the living to eventually re-colonize Lordaeron. Given Sylvanas' philosophy, however, these people must either be keeping this opinion secret or have been wiped out for their dissenting view.

And for those new Forsaken citizens, who were literally raised right after putting up a fierce resistance to Sylvanas' campaign, I cannot imagine that there would not be a group among them who not only have a dissenting view, but would actively attempt to sabotage and strike back at Undercity.

Sylvanas has proven willing to disobey orders from the Warchief. After assuring the Orcs that she would not deploy the plague in Gilneas, she turned around and ordered its use.

The Forsaken under Sylvanas have extremely dangerous weapons at their disposal, and the Horde is justifiably wary of them. Basically, what it all boils down to, from a Horde perspective, is one's interpretation of the Wrath Gate Incident.

On one hand, and giving Sylvanas the benefit of the doubt, it was Putress and Varimathras who orchestrated the whole thing - a kind of declaration of war on the rest of the world. It is unambiguous that Varimathras sought to take control of the Forsaken and Undercity in order to serve the Burning Legion, and employ the weapons they had developed to cripple the Horde, Alliance, and Scourge.

The question, then, is what Sylvanas intended to do with those weapons in the first place. If we are to attribute the best possible motivations to the Banshee Queen, it is that the weapons were intended to fight the Scourge only. Sadly, Southshore proves this is not the case. Still, a member of the Horde could believe that these weapons are meant only to be used against the Warchief's enemies.

Sylvanas could, in fact, be a loyal, albeit disobedient member of the Horde. To me, this seems like the most likely scenario to describe the current situation. The problem, however, is that we really don't know how long such a state of affairs will last. Might Sylvanas see an opportunity in Garrosh's fall to strike out on her own? Might she, in her mad philosophy that justifies the murder and raising of humans throughout Lordaeron, decide that it is time to start raising her Horde allies?

Koltira Deathweaver's fate could set a very important precedent. Do all Horde Death Knights answer to Sylvanas? Or ought Koltira to answer to Lor'themar? Sure, Sylvanas is just as much an elf as Koltira, but if she declares all Horde Death Knights to be hers to torture and "re-educate," is this not the first step toward some kind of power grab?

With the fall of Hellscream, we could probably hope that the Horde's new leadership will try to reach out to the Alliance and mend some fences, even if they don't become full allies. Yet Sylvanas' campaign through Lordaeron has been far more brutal and horrific than anything Garrosh has done so far. Sylvanas could be the torpedo that sinks a lasting peace between the Alliance and Horde.

The Forsaken are capable of being good allies. Beneath the bitterness and the macabre culture they've devised, they are ultimately people, just as any other race in Azeroth is. But as long as the Banshee Queen pursues her reign of terror and campaign of horror, the Horde is going to have to keep looking over their shoulder, and the Alliance is going to have to shore up their northern border.

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