Monday, September 29, 2014

Draenei, Orcs, and Legion

When our universe (well, the main Warcraft universe) gave rise to the Horde, the Orcs turned on the Draenei, a group of people who had been their neighbors for centuries. The Orcs and Draenei had never been allies, exactly. But the Draenei, being who they were, had never acted aggressively against the Orcs, which was pretty much unprecedented in Draenic history. Just as a note here: I'm going into this assuming that the history of Draenor is very similar between the two universes, and only differs where it is explicitly stated.

What were the Orcs to make of the Draenei? The strange, blue, hoofed people were phenomenally advanced - their technology and architecture made the Ogres and the Arrakoa look primitive. The arrival of the Draenei coincided with some huge events in Orcish culture. Their ship, the Genedar, which had taken them to countless worlds, always one step ahead of the Burning Legion, crashed in Nagrand and its wreckage became Oshu'gun - a place of great spiritual importance due to the way that the spirits of the dead seemed drawn to it. Shadowmoon Valley was host to a strange power called the Dark Star, which the local Shadowmoon Clan considered evil, though the Draenei knew that it was in fact the Naaru K'ara, who had been injured sometime during their flight to Draenor and was ejected from the Genedar in a moment of panic, which likely caused the crash in the first place.

It's never explicitly stated, but for all we know, Shadowmoon Valley is cloaked in eternal nighttime because of K'ara. Still, though K'ara became very dangerous in her injured form, she remained dormant where she fell, and the Draenei built the Temple of Karabor there, presumably in her honor (I assume Karabor derives its name from the Naaru's name.)

The Orcs were neighbors - but they weren't exactly friendly or non-friendly. Some Orcs were closer to the Draenei than others, for example, Rulkan, the wife of Ner'zhul, counted Velen as a personal friend, albeit one she didn't see often. Ultimately, the Draenei remained aloof from the Orcs, and it was this aloofness that led to the horrors of the Old Horde.

The Draenei made one fundamental mistake in our universe - they didn't warn the Orcs about the Burning Legion. To say that this puts the blame of the genocide and the destruction of Draenor entirely on the Draenei's shoulders would be, frankly, absurd. But it was definitely a major error in judgement.

Quick recap: In our universe, Rulkan died some time before the rise of the Horde. Kil'jaeden, who had found the Draenei but had not yet tipped his hand about that fact, appeared to Ner'zhul in the guise of Rulkan's ghost, warning him that the Draenei were going to wage a genocidal war against the Orcs. Ner'zhul, who was respected by the other clan leaders because of his spiritual authority, rallied around him and provided the opportunity for Gul'dan, his closest student and Kil'jaeden's willing undercover agent, to organize the Horde into the demonic army that it became.

Perhaps if the Draenei had warned Ner'zhul about the demons, he might have been more skeptical toward this apparition. On the other hand, it's possible that it wouldn't have mattered, and that Kil'jaeden would have either been able to trick Ner'zhul anyway, or he would just have found another way to manipulate the Orcs.

Still, we don't know a lot about the history of the Draenei between Argus and Draenor. We know they traveled to many worlds, but we still don't really know what those worlds were like. Did they have people on them? And if so, what happened after the Legion found the Draenei? The case of Draenor is pretty horrific - given that the Draenei inadvertently led the Legion to Draenor - but it also seems relatively unique. We can guess that a lot of the time spent in transit was really just the Draenei living on the Genedar (possibly with some kind of stasis system, though I also subscribe to the idea that Draenei just have incredibly long lifespans.) Clearly Draenor was a special place, as they called it "Exiles' Refuge," and settled down there instead of just trying to repair the Genedar.

One could imagine that somewhere along the way, they had come to some other world, but telling the people there about the demons chasing them had either gotten them effectively kicked off the planet, or perhaps had led some among those people to look into this whole warlock magic thing and then turn on them. It's all pure speculation, and while it wouldn't technically be a retcon, it might be seen as a cheat to suddenly throw in this story to justify the Draenei's silence on the whole Legion thing.

Actually, do we know that the Draenei never told the Orcs about the demons? Has that been said?

The Orcs became the Horde because they feared the Draenei would kill them. But given that they had evolved on Draenor, this wasn't exactly something new. Still, could there have been a sense of betrayal? The Draenei had seemed so friendly, and now they were a threat? Or perhaps there had been jealousy. In a mere three hundred years, the Draenei had built gorgeous cities and temples throughout Shadowmoon Valley, Talador, Nagrand and Farahlon. The Draenei had so much wealth and power, all tantalizingly within reach. It's not hard to imagine that there was some resentment there as well.

And Orcs being how they are - the Blood Craze seems to be inherent to their physiology, as opposed to a purely demonic thing (maybe demon blood essentially keeps it on at all times and kicks it into overdrive?) - once the gears of war started turning it was impossible to stop them. Even when Ner'zhul realized he had been deceived, it was too late - the Orcs en masse had gone into a blood craze, and it wouldn't stop until Draenei civilization was in ruins.

But it's a little odd, because the Iron Horde really shouldn't have that much of a desire to attack the Draenei. In Draenor-B, Ner'zhul was never contacted by Kil'jaeden, because Rulkan's still alive. Indeed, the Horde itself looks almost like it isn't even going to come together. Gul'dan is doing his best to rally people, but while he's a powerful warlock, most people don't really like or trust him (with good reason.) He has none of the authority that allowed Ner'zhul to bring together our Horde.

The reason the Iron Horde comes together is not Gul'dan or Ner'zhul or Kil'jaeden (lots of apostrophes in Warcraft names, have you noticed that?) It's Garrosh, and Garrosh barely cares about the Draenei at all. The Draenei are a small secondary threat. Garrosh convinces his alt-universe sorta-dad to form the Iron Horde specifically to take on us - the Alliance and Horde of Azeroth. He portrays the Alliance as slavers who would keep the Orcs in chains and he portrays the Horde as a bunch of Fel-tainted beast to be put down.

The Draenei are seen as a threat only in that they are the only group of people on Draenor that might have any chance in a fight against the Iron Horde. The Ogres quickly agree to an alliance to save their own skins, the Blackrock Orcs manage to harness the barely-sapient Gronn, and the few other humanoid races are either too few, like the Saberon, or too caught up in their own internal conflicts, like the Arrakoa, to be a real threat.

But again, once the Horde war machine - Iron or otherwise - gets going, it's hard to keep the conflict focused. Grommash's top priority once we shut down the Dark Portal is to lock down Draenor. His "join or die" approach to diplomacy creates enemies, and the Draenei are probably the biggest one outside the Alliance/Horde.

At any rate, if the Draenei share some small portion of the blame for the demonic corruption of the Old Horde, they certainly hold none of it in the creation of the Iron Horde (well, except in a really convoluted way, given that without our universe's Horde, there would be no Iron Horde.)

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