Saturday, May 5, 2018

The State of Gilneas after the Fall of Undercity

Gilneas is in an odd limbo state in the current game world, and lorewise, as far as I know.

Worgen players begin in Gilneas, first succumbing to the curse and then aiding their fellow countrymen (many of whom, including the king himself, are also werewolves) in fending off the Forsaken assault on the country and then fleeing to safety in Darnassus.

Maybe the most frustrating thing about the Cataclysm leveling experience was that Worgen players never really got to resolve this story. Some of that story carried over into Horde quests, but you wouldn't really see them on your Horde character, with only the Battle for Gilneas battleground as any sort of revisit to your home territory. The zone itself, outside of a quest for the Rogue legendary daggers from Dragon Soul, is barren and empty after questing there.

Ironically, Alliance players might be left to believe that Gilneas is simply occupied territory, held by the Horde, when Horde quests actually complicate that narrative.

The quests in Silverpine Forest actually have you enter Gilneas itself - in a different phase so that you don't encounter any Alliance players. The fight against the Worgen, particularly the Bloodfang Pack (which existed prior to Cataclysm if I recall correctly) is a vicious one. Ivar Bloodfang and Darius Crowley employ some pretty hardcore tactics, like allowing one of their scouts to get killed just to lure the Forsaken forces into a trap, or convincing the remaining humans on Fenris Isle to drink Worgen blood and become afflicted by the curse so as to prevent Sylvanas' Valkyr from raising them (but, you know, condemning them to being Worgen for the rest of their lives.)

The Silverpine chain ends with Sylvanas capturing Lorna Crowley, Darius' daughter, and threatening to have her killed (and possibly raised) if he doesn't pull back from Silverpine. Darius accepts, which I guess gets him points that Agamemnon really needed but leaves the military situation ambiguous. For one thing, it's not obvious if he's surrendering the whole of Gilneas or just those parts that had existed beyond the Greymane Wall (notably, said northern territories were his domain as a member of the nobility.)

Theoretically there might have been some clear terms written down in the treaties signed following the Siege of Orgrimmar, but with war reignited, that seems out of the picture.

The pressure would clearly send the Gilneans back to their homeland. As Teldrassil burns, they are losing their adopted home, but with Undercity destroyed, the giant threat that first forced them to leave in the first place has itself been pushed into exile.

And when you consider that Undercity is not going to be available for the Alliance to set up shop, it seems only logical that they would make a big push to secure, fortify, and repopulate Gilneas.

So for the people of Gilneas, this war - assuming it doesn't kill us all - might actually wind up being a positive in the long run.

Now let's talk about Gilneas: the country, the culture, and the curse.

Lordaeron is about to see a seismic shift in power. Despite the fact that five of the seven human kingdoms were all situated on the Lordaeron subcontinent (it would be way less confusing if Lordaeron the country and Lordaeron the subcontinent had different names, but here I am writing this in America, which is a part of North America and not the other way around, so it's not like it's unrealistic,) the Alliance has had only a loose grasp of its territories since the devastation of the Scourge.

After Undercity, though? The Scourge hasn't been a major threat (or at least an obvious one) since the death of Arthas, and this played quite well into Sylvanas' ability to consolidate her power. But when she is forced to flee the Undercity, that leaves a massive power vacuum that the Alliance can easily fill. Though certainly devastated by the one-two punch of the Cataclysm and the Forsaken, Gilneas seems to largely be intact, ready for people to move back.

Genn is super old at this point, but it seems as if the Worgen curse has reinvigorated him, to the extent that he can beat down Varok Saurfang (watch the BFA cinematic!) Still, while his older child Liam has died, he does have an heir in Tess (very ironically a member of the Uncrowned) and so there is hope for continuity of the Greymane line should something happen to Genn. With the scars of the Northgate Rebellion healed over and frankly moot, and bad apples like Lord Godfrey no longer there to poison the kingdom, not to mention the shared trauma of having to leave their home, there's a great deal of unity among Gilneans.

And that's particularly impressive given that about half of them are werewolves.

The Worgen were monsters that other Gilneans hunted down, and their swarming attack on the capital is part of what allowed Sylvanas to invade in the first place. But it seems as if at this point, the Worgen have proven themselves so reliable and in control of themselves that the rest of Gilneas seems pretty chill about them. It probably helps that their king is one.

Still, I feel like there's territory to explore here. One thing in particular that I find interesting is the fact that the Worgen curse is not passed from parent to child. Except in rare cases (and never in-game,) you pretty much don't see Worgen children. Generally, if you're strong enough to survive being bitten by a Worgen long enough to become one yourself, you're probably a rather hale and hearty adult.

What this means is that it wouldn't be too crazy to expect that many in Gilneas expect the curse to be a temporary thing - just the affliction of the current generation, to be forgotten as a bizarre and traumatic time for their people.

And yet, I have to imagine that some people wouldn't want to go back. The curse has not only protected them from the Forsaken use of necromancy and blight, but it has also given them a new perspective on life - putting them more in tune with the natural world and their feral instincts, and even opening up the path of true Druidism for them.

Now, as long as there's a game, no one on Azeroth will know a lasting peace, but one could imagine that if Gilneas is liberated and re-settled, you might find that the cultural unity in Gilneas starts to feel strain between those who want to go back to how things were and those who want to maintain their Worgen nature.

It's pretty clear that things have changed significantly in Gilnean culture. Prior to the fall of the Greymane Wall, Gilneas, and Genn in particular, felt that they were the strongest nation and did not need to help others. He was an isolationist, only to discover that they couldn't make it on their own. That's reflected already in the way that Genn is taking a pretty huge role in the Alliance lately - spending a great deal of time counseling Anduin and acting as an ambassador when we got to Kul Tiras, not to mention more or less running the campaign against the Horde.

Might we see Gilneas arise as the Alliance's major capital to the north? It stands to reason that if any nation is positioned well to restore Lordaeron to human control, it's Gilneas. There will certainly be conflicts to come, of course, with Stromgarde clearly set up to be a continuing area of contention, but I really can't think of any Alliance group who will benefit more from driving the Forsaken out of Undercity than Gilneas.

Still, questions remain: what will Gilneas be in this long-awaited return? Unlike the Draenei, the Gilneans get to actually rebuild in their homeland. Prior to the Forsaken invasion, Gilneas was a nation oriented around isolation and self-sufficiency. But that is so profoundly different from the way that these people live now that I can't imagine it just returning to the way that it used to be.

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