Who is Playing the Game Best?

In a lot of ways, I think the frustrations I have with the way the Alliance story is told is that they've made the entire faction into Ned Starks - capable in combat, but far too quick to trust, with no real schemers amongst them.

As it stands, I see three potential chessmasters at work in BFA: Azshara, N'zoth, and Sylvanas.

Let's start with Azshara, given that we're dealing with her right now:

Azshara is personally very powerful. She's generally considered the most powerful mage on Azeroth, making Jaina or Khadgar look like novices. On top of that, she's been in power for well over ten thousand years. Her people adore her, as they did when they were all Night Elves. It almost seems as if she has some magical ability to influence people beyond her personal charisma.

We know that 8.2 starts with Azshara drawing the Horde and Alliance fleets into a trap, wrecking them in the drained-for-now Nazjatar.

Azshara has been known to ally herself with powerful evil entities when it suits her - first she welcomed Sargeras, considering a Titan the only one worth to be her consort. But when Zin-Azshari, not to mention most of the world, began to flood, she made a deal with N'zoth, transforming her people into the Naga so that they could survive beneath the waves.

In Azshara's Warbringers short, the interaction seems like one in which she talks her way from drowning with her empire in ruins all around her to becoming the queen of a new empire and a new race. She makes a bold move, bluffing (or maybe just choosing death over servitude) N'zoth so that it will save her on her terms.

She has fiercely loyal subjects and a lot of arcane power at her disposal. But is she actually a master schemer?

See, I could be wrong, but my read of the Warbringers short is that N'zoth made her think she'd won the negotiation. We'll get to N'zoth, but particularly the moment when Azshara is underwater, smugly smirking, only for a look of panic to gradually grow on her face before N'zoth fulfills his end of the bargain and transforms her (in a manner that seems extremely painful.)

See, Azshara is defined by her arrogance. Yes, she's powerful. And one gets the sense that basically no one ever says no to her. Which means that, while she might be a brilliant mind at the arcane, she probably thinks she's smarter than she is.

Comparing Azshara to N'zoth, my money is on N'zoth being the one whose plan is deeper and ahead of everyone else.

Here's the thing: we know less about N'zoth. We barely every interact with him (it... I'm going to use male pronouns given that the game does and his voice actor is a man, even though Old Gods are very clearly something outside of what we understand as gender) but what we've heard about him suggests an entity that thinks in an extremely strategic manner.

N'zoth is famous for being the weakest of the Old Gods - but also for seeming to always come on top. By weakest, one wonders what we're actually saying. My sense is that he had the smallest armies and perhaps the least powerful control of raw magic. But N'zoth's ability to outmaneuver his more powerful brethren suggests a being with a remarkable ability to play the game.

The Old Gods are beings of madness, but they have all shown themselves capable of at least some manipulation. C'thun turned the Anubisath constructs to his purposes. Y'shaarj made of his death an intractable curse. Yogg-Saron created the Curse of Flesh and the Emerald Nightmare. And N'zoth created the Naga, was probably the one to corrupt Deathwing, and even usurped the Emerald Nightmare from Yogg-Saron.

And as old as Azshara is, the Old Gods are older, and insidiousness is their very nature.

It's disturbing that N'zoth seems to be treating us heroes as his allies, even as we strive to defy him. There's something he knows that we don't.

Now, Azshara and N'zoth are allies, but one imagines that Azshara can't really suffer any being, Titan or Old God, as her superior. Does she have a plan to take the reins of the Black Empire?

I imagine she does, but I also strongly suspect that if she does, N'zoth is counting on it, and ready to do whatever it takes to use that to his advantage. Remember, N'zoth played the weak one among the Old Gods - was it that he truly was weaker, or did it just suit his purposes to be beneath the other Old Gods' notice. Of the four of them, he's the one who hasn't ever been killed in any way (and yes, the jury's still out on how dead C'thun or Yogg-Saron are, but N'zoth isn't even partially dead.)

But then there's the wildcard: Sylvanas Windrunner.

Now, to be fair, you can always make someone seem to be running the most complex schemes by simply not telling us what they're doing. It's clear Sylvanas is doing something. We've seen her capable of deception and ambush - she successfully fooled the Alliance into sending troops south to Silithus before her attack on Darkshore. It's even starting to look like the entire coup in the Undercity in which Varimathras turned against her and tried to summon the Burning Legion might have, somehow, been her doing to purge disloyal members of the Forsaken and strengthen the Horde's investment in her people. She also arranged the entire Siege of Lordaeron as a trap to decapitate the Alliance - though in this case she might have failed to account for Jaina showing up.

Sylvanas has been up to a lot this expansion, though we're currently at a stage where nothing is explicitly working for her. But there are strong implications:

First, there's my theory that Sylvanas wanted Baine to break Derek out so as to make it appear that he was freed before his mind was conditioned. Then there are the assassins she sent after Thrall - which again, could be a failure, but do you really send just two assassins to kill a legendary shaman like him? Again, it's speculation, but I think she intended to draw Thrall into the whole fray. And we still don't know what the full terms of her deal with Helya was - a being who, according to a turn-in quest from Island Expeditions, is not nearly as dead as we might have thought.

Right now, Sylvanas has sent Nathanos with the Blade of the Black Empire (no longer Xal'atath, as that entity has left the blade) to the ocean, and the last the Horde sees of him, he's walking nonchalantly into the ocean wall (as a Forsaken, he doesn't need to breath. Though I doubt my Forsaken Rogue could just walk through that wall.)

Which means what? WHICH MEANS WHAT?

Nathanos has not simply failed his mission, and that leaves us to ask what that mission is, and what Sylvanas asked him to do?

So, to put the full tin-foil hat on, I think that the Blade of the Black Empire is going to be used to trap N'zoth - not entirely unlike Frostmourne, it'll be a soul-prison, and in this case it will be a prison for an Old God.

But there are other steps in that plan (if indeed that is the plan) that we don't know.

Sylvanas has to be reckoned with in some way this expansion. I can't imagine that the "faction conflict will be resolved" if Sylvanas remains Warchief, or unless we discover that she's been doing all her horrible deeds for some greater good - though even then, I imagine Tyrande and co are not going to be in a forgiving mood.

So here's my bet: I'm counting Azshara out of the "top manipulator" competition. I think she's powerful and important, but she's the Cersei of this story, and (spoiler alert! If you somehow don't know how Game of Thrones ends by this point and care!) that means that for all her plays, it's not going to save her in the end.

N'zoth is the champ to beat - an eldritch being of unspeakable nature. But Sylvanas is pulling some master moves here, to ends that we haven't been able to discern quite yet.

And here's the bigger tin-foil thing: She's also drawing on powers that we don't fully understand.

Now yes, the Void is the main Lovecraftian, unimaginable, horrible, eldritch force in Warcraft. The Old Gods are clearly beings of cosmic horror, and that genre is all about things that you can never really beat, and generally can't even really slow down - your best bet is to hide and hope they don't notice you.

But Sylvanas is drawing on the power of Death. And we've seen in the past that Death magic doesn't seem to even play by the rules the Old Gods follow. The Lich King built a massive citadel out of an Old God's blood - blood that drives mortal insane just by being around it. But the undead? Unaffected. You go to that mine in Ymirheim, and the Val'kyr there are doing fine. There's a Faceless N'raqi who actually asks us to help him because he can't escape - the Ymirjar captain there cannot be manipulated, even as the captured miners will attack there liberators or jump into a chasm to their deaths.

The powers of Death are the ones we know the least about - like who the hell Bwonsamdi's boss is. And we know that the whispers of the Void flooding Alleria's mind beg her to kill Sylvanas because she works for the "true enemy."

Is death powerful enough that even the Old Gods fear it?

And if Sylvanas is drawing on that power, might she be able to outplay even N'zoth?