No race has struggled more with the demonic Burning Legion than the Draenei. Fifteen thousand years before the Night Elves had even heard of the Legion, the Draenei were forced to flee their own home planet - indeed, their race's name is a product of this fact.
Draenei is not actually the name of their species. The Draenei, along with their Lightforged kin and the shadow-cursed Broken, and even the Lost Ones (whom we haven't really seen since BC) are all Eredar. In fact, the Draenei - those who haven't been transformed by Light or Shadow magic - are what the Eredar race was before the coming of Sargeras.
The history of the corruption of the Eredar and the Legion's annexation of Argus might start with an Eredar mage named Thal'kiel. A master of summoning magic, he was one of the masters of the Conservatory of the Arcane. Thal'kiel had his own dedicated followers who studied under his instruction, called the Wakeners. Among the Wakeners was Thal'kiel's top student, Archimonde.
Delving into the mysteries of the cosmos, Thal'kiel began to hear a voice answer his inquiries - the Dark Titan Sargeras. Teaching him to summon demons rather than arcane constructs, Thal'kiel grew more and more obsessed with demonology. He eventually went to the duumvirate - the dual leaders of Argus, Kil'jaeden and Velen. Summoning legions of demons to destroy his older arcane constructs, he expected congratulations. But Kil'jaeden made no comment while Velen forbade him from continuing this line of research.
The rejection led Thal'kiel to sequester himself while he practiced summoning more and more demons. Eventually, he brought his Wakeners into a conspiracy to overthrow the Duumvirate and become the rulers of Argus.
However, Archimonde, ambitious and eager to prove himself a hero of Argus, revealed the plan to the authorities and led the attack to nip Thal'kiel's rebellion in the bud. Personally decapitating Thal'kiel, Archimonde parlayed his heroic status to political power, eventually joining Kil'jaeden and Velen as the third member of a Triumvirate.
Keeping Thal'kiel's skull as a grisly trophy of his moment of ascension, Archimonde had the skull gilded and encrusted with gems and kept it on display outside his quarters at the Conservatory. Little did he know that Thal'kiel's consciousness remained within the relic, and the skull functioned as a conduit for Sargeras to poison his mind.
Thus, when the Dark Titan arrived at Argus, Archimonde was the first to agree to his proposal.
Sargeras surely would have tried different tactics to corrupt the Eredar, but without Thal'kiel, history may have gone very differently.
Velen and his Draenei have been defined by their relationship with the Burning Legion for eons. The War of the Ancients is recent history compared to the flight from Argus.
In that conflict, the Draenei have held onto the Holy Light and the guidance of the Naaru as the sole path to survival. Traveling with a number of Naaru, the Draenei have never had a reason to question their faith - their god-like protectors are near to them, and through their grace they have been able to survive all this time.
But in what must feel like the blink of an eye to a people who live so long (remember that many living Draenei personally remember the flight from Argus) their world has been more or less turned upside down.
Consider that a mere thirty-five years ago or so, the Orcs banded together to form the Horde and immediately set about killing Draenei wherever they could find them. The slaughter was a shock, and one that left most of the Draenei dead. But some of those who were not killed were given what might be an even worse fate: the Horde altered the void-tainted blood of Seethe to use as a sort of biological weapon that mutated those it affected but also cut them off from the Light. Much as the Arrakoa who were touched by this blood were twisted in form, so too were these Draenei broken - Krokul in their language. (Little did they know, but those Draenei who stayed behind to fight the Legion on Argus seemed to fall to a similar fate thanks to the void power of the Dark Naaru L'ura.)
The notion that they could be cut off from the Light sent shockwaves through the surviving Draenei society. The Light had been the Draenei bulwark against the Legion - so how were they to trust these former friends and family who were now hideously mutated by the very opposite of the Light? In paranoia cultivated by the shocking turn of the Orcs, many Draenei turned their backs on the Krokul.
Thankfully, Velen is a thoughtful and nuanced person, and not a zealot. Speaking with Nobundo - once a heroic paladin, who had lost his power due to his transformation - he invited the former paladin and future shaman back into society, and forced his people to take in their brethren.
Nobundo introduced a very new type of spirituality to his people: while he waited in vain to hear the Light speak to him once more, it was the elemental spirits of Draenor that approached him. Eager to commune with mortals after the Orcs had abandoned them, Nobundo was able to bring this new tradition into Draenei society, and even some non-Krokul began to take it up, considering it a sort of alternate path to the Light.
Upon discovering the Alliance, which counted many worshippers of the Holy Light among its members, the Draenei resolved to travel to Azeroth and join them. Despite some early complications (it didn't help that they looked a lot like their demonic brethren) their initiation into the Alliance has gone rather smoothly, and Velen himself has developed a close relationship with the current High King, Anduin Wrynn.
But again, after what had to feel like a shockingly short amount of time, the Draenei found themselves fighting the Legion once again. But there was something different: with the allies they had found, they were finally able to stand their ground. The Legion was turned back.
Of course, their frustrated attack led to the careful manipulations that would allow for a full-scale invasion a few years later, which is where we get to the Legion expansion.
However, due to the maverick impulses of Illidan Stormrage, the ultimate battle that Velen and the Draenei had been anticipating for all their thousands of years was forced - a portal opened up between Azeroth and Argus, and it would mean the ultimate victory of one side or the other.
Illidan was certainly an ally in this fight, though his methods were profoundly different from what the Draenei had deemed acceptable. When the fragments of Xe'ra were assembled, it seemed that the Light would secure their final victory.
But Xe'ra revealed herself to be something less than pure benevolence. The Prime Naaru attempted to forcibly Lightforge Illidan - we know of something similar happening in the past, namely Lothraxion, who had been a wicked Dreadlord in service to the Legion prior to his conversion. And while Lothraxion is now a champion of the Light and a good friend and ally to mortals, Illidan was not exactly an evil demon. He had done bad things, to be sure, but his goals had always been admirable. And as Xe'ra pumped him full of the Holy Light, Illidan - someone for whom free will might be the most important value - struck back, destroying Xe'ra.
What's kind of fascinating is that Velen did not seem to blame him. Turalyon, the sole Lightforged human, was horrified, seeing this as grasping defeat from the jaws of victory, as it were. But Velen had the perspective to look at this event and see the truth - Xe'ra had been wrong to ignore Illidan's wishes.
The Light has the potential to be used as a force for good, and it often is. But as we've seen with the Scarlet Crusade or Kael'thas' Blood Knights, it can also be used for evil. And Xe'ra's actions toward Illidan showed that even the Naaru are not immune to the Light's zealous, authoritarian tendencies.
Meanwhile, we're also finding that the Void is not necessarily a force of pure chaos and evil. We saw how the Arrakoa Outcasts used shadow magic to protect themselves from the genocidally zealous Adherents (who were themselves wielders of the Light.) And now we've got the Void Elves, who, aside from a little creepy glowy tentacle here and there, seem to be good people for the most part (well, we need to see more of them to get a better sense of their culture and attitudes.)
But larger even than this realization, the fact of the matter is that the narrative has moved onto a new chapter. For eons, the Draenei knew their destiny was to return to Argus. When they arrived, though, they found a shattered husk. The Titan Argus, whom the Eredar probably didn't even know about until Sargeras took over (the Draenei certainly seem to be surprised to learn about it) is dead, which means that in a rather literal sense, their home world is dead (though given how the other Titans were able to come back, I'm not sure if we should count Argus out forever.) The point is, the Draenei end-game, which would have been "we defeat the Legion and move back home," is not going to happen. That means that the Draenei now have to commit to another world as their new home, and it looks like it'll be Azeroth.
So what, then, of the Naaru? What then of their grand purpose as a people?
The Lightforged, who have spent the last twenty-five thousand years (or the last million, if they've experienced the same time dilation as Turalyon and Alleria for the full duration) at war with the Legion, are just transitioning to new threats - currently the Horde.
We haven't tended to see the Draenei all that aggressive in previous Alliance/Horde conflicts, but that might be due to the fact that many expected that their place in the Alliance was a temporary one, and that they would eventually return to Argus, leaving the Alliance behind.
That option is off the table, and that means that they now really do need to carve out a place for themselves on Azeroth. The Alliance is the best option to secure that place, and the Horde now stands as the biggest threat to their safety.
The Draenei have managed to be deeply spiritual without zealotry in the past, but the Lightforged seem unlikely to show the same sort of restraint that Velen has. Remember that Velen saved the Blood Elves by reigniting the Sunwell - that's not bad for someone who is hypothetically your enemy. Would the Lightforged have forgiven the Blood Elves for what they had done to M'uru?
Now if you're looking for internal conflict within the Alliance, let's recall that many of the Void Elves very easily might have been the same Blood Elves who had tortured M'uru into a Void State. Now the Draenei and their Lightforged kin are going to be fighting side-by-side with these Ren'dorei.
All this, even when the idea of the Naaru and the Light being pure good are coming into question, and you've got a race that has a huge challenge set before them: who are they? What do they believe in? What is their purpose? What cause can unite them? There's no home to go back to. The dichotomy of light and shadow is in doubt.
What does it mean to be Draenei?
No comments:
Post a Comment