Know Your Lore: Shadows of Argus Q&A

This is a bit of a swerve for this column, but I get asked a lot of questions on Twitter and via email about patch 7.3 and things that we’ve seen and experienced since it dropped. So in this particular edition of Know Your Lore, I’m going to take some time and look at them.

Note — there are going to be big spoilers for Antorus the Burning Throne and the end of the patch 7.3 storyline here. It’s the last section of the column, so you don’t have to panic — they’ve been marked as spoilers so you can avoid them. Let’s do this.

Turalyon and Alleria and the thousand years

A lot of people have noticed a bit of dialogue between Turalyon, Alleria and Khadgar on the Vindicaar. Alleria mentions remembering that Khadgar should be the one to buy the next round of drinks. She then says to never question an Elf’s memory, even after a thousand years. It clearly hasn’t been a thousand years since Warcraft II: Beyond the Dark Portal, so what’s Alleria talking about? Basically, what she’s saying is that she and Turalyon have been fighting the Legion in the Twisting Nether for a thousand years. From their perspective, a millennia has passed.

That does raise some questions. First off, how is Turalyon still alive? Humans generally don’t live a thousand years, although there are exceptions. Aeqwynn, Medivh’s mother, lived well over a thousand years. The fact that Turalyon is now white-haired, and his eyes seem suffused with golden radiance could certainly mean that the Light sustains Turalyon’s long lifespan. Or perhaps one ages more slowly in the Twisting Nether.

Secondly, if it’s only been a few decades for us but a thousand years for them, is that just a property of the Nether? Or is it perhaps a consequence of using Naaru dimensional ship technology? Or does it happen whenever you travel from world to world? Does every world have a different time frame? These are questions that haven’t been answered as yet, but they’re fascinating to think about. We know that the Titans had control over fundamental forces of reality — Aman’thul could bestow control over time to the Bronze Dragonflight, for example — and so it’s possible that worlds with Titans in or from them will all have different time frames.

But what we do know is yes, Turalyon and Alleria have been fighting the Legion for a thousand years.

Why didn’t they just fly the Exodar?

Out of canon reason — because the Exodar is too big and confusing for a quest hub when you’re on Argus. It’s just not necessary. The Vindicaar has everything you need.

But in game, the only mention we have of the Exodar being flight capable is in the short story Prophet’s Lesson. You’ll note in the short story that nobody actually tested it. The Exodar wasn’t launched, it didn’t lift up from the ground and make any sort of flight. If you travel around the Exodar, you can tell it’s not seated in the ground in a particularly gentle way. There are whole sections of the interior of the place that are clearly cracked open. Next time you do the Rakeesh scenario, pay attention to where you meet up with Nobundo and help him out. It’s in a giant tunnel that enters and exits the actual Exodar in places.

Now, maybe when O’ros was alive he was going to patch the whole thing up with the Light or something. But with our big windchime friend dead, our only recourse seems to have been to cobble together a new ship. And frankly, I view the Vindicaar as the Draenei version of the USS Defiant from Deep Space 9. It’s a tiny little ship packed with the muscle of a much larger vessel. Either way, the Exodar didn’t make the trip. Honestly, I feel like bringing a ship full of noncombatants to Argus would have been a terrible idea, so I’m glad they didn’t do that.

What’s your take on what happened with Illidan and Xe’ra?

Illidan probably shouldn’t have killed Xe’ra. That being said, I’m not really sure what other options he had. She clearly had him in the grip of the Light, and wasn’t listening to him. She was going to use the Light to fundamentally change him without his consent. Besides blasting her with his eye lasers, what were his options there? {PB}

I don’t see what he could have done besides either let it happen, or do what he did. He doesn’t break her bond until he shoots his Eye Beam at her. There’s definitely a case to be made that Illidan went too far. But up until that moment, she was ignoring everything he’d said and done.  She just wanted to make him fit into the perfect destiny the Light had planned for him.

Illidan’s life has been one where he chased after, and then finally rejected, the destiny his golden eyes promised him at birth. “Sometimes, the hand of fate must be forced.” From the beginning I’ve argued that Xe’ra had no real concern or regard for Illidan. Her actions proved it — he was a tool to be remade by the Light.

Should he have acceded? I think Illidan’s made plenty of sacrifices already. Moreover, the one thing all Demon Hunters never sacrifice is that sensation of loss and outrage. Xe’ra was going to erase that from him. She wanted to take away the core of who he is. As an offer, the gift of healing and redemption is a wonderful thing. Imposed, it becomes a violation.

But I can definitely see the side of people who feel like Xe’ra was just doing what she thought best. Both of them could have backed off a little, but I still think Illidan comes out of it with some good points.

So what is Sargeras’ plan anyway?

This next section contains spoilers. If you don’t want them, stop right here.

What is Sargeras’ big plan, the one he’s been working on for thousands of years?

Back in Chronicle Volume 1, we read about the confrontation between Sargeras and the Titans. Sargeras managed to strike down the Titans, starting with Aggramar. Norgannon used his power to send their Titan Souls rocketing through the void. There, they attempted to enter the bodies of the original Titan-Forged Keepers.

Sargeras has spent the entirety of his Burning Crusade locating and capturing the souls of the Titans, and now he has all of them but Eonar. How? I don’t know yet. Did he get their souls from the Keepers somehow? Did they flee the Keepers when Sargeras’s Legion attacked Azeroth back in the War of the Ancients? When the Avatar of Sargeras attacked Northrend as part of the plan to place Sargeras’ spirit in Aegwynn’s body, was he also collecting the souls from the Keepers? However he did it, he does have them. What you’ll see at a certain point on Argus is that one of them, Aggramar, has already been converted to join Sargeras. We discover this when Aggramar in Avatar form descends from the heavens and crash-lands directly in front of you.

In essence, Sargeras is attempting to capture and use eons of psychic torture to brainwash them all into joining him. Remember, Titans are weak against Fel, it’s how Sargeras beat the Pantheon the first time. Once he has the other Titans on his side, they’ll all join forces to convince Azeroth to join the Burning Crusade. Then they’ll destroy all life in the universe to prevent the Void Lords from corrupting it.

And it’s up to us to stop it. No pressure.