The Queue: Puck
@MatthewWRossi
I’m not good at grief. I’ve lost pets before — in my time writing here I lost both Grim and Aurora. The same stabbing pain, the heartbreak of it, never really gets any easier.
She was my little girl. She played WoW, and even healed a raid once — and did a better job than I did, for that matter. I love her and I’ll miss her. She fought and rode the Roomba, she loved basking in the sunlight, she was brave enough to yell at a cop for daring to come into her house.
Goodbye, little sun shadow.
Lore question: What’s the official word on the origin of the aqir? Are they a native race to Azeroth, like the trolls? Or were they in fact created by the Old Gods, like the Faceless Ones?
Short answer: Chronicle books are all written from a certain perspective, and the first one, which mentions the Aqir being born out of the Old Gods, is written from the perspective of those that supported the Titans.
Longer answer: Dragonflight shows us that the Titanforged, like Odyn, have deliberately lied or withheld the truth about the cosmos from us in the past. Not only did they have rebels who turned away from them, but they flat out denied the truth of the First Ones and concealed the existence of the various Zereth’s like Zereth Ordos.
So, were the Aqir born out of the Old Gods? Or were they a native Azerothian people who existed before the arrival of the Old Gods? And was it the Titans/Titanforged who spun the tale, or did the Old Gods themselves tell the Aqir this origin to tie them more directly into servitude? Hard to say right now.
It’s hopefully a question The War Within will answer.
Doing the Radiant Memories in Dustwallow Marsh made me think of how Peons are probably one of the weirder aspects of the lore and clearly exist only because Blizzard dropped the ball on
Everything else we have about Orcish culture doesn’t really have a place for a dedicated labor class. There’s no indication where peons even come from and growing up to being a peon is never cited as a fear or even possibility for young orcs. It’s as if kind of dumb Orcs that are bad at almost everything their culture values just occasionally materialize out of thin air.
And since the Horde is a much more diverse organization then it was in the WC3 era, in WoW we’ll often go long stretches without peons appearing at all, only for them to randomly show up and it always feels kind of weird when they do.
In retrospect, I think it would of been better if menial physical tasks were done by less experienced lower ranked warriors. Both for them to earn their keep and to help build up their strength for battle. That would still emphasize the warrior culture of the Orcs, while giving them an understanding of physical labor that doesn’t involve apparently exploiting the mentally disabled. (come to think of it, the whole portrayal of physical laborers as rather dumb is one of the aspects of the RTS era that has aged like room temperature milk, but that’s a different discussion).
Personally, I would have liked it better if Orcs were portrayed as moving back to their pre-Horde ideas. Remember, the Orcs didn’t have the Horde before Ner’zhul took older Orcish traditions of banding together temporarily in times of crisis and twisted them to his purpose. (I mean, okay, Ner’zhul was being lied to by Kil’Jaeden pretending to be his dead wife, but still.)
I like to think of Orc Peons not as dumb, but more like Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus — it would make sense to me that experienced elder Orcs who were retired from warfare would still need a role to play in their society. I mean, Thrall went and farmed for years, it seems like a desire to go live as one with the land is more baked into the Orcish persona than that of being Warriors, as such.
Is Dagran the first beardless adult dwarf in the game?
I think he’s a teenager — 14 or 15 if we consider Moria was pregnant with him in year 25 and it’s year 40 in Dragonflight. Since we know Dwarves are a touch longer lived than Humans, I don’t think they consider a 15 year old an Adult.
That being said, I can’t think of any beardless male presenting dwarves in WoW.
LoreQ4tQ: how involved in TWW’s story do you think Xal’atath will be? The video makes it seem like she’ll be playing the role of the power behind the leader, which makes me think she’s using this as cover for her other machinations. So while I’m sure we’ll be aware of what she’s doing (probably as she’s doing it or after it’s happened), I can’t help but think we won’t be facing her directly until the end, and I kind of doubt we’ll kill her in this expansion.
She could be the main villain of the whole Worldsoul Saga, which would make for an interesting throughline. Especially since most WoW baddies don’t survive the expansion they star in.
I mean, technically she’s already dead. That’s a dead body she’s riding around in, even if we do kill her, she can always come back.
That’s the Queue for today. Goodbye, bright eyes. The world is colder now with you gond.
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