Up next in 10
This week Lore Watch takes a deep dive into the character of Faerin Lothar, based on the recent short story "Faith and Flame," as well as the release of patch 11.1.7, which sends us questing back into the Arathi Highlands. Faerin's story is inextricably tied to the Arathi race as a whole, but also unique to her -- noble or no, not many seven year olds are going to stow away on a ship to join the Hallowfall Expedition. Join Matt and Joe as they recount the ancient history of the Arathi, all the way into what you need to know as we embark on the latest chapter of WoW, the Arathi Campaign.
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[Music]
0:10
hello and welcome to lore watch a round table free form discussion about luring your favorite media i'm your host joe perez one of several lore focused folks
0:17
from blizzard watch and i've got my stupendous co-host with me today matt rossy how you doing today matt i mean
0:23
it's not as hot as it could be that is extremely true and i'm hoping
0:30
last year was a really rough year here i don't know how it was up there it was pretty bad yeah it was miserable this
0:37
year we're looking like we're not going to get above 80f too much so hopefully
0:42
it stays that way cuz last year i'm not made for heat i'm built for comfort uh
0:48
but that's not what you're here to to listen to you don't want to hear a meteorological podcast although if you did yeah maybe
0:54
we'll do that someday who knows i mean for that matter the site's name is blizzard watch
1:00
uh it's still be forgiven if you thought we were looking for meteorology from us it does remind me of the one email we
1:06
did get from somebody who was like i thought this was a meteor meteorological podcast uh and then just kind of like
1:12
you know said "okay have a good day." and then went off that was years ago years and years ago uh but no we're here
1:18
to answer questions from you our wonderful listeners or in this case we're going to be talking about something that one of our wonderful
1:23
listeners wanted us to talk about if you have questions for us or something you want to chat about uh you can go ahead
1:29
and send those into podcastwatch.com specify the show that it is for and the subject line as well as any special
1:36
pronunciation of your name uh if you want to hit us up on discord we have the q and podcast questions channel which is
1:42
open for everybody same rules apply if you are a patreon subscriber as a way of saying thank you we have the patreon q
1:48
and podcast question channel set aside you can always hit us up there we tend to look there first it's just that
1:53
little extra something to say thank you for helping us keep the lights on and you can also send us messages directly
1:59
on patreon and liz will get them to us but kt story kts stories wanted us to
2:06
cover the uh new faren story that was just released uh not too long ago uh
2:13
faith and flame and honestly we were going to talk about it anyway but i mean what what better time than now prior to
2:21
uh the next content release coming out so first of all i was happy to see that
2:26
the story of faren is continuing we kind of knew it would with the idea that we're going to be going to the arathy
2:32
highlands again uh and it seemed like it would be really really bad if we were going to the arai highlands and there
2:39
was nothing involving you know her um or the arathy in general uh so i
2:47
think it's nice that we saw this uh and i thought it was a really well done story and if not in a way of like
2:53
extreme excitement uh but subtlety and telling you more about the character
2:59
some of this i wish would have been in game but it's still nice to see it represented nonetheless what did you think of the the story matt
3:07
i mean it's a it's kind of like a character sketch slash setup piece so
3:15
those are always those those live and die by what they're telling you i mean that they're they're
3:21
there to provide something i think that the reason you don't see this kind of thing in game very much is that in game
3:29
you are actively playing mhm and it is difficult to sit down and read a story
3:35
about how somebody isn't doing something or is doing something like making a
3:40
turning point decision but that we don't know the outcome for yet uh like so that
3:46
there's that i thought i think it was good that they decided to move far
3:51
further uh i i think that for me that the moment that i liked the most was
3:57
actually one that they didn't they didn't actually establish the payoff for they just showed that it happening where
4:03
denath trollbane shakes her hand and the trollbane line ties back to the the
4:12
lothar line because the lothar line is literally the the line of artor and his descendants mhm um and the trollbane was
4:19
like literally the original trollbane was right at his side it was like it it'd be like the the lancelot or galahad
4:26
to an arthur sort of thing so i thought that was interesting and he doesn't he doesn't like say much to her he doesn't
4:32
say anything like you know you know i knew um anduin lothar or anything like that
4:39
cuz she wouldn't even know who that is except that she was told who it was by uh the anduin she knows uh there just
4:46
it's an interesting there's a a feeling of weight to it um both the physical
4:52
sense of something being heavy or foroting and of the waiting of it it is a story about waiting it's a story about
5:00
having reached that moment where you have to push off uh and you have to make
5:05
the change that you felt that you had to make for a while but now you actually have to do it uh i i thought it was
5:11
interesting i i like stories that kind of play around with that with concepts like that so yeah and there's a lot of like little
5:19
moments here that i think are are very interesting and very i think they're going to bear fruit later like one of
5:25
the things that that it starts with is uh on like spoilers ahead for the story
5:31
obviously we're going to talk about this in depth so if you haven't read it go back and read it or listen to it that's about an hourong video that is up on
5:37
their youtube channel that you can listen to uh that goes through the telling of the story it's an audio drama
5:42
uh both of which are really really well done uh but you get to know about her
5:49
background so at one point in time like we know that she stowed away we know
5:54
that uh she was the only child on the expedition uh and they basically founded
6:01
the orphanage for her uh i mean it was inevitable in the foresight of them that
6:06
they you know where they were where they were established it would happen more that people would seek companionship
6:12
have families and i mean when you are a warrior and you are you know with
6:18
another warrior and you both go to battle there's a chance that neither of you will come back and therefore there
6:24
will always potential be potentially be orphans that need to be taken care of and and you know for that matter even
6:29
the people who aren't warriors who live in that place which is surrounded by things that want to kill you um villages
6:36
we've seen this villages get attacked people who are like farmers or fish yeah
6:42
people die i mean we've seen it throughout world of warcraft it's been one of the messages is that you know sometimes horrible things happen and
6:49
people pay the price um so yeah they it was inevitable yeah that they would lose
6:55
people and those people would leave people behind so in a in a lot of ways it showed foresight but it's also
7:04
i don't know i i want to talk more about something else that that i think ties into this but i want to wait to see how where you go before i do so so what i
7:11
was going to say is like not only does it establish this and show that that sort of foresight it also gives me what
7:16
i think are two of the more interesting bits about this story uh not the most
7:23
but they're up there uh first is that there is uh somebody who is assigned to
7:29
watch the orphans because of course there is uh and it's an older uh an
7:34
older member of their their uh group and for whatever reason i cannot remember the name off the top of my head lamp
7:40
lighters no no the uh the person the actual individual uh was it sigfire
7:47
yes something like that it was a double last name with a lot of letters in it i my brain was like i don't know what's
7:52
going on here yeah and he had uh he was selected as a caretaker uh and he was an old man then but he was you know loving
7:59
and dotting and and as much as he could with with faren and because faren was
8:05
essentially the only one there faren spent a lot of time with sigfried and sigfried
8:11
had a lot of attention to give faren so essentially becoming like a surrogate
8:18
parent in this moment to her and i think that's an important establishment because we've met uh sigpire we've met
8:26
them uh we've you know interacted with them and understanding their
8:31
relationship like that i think is really impressive uh and really important because you understand why they're so
8:37
close and what he is to her um but the interesting thing is that this revolves
8:42
this memory that comes up revolves around the story of a well we'll get
8:48
into that in a second but how he tells the story which i think is really interesting he has this giant tome of
8:56
lore and myth and this is something that he had gone through a dozen times with
9:02
faren has gone page to page with this but the scene is that faren as a child is getting ready for bed and demands a
9:08
story wants one with lots of battle because of course she's an 8-year-old child and you know war is exciting
9:14
battle is exciting and as she tucks herself into bed he says "no i've got the perfect story for you." uh and you
9:23
can see there's like a little impishness there he's like "but you have to be in covers you have to be in bed because if you're not sleeping if you're not ready
9:29
how will the dreamers catch your wandering thoughts?" and she's like "they're not real." and he you know gives that that whole like wink in a nut
9:36
of course they are uh who else brings you your visions while you sleep think that's an important point that we should
9:42
put out there just for later on uh but as he breaks this book open he says "i
9:47
think i have the perfect story." and then he does something that faren has never seen before he runs his hand along
9:54
the edge of the uh brocadated page essentially tracing the intricate work
9:59
of it and light starts to emit from the book and
10:05
the book turns itself over page by page till it gets to where it goes uh and
10:11
fyron even says "do you know magic?" and he goes "i don't but the book does."
10:19
and the story that he begins to tell is something that he says is a special one
10:24
hidden amongst all the fighting all the battles nearly forgotten due to the oath that was sworn by the secret keepers
10:33
guardians of our most secrety secrets uh that i think is one of the most
10:38
interesting bits is that here's this book that whether it's him or the book itself is displaying a sort of
10:45
fantastical magical property based in the light and second is this wonderful
10:50
story that apparently only the magic of either the book or him is able to bring
10:55
forth just as he's talking about the secret keepers and it made me think of there might be a parallel here with the
11:03
secret keepers and other groups that we know like to collect bits of lore and use magic to retell it doesn't it
11:12
i have no idea what you're talking about i have not heard any lore of any such
11:18
group that walk around doing anything like that now if you'll excuse me i must go
11:27
kate pulled up foosh yeah no obviously uh it was like the first thing i thought
11:33
um especially when he said the secret keepers guardians of our most secrety secrets i mean obviously he's talking to
11:38
an eight-year-old so he's playing it up but i mean that's what they do you know
11:45
that's their that's they they go and find these things so that they're not lost um it's also interesting because
11:52
it's one of those things that the the bit that comes up the the ballot of of
11:57
the first flame it it's one of those things that really hits me from time to time when we talk
12:03
about this stuff is that our time scale for azeroth is really skewed
12:09
like we get told oh and then this happened and then this happened a couple thousand years later and it doesn't
12:15
really occur to us that that's that's like multiple people's lifetimes
12:21
that that unfold in that time like arathor
12:28
as a as a nation existed for quite some time and we just get the cliff's notes
12:33
version and and fail to understand that there's all this time between these
12:38
events and after these events and that they don't just boom magically you know
12:44
morph into you know centuries pass and then this happens but the centuries that passed stuff happened during them
12:51
that got left out because it wasn't really part of what we were trying to tell you so the whole the whole part of
13:01
the story about that legend is interesting to me just from the idea of you know it these people lived and died
13:06
and had these things happened during their existence and we've never heard about it before
13:12
because there's there was no time for us to hear about it and not only that so long ago and not only that but it seems
13:19
like it's something that they might be i don't want to say keeping away from the open world but like this establishes
13:26
that there's stories that even they're not broadcasting and there might be a reason for it and let's talk about
13:32
crochet here uh because it's crochet the first flame tale of the lost queen of er
13:38
and ancestor to fyron um and i think
13:43
this is a really fascinating story because there's a lot of parallels here and and we'll go into some of the
13:48
details because i think they're relevant uh first you find out that crochet was a rambunctious child full of fire and
13:54
spirit sound familiar uh she was bright and intelligent but often neglected her studies and chores in favor of playing
13:59
games or venturing into the wilds like every other child with with weird magical powers i'm sure um but she was
14:06
the oldest of her father's children born to a noble woman from qualas
14:12
he adored natur or she adored nature and spent much of her time coming to know the forest and rivers that marked the land making friends with creatures and
14:19
all manner of folk so right there we know that she is at least in the line of
14:25
what we'd expect the arathy to be human and elf or at least that's the assumption here uh that she is a that
14:32
her mother is from kthalas it's almost guaranteed to be right but it could have been two elves it could have been it
14:38
could have been children of two elves but i think that i think that this is establishes because of the line of of uh
14:43
athor of maror that she has to be right um
14:49
so but then the fact that she's attuned with nature and very easy like makingly
14:55
friend friends with creatures is a very elf thing very stereotypical elf thing to do uh but i think it's really really
15:04
interesting um it it's what you would expect i think almost from that sort of
15:11
person uh there's more here but i don't know if there's anything you wanted to say about that part of it before we go
15:16
on well it's it's interesting to me to because as at one point we talk about the the story talks about the breaching
15:22
of thoran's wall yeah yeah yeah it means that this story is taking place in arathor yes it is not taking place in
15:30
wherever they ended up going to the new empire in athor it's it's taking place in athor and it apparently it's taking
15:37
place either during or very shortly after thoran's death like thoran was alive for
15:46
a chunk of this mhm and you talk about the battles she
15:52
fought and how over months these things happened and it's like you talked about
15:58
you know is this a story that they're maybe not telling or they're kind of keeping close to the vest and we hear
16:04
that there's oaths that were that were sworn on that regard who swore the oaths
16:11
and why is he telling her this if there's oaths telling him you not to tell it like are there also oaths saying
16:18
when okay if the book if the book says you know the book says no you know sort of thing if the book says yes if you do
16:25
that magic deal on the side of the book cuz she could never find the story again
16:31
hundreds of times yeah so that's interesting too um well we get into that that's after that's i think that's after
16:37
the crochet story because i think we're still in the crochet story because there's there's a lot here right so
16:43
the scan deal we don't know what the heck that's supposed to be so we although it does feel very azerothy it
16:48
does feel very azerothy but we we'll get to that the the um original
16:54
interpretation or at least representation of her is that she was very arcanely uh attuned right she was
17:00
able to wield magical powers at some point this is before uh something else happened so she was she w up training as
17:07
a warrior after this this sickness this curse that started taking the land uh after it started mutating creatures and
17:14
people sound like the black blood potentially um she pledged her skills
17:20
and uh power to the protection of her kingdom and that she would hunt down and eradicate this magical malediction uh
17:26
during one of the encounters as monsters closed in around her and her wounded allies she unleashed a torrent of flame
17:33
and light not one or the other both and very distinctly called out as flame and
17:39
light the likes of which had never been seen the smoke and dust cleared revealing the princess now wielded her
17:45
fire as a sword and shield with her gleaming armor blazing weapons as it was
17:52
if crochet commanded the power of the sun itself
17:58
i think that's interesting because this is very much represented as a paladin
18:04
almost yeah i mean well for that matter dude like think of any more recent
18:09
character you can think of who you could say this about there's a lot of them yeah but the one that comes to my mind
18:15
is the ashbrer yeah flaming light and we
18:20
know he was he was another member of the you know arathor bloodline he was
18:27
descended from them just as you know finan herself is uh so that's
18:34
interesting to me this the the faith so strong it could literally you know annihilate whole waves of undead or
18:42
monsters or what have you um the idea of the smoke and dust clearing uh that's
18:47
that's so textbook the ashbreaker and this might predate and this predates the
18:53
uh founding of any traditional paladin order too yeah well i mean it's
18:58
interesting that they this thing says that you know she was the first paladin uh we know that the paladins derive from
19:05
tier and to the point where um the you know lordon was named after lord dane
19:12
who was uh uniquely faithful you know he he basically served as a
19:19
member of thor you know thoran's family
19:24
uh one of his one of his you know his left hand to uh trollbane's right and
19:30
they basically did did the same kind of thing but this is new
19:36
what is it that this is you know what i mean it feels like this is the point where they stepped out of something mhm
19:44
and i think that that kind of relates to what we're seeing with fyron uh is that whatever power we're talking about here
19:51
it's something that paladins are supposed to be doing
19:56
and that very few of them actually managed to get to that point a and there's more after this that i think
20:02
also fills into that too like the whole defense of those around her um but it's
20:07
shortly after this that you know as she's got this discovered power
20:13
one night while asleep in her tent near the front she's visited by an entity of
20:18
light it gave her a vision spoke of a place hidden deep in the wilds a temple
20:23
where the heart of the world and the eye of the heavens met but only she was
20:30
strong enough to find it possessing a soul true enough to wield its power and
20:35
so she went off and she found it and uh this is all while praying that her
20:40
friends would stay alive she finds the temple she climbs in exhausted ready to fight whatever stands in her way but
20:47
inside of the central chamber she discovers a being of light from her dream whom she could now see was a woman
20:54
dressed in stardust robes standing vigil over a pool of swirling light and fire
21:02
the woman looked up and her face changed from elf to human to troll and back
21:08
again every time she moved her appearance shifted
21:13
the woman called herself the scion and explained that she had sent something in crochet something willing to fight in
21:18
defense of others and that the world would need that strength in the coming age
21:24
now you can go ahead because i know you wanted to talk about this but this is this is absolutely fascinating to me
21:31
well i mean the first thing that comes to mind is alone yeah first thought that jumped to my mind too absolutely
21:36
especially the face changing from one to the other thing that's just it feels like a very alone thing to do basically
21:42
changing to be suiting to the the purpose of of the moment um the the pool
21:48
of light and fire reminds me of the myth of how aloon and ane would descend you
21:53
know aloon would descend into the well at night and come back you know and at dawn and come back up at night that
21:59
whole deal um the bit with
22:05
basically originally says something that has the scan think that she's interested in power she said
22:12
if power was truly all all creé sought then she and her people would be lost to the evils overtaking the world and she
22:18
goes i didn't come here for power i came here for purpose you know help me deliver my kingdom from the malevolence
22:24
and i will live in defense of this of all lands um it's interesting because that's like
22:30
such a mirror to arthus's story mhm and how arthus failed because he didn't see
22:36
that he had to defend everybody it wasn't just his people it was all people
22:43
and because he was fixated on just his people he was willing to like he was willing to like you know let the
22:49
mercenaries die for his actions because they weren't important to him yeah
22:54
exactly uh whereas cray almost immediately gets it like no uh i have
23:00
the i need to find the power to save her people just as he had wanted to save his people
23:06
but she takes it to the point where if you do this for me if you help me to save my people i'll defend everybody
23:13
um not just my people i'll defend the world and that's interesting too um like
23:20
how the light calls you what the light calls you to do some of this also feels a little bit like it might have been azeroth itself
23:27
yeah so i i started thinking about that a lot too because what what happens next i think plays into this and i just want to to bring this up uh a little bit so i
23:36
can kind of track back so follow me here so she once they make this arrangement she winds up waiting into the pool uh
23:44
and is born again uh and again it's noted here that sigfred says this is not
23:50
uh there are no paladins then uh there were many mages yes but when returned with the ember she wielded both the
23:56
light and fire to drive back the evil uh so she emerged from the the fiery waters
24:03
stripped of her old life her essence was burned away and made a new with eyes blazing in hair of flame and she was
24:09
wielding the the ember that could never go out the first flame to me with going
24:15
back to aloon this go reminded me of something that you and i talked about way long ago when we talked about the
24:21
night warrior and we talked about how the night warrior seems to be the power of the eclipse of of of the moon in in
24:29
total blackness this seems like the exact opposite and you had mentioned and
24:35
and we had talked about how ani may have just been a different face of aloon how anie may have just been the other side
24:41
or other representation of aloon and this feels a lot like that right this feels like a lot like if we had the
24:47
night warrior that this is the day warrior almost yeah that i mean that does make a certain amount of sense i
24:53
mean the night elves worship aloon in her aspect as the moon because they're
24:59
usually they were active mostly at night that's when they see the light that's where the light comes from but the torin
25:07
obviously didn't like the torin weren't ignorant of the moon they knew the moon existed but the torin were much more of
25:14
a dal people they're not just they're not just out active at night in fact they're usually active more during the
25:20
day so for them their myths i think this ties into that their myths of of an
25:26
aloon could what do they call musha yeah an musha i mean it's two it could be two
25:32
facets of the same thing just as they depict it as two eyes like the two eyes
25:37
of the earth mother and that's the thing is your eyes aren't separate from you mhm if you have two eyes that that
25:45
follow you around and do stuff they're your eyes they're you know your left eye
25:50
and your right eye are both you um so i think that that's something to think about in terms of the entity we
25:57
call aloon could be a lot bigger than we think it is yeah and there could be a deeper
26:04
relationship with it with azeroth as well yeah yeah exactly um in much the
26:09
same way well i mean that's that's something to talk about later uh what's also
26:14
interesting about this too is the idea that there were no paladins then we we know that they had people who fought
26:20
like i said lordane was very faithful and he fought but it's very possible this is the first time that the kind of
26:27
powers we see in paladins existed amongst the arathor light as weapon or
26:33
light as purpose weapon right well i mean because we we know that there are other people who have their own paladin
26:38
traditions like the the the dreni have had paladins going back to the first time that the uh naru showed up and
26:46
we've already seen that the naru and aloon have some kind of relationship
26:51
and therefore it keeps coming back into to this idea that there's many possible
26:58
ways to get there but this is the way that her people did it and it might very
27:03
well be the way that you know the other peoples of azeroth at least like the humans did it
27:09
you know the humans may have gotten their you know humans and elves who both had paladins or have had paladins since
27:16
this could be the first time that that happened um and for that matter it's a myth so it may not be entirely accurate
27:24
uh which i think is also kind of fun uh the idea that you know this is this is
27:29
possibly trying to distill down a process that took hundreds or even thousands of years into one person who
27:37
can then stand and be the story of it yeah yeah and the interesting we don't know yeah and that you bears an interesting point is this is one of the
27:45
why i thought of like the lore walkers and and going with these keeper of the secrets here or these secret keepers
27:52
they there could be a level of myth to it to like it could just be pure story and it
28:00
could be just you know this is how we survive uh the oral tradition of the
28:05
telling of the the first paladins and those that wield the light and that the you know we make it that it was the
28:10
queen of of the arai um it could also be just like the lore walkers where yes
28:18
it's mythical but it's also accurate and it there we don't know that we will ever
28:25
know the truth of it which i think is i love when they do that right cuz it's it's a lot of speculation but what we do
28:31
know is what comes after which i think starts informing where things are going a little bit um so we know that she went
28:39
back she drive she drove the evil back that tried to take the land uh she
28:44
cleansed those who'd fallen to the curse returning them to their previous form so
28:50
whatever she had power-wise potentially was able to reverse whether it was if
28:56
this was black blood mutation the black blood if this was arcane manipulation whatever arcane manipulation it was
29:02
whether it was a curse or or whatever uh or if it was just pure flesh crafting
29:07
whatever power that crochet wielded seemingly was able to cleanse and purge
29:12
that away potentially again could be myth but also may be very relevant in
29:18
the coming expansions that we're about to go into yeah and for that matter just because it's a myth doesn't mean it
29:25
doesn't have a truth in its heart um even in our own actual history there are
29:31
things we know primarily through myth that we don't you know for for 1800
29:37
years people didn't think troy was real they didn't think it ever actually
29:43
existed they thought it was just a myth and then you know they started doing excavations of the mound in hisar lake
29:49
and boom eight of them they kept finding different troys from different periods of time um the trowad existed the the
29:56
thing is is that the land had changed the water had moved what was now a hill
30:02
on a on a town that was like 20 miles from the shore had once been coastal and
30:09
things you know things have changed so that you can't tell the truth from the myth until something happens to reveal
30:16
it to you um i think that that's interesting in terms of like you pointed
30:22
out like like was it the black blood or whatever but the the thing is that crochet basically takes what remained of
30:28
her power which means that she used a lot of it she expended it she taught others and she expended it trying to
30:35
fight this thing and then she tried to take trace the curse back to its source um so her per so it could be persian her
30:42
kingdom and the world could be safe forever that's interesting because
30:47
obviously it it seems that she did not obviously she did not go forth and find it and and
30:53
end it but you know who knows we don't know what where she is she could be dead
30:59
she could have been dead for a long time but she was partially elven at least and
31:05
blessed by something almost divine who knows she could be in
31:10
a temple right now somewhere unable to leave it uh like that guy from the indiana jones and the last crusade you
31:16
know what i mean it just there's a lot to this the fact that the story only
31:21
come is only tellable when this book is glowing and he sigfried it here has it
31:26
um that's fascinating to me it's like he can only tell it to people who need to
31:32
hear it yeah yeah and i mean faren being the descendant of the line and which we
31:37
also hear in the story uh descendants or like her children crochet's children uh
31:44
were able to like she passed that power on to them at least portions of it and
31:50
so they carry it deep inside her and i think it's really important because then
31:55
it it snaps back to uh coming back to fyron and as fyron grew up um obviously
32:03
she was being protected being an heir of uh the kingdom essentially being an heir
32:09
of the the empire they didn't really want her going and fighting and so she wound up helping at the orphanage taking
32:16
care of the kids alongside uh sigf freed and so one day when everything is going
32:24
sideways uh belelladar starts to darken
32:29
um and as she's reading uh the stories to the the children and as she's trying
32:36
to get them ready for dinner and and and everything else uh essentially an nubian invasion happens inside of halofall and
32:43
uh a lamp lighter is thrown through the window of the orphanage um knocked out
32:49
cold sig freed is is doing his best to to get the children to safety uh but
32:54
then what ends up happening is you have fyron who is one trying to hide
33:02
from this narubian who is taunting them uh and then two
33:08
one of the the young children molly wasn't able to get into the cellar for safety uh which also seems really weird
33:15
that they would tell people to go into the cellar for safety when the rubians burrow but that that's a whole other thing um
33:21
and throws herself in front of molly and the nubian as the nubian is trying to get to her and in this moment she throws
33:28
up her hand and a shield of light and fire uh goes all around her and then
33:33
nubian cannot crash through it no matter how hard they try uh and which buys
33:38
enough time for the lamp lighter to get back on their feet and kill the creature and it's the first time that fen had at
33:47
this particular instance shown that ember of power that she had inherited
33:53
and it's from this moment on that they said "well okay very clearly she's got this power uh now that she's got a taste
33:59
of protecting people she's probably not going to stop we got to train her." and so she winds up getting trained in the
34:05
marshall way uh by uh general steel
34:10
steel strike steel strike yeah yeah uh which i think is also very interesting
34:16
so we see that she has the power we see that she has that sort of innate sort of
34:22
warning and and the way that it was described is that there was this cold fear inside of her before she moved to
34:29
protect the child then a voice essentially called out and said "no i'm here reach out to me." and as she did it
34:36
melted away the fear and allowed her to act and and sort of intervene in that
34:41
moment just a fascinating framing i don't really uh for me it's what's more
34:47
interesting to me than the than that because that's you know that's just t typical hero stuff uh what i thought was
34:53
interesting was this idea that you know i want you to think about the fact for a
34:59
moment that an eight-year-old decided she was only an eight-year-old when she's in the orphanage so she was
35:06
younger than that when she snuck onto the boat in the first place yeah and all of like all of these things that this
35:13
this tiny little child did are effectively revealed through this story to have been
35:19
at the behest of something something that called out whether it's a call you
35:25
know and we've already this expansion is about the azeroth screaming help at a
35:30
whole bunch of people it's quite possible that fyan is has been one of those people her entire life
35:37
and has basically been contacted by the the entity that is this glowing
35:44
phenomenon that seems to be azeroth itself this whole time um
35:52
and since we've already implied that the sigh there might be aloon or it might
35:58
even be azeroth it's quite possible that the same thing that was calling that her ancient
36:03
ancestor was has been calling her this whole time that to to the same purpose even
36:10
and has been since she was very young and keep in mind that over the course of her life uh faren's been through a lot
36:17
faren is missing her arm we haven't even got that we we haven't gotten that story yet yeah no we haven't
36:24
even seen that one yet faren has like been fighting on the front lines of this battle with everything around belelladar
36:32
since the bellar started failing and belelladar didn't start failing last week
36:38
you know it's been failing for years and that's to me that's interesting keep
36:46
in mind of course that legion was at this point years ago uh yeah she has actually been a bit but
36:55
even before that even before sargera stabbed the planet even before all of that stuff belladar has been slowly
37:01
failing they've been having these void moments um quite frankly i i still think
37:07
belelladar might be just a really big naru um every time i think about belladar i'm like "okay so it's got
37:14
light and dark cycles it's uh it's this big crystal thing." i mean guys you
37:19
really hard for me not to think that this is anaru uh or or even an or what have you i
37:25
don't know but there's a lot to this idea and that's
37:31
one of the reasons i said that it was thought so interesting that you know when dennis trollbane meets her he says oh you're the lamp lighter you're the
37:36
lothar who's a lamp lighter he just accepts that she's a lothar
37:41
doesn't have any trouble with that and keep in mind he you know she's of
37:47
the arith the array that left and went off and founded this empire he's an
37:53
array who stayed him and all his ancestors going back to
37:58
the foundation of the ara you know the arathi empire he's been in the arai
38:04
highlands this whole time so that's got to be interesting that's
38:09
something i've wanted to i've want to understand how that works is it like is
38:16
it similar to like we we know people you know you and i grew up as americans so we've lived our lives with our our
38:24
ancestry dating back to other places like the old world is something that we
38:31
have as a concept in our in our family and that to me is interesting because i
38:36
i went over and met my grandmother's cousins when i went to ireland i met the
38:42
people that my grandmother like essentially the children of her siblings that i had never met or the children i
38:49
guess the children of her mother's siblings my great-grandmother's brothers and sisters i met them and obviously
38:56
we're related you know cuz my grandmother is you know related to their
39:01
grandmothers and grandfathers but we're not the same mhm there's a lot of
39:07
difference between us i don't call myself irish for one thing my last name is rossy so obviously i got some
39:12
italians in there somewhere but also just there's a ton i want to know about how
39:19
the arai view the places like how do these pe these ariath view arathor how
39:26
do they view the arathy islands has have they thought about going there obviously
39:32
fyronun's going to go there i keep saying fyun like i'm talking about forgotten realms i don't like that matt
39:38
it's fair um but yeah there there's a ton of stuff to this that i find
39:44
absolutely fascinating in terms of both just the personal journey and also fen's
39:51
faith is is like fundamental to her being mhm but this feels like it could
39:57
be something like you have to really trust in the things you're hearing to
40:03
give up everything for it when you're a child and um i'm not talking like a
40:09
teenager i'm talking like six she was like six seven she got on a boat knowing
40:15
she might never come home might never see any of her relatives again are who we don't know much about those people
40:22
that that faren left behind no we don't know anything about her family she hasn't talked about them at all yeah we
40:28
don't know much at all about them but obviously whoever they are is important enough that general steel strike took
40:34
her under her wing you know so yeah there's there is a lot going on here
40:40
yeah and and i think that's really a good it's a it's a good window into the
40:47
character of faren and also the mentality of it because we know the
40:53
stories that now she grew up in and we know that there's been a uh voice or
40:59
something calling to her or you know trying to give her i don't want to say direction but like influencing her in
41:06
some manner and it doesn't seem malicious it seems like it's just something that is maybe her ancestral
41:14
call like you go to adventure or whatever the case is um yeah the story of the san and the pool of of you know
41:21
light and fire it doesn't sound that different than what we're talking about does it like
41:27
the whole the the song that people hear and the cry the calling that they hear and the the giant glowing presence that
41:34
they feel not that different you know who knows you know we don't know that
41:39
it's related but it certainly feels like it might be yeah and i think i think that this also
41:45
then establishes the next portion which is all of this is to say that the story is leading up to uh faren is making the
41:53
decision to take anduin up on his offer and if you didn't know anduin made a
42:00
offer for uh faren to join them as as they leave dornagal once things are are
42:06
sorted to go back home uh anduin's been away from the kingdom for a long period
42:11
of time he needs to go back and check on things um but also things seem to be
42:16
calming down in dornagal we've actually left the place potentially better than we found it which is still wild to me
42:24
after years of playing this game um so we don't get to do that very often if
42:31
ever this might be the first time um but she's she wants to go she wants to
42:38
see the world because she feels like something is calling to her and telling her that it's her time to go out that
42:44
something out there it's time for her to to be more involved like what she needed to do here is done and that may be
42:54
part of you know her purpose here was to meet anduin maybe and maybe it was to
43:00
help the people uh of kaz algar all become one place one people one united
43:08
front again because don't forget like she was a voice of reason when we were
43:14
bartering uh and using like with with anduin trying to get everybody on the same page whether it was horde alliance
43:21
uh the basically getting everybody like listen we're all going to be here this is our place to live we all need to
43:27
unite together and we need to free the nubians not just kill them because now if we free them we can have them on our
43:33
side and we've kind of done that to a point as well um there's still some loose loose ends that we'll talk about
43:39
in a future episode cuz i'm i'm mad that there's not one payoff yet and i'm curious when that's going to happen but
43:46
it is yeah i think that that's to a certain degree that the payoff for this is not coming till like two expansions
43:52
from now yeah which is fine um but yeah so now now she's moving forward and now
43:58
we know that we're going back to the wrathy highlands and that is probably
44:03
going to be the next place we see her because why wouldn't it be denith trollbane is going to be one of the
44:10
folks that is showing her around and specifically calls on him and
44:16
introduces them at the end of this as she says "yes i'm going to be going with you." um
44:23
and i think that's also fascinating because it's like the wrathy highlands is a really important place that she's
44:29
never she didn't knew exist i mean she knew it existed in the sense that it is the place her myths are told in and i
44:37
think that's interesting like the the whole deal they they broke through thoran's wall the arathy highlands has the ordinance wall on one side of it you
44:45
know that's literally this wall right here i've been there i've walked on it uh i fought monsters there so to her it
44:52
is a completely fantastical place she's she's only heard of in these stories
44:58
and to the people of like that she's going to be traveling with it's just that place they live
45:04
um so yeah there's there is a lot of of interesting potential here i don't know
45:11
you know how it's going to pay out but i do think it's fascinating to watch it get closer to existing i also think
45:18
though one of the things we haven't really talked about is the fact that what we see in this story is what has
45:24
shaped faren as a character as a person and we we already knew the the hero and the
45:32
the the you know almost fanatically faithful person but we we didn't really get was the idea of fyron is lonely
45:41
she's lonely surrounded by people there are all these people that care about her and she's still lonely
45:48
because she feels pushed onward to and has to leave behind everything and she
45:54
has felt that way her whole life and the people that helped her make sense of that or or made her feel better or
46:02
process this information or were able to be like voices of reason are gone
46:07
they're not there anymore like that's another sticking point like she has yeah she actually has to go and say goodbye
46:13
to them well it's not just them yeah like yeah they're dead essentially um and that's not saying like steel strike
46:19
and and chiron and and sig freed they're they're they're all important to her but
46:24
they weren't the only ones and even she can't bring herself to say goodbye to to sig freed which i think is fascinating
46:32
well for that matter like when she goes to see um ryth's cat mhm and she herself
46:38
doesn't have one she's like "i don't actually like these guys that much but i'm going to miss you." you know and i
46:45
mean i don't know how to put like we haven't even talked about the story of the dragon because it doesn't really we don't get much we just we hear a very
46:51
little bit of it um but there's the bit of like this big blue dragon that's going to teach uh teach the original
46:58
this person yeah so there's a there's a lot to that one that i i really wish we
47:04
got more than that but there's just this moment where she like she's like there
47:11
with ryth's cat and you know she's like please don't feel like i abandoned you please don't i hope that when you know i
47:17
don't come back you don't someone is here someone will you know come and bring you food and do what i have been
47:24
doing because you know ryoff's gone so ryoff can't do it anymore and that's there's this moment of just
47:32
heartbreak you know she still she still knows she's going to go she knows she
47:38
has to go like a lot of the tension in the story isn't
47:43
it isn't the tension of somebody who isn't sure what they're doing is right it's the tension of someone who knows what they're doing is right and knows it
47:50
will hurt and does it anyway um which is a something that makes fyron to me a very
47:58
interesting character in terms of like how she's it it isn't she is not immune
48:04
to doubt it's just what she doubts it is never her purpose she doubts it's
48:09
herself can i do this can i succeed i know i have to try but can i actually do it
48:18
there's a lot to it i i you know there's that whole bit where she's like a little mad that khadgar got returned to and
48:26
they got to get kaggar back but none of her friends came back and she's like you
48:31
know like all these people died fighting that thing and and i it's not i don't
48:38
i'm not like selfish but still it hurts and there's i think
48:44
that's a really good moment the idea that you know she might never get to go back there and
48:52
i don't know it's it's just the whole bit about you know she she's
48:58
trying to like talk to endari i think in particular uh and she's talking about
49:03
chess lights gambit what they call it um it's chess come on guys uh
49:10
and that whole bit you know i know part of me knows you'd pack my bags uh and send me you know off with send me off
49:17
yourself if you here maybe you'd even come with me maybe i would even ask you uh and there's a that idea that there's
49:24
loss and she says that that idea is really a
49:29
fundamental part of this concept this person who goes forth and attempts to
49:35
like do what that needs to be done they they do so knowing they are going to
49:41
lose things that they've already lost things and they will lose more things
49:46
that is i i don't know it's just a really poignant aspect of this story
49:52
yeah it's a it's also it's kind of fun that you get to watch her you know jerk uh anduin around a little bit yeah
49:58
there's a playfulness there but i think i think that's really the the thing that gets me about this is that the story is
50:04
incredibly grounded it's yes it's it's dealing with this telling of myths and
50:10
stories and we only really get the one detailed myth and we get little bits and pieces of some of the others but it's
50:17
grounded in the reality of everyday life for these people and the people that
50:23
surround far the life looks like as she tries to move forward
50:29
and i think that's a really interesting framing we talk about this all the time it's it's really easy to tell a story
50:36
about cosmic entities and you know the universe is shattering and and whatever the case is wo's been doing it for years
50:44
but it's really difficult to do a very human story and at the end of the day
50:49
while this was asked to us to cover it because of the myths i think the more human aspects of it is what's
50:55
fascinating to me and what i think is exceptionally well done um learning more
51:01
about fyron having more about the the strength of character and what makes them who they are i think is just as if
51:08
not more important than the myth itself that we learn and it makes me look
51:14
forward to seeing what fyron's going to be in the story because she's very clearly has a part to play she's not
51:21
done and whether that part is she'll be fighting alongside us in the highlands
51:27
and then onwards towards uh midnight and into the last titan uh or whether that
51:33
ends here we'll find out but i i'm really excited to find out more more
51:40
about this this character more about how they fit in with the coming story i do
51:45
also find it fascinating that it also ends with anduin basically saying "yeah i'm going to have to leave you be." uh
51:52
and but there's other people that are going to watch you uh and her being very
51:57
disappointed by it but also like she's going to get a chance to stand on her own without anduin which is very clearly
52:05
like displayed by the story right they they they're essentially telling us that yes she has a story and it doesn't
52:12
necessarily involve anduin and i think that that's really important because that's something i mean i know you and i
52:17
asked for it but it seems like the community at large has asked for it as well
52:24
so what do you where do you think our payoffs for this are going to happen like we know that it's going to be in
52:29
the iraqi section but do we think it's going to reverberate past it
52:37
um obviously i think it's going to move at least past this expansion that's that's what i believe um but i don't
52:44
know beyond that that's one of the things i've actually learned to try not to anticipate these things because
52:51
sometimes i obviously i fail but sometimes it's worse and i succeed then
52:56
i feel kind of cheated because then i don't get to see what what someone else is going to come up with i mean i do
53:02
because it's what they came up with but it feels like oh i i saw that coming and i don't like that mhm uh but in the case
53:10
of of faren i want them to basically do more with her because they have not
53:16
introduced a lot of new characters over the years who've gotten to stick around as much as they could have um i will say
53:22
this till till doomsday um i don't like
53:27
how gash ended up and i really feel like it was a waste of a story element i say this as somebody who's primarily played
53:34
alliance my whole life at this point for like the entire existence of world of warcraft i have been playing alliance i
53:40
i have horde characters i've play horde from time to time but i've primarily played as alliance i feel like part of
53:48
the reason i prefer alliance to horde is the fact that horde characters don't get
53:53
to stick around and be important the way that you know
53:59
thrral gets to but nobody else does and i really felt like i actually felt like
54:05
at the end of uh of warlords that gash
54:10
and thr and their rivalry had gotten to this really interesting place where in his
54:17
quest to defeat what gahash stood for thrall threw away a part of himself
54:24
he did a thing that he was not allowed to do he forced
54:29
the elements he didn't ask them he told them he made them do something
54:36
and i kept thinking to myself you know gar shouldn't be dead after this he should
54:41
still be alive maybe you know ruined but alive just so he can confront thr with
54:47
his hypocrisy cuz that was a hypocritical moment and it was something that i thought was very
54:52
interesting for both characters and we never really got to deal with it
54:58
yeah and so i want to see fen do more here but i also want to see that
55:05
for other characters that have not gotten the chance yeah and and i think that that that's another thing that
55:10
makes me hopeful with this story is it seems like we're going to get that for faren but it seems like we might be
55:17
able to get that for more potentially and i would very much like to see
55:24
uh more folks get that level of like long-term storytelling where they're
55:30
going to be around for longer than just one uh expansion they're going to not just be frriged immediately um or
55:39
they're there to for the express purpose of dying uh or serving as like
55:44
motivation or bait uh for something else like i am a-ok okay with with that
55:50
happening more frequently um and i'm hoping that this is an indicator that we will get more of that in the future and
55:57
if anything the fact that we're going to be in a three we're we're we're at the
56:03
end of the first chapter of a three expansion cycle and that's the opportunity really to do that
56:10
quite a bit right to have characters that span all three of those expansions
56:16
to have ones that get introduced and and you know make a long-term effect and i'm
56:23
hoping that we get more of that but also i'm hoping that we get to know more about the secret keepers uh and i really
56:30
well i definitely think that that's tied into the whole uh the lore walking experiences we're going to have i feel
56:37
like there's got to be a parallel i feel like that she went through one of those
56:43
for her ancestor like i honestly feel like that's what that was yeah not that it wasn't the book itself right like it
56:50
was yeah no the fact that he says you know i don't you know i don't know magic but the book does um makes me feel like
56:57
maybe the book you know maybe the book did know magic maybe it's you know it's a it's a thinking book i don't know but
57:03
i like the idea of this thing being out there that allows you to see this story
57:09
that you need to see um it reminded me very much of the stuff we did back in
57:16
so yeah i i i definitely want to see more of that kind of thing i want to see more of what what the lore walkers
57:23
always seem to be so interested in telling us things what is it like when they don't want to tell us something
57:30
yeah yeah like like there there seems like an element of that right like they they
57:37
tell us stories but they don't there has to be a level of which they say or back
57:42
off from it like it just seems yeah we're not going to tell every 5-year-old we meet about n'af yeah like it seems
57:49
like their storytelling always had a purpose then the the darkness at the heart of the world decided to eat us all
57:55
h yes it's there now sleeping always waiting waiting for our souls you know i
58:01
don't that's not going to be something they're going to bust out you know they'll tell that to the hero who can go
58:06
off and fight it they're not going to tell that you know just story just around the campfire to every kid in range uh and i i i do like the idea that
58:14
there are things they don't tell you but they don't they're not hiding those things they're just waiting you know you
58:21
need you when you need to hear this we will tell you this yeah yeah um and i
58:26
think that's an aspect that we don't really talk about a lot with the lore walkers in general where like it everything is timing timing timing
58:33
timing timing it's you don't just tell a story for the sake of telling a story you tell a story when it is appropriate
58:40
when it makes the most impact uh and i think that that was exactly what happened here you know an 8-year-old
58:47
faren is probably at that exact moment uh in the right mind to receive that
58:53
story and internalize it in a way that like an adult or or a younger child
58:58
wouldn't be able to an adult would immediately run off and try to find their ancestor a child would you know
59:05
just as easily dismiss it but an 8-year-old faren would sit there and dream about it would would sit there and
59:11
you know this was my ancestor this is what they did this is you know and and maybe might potentially understand the
59:18
lesson of that maybe not now but internalize it so that they can understand it as an adult in a way that
59:24
they couldn't before go ahead i'm just thinking about that idea that the dreamers they aren't real oh no of
59:32
course they are and like you know when we're making the war walker connection it's like do does this mean that they
59:38
have a connection with the the emerald dragonflight for some reason uh or maybe
59:44
all of the dragon flights like we we already had that conversation about nos dormu possibly involving himself
59:52
and yeah there's there's something there's some fun stuff here well there's also the possibility and i'm just going
59:58
to throw this out there since we're at the end of the episode uh who else have we seen dream that brings things into
1:00:04
physical form azeroth azeroth herself yeah that's true has her
1:00:12
dreams and nightmares become reality so there might be a tie there as well
1:00:18
but that's a story for another time i think that's going to do it for us today folks uh as always blizzard watch is
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1:00:53
wonderful questions or topics on uh discord we have the q and podcast questions channel set aside for everyone
1:01:00
uh you can go ahead and just same rules just toss them in there if you are a patreon subscriber you can hit us up on
1:01:05
the patreon q and podcast questions channel uh we tend to look there first as a way saying thank you for helping us keep the lights on uh and you can also
1:01:11
send us messages directly on patreon but with that folks we'll catch you next
1:01:16
time [Music]
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