The Evils of Faction

I don't have a beta key, but I read obsessively about Cataclysm to know that, at least at this point, Garrosh is not well-liked. Let me preface everything I am saying by saying that I spend far and away more time as a Horde mage than I do as an Alliance anything, and I'm also an Ambassador to the Horde, so I like to think I know a little something about Horde politics. Or at least, my character does. I as a player spend a lot of time pondering over it, in any case. To tell the truth, as things stand now, I don't particularly like him myself. Generally, from now on, when I say "I", I mean "Luqa, the Blood Elf."

Of Blood and Honor.

Let's talk about the old Warchief. Thrall is not without his criticisms, but I've always had a great admiration for him. If you've read Lord of the Clans, you know what rags-to-riches story he is. Thrall was pretty much the lowest of the low. He grew up as a slave gladiator in the orcish internment camps following the Second War, treated like shit, and thinking that he deserved it. I didn't even realize this until I read the book that thrall is actually a synonym in English for slave (vocabulary expansion win; I thought it was just some made up name like every one else in every fantasy name ever). Thrall, with the help of others, reconnected to his orcish heritage then liberated and united a broken people, who were already fugitives from a shattered world. Then, he took them across the Great Sea and forged an entirely new home for them, while garnering allies in the Sin'dorei, the Forsaken, the Tauren, and the Darkspear Trolls, all the while leading the New Horde to defend Azeroth from some of its recent threats. That's not such a bad resume. Also, he basically goes around calling himself "Slave". How fucking badass is that?

What I respect most about him was insistence that the New Horde not be the Old Horde, that they were not the blindly warlike and bloodraging beasts of some decades ago (although its arguable whether they were really that, if you ask me). The Alliance was not some great foe that needed to be cleaved and smashed at every opportunity, nor was anyone else. Sometimes you have to work with them, like with Jaina, or the War of the Shifting Sands, or the reinvasion of the Draenor. And how could anyone with a brain judge otherwise? Azeroth is a tough place to live. Someone's always trying to enslave you, corrupt you, or just plain murder the shit out of you. You can't go around destroying and raping and pillaging constantly. Thrall is a smart guy, and each of the Horde races has enough problems without going off and creating new ones for their own sake.

Garrosh Whoscream?
Now look at Garrosh. He's warmongering, bloodthirsty, hot-tempered, and brash. He was appointed the Overlord of the Warsong Offensive (at the end of Wrath of the Lich King). And how did he get there? Well, first he was chieftain of the dwindling, ailing Warsong clan, in Nagrand, and he reconnected with their now Azerothian counterparts through Thrall. Thrall brought him back as a personal advisor for no clear practical reason of which I am aware. Then, he has the nerve to give Thrall lip about how he intends to handle the Scourge threat, which leads to an out-and-out duel, rudely interrupted by the Scourge attack on Orgrimmar. Then he appoints him the Overlord. Like, of the Warsong Offensive. To defeat the Scourge. As in, the single greatest threat to Azeroth remaining as far as they know.

So this guy, Garrosh, he comes out of nowhere and rocketed straight to the top of New Horde leadership, talking all this shit about who everyone should be and what everyone is doing, and meanwhile he is probably the least experienced warrior and leader of nearly all of his new peers. Where do you get your stones, buddy?

Actually, I can see where his stones are coming from. He thought that he was the last of a dying breed of worthless, dishonorable curs, and that we next in line to shame his family. His father was, after all, Grom Hellscream, the first to drink the blood of Manneroth. But then he learned, through my (or any player's) help, that actually not Grom had been the one to finally kill Mannoroth and free the orcs from their corruption. He went from depressed wretch to a newly empowered alpha male foaming at the mouth pack leader type. It's got to feel great to realize that you are worth something, and now he wants to do something with himself.

Broken Front, Broken Leaders

From what I've seen in Wrath of the Lich King, he is a strong leader, but not a particularly wise one. There is the famous conversation in Warsong Hold at the opening of Wrath of the Lich King, where Garrosh is talking a big game, how they should be killing the Scourge and the Alliance, and he oversteps his bounds, and Saurfang has to take him down a peg. He insists on making war with the Alliance, turning Northrend into the theater for a two-front campaign. He is openly insulting to Varian and even neutral people like Tirion, and disdainful of any attempts to do things other than his way. And look at who the people are he puts in power. Conqueror Krenna, who completely abandons the war against the Scourge in favor of mucking about with the Alliance, so much so that I (or you) had to actually depose her and put her far more sensible sister in power. Korm Blackscar, who commands the Orgrim's Hammer, is clearly more interested in fighting the Alliance than the actual Scourge based on the dailies he gives.

The Broken Front in Icecrown is a quintessential example. In front of Mord'rethar: The Death Gate, the Horde waited til the Alliance were engaging the Scourge and the Hored attacked from behind, pretty much ensuring that the only people not defeated there were the Scourge. Now Garrosh did not directly order nor know about this, and neither did Korm, but Thrall would have been furious, and would never allow such a supremely stupid and brash attack. Under Garrosh, we have so much leadership that just refuses to acknowledges what's at stake for their own personal vendettas and desire to make war. This culminates in the Gunship battle in Icecrown itself. It just never stops with these people does it?

What Garrosh Doesn't Get

I was pretty annoyed by this. And I was thinking, do I really want Garrosh as my warchief? Until last night, when I remembered that I read somewhere (unfortunately I cannot remember where, I've been scouring the internets all day for the long forgotten URL) that Garrosh doesn't really understand what Azeroth is about. I didn't really understand that statement at the time, but then I started thinking about the politics of the Horde, and who its constituent races are. You've got the Orcs, who are essentially a bunch of refugees that have undergone some serious breaks with their heritage in the past few decades, and are trying to carve out a new home for themselves against the wishes of many of the other peoples of Azeroth. You've got the Forsaken, who are just as abhorred as their former peers the Scourge, and, some might argue, rightly so. They are quite proactive about it, but they really just want to have a place for themselves, too. The same goes for the Darkspears, outcasts from their home, and just recently able to take it back. Then there are the Tauren, who share their shamanistic connection with the land and tribal society with the orcs and trolls, but not much else. Finally, you have the Blood Elves, whose ancestors were in the Alliance, another outcast people who has turned toward the dark side in order to ensure their survival and and find a place for themselves.

The Horde is really an alliance of convenience between peoples who need allies to survive, between peoples who do not necessarily want to conquer Azeroth for themselves so much as find some way to live in it. Garrosh does not understand this. He knows only of the deeds of the Orcish Horde, and even of that, he knows very little. So he goes for what is easy to understand: Blood and Thunder.

The silver lining to this for me is twofold. One, you've got King Wrynn on the other side running the Alliance who is just as hot-tempered and brash (mutual foils, anyone?). He wants to go on the offensive against the Horde, and he's going to be doing it. It's going to be good to have a Warchief who is game for this. The best defense is a good offense, as they say. And I think the Horde is a faction that, culturally, and societally, is quite disparate and pulling in different directions- especially the Forsaken who are always trying to do their own thing. A strong leader in time when the Horde is under threat will be invaluable for demanding unity and direction at a time when it is most necessary. I also think that he can spend some time here and learn about the people of Azeroth, even though he has not shown much interest in that.

And now there is no supposed enemy that he has to begrudgingly ally with, except for maybe, as he sees it, the Forsaken. But still, I worry about Garrosh's judgment. It says in the Art of War, if your enemy has a choleric temper, inflame him. Garrosh is quite strong, but its clear what his weaknesses are. By all means, I'm willing to get behind him in a fight where the enemies are clear, and the decisions are black and white. But experience tells me that things in Cataclysm will not be that way, and in general they rarely are, so that's not the measure of a truly good Warchief.

The best Warchief, like Thrall, excels when the situation is the opposite.

ICC: Icecrown Citadel Confusion

So I find the narrative of the Deathbringer Saurfang encounter confused. If I am making sense of the first four bosses of ICC, the Ashen Verdict made the initial ground assault on the Citadel, gaining a foothold. From there, a “group of adventurers” is able to defeat Lord Marrowgar and Lady Deathwhisper, where they ascend to the Rampart of Skulls to find that the Skybreaker and Orgimm’s Hammer have air dropped troops onto the Citadel, and naturally begun fighting idiotically at the worst possible time. The Horde and Alliance push their way to their respective ships, where they take off towards Deathbringer’s Rise to gain entrance to the Upper Spire.

Here is the confusing part. Along the way they encounter the opposing faction, and engage in battle. Both sides claim to have defeated each other and moved on to defeat Saurfang. If you read the dialogue from the Deathbringer encounter, it isn’t possible that both accounts are completely true. In one Saurfang shows up first and the Horde defeats him. Muradin does not appear. The Rise is manned by Horde personnel. In the other, Muradin shows up first, the Alliance defeats him and Saurfang shows up after Deathbringer is dead. Alliance personnel man the Rise.

Now, I get that there can be conflicting accounts of the same event. I think this is a fun way to implement the acting out of the narrative. The problem with the Gunship and Deathbringer part of the story is that since one account precludes the other, its hard for me to imagine a situation where both sides could think they got there first and had no help from the other faction, and both claimed the same spot.

Working together or even tolerating each other sounds really unlikely considering they were just attempting to kill each other, even as the Scourge was trying to kill them both. The only way I can really see this happening is to say that somehow, neither side ever really stopped fighting with each other. The "victory" in the Gunship battle was just a momentary lull in the fighting, and the other side retaliated. They continuously skirmish over Deathbringer’s Rise after Deathbringer is defeated. The “group of adventurers” took it upon themselves to not bother with the Horde vs Alliance nonsense and take out Deathbringer. This makes sense, given the pettiness of the fighting they’d been doing.

But this still doesn’t explain how the characters would experience things in such a way that both sides claimed they were the only ones fighting Deathbringer. I don’t see any explanation.

Oh wait!

The Gunship battle, if I am interpreting things correctly, is put there as the result of the Wrathgate when the Forsaken betrayed the Horde and the Alliance. King Varian Wrynn would not forgive the Forsaken (though it is not clear to what extent the Forsaken as a whole were innocent in the whole affair) and declared war on the Horde during the Battle of the Undercity. The two factions had already seen rising tensions and skirmishes, particularly in Grizzly Hills.

By the time they reached Icecrown Citadel, they were in open war. See the quests in Icecrown that involve Mordre'thar: The Death Gate. But the problem is, the war effort against the Scourge is severely hampered by this pointless conflict, for obvious reasons. On each gunship you have Argent Crusade representatives telling them to cut the crap and focus on the Scourge. Thassarian and Koltira, Ebon Blade questgivers, are pissed about it too.

This is part of the motivation behind the Argent Tournament - to get the two factions to work together, because if they don't, they cannot defeat the Scourge. It works partially, but the relations devolve back into bickering and fighting on the Rampart of Skulls, leading to my current question.