The Forsaken aren't bound to Sylvanas by necromancy. She's not the LK (who mindslaved the Scourge and fed off their souls to grow stronger). They follow her because she gave them a place to belong and a purpose after the world forsook them. Sometimes this devotion can be creepy and cultish, but they do it of their own free will. Some decide they want something else and they leave to do their own thing without consequence.
The dwarves have the tram to SW now, and in the second war they survived because there are a myriad of secret tunnels to farmland in the mountains on the outside. Not to mention they have probably created a significantly larger supply store since then in case another siege occurs.
IRL there have been cities far less fortified, and far more vulnerable than Ironforge that survived years of siege. Carthage itself lasted three years against the full might of Rome.
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Not to mention the whole reason she chose returning to life is because she saw that she was going to WoW's version of hell (which means she has probably done a whole lot of nasty stuff in the past we don't even know about).
This whole thing imo, is her desperately trying to make herself as powerful, and by default further from death, as possible. She is afraid of dying now. And instead of repenting for what she's done and trying to make to world a better place. She's invading her neighbors and fucking up property values with puddles of toxic ooze.
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Is what Arthas did genocide?
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Killing an entire race/species in the process of it on purpose is though.
Know why the cathars are not a sect of Christianity anymore? Because the Vatican spawned a crusade against the Cathar faith and the Catholics killed every single Cathar. That was a genocide. And they did the same thing to the pagans in Lithuania. The Teutonic knights spent 200 years there slaughtering anyone who didn't believe in Jesus.
Know why the Aztecs arn't around anymore? Because the Spanish took all their land and either killed them with disease and war, or overworked them as slaves. That was a genocide too.
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The difference is literally every structure in Ironforge is made of stone. Conversely well over 90% of Tokyo's buildings were built with nothing more than paper and wood.
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Those fires were also caused by one of the most violent earthquakes in recorded human history too though, and 50% or more of the structures that were destroyed can be attributed to the immediate damage caused by the quake. The structure that were destroyed by the fires were also heavily damaged by the quake before hand in most cases.
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Catapults are in no way shape or form banned in warfare.
Also: "International law does not prohibit the use of napalm or other incendiaries against military targets, but use against civilian populations was banned by the United Nations Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) in 1980."
Didn't really look like that in South Shore.
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So she is purposely dooming thousands of others to the same miserable plane she is going to go at some point? Real nice of here.
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As for people saying she could just get Goblins to get her into Ironforge...
I don't know if you all realize this, but Ironforge is better secured than Cheyenne Mountain. Arguably the US's most impenetrable base, which, like Ironforge, is also inside a mountain. Cheyenne is one of the NORAD command centers, and is supposed to be able to hold up against multiple direct small-medium nuclear strikes, or at least one 30 megaton strike. To put that into perspective, the bomb dropped on Hiroshima that leveled the city in seconds was just 0.02 megatons. And the most powerful bomb the US ever tested was only 15 megatons, and made this explosion:
Seeing as Ironforge is even stronger defensive wise than NORAD (deeper within the mountain. Even thicker front door). Then I highly doubt the goblins have anything they can throw at IF that would get them inside.
He was clearly dying of Blight before the dragons set him on fire.
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Just because using biological/chemical weapons in an open area is less effective doesn't mean it is ineffective if you use large amounts of it. They even say it was a more highly concentrated form of Blight than what they had used before.
Last edited by Aquamonkey; 2013-07-27 at 01:54 PM.
Highly doubtful, she'd need the backing of the whole horde, and then some to take down the massive influence and harsh conditions the dwarves live in as a first stepping stone and the dwarves would last out long enough to gather support and push them back and possibly even annihilate them. It's a tenuous barrier kept up only by the Forsaken not crossing it. Gilneas was lost only because of their 'apparent arrogance', that lost them the full support of the alliance. Had the Gilneans kept allegiances strong I have no doubts the Alliance would have used it as an excuse to push back and retake Lordaeron for good.
The forsaken are undoubtedly a strong force but if the entire Alliance went up against them as a united front they wouldn't have a prayer. And now that the Orcs are divided (and later in disarray before a new War-chief is chosen) the Horde isn't fit to lead a campaign of that magnitude.
I have eaten all the popcorn, I left none for anyone else.
Yes, originally, the WC3 description of deathknights said that paladins were immune to Plague. However, there's a whole quest chain about a paladin Crusader Bridenbrad who is infected with Plague.
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IF that is true. We don't know what the criteria are for going there. We only know of 2 people who have gone there, Arthas and Sylvanas. Nothing explicitly states that all undead go there. It might be from the LK feeding on their souls, something that doesn't happen with new Forsaken. It takes a pact with Val'kyr to bring Sylvanas back from that place, but even lesser Val'kyr have no problem raising regular Forsaken.
Besides, they see it as freeing people from death's grip, "Welcome back to the realm of the living. With the blessing and power from the Dark Lady, I have freed you from death's grip." Considering most people don't jump back in their graves (something that isn't painful for undead), they must prefer being alive again over going back to whatever afterlife they were in.
Last edited by Aquamonkey; 2013-07-27 at 02:11 PM.
Our knowledge of what happens after death in Azeroth is surprisingly limited. It is entirely possible that the reason a lot of people made undead (typically very soon after their death) choose to stay with the Forsaken is because they may have been in some sort of limbo or temporary purgatory before moving on, and they are scared of returning to that, or maybe Sylvannas was a fluke and you don't even remember what happened when you died after you are raised, and thus you would experience the same fear of dying you had before you died in the first place all over again.
Just to clear one thing up: No, the Knights of the Ebon Blade are NOT watching Sylvanas, simply because they don't exist anymore. The Ebon Blade has been split up to their former factions.
It's almost as if people forget that Sylvanas doesn't have a huge army of Val'kyrs, ready to keep raising new Forsaken all the time. If they keep doing that, *someone* is going to notice. Half of them have already been killed through various means, what exactly would make them survive all that time? If you keep them at front to keep raising reinforcements, someone *will* assassinate them. Hell, even at Andorhal, where Alliance actually losses, they manage to take out some of them.
'Sides, if Sylvanas were to Plague bomb everything, even the Horde would help to stop her. I don't care how many fanboys worship her half naked undead flesh - she's not capable of fighting entire Azeroth and winning.
We do have the novel's account of Sylvanas' first death. She was drifting into a "soft and warm and dark and calm and comforting" afterlife after being impaled by Frostmourne, only to have Arthas rip her soul back into this realm. Which is probably why she didn't give a shit about the Val'kyr's visions and killed herself to get back there. Sylvanas' quotes about being resurrected in Silverpine only mention the darkness and nothingness without really describing it, or she wasn't dead long enough to completely descend to hell like at ICC (which started as only darkness).
Sylvanas didn't have any kind of limbo when she first died. The limbo thing isn't going to be the case for people who were raised from graveyards like Deathknell, since they had been dead for a while.
The memory wipe thing is also possible. I can't recall any Forsaken mentioning memories about their afterlife. But Sylvanas didn't talk about it either except that one time in Silverpine, years after her first death.
Last edited by Aquamonkey; 2013-07-27 at 02:53 PM.
There doesn't seem to be a limbo. You either go to light or darkness. There are the cases of arriving to a peaceful place upon death as a natural living mortal, a heaven of sorts that is described as the light. Undead on the other hand seem to go to the darkness which make sense as they are bound by shadowy magics. The memory itself of the afterlife could just be so traumatic it would be repressed. If you were ripped from paradise to be imprisoned in a cage of rotting flesh would you even want to remember? Would you end your tortured mockery of life knowing that you have no place to go but hell?
Last edited by delus; 2013-07-27 at 03:50 PM.
We don't really know, a lot of undead seem to be glad that they're freed as they die, some cases even show their spirits ascending. Sylvannas' case could be not because she's undead, but because of the things she's done in her unlife. Same with Arthas.
So, let me recap what did this thread help me realise:
- The Alliance won't bother responding to a Forsaken invasion untill they reach the front gates.
- The Alliance won't bother helping their under siege allies, either!
- Forsaken assasins will be cutting all sorts of important people, completely unhindered.
- The Horde won't even raise an eyebrow in the hearing of all these. Why should they, it's not like Sylvanas has gone Genghis Khan mode and they're next.
In general, noone responds to anything the Forsaken do or might do, seems like they have already decided to bow before their undead overlords.