And people called me a "crazy doomsayer".

[Lorgar Aurelian]

Except as per Calia herself, everyone but Elsie was already defecting by the time Calia got to talking with Elsie. And she talked to Elsie last. Meaning that before Sylvanas even realized something was off 11 out of 12 Forsaken still on the field were already defecting. With none seen returning after Sylvanas sounded the horn as they should have. We only saw them returning after Sylvanas learned about Calia and decided that the test of loyalty has failed and ordered the Dark Rangers to kill them all. At which point, as Sylvanas pointed out to Nathanos after he questioned her, they could have just as well be returning only out of fear. Because, you know, there appeared a threat of consequences for defection. And looping back to Calia, Sylvanas turned out to be right in regards to 11 out of the 12 that were killed.

Which leaves Elsie. Who still disobeyed orders about the retreat to chit-chat with a pretender to Sylvanas' throne, even though she's been told about how they were to retreat immediately after the signal. Once upon her own inquiry. After which she herself thought about how there would likely be serious repercussions for violating that rule, as not retreating when called to could create an incident with the Alliance.

We have gone over this before, this is something you just made up that the book doesn't support it as it lays out who was talking with who and its not all 11 and it wasn't even calia talking to them it was a small group who approached her.

There was Osric, talking to his friend Tomas. Over there, two sisters
were reunited. There was Ol’ Emma, whom Calia had healed, looking
ten years younger as she smiled at her children. And Parqual and
Philia were coming to join them. They spoke for a few moments; Calia
was too far away to hear what they said.
Parqual said something to his daughter, then headed alone toward
Calia. She felt a flicker of concern; he shouldn’t be approaching her
like this. No one was supposed to know that she and Parqual knew
each other. Loudly, he said, “Priestess…may this Forsaken have your
blessing?”
“Of course,” she replied.
He bent his head, whispering to her, “We need you now. It’s time.”
“Wh-what?”
“You’ll see. Be ready.”
Calia steadied herself and called for the Light’s blessing. It came,
bathing him in its warm, gold-white glow. Parqual grimaced; the Holy
Light healed Forsaken, but it was not pleasant for them. With a nod of
appreciation, he turned and rejoined the group. She watched them,
alert now. For a while, they simply chatted. And then, too casually,
Philia and Parqual walked away from the Felstones. After a moment,
the Felstone family, too, began to walk. Slowly and indirectly, so as not
to attract too much attention, they were moving from the center of the
field toward Stromgarde Keep.

then we have this where it doesn't say all.

Several of them are moving in the direction of Stromgarde Keep,” he
confirmed, “but that may not be intentional.”

then when it comes to the horn there is this which says some were heading back at once.

As if in response, the horn sounded three sharp blasts. Elsie turned
her gray-green face back toward the wall and the Forsaken banner that
had been unfurled.
“I’m sorry, Your Majesty,” Elsie said. “I can’t betray my queen. Not
even for you.” She turned and shouted, “Retreat! Retreat

On the field below, spread out like markers in the map room, were
other tiny figures. Some of them were heading back toward Thoradin’s
Wall. Some were returning to the keep.
And some still stood in the field as if paralyzed.

just like last time your either lying or misremembering but either way your wrong on most of it.

[shadowmatrix]

It was in-character for Anduin to try to get through to Sylvanas, it was very out of character for Sylvanas to react the way she did.

You can't kill hope.

[leorana]

"The boy-king serves at the master's table. Three lies will he offer you.".

Anduin will play by the game of Jailer/Sylvanas "accepting" the power she is offering, he will tell us(players) lies so we can truly believe that he is a bad guy. And when at the right moment he strike back. And will be hard for him to control his emotions and all the shit that he believes so he can play this game.

Would be awesome

I think Anduin will take Sylvannas offer and turn (at least temporarily) to serve the darkness.

I realy like IIlngoth' references.

Regardless of the boy king, if Anduin is the golden one and not turalyon, then Anduin might take the vacant throne (of the lich king) . Reading on it again, Sylvannas play along (kneels before six masters) but eventually will take over the SL (serves only one - her own). I also fear that Ysera might betray us somehow.

What if Sylvannas isn't Vader but rather Anduin (Anakin) is? There was a buzz Anduin will turn dark at sime point, and another for Sylvannas actually doing good in the long run (and judging how unjust and awkward the afterlife is I'm with Sylvannas on that we need a better system). A role switch would be a quite interesting twist. Not the first time it happened neither.

[Claymore]

I'll keep my theory that Sylvanas is on our side but with a complete different sense of priority. She is justifying her actions by what she judge necessary to achieve her goals, she's an extremist.

Before disserting on her, let's talk from a design perspective. In a game like wow, some character gets the development earlier than other or are let in "stasis" until further interest in the character. So even if there were development in LK and Cata, her arc started with Legion.

To understand her motivation is quite simple. The infinity of death beats the short time spent alive. If the afterlife is wrong then no matter how many have to die. After all, no matter if you die in a burning tree or if you live a long life you end up in the maw. And before talking about her relation with the Jailer and how I believe she works since day 1 on how to screw him over let's talk why she try to convince us that the "arbiter system" is wrong.

You are judged based on your life, however if we can make choices, most our them are limited and some option are removed from you. If Sylvanas would had died without resurection defending her people, she would had a sweet afterlife maybe, but if you take her a few years latter the judgement is different. The individuals are judged at the moment of their death which in this world represent a tiny fragment of your existence. The system does not take into account the kind of person you could become and doesn't really give much agenda to you in the afterlife to change and be free (The 4 covenants have this glowing flaw). The arbiter use some unknown parameter to force a soul to live some existence that could not be right for people that are changing. The system should not judge you on who you where the moment you died but who you could be, or could have been.
Current system is cool for people having luck but is most likely to defavor those who had cruel hardship.

But let's get back to the plot.
Wotlk : Sylvanas is revengeful, commits suicide when she see no other option for her once the vengeance is acomplished. Jailer is somehow hijacking her.She is not stupid and must have figured that the jailer is the puppet master of her demise. If she should be pissed at someone it's him over Arthas who was like her a puppet. So no way she agree with the jailer, especially if she claim to fight for choice when the jailer, no matter his endgame is absolutly not for it.

Jump to Legion. Sylvanas shadowland's story is already in motion. She showed honest respect to Varian and is quite surprise at her nomination. Though it was through the Jailer and we could assume she was playing comedy, let's assume that it was an honest reaction. The Arbiter is broken by some design and nothing point to Sylvanas being responsible.

Jump to BFA. As Saurfang said, everything she did failed. She knows everyone is going to the maw, so she gives no fuck to who die as long as it allows her to continue her plans which is : failing. As a loyalist, you could be disapointed that she knew every action we were doing against her and she asked us to do nothing. So she let Baine try to make amends with the Alliance, knew it, and only decided to emprison him. So both Alliance and Horde could rescue him, and once again she knew it and let it happen. And when the Horde and the Alliance are at orgrimar and a victory uncertain, she's dueling Saurfang and "slip" in a way even her devotees learn they are being used.
Basically, she united everyone against her on purpose.

Jump to SL. She open the door to the shadowlands. If she had not, we would have lose. The maw would continue to get the souls and nobody could counter that. So her action was once again useful for us and not useful for "Sylvanas pure evil" as she is not pure evil.

Jump to both conversation with jailers and Anduin. She is honest with Anduin, saying she is fighting for choice and explain her perspective. Second cinematic showed that Jailer is all about control and Sylvanas, as duplicit as she is, is not a hypocrite. I don't believe she has been talking about liberty and choice and follow blindly the Jailer that is the complete opposite.
She wants both afterlife justice and an end to the Jailer's domination. She believes that if she played along, the Jailer could destroy the SL as we know it, and then with help destroy him. That's why she brought us, that's partialy why she is doing her best to not enslave Anduin. However not enslaving Anduin would mean treason and the Jailer would destroy her. That's why she said she hasn't "gone this far to falter now". She did despicable things to be able to achieve her plans, yet enslaving Anduin is a bit too much for her.

Of course she burned Teldrassil and many other atrocities...however I think it took a toll on her, even if for her the end justify the means. Enslaving Anduin is not a worse thing but it is more personnal for her. She is forced into a corner having to do to Anduin the exact thing that destoyed her in the first place. Living Windrunner had flaws but she protected and loved until the lich king removed that from her. She obviously doesn't want to that to Anduin, even if that contradict her plans, that why for the last two cinematic we see her falter...doing horrible things to save the world is a necessary evil for her, but doing what traumatized her and make her hate herself to the point of suicide is something she doesn't want to do to Anduin who represent for her, what is good about life even if she tries but failed to deny that her mortal self still exist.
For all of her action, she could believe she is doomed, yet Anduin show that she had no choice into being the banshee queen but she could still be Windrunner. If Anduin surrender, it would be a confirmation to the depressive "truth" Sylvanas clings to, that hope is a lie. I think that deep down she is still Windrunner, no matter the title of banshee queen and what it implies and she hates that. The cutscene with Uther and Arthas also showed through Uther hesitation that Arthas as evil his action got, was more than just the lich king.



I don't say the writing is awesome, but it is consistent and offer depth of character in a game that has always been a blockbuster kind of story, with sky beam and evil people doing evil things. If I'm right about Sylvanas, she is quite like Illidan, justifying the end and taking the decision for other. However with Illidan, there was no conflict between his motivations, his actions were foolish (opening a portal to Argus without a plan and being saved by a light deus ex machina) and suceeded by apparent luck and pure force of will.
I prefer to see Sylvanas accepting the mantle of a vilain, showing emotions and having moment of doubts in her "perfect" plans she had years to prepare and her own belief.

Pretty well explained, I think. I think the question is, can Blizzard stick the landing and make us believe Sylvanas as this sort of anti-hero? Maybe, maybe not. Given how heavy-handed BFA was, there's some pretty well-founded skepticism, I would say.

But credit really has to be given to the voice actors and the animators, as the cinematics are doing a pretty good job of selling Sylvanas having a little more emotion beneath the surface. That said, I still find Anduin a bit insufferable, just painfully generic and "good". If anything, I think I'd almost appreciate they just having him willingly accept "Shalamourne" or whatever, confident in his ability to resist its corruption, only to find it a greater struggle than he anticipated. Not to say "he should become a villain", but I'd definitely like to see him humbled.

[Verdugo]

I'm just trying to see the character from a less 1 sided view is all.

No, you just cant accept that Blizzard fucked up.

[Muxtar]

It really wasn't even in-character for Anduin. Before the Storm ended with Anduin proclaiming that he'll never abandon hope that people can change, but it also contained a piece of character growth where he admitted some people may never want to become his drone. Which he said while talking about Sylvanas. And finished off with saying that she's well and truly lost. Which is why he didn't try pleading with her at Lordaeron. He demanded unconditional surrender from her, threatened her with death if she did not comply and that was that.. This cinematic is a character regression for him that undoes the last decade of his development.

Well, he demanded and threatened with Sylvanas when he had his army behind him. Now the situation is slightly different, him being a prisoner at Barad-Dur... ehm, Torghast, without much chances to walk out with his own mind in his head. So it is reasonable that he changes his behaviour and tries to persuade Sylvanas, I'd say it is his only chance to escape undeath and mind-slavery to Jailer.

[VinceVega]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPOvUQIbP9s
Aaaand, cut. Scene over. They officially whitewashing Sylvanas by that vomit inducing interaction with Anduin. Lets say it like that - its horrible from every angle. Its like a perfect gem made of pure crap, every side of it shines its own hue of awful.
1) Anduin still sees "some good" in her, aka the Hope or wahetever.
2) Arthas-Anduin parallel which i always found really unnecessary, not every Alliance prince should be compared to Arthas. Arthas wasnt even that great of a character (although he IS better then most current characters.)
3) Whats the point of all that grand talk of "choice" and Anduin placing HIS fate as some kind of "end line" for Evilness when uncountable legions of souls are currently tortured, broken, turned mad or enslaved by the Jailer and Sylvanas. How comes their fates were not evil enough, but if she dares touch him THEN its a Moral Event Horizon?
4) Jailer looks awful, just saying. Handsome squidward is not imposing and looks silly.
5) Kerrigan "redemption" story ahoy, here we go. *vomits*
6) All that was pretty much "foretold" before and people said that it will never happen. Well... I guess it DID happened after all!
But... It dosent make me happy, it just makes me even more disheartened since the Worst Scenario is THE Scenario we going with.

Oh noooo they gave a villian (who has not always been a villian) a conscience and don't portray her unrevocable evil and without emotions. She always had emotions. At no point was she not lead by the,

I don't think there is anythi8ng that would satisfy you in regard to lore.
No idea why you think there is a redemption story. So the moment the villian is not mustach twirling obvious all htere is evil, there HAS to be redemption?

Anduin did not put any endpoint of evilness anywhere. He just recognized and pinted out sylvanass inner conflict.

regarding point 6: NOTHING happend. NOTHING. Even if it does. Stop acting so world endingly cringy with everything regarding Sylvannas, Anduin and Bain. Everyx thread about them is just senseless whining about the one being too good the other being too evil or not evil enough.

[Varodoc]

The Child of Light and Shadow is clearly Arator. The Child of Light (Turalyon) and Shadow (Alleria). Xe'ra's prophecy was right, but, in her hubris, she misinterpreted the real identity of the true Child of Light and Shadow.

[huth]

I dunno man, you saw those Venthyr aristocrats living the life? Team Maldraxxus also seems to enjoy the fighting and tests.

Let's not forget that the gardening stint is also for people who like gardening, and most of them don't seem to actually do all that much so there's plenty of free time involved.

[Muxtar]

The Child of Light and Shadow is clearly Arator. The Child of Light (Turalyon) and Shadow (Alleria). Xe'ra's prophecy was right, but, in her hubris, she misinterpreted the real identity of the true Child of Light and Shadow.

But he was born before Alleria acquired shadow powers, wasn't he?

[Varodoc]

But he was born before Alleria acquired shadow powers, wasn't he?

Prophecies are set in the future, the requirements do not have to be met right when the subject is born. Prophecies are complex and ambiguous, but Arator makes way more sense than Illidan or even Anduin. Anduin definitely makes no sense. Just because he's a Discipline priest doesn't mean he's "Child of Light and Shadow", otherwise Moira Thaurissan is too lol.

In fact I would say that it's not a coincidence that the Prophecy was dropped and Xe'ra slain right when Alleria and Turalyon were reintroduced. Clever way to misdirect the players, but it didn't work on me.

[huth]

The sins we killed were those pumped into him by Denathrius, but the sinstone was his own. And as we're told right at the start of Revendreth, the sinstones just laying around represent a soul that has completed their journey in the realm and moved on to better pastures (or, as we learn later, became a Venthyr).

Most likely only those that left for elsewhere. It's pretty clearly shown why just leaving your sinstone sitting around is not a good idea for a Venthyr.

Sinstones aren't normally attached, either. Anybody carrying it around has had somebody tie it to them. That's actually a method of abuse being used by Denathrius and his cronies and is mentioned by the Accuser as not being healthy at all.

[Iheartnathanos]

I love how players interpret motivations for villains as justifications.

Pretty much this. /endthread. Seriously people.

[Lorde Snow]

The Redemption of Sylvanas is the greatest absurdity of the games I have seen, the mere idea of ​​a redemption for her to be considered is already an unimaginable horror, the character made several cruel experiments including with allies, betrayed allies with chemical weapons at the gate of wrath (wrathgate) compromising peace between alliance and horde, she lied and used everyone like tools, observation we are talking about Sylvanas pre cataclysm, after wrath she declared war on a neutral nation, even used chemical weapons prohibited by her leader to win the war, making the area uninhabitable, tortured Koltira an ally who made a temporary peace agreement with the alliance to face a greater evil, vilified the corpses in MOP, considered murdering his own sister, killed animals to alleviate the frustration of such an act, had a hand in Varian's death, she used Vol'jin's death to come to power, she tried to enslave eyir by jeopardizing Odin's alliance with the alliance’s and horde armies in the campaign against the legion, broke the death machine in her pact with Helya condemning all souls to hell (Maw), caused the genocide against the night elves when she set fire on teldrassil, killing women, children, the elderly, the majority civilians and condemning the victims to eternity in the maw, caused the 4th war a kind of world war, killed its own allies, left its own people the renegades homeless, tried to brainwash an enemy brought back to life against his own will so that he murdered the family, planned kill her sisters, killed her own people when they wanted to return to their loved ones and even those who did not disobey her and chose to be by her side, sought to kill everyone who threatened her stay in power, once again vilified and desecrated both enemy bodies and allies alike, helped to unleash the last of the old gods which almost caused the end of the world, she released the Scourge army upon the world, once more put azeroth in danger caused a cosmic catastrophe of unimaginable proportions when she broke the barrier between the life and death, unsatisfied she kidnapped the greatest leaders of the factions and threw them alive in hell, caused the drought of anima throughout the Shadowlands and compromised the world of the dead, all of this by an illusory utopia, how can such a demon that caused more harm and destruction than gul'dan, arthas, garrosh and deathwing together stand a chance of redemption? Nothing is more absurd than that, if she doesn't face justice and the consequence of her actions, I give up Wow definitely.

[Mehrunes]

We have gone over this before, this is something you just made up that

just like last time your either lying or misremembering but either way your wrong on most of it.

The only reason we've had to go over this more than once is because you refuse to read the book in its entirety, as you cannot maintain your narrative in any other way than through willful ignorance. Sorry to burst your bubble though, but covering your ears, shouting "lalala I can't hear you" and blatantly cherrypicking out all the parts of the book that say exactly the things that I talked about isn't an argument. Just the opposite, it's a stark admission of argumentative bankruptcy on your part.

And since you decided to use this bullshit and utterly dishonest premise to outright accuse me of lying, let me educate you (though I fully expect you to deliberately ignore it again).

the book doesn't support it as it lays out who was talking with who and its not all 11 and it wasn't even calia talking to them it was a small group who approached her.

I know that many people on this forum struggle with the concept of words meaning things (yourself included, as you're demonstrating right here), but none of what I said meant "Calia approached the 11 defectors" or anything even remotely similar to that. I said literally nothing about who approached who in regards to these members of the Council, let alone who brought up the topic of defection to whom in those approaches. What I did say is that in regards to ELSIE - and ELSIE ALONE - it was Calia who approached her with the prospect of defection (as Elsie didn't plan on that herself).

“You didn’t once. You won’t have to live in the shadows anymore. Just—please. Come walk with me. Parqual, the Felstones, all the others—see them? They’re defecting. Anduin will shelter and protect you all; I know he will!”

Wow, would you look at that, the thing I actually said has happened has happened. Who'd have thunk. And just like I said, as per Calia all the others aside from the named Felstones and Parqual (and Elsie, obviously) were already on the "let's defect" train. Because words still mean things and "all the others" does not mean "just some of them". With you providing nothing to prove otherwise other than "Calia didn't talk with all 11 of them".

And let's go over how how "Calia didn't talk with all 11 of them" doesn't work. To start with, the funny thing here is that you're wrong even in regards to the bits of the book that you so generously decided to acknowledge in order to "inform" me about the "real" events. Because Calia wasn't approached by a small group at any time. It was Parqual alone that approached her, not a group. Whoopsie. Yet despite not being talking with Felstones she did know they were defecting all the same. But the same principle does not apply to the seven remaining Forsaken, because magic.

And let me ask you a question: how many members of the Desolate Council were actually named in the book? Seven, one of whom didn't even get a surname until BfA. Parqual, who was confirmed by the book to be a defector; the three Felstones, who were confirmed by the book to be defectors; Tomas (Gray, as specified by a later source), who weirdly enough was not only on the run (together with his living brother) between Stromgarde and Calia after the slaughter started, but was the first Forsaken that almost got in range of Anduin's spell-casting, meaning he was the one who got the closest to Stromgarde (but was totally not defecting to Stromgarde /s); Elsie, who disobeyed orders about the retreat and Annie Lansing, who returned to Thoradin's Wall before things went sideways and survived just fine.

The remaining six members of the twelve that died aren't named (though one was named in Shadows Rising and, like I already said, Tomas gained a surname only in BfA), just like the nine that also returned to the Forsaken camp before the culminating event. Most of them aren't even mentioned on non-collective level, except for one "reunited sister". Because they weren't relevant to the story.

Calia naming seven more Forsaken that by that point the story spent no time on would just be redundant, especially since the last remaining Forsaken still on the field that she didn't name in that speech but was named in the story was also shown running towards Stromgarde with his brother after shit hit the fan. Maybe in a longer book where those Council members were actually fleshed out characters it could be used to drive the point further home, but in a book that's less than 200 pages long it'd just be beating a dead horse. The book doesn't also mention all the shits Calia took on her way to Arathi. I guess in your mind it means she has a golden sphincter and doesn't defecate.

On the other hand, those seven Forsaken not specifically named by Calia (including six not named at all) being actually loyal Forsaken would be a new piece of information. Especially given how Calia said they were indeed defecting. Yet the book does nothing to introduce it, or even introduce them as individual characters (including Tomas, he's only ever briefly mentioned by other characters). Instead it shows Calia talking about all other-than-Elsie of them defecting, because the point about Forsaken wanting to stay with their families has already been made by then. With there being a whole zero of other evidence indicating that Calia lied.

then we have this where it doesn't say all.

Several of them are moving in the direction of Stromgarde Keep,” he
confirmed, “but that may not be intentional.”

Not only does this happen before Sylvanas even sounded the horn, not only was it so unclear if they were going towards Stromgarde Keep intentionally or not from where Sylvanas and Nathanos stood - even though we know from other perspectives that it was indeed intentional - but since I quite clearly said Elsie was not defecting, congrats on "proving" a whole lot of nothing here.

then when it comes to the horn there is this which says some were heading back at once.

As if in response, the horn sounded three sharp blasts. Elsie turned
her gray-green face back toward the wall and the Forsaken banner that
had been unfurled.
“I’m sorry, Your Majesty,” Elsie said. “I can’t betray my queen. Not
even for you.” She turned and shouted, “Retreat! Retreat

Given how you're using this quote to "disprove" my claim that Elsie did not retreat as it talks about her alone and mentions no other Forsaken, the only thing you're actually establishing here is that for some reason *cough* willful ignorance *cough* you can't grasp the difference between someone saying something and them actually doing it. Because let's loop back to the chapter before where we see Sylvanas sounding the retreat:

“Something is wrong,” Sylvanas murmured. “But I cannot put my finger on precisely what.”
The priestess had said something to Vellcinda that had the Prime Governor agitated. No one else on the field seemed to notice. They were too busy taking strolls with their loved ones.
And that was it.
“They’re defecting,” Sylvanas snapped.
Nathanos was instantly alert, scanning the field with his spyglass. “Several of them are moving in the direction of Stromgarde Keep,” he confirmed, “but that may not be intentional.”
“Let’s find out,” Sylvanas said. She lifted the horn to her lips and blew three long, clear notes.
Now to see who comes when called—and who breaks and runs.
At that moment, one of the priests returned, urging her bat to go as quickly as it could. She looked shocked and sickened.
“My lady!” she gasped. “The priestess—I didn’t recognize her until her hood fell off—I can scarce believe it—”
“Spit it out,” Sylvanas snarled, her body taut as a bowstring.
“My lady—it’s Calia Menethil!”
Menethil.
The name was laden, heavy with meaning and portent. It was the name of the monster who had made her. Who had slaughtered and destroyed. It was the name of the king who had ruled Lordaeron. And it was the name of that king’s daughter—his heir.
And to think she had thought the king of Stormwind an ingenuous fool. He played politics better than she could possibly have imagined.
Anduin Wrynn had brought a usurper with him. And now, that girl, that damned human child who ought to be long dead, was taking Sylvanas’s own people to join the Alliance.
“My lady, what are your orders?”

Now, let's go through the chronology here, point by point, because you quite obviously struggle with it.
1. Sylvanas realizes something is wrong, then that this wrongness is an ongoing defection.
2. She sounds the horn. - This is when Elsie shouts the order to retreat as shown in your quote.

But wait, at this point Sylvanas is still just testing their loyalty with the horn signal. She doesn't even know about Calia yet, which is what led her to order the killings. So let's continue.

3. A Forsaken Priest returns from the field with information that the human Priestess talking with Elsie is Calia.
4. Sylvanas gets lost in thought on her hatred of Menethils and has to be asked for orders on how to deal with it.

This is where Sylvanas' perspective bit ends. The rest is covered in a bit from Anduin's perspective:

“The retreat,” Anduin managed, grimacing as the pain increased. “It’s dangerous.” A second pain struck Anduin, different but even more devastating to him. For this was not the bone-hurting ache of the Divine Bell’s handiwork but the knife-sharp pain of a dream shattering before his eyes. With a sick jolt, Anduin saw that the tiny figures who had stood at attention on Thoradin’s Wall were now mounted on bats and flying toward the field.
Dark rangers.
“It’s over,” he whispered, and leaned on the parapet. “Get them to safety before it’s too late!”

5. Sylvanas orders the deployment of the Dark Rangers and for them to kill the Forsaken still on the field.
6. The Dark Rangers fly towards the field until they get into shooting range, then they start killing.

So, pray tell, where is Elsie in all of this? Again, given how this particular quote talks about just Elsie and no other Forsaken, you quite clearly used it in order to "disprove" my claim of how Elsie herself did not retreat. So, if you're oh, so correct about this, this part of the book showed Elsie shouting "retreat" means that by point 6 she must have been on her way towards the Thoradin's Wall, right?

Nope. Here's what follows immediately after your second quote (don't worry, I'll get to it shortly):

The pain wasn’t abating, and Anduin clenched his jaw against it as he looked back at the wall. He forced his fisted hands to open and lifted the spyglass.
His mind saw things with a strange, swift clarity, and he immediately picked out Archbishop Faol and Calia. The former was close to the wall, urging his charges to rush through the gates to safety. But Calia stayed in the field, arguing with Elsie Benton. The priestess’s hood was down.
Calia…what are you doing?
Calia turned away from the Prime Governor, ran forward a few paces, cupped her hands around her mouth, and shouted, “Forsaken! I am Calia Menethil! Head for the keep!”
“What is that girl doing ?” shouted Genn.
But Anduin was not listening. His gaze was riveted on the pair of women in the field, one human, one Forsaken, and at that moment Elsie Benton dropped like a stone with a black-fletched arrow protruding from her chest.

Damn, Elsie didn't actually do the thing she said, because there's a difference between words and actions? The discovery of the century, to be sure, but let's not dwell on that and instead let's shift back to what Elsie was doing instead of retreating. Which, lo and behold, is also precisely what I said. I.e. she continued arguing with Calia. And not just after the horn, this is what she continued to do even after the deployment of the Dark Rangers. And then died right next to Calia, without making even a step towards Thoradin's Wall as she was supposed to.

So go on, do enlighten me how Elsie retreated like you tried to show here while also not retreating, as is actually shown in the book. Were there two Elsies by any chance? Because I missed that part. Or is Elsie in a state of retreat superposition, where she's both retreating and not retreating? Unless... Unless you were wrong. Nah, can't be it.

On the field below, spread out like markers in the map room, were
other tiny figures. Some of them were heading back toward Thoradin’s
Wall. Some were returning to the keep.
And some still stood in the field as if paralyzed.

Uh-huh. Now let's expand this quote to the bits that you left out as they were inconvenient to you (which just so happens to be what I already quoted):

Anduin heard the sound of the horn. Baffled, he looked down, trying to ascertain what had caused it. As far as he could see, nothing had changed from a moment—
He pressed his lips closed to prevent a groan from escaping. There was sudden deep, dull pain inside him.
“What’s wrong, son?” Genn asked sharply.
“It is the bell,” Velen said somberly, sadly. Turalyon looked confused, but Greymane’s face went hard. He knew about the bell. About the warning it meant to his young king.
“The retreat,” Anduin managed, grimacing as the pain increased. “It’s dangerous.” A second pain struck Anduin, different but even more devastating to him. For this was not the bone-hurting ache of the Divine Bell’s handiwork but the knife-sharp pain of a dream shattering before his eyes. With a sick jolt, Anduin saw that the tiny figures who had stood at attention on Thoradin’s Wall were now mounted on bats and flying toward the field.
Dark rangers.
“It’s over,” he whispered, and leaned on the parapet. “Get them to safety before it’s too late!”
On the field below, spread out like markers in the map room, were other tiny figures. Some of them were heading back toward Thoradin’s Wall. Some were returning to the keep.
And some still stood in the field as if paralyzed.

What's this? The part where we see any Forsaken retreating happens only after Sylvanas deployed the Dark Rangers, not after she sounded the horn? Precisely like I said? And not at once after the horn signal, like you said? Thanks for proving my point while shooting yourself in the foot. Perhaps if you didn't have to pretend half of what's written in the relevant chapters of the book doesn't even exist you wouldn't accidentally stumble your way into supporting the very thing you tried to disprove with your very real and totally factual hot takes.

[Halyon]

Anything regarding Sylvanus and Anduin atm is something I'll just ignore, it's just FUBAR'd and if I care, I'll die to a stroke.

Just...don't fuck up Kael'thas' redemption arc, it's allright so far.

[Minikin]

Alliance players freaking out that Sylvanas might go redemption story like we didn't see this coming.

faction has nothing to do with this or that. mind you the last cinematic did make her more relatable, which was a good change of pace from the sunday morning cartoon villain style.

But like, what about Anduin over here convincing bad guys that there's still good in them? Garrosh 2.0, but the one in chains is reversed.

Really hoping the entire expansion doesn't hinge on these 2, Sylvanas' redemption and Anduin being such a special special boy(he really is so special, you should just throw down your weapons and love him) and instead the Jailer to bring out the real weapon which is Arthas.

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I take it you dont play Venthyr then. The Accuser, one of the biggest authorities of sins says that "Every soul deserves a chance at redemption".

well......technically.....sylvanas is currently helping the guy who is bypassing that rule and sending everyone into crunch time at the maw....


She did not personally bring each and everyone of those souls to the maw and drop them in like Devos did to Arthas. She had a lot of people killed while the Arbiter was out of order. So she's guilty of knowing they would go to the maw(we actually haven't seen any confirmation of this, but maybe safe to assume) but she actually isn't sending them to the Maw. Many people killed during this time and many people are still killing this time.[/QUOTE]

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Whitewashing? What? Sylvanas was a fair skinned Elf since day one.

go home, you are drunk

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https://youtu.be/aW_h0qf9vpA?t=81 the looks at 1:22 begs to differ it screams satisfaction, she taking pleasure from it. Sylvanas is a Psychopath.

she honestly looks like "damn you saurfang stop ruining my moment!"

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I'm convinced Anduin could stand there and breathe for 60 seconds straight with no dialog and an MMO-C post would show up explaining why he's completely ruining the story.

lol! it do be like that

[oplawlz]

Sure, i bite. When you were a fan of Warcraft since... Warcraft 3 you played on some shitty library PC and got absolutely swallowed up by fandom and so on you tend to really feel like shit when it bites you in the ass.

This is on you for not using that library to invest your time in a well written story.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

The only reason we've had to go over this more than once is because you refuse to read the book in its entirety, as you cannot maintain your narrative in any other way than through willful ignorance. Sorry to burst your bubble though, but covering your ears, shouting "lalala I can't hear you" and blatantly cherrypicking out all the parts of the book that say exactly the things that I talked about isn't an argument. Just the opposite, it's a stark admission of argumentative bankruptcy on your part.

if I remember correctly the last time we went over this you up and disappeared when actual book quotes came into play but sure let’s forget that and pretend you have some nonexistent high horse while you fight a straw man of what you think my motives are, which admittedly your rather good at.

And since you decided to use this bullshit and utterly dishonest premise to outright accuse me of lying, let me educate you (though I fully expect you to deliberately ignore it again).

hey I said lying or misremembering it’s not my fault you went with lying instead of the totally normal misremembering.

And let's go over how how "Calia didn't talk with all 11 of them" doesn't work. To start with, the funny thing here is that you're wrong even in regards to the bits of the book that you so generously decided to acknowledge in order to "inform" me about the "real" events. Because Calia wasn't approached by a small group at any time. It was Parqual alone that approached her, not a group. Whoopsie. Yet despite not being talking with Felstones she did know they were defecting all the same. But the same principle does not apply to the seven remaining Forsaken, because magic.

a group sending a sole member to try and get you onboard is still you being approached by a group, no idea how you could get the notion that a group has to come with every member for it to count as a group approaching you.

(Gray, as specified by a later source), who weirdly enough was not only on the run (together with his living brother) between Stromgarde and Calia after the slaughter started, but was the first Forsaken that almost got in range of Anduin's spell-casting, meaning he was the one who got the closest to Stromgarde (but was totally not defecting to Stromgarde /s)

it’s almost as if the book lays out that while some were heading towards stormgarde and some where heading back others weren’t moving at all. Rather they were starting to defect before or after the horn/killing is up in the air but the books don’t support any definitive stance like the one you have made up.

The remaining six members of the twelve that died aren't named (though one was named in Shadows Rising and, like I already said, Tomas gained a surname only in BfA), just like the nine that also returned to the Forsaken camp before the culminating event. Most of them aren't even mentioned on non-collective level, except for one "reunited sister". Because they weren't relevant to the story.

exactly they aren’t named and rather they were defecting or not is not laid out in the books thank you for proving my point that your “they all were defecting” isn’t supported at all by the actual book and is just something you made up your self.

Calia naming seven more Forsaken that by that point the story spent no time on would just be redundant, especially since the last remaining Forsaken still on the field that she didn't name in that speech but was named in the story was also shown running towards Stromgarde with his brother after shit hit the fan. Maybe in a longer book where those Council members were actually fleshed out characters it could be used to drive the point further home, but in a book that's less than 200 pages long it'd just be beating a dead horse. The book doesn't also mention all the shits Calia took on her way to Arathi. I guess in your mind it means she has a golden sphincter and doesn't defecate.

you have already proved my point and you are just making stuff up you don’t need to keep going.

On the other hand, those seven Forsaken not specifically named by Calia (including six not named at all) being actually loyal Forsaken would be a new piece of information. Especially given how Calia said they were indeed defecting. Yet the book does nothing to introduce it, or even introduce them as individual characters (including Tomas, he's only ever briefly mentioned by other characters). Instead it shows Calia talking about all other-than-Elsie of them defecting, because the point about Forsaken wanting to stay with their families has already been made by then. With there being a whole zero of other evidence indicating that Calia lied.

This part is just a great bit of irony given your past stances on characters not being omniscient and there miss use of words.

But hey when it’s something you want to be wrong characters are flawed and can misuse words like anduin and genocide but when it’s something you want to be right they know every thing and always use perfect words

Any way. The book lays out who calia sees defecting there is no reason to think she means every single forsaken on the field and not just the group that approached her as she doesn’t even know who has and hasn’t been talked to about it other then the group see saw starting towards stormgard.

Not only does this happen before Sylvanas even sounded the horn, not only was it so unclear if they were going towards Stromgarde Keep intentionally or not from where Sylvanas and Nathanos stood - even though we know from other perspectives that it was indeed intentional - but since I quite clearly said Elsie was not defecting, congrats on "proving" a whole lot of nothing here.

your absolutely right it was intentional from another perspective, yet from NO perspective does it lay out that it was all of the forsaken and not just some of them, well unless you want to die in the all knowing calia hill.

Given how you're using this quote to "disprove" my claim that Elsie did not retreat as it talks about her alone and mentions no other Forsaken, the only thing you're actually establishing here is that for some reason *cough* willful ignorance *cough* you can't grasp the difference between someone saying something and them actually doing it. Because let's loop back to the chapter before where we see Sylvanas sounding the retreat:

actually i was using it to show that the command to retreat and forsaken falling back as per anduin’s bit happen within moments which is why I put the quotes next to each other and didn’t even mention her. But you gave that straw man a good thrashing!

What's this? The part where we see any Forsaken retreating happens only after Sylvanas deployed the Dark Rangers, not after she sounded the horn? Precisely like I said? And not at once after the horn signal, like you said? Thanks for proving my point while shooting yourself in the foot. Perhaps if you didn't have to pretend half of what's written in the relevant chapters of the book doesn't even exist you wouldn't accidentally stumble your way into supporting the very thing you tried to disprove with your very real and totally factual hot takes.

again the irony is palpable. As the full quote lays out anduin sees the bat riders take flight and then notes that there are already some one the way back to the forsaken side. No mention of them just starting to move as if in response to the bats or of them standing still like the other forsaken just that they are heading back. Any claim that it was the bat riders who made them start and return to the forsaken side just isn’t backed up by the book in any way. But for the sake of fairness I’ll admit that it doesn’t say they moved with the horn or the command to retreat.

So Thanks for proving my point while shooting yourself in the foot. Perhaps if you didn't have to pretend half of what's written in the relevant chapters of the book doesn't even exist you wouldn't accidentally stumble your way into supporting the very thing you tried to disprove with your very real and totally factual hot takes.

[Makabreska]

It really wasn't even in-character for Anduin. Before the Storm ended with Anduin proclaiming that he'll never abandon hope that people can change, but it also contained a piece of character growth where he admitted some people may never want to become his drone. Which he said while talking about Sylvanas. And finished off with saying that she's well and truly lost. Which is why he didn't try pleading with her at Lordaeron. He demanded unconditional surrender from her, threatened her with death if she did not comply and that was that.. This cinematic is a character regression for him that undoes the last decade of his development.

Well, back at Lordaeron he was in the position of power. Now he is on Jailers mercy, so the only weapon on his disposal are his words. It makes perfect sense to me to try to win Sylvi, or at least make her doubt herself and the cause. It just more cunning approach, instead of shit talking her and making demands from his cell.