Night Elf Monks Pre-Sundering and Monks before MoP

[Techno-Druid]

We know that the pandaren were once close allies with the kaldorei and some pandaren even lived and trained in ancient night elf cities such as Zin-Azshari or Suramar.

There's some speculation that pandaren may have picked up their knowledge of arcane magic from the Highborne. Even if this isn't the case, the pandaren and night elves were still pretty close Pre-Sundering. So wouldn't it have been possible for monks to find their way into kaldorei culture thousands of the years before the events of MoP? I don't mean night elf monks having become anything vital to kaldorei society like the Preistesses or druids, but rather simply existing and martial arts being passed down from generation to generation.

I'm not sure if this thread belongs in the Role Playing section or not, but my main reason for bringing this up is because of the lack of diversity I see with people roleplaying monks. Every monk has to have been taught by a pandaren in the last two-three years, but pandaren have been traveling to different lands from the Wandering Isle for thousands of years.

Mojo Stormstout witnessed the crash of the Exodar and assisted the draenei during the BC, training monks. However, I never see draenei monks roleplayed with a backstory of being trained by Mojo or another draenei trained by Mojo. We know from Vanilla that Chen Stormstout at least trained one orc named Brewmaster Drohn during his stay within Durotar. It seems impractical that Drohn wouldn't share the information taught to him by Chen with other members of the Horde.

[Mace]

We know that the pandaren were once close allies with the kaldorei and some pandaren even lived and trained in ancient night elf cities such as Zin-Azshari or Suramar.

There's some speculation that pandaren may have picked up their knowledge of arcane magic from the Highborne. Even if this isn't the case, the pandaren and night elves were still pretty close Pre-Sundering. So wouldn't it have been possible for monks to find their way into kaldorei culture thousands of the years before the events of MoP? I don't mean night elf monks having become anything vital to kaldorei society like the Preistesses or druids, but rather simply existing and martial arts being passed down from generation to generation.

I'm not sure if this thread belongs in the Role Playing section or not, but my main reason for bringing this up is because of the lack of diversity I see with people roleplaying monks. Every monk has to have been taught by a pandaren in the last two-three years, but pandaren have been traveling to different lands from the Wandering Isle for thousands of years.

Mojo Stormstout witnessed the crash of the Exodar and assisted the draenei during the BC, training monks. However, I never see draenei monks roleplayed with a backstory of being trained by Mojo or another draenei trained by Mojo. We know from Vanilla that Chen Stormstout at least trained one orc named Brewmaster Drohn during his stay within Durotar. It seems impractical that Drohn wouldn't share the information taught to him by Chen with other members of the Horde.

An excellent point, and one I thought of as soon as they announced monk, it's one of the reasons people were arguing for Monk druids, but the problem with that, was that druidsm only came to the night elves properly not in the initial Cenarius contact before the arcane civilization took route, but post Sundering, after the Pandaren had already gone into seclusion.

But with the monks, I would say yes! By all means it's possible, some people will ofc challenge this and ask you to quote a source, it isn't specifically mentioned, which is why you're asking, (at least as far as I know) but common sense dictates it should be possible... you don't need a source for everything when it makes sense, but you can certainly ask blizzard to confirm and carry on in that position until you're told otherwise.

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...There's some speculation that pandaren may have picked up their knowledge of arcane magic from the Highborne.

pet peeve here, but why do you say the Highborne and not the NIght elves? the highborne were the elite rulers, but all the night elves were part of and very much in the arcane civilization, they are basically exactly how you see the nightborne in Suramar, that was all night elf society, (in fact the only reason i tink we have a distinct race for nightborne and they're not using night elves is simply because they're here to stay and blizzard wants the arcane night elf group distinct from the current night elves, so they can do their own thing...and blizzard always loves doing this sort of race redress every expansion, give us a variation on a playable race, this time it's the night elf. but you should note, that while it's their bodies that have changed, nothing else has, they are the original night elf culture of ancient times.

It's the same culture of the highborne of Eld'rethalas, as much as variations between cities on opposite sides of a global empire can be, highborne was highborne afterall. Differenceis Eldre'thalas is ruined, so we got to see nothing of the ancient night elf life. THis is is what we get to see in Suramar, this is what the developers told us they wanted to show (check gamescon 2015 and blizzcon 2015), in the nightborne, they are showing us the arcane civilization of the night elves in it's full glory that continued on, unlike the Highborne and unlike the Darnassian Night Elves.

But back then it was all night elves. The whole society chronicles tells us were not satisfied with the initial pre-druid life with Cenarius, and kept plumbing the dpeth of the well till thier knoweldge of the arcane grew, and they all went arcane, the most powerful of them later under Azshara became known as the Highborne. WotA novels shows us all them were very much arcane, like you see in Suramar, little children learnt spells like they did reading and writing.. druidsm was non-existent, Malfurion only comes across Cenarius in his adult life, and Cenarius trains him, he alone is student of nature, and after the sundering he teaches the post-arcane night elf group druidsm, which they adopt wholey instead of the arcane simply because using the arcane for spell is banned - because they're fearing it will summon the legion back.

So, it was the night elves, that the Pandaren would have picked up, as a society, not necessarily the highborne. Besides, remember as time grew on the highborne (not all, but generally) got really arrogant, even against other night elves, they'd not have been bothering with Pandaren - that's later though, not earlier, remmeber how Azshara views other races.. and you see that in Suramar too, look at the place, every where else even in modern times save maybe perhaps Silvermoon, looks like a dump in comparison, and Silvermoon looks like it's getting there, but not quite there yet. So imagine what it was like back then, they'd have really thought other races lesser, the highborne even moreso, so it would have been the nicer lot, that would have interacted. [as an aside - see when you kill nightborne they say "impossible" and other things like that, well I can imagine that's exactly what the night elves would have been like when they first encountered the demons in the War of the Ancients, shocked that any thing or anyone could beat them]

Saying that, they do say that the interaction happened earlier, before the legion, so the highborne perhaps had not reached the level of insufferable arrogance they had.. it was around that time, because the night elves had started becoming so unfriendly driven a bit to haughtily by their ever increasing powers that the Pandaren withdrew from them. Like Cenarius did centuries earlier, if not millennia.

[Techno-Druid]

An excellent point, and one I thought of as soon as they announced monk, it's one of the reasons people were arguing for Monk druids, but the problem with that, was that druidsm only came to the night elves properly not in the initial Cenarius contact before the arcane civilization took route, but post Sundering, after the Pandaren had already gone into seclusion.

But with the monks, I would say yes! By all means it's possible, some people will ofc challenge this and ask you to quote a source, it isn't specifically mentioned, which is why you're asking, (at least as far as I know) but common sense dictates it should be possible... you don't need a source for everything when it makes sense, but you can certainly ask blizzard to confirm and carry on in that position until you're told otherwise.

- - - Updated - - -


pet peeve here, but why do you say the Highborne and not the NIght elves? the highborne were the elite rulers, but all the night elves were part of and very much in the arcane civilization, they are basically exactly how you see the nightborne in Suramar, that was all night elf society, (in fact the only reason i tink we have a distinct race for nightborne and they're not using night elves is simply because they're here to stay and blizzard wants the arcane night elf group distinct from the current night elves, so they can do their own thing...and blizzard always loves doing this sort of race redress every expansion, give us a variation on a playable race, this time it's the night elf. but you should note, that while it's their bodies that have changed, nothing else has, they are the original night elf culture of ancient times.

It's the same culture of the highborne of Eld'rethalas, as much as variations between cities on opposite sides of a global empire can be, highborne was highborne afterall. Differenceis Eldre'thalas is ruined, so we got to see nothing of the ancient night elf life. THis is is what we get to see in Suramar, this is what the developers told us they wanted to show (check gamescon 2015 and blizzcon 2015), in the nightborne, they are showing us the arcane civilization of the night elves in it's full glory that continued on, unlike the Highborne and unlike the Darnassian Night Elves.

But back then it was all night elves. The whole society chronicles tells us were not satisfied with the initial pre-druid life with Cenarius, and kept plumbing the dpeth of the well till thier knoweldge of the arcane grew, and they all went arcane, the most powerful of them later under Azshara became known as the Highborne. WotA novels shows us all them were very much arcane, like you see in Suramar, little children learnt spells like they did reading and writing.. druidsm was non-existent, Malfurion only comes across Cenarius in his adult life, and Cenarius trains him, he alone is student of nature, and after the sundering he teaches the post-arcane night elf group druidsm, which they adopt wholey instead of the arcane simply because using the arcane for spell is banned - because they're fearing it will summon the legion back.

So, it was the night elves, that the Pandaren would have picked up, as a society, not necessarily the highborne. Besides, remember as time grew on the highborne (not all, but generally) got really arrogant, even against other night elves, they'd not have been bothering with Pandaren - that's later though, not earlier, remmeber how Azshara views other races.. and you see that in Suramar too, look at the place, every where else even in modern times save maybe perhaps Silvermoon, looks like a dump in comparison, and Silvermoon looks like it's getting there, but not quite there yet. So imagine what it was like back then, they'd have really thought other races lesser, the highborne even moreso, so it would have been the nicer lot, that would have interacted. [as an aside - see when you kill nightborne they say "impossible" and other things like that, well I can imagine that's exactly what the night elves would have been like when they first encountered the demons in the War of the Ancients, shocked that any thing or anyone could beat them]

Saying that, they do say that the interaction happened earlier, before the legion, so the highborne perhaps had not reached the level of insufferable arrogance they had.. it was around that time, because the night elves had started becoming so unfriendly driven a bit to haughtily by their ever increasing powers that the Pandaren withdrew from them. Like Cenarius did centuries earlier, if not millennia.

That makes sense, especially with the hints we're given about the pandaren-kaldorei interactions Pre-Sundering.

Before the night elves were addicted to arcane magic and summoned the Burning Legion to Azeroth, the pandaren were a close ally to the night elves. Some of them even lived with the night elves and witnessed the power of the Well of Eternity. Yet after the night elves became obsessed with the well, the pandaren decided to sever their ties and enclose their border in Pandaria.

Before they left, the pandaren decided to offer the Highborne a gift, a chest of pandaren design, said to contain all the arcane magic they would ever need. The gift was accepted and taken down into a royal vault in the Temple of Zin-Malor in Eldarath. However, when the chest was opened, it was found to contain absolutely nothing. The pandarens' gift was actually a message of advice and wisdom to the Highborne: all the arcane magic they needed was nothing, or in other words, that they did not need it at all. The chest and the message it represented continued to exist in the vault even 10,000 years later, but as history would record, the pandarens' wisdom fell on deaf ears.

As for mentioning pandaren druids, as much as I can see Blizz's position on pandaren druids for gameplay purposes ("A bear turning into a bear"), it actually makes sense lore-wise. The August Celestials being Wild Gods no different from the Ancient Guardians or Loa, have access to the Emerald Dream. I could easily see the potential for pandaren to have some sort of "Dream Walker-type" (Exceptional pandaren granted entrance into the Emerald Dream by the Celestials). I'm actually a big fan of having variant classes (Like Sunwalker or Harvest Witch).

[Deleted]

That makes sense, especially with the hints we're given about the pandaren-kaldorei interactions Pre-Sundering.


As for mentioning pandaren druids, as much as I can see Blizz's position on pandaren druids for gameplay purposes ("A bear turning into a bear"), it actually makes sense lore-wise. The August Celestials being Wild Gods no different from the Ancient Guardians or Loa, have access to the Emerald Dream. I could easily see the potential for pandaren to have some sort of "Dream Walker-type" (Exceptional pandaren granted entrance into the Emerald Dream by the Celestials). I'm actually a big fan of having variant classes (Like Sunwalker or Harvest Witch).

Giggled at bear turning into bear. Bear form being a big panda would be cool though.

[Techno-Druid]

Giggled at bear turning into bear. Bear form being a big panda would be cool though.

Yeah, in my opinion, there's more going for pandaren druids than Gilnean/worgen druids. Considering they literally worship the very beings that have access to and some degree of dominion within the Emerald Dream.

[Snackwiches]

I never really thought Pandaren having a shapeshift into a Bear was that weird. Certainly no weirder than people turning into Vrykul and the such.

[Mace]

I never really thought Pandaren having a shapeshift into a Bear was that weird. Certainly no weirder than people turning into Vrykul and the such.

If they did it, they'd have some really cool armor, properly armored, like one of the artifacts would have been

[Shadowbane]

So wouldn't it have been possible for monks to find their way into kaldorei culture thousands of the years before the events of MoP?

It would have been possible, but like a lot of other possible-to-have-happened stuff in the lore, since we don't see evidence of it having happened, it probably didn't. I think it's a pretty dangerous route to take if things start being rationalized this way.

Like because we know chronomancy exists, and alternate dimensions exist, why -can't- my human mage be from another dimension of Azeroth who was caught in some freak time-magic accident, sent back 10,000 years to learn magic from the highborne who then jumped forward in time again to the present in our world? In short, whether it could've happened isn't as important as whether it actually did or not - and then it's a question of whether it should. That, naturally, is a very extreme example.

Plus, less and less pandaren from the Wandering Isle left to explore over time. Only a handful of pandaren were exploring the outside world within recent history. With the draenei, it's different when it comes to RP because it's not like -every- draenei monk can say they were trained by Mojo Stormstout, just like we can't all be the hero(es) who killed Edwin VanCleef or Deathwing.

Plus, the night elves and pandaren only grew to become distant and less friendly before they basically stopped talking entirely.

Draenei warlocks are possible, but they aren't probable because they're a noble people who have a deep history with demons and are very Light-religious.

The exceptions I think, to be honest, would be worgen and goblin - who should by all rights be able to play as them, but Blizzard basically said it'd be weird because of how the intro zones for each race are set at a fixed chronological point, and it'd be confusing to have pandaren be there teaching them. Unless they want to do what they did for the draenei, and retcon a pandaren having been there all along.