World of Warcraft Shadowlands Chains of Domination (Sylvanas and Anduin) Cinematic Reaction!!

2 thoughts on “World of Warcraft Shadowlands Chains of Domination (Sylvanas and Anduin) Cinematic Reaction!!”

1. The big guy is the Primus who was missing all through 9.0's campaign story and most of us were rolling our eyes at how painfully obvious it was made that the Primus was the Runecarver in Torghast that helped us craft our Legendaries which is a powerful type of item you can currently only have one of (we're told these are made with some of the same powers and in some of the same ways that Frostmourne and the Helm of Domination were forged which is kind of a lore hype thing). In 9.1 we returned his sigil and with it his memories at which point he revealed he removed his own memories to keep the sigil safe which we kind of screwed up.

   The two you didn't know were Alexandros Mograine and his son Darion Mograine, they both were death knights of the Scourge at different points. Darion is heavily featured in Wrath of the Lich King when you play through the level 55 death knight introduction (now level 8 since the Shadowlands level squish) and are actually serving the Lich King which at the end of that quest chain you break free and go to the appropriate faction based on which race you picked. He was the leader of the Knights of the Ebon Blade which is the faction of death knights that go after the Scourge and the Lich King at the start of that expansion and is the basis for our playable death knight characters. He later appeared in the 70-80 content of Northrend itself (that expansions main continent) and was a major character present for the assault on Icecrown Citadel itself.

   His father goes further back to a comic series called The Ashbringer which set up the Ashbringer as a heavily story related weapon which is the very weapon used to shatter Frostmourne at the end of the Lich King raid encounter by Tirion Fordring close to the end of the expansion. He was also one of the bosses of the original version of Naxxramas (40 player level 60 raid) which was reintroduced and tweaked a bit in Wrath of the Lich King as a 10/25 man raid at level 80. Part of the reason for that was that it was introduced too late in vanilla WoW so not many guilds actually even ran it. There's a lot more story about those two but I never read The Ashbringer which I'd like to do some day. I know the bulk of their story took place as Lordaeron fell to the Scourge during the events of Warcraft 3, although this was all written way after that game and I believe Alexandros Mograine and the other paladins of the Order of the Silver Hand like him had the Ashbringer forged from a coalesced crystal form naaru.

   The two beings you saw at the end were one of the attendants of the Arbiter Tal-Galan and the broker Ve'nari. So we were introduced to the brokers when we were doing the introductory quests in Oribos. They're very mysterious traders that seem to travel the "In-Between" which is seems to be an infinite sort of border dimension between the Shadowlands and Oribos. They're suspiciously similar to the ethereals we met a long ass time ago in Outland. I have a theory about that myself that I might speak about later. We met Ve'nari when we returned to the Maw after the initial introductory scenario of the expansion later in the leveling process and during end game grinding there after hitting level 60. She kind of pushes the narrative along by telling you things but not much. Her motivations are really mysterious and she's sort of a curious character as you do max level daily quests for her and shit. One thing she makes a point of is for you not to tell anyone she's there and we find out the other "cartels" of the brokers have sent ill fated expeditions to the place looking for her and something else. There's also a character that tells us not to trust her.

   The thing about the story in Warcraft is like 90% of the player base has less of an idea of what's happening than you. A lot of people just "LOL LORE!" their way through the game to either compete in PvP or grind the PvE stuff and skip quest text, in game dialogue, cutscenes and cinematics. So most of what you're missing here is obviously from the non cutscene and cinematic sources. Though to be fair this is mostly just in game dialogue compiled into a video rather than a true cutscene or cinematic.

   There are a lot of new things they pulled out of thin air for the Shadowlands and what's more is they try to connect them to things from Warcraft 3 and even the 90s games like Warcraft 2 in some cases. I'm sure by now you've figured because so many writers come and go the lore of Warcraft is kind of patch worked together and in some cases fully retconned. ESPECIALLY when it comes to WoW rewriting the old Warcraft games or later expansions rewriting older ones. This obviously has caused a great deal of frustration in the community.

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2. It'll be a long ass time before we get new cutscenes I would wager. Next patch and what not. We will get a small patch just announced. But not much in there probably. Maybe something with Sylvanas or what not. But yeah… Blizzard is kinda juggling all the garbage right now with the lawsuit and players leaving in droves. It's a bit sad, but also justified. This will nonetheless probably extend our wait for the next patch, yet again. Expansion was delayed, this patch was delayed.

   Anyway. It's nice to see you do know many of the characters honestly. The brokers and the Fatescribes are beings purely of the Shadowlands. Like the kyrian stewards, Revendreth dredger, Dreadlords (originally) etc. The brokers are weird as fuck, and there is a large dungeon that came with this patch (that I haven't done) that is more of a dumb fun rollercoaster than deep lore. Ve'nari, the broker in the little cutscene is the only real character that we engage with as players. The "purpose" of them all is generally in the names, as you can probably guess. The PURPOSE however is what the most strict system-abiding beings call the First Ones guidelines and rules. The first ones are yet to be understood by everyone including players. The eternal ones who seem powerful, are lesser gods in the big scheme of things. In the Ardenweald cinematic you see that the Winter Queen calls Elune (deity of our realm of life) her sister.

   Zovaal at this moment seems a little bit like a flat villain who simply follows the "AI-creation" trope. He wants to know who his creators were, why they created him and how to take their power for himself. We honestly don't know any more than you at this point though. The sepulcher/Zereth Mortis/realm of the first ones, are basically refered to as if the same thing. Maybe minor difference in meaning. Probably next patch area/zone/raid. But who knows. :p

   The father and son speaking was Alexandros Mograine and Darion Mograine. This is an old story from the earliest non-game media. Like novel(s) about them, with some stuff in-game over time of course. I am no expert on this exact story but basically: The sword called the Ashbringer was not actually just the name of the sword but of the person who wielded it. Some kind of special paladin title basically. Very brief summary is Alexandros was the first Ashbringer and he was killed by one of his sons, all went to shit for his entire family, Darion was the last sane person but he also died. He was however raised by Arthas as a Death Knight (the in-game class we got with Wrath of the lich king). They broke free from his control similarly to Sylvanas and Darion has been one of their sort of leaders since. The video editor quickly showed Tirian Fordring after he defeated the Lich King (you've seen it). He was at the time the Ashbringer. Probably the best Ashbringer and/or Paladin of Azeroth ever. Alexandros approves of him being the Ashbringer when they talk. Not ideally though, the Paladin class got to wield the Ashbringer (was cool ofc) during Legion. And for us to get it Blizzard had to kill Tirion, and they did so in a not very grand way on the Broken Shore. So anyway: The mograines are a horrible yet tragic family. Where Darion is now the only semi-living member left. He is an undead DK after all. His actions have not been very "nice and clean" in the past. Probably not to his father's liking at all, but they sort of "had to" gloss over that here I suppose. Eh.

   Too long didn't read. LOL I forget where I'm going… time for sleep!

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