A Lightforged is closer to a class than a race when you think about it, you aren’t born Lightforged but become one through training and well defined process.
That being said a Lightforged does have clearly different physical features, I know it is a bit dumb to think in term of genetics in a fantasy setting but Lightforged do have different skin tons, eye colors and those lovely golden shinies engraved on their bodies. So do you think (or what is your headcannon considering the lack of infos on the matter) the child of a Lightforged would be 100% like the non lightforged version of his race ? Would some traits carry over ?
We kind of see that it is a process they have to undergo, and that it is pretty strenuous and taxing, something a child likely could not handle, I -think- the answer is ‘No’, and that they would be a normal Draenei, who could then in later life undergo the process, same as any Draenei. Kind of the same way that a child of two Worgen parents is born as a normal uncursed human.
I have to second this motion. Let’s say we try to apply the rules of heredity to a fantasy setting - which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Lightforging isn’t a disease; it’s an acquired status. Think of it like a deep tan: you can sit in the sun all you want, but if you’re naturally a ginger, then your kids will be too regardless of how much you let yourself bake in the sun.
In 1880 Professor August Friedrich Leopold Weismann cut off the tails of 20 successive generations of mice and showed that not a single tailless mouse was born as an experiment and to prove some tenents about inheritance and acquired traits
The Lightforged are like these mices
Lightforging - in this case - is like cutting of the tail of a mouse
The offspring of two Lightforged, or one Lightforged one Draenei… or God forbid, a Lightforged and a Man’ari will be a normal Eredar/Draenei, who after traning and coming of age could become a Lightforged if survives the ritual
So he wouldn"t have any lightforged like traits ? My headcannon Always was (insisting on the word headcannon here) that he would Indeed be a normal draenei but with some physical differences like a lighter skin tone.
Funny story: I actually saw a character profile back in the day of a night elf who had grafted a draenei tail onto herself.
Lightforging is of course not hereditary as there is an entire process to it and not all army of the Light draenei are lightforged. Much like worgen being a single generation curse and void elves being an accident, a few races aren’t really races at all and will vanish in a century unless actively reinforced.
I’ve seen Worgen with a wolf tail as a part of his curse…
But a Night Elf with Draenei tail (the funny/sad part is, with the Mogu flesh-shaping it is even possible)… yikes
Tho…
Given the radical changes to their bodies that the Lightforged go through, my natural assumption was that the lightforged were sterile and unable to reproduce, and so offsprings would and distractions like family would be a no-factor for them.
Essentially, they would be considered an augmented caste of eternal lightbound warriors from regular Draenei - their lightforging granting their bodies superior abilities at the cost of certain sacrifices.
Then that 25K years of fighting against the Legion would been a bit hard
A small number of the population left Argus with Valen when the Genedar came then that ship split two part of the exiled Eredar went with the Xenedar part and became Lightforged to fight, and the Genedar part whent to a 25K journey planet to planet to … flee? Find a new home? Whatever.
So they must have reproduce on the Xenedar to compensate the losses… ^^
I always imagined that the army of Light did either or both of the following:
Recruited from Draenei populations across the multiverse.
Had their own Draenei populations to draw from, perhaps from various bases or planets they might have held throughout the multiverse.
For the Army of Light to ever be more than a measly-little-fly compared to the Legion and actually be a credible threat worthy of even a shred of attention from Kil’Jaeden or any of the other Legion leaders, I assumed that the Army of Light was a much bigger entity; the ones we saw on Argus merely the elite speartip, but possessed of many more holdings and settlements throughout the universe.
Wasn’t it stated somewhere, though, that the Legion decimated every world the Draenei stopped at? (Until Draenor and Azeroth, that is…) That the Draenei just had to pack up and leave every time this happened…
I think the draenei (Lightforged or not) procreated on their ships, and perhaps also on those worlds before the Legion came to destroy them.
I would imagine the Legion relentlessly pursued the Draenei, and eventually reached whatever place the majority of them had gone to; but tracking down all smaller splinter groups would probably be difficult… that is, before the Legion eventually burned the entire universe.
We ought to remember that the Legion’s war is on an absolutely massive scale, and they have been working through countless worlds in an ancient conflict. Their sense of time and scale is very different from that of mortals. Merely reaching, let alone destroying a world can take thousands of years or more; and they are likely waging wars on many different worlds at the same time.
It is very plausible that if a few hundred thousand Draenei fled to a world, it would take centuries or even many millennia before the Legion actually showed up to said worlds. Demons are immortal creatures; with Sargeras waging an almost eternal war against the universe to bring an end to all things.
I could imagine a Draenei population fleeing to a world, settling in and growing into the millions or even billions for a few thousand years; only for the legion to appear, destroy everything, and send the survivors fleeing somewhere else. Again. And again. And again.
And if that cycle had been allowed to continue; even if the Draenei escaped a 1000 times; the Legion would eventually win anyway.
