Khadgar’s mind cleared, and with a quick efficiency he pulled the energies into himself, raised his hand, and buried a bolt of mystic energy into the creature’s chest. The energy ripped through the beast’s chest and splattered out its back, sending pieces of flaming flesh in all directions
This is what arcane blast does to people. It splatters them like Dr Manhattan. For context, Khadgar at the time was still an apprentice mage who hadn’t undergone his Rocky Balboa training montage yet. Arcane blasts are incredibly mana costly, with an apprentice like Khadgar only able to conjure 4-5 before he ran out of mana. You literally dump your mana reserves into blasts of pure arcane energy that splatter people over the pavement.
“bUt KhAdGar” – Khadgar is the perfect example, because lorewise he was never known for being a particularly powerful mage. He wasn’t born with any innate power or talent, nor was he ever particularly gifted. He became the powerful Archmage he is today by sheer perseverance and studying. He is the closest approximation we have to a realistic power curve for an average mage, because he is the representation of an average mage’s power curve in The Last Guardian. We learn everything from his POV as he progresses, and everything he accomplished is the result of pure hard work.
At the same time though, High Executor Darthalia is still very much ‘Executor’ despite being a woman, so it’s quite possible there’s a difference between the way the Venthyr and Forsaken use that title!
The sinstone golems of Revendreth are the manifestations of unresolved sins, namely the sins of souls who failed at redemption and were condemned to the Maw.
I could see Forsaken not particularly caring about gender or physical sex characteristics given they’re all reanimated corpses but thats just speculation.
At the same time, there’s a bit of a precedent with Highlord being used for both men and women. Perhaps the Forsaken, seeing the need for new and edgy titles, simply took Executor and decided to use it for both genders.
I’m a fan of ‘Executrix’ myself, but I imagine it only takes one Rotbrain to go “She don’t do tricks!” for it to fall out of favour…
^ This is reflected a lot in Warsong and Burning Blade culture as it’s presented in WoD. Burning Blade expressly forbid chest armour partly to compensate for the heavy banner, and partly because exposing one’s chest is deemed ‘valourous.’ Most big-name Warsong we see forsake chest armour of any kind as well, though that may be just to show off their sick tattoos.
I imagine too it’s partly due to demand; only the Blackrock Clan knew how to shape their namesake ore, and True Iron (as well as Truesteel) isn’t nearly as plentiful. It could be guessed that it was put to more useful things (like an axe anyone could pick up once you’re dead), but that’s purely head-canon.
And the general consensus of the thread is right: shooting or slashing at a stationary or distracted Orc is one thing. Standing down a 7’ monster of a man is horrific under any circumstance, particularly if you were conscripted (as seems to be the case by BFA and was surely partly a case during the 1st-2nd Wars) from tilling Pa’s field two days ago.
This also seems to be the case in WotLK, as seen with the lines of conscripted civilians in Valiance Keep.
There’s also the Hero’s Call boards which tell “all able-bodied citizens to report to ”. Maybe conscription is deeply entrenched in the alliance, or at least human culture?
Regarding the strategy bit, Orcs are capable of pulling off some 4D chess moves in battle. They’re not all just raging berserkers who can’t think, though the individual grunt fights more like a warrior seeking personal glory which is why they tend to be drawn into 1v1s more easily.
When Garrosh invaded Ashenvale, he set the forest on fire. Tyrande laughed at the idea, because she and her priestesses could call upon Elune to magic it away - dumb orc doesn’t understand what he’s playing with. When they did, the moonlight shone down upon the location of each priestess.
Except Garrosh ordered his demolishers to blanket fire upon those locations, wiping out numerous Sentinel groups and Priestesses in the process. The forest fire was just bait to force them to reveal their locations of ambush, because they were melding in with the canopy. This allowed the Horde easy advance through Ashenvale, leading to the siege of Astranaar.
That’s how a real Warchief does 5D chess moves, not whatever Sylvanas was trying to do.
Bonus round re: orc skin. In the same episode described above, orcs can tank several arrows from a Sentinel despite their master class marksmanship skills. Those orcs confirmed dead by their arrows required nearly a dozen arrows to be killed; those who survived the barrage managed to tank several arrows to their chest, legs and arms while retrieving their critically wounded and dead.
Worth noting that after the bombardment, the remaining Sentinels rallied and Tyrande conjured a giant beam of moonlight to keep the orc army crowd controlled with blindness, so they kept raining arrows on the orcs fording the river, though orcs can tank a lot of arrows before going down. Still, they were pushed back to the forest until Garrosh released the magnataur to break the night elf ranks.
Also to add another layer of complexity to this, despite Tyrande became aware of the demolisher plan, Garrosh still kept them firing in a specific pattern to corner Tyrande off and force her to evade into an opening where orcish archers shot her. One in the shoulder, one in the lower back. She was too busy avoiding the projectiles and lost sight of where she was evading to.
