It´s the eternal struggle of basing your RP concept around lore that isn´t available to everyone on the front page of the story. It doesn´t matter that Silver Hand survived in Stormwind and Ironforge throughout Third War and that Alliance paladins since Vanilla are part of this Silver Hand, which is very distinct from the group of paladins Tirion formed around himself, Tirion Fordring shouted “Argent Dawn and Silver Hand are merging, I said so!”, which means Silver Hand now doesn´t exist.
At least it beats having to deal with people who think your concept sucks because they still go by RPG lore.
It’s also a bit hard to consider it so when the writers themselves don’t really agree on it. Tirion does send a personal letter to Varian Wrynn as ‘Highlord of the Silver Hand’ for him to tolerate the Death Knights, and his word seems to be taken into quite heavy consideration.
In vanilla, the Brotherhood of the Light also threatens the isolated Scarlet Crusade detachment in truce with the Argent Dawn and the aforementioned BotL by threatening to sic Tirion and his knights on them, right after vowing to reform the Order of the Silver Hand over his son’s corpse at the climax of the storyline in Hearthglen.
It’s less of an issue about roleplayers not getting what’s ‘canon’ or not and more about Blizzard not really agreeing on what the Silver Hand really is as far back as Vanilla.
I think the explanation for this can easily be that there were multiple organizations claiming to be Silver Hand at the same time, one in Stormwind and the other in Plaguelands.
After all, Argent Dawn itself was created when part of what remained of Silver Hand split off from the other part took the name Scarlet Crusade (or split off from Scarlet Crusade, I believe both versions exist in the lore), and yet it existed at the same time as Alliance Silver Hand.
Also, in the letter he doesn´t call himself “Highlord of the Silver Hand”, but simply Highlord. And, still, in his Vanilla questline he specifically says that a new order is born, meaning that, unless he changed his mind and joined the Alliance off-screen, his Silver Hand is specifically something different. https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/In_Dreams
It could be, if it was actually pronounced in lore; but it never was. As seen in the letter, Tirion’s word as Highlord of the Silver Hand has validity both in Lordaeron in Stormwind, so any speculation falls moot as just that, speculation that has never been materialised since 2004.
Calling a headcanon something else than that doesn’t make it not a headcanon, and it’s not on any roleplayer’s fault for not subscribing to it, nor are they ‘following RPG lore’ for sticking to what the canon has said explicitely, genuinely confusing as it might be.
Scarlet Crusade is a combinatoon of surviving Knights of the Silver Hand and what other Survivors were capable/allowed to join.
After they went nuts, a small group of Knights and survivors split off from them and formed the Argent Dawn.
So while they are offshoots from the Silver Hand, they had foregone that title in favor of new ones(re: Scarlet Crusade & Argent Dawn), especially since the Silver Hand in Lordaeron was (officialy) disbanded.
Now that does not mean the Silver Hand in the Southern Kingdoms stopped existing, since they were a different chapter, most likely, so they were never disbanded.
Tirion Fordring claiming Highlordship over the Silver Hand(from Stormwind, Ironforge andnwhat remained of the northern chapter) was probably just a bold move that paid off in him being established as Highlord over all chapters. Even if he was a disgraced Knight, he was the sole survivor of the original 5, so his name probably carried a great deal off weight and respect
I mentioned it in the edit, he doesn´t actually call himself Highlord of the Silver Hand, but just Highlord.
In fact, I couldn´t find anything from Vanilla that mentions him even forming Silver Hand or joining it, he only mentions some unnamed “Order”, and then later Eligor Dawnbringer mentions him and his knights, once again not providing names of their order.
Which is my point, Tirion saying “I´m uniting Silver Hand and Argent Dawn” may not mean much to the paladins that weren´t part of his (seemingly neutral, although we literally have no information about the new order he announced because it never appears in the game) paladin order. The Alliance Silver Hand has never been shown to be merged with the Argent Crusade.
We however have no sources on this because he just disappears from the game after his Vanilla questline, until reappearing in DK starting zone.
Missed that one bit, you´re right.
However, it kind of proves what I´m saying, the guy literally announces that he´s forming a new order of Silver Hand, distinct from the Stormwind one (whose existence he ignores since he says that the Order is reborn even though it still exists down south).
That spider is going to be part of whatever dark alchemical mumbo jumbo Xal’atath uses to transform the nerubians into the elite humanoid form.
I can already picture the super edgy monologue about being able to reshape the framework of the race thanks to [story about how she managed travel to Zereth Mortis due to being some OP void entity goes here].
The speculation on which of the Earthern subgroups go Alliance vs. Horde in the same way we saw with Tushui/Huojin or Dark Talons/Obsidian Warders is…appparently none of them?
Per Red Shirt Guy, “The starting quests are the same for both factions with all the same NPCs and your character is just assigned to go to either SW or Org by the same character.”
So there is no justification for picking which side. As it stands they seemingly have no reason or interest to join the Horde other than “hey me and my husband saw you from across the bar and we really dig your style.”
Meanwhile there’s apparently a debt/owing their existence to the Ironforge royal family to help explain why you’d want to sign up for the Alliance.
Recruitment story that is entirely Alliance-oriented, but also you can click a button and join the Red Team. Thank you blizz, very cool.
I think that if we were to talk with the Blizzard writers, they would legitimately be confused by our reaction to this stuff.
“Why are you making this about the factions? We moved on from differentiating between the factions years ago. It doesn’t matter if the Ironforge royal family are Alliance, they’re just characters now. Their faction doesn’t matter, just like how the faction of your earthen doesn’t matter, whether they are Horde or Alliance is just a gameplay limitation.”
I mean, why anyone would willingly join the Horde. Or why any sane faction would stay in the Horde is beyond logic anyways.
Horde as a faction has zero reasons to exist anymore, as its whole history, up until recently, was them making the same mistake of starting a genocidal World War against their enemies, for the most flimsies of excuses, and losing it. Only to go “we changed for realsies now” ONCE they finally bit the dust again.
Why Earthen(or Dracthyr) would willingly join such a faction is nonsense if they had taken one little look at its past.
They wanna tear down the faction divide, but can’t even be bothered to come up with a 2 sentence reason why?
sounds like blizzard.
Unlike the earthen by the looks of it.
the Dracthyr didn’t so much pick as they just decided to go with one black dragon instead of the other black dragon.
it was a mission to warn the factions about the incoming threat of the primalists and when they arrived they were like “by the way, we are kinda out of a job, we are pretty good in a fight.”
They don’t even take the faction divide seriously if you ask them in Valdrakken.
I still argue the Houjin ought to have left after their horrid treatment by Garrosh and the trampling of their sense of honour and philosophical responsibility to stand up to wrongs. Inaction is injustice and the Horde failing to act fast enough to fix itself before Yet Another Atrocity™ would have been even more of a dealbreaker.
Good writing necessitating they stay for game reasons, you’d have to think up a solid reason for reform but instead the thought leaders of the respective philosophies basically retreated from public life to pursue their romance.
And neither should we.
The next time it’s politically relevant, they should be acting confused and upset at having to butcher their brothers and sisters to plant a flag on yonder hill.
Overthinking this too much, but how do the progenitor creaturas and the different zereths even work
Do all the zereths create their own? Could this come from zereth voidus or zereth naturis, or are spiders, along with deer and salamanders intrinsically connected to death?