I understand they are part of the Military arm of the Kaldorei, but how strict or regimented is this membership/lifestyle? Are sentinels just glorified soldiers like the Stormwind guard, restricted to a fairly well established guard/military duty, or are they more free to ‘live’ outside of their military duties?
I have made a sentinel themed character, a huntress specifically, and want the freedom to move around and not just be a glorified guard in Astranaar. My head cannon when i’m out n’ about, as opposed to guarding Astranaar, is for some scouting activities, religious pilgrimages or being ‘deployed’ to different Kaldorei hubs to watch over it.
So the question buried in this rambling: How independent are Kaldorei Sentinels from their military and any duties that entails, are there well-established restrictions on conduct and our freedom of movement that I need to respect or incorporate into my RP?
They are part of a Sentinel unit (e.g. Silverwing Sentinels, Nightblade Sentinels, Shadowleaves, Darnassian City Guard), and they are just as regimented as the militaries of other races with all the training that comes with it. In the novel we see them patrol and exercise no matter the weather. In the quests they spar among each other and in Feathermoon they train their archery, stand at attention etc. etc.
Note that a huntress is higher ranked than your usual Sentinel. The ranks we see in-game seem to go somewhat like this:
Sentinel
(Officer?) - referring to Astranaar officers here, can’t really put them anywhere because it is so vague.
Huntress
Captain
Commander (of a unit)
General (Shandris)
Also note that priestesses are most often high ranked members of the Sentinel Army, as well. As an example, we saw a priestess each atop the ships in the Darkshore scenario, a regiment of sentinels on the deck below them standing at attention. There’s more examples, but WC3 has established them pretty well despite RPers often ignoring / forgetting their vital role as officers in the military.
To answer your question more directly, your huntress would probably move with her unit, but you can usually work around playing messenger, scouting, backing up other units if they need reinforcements, solo missions. There‘s nothing clearly defined about that.
Appreciate all the info. I have thus far Played my Sentinel Huntress in a similar capacity as you have described (Phew!) - I justify leaving my home as conducting some kind of messenger running/scouting when deploying myself to a different RP hub. I think I will try and work a bit more on the military side of my character and try to give it a more regimented flavour, so far wasn’t sure how far military should be balanced with Kaldorei customs. As she’s not in a guild currently most of her Military RP has to be done through guarding Astranaar/the RP hub she is in, only going ‘off-duty’ when I want my character to be more social and to rest/relax.
New lore actually offers a good opportunity to visit hubs all over Azeroth, as the sentinels are deployed to search for Sylv and her loyalists next patch. That‘s how I justify my guildless sentinel moving around with my imaginary unit.
I think there’s many ways you can spin most characters going out into the world and doing their own thing.
A good example could be as an adventurer:
The Sentinel’s superiors, recognising their particular skill-set, send them out in the world to travel and assist the other races of the Alliance. This allows them to learn more about their allies and to build on the friendship and cooperation between them.
Like a diplomatic mission with more arrows and stabbing.
All really good examples - I’ve committed to getting my Sentinel to max level for better Mog so taking the time to refine the character concept some more while I blast through the levels.
Think the idea of using adventuring rolled with the theme of the recent developments in the lore quite useful initially, as it casts a wider net for me to work with and refine my character as I find my feet. I want to avoid being a slightly more talkative npc guard and instead have the flexibility to seek out more opportunities, there is only so much patrolling my mind can muster! xD
I’m certainly not agreeing that sentinels are exclusively Astranaar guards, not by any stretch of the imagination, but this quote in particular strikes me as a symptom of a wider attitude problem I experienced regularly while roleplaying a career soldier. You can’t have all the good bits of a concept and then throw out the bits you don’t like; you can’t be half-in and half-out especially within the military.
Many characters - human roleplayers in particular - enjoy tacking on commissioned officer titles and/or “former soldier/guard/7th Legion” in their TRP profiles, but what it often boiled down to was justifying being a ‘tactical genius’ or displaying some NPC-invested authority to swing at other characters when necessary. It’s hard to argue with someone telling you what do when they are a Knight-Captain, a former SEAL, formerly of the 7th Legion and a veteran of all three (four?) major wars.
As a player who put copious amounts of research, thought and most importantly in-game time & effort into creating and maintaining a military atmosphere through which to experience this setting, these sorts of things became very galling. It seemed often as though people took military titles and backgrounds as a reason to order mine and my friends’ characters about but didn’t take the time to work through that period of their character’s life in a military roleplaying guild or indeed put any effort into realising that background - their qualifications and experience just materialised from nowhere and always vastly outstripped ours.
In your case OP, I would ask you why you were actually roleplaying a sentinel in the first place if you wanted to find out how much of the military background you could avoid engaging with. The sentinels are the soldiers of Darnassus in the same way footmen are the soldiers of Stormwind. You cannot roleplay either concept outside of its respective military context. It would be like roleplaying a dwarf that was very short, was born in Gnomeregan and enjoyed tinkering. You might as well just play a gnome.
I do appreciate your insight, though not necessarily with everything specifically. Most of my time with the character thus far was in the more traditional military style: patrolling things, scouting roads and seeing what local help I could offer.
My main questioning was not ‘to avoid as much of the military side as possible’ but more under which framework I can bring some travel into my RP, as frankly it does get tedious walking the roads of Ashenvale constantly with only piecemeal RP encounters, as it’s not always the most populated hubs.
I was feeling too one-dimensional, that’s why I felt ‘like a glorified guard’. Wanted to see how I could approach bringing more traveling into the Sentinel concept. But I detest the 50 titles and ranks people proclaim, nothing worse than the military superiority complexes that often pops up.
Okay, that makes complete sense! Thanks for clarifying.
In which case, absolutely. All military characters (especially those outside a structured guild) will struggle with the same situation. The best way to go about it is simply to work your activity into your character’s given tasking, that is to say if you want to spend a while wandering around Desolace just state that your character has been ordered to do so for whatever reason. So long as your general activities are in line with what a serving soldier is likely to do - which in a sentinel’s case is certainly not just wandering Astranaar - you can go ham, really. With WoW’s hard-on for corruption in all its forms you can really justify being anywhere so long as what you’re doing vaguely furthers the goals of the Alliance.
So far most of your questions have already been given well thought out answers. I’d like to add that, as far as Huntresses are concerned, once your character have earned that title then it’s, more or less, permanent. Even if your Huntress isn’t on active duty they could probably refer to themselves by the title, since it’s a very niche rank to the Sentinel army in particular, and carries weight amongst the night elves.
Furthermore, I think, (military connoisseurs feel free to correct me) - if your character is of a certain rank and should, for whatever reason, step down/retire or what have you, then when they enlist again they retain the rank they used to have (unless it was stripped from them).
That gives you more freedom in the sense that, even if your character isn’t in active service, their rank, especially Huntress, probably still means a great deal to them as an accomplishment/milestone and can be treated as a significant part of your characters goals and motivations.
For what it’s worth, always happy to see more Huntress roleplayers! I don’t know anything about your character beyond her rank, but she sounds like a proper bad@ss already. Best of luck to you!
Aw thanks! I didn’t want to kick too far down the rank pool, but loved the idea of riding into battle on my war saber and bow in hand! Like the idea of using times outside of service to explore more general RP etc.
While I do enjoy doing the military aspects, feeling freer to explore the wide world with my Saber at my side really draws me to my character. Been making some good progress on her so hope I can get her back into the thick of it again soon!
