Think you will find I have, which is not an answer…Can you expand upon what you mean?
We have no indication that the Alliance as a whole was completely ok with child slavery.
We have exactly one example, and that is Blackmoore. And you wouldn’t have to look very far into our own history to find examples of lords, nobles or other individuals of power not feeling like the law applied to them.
There’s no indication that child slavery was widely accepted or practiced.
The internment camps weren’t slave camps. The orcs weren’t dragged into mines to dig out ore or made to chop wood or produce consumer goods.
They were just put there because Terenas didn’t want to commit a genocide and kill them to the last man, woman and child as some of the other kings were arguing that they should do.
I’m sure there’s more examples if one digs deep into old lore, but more likely than not, it’s more Blackmoores, with evil individuals having their personal slaves or attempting to get some, like the Perenolde family. Not a system of organized slave labor within human or dwarven society.
This would be the equivalent to finding one Horde member doing bad things and then applying that to the entire Horde.
For example, there’s one NPC in the Undercity who has performed invasive brain surgery coupled with alchemy to literally destroy the mind of a human woman. Making his her slave in all things.
With the logic that Blackmoore represents the views of the entire Alliance on slavery that must obviously mean the entire Horde thinks this is OK and they’re all doing it.
Historically speaking, there’s been more slavery within the Horde as it was part of Orc society for many years.
Thrall ended it by taking steps to ensure that no orc could enslave another orc.
But while that may have ended most slavery of orcs, he didn’t take steps to stop the enslaving of other species, as there are many examples of individual orcs holding “pit fighter” slaves of various species, including but not limited to Humans, Worgen, Night Elves, Worgen, Taunka and Naga.
Rehgar Earthfury bought Bloodeye Redfist as a slave. Orc enslaving another orc, so Thrall apparently wasn’t able to rid orcish society of it completely.
Redfist bought his freedom and Reghar and Redfist pooled their resources and bought Broll Bearmantle and Valeera Sanguinar, and Varian Wrynn was found washed up on the shore and immediately enslaved.
The Crimson Ring was an “underground pit fighting arena”, but I find it hard to believe that it was a well-kept secret, considering how large and organized it was.
The only cultures I can think of that is widely practicing slavery as part of their “culture” are:
- The Orcs, but they’ve taken steps to eliminate or at the very least, reduce it. And these days it’s mostly individuals owning pit fighting slaves.
- The various Ogre clans have widespread use of slavery both for fighting and hard/tedious labor.
- The Naga use lots of slaves, mostly for hard labor.
- The Mogu utilize lots of slaves, mostly for hard labor as well.
- The Sethrak have a tendency to enslave Vulpera.
- The Dark Iron Dwarves have historically speaking utilized lots of slaves for hard labor in their mines. Not sure what the current stance on that is after Moira consolidated power and entered the Alliance.
- Some troll tribes practice slavery, such as the Farraki trolls of Tanaris.
- The Forsaken did utilize slave labor during their invasion of Gilneas, but I don’t know if this means the Forsaken as a whole often utilize slaves, or if it was just a convenient use of the captured civilian population at the time.
Knowing the Forsaken, these civilians would most likely just be deliberately plagued and raised into undeath later anyway. - The Blood Elves of Silvermoon had some leper gnome slaves, but seeing as that’s the only example the logical conclusion is that it’s an example of individuals holding slaves. Not that organized slave labor is part of the Thalassian Elves culture.
This is kind of what I mean though. People are very keen to go “Oh but that was one individual” in the same way that “Oh Garithos was just one racist”.
Which doesn’t stand up to any scrutiny, because we then have to believe that for example, being racist gives you superpowers allowing you to arrest an Archmage and his army and march them to Dalaran.
Which is ridiculous to even consider, so in that example, it clearly wasn’t -just- Garithos who was racist or complicit, was it? It would have to be a sizeable enough body of human troops so that Kael’thas didn’t turn round and go “How about No.” and fireballing that misshapen human racists face into oblivion…
Somehow whenever it is Alliance, it gets transmuted into “Oh but that was just one person” but when it is Horde it is “The Horde does this!”
or the other favourite “Oh, that was the Alliance of Lordaeron, a different Alliance, the Grand Alliance don’t do that”
“So the current Horde are not guilty of doing the…”
“NO! All versions of the Horde are the same and equally guilty!”
C’mon, you can see why the double standards make it hard for people to take that seriously, surely…
Don’t build a Garithos shaped strawman to back up your arguments please. I haven’t mentioned him here.
There’s lots of racism in WoW. The elves are racist, the humans are racist, the orcs are racist etc etc etc.
The entire Faction War narrative fits neatly into a “Race War” theme as the divides aren’t political, they’re racial.
I haven’t made either of those claims, if you read my last post in its entirety I even sowed doubt about slavery among the Forsaken, the most cartoonishly evil race in the entire game, because we see them enslaving people en-masse only in Gilneas.
But by your own logic of using Blackmoore as an example that slavery was widespread in the Alliance, you must also accept that slavery is widespread in the Horde based on but not limited to the following:
- Forsaken enslaving Gilneans.
- Orcs and Goblins enslaving Kul Tirans.
- Blood Elves enslaving leper gnomes.
- Orcs enslaving orcs and other races to fight in The Crimson Ring.
- Forsaken enslaving humans.
- Any example in the entire lore when an individual member of the Horde has held more than zero slaves.
So… You see one example of a guy holding an orc child as a slave, and you are like:
“ALL HUMANS ARE DISGUSTING SLAVERS WHO ENSLAVED ORC CHILDREN!”
But you don’t see the Horde in general as slavers even though they’ve enslaved people in Stormsong Valley and Gilneas recently?
Even though that’s much more organized slavery than one guy keeping something “exotic” as a pet?
If you do see the Horde as slavers, then by all means say so.
Bottom of the line is that if you make the claim that child slavery was widely spread in the Alliance, you bring up the evidence to support your claim. Burden of proof is on you.
Otherwise we have only the one example to go on, and that is Blackmoore. Who happened upon a baby orc and thought it would be ridiculously funny to own one and give it a name that literally means “slave”.
And using (a simplified) Occam’s Razor it’s far more likely that Blackmoore is the outlier here, not that he’s representing the majority, than saying that “Child slavery was common” when we see it literally nowhere else.
I’m not saying the Alliance are “good guys” while the Horde are the “bad guys”. Both sides do bad things, but the scenarios in the Jade Forest with both sides capturing children while also being portrayed as “heroes” and “liberators” are in my opinion just bad writing.
If there’s bad stuff being done by the faction you play then they should show it.
The Jade Forest is extreme in this. Somehow all the bad Horde people landed on the south shore while all the good ones landed on the north shore, while all the bad Alliance people landed on the north shore while all the good ones landed on the south shore.
So it’s “good guys vs bad guys” on both sides. Which is ridiculous.
The Faction War storylines are badly written to begin with, but they only become worse if they aren’t even willing to touch the fact that your own faction does do bad things as well.
IM afraid that the People responceble for the great lore since orcs vs humans, are not involved or hardly involved annymore.
The whole writing makes no sence annymore.
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