You do know even if the Alliance managed to win this scenario it would be a hollow victory, with them collapsing from the aftermath right?
and those are Blizzard’s own words through lore sources.
If the Horde and the Alliance duke it out til only one remains truly standing the victor won’t be much worth after.
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Yeah…I’ll hold my enthusiasm regarding Talanjis leadership. We’ve yet to see how they handle her reaction to this war and how they make her stand in regards to the Alliance.
Given we might be in for another Lorthemar scenario, I’ll just wait to see how writers handle her before judging whether her persona sticks to the sort of able leader she could be, or if she is turned into yet another Baine by the writers, and is written to handwave her own losses for the sake of the Alliance and their peace.
Her potential role as saviour and “last reasonable leader”, is entirely dependent on how writers handle her reaction to the war, it’s conclusion, and the stance to be had going forth in regards to the likes of Jaina.
The way I always understood it was that the Alliance would win the War,but the Horde would make it not worth winning. This is why Varian at the end of MoP was -smart- and his line of ‘What a King must do’ actually makes sense. He knew if he listened to Jaina and went, “Yeah, we’re arresting you all/killing you all now” then there would have been a bloody Civil War on the streets of Orgrimmar, and even if successful, the Alliance would lose a lot of leaders also. Fast forward a few days, people learn what the Alliance did. Now that it is -proven- that the Alliance intends on the Horde’s destruction, the brakes come off. There is no LTT to stop the Mana Bombs being broken out of storage, and Rommath has no qualms about using them. There isn’t even the twisted presence of Sylvanas to govern the use of Blight as -she- chooses, in both the cases of the Forsaken and the Sin’dorei , control of these WMD’s pretty much would devolve to local commanders (Much as with the -justified- fears as to what happened to Russian nukes when the Warsaw Pact collapsed)
The Alliance would comprehensively have won the Conventional War, and probably razed Orgrimmar to the ground. They won’t have stopped there.
News would suddenly reach them of the horrible genie they have let out of the bottle, as localised commanders, operating on their own initiative start invading the southern parts of the Eastern Kingdoms, but this is less a war of conquest, more a war of annihilation. If they do not stop the Alliance, the Alliance would have made it abundantly clear that they would not stop killing Horde. The front lines, rapidly moving south, would be hellish places of deadly poison gas and Blight, all lit by the eldritch blue glow of Mana bombs, with each battle, the number of Forsaken increase. By now The Alliance has won in Durotar, and Echo Isles also, though guerrilla fighting. There is no Baine to be a rational head and try to make peace. In such times, people will accept any strong leadership, and we all know who that means. Magatha Grimtotem. She unifies the Grimtotem and other Tribes. Ironically the Tauren will never have been stronger, nonetheless, the Alliance would be able to besiege Thunder Bluff (However didn’t Varian have a vision saying it wouldn’t be worth it in terms of cost to lives?)
In the meantime, morale is low on both sides, the Alliance have heard of what is going on back home, the Horde morale is low, but only because they are so massively losing, there is only Thunder Bluff, and the Crazy Train that is going on in Eastern Kingdoms. Desertion will be high. The Alliance troops moreso, simply because it is harder to desert when under Siege! Alliance soldiers would simply want to go home and see if loved ones survived the ever growing onslaught. No one Forsaken is strong enough to have taken Sylvanas’ crown, and to add complication, whilst they inexorably push south, the Forsaken themselves fall into internecine conflict as to who is in charge. The Sin’dorei know who is in charge, after the relatively libertarian and benevolent rule of LTT, they have once again fallen under the protective, but stern, some would say Tyrannic hand of a Dictatorship. All Hail Lord-Regent Rommath. He sees no problem with the WMD’s, because he knows that the Alliance have nothing to return in kind. They don’t have Blight in industrial numbers, and they don’t know how to make Mana bombs, Gasmasks might be hurriedly distributed, but there won’t be enough for every civilian, as well as soldiers. There simply -is- no protection against Mana Bombs however. There are rumours that back home, Haldurion Brightwing has left the front lines, and taken a loyal cadre to Quel’thalas. Who needs him anyway…Silvermoon’s forces fall under Matriarch Liadrin, who, griefstricken at Lor’themar’s death, pursues the war with ruthless efficiency. For the second time the Light has betrayed her, she won’t be fooled again… The Alliance, having crushed the Horde in Kalimdor, apart from a few Guerilla bands of Trolls and Tauren “Remember Vol’jin!” “Remember Thunder Bluff”
it is an exhausted, demoralised ill supplied army that returns to EK, news reaches them on the way that Ironforge is holding, but only because it has closed all the external vents, stopping Air (and Blight) getting into the city. The problem there is…rather than being starved out, they face a slow death by suffocation if the Alliance can’t remove the Forsaken forces surrounding it.
Rommath receives troubling news from home, it seem that Halduron has formed a splinter government, with many supporters from the Farstriders and the common folk. Guards seek to place him under arrest, but he is very much a ‘Robin Hood’ figure at this point, he and his followers retreating into the forests of Quel’thalas.
Rommath must win this war and quickly, to quell the strife back home. Once that is done, he will have his mages raise the Ban’dinoriel Gate, and Quel’thalas can just relax behind it and wait for all this to blow over.
The arrival of Alliance soldiers back in Stormwind is timely, however the populace of places in the route of march of the Horde are panicking, refugees lining the path, flooding the roads to the last bastion of safety, Stormwind. As such it is difficult for the Military to get to where they need to be (much like the Fall of France). The remaining Horde rebuff any suggestions of a ceasefire, Rommath is certain the Alliance wish their destruction, and there is no coherent leadership of the Forsaken, whose forces more and more are splintering, various warlords using Blight more and more, to raise more mindless troops to use against the Alliance, -and- Each other!
Ironforge rallies, and growing short of breathable air, surges through its vast gates, smashing through the Forsaken there, who are mostly rear echelon troops, They start marching South, to come to humanities aid, whereas their civilians, in a bizarre reversal of fortune, become refugees in Gnomeregan, which also had to close its air supply vents, however there being less of them, they were able to bear it better, and now the Forsaken are gone, the Dwarf civilians fall under their protection. In despair at what is happening, the pandaren withdraw, and Garrosh Hellscream never gets his trial. Taran Zhu does the deed himself. It is a corpse that arrives in Pandaria. By now, the Horde, despite its initial successes, is splintering apart, day by day growing more savage, as they are fighting for their lives, but by now, so are the Alliance. The Forsaken forces are now in outright two way wars, between themselves, and the Alliance. Rommath hears that Halduron has declared himself Regent Lord, and raised his standard, inflicting a crushing defeat upon Rommath’s own forces at Elrendar river. He needs to win…
Everybody remembers where they were, that day. When the Dwarven military struck the Horde in their rear, unexpectedly. no one can forget, or wonder how the People of Stormwind felt, as the cannisters flew over the walls, and at various points in the city, the light fizzled, crackled, then expanded in a blue light, evaporating everything in its way, leaving just blue dust. Stormwind suffered the same fate as Theramore, just lots of Tactical Mana Bombs, not one big one. Suddenly the civilian population were not a problem in terms of getting the military to where they needed to be, because there weren’t many civilians left, they either died to Mana Bombbardment, Blight, or were drafted, the fields were all contaminated anyway, so the Alliance slogged their way North. A bitter, broken army
Nonetheless, they won. In a way. Between the Hammer and the Anvil, Ironforge and Stormwind managed to defeat the Horde forces, there were many War Crimes tribunals, one not amongst them was Rommath, who used his magics to teleport himself to Silvermoon, before finding himself under attack, the city had fallen to Halduron, after a bitter civil war, the Sin’dorei now so weakened in numbers it was debatable whether those remaining were a stable enough genepool to survive as a Functional species
He was fleeing the city, to who knew where, when a Farstrider arrow took him between the shoulders, his body hung outside Ban’dinoriel, which was closed, and stayed closed.
The Forsaken? Eradicated. Their Warlords and those responsible for the Blighting were executed, the angry mobs of surviving humans did the rest.
Now, Ten years later, people curse that day. As humans scratch a living from dusty and poisonous earth, each day a trial to survive,so much of the world was Blighted, or has now ceased to exist in -all- realities, just blue powder. There is not enough sustainable crops to feed everyone, the water is poisoned, people are losing hair, turning yellow, teeth fall out of gums, the young children are feral, for who has time to run a school when every day is a struggle to just find something, no matter how disgusting, There are rumours, the very few travellers bring, that in Lakeshire some folk have resorted to…‘methods’ to ensure there is enough food for everyone, When the winters grow thick, and the snowflakes now are not fluffy white things, but jagged, with green and blue veins running through them, that burn when they touch, and cause sickness. Mortality rates for the young and old skyrocket, especially with the onset of disease, rats, plagues effect whole regions. People desperately grub at the poisoned earth, to grow crops they know will kill them. One day, the few surviving Mages report feeling a vast magical -Clang- noise from behind Ban’dinoriel. No one knows what it can mean. Did they flee this dying world? or did, as popular opinion runs, they perform a mass suicide pact. No one knows. No one can get there, it is naught but blight and blasted blue powder.
As live becomes harder and harder, the peasants, for there are no armies anymore, just savage warbands feeding on each other and the peasants, only the faintest traces left of Stormwind’s livery think with angry snarls. Five words could have stopped this, just Five Words.
“What a King Must Do.”
So there is a grim immediately post MoP scenario.
Be even worse now, in Anduin had pursued the Horde’s destruction.
The Alliance would undoubtedly win, but they’d win a world no one wanted to live in…
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History and troop management has taught us that more often than not, the Horde wins frontal and conventional war clashes.
And the Alliance often ends up leaning or depending on rebellious elements that hamper the Horde war effort for X or Y reasons in order to finally come on top.
Happened in the Second War, happened with Garrosh, and has happened again with Sylvanas.
The Horde is, to put it simply, naturally predisposed towards conflict. Be that because of cultural or physical attributes.
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Edgy from you.
But hey humans over everything. Happy now?
Edit: Jabjan Zul’aman will stay Amani.
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Nah. It doesen’t matter who holds it as long as it’s trolls.
What does this even mean.
That your choice of word’s could have ben better.
I know, I am not better.
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Okay.
/10chars
You’re the 10/chars calling people stupid.
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What…
/10chars
What ever.
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Oh yeah. Well yeah, it’s Erevien, it’s pretty self-explanatory.
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By the sun that got Dark :o
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What can I say, I’m a big fan of ‘Alternative History’ as the genre is called, or “What if?” Often, these things go very badly wrong, sometimes, like ‘What if Marc Anthony and Cleopatra had won at the battle of Actium’ they actually end up nicer, and you go “ohh, I wouldn’t mind that world so much…” But yeah, I can’t see any way where Varian attempted to ‘dismantle’ the Horde would have ended well…
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I mean Anduin ‘‘successfully’’
Ended the fourth war, Horde and Alliance are now friends and bygones are bygones.
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There is a heck of a lot more Varian could have demanded at that point, though. I won’t argue that capturing the leadership, and occupying or destroying OG would have been catastrophic, but finger-wagging and going away was a joke. And while it might not have been “dismantling the Horde”, he could have done quite a bit to make it less cohesive and dangerous to the Alliance in the long run. Comparatively “reasonable” demands like removing the office of Warchief, or Alliance embassies in every Horde capital could have gone a long way to defang them over time. And the Horde leaders who refused such wouldn’t necessarily have had a united Horde behind them, if the Alliance showed the threat behind the demand.
It could of course still have led to a catastrophic war… but really, “you have to forgive the Horde every transgression without expecting them to accomodate you in any way, else they will fight a genocidal war against you” isn’t much of a long-term plan, either.
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Absolutely.
the only Problem is of course the Alliance of that time was not really interested in a working peace relationship with the Horde.
They just wanted the War to end that was draining resources which were already precious thanks to DW and lower the chance of casualties.
Remember Thrall Tried for years to establish said connection doing his office as Warchief, however the Alliance were flat out not interested in working with the Horde unless some world Catastrophic event is at play.
the Alliance believes in leaving Nations, factions and other people not part of their club to be left to their own devices when not useful in some specific scenario.
they Left the Sin’dorei for dead for years, despite very much knowing their Kingdom still existed.
Tyrande left the Shal’dorei to their own devices despite Thalyssra having publicly stated she wanted to reunite their peoples.
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I’m not sure if you are trying to explain how exactly the story is ridiculous here,or if you are trying to justify it. So I’ll just assume the later.
Which is just stupid, and should never have been written that way.
That’s not the whole truth, though. Varian came to a peace summit in Theramore… he was just kidnapped. There also was another peace summit in Theramore… which was attacked by the Twilight Hammer. The Alliance was obviously interested in talks. After Wrathgate less so, but Thrall wasn’t Warchief a long time after that anyway, and there was a cooler fish to fry. And not trusting peace talks and not being willing to pose demands with a threat behind them are quite different things.
Well, the Horde’s devices have repeatedly proven to be the Alliance’s problem, so that way of thinking doesn’t really apply here, if someone on Varian’s staff has more brains than a goldfish.
Not so sure about that. Certainly not to the point of “a lot more”.
Pushing an already willing opponent would probably make him reconsider his stance and actions throughout the whole thing. Next time, he might not be as willing as to rein in or sabotage the next Garrosh.
As terms went, what Varian did wasn’t that of an oddity given context.
A completely innocent victim might have had grounds to ask for a more solid sort of compensation, but regardless of how nasty Garrosh went, the Alliance didn’t hold back many of their punches either.
In Kalimdor alone, most of the conflict on Horde lands came as punitive measures against folk that had close to zero say in the thing that were used as excuse to issue said punishment.
And throughout the Pandaria ordeal, we also had stuff like the Purge.
In all, going with a “Fine, at least you tried to halt the warmonger and collaborated with us taking him down”, is some rather reasonable terms to come to…when said eventuality happens for the first time as it did back in MoP.
Pushing for more would’ve probably made the Horde rethink its stance, and wonder why the sh!t did they collaborate with the Alliance that had warred and killed many of their own, to then enforce further terms on them once the Horde tries to make amendments by halting the warmonger that was trying to annihilate the blue side.
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