while they didnt suffer from the same small race syndrome I think many can remember the early…i wont even say weeks, year or two of pandaren rp suffering in a way similar to vulpera. too many people going into “oh look i am fluffy i am cute :3” ic. others delving into the reasons people dread the word “furry” and making the whole world see it. i remember seeing them being treated with the same stigma’s vulpera currently are and its sad to see. sadder still that the stigma seems to be lingering longer than it did with pandaren.
this imo would be a boon to a lot of RP. you see something become a big hit and sooner or later you will see people start to slowly slip it into their rp. i saw people using the word “anjin.” ic.
the only thing i want to see from vulpera rp is remembering their a race of hardened survivalists. they tame and ride hyenas and vultures, carrion scavengers. a vulpera might be your friend but if your dead or dying you suddenly become a lot of valuable resources and they will lock in.
Different stigma. Pandaren suffered the meme of ignoramuses claiming blizzard had just invented pandaren the other day to cater to china, cribbing off the kung fu panda movie but as time went on they were proven wrong and now you’re just embarrassing for saying so.
Vulpera have a different issue in being stereotypically cute, which is a mortal wound to begin with, and taking a much harder “catering to furries” hit as a second body blow for a number of reasons.
Both pandaren and vulpera suffered the indignity of weird fetishists taking over and living up to the memes, soiling the public perception but vulpera being a one zone wonder they’re not getting the narrative ingame to vindicate them and remind players of what they’re supposed to be.
mild tangent but i never got using that as an insult to even make sense. id be flattered if my character was compared to a genuinely fantastic movie. school-yard mentality.
yeah i agree and this is where vulpera have it worse than pandaren, or worgen. pandaren had an entire continent and expansion dedicated to them, even if their lores been sparse since. worgen since their inception have come more and more increasingly to the forefront of the alliance military. rightfully so, if you effectively have allied werewolves.
Vulpera are stuck in a niche that their faction intro proved they fill well but has nothing being done with it. their problem solvers. life of survival in the dunes makes them great out of the box thinkers but its not being developed. and without development their just. left to suffer as you said indignity after indignity.
personally i think it makes complete sense. we have very little to go off of with vulperan faith but we can use other non-zandalari dwellers of the island as a basis. sethrak worship a loa. (at least those who dont follow vorrik do). The tortollan worship a loa in Torga. i think it stands to reason that if vulpera did have faith, faith in a loa wouldnt be out of the question, particularly one native to vol’dun.
my vulpera shaman for example carries three tokens of the loa. one for sethraliss so the desert winds might be fairer. one for akunda so that the storm’s fury might help her survive another day. and one for kim’bul that she may avert the gaze of unwelcome eyes.
if your living in a harsh desert youll take what help you can get. if trolls keep worshiping them then maybe theres something to it.
Vulpera worshipping Desert-like Loas, maybe a Hyena, a Vulture and well the Alpacca could fit very well in my personal opinion.
As for the main question of this thread: i would love to see Vulpera be more integrated in the daily slice of Life of Horde RP:
Yes they are small, but also very resourcefull.
Could be scouts in the Barrens, helping with shamanistic rites in Thunderbluff or securing supply roads in Azshara.
There are plenty of uses for a Race that basicly prove to Baine what they can do and where their experiences are.
Survivalists that can thrive in any climate, finding value in everything.
Looks can be decieving.
To this, I say it make sense whilst I must admit I don’t know too much about vulpera lore outside of quickly questing trough Voldun once or twice.
I do find it reasonable to assume they are influenced and flavoured to a certain degree by the culture ‘next door’ and seeing how they share their lands with outcast Zandalaari, even more so.
Let us not forget culture mesh together, to some degree it is a fleeting thing after all.
They strike me as a curious people, and this is not unique to their race mind you but… being curious is important and can prove to be most useful in regards to acquiring skills and knowledge for the induvidual.
Don’t the vulpera also have a form of ancestor spirit worship to their culture, too? I vaguely remember that being the case.
Sadly, like others have said, their lore has been pretty paper thin and it is more or less required for roleplayers to create their own flavour. As long as that fits with the circumstances and setting of the race I don’t really see an issue – loa worship, given that the loa are physical, tangible presences in Vol’dun? Go for it.
Even if some people might contend that the vulpera as a society don’t worship the loa (or don’t do something else), an individual character or group could still do it. No people are a monolith and the player characters only represent a small fraction of the overall population.
There are bound to be Vulpera worshipping a Loa, or at the very least be curious about it.
We have Shamans and the like, and that implies an understanding of mysticism.
And let’s not forget that the temples of Akuna and Kimbul are located in Vol’Dun as well.
That’s two Loa available to be worshipped and you do even quests for them.
So for me it’s totally acceptable that Vulpera follow a Loa, especially if they remained on the Zandalai islands for a long time. The entire island worships Loa, so it would be weird for them not to at least be involved or be curious about it.
Taking it a step further to my own roleplay experience, I’ve gone down the druid path. Not exactly Loa worshipping, but there are the Wild/Ancient gods for shapeshifting, and my Vulpera has taken an interest in it. He can’t shapeshift, nor has he seen any of the wild gods (Ursol quest line in DF excluded). So venturing down that path is honestly a great way for me to get my Vulpera involved in the topics that I as a player care about.
They have a few peculiar, culture specific sayings and they do have shamans. The most I get out of it is a sort of vauge respect for the harsh elements of their homeland and ancestor worship.
Isn’t there some lore about it in those storybooks and the shadowlands burial practices?
In that “Stories of Azeroth” book there is a tale of the “Wailing Bone” which describes how the ghost of a Vulpera will be bound to one of its bones, and haunt the Caravan, wailing all the time until their right resting place has been found.
But that is one of the few stories about them sadly.
I do enjoy that story, because it hints to a few more interesting elements, like a caravan member being picked to lay the Wailing Bone to rest, and shirking the responsibility can lead to horrific things, but the story does well enough to make it inconclusive whether that’s a tangible danger, or just belief the vulpera hold that spawned scary stories.
It’s not a bounty of lore but it gave a nice amount of fuel for ideas about how they operate. It’s also why I feel like some of them likely worship loas, just not the same ones the Zandalari do, and probably not in the same way. No big temples built for them, might not even refer to them as a loa, things like that.
Stuff like small shrines on commonly used desert routes and near various oases would make sense + be cool to me. I could imagine them picking up the term loa from their proximity to Zandalar, but just calling them spirits or whatever instead would also add up.
I think Vulpera are neat, but if i see one in stormwind after the inevitable Horde/Alliance merge im probably gonna kick it to death.
Jokes aside, I genuinely think the more ‘serious’ vulpera rpers are flashbanged the same way Worgens are. You’re not a big dog, or a cuddly fur creature, youre a hard, pipe hittin OG whos been through some real, real sh*t
Shoutout to the Vulpera in Nazmir robbing people, youre a hero
Next to the Tortollans, the Tuskarr atleast worship or acknowledge a loa aswell, namely Gral the Shark Loa. He shows up in the Azure Span when the chieftain’s body is sent out to sea to call him to him.
So I could definetly see some vulpera seek out loa to guide them. Like Sethraliss or Akunda or Kimbul or any others atleast in close proximity to Vol’dun.
I wouldn’t describe loa as an actual category of creature anyway, it’s just a label given to spirits and perceived divinities by trolls. Most of them are just Wild Gods who enjoy the worship, alongside some ascended trolls like Bwonsamdi.
I could definitely also see vulpera paying some kinda homage to the elements. Maybe giving offering to elementals of air in the hopes that they won’t get another sandstorm blown their way, because that’s quite inconvenient.