Will probably have to map the timeline between when Blood Elves left Garithos and the Alliance of Lordaeron to when they joined the Horde.
I will explain it this way. The Greenskin Orcs almost all of them drank the blood of Mannaroth. The Frostwolf Clan chose not to. However in the absence of the elements as the Orcs were once a Shamanistic / Spiritual people.
Yet Thrall despite his parents not drinking the Blood of Mannaroth he was born with Greenskin. Originally there were no Green skin Orcs and this was a cause of the magical effects of the Fel. Anything and everything can be corrupted by the Fel.
The Blood Elves had a schism from the High Elves. Then later had a schism from Kaelthas Sunstrider. But before the 2nd schism. Seeing that Elves are magical in nature. They will have been exposes to and or interbred with the Fel Elves / Felblood Elves. Which regardless of the schism between Kaelthas Sunstriders faction and Lorthermar Theron’s faction. Will see to it there are still Felblood among them. The Blood Elves never stopped their practice of the Fel after the schism from Kaelthas Sunstrider.
Fel Corruption still takes place. It can overcome some Warlocks. Like how demonology Warlocks originally had a demon form - or the Warlock Greenfire questline that led to one of theirs permanently having been banished as a demon etc…
Perhaps Lorthemar Theron limits the practice so as to not produce more generations of Fel Elves / Felblood Elves. However their legacy never left.
ONLY the High Elves that did not walk the path of the Blood Elves and or have such proximity and practices are “pureblood” Elves as in absent the Fel corruption. The change of Green eyes was a recent thing.
Blood Elves found for themselves a home. Among the very Horde that they fought against when they were united as High Elves.
It does not change the fact that until Jaina Proudmoore pacified dissidents in Dalaran. Lorthermar Theron was actively in talks with High King Varian Wrynn to leave the Horde which some Blood Elves call “home” and join the Grand Alliance.
Jaina’s actions caused the Blood Elves to go back to the Horde. High King Varian Wrynn said so himself.
What do you mean exactly when you say fel elves tho? because I didn’t hear you confirm or deny what I thought you meant with fel elf (the very red demonic variants from outland), I’m confused because you mention intermingling and interbreeding with the fel elves which simply straight up never happened.
And yes, the thrall green skin arguement is true, I believe in that sense the old belf green eyeglow mirrors the orcish skin colour; you can only get so far by simply being exposed to fel and Thralls parents definately were exposed to fel. If being around crystals can change belf eyes then being around other green orcs and probably a container of demon blood would probably be enough to get there. (Though lets not pretend that brown orcs were a later retcon, one I enjoy and think is really cool, but its probably just a disparacy from that time)
However, the lore clearly states that fel elves (or atleast the red demonic ones) come exclusively from the gorging of demon blood; that is to say there are no other sources mentioned anywhere. To go back to the chaos orc; there is also no recorded further transformation from orcs who overexpose to fel who turn into redskinned chaos orcs and there is no shortage of horde warlocks who expose themselves to it every day, yet the only red orcs we ever see are still just the ones in outland that had captured Magtheridon.
So no, the red skin that both chaos orcs and fel elves have 0 other mentioned or hard confirmed sources from anything else other then the consumption of demon blood.
There is no case of Lorthemar limiting the practice to prevent new generations of fel elves because the only source of fel elves is consumption of demon blood and that just doesn’t happen in belf society, never has, it has always only been that initial group of fel elves that Sargeras allowed to gorge themselves on demonic blood that was ever mentioned as a source for them.
If there is no hard source of it, there is no arguement for it. Considering we never saw Fel blood elves again after the Legion was dealt with in TBC, I would assume this very much means that fel blood elves are a legion creation, not a random magical adaptation
In general red has this theme where overcorruption leads there, having 80 void corruption in BFA’s last patch also gave us red visuals. Tying back to my idea of you needing something more potent then just being around a source of fel energy but admittedly that’s pure headcanon
I also agree with Erevien on this comment here.
Thralls horde =/= Orgrims horde.
The whole thing about Thralls horde is that it is a revival of the shamanistic horde, rather then a warmachine horde that Orgrim used to try to conquer azeroth. Thrall fixed what Orgrim allowed Gul’dan to break.
To claim that thralls horde is the same horde as the horde that attacked Quel’thalas is to blatantly deny Thralls whole character arc ever happened
I quote from ‘A new home for the horde’ from World of Warraft: The ultimate visual guide, page 114;
“No longer a bloodthirsty tool for the Burning Legion, Thralls horde was instead shaped to be a refuge, a safe haven dedicated to survival and prosperity- One that included any races that sought shelter from a harsh unforgiving world.”
This is the baseline of Thralls horde.
And no I do not believe that the current horde is Thralls horde anymore either, other warchiefs have pulled it away from that unfortionately. But the elves joined when it definately was Thralls horde.
In the absence of a power source and their ongoing addiction to magic they needed a new source. So following Illidan Stormrage (practically the King of the Blood Elves) they had a new source of magic to feed their addiction. The Fel. Thus any addict would seek as much of their new source as possible.
Fel Corruption can happen with ingesting tangible fel such as Fel Blood. However that is because the Demons of the Burning Legion have Fel as parts of their bodies. But can still be harmed by Fel itself.
Fel Corruption is also possible with proximity. Which is why even the Orcs that did not drink Fel blood or practice Warlock magics, were born as Greenskins a Unique effect of Fel Corruption.
There are different levels of Fel corruption such as the Fel Orcs where they became Red skin Orcs and practically slaves to the burning Legion.
Fel Corruption is a process. High Elves do not suffer Fel Corruption. As for the lore. There seems to be more and more retcons that they almost seem to have lost it’s continuity.
There would be descendants of Blood Elves whose parents and ancestors were part of Kaelthas Sunstriders faction. That Fel corruption / legacy would still remain.
The magics of the Night Well created the Night Elves from the Dark Trolls. The magics of the Sunwell created High Elves from the Highborne Night Elves. Fel corrupts everything. So the Fel Elves / Felblood Elves are specifically an off-shoot of the Blood Elves.
Perhaps in time there might be Night Elf and Nightborne varients.
But it does not change the fact that in the World of Warcraft universe. The Elven species are very responsive to magics. There are variations of withered states with the Night Elves seem to be the only exceptions.
However because of their legacy and their choice to follow Kaelthas Sunstrider. As a species they have veered off a different path than the High Elves. Which are the only purebloods of what the Blood Elves used to be.
It is very easy to dismiss things as headcannon this and headcannon that. Or you can just follow the lore and see the destination.
Blood Elves did not stop having kids since the Burning Crusade. What do you think those kids inherited?
The change of Green eyes was an aesthetic change to try and indicate they have recovered/cleansed their Fel corruption. Even if they continue the practice.
So when you say fel elf, you mean a spectrum anywhere between a green eyed blood elf who was simply affected by proximity and what the game itself calls a Felblood elf? https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Felblood_elf
I’m asking because the more I read your comments the more vague my perception of what you mean with fel elf is becoming and it makes it hard to even formulate an arguement that makes sense to what you are responding with and there’s no real point in us talking about lore if we don’t even agree on the terminology used so thanks if you can answer this in a way so that I understand what you mean when you say fel elf.
Like I can’t even respond to the rest of your post because I do not know what you mean when you say fel elf. To meet you half way, when I say fel elf, I specifically mean the felblood elf
lol the Old Horde as you call it still very much exists today. Etrigg is one of the first Orcs that came through the Dark Portal. Fought in every war the Horde ever fought and even led Horde forces in the Battle for Azeroth in Stromgarde against Trollbane.
There is not much distinction between the Old Horde and current Horde.
Eitrigg was still there during the Greenskin Orcs Heritage armour.
You are splitting hairs here.
Fel Corruption is Fel Corruption. It does change the person that is exposed to it. Fel effects the body - the soul - just about anything.
Can Fel corruption be cleansed completely? No.
Thrall is very much a live. He led the Horde to Durotar in the first place.
Lorthemar Theron is still alive. Magatha Grimtotem is alive. Though not an official leader she did rule Thunder Bluff for a short time. Voljin is rumoured to return as a Loa. Some shenanegans about absorbing the Anima of Rezhan the loa of Kings. Sylvannas will inevitably make a return to the Forsaken and the Horde.
So you are talking about the entire spectrum, thanks for clearing that up.
Its gonna be a long one because we are involving the whole spectrum here so there’s the warning done, I’ll try to use bold lettering to section off parts for readability. Otherwise my apologies for the absolute wall of text I’m about to dump.
And yes fel corruption is fel corruption, but not all fel corruption is born equal, hence my demand for clarification, because how a form of corruption works is entirely dependant on the flavour of corruption (another reason that this’ll likely be a long post in context of the whole spectrum)
To touch on the descendants and how it would affect them, we have to look at the whole spectrum of thalassian + fel and see what that means (Disclaimer: You involved the whole spectrum not me I was just talking about one of these, its gonna be a long one because we need to further define things for me to be able to give a proper response)
Blood elves
Thalassian illidari
Felblood elves
The blood elves.
The extend of visual corruption is green eyeglow, the cause is always either usage of through casting fel powered magic or proximity exposure by existing in outland or being in silvermoon city while the fel crystals were powering the cities magical services.
Originally, it was said that this change was permanent and could not be undone, however this was recently retconned with the golden eyes. All playable blood elves up until legion gave us demon hunters and the majority of Sunfury (Kael’thas’s) elves fall under this category. There is no distinction between the corruption of a member of Kael’thas army (not a felblood) and a citizen of Silvermoon.
Again, this is all playable blood elves, the ones who did not go through this process are high elves without exception, who chose to not follow along with kael’thas for different reasons, one being he was vibing in Dalaran when the scourge attacked his home. Fel wasn’t introduced to their society until after the split of high and blood elf.
The felblood elves
These are the lads I linked about earlier, they gorged on demonic blood to get to this level of corruption and there are no other sources for this extend of corruption within thalassian elves, meaning that unless there will be a future refference remediating that, the only way to get to a felblood elf is to gorge on the blood of demons.
The Thalassian illidari
No members of these in Quel’thalas or Kael’thas armies respectively at the time, so we can entirely ignore this section.
EFFECT OF CORRUPTION ON OFFSPRING
Offspring of the Blood Elves would simply be more Blood Elves.
The thing is with the sunwell reinvigorated, the crystals were removed canonically from SMC. They’re still there if you go there ingame, but lorewise they havn’t been around since late TBC. Which means that there is nothing to keep the mutation going for the average blood elf, with the exception of maybe a warlock or illidari.
We have 0 cases of Felblood elves being accepted in society, if anything it was strongly implied that their existance was kept a secret from Kael’thas own forces because the majority of the Sunfury were working with Kael’thas not to gain power from Fel, but to find ways to free their people from their mana addiction or provide a safer source (see the mana forges that were run by the sunfury in netherstorm), it is therefor unlikely to think that the felblood elves ever reproduced.
However with the advent of golden eyes the consideration is that the Blood elf state of Fel elf spectrum is not a permanent state, it did take the sunwell adapting to radiating out a whole second cosmic force and then about a decade for eyes to turn gold but it is very much reversed at the moment.
It would be more correct to say that the High elves are just arcane charged thalassians, where-as the Green eyed and Gold eyed are Fel and Light charged thalassians respectively, but all are still thalassian, they have not been transformed to such a bizarre degree that they should be considered seperate races, the distinction is for the most part political.
OTHER ELF VARIANTS
I think the nightbourne do have variants, there were a bunch of fel using npcs in the suramar campaign that belonged to Elisandes forces, they wielded fel magic and beyond having a green eyeglow had no real visual transformations, kind of like the blood elves did. They followed Elisande into the grave however. IDK if they have a felblood (drank blood) or illidari (ate soul) variants but we have no real examples of them so its safe to say no. Either way these are not a playable variation of nightbourne.
And yes, night elves are the odd ones out, though the night elves come from a caste of elves that never really had as great of an affinity for magic as the highbourne (upper caste) so maybe they were simply never as reactive to magic, or their druidic practices have simply filled their elven tanks with a benign force that does not corrupt or reshape you. Even in their demonic corruption they are the weird ones because the only example here are Satyrs and Satyrs are a result of a curse
Not proximity, not usage of fel, not consumption of organs or blood or souls of demonic entities, a curse. Which means either life magic can ward against fel corruption or night elves in general are the least susceptible for magic because for so long ago they outright banned the usage of arcane.
That said, the different stages of withered are simply different severities of withered. Just like how there are different states of hunger ranging anywhere from tummy rumble to you can see my literal skeletal structure head to toe.
WELLS OF POWER
The well part is also a bit off. The well of eternity is the well that transformed dark trolls into night elves. The sunwell and nightwell did not have such transformative effects because technically they are just soft copies of the well of eternity. Both had cases of elves being cut off of it. At best my I think that being connected to either should prevent withering (lack of magic) as well as becoming wretched (too much magic)
I don’t know for the nightbourne but its implied to have to do with the fact that they lived under a dome for thousands of years that they look a bit different and darker. For High elves, they became smaller overtime because they lacked the blessing of the world tree Night elves had. Them adopting skin tones more expected of daytime humanoids probably had to do with them being less nocturnal then the nelf society.
HEADCANON
I am not attacking you nor labelling what you say is headcannon, a lot of the things you stated are mostly just old retconned canon. You say for example that the corruption cannot be reversed, but the extend of the corruption of the glowing eyes of the blood elves already has, The eyeglow was the only expression of this corruption.
Its just that when you go this deep you will find holes you will need to fill up with assumptions or headcannon. When I state headcannon, I exclusively state this as a disclaimer to when I say something myself.
As for following the lore and seeing what it tells me, I guess this post is the result of me trying my damnest best at that.
I might make edits later if I find some gaps in paragraphs or really bad spelling errors
If the positive themes surrounding the Alliance are this consistent, are you sure it’s bias? Could it at least be theoretically possible that the Horde is simply the bad guy?
Apart from that there is a much more relevant bias to explain stuff like this. The same bias that leads us to having 4 playable elf races right now. Popularity bias. Of course there aren’t fel orcs around. They aren’t sexy, and no one cares. Something that’s basically a playable succubus on the other hand is well worth the minor investment of unlocking the skin tone for players.
Getting a third dwarf race is quite a bit more baffling than that. I mean, I happen to like dwarves well enough, but as an investment I wouldn’t have bet that much on them…
Does it, though? The core of it seems kinda religious to me.
Locus-Walker says: Let’s discuss maintaining your sanity. The Void will do everything it can to shatter your will.
Locus-Walker says: You see the Void as an enemy. It sees you the same way. For now.
Locus-Walker says: Its very nature is hostile to order. Life, Sanity.
Locus-Walker says: You must dive deep into its shadows. Accept its many truths.
Locus-Walker says: You cannot reject it. You must accept it.
Locus-Walker says: Only then will every ounce of power be yours to command.
Locus-Walker says: Embrace this wisdom, and your mind will yet be your own. https://www.wowhead.com/en/news/locus-walker-stay-awhile-in-telogrus-rift-a-lesson-in-maintaining-sanity-339686
“Surrender first, don’t look for one truth, just accept what they offer, then you will find enlightenment” doesn’t sound exactly like the scientific method to me…
