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Orc Quest; or, A Critical Examination of Agency Through in Interactive Fiction (Warcraft)

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Nevill said:
I do not recall fighting anyone but Darkstorm and his group of renegades who most certainly did not consider themselves loyal. The breakaway Blademasters couldn't be counted as such either. And... death threats?
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Two that I recall off the top of my head.

First flat out told a fella called bloodeye wanted us dead.

Second when we had an unfortunate encounter with the elders and they heavily implied it.

Also, no they very much did. The implication seems to have been that fel dad wanted him out of the way and set him up as a way to make some easy glory for us, but as far as Darkstorm was concerned he was still very much a loyalist to the burning blade...just the burning blade that wants to destroy Azeroth, which in many ways is the same thing as the burning blade of the horde, especially since they have the same leader.

Nevill said:
Was this stated anywhere? Forneus never gave the reason for why he accepted the summoning, or did I get that wrong?
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There's a whole lot of guess work on an IC and OOC level.

However, it can't be disputed that the Burning Blade had really ****ed the elements up around Dreadmist peak.

Going further OOC there's a quest for the alliance to kill Sarilus Foulborne who lives on the mountain, cause his study of how screwed over the elements are there has let him learn how to befoul and control elements far further afield in Azeroth and the Burning Blade is keeping an artefact there called the demon seed, which is "a powerful tool for the burning legion."

In short we don't know why Forneaus decided to personally answer the summons, nepotism from the kids of his boss asking, the immense power of blood sacrifices, anger at the orc's using fel (this one I think seems to be part of it as he focused on it in Grok's conversation), vengence for the earth elementals tainted? I'd imagine its a bunch of those factors together.

Nevill said:
I don't think he is at the point where he'd question whether his clan does more good than harm.
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I dunno, if for no other reason than that risks falling into the kind of double think that let the warsong shrug off turning fel...again.

He's not an idiot and knows enough about to fel to know that the clan shouldn't have the ability to whip up a demon like that without also ignoring Thrall's orders and he knows that the sheer degree of people haemorrhaging from the clan is weird as well to say nothing of the secrets stacked on secrets stacked on secrets. What sort of clan heir isn't even told that their clan three major strong holds, or even what the third one is meant to be doing there? I'd argue probably one whose clan has a lot of things to hide.
 
[X] Remain silent

The Burning Blade... it's a pity, but it's too twisted up in Fel. The Blademasters I think are what really makes the clan's loss sting though. So awesome and yet...The price to retain them, to maintain them...But, I think we need to start to set a plan in motion, or at least create a plan, so that instead of having to wrestle against a clan corrupted by Fel, we instead do what we can for the greater Horde in general.
 
[X] The Lie of Honour
Its been adjusted enough that I think we should at least try this.

Not only is it better for the horde since the burning blade won't scatter to the winds, it also gives the chance that Fel dad can question his loyalties and not keep going down the rabbit hole, which he will if we keep our mouth shut.

hapcelion said:
[x] Remain silent
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Zaealix said:
[X] Remain silent

The Burning Blade... it's a pity, but it's too twisted up in Fel. The Blademasters I think are what really makes the clan's loss sting though. So awesome and yet...The price to retain them, to maintain them...But, I think we need to start to set a plan in motion, or at least create a plan, so that instead of having to wrestle against a clan corrupted by Fel, we instead do what we can for the greater Horde in general.
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Cryos said:
Moratorium over

[X] Remain silent
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Its not a guarantee, but I think its a better chance than what we've currently got.

On a personl player level, I want to be kicked out the horde, not stuck in it exiled merely by defacto chained to the burning blade's decaying corpse, so if you're voting on the basis of get away from the burning blade, go for the option that won't leave us stuck with it at least!
 
FractiousDay said:
You might cite Warhammer and it's variations but while they go into it a bit they don't make it 'human', Grimgor or Gazghul aren't really characters with relatable stories. LotR doesn't really do anything with orcs aside from brief touches, and occasionally things like TES do a bit but not much.
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Brutal Kunnin is a great Ork centric book, especially in audio form. Orks vs Mechanicus has never been such a treat
 
[X] The Lie of Honour
It puts on hold the train crash of the Burning Blade, which would be slow, messy, and painful. In-character, Neeru and Thrall are given a chance to find a working agreement. Out-of-character, Neeru is given a chance to re-examine his plots & loyalties. Will they take it? Time will tell. In any case we try to do more than being merely a passive spectator to ruin and civil war.

Btw you state that the Burning Blade is bad and best done with; well, if we remain silent we still remain in the clan, and its fall will cause massive damage: to the Horde, to the clan, to Neeru, to Grok'mash. There won't be a "clean slate", but instead a mess. Paradoxically, if we speak up and get ourself exiled, we can be on our own and travel the world, re-connect with the elements, etc. and return and deal with the situation being stronger and (possibly) wiser
 
Doomed Wombat said:
Also, no they very much did. The implication seems to have been that fel dad wanted him out of the way and set him up as a way to make some easy glory for us, but as far as Darkstorm was concerned he was still very much a loyalist to the burning blade...just the burning blade that wants to destroy Azeroth, which in many ways is the same thing as the burning blade of the horde, especially since they have the same leader.
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Ah, my bad. I didn't separate "Darkstorm" and "his group of renegades" in my sentence. Scorn was pretty open about "searching freedom in Darkstorm's service", which I took as a sign that most of his subordinates were rabble, bandits, deserters and other malcontents.

So far Darkstorm is the only guy who openly stated that his misdeeds were carried out in the clan's name.

[x] The Lie of Honour
 
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[X] The Lie of Honour


If we do get exiled I wonder if this leads to Feldad going for a fatherly route. It won't have much effect on the crowd since it's public knowledge that Neeru scorned Grok'mash for being weak, but maybe enough time has passed for the people to notice the change in attitude? Then again the cynic in me says that Neeru is only pretending to have accepted Grok to ensure loyalty since he knows Grok craved that approval and love for so long.
 
[X] The Lie of Honour

Catching up on the discussion in the thread has firmed me up in this.

Shamans are great, I love Thrall, but I also love Warlocks. Beyond the bigger conversations about all magics having their Radiation type effects, one goes to war with the tech they have. Not what they want. So what the Horde has is a bunch of Feuding Shamans and Warlocks, so if we can make them get their shit together more its worth a shot.

If Thrall eventually steps down to focus on Shamanism and Saurfang or someone is made actual Warchief it might help stabilize things enough for people to actually get along.

Irrespective of that, I will push for the delightful constantly over his head orc to wander around learning more of other magics. And being a general Ronin adventurer. Orcs have to have some people focused on positive PR with other cultures.

And maybe FelDad will have some sort of Redemptive Arc. That would tickle me.
 
Doomed Wombat said:
I admit if that ended up happening I would be surprised, but pleased.
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Its theoretically within character. As unenviable a childhood as the Post-Horde Collapse is, I'd imagine the baggage that comes with having your childhood be the destruction of Draenor/Invasion of Azeroth...steep. New Homeland, New Situation, New Inspiration from a place a paranoid can trust in his progeny. Crazier things have happened in the Warcraft universe .
 
Adhoc vote count started by FractiousDay on Apr 19, 2021 at 5:14 PM, finished with 40 posts and 10 votes.
  • [X] The Lie of Honour
    [x] Remain silent
    [x]Lie.
    -[x] Bonus points if we can somehow challenge him to a duel to illustrate the farce of honor his actions are vis. the Azeroth Magic Steroid Hero fighting some teenager literally just off his sickbed. Really twist the sword we're falling on into his gut.
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Approving of the discussion, going to put a timer on the vote now for any more to make their preferences known
 
[X] The Lie of Honour

alright with the changes I guess it can work, hoping exile is the result, we could go for a change of scenery.
We want to protect Azeroth? Might as well make contact with the organizations responsible for it's defense, I imagine the Earthen Ring or even the Cenarion Circle will try to do something about the Mini-Cataclysm that just happened, we clearly feel responsible in part for what happened so it would make sense to try and do what we can to help with the problem, or, possibly if we're not wanted there (we did kind of help cause the problem they could not want us there) we could always go to the eastern kingdoms, maybe the Argent Dawn could be a place we could help.
 
Cryos said:
we could always go to the eastern kingdoms, maybe the Argent Dawn could be a place we could help.
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Suggested a possible means for that, via Nazgrim asking us to go see if his old pal Tirion is still alive.

Though on the eastern kingdom's front there's several things over there that we could get involved in. First there's the storm wind situation, and with Vyrian potentially dead that's...yeah really not good.

And of course Ragnaros is in the burning core, with Rend Blackhand above...and Neltharion...and the dark iron.

Jeeze...blackrock spire is a ****ing nightmare.
 
If we are to go to stormwind, we could potentially deal with onyxia, which would be an incredible boon for us. The potential to show up the human alliance while maybe earning some debt of honor from them would be extremely useful, though be warned that orcs aren't exactly on good relations with stormwind this soon in WoW. In fact, by our usual luck, we could very well end up as a scapegoat over there if anything goes wrong and, being an orc of the horde, kick off another war.

Which is why I'd advocate we first go to Theramore and get acclimated to some slightly friendlier Alliance folks and learn a thing or two about the Eastern Kingdoms before we go plodding about over there. Plus, it may give us a chance to improve relations with the island kingdom a bit more and potentially distance them more from the Alliance as a whole.
 
hapcelion said:
If we are to go to stormwind, we could potentially deal with onyxia, which would be an incredible boon for us. The potential to show up the human alliance while maybe earning some debt of honor from them would be extremely useful, though be warned that orcs aren't exactly on good relations with stormwind this soon in WoW. In fact, by our usual luck, we could very well end up as a scapegoat over there if anything goes wrong and, being an orc of the horde, kick off another war.

Which is why I'd advocate we first go to Theramore and get acclimated to some slightly friendlier Alliance folks and learn a thing or two about the Eastern Kingdoms before we go plodding about over there. Plus, it may give us a chance to improve relations with the island kingdom a bit more and potentially distance them more from the Alliance as a whole.
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We shall see. I doubt we can get to that, but it is interesting to think of it. Still lets not put the cart before the...warg and see if we get booted out first and our situation after that.

With that in mind anyone got ways we could shift the argument a wee bit?

FractiousDay said:
Turn Thrall's strategy back on him, say that all the Burning Blade has done has been for the greater glory and security of the Horde.
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For example this bit I'm somewhat concerned with given Grok's own suspicions and the strange place of the burning blade ATM, so hopefully it comes out more as justifying what the burning blade did during that specific battle was for that, not its actions over a longer period of time.

Cause that's not true.

That said I also think there's room to twist Thrall's metaphore back on him too. He said in his vision he held a blade that burned his hand, its a very unsubtle metaphor, but arguably it can be made even more so. AKA instead of the burning blade being representative of something corrupting the horde, instead it is very literally the burning blade clan or Grok specifically, whose power unleashed for the horde did destroy its enemies, but also burnt its hands.

AKA Thrall's got all the subtly of a brick, but its still alluding to something, strip even that away and we can control another bit of the narrative, made even easier by how that version is likely even simpler to understand.
 
I fear the more we attempt to control the narrative/undermine thrall's authority, the more likely we are to see fel corruption/garrosh types in the future.
 
hapcelion said:
I fear the more we attempt to control the narrative/undermine thrall's authority, the more likely we are to see fel corruption/garrosh types in the future.
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Not the intent. Intent was to try and bring more heat onto us, by using his metaphore but recontextualising it. The above is probably better as acting like a check since it dispels ambiguity, it just confines it to a singular instance. However it still reminds folks that the burning blade/fel is dangerous stuff, shit it burns ya hands. Its just it can be used sometimes for good.

Just remember toasty hands.
 
Doomed Wombat said:
Not the intent. Intent was to try and bring more heat onto us, by using his metaphore but recontextualising it. The above is probably better as acting like a check since it dispels ambiguity, it just confines it to a singular instance. However it still reminds folks that the burning blade/fel is dangerous stuff, shit it burns ya hands. Its just it can be used sometimes for good.

Just remember toasty hands.
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I get that the idea is to try and salve the issue so we can have the clan continue by putting more focus on us. but that's what I'm uncomfortable with. Because then while ostensibly the plan is for feldad to maybe get an epiphany, and change, I don't share the optimistic sentiment that he will. If anything, someone that paranoid and set in their ways, I see as taking this as a chance to continue exactly where they left off, perhaps accelerated given the hostility he feels towards thrall and the recent turn of events.

The Lie isn't my first choice, but if it's the action we're taking, I'd rather not have Grok shoulder more blame than he needs to. The clan bears it as well.
 
hapcelion said:
I get that the idea is to try and salve the issue so we can have the clan continue by putting more focus on us. but that's what I'm uncomfortable with. Because then while ostensibly the plan is for feldad to maybe get an epiphany, and change, I don't share the optimistic sentiment that he will. If anything, someone that paranoid and set in their ways, I see as taking this as a chance to continue exactly where they left off, perhaps accelerated given the hostility he feels towards thrall and the recent turn of events.

The Lie isn't my first choice, but if it's the action we're taking, I'd rather not have Grok shoulder more blame than he needs to. The clan bears it as well.
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Perhaps, but I'll try to give him a chance if one exists. And if he has to go down that path then I'd rather keep him where he can be seen than let him slink away into the shadows.
 
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    • Scheduled vote count started by FractiousDay on Apr 18, 2021 at 6:31 PM, finished with 50 posts and 11 votes.
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