May I ask the point of 'kill all the orcs, and kill the orcs some more'? Given the utter importance of unity between everyone, Horde, Alliance,and Sentinels, going out of the way to fight the Orcs, and the Horde seems...counterproductive at best.
Ah good point, perhaps I wasn't specific enough, first we get the orcs to kill some burning legion, then we kill them. Scheduling is indeed important!
If, comparably, you actually meant 'why are you so hostile to the orcs', it's because they're dangerous generally and hazardous to us through parts of their culture and leadership, and I think the safest thing to do would indeed be to kill them all. I in fact ran a whole quest about orcs which is linked in my sig if you're interested. I seem to remember writing a lot of info posts on it
Considering that there might be some misunderstandings of the timeline and the situation, I must address some things:
- Jaina in established lore was there long enough to see Quel'thalas fall. By that time, Lordaeron had already fallen to the Scourge and Dalaran was next.
- The Human Expedition is not a colonial adventure - it's considered by some as a last ditch effort for the Grand Alliance races to survive. For all they know, all of Eastern Kingdoms could have fallen. This has resulted in the current powers coagulating around the leading figure, which is Jaina Proudmoore, who wishes to find a safe haven in Kalimdor for her people. I might be making it canon, that the whole of Eastern Kingdoms have fallen and the Human Expedition considers themselves the last of the Grand Alliance. If so, expect visitors from aboard!
- The situation around the acquiring of Kul Tiran ships is vague in lore. I've left it unaddressed, but I am slowly leaning towards Jaina either stealing them from Daelin to facilitate the reason for Daelin's dash after her, or they were part of some Kul Tiran fleet. I will address this problem in the next post!
- The factional situation will worsen, soon-ish, if things do not go smoothly on land. There's a lot of people on these ships and they are soon able to move willingly, wherever they please.
This is indeed useful (though confusing) so thanks for noting it. I know the lore is problematic but I'll note some things that don't really make sense. These aren't necessarily for you as an author to 'fix', but some things are mutually exclusive, and as a general point of advice, may be problematic. If you as the author has one idea of timeline and internal logic, and the readers have another, there's going to be assumptions made which will make it more difficult to 'play' the quest.
To begin, I'm going to try and lay out a timeline of stuff we know was happening at various points.
- Thrall's gurillea campaign hitting camps culminated with the Orcs stealing southshore ships, assumedly all the ships which were there. The Orcs take somewhat of a circuitous route to Kalimdor and actually take a while to arrive
- Plague spreads through Lordaeron, Arthas opposes it and fails, burns Stratholme, then leaves for Northrend with part of the Alliance fleet (which he later burns keep in mind)
- Cult of the Damned hides out till he gets back, prepares etc.
- There are now lots of displaced people in Lordaeron and other kingdoms, the Alliance has fractured but isn't compeltely broken yet. Lordaeron is weak but not dead for example.
- Jaina departs with a fleet to Kalimdor (Medivh has to tell her Lordaeron has fallen, she's surprised, or at least that's what the narrative of RoC was)
- Arthas conducts his Northrend campaign, and eventually returns home
- The Scourging of Lordaeron occours, presumably over several months. Arthas rallies the undead and heads north to the Sunwell, destroys Quel'thalas, then back south to take on Dalaran, summoning Archimonde.
- Standing forces of Lordaeron and the Alliance still exist, most notably Garithos' army. Other significant pockets of resistance remain, whether as minor elements like the Syndicate, or as major ones like the Scarlet Crusade.
- Daelin at some point has heard that Lordaeron has fallen, I assume he took his ships back there, then sailed back after Jaina but that's an inference
- Lots of the Scourge and demons go to Kalimdor to fight there.
- At some point the orcs and kul tirans arrive on Kalimdor, go about for a bit, eventually go to defend Hyjal and so on.
Now, there are inconsistencies here with what you're saying. This isn't a massive problem, as we know the timeline is messy because Blizzard has no interest in sorting it out. However, for your purposes there are some issues, again with the arrangements of Jaina's specific departure.
The situation before Dalaran's fall isn't actually that bad. It's bad for Lordaeronians and High Elves sure, but Gilneas and Strom are still standing (though weakly), and Stormwind is fine, as are the Dwarves during this period. More importantly, Kul Tiras is also fine, and control the world's largest and most advanced navies (their competiion being Zandalar and the Night Elves, maybe some High Elves too). Logically, I don't see how this can be a 'desperate escape' when there are multiple kingdoms which are doing, if not great, at least ok during this period. Similarly, there are months and months of time in between Medivh first telling Jaina to go west and her actually doing it, if she's waiting around until the actual fall of Lordaeron.
I've had a look at the wiki and it does seem to indicate Jaina was around for longer, so that's a contradiction from RoC that I wasn't aware of but sure. A lot of that seems to be from the books so I can get why it doesn't make sense. Fair enough though. Anyway, Jaina's expedition has the support of numerous groups, but I can't see, for example, dwarves, heading randomly across the sea rather than going to defend their homes, which are under threat from this presumably world ending undead force.
You make the point that they think they're the only survivors, why? A character in this work has a flying machine, Dwarves raise flying mounts, Kul Tiras has ships. The point of the Scourge (as far as I'm aware) was largely to get Archimonde in play by stealing the Book of Medivh and summoning him. That necessitated weaking Lordaeron, getting into Dalaran and so on, which also served the BL's aims of weakening Azeroth's defenders more generally. They presumably planned to attack other places but they didn't, we know this because Arathi, the Wetlands, Hillsbarad, Alterac and so on aren't all like the Plaguelands. The Ashbringer even exists because some Scarlets were able to go down to Ironforge and get Mangi to make it, which at least implies that the roads were clear enough at some point to do that.
Some of this is just the points of my argument, but the more important elements for this quest would be the decisions you as a QM have to make about the internal logic and chain of events.
- For example, I find it to strain my suspension of disbelief to have Jaina steal more than a few ships, or otherwise set off in an unauthorised manner. If she turns up to Boralus and says 'hey guys I've got a stupid idea', she's going to be refused. We may assume that Daelin hadn't gotten back yet so its slightly more believable, but she's not his deputy, he would have had some vice-admiral in charge while he was gone. That's why I assumed it was a colonial expedition.
- Similarly, I just can't really understand how they'd have thought that the other kingdoms had fallen. They'd almost have to sail past Kul Tiras on their way out to Kalimdor anyway.
- Someone would have had to supply the ships. If they were under such threat, why would they have sent a load of random supplies and soldiers away? To use an example, Phillip II in 1585 ordered a fleet be made ready to attack England, this was to have 30 warships and 100 merchant carriers for an army. I'm going to assume we have something roughly similar, given the talk of the 'city of masts' and so on. In 1587 Cadiz was raided and the preparations for the fleet set back a year with the destruction of various Spanish ships and 10,000 tonnes of supplies. This gives you some idea of the timescales to prepare such expeditions, it would take multiple months to do everything.
- My central point though, I don't find it credible to maintain a position that the expedition set off very quickly, but also that they waited around for so long. If they did indeed wait and prepare, as would have been necessary, then there would have been some sort of command structure put in place, it can't have just been a rapid expedition with nothing established.
