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Know Your Lore: High General Turalyon
The World of Warcraft is an expansive universe. You're playing the game, you're fighting the bosses, you know the how -- but do you know the why? Each week, Matthew Rossi and Anne Stickney make sure you Know Your Lore by covering the history of the story behind World of Warcraft. He saved his people. Not many people can say that, but High General Turalyon can. On the slopes of Blackrock Mountain, when the greatest warrior the humans of the world of Azeroth had ever produced went down to dusty death, one man turned shattering defeat into hallowed victory. That man was Turalyon, paladin of the Order of the Silver Hand, strategist of the combined forces of the Alliance of Lordaeron during the Second War. It was Turalyon's hand that raised Lothar's broken sword in outrage over orcish perfidy. It was Turalyon's voice that roused the fury of the Alliance at the sight of the dead hero. And it was Turalyon's will that broke the orcs once and for all, that drove Doomhammer to his knees in defeat. Turalyon beat the Horde at Blackrock Mountain. Turalyon led the Alliance to the very site of the Dark Portal, where Khadgar destroyed its physical form. And beyond that, it was Turalyon who led the Alliance Expedition beyond that same portal, to face the shaman Ner'zhul and his twisted ambitions. Turalyon's forces managed to seal the Dark Portal and prevent Ner'zhul's destruction of Draenor from affecting Azeroth, and in so doing, possibly saved the world entire. Since then, no word has of his ultimate fate reached those he led, saved and left behind. It is indisputable that this paladin is one of the greatest heroes of his people, possibly even the greatest paladin who has ever lived. (With all due respect to Uther, Turalyon's record is unambiguous in its greatness.) Yet Turalyon never felt himself to be great. Struggling with doubt every day of his life, convinced the death of Lothar was his fault, he endured and pressed on, steadfast unto the edge of death and perhaps even past it.
Know Your Lore: Intermezzo Part One - Return of the Horde
Welcome once again my friends to the lore that never ends, we're so glad you could attend, come inside, come inside Know Your Lore. This week, we look at the aftermath of the Second War and the years between it and the Third. A lot happened in this intermezzo between the drums of two wars, because in general it seems that Azeroth basically reels from crisis to crisis. I should also point out that in at least one case, a major lore figure dies in one source and yet is said to be alive later in a previous source. If you pay attention to Warcraft lore this will no doubt not surprise you terribly. At the end of the Second War, the Alliance forces destroyed the Dark Portal in a rather impressive bit of CGI for the time. Generally, it was hoped that Khadgar's little bit of pyrotechnics would end the threat of the Horde forever, as (the theory went) there would be no more reinforcements coming in through the portal. This act effectively broke the back of orcish resistance to the Alliance of Lordaeron's forces, and in so doing ended the war, as even Orgrim Doomhammer found himself captured and chained by the Alliance. Only Kilrogg Deadeye and those few forces directly under his command managed to evade capture and remained free. This would come back to cost the Alliance. However, in the immediate aftermath of the War, the nations of the Alliance found themselves divided on the question of what to do with the orcs, many of whom had sunk into a strange despondent lethargy with their defeat. Should they all be killed? If not, what else could be done with them?
All the World's a Stage: So you want to be an Alliance Warrior
This installment of All the World's a Stage is the twelfth in a series of roleplaying guides in which we find out all the background information you need to roleplay a particular race or class well, without embarrassing yourself. From the way that warriors are available to nearly every race in the game as a sort of default fighter person, you'd think that they would be the fallback choice for any number of different sort of characters you might imagine. Any sort of regular shmuck could be a warrior right? You just gotta pick up some sort of weapon and start swinging it around at an enemy, yes?No. Even though the Warrior class is available to almost every race in the game, every race has its own tradition of what it means to be a warrior -- it's not just a farmer with a pitchfork running around and trying to kill things. Warriors go through extensive training, learn to wield a wide variety of weapons, and train themselves in staying upright and charging about even while wearing all kinds of heavy metal on their bodies.So today we'll look into some of the ways that the races of the Alliance understand what it means to be a warrior, and see which heroes your character might look up to, as well as the archetypes these heroes represent.
