Omacron, I appreciate the input, however much of the guide is based on a logical progression. At the same time, much of the information you claim conflicts with information taken directly from the RPG books (and has not really been contradicted since). Things like the group families, Kaldorei men being more artisans, etc.
Er, all of the information I provided is cited, and the majority of it comes from sources published AFTER the RPG. Also, pray tell, what manner of logic have you used here, besides jumping to conclusions? You can't say "oh, look, my reasoning is logical" without actually SHOWING it. And a lot of what you said is just pulled out of your rear, like the "group families" thing. You don't provide ANY citations, period. There are some generally correct things in your post (namely, those I did not rebut), but unfortunately even more is made up crapola.
05/27/2011 12:58 PMPosted by
Melyria As for things like diet, I said mostly vegetarian, which is to say that meat does still exist in their diet but it is not the focus in the same way other cultures have it.
And I said, based on their culture and habitat, meat would actually factor MORE into their diet than both modern humans and most other Warcraft cultures. Societies that live in dense forests tend to get more of their nutrition from hunting than those who have farmland for raising crops, and since we know night elves have hunters... what do you think they do with what they kill?
On the item of necromancy, I find that you're taking a bare bones effect from WC3 and trying to expand on it when it conflicts with past lore. Wardens gain their power from Elune, much like how Priestesses do (skills such as Blink and Greater Invisibility rely on the Warden's faith) and Avatar of Vengeance is no different.
The night elves interact with spirits all the time- what do you think wisps are? That's necromancy whether you like it or not. Necromancy is actually a bigger part of night elf society than most. Furthermore, you can't just discount things in-game unless Blizzard themselves do so. Since we've seen nothing to say the abilities of the WCIII warden are not canon, and it's clear that Avatar of Vengeance USES THE CORPSES OF THE WARDEN'S ENEMIES (http://classic.battle.net/war3/nightelf/units/warden.shtml), it's obviously necromantic.
The undead upset the nature of balance, which Night Elves deem one of the highest priorities in the world, something they will fight and kill to protect. A Night Elf Death Knight would be a blasphemy of the highest degree. As well, Necromancy (specifically the Necromancy granted through the Scourge) is a vein of Fel Magic that is, at its base, infused with demonic power.
There is such a thing as non-demonic necromancy, prevalent among the trolls. There's a very popular and definitely possible theory that the night elves evolved from trolls, and their religions certainly seem to mirror eachother with ancients and loa, so the simple existence of necromancy need not be "unnatural", especially when you consider the Wardens are explicitly "Secret police", meaning they're essentially above the law and given special permissions.
Now, you have every right to not follow my guide and there others out there. However, I've looked at said guides (mostly after I wrote this) and I've noticed that they are strikingly similar in the information they provide. One is on the EU forums that basically is a slightly longer winded version of my own, with a couple of points up for contention.
What you're doing, in theory, is admirable. Unfortunately, the execution is flawed, as you make too many jumps in logic and add in too many of your own theories as fact for this to be truly helpful. You give people the wrong idea of night elf society- probably because your view of the night elves is colored by WCIII. Look, night elves were my favorite race in WCIII, but the characterization of night elves has completely changed in WoW and even more so in Cata. While your statement that "night elves aren't purple humans" was definitely accurate in the WCIII era... I'm afraid it's not so accurate in the time of Cataclysm.
