Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
The Burning Legion.
They’re the bad guys of Warcraft.
They want to see Azeroth, both planet and the world soul of a celestial Titan, burn
out.
Then they can move on to destroy the rest of the universe.
But time and time again, they’ve lost.
They lost the War of the Ancients.
They lost when trying to use the Orcs to subdue Azeroth.
They lost after using the Lich King to summon Archimonde the Defiler into Azeroth.
They lost when the summoning of Kil’jaden failed.
They lost when the re-summoning of Archimonde failed.
And now in World of Warcraft: Legion, they’re poised to lose once again, starting with the
death of Gul’dan, one of their top agents.
Then there’s the likely defeat of Kil’jaden, and at some point, an interstellar trip to
Argus, supposedly the seat of the Legion’s power.
But for all the Legion’s setbacks and now their first defensive posture on Argus, can
the Legion truly be defeated once and for all?
Hey it’s Soul, bringing you the Word of Warcraft, and today I want to speculate just
what could happen on Argus and just how the Legion could be defeated.
Spoiler alerts, by the way.
In the World of Warcraft MMO, players are being positioned to assault Argus, the big
capital planet of the Legion.
According to current lore, there’re a few ways for people from Azeroth to get to Argus.
One is by way of the Army of the Light who’s already on Argus, They’re led by Turalyon
and Alleria, famous warriors from past wars, and accompanied by god knows who else.
Lothraxion, a Nathrezeim, is part of this coalition, also called the Golden Army.
He arrived with reinforcements at Netherlight Temple to help the Priests and Paladins there
against Balnazzar and a fierce Legion attack.
Later, Lothraxion represents this army at the Paladin Order Hall.
This means that at least he has access to travel through the Twisting Nether and then
make his way to Argus, and maybe people can hitch a ride.
Another way is through using the Exodar, the hijacked ship used to travel or well more
like crash into Azeroth.
Velen told his people to prepare the ship for a return trip home to Argus, which sounds
like total suicide, but after he was tricked and kind of sort of took part in killing his
own son we could say that Velen is, if nothing else, extremely motivated.
Then there’s Illidan who, based on the Illidan book, established a link from Outland to Argus
and almost literally right near where Kil’jaden’s seat of power is.
It’s hard to tell just how potent of a portal can be created through this link.
It took the sucking up an army’s worth of souls to open a portal to another Legion held
world.
There’s no doubt that if this method were to be used, a different source of power would
be needed, at least one that Illidan’s new allies would agree with.
The Legion is invading Azeroth, and its defenders are looking for the Pillars of Creation to
sever the link to wherever the Legion’s forces are coming, but who’s to say that
it’s a one way road?
It may be possible to travel to Argus through this already established mechanism by using
the Pillars.
This seems like a longshot because in Warcraft’s history, traveling through gateways and portals
has always been a two-way street requiring cooperation from both sides, and it’s not
likely that friendlies are on the other side of this gateway.
Finally there’s the Scepter of Sargeras, which allowed Sargeras to send a piece of
himself to Azeroth.
This weapon is possessed by the current leader of the Council of the Black Harvest, who just
might look like this.
But this basically means that the wielder of the Scepter can either travel anywhere
they want, or can transport a certain amount of mass or energy where they want.
So in the context of the World of Warcraft game, players will travel there through one
or more or all of these means, land on Argus and probably kill tons and tons of demons.
The ultimate goal is to stop the Legion, preferably once and for all.
But here’s the thing.
Is it even possible?
We have to look at the Burning Legion not as a simple force of destruction but a massive,
intergalactic organization with vast resources spreading across probably a good chunk of
the universe.
The Legion is led by Sargeras, a planet sized god-like being once known as a Titan but later
went turncoat and became corrupted by the very thing he was supposed to stop.
And now he leads them.
As evidenced by the Chronicles books, Titans are immensely powerful and sit on the ludicrous
side of the power scale, so much so that their direct interactions to a planet are likely
to cause lasting, permanent damage.
The Chronicles books detail that Titans are too powerful to interact with a planet directly.
The Pantheon, the crew of good Titans, created the Titanforged constructs to do work for
them on a planet’s surface.
Sargeras was never known to create Titanforged in his heyday, but currently he either empowers
or orders his Legion around instead.
It’s sort of in dispute whether or not he has a physical body, not after the War of
the Ancients when he attempted to step into a collapsing portal and maybe have been banished
to the Twisting Nether, but there’s no reason to think he’s stuck there for all of eternity.
Even if he were though, that makes him that much more difficult to touch but just as dangerous
as ever.
For the purpose of this video though we’ll assume he’s capable of leaving the Twisting
Nether at will.
He just doesn’t because the Legion has been effective at placing his influence in multiple
locations at once.
Basically there’s no known method to go toe-to-toe with Sargeras and survive, unless
you’re also a Titan.
Then we have the many other races that make up the Legion’s ranks.
Leading them are his primary lieutenants, The Eredars Archimonde and Kil’jaden, and
there’s Talgath too, who might be next in line.
The Eredar as a race are part of the Legion too, and are powerful spellcasters in their
own right.
They’re followed closely by the likes of the Nathrezeim, Doomlords, Pit Lords, the
Mo’arg, all of their sub-races and on and on and on.
Planets touched by the Legion are either burned to a crisp or assimilated into its ranks,
creating a link of numerous planets.
Reason dictates that these planets are likely linked through portals or gates to communicate
and supply.
So let’s look at Argus, brought into the Legion some 25,000 years ago.
Given the time passed, Argus probably represents the seat of power for the Legion as an organization.
Despite that, the bulk of the Legion’s standing army will not be on Argus because that’s
just one of many planets under the Legion’s control.
Presumably its leadership, mostly Eredar, is there.
It’s their planet after all, and there’re at least enough Legion ground forces there
now to fight off the Army of the Light, and apparently still push them back.
The two most powerful Eredar are Kil’jaden and Archimonde, empowered by Sargeras when
they submit themselves to him.
Well I guess they were the most powerful; they could be assumed as dead or incapacitated
by the time the heroes of Azeroth show up on Argus.
If so, does that mean the Legion is in total disarray?
In my opinion, not at all.
Like I said the Burning Legion is more than just a ham-*** lump of demons that smash
into planets.
They grow with every corrupted world.
Their enemies shrink with the worlds they destroy, and for thousands upon thousands
of years, they’ve grown to be pretty efficient at burning planets.
Except for one.
Taking out Archimonde, which still hasn’t quite been confirmed, does deal a blow to
the Legion’s organization; after all he was their primary field commander.
But it doesn’t mean that anyone else can’t take up the reins.
For example Kil’jaden orchestrated many of Azeroth’s invasions, including this most
current one.
If Kil’jaden is defeated or outright killed in the coming months, this deals possibly
a greater blow to the Legion’s ability to strike, but probably doesn’t affect its
ability to defend itself.
To say that only two Eredar were worthy of the Dark Titan’s blessing is a discredit
to the Eredar as a race.
You can bet there that there are other Eredar eager to take up the reins as chief lieutenants
of the Legion and since the Eredar are part of the most current invasion force, I’d
speculate that as a race, there’s a very high population of them.
Talgath for example was the one who located the Draenei on Draenor many years ago, and
has ambitions to serve more directly under Sargeras.
The current openings thanks to Legion’s events may give him that chance.
So what then?
It appears that chipping away at the leadership may slow the reaction time of the Legion hierarchy
but it doesn’t get us any closer to truly defeating the Legion because there’s the
impenetrable wall of Sargeras that just isn’t an option to deal with.
The next option is to go around Sargeras and disrupt the mechanisms behind the Legion’s
infrastructure.
I said earlier that the Legion is an intergalactic organization.
An effective way to combat that is to mess with all the things that keep the Legion organized.
This means disrupting their networks of portals and records.
In the Illidan book, Illidan did in fact do this when he was finding out how to get to
Argus.
Once he retrieved the records detailing the location of Argus, he detonated the energies
used to make his way there, and pretty much shattered the planet, which happened to be
the Nathrezeim’s homeworld.
However!
Most of the more notable Nathrezeim show up in Legion, so we can’t say for sure if their
homeworld blew up or just shattered like Draenor did.
The world of the Dreadlords is heavily affected by magic, so maybe magic is keeping the world
mostly intact.
Or since the Legion seems to be a constantly active machine of destruction, maybe all the
important Nathrezeim are always deployed somewhere.
Assaulting strategic Legion outposts is probably effective though.
Actions similar to Illidan’s will need to be done to either retrieve information, take
out entire Legion worlds, or both.
Actually, Argus itself may house the greatest troves of information that, if it fell into
the hands of the Army of the light, could expose weaknesses in the Legion’s organizational
structure.
Or Argus is so critical to Legion communication that it’s just better to use a means of
traveling to Argus and causing another portal destabilization, or to just plant a giant
bomb.
In the World of Warcraft, players have been told that they’ll travel to Argus though,
so for now, it seems the planet won’t be turned to dust.
But if it’s not to be destroyed, that means there’s something the heroes of Azeroth
want from there before they do that.
That could also mean Argus is ultimately a trap set by the Legion, or maybe just set
by Sargeras.
There might be a cost benefit for Sargeras to just destroy Argus while Azeroth’s greatest
champions and the Army of the Light are there.
Maybe the Legion is just buying time, toying with the Army of the Light to tempt others
to join the fight, and them bam, Sargeras cleaves the planet in two.
Strategically, the Legion has almost every advantage because of their sheer numbers,
resources, and the overpowered Dark Titan.
But Sargeras needs Argus just like he needs the Legion.
As strong as he is, he can’t project his full power in two places at once.
I suspect Argus is a central hub of communication and transport for the Legion, making this
vast network both a strength and a weakness.
In fact Argus is probably the singular most strategic point for the Burning Legion’s
advance.
Without Argus, the network that supports the Legion will destabilize and perhaps isolate
the Legion’s armies within its individual planets.
If there’s a way to possibly “infect” the connection between Argus and the Legion
worlds connected to it, which I presume is all of them, a super crazy magic spell could
cause a sort of chain reaction from Argus that destroys or at least cuts off all of
the Legion-held worlds.
That should be enough to cause absolute chaos within the Legion’s ranks.
Isolation leads to confusion, confusion leads to infighting and insurrection and eventually
destruction.
That’s what I theorize, at least.
But even with all the demons out of the way, does that mean Sargeras is vulnerable at all?
According to Chronicles, Sargeras was able to defeat the Pantheon of Titans with only
the demons he had on hand which did not include the Eredar at the time, a broken sword, a
lot of felfire and huge balls.
Not only that but even though his demons were decimated in the battle, they’re still around.
“Their apocalyptic battle warped reality and darkened the stars.”
This is a being who fought in a battle that destroyed entire planets and stars, and he
still won.
The only known things capable of defeating Sargeras in a straight fight would be the
Void Lords, a Void Lord corrupted Titan, and Azeroth itself, whose awakening would also
mean probably killing everyone on its surface.
And none of these factors can be influenced in any known way but time.
So even if we totally disabled the Legion’s ability to function as an organization, Sargeras
himself would still wipe us off the map, body or not.
In the event that his entire Legion is incapacitated though, Sargeras then has one of two choices:
One is to reestablish the Legion; restore communications and supply lines between his
worlds and find some new middle management.
The problem there is that, if by this time, the Army of the Light is still around, they’ll
be a force that can continually harass Sargeras’ efforts
The other option is to refocus his efforts to travel to Azeroth himself, adding in whether
or not he has a body.
We can only speculate that while Sargeras does know the location of Azeroth, it’s
really, really far away.
Remember, the War of the Ancients was over 10,000 years ago and that was around that
time when Sargeras realized that Azeroth contained a world-soul.
Sargeras should be motivated enough to want to go there himself to destroy Azeroth but
it took 9,000 years before he actually did something.
This implies that Azeroth is so far away from both Sargeras and the standing armies of the
Legion that he’d rather wait for well over 10,000 or more years to hatch a new plan,
than to travel directly.
Unfortunately, incapacitating the Legion’s means to travel to Azeroth is probably the
best case scenario at the moment.
This will be done by using Argus as a focal point to launch a simultaneous attack on every
Legion world.
Azeroth’s heroes and the Army of the Light, with all their efforts, can only hope to delay
the arrival of the Dark Titan.
But with time bought, they can also focus on cleansing the world of the Old God influences,
then either harness the power of the world soul, or wake up Azeroth itself.
Which could kill everyone.
Share your thoughts, and Stay Breezy.