This week, I want to talk to you about one of the most complex and gloriously frustrating characters in the world of gaming. Incidentally, there will be several pretty weighty Battlestar Galactica references in this installment of Out of Character, but if you're not a fan of BSG, I'll just wait right here while you run off and catch up on my favourite show ever.
Done? Good. Then let us begin.
MOIRA BRONZEBEARD - WORLD OF WARCRAFT
You won't know who Moira is if you're not a bit of a lore junkie, but that's okay; unlike other actual RPGs, World of Warcraft is a Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game. Recording audio for dialogue is a bit tedious with MMO games, so typically when you talk with someone you're free to either (a) skip the dialogue, or (b) run off before the person/orc/dwarf/gnome is done talking to you. The MMO is in the process of breeding what I call PLOT BLINDNESS: an ailment in which people who are otherwise normally into narrative and plot find themselves skipping massive swathes of intricately scripted stories so they can attain PHAT LEWTZ.
*COUGH*
Which is all well and good, but it's left people like me in an awkward position. Questing in WOW for me is a rich experience, filled with plot twists, characters I love getting killed off, and compelling coups d'état. For many, it's got about as much to do with storyline as THIS GUY has to not being a douche-swizzle.
In World of Warcraft, politics is a big deal. Almost every race is crumbling under the weight of inner political turmoil, and none more so than the Dwarves. You see, there are three factions of Dwarf: The Bronzebeards of Ironforge, the Wildhammers, and the Dark Irons. Guess who the bad ones are. Anyway, a major fracas led to these three factions... can you refer to a genocidal civil war as a 'fracas'? Oh well. Guess I just did. Anyway, the three factions had a tiff (see above for a discussion of a similarly flippant word), called the War of Three Hammers (one for each clan) resulting in the Wildhammers heading off to live topside over at Aerie Peak, where they became renowned for their breeding of gryphons. Everyone can, and should, love the Wildhammers.
Aerie Peak: dream holiday destination. Anyway, the next faction of dwarves, Bronzebeards, whose mighty hammers did mighty hammery things (mainly with weapons, armor and the occasional creased fender), won the scuffle and took up residence inside Ironforge, the largest and most spectacular city in Azeroth (the 'World' in World of Wacraft). Their King, a wise ruler named Magni, will be discussed shortly. Here's a picture of the great forge in the heart of Ironforge, which might give you a clue about where the city got its name.
And here, just because I love this picture, is a concept painting of the Ironforge gates.
But of course, this leaves out the ultimate fate of the Dark Iron dwarves. The Dark Iron clan were led (at the time of the fooferah) by someone called, menacingly, SORCERER-THANE THAURISSAN. After his forces were driven out of Ironforge, Thaurissan performed probably the single most dickish move of any character in World of Warcraft so far: he used his magic to summon some backup.
See the big fiery guy? The one holding the hammer? The one as big as a mountain? Yeah, that's Ragnaros, the evil master of all fire elementals. The gods who built Azeroth LOCKED HIM UP IN A SEPARATE PLANE, which should indicate two things. Firstly, that untethering him because you're a sook is a proper dick move, and secondly, that Gods are equally convinced that locking up violent morons and ignoring them will ACTUALLY FIX THINGS. Anyway, summoning Ragnaros not only scoured all life for miles around leaving formerly verdant forests as miles of scorched molten earth, but led Ragnaros to enslave the Dark Iron clan deep under Blackrock Mountain, the epic volcano from which Ragnaros sprang. Crazy bad times. Oh, and this sublimely stupid move spurred the remaining dwarves who'd survived to unite and beat the ever-loving shit out of the Dark Irons. Which felt good, I'll wager.
Skip forward to the time of World of Warcraft. Magni, the king of Ironforge, sends you to retrieve his daughter, who was evidently kidnapped by Dark Iron dwarves. You, being the adventury type, comply. Halfway through your infiltration, you rescue princess Moira Bronzebeard's bodyguard, a dwarf named Kharan Mighthammer, who recounts how the kidnapping went down as follows:
So after some truly epic and pitched skirmishes, you enter the throne room and confront the current leader of the Dark Iron clan, one Emperor Dagran Thaurissan. And when you talk to Moira, she reveals that she wasn't, as her father insisted, under any spell or brainwashing, but that she loved Dagran. Not only that, but she angrily reveals that she's pregnant with his half Dark Iron, half Bronzebeard child, that she's extremely bitter and twisted after you slaughtered her husband, and asserts that whether you and Magni like it or not, her halfbreed son will rule everything. EVERYTHING.
Moira might LOOK like Princess Leia, but she reveals herself to be a vicious, frighteningly capable schemer; indeed, it's strongly implied that she organised the kidnapping and murder of her minders, simply so she could weasel her way to power and overthrow the empire of her father. When the latest expansion was released, AZeroth was rocked with a violent cataclysm; the elements were in uproar, and, desperate, Magni sought to commune with the elements. Something went terribly awry, however, and Magni was transformed into diamond. So he was killed. I don't mind telling you a cried more than a little. And this was the point at which Moira Thaurissan (for this is the name she now goes by) put her plans into action (provided you believe she didn't have a hand in the death of her father, which many people are sure she did).
She filled Ironforge with her own Dark Iron minions, shut of communications with the outside, and exacted a stunningly violent and insidious military coup. Every encounter she had with resistance was filled with restrained hatred, and although you wanted to punch her in the face really, really hard, it was sort of hard for those following her actions to not see why she was so twisted up inside; after all, she'd been twisted up inside by a potentially oppressive father (not violent, just stifling; I won't hear a word against Magni and his mad parenting skills), she'd pursued forbidden love, and then she'd had her father send his lackeys to KILL HER HUSBAND. WHILE SHE WATCHED. AND WAS PREGNANT. WITH HIS BEBE.
Which makes her a great deal like this woman right here:
Admiral Helena Cain from Battlestar was, like Moira, someone who makes me almost physically angry. She was a hateful, twisted, borderline psychotic, but she was driven by a conviction that what she was doing was absolutely right. What made her so frustrating (and compelling to watch) was that she was surrounded by people who SHOULD have prevailed, but couldn't, because they were totally blindsided by her willingness to kill the shit out of anyone and everyone who got in her way. Moira is exactly the same, and (SPOILERS) much like in BSG, things got so bad that eventually, the people we were rooting for (Adama/Roslin and Varian/Jaina respectively) planned to take the bitches OUT. In the case of BSG, fate conspired to take care of Cain for them. In the case of Moira, the assassination plan was halted by King Varian Wrynn's son, Anduin, whose attempts to broker peace led to the foundation of a council, with a representative from each clan. Moira would represent the Dark Iron Ballbags, Muradin would represent the Bronzebeards, and Kurdran would represent the Wildhammer clan.
REPRESENTIN'.
More recently, Moira once again displayed her trademark manipulative nature by starting a series of viral rumors about the Wildhammer clan in an effort to create a violent insurrection against them, culminating in riots, deaths and a narrowly averted civil war. Nice one, Moira. It's not that she's evil, it's just... well, in World of Warcraft, characters are usually black or white, or a shade thereof. You can typically pick you good and bad guys. With Moira, however, things are ridiculously grey. It would be easy to dismiss her as simply a villain, but she now has a halfbreed toddler with her during council meetings, and one day, that kid IS going to be heir to the Bronzebeard and Dark Iron empires, which is why pulling the strings and inciting a violent overthrow of the Wildhammers makes sense. Provided you're a total psycho.
Moira Thaurissan is one of the most intelligent, driven, and certainly the most doggedly, persistent and cunning characters in World of Wacraft. Is she guilty of patricide and attempted genocide, or is she capable of being redeemed? And if she DID redeem herself, could you trust her enough to STAY redeemed? Of course not. But you can't kill her, because she's a mother. And you can't kill her son, because her son is a freaking baby, and you're not that much of an asshole. But Moira is. She's a terrible, terrible walking lesson in an increasingly grey narrative: that victory goes to those willing to do what it takes to win, whatever the cost. Mercy gets you killed most of the time, so Moira doesn't show an inch of it. The day she becomes a raid boss and has to get taken down for the good of the dwarven empire, I'll be the first one in line to put a bullet in her brain. But until then, she'll have my begrudging respect.
Done? Good. Then let us begin.
MOIRA BRONZEBEARD - WORLD OF WARCRAFT
You won't know who Moira is if you're not a bit of a lore junkie, but that's okay; unlike other actual RPGs, World of Warcraft is a Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game. Recording audio for dialogue is a bit tedious with MMO games, so typically when you talk with someone you're free to either (a) skip the dialogue, or (b) run off before the person/orc/dwarf/gnome is done talking to you. The MMO is in the process of breeding what I call PLOT BLINDNESS: an ailment in which people who are otherwise normally into narrative and plot find themselves skipping massive swathes of intricately scripted stories so they can attain PHAT LEWTZ.
*COUGH*
Which is all well and good, but it's left people like me in an awkward position. Questing in WOW for me is a rich experience, filled with plot twists, characters I love getting killed off, and compelling coups d'état. For many, it's got about as much to do with storyline as THIS GUY has to not being a douche-swizzle.
In World of Warcraft, politics is a big deal. Almost every race is crumbling under the weight of inner political turmoil, and none more so than the Dwarves. You see, there are three factions of Dwarf: The Bronzebeards of Ironforge, the Wildhammers, and the Dark Irons. Guess who the bad ones are. Anyway, a major fracas led to these three factions... can you refer to a genocidal civil war as a 'fracas'? Oh well. Guess I just did. Anyway, the three factions had a tiff (see above for a discussion of a similarly flippant word), called the War of Three Hammers (one for each clan) resulting in the Wildhammers heading off to live topside over at Aerie Peak, where they became renowned for their breeding of gryphons. Everyone can, and should, love the Wildhammers.
Aerie Peak: dream holiday destination. Anyway, the next faction of dwarves, Bronzebeards, whose mighty hammers did mighty hammery things (mainly with weapons, armor and the occasional creased fender), won the scuffle and took up residence inside Ironforge, the largest and most spectacular city in Azeroth (the 'World' in World of Wacraft). Their King, a wise ruler named Magni, will be discussed shortly. Here's a picture of the great forge in the heart of Ironforge, which might give you a clue about where the city got its name.
And here, just because I love this picture, is a concept painting of the Ironforge gates.
But of course, this leaves out the ultimate fate of the Dark Iron dwarves. The Dark Iron clan were led (at the time of the fooferah) by someone called, menacingly, SORCERER-THANE THAURISSAN. After his forces were driven out of Ironforge, Thaurissan performed probably the single most dickish move of any character in World of Warcraft so far: he used his magic to summon some backup.
See the big fiery guy? The one holding the hammer? The one as big as a mountain? Yeah, that's Ragnaros, the evil master of all fire elementals. The gods who built Azeroth LOCKED HIM UP IN A SEPARATE PLANE, which should indicate two things. Firstly, that untethering him because you're a sook is a proper dick move, and secondly, that Gods are equally convinced that locking up violent morons and ignoring them will ACTUALLY FIX THINGS. Anyway, summoning Ragnaros not only scoured all life for miles around leaving formerly verdant forests as miles of scorched molten earth, but led Ragnaros to enslave the Dark Iron clan deep under Blackrock Mountain, the epic volcano from which Ragnaros sprang. Crazy bad times. Oh, and this sublimely stupid move spurred the remaining dwarves who'd survived to unite and beat the ever-loving shit out of the Dark Irons. Which felt good, I'll wager.
Skip forward to the time of World of Warcraft. Magni, the king of Ironforge, sends you to retrieve his daughter, who was evidently kidnapped by Dark Iron dwarves. You, being the adventury type, comply. Halfway through your infiltration, you rescue princess Moira Bronzebeard's bodyguard, a dwarf named Kharan Mighthammer, who recounts how the kidnapping went down as follows:
Several months ago, the Magistrate of Lakeshire sent envoys to Ironforge, pleading with the King for assistance with the Blackrock incursions coming from Redridge and the Burning Steppes. Princess Moira volunteered to help, against my pleadings. I was assigned twenty elite guardsmen to protect the Princess through the perilous journey from the Loch to Lakeshire.
We made our way through the Searing Gorge tunnel and into the ravaged wasteland comprising the gorge. In retrospect, things were eerily quiet. The only dangers we ran across were the wildlife of the region: Creatures that my men easily dispatched. We reached Blackrock Mountain with relative ease and made our way through the stonewrought construction without so much as a hiccup.
As we were making our way across the Burning Steppes, we were ambushed. It must have been a hundred of them... Dark Iron Dwarves! They were shifting out of the walls, from the rocks in the Steppes; out of every crevice, nook, and cranny in sight. They swarmed us, overwhelming the guards and the few brave heroes that had agreed to assist us on this mission.
One thing was clear: This was a highly orchestrated ambush. It was as if they knew every move we would make before we made them... how else could this have happened? Someone must have tipped the Dark Irons off.
So help me, if I ever get out of here, I will spend the rest of my days finding the traitor. Where was I? Oh, yes, so we were captured. My elite guardsmen were captured on the spot. They spared me and took the princess away by way of ram. I was taken to the detention halls of the Slag Pit and then transferred to this prison.
I can only assume I am still alive because they wish to extract a ransom for my pitiful life. Or maybe out of cruelty, as a way to let me forever play back the events that transpired in my mind. Regret is the cruelest jailor of all, <race>. She now resides at the side of Emperor Thaurissan. He has her under some sort of powerful thought altering spell... and here I sit, completely helpless.
So after some truly epic and pitched skirmishes, you enter the throne room and confront the current leader of the Dark Iron clan, one Emperor Dagran Thaurissan. And when you talk to Moira, she reveals that she wasn't, as her father insisted, under any spell or brainwashing, but that she loved Dagran. Not only that, but she angrily reveals that she's pregnant with his half Dark Iron, half Bronzebeard child, that she's extremely bitter and twisted after you slaughtered her husband, and asserts that whether you and Magni like it or not, her halfbreed son will rule everything. EVERYTHING.
Moira might LOOK like Princess Leia, but she reveals herself to be a vicious, frighteningly capable schemer; indeed, it's strongly implied that she organised the kidnapping and murder of her minders, simply so she could weasel her way to power and overthrow the empire of her father. When the latest expansion was released, AZeroth was rocked with a violent cataclysm; the elements were in uproar, and, desperate, Magni sought to commune with the elements. Something went terribly awry, however, and Magni was transformed into diamond. So he was killed. I don't mind telling you a cried more than a little. And this was the point at which Moira Thaurissan (for this is the name she now goes by) put her plans into action (provided you believe she didn't have a hand in the death of her father, which many people are sure she did).
She filled Ironforge with her own Dark Iron minions, shut of communications with the outside, and exacted a stunningly violent and insidious military coup. Every encounter she had with resistance was filled with restrained hatred, and although you wanted to punch her in the face really, really hard, it was sort of hard for those following her actions to not see why she was so twisted up inside; after all, she'd been twisted up inside by a potentially oppressive father (not violent, just stifling; I won't hear a word against Magni and his mad parenting skills), she'd pursued forbidden love, and then she'd had her father send his lackeys to KILL HER HUSBAND. WHILE SHE WATCHED. AND WAS PREGNANT. WITH HIS BEBE.
Which makes her a great deal like this woman right here:
Admiral Helena Cain from Battlestar was, like Moira, someone who makes me almost physically angry. She was a hateful, twisted, borderline psychotic, but she was driven by a conviction that what she was doing was absolutely right. What made her so frustrating (and compelling to watch) was that she was surrounded by people who SHOULD have prevailed, but couldn't, because they were totally blindsided by her willingness to kill the shit out of anyone and everyone who got in her way. Moira is exactly the same, and (SPOILERS) much like in BSG, things got so bad that eventually, the people we were rooting for (Adama/Roslin and Varian/Jaina respectively) planned to take the bitches OUT. In the case of BSG, fate conspired to take care of Cain for them. In the case of Moira, the assassination plan was halted by King Varian Wrynn's son, Anduin, whose attempts to broker peace led to the foundation of a council, with a representative from each clan. Moira would represent the Dark Iron Ballbags, Muradin would represent the Bronzebeards, and Kurdran would represent the Wildhammer clan.
REPRESENTIN'.
More recently, Moira once again displayed her trademark manipulative nature by starting a series of viral rumors about the Wildhammer clan in an effort to create a violent insurrection against them, culminating in riots, deaths and a narrowly averted civil war. Nice one, Moira. It's not that she's evil, it's just... well, in World of Warcraft, characters are usually black or white, or a shade thereof. You can typically pick you good and bad guys. With Moira, however, things are ridiculously grey. It would be easy to dismiss her as simply a villain, but she now has a halfbreed toddler with her during council meetings, and one day, that kid IS going to be heir to the Bronzebeard and Dark Iron empires, which is why pulling the strings and inciting a violent overthrow of the Wildhammers makes sense. Provided you're a total psycho.
Moira Thaurissan is one of the most intelligent, driven, and certainly the most doggedly, persistent and cunning characters in World of Wacraft. Is she guilty of patricide and attempted genocide, or is she capable of being redeemed? And if she DID redeem herself, could you trust her enough to STAY redeemed? Of course not. But you can't kill her, because she's a mother. And you can't kill her son, because her son is a freaking baby, and you're not that much of an asshole. But Moira is. She's a terrible, terrible walking lesson in an increasingly grey narrative: that victory goes to those willing to do what it takes to win, whatever the cost. Mercy gets you killed most of the time, so Moira doesn't show an inch of it. The day she becomes a raid boss and has to get taken down for the good of the dwarven empire, I'll be the first one in line to put a bullet in her brain. But until then, she'll have my begrudging respect.
Source: The Vine
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