Conquest of the Horde

I posed this question to our lovely Cressy (*hug*) and she advised me to post it here.

This is the situation, my silly little Blood Elf, Luna Arise To'ryll, is a very 'old fashioned' blood elf.
Now i've always had an issue with chicken-mounts, not because they're ugly (Personal Opinion: although they are), but be cause they do not seem particually practical in a war-time situation.

The Quel'dorei steed, attainable by alliance is more of a reminder of the majesty that the high-elves had achieved before their ruin. And i love this unicron mount. It's both a very striking roleplay took, very practical for a soldier and a perfect reminder of their origins

Therefore i want to pose a question to people:

Would it be realistic for a Blood Elf to have retained such a mount from before the fall of the High Elves
Or
Would it be practical for a Blood Elf to have ascertained such a mount through other means (trade, thievery)

If either of these is possible, would it be likely to token the mount as a roleplay tool with the race requirements (Night Elf, Dwarf, Draenei, Gnome, Human) removed?

Thanks for your time

tl;dr? Gief Unicron!

I have always had an issue with Hawkstriders. There's no basis for them in lore, and in my opinion, they just look awful. As a choice by Blizz, I see why they did it. But as a player who was really enthusiastic about Blood Elves at the end of Frozen Throne, I was extremely disappointed by the decision. For role-playing purposes, it's almost a requirement that a Blood Elf be a paladin, or not use a mount (in my mind). The hawkstriders are really that bad.

I would be in favor of using either the Quel'Dorei steeds, or just making it so that Belves could use horses. The biggest difficulty, then, is that the horses tend to have alliance colors for blankets and barding, which clashes with the Elven sensibility of red and black.

On a related note, I'm very glad that dragonhawks became available as flying mounts. That is a great boon for Blood Elves, I think, and will be even better when Cata allows us to use them in any zone.

So, I suppose in summary, I like the idea. Don't know how hard it would be to implement, or if it would be worth the effort. But yeah.

I like the idea. It's not such a far-fetched thing to think that there were High Elves who learned to breed horses, and the trade probably had a good chance to bleed over (lolpun) when they became Blood Elves. Families could've passed the trade down in generations, etc. Just give it a little thought and you could come up with a feasible idea as to why a BElf would have a horsey.

Not to mention, I don't think you're going to get much protection on a hawkstrider as you would going into battle on a horse. Hawkstriders always seemed to be a more elegant, showy mount.

Bringing up the topic of old fashioned again, the Ranger Corps armour was blue and yellow, so perhaps those of us who fought in the war, the colour scheme would still possibly work?

I see your point about not being battle practical, but i think thats why they suit bloodelves so well. S'like, they are perched up on their high and mighty suede chairs on the back of an overly decorated bird, striding about cause its far too common to be expected to walk

Olegionel Wrote:I see what you are talking about guys,BUT I think that hawkstriders are actually really cute and "suits" to blood elfs.Moreover,their "birdy" look (hawkstrider`s look,not blood elf`s ) looks very fantasy and unlike any other mounts!BUT I also think that forsaken`s race mount looks just great too...It`s so "misterysh" and magical :roll:

While I see your point Olegionel, they aren't practical to ride into battle with.

I'm not sure if hawkstriders are impractical. For one, they lack the requirement of having to be shoed and the various care that is needed for hoof maintenance (including periodically trimming back the part of the hoof that grows). Hawkstriders instead possess an almost reptilian-like three-pronged appendage that is probably better able to grip or otherwise dig into the terrain.

Given the mix of reptilian and avian features, it might also be likely that the hawkstrider has a more varied diet than their four-footed counterparts. Horses are herbivores, and are sustained with a steady diet of grasses and other grass materials -- and they eat consistently throughout the day. On the other hand, hawkstriders (who are similar to terror birds or phorusrhacids) could maybe be carnivorous or even omnivores and eat far less frequently. This would allow a greater selection of food from which to make their diet. So not only could they maybe eat meat, but they may also eat a range of plant species and plant parts, including fibrous twigs and leaves taken from leafy plants.

One fun thing to contemplate is that, if they do strictly eat a diet of plants (tallstriders, who are somewhat similar to hawkstriders, eat a diet consisting of cheese, bread, fungus, and fruit as hunter pets), hawkstriders might have to use gizzard stones.

The bright plumage is something that would be hard to justify. Typically brighter colors are used for mating purposes (though typically only one gender of the species is bright in color) or as a defense against predators (linked with toxins that would otherwise harm their attackers, for example). It might be that the quel'dorei and sin'dorei bred the bright plumage intentionally because they preferred it to a duller coat. Perhaps the elves (who are consistently portrayed as being haughty) would prefer this very visible image.

I don't know. It's Blizzard's game and Blizzard's lore; they've chosen to make this the iconic mount of the blood elves. Regardless of how people perceive their appearance, that's just the way that it is! This, of course, shouldn't detract people from using other mounts (hell, I'm second-in-command of a guild of dwarves using bear mounts), but the reason for doing so should probably be grounded (or explained) using logic.

There are no flamboyant turkeys anywhere near Silvermoon. There are not even horses... You got Dragon Hawks, Lynx, bats , and spiders. It would make sense that they would use Lynx as their mount, as they use Dragon Hawks as a flying mount.

^ Which is something that would have possibly bled over from their origins as Night Elves. Night elves Ride the felines native to their homelands as land mounts, and ride hippogryph as air mounts..Why? Because those are the creatures readily available to them. Duh.

Only creature that looks remotely like a Quel'Dorei steed is a zhevra...and those are only in the barrens with the color scheme way different....So, where did these quel'dorei steeds come from...why would they be introduced with such other fine animals close by silvermoon...

Vagabond Wrote:There are no flamboyant turkeys anywhere near Silvermoon. There are not even horses... You got Dragon Hawks, Lynx, bats , and spiders. It would make sense that they would use Lynx as their mount, as they use Dragon Hawks as a flying mount...

There aren't horses near Stormwind or Elekks near Exodar in the wild, those only become available because of breeders. Same thing with the hawkstriders.

Also, to the point that Hawkstriders are not practical mounts. They actually make more sense than riding horses. Because of their small and round bodies they are harder to hit and it is much easier to have armor to cover it. While its legs are much thinner and may be weaker, but they are also, just like the chest, harder to hit and may be more flexible.

No idea where humans got horses from, closest horse thing is in the barrens of Kalimdor, a place humans hadn't been to until the third war.

Makes sense that Draenei have their elekks, since it also makes sense that they brought some with them from outlands when they left.

Blood elves (and before them, high elves) shoulda been riding Lynx IMO. Hawkstriders have no place amongst Blood Elves (or high elves, if they had them too).

Quel'dorei steed: See dilemma with humans and horses.

Perhaps the blood elves don't use Lynxs -because- of their Night elven counterparts. Blood elves want to prove they are different from night elves and want to stray away from anything that could be misinterpreted as something from night elven culture, such as the Lynx vrs nightsabers

Well, I think it comes down to the fact that Blizzard has incorporated the hawkstriders into their lore by adding them into the game as the principle mounts of the sin'dorei. We may not like it and we may not understand their reasoning, but no amount of griping is going to change it.

As noted before, we most definitely don't have to allow that to limit our characters to what mounts they can use, nor do we have to conform with the norms. I think it's important, however, to realize that our preferences won't necessarily change something's place in the universe's lore: hawkstriders can't be impractical just because we don't like them.

Krilari Wrote:Perhaps the blood elves don't use Lynxs -because- of their Night elven counterparts. Blood elves want to prove they are different from night elves and want to stray away from anything that could be misinterpreted as something from night elven culture, such as the Lynx vrs nightsabers

Blood elves and high elves were not immortal like the night elves; while there are night elves alive who remember when the Highborne were banished from Kalimdor after the Sundering, generations of high elves have lived since then (over 7,000 years, resulting in at least 70 generations based on physical maturity of 100 or so years). So while many night elves may fervently dislike their counterparts in the Eastern Kingdoms, generations have lived and died over the years. They may have maintained histories that chronicle what happened to them, but they may be incomplete or even incorrect (intentionally or otherwise). Think about how uncertain we are of events that have occurred in our world over the last thousand years -- which is far less than 70 of our generations!

That said, a common theme in literature when a group of people are exiled or banished is the need to create a new identity for themselves. They are often portrayed as creating a new persona (sometimes by rewriting history) to either justify why they were forced to leave or as a way to reclaim honor/pride/whatever. This might be part of the explanation for the hauteur that is common of high elves and particularly blood elves -- who choose to distinguish themselves further by calling themselves sin'dorei (Children of the Blood) in remembrance of their fallen kin.

So, those who left (or were forced to leave) their kin on Kalimdor may have only a vague recollection of their past as a society. They'd probably have wanted to further distinguish themselves from their kin, which would probably also explain the gradual change from moon worship to sun.

In that sense, they may have chosen an entirely different mount, but it wouldn't explain their current (and sudden!) appearance in World of Warcraft. The only thing I can think of is the existence of tallstriders, who are similar in appearance to hawkstriders and are native to Kalimdor (including Darkshore and Azuremyst Isle). Perhaps some of the Highborne brought tallstriders with them when they were exiled and then bred them. They'd have changed significantly in the approximate 7,300 years that have since passed (think of the evolution of horses, particularly when the importance of horse breeding was identified during the Middle Ages). And, in the process, their efforts have changed them so much that they don't have a counterpart in the wild (much in the way that domesticated ferrets are radically different from wild ferrets thanks to 2,000 years of directed breeding).

I can't find any information on how long hawkstriders or tallstriders live, but I'm guessing that quite a few generations have lived and died over seven millennia. You'd probably see extreme and deliberate changes in a species in that period of time.

Lots of speculation! I enjoy these kinds of things!

What I don't get is they don't look practical as in, riding into battle with one...can you help me understand why they'd choose a Hawkstrider to ride into battle with?