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Elven interest
baisuzhen wrote in wow_ladies
Hi Ladies and Gentlemen,

Being quite the lore geek, and as well as a pseudo aspiring anthropologist interest, I often wonder, how has the evolution of the Night Elves come about. During Azshara's time, all elves were purple skinned aren't they? Including the High Elves right?

After they were exiled, how long did the High Elves evolve to the current pinkish/human skin? Also they shrunk in size?? How long would such a physical change take? Was it a gradual process or a sudden(magic)?

Are you a High Elf because of your beliefs or because of your heritage? How many of them were exiled? I mean the current population of Silvermoon City, while small compared to the Humans and Orcs, are still substantial enough. Given the rate of elven reproduction, just how much genetic differences were there available for them to populate up to a city range?

Also just how devoted as a race the Night Elves are towards Elune? Do High Elves in Azshara's time still follow Elune? When the time of their banishment came about, how do they cope with the loss of the Moon Goddess? Culturally speaking, and as well as daily lives, do they revolve around Elune? How do Elune feel about the loss of her elven children? Does she even care or she's simply a racist xenophobic deity whose interest is only if you are still purple-skinned?

There has been absolutely no word from Blizz regarding An'she the Sun God. He simply reappeared in Cata, and then no further word. Was he even integral to Elven life? Do the High Elves, after being banished from nocturnal lives and adopting diurnal lifestyles know even of the Sun God's existence? 

I can't answer all the questions, but I can give it a stab. Timelines for when the highborne left you can probably find on the wiki, to give you an idea of how long the evolution took. http://www.wowwiki.com/Highborne This covers a few of your questions, at least on the matter of Elune, in that they don't worship her and gave that up when they were exiled. Considering they were exiled, I don't think that Elune is a big fan of them and it's not really her fault in that matter. They were kinda giant assholes.

I imagine that the current population of Silvermoon is actually pretty small. They lost 90% of their population and not all of that remaining are blood elves.

Well, first off, the terminology needs to be mentioned. There were no "high elves" in Aszhara's time, they were all Highborne. They were the ruling class of the elves, so Aszhara was one of them. I believe everyone had night elf colored skin back then, but I'd wager the Highborne were already looking more pale than their fellow night elves.

I think there's mention of the highborne having physical differences from the lower caste during Azshara's time, so the complete transformation, while it wasn't sudden, probably didn't take long. It would have begun in earnest when the highborne that survived the Sundering were exiled from Kalimdor and found themselves in Quel'thalas. They made the Sunwell and things went as they go. All of the physical differences between night elves and high elves are attributed to arcane corruption.

Currently, I'd say you're a high elf because of both. Your heritage up until the Sunwell's destruction dictated your high elf status, but after that, it became whether you decided to follow Kael'thas's means of sating their magic addiction. If you believed that to be wrong, you remained a high elf. As far as the way Silvermoon looks in-game, I kind of think that they added more NPCs than would actually be there just so it wouldn't feel like a giant, empty city. And I'd imagine there's enough diversity to keep from having too much trouble, but I don't know about that.

While night elves of today are very much so interested in Elune, I don't think highborne really cared about her. Back then, it seemed like a thing for priestesses and that's it. Of course, I'm speaking from Knaak-given knowledge now, so I don't really know. I also think Elune became more of a universal both gender thing after Cenarius was killed.

And, as for An'she, I don't think the high or blood elves even give him one thought. He's a tauren deity, so they would revere him as much as they'd revere the Earthmother, which means not at all. He doesn't seem integral to the Sunwell, which is all the high/blood elves really care about. I think their love of the sun stems more from the Sunwell and "it's totally the opposite of those night elf losers nyaaah".

During Azshara's reign, and before that point, all night elves were just night elves. The "high elves" you are thinking of are actually "Highborne" which are just regular night elves that were favored by Azshara and used magic. They caused the Maelstrom eventually, and were exiled--the ones that didn't get tossed into the bottom of the sea eventually moved on and evolved into "high elves"--however, there are still a sect of Highborne elves, and those are the Shrendelar (sp, I'm at work atm) and they are the ones that live in Dire Maul and the ones that rejoined the Alliance recently so that night elves can effectively be mages. Theoretically, all "night elf" mages are Highborne, I believe, however, for sake of ease, they're just referred to as regular night elves. These are NOT high elves.

You'd be a high elf because of your genetics-high elves are not biologically the same as night elves or even blood elves anymore, they are all related, but different.

As far as the Highborn worshiping Elune, I don't think they really cared. They were enthralled (likely magically) by Azshara, and probably didn't care at all one way or another about Elune for the most part. I'm not sure how high elves would feel about Elune.

just as a note it seems in terms of lore that the highborne did worship both sun and moon at one time because it's mentioned by one of the NPCs(i forget which) in the Ghostlands when he tasks you retrieve materials from the Sanctum of the Moon. Though that's not to say they worshiped Elune as a deity. Also as a note the queldorei ghosts that you have to kill in that area look very much like a step in the transformation between night elves and the current high elves, (mainly pink skin and blue eyes but night elf features).

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