There are many characters in the Warcraft series, but the ones that really made me feel flesh and blood and loved were Garrod Shadowsong and Darius Crowley. Faced with the crisis they had foreseen, the two chose to face it in the opposite way. Although Blizzard does not give plot weight to match their status, it may be a good thing, because the characters who appear frequently are basically completely destroyed.
Garrod was an officer of Suramar who followed the noble leader Ravenques in his rebellion against the Burning Legion at the outbreak of the War of the Ancients and was keenly aware that Aysara was likely to have defected. After the death of Ravenkes, another military nobleman, Daisdale Stareye, took over as leader of the rebels, and although Garrod knew that Stareye's abilities were simply not up to the task, he only privately complained about his arrogance and incompetence. Garrod never considered competing for the supreme commander's power or kicking StarEye down, and despite his greater abilities and Mavi's support, Garrod's idea was to rush to Stareye's side to alert the reckless commander when Stareye led his cronies into the trap of the Burning Legion. Quite thankfully (except Stareye), Garrod was one step late, and Stareye was attacked by the demon legion and died on the spot. The death of the supreme commander plunged the military nobles into chaos, and they elected Garrod, who was next to Stareye, to lead the rebels, and the death of two leaders in a row made the army almost desperate. However, Garrod proved his ability to be incomparable with practical actions, he threw away the arrogance of the night elves, united the bear monsters, earth spirits, minotaurs and night elves, and assigned tasks according to the advantages of each race, and the balance of victory gradually turned back in favor of the rebels.
The Burning Legion then continued to retreat, and the allied forces gradually approached the palace ruled by Queen Aysara. As Maffario and the Dragon Legion quietly head over the Well of Eternity, the Demon Lord Archimonde is focusing on Garrod, believing that publicly executing the Night Elf commander will break the will of the Resistance. Archimonde proposes a duel to Garrod, and the humiliation has caused the demon lord to ignore the crisis coming from the rear, and he easily blocks Garrod's every charge to prove his strength to the Burning Legion and the rebels. But as Archimonde prepares to end the duel, Maffario destroys the Well of Eternity, and Garrod uses his last strength to stab his sword into the demon lord's chest. The portal exploded and swept away all demons, including Archimonde, and did not return to Azeroth until 10,000 years later. Queen Aysara and her cronies sank to the bottom of the sea and would later return to land as a Naga tribe in an attempt to reclaim their former glory.
Until the King of Draenor, Garrod was the only two mortals to single out Archimonde, the other being the Great Druid Mafario. Garrod's post-war reluctance to fight directly rewrote the history of Azeroth, and the next ruler of the Night Elves was undoubtedly him, but according to the content of "Heart of the Wolf", Garrod quietly left after transferring power to Tyrande due to his unwillingness to become a hero and political disagreement with Maffario. Garrod's direct or indirect consequences include:
1. Maffario led a large number of druids (mostly young men) to sleep in the Emerald Dreamland, resulting in the power of the night elves being severely weakened, only controlling a small amount of territory from the Grey Valley to Haigar, and the entire Eastern Kingdom, some Kalimdor and a large number of islands were lost. In the War of the Ancients, the Dragon Legion was severely damaged by the Deathwing and the Burning Legion, the Black Dragon Legion and the Blue Dragon Legion basically collapsed, the Red Dragon Legion and the Green Dragon Legion were often overwhelmed and lacked, and the Night Elves needed a lot of people to take on the task of guarding the world. The price of Mafario leading his people to sleep is that it is difficult for the night elves to even hold the territory (Battle of Sartre), and enemies of the level of the Ancient God can only be led by the commander to fill the meat grinder (Battle of Quicksand), and they cannot defeat the enemy army before they are assembled by monitoring the abnormal situation in time. If the enemy army is active in the Eastern Kingdom or even Northrend, then the night elves have difficulty even monitoring (Catastrophe War), and only after the enemy army attacks Gray Valley do the sentries discover that Archimund has actually returned and hurriedly awaken the druids.
2. Tyrande's prestige is unconvincing. Although she formed a sentry unit to patrol and guard the territory of the Night Elves, she was stretched thin in the face of a fierce war. In the Sartre War, the Night Elves and Druids joined forces to fight, and in this battle, the Druids were eager to quickly defeat the enemy army and chose to take the risk to call on the power of the wolf god Godring, only to gain strength while losing their minds and indiscriminately attacking Sartre and Sentinel. The military nobles who had served as the main force in the War of the Ancients had all unloaded their armor for pleasure, and the other two important leaders, Mavi and Deer Helmet, looked down on Tyrande, and the troops they formed successively refused to obey her orders and followed their commanders to rebel. Even Illidan, a rebel who can rank in the top three in the Night Elf society, still has loyal fans after 10,000 years (in Ferwood Forest, not the plot of "Legion Returns"), which shows that Tyrande's rule is quite mediocre.
3. The forbidden demon order issued by Maffario crushes the Moon Guard and wizarding traditions that the night elves are proud of, and wizards can only obey orders or seclusion (according to the plot later added by Blizzard, some powerful wizards who resisted the Burning Legion in the War of the Ancients finally choose seclusion to avoid the restrictions of the forbidden order), and violators seem to be sentenced to death. The relationship between Darth Rema and the upper elves and the druids fell to a freezing point because of the forbidden order, and in the end, the druids were victorious, and the upper elves were all exiled to the eastern kingdom (originally all executed, and Maffario was soft-hearted). The latter plot is well known to everyone, the tragedy of Archimonde's descendant tracker and guardian is caused by the abuse of magic by the High Elves and humans in Dalaran, and the forbidden demon order only temporarily covers up the problem and does not solve it.
Thousands of years later, the Night Elves accepted Sindra's upper elves to relearn magic because they faced the smoke of war, and even the upper elves themselves rushed to the battlefield. However, because the upper elves did not have enough energy for 10,000 years (Sindra died due to energy exhaustion), and the lack of need for improved magic to be put into actual combat like the high elves under the protection of the shield, the upper elves could not suppress the blood elves. At this time, the forbidden demon order has become a very funny thing, and the blood elves see that the ancestors were exiled by Maffario for violating the forbidden demon order thousands of years ago, but now the upper elves of Sindela can be accepted, igniting hatred in their hearts. One of Aisara's Blood Elf wizards assisted the tribe in killing and destroying the camp of the upper elves, and she was full of disdain for Sindra, mocking their magic for not being able to match Quilsalas.
If Garrod is negative, unwilling to tear the night elf society to attack his friends, he even throws away the laurels he has already worn. Crowley, on the other hand, has a completely opposite personality, and although he fails to turn the tide like Garrod, he chooses to do his best to save this continent that even the guardian Medivan abandons, so he does not hesitate to point his sword at King Jean, an old friend. After the end of the Orc War, Guinness's plan to control Otrank failed, and neighboring Lordaren's strength reached its peak, at which point Jean pondered to withdraw from the alliance and completely block Guinness with the help of terrain to prevent possible future invasions, just as Soladin the Great built a magnificent defensive wall thousands of years ago to prevent the trolls from attacking. Since Guinness has a large number of reefs on the seashore, it is a suicide for an enemy who is not familiar with the terrain to attack from the sea, so on the surface, Guinness is solid after relying on mountains to block land passages.
However, Lord Crowley was adamant against the plan, and he was a staunch supporter of the Alliance, but Jean had already persuaded the other high-ranking officials to agree to break away from the Alliance and block Guinness' plan. After Crowre, after finding that there was no way to solve a negotiated problem, he directly staged a military coup to stop his old friend Jean's crazy thoughts (another of Jean's subordinates, Gaudre, also staged a military coup years later to try to save his Guinness), but Crowley's operation failed, he and several of his cronies were caught and imprisoned, and the old ministry, who escaped pursuit, was dormant under the leadership of his daughter Lorna Crowley.
In particular, when Gianna Proudmore recruited armies and civilians from various countries to leave the Eastern Kingdom (the timing of the novel is questionable, at least it should not have been the Alsatian attack on Dalaran), the Lord of Crore answered the call by sending the "Guinness Brigade" to assist Gianna's expeditionary force. This force appears in Reign of Chaos, where they are tasked with guarding the Rockclaw Mountains in case enemy forces disturb Gianna, but the line is eventually breached by Sal and Kane. The later Rescue Grom and Haikal Jihad Guinness Brigades should also participate, and Crowley should have never thought that his actions would affect the fate of the planet to some extent when he sent his troops.
Crowley turned out to be right, and Lordaren and Guinness were both rivals and dead lips. Times have changed, the Calamity Legion is about to launch the pace of aggression, and mankind can only survive together. Some Lordaren refugees fled to the vicinity of Gremaim and asked Guinness to help them, and if it was Crore, he would definitely suggest rescue for these refugees to find out what was going on in Lordaren, but Jean ignored the refugees' request. When the Forgotten Iron Hoof took advantage of the collapse of the walls and reefs to trample Guinness, Jean realized that his stupidity gave his last chance, and perhaps Jean would regret his decision not to rescue the refugees of Lordaren, whose knowledge and skills could have helped Guinness deal with the undead plague (all the refugees were killed by the tribe, and only one blind blacksmith survived in a remote corner, interestingly, this blacksmith was neutral to the tribe, probably because he was invisible).
Immediately after his release, Crowley led his men into the war against the Forgotten, and took on dangerous tasks such as the Queen of the Temple to cover the evacuation of Guinness's civilians, and Crowley continued to lead the battle until Guinness left with the Night Elf fleet. Although the king, nobles, and armies have withdrawn from the land, the rebels remain here, and those who were once spurned for their betrayal prove who the real heroes are. Later, the rebel leader Goffrey also protected the long-defunct Guinness in his own way, shot Sylvanas to death, and used the body of the undead to guard the once ideal Guinness (one of the pinnacles of Blizzard's plot, actually created a large number of memorable characters in the novice mission, although it is a pity that their story has not been finished.
Crowres stayed in Guinness to continue his guerrilla campaign, forming the Guinness Rebel Front, uniting all forces willing to cooperate, and the Bloodtooth werewolves led by Iva Bloodtooth ambushed the Forgotten and Orcs in the forest, and even crossed the tribe's defenses to invite the survivors of Lordaren on Fenris Island to fight together. Due to the disparity in strength, Crowley devised various tactics and traps to deplete the power of the Forsaken, and his subordinates even used suicide attacks to eliminate Sylvanas' cronies and the executioners who slaughtered Lordaren and Guinness. Although Lordaren, Seramo, and Guinness were eventually slaughtered, Crowley had done everything in his power to prevent the tragedy, and he sent troops to assist Gianna and Guinness after the fall of Lordaren, thinking that saving the civilians of Lordaren was enough to defeat many Alliance leaders.
