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Comment by BeerWolf

Guessing she's the mother, poor woman :(

Comment by Samaramon1

Ah cmmon man :( as if I didn't cry enough already...

Comment by Deralinoux

In the run-up to the second quest of the short questline with Wenren Althal (when you hand in Arcane Trickles and accept Arcane Experiments), there is a short scene with Tefferty Ulreth at his door. He says "Here's the last of Ol' Gail's flowers. Are ya sure this will work, Wenren? It's all she had left of home."

The implication is that Wenren used these flowers in his spells researching portals; specifically these were the ones who would allow him to open a portal back to the Arathi Empire, for him and all of his people. After his murder (by that same Tefferty), and once you finish the entire questline (with Finding Justice), you can come back to his house to find this NPC, Ol' Gail, scrubbing the blood left on the floor where you'd previously found Wenren's body. Upon interaction you are told <Ol' Gail wipes tears from her eyes as she scrubs the floor.>

To me, this scene is much worse than her being Wenren's mother, as BeerWolf hypothesized. This old lady gave away her very last memento from her land, which she'd thought lost forever, on a wild, foolish faith in him that he might actually suceed in his portal research. Against all odds he did, he was about to reunite them all with their long lost loved ones and their homeland (maybe even their cherished pets, as Wenren himself hoped for), but at the last moment was murdered, his entire research burned. This one act not only deprived the entire Hallowfall Arathi of their best chance at return and even mere survival, it cost this old woman her last memento, all she had left of her home, alongside her final dream of ever seeing it again. All that's left for her is scrubbing the last traces of her hope in that remaining stain of blood, her tears falling on their wasted life.

This expansion has a lot of wonderful lore and worldbuilding, and I've been left a bit disappointed by the way the quests explored it, particularly in how fast-paced the main campaign story was. The sidequests are as usual somewhat more engaging, finding space to tell these smaller ("local"), more evocative stories, although the writing remains a bit mono-dimensional and the great foundation proposed in Khaz Algar still feels sadly underexploited. This questline was my favorite one so far, I was absolutely expecting Wenren to fail and/or the usual wholesome positivity through effort and healing that I still find a bit too prevalent in the current WoW writing. The absolute cruelty of his loss when everything points to the fact that he actually succeeded, the simplicity of that great implication for the entire faction in an otherwise completely optional sidequest, and the commitment to illustrate the impact it had on an otherwise completely irrelevant NPC, all combine to an absolute gut punch that I will definitely remember. I hope to see more like this in the future.

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Ol' Gail

This NPC can be found in Hallowfall (3).

Ol' Gail

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