Rheastrasza and Sacrifice

Content Note: This post discusses imprisonment, forced impregnation, and forced experimentation. 

This past weekend I had the honor and privilege of being a guest on Apple Cider Mage and Tzufit's podcast Justice Points, a show that takes a look at social justice and feminist issues inside World of Warcraft.  Our episode tackled the subject of mothers and motherhood in Azeroth with topics ranging from how motherhood is portrayed to the conspicuous absence of mothers in game and lore in general.  I had an absolute blast and am rather pleased with how the episode turned out, but there was one character I wanted to touch on who we simply didn't have time to cover.  However, instead of looking at her in terms of motherhood and mothers in Azeroth, this post will center around questions of ethics, consent, and what is meant by sacrifice.

Rhea

While questing through Badlands in either faction, you come across a Cataclysm era quest arc involving a goblin named Rhea.  At first she seems like any other goblin: passionate about her research and eager to uncover the secrets of the black dragonflight's procreation and source of their old god corruption.  She asks for the player's help in the task of stealing wild black dragon eggs and whelpling corpses.  In the larger picture of in-game quests, her request is par for the course.  Go kill stuff and bring back its body part/corpse/poo, or go here and steal some object from the enemy.  However, if we look at the quest on its own merits, it quickly turns macabre in that you're stealing what are essentially infants and killing toddlers to collect their bodies for a third party to experiment on.  Then, once you turn in the corpses Rhea hints at the fact she is no ordinary goblin, but doesn't yet reveal her true identity.  She removes the magical veil concealing the presence of Nyondra, a black dragon mother and we enter a whole new level of horror.

Nyxondra is being held against her will. She is hidden from her brood, right in the middle of their breeding grounds. She lays eggs, but they will be taken away before she can see them hatch.

Cruel? Perhaps... but not nearly as cruel as the treatment that their dragonflight showed my mistress.

Show me that I can trust you, <name>. Take Nyxondra's eggs, and bring them here. You will need to beat Nyxondra into submission before you can take them.

Rhea's mistress is, you will later learn, Alexstrasza the head of the red dragonflight and (now former) Aspect of Life on Azeroth.   That Alexstrasza would order another dragon held captive against her will and allow her eggs to be stolen, experimented upon, and ultimately destroyed in the process is particularly disturbing considering Alexstrasza's own history of forced captivity and breeding during the Second War.  In case it's not enough that you're asked to be complicit in the imprisonment and experimentation of Nyondra, Rhea specifically tells you that in order to earn her trust you must beat Nyxondra into submission and steal her eggs.  The reason for this cruelty and horror is revealed after you hand over the three eggs you literally beat Nyxondra into giving you when Rhea turns into the red dragon Rheastrasza and finally explains the purpose of her experiments.

Rhea says: Deathwing's madness overcomes him, and we, the red dragonflight, must take this opportunity to steal his black dragons from beneath him. We will remake the black dragons as they are intended to be: the warders of the earth.

If you're not familiar with the lore, once upon a time Deathwing was Neltharion the Earth-Warder, Aspect of the black dragonflight.  Many thousands of years ago, Nelthraion was driven mad by an old god and turned against the other dragonflights during the War of the Ancients.  Neltharion became Deathwing and was eventually imprisoned within Azeroth, but not before his madness spread to the other members of the black dragonflight.   After his escape caused the Cataclysm, it appears Alexstrasza asked Rheastrasza to find a means of cleansing the black dragonflight of their corruption by any means necessary.

Alexstrasza's and, by extension, Rheastrasza's motivations are clearly good.  They wish to purify the black dragonflight and restore the order to the dragonflights taken away by an old god's corruption.  After all, even before Deathwing nearly destroyed Azeroth and upset the balance of the elements, other black dragons like his daughter Onyxia had proven dangerous to the world.  There was no guarantee that even with Deathwing's death that the black dragonflight would cease to pose a threat.  However, the question of the ends justifying the means and whether or not sinking to the same tactics of your enemy makes you any better must be asked.  Furthermore, how do we trust this isn't partly revenge or that Alexstrasza wouldn't go so far again under less dire circumstances?  Given that we must bloody our hands to even be entrusted with this knowledge, what other horrors might the red dragonflight--the ones we're told are the good guys--be involved in that we don't know about?  Finally, whose to say that even free from madness the black dragonflight themselves will view this cruelty as necessary and not a betrayal?

With the aid of Titan technology, you manage to clear away old god corruption from one of Nyxondra's eggs.  More questing that requires the deaths of other black dragons follow under the guise of protecting the eggs Rheastrasza has stolen until finally she asks you to kill Nyxondra.

My greatest regret is the treatment that we - no, I - gave to Nyxondra. I forced her to lay eggs, then I performed experiments on them. Over, and over, and over again.

Even as a mother myself, I can only imagine her sorrow.

No... I mustn't be weak. Our work is, after all, for the benefit of future generations of black dragons. Her sacrifice was necessary.

She circles the Ruins of Kargath, northwest of New Kargath, insane with fury. Please, heroes... put her out of her misery.

The line "Her sacrifice was necessary," is curious.  It is, of course, open to interpretation, but to say someone has made a sacrifice implies a choice was made on the part of the one doing the sacrifice.  Nyxondra, as was already established, was imprisoned and experimented upon against her will.  She never consented to have her body used and her children and killed "over, and over, and over again."  Nyxondra's "sacrifice" was chosen for her by Rheastrasza (and also Alexstrasza), and already supposedly insane due to old god corruption, Rheastrasza's experiments have driven her further into insanity and requires she be euthanized like a sick animal.  Given that Nyxondra doesn't simply lie down and accept her fate, we can surmise she doesn't wish to die and the decision to end her life comes from Rheastrasza.

As I said it's open to interpretation and it could be argued that Rheastrasza meant Nyxondra herself was the sacrifice made for the greater good of the black dragonflight (and Azeroth as a whole).  Either way Nyxondra is still a victim stripped of her consent and bodily autonomy, much like Alexstrasza was in the Second War.  We don't know how many children Nyxondra lost only that, like Alexstrasza, it was many.

So, if Nyxondra didn't make necessary sacrifices, who did?

In the end, it's Rheastrasza who makes conscious sacrifices fully informed of the consequences.  First, her ethics and moral high ground are sacrificed when she imprisons a dragon against her will and then kills many, many children in the name of ultimately curing an entire flight.  Lastly, she sacrifices her life and one of her own eggs to protect Nyxondra's purified egg (which unbeknownst to the player and to Deathwing has been moved to a safer location outside of the Badlands).

It's not clear whether or not Rheastrasza knew she would die.  She certainly knew it was a possibility and the letter she leaves for the player makes it clear she accepted this risk unlike her captive.  Yet, I'm left to wonder if she accepted death not out of a noble sacrifice, but because she felt it might make erase the evil of her actions.  Also, with her death dies the knowledge this cruel experiment existed apart from Alexstrasza and that of the players and the gnome scientist Dr. Hieronymus Blam.  If I were to propose a more sinister theory, perhaps Alexstrasza wanted her to die to help keep the experiments a secret.  We don't know if it was common knowledge among the red dragonflight or other dragonflights.  Certainly all of them would agree ridding the black dragons of their madness is a worthy goal, but I can't imagine Ysera or Kalecgos going along with Nyxondra's torture and then death.  The player, of course, knows as does Dr. Hieronymus Blam, but by forcing us to bloody our hands so severely before explaining the plan to us might have been a bid to buy our silence as well.  If we're to believe ourselves heroes at the end of the day, we'll ultimately have to believe every terrible act we do in the midst of war/potential apocalypse was for the best.

Was it worth it?

Rheastrasza isn't around to know whether or not her and Alexstrasza's plan worked.  The egg Rheastrasza cleansed is Wraithion's and right now the jury is out as to whether or not he's all that different from his father.  The end of the legendary cloak quest certainly makes me think otherwise and leaves the question of just how much of Deathwing's evil was the madness of old gods and how much was his own personality.  Then again, given that Wraithion "escapes" from the red dragonflight to forge his own path, we have to wonder if he knows the truth of his birth and what became of his mother.  If so, he might well be out for revenge and this has in turn motivated him to, like his late half-sister Onyxia, try to influence Azerothian politics in his favor.

Or maybe, like Rheastrasza, he sees a larger picture and feels his manipulation and lies are for the greater good and will ultimately save Azeroth from itself when the next great evil is visited upon us.  How far he'll go to achieve his goals isn't clear, but with Rheastrasza and Alexstrasza defining what sacrifices are necessary and setting the tone, there is the potential for greater evil and horror in our futures.