No, this isn't an "Alliance whining about neutrality" post.

I am curious about the direct lore reasoning. As we know, the paladin resistance of northern Lordaeron survived despite all odds and grew into powerful orders: the Scarlet Crusade and the Argent Dawn, later transformed into the Argent Crusade. The two orders stood proud in their neutrality (hostile or passive) and never took the side in the Alliance-Horde conflict.

But why?

Or, rather...

Why didn't they contact and rejoin the Alliance in the first place?

What did the Silver Hand knights of Lordaeron had to lose by establishing the contact with Ironforge and Stormwind like Southern Lordaeron did?

Now, with the Scarlets you can chalk it up to Balnazzar's influence - even though in WoW they STILL sent their emissaries to recruit Alliance heroes, but what's up with the Argent leadership? Confined to small territory, all alone, yet reluctant to ask for help?

The continental factor was the first that I thought about... But it's not really in issue for either Argents or Scarlets - agents of both operated on KALIMDOR, doing silly stuff like harassing the naga or battling local demons. So, by all means, the Argents could do just that. What stopped them?

Please, propose reasonable ideas. Not the kind of "They didn't because Blizzard hates the Alliance" or "They didn't because it would mean surrendering before the evil Stormwind".

Maybe in those 5 years from WCIII to Vanilla they were unable to leave Lordaeron because it was too dangerous and filled with way too many undead? Just a guess.

Because the Argent Dawn existed to fight the Scourge. When it war created, faction conflicts weren't a thing in that region and the Scourge was a major threat. Now, Tirion is in charge and wants to stick to the old ideals of this faction when the context isn't the same anymore. The Scourge is much less threatening and the Forsaken are at war with the Alliance. The can even be considered Scourge 2.0 with their fighting ways.

The Argent Crusade is no-longer needed unless they change their mentality.

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Why didn't they join? Possibly because they feared that the Alliance would not accept some of it's members, like the orcs and tauren. Another possibility is that they preferred their neutrality, which enables them to chose whom they'll fight without having to follow some ruler in the south.

Why didn't they ask for help? The way I understood it, they constantly recruit members of the two playable factions, which is simply not really shown ingame. Still, I think they've asked for help a few times. During the zombie event, for example.

I think the part where the Argents insist on hiring anyone and everyone who's willing to fight evil is the delineating factor.

I think when it comes down to it, Blizzard never plays up the interaction between the Argents and the Alliance because the question of how the Alliance deals with orcs in the Crusade opens up a lot of problematic scenarios. Either you have to characterize the Alliance as being uncompromising when dealing with Horde races (which ultimately recalls Garithos and his bigotry) or you have to handwave and say the Alliance doesn't have a problem with it as long as the Argents are not hostile to Alliance interests.

As for in-universe reasons, I think it just comes down to manpower. They're too concentrated on fighting against the Scourge in Lordaeron to ask for help. When it comes to one-off characters doling out quests in Desolace or Blackfathom Deeps, I chalk that up to random quest designer whimsy. Notably, I think a lot of those references are gone post-Cataclysm.

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Expect nothing and anything will surprise you.

Why was my thread moved down here, instead of the Lore discussions?

You didn't read my post thoroughly. Both Scarlets and Argents sent their agents to different continents one way or another.

Why didn't they join back when they were still remnants of the Silver Hand, and not a network of crusaders from all races and classes?

Wasn't it always here?

I meant it to be in Lore... Maybe it slipped my mind?

Or the mods moved it seconds after it's creation. They're evil, like that.

This is similar to asking "what was going on in the EK south of Lordaeron during WC3."

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Expect nothing and anything will surprise you.

But the Scarlets MANAGED to contact the Alliance pretty early - early enough that half their diplomatic chain didn't know that their leadership has gone crazy paranoid.

Probably because they were Silver Hand ambassadors already in the South. They didn't need to send other guys. It's probably also the reason they still managed to recruit more troops, people in Stormwind probably didn't knew a lot about the Crusade and the fact they went insane.

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Why would Brother Crowley align specifically with the Scarlets if he was a generic Silver Hand emissary, though? He would be required to have at least knowledge of the Crusade to don their scarlet robes.

We don't know. Ask Sean. Maybe read the Ashbringer comic.

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They probably sent letter to him saying they renamed themselves the Scarlet Crusade for whatever reason and told him to continue recruiting. Or maybe Crowley don't like other races so he decided he was with the Crusade instead of the Argents when the time to side with either of them had come.

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Existing outside the control of governments can carry benefits, if they had joined the alliance they probably would've been told to pull out of the Plaguelands.

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Lore reason, who knows. Game reason, since they wanted large neutral factions whose stories both factions could take part in for the larger story.

But they didn't have to become vassals of Stormwind. They could have joined the same way southern Lordaeronians did, pledging to the Alliance, not a single king. Given that the paladins were also nobility, they could mash up some "Grand Duchy of Eastern Lordaeron" for the vassalage specifics if needed...

If it was in Blizzard's interests to take the story in that direction, I can see exactly that happening; Tirion and whatever remaining living Lordaeronian nobility establish a new government as the nation gets reclaimed. But given how the logical conclusion of that narrative involves either redeeming the Forsaken or driving them out of Tirisfal/Undercity, I don't see it happening within the context of the WoW game.

Even so, something that doesn't really get represented well in-game is the concept that the Alliance is really a mutual defense treaty instead of a hierarchical structure. Varian can make demands of the Three Hammers if he wants, but it's up to the Three Hammers to say whether they're going to deliver. Varian can get Tyrande to stand down at the Temple of the Red Crane, but that's because he's got dwarf, gnome, and jinyu troops in the way setting up countermeasures. So if the Silver Hand/proto-Argent Dawn had decided to throw their lot in with the Alliance, my sense is they wouldn't really have a different modus operandi than they do now. There would just be the possible troubling discussion of Varian asking for troops and Tirion saying "NOPE BUSY WITH DEADITES AFK"

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Expect nothing and anything will surprise you.

I'm thinking about the pre-Tirion period, actually. Back when the schism between Argents and Scarlets happened, to be precise. Maybe early WoW too.

The problem is timeline then. Admittedly, while the Ashbringer narrative gives us some of the highlights, it doesn't really give us a clear indication of when it happens relative to details like Varian's disappearance. The post-TFT, pre-WoW era is really not well-defined.

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Expect nothing and anything will surprise you.

Don't we have a general idea of that, though? Stormwind was being rebuilt and then had the Stonemasons rebellion. The Gnomes were busy blowing up their city. The Dwarves do what they usually do: hunkered down in Ironforge.

A better question might be "Why were there so many Orcs and Tauren in the Argent Dawn in the first place."

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"Noble countrymen, evil is upon us. Darkness has befallen our shores. Rise and slay thy enemies� strike, strike so others shall live. The meek shall not fade into the night� live my brethren, live." - King Terenas Menethil II

After fighting the Scourge in Kalimdor, they decided it was a very bad thing that needed to be fought, so they went over to Lordaeron to do so, then signed up with the Dawn.

Except

A) There was still a Scourge presence in Kalimdor. See: The Argent Dawn

B) The Scourge in Kalimdor was a blatant offshoot of the Burning Legion, which anyone who fought the Scourge exclusively in Kalimdor would see as the real threat.

C) Orcs and Tauren have absolutely zero investment in any lands in the Eastern Kingdoms. If they simply wanted to "fight bad things that needed to be fought" there are plenty of things that were actual threats to them in Kalimdor to fight.

The only reason why there are any in the Argent Dawn ties to answering the OP's question, which is that they aren't Alliance because Blizzard wanted to give the Horde the Alliance's story arc.

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"Noble countrymen, evil is upon us. Darkness has befallen our shores. Rise and slay thy enemies� strike, strike so others shall live. The meek shall not fade into the night� live my brethren, live." - King Terenas Menethil II