Sand and Bugs, Part 3: Where's the Sense of it All?!?

Here we have a map of the Old Azeroth zone of Silithus, which has been my home of Sand and Bugs for the past four days. That's all that's really there though: sand and bugs and a big gate into Ahn'Qiraj. In vanilla WoW before Burning Crusade, this zone along with Eastern Plaguelands and Winterspring were the highest level areas in the game. In my opinion this place was the most dangerous area in the game, with three huge silithid hives that were previously filled with lvl 60 elite bugs. In between each is a bunch of worms, spiders, scorpions, and other nasty crap, including various camps of Twilight Hammer cultists. It's not a pleasent place to spend a vacation.

Today, with everyone being level 80 and all the bugs in the three hives no longer elite, this zone is a pushover, and I can pretty much storm through it without much effort, just a lot of time and risiliance to boredom.

That's not what I came here to say though. Rather, if you spend time in Silithus you come to realize that it's a very peculiar place. In the map above, you can see the three main hives of Silithus (the patches of pink): Hive'Ashi in the north, Hive'Zora in the west, and Hive'Regal in the south-east corner. Each of these hives has a town or encampment nestled up against it, with the main town of the area, Cenarion Hold, up against Hive'Ashi, an alliance base against Hive'Zora, and a horde camp watching over Hive'Regal. Now after spending a lot of time in both Hive'Zora and Hive'Regal over the last couple days, I can see why the Cenarion Circle decided to put the Alliance and Horde bases where they currently are.

One might think they're in the idea that Horde are making better warriors so they strategically placed them next to the larger and more dangerous silithid nest! I would agree with this, but I don't think that's the only reason. I personally think that the Cenarion Circle also realized ahead of time that the Alliance really doesn't make a great deal of sense so they put them in charge of a silithid nest they would be well suited to.

You see, both Hive'Zora and Hive'Regal have a particlar type of "worker bug", called Tunnelers in Zora, Burrowers in Regal. These bugs look largely the same, a cross between an aphid and a ladybug, the only difference is their colors depending on what hive their in. In both cases though they're pretty much the same: worker caste insect much like you would find in ant colonies.

In Hive'Regal, there are a few of these workers topside hanging out in a few of the boney spires that make up a silithid nest, a sensible place for a worker doing work. Others can be found down in their tunnels, at dead ends. That makes the most sense, yes? They're burrowers! They should be burrowing! Duh! O_o

Well, you would think so, but I guess Hive'Zora has a pretty different way of doing things. Instead of down in the tunnels digging tunnels as tunnelers should, you'll find the tunnelers wandering aimlessly outside and down the halls not tunneling, being in places where patrolling tank and warrior bugs should be, or maybe he's just being lazy. I'm reminded of the Marijuana Spider and his hammock...

It can be clearly said that Hive'Zora does not make a great deal of sense, so the Alliance got stuck watching over them. Because putting the senseless in charge of those who make no sense only makes perfect sense, am I right?