How one awkward moment in World of Warcraft explains why Inquisitor Sally Whitemane goes around without pants

Any long-running universe eventually piles up a backlog of old decisions. Someone carefully puts them side by side, and the lore starts taking on a life of its own. That's especially true when the subject isn't the fate of worlds but a wardrobe. Moments like this make it easy for fans to invent their own legends.

Sally Whitemane, High Inquisitor of the Scarlet Crusade, debuted in World of Warcraft back in 2004. Together with Commander Renault Mograine, she guarded the Cathedral in the Scarlet Monastery.

The game takes place shortly after the events of Warcraft III, when the fanatical order rose from the ruins of Lordaeron. Whitemane look has changed several times since then, and later versions of the character are noticeably more modest than the original.

That led to a chain of logic on Reddit that lore fans now can't unsee, posted in r/wow:

If Whitemane canonically wore pants circa Warcraft 3, that means she canonically took them off while in a private room with Mograine, for some reason, before being interrupted.

It sounds like a joke, but the punchline makes more sense once the original Cathedral fight is fresh in mind. Players first fought Mograine at the altar, and only after he fell did Whitemane rush into the hall. She came through the doors behind the altar, meaning she literally burst out of the next room.

The High Inquisitor then resurrected the fallen commander with the line "Arise, my champion!", and the fight continued against both of them. Whitemane did all this in a leg-baring outfit that's hard to call battle attire.

The joke also works because the lore has been feeding this fire for years. In official Blizzard material, the relationship between Whitemane and Mograine is presented as something more than a chain of command.

Renault is a grim figure, too. He betrayed his own father, Alexandros Mograine, the legendary wielder of the Ashbringer. Against that backdrop, the image of two leaders of a fanatical order retreating to a back room of the cathedral just as adventurers barge in looks almost like a logical plot beat.

Blizzard itself seems to remember the pair. After the Monastery was reworked in Mists of Pandaria in 2012, Whitemane got a new look, and a few years later she became a playable hero in Heroes of the Storm.

But as soon as someone returns to WoW Classic, that same door behind the altar opens again. Players once more watch the inquisitor run out to the altar in whatever she happened to be wearing.