Hail to the Lich King?

I mentioned in a previous post that Sylvanas Windrunner is travelling a dangerous path in Cataclysm, one that may lead to her becoming the next racial leader to be a raid boss. She seems determined to be the new Lich Queen. Her use of the Apothecary-engineered Blight in the battle against Gilneas is causing concern from both the Horde and the Argent Crusade, concern which she and those under her command are trying to soothe away with bald-faced lies. The Frostwolves refuse to help the Forsaken in the Hillsbrad Foothills because of what she’s done. She’s raising her own new army of (ostensibly free-willed) undead humans to bolster the Forsaken’s army using creatures who were previously willingly loyal to the Scourge despite clear opposition from the new Warchief. The Dark Lady has gotten out of control.

I also posted about the Horde’s Gilnean Envoys and their Scourge tabards. Taken at face value, this is an even bigger statement than anything else she’s done, openly embracing the symbolism of the Scourge from whom the Forsaken spent so much time trying to distance themselves. It’s a step short of actually calling herself the Lich Queen.

But let’s think about it from a behind-the-scenes standpoint. Blizzard is clearly leading up to something with Sylvanas. There’s Garrosh’s anger at her use of the val’kyr, Drek’thar’s outright rejection of the Forsaken’s request for aid, the Argent Crusade’s murmured disapproval, and the big cliffhanger with Koltira. She isn’t just doing terrible things, she’s doing terrible things and other characters are noticing. There may be a few content patches between now and when this all plays out, but it can’t be left dangling forever. So maybe these Scourge tabards aren’t because of Sylvanas. Maybe they represent whoever will be replacing her.

The most obvious candidate would be Bolvar Fordragon, the new, benevolent Lich King. Rather than command the Scourge as his army, he merely seeks to keep them under control. With Sylvanas gone, would the Forsaken be willing to follow a Lich King who isn’t Arthas and join a Scourge that allows them free will? It’s entirely possible. The question is whether Bolvar would be willing to lead a nation so opposed to his beloved Stormwind. He might view the Forsaken claim to the Plaguelands as justified and be willing to continue fighting the Alliance for it if the Forsaken become his people, and if his identity became known he might more easily convince Varian Wrynn to leave Lordaeron to them, but he also might side with the humans. He showed a willingness to work alongside the Horde at the Wrathgate, but that wasn’t against the Alliance. He could be effective at forging a truce in Lordaeron but might be less convinced of the need for war between the factions. And there’s the little fact that the Forsaken killed him in the first place. The Forsaken could be absorbed back into his Scourge and start using that crest as their own, but would Bolvar care to lead them?

Another possible replacement is Koltira Deathweaver, but his soft stance on the Alliance is what got him in trouble in the first place. That softness, however, is really only tied to one person, a person who has his own strong ties to the kingdom of Lordaeron. With a vacuum of power in the Undercity, Thassarian might decide the Forsaken, as fellow undead “survivors” of Lordaeron, are his people more than the humans of Stormwind. It would make sense, but wouldn’t fit the idea of Koltira and Thassarian representing their respective factions. But with the war against the Scourge over and the Ebon Blade’s storyline finished, do they still need to serve that purpose? I can’t see either of them taking up the Scourge’s livery, though. There’s a lot of baggage there that I don’t see either of them wanting to carry.

It is also possible that Sylvanas has quite simply gone off the deep end, and these Scourge tabards are the latest symptom, but I stand by my belief that something dramatic is in the works for her. We just have to wait and see what Blizzard has planned.

Undead at the End of the World

This was originally posted to Tumblr on 11/24/10. It contains SPOILERS for the new Forsaken starter quests.

I love the Forsaken. They’re angsty, they’re posthuman, they’re less vanilla fantasy than some races in WoW (though that’s an argument in favor of most of the Horde), they’re inherently evil but able to seek redemption - or not, they’re just all-around awesome. I also like hunters. They’re the class I have half a dozen of (almost all Draenei) sitting at level 12 on random servers here and there. I love the customization options of their pets, I love their ranged fighting style that’s still more active than a caster, I love their general solo OP-ness. They were the first class I got to any significant level, but they were left by the wayside due to not being available to Forsaken.

Oh, but that little issue has been resolved.

But what I’d really like to talk about is the changes to the Forsaken starting storyline and the area of Deathknell. My new hunter Anders is just the driving force that brought me there on the first night of 4.0.3a. There was always some question of where exactly all these new Forsaken were coming from, especially several years after the moment during the Frozen Throne when the Lich King’s power over his minions was interrupted and Sylvanas was able to break away with the first Forsaken. Most of us just fudged things a little, saying that Scourge were still breaking away here and there and joining the Forsaken. The new Deathknell gives a more solid answer for new Forsaken: Sylvanas has tasked her new val’kyr allies with raising every corpse they can find to join the Forsaken ranks. Your first “quest” is to be raised by the val’kyr hovering over your prone, immobile form. According to Deathguard Saltain they’re shipping bodies in from “Silverpine, Hillsbrad… hell, anywhere we can get them from.” He even sends you - and your new guardian buddy Darnell - to bring back the corpses of the Scarlet Crusaders who used to harass Deathknell. The Forsaken are serious about bolstering their ranks, and that’s where you as a new Forsaken character come in.

This doesn’t always work out, and that’s the main conflict in the starting zone. Undertaker Mordo is doing his best to sew people back together, but he can’t fix their heads. Some end up as mindless zombies who need to be culled, while others need to be coaxed into coping with their new unlives. Those who have minds but can’t cope try to form a revolt that has to be put down by force.

Deathknell incorporates phasing in a way that’s virtually unnoticeable when you’re playing through it. This significantly mitigated the overfarming of quest mobs in an otherwise busy area and made the whole thing flow as a story much better. The actual environment hasn’t changed much at all, but the quests and NPCs make it feel fresh. I haven’t played through any other starting areas yet - though I have a now-Horde-loyal Grimtotem druid planned - but I hope they’ve been overhauled as beautifully and thoughtfully as Deathknell.

Good Ol' Subtlety

I've decided, in the interest of having more to write about for this blog, I'm also going to talk about Forsaken in general here. Death Knights hooked me so completely because, in addition to being a plate-wearing melee class, they're also inherently Forsaken-like. The Forsaken are easily my favorite race to RP.

To that end, here is my first post that has nothing to do with Death Knights per se, but everything to do with Forsaken:

On the left there is a Gilnean Envoy, the PVP weekend NPC for the new "Battle for Gilneas" battleground.

SHE IS WEARING A SCOURGE TABARD.

GOOD JOB SYLVANAS.

Alas, Poor Koltira

This post contains SPOILERS for a quest chain in the Western Plaguelands. Consider yourself warned!

Lore-wise, Death Knights don’t get a lot of love in Cataclysm. Presumably, once Arthas was dealt with they all went home from the northern front and tried to find whatever place they could back in the land of the Living. Some very likely gave themselves back to the grave. For those of us who have carried on, our main story, the story of our vengeance against the man who turned us into the monstrosities we have become, is over.

I guess most of us found better things to do than stand around giving out quests, because there are only a handful of Death Knight NPCs outside of Northrend and Ebon Hold. However, there are two who play a significant role in the conflict over the town of Andorhal in the Western Plaguelands: Koltira Deathweaver and Thassarian. These two, introduced as BFFs during the Death Knight starting quests*, have often represented the Ebon Blade’s contribution to their respective factions. Rather than working directly with the Ashen Verdict in Icecrown, we see them commanding Horde and Alliance forces against the Scourge from their airships. But they’ve also represented the faction- and race-blindness of the Ebon Blade, as they are close friends despite this.

In Cataclysm, Koltira and Thassarian have each been put in charge of pushing the last of the Scourge out of the town of Andorhal. The Forsaken and the human forces of Stormwind are both trying to lay claim to the town, putting the old friends at odds with each other. After defeating the Scourge they declare a secret truce, but their peace is broken when a group of humans take it upon themselves to attack the Forsaken. When Sylvanas finds out, she promises a harsh punishment:

(Feel free to skip to about 4:45 for Sylvanas' confrontation with Koltira.)

What I find most interesting about this from a lore perspective is how much control Sylvanas has over Koltira. He’s not your average Forsaken, and he doesn’t owe anything to her unless there’s something we haven’t been told. It makes sense that he would have pledged loyalty to her rather than Lor’themar Theron or Garrosh Hellscream, but not so much that it could have been assumed. A woman who openly recruits former Scourge loyalists to her cause would surely be more than happy to give Death Knights a home in her army, but she can’t force them. Koltira made a choice to serve her and she treats him like property to be beaten into compliance if necessary.

There’s a lot going on with Sylvanas in this expansion that seems to be leading somewhere, and the cliffhanger nature of Thassarian’s declaration that he’s going to Tirisfal Glades to find out what happened to Koltira suggests they will be part of it. Blizzard has to have some resolution planned for that. There’s been speculation that the “Lich Queen” may not survive to the next expansion as her behavior continues to go above and beyond what even her allies consider acceptable. If Thassarian blows the lid off of what’s going on in the Undercity that may provide the catalyst. But if Sylvanas falls, who will lead the Forsaken? This is a plot thread that bears watching.


* Their close friendship - and possibly the fact that one of them is an elf - has led to Koltira and Thassarian being frequently “shipped” as a romantic pairing. I would be deeply amused with Blizzard if they made such a badass gay couple canon, but I’m leaving that opinion out of this.

Art by Altana on DeviantArt

Putting the "Death" in Death Knights

Are Death Knights actually dead? It's a question that comes up far too often in places like LiveJournal's warcraftsues community, which has seen a parade of beautiful, warm, unrotted, pregnant not-a-Death-Knights in the past year. But putting aside people who want to have blue eyes and pretend to be a High Elf, people who want to be Drow, or people who are just in it for the ERP but for some inconceivable reason decided they needed to roll their super-sexy chick with blue-black skin, just how dead are our characters? And how did they get that way?

If you walk around Acherus during the opening quests, you'll see necromancers standing around meat wagons. The Scourge need to bolster the ranks of their new Death Knights, and quickly, so they've trucked in bodies to raise to do their bidding. Where do these bodies come from? It's not stated explicitly, but it's a safe assumption that they're soldiers who recently fell in battle against the Scourge. It's also a safe assumption that the bulk of them are from the Argent Dawn, since they have the largest presence in the Plaguelands. This is your "vanilla" backstory for the majority of the Knights of the Ebon Blade: A soldier or adventurer who fell in battle against the Scourge shortly before the events at Light's Hope Chapel and was raised in Acherus, then twisted by the Scourge there into a Death Knight. So the average Knight of the Ebon Blade was killed and raised into undeath. Who and what they were before is open to interpretation, but that much is pretty straightforward.

If you're an NPC, or if you just want to do things differently, it's also very possible that you were killed and raised at another point in the war. Darion Mograine, Highlord of the Knights of the Ebon Blade, died when he impaled himself on his father's sword Ashbringer. He freed his father's soul from the corrupted weapon but cursed himself to undeath, though it's unclear whether the sword raised him or Kel'Thuzad did. Thassarian died at the beginning of the Third War at the hands of Arthas' lieutenant Falric and was raised to join the Scourge as a Death Knight. Koltira Deathweaver was killed and raised by Thassarian during the Scourge invasion of Quel'thalas, then trained as a Death Knight. I admit my own Dariahn follows a little of both formulas, though it was more because I had his backstory hammered out a good few weeks before I played through the starting area than because I was striving to be different. He died in Stratholme and was raised to be a necromancer's personal servant, served the Scourge and the necromancer for years, but was not a Death Knight until he was sent to Ebon Hold by his master to train.

But can you become a Death Knight without dying? There are certainly examples of it in the lore, not least being Arthas himself. (Another would be a certain Drakkari you encounter in Northrend, but I'll not spoil that amazing quest-chain.) But the resulting Death Knight is no less undead. Just because they did not suffer a specific trauma that rendered their body dead does not mean they haven't undergone physiological changes that make them undead beings. Their tooltips even say they're Undead! A major factor in this conversion is the runeblade itself. When Arthas first encountered the dreadlord Tichondrius, he told the now-undead prince, "The runeblade that you carry was forged by the Lich King and empowered to steal souls. Yours was the first one it claimed." The RPG books have some useful hints here as well, as they list rules for Frostmourne as a player-wielded weapon: "An individual who wields Frostmourne will not part with it willingly. Over time the person will go from good to neutral and finally to evil. A non-undead evil wielder will then become undead. Finally the sword is able to suck the being's soul into the sword." This form of conversion likely has to be undertaken with some degree of consent, with the person willingly taking up the soul-stealing weapon. That doesn't mean brainwashing and other forms of manipulation can't be involved. Even Arthas didn't know what he was getting into when he took Frostmourne. But a Death Knight's runeweapon can cause those physiological changes in the living, turning them undead without the body ever technically dying. It's also worth noting that Scourge necromancers tend to show symptoms of undeath due to their constant exposure to necromantic energy, but they never seem to be classified as undead. Practicing necromancy alone doesn't seem to be enough for a spontaneous death-free conversion.

This brings us to the subject of metaphysics in Warcraft, how it applies to both Death Knights and Forsaken, and game mechanics vs creator intent (which is a subject I've spoken on before). Warcraft has the benefit of being one of those universes completely unlike our own where metaphysics are pretty much a known quantity. It's hard to say "There is no Light" when you keep getting hit upside the head with great hammers of it whenever you go into a contested area. Likewise, regardless of any of your personally-held beliefs about the real world, our characters have souls. While the Forsaken may be classified as humanoids so paladins don't destroy them in PvP, it's also a reasonable assumption that Sylvanas "freed" them by freeing their souls from the Lich King's grasp. That's why standard undead rules don't apply to them: They're a sort of hybrid creature with a soul in an undead body. It may have started as a bow to game mechanics, but it works.

How does this apply to Death Knights? The bulk of the Scourge may be mindless, and your average Forsaken was one of these, but there are numerous soldiers among them who are able to act and think on their own like the Death Knights trained in Ebon Hold. But they still serve the Lich King unquestioningly and are unable to act against his will, and this can be extrapolated to be because he controls their souls every bit as much as the mindless ones. Death Knights' souls are absorbed into their runeblades, which are Scourge creations. (Liches, as a side note, keep theirs in phylacteries.) But when you're sent back to your faction's capitol for what I like to call the Walk of Shame, you're given a letter from Tirion Fordring declaring that you have "the soul of a champion. A soul that has only recently been reunited with the body. " Whether it was because the power of the righteous souls at Light's Hope returned your soul or the Lich King freed the Death Knights as a way of casting them out after Mograine's betrayal is up for debate, but your soul is now your own.

So Death Knights are, like Forsaken, a sort of hybrid undead that once again has a soul. Some are raised from the dead, and others are enslaved and converted from Living to Scourge, but they are all free-willed undead. The Forsaken are usually just a little worse for wear.

On Runeblades

As I've mulled over possible subjects to kick off the lore part of this blog, I've come back again and again to thinking that many of them require me to lay out some of my most basic interpretations of what Death Knights are. The biggest problem with lore in World of Warcraft is the conflict between creator intent, or what the game designers originally had in mind, and game mechanics, or what the game designers had to do to make those ideas fit into a game that requires things like class balance. As a writer, I am a big fan of creator intent. I recommend anyone who can get ahold of them to browse through some of the tabletop RPG books published a few years ago (and now sadly out of print) by White Wolf to see an alternate World of Warcraft unhindered by such things as Forsaken who can be healed by the Light because having warlocks as raid tank healers is untenable, or Forsaken who can't speak Common so they can't grief Alliance players, or...well, suffice it to say that Forsaken without game mechanics make way more sense and are much more interesting.

To start discussing the creator intent of the Death Knight class, it's also important to lay out the creator influences, and there is none more obvious than the runeblade Stormbringer from British sci-fi/fantasy writer Michael Moorcock's Elric of Melniboné stories. Even the Wikipedia page on Stormbringer mentions the nod in Warcraft:

"In the Warcraft mythos, Arthas (a prince who betrays his country and becomes undead, ending up looking rather like Elric) wields a soul-stealing runeblade named Frostmourne (the name is similar to [Stormbringer's sister sword] Mournblade). Also, the minor character, Highlord Mograine, carries the Ashbringer, an anti-undead blade whose name seems a clear reference to the Stormbringer. (The 'corrupted' version of this blade, which behaves more like the Stormbringer right down to the blade speaking to its wielder, was one of the strongest blades available to player characters of World of Warcraft for a significant length of time.)"

So whether you're familiar with Moorcock's books or not, it's pretty clear that the people at Blizzard are up on their classic fantasy, and I'd strongly recommend the Elric books to anyone looking to get a handle on the whole soul-stealing runeblade concept. Stormbringer and its effect on its wielder give one an excellent basis for WoW's Death Knights and their own runeblades. Death Knights are literally soulbound to their swords, often giving them names like Koltira Deathweaver's Byfrost, and they form the core of their power with the souls they consume. But they are also a dark, corrupting influence, and they ask a terrible price of their wielders. Elric's Stormbringer was as addictive as a drug, and it often took the lives and souls of his friends. Frostmourne took the soul of its own wielder, turning Arthas into into an undead slave of the Lich King.

Unfortunately most of the adoption of this into the game had to stop with NPCs because of game mechanics. There was talk early on of having Death Knight runeblades as upgradable weapons, possibly with a way to transfer stats from looted weapons, so that we would wield the same sword throughout the entire game. That was sadly dropped even before the Alpha testing, partly due to a belief that the player preference for a striking visual representation of new loot was more important. (Apparently I was misremembering, because after getting home to where my work firewall is not I researched and found that was just fan speculation. It's not unreasonable to think they considered it, especially as similar as it would be to the Heirloom system, but there's no confirmation it was proposed. Sorry!) We still have the Runeforging system, which gives us excellent enchants for little more than the price of our character's immortal soul, but it's not really the same as a persistent upgradable weapon to drive home how important the runeblade is to the concept of the class. In one of the first Death Knight starter zone quests, "The Endless Hunger", immediately after runing your blade Instructor Razuvious tells you, "The endless hunger will soon take hold of you, Death Knight. When it does, you will feel pain immeasurable. There is only one remedy for the suffering: the hunger must be sated." You're then instructed to kill one of those declared unworthy to be a Death Knight. "Kill and the pain will cease. Fail and suffer for eternity." It's a beautiful setup, but after that there's not a great deal of follow-through.

Personally, as a fan of Moorcock's books and an avid RPer, I have a pair of [Frostguard]s playing the role of Dariahn's twin runeblades, Reckoner and Revenant, and declare any actual useful weapons to be OOC. This sort of "RP armor" thing is pretty common on RP servers as you're lucky if you can get a PvE set that even matches, much less actually looks good, so I don't have any trouble getting people to go along with it. Naturally, the [Greatsword of the Ebon Blade] also makes an excellent RP runeblade, and you'll already have one by the time you get out of the starting area. I encourage anyone playing as a Death Knight to find a nice weapon to play the part, give it a name, and succumb to the hungry singing of your own black blade!

Welcome to Chill of the Grave!

I know, there are already so many WoW blogs out there, why start another one? Well, for one thing, because my boyfriend was getting tired of me keeping him up all night debating to myself the relative merits of Glyph of Death and Decay and Glyph of Obliterate. I'm a writer deep down in my bones, and a chatty one too, so this is largely a place for me to talk about things.

It's also a place to provide information for people who want to actually learn to play this class, though I'm more interested in debate than simply saying "This is how you have to do things or you fail". While there are definitely things you have to follow, there's plenty that is open to your own personal playstyle, and I believe all valid ways of playing the game are, well, valid. I prefer debating the advantages and disadvantages of one thing vs another to outright declaring that one is the only way to do things. I personally prefer to play as DW Frost, both in my Tanking and DPS roles, and that's the view I'm going to bring to this blog, but I don't think other specs are wrong. In fact, if this blog catches on, I'll look into getting Blood and Unholy columnists, too. I'm planning to approach things more in the fashion of sites like Mania's Arcania than Elitist Jerks. So expect that to be the attitude of the blog going forward: Informing and discussing decisions, not making them for you.

I'm also planning to do something most class sites don't: Discuss the lore of the class. I'm a creative type and an RPer at heart, and part of what made me so certain I would love playing a Death Knight from the start is the compelling lore around which the class is based. Expect to see discussions of lore and write-ups/reviews of things like the Death Knight manga in between posts about PvE mechanics and tanking.

And just who am I? My main is Dariahn of Thorium Brotherhood, Forsaken Death Knight of the RP guild Hand of the Blightcaller. I don't do much in the way of progression at the moment because of time limitations, but I do weekly 10-mans, roflstomp Heroics, and stay abreast of everything going on with the class. I was raid-tanking in Burning Crusade as a Forsaken Prot warrior, and I knew from the announcement of the Death Knight class that the combination of tanking capability and Forsaken-esque lore was going to make me love them. Since before I could roll one I was determined to learn to play the class well, and I like to think I've done a pretty good job of it.

So check back every so often! I hope to update at least once a week, ideally more, with assorted thoughts and opinions on WoW's most misunderstood class, and always feel free to comment!