Is this story even about Azeroth?
The Alliance and Horde seem to be functionally dissolved in favor for the Murder Hobos Coalition. And my sexy knife from 8 years ago is giving boring hero characters panic attacks.
Also not-dwarves and the Imperium of Man may or may not be involved to some extent.
Well, one of the Forsaken leaders is the result of Light necromancy and it’s her story that told us that necromancy can be done by any magic type. So unfortunately that’s part of the Forsaken story now.
I feel like Sargeras said something similar to Kil’jaeden, Archimonde and Velen.
Calia’s biggest contribution to the Forsaken is convincing Anduin and Jaina that the Alliance will respect that Tirisfal belongs to the undead. That and creating a light-bubble shield, one-sixteenth the size of Anduin’s and tiring out not long after. For this demonstration she was awarded with a position on the council so she could pout at the rest of the Forsaken whenever they suggest killing their enemies as a method to solve their problems.
We were also rewarded with Calia being told that Necromancy is no big deal, and a normal part of existence, since anyone using any source of power can do it. The fact that this seems to imply that the Shadowlands themselves should be starved of souls/anima considering no one has to die so long as magical power can revive you, is left up to the observer to ponder as a reckless addition to the setting, but one very much in the Undead’s favor.
We are no longer some abhorrent error of the cosmos and dark magic: eternal undeath after one’s life is respected by the Shadowlands as a mortal’s choice.
This means that anyone who chooses to pass on is effectively a conscientious objector when it comes to Azeroth’s fate, and the method by which Azeroth can defend and defeat her enemies is by employing an endlessly respawning army of undead champions.
Considering the role of the Spirit Healers, perhaps this is already effectively in play.
remember when Calia was too stupid and stubborn to realize why her going to a secretive meeting meant to calm down tensions you weren’t invited to and called for a coup against the sitting warchief of the horde and died?
woulda been cool if she stayed dead.
The genuinly funniest part about the heritage quest is calia pouting in the corner, like she hadn’t realised what she had signed up for
I always liked how Derek Proudmoore was actually an example of how an Alliance-friendly forsaken could be plausibly done since he got an expedited version of the forsaken experience.
Meanwhile Calia’s undeath is because the Naaru showed up and said “we’re gonna revive this specific idiot for some reason”
I am pretty sure the Priory dungeon in Hallowfell has a bunch of light undead, but the guys in there are also framed as taking their zealotry too far and playing god, essentially.
Paladin mounts were or are sort of undead too.
But the idea is that paladins reverse the undeath of the horse.
As much as I’d love that, Shadowlands sort of retconned that Necromancy is mainly a branch of Shadow/void magic…
You had a questline with Calia Menethil where she questioned her connection with the Forsaken – being risen by the light, and you have the Shadowlands denizens say that Necromancy has nothing to do with shadow or void at its core; that it’s merely the act of raising the dead “Necromancy is necromancy” and nothing more.
Ultimately however, hopefully we get something keenly interesting with the Forsaken though … Albeit I’d wager that it’s most likely much of the story is going to go towards “human potential” and void elves 
I just wish he weren’t a flippin’ Proudmoore. Not to mention that he shouldn’t have had a body to raise in the first place. Those are two giant barriers to him winning me over.
Is it ever explained why Calia wasn’t conventionally ressurected? Was the priest order hall just bored that day?
If something was preventing actual resurrection to a full and normal life, was the question answered (or even asked) why it was so important that Calia be returned, that it must be done by any means possible?
It’s such a weird and unpopular decision and so far it’s amounted to very little. Its bizarre that it seems to be a hill they’re willing to die on.
Because the Light decided to do it that way. And… We see it a lot as a game mechanic, but I do not think there is any example of a normal resurrection in lore. Canonically reviving people breaks a story unless it is an exceptional case, after all.
Lei Shen’s revival seemed to count as one of the cases of true resurrection, i.e. a person being brought back to life as themself in personality and as the same type of creature they were before dying. Then there’s the slain players being resurrected by first Terenas and later the titans during the Lich King and Argus fights, respectively, which comes across as “events” in the story of the fights rather than just mechanical game abilities like from our action bars. Plus there are obviously the extraplanar creatures like demons who are either deliberately or naturally resurrected in their home planes whenever they get killed elsewhere.
Necromancy has always struck me as distinct from resurrection in that the former results in the revived person “coming back different” from how they previously were in life. Those specific differences can vary depending upon the magic involved, but the person reanimated necromantically has always in some way been altered in the process, while someone resurrected is physically and spiritually restored to their fully living state as they existed before the cause of their death.
Iirc it was all part of the naaru’s plan, with the whole book basically being the naaru grooming calia for that role
Someone at Blizzard told Golden that she needed to come up with a Light Undead character, likely to provide a contrast/counter to Sylvanas—considering they were planning on her exiting her role as leader of the Forsaken—and Golden claims she immediately thought of Calia from the Priest Order Hall, and selected her for the Role.
Based on what little text I’m willing to read from that novel, it seems very plausible that the Naaru were indeed wanting an agent among the Forsaken to influence them. Calia seemed a perfect fit for the role, and told the Naaru she wanted to be more like her people, which meant for her Resurrection to stop just short of a true revival—since the intention of both Anduin and the Naaru was NOT to craft an undead at that moment, and Anduin’s shock at the way she returned backs up this theory. So she willingly “chose” undeath, but of course gets the Excelsior-Lux Level Package, and gets to be a porcelain doll so as to not look offensive to certain censors and have a face that’s hard to punch.
Like many a Blizzard protagonist these days, her main role in the story is to Doubt and Pout. She doubts herself, and pouts about it until Voss reassures her. She doubts the intentions of her people who are going about things the way they always have and will, and pouts about it. By her side, is her equally doubtful and poutful Proudmoore, who has thus far taken a complete non-speaking role, which seems to serve him well as the antithesis to Nathanos, who was quite the sarcastic chatterbox and played off of Sylvanas consistently in their duo.
For the foreseeable future, I expect nothing from these two and I’ll probably still be disappointed.
Calia and derek also both share the fact that they aren’t actually forsaken by anyone and can at any point just go back to live among the living
Calia spent the entirety of Battle for Azeroth nestled in Jaina Proudmoore’s creature comforts and grace, having been risen by Anduin, meaning the High King of the Alliance personally sanctioned her existence. She was never Forsaken by anyone save for the Forsaken leadership themselves who were very suspicious of her upon her arrival to the scene and fast-tracked promotion to being a member of their government.
Likewise, Derek only had to share words with his sister and pout at her for Jaina to immediately relinquish her distrust and accept him back. She placed him with Calia because she knows nothing of undeath, and just figured that Calia’s existence was relatively similar to his own, even though the only thing they have in common is being post-mortem noble scions.
The more you consider them, the more obvious it is that the only purpose they serve narratively is to fill the void left by Sylvanas and Nathanos. Except they’ve been set up to fail from the very beginning, like a lot of the “Replacement Leader” Horde characters. They have muted personalities compared to their prior holders, and are not given unique or special qualities that they bring to the table. Unless you consider Calia being a milquetoast light priestess to be a notable addition to the Horde roster, who previously lacked a priest, but still had the Light represented by Liadrin since Burning Crusade.
Ah well.
Even that turns out to be redundant because it’s the same expansion that introduced Talanji.
That sounds like someone making up garbage to make a story fit. You really need to go for the gold in mental gymnastics to make using Light of Life magic as necromancy. I can’t fathom the logic behind it and I won’t give it more than a minute of my time.
In any case, I’m specifically talking about the Forsaken and we know that they have an entire sect dedicated to the study of shadow magic. Some development there would be nice.