Something has been bothering me lately. I’ve been looking at the lore of Nazmir. And the blood trolls, really seem to be just running off the experimentation of old gods blood that escaped from the facility and were repurposed or simply corrupted the surrounding life.
But it got me thinking. San’layn have all the similar traits. A form of cannibalism, blood drinking, hemomancy. But they were created by the Lich King. The Lich King had powers over undeath but blood is a function of life even when corrupted. The north had old god influence just like Nazmir did.
Was there ever a question of the Lich Kings use of blood magic to create the San’layn. Like there was some interconnection between the old gods?
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This is a good question. I don’t have the answers, though. You might get more hits posting in the story forum, since near as I can tell you are asking about lore accurate materials.
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While the absolute origins of Blood magic in WoW is not touched on, the use of it goes back pretty far, with early examples being used by the Mogu (who called it Anima, not to be confused with the Anima of the Shadowlands). It appears that the Titans used Blood Magic or something akin to it in the ordering of Azeroth, though whether beasts and other critters that are now ‘mortal’ races were formed using it prior to the Curse of Flesh is unknown. This was known as the art of Flesh-Shaping.
It is confirmed that Hemomancy is a type of Life Magic, albeit it has moral implications that we normally don’t consider when talking about Life Magic in general. This makes discussion for us more difficult because it can be difficult to separate the moral issues of Blood Magic being bad, evil, or used for ‘dark’ purposes, and its technical status of being the manipulation of Life Energy and Life’s traditional association with being ‘good’.
Because the Lich King, as an arm of the Jailer, borrowed a lot of things from the Undying Army when forming the Scourge, we can probably also assume that some things were borrowed from the Harvesters Court as well when organizing the risen Darkfallen as San’layn. Because the Darkfallen risen by Arthas as the Lich King came principally from Kael’thas’ remaining lieutenants and casters remaining in Northrend that attempted to prevent his ascension to the frozen throne, they needed another source of magic since they were then cut off not just from the Sunwell, but also fel magic. Turning to transforming the Life Energy of others into energy for the spellcasting would be a natural source.
What Death Knights seem to do in basic circumstances is transform or corrupt the Life Energy in another, traditionally manifesting in corrupted blood, etc, rather than imbibing blood for nourishment or energy like the San’layn (though that would not preclude them from doing so or practicing hemomancy or flesh-shaping)
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We may want to take a gander and reflect back into Dead Mines where they have Blood Magi as well.
Just a random thought I had.
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I love this kind of thinking.
I like to think there is some way to tie all of this into a rich, compelling narrative. Ideally, this is something that was picked up when the Defias reached out to pirates for help with trying to destroy Stormwind. Given Westfall’s proximity to Stranglethorn, it’s very easy to imagine a pirate picked something up…possibly from the Gurubashi.
Hakkar was all about blood, right? You can draw a line from Zul’Gurub to Westfall. This is something I think that is overlooked in a lot of RP: Sheer proximity can create links.
If you also add in the corrupting nature of blood magic, you can imagine Lady Prestor (née Onyxia) arranging things behind the scenes, guiding that spooooky magic to the Defias. It’s a way to foster even more division, potentially keeping the Defias (if they won, which she knew they absolutely would not) from uniting too much.
This is the kind of plotline begging for RP.
…I say all of this knowing that the actual reason is probably something like some developer/writer back in the day just choosing ‘Generic bad guy #042-human-A’, and calling it a day.
Still. An elf can dream…
Ahem. But, yes. Good observation!
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