Man. What a missed opportunity with him and Lilian. I mean first off seeing him without Voss has to be like seeing Daft Punk without their helmets. Yeah some people will know but most won’t. So why you’d include him and not her seems bewildering when Van Cleef or Arugal would probably be a more immediate memory.
But I also find it interesting because we know so little about their relationship. It certainly seems she was made into a living weapon without much choice in the matter, but I don’t know that for sure. Suffice to say there could’ve well been a time when their relationship was good.
And beyond that, Benedictine could be repentant. Denathrius was chucking all sorts of souls that hadn’t failed yet into perdition. The gross abandonment of their mission and mistreatment of the souls in their charge is a huge part to the Venthyr questline so its more than possible that’s what happened.
The thing is even if they’re dead set on Calia, and she’s such a nothing character I kinda wouldn’t even bet on that, Voss is still forever a historic figure in the Forsaken’s storyline. Intermin leader after their God Emperess dips set isn’t the sort of thing that’s just a footnote funfact.
This was such an excellent opportunity to give a character a real sense of closure.
And ya know what? Calia at least knew who he was and has presumably heard disheartening information from Voss about him on that long boat ride to Orgrimmar. I’d even accept her at this point. It’d be something.
And instead it’s nothing. An Easter egg most people would have to check WoWpedia to get. Unless you really like Voss and/or have played the Tirisfal Questline a bunch this guy is a mcnothing to you.
I honestly feel insulted. Like they could’ve gone with literally any other named Scarlet Mob of which there are dozens. But they go with the one that explicitly says a once in a lifetime chance for a villain in the Tirisfal storyline to interact with either undead character he knows is being sped past with nary a wave.
Peachy Keen.
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It doesn’t even make sense why he’d be thrown into the Maw.
I was operating under the assumption that he got Garrosh’d - aka he was in Revendreth and then got dumped into the Maw by Denathrius.
But I haven’t done the quest so maybe there’s something that makes this not the case?
He’s just a named NPC hanging there on the wall with no relevance to anything.
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Though now I’m wondering - do we actually have anyone that we know for a fact was sent to the Maw by the Arbiter pre-drought, no external shenanigans involved? Like, do we have a baseline to go off of at all?
I mean the order of the day has been people who don’t deserve it thrown into the Maw.
Personally if I was writing it, if we’re going with
A. He was an indignant son of a Lich who only regrets not smothering Lilian to death in the crib,
Then we go with Calia meeting him and getting a crash course in just how deranged the Light can make people. Obviously I’m not putting Voss through that, she already tore his head off she doesn’t need an even worse ending to her relationship with her father.
B. If he’s repentant then we could have Voss meet him. And maybe have a smaller, personal moment amongst this bombast where he is genuine apologetic. Hates himself for being so blinded with zealotry that he couldn’t even see his own child in front of his face anymore. And that gives Voss the sort of closure pretty much nobody gets, and is a step on her arc from ms.suicide mission to first long term elected leader of the Forsaken.
I think either of those would be a lot more interesting then him being a damn ornament.
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Possibly, but he would’ve died prior to the afterlife breaking so either he went to Revendreth and was sent down or he was immediately sent to the Maw while world slayers are given a chance to atone in Revendreth.
Either they just looked up c-list antagonists to throw into the Maw without considering the implications or there’s going to be a scene later of us rescuing the souls in the Maw, and he’ll be among them. Possibly with Voss.
I really don’t have hope for closure here but I do think you’re right for googling random characters.
Like Warden Stillwater is alive somehow in BFA. And I can accept Sylvanas doesn’t care but this was a guy so depraved 'I think melting bunny rabbits is funny" Apothecary Lydon saw to his immediate summary execution.
Do you know how bad you have to be for the Royal Apothecary Society to consider you a war criminal? And he’s just back. Nobody even bats an eye.
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I have no issue with Warden Stillwater coming back but they should make him wear goofy Groucho Marx glasses and call himself Warden Schmillwater
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Actually that would both be funny and keeping with Hillsbrad’s tone so I’m 200% down for this.
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Warden Stillwater of course lends to questions on which Quests actually happened…
Raids and major Cutscenes(especially the Cutscenes) we can be sure have happened but can we be sure each Questline Boss is truly dead if Stillwater never died?
Can we truly be sure Emperor Korthek is not alive?
Hopefully Blizzard can be convinced to bring him back as a potential Allied Race Leader while having him realize that General Jakra’zet’s ideas were bad considering he is not that different in personality from Emeni(sending the Sethrak on the warpath because they should be conquerors despite what Sethraliss teaches).
Of course in the case of Raids with multiple possible versions: Remember the Siege of Dazar’alor Raid has two different dialogues for Rastakhan so who knows which one is the real one… We don’t know which if either of the Zul Encounters is the real one so who knows if he is even dead.
I agree 100%, OP. Lilian needs to get some story content here. It’s not fair to tease her father being in the Maw and not address it.
For some reason, there seems to be a trend in Shadowlands of using Scarlet Crusaders for cameos and generic mobs but not actual plot, and I’m not sure why that is. Houndmaster Loksey features very briefly in the leveling story in Revendreth. Scarlet Crusaders are one of the mobs that generic hostile souls in Revendreth can appear as (they keep crashing my Ember Court parties, very rude). Renault Mograine has been mentioned twice, but hasn’t actually made an appearance, despite three members of his family playing a role in Shadowlands. Now we have Benedictus Voss joining the party, and again there doesn’t seem to be any actual plot connected to him. It’s very strange, and I would think that Scarlet Crusaders in general would be relevant in Revendreth’s story, both because they are good examples of the type of souls that the Venthyr attempt to rehabilitate, and also because they are uniquely experienced in dealing with both the Light and dreadlords. Remember, the Scarlet Crusade was ultimately founded by Balnazzar to be his personal army, and even though he’s dead, you’d think that the Venthyr might take an interest in that detail.
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No one in the maw makes sense to be in the maw. The process is arbitrary. That said, hes too much a failure to go to maldraxxus, and likely not remorseful enough for Revendreth, and not traumatized enough for Bastion.
In general the game has treated the Scarlets very weirdly. Even in Wrath you started seeing them turning to the dark arts with Shadow Priests called Raven Priests which is such a cool sounding concept I’m mad I didn’t think of it first. And even Death Knights at least in some parts of Dragonblight.
Then in Cata the vast majority of their Lordaeron forces become undead. And that’s still such a missed opportunity for Forsaken Paladins. Because sometimes the Forsaken loathe to wield the Light (seems to depend on who’s writing in that moment so it’s one of those things I head canon as undeath affecting everyone differently) but this would of course mean nothing to a zealot.
But it was really weird that there’s not a Forsaken, or even so much as an undead Argent to comment on this poetic irony.
Hell in fact some Brotherhood of the Light chump talks about how the Scarlets are finally now aa disgusting on the inside as they are on the outside. To your undead PC’s face. Wish the NPC could’ve reacted to the /slap I responded to that with.
So at least they’re keeping in tradition of not letting the Scarlets and their preeminent enemy have any interesting interactions.
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Good point. They at least let the Ebon Blade get into fights with them again in Legion, probably because the Scarlets are one of the few enemies the Ebon Blade can really go after with extreme prejudice without losing moral standing, but not enough has been made of their relationship to the Forsaken, or even their relationship to other people beyond being hostile mobs. There’s a lot of lore behind the Scarlet Crusade and who they are that is relevant to other characters, but we don’t really get to see that explored in game beyond whose trying to kill whom. Lilian went to great lengths in MoP to make sure Sally Whitemane died and stayed dead, only for the Ebon Blade to raise her as a Horseman in Legion, an event that would have seen her likely crossing paths with Lilian in the Broken Isles since they were both working for their respective order halls. I would have loved to have seen even a brief broadcast text interaction between the two of them acknowledging that, but since we didn’t get that in Legion, we could at least get something now in Shadowlands.
As a fan of how the Scarlet Crusade, Argent Dawn, and Ebon Blade are all connected to each other by the history between their founders and leadership, I’d love to learn more about how the Voss family fits in with the other Scarlet-connected characters, and how that might have affected both Lilian’s personal journey and how she might be perceived by other characters, especially any Forsaken who might have run into her or her father when she was alive. There’s also lots of room for interaction between her and any other Forsaken who were devoted to following the Light in life, and discussion of how that does or doesn’t change in undeath. These are all themes that could be explored with Lilian and used to build up Forsaken development without having any connection to Sylvanas, and that sort of development is sorely needed, especially now.
I would love to see this sort of development in game, but if that can’t be done for various gameplay reasons, then I’d still love to see a short story or novella or comic or audio drama about Lilian, because that would still add depth to what’s seen in game. “A Thousand Years of War” added some very nice depth and context to Legion’s portrayal of Alleria, Turalyon, and Lothraxion. “A Moment in Verse” gave us some sweet moments between Lor’themar and Thalyssra, but also revisited Kael’thas’ betrayal and how Lor’themar is still affected by it, which has given a little more dramatic weight to Kael’thas’ story in Shadowlands. As a personal favorite, the Ashbringer comic provides some backstory to a lot of fairly minor characters, and I must say that as someone who didn’t read it until well after I’d played through both Wrath and Legion’s death knight content, a lot of the in-game story beats hit differently after knowing more about the connections between the various involved characters. A single short story can do a lot for narrative development, and Lilian needs whatever she can get right now.
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Blizzard seems to assume players will have a tantrum if they don’t get to do yet another “kill everything in this camp and click a few things” quest every 10 minutes.
It’s just bewildering to me they have all this stuff they could do with Calia, Voss and Whitemane. But like we get Thrall and Drakka. Which I found sweet but as others pointed out, they did this before in WoD. Like it is such a bizarrely specific thing that adult Thrall has met his dead mom twice now. And still no Cairne and Baine which I’m just guessing isn’t going to happen. Yeah they said it would but remember Gallywix’s gun? They say a lot of things.
BFA was pretty much a wash out the gate but SL had tremendous potential and at the rate we’re going I don’t even know if we’ll see a 9.3.
Maybe don’t kill them off but I swear to God Sylvanas, Anduin, Jania and Thrall need to be at least put in a phantom zone and thrown into space for a minimum of 5 years.
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Thrall would be cool if he wasn’t just a very mediocre presence, aka what the Horde basically is in the narrative at this point.
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We do have some sort of arbitrary idea.
The Arbitor sends people to where she thinks they will best serve The Purpose. Not because of any moral scale of deeds.
It occurs to me that the Ebon Blade, or at least the Horsemen, could stand to send Lilian a thank you note for killing Whitemane properly. The reason given for why Whitemane is no longer completely insane like she was in life is that “Death has a way of quelling the madness of the mind,” and that’s all due to Lilian making sure she couldn’t self-resurrect again. I just find the idea of Darion sending Lilian a note thanking her for killing his sister-in-law because it greatly improved Sally’s disposition to be amusing.
I also like the idea of using Lilian’s connection to the Scarlet Crusade and Whitemane to lessen the distance between the Forsaken and the Ebon Blade. I don’t want the Ebon Blade to shift from being a neutral organization, quite the opposite, but thanks to the Cata Western Plaguelands storyline and Sylvanas’ story they’ve been pushed away from the Forsaken specifically for a while now, which has made their neutral position a bit awkward. Now that Koltira has been back for a while and Sylvanas is no longer with the Forsaken, there’s an opportunity for less tension between the two most prominent groups of playable undead. Lilian also has a lot more in common with Darion than Sylvanas ever did, which could also be used to develop a less antagonistic relationship between the two groups if Lilian continues to be a significant part of the Forsaken leadership. I’d love to see the story get to a point where the Forsaken and the Ebon Blade can coexist as separate groups with independent goals (and different narrative functions) without being specifically at odds with each other.
I don’t even mind that Anduin, Jaina, and Thrall are getting attention in Shadowlands, the problem is that everyone else isn’t getting anything, and this really shouldn’t be a zero-sum situation. Baine’s already present, he just needs to actually do something. He’s a warrior, let him go out with one of the covenant assaults and kick some Mawsworn butt. Calia’s present in Oribos and is evidently sending messages back to Azeroth regularly to keep people up-to-date there, it would be easy to have her mention relaying information about Sylvanas’ latest actions back to Lilian. We know that it’s possible for people back on Azeroth to visit, why not give us a “stay awhile and listen” of Lilian or other Forsaken representation arriving and inquiring about any progress in the fight against Sylvanas? These are all relatively minor changes without even touching the main story quests, but I feel even something that small would help.
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