That’s a pretty big extrapolation on what was said, and after the complete embarrassment that was Sylvanas’s story I really, really, really don’t want more stories where characters cant be considered culpable for their actions because their Jimminey Cricket is stuffed in the devil’s bread box or whatever.
Edit:
Also wait what? There are evil Light users and good characters with nothing to do with the Light.
Bwomsamdi has been nothing but upstanding despite being a death magic deity. Whereas the Scarlet Crusader were evil despite being all about the Light.
Unless I am missing something that was revealed at some point, perhaps in her book or in Shadowlands, but we don’t really know what her plan with Derek was. I remember there being lots of speculation in the forums, but you are the first person I’ve seen to actually claim to know for a fact what his purpose was. Whether he was a grenade or something else, I don’t know.
When I see people use the “timebomb” metaphor the emphasis always seemed to be on the “time” side of it, rather than the “bomb” with “bomb” being itself a metaphor to a big action. That’s how I was using it.
Not really. It’s the direct result of what was said. She was asking if being raised by the Light made her different. The Margrave said it didn’t. Cut and dry that that retcons a lot of the old stuff.
It was probably the most interesting thing about the Forsaken as a race from 2004 up until BFA, when they started to retcon it in preparation for making Sylvanas’s lack of culpability come from a soul split instead of her Forsaken state.
Tons of great plot potential in having a race under these corrupting mental effects, a source of magic that counters it, history and kin who may be motivated to restore them, “unlock” their capacity for good again, etc. We had every other playable race in the game to do stories without the question of mental states compromised by undeath.
Culpability and mitigating circumstances should have been a central plot point. You’d actually think in a normal story that the Alliance would have been EXTREMELY invested in investigating this. These were former humans after all, and some of their own people were at risk of being killed and raised into their ranks. So much potential squandered.
The loss of positive emotion makes it highly likely someone’s dark side becomes a lot stronger. But the ability to feel positive emotion obviously doesn’t mean a person can’t be evil. The point isn’t that the Light guarantees someone will be good, it’s that having the Light cut-out almost guarantees that they will become a sociopathic version of who they were in life. Which is, more or less, how the Forsaken came across in their questing.
Not that any of that applies anymore. At this point, there are no solid rules. If there was any doubt that maybe they’d try to fashion some kind of coherence to their history, even if it meant squaring some circles, it’s really out the window now.
That Margrave line was almost admirable in its shamelessness about the retcon. Might as well have said, “Don’t worry Calia, however things worked before, they’ll just change to work however you need them to for your personal journey.”
“When undead use or are healed by the Holy Light, does it cause them any actual damage or harm, or does it only cause them pain (in addition to the intended effects of the spell)?”
Channeling the Light in any way, or receiving healing from the Light, only causes pain. Forsaken priests do not disintegrate or explode from channeling the Light for an extended period of time… though they may wish they would"
“Are there long-term effects on an undead who is in regular contact with the Holy Light in a positive way?”
It is difficult to say, as there are no known records of undead wielding the Holy Light before the Third War. There are reports, however, that some Forsaken have slowly experienced a sharpening of their dulled senses of touch, smell, etc., as well as an increase in the flashes of positive emotions that have otherwise become so rare since their fall into undeath. Unfortunately, this may be the cause of the Forsaken priesthood’s increased attempts at self-destruction; regaining these senses would force the priests to smell their own rotting flesh, taste the decay in their mouths and throats, and even feel the maggots burrowing within their bodies.
End Quote
Yes. I think it’s a stretch to say theyre bereft of morality because plenty of Forsaken don’t behave particularly amoraly.
I didn’t say they were necessarily bereft of morality. I said they had compromised mental states, with a high probability of turning them into sociopathic versions of themselves, for which they would deserve less or no culpability. Some might be bereft of morality in a way they weren’t in life. Others might just lose a fraction of their capacity for good.
Undeath was supposed to be a corrupting state. Not just to the body but to the mind. What I said is utterly supported by what you just quoted.
Compromised morality as a result of mental states opens the door to all sorts of story-telling. Most justice systems build in mitigation and lack of culpability based upon provable compromising effects to the mind. Sometimes that might mean an insanity defense, with divergences depending on whether the insanity is ongoing (locked up for treatment, and if incurable, locked up for life) or has now passed (defendant gets released). Sometimes it might mean mitigation in sentencing (not enough to make then inculpable, but enough to lessen culpability).
What made the Forsaken different, and gave a lot of interesting potential, was that with them you have this corrupting mental state effecting an entire people instead of just one criminal or another.
The old plot could have had great nuanced stories about culpability, the soul, mitigating mental effects, and the like. Zero of that plot potential was met, and they actually retconned out the stuff that gave that potential.
Death as a Cosmic Force seems all about receiving the leftovers of what the other Cosmic Forces don’t want.
Most Mortal Souls including Aqir go to the Shadowlands by default so clearly the Shadowlands is grabbing what the Cosmic Forces have no interest in.
Necromancy regardless of Cosmic Force is the Great Dark Beyond grabbing Souls of interest to bring back to it’s Realm.
The Light clearly is trying to remove the Nathrezim Shadow Magic while healing the Body until it becomes filled with only Death Energy.
Faol has been using the Light for so long that the Shadow has been purged leaving only Death controlling his reanimation.
Blizzard sees no difference between the roles of various Magics yet I want to know what each Color variation of Death Magic even is! I want to categorize things into neat folders! Science does not permit otherwise!
It seems a safe bet that Derek was part of the Pure Evil Sylvanas plot that Afrasiabi started, which was then abandoned after he was shifted away from the WoW story team.
Derek was supposed to be a Manchurian Candidate. He would have been brainwashed to be pretend that he was his old self and then assassinate Jaina or something.
This is the important part. The exact plan was never actually spelled out in the game; people just guessed. Some thought he was supposed to kill Katherine, for example.
Dude is in desperate need of more modern voice lines, but Derek becoming a relevant Forsaken character hopefully spells more focus on their spooky navy. A dread admiral and high executor deserve seats on the Desolate Council too IMO.
No. The only Forsaken NPCs who deserve their spot on the council are Grand Executor Mortuus and the Black Bride. Derek is also an alliance plant just like Calia.
Derek literally wasn’t around for the formation of the current alliance. He died in the second war then suddenly woke up as a zombie, then got freed and helped by members of the horde and welcomed into the forsaken, and he was happy to join people who understood his current pain. He’s about as forsaken as any newly raised undead can be. Lilian was ready to fight Talanji over it.
Do you think Captain Stone is an alliance plant too? She’s also a recently raised Kul Tiran.
This. Meryl is literally an undead raised via his own will and arcane magic. Also…Why not just call her the Pale lady? It rolls off the tongue better than ‘pallid’.
There is no war. Lilian is not alliance in any capacity. She never was. Offering to pull out of Gilneas is a gesture of goodwill during peacetime. The Forsaken never cared about Gilneas. It was always Garrosh’s prize.
