So with Sylvanas’s Cult of Personality being pretty thoroughly disbanded and Sparkles The Good Christian Flesheater now on the scene I think this is a topic worth thinking on. The way Id see it I’d break the Forsaken’s faith into 4 quadrants.
Cult of the Forgotten Shadow;
This is far and away the easiest to expand on. Because the tabletop game already came up with rich lore for it. They actually preach balance between Light & Shadow and have this belief called Divine Humanism which is just “The Lord helps those who help themselves” taken to it’s logical conclusion. Maybe we have an undead Natalie Seline, maybe we don’t, either way just pull the trigger on the perfectly good world building collecting dust.
Church of the Holy Ghost?
Or Pallid Light if Blizz is just dead set on making fetch happen. Lordaeron wore the Pope hat when the 7 kingdoms went shopping at Spirit for their one personality trait so it stands to reason there’d still be a sizeable Light worshipping miniority. Obviously a lot felt pretty abandoned by their faith and returned the favor. But beyond Faol you still have a bunch of undead in the Argents who presumably still worship the Light.
Plus I still think the Forsaken should absorb the Scarlet Risen and that would give something for them to do. Idk I’m an undead Priest main so bias but I love the “Even in death my faith still shines!” trope.
Cult of the Damned
I really think a good villainous Forsaken subgroup could be a reinterpretation of the CotD’s message. Remember to them undeath was a reward, not a curse. I think you could take that and spin it into basically undead supremacy. Think it’d make for a nice dark mirror for the Scarlets and you could have melodramatic sermons about how undeath is the true measure of quality. I think it’d be fun.
Religious Appropriation
What with the Forsaken having hung out with the Orcs, Trolls and Tauren for a decade now I think some would either adopt their beliefs or create their own spin on it. In particular I could see Loa like Jani, Shadra and Hi’Reek being very popular with the Forsaken. But I could see the Deathguard taking a shine to Orcish warrior ancestor worship. And while I doubt many would start outright worshipping the Earthmother I could see RAS botanists in the Pools of Vision coming away with a respect and vague veneration for her.
So what do ya’ll think? Obviously I’m not demanding like a massive cathedral for all the aforementioned. But I think the Neo CotD could provide both an internal and world villain while giving the Forsaken another villainous vein. The CotFS desperately needs more love. The Lightbrights could just refurbish any of the derelict chapels hanging around or hell just walk to church service in Hearthglen from Andorhal. And I think it’d be neat to scatter the odd Forsaken acolyte around some Loa shrines and the like.
The RAS could realize that there are diseases and poisons natural to Azeroth and work on making them more virulent, thanking the Earth Mother for her gifts or some such. They don’t need to venerate her, but realize the plague wasn’t needed. Everything they need to make a potent bio weapon was already provided to them
The Risen are still under the command of Balnazzar are they not?
I think they need to do more with this, as for the Cult of the Damned, they seem to not be represented in the new Forsaken refugees, they may have rejoined the Scourge under mysterious new leadership they are hinting at. Lady Deathwhisper had some really interesting doalogue about" the True Throne of Power" Azshara had the same kind of dialogue where she said “The true throne of power waits and I intend to claim it.” Some kind of story is building here but we just don’t know enough.
Either way I think the story writes itself. I get the Forsaken have bad blood with the Scarlets but they’re enslaved undead. They should probably do something about that.
And with Voss, a former Scarlet who’s acclimated to undeath, and Calia, the rightful heir of Lordaeron, both on the Forsaken they really don’t have any reason to take up arms against them.
Plus then we could get undead paladins. Which I want because idk how to tank on Monk and at this point I’m afraid to ask. And after playing a worgen claw mog warrior it’s hard to go back.
I liked how in Before the Storm, Sylvanas gave a little shout out to them. They seem content. If they want to show a more responsible/sustainable Forsaken ethos, they could be the ones to usher it in, with credibility. The Tauren wanted to accept the Forsaken as a way to heal what was clearly harmed. The Tauren could have taught them a few tricks. Maybe when they release Undead Shaman. Mix it with some spiders and snakes from Troll Shaman also teaching them some other tricks.
I wouldn’t hold my breath for it even on an undead toon, but I think you could do something really cool with Forsaken Druids.
Obviously theyd be more interpretations of the class than actual Cenarion Druids. But with Maldraxxus we know for a fact there is undead ecology. I’ve mentioned it before but you could have RAS Mycolomancers who manipulate plague fungi. We’ve seen Apothecaries turn into stiched monstrosities by downing a potion so there’s your excuse to have them shift into abomination cats and bears.
Balance is where this kinda falls apart. But between Velf Holy Priests, LForged Unholy DKs and the already playable Nelf undead druids they just wouldnt be the weirdest thing walking around.
Oh maybe you could have their Boomkin form be a more ghostly raven looking form using the Zandalari boomkin model and tie that in with the CotF while the other two are distinctly RAS.
Couldn’t balance simply be plague druids who curtail the over abundance of life in a given area? Even mushrooms, fungi and other plants that would kill people if ingested need space to grow and thrive
Personally I just want the CotFS to use a raven motif. Because the Dark Archangel wings are the coolest spell effect in game but Void stuff is all Cthulu so the lore there is kind of non existent.
And I think a sort of ‘Shadow cast by the Light’ as represented with raven wings and the like would be rad.
In the interest of providing inspiration I’ll describe the 4 mayor zombie groups that were born in iZombie.
There were two zombie supremacists groups. The first one was led by Brother Love, a zombie that had been driven halfway insane from isolation in a well, but was eventually saved by a former employee. He believed that during his time in the well, God had been the one feeding him scraps of brain to keep him alive. So he decided to start a Zombie Cult in God’s name. He believed zombies were God’s chosen children and it was their God given right to take any human brain they desired by force if need be. Outside of rotters (zombies that starved until they became mindless) he and his flock were the most feral zombies living in the city, and loved themselves a good meal of fresh brains straight from the skull of their recently screaming victims.
The second zombie supremacist group was led by the man that accidentally created the zombie virus. His belief was more pragmatic than divine right. He believed it was an “us vs them” situation. Either zombies took over the world’s political and military structures and turned humans into cattle, or humans would eventually wipe out every zombie man, woman, and child. He worked for a time from the shadows to achieve his vision, namely by trying to instigate a war. Which was easy considering that the humans already had the Dead Enders, a human group hellbent on wiping out every zombie. Once tensions reached an all time high, and zombies were all living in fear of the Dead Enders, he started to reveal his zombie supremacist vision to other zombies, and very soon he had zombie supporters from every corner of the city, including within other zombie groups.
He also created an army of obedient rotters that were supposed to be the zombie’s answer to mutually assured destruction. If humans ever tried to wipe out zombiekind, he would initiate a zombie apocalypse by releasing these rotters into the world. A key difference between rotters and normal zombies is that the former’s scratch/bite turns humans into mindless ravenous zombies instead of proper thinking zombies.
Aside from those two groups, you also had Fillmore-Graves. A zombie isolationist group. They wanted to be segregated from the humans in order to live in peace. At least until a cure could be made. However they needed a steady supply of brains, but they had no way to incentivize the human governments into donating brains once they were isolated. Eventually they had to place their isolationist ideas on hold. They concocted a plan to create a zombie population boom in the city. Once they had enough zombies Fillmore-Graves felt they could realistically occupy the human city and use the humans as human shields to dissuade human military intervention. In order to incentivize brain donations, they used the threat of hungry zombies turning into rotters and feeding on the humans living in the city. Despite the occupation, the humans were allowed to maintain their entire political structure, and continued to have full authority over the humans in the territory, while Fillmore-Graves took care of the zombie population and any zombie problems.
Despite the flow of brain donations, they were still suffering from brain shortages which led to strict laws on population growth. Creating new zombies was strictly prohibited under their rule and it was the only reason they would execute a zombie. Any other zombies breaking any laws would be frozen instead. To enforce these laws, the men and women of Fillmore-Graves were all highly trained soldiers with the military equipment to match their training. On top of their training, whenever they expected heavy combat, they would consume a drink that turned them into super zombie soldiers.
You also had a criminal empire run by zombies. Their primary product was, of course, brains. They had the best and only means to find any brain, dead or alive, from anywhere in the world which meant that they were essentially untouchable during the brain famine. Their primary source of brains came from warzones, but they were willing to kill to fill their brain quota. They also had no qualms about turning humans into zombies to fit their needs. They especially like turning rich humans into zombies in order to create rich customers.
The last group was all about coexistence until a cure was found, but they also saw the zombie virus as a cure for most of the world illnesses. They went out of their way to smuggle sick humans into the zombie occupied city to provide them the zombie virus, as well as a relatively safe place to live in their new unlife. They were willing to break any laws, be it human or zombie to achieve this goal. Their smugglers were all humans, but while they had a number of zombies involved in the smuggling operation, only the leader did the turning so that if they were ever caught, only the leader would be executed. The rest would be frozen, while the humans would simply be taken to jail.
Honestly I came up with it due to my DK. Gen 2 DK who was a Light zealot that of course became a CotD zealot.
She actually had at least one cogent point though. Who became a free willed undead had approximately 0 to do with their status in life. Nathanos couldnt manage but Gretchen Dedmar, a senile old grandma still convinced she’s at death’s door, could.
It rewards the deserving with immortality and curses the weak to wander the earth as mindless meat. To her it was the greatest diviner of superiority. No biases, no bribes, no possibility of corruption - it simply separates the wheat from the chaff.
Fun fact, from what I understand, in nature the mark of a virus’ success isn’t potency but transmissibility. An extremely deadly, fast acting virus doesn’t spread or become a pandemic because it simply kills the hosts too fast for them to spread it to others. As a weapon that’s useful but not so much for a virus’ survival.
