He’s been around for nearly 3000 years, most of it as an undead. I understand he’s a pretty benevolent guy, but how did he survive all this time without getting attacked by angry villagers, or getting imprisoned by Dalaran for experiments? I know he’s a pretty powerful mage, but it seems like he’d have problems every time he goes into town for groceries.
He lives off Manacakes!
Well mages in particular know how to blend in, craft illusions or simply remain unnoticed.
They can create servants and constructs and don’t necessarily need other people.
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Do sentient undead need to eat for upkeep?
As far as I am aware Meryl never made it a secret that he’s been dead for thousands of years. From what it looks like, people see him as an just another example of what good magic use can do; he was so skilled he just decided to not stay dead and used his magic to bring himself back.
As to why he wasn’t attacked and what not like people would have you believe is that, again as far as I’m aware, being undead wasn’t really that big of a deal prior to the Scourge. Provided you didn’t spend your time eating people and cooking up blight, most people would have either never noticed until you were rotting or simply just went “huh that’s weird” and went on with their day.
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Well part of it seems that his condition wasn’t always super apparent. In The First Guardian we see him when he says he has been undead for 100 years and he looks ok.
Secondly, as others have noted, undead don’t really need to eat. And a lot of his social connections seem to have been with important/secretive people (Alodi, the Council of Tirisfal, etc). These were the people in charge in many instances. It should have been relatively easy to avoid most of society while engaging in what he needed.
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Dalaran probably sees his condition as just one of the possibilities of magic use, seeing as Aegwynn herself lived for centuries. There’s at least another undead, an archivist of sorts, in the Hall of the Guardian who still hasn’t realized he already died. So while not common, undeath doesn’t seem to be a cause for alarm for mages.
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The Council of Tirisfal incidentally seems to be a rival organization that the Council of Six wanted the secrets of.
The Council of Six has Krasus(a Red Dragon whose kind is connected to Life) as a founding member and he is behind the dogma that Death Magic is an Abomination.
I’m sure the Council of Tirisfal did it’s best to keep it’s founding member Meryl away from the notice of the Council of Six.
The Council of Six has a Life Agent as a founding member while the Council of Tirisfal has a Death Agent as a founding member.
The loss of Krasus pretty much ends Dalaran’s opposition to Death Magics. Even Khadgar helps the Player create an Undead in the Broken Shore.
Mages can turn invisible and use illusion to appear as whoever they want. Plus he’s undead so he could dig a hole, bury himself, and have no reason to leave until he got bored enough to.
Alonsos Faol is a similar question but, Priests also have weird mind powers.
Plus most common people thought they were merely dead dead and at this point an undead guy just chilling in Booty Bay or Dalaran or Shattrath or, really anywhere that’s not a strictly Alliance town, isn’t going to be regarded with much suspicion.
He never did. Presumably he’s been in the tower ever since he became undead.
It should be noted Meryl became undead via arcane magic and not your garden variety necromancy/plague like Forsaken/Scourge. Also in the comics he’s depicted as fairly normal-looking other than very pale skin and glowing eyes (he got a normal, bones-sticking out forsaken model in Legion because blizzard was too lazy to give him a unique model…much like poor Kalecgos is still stuck looking like a male human with blue hair when he should have a half-elf model (speaking of which…since they’re adding ear and eyebrow length in SL…how about giving Arator a more appropriate model? ).
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