Considering one of the Soul Fragments in the Uther Questline in 9.1 PTR included Gavinrad the Dire whose other half appears in Icecrown I would assume that Frostmourne grabbed both halves of the Souls it cleaved yet Zovaal marked specific halves for the Maw.
I have no doubt it not only marked the piece of Sylvanas it initially grabbed on stabbing her for the Maw but did the same to the half that became a Banshee just because he got the random idea that he could use her.
Sylvanas in the end was Zovaal’s backup to Ner’zhul should Ner’zhul fail his mission which he did when Arthas usurped him.
If you say so. You’re the first Sylvanas fan I know of who has apparently been waiting for this version of her.
She’s still a stranger. We knew Ranger-General Syvlanas for all of a single WC3 mission. She hasn’t been that person for 17 years. We never really got to know her.
I’d ask where the devotion comes from, but you already admitted to me in one of my threads thst you’re a fan of Sylvanas in all forms.
Its gonna blow your mind to find out I believe 99.99999% of undead has had their souls twisted/manipulated in some shape form or fashion. Is this a good time to let you know that I want all undead souls restored to 100% eventually? I’ve been on that boat for a long time too : )
Speak for yourself. I’ve known her from WC3, Novels, in-game quest, in-game books, Chronicles, Edge of Night, and Dark Mirror. Every since WC3 I’ve been team Sylvanas, when she had her soul manipulated I was still a fan, and when it’s restored I will likely still be a fan.
I know more than enough to be a fan ie Ranger General, cunning, military tactician, tragic, didn’t mind bucking the system, made hard decisions on the battle field, died a hero, one of the best archer’s on azeroth etc etc etc.
What is there not to love about her character?
Only one trait I hated; mustache twirl for the sake of twirling. Again, I hope that’s the only trait Zovaal shot out of her.
We’ve been over soul manipulation. Sylvanas’ soul remains a unique case and whatever happens to her is probably not happening to the entirety of the Forsaken.
All of which only serve to flesh out a few more perspectives of the same single event in her life that made her relevant?
God, I hope they don’t doing to the Forsaken what they just did to Sylvanas. It’s bad enough to change one character in this fashion, but the entire Forsaken race? What am I supposed to think of my character and who they are if I then have to consider they might have done everything differently? That’s awful.
You’re great at extracting a ton of mileage out of a single sliver of a character’s life, and that’s admirable I suppose. Again, I asked openly which shade of Sylvanas people are fans of, and you said you were a fan of all of them. That’s when you know a character has become a cult of personality.
That’s enough to fundamentally change who she is and how she would’ve done something.
Thrall certainly has a few dark spots on his past he wouldn’t want to do again, namely the way he handled Garrosh. The difference is Thrall and Sylvanas is that one’s growth was internalized because he had no one but himself to blame, and Sylvanas is externalized because an aspect of her entire being has been kept apart from her.
That’s nowhere near the same, and because Sylvanas didn’t arrive there herself, we can absolutely treat this new version of her like a stranger.
I will elaborate a little if you like. I certainly don’t mind.
In WC3 I was basically rooting for Ranger General Sylvanas every step of the way. I loved that she showed military tactic, confidence, and grit. The Arthas novel fleshed out the same event as you so delicately* put it. It fleshed out Ranger General Sylvanas’ point of view adding things like suicide missions, her emotions, her reactions to her troops being gruesomely murdered and resurrected, meat wagons throwing her troops body parts at the elf gate as ammunition etc etc. Her story was heroic and it ended in tragedy. Christy did a great job of depicting a lot of details about that WC3 event.
Prior to EoN I viewed the Banshee Queen as someone that was truly loyal to her people, and loyal to the Horde only because she had to be, and as someone who would always have her teams’s back. She was cunning,* cut throat,* intelligent,* a military superb strategist,* unmatched with a bow, and a great Commander,* to boot etc etc etc. Oh she was just a wee bit psycho; just like the people she led. There was a small part of her cursed soul that cared for the Sin’dorei and she carried their revenge on her shoulders. I loved everything about this character.
Post EoN the Banshee Queen continued to be all those things minus the part were she cared for them as much as a blacksmith loved to care for his hammer. In other words there was care, but it was only enough care to ensure she didn’t die and or apparently fail her part of the Zovaal’s bargain. I actually took Sylvanas undead card after EoN for a few months; I was on the Sylvanas hate boat and made it very clear. Imagine me, dragging Sylvanas character for couple months straights, ikr. It wasn’t until I realized what she was doing actually benefited the Forsaken and the Horde that I started to enjoy the character again.
The SL for Sylvanas is about a clean death. Every since EoN, back when we were calling Shadowlands “WoW Hell” I’ve been salivating at the thought of raiding SL and booting the Arbiter. I have been very vocal about that…like literally, before I knew who or what she was I wanted her gone. You see I never believed that Sylvanas was destined for “WoW Hell,” I believed that when she died the curse should have been lifted (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NoOntologicalInertia), the Judge being benevolent realizes the true soul and she returns to her original afterlife, and to this very day I still believe that for all undead.
As for the curse:
I knew something was off about her and the Forsaken in vanilla, and it was reinforced with the Arthas novel.
It was around this time I was introduced to the Curse of Undeath. I automatically clung onto the word curse, and normally with a curse(in cinema) comes something that is a driving them to do terrible things (see:https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Curse) this was 100% the case for me. I believed whatever part of their original soul remained was hit with trauma, despair, ptsd, hopelessness, etc etc; the other part was wired by necromancy and I suspect nothing good comes from that.
If the general pop was is a whooper, than Sylvanas is a triple whooper with cheese with an oreo pie and large drink.
The UVG has a section under Sylvanas profile that’s titled “The Dark Ritual” it says the following:
The ritual that Arthas used to turn Sylvanas into a banshee involved tearing her soul out of her still living body. It infinitely prolonged her existence as a creature filled with hate toward all life. -pg138
I’m gonna paraphrase the next quote because its done in sequential frame in the Ghostlands trilogy:
He took her ravaged body and cast unholy spells upon it! Creating from what had once been good a thing of evil! He twisted the soul of Sylvanas Windrunner and turned her into the banshee she is now
The General Population falls under:
“The souls of the undead (Forsaken, PC death knights, ghouls, etc.) are imperfectly attached to their bodies; the dark magic that sustains them is a buffer that prevents their souls from properly joining with their bodies. This is why undead feel only faint sensations of pain or discomfort from most physical stimuli, and why the Light is so painful to their existence. The primary exception to this rule are liches, as liches bind their souls to a phylactery and then use the phylactery to generate a physical form; this process is why lich bodies look nothing like their mortal bodies, and also why you have to destroy a lich’s phylactery to truly kill them.” - Cdev
I could go further into detail, but RL calls. I’ll be glad to pick this conversation up with you later.
After Edge of Night, she’s indeed everything she was before-- but also, now she is a liar. I went back and watched the BfA announcement cinematic, where she triumphantly calls out a rallying cry for the Horde. And we know now that she is lying.
We go back to the events of Silverpine Forest, and everything she says to the player character about how the Forsaken’s future rests with Lordaeron and their right to defend their claim to its land is now also a lie.
I don’t understand why players who have celebrated her as their Warchief continue to do so after she spat into the collective eye of the Horde, and literally called them nothing, revealing that whatever she did for the Forsaken, the Horde, or earn the hearts of the player has been a lie since Edge of Night.
There’s no reason to suspect that there was anything “off” with the Forsaken or Sylvanas, and looking to present events as confirmation is nothing but revisionist history. We had nothing-- not a scrap– to suggest that Sylvanas was not everything she said she was. Shrewd, unwilling to be kept under the thumb of Hellscream, sure, but being furtive with someone micromanaging her campaign is not the same as being furtive with everyone else at the same time. The Forsaken were her team, in on the charade, and we had every reason to believe it.
The circumstances behind Sylvanas’ reanimation and undeath are still unique to her. It’s going to be a mistake to apply things that happened to her and only a few others and look to that for context that will inform what it’s like to be Forsaken. Just because it’s canon that Forsaken souls are imperfectly bounded to their rotting bodies doesn’t mean that it’s the same or similar to what’s going on with Sylvanas’.
Something obviously happened specifically to Sylvanas, and the nature of undeath is happening to the rest of the Forsaken. Comparing them is like saying that osteogenesis imperfect (brittle bone disease) is the same as osteosarcoma (bone cancer) is the same because both involve a condition in the bone.
The Forsaken are not going to experience a ‘soul split’ and many were not involved in the ‘dark ritual’ that made her who she is now.
Awful how exactly? No seriously, that way would be waaay more organic to justify the Forsaken getting a more “benevolent” portrayal than the parody “muh Calia gave me 5 mins of teraphy and I´m CURED from sociopathy” Blizzard tried to sell in BfA (though I´ll concede she only gave “teraphy” to “existing as per 5 min ago” undead, so… easy peachy in comparison to an actual decade+ Forsaken with trauma and abuse baggage.
This is a good point in regards to the old school Forsaken, who were raised thanks to plagued grain.
Not so sure in regards to 2nd generation Forsaken like Voss -I mean they were raised by the Val´kyr we nowadays know were into Zooval´s plot all along, so… Domination Magic, again?-
Because it’s unnecessary, not creative, not interesting. The Forsaken don’t need to have soul reunification to be portrayed sympathetically. They don’t even need sympathy, they just need to be understood. If it’s going to undermine 17 years of history in Sylvanas, then doing that to an entire race would be the same on a much larger scale.
Let the Forsaken own what they are, and find a better way to answer that question without pressing a big fat reset button on their personalities that removes their agency and accountability.
It’s not obvious that they’re doing anything other than necromancy. I guess it remains to be seen.
And putting an Alliance flavored cinnamon roll whose connections are stronger in the Alliance and who is literally part of the Church of the Holy Light (Alliance themed too btw) is not just as unnecessary, not creative, and not interesting?
Cause sorry, but I can buy waaay easier someone “suddenly” growing an empathy bone AFTER getting their whole soul back than after hearing the airheaded princess who abandoned them a decade before… If anything this puts the Forsaken potential development far and away from the obvious “White Saviour” trope that Calia represents, and I rather we run with it.
I repeat: cause the words of a 5 secs ago Undead with no actual relatability nor actual knowledge is a “much better” alternative?
If anything, I hope THIS lore bit will help you realize why Calia becoming the “answer” to the “Forsaken problem” is such a load of BS.
Its always been at least implied that a valkyry raising involved choice. Cata introduction, Godfreys goons comment on the reasons for accepting the Valkiry’s gift as does Sira Moonwarden on Darkshore.
I 'm wondering if having an empathy bone re-implanted into someone who has always allegedly lived their life and unlife around the ‘arrow in her quiver’ metaphor is that open to pangs of guilt or remorse, especially if they have access to hard drugs and alcohol.
From how it looks so far, this isn’t an either/or situation. I think what Dayon is worried about is getting Calia and a retcon that could mass-fix the forsakens’ mental state as a whole. No matter what, it doesn’t seem like she’s going anywhere, so “only” having one bad aspect instead of two is… well, less bad.
In my opinion, the problem isn’t the idea of therapy (despite the fact that apparently nobody in an entire country thought to talk about their problems in two decades), but that it’s Calia doing it.
It was not explained why the night elves were given the choice of non-life while they were dead, but the human choice was given after they were resurrected?
Funny, I see it differently… cause if they get retroactively “fixed” (I mean not even really “fixed”… just with the whole means to decide by themselves) by proxy of them getting their whole souls back, then guess which character´s râison d´etre literally dissapears from the narrative, hmm? Yes, Calia´s.
If the Forsaken achieve the means to see the “error” of their ways by themselves, then they don´t need no Alliance flavored cinnamon roll baby to “educate” them. Contrary to what Dayon believes, this kind of development gives the Forsaken AGENCY to change by themselves, not merely thanks to the words of a pretty “lady”. It would be their actual real selves the ones making the choice, not an unbelievable “teraphy” conducted by a “professional” with 5 secs of experience on the matter.
I´d say this is the opinion of myself and most of the people put off by Calia. Cause it´s legitimately insulting to have the Forsaken “fixed” by a literal Alliance flavored pet character after the egregious villain batting and neglect they have suffered in this game.
She´s awful because she has NOT been constructed by the narrative as an actual coherent individual to achieve this goal, she literally gets away with it more thanks to her “writer pet” status than by actual writting development done upon her. Ergo, it comes as the apalling “White Saviour” trope and nothing else.
And we fulfilled our “racist writting tropes” quota with Baine, tyvm.
…
I did not quite understand.
Representative of Cataclysm - Godfrey pistol. The representative of the night elves is Syrah. Right?
Probably, I poorly formulated the question.
Why is there a difference in the procedures for resurrecting night elves and humans? Why can a night elf refuse being dead and become a wisp?
You have a chip on your shoulder. This is not productive.
I think Calia is going to be fine. I think the Light-based undead angle of the character is an obvious ratcheting of the Forsaken in a specific direction, but she’s not unsalvageable. She’s always going to be undead, that means no matter how Light-forged she is, a part of her will always walk in a realm of shadow.
Directing people toward growth within themselves is more empathetic than having something shoved into them, because it will leave the question of whether or not they’re changing because they willed themselves toward it, or because forces outside of their own control made them change. The latter is antithetical to what the Forsaken are.
It would have to be a matter of choice, and then we’d have the Forsaken dealing with this dumb divide of whether or not to take the “soul pill” or whatever we want to call it, implying that a Forsaken is unable to control their own darker nature without doing so, and that’s garbage.
I don’t know what part Calia has to play in leading the Forsaken. I do not want them to become suddenly sainted and sanctified in the Light as misunderstood good boys. I don’t want them to keep being mired in Party City Halloween schlock either. I want to dive into the mind-body divide of their tortured existence and how people stuck in limbo find purpose for themselves. The Light is still an alien, cosmic force, and an ‘ascended zombie’ can still be otherwordly, strange, unsettling and uncanny if it’s played right. I don’t have faith that it will, but it doesn’t have to be gloom and grimdark to be adequately creepy.
I think any normal person in the presence of Calia would well and truly be unsettled by the reality of her condition, and I’m less sympathetic to the idea that she’s actually any worse than Sylvanas was. It doesn’t make sense to me how Calia can be criticized as being beautiful while Sylvanas has always been presumed to be a central character because of her sex appeal. I guess I take the radical position that both of them are creepy because they are both undead, and it really had nothing to do with Light or Shadow.
If it obfuscates whether or not the Forsaken were capable of making the change on their own, that is not the same as having agency. That is reliance on forces outside of the character to grow, change, learn, and develop. It’s a funny thing to call that agency or anything like it when a character, or an entire race, remains stunted if not for the presence of this plot contrivance-- especially because we didn’t know that going in.
The blood elves-- and most elves-- have a magical addiction. We know that about them from the get-go, it’s baked in, it’s part of their nature. We’re not retroactively looking through some of the dumb stuff elves have done with something new and revelatory that was unclear. We also know that a lot of elves are not slaves to their addiction, and many are heroic, admirable, and have their own natures in check. The Nightborne broke their addiction, and its unclear if the Sin’dorei will. It’s evident enough they may never need to, and from a narrative perspective, they do not need to be rescued from themselves the way a few short-sighted players think is needed for the Forsaken.
Sylvanas getting her soul back might mean we have to look at everything she’s done with a big, fat asterisk because we don’t know if the nu-Sylvanas would have done the things the classic Sylvanas did. If we have to apply that to the Forsaken writ large, we have to toss out everything any Forsaken has every done, and it diminishes the Forsaken who managed to be decent people despite their condition-- Leonid Bartholomew, Alonsus Faol, Shademaster Kiryn, Batrider Cullen, Lilian Voss, Thomas Zilling, Amalia Stone, and the slew of admirable Forsaken who didn’t need their souls returned to them not to be a complete and total fiend.
“Fixing” the Forsaken through soul reunification undermines all of that, and players who are claiming this is agency are just not thinking it through.