Writing for a warlock, it does take a bit of effort to rationalize how they’re OK with using a magic which requires soul eating without making them total monsters!
Is your warlock a good person? Do they only use demon or otherwise “deserving” souls in their rituals? Do they just take a little bit of a victim’s life force, as a treat, rather than obliterating their soul entirely? Or do they rationalize sacrificing innocent souls “for the greater good” in an illidan-like fashion?
Mine is a consequentialist (bit of a common theme for my characters).
They’re a Nightborne felcaster that essentially played along, but was helping sew the seeds of revolution in whatever way he could behind the scenes. When the reckoning came, he smothered felfire with felfire. It was delicious.
Altielle isn’t evil. She’s just weak.
She tries to do good over and over but fails due to her inherent flaws. But when she does good. When she stands up to the fears and weaknesses she has and does the right thing anyways…
That’s when she’s at her finest.
He wears the skulls of orphan gnomes on his shoulders. He’s just misunderstood. That orphanage attacked him everyone saw it.
My warlock was actually so ashamed of the stuff he did in Outland he tried desperately to go back to the “Good Old Days” of being a SMC Magister and using only the Arcane, even though it just wasn’t the same.
He only broke out the Fell and started using i again semi-regularly during Legion, then regularly after Velves tried to kill his Blood Knight daughter.
My warlock employs demons to help make deliveries as a part of her independent mailing service. Years of training in the summoning arts can’t go to waste in private enterprise!
I haven’t RPed mine in a while but he was a ruthless pragmatist who ultimately reformed for the sake of home and family. He arguably used fel for the right reasons, and opposed the Legion. But… he didn’t mind if a few civilians died for the greater good. The resolution of his story was him essentially giving up Fel.
He’s now in the process of rapidly aging and dying from the effects of years of fel magic on the body.
You win hands down!!
Absolutely.
My Warlock, was the romantic partner of Mystfire for most of her life (it’s an alt, I don’t do romance with other people in RP). But that term i used very loosely. He was corrupt, wicked, manipulative, and quite frankly, abusive towards Myst.
Egging HER on to do terrible things, and if she had doubts, or misgivings that something was wrong, he squashed that. He molded her into a criminal and an outlaw for hundreds of years, until only recently did she finally take care of him and try to redeem herself.
She did have one daughter with him, which is the primary reason she was so loathe to just abandon him, it took her a long time to realize that man was not her daughter’s father, he was just a scumbag who helped make her.
It was one of my favorite storylines to write, and while I am partially sad it is over, I am extremely satisfied with its ending, and the growth Myst experienced during it. Successful story is successful.
Mary’s pretty evil, but only because she can and does rationalize things like stealing and using souls for herself. She generally only takes from people she considers “bad”, but sometimes she’s just flat out wrong. She seems like a really nice, friendly person on the surface, though. I get a lot of ‘wtf’ ooc when people find out what she gets up to in her personal time.
Evil? I can’t say I kick puppies, but I do not hide what magics I use. They are a means to an end. I found what I am good at and use it to fight off the enemies of the alliances I am sworn to.
I wouldn’t call him evil, necessarily. He resorted to it to survive, and then to send the Legion packing from Suramar. Is it a questionable source of magic? Absolutely. But he’s not using it to, like, murder people.
I mean, sort of. It’s been hard to reconcile the backstory of “nightborne insurgent” with the whole Teldrassil happening thing, which has kind of put a spoke or two or twenty in my wheels. But in short, I wouldn’t say he’s evil or a villain so much as flawed, a little power-hungry and very willing to turn his fire green if it means a) blowing up demons and b) living to tell the tale. Plus, I mean, his imp shredded his face so I’m still working on the dynamic there but I can’t imagine he’s very nice to it.
Am I evil?
I am man, yes I am.
Delilah is undeniably ruthless and has accepted that her method of magic and the revenge she seeks will cause consequences she can’t truly control. She just…doesn’t care. She worked herself up from the gutter to become who she was and she’ll do whatever she has to to reclaim that power, wealth and status.
Let the fel infect her blood. She’ll drown it with the finest wine.
Doctor Beacon is evil, but not a monster. Evil in the sense of she can do certain things without feeling bad about it, but a far lesser evil to anything of the sort that would get a quest on her head.
She does what she does to improve the power of her people, and to ensure the world survives so they can live in it. She also just does everything she can to make her life pleasant and comfortable with her power, and just… generally doesn’t care about the people her magic devours, though she makes sure none of them stand with the Horde.
Rae is rather morally grey rather than flat out evil, but it depends who you ask and what situation they encounter her in.
She sticks to fire and shadow magic rather than Fel, and uses slivers of souls from multiple sources rather than a single, whole soul from one person. As she explains it’s like the difference between mining for gold or panning for gold in a river - you can pull out a whole soul (and use the extra fear and pain to aid in powering a spell) or you can collect the bits of echoes people leave behind without realizing it.
After a few nastier moments in her past, she tries to be a better person and often falls back on her former priest training and the Three Virtues (Respect, Tenacity & Compassion) of the Church of Light as guidelines. Her disinclination to cause pain and suffering is what keeps her from turning flat out evil. Still, if someone pisses her off enough or harms those close to her she has no qualms wiping out a small village to get to them. Her priest bff is pretty good at calming her down in those moments so she hasn’t blissfully slaughtered that many people recently. (Unless they were bad people who started it first…)
The trouble with being an elf is that you have a long life, and therefore ample time to reap what you sow. Any elf with any sense must wield power with discernment and restraint.
It’s also prudent to defang your enemies if you can’t crush them outright. There are few things more dangerous than someone with less than a century to lose.
My warlock is currently little more than an AH alt, so the little story/fluff I have for her is purely for comedy.
Based on goblin contract skills and seeing that underground tailoring ring in Silvermoon, I made her a fashion designer taking advantage of the glut of unemployed demons post-Legion to get cheap labor!
Her imp has to wear a top hat to advertise her work. He’s not very happy about it.
My warlock doesn’t go out of her way to set people on fire. But, then again, she doesn’t go out of her way to avoid setting people on fire.
Ah, fire. Yes, delightful. I find dousing Alliance civilians… subjects… soldiers? Yes, yes, soldiers! In highly corrosive chemicals to be equally hillarious… amusing… effective? Yes!