They were predominantly plague-striken citizens of Lorderon, and the original Plague of Undeath is noted for especially retaining the awareness of its human victims trapped in their bodies as part of its Scourging process.
Necromantically raising corpses as ghouls doesn’t necessarily produce functional undead people who can proceed to start new unlives as “themselves” once they’ve been freed from their controller. Most Scourge who aren’t Plagued humans or explicitly made to be sapient by unique processes (like certain constructs) or special reanimation by the Lich King and his empowered champions are basically meat-and-bone puppets animated and driven by a broadcasted impetus to follow their master’s basic commands.
Forsaken aren’t from full-blown ghouls; ghouls are an extreme mutation of undead caused by continued exposure to the various plague agents and necrotic energies widely employed by the Scourge. With their still recognizably human (albeit emaciated and variably decayed) features and proportions, most Forsaken would have effectively been zombies, while ghouls are mutated to have grossly large heads and limb extremities complete with oversized fangs and claws.
It seems pretty clear to me that most of the Scourge is too far gone to be freed because otherwise, the bulk of the Scourge would have been freed during one of those gaps in the Lich King’s control including the one that created the Forsaken.
In fact, there have been two times in the lore where there was no psychic domination of the Scourge at all. After Arthas’ defeat at Icecrown Citadel before Bolvar took the helm, and when Sylvanas took the Helm of Domination from Bolvar before she shattered it to give the Jailer control of the Scourge.
Neither case resulted in more free-willed undead being created. In fact, the entire basis of “there must always be a Lich King” was predicated on the idea that the bulk of the Scourge didn’t have anything but animalistic instincts left.
Is that actually true? The only instance I can think of where that was implied was Road to Damnation where Kel’thuzad speculated that maybe it was the case but it was unconfirmed.
The experience of being raised seems to mostly be you die, and then your consciousness is a blurry mess that merges with the will of the Lich King, and if you get freed it’s extremely disorienting to the point where you can barely even recall what happened and how you got there.
I don’t recall anything to suggest that the Plague of Undeath’s function was any different from other forms of necromancy other than the scale. With more recent lore it seems that the Plague of Undeath was essentially just a toxic form of domination magic that both efficiently killed and primed the victim to be receptive to death magic.
It was part and parcel of how it worked. The Plague of Undeath’s mechanism for “hands-free” reanimation was unique because it allowed for remote Scourging; enslaving the soul through the body’s particular cause of death was what allowed it to remotely turn its human victims into Scourge on the fly instead of just being a really toxic poison that still required someone nearby using necromancy to raise them as undead.
Nothing else allows a victim to be killed, then raised as Scourge without another agent of the Scourge in the vicinity deliberately causing the reanimation. Without that mechanism, it wouldn’t have raised them as Scourge, just as being cut down by a Scourge soldier doesn’t inherently turn one into undead; being raised by Scourge necromancy after being cut down by a Scourge soldier does that. Certain powerful Scourge agents (including the Lich King himself) can raise new undead out of fresh corpses from a fair distance, causing slain foes on the front lines to rise again as new Scourge soldiers shortly after being killed, but the act of dying at Scourge hands itself doesn’t carry the same built-in auto-reanimation mechanism that the Plague possesses.
That was why it was so effective at rapidly converting so many people; as powerful and expansive as his will had become, even the Lich King couldn’t just arbitrarily raise any dead person anywhere from afar irrespective of their cause of death (otherwise he’d need no Plague, as the world’s full of populous cemeteries and tombs and lots of people are always dying all the time, all over the world), but anyone killed by the Plague specifically was effectively “marked” to become new Scourge on the spot, rising again with their freshly slain bodies and souls already under his control. It effectively caused the victims to go straight from living to undead, skipping the normal “in-between” state of just being a soulless corpse in need of reanimation.
If it’s only the plague of undeath that possibly creates free willed undead, then why are the Val’kyr shown to be effective? Surely more conventional necromancy can have similar ends even if the means are different?
Nathanos’ account of undeath both in-game and in Dark Mirror demonstrate a relative lack of awareness on his part. All that mattered was serving the Lich King and he reveled in it, because he was basically an animal.
That doesn’t seem to be the case as per Antonidas’ studies of the plague
I’ve stumbled upon a key factor of this plague, one so cleverly hidden in its methodology that I’ve come to two immutable conclusions: That its development was for the singular prupose of ending human life, and its inception was at the hands of an intelligent being.
Long term affliction of the plague causes a certain reanimation of activity in the dead. This activity is very small at first, and I disregarded it as a minor side-effect. However, this energy remained persistent and unwavering. A thought struck me, one which was both surprising and strong: The corpse was waiting for something.
At that moment I did not have any evidence to prove it, but I nonetheless spent time pursuing it. I used my limited knowledge of necromancy and casted simple curses on the corpse. At the time I had no motivation to raise the dead, only to change or distinguish the radiating energy off the corpse. Imagine my surprise when it sprung to life and attacked me.
I did not hesitate to incinerate it to dust, and I now regret doing so. But I was able to prove my unprovoked theory, that the corpse (and by extension the plague that saturates it) was indeed waiting for further commands. It’s clear that those who die by this plague are only lying dormant in their graves, awaiting one skillful in necromancy to awaken them.
So it still requires some kind of external magical influence in order to raise a victim of the Plague. The nature of the plague just makes it trivially easy, possibly to the point that when it got going the necromantic magic was able to raise new victims simply by its presence even without being directed.
It definitely matches what we’ve seen with how the plague unfolded. It was relatively slow at first and it could take hours or even days for the plague to raise its victim, probably because early on it required the Cult of the Damned to still give the bodies a “kick” so to speak. But as it got going, and particularly as Mal’ganis got involved, the time from death to raising went from hours to seconds.
It didn’t skip the “in-between” state for most of its existence though. Other accounts from Dalaran during the Third War say that even once the outbreak got going there were still usually periods of at least a few minutes where the victim was dead-dead.
My point is that while the mechanism of the Plague of Undeath was such that it allowed necromancy to be done on a scale that was normally impossible, the fundamental forces at play were still the same as killing a guy with a sword and then raising him as undead. The Plague was not unique in that regard, only that it allowed for people to be killed and raised en masse with minimal preparation or power requirements.
The lore on the mechanics of necromancy is still fundamentally a mess unfortunately. We’ve seen necromancers raise people who died decades earlier and yet they still apparently retained their souls even though it their souls should have been taken to their appropriate afterlife long, long ago.
We’re not even sure if the soul is really intact after being raised as undead. Souls are not supposed to be capable of inhabiting dead bodies which suggests that part of the necromantic process could involve reshaping the soul in some way, which would correlate with the pretty well established fact at this point that becoming undead either turns you into a prick or makes you emo, depending on your relative exposure to forces like the Light.
Most other fantasy universes don’t have raised undead retain souls at all because it causes giant metaphysical clustertrucks like the one we have now in WoW, but they did it in WoW with the Forsaken because the primary appeal of the Forsaken faction is being a teenage edgelord whose parents don’t understand their pain.
Lie.
The Scourge still raises anyone it kills by infecting them with the Plague. We just had an event about this and that you’d lie so brazenly speaks multitudes unto your character as a debater.
This confused me too at first but Danuser actually did an interview about this - apparently the soul simply disappears from the Shadowlands if it is raised, forgetting all memories of its time there… and will simply return again, along WITH its Shadowlands memories, if it is killed. I’ll see if I can find the interview - I believe it was with a lore channel called the Lost Codex.
Sylvanas didnt even give them the ability to chose. It was the Lich King weakening his grasp that ultimately allowed the Forsaken to actually get back their agency.
Dreadmoore is absolutely correct here it’s canon. Even if she didn’t do it personally for every Forsaken it is clear that Sylvanas possesses the ability to free the wills of Undead
https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Reigol_Valdread
And for what it’s worth I say that as someone who initially disagreed. The lore is clear on this one
That just raises the question of why she needed the Val’kyr then.
Maybe Varimathras was involved? In Warcraft: Legends the Forsaken raise some Scarlet Crusaders as undead but Sylvanas needed to have Varimathras do it.
Alternatively, Sylvanas didn’t really free him so much as he freed himself and Sylvanas just gave him a push, and it’s extremely rare for that to happen.
Sylvanas had the ability to free the minds of undead. She did not have the ability to raise them herself.
And no I wouldn’t use her BFA Siege of Lordaeron example as evidence to counter that claim, to be honest. The ability she possessed to raise new corpses as well as the ability to turn into a sort of half-corporeal banshee seem to have eventuated with her bargain with the Jailer. Her black arrow ability in Warcraft 3 is the only prior indication of this and it was A: temporary and B: probably mainly a gameplay mechanic.
In the actual raising of undead, it’s possible! Especially now that we know Nathrezim are creatures of death.
