I have been having a lot of fun with my Troll Death Knight recently and have taken a swing to getting him in character.
Instead of following traditional Loa, I maybe sort of came up with the idea of a follower of a nascent Loa.
What is your thoughts on player loa, and what pitfalls or traps usually come from playing these kinds of stories?
Outside of clearly NOT treating the Loa as non-canon of course.
I think itâs one of those things that are plausible lorewise but is going to be tougher for people to engage with. Because itâs a non canon loa they canât read about or encounter in game or in a book somewhere, all they can really do is listen to you about what it is or does. I think thatâs ultimately the main pitfall. This isnât to say itâs impossible or some deeply hard thing to do. So donât get me wrong there.
Documentation and player presence has been something I have been routinely concerned about since I started this character.
So far I have a TRP3 âdiaryâ of sorts that the character uses to write down specific commands and request from his loa, as well as the location of potential ritual sites. I donât really consider that a pitfall so much as an unavoidable consequence of this type of roleplaying.
I have contemplated making a caard if the cult grows, for either clarification purposes or letting other people play priests.
Basic Rules of Roleplay work best here for a Player-made Loa, but âLoaâ is a very vast, all-encompassing term that doesnât just apply to Wild Gods and Demi-God Mortal Spirits, after all.
Trolls have always had small Loa in their lives. From the household Loa who come from their ancestors, small spirits their bloodlines have befriended or saved, or even just children of older, more established Loa who enjoy the security and comfort of a family household to look after, and that looks after them in turn.
Loa of this kind are more like a Familiar, and a sassy one at that because theyâve likely been around you since before you learned to crawl, and have minimal power in the terms of what players are familiar with. These can run the gamut from a small Loa that watches over the family hearth to make sure the fire never spreads, to an ancient relative that stands watch over the children as they sleep, Some might literally be family, with their offering being a plate of food at the family dinner every meal-time, to respected and honored servants of the house-hold, proud of their duty and their status within a powerful and respected household.
Weâve seen the former in Northrend, specifically the Enchanted Tiki Warriors (questline is from https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Enchanted_Tiki_Warriors) of Warlord Zolâmaz, which is rather disturbing actually, considering the Tiki you created to both drawn the Warlord out and fight him is made from the souls of his wife and children ⌠that you also killed âŚ
The later was referenced in the Zulâjin novel, that most Trolls have household Loa who are of little power, but great spiritual and cultural comfort to the family and tribe as a whole.
While most âpersonalâ Loa are entities such as Gonk, Gral, Paku, Bwonsamdi and other, greatly powerful entities that the Trolls pledge their service to and take requests from, and give offerings to depending upon the nature of the Loa in question, that doesnât mean that the Troll has to exclude all other Loa from their life. Many of the most powerful Loa are jealous of each other, using their followers to gain influence, territory and safety at the expense of their rivals, barring Gonk, who actively works to allow Trolls to have multiple high-ranked Loa and somehow has enough pull that all but the most jealous and stubborn Loa will âshareâ followers with each other. But many Trolls also have small, personal Loa in the same vein as a household Loa, minor spirits who do not, per-se, have great power themselves, but assist and guide the Troll in question on their path forwards through life.
Be it a small Fire Elemental that keeps the light burning in a torch, in return for incense and protection from larger Elemental Spirits that might consume or enslave it, a Loaâs child that serves as the Spirit Beast companion of a Hunter who serves said Loa, allowing the child to grow and learn in safety in exchange for service, or even a dead relative who whispers advice and comfort from the Other Side through a small charm or trinket they are linked to.
And even the smallest and humblest of Loa can rise to the top of the pile, if they have the guile, the will, and most importantly, the luck to see it through. A powerful champion can do wonders for making that trip less treacherous for such a Loa, and one thatâs already touched by Death, but not by Bwonsamdi, would make a very tempting target. Needing to shed blood constantly due to their curse, thatâs a lot of vitality and anima theyâre producing with that violence, enough to nurture and feed a growing Loaâs power, and in return, the Loa intercedes on behalf of the Troll, either working as a go-between between the Death Knight and Bwonsamdi, or storing that power and doling it out as necessary while also increasing its own power when and where it can.
These are just some random thoughts of mine. Iâm trying to bone up on my Troll lore because, really, weâre going to need it as we head deeper into the next expansion and considering how Xalâatath has interacted with the Empires of yore, more understanding of Troll culture and religion can only serve us all well.
This is actually a fantastic post and something that gives me a lot more insight on what to do with VorâJaroa, so-called âLoa of Leechesâ.
The ambition of a small and diminutive Loa rising up to protect what it sees as a heavily misguided family Is already something I was working with and iâm glad that thereâs examples of it in the lore already.
Wild Gods, Loa, Celestials âŚ
Itâs been made clear over and over again in official statements by Blizzard staff that weâre meant to take nearly everything said by npcs (or in texts, scrolls, books found in Azeroth or elsewhere) as being something from an unreliable narrator. Meaning: âcanonâ is a plumb bob to balance and guide playersâ creativity, not field artillery to shoot down othersâ fun.
Since there are an unspecified number of Wild Gods, the same would be true of Loa ( a subset of Wild Gods, being those revered by Trolls ). On top of which, youâre not really talking about whether or not a specific Loa actual exists, but only that a specific character believes it exists.
Trying to get people to interact with some kind of fanatic handing out tracts or shouting on a street corner might not be fun in the long run. But if their beliefs and practices are just part of a characterâs well-rounded background and story arc. then it shouldnât really bother anyone worth RPing with anyway.
If you want a specific canonical justification for a ânewâ Loa, it seems to me that saying it reawakened in Ardenweald and recently returned to Azeroth would serve.
I think also as long as you arenât doing it as a power over other people is also fine. Sometimes people will come up with original ideas, which is great, half the fun of RP is being creative and coming up with fun ideas and concepts to play out with our digital action figures. Itâs when it conflicts with the setting in a way that invalidates others.
I could say, Juspion follows a unique Naaru that doesnât exist in the gameâs setting. Thatâs all fine and dandy until I say, also this original Naaru is a Super Prime Chad Naaru and bigger and stronger than Xeâra and made Juspion into a SUPER LIGHTFORGE and I can literally shoot light beams from my eyes now ANNNND I light beamed Turoylon to death AND became the new leader of the Lightforge AND now Iâm High King of Stormwind for defeating Turylon as are the ways of the Nord AND Iâm also the most popular one at prom AND EVERYONE wants to dance with me INCLUDING YOU.
Thatâs no fun, no one wants to deal with that.
If I show up and say, I worship a unique Naaru that was lost to us during our journey and I carry a few precious fragments. When I pray to them, they glow ever so faintly and give me the resolve and continue faith in the light.
Thatâs totally fine, no one is going to bat an eye and if they do, thatâs a problem on them not me.
This is a great point.
I think players sometimes forget that not everyone was running around doing main character quests on their characters. What they might have learned could have been information passed down from word of mouth, got lost in translation, and by the time it gets to them itâs an entirely different story.
Juspion doesnât know squat about Loa. He knows OF them, heâs heard stories but maybe by the time those stories got to him, itâs about Gonk being the most popular girl at prom and everyone wants to dance with him, INCLUDING YOU.
If Thrall can be Goku, you can have a Loa.
Now Thomas might not be a âLoaâ (even though a couple Trolls have called him one to his absolute mortification) but there is definitely some sort of reverence = power source undercurrent in WoWâs writing, even outside of Troll culture. The buff the Highlord gets while inside the Legion order hall for paladins has flavor text that specifically calls out the devotion of your followers as the cause of the buff. Or how the both Cult of the Damned and the Tuskarr of Northrend called Arthas a god and how he really did end up in a god-like status. Self-fulfilling prophecy, or exploitation of a natural phenomenon of the WoW universe that only Trolls have given a solid name for? Who knows, and thatâs the fun part!
If you want to create your own minor Loa and get your friends in on the action, it can become an intensely fun collaborative effort as OOC and IC semi-collide to make something that wasnât a thing⌠a thing! Thomas may never -call- himself a Loa, but have people asked blessings from him and heâs been coincidentally able to grant them? Thomas will swear up and down it was the Lightâs doing, definitely the Light.
One thing with leeches, is that both historically and in fantasy, they are creatures of both healing and disease, which ties in well with a Death Knight of Blood or Unholy styles.
Leeches were often used to leech blood out of impacted bruises that overlaid broken bones to ease the pressure and prevent deformation of the healing bone, âdiseasedâ blood and swelling in or around the cranium were often treated with leeches, but they were also vessels of disease if used âwildâ or not specially prepared.
In fantasy-settings, leeches often fill similar, if exaggerated roles, with leeches being elevated to voracious parasites despite the fact real leeches will drop off the host as soon as theyâre fed, and being able to absorb tremendous amounts of vitality, or being loaded with horrendous diseases. In positive aspects, however, they were seen as consumers of diseased blood or creatures, and a natural if unsavory part of the cycle of life, sapping the strong to prevent them overwhelming the weak and disrupting the cycle beyond the point of repair.
I often have conversations with people either totally new to RP or playing a different race for the first time. Theyâre usually incredibly anxious about not âKnowing The Loreâ by which they mean having memorized every bit of everything ever published by Blizzard, whether it be books, ingame or tweets.
I always remind them that they donât need to know any more about lore than their character does. I make sure to remind them about the rl analog: none of us know everything about every extant human culture, let alone the entire history/prehistory of humanity. And, come to that, even historians, archaeologists and others of their ilk often disagree.
One of the best IC responses to differing perspectives on lore (imho) is something along the lines of âHmm. Thatâs different than the way my nana told it. I guess Iâll have to go have a sit and think about it.â 
I have actually been specifically playing out the unholy and blood aspects of a leech loa precisely as you posted, with VorâJaroa being a sort of âimmune responseâ of Nazmir that was born to devour corruption, plague, and illness and teach the âtrue power of bloodâ through the medicinal qualities of leeching, bloodletting, and other bodily humor filtering qualities.
However I never really considered the impact of leeches on the environment in terms of weakening the strong. I might incorporate that view into the loaâs sense of justice.
Oh hi! I found you in Org and vorâjaroa was a really fun concept to rp with, I think you do it well
Iâm glad you enjoyed it, Itâs definitely been a test of skills as a role player in making sure they were both enjoyable and believable.