If memory serves, Arthas raised the dead into scourge, some of whom broke away when his power weakened to become Forsaken. I remember a cut scene where Sylvanas used Val’kyr to raise new Forsaken and understand that this was done repeatedly to bolster the Forsaken numbers.
Now we come to Calia Menelthil who was apparently raised, more or less, by the light. So I was wondering, undead touched by the light can exist, can not also undead touched by the void? Your thoughts are appreciated.
If Margrave Sin’dane is to be believed, then yes. (Sort of)
She implies that being risen into undeath isn’t exclusive to one school of magic when speaking to Calia about her state of being. That potentially leaves it open-ended enough to speculate that other cosmic forces could do the same but it isn’t a definitive ‘yes’.
Apparently, Necromancy isn’t exclusive to the powers of Death. It can be defined as a series of techniques to imperfectly bind a soul back to its body. Necromantic techniques can be adapted to take any cosmic power plug you want to use.
As weird as it is, one could argue Bolvar is an undead made through the power of Life, for example.
I believe that was what the Void Elves were doing to the dinos around Zuldazar.
The plot of WoD Shadowmoon Valley is literally all about the Void raising undead.
In that case it was not true undeath, it was the conjuring void entities that used corpses as finger puppets. Which… when you consider it… is incredibly horrifying.
Anything being able to raise the dead doesn’t seem right. Using different cosmic powers to animate the dead like some bone golem is one thing but full on raising should be death exclusive.
Shadowlands lore blows.
The schools of magic from D&D exist to a large extent in WoW, though they’re called ‘of the Arcane’, likely due to the ego of the Kirin Tor. By the in game books, they’re pretty much identical barring Portals and Teleportation being under Transmutation and not Conjuration. Because of this, pretty much any act of raising the dead, be it undead or otherwise, falls under that same umbrella. All magic uses these schools, even if the methodology and magic types involved are different, and I think that’s what they were going for when the Margrave said this.
Prior to the weird Pokemon-esque organization of the cosmology, there was a lot more crossover between the magical types in Warcraft, and you see this as recently as WoD. Shadowmoon Orcs use the Void and Shadow to manipulate the souls of the dead as well as summon skeletons and the like, Gul’dan uses Fel to bring Mannoroth back from the dead and at a few points he’s literally a skeleton. Further back, you can restore Loramus, a Demon Hunter, via use of a blood magic ritual and other eldritch methods even after he’s been dead for ages and cut up into pieces. You do the same in a Horde quest in Wrath, but via Shamanism.
So this is more or less the writers trying to adhere to pre-Chronicles lore, because the moment those books were published it seemed like they frantically backtracked.
Meryl Felstorm used his own Arcane magic to resurrect himself. If Arcane can do it, so can Void. I don’t think the term “Void” even existed before Chronicles.
Before Chronicles it was simply called Shadow Magic.
The Shadow, Darkness, Void it all seems interchangeable.
The big bad that the Jailer warned us about is The Shadow, so is that the Void? is that who we have to worry about next? a Void Lord. i dunno.
Could be the Infinite Dragonflight breaks the timeline in Dragonflight, allowing the cosmic force that supposedly chained free finally.
It would be interesting if each school of magic had it’s own strengths and weaknesses when raising dead. For instance, Death magic would be “the best” at it in the sense that it’s most in tune with the process, and therefore takes the least amount of work and has the highest chance of success. Necromancy via Light magic would be more resistant to decay and allow the recipient to retain more of their former personality. However, it would have a very low chance of success due to the Light’s aversion to undeath, with the only exception being people that were devout followers of the Light.
We see lots of void raised undead in AU Shadowmoon Valley. Ner’zhul and his shadowmoon clan use the void via a corrupted K’ara (The Dark Star) to do so.
Fel magic can also raise the dead as seen in the Broken Shore.
I don’t think it is a member of the void. The void is considered one of the 6 cosmic powers the First Ones (still reckon they are ducks. Don’t care what Dragonflight says) made. And Zovaal tried to use domination magic to bring all the 6 cosmic forces under his heel via Zerith Mortis.
But tbh, it is really just a ploy by Blizzard to try and “redeem” Zovaal in a meta sense.
i beliefe if is more inline if the first ones only create the four inner power, means, life, death, order,disorder and light and void is outside of their “Reach” and were there from the beginning and…indeed are their own origin. But i guess we will not get this.
Would any of the Drust’s shenanigans count as Nature Necromancy?
Tbf we had seen Fel magic being used to raise the dead. Most notably with Mannoroth’s corpse in WoD but you also see a lot of that in Legion.
And what’s of note is that in the Warlock questline it’s shown they seem to actively look down on Necromancers. They basically bully the CotD into giving them an artifact and consider them crusty old corpse lovers. And I do find the idea of Chaos, Death and Void magic users all hating eachother amusing.
I do wish WoW had just nailed down a more sensible magic system though. Because it’s funny to me that Fire Mages were the edgier casters and the more acceptable path was Arcane and Ice. But then DKs also use ice and their whole thing is being edgy so - is it more mean spirited ice?
Even before that you had Madrigosa back in TBC who was somehow spontaneously raised from the dead by pit lord blood as a demon skeleton dragon. Like you do. Ah, the old days before they had any solid cosmology.
“Well you see we Kirin Tor use just-ice whereas the Ebonblade uses mal-ice”
I’ll see myself out.
Oh, I forgot, the Void Elves use the Void to raise undead dinosaurs in Zuldazar. But, they don’t actually put their souls back into the body. They simply use the Void to posses the body.
Unacceptable. Once Jaina and Genn are dead, Umbric and his wretched ilk must be exterminated like the cockroaches they are. They threw Goblins into the Void, so let’s have them eradicated by the Light of Rezan!