San’layn/vampyr Elf ALLIED RACE Coagulated Megathread of Ideas{Re-VAMPed} (Part 1)

Community General Discussion
8009

Sure thing! I’ll communicate with you about what lore you’d want me to include as well so we’d be on the same page. As for the going over my own megathread, yeah probably! I also didn’t think about doing an updated lore video, but yeah there’s a lot of unanswered questions from BfA so I probably will make a video bringing them up and leaving my suggestions as to how they could expand upon this stuff.

Alright! I’ll write out the process when the time comes then post it on your thread just to make sure we’re on the same page too before I make it ^^

This response made me giggle <3 hahaha

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8010

I was given a paperback copy of the Shadows Rising book as a gift, which I am in the process of reading through.

So far, there hasn’t really been any San’layn mentions in it. In fact, Wowpedia has a section for the different books that talks about the general plot and lists all characters that appear or are mentioned in each book. Shadows Rising is listed here:

I did not notice any San’layn characters listed. In fact, all I’ve seen of Sylvanas’ minions in the book are some Dark Rangers, so it’s possible that she doesn’t have any San’layn among her ranks. I recall she had some banshees from the Sylvanas loyalists cinematic, but that is about it.

Mostly, I mention this since the next patch is hitting the PTR soon, and we’ll see what Sylvanas’ raid will consist of. It’s possible it’ll mostly be filled with minions of the Jailer, though we could see some of Sylvanas’ mooks as jobbers there as well.

As such, I again wanted to state that even if for some reason there San’layn there, it doesn’t mean them as a whole would be following her. It’s possible there could be multiple covens and so on. It is something that I feel shouldn’t deter our support for playable Horde San’layn. Best case scenario I feel is that there aren’t any San’layn there, as they would be smart enough to not follow the person who serves a jerk who wants to enslave us all and milk our souls for some fresh, pasteurized anima.

Thinking on it, it’s possible Sylvanas used Dreven’s posse as a means to an end and didn’t care about them at all. If anything comes from it, at the very least it opens the door slightly since Rokkhan would be fine accepting them if they served the Horde. Not a guarantee, but hey, it’s something.

As I said before, I’ll be keeping an eye out for anything San’layn related with the next patch, as well as keeping an eye out on what happens with Kael’thas. Not expecting a whole lot to be honest, but you never know. :wine_glass::bat:

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8011

Right! It could be like the Dark Ranger situation where there are Horde loyal and Sylvanas loyal. Maybe the ones who joined Sylvanas were a splinter faction of San’layn freed from the Lich King when Arthas was defeated.

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8012

This comment aged like fine wine. :ok_hand:

Alliance has customisation options to look the part of High Elves now, although not directly named; would only be fair if the same ordeal is applied to Blood Elves having the San’layn customisation options. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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8013

Speaking of undead races in general, it seems like there is a general inconsistency with how beings raised into undeath are. Even with Arthas having been removed.

Some retain their own personalities just fine.

Others go BWHAHAHA and twirl their mustaches for the sake of it.

And some just go along with it and joining the Forsaken, even if they were previously members of the Alliance. Just like a shoulder shrug and a WELP kind of feeling.

A good example of this is Sira Moonwarden, who was dedicated to the Night Elves and was present when her home fell. Then she gets raised and then immediately…joins with the being who killed her and destroyed her home.

I get that she could be fed up with Elune, Tyrande, and such, but I don’t really get why she just joined the very person responsible for the death of destruction of several people she knew and her home. It’d be different if she joined the Forsaken after Sylvanas left, but…it’s really weird to see the sudden loyalty to her enemy. Especially reading the Shadows Rising book.

With San’layn, it’s a similar thing. Arthas raised them as Darkfallen, and we still see some like Dreven acting with Scourge-like personality and ambition. You’d think there would be San’layn out there that would suddenly be who they were beforehand. Not sure why some of the Forsaken can do that for the most part and not the San’layn that we’ve seen so far.

It’s possible someone could point something out to explain it better, but as I said, it’s a bit of a weird inconsistency to me with how undeath and personalities/servitude work. :wine_glass::bat:

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8014

“Your Goddess abandoned you. Join me and take revenge!”

“By helping you slaughter my friends and family like you did to me?”

“Yes.”

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8015

I hate that storyline so much…

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8016

This is covered a bit more in Darkness Rising, but Sira (and Everyone else whose died recently) spent an indeterminable amount of time in the Maw being tortured, cause time goes wonky there. Moments in the living world, hours? Weeks? Wonths? Years in the Maw?
The other thing is specifically how she was raised, where she basically has the Death Knight hunger of needing to hurt/kill stuff or go insane[r] very painfully.

That being said, the entire extended storyline of War of Thorns >Battle of Darkshore was complete and total [EXPLETIVE].

The first batch of Forsaken had Sylvanas whispering/singing into their head and that allowed them to break free/change, and the second batch can be chalked up to how Sylvanas’ Valkyr are raising them.

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8017

This kinda reminds me of a storyline from Buffy, but if it was crap.

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8018

I don’t take the game lore seriously. Especially now. I’m sick of people in general using it to tell me how I should play my character. They use exactly this to say that my character should be mindlessly evil, when I play antiheroes. At this point I just… don’t take what Blizzard does to heart. In my opinion, ANY character that has a free will can be any alignment. Good, evil, and anything in between. Not that this implies that you said otherwise, of course. I agree entirely and am reinforcing my frustrations with it.

They SHOULD show more variety with the intelligent undead, but they’ve reduced forsaken to mindlessly evil, dark rangers, and San’layn. Death Knights get to be big heroes in Shadowlands for like 30 minutes before everyone forgets they exist again. I’m so tired of arguing with people that my characters retain their traits they were when living, just lean more toward violence (heavily).

That’s my gripe with RP and how lore is presented, though. I really need to stop letting these stupid RP police get to me and dictate my emotions. It would be very nice if Blizzard cared about lore enough to actually provide more variety, though. Clearly, they do not.

Edit: Also gotta love people completely incorrect about lore arguing against San’layn in other threads. Makes me roll my eyes hardcore. Not calling out the specific person, but I’ll answer it bloody here like I always do, because I’m tired of seeing incorrect nonsense being thrown around.

^ This entire post, and I am NOT repeating myself. Would be nice if some posters actually paid attention to lore as opposed to spewing nonsense and lies.

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8019

The duality of mankind at it’s finest. It’s why Blizzard probably doesn’t understand why they lose half their player base every expansion right off the bat. And how it’s getting worse. Half want their theme park lobby game. Half want sandbox MMO. There isn’t much sandbox or MMO. Just raid, mythic, arena, bg… the world isn’t important except to showcase their lore which they are too obsessed with the main characters for it to be anything else.

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8020

Neither does Blizzard for the way the company itself devalues ​​certain details of the lore when it is convenient.

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8021

I HATE what Blizzard has done to the Lich King and the lore behind the Scourge. My most favorite part of WoW lore and my favorite characters ruined.

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8022

Agreed. I honestly can think of very little I even like about this expansion, so much that it’s just made me stop playing. Which is ironic, as I still will likely make videos relevant to it, this thread, and other AR requests, but… ugh. Now I’m even more inclined to make that lore/questions video too, because I’m tired of the nonsense on here. (What else is new though.)

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8023

According to the second Traveller novel raising a Forsaken is extremely easy, since it’s basically just raising a zombie. However when raised the prospective Forsaken is under control of the person who raised them. The tricky part is returning their free will, which requires a great deal more magic.

So basically Forsaken are risen without free will, but are then given free will when it’s convenient. This is why Forsaken raised on the battlefield are usually ESGEDDIT FOR THE DARK LADY right away while Forsaken raised in a place where the necromancer in question can take their time are immediately sentient.

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8024

This is what I figured the process was, though I do wonder if the person who raised them to be in servitude of them expires, then what happens?

I can’t remember any specifics, but when Arthas kicked the bucket for good, I figure a lot of sentient undead who were raised would’ve gotten control of their free will again. It wouldn’t be impossible, since we saw that with the Death Knights and other minions gain free will while Arthas is still alive.

At least with Sylvanas, it makes sense for her to meddle with the process to ensure servitude, but even that seems a bit flakey with some of the Forsaken getting some more of their free will after the fact. Sure, a lot of them seem to have joined as a choice, but it’s unclear how many joined by “choice” and how many were forced.

It’s why I wonder how San’layn are in that regard. If they’re still acting like they were under Arthas, then the only logical thing I can think of would be their vampyr curse. Maybe there is a head vampire of some sort that controls them in some way, and freeing them by killing this being would make for a neat storyline. Otherwise, I don’t see why they wouldn’t potentially regain their free will again when we killed Arthas.

I’m sure people can point out specifics to help explain or show examples of some things. Mostly, I’m just trying to make some sense of how undeath works in the game’s setting. :wine_glass::bat:

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8025

Just random guessing on my part here, but there could be like a leftover echo of Arthas’s will lingering in the magic used to raise them. Perhaps it takes some sort of event to shock them out of it, sort of like we see in the DK starting zone when Arthas betrays them.

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8026

To be honest, we did see variation with Blood Prince Dreven. He was willing to work with the Horde and trying to join it–in fact it’s still pretty sad that again (and I still refuse to get over this) he and the other San’layn were looking for a home in the Horde, as they had none. This shows the willingness to work with other races, just like Death Knights.

Honestly, if Blizzard didn’t dangle a carrot on the stick with that stuff, I wouldn’t be pushing this so hard. I had my hopes brought up so much on that, only to be handed a platter of ‘shut up, you’re not getting answers’. It is so frustrating, not that these people even bother to look at what we say here on the forums. Still here of course, but it just… sigh.

That entire fiasco just bothers me so much. Along with now no Blood Prince Valanar being raised in the prepatch (Where is he…?) and no mention of the vampyr curse from Wrath in a literal death expansion, yet we have an entire section of “vampires” in the afterlife out of nowhere. -.- NO connections to it either. I don’t know why people expect me not to be upset, especially when Blood Elves were handed pretty much just horrible jewelry and everyone tells me to shut up because ‘oh they got so much’.

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8027

They do this way too often with way too many things.

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8028

That seems to be on the menu quite a bit, I noticed. I kept being offered that when trying to figure out where the Horde Ogre Clans went and why they weren’t being utilized in a huge war. I think if I kept eating that platter, I’d be about as fat as several Ogres from it.

Don’t forget the other missing Blood Princes. Also with Dreven coming out of nowhere, we could see other San’layn royalty (princes, princesses, etc) out there too.

Yeah, that was a very frustrating thing to see the San’layn treated as such in the expansion that introduced allied races as a concept. Moreso to see them put in as big bad mooks for the Alliance to have a fist pump moment I’d be curious to see what things were considered for BfA before it got rushed to be finished to focus on Shadowlands.

Something interesting I may have linked here a long time ago was an interview with Steve Danuser about Shadowlands coming out, with the following as a question:

"Any allied races planned for later in the Shadowlands?

Allied races should feel thematically appropriate. A lot of the races encountered at the end of Legion and BFA fit, as people we discovered become embroiled in the wars we’re fighting and both sides are looking for reinforcements, but Shadowlands doesn’t really have that feeling at the start. It’s something they’ll look at and see how players react to certain races, but nothing is planned for the launch of Shadowlands."

Note that part of the last sentence: “see how players react to certain races”

The context was focused on Shadowlands specifically, but this was a reason I felt that showing off support in general for races to become playable was important. Some semblance that Blizzard was looking for feedback for allied race ideas. I suppose in some ways, it’s a reason I still continue onward, though it can feel like folly to do so at times.

But yeah, it’s frustrating in general to see San’layn treated as such. Moreso when you had people cheering for them in Twitch chats of WoW announcement streams, too. Seems like them and other races becoming playable were huge missed opportunities to me. Not to mention the whole “no more customizations during Shadowlands” announcement setting a pretty bad precedent and path the game is heading.

I really don’t know what to expect in the future. I keep hope, of course, but it honestly can become challenging as time goes on. :wine_glass::bat:

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