I can.
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Spasibo :3
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Im the priest order hall she was a discipline priest. So I think she would understand the proper balance.
Her undeath also involved alonsus faol and anduin. Beings who have had shadow magic in them, alnosus faol raised by shadow - traditional necromancy, anduin had his shadow magic teased in books.
So with Calia I think there is some good story oppurtunities.
The writers also could intentional write her bad to make her a better character going forward.
Here is an example of how writers make flawed characters to improve and grow over time in starwars.
So myself will give charscters a chance. I knew Calia as a priest follower, I thought her story was interesting. I think they need to write her and have her interact with forsaken/horde if they want her to be the leader for them.
But idk what they plan for her. She might be planned as an alliance character and have story that revolves around another take. So I am curious what they do with her.
My major problem with her is Blizz trying to force Alliance influence on the Horde. She needs to stay on that side and guide their undead that resulted from Teldrassil.
If Blizz could truly write gray characters, we wouldn’t even be here. They went too far with Sylvanas and tried to make up for it in the other direction with a council for the Horde, and this light-forged blank slate. When they just should have never killed off Vol’jin.
I don’t care how much they flesh her out, or make her relatable. She’s still this character that left Lordaeron, and never turned back. Even after Arthas was dead. And is still this Alliance associated character they are trying to force on us.
Hard pass!
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Oh She is a Lordaeron human, but most of the forsaken were former alliance lordaeron humans. So I don’t see a problem with that myself.
She has a unique undeath, I find that interesting. So far I haven’t seen her push her light views on the forsaken. In the priest orderhall she was a discipline priest, so probably in game she recognizes the need for both light and shadow.
I also believe blizzard did not initially plan this, this was something the author Christie Golden I believe pushed for. So she I would assume knows how her story arc would go, and that story arc can take years to happen. A good author can make a character that is initially hated to be good or lovable. They need time to make it work, I just question if blizzard would put that effort in the game. Most notably during questing. It doesn’t seem we are getting faction specific questing until now. So we can only see her character arc with whatever media we have. Right now she is shadowing Lillian Voss and learning about the Forsaken. And 9.2.5 will be like the first time we probably will interact with her via questing as horde/forsaken probably. First impressions matter. I wonder if blizzard will put in forsaken dislike and canonize that and have her work toward being accepted or not.
In lore she is like Lordaeron loyalty. Idk how blizzard would write that into the forsaken storyline, since they are former Lordaeron humans, it’s not like they just forget there lives, they sort of adopted a new identity, but Calia represents probably there past life, and I can see some story on how that affects the forsaken going forward where groups are more accepting of them and we don’t know if blizzard will work to canonize the neutrality, since they said there will be no lore to explain crossfaction, that the lore happened when BFA ended when we are effectively at a ceasefire with each other.
Lillian Voss interview shadowlands alpha stuff
Brilliant! Now, this next question, I suspect I know the answer already but… it’s just about the alpha again - with the introductory questline into Shadowlands, we saw some unusual pairings on the Horde side. We saw Calia and Valeera standing on the Horde side of things. Now, as far as I know, Calia is not the new leader of the Forsaken according to the book Shadows Rising, and Valeera’s always been more of an Alliance character, so I just had to ask more about their position there.
Yeah, so what you’re seeing there, and what players are reacting to, is just some early content blockouts. We’re going to make some adjustments to the populations on top of Icecrown there. Valeera wasn’t intended to be positioned as one of the Horde leaders or anything like that. She is a neutral character that shifts between both. So her positioning was just a spawning thing with how the designer had made a first pass and set things up there. You’ll see that evolve as we go.
In terms of Calia Menethil, you’re right that she is not the leader of the Forsaken. She is on top of Icecrown for a reason and you’ll learn that there’s some content that that people haven’t experienced yet, because it involves events of the prepatch - both Calia and Lillian Voss will be there in the prepatch, and that will set up some context for why Calia would go to Icecrown.
I don’t want to go into too much detail there, except I will say that if you think about Calia’s past and her family history, she has a personal involvement in the spectre of death that hangs over everything - and there’s no way that you can think of the Shadowlands and the power of death without thinking about Arthas and the Lich King and that legacy. So, I will say that Calia is involved in the Shadowlands more for her personal reasons than she is as a representative, or a leader in any way.
Here is an excerpt from an interview describing Calia at shadowlands launch. Her relations to undeath/Arthas was more the focus of her inclusion. But I don’t think they did Arthas well in shadowlands.
Alleria had unique Void powers, then they followed that up with a race of knockoffs. Not a good precedent for Calia keeping Lighforged Undeath for herself, sadly.
What was it she pushed for, Calia’s unique undeath, her being a Disc Priest, or her being a Horde leader?
If it’s the third one, then yeah pretty much the epitome of an Alliance insert on a Horde leadership role.
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She would be so much more interesting if she was an actual undead who used the light and suffered because of it, but stood strong and kept it up despite that.
Because it would actually show sacrifice and nuance.
Instead, she’s a mary-sue, getting all the benefits of the light and undeath with no drawbacks shown whatsoever.
She doesn’t know the suffering of the undead by any means, which is why people can’t stand her at all. She doesn’t properly represent the undead nor does she know what they went through.
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Well idk what Blizzard has planned for her or what there intentions are. But those may or may not be stuff purposely put there for narrative reasons. I think which could lead to interesting story if done right. But the writer has to be confident in there story and stick to there guns. As this would be the hateful phase for her character development.
Know this is blizzard writing which doesn’t show me much confidence of it being told very well in the game, but maybe in a book who knows?
Ideally we would see her struggle with getting accepted with forsaken citizens/players/heroes as a foreign figure throughout the horde loyalty of the forsaken. And she would work with either horde players/ figures to try to make it work if they intend to make her a horde leader.
But blizzard has said she and Dereck weren’t going to be horde in BFA. So like I myself am not sure where they will take this character but if they intend to make an alliance allied race out of it then they don’t really need to work on making the character likable by horde for example.
So it’s all just a wait and see narratively for me. I think her model looks cool and her story is a bit tragic, she seemed like an okay character during the priest class hall campaign. But she hasn’t really interacted much with the horde besides Slyvanas killing her, and her shadowing Lillian Voss, the current leader of the forsaken.
She’s from Lordaeron, but like I said, she fled and never turned back. Never came back to her people until BFA.
Her unique undeath puts her in a position where she can’t really relate to undead. Who were risen by darker means and shunned.
She’s Gwenyth Paltrow here.
And again, like I said Alliance side originally. Even with how she was raised. She can stay that side.
Valeera can stay on that side as well. Then when Anduin dies go off wherever.
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She would have been killed… Lets be honest.
What was she going to do?
I get not liking her for a myriad of reasons but literally her trying at all to help or be involved with her people before would have been a death sentence… Which not the end of the world clearly all things considered but I don’t know what you’d have expected her to do.
Omg so much this!
This! All of this!
And ideally she would forsake her Alliance ties and choose her people with the Alliance turning their backs on her.
This!
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She was just a general NPC in the class hall campaign. If she didn’t have the name Menethil, no one would have given her a second look.
People always say that, but miss the important part. She stayed away even after Arthas was dead, for years until BFA.
Now she wants to act like she’s on the level of everyone else.
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From what I gathered she was hidden from the general public, and I think she was hidden as an Si:7 person or whatever. She does have a history with Lordaeron, she wasn’t trained to lead, that was all on Arthas, she wasn’t educated to take up leadership. She really made big mistakes when she brought the forsaken to meet the alliance humans and she payed for it with her life.
So I do think she has something they can work with if they told the story properly. She isn’t as cursed as the undead, but she still is undead albiet it in a weird light way, and not the shadow way. Perhaps she now struggles using shadow magic? Who knows maybe she has the opposite problem, as a discipline priest they could write in stuff like that or not.
I sort of like how they made the oppostie of the dark lady, the light lady. I would have been interested in seeing a conflict or struggle for power for the forsaken but Slyvanas left the horde/forsaken basically and Lillian Voss is cool herself. She is a rogue, but in reality she is trained in many magical schools, basically an op multiclass assassin who was killed off because she became too powerful.
Lillian Voss is like an unfortunate royal who wasn’t ever planned to take the throne, more of an afterthought, and I think Calia’s position is interesting because the forsaken were seen as monsters, but bit by bit they became more accepted to the other race societies, even Genn says there is some good forsaken.
I think she can work, Alliance side. They can all stay that side. Horde has already been affected enough by their influence. No more. I cannot emphasis that enough.
I don’t care if or how they flesh her out, after the council bs, keep her on that side. They have their own Undead to care for.
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I will wait see myself, mostly because I wouldn’t mind getting more powerful horde characters. And all our leaders get killed off : X
I think they can turn her into an interesting character but we will see what blizzard does, can’t really expect much if they continue to do stuff like we saw in Shadowlands.
I can see her getting involved in like a Light Inquisition storyline relating to the forsaken and Lordaeron. Since Lordaeron is known as the city of light.
"Lordaeron City’s original founders were made up of disillusioned noblemen of Strom who had grown weary of the political power-struggles that plagued the capital city of the Arathorian Empire. They moved to the north, hoping to establish a city where all could pursue a higher calling of spiritual reflection and artistic expression. Their journey brought them to the northern shores of Lordamere Lake where they began their work on the “Land of many peoples.”
The city flourished and rose to challenge even Strom in beauty and prominence in the empire. Lordaeron City became the center for worship of the Church of the Holy Light after the religion was mandated in Arathor. Even after the Civil War in the Empire that saw the city established as the new capital of the Kingdom of Lordaeron under the House of Menethil, the people and houses of Lordaeron City maintained close ties with those of Strom. "
Like Lordaeron has a connection to the light, and Calia has a strong connection to it. So like them wise I find it interesting that we have a light undead.
Not exactly a good time to return home even after. Sylvanas’s whole ideal even after that is basically that the surrounding human populations and the forsaken cannot coexist, thus southshore, gilneas, fenris.
I’m not a fan of her right now personally but I’m not gonna hate her until I see what happens further. LF undead are always a touchy spot because a lot of people (myself included) don’t really like em.
I see it as an invasion by the Alliance.
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Keep in mind that forsaken and blood elves are former alliance that joined the new horde. So it is effectively horde history too via the forsaken. It is a political issue due to the new horde affiliation.
Oh but BFA was conveniently the perfect tome, when Sylvanas rose to leadership in the Horde. Makes it even more suspicious.
well you know how it is…wow writing 
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