Talking about the scarlet crusade, and just for arguement, trolls.
You dont need to believe in the light itself, but to have such a strong an intimate bond with some cause or loa that represents light?
Or is the scarlet crusade really enacting the lights will afterall with what we’ve seen with alternate dreanor and legion?
Because I’ve heard the light has abandoned some people, but is that only because they lost faith or did the light reject them?
Even among humans there were evil paladins. That one guy… Barthilas I think his name was who in life prosecuted the living hell out of Tirion Fordring because Tirion chose to protect Eitrigg, who had saved his life. This didn’t sit well with the humans out to kill the orc out of sheer anti-orc paranoia and spite.
During that story, Uther excommunicated Tirion from the Silver Hand and seemed to take away his paladin powers. Said powers would come back on their own later on however.
But they never abandoned Barth for being a hateful prik or even Arthas for that matter until he actively abandoned them.
The Light, needless to say, is weird. Sometimes I think the tennents of Justice, Compassion, and goodness they’re suppose to follow are really more like guidelines than actual rules.
https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Ask_CDev
Can you please explain how “light” works? The lore states that undead are physically incapable of using the light, much like the Broken, but then we have Forsaken players casting healing spells, and Sir Zeliek in Naxxramas using pseudo-paladin abilities.
Without spoiling too much, we can tell you that wielding the Light is a matter of having willpower or faith in one’s own ability to do it. That’s why there are evil paladins (for example, the Scarlet Crusade and Arthas before he took up Frostmourne). For the undead (and Forsaken), this requires such a great deal of willpower that it is exceedingly rare, especially since it is self-destructive. When undead channel the Light, it feels (to them) as if their entire bodies are being consumed in righteous fire. Forsaken healed by the Light (whether the healer is Forsaken or not) are effectively cauterized by the effect: sure, the wound is healed, but the healing effect is cripplingly painful. Thus, Forsaken priests are beings of unwavering willpower; Forsaken (and death knight) tanks suffer nobly when they have priest and paladin healers in the group; and Sir Zeliek REALLY hates himself.
It’s old and not necessarily everything is canon. It does mention evil paladins.
The Light also doesn’t make the Undead explode(though they wish it would) merely inflict Pain as it gets rid of Revendreth Anima.
Revendreth Death Magic is tied to everything associated with the Nathrezim which is why the Light is so painful to them.
The Undead are merely raised with Maldraxxi Death mixed with Revendreth and Mawsworn Death so all that happens is that the Light burns away the Revendreth Death and leaves the Maldraxxi and Mawsworn Death behind though it naturally takes a long time for that to happen.
Archbishop Faol has been using the Light for a long while so all it does is comfort him due to the eradication of Revendreth Death leaving behind all other forms of Death.
Back onto morals: Paladins get their powers from Willpower and Faith not from Morality.
Of course anything that makes Faith waver will weaken the ability to draw upon the Light including immorality.
The only thing that can sever one’s connection to the Light is Void Magic Curses specifically designed for that purpose and even then once you got the Soul separated from the Body all you need to do to restore their connection is to beat the Curse out of them.
Blizzard’s last word on blood elf paladin-ism is that they draw their powers from the Sunwell rather than conventional Light worship, a process that should (theoretically) afford them a certain moral flexibility in its application. Their previous method skipped over the paladin TOS entirely, and they’re bound to the Sunwell in more or less the same way they bound themselves to M’uru in Blood of the Highborne.
This isn’t really apparent in the game though; when Liadrin and her Blood Knights show up, it’s to fight for causes they feel very righteous about. To a ridiculous degree, in the case of Liadrin vs Stromgarde. You’d think being forced to conduct a genocidal zombie dictator’s “campaign of destruction” (quote Alex), coinciding with her break from the Silver Hand, would’ve been a good time to question the faith of Horde paladins, druids, shamans, etc. But then, hers was only one of many character assassinations in BfA, swiftly dismissed in her next appearance.
Bold of you OP to think Blizzard thinks seriously about the metaphysics of this game on any level
It’s mainly due to them losing faith. The light is faith based. As long as you believe in it or a deity or something along those lines (e.g. An’she for Taurens) you can use the light.
Following the scourges invasion of Quel’thalas, many High Elves (now Blood Elves) lost faith in the light and jumped at the opportunity to get some catharsis the first chance they got. That being torturing M’uru and taking his light by force.
Tirion was believed to have been stripped of his light powers following his trial (something he probably believed himself). Where he was found guilty of treason, as he saved Eitriggs life as best he could (after Eitrigg saved his following a fight the two of them had). Yet when his son was killed, Tirion called upon the light to smite the murderer. This was probably why Arthas regarded Tirion as the strongest Paladin that he knew of. As Arthas was there at the trial and probably learned about Tirion still being able to use the light despite what happened.
Well, that’s not entirely the case. The Broken seem to have been altered in some manner that literally prevents the Light from answering them no matter how much they still believe. The Red Mist had that effect on contact and in real-time, before they had reason to lose their faith, so presumably it’s a result of the Red Mist’s origins in both the void and the fel causing their bodies and souls to be made somehow “incompatible” with manifesting the Light’s tangible energies.
The other major issue is also how inconsistent blizzard is with their own lore. Instead of working with previous established lore they already set down, they’ll demolish it to make way for the next cool thing they have in mind.
When the devs refuse to respect their own written lore, can’t really expect them to respect anything else within the IP
And they’ve really been playing fast and loose with the Light - and any significant character connected to it - throughout the expansions.
all palas are evil
For starters, what I find most annoying about the whole religious angle blizz has been going with is how blizz seems desperate to make the Light this darker and more malevolent force that any crackpot dictator can use on a whim.
It goes back to them not respecting the previous lore set down by others when some new pop culture idea happens to be the new Go to trend
Nice to meet someone else who understands how Blizzard has been shoehorning a darker side into the Light. Especially given the execution of it (ignoring the Draenei’s history on AU Draenor, using the Scarlet Crusade offshoots as punching bags, making a higher class of Naaru only to reduce them to a jobber for Illidan…)
Yrel was one the bright spots of WoD. I loved questing with her and watching her go from a nobody to Exarch over the course of the expansion. What blizzard did to her in the Mag’har scenario is criminal in every sense of the word.
The key thing to remember about “the light” is that it’s just like all the other greater forces out there (Order, void, chaos, elemental, death, life) in that it isn’t good or evil per se so much as a concept that wants to see itself propagated and doesn’t give a damn about what the end results are for the rest of us.
Thus it is entirely possible to have evil paladins.
Blizzard keeps saying this but what they’ve been showing since 7.3 or so, and really kicking up into high gear recently, is that every single one of the cosmic forces is evil. Because I guess they think it’s cool and subversive, it makes things “deep” if everyone is an a-hole.
Not exactly? Like the greater forces would all percieve themselves and their vision as being “good” and when we step back and actually look at the light we can see that it is every bit as aggressive as anything that we’d see from the legion or the void, it’s just that they’re more polite about it.
Yeah i’m not a fan of the path they’re going down with the Light. It has really ruined the “Classic” Paladin and Priest fantasies and just watered them down. I had no problem back in the day when you had the Scarlets as the “evil” Light faction of zealots. It was done in moderations and didn’t tarnish the old “Light” fantasy.
I don’t care for the “Muh Light bad” stuff and get sick to my stomach at “Lightforged Undead” nonsense.
Not so much shoehorning “Evil” into the Light but decoupling all forces including the Light from alignment considerations. You can have evil Paladins and saintly Warlocks. or Druids, Mages, and Shamans of any temperament. The means they use don’t determine their ends.
More like any of the cosmic forces can be turned to evil … (or good ends) Anduin and his fellow priests after all used Light-based necromancy to bring Callia back from the dead.
Don’t you mean saintly Shadow Priests? Any person who steals Soul Fragments is Neutral at best for their Mutilation of Souls for power.