I’ll be honest in saying that I don’t know a lot about the Forsaken and their motivations/virtues. Maybe someone more familiar with them would be able to speculate on these points:
What would the Forsaken stand for if Sylvanas were to be removed from power as Warchief, and even further as the leader of the Forsaken?
Who could lead them in the absence of Sylvanas & Nathanos? It seems that the Forsaken are largely guided by Sylvanas’ motivations, for good or bad.
Whatever Blizzard wants them to stand for.
I’m sorry that there isn’t more to it than this, but there really isn’t. The Forsaken aren’t evil world-destroying lunatics this expansion because Sylvanas’s characterization requires them to be, they’re evil world-destroying lunatics because Blizzard has decided to make them so for the purposes of the expansion’s storyline.
In Sylvanas’s absence, maybe they’ll be redeemed as fierce defenders of Azeroth’s free peoples. Or maybe they’ll still be evil lunatics. Or maybe they’ll all join the circus and become clowns. All options are on the table and all are equally likely.
In the real world, future events flow from past events in a series of causal connections. We want this to be the case in fiction as well, but it really isn’t. In Azeroth, yesterday has no bearing on today and today has no bearing on tomorrow.
it was always like this, but this expansion’s terrible writing made it more clear than ever
I can only speculate, but if you remove the leadership from the equation, the Forsaken will be relegated to little more than just a playable race and a hoard of NPC quest mobs to kill from time to time. Orcs and Trolls have gone variously leaderless since Warlords, yet we hear nothing about how that affects them as a faction.
In short, Forsaken will just kinda be… there.
Imagine: The forsaken story being about the forsaken people and not one single character.
Before the Storm talked about this.
There’s two kinds of Forsaken:
A Forsaken without Sylvanas is a dead faction. No undercity, no necromancy, no pride. Just kys you deader freaks.
proud of yourself?
On other posts I have offered a potential resolution to the Forsaken question that can also involve Sylvanas being removed and that’s Lightforging the undead a la Calia.
You could also have the forsaken actively free the scourge, who are almost literally endless.
Assuming the Honor Horde win the coming Civil War 2.0 I could see elements of the Forsaken taking on an underground resistance/revenge role in future storylines. Really going full-circle on that whole Wrathgate thing.
A more constructive comment than your previous snide.
This would be a reversion back to the Pre-Cata Forsaken (sans that they never intended to coexist with the living as soon as the Lich King was defeated) but could be reframed. It doesn’t solve the issue that they rely on necromancy not to die out.
Before the Storm focused on Forsaken that are grateful to be alive but don’t have the immortality complex of Sylvanas and her obsessive fear of death. The novel focused on the more mundane aspects of the Forsaken----replacing new limbs with better ones, dealing with issues of mortality and how the undeath variant of that contrasts with the living, how while there are Forsaken that arise nothing like their living counterparts (insanity, psychopathy, anger, etc), there are a considerable number of undead who just want to continue living as they did in life, and how that conflicts that brings with Sylvanas’s vision of for the undead.
I would like to see a return of the Prime Governor/Governor/Minister model the novel introduced by the end of BfA or beyond. It was more focused on the administration of the existing Forsaken territories rather than edgy lamentations of killing hope. I wish BfA focused on creating new Forsaken characters to reflect what was shown in the book, rather than propping up Nathanos and Sylvanas.
Wait.
Yes it does. If they rely on freeing the Scourge, that’s a near endless population.
It certainly would be an uncertain future. There has been plenty of discussion about Sylvanas and her effect on the Forsaken plot. In that, Treng has a point. Sylvanas has often acted as a magnet for Forsaken story elements. It’s often joked that the Forsaken don’t have many important NPCs beyond her, and there is some truth to that statement.
Unfortunately, removing Sylvanas from the Forsaken would not be an easy task. More than any other racial leader, Sylvanas is connected to her people. She isn’t just their Queen. She is their savior. Their reason to exist. Their deity. Removing Sylvanas from that status would be like ripping the Light out of Stormwind society.
Personally, I’ve often wanted Sylvanas to become an actual icon of worship for the Forsaken. That if she dies, she ultimately becomes the keeper of Forsaken souls within the Shadowlands, ensuring they receive peace and solace. She would remain their point of worship and maintain her status of importance, but would be moved to the background, allowing other characters to thrive and grow.
Who could lead them in the absence of Sylvanas & Nathanos? It seems that they are largely guided by Sylvanas’ motivations, for good or bad.
A bit unlikely / self-indulgent, but what if the Royal Apothecary Society, The Cult of Forgotten Shadows, and a rehabilitated Desolate Council began competing Medici-style for power and influence while under the careful scrutiny of a suspicious Horde? After all the cloak-and-dagger exploits in their spat of history, it would fit, and–hey, bonus points!–it would allow Forsaken **pragmatism** to persist into a new generation of unbreathing mafiosi.
Or we could just write them a new character. So long as it’s not Calia Menethil or Lillian Voss.
What would the Forsaken stand for if Sylvanas were to be removed from power as Warchief, and even further as the leader of the Forsaken?
The most common suggestion is that the Forsaken turn its efforts on exterminating the mindless undead and on liberating undead under Bolvar’s thrall.
Personally, though, I’m more interested in going almost a perverse Gnomish route. Maybe their in-game culture becomes more subsumed under the umbrella of alchemical tech, perhaps with an aim towards finding a way to swell their ranks without Sylvanas’ Val’kyr.
Whatever they do, however, I hope they preserve the Forsaken fixation on survival over honor and their suspicion of and distance from the rest of the Horde.
Well there’s only two ways we know that can work.
So I mean without lightforging maybe but that’ll require unprecedented innovation we don’t have so can’t seriously take it as an option.
What is it with you and false dichotomies?
Sylvanas freed a forsaken simply by screaming at him.
This will almost certainly have to happen in some form. Knowing Blizzard they definitely aren’t going to re-record the generic Forsaken VAs, “Dark Lady Watch Over You” would just take on a new meaning.
Also knowing Blizzard the Forsaken will just fade into the background like Pandaren, the Undercity is gone and I don’t think they intend to bring it back. There is no Forsaken government or nation anymore, especially not without Sylvanas.
pretty impressive that Sylvanas, as a freed scourge minion, has hidden her lightforging tattoos so well. especially considering some of the art thats been drawn of her.
Valkyr have never been used to free the Scourge to the best of my knowledge. They’ve been used to bring souls from the afterlife to populate corpses.