I moved to KC from California and I still get looks like I’m crazy.
Fam, I moved out here for grad school and stayed because I’m still paying less for a two bedroom than I was for my single room in an apartment split between six people. California’s economy is buckwild.
Cali is what i picture hell would probably be like.
I was much more understanding of using Calia as the Forsaken leader until Blizz gave us that last novel. They took her from being someone competent(?) enough to hide from the scourge and who was content with their role of being just an ordinary priest, to suddenly being “oh, my Lordaeron and its people!” and dumb enough to try to rally Forsaken RIGHT IN FRONT OF SYLVANAS.
It’s not like she’s new to Azeroth and has no idea who Sylvanas is, or how tentative the peace of this meeting was. Anduin didn’t want her there and she went anyway. They hit her with the Menethil bat of bad decisions.
And we won’t even talk about her shiny new unlife.
If she would have stayed back, or stayed hidden - used better judgment - I would have been a lot more accepting. If she would have been raised as a typical looking Forsaken or even similar to Sylvanas or a dark ranger’s look (i.e. without looking like the WoW version of Angewomon), I could have seen it. As it is, I’m just wondering how long it’ll be until she has a dwarven friend who tells her to leave the sword be. 3 expacs? Anyone wanna take bets?
Or we could have Bethor Iceshard as the new Forsaken leader. You know, the super powerful mage that helped rein in a rogue Lich and commanded over the Mage Quarter for almost all of WoW’s life. You know the guy who told the Lich Gunther that there was much to talk about and then nothing else ever happened.
Blizzard? Where you going? No Bethor is the other way where are…oh…knocking on Nathanos’ door again huh? We can probably just…oh…he doesn’t even have hunting hounds anymore huh? How about…oh…he’s not his old self huh? Still creepily in love? Well alright then. Guess I’ll just go to the Scarlet Monastery so they can tie me up and get it over with.
Oh what’s that? They’re not really there anymore? Oh at least we took out one of our oldest standing enemies in our own territ—…oh we didn’t do it, the Death Knights did? Like the ones we let take a prisoner from us with zero consequences? The same ones who raised a Horde hero and old Alliance King with zero consequences? Oh…alright then.
I dont think I could have cringed any harder than when Nathanos said “my love” which needed to be actually voiced because of course.
What a waste of a character with so much potential.
Cringed hard enough to screw up your typing too
Autocorrect is dumb 
Sorry, did you mean *otter carrot?
Ideally?
Calia Menethil gets installed by the Alliance as part of a peace treaty, with the Desolate Council advising her on Horde politics and the needs of the Forsaken as a whole.
Lillian Voss advises her and subtly pushes Calia towards being more protective of the Forsaken, of which Calia is fully behind, and the two strike up an unlikely friendship despite the strain of Calia being an Alliance-mandated leader in the Horde as well as a Light-made Undead and Lillian being a Void-wielding ex-assassin zombie-ninja.
Calia is also protected by Sira Moonwarden, with Calia trying to ease Sira’s grief and rage at Elune’s ‘abandonment’ of the Kaldorei in general and herself specifically, while Sira tries to harden Calia against the ‘futility’ of belief in anything or anyone but yourself.
The Desolate Council is the effective leaders of the Forsaken, but must give ground to Calia on some matters to make sure the Alliance is placated, but it is painfully obvious that while the Forsaken as a whole are on board with Calia’s message, they’re no longer willing to be sheep, blindly following a leader who sings a pretty tune right into the slaughter pen.
This is really nuanced and good which means we are probably not going to get anything like it, but boy, is this the dream.
You say “waste of a character” but honestly I called this from the minute they decided to make the leader of the dark rangers a human man.
Call me bitter but I’ve never seen that trope (“This man does what these women do but better!”) used for anything that wasn’t ham-fisted romance or wish fulfillment. It just took a while for it to come to pass.
…holy crap, I never thought about it like that.
I agree with this, but I do have a question. You say it’s the trope, “This man does what these women do but better!” just because it is Nathanos leading the Dark Rangers, but aren’t Dark Rangers both men and women? I could be wrong on this completely, I just thought there were both thus that trope wouldn’t be the case here.
Having said that, I hate the fact that Nathanos is the dumb trope, “Humans have so much potential that they are amazing at stuff” And so Nathanos is able to lead over elves who have had training way longer than him…
Before this expansion pack, Dark Rangers were mostly portrayed as elven women. When Nathanos rose to power, he was the only male Dark Ranger. I know this because I did my Dark Ranger research for RP reasons, and he was specifically noted.
If the Dark Rangers were unisex from the very beginning, I would not have disliked Nathanos as much as I did. But it sends a very specific message when the first male dark ranger is immediately the Very Best One and the one Sylvanas likes/trusts the most. I was never vocal about it because it was kinda petty, but he’s always rubbed me the wrong way.
Before this dark mirror BS he wasn’t even really a dark ranger. He was just a dude with a bow who was a dope shot. Only human to be trained by Elves, earned top marks, and the Elves still crapped on him because he was a human.
Also before BfA I don’t think he was even explicitly in charge of Dark Rangers. He was the Dark Lady’s champion and thus carried no official rank in her military. But these past two expansions have not been kind to us.
anduin: “let’s all kneel before the new queen of Lordaeron, Calia mene–”
dramatic music sting, plague bombs explode
re-undead putress: Did you think we had forgotten? Did you think we had forgiven? Behold, now, the terrible vengeance of the Forsaken!
you can’t keep a good zombie down
If the Forsaken go the council route then I’d like to see:
Commander Belmont (silverpine, darkshore warfront)
Magistrate Severn (sp? the guy from brill)
Benthor Iceshard (in the mage quarter I believe)
Maybe they do what I thought Sylvanas would, secure Forsaken territory. Everything North of the Thandol Span (save for Argent Areas) so we could still have conflict where its not good vs evil, but territory disputes.
Maybe they put an emphasis on infrastructure and providing resources for the Horde; Food and lumber to the Orcs, who live in a desert
Yeah but Nathanos is always a jerk and tried to replace General Nazgrim and that is unforgivable
You can never replace Nazgrim.
Only Nazgrim can replace Nazgrim