He is always on the winning side and the dreadlords are still out there.
This is a real Forsaken character right from Warcraft 3 who fits.
I’m surprised this wasn’t a popular idea already. The only thing is how to get the Horde to reaccept him. I would say just have him as a desolate council member, that should be easy enough. Then he can manipulate them and whatnot. Even if he is not leader he should be a major character. It is forbidden for one dreadlord to kill another and he lost favor with his brothers for his failures.
It may be harder for him to revive without the legion, but when dreadlords die they don’t even leave bodies. So I’m sure he is somewhere.
With Alliance having demons why not bring him back? Plus dreadlords just look awesome.
I think that if you could turn back the clock, having him be loyal would have been far more interesting than having him be the most obvious traitor of all time.
I think the opportunity to make that happen has long passed, though.
I get the feeling it pushes the rating of the game and he may have even gone over it. It’s sad, clearly they can do good body horror if they wanted to.
Agreed on all parts.
I made a topic about this a few years ago.
Varimathras was one of the biggest missed opportunities in the entire setting. Maybe in all of Blizzard Entertaintment history.
Vanilla had hanging corpses in the undead themed zones. This game has always stretched T. No, they don’t do it anymore because the playerbase has gotten soft since BFA ended.
It is even sadder when you remember as of modern lore, he was actually there as part of the Jailor’s plans. Because he is a 90000d chess player and was always after Sylvanas from the start. Well, he was. Now he is a very sad robot that needs a new pair of AA’s.
“Hey. Hey. Hey Varimathras. Hey. I need you to go get beat by Sylvanas and pal around with her until they’re about to kill Arthas then betray them so Arthas gets away. Then I need you to let Sargeras take you back to Antorus and torture you until Azeroth’s Champions show up, then you need to… like, I dunno, tease them about the fact that Sylvanas is working for me but don’t outright admit it. Then die. Forever. Just die.”
Varimathras salutes
Somewhere in Blizzard HQ, the sound of someone sniffing their own farts intensifies
The Horde had a Dreadlord for 2 seconds, and he gets turned into a raid boss. I suppose that is the fate of all Horde characters who might garner even one fan. While characters like Baine and Calia and Aethas keep being there.
If the Dreadlords learned anything, it is probably that the Alliance is the winning side in this narrative.
“Don’t join the Horde, you saw what happened to the last guy. It’s safer on the Alliance.”
And to think, Varimathras botching the Wrathgate for the Legion makes little sense, since we already knew that the Legion wanted the Lich King dead. Kil’Jaeden appeared before Illidan in Outland and gave him the task of destroying the Frozen Throne, so if Varimathras was a Legion agent the whole time, why sabotage Sylvanas’ and the Alliance and Horde’s attempt to accomplish the same goal?
As Kagehiro points out, Varimathras is proof that Blizzard’s attempt to weave the Jailer into the plot all the way back to the beginning, was never going to make sense. So the Dreadlords are team Jailer, right? And these guys are so good at their job that they were able to corrupt the Titan Sargeras, right? So if you really wanted Sylvanas to become an agent of the Jailer, wouldn’t it have better served to have Varimathras just—I dunno, explain what he really is, and convince Sylvanas of the futility of mortal’s expectation of the afterlife?
I mean, sure she supposedly didn’t trust him, as a rule. But I’d sooner buy-in that a Venthyr agent designed from its creation to be the best liar that became a Demon in order to facilitate the lie, was able to poke Sylvanas’ psyche enough to get her to give up on the Afterlife and join his team over her dying and witnessing Lava Eel Vore heaven, and becoming the biggest sucker the universe would ever know.
But I don’t get paid the big bucks like the Blizzard Story Team, so what do I know.
Nezmith, we are just not capable of thinking in the 9001D chess style ultra-scheming manner as our betters. What makes sense to us is simply a sign of our limited, linear brains trying to comprehend the infinite wisdom of Zozo and his ilk.
Even his own demise was all a part of his uber-mega-super-omega plan. Obviously so too was Varimathras’s seemingly-foolish but ultra-critical “mistake” with the Wrathgate and pretending to try to take Undercity.
Schemes within plots within plans within fractals.
Not to mention in a logical world you’d think his betrayal would make the Jailor harder to trust, seeing as his liasion to Sylvanas was Mal’Ganis. You know the brother of Varimathras. Who betrayed and tried to murder her just a few years prior.
You’d think that’d warrant at least some explaining to do.
Zovaal: “You have no idea what I’ve seen, there’s a greater threat known as—auuuughaaaaaaahhhh…”
Alynsa: “Oh come on.”
Nezmith: “Well that’s what he says.”
Benediktion: “Look if he was dying, he wouldn’t have bothered to utter, auuuughh. He’d just tell us what the threat was, because he knew the whole time.”
Nezmith: “Well that’s what showed up in the subtitles.”
Nah, Sylvanas was completely lobotomized by that point, according to Golden. Mal’Ganis, the demon that put Arthas on the path to becoming the destroyer of her home and her slayer, shows up in the Undercity and says,
Mal’Ganis: “Heard you joined our team. Nice. Here’s the latest orders from the big man downstairs. Don’t mess this up, newb.”
and the book is like,
"Sylvanas stood there for a moment, contemplating what she had just witnessed. A Dreadlord, brother to the one who betrayed her just a scant few years prior, had delivered to her instructions from their far-seeing master. She hesitated a moment, recalling she knew that the Dreadlords had manipulated Arthas into carrying out his campaign across Lordaeron and Quel’thalas. And now she too was taking instructions from them, a strange turn of events.
Perhaps her fate would become the same as his, and she should back out of this and—something caught her attention, a sudden movement in the corner of the room. It was a white-haired warlock, running at her and brandishing a large mallet. She barely had time to move before the strange white-haired woman was upon her, and walloped her with the enormous hammer. The shadows at the edge of her sight crept in, and Sylvanas knew nothing more."
First, you almost owed my Alliance Hunter a few gold for repairs for making me laugh way too hard. Luckily I remmebered Feign Death exists, so your ledger is clear there.
Second, those weren’t his final words. That’s just what he said before he took his really long nap. Zovaal also remembered how to click Feign Death, but see he also used some Misdirection and Distraction ahead of time. That was represented by him projecting some random bit of memory about an event we already knew happened, right into our noggins. If you listen very, very closely you can hear him even hint at it.
“A cosmos divided… Will not survive… What… is… to… commmmmmmy fractal, just loot the dummy corpse so I can run away dumb raiders…”
history.