There’s been a lot of discussions on what does and does not make sense as the last few classes are made universal for all races. As it stands, most people are in agreement that so long as there’s no biological lore that would prevent it, there’s no reason a young member of one culture wouldn’t be influenced by exposure to other cultures to take up a certain way of life they find compelling. But, that leaves a lot of loose ends. Evokers are an obvious example, and some lore would need to be cooked up involving draconic blood drinking rituals or something to get, say, a human evoker.
Undead paladins are a little trickier, though there’s a long standing undead holy priest and paladin NPC in lore already, explaining that their using the light causes anguish, but is survivable if someone has the will to push through. Fair enough.
Druids however are a tricky one for some races. Goblins and gnomes there’s not really any issue there. Aside from certain members of their race embracing their connection with nature and rejecting technology (that’s more likely for the poorer underclass of goblins, or heck even leper gnomes that have lived with severe consequences). That said, ones who embrace nature and want to rededicate their technology in balance with it, so their druid forms mix cybernetics with animal forms, is also a good route.
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GETTING TO THE POINT, undead druids seem the most antithetical thing since sliced air. I’ve been considering a solid story hook for a while now, and frankly I’ve seen enough NPC dialog and bizarre instances to suggest that undead druids could make perfect sense, as an “other side of the coin” thing. Many druids talk about the importance of recognizing stable cycles in nature, and chief amongst that is the cycle of life and death. Undeath seems like it defies that cycle, but what if there’s a way to integrate undeath into the cycle after all, and bring it into balance?
In the zones completely dominated by undeath, we see how many living entities have found ways to coexist with undeath. Gigantic maggots, rats, bats, somehow they find a way without “turning” themselves. There are also numerous bizarre instances of entirely peaceful undead entities, such as rotting bears and dears set to “neutral”, just grazing on plagued grains growing in the fields. There’s a cycle between life, unlife, and true death going on in these areas. Then, there’s the fey-drunk darters in the whispering forest of Tirisfal. This is a strange event that still isn’t fully explained. That region has an old god general buried under it’s lake, and it was supposedly where the high elves first made landfall on arriving from Kalimdor. Alright, this explains where the fey dragons came from, but not their behavior at the mushroomy faerie circle, or why the undead wildlife respond the way they do. Perhaps they’re trying to either keep the old god asleep under the lake, or purge the undeath infecting the region. What I do know is that fey dragons have a strong connection to the emerald dream, phasing in and out of it at will. It may be that the presence of so much undeath across practically a whole subcontinent almost certainly has affected the Dream. It may be that in response, even the fey dragons are attempting to bring some new kind of balance to the area, to give a cycle to undeath. It’d also fit with Sylvanas’ greatest concern, that the forsaken can’t reproduce without taking the bodies of the deceased and “rising” them. All those undead deer and critters roaming around, falling to pieces with sickly green glows in their eyes, they stop roaming to peacefully coexist with the song the darters are singing.
What if there’s a way to bring a cycle to it? Mushrooms are part of the cycle that reassimilates dead tissue into brand new living things, a way for undeath to rejoin the cycle of nature after passing, and those living in these plagued lands might die, and be raised again to undeath, completing the cycle. This may be the fate of any living who choose to live in the area now, but it may not be something to be seen as a curse. The living reproduce, the dead rise and eventually meet true death to be absorbed by the mushrooms and maggots, and that fuels more living. Imagine the interesting rituals that could some day form around such a complex cycle, and imagine how druids may respond, some recognizing that not all undeath is corruption and forming an order, the “druids of the soil”. They would take on undead forms, or forms strongly associated with death like a large mushroomy critter as their tree form, a rotting dear as their travel form, and so on. Undead druids would certainly cause a stir back at Moonglade, and they’d likely have to set up a camp across the lake and very far from the others, but they’d have a presence. A cycle of undeath to death back to life. I can even imagine a questline where to fully establish this respect for a new part of this cycle of nature specific to the Plaguelands (the properly named plaguelands, Silverpine, Tirisfal, and even whatever of the Ghostlands haven’t been fully cleaned up yet), the elves dedicate a newly christaned World Tree, an undead gnarled world tree covered in everything from mushrooms to termites, meant to maintain that balance with the other living world trees, such as the arcane world tree currently feeding the nightborne’s mana addiction. A big ol’ haunted world tree planted right there, in the whispering forest in the exact spot the darters are doing their ritual.
Anyway, that’s the idea I had for it.
