What A Forsaken Fan Would Love To See

Lore Story Forum
21

Another thing I really like about the Forsaken, even in Cataclysm is that they always seemed to have the most interesting potential for diversity in them. You had members like Apprentice Crispin (A leper gnome) who was a member of the Forsaken, and even comments that any is welcome to join the Forsaken ‘as long as they bend the knee to the banshee queen’. While it was always a vaguely dark comment it also showed an interesting perspective for the race that seemed to be willing to accept all comers, which was a unique stance for a faction to take. I would certainly love to see more exploration on that side of the Forsaken, how they are a very insular group, but they are willing to take in additional ‘forsaken’ peoples and make them part of their ranks.

Ah, I forgot, the Alliance gets to kill them in the Drustvar invasions. Where Apprentice Cripsin comments on his pain finally being gone when slain, and the Forsaken he worked with, Apothecary Jerrod just lets out strangled ‘mmmugh’ like some sort of mindless zombie. Lovely.

7 Likes
22

Doesnt change the fact that its canon and evil, even if its played for a joke. Theres alot of joke quests, they are canon till blizzard says otherwise.

23

Helcular for Forsaken Leader. He was doing a bang-up job in the pre-Legion invasions.

2 Likes
24

I just want Dark Souls Mommy PAWG Queen Calia Menethil as the new leader bro.

3 Likes
25

Posting in yet another Forsaken thread where the Forsaken poster is patted on the back and admired for their passion for Forsaken fandom. Meanwhile Night Elf posters like Elesana who are also clearly very passionate in their fandom are told to shut up and blamed as the reason why people hate Night Elf fans. At what point are Forsaken threads considered spam?

4 Likes
26

What the hell is wrong with you people?

17 Likes
27

Its obvious that op still loves the game, while Elesana hates the game, and should probably quit for her own sanity

24 Likes
28

And I was just about to ask what ever happened to those two before I got to the end of your post. Welp. Guess I’ll scratch those off the list of characters we could revisit. Nice to hear the Forsaken are canonically in Drustvar though.

Fighting unrelated spooky things as a Forsaken is always fun. I just picture the Waycrest witches doing their “Welcome, mortal, to the Haunted Mansion” thing to a group of unimpressed Forsaken, scoffing at the lack of skulls, foreboding mist and eerie lanterns.

I do try to represent that myself with my Forsaken. I’ve an undead warrior I write as a Vargul, as portrayed by a truly asinine amount of growth potions I keep on him at all times. Plus a Pandaren SPriest I write as a sort of The Grudge/The Ring esque vengeful spirit type. The Forsaken being a more loose collection of various lost and dammed types than a strict race is something that could definitely be explored more.

Honestly Zelling was so sad and relatively one note it should’ve been kind of obvious they were setting him up for a ‘kick the sick puppy’ moment. Because I guess we were supposed to still be asking ourselves if Slyvanas’s moral fiber could be trusted after she firebombed a surrendering population center for, basically until the plot hook of SL was revealed, no real reason at all.

As it stands I really do hope we see more of Voss. She’s a solid representation of a more nuanced undead character. She demonstrably loves killing and has no qualms about using dark magic or treacherous tactics to do it. But she honors good faith promises, seems to be actually quite patient and caring, and clearly has a functional moral compass. She’ll do dark stuff but knows where to draw the line. I hope we see more of her. I could see her having a sort of reunion with her father in Revendreth.

I’m just honestly pleased to see her doing well. I have a lot of Forsaken toons so I did her quests many times over, and also Scholomance. Was relieved to hear she made it out when she turned up in the Rogue class hall in Legion and really happy to see her back in the Forsaken narrative proper. She’s one of the very first characters you interact with in Death Knell post Cata and is by far the most interesting character in Tirisfal.

Probably because I laid out why I love the Forsaken, gave examples of what I think Blizz’s best work with them has been and some, what I hoped to be helpful, suggestions on what I think could be done in the future to reinvigorate the faction.

But we both know you didn’t actually read the post so /shrug.

24 Likes
29

I’m still a bit hopeful a lot of warfront NPC deaths are only semi-cannon, because I feel they brought back a lot of minor NPCs from both factions that had way more potential than one-note kill quests for the opposing faction who likely has never even heard of them. Just one of the disappointing things of BFA where they brought back so many minor characters only to die. Also, I wasn’t able to find out if they were part of any of the ‘kill’ world quests, so long as they aren’t they may have actually survived them.
(But that’s just me being hopeful)

One to follow up on your point, I feel that the Forsaken have such an incredibly wide range of potential story lines, thoughts and characters that they could have that they could easily have a whole expansions worth of new Forsaken Characters and still not run out of creative space for them. They can run the gambit all over, from those who are just trying to get by in a new normal, to those who have fully embraced their new undeath and celebrate it, to those who only accept their curse because they have no desire to destroy themselves.

My own Forsaken Warrior is a Career Soldier who was a Career Soldier in life, and basically has just seen a couple lifetimes worth of war. He also likes cooking, which is hard to do with no taste buds, but he makes it work.

Speaking of the Forsaken, I’d love to see more Abominations as Quest givers / characters. I’m always so interested in their positions as it is shown that they can gain military rank as evidenced by Sergeant Gorth (Howling Fjord, Vengance Lift) who is an abomination who is also a Sergeant, indicating that he likely even has soldiers under him, and based on his position it looks like Forsaken Soldiers. Which is interesting as it shows that even Abominations can rise through the ranks. He also says he isn’t afraid because he can just be put back together again, making me wonder if Abominations can ‘retain’ a sense of self even when cut down and reassembled.

5 Likes
30

Probably because people like Elesana like to invent conspiracy theories in their own mind, then get outraged at Blizzard for said conspiracy theories.

11 Likes
31

That’s a funny thing to claim coming from the same people who say Blizzard is punishing them for playing Horde and that the story is deliberately being written in favor of the Alliance. Anyways I can’t wait for Shadowlands! Maybe Blizzard won’t punish the Horde player as much in Shadowlands. Fingers crossed. :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

3 Likes
32

In regards to Abominations and Darkshore I stilk think it was a huge missed opportunity to not have a giant ancient fight one of those giant abominations like the one we see in Zul’Drak. C’mon a kaiju fight between a giant Frankenstein’s monster and a massive angry tree? That’d’ve been fun.

Abominations are pretty interesting. You help Calder Gray make one in Southern Barrens near the Battle Scar. If that quest’s anything to go on you can make them fairly easily if you have access to a lot of dead humanoids and in this setting thats not hard to come by at all.

I’d love to see more variants on their design. Perhaps a commander model that could have two heads like the ogres, or perhaps just one big melon of a head - a literal big brained abomination. Or other specialist versions made from the parts of specific humanoids.

A feral berseker model made of gnolls, quilboar, furblogs etc.

A juggernaut model made from mogu, ogres, drogbar etc.

An amphibious assault model made from murkocs, naga, makrura etc.

Speaking of which I was disappointed how little we saw of the Forsaken Navy in BFA. There was the one new cool flagship model that gets wrecked in Nazjatar but that was about it. You’d think not having to breathe would be a pretty killer edge to have in naval battles. I was picturing Forsaken saboteur divers, riding zombie sharks and swimming underneath enemy boats to plant bombs.

4 Likes
33

Speaking of Ivus, I always thought Lokholar the Ice Lord should have been the world boss the Alliance fights at Darkshore to be opposite of the Horde fighting Ivus the Forest Lord, and that because of that Primalist Thurloga should have been one of the Darkshore Warfront generals (if they had ever implimented more than just Maiev and Sira).

More broadly, though, I would like to see more of the Tauren’s relationship with the Forsaken, since the Tauren were the ones that brought the Forsaken into the Horde, after all, and there’s even the little Forsaken enclave in Thunder Bluff in the Pools of Vision.

3 Likes
34

That’s actually been a favorite topic of mine to explore. I wrote this guy as living in Mulgore for awhile. He was a bit of a political dissident in Tirisfal and assumed correctly a Windrunner with supreme authority wouldn’t be conductive to his health if he hung around Lordaeron.

I had him working as a healer and apothecary around Bloodhoof village. There’s a lot of fun cultural misunderstandings you can do. At one point two Tauren Braves tracked him to his secret lab in a mountain cave and discovered- well it was certainly a lab. He was researching infectious diseases effecting Tauren and the local wildlife so he could treat cases of them better. It was in the middle of nowhere and hard to find because it had live specimens of deadly diseases, and that’s just a sensible thing to do. Interestingly his diet was never an issue. Plenty of quilboar and centaur to eat and the Tauren are typically just happy to see less of those threats.

What I’d really love to see is how their allies culture has affected the Forsaken. I could see Priests and Herbalists in Thunder Bluff coming to respect an interpretation of the Earthmother. Likewise Forsaken warfighters might come to mimic the Orc’s martial and ancestral reverence. If nothing else I’m sure Loa like Shadra and Hi’reek would be of interest to bat handlers and spider tamers.

7 Likes
35

I missed the Legion pre-patch event so I was initially very confused why Helcular had such a big fan base. I mean he does indeed exert some big rod energy but he’ll always be best remembered to me as the monster you unleashed on Southshore for some sweet, sweet, sweet revenge.

I deliberately did not mention any potential leadership candidates because honestly - there are no good ones right now. Whoever it winds up being needs some story spotlight and a lot of time to cook.

A leader is also not really what the Forsaken are in a dire need of in general, right now.

Foremost if I could have one reasonable wish it’d be for the Cleft of Shadows to become a Forsaken district. That’d be a good place to throw in some new Forsaken structures. Use it as a sort of testing field for new building designs since none of the current ones would fit in easily there.

But most importantly we need more characters in general. Outside that wonderful aside with Paxton and his squad the only other normal undead you interact with in BFA is Voss and Tattersail.

I’d really love if we just had a handful of Forsaken characters handing out WQs. You could invent new ones or use exisiting ones. I could see Calder Gray overseeing Horde interests in Maldraxxus. Perhaps Shadowmaster Kiryn could return to do the same in Ardenweald.

Basically there needs to be an actual Forsaken to lead before we worry about a leader. Have some fun reoccuring undead from older expecs return, have them actually interact with the players and do something relevant in the overall story. If they do that I’m sure at least a few will be well received. And then you could consider who of that cast of characters might make the best new Forsaken leader.

1 Like
36

Thank you for this thread! It was very intriguing to read and was a real eye opener for me as someone who’s primarily played Alliance and thus never been really exposed to the more “human” side of the Forsaken. I’m also planning to roleplay a Void Elf and this has changed how he’ll interact with them too.

2 Likes
37

Great OP.

I love your point about the delight in seeing the mundanity in Forsaken existence. It reminds me of why I loved What We Do in the Shadows so much. Sure, the Forsaken are kinda sociopathic and all. But they still gotta go to work and pay the bills.

5 Likes
38

Thank you ^^

The image of the diabolical and scheming Forsaken is popular and I get why. I write two of my six Forsaken toons like that, it’s fun. But people seem to forget that if you pay attention to Forsaken quests and dialogue- they’re mostly normal. For what and where they are at least.

5 Likes
39

Heck…my original wow character in vanilla was a Forsaken shadow priest named Genevra (back when shadow was just the opposite of light and there was none of this (imo) stupid insanity/old god/void connotations it has now) who was having to adjust to her new state and was SO goody-two shoes that I flat-out didn’t do any ‘evil’ quest on her (anything involving poisoning anyone/anything or murdering innocent people) because she was a good person despite what she was. And this was back in vanilla when getting that XP to get to 60 wasn’t exactly plentiful. Stick to your RP guns I say XD

5 Likes
40

I think one of the biggest shames is how the writers have portrayed the Forsaken without even a little bit of sympathy to them. Particularly Alliance side they were coming across as very Scourge-lite instead of people trying to survive. I’ve mained a nelf since Vanilla so their work in the Battle for Darkshore was, to me, Blizzard really jumping into the whole evil aspect with both feet. I think we’d benefit from seeing a few more neutral Forsaken, but I also know this expansion is definitely not a good place for that. I’m interested to see where they take the Forsaken going forward. Perhaps without Sylvanas at the helm, the Forsaken can develop a bit more along a different route.

2 Likes