What’s the deal with Crystalsong Forest? It’s such a unique area, but I don’t remember ever doing quest or reading lore about the place. I did find a article that said the zone was originally going to have content, but the close proximity of Dalaran bugged out the zone with lag so they decided to not do anything with the zone… or so they say.
Anyone know anything about Crystalsong Forest?
In-universe: It used to be a normal forest that had a Highborne settlement. The Highborne got into a fight with the Blue Dragonflight, and the resulting magical fallout turned the forest into crystal.
Out-of-universe: It was mostly empty because they were going to put the Argent Tournament there, but like you said, the lag from Dalaran made that impossible.
Tilgath is correct, but to go into more detail regarding the fight, the crystallization was actually a deliberate act by the Highborne that got way out of their control because they didn’t know how to handle the magic behind it.
A group of Highborne, after being exiled 7k years ago, landed on Northrend and were having magic withdrawals. They saw the Blue Dragons converting things to crystal with spells and then draining the mana from them as a snack, and decided to do that too. For this purpose, they went into the Nexus and stole artifacts from the Blues, which of course the dragons didn’t like. A fight broke out.
The Highborne were already weakened, and even if they weren’t they could go up against full fledged Blue Dragons. They were losing badly, and so in an attempt to get some power back and fight them off, they used those artifacts they stole to try and covert things to crystal. The spell ended up being waaaay too much for them and they died, the shock causing their spirits to wander for centuries.
Don’t do mana crystals, kids.
This is pure speculation on my part, but I figured because of Sunreaver’s Command and Windrunner’s Overlook that the Sunreavers and the Silver Covenant were going to play bigger roles in Crystalsong Forest’s content than they ended up being up at the Argent Tournament, and I feel like those concepts were carried over into the faction bases at the Isle of Thunder in Mists of Pandaria.
But once again, pure speculation, I don’t actually have anything to back that up.
Great replies here already but I’ll simply add the link to the lore article about it for any further inquiry. It’s one of my favorite zones because of how straight, no-chaser High Fantasy the zone’s theme is to me.
Thanks for that! I’m reading it now.
Here is something interesting about Crystalsong Forest from the link you provided;
One thing is sure though, the Scourge cannot pass through this forest.
There are of course many other interesting things in that link, but that fact above kind of shocked me… why wouldn’t the dead be able to pass? Interesting…
EDIT: It’s particularity interesting considering the Lich Kings seat of power is in Northrend yet the scourge can not pass through the forest. I wonder why…???
Potentially because of the large amounts of arcane? Though I have no idea what that would prevent the undead.
But now that you mention it, it makes a lot of sense why there’s so much undead in the northeast side of Sholazar Basin as if they’re trying to find other ways to circumnavigate Crystalsong.
Arcane clearly harms Scourge just like Nature does. Only Undead with Free Will is able to walk into both which indicates that Nature and Arcane affects Death Magic the same way Light affects Void and Fel.
It seems while the reason Light harms Undead is due to the Fel and Void in them the actual Death Magic is only harmed by Arcane and Nature!
Actually, they were already there pre-Sundering. Shandaral was established by the Kaldorei Empire back when Northrend was just the northern reaches of ancient, super-continent Kalimdor.
After the Sundering, the Highborne of Shandaral were cut off from their surviving kin in “new” Kalimdor, and became more and more desperate for sources of power as the centuries passed. That’s what led them to make an oopsie by stealing from the Blues.
It is never explained, but the inability to pass through the forest may be a relic of when the argent tournament was meant to be hosted there.
That said it may be the strong arcane forces there have been directed to make some sort of ward against them. Perhaps their unique existence as living crystal causes them to radiate a power which causes the spell of reanimation to become unstable; scourge kryptonite, if you will. It is super hard to say really.
Various Cosmic Forces don’t go well together: Light reacts negatively to Fel and Void, Fel reacts negatively to Light and Void and the Void reacts negatively to Light, Fel and Arcane!
Arcane probably reacts negatively to Void and Death while Death reacts negatively to Arcane and Nature(though not Light as shown with Calia)! Is it just me or does Nature seem to be the least volatile Cosmic Force of the bunch?
Interesting. I like knowing about these “counters” to certain cosmological forces/powers.
I’m trying to think of any instance where Arcane thwarted undeath - or proved a hard counter to it and I can’t. But I have no reason to NOT believe what you wrote! I’ll keep searching.
Probably something similar to how the wizards of Dalaran attempted to defend their city from the Scourge during Warcraft 3; but instead of having individuals channel that magic to ward off the Undead, it’s occurring naturally in Crystalsong.
Oh that’s a good example of Arcane>Undeath
Although it seems as if the magic was more a lock on a door. Not necessarily that the scourge was damaged more via the auras. Maybe I’m missing something though.
The first line of the description of that battle:
In preparation for the undead attack, a small group of wizards (which included Antonidas) prepared a special spell that would do damage to any undead that entered Dalaran.
The spell was specifically crafted to harm the Undead. Probably something they cooked up after Gorefiend and Gul’dan’s Death Knights raided their city.
Yeah, I do see that, but I guess I was looking for something more definitive? Clearly it was an Arcane spell (not light based or Fel based or elemental fire etc) but since it only damaged them, it just doesn’t feel like a Light’s Hope Chapel version of the Arcane. Well, or an Ashbringer.
Well the spell would harm the Undead until they were killed and not just damage them iirc. It’s been a while since I last played that mission.
Which is so weird to me! One would think Fel and Arcane would react negatively to each other since they’re order and disorder.
Where is Raselle when you need him/her D:
Arcane for what it’s worth is weak to Fel(which means a beam of Fel Energy will overpower an equally powerful beam of Arcane Energy) yet doesn’t react negatively in it’s presence. Instead they balance each other out and create inert Corruption Magic which apparently lacks any constructive use!
When you say react negatively, do you mean breakdown? Or something else?
What does corruption magic do?