World Of Warcraft

First time was the Lich King.

Second Time was suicide after the Lich King was beaten.

Third time was being stabbed in the back by Lord Godfey.

Hmm, I don't remember those last two in-game. Must have been EU content.

Edited by Fighteer on Aug 9th 2018 at 11:05:56 AM

Second was a pre-Cata (I think) short story. Third was the finale of Silverpine Forest's questline

Well the Lich King was in WC 3.

The second time was in the novel Stormrage, she lost her purpose in unlife and threw herself into the Saronite spikes of icecrown. When she 'died' she saw her people being sacrificed by Garrosh in a failed assault on Gilnas, and saw the horrors of death. The Val'kyr rezed her after choosing her as their new leader, once back she went to any lengths to make sure they won in Silverpine to make sure the vision she saw did not come to pass.

Lord Godfrey killed her in the Silverpine questline in game, the Val'kyr around her sacrificed themselves to bring her back.

Horde-side, then? I played the Worgen starting quests but I don't specifically remember that happening... it's been a while, though. I haven't done Silverpine as Horde since Cataclysm.

Yeah Horde side only. The Worgen starting zone does not actually deal with the war much at all.

Yeah, Silverpine is a horde only quest zone and cataclysm is when the Godfrey storyline got added.

Edited by sgamer82 on Aug 9th 2018 at 9:20:30 AM

Her vision is very horrifying.

Her people lacked her leadership and ability to counter Garrosh, they tried to carry out his orders conventionally only to get ripped apart by shadows. Those shadows push the Forsaken all the way back to the bulwark, and abandoned by the rest of the horde, the Forsaken turn to throwing themselves onto bonfires rather than attempt to fight the unstoppable shadows.

Godfrey is seen in the Worgen starting zone, the player kills him, the horde side we see where that ends up.

Edited by Memers on Aug 9th 2018 at 8:27:23 AM

I mean, that's part of why I still can't hate Sylvanas; I'm not sure why she bombed Teldrassil, admittedly, but her motivation was always to spare her people (yes, and herself) the horror of eternity. She's lost her grip since then, but I do believe that she sincerely wanted to help her people at one point.

I'm not accusing Sylvanas of being insincere, at least not about wanting to preserve herself (and the Forsaken by extension). However, her choice of actions to accomplish that goal has been... less than stellar.

Yeah, that's definitely true. I think it just comes down to the simple fact that, yeah, being Forsaken sucks ass and there's no way it will ever get better, at least not the way most of them would probably want. They're fucked, and it's not fair, but sooner or later they'll have to accept it or not.

And really, figuring out what to do to prevent yourself from being locked in a hunk of rotting meat forever would be stressful enough even if Sylvanas and the Forsaken were 100% clear of the Lich King's influence, which it's absolutely not clear that they are. There's definitely some kind of additional influence on them besides 'human, but dead', or they wouldn't have so cheerfully participated in atrocities like the human farm.

Maybe, but in the new novel we have a situation whereby Calia Menethil was working to reunite some Forsaken with their human families, and we specifically learned (through Alonsus Faol) that they can still harbor the Light. Not all Forsaken want to be undead monstrosities forever. There exists the potential for reconciliation and acceptance, but it's something Sylvanas cannot allow lest her people be tempted to abandon the path she's set for them.

This is the fundamental problem. Her path isn't the only possible path, yet she's stuck on it in the true spirit of the sunk cost fallacy.

Edited by Fighteer on Aug 9th 2018 at 12:12:32 PM

Question: why does giving your character the maximum level boost make the game act like you're an entirely new Level 1 character? :S

Because it's too much trouble to make the training scenario for boosted characters take into account whether you boosted from level 1 or level 90.

Will you please stop sympathizing them?

"Oh poor Forsaken, they must be too traumatized to do Hillsbrad farm atrocities!"

In Undercity, Sylvanas maintained extensive slave pens where captives were shipped to be vivisected and pumped plague in them per experiments. Look at Apotechary quarters where even orc torsos exist.

She was evil to the core since Vanilla. Her surgeons took captives and tortured them to break their spirits, and removed their brain parts to be docile slaves. I mean guys, war is war, doing everything for victory, yadda yadda, but this character specifically does it for cruelty.

"Oh dear me, I still don't think Sylvanas is evil!"

Face the facts. For God's sake guys, take off the bias glasses. She *is* and always has been evil. It takes a special monster to take a human girl kidnapped from alliance ranks and force feed her plague to make her rot in seconds. (the books)

Edited by VIRID on Aug 9th 2018 at 9:49:37 AM

Well, a shift in Alliance attitudes toward the Forsaken who do want to be repatriated would be a big help... or would have, before the second Siege of Lordaeron. Now I expect that Calia and anyone who agrees with her are suddenly very, very unpopular.

^Right, but my point is that the humans who became Forsaken and Sylvanas Windrunner, elven ranger, probably weren't the kind of people who would do that (barring existential questions about the depths of human depravity, and so on). Either they were cheerful human farmers who would have done those things anyway, or something changed in them when they died and were tainted by the Lich King that stripped them of fundamental humanity. The end result is the same - amoral zombie "scientists" - but why that happened is important, mostly in figuring out how likely it is that all the Forsaken could just be switched back into Scourge mode or something.

Edited by RedSavant on Aug 9th 2018 at 12:25:46 PM

Well, isn't that the rub? It fits perfectly with Sylvanas' plans: if you don't want your people consorting with the Alliance, make absolutely sure that the Alliance hates them.

In response to your edit, the difference between "ordinary" Forsaken and Sylvanas is that she was raised from death by Frostmourne itself, whereas the rest rose up through less... personal means. I'm not sure how much we are supposed to count that, though.

Edited by Fighteer on Aug 9th 2018 at 12:22:57 PM

^True enough, yeah. I do think the Alliance bears some responsibility, too (though really, being hesitant to cozy up to the creepy-ass undead who A) were once your family and B) were Scourge until very recently is not something I can blame them for), but in the end it all folds into the same blended-together cycle of hatred and violence. By the time you're killing someone else's mother on the battlefield as vengeance for your friend she killed five retaliatory strikes ago, it hardly even matters who struck first in the grand scheme of things.

Man. At this rate I'd suggest maybe we should just build an even bigger gate in front of Mulgore and hope the rest of the world leaves us alone, but the last time we tried that the Alliance burned down a village of women and children, so that didn't work out very well.

Sadly it matters not anymore. What's done is done. She and her cohorts might have been, yes, normal people, but let's face it.

Trauma does not give you a free pass to murder, mutilate and torture innocents for fun.

It gives you a temporary pass for judgement. And that pass was used up when Sylvanas killed the Desolate council and used enslaved Valkyr.

Edited by VIRID on Aug 9th 2018 at 10:09:41 AM

Well if you died and came back, your morals and damn near everything else would be screwed up to hell and back even without any outside influence. Nothing anyone else can do can match getting killed aside from dying again.

Something you either are desperate to not see again or a death is cheap mentality sets in.

Edited by Memers on Aug 9th 2018 at 10:13:52 AM

Yes, but these do not justify what they did. I'm not trying to drag the argument, I'm just angry against youtubers who repeatedly defend Sylvanas and even blame alliance for everything.

One even told me that I must be a Trump supporting white male.

Protip: I'm a centrist middle eastern dude.

I mean. if we still count old stuff as canon theres one very definite reason why it breaks forsaken

back in the old short story of when kelthuzad first met the lich king when he was still a mortal mage, he witnessed a plague experiment

a mortal woman turned while in a cage with her husband, and while he tried to console her, her now plagued and no longer in her control body started eating him alive. while she begged and cried for it to stop.

I imagine this worked the same for you as a death knight too. You could maybe vocalize your unwillingness to do what you were doing, but your body wasnt listening anymore,

so i imagine any formerly scourge forsaken have massive PTSD issues

Edited by Midgetsnowman on Aug 9th 2018 at 11:28:30 AM

There seem to be a number of vehicles to reach undeath.

• You can be infected by the Scourge Plague, which transforms you into a subservient minion, possibly with elements of your original mind and/or soul clinging to it.
  • The Forsaken Blight apparently shares aspects of the plague but is more immediately lethal.
• You can flat-out die and then be raised by a necromancer or necromantic magic in general.
  • This appears to be the case for most PC Forsaken, as the intro cutscene indicates that they have risen freshly from their graves in Lordaeron, rather than being released from the Lich King's servitude.
• You can have your soul stolen from your body directly by Fel or Shadow magic, a la Frostmourne.
  • This is what happened to Sylvanas (and Draenosh Saurfang) and seems to create more powerful undead.
• You can die tragically in such a way that your spirit is bound the mortal realm and cannot escape to its rest.

In all of this, there seems to be a distinction between mindless undead and undead that hold the souls of their original mortal bodies in bondage, but what that distinction is is not clear.

Do we canonically know that some Forsaken remember gnawing on the bones of their former loved ones?

Edited by Fighteer on Aug 9th 2018 at 2:52:35 PM

a mortal woman turned while in a cage with her husband, and while he tried to console her, her now plagued and no longer in her control body started eating him alive. while she begged and cried for it to stop.

What cage though? Sylvanas' cages?

No, a Cage in Northrend. This was before Kel'Thuzad officially joined the Scourge; Anub'Arak was showing Kel'Thuzad all the wonderful things the Scourge was doing in preparations for the war, including plaguing crops to spread, mutilating bodies to make Flesh Golems, and the above mentioned zombification of a Woman who then killed and ate her Husband when she didn't want to.

Edited by DingoWalley1 on Aug 9th 2018 at 3:01:00 PM