Sunday, October 15, 2017

That Chart of Magical Elements and Classes

So, there's a cosmological chart that is at the beginning of both existing (and presumably will be in the upcoming third) volumes of Warcraft Chronicle. I'm kind of obsessed with it, as it details the way that magic and the grand forces of the games' cosmos interact with one another.


We essentially have three layers of magical realms or forces before we get to the material plane, also known as "reality."

The Emerald Dream and the Shadowlands stand just outside - and while there are pockets of unique areas in both - like the Heart of the Dream or Helheim - much of these realms are mirrors of the existing world.

Then as we travel out we get the elements. The four primary ones have Titan-crafted planes, namely the Firelands, Skywall, Deepholme, and the Abyssal Maw. Spirit and Decay don't have their own planes, though one could make the argument that the aforementioned Emerald Dream and Shadowlands could stand in for those.

The outermost circle is what I like to think of as the Primal Forces. And we get the name of the force, the magic affiliated with that force, and the entities who best seem to embody the force. The Light and the Void are both also "realms" of a sort, though probably so alien in their purity that it would be hard for mortals to survive within them, or at least remain who they are. Disorder has a realm in the Twisting Nether, which seems to be where Light and Void collide and annihilate each other to produce destructive energy. Life and Death, again, don't have full planes as far as I know, but they could very well claim the Emerald Dream and Shadowlands, respectively. Order does not seem to have its own equivalent of the Twisting Nether. If anything, though, I'd think that the Arcane is tied to the physical cosmos, as unlike the Nether, Order seems to be a careful balance of Light and Void.

Many of the classes, particularly those with any kind of magical ability, can fit into one of the six primal forces.

Paladins wield the Light, and are thus pretty firmly associated with the top of the chart, allying with the Naaru and using Holy magic. Of course, as we're learning on Argus, it seems the Light "in a vacuum" so to speak, is not automatically good, even though when it comes to mortal affairs, it tends to be a highly beneficial tool.

Priests also call upon the Light, though they also delve into Shadow. In fact, with the Legion design (and probably going forward,) Priests are almost perfectly at 50/50 between the Light and the Shadow, with Discipline becoming much more thematically hybrid between the two. Again, on Argus we're learning a bit more about the Shadow, and how it is not necessarily evil, even though, again, when it comes to mortal affairs, it's often a threat.

Demon Hunters are pretty pure practitioners of Fel magic, putting them in that Disorder domain (oddly not called Chaos. I wonder if there's a particular reason for that.) As beings that are nearly demons themselves, it makes sense that they'd affiliate with Fel, though we also do have to throw in a little Arcane/Order there, as the tattoos on a Demon Hunter are actually Arcane wards to contain the chaotic magic within them.

Warlocks are also, of course, masters of Fel magic. On the other hand, I wonder to what extent they dip into other types of magic. Shadow Bolt and the Voidwalker minion seem tied much more to Shadow and Void - the Voidwalker is classified as a demon but really ought to be labeled an aberration; it's not clear if there's been some kind of fel corruption to make your Voidwalkers actually into demons, though I'd suspect it's kind of grandfathered in as they probably decided to make Voidwalkers distinct from demons only relatively recently. Still don't know what the Legion is doing using them. Also, I'd argue that some Affliction abilities, like Unstable Affliction, seem like they could be Necromancy, rather than Void or Fel magic, though there's not a ton to support this except that the Old Horde's Necrolytes seemed to be Affliction Warlocks. And then one might even wonder if Warlocks also use some Arcane magic, though perhaps Fel can do things like gateways and summoning portals just fine.

Death Knights are obviously, firmly in the Necromancy realm, though it gets a little more complicated as one goes into the inner rings. One of the two "binding" elements is Decay, which is used by Dark Shamans to force the elements into servitude (we saw the effects of Decay in the Barrens and the Kor'kron Dark Shaman fight, where the elements were all polluted and toxic.) It's not entirely clear if Death Knights are using "decay" in that same sense, though having an ability like Death and Decay does lean me in that direction. Likewise, Death Knights have some control of the elements - though really just frost. Is this a combination of Air and Water, with Decay as the "binding agent" used to control them? Perhaps, though perhaps the chill of the grave is not exactly tied to the elements, but is more just pure necromancy. Finally, Death Knights are tied to the Shadowlands, the dark opposite number of the Emerald Dream (though having nothing to do with the Nightmare.) The Shadowlands have not been explored much in game, but I would guess that both the ghost-realm where you have to run to your corpse to revive and also Helheim are both in the Shadowlands - as are the areas you visit in some Wrath quests like the Alliance ones in Howling Fjord and the Horde one in Dragonblight. Apart from the note on Warlocks above, other classes don't seem to be in this territory, though you could argue Hunters actually get in there a little bit with abilities like Black Arrow.

The only class that very explicitly deals in Void magic is the Priest, and that's obviously primarily Shadow Priests and Discipline Priests. That being said, Rogues have always been said to employ some mysticism in their arts, allowing them to use their Stealth ability, and Subtlety in particular seems to employ Shadow magic to aid in striking from darkness.

Mages are very clearly practitioners of Arcane magic. The "arcane" spells used by Mages clearly draw from this power in a pure form, but while they employ Frost and Fire spells as well, it seems that they are conjuring these elements not through any kind of shamanistic request but through manufacture. It's possible that Mages are actually creating tiny portals into the Abyssal Maw for frost and the Firelands for fire, but I'd suspect that they are simply employing Arcane magic to create these elemental effects (I've even wondered if they are actually manipulating time to create heat and cold, given that temperature is technically just the speed at which particles within a system are bouncing around.)

Druids are probably the most obvious "Life" magic users, and their deep ties to the Wild Gods (in the form of Ancients or Loa) puts them pretty firmly in this category. They're also tied very closely to the Emerald Dream, which seems to be where the Wild Gods call home. Of course, Druids (particularly Balance) do seem to draw on the power of the Stars, which appears Arcane in nature. Given the mysteries surrounding Elune's nature (is she a being of Light or the Arcane, and is she connected to the Titans or the Naaru, or both?) it's possible that Druids are actually more like Mages than they might like to think they are.

Now what's interesting is that both Shamans and Monks are kind of tied into this Life magic, but not quite as directly.

Shamans negotiate the balance between the four primary elements: Earth, Fire, Water, and Air. Good shaman employ "Spirit" in order to maintain this balance, though destructive Shaman employ its opposite number, Decay. It's not exactly clear what the connection is between Life/Nature magic and Spirit, or Death/Necromancy and Decay, but what is kind of interesting is the way that Shamans may focus on the primordial elements, but they also have a strong connection to the spirits of ancestors long since dead. Might shamans actually have a more benign connection to the Shadowlands? Also, bizarrely, the ability Ancestral Recall states that it yanks the Shaman through the Twisting Nether, even though there does not seem to be anything else in the class that relates them to that chaotic realm of Fel magic.

Monks are less focused on the elements in general, but employ that same "Spirit" element as their primary fuel, which they call Chi. Of course, with abilities like Breath of Fire, a specialization called Windwalker, and a host of healing abilities themed with Mist, it's possible that a Monk is actually not all too dissimilar to a Shaman, except that the focus is far more inward - mastering the self rather than calling upon spiritual allies.

Rogues and Warriors are largely classes of the material plane, simply using physical training to do what they need to do, though as I mentioned before, Rogues may employ some Shadow magic to aid in their stealth.

Hunters are probably also in this category, though they seem to also like to pick up skill from various areas as well - a handful of nature magic, as well as some Arcane shots and even possibly Necromancy (in the form of Black Arrow.)

So that seems to cover all the player classes. It's pretty clear that some primal forces are represented more than others, but it's a fairly good spread. I think this would be a good place to start both in brainstorming new classes and also in creating new figures and threats for the future of Azeroth.

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