Friday, November 17, 2017

The Fate of the Late Vol'jin

Sometimes you need to raise the stakes.

In Legion, we've faced the biggest threat that we've ever seen in World of Warcraft. While you could make various arguments about the relative danger of Arthas, Deathwing, or Old-God-Infused Garrosh (even though I'm a Lich King fan through and through, I'd argue 2, 1, 3 in terms of danger rank,) the Legion had to be the biggest thing yet. The Legion was responsible for the existence of the Horde and the very war that started the Warcraft games in the first place - they've been the Bigger Bad lurking behind things since 1994, so they had to come swinging hard.

And boy did they. The failed counter-attack on the Broken Shore was perhaps the most crushingly decisive defeat that the combined forces of Azeroth have endured (unless you count "the Elemental Lords uniting against the Old Gods way, way back.")

To sell that defeat, the narrative required the sacrifice of important character. Central ones.

Varian Wrynn, King of Stormwind, High King of the Alliance, had had quite the arc. Recovered from his kidnapping and amnesiac journeys as a gladiatorial pit fighter and restored to the throne in Wrath of the Lich King, Varian began as a warrior fueled by rage, actually officially starting the war that would end with Garrosh's defeat in Orgrimmar after he saw what the Forsaken had been doing in Undercity. While Varian's anger guided him and threatened to alienate him from his son, he gradually got to know Anduin better and the relationship between the two developed, as Anduin convinced Varian that peace was a viable option and that, in the end, Azeroth was stronger when Alliance and Horde fought together.

The Broken Shore was the culmination of that arc; he and Sylvanas - the same Sylvanas whose apothecaries had convinced him to declare war on the Horde - fight side-by-side across the demon-infested beaches.

He had come around. He had learned to respect his son and to hope for a brighter future. His story had concluded. And so, he was ready to die.

And while he did die in an apparently horrifyingly painful way, he died in the most heroic way one could - sacrificing himself to kill the Fel Reaver that threatened to kill the escaping Alliance forces and then taking out several demons before they could take him down. He died a great example of Alliance heroism and self-sacrifice.

The Horde lost its leader too.

But Vol'jin got none of that. He had only been Warchief for a single expansion, leading from behind as forces traveled to Draenor and while he was cleaning up the mess that Garrosh left him. It isn't as if Vol'jin never got a story - he led the revolt against Garrosh, saving the soul of the Horde as he did. And he had led the resistance against the Zandalari under Prophet Zul, even enlisting the aid of the Alliance to do so.

Vol'jin was a man of iron principles and integrity, unwilling to stand aside while tyrants rose. Not only was he the first non-Orc Warchief of the Horde, he may have also become its greatest leader, a statesman who would rally the myriad nations of the Horde under a banner of inspiration.

But it was all cut short on the Broken Shore.

We barely got a chance to see Warchief Vol'jin at work before he was unceremoniously stabbed by a demonic blade, the fel curse within poisoning his body. He had the luxury of naming a successor, and made the shocking choice of Sylvanas Windrunner, but he did so with his literal dying breath.

The Broken Shore established the great stakes of Legion as an expansion, and that's a crucial aspect of storytelling. But Vol'jin's death was so sudden and seemed to cut off so many potential stories (in ways that Varian's death did not) that it left many if not most players with a bit of a sour taste in their mouths.

So when Battle for Azeroth was announced, those same players (and probably even the ones who were ok with his dying) were intrigued to hear that, among the five characters they claimed the story would focus on (the others being Jaina, Thrall, Anduin, and Sylvanas,) the Darkspear leader was among them.

But Vol'jin is dead. His body is a bunch of ashes in an urn. How do we keep telling his story?

Obviously, a person's story continues in a way thanks to the people they have affected. We haven't seen a ton of Horde NPCs mourning the lost Warchief, but that's also not generally where WoW focuses its story (and it's also not very useful while you're in the middle of the biggest demonic invasion in Azeroth's history.) One thing they've never addressed is who the Darkspear's racial leader is. We actually don't have a whole lot of friendly big-name Troll NPCs in the first place, and while Saurfang has stepped in as the de facto Orc racial leader after Thrall retired (for now) and Garrosh was arrested, escaped, and killed, the Darkspear don't seem to have an official leader, at least that one can see in-game. That's a story that could go forward.

But I imagine that we're going to be dealing with Vol'jin on a more supernatural level. This is a fantasy game, after all, and being dead is not always a death sentence, if you get my meaning. Illidan was dead after we killed him in the Black Temple, but he got better after Nighthold.

We know that Bwonsamdi is going to play a role in Battle for Azeroth, and as a Loa of the dead, it would make sense that Bwonsamdi took Vol'jin's soul after he died. Vol'jin said that the spirits had told him to name Sylvanas his successor - was it Bwonsamdi in particular that told him?

Indeed, between Bwonsamdi and the Witches of Drustvar, there seems to be a lot of exploration of the Death Realm (presumably the Shadowlands) in Battle for Azeroth. Could the retrieval of Vol'jin's soul from the land of the dead be a major part of the Horde's efforts in the expansion? Was Sylvanas meant to be Warchief permanently? Or was she meant to keep his seat warm (which has got to be super-hard for someone whose body temperature is the same as room temperature) while he spent a couple years dead?

If we're going to see Vol'jin either brought back to life or becoming a spirit powerful enough to return to the land of the living, what role does he then serve? If he simply becomes Warchief once more, what does that mean for Sylvanas, and what does it mean for the Warchief to not merely be undead, but someone who really triumphed over death in a way that Sylvanas never did? If he does not become Warchief again, what does he do? Is he a literal spiritual advisor? Does he bring tidings of a greater threat that we've never addressed? Is he still a voice of Horde-Alliance cooperation?

The truth is that we really just don't know practically anything about how this plot will evolve. We're going to have plenty of Trolls in Battle for Azeroth, but while the Zandalari will be joining the Horde, we don't yet know how big a role the Darkspear will play.

In fact, there's something of a reckoning due between the Darkspear and the Zandalari, as it was the former who foiled the ambitions of the latter to reestablish a united Troll Empire across Azeroth. That conflict might be resolved by taking down the Prophet Zul, but if Vol'jin's spirit is not involved in that plot, I don't know where else he would fit.

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