The Scourge are my favorite villains in Warcraft lore. They're not the most powerful, and perhaps not the most monumental in their influence on the world. But they're incredibly iconic, and the drama of the Scourge is profound.
I say this as someone who has never been a big fan of zombie movies. The thing is, zombie movies (and shows, and other kinds of stories) are usually about the breakdown of society - apart from the occasional scary elite monster (like the elites in Left 4 Dead) zombies are basically fungible, and while the horrific fate of those who contract the zombie disease is to become one of them, it is a total loss of identity that comes with that. Which yes, is a compelling nightmare. But I find intelligent undead far more interesting.
Of course, the most popular version of intelligent undead are vampires - depending on the author, vampires can vary from little more than zombies with different rules to masterful, diabolical sadists, and even to sympathetic, often romantic figures. (The latter version in particular always seem to be profoundly attractive in a sort of goth way.)
The Scourge plays a little with both versions. The horror of the Scourge is compounded in a number of ways: First, the Scourge recruits its enemies. From a simple logistical standpoint, that's incredibly dangerous. In Game of Thrones, the Army of the Dead (which was clearly an inspiration for the Scourge - the show hadn't begun until after Wrath of the Lich King, but the blue eyes and wights led by intelligent and icy monsters certainly existed in the books prior to Warcraft III) demonstrated this power at Hardhome, where the heroes fight off an assault by the Undead only to find that everyone who fell defending the town just wound up added to the armies. Essentially, it's a military adversary where anything other than a total victory in battle basically counts for nothing.
The second is the simplest: we are, at a deep instinctive level, afraid of dead bodies. It makes sense, given that bodies tend to carry disease, their rotting smell a warning that even those who died of non-infectious causes may now be crawling with pathogens that could spell doom for us if we stay near them too long. Bodies are bad enough, but having those same dead bodies coming at us with a malicious intent is nightmarish.
The third, however, is the thing I find the most interesting: when the undead retain their memories but lose their moral sense, our emotions toward people we knew in life are used against us. The Scourge are cruel, not just violent or dangerous. And they use the knowledge that a living person converted into undeath has of the people from their lives to twist the knife.
Consider the moment Arthas returned to his father after claiming Frostmourne. Arthas was welcomed as a conquering hero, who had saved his kingdom from the Scourge. Flowers that would later come to be known as Arthas' Tears were strewn on the path to the throne room. It was a most horrific event, then, to see Arthas, the crown prince and great hope for his kingdom, walk in and stab his father, King Terenas, through the neck with Frostmourne.
Arthas was meant to be the hero. And he knew that. He used it to inflict maximum terror on the kingdom that was now his and that he would then bring to slaughter.
I've played mostly Alliance since Wrath, but the moment that Horde players arrive at the Deathbringer Saurfang fight is similarly horrifying. Varok's son had been a hero, much like the elder Saurfang, but unlike Varok, Draenosh was not tainted by the many sins of the Old Horde. It is terrible enough to lose a child, but then to see that same child's body reanimated, and for all his honor and love for his father to be turned into cruel mockery is a tragedy that also robs the mourners of their fond memories of the departed.
To get personal here, I lost my mother a little over two years ago. Imagining her coming back somehow but spitting nothing but hatred and malice would, I think, totally break me emotionally.
And with the Scourge, this is not just one isolated case - the Scourge has converted practically entire kingdoms to its cause, and intentionally levied this emotional warfare as part of their tactics.
When you play a new Death Knight - and I should say that datamining suggests this might not be available for long given that there might be a new starting experience, so be sure to check it out if you haven't ever played one - you can find a number of books written by Kel'thuzad within Acherus. The Lich King's majordomo makes some fascinating points and arguments:
Essentially, he says that the Scourge only employs their "evil" aesthetic to play into the fears of the living. The Scourge views itself in very amoral terms. All things within the Scourge are designed to serve its purpose - to convert all life on Azeroth into undeath. And, at least in Kel'thuzad's view, there isn't actually much real malice - just a job to be done and tools used to accomplish that job. He even mentions how all of the Scourge's "culture" is appropriated, such as using Nerubian architecture for its Necropoli.
Holy crap. Does that mean Naxxramas was originally built as part of the Black Empire?
In a weird way, though, doesn't this utilitarian approach to the Scourge's "evil" deeds make it even more horrific? Anger, after all, is human. Hate, vindictiveness - it's all emotional. But Undeath, we know, mutes emotions. So instead, we've got essentially a machine of death that has chosen to use both physical and emotional pain as a weapon against the living purely out of practicalities.
To connect with another game franchise, in Dark Souls, the danger of "Hollowing" is the way that, over time, the Undead lose their personalities and become mindless and, one imagines, stop really having much of an inner life. The plot of at least the first and third games (I haven't played the second) is about trying to find a way to renew the world so that people can live natural lives - mortal, yes, but also meaningful and conscious.
What's interesting, then, and horrifying, is that the Scourge seems to be designed first to unleash terror and cruelty and apocalyptic destruction on the world. But the end goal is for things to be still, cold, and unmoving - meaningless.
All the pomp, all the performative cruelty, is just serving the vision of a still and static world.
Which is pretty freaking scary.
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