Undead Paladins and the Current State of the Forsaken

 You know, when I first started playing WoW, I kind of rolled my eyes at the Undead, the chosen playable race for the most edgelord players.

But the thing is, the deep, dark truth in my soul, is that I'm a bit of an edgelord myself.

Yeah, I freaking love these guys. The truth is, that while there was some precedent for my affinity for spooky vibes (my favorite holiday as a kid was Halloween,) I truly think that World of Warcraft coaxed forth a lifelong fondness for the grim and macabre, and my amoral little Undead Rogue, who cut his teeth assassinating the leadership of Hillsbrad, has always been one of my most beloved WoW characters, even as my love of the Rogue class fluctuates (actually, I really adore the way Subtlety plays currently, though Goremaw's Bite being part of the recommended talents does mess up my comfortable action bar placements).

I also love Paladins... though I'll confess that while Protection Paladins remain my "comfort class," as my main has been my human Prot Paladin since early 2008, I don't terribly care for the current state of Retribution. And I've genuinely never played as Holy outside of the artifact quests in Legion. If I tank well enough, they won't make me heal!

But if you asked me which race would be the absolute last to get Paladins, I'd have assumed Undead.

Perhaps that was too quick a judgment.

In I believe 12.2, we'll get an expansion to the available classes for Paladins, adding Night Elves, Trolls, and Undead.

For Night Elves, this is honestly a long time coming. Delas Moonfang was one of our class champions in Legion, and the ghost of Nerus Moonfang (I believe her ancestor) was another one. There were, thus, more Night Elf champions than there were Dwarves and I believe Draenei, both races that can and always have been able to play as Paladins. While Night Elves don't worship the Light in the same way that Humans, Dwarves, and to an extent Blood Elves do, we've seen how the Paladin tradition need not all derive from Uther the Lightbringer's example, with Draenei Vindicators, Zandalari Troll Prelates, and Tauren Sunwalkers. It stands to reason that Night Elf Paladins could emerge from a combination of their Sentinel warrior traditions and their Elune-worshipping priestly traditions.

Then, with Trolls, it seems likely that the example of the Zandalari Prelates would simply be something the Darkspear incorporate into their traditions. Interesting that the Darkspear were once this minor, pariah tribe amongst the Gurubashi nation and now are more or less on equal footing with the traditionally most powerful Troll tribe. While there were rough patches (Garrosh,) it sounds like joining up with the Horde has worked out quite well for the Darkspear.

Anyway, when it comes to the Undead, it sort of simultaneously makes a ton of sense and also the least sense for them to be paladins.

After all, the Knights of the Silver Hand were quite prevalent in Lordaeron. I don't know how where Uther actually hailed from, but we've seen how Alonsus Faol, who literally is the one who imbued Uther with his holy power and co-founded the Knights of the Silver Hand, has remained a holy priest firmly dedicated to the Light, even if that light causes him pain as one of the undead.

While Faol is associated more with the Conclave now, as he is a Priest rather than a Paladin, I think he stands as a great example of how the Forsaken might embrace ways that seemed to be lost to them with their descent into undeath.

Culturally, I think that Sylvanas' regime as head of the Forsaken (and in fairness, she more or less founded the Forsaken as a unified people) discouraged association with old identities from when they were living. While Sylvanas seems on the road to reformation, she's also decidedly not the leader of the Forsaken anymore, though at least in-game we haven't seen anyone really take her place (Calia Menethil might play such a role, but I think reestablishing the Menethil dynasty is maybe not the best choice for them, even if she's about 1000% better than her brother was.)

The point is, the Forsaken, who have always leaned pretty hard into their dark and spooky aesthetic (prior to Cataclysm, towns like Bree were just ruined versions of human architecture found in Elwynn Forest, but they had created new types of buildings in Wrath of the Lich King, which they then carried over with the world revamp, dialing the spooky gothic vibes up to 11). And that extended to their behavior, with a fair number of actions that were straight-up evil, with just the lightest justification that it was in the name of self-defense.

Sylvanas amped up this kind of behavior, eventually forcing the Horde to turn on her after she had become Warchief, and outside of the game, she even had an emerging independent Forsaken government, the Desolate Council, killed.

Without Sylvanas, and after the betrayal by Sylvanas in her alliance with the Jailer, the Forsaken have not really been in the spotlight as much, but I suspect that, absent her influence, it might be less taboo for them to embrace some of their old identities as humans. Particularly given the much less hostile relations between the Alliance and Horde, it's not quite as important to the survival of the Forsaken to be so utterly hostile to living humans.

And I think that these factors all combine to allow them to start embracing the role of the Paladin.

Now, at least according to some very old lore, it's unlikely that any Undead Paladins would have been living paladins prior to their initial deaths. Back in early WoW lore, Paladins were immune to the Plague of Undeath, and thus would not have been turned even if slain by the Scourge (they could still be resurrected as Death Knights, of course).

This is the kind of minor lore thing that could very easily be retconned away, but I think it might be interesting, culturally, if we conceptualize Undead Paladins as embracing it as newcomers - a movement to honor the history of Lordaeron, and a test of their convictions to endure the power of the Light in order to protect their people.

Look, as I said, I really only love playing Protection, so I don't know how likely it is I'll have some really prominent Undead Paladin alt (I already have a Lightforged Draenei and Tauren Paladin sitting there as well). But it would be really cool if we get an exploration of the way that Forsaken culture has evolved in recent years.

Patch 12.2: Eclipse and 12.1.7: Talebound, plus Wrath Remix, and a brief Last Titan Teaser

 While we only got a brief (but pretty menacing) teaser for The Last Titan, the main focus for Blizzcon's WoW stuff, apart from, you know, WoW Forever, was Eclipse, the presumably final major patch of Midnight. Boy, doesn't it feel like this expansion just came out?

Eclipse sees Xal'atath make it down into the Worldcore, where Azeroth's World Soul was placed by the Titans (after they removed it from Harandar). It appears that Xal'atath's plan is to merge with the World Soul to become her own kind of Titan-like being.

Here are the major highlights:

First off, we have a new zone called the Mantle Vault, where the Worldcore can be found. Here, there's a subterranean hostile faction called the Deepskar Empire, composed of Troggs, Drogbar, Kobolds, and led, apparently, by hostile Niffen.

Within the Mantle Vault, we'll find the big 8-boss Worldcore Raid, which sees us have our big confrontation with Xal'atath, and where spellcasters can get their hands on Midnight's Edge, a spellcaster dagger that looks quite similar to a certain Black Blade that a certain former-mortal-turned-void-being used to live inside, though Blizzard claims at least that this is a different weapon (it's also apparently not just a rare drop, but will require a whole quest chain that includes finishing the raid. Fingers crossed it's more like the Mists/Warlords Legendary quests so I actually have a chance of getting one).

Additionally, the Gearhold will be a new Lair, the recent variation on World Bosses that... puts them in instances (not entirely sure how this is distinct from a single-boss raid, though I guess the fact that you can just walk in and be assigned a World-tier group for the boss is somewhat convenient). The boss here is an Azerite-infused cave bat called Noctinaxx.

We'll be getting a new dungeon called Thraegar's Stand, which has three bosses and seems to be kind of Earthen/Titan themed.

Also of note: Paladins will now be available to three new races: Night Elves, Trolls, and Undead. While this doesn't quite make them universal like they've done for some other classes, it does mean that we've got a ton of new options. Personally, I'm eager to make an Undead Paladin alt (if for nothing more than to see how amazing their paladin mount will look,) and given that we had Night Elf Paladin class champions in Legion a whole 10 years ago, it's about damn time that we get some cat-mounted champions of Elune's light. As for Trolls, I imagine that they've adapted some of the traditions of the Zandalari Prelates, spreading Paladin techniques across Troll-kind.

Also, perhaps unsurprisingly given how profoundly sinister he's been all expansion, our Delve nemesis will be none other than Astalor Bloodsworn. What that means for Prey is something I don't totally know (it will, evidently, still be part of the game).

Prior to this patch, in 12.1.7, we'll be getting a new game mode: Talebound.

This will apparently be a sort of Gothic Horror-vibes roguelike RPG system. If I understand correctly, this will be a bit like Plunderstorm, as a standalone thing you can play within the WoW Client. But unlike Plunderstorm's PvP battle royale, this seems to be built around single-player and co-op.

The premise is that we're snatched out of our reality to play the role of protagonist in The Storyteller's tales - a figure who prefers horror stories.

The game mode lets you play as one of three original classes, the martial Slayer, the Inquisitor, or the Witch.

Now, I think that WoW does Gothic Horror vibes immaculately, and my favorite parts of the game have tended to be when it leans into horror aesthetics, which I think are beautifully offset by WoW's cartoonish style, keeping it from getting oppressively bleak. It seems that this game mode will use environments like Revendreth, Gilneas, the Plaguelands, Parts of Kul Tiras (I know we saw the Shrine of the Storm, though I have to imagine we'll get a bunch of Drustvar) and such, and let us wear all the kind of Victorian finery that you'd want to in such a space.

This feels, basically, right up my alley, even if I generally don't like Roguelikes.

Additionally, we're getting a third expansion Remix, and having already done two of the game's most beloved and popular expansions, the next one will be bringing us to what for many was the pinnacle of WoW, Wrath of the Lich King. While I've already farmed quite a few of the tier sets for almost twenty years now, I'm sure I'll have fun soaking up every bit of Wrath nostalgia for that.

While the focus here is far more on Midnight's last patch and WoW Forever, we got a tiny little preview for the Last Titan - nothing in terms of gameplay, but we got this:

Shots of the massive, towering structures of Northrend, Wyrmrest Temple and Icecrownd Citadel, against stormy, overcast skies. As the camera lingers on Wyrmrest Temple, towering over Dragonblight, a flash of lightning reveals a silhouette - something that dwarves the temple tower, hundreds of feet, maybe a thousand feet tall. And then, glowing runes activate, and we see what appears to be an utterly colossal Titan construct walking the earth. Twin cannons on its shoulders activate and point down at us, the puny viewer in the frigid landscape, and as they begin to fire, we cut to black.

The Last Titan is due to arrive next year, in 2027.

Yeah, this is a pretty fast clip: Midnight launched only 18 months after The War Within, and it looks likely that The Last Titan will arrive on a similar schedule (I'd assume late in the year, given that Midnight only launched this year).

I... I know that the ambition back in the day was or WoW to have annual expansions, but I don't know that I think this is really a good idea. If the level cap rises and our progress in gearing and other means (I've actually been taking professions seriously in Midnight) is wiped away that much faster, it might cut into some of the extrinsic motivations to play.

I'm super jazzed to see what an updated Northrend looks like, don't get me wrong. But I think the traditional two-year cadence for WoW expansions worked fine, and if you're worried about content droughts, just give us X.3 patches! They did it in Wrath and Legion, and everyone loved those expansions!

Anyway, lots of stuff to digest. I haven't even touched on the new campaign being added to Warcraft III Reforged (hey, do you like the Forsaken? I've got good news for you.)

World of Warcraft Forever

 Well, here we go: World of Warcraft Forever is essentially the new Classic Plus that has been rumored for some time.

While Classic exists to preserve and revisit the experience of World of Warcraft's past, Forever will essentially create a branching experience, with new content added to the game, but in a different manner than the 22-year-running "retail" core version of the game.

Like Classic, the focus here is on the original two continents - Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms, in the post-WCIII time period, but as a sort of branching timeline. Again, while Classic seeks to preserve as best as possible the gameplay experience from 2004, Forever will be adding new content, including new zones, expanding old zones, and adding new dungeons and raids.

We'll also be seeing some new race/class combinations, the most notable of which is the Undead Paladin. The cinematic trailer, which focuses on our familiar dwarf hunter with his brown bear companion from the original WoW cinematic, sees him travel across the world following a Wisp, who brings him to Dalaran as its magical shield retracts (yes, we'll be able to go to Dalaran in its original location) and eventually has him wind up at Nordrassil in a new version of the Mount Hyjal zone, and he faces off against a Forsaken Paladin (in a clever nod to the original cinematic, the ground around the paladin's foot alights, but unlike the Warlock in that original trailer using Hellfire, this is Consecration).

Players will be able to choose between the original character models and the post-Warlords updated models, and it seems that the entire world has gotten a bit of a graphical overhaul (not a total rebuild, but things look a little better).

There will also be a new playable race, the Skyborne, who seem to be an offshoot of the elves living on a giant floating island. Skyborne are available to both factions, but depending on which faction you choose, different classes will be available, with Horde Skyborne able to be Shamans through a connection to the Earthen Ring and Alliance Skyborne able to be Mages through the Kirin Tor.

Forever will have a locked level cap of 60, with any updates evidently building upon content at that level. They claim the game will be focused more on leveling, with a lot of alt-friendly features to encourage you to stop and smell the roses while leveling up.

The talent system is more akin to the old Classic style, but some small incremental talents have been consolidated to make room for more impactful ones.

I will say, as someone who started playing during Vanilla, I was never really that eager to get into WoW Classic. As nostalgic as I might be for those early days of WoW, I also really appreciate the development of quality-of-life conveniences (and I also don't have rose-colored glasses about the behavior of players back in those days).

Now, this might appeal to me a little more given that there's all this new stuff to try out (I do actually really like the idea of an Undead Paladin, even if it seems insane to me that we still haven't gotten Night Elf Paladins after Legion gave us two Night Elf class champions).

Still, WoW takes a lot of gaming energy, especially if you like to have a lot of alts (see the name of the blog). So I'm likely to just try it out a little bit. I believe the subscription, like WoW Classic, is covered by your WoW subscription, though it sounds like there might be a one-time purchase fee.

It launches in November, so, pretty damn soon. (Man, the latter part of this year is piling up with new games to play).

Diablo V Announced

 Well, that's a bit of a quicker turnaround!

Just a teaser, I think, so far, but Diablo V apparently takes place in a Sanctuary that is somehow even worse than usual. The world has fallen to ruin, conquered by the Lord of Terror himself.

Supposedly, there will be no safe towns in which to rest and take shelter.

I'm curious to see how that affects the way the game actually plays: in Diablo IV, for instance, there's a tremendous amount of stuff you need to do in town to fine-tune and enhance your characters' traits and abilities (in fact, I think it got kind of out of hand, to be honest).

Personally, I'd wish for a stripped-down and simpler version of the game, with more of an emphasis on smart moment-to-moment gameplay than optimizing to a razor's edge so that nothing lasts more than two second against your assaults.

Look, I know that much bigger fans of the franchise would string me up for this, but I actually think the world of Diablo would lend itself very well to a Souls-like game, inverting its "killing thousands of monsters at a time" style in favor of something that required careful play and planning to face each enemy. But I fully recognize that that's not what the franchise has ever been, and this is my imposition of another gameplay style onto it.

Anyway, part of why Diablo IV's character progression got so profoundly convoluted was because it had two expansions stacked on top of the original game, so it's probably good to get a nice reset here.

New Starcraft Game Announced... To Be Released 4 Years From Now

 Yes, it looks like Blizzard is returning to the Starcraft franchise, though I'll warn diehard RTS fans out there, if you're one of those people who for a solid decade was wondering when this weird little MMORPG spin-off game would give way to a true Warcraft IV, you might feel some disappointment that Starcraft (supposedly just called "Starcraft," though there's an image that seems to call it Starcraft Dominion) is going to be an open-world shooter game.

We only have a cinematic trailer, which shows a young recruit to the Terran Dominion's space marines, rising up through the ranks as he, notably, doesn't actually engage in any combat but just trains a whole lot.

Starcraft is a far more cynical game setting than, say, Warcraft, and so the moment he gets out to face the Zerg Swarm, his gun jams and there's an abrupt cut to some technician salvaging his armor, opening a drain where his liquified remains pour out.

Now, a lot of people have commented on the fact that, with a 2030 release announcement, this feels a bit early to even tell us about it. And there's a history of games like this being announced well in advance and then being canceled quietly.

We shall see.

To be honest, I don't know that I'm really that interested in a dark and cynical Starship Troopers-like dark military sci-fi game. We've already had games like Helldivers 2 or the Warhammer 40k Space Marine game, so I'm curious to see how Blizzard intends to set their game apart from these others.

I don't know if I'll be able to keep up with every bit of news coming out of Blizzcon, but this seemed notable to share.

As We Periodically Do: Asking What We Want for 5.5 Books

 Arcana Unleashed is, I think, maybe the most successful supplement to come out for D&D since the debut of 5.5 edition, other than the core books.

For the main book, we have a big influx of spells, feats, subclasses, and I think we have a pretty good hit to miss ratio.

I think it's likely that the impetus for this book was first to reprint the four Wizard subclasses that had been in the 2014 PHB but not the 2024 one, given the standardization of 4 subclasses per class in that book.

Even if it wound up reducing the number of updates for Clerics and Wizards, I actually applaud the "4 for everyone" approach that we got in the PHB. The funny thing, though, is that the books we've gotten since haven't taken the same even-handed approach.

5.5 is still relatively new, though we're now two years out, so it's not brand-new. In that time, we've gotten a revisit to Eberron (a book whose purpose I think was to get the Artificer updated to catch it up with the other 5.0 classes,) an adventure anthology in Dragon Delves, the Forgotten Realms books last year, Horrors Within, and the these two with Arcana Unleashed, with Deadfall giving us our first full campaign book of 5.5 (which, interestingly, matches the last 5.0 campaign book's level range, at least roughly).

Now, I have all of the adventure books, because I'm a bit of a collector, but I don't really use them - to me, a big part of the fun of DMing is building by own campaign. Thus, I'm more likely to borrow ideas from them, or monsters. But I recognize this isn't necessarily the typical thing: plenty of groups and players run these adventures, even exclusively.

In 5E's early days, we'd get a lengthy adventure book at least once a year. But they seem to have leaned away from that model. I don't know if it's just that most players don't make it through all those adventures (the only one I finished was part of Adventurer's League, with a lot of players who were not there for the RP, and my friend who was DMing was keeping things moving quite fast).

What I find interesting is that the early days of 5E - and actually, not even that early - some of the big supplements we got were sort of universal rules expansions.

Volo's Guide to Monsters was something of an expansion to the monster manual, and while it had pretty extensive lore chapters (a fair degree of which seemed to be retconned away) it was also the biggest influx of monsters for DMs to use, as well as new playable races.

Then, we got Xanathar's Guide to Everything, which provided at least two subclasses for every class other than the Wizard, along with the biggest addition of spells and, for DMs, a far easier encounter-building system than what we had gotten in the DMG (it was a big improvement, and one I used for a long time, though I think the 2024 DMG one is what I currently find most effective).

Later, we got Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes, which provided another good influx of monsters to use, along with some more playable races (a little less broad in scope).

And then, finally, Tasha's Cauldron of Everything gave us more subclasses and, I think pretty crucially, new variant rules that divorced ability score bonuses from races - something I, frankly, think they erred in then stapling to backgrounds in the 2024 PHB and would not mind seeing a similar corrective.

Tasha's did do a fair amount of consolidation: giving us setting-agnostic versions of the Artificer as well as several subclasses. In other words, WotC has always done a fair bit of reprinting (even Xanathars repeated some options that had shown up in Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide).

Toward the end of 5.0, WotC released a "Rules Expansion Box Set," which included Xanathar's, Tasha's, and the new Mordenkainen Presents: Monsters of the Multiverse. This latter book effectively cut out much of the length lore chapters from Volo's and Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes, and included nearly all of the monsters in the books, plus most of the playable races that had shown up in either (along with some that had shown up in setting books,) with a few revisions.

This box set, if you didn't already have those books, was the obvious "next thing to buy" if you were getting into 5E and had only gotten the Core Books. Truly, with those six in your collection, I'd say you were basically covered when it came to having what you needed for a decade of games.

This might appeal to me more strongly than other players/DMs, but I really prefer rules expansion books over just about everything else. As much as I love, say, the Ravenloft setting (and wish the Planescape set had been better,) and I truly think Van Richen's Guide to Ravenloft is my favorite 5E supplement they came out with, the books that provide the most utility are, in my opinion, these ones that sort of get out of the way of the people trying to come up with original stories (aka, DMs and players) and just gives them more stuff to work with.

I thus rank a broad expansion of player options and/or monsters as the best thing that WotC can release. Next, I'd probably put campaign setting books, maybe at an equal footing with thematic monster books (the latter being stuff like Fizban's or Bigby's).

Arcana Unleashed (the main book, of course) is thus sort of in that first category. There is some extensive stuff about the various magic-school-affiliated factions, that's all well and good and probably something I'll never touch in any of my campaigns. But the crux of it is player options, and that, to me, feels like fuel for player creativity.

The slightly narrower focus on the Arcane theme kind of pushes it toward that second category.

What I wonder, though, is if WotC has shifted their philosophy against "of Everything"-style books. Truly, Xanathar's and Tasha's have no singular thematic throughline, other than cheeky little commentary written in the voices of their title characters.

But what they ultimately gave us was just more stuff to use, and they wound up being, I would think, the most popular supplements in 5.0.

Given the UAs we've gotten in recent months, I suspect that we're going to have themed supplements for the forseeeable future: the announced Dark Sun book, some kind of "villain" book, now probably some Underdark book. Oddly, the revisits to older subclasses from Xanathar's seems to have been preparation for the Warcraft book (a game/franchise that can play different tones of fantasy about as well as D&D can).

But I was thinking: between Heroes of Faerun, Horrors Within, and Arcana Unleashed, we have still not gotten a new Druid subclass in 5.5 since the PHB.

There was something kind of nice about how the of Everything books really touched on each class and gave them cool stuff.

Some More Critical Role Campaign Four Theories

 As a longterm fan of both Critical Role and Dimension 20, I've been keeping up with CR's fourth campaign, with its new world and new DM.

Brennan Lee Mulligan likes to weave complex mysteries in his campaigns - more or less every Dimension 20 is a mystery for the players to solve amidst all the monsters. While I think Matt Mercer's style has certainly contained mysteries, I think that the idea of investigating and discovering what the bad guys are doing is less of an emphasis than simply trying to survive their plots and bring the fight to them.

The broad goal of the extended party (meta-party?) in Campaign Four is to subvert the power of the Sundered Houses, noble families whose nobility is kind of defined by their sorcerous capabilities, and who have sought to hold ultimate power within the world after the death of the gods. Arguably "noble" is underselling them, as they occupy a position higher than, say, King Augustus "Gus" Valian of Timmony (who seems about the best-case scenario for royalty - someone who was lost as a child and grew up among the common folk, and only discovered royal lineage in adulthood, but has retained his "man of the people" values).

The houses, Halovar, Tachonis, Einfasen, Royce, and Cormoray, are each associated essentially with a different source of magical power and creature type in D&D terms - Halovar with Celestials (though eyebrow-raisingly, also fiends - something that I'll be focusing on mostly here,) Tachonis with Undead, Einfasen with Giants, Royce with Fey, and Cormoray with Elementals.

I don't have any new evidence for this, but I think it's notable that Azune, Luis Carazo's Paladin/Sorcerer, speaks a native language we now know to be Araman's version of Draconic, and that the only other Sorcerers we've encountered have been members of the Sundered Houses. Not only do I guess that Azune's Sorcerer subclass (not sure if he has one yet, as I think the party is only level 5 currently, and he might have put 3 levels into Paladin) is Draconic, but I do wonder if there's some "lost sundered house" that he belongs to that had the power of dragons.

But let's talk about a different Sundered House: Specifically, Halovar, and specifically, the house matriarch, Yanessa Halovar.

Yanessa is, pretty explicitly from the audience's perspective, a conwoman. Not only did Wick come into the campaign falsely labeled as a Cleric (because Wick thought he was,) only to turn out to be a Sorcerer (evidently a Clockwork sorcerer rather than Divine Soul, a I'd guessed. Not sure what to make of that other than just that Divine Soul hasn't gotten a 5.5 update yet,) but I noted that the voice that Yanessa uses with family is a decidedly working-class one.

While I had perhaps thought that this was just Mulligan's way of showing duplicity, the idea that Mulligan, famously an old-school leftist preaching working class solidarity, would invoke the trope of using lower-class accents to denote wicked and villainous characters seemed unlikely.

So, in the most recent episode, we got another little detail that seemed pretty important:

After Hal puts on his play Kotherai without making any of the Candescent Creed-mandated edits (that would have turned it from a stirring tribute to the proud history of the orcs rising up against their oppressive creator god into a piece of anachronistic Creed propaganda,) Yanessa shows up at his home to threaten him.

As part of her threat, though, she puts on a false face of civility and makes him breakfast with his own food in his own kitchen. And Hal notices that the food is cooked expertly - a stark contrast when Aranessa Royce, Hal's once-sister-in-law, tried to cook and was an utter disaster because, as a member of a Sundered House, she had always had cooks to prepare her meals.

The very strong implication here, I think, is that Yanessa was not always a member of such an august house. But how did she become the head of one, in that case?

Well, it could be as simple as the idea that she married into it. But if that were the case, it seems strange that she would be the family's leader. While she's worked hard to redefine House Halovar as simply the stewards of the false religion she's cooked up, the basis of their power is that family history.

We know that they have a celestial locked away in their family estate, from which the Filament that fuels their Luxes' powers (and Wick's... maybe?) is harvested.

But Yanessa is not a sorcerer - in an act of intimidation and maybe frustration, she shatters two mugs of Hals that were made by his daughters with Eldritch Blast, a spell only Warlocks have access to.

We also know that the demons, like Tyranny, who have been pledged to serve the Candescent Creed, are not, of course, actually reformed, but simply there as part of a contract with the demon lord K'sharavi (Tyranny's "dad"). I think the demons are more complicated than just "evil," (I think that Tyranny is a reskinned Tiefling, and they retain the concept of a "virtue name." Tyranny believes wholeheartedly that there must be a strong tyrant to lead, but wants someone as kindhearted and goodnatured as Wick to embody that role - a kind of extreme lawful position. (Ok, parenthetical inside a parenthetical, I have thoughts about how you can think of law as institutionalist and chaos as personalist, in which case this would actually be the chaotic position, but I'll set that aside for now).)

So, presumably, Yanessa is a Warlock, and might have K'sharavi as her patron. But is there something deeper going on?

See, Warlock powers are great, but making deals with demons and devils often involves some life-transforming change - the powers could be just a means to accomplish that. So here's my big theory:

Was Yanessa just a common woman before all of this? We're told the Halovars were originally the priests of Tonsul, the human-aligned god of the sun. But what if she's not actually a Halovar at all? What if the Halovars were all killed off, and Yanessa came with the claim of being the House's last scion (this is admittedly even bigger than my initial pitch, so let me get back to that)?

What if she sold her soul for power and influence, to become a high aristocrat of the Sundered Houses, to escape what she at least saw as her wretched state of poverty and irrelevance?

We know that Wick is an Aasimar - though we're not totally clear on whether he's truly directly descended from the celestial in the Halovars' basement or if this is the longterm effect of being pumped full of Filament (I'm leaning the former).

But it is really interesting: if Azune is secretly a member of a lost Sundered House, or at least some equivalent thereof, it does mean that these families may not be as immutable as they'd like us to think.