For those who want to geek out, and hard, join me after the break...
Are they gone?
Ok, I alluded to this in my Spires of Arak impressions article (ok, I basically said it explicitly, but I think it warrants an article of its own.)
Player of both factions, after arriving in Spires of Arak, will be sent to check out a garrison established by Admiral Taylor - the Alliance counterpart to General Nazgrim. However, as soon as you arrive, you find that the place has been massacred, and is filled with ghosts. Dealing with the ghosts, you find out that there was a mutiny, and only a handful of loyal ghosts are holed up in the barracks while the rest of the fort is now run by the treasonous ones. You eventually discover the whereabouts of Admiral Taylor, who has been left to die on a rack between two obelisks of a disturbingly familiar design.
Upon finding Taylor's body, you are confronted by a necromancer. The necromancer transforms Taylor into a Marrowgar-like bone construct, who you are forced to put down before dealing with the necromancer. As he dies, the necromancer laments that he was unable to kill you, given the reward his "master" promised him.
Taylor's ghost thanks you for putting him down, and happily becomes a follower at your garrison, which admittedly softens the blow of his loss.
The Necromancer, named Ephial, currently has the standard model of a Scourge Necromancer, shared with Heigan the Unclean and Gothik the Harvester. The obelisks to either side of Taylor's rack are of the classic Scourge/Nerubian design.
Does this portend the return of the Scourge?
Now, we've had a Scourge expansion. It was, to be frank, my favorite expansion. But Wrath of the Lich King ended in a somewhat strange way. We killed Arthas, which would seem to mean the Scourge's utter defeat, yet we were cautioned by both the ghosts of Uther the Lightbringer and Terenas Menethil that in the absence of the Lich King, the Scourge would be unstoppable. Killing its leader alone would only spell doom for Azeroth, and so Bolvar Fordragon, who had resisted the Lich King's will for a full year of torture, volunteered to take on the responsibility.
The point is, the Scourge is still around.
The Cult of the Damned remains active, and while the Plaguelands are healing slowly, Bolvar has not been able to keep every single undead minion in check. Indeed, there seems to even be rebellion against his rule.
The Scourge might have been put down, but it will not forever stay down.
Who could be pulling the strings, though? To me, there are two possible answers.
The first, more depressing one, is that the Lich King defeated Bolvar. It was a serious risk, putting on the Helm of Domination, because the power of the Lich King could very easily consume the will of a righteous man. Bolvar seemed like the best bet, but it was still something of a bet. If the Lich King has defeated the stubbornness of Bolvar to remain "Jailor of the Damned," then we're in deep trouble. Not only would that mean a Scourge resurgent (and I wonder how well the Argent Crusade or the Knights of the Ebon Blade have been monitoring the goings-on of Icecrown Citadel,) but it would mean that a long-term solution to the Lich King-as-jailor duty is basically nonexistent.
The other possibility is a kind of "fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me" situation. The upper echelons of the Scourge are the Liches. A Lich is a super-powerful sorcerer who binds his or her life-force/essence/soul to a physical object. The Lich's can be destroyed, but they do not die, as long as the phylactery that holds that soul is intact (wait, is Dorian Grey a Lich?) Not counting the Lich King himself (arguably the armor was something like a phylactery for Ner'zhul's soul - though it's unclear if anything remains of Ner'zhul ever since Arthas emerged as the dominant personality,) the granddaddy of all Liches is Kel'thuzad.
We've killed Kelly-T twice now, once during vanilla and once during Wrath (both in his fortress, Naxxramas.) The first time, we took his phylactery to a priest named Inigo Montoy, of the Argent Dawn. Unfortunately, Montoy was actually a member of the Cult of the Damned (Founder: Kel'thuzad,) which is why we had to fight him again. But the second time we killed him, we didn't take his phylactery at all. So that means that, by all rights, Kel'thuzad should still be... well, not alive, but still undead.
And if anyone was going to take over the Scourge in the absence of the Lich King, it'd be Kel'thuzad. KT was Arthas' right-hand-man and his closest advisor. Barring a takeover by the Burning Legion (which they've attempted a few times,) Kel'thuzad would be the most likely to ditch Bolvar and try to wrest control of the Scourge for himself.
There's clearly still a lot of story left to tell for the undead. That's especially true given Sylvanas' recent (ok, constant) behavior.
With Garrosh gone (though possibly even before him,) Sylvanas is the most outright villainous person in either player faction. Garrosh himself was disgusted with her tactics in Silverpine Forest, pointing out that there was really no difference between what she was doing and what the Scourge had done to her.
And Garrosh's arc proved that Blizzard is willing to make true villains out of its faction leaders, so it's been thrown around that we might find ourselves killing Sylvanas at some point in the future.
That said, I'd like to see that particular plot go in a different way. Sylvanas does retain some of her empathy from life. The Forsaken are more interesting, I think, when we see them as sympathetic, if desperate people. The other practical problem of getting rid of Sylvanas is that there's really no one in a good position to be the Undead faction leader. Varimathras is dead (and was a freaking Dreadlord, so no thank you!) which leaves us without any really well-known Undead characters. I'd love to see an Undead Human lead them if not Sylvanas, given that the playable Undead are all former humans. There has been talk of Calia Menethil, Arthas' sister, who would by rights be heir to Lordaeron, but she's never appeared in game.
Anyway, I've always been really into the story of the Scourge. The Forsaken are probably my favorite Horde race, and the fall of Arthas had a pretty great, mythic sense to it (it's actually an evil version of the King Arthur myth, with Kel'thuzad standing in for Merlin and Frostmourne as Excalibur.) While I don't know how they would pull it off (for instance, unless they pull a Draenor on Northrend, where would you even set it?) I hope that we take an expansion to revisit the Scourge. Then again, I'm not sure we're quite ready for it. Much as the Twilight Dragonflight and the return of Deathwing was teased as early as in Burning Crusade, I hope this is one little breadcrumb portending stuff coming in the far future.
And it could be nothing. The models used in the quests scream Scourge, but they could change. It could be a throwaway plot, a one-and-done. Still, I have officially gotten my hopes up.
Now, who the hell was the master's voice during the fight against Varimathras in Undercity?
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