The Horde Needs a Solid and Unequivocal Loss

The Alliance has plenty of reason to fight the Horde. Time after time, the Alliance has shown the Horde mercy. Jaina sacrificed her father to peace. Varian left Orgrimmar standing. And every time, the Horde decides to go and attack the Alliance again. The Horde is convinced the Alliance is their eternal enemy when there has always been a path to peace if the Horde would simply accept it.

For an enemy they insist on fighting, the Horde never actually seems to have reason to fear the Alliance.

See, the attitude that seems to permeate the Horde is that they are convinced of their own superiority and then use that sense of superiority to attack what they perceive as a weaker foe. But that is the opposite of honor. The Horde is theoretically the underdog faction, but at no point has the Horde in general seemed to experience a genuine worry about how they are to survive against an Alliance foe.

The Siege of Orgrimmar saw their capital invaded and captured, but by that point most of the Horde had already turned on Garrosh. This meant that what was theoretically a loss for the Horde actually got turned into a victory.

The Horde never loses.

Now let's talk spoilers:

There is No Redemption for Sylvanas Windrunner and the Horde has No Honor

Well, I'll admit that I held out some foolish hope that we might see some trickery afoot - that the fire in Teldrassil might have some mysterious cause, framing Sylvanas for a more brutal attack than she had planned, pushing the war into overdrive.

But as her Warbringers short shows, it's all on her.

This plays in-game at the Burning of Teldrassil.

We see Sylvanas talking to Daeleryn Summermoon - an Alliance questgiver who has been aiding in the defense of Darkshore. Sylvanas explains how she saw hope dry up in the defense of Quel'thalas when she was killed by Arthas. But when Summermoon claims to grieve not for her people but for the hero Sylvanas once was, the Warchief orders her people to set Teldrassil ablaze.

Alliance players are given an impossible quest to save the people of Darnassus - I managed to get about 28 out of 982 to safety before becoming overcome with smoke inhalation, at which point Mia Greymane has you pulled out to safety.

Teldrassil is a massacre, no doubt about it, and there's really no getting around Sylvanas' total responsibility.

And to be frank, as a player (on both sides) I am not happy about this. Sylvanas is a straight-up villain. Morally grey means a mix of light and dark, that there's something redeemable about a person even if their methods are brutal. Sylvanas just doesn't have that. There's nothing defensible here. It's a preemptive war (note: preemptive war just means war. There's literally no difference except that you're trying to use a euphemism to distract from the fact that you're the aggressor.) It's an intentional slaughter of civilians.

There's one tiny kernel of honor among the Horde leaders in the attack, and Saurfang does nothing to try to prevent the burning.

So here's what I find frustrating:

Sylvanas is not conflicted, nor does she have defensible motivations. She's just evil.

The Horde is once again the aggressor - yes, you could point to Genn's attack on her in Stormheim, but remember how her mission there was to ENSLAVE a val'kyr?

My Horde main is an undead Rogue, and after the Desolate Council and now this, I think he's thinking very carefully about the opportune time to stick a dagger in Sylvanas' back.

It doesn't even make sense strategically - the plan was to turn Darnassus into one big group of hostages to ensure the Alliance didn't attack. Now the Alliance has no reason whatsoever to hold back. Sure, Sylvanas is luring the Alliance into a fight, but she's totally failing to learn the lessons Garrosh failed to learn - that you can't go 100% aggression without dividing the Horde.

Sylvanas has to be overthrown. And that's why I'm worried we're going down the Garrosh 2.0 path. This is worse than Theramore. We've either got to ask Horde players to continue playing the villain for the foreseeable future or we're going to just run through the same plot points as we did in Mists of Pandaria.

Surprise me, Blizzard. But don't confuse Sylvanas' actions with a cool, morally grey story. This isn't grey. It's just straight up evil.

The Escape From Red Scar Plains

Tonight my D&D party finally completed an adventure that we started over a year ago. The campaign goes on (the characters are only level 8 at this point) but for now, this group of weirdos have defeated Kagrok the Apocalyptian, leaving behind the Court of Flames, Red Scar Plains, and the Shadowlands behind them.

We're taking a break for one of the other people in the group to DM, meaning I get to play my own character.

It's actually a bit emotional, for reasons that might get a little more personal than I've been on this blog before:

Last year my mother died of cancer. I went to visit her in the spring, and during the two months I spent with her, I started putting together this adventure. I returned when it seemed that the crisis she had been in had passed, but we only had one session - depositing the players in a region of the Shadowlands (my hybrid Shadofel/Dark World from Link to the Past/End World from the Dark Tower series) known as Red Scar Plains (an inside joke with one of the players, but also a pretty good name for something in a fantasy setting) - before I got a call from my sister telling me that the cancer had spread to her liver and they were ceasing chemo because there was no hope of beating the disease.

I flew back to Boston the next day - my mom's last birthday, actually - and spent the next couple weeks with her. Those weeks were pretty bad, though I wouldn't trade them for the world.

But the previous trip - two months hanging out with my mom in the den of my childhood home (I still call it the playroom, even though it hasn't been littered with toys for over two decades now) and chatting while working on a D&D adventure (it's also when Acquisitions Incorporated: The "C" Team started, so I was watching that too) was some of the last real quality time I had with my mom.

I would basically spend every day except for a 5-mile walk that took a couple hours chilling in there with her. Frankly, other than the dread of her disease, it was a pretty pleasant time.

The first anniversary of my mom's death was earlier this month. It's been surreal to think that it's been a whole year.

And now, here's another milestone passed. The imaginary heroes (some with big question marks after that word) have made it out of their imaginary predicament, and are ready for new terrible things to happen and monsters to kill. After all the crazy things that have happened in Red Scar Plains, they're moving on.

It's not really that important. It's not even directly tied to my grieving process, though it certainly is tangentially. I'm just recognizing that the feeling of surprise that it has been over a year since I lost my mom is oddly similar to the sense of surprise that this adventure I've been running all this time is actually finished.

Warchief Sylvanas

Sylvanas is not the first person you'd expect to become Warchief.

For much of the Horde's history, up through Garrosh, the Warchiefs were all male orcs. Indeed, when Thrall named Garrosh his successor (maybe his worst decision ever,) he did so in order to put an "old school" Warchief in charge. To be frank, Thrall's decision was racist - his nostalgia-fueled choice was based first on a skewed view of the Horde's history that sought to undo many of the reforms Thrall himself had put in place while also ignoring that the Horde was now a far more diverse organization than it once had been. Putting a male orc in charge of the Horde was hardly revolutionary.

It's pretty obvious that Vol'jin would have been the far better choice to succeed Thrall, and while his actual tenure as Warchief was shockingly short, his brief period of rule was fulfilled the promise of Thrall's Horde. Setting Ashran aside (which I see as kind of non-canon, frankly, as it has no impact on the story of Warlords,) Vol'jin saw the Horde return to its former strength and cooperate with the Alliance to form the most effective bulwark Azeroth had ever seen (again setting Ashran aside, notice how there's practically no Alliance/Horde tension, and how the Iron Horde was defeated so handily?)

Vol'jin's death, however, made Sylvanas warchief, and that has not exactly been great for everyone.

To an extent, it makes sense. Of the original four racial leaders from vanilla, Sylvanas is the only one still leading her people (Thrall's retired, Vol'jin and Cairne are both dead.) Sylvanas has plenty of leadership experience, and a proven record on military capability.

And yet it doesn't seem like it could possibly last.

Sylvanas has essentially no scruples. In fact, as someone who has played an Undead character since vanilla, it feels a bit like she's slid backwards. There was a time when the Forsaken were defined by their free will, and yet Sylvanas rules as an autocrat. She uses Val'kyr to raise humans her forces kill, and those newly-undead humans immediately join her. That seems totally unlikely if they have any free will. Her actions in Before the Storm, slaughtering any of her people who accepted her invitation to the peace summit in Arathi Highlands, show that there's no actual belief in freedom there - she basically says "you are free to do as I say or you are free to die."

The truth is that Sylvanas is a villain. You can't really square her behavior with any kind of heroic narrative. Sure, she has her motivations, but having motivations that make sense doesn't make you a hero - it just makes you a better-written villain.

The Horde has struggled with this sense of identity in the past. Freedom is of course a big value for them, and yet they have historically had a lot of authoritarian leaders in the past. The Alliance, despite being ruled by a king, seems to be a more tolerant and liberal society.

As I see it, there are three possibilities for Sylvanas:

One is that she simply remains Warchief. This could take a few forms. One possibility is that she remains as villainous as she has been and that the Horde just gets used to it. More interesting, I think, would be for Sylvanas to have to undergo some... character development! She needs to take a long, hard look in the mirror and recognize how close she has come to becoming Arthas. I would really enjoy seeing Sylvanas being forced to come to terms with what she has done - not losing her edge, mind you, but for her to take a moment and decide on principles that she should have, that will make her a good leader. Could losing Undercity be an opportunity for growth?

The next is that she is overthrown by her own people. This one I kind of want to shoot down on principle because, well, we've been there and done that with Garrosh. The Horde doesn't need yet another civil war. Horde players are sick of ping-ponging in their loyalties and Alliance players aren't that interested in being the supporting players in a bunch of Horde drama.

The third is that Sylvanas could step down as Warchief. Maybe she'll come to realize that she's wrong for the job, or that Vol'jin had been misled in naming her. Sylvanas could also realize that if she only has to worry about the Forsaken, it allows her to focus a great deal more on what interests her - like securing immortality for her people.

I think "part B" of the first example is the one I like best - I definitely like that there's a non-orc woman running the Horde (and while I like Anduin a lot, wouldn't mind having a non-human step up to run the Alliance if he has to step aside for some reason.) While I get that the Forsaken have always been the "villain race," I'm always a big fan of subverting those assumptions and adding nuance. The Forsaken need to be something different than the Scourge, and having Sylvanas rethink her methods would go a long way to bringing that in.

The Pandaria Boost

Having gotten my Nightborne Hunter to level 80, I took her to Pandaria, where she got to feel really ambivalent about fighting the Alliance (I don't have much of an RP concept for her, but I think she feels conflicted between her desire to reconnect with the Blood Elves and her gratitude for the Alliance's role in liberating her people.)

Anyway, what struck me was how absurdly efficient the leveling process has been. I'm already halfway to 83, and that's after a couple hours of play this morning. One can hit 81 before even getting to Grookin Hill on a Horde character.

Though I have great nostalgia for Northrend and Wrath of the Lich King as an expansion - and it was a huge improvement on leveling over what came before - the truth is that the 60-80 leveling experience is a pretty slow one.

However, what this means is that by the time you hit 80 and get to start in Cataclysm or Mists content (Cataclysm goes pretty quick too, but I think Pandaria is proving the smoother experience) leveling up the rest of the way is pretty much a breeze.

I do wonder if one day they'll make Draenor and the Broken Isles a shared 90-110 experience to give people options. The good news is that Draenor's leveling experience is actually the strong suit of the Warlords expansion, so even if some zones fall a little short (I'm looking at you, Gorgrond,) the overall experience is both quick and rather easy.

Anyway, I'm excited that my Nightborne is "over the hump" as it were.

My Highmountain Tauren is finishing up his old world leveling in Azshara (because sometimes it's fun to play around with the level scaling to do things in an unusual order.)

There are of course four more allied races coming in BFA. I'm still a little undecided about what classes to go with for some of them, but here's my general plan:

Dark Iron Dwarf: Either Mage (Fire) or Warlock (Destruction.)

Mag'har Orc: I really don't know. I'm trying not to overlap allied race classes, which eliminates Hunters, Warriors, Rogues, and Paladins - though I doubt they're getting the latter. I might consider making a Priest, but honestly this is probably my bottom-priority allied race.

Zandalari Troll: Most likely a Shaman (Elemental.)

Kul Tiran Human: Druid 100%. With their creepy wicker forms, there's a good chance the Kul Tiran might supplant my Night Elf as prime druid. (As cool as the Allied Races have been, none has really gripped be enough to consider making one of them the "main" for their class except the KTs. If you forced me to delete my old characters and make new ones, I'd probably make a Lightforged Draenei Paladin as my main with a Worgen Death Knight as my prime alt, but I'm way too attached to the Human Paladin and Draenei Death Knight by this point.)

The Joy of Purchasing Your Starting Gear in D&D

So, as you can guess from the posts, I've been DMing for roughly two years now, and I'm very excited about several things (Ravnica and Eberron stuff announced/released today, for example,) but one of the most exciting things is that one of my friends is going to run his own couple-session adventure, giving us a break from our massive campaign and allowing me to actually play a character!

Per the DM's instruction, we're not revealing our characters to each other until we're at the table, but I doubt anyone in my group reads this blog, so I'll talk about it right now!

Spoilers for people in my D&D group other than the one who will be DMing to follow. For the rest of you... whatever!

My character is going to be a Great Old One Warlock (intending to go Pact of the Tome if we make it to level 3.) He's a human, but using the variant human rules I've given him moderately armored, which allows him access to medium armor and shields (something Hexblades get automatically.)

For this reason, I figured I'd forgo the usual starting gear and instead roll for cash to spend in "session 0."

So with +2 to his dexterity, my Warlock is able to wear Scale Mail, bumping him up to 16 AC, and then throw a shield on his off-arm (leaving the main hand for somatic spell components) and I've got what is basically a pure caster with the armor of a guy in full plate.

Then, a dungeoneer's pack covers most of the basic stuff you need, though I think I had to get a bedroll. From there, it was largely flavor stuff, like a book (with a Noble background, he already has some nice clothes.) He's got a quarterstaff as a weapon, though I suspect that he's almost never going to hit things physically (once I get Pact of the Tome I might go with Toll the Dead as range-agnostic alternative to Eldritch Blast.)

It's really fun, though, to go through the equipment and look at all the various things you can purchase.

With today's release of the Eberron material (I haven't purchased it yet, but they did post an updated Unearthed Arcana for its new races) I decided to roll up a Warforged Juggernaut Eldritch Knight Fighter (though he's technically not an EK yet as I'm rolling these at level 1.) I have two character concepts which would be next in priority after the Warlock, one a time-traveling Dragonborn from a modern future who essentially works for the time police, and the other the Warforged who was the guardian of an ancient library that was destroyed by some foe in the distant past and has only recently woken up.

Warforged are definitely a race you'll want to consider purchasing gear for.

In the new design, Warforged don't wear armor, but they can switch armor modes after a long rest to effectively get Light, Medium, or Heavy armor, and you have access to these modes based on the proficiencies of your class. Darkwood Core, the unarmored/Light armor option, gives you 11+dex, and you get to add your proficiency bonus if you're proficient in light armor. Composite Plating is effectively your medium armor mode, giving you 13+dex, with a max dex bonus of +2, and then your proficiency bonus. So if you have the +2, you're getting 17 AC at level 1. Heave Plating is the equivalent of heavy armor, giving you 16+proficiency and disadvantage on stealth checks. That means effectively starting with full plate.

But the biggest thing about this is that you can save a ton of gold.

You don't need to buy armor (though you can still use shields for the +2 AC bonus) and you're going to get guaranteed boosts to that armor as you level up.

On top of that, you also get to ignore rations or even bedrolls. A lot of your expenses are really negated by that whole construct nature (though you still count as a humanoid for spells.)

Anyway, this gives you tons of gold to consider spending on stuff like acid vials, caltrops, weapons, and any other fancy stuff you might need.

Going through the PHB's equipment lists really lets your imagination run wild. You could roll a character who has a whole bunch of acid vials to throw at enemies (and wouldn't that be a novel way to pick a lock, too?)

The Cosmic Underpinnings of Ravnica as a Setting for Both Magic and D&D

Both Magic The Gathering and Dungeons & Dragons use the idea of a multiverse to connect their various settings.

I have no idea if this is still canon, but Magic actually has (or at least had) a name for its multiverse, which was called Dominia. Dominaria, the original setting of the game, was special because it was at the center of that multiverse, its name meaning "Song of Dominia."

D&D is flexible, but while they have suggestions on how to come up with your own Outer Planes (I'm sort of waffling between whether my setting's outer planes are entirely separate from the standard ones or if they're connected,) generally the idea is that there's a prime material plane that is the relatively mundane reality most player characters would be from, and then there's a succession of more and more alien planes moving outward until you get to the Far Realm, which is where the rules of reality, including the dichotomies of good and evil, law and chaos break down.

While Magic certainly has its odd locations, there's actually no real hierarchy to its planes. Each plane is a world with its own rules. Indeed, many of these planes don't really have gods, per se. Or one could argue that the true gods of Dominia are actually the abstract colors of magic, representing the conflicting philosophies and methods that then contend with each other on the planes themselves (Magic does have its own equivalent of the Far Realm, called the Blind Eternities, which is a space outside the multiverse where Magic has no colors, and from which the cosmic horror creatures called the Eldrazi hail.)

These are both pretty compelling ways to structure a multiverse (I'll confess that I like the nuance of Magic's five colors better, but that could also be because I first played Magic when I was eight and I first played D&D when I was twenty-nine.)

We don't know what the Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica is going to be like, exactly. What little has been talked about is that they're going to have players choose guilds in place of backgrounds, and there's apparently a kind of flow-chart questionnaire to determine which guild players characters should choose. They also suggest letting players choose their guilds and then developing a story in which they rise to oppose an adversary that they would all have reason to fight against. (Already I have some character concepts: Dimir Illusion Wizard or College of Whispers Bard, Orzhov Death Cleric, Izzet Storm Sorcerer.)

What I really want to know, however, is to what extent this marks Ravnica's induction as an official D&D setting.

I suppose that the fact of the matter is that they're publishing a physical book as part of the 5th Edition line, so you don't really get more official than that.

But if we go all Planescape/Spelljammer, can players from other settings arrive on Ravnica? Does Asmodeus or Pelor get to interact with the guilds, and does Rakdos go back to the Abyss if we kill him?

Obviously the real answer to any D&D question is "does the DM allow it?" But I'm really curious to see the way that Wizards treats this in terms of marketing. Are they calling attention to the fact that the Ravnica setting has been around in Magic for the last thirteen years or so, and that it's a kind of odd man out for D&D? Or does Ravnica join Dark Sun, Greyhawk, Ravenloft, and Eberron as one of the canonical, official settings for D&D?

I realize it's all sort of much ado about nothing, as once again, it's really about what flies at your table. But I'm still really curious to see how the book turns out.

What is the Blue Child?

The Moon figures prominently in the folklore of many of Azeroth's inhabitants. The Night Elves of course associated or perhaps equate it with Elune, their moon goddess. We still don't really know Elune's nature, but we do know that she exists and is powerful at least on a scale with Titans and Naaru.

The Tauren consider the moon the Night Elves call Elune to be Mu'sha, one of the two "eyes of the Earth Mother" with the Sun, An'she, being the other. In Shu'halo (the Taurahe word for Tauren) myth, these two figures are their own entities while at the same time being connected to the supreme being, the Earth Mother (which in my headcanon is the Titan Azeroth - it hasn't been confirmed, but the fact that Azeroth literally has a living god inside of it seems to line up pretty concretely with the myth of the Earth Mother.)

The dichotomy of the Sun and Moon is pretty commonplace on Azeroth - the only two female Mogu were sort of themed on the Sun and the Moon. The High Elves built their society around the two foci of the Sunwell and Silvermoon City. Balance Druids are all about balancing the Nature/Life magic of the Sun with the Arcane magic of the Moon. It's a theme.

But Azeroth has a second moon. And no one seems to pay any attention to it.

The two moons of Azeroth are typically called the "White Lady" and the "Blue Child." The White Lady gets most of the attention - in fact, the "Lady" in question is very likely the Goddess Elune - while Night Elves lived in isolation for a long time, it's clear that some of their culture filtered into human society through the High Elves as well as perhaps some small remnants in the Eastern Kingdoms.

The only potential common reference to it is in what I have generally assumed to be a critical research failure when writing voice lines for Worgen NPCs. Often when you click on a Worgen or Gilnean human, they'll say "May the Light of the New Moon Guide You." To anyone who remembers learning about moon phases in elementary school, this is a really silly-sounding line. The New Moon is the phase in which the moon is between the Earth and the Sun, and thus the side that faces earth is entirely in the moon's own shadow, so that there's no moonlight (and in fact, during the New Moon, it's only up during the day anyway.) The Full Moon is when the moon is brightest because it's on the opposite side of the earth from the sun, and so we see the entire earth-facing side illuminated by the sun.

The full moon is of course what we usually associate with werewolves - in fact, there's a statistic that emergency rooms fill up with more injuries on a full moon, though this isn't because of men transforming into beasts, but rather because the extra light mean people are staying out later and getting drunker (fine, they're also getting mauled by lycanthropes.)

So clearly this sounds like some shoddy copy-editing that no one caught until it was too late to feasibly fix it.

But if we want to get super wonky and explain it away (like the way that we got an entire movie to explain why Han Solo described his famous "Kessel Run" in units of distance rather than time,) might we argue that the moon the Worgen are referring to is actually the Blue Child?

Sure, it does seem like their werewolf moon-associations would really be based on Elune (consider it was the Scythe of Elune that created the modern Worgen form,) but if we run with this admittedly flimsy premise, might the "New Moon" have a different meaning on Azeroth?

Consider, for example, that neither moon seems to have phases. Sure, Balance Druids have a spell that plays with phases and again this might be a real-world technical issue rather than something true in-game. But if the moons don't have phases, what, then, does New Moon refer to?

If it means the Blue Child, does that suggest that the Blue Child is a relatively recent addition to the night sky? Recent enough that there would be people who refer to it as a new moon?

So let's run with this premise like a streaker who just stole the football in the middle of a game: when did the Blue Child appear? And what. the hell. is it?

We've got enough questions about the White Lady potentially being a goddess. I've suggested in the past that Elune might be some kind of minor Titan, or perhaps an Elder Titan who reverted to a planetoid nature in order to watch over Azeroth - who could be something like a daughter or granddaughter to her.

Could the Blue Child be something like that?

Alternatively, we know that planets coalesce around Titantic world souls - some planets have no Titans within them, such as Draenor, but all Titans seem to start off as these World Soul entities.

But how does that happen? We know that Aman'thul emerged first among the pantheon and then found the others. But where did these World Souls come from?

Also, were there other Titans who were not in the Pantheon? It seems as if only Sargeras was aware of the Titan Argus, and only after he quit the Pantheon did the others discover Azeroth. If Elune is a Titan, perhaps she was simply independent of the Pantheon either voluntarily or because they had never found each other (though the Tears of Elune as a Pillar of Creation and the fact that Eonar hid on Elunaria both suggest to me that they were well aware of each other.)

Azeroth is a future Titan (one who I hope doesn't destroy the planet when she emerges - that's something we really need to get a good answer on. Just give the people of Azeroth some advance warning so they can relocate to some other world before it happens!) But where did the World Soul come from?

If Elune is, in this new conception, some kind of Elder Titan, might she have actually procreated? And if Elune is Azeroth's literal mother, might Elune have other children as well?

Is the Blue Child perhaps, then, just that? A child?

Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica: A D&D Sourcebook

Holy crap, they're crossing the streams!

For those who don't know, Ravnica is one of the most popular settings from Magic: the Gathering, the mother of all CCGs. Magic, like D&D, is both a property of Wizards of the Coast as well as being a fantasy-themed game, so translating Magic settings for use in D&D is something that works out fairly well - but in the past, they've done simple PDFs in a series called Plane Shift.

This, however, is going to be a published hardcover sourcebook.

Ravnica is my favorite setting they've done in Magic, and the original Ravnica block was the last period I really played a significant amount of the game.

For those who know D&D and not Magic, let me give you the rundown:

In Magic, there's a vast multiverse filled with different planes - sort of like planets, but magically separated into their own universes with different peoples, gods, and the like. Much like D&D's various worlds of the Material Plane, Magic's planes have some similarities that echo through them.

One of the core elements to the nature of the Magic cosmos is that there are five colors of magic, representing different attitudes, techniques, and philosophies of magic. The five are White, Blue, Black, Red, and Green. I don't want to get too down in the depths of what they represent, but to sum up briefly: White is holy, light-based magic focused on cooperation and law. Blue is arcane, cerebral magic that focuses on using the mind to manipulate reality. Black is necromancy and sacrificial magic that focuses on empowering the caster at any cost and destroying one's enemies. Red magic is chaos, focusing on impulse and emotions, prizing action and recklessness. Green is nature magic, empowering the strong and focusing on instinct and growth.

In a sense, you can think of the color system as Magic's alignment system, but with a bit more nuance than the two-axis D&D one. White, for example, might represent altruistic goodness, but it could also represent tyrannical authoritarianism. Every color has its good and bad aspects (though you might find it harder to make a hero that uses black mana than, say, one who uses green.)

Ravnica is one of the many (maybe infinite) planes in the multiverse, and it's a fairly unusual one.

The entire plane is covered by one massive city - the city and plane of Ravnica are one and the same.

Ruling over this city are its ten guilds, each playing a different role to keep the city functioning. Each guild utilizes two different colors of magic - every two-color combination has a guild.

The Azorius Senate (White/Blue) is the city's legislature and bureaucracy. The Boros Legion (White/Red) is its military and police force. The Selesnya Conclave (White/Green) maintains its parks and green spaces. The Orzhov Syndicate (White/Black) is its church and tax collectors (and also its mafia.) The Gruul Clans (Green/Red) are its demolitionists (and anarchists.) The Golgari Swarm (Green/Black) are its waste-disposal and providers of food for the poor. The Simic Combine (Green/Blue) maintain its water supply and perform biomancy research. The Cult of Rakdos (Black/Red) are its bacchanalian entertainers (and often assassins.) The Izzet League (Red/Blue) are its builders and magical researchers and engineers. Finally, House Dimir (Black/Blue) are its archivists, but are also its spies, assassins, and knowledge brokers.

Any adventure in Ravnica is likely to involve a lot of intrigue between the different guilds and their various ambitions.

I, for one, am super excited about getting this sourcebook. While the Plane Shift articles have offered Magic planes as a suggested setting, this seems to be the first time they're releasing an actual book based on a Magic property within the official D&D 5e line.

Also of note is that there is a PDF on DMsguild with information about Eberron. I think I'm probably going to pick that up (I know some old school purists might be annoyed that a Magic property gets a book release while an actual original D&D setting is only getting a PDF. I don't really have any comment on that, but as someone who was kind of obsessed with Ravnica, I'm pretty happy at least about this release.)

Further Analysis of Warbringers: Jaina

Did you watch the video? Do it! (Look at the previous post.)

So let's talk about what we saw in it, and what we might see of Jaina in BFA. To be clear, we're talking about Beta spoilers here, so I'll put a break in case you want to remain free of such things.

Spoilers Ahoy!

The Daughter of the Sea: Jaina's Warbringers Short

Just watch this. Seriously. Watch it now.

Did you watch it? No? Watch it.

I did not expect this to be a musical piece, but holy freaking crap was that awesome. There's a popular song in Kul Tiras that is all about Jaina's betrayal of her father - a decision that seemed an altruistic sacrifice in the name of peace, but for which Jaina has been compensated by having her city destroyed.

Letting her father die at the hands of Rexxar and Rokhan is one of Jaina's biggest regrets, and one that has turned her from a beloved champion of her people into something of a monstrous folk-legend.

Now, having abandoned her desire to allow the Horde its own place in the world, we see (seriously though, watch the video) her return to the ruins of Theramore, where she allowed her father to be killed for an empty peace, ferried through the ruins by a Charon-like mysterious oarsman.

The spirit takes her out into the ocean, where Jaina encounters the spectral echo of her father's flagship, but in that location, she uses her magic to raise the sunken craft from the ocean floor, turning to the oarsman and thanking what turns out to be the ghost of her father.

As the Daughter of the Sea, Jaina has transformed into something of a monster in the eyes of her people, but now it looks like she's eagerly embracing that identity - and turning her monstrous power on the Horde.

The music here is freaking fantastic, and if this is the quality level of the other Warbringers shorts, this'll be some of the best stuff Blizzard's cinematics team has put out.

Seriously though, watch it. I'm going to watch it again.

The Fight for Northern Kalimdor is Going to Get Uglier

One of the oddities of the language options in WoW is that Night Elves speak "Darnassian" as their race-specific language. Languages are not generally shared with other races except for Common and Orcish, which serve as the linguae franca of the Alliance and Horde respectively (and frankly, even in the RP side of things it's clear that people on both sides generally speak common if you ever watch any cutscene.)

Still, what's odd about it is that Darnassus is a very recent city. Indeed, the entire massive world tree of Teldrassil was only grown following the Third War - its first appearance was in WoW classic, and we found that its purpose was to replace the damaged Nordrassil in an attempt by Fandral Staghelm to restore immortality to the Night Elves.

Now I could grant Darnassus as some kind of ancient city raised from the depths by the rapid growth of Teldrassil, but that has not ever, I believe, been established as canon. Perhaps Darnassus is named after some long-lost city? But we know that the most important cities in the Night Elf world prior to the Sundering were Zin-Azshari and Suramar, one of which is now the scattered ruins found in Azshara and the other being an only-recently re-opened sort of urban time capsule. We've heard of other places like Eldre'thalas, but as far as I know, Darnassus really has only been around as long as Teldrassil.

The point being: the Night Elves, many of whom are about ten thousand years old, have only had Teldrassil for a little over a decade.

Its loss is going to be bad, certainly. But we need to look at the history prior to the Third War to get a sense of its role in Night Elf society.

Prior to the arrival of the Horde and the Burning Legion on Kalimdor, the Night Elves had a very different society than what they have now. For the most part, all male Kaldorei were druids, and spent most of their time sleeping in the Emerald Dream, aiding Malfurion. Not all men did this, like Jarrod Shadowsong, or of course Illidan Stormrage, but it seems like a large swath of Night Elf males only surfaced periodically out of their dreamstate. Meanwhile, Night Elf women basically had to do everything else, serving as the military (Sentinels) and the Priestesses.

But what they got really good at doing was surviving in the wilderness.

The forests of Northern Kalimdor were Night Elf territory, and before the Third War, that meant if you didn't have their trust, entering was a death wish. Only a few humanoid races were on good terms with the Night Elves - the Furbolgs primarily and also the Tauren, who largely learned Druidism from the Night Elves. But there's a reason you don't see, say, Centaurs in those forests. It wasn't until the Horde arrived that those forests were successfully invaded, and only with the aid of demonic magic were they able to defeat Cenarius.

Now, dynamics have shifted dramatically. The Night Elves do have the aid of the Alliance, but the Horde has made its primary base of power directly south of the Night Elves' historical territories. Now that they've had a long time to get settled in, the Horde has built up an industrial and military power base that the Night Elves' guerrilla tactics aren't working as well as they first did. The Orcs are cutting the forest down, and it's a lot harder to hide among felled trees.

The Night Elves' decentralized society served it just fine for ten thousand years, but we've seen in the history of the Horde that the one thing that seems capable of stopping them is fortified cities. Historically, the Horde has only taken four major cities by my count - Shattrath, Karabor, Stormwind, and Blackrock Spire. In three of these cases, they needed a significant boost: in fact, in their genocidal war against the Draenei, they were at the edge of losing the war and falling into internal combat after being repelled from the fortified Draenei settlements until they took the Blood of Mannoroth. Stormwind also only fell after Llane Wrynn was assassinated and the leadership and morale of the kingdom fell apart.

The Night Elves have not had a lot of success keeping the Horde out of their territory, but one place that has always seemed totally unassailable has been Teldrassil. Apart from the occasional Rogue or magically-inserted agent, we've never seen the Horde even come close to threatening Teldrassil.

This has given Night Elves a safe haven as well as an urban center where they can put down roots, so to speak, and perhaps start to rebuild their culture. Its position off the coast of Kalimdor has kept it out of the Horde's reach, allowing the Alliance a safe port to retain access to the continent.

So even if the Night Elves got along fine without it for millennia, the new dynamics of a world that includes the Horde has made it a crucial asset. And that means that losing it is going to seriously destabilize the Alliance position in Kalimdor.

Indeed, not long ago we saw the Alliance cutting a gash across the heart of Horde territory by connecting its forces based out of Teldrassil with those in Theramore. With both of these ports gone, the only major presence the Alliance has in the Kalimdor area is the set of islands inhabited by the Draenei.

This puts a lot of pressure on the Draenei to be the backbone of the Alliance presence in Kalimdor. Here's the good news: the Draenei have just secured new allies, and not just new allies but the most battle-hardened, badass, experienced veterans of a war that for them may have, due to some timey-wimey shit going around on Argus, a million freaking years of warfare experience. Seriously: Lightforged soldiers would have to be, lorewise, the most absurdly excellent soldiers in the Warcraft universe.

Here's the bad news: The Lightforged have spent that million (or maybe it's only a mere twenty-five thousand) years fighting irredeemable demons in a war of mutually-exclusive survival. The Lightforged are not trained to think in nuanced terms about the lasting viability of peace and what exactly distinguishes a Horde civilian from a soldier.

I realize Blizzard might not want to go there (though depending on how reliable the narrators are for the Mag'har Orc unlock quests they might,) but I'd have to imagine that the Lightforged would eagerly glass any Horde settlements within their allies' territory with the Vindicaar's weaponry if it meant stopping the Horde. The Lightforged have generally been taking the attitude that as one war ends, another begins, and that to me suggests that we're going to see them using tactics developed fighting the Burning Legion to fight against whatever young kids the Horde hands spears and swords to. It's going to be ugly.

Where do the Night Elves factor into this?

One huge question is what Malfurion does. Malfurion has been resolute in taking a faction-neutral position with the Cenarion Circle, desperate not to alienate the Tauren and now Troll members of the organization. But that neutrality in the face of Horde aggression has earned him a lot of detractors within Night Elf society. Fandral Staghelm was never a fan of his former teacher, but when his granddaughter was killed by the Horde, he and his daughter-in-law both gave themselves to Ragnaros so that they could take their revenge - both against the Horde and the Shan'do who had turned a blind eye to this aggression.

Malfurion has tried so hard to remain neutral, but at the same time he claims co-rulership of his people with his wife. He has left the more Kaldorei-specific leadership to Tyrande, but can he really continue to ignore the plight of his people after the burning of Teldrassil? I know that he was opposed to its creation in the first place, but that's not a position he can fall back on after it burns without coming off like a dick.

Horde members of the Circle are going to have to answer for this, but I think Malfurion in particular is going to need to decide whether he's a leader in the Alliance or not. If he is, we've got to wonder about the future of the Cenarion Circle. And if not, we've got to wonder how Tyrande's going to take that.

And while we're at it: what about Cenarius?

The Night Elves have Ancients on their side. Cenarius once stood against the Horde. He has, like Malfurion, basically forgiven them for murdering him that one time. As a demigod, Cenarius might truly be above this fray, but I kind of hope he isn't. Why? Hear me out:

What if the Alliance/Horde conflict becomes a war between gods?

Think about it, you've got Troll Loa - some of whom are Wild Gods like the Night Elves' Ancients, and some of which, like Bwonsamdi, are some kind of death spirits. Can you imagine... I mean, can you freaking imagine what a Cenarius versus Bwonsamdi fight would look like?

What better way to demonstrate how insane the Alliance/Horde conflict had gotten then by having gods get involved? The premise of BFA seems to be that by defeating the Burning Legion, the Alliance and Horde are now realizing that the other faction is a bigger threat than anything the cosmos can toss at them. What if we now start to see the two factions actually ascending into that cosmic level of power by having the gods forced to pick sides?

I told you it was going to get uglier.

Forsaken Future

With two major cities that have been in WoW since vanilla about to be removed (for high level characters) due to their destruction in war, I thought it would be interesting to talk about the people of these cities, where they're likely to go, and what the implications are for the future of the territory.

Even though Teldrassil and Darnassus are going to go first, I thought I'd start by talking about Undercity.

The Undercity started its life as the sewers beneath Lordaeron's Capital City. After Arthas returned from Northrend as a death knight and slew his father, he massacred the people of the city and then set their undead corpses to building out the Undercity as we know it, taking it for his capital as the technical King of Lordaeron (though I feel like patricide/regicide is typically grounds for disqualifying someone for the throne.) In the chaos following Illidan's weakening of the Frozen Throne, Arthas was forced to flee the city and was ambushed by a newly-free Sylvanas, surviving only thanks to intervention by Kel'thuzad. Eventually, Sylvanas would give the free-willed undead a banner under which to rally, creating the Forsaken and claiming the Undercity as her capital.

With the Forsaken in the Horde, the Undercity has served as a primary bastion on the Eastern Kingdoms, and though Forsaken loyalty has always seemed to be first to the Banshee Queen and only second to the Horde itself, things got really thrown for a loop when Vol'jin named Sylvanas as her successor following the disastrous Broken Shore defeat.

This has put Sylvanas in an awkward position. In the decade plus she spent as a major figure but not leader of the Horde, she was able to maintain a consistent presence in Undercity, and her cult of personality was incredibly strong among the Forsaken. But the demands on her as Warchief have pushed her to spend more time in Orgrimmar, leading to the spontaneously-arisen Desolate Council.

Though there was no indication that they had any intention of usurping her power - its was just that someone had to be in charge of the Undercity while she was away - Sylvanas saw the Council as a threat, and quickly equated their differing opinions on the whole "endless state of undeath versus eventually dying and passing into whatever afterlife awaited them" debate with others who, seeing an opportunity to defect to the Alliance during a negotiated summit, attempted to do so. Sylvanas wiped out the Council along with many other Forsaken as well as Calia Menethil, who, as rightful heir to the throne of Lordaeron, could easily become a threat to her legitimacy (Calia was resurrected as some kind of Light-based Undead, so that chapter's clearly not closed yet.)

Sylvanas' difficulties with her dual position as Banshee Queen and Warchief are going to see something of a nightmare scenario take form: in retribution for the Burning of Teldrassil (which I personally suspect is going to be a false flag operation by a third party like Azshara - but we'll see) the Alliance is going to march on Lordaeron, and ultimately the Undercity will be left so contaminated by plague that neither Forsaken nor Alliance can make use of it anymore.

Sylvanas appears to be the one to "detonate" the city herself, if I understand the broken cutscenes that I saw in the Beta correctly, but she has to know that doing so actuates a serious blow to her.

As terrible as it will be for the Alliance to lose Teldrassil and with it a safe harbor and previously-thought unassailable stronghold off the coast of Kalimdor, not to mention an adopted home for the Worgen, the fact is that the Alliance is still standing on pretty solid ground. The Night Elves will be pushed into a far more dangerous guerrilla fight against the Horde, but one should recall that Teldrassil is actually a very recent addition to the world and that the Night Elves have places like Feathermoon Stronghold and other major settlements in Kalimdor to which they can fall back. And as Anduin is in the primary leadership position within the Alliance, he can offer aid and safety to his allies without having suffered a major personal defeat.

Sylvanas is losing her own city. For the Forsaken, it will look a whole lot like she has abandoned the Undercity to rule the Horde (even if she does lead the defense of the city during the battle) and the Horde must be looking at her skeptically as someone who can't even keep her own territory safe - and now she's supposed to be ruling all of us?

The Forsaken did not really have all that much of a home field advantage against the Alliance, given that their territory is all former Alliance territory. Sylvanas' murderous display at the summit in Arathi might have quelled some dissenters, but it could have also emboldened others who resent that a group founded on the very principle of having free will nevertheless expects perfect and unflinching loyalty to the glorious leader.

The humans and worgen are likely to make a strong push to re-take Lordaeron. The Worgen don't even have Darnassus to fall back to, so they will be fighting as if backed into a corner. Retaking Gilneas seems practically a given, and indeed much of Tirisfal might return to Alliance control.

Where, then, will the Forsaken go?

Some I'm sure will keep fighting for Lordaeron, but whereas they had previously fought with the advantage of their war machine and plagues, that's pretty much crippled with Undercity's destruction. They're now bereft of the city to defend themselves and they're facing a lot more opposition.

Silvermoon would be a logical place to retreat back to, given its proximity, but the Blood Elves have their own problem now of dealing with Void Elf separatists who are now among the ranks of the Alliance again. Granted, I don't know how civil Silvermoon's impending civil war is, but it's not going to be the most appealing place for Forsaken refugees.

So I think it's most likely that the Forsaken will be forced to follow the Banshee Queen in relocating to Kalimdor and Orgrimmar. Great. It's not like that's a place already dealing with scarce resources and a bunch of populations that don't always get along with one another!

This is a pretty explosive way for a major war to start, and one wonders to what degree it will escalate. Not only is Sylvanas set to be on shaky ground with this humiliating loss, but she's also about to incorporate one of Azeroth's oldest and most established civilizations into her empire - which should shore up its forces, sure, but also introduce a lot more players in the world of courtly intrigue.

The pressure is on Sylvanas for a big and unambiguous win, but the Alliance is both emboldened and motivated to make doing that very difficult. The real question is whether destabilizing the Horde with his attack on Undercity will wind up being the right call for Anduin.

A Messy Patch and An Era Closes

Well, 8.0.1 didn't land softly - there are still some issues with the pre-patch to BFA, but in a way this makes me glad that they held off on the quest content for next week.

One pleasant surprise I came across was that, with the new way Honor works, I actually qualified for the first of the PVP artifact appearances, and because that's account-wide, that's on all characters. I really didn't think I was ever going to get those Nightmare-themed druid forms, but now I've got them! (Too bad I never play Feral - the nightmare cat form is fantastic.)

Of course I regret not getting more Mage Tower appearances, though getting the one for my main character's main spec (the blue/gold variant is my favorite look for Truthguard) softened the blow a bit.

Most specs I'd say are just a bit tweaked, but the ones I've been having the most fun exploring are the new Survival Hunter and the new Demonology Warlock. The former has really had an extensive rework that turns Raptor Strike, previously a way-bottom-of-the-priority-list filler into a major source of damage. As a result I've started leveling my Nightborne Hunter again and she's gone from 66 to 71 (still slow going, but more fun now.)

Demonology's whole rhythm and feel is different now, despite having a lot of the same abilities it had previously. You're still summoning Dreadstalkers in pairs and filling in with Hand of Gul'dan, but with the removal of Demonic Empowerment and the addition of Demonbolt (which you cast instantly with procs that you get frequently,) as well as a bunch of talents and stuff that summon more demons, Demonology is really leaning into the "swarm of demons" model, and is a lot of fun.

Hey! If you hated checking websites every time you got a new relic, well, you're in luck. Relics are now purely item-level boosts for your de-powered artifact, and thus you can just plug in whatever has the highest item level without feeling worried you're somehow screwing up.

Everyone gets a free legendary! If you go to the Mythic+ cache in your class hall, you'll get 1000 withering essences, which you can now use to purchase specific legendaries from the guy in the blacksmith shop at Dalaran. If only we'd been able to do that earlier...

You'll also notice that not only is gear squished, but item level is too! So if you were rocking 930 gear before, that stuff is now I believe 210. We're going to seriously have to reassess what good dps is, but Recount is fixed so at least we can measure it!

Naturally, like a lot of pre-patches, once you've rebuilt your talents and fixed add-ons, we're now in kind of a holding pattern. One thing I've noticed is that the scaling stuff is a mixed bag - I've been able to pretty easily solo a lot of Blackrock Foundry (Mythic's a bit of a challenge still, but I doubt it will stay that way long.)

As of next Tuesday, we'll have three weeks from the launch of Battle for Azeroth. So gear up, make sure you've got some free sick days lined up (if that's your style) and take it easy out there.

Gallywix and the Horde

I'll put a caveat here at the beginning of this post to mention that Blizzard has an extremely spotty record of treating its diminutive engineering races with any real seriousness. Gnomes and Goblins have always been seen as the silliest playable races, and are often there for comic relief.

Despite becoming playable several expansions after the game launched, Goblins tend to get a bit more screen time, largely due to the fact that the faction-neutral Steamwheedle Cartel is there in addition to the Horde's Bilgewater Cartel. While the Gnomes and their experimental technology is a big asset to the Alliance, the Goblins fill a role split between Gnomes and Dwarves, serving both as innovators and as industry.

After his disastrous choice to give Garrosh the mantle of Warchief, Thrall followed up with an equally baffling decision to bring the Bilgewater Cartel into the Horde with Trade-Prince Gallywix as its leader.

To be clear, Gallywix was the main villain of the goblin starting zones, and it's clear that everyone in the cartel hated him.

Now, admittedly, goblins are typically not likely to hold a grudge if there's profit to be had - their entire culture is built on some kind of obsessive ultra-laissez-faire Randian capitalist system, and Gallywix's ability to amass wealth likely earns him a lot of prestige within the goblin community.

But that being said: can we trust this guy?

It's Gallywix who brings the emergence of Azerite to Sylvanas' attention, and before he even does so, he has his workers mining the stuff. Surely much of that is going to the Horde, but it's also not only likely but probable that he's skimming the stuff for his own purposes.

And is it possible he has other buyers?

Gallywix has flown under the radar for years - for a long time you couldn't even find him at his pleasure palace in Azshara despite there being voice files that seemed to indicate that's where he was supposed to be. Given how comic the goblins tend to be, we'd likely be expected to just think of him as the sleazeball in the background of the Horde.

But as he steps a little further into center stage with the collection of Azerite, I had a strange thought: what if he's sold out the Horde?

A week from now, we'll be seeing the Burning of Teldrassil, which could very likely involve some use of Azerite to ignite the tree.

While the official story will be that the Horde burned it down, justifying the attack on Undercity, I suspect that Horde players might see some implication that it wasn't part of the plan. There's indications that Sylvanas is shocked to see the tree burning, and had intended instead to occupy it so as to prevent the Alliance from shipping Azerite back from Silithus.

One theory is that Azshara might be the one behind the burning, trying to enflame tensions between the factions to divide and conquer.

Could Gallywix be supplying her?

This is all pretty wild speculation, of course, but I think Gallywix is just far enough out of the spotlight that discovering his betrayal would make for a really cool twist, and that perhaps even if it were discovered, it would be too late to actually stop the war.

Warbringers is BFA's Animated Short Series

Like Lords of War and Harbingers for WoD and Legion, respectively, BFA is getting its own semi-animated series with gorgeous art, detailing three key players.

The Warbringers shorts will focus on Jaina, Sylvanas, and Azshara, and they look pretty darn cool.

Sylvanas' appears to focus on her last days of true life, battling the Scourge and ultimately dying to Arthas. Sylvanas is the somewhat unambiguously the most evil faction leader (though Gallywix's greed is something I could see pushing him over the edge if we find out he's been doing some really horrible stuff behind the scenes,) but she's also someone who feels strongly that she is doing what she needs to do. Getting more into her motivations would be great, and I suspect that her short will help flesh out her perspective.

Azshara's appears to be about her near-drowning at the end of the War of the Ancients and her transformation, along with her followers, into the Naga. Azshara is a straight-up villain, and seems as if she was always evil, even before Sargeras contacted her. But I'm always going to be more invested in villains who have a perspective that justifies their actions, and if we can see at least some hint of Azshara's justifications, I'd be up for that. More likely this will just show how she made her pact with N'zoth and maybe started to lose control to more powerful beings even after she had kind of kept pace with the Burning Legion.

Jaina's story looks like something we haven't seen yet. She seems to be assaulted by ghostly spirits while traveling through half-sunken shipwrecks. Given the mysterious "Thros" in the max-level quests, which seems to be part of the Shadowlands, I'm probably most curious about this one.

Anyway, these shorts have been big hits since Warlords, and I'm excited to see the new ones.

The Sword of Sargeras

Even in an expansion that so effectively closes a major chapter in WoW lore, Legion holds to the pattern established in Mists of Pandaria, pushing the story forward and onto the next expansion.

After defeating the Titan Argus in the end of the Antorus raid, the other Titans are freed to use their power to bind Sargeras, forcing him back into the Seat of the Pantheon where they, aided by Illidan Stormrage, will presumably attempt to keep Sargeras imprisoned for all eternity.

Yet as they bound the Dark Titan, Sargeras instantiated his sword, plunging it into Azeroth as a parting blow before his long imprisonment.

With that, the Legion was defeated and the mass demonic threat apparently resolved at last.

Yet we were presented with a new problem: the sword.

Not only was the sword the source of a massive and life-threatening wound in Azeroth - threatening to destroy the nascent Titan before she could reach maturity and emerge - but the sword continued to pour deadly fel energy into Azeroth, poisoning her along with the physical damage. (Side note: interesting how the Fel magic Sargeras uses tends toward the blood-red, rather than the typical green. Is super-concentrated Fel red, or is it something to do with Sargeras' Titanic power? The red is actually more traditionally demonic in appearance.)

We've managed to solve that problem by soaking the power of the sword into our artifact weapons, which, until Tuesday, means a steady increase in artifact levels to an absurd degree (I believe we're at the quadrillions in artifact power at this point.) The downside is that this ultimately burns them out, reducing our great weapons to merely mundane equipment.

Still, a lot of questions surround the sword.

My big question is how deliberate Sargeras was in his strike. While it would seem perfectly logical for him to simply lash out and hit anything he could, we're also talking about a Titan here, who would seem to have the mental capacity even in such a brief instant to try to strike somewhere strategically.

Where it lands is Silithus, and that, to me, is pretty meaningful.

The first Old God we ever encountered (not counting the Old One in Azjol-Nerub in Warcraft III, which is presumably in retrospect supposed to be some part of Yogg-Saron,) was C'thun, whom we discovered and fought in Ahn-Qiraj, the area adjacent to Silithus.

Given how enormous the Old Gods are meant to be, C'thun's body is presumably present in much of Silithus (and indeed most of Southern Kalimdor.) The "bindings" on these beings presumably isolates some key part of their anatomy in order to effectively imprison them. But C'thun's body almost certainly runs beneath most of Silithus, meaning that a stab through there would likely have been through C'thun.

Is it possible that Sargeras did this on purpose? He certainly didn't want to see Azeroth succumb to the Old Gods any more than we did, and perhaps he thought he might be able to kill C'thun or at least seriously damage it in what time he had.

One question this does raise, though, if we're to assume that Silithus has C'thun-body running all through it, is how the Azerite is getting up there.

One would assume that with Sargeras' sword going through that land, the first thing we'd see bubbling up would be the C'thun equivalent of Saronite - Old God blood.

Granted, Azeroth might have higher blood pressure or perhaps C'thun's body is dried out since we "killed" him back in vanilla.

Still, if you'll indulge a tinfoil hat moment here:

The fact that Magni hears whispers from Azeroth has always seemed a little troubling. Sure, it could be legitimate, and he's just a guy communing with the world as the Titan tablets told him to back before Cataclysm.

But if he's being manipulated by the Old Gods, we could have some trouble.

First off is the possibility that Azerite is actually some kind of creepy Old God gunk like Saronite. That would mean that gathering a bunch of it into the Heart of Azeroth like Magni's telling us to in BFA and then depositing it in the World Soul would be the perfect way for the Old Gods to corrupt the Titan once and for all.

Second is that it was Magni who told us to sacrifice our artifact weapons to de-power the Sword. If Magni's compromised, maybe the right move would actually have been to let it do its work. What if the sword wasn't harming Azeroth, but was actually killing (in a permanent way) C'thun? After all, we know that Aman'thul, in a similar position and relative scale to Azeroth as when Sargeras stabbed, was able to pluck Y'shaarj out of the planet and truly kill the Old God. It's not hard to imagine that while our efforts were like a lightly-powered surgical procedure, Sargeras might have actually had the capability of truly killing an Old God by stabbing it with his massive, ridiculously huge sword (seriously, take a moment to appreciate that gigantic thing.) By siphoning its power, did we just save C'thun?

And now, on top of that, we've got war breaking out again - something that the very chaotic, very evil Old Gods would probably be celebrating.

Sargeras was probably wrong in his overall philosophy - killing everything in the universe would seem to actualize the Void's ultimate goal, rather than frustrate that goal. But even though I worry for the Titan Azeroth, I'm not sure that Sargeras' stab was meant as a last parting shot of cruelty, but perhaps one last desperate attempt to stop the Old Gods.

And we may have just invalidated his efforts.

On the Possibilities of San'layn and "Redeemed"

Based on stuff in the Beta and story details from Before the Storm, there's some potential to the expansion of Undead playable races.

As of yet, only three playable races have no associated Allied Race - Worgen, Pandaren, and Undead.

The latter of these has a lot of potential for allied races, largely because the category of "undead" is quite broad. Undead/Forsaken characters are effectively zombies with free will and intelligence restored - your classic risen corpse, but with the sentience to allow them as good guys or at the very least not pure evil.

Spoilers ahead.

The San'layn have a fair amount of potential, as we actually see them in-game assisting the Horde in BFA. Previously we've only seen them as evil minions of the Scourge, but then again, that's the whole premise of the Forsaken, taking former Scourge monsters and making them... marginally less evil.

Given that San'layn are the most common version we have of Warcraft vampires (we finally saw some non-elf vampires in Stormheim) it would seem that putting them in would fill a niche that Warcraft has really left open for a while. I'm sure that many people would relish the chance to play a vampire in WoW. They'd also be a perfect opportunity to add a new Death Knight race - something we haven't seen since Cataclysm.

There are some issues, though. First off is that San'layn are arguably more of a Blood Elf variant than an Undead one, and we've already got Void Elves. It's also not clear where they'd stand in terms of the Scourge and the Lich King. Bolvar appears to have the loyalty of most of Arthas' old minions, but on the other hand, we have seen some new factions breaking off, so it's not unthinkable that the San'layn or maybe a subfaction thereof might have broken off and made a deal with Sylvanas.

In terms of greater Horde geopolitics, anyone worried about Sylvanas' consolidation of power as Warchief would probably not be too happy about a growing undead bloc. The San'layn would make natural Sylvanas loyalists, given her both her Undead and High Elf nature. We already know that dissenters among the Forsaken are not safe, given her actions toward the Desolate Council, and the San'layn seem likely to be similarly zealous about the state of undeath, meaning reformational Forsaken would be further set back by their admission to the Horde.

Normally I'd also ask questions about numbers, but given Void Elves, I don't really think that's much of a question for allied races anymore.

Now, the "Redeemed" are not even canonically named that, and in fact, there's only one existing example so far: Calia Menethil.

In the events of Before the Storm, Calia goes to a truce summit where Forsaken and Human family members were to meet and try to reconcile or at least get to talk to each other. When some of the Forsaken there tried to defect to the Alliance, Sylvanas turned the place into a bloodbath - holding to her promise not to kill any of humans by instead turning on her own people, with one exception: Calia Menethil.

Arthas' older sister and the rightful heir to the throne of Lordaeron (I guess Lordaeron was a little behind the times, having Male Premogeniture rather than straight up Premogeniture) was shot full of arrows and died. But that wasn't the end for her. Alonsus Faol (Forsaken but with no loyalties to Sylvanas) and Anduin took her body to Netherlight Temple, where the Naaru Saa'ra channeled their priestly power together to resurrect Calia as some kind of holy-infused undead.

To be clear, Calia is the only example we have of such a person. But the very existence of someone who isn't straight up resurrected to normal life, but is somehow undead and yet filled with the Light, is quite the novelty.

Still, if it can be done with one person, one wonders if it wouldn't be impossible to do so with others. It's clear that there's a fair segment within the Forsaken who would prefer to live their old lives again, or at least not threaten their families with death and undeath. And someone imbued with the Light coming back from the dead might have the opposite effect on your average Alliance citizen that the other Forsaken have had - consider how people coming back to life in real-life religions are usually considered miraculous.

Of course there's the danger of making too many cross-faction allied races - you don't want faction identity to totally dry up, and the Undead are arguably the most polarized and polarizing race in the game. Still, story-wise, having a group of Alliance undead led by Calia would make a lot of sense. And with Undercity falling, there's no one better suited to re-establishing the Kingdom of Lordaeron than her rightful Queen.

We Know Shockingly Little About the Arc of BFA

By the time Legion was less than a month away, we knew a lot about the plot going forward:

We had Emerald Nightmare coming in as the first raid, and we knew that we'd quest through Suramar at max level before heading into the Nighthold.

But beyond that, we also knew that the whole expansion was building to a confrontation at the Tomb of Sargeras, giving us all but the last raid tier and the surprise mini-raid of Trial of Valor.

I don't think we knew that Kil'jaeden would be the Tomb's final boss, but other than the big reveal post-launch (I believe at Blizzcon 2016) that we'd be going to Argus, we knew a lot about where things would go in Legion.

In BFA, we know far less.

We've got the six zones - three per continent - and we know about the expansion's first raid, but beyond that, in the story moving forward, we only know that Azshara will be the final boss of the first big raid - if we take Uldir to be sort of the equivalent of Emerald Nightmare, that means that (other than another ToV-like,) we'll be confronting Azshara after that.

We don't know where we're going to fight Azshara, though. Naz'jatar would be the most logical place to do so, given that it is her capital, but that's an underwater city that does not seem logical to put near any existing zones. We don't have a Kul Tiras raid as of yet. Might we wind up fighting Azshara outside her home?

But beyond even that, we really have no clue as to where the expansion will be heading.

Clearly, the Alliance/Horde conflict is center stage in a way that it wasn't even during Mists. The question then is whether it would make sense to do a full raid that was faction-based. The premise of the expansion seems to suggest that would be the right way to end it, yet the implications of such a raid would be tricky to work out - even if you see two battles, perhaps taking out a major player of the opposite faction, won't both feel like pyrrhic victories if we realize that while we were raiding, say, Thunder Bluff, the Horde was attacking Ironforge? And vice versa?

One of the biggest bits of speculation is the presence of Old God stuff in BFA. Uldir is obviously going to be heavily Old-God/Titan themed. But G'huun is a lore newcomer, and given the nautical theme of the expansion, a confrontation with N'zoth seems highly possible as the culmination of the expansion. Still, we have no confirmation that that's the case.

One can definitely imagine that the faction war is going to develop in different ways over the course of the expansion. Sylvanas' plan to plague Stormwind might be on the back burner for now, and it's not clear what decisive action post-Undercity the Alliance wishes to take to counter the Horde threat.

Both sides are going to their new continents to strengthen their navies, so it seems a big naval battle ought to be in the works (if the devs can figure out how to make that work in gameplay.)

The other question, story-wise, is where things will end. It's clear from the mechanics of the game that neither faction can truly be eliminated, and there's got to remain some conflict between them. But after the post-Garrosh armistice, what needs to happen for there to be real peace?

Eliminating Sylvanas could secure it, but that would feel a bit too much like Garrosh 2.0. If the Alliance had been the aggressors in this conflict, with some charismatic leader refusing to entertain the notion of peace, and for inner conflict to build up in the Alliance, you could see something happen on that side, but that's not the way things are going. The plot seems to be Anduin learning to balance his desire for peace with the need to defend his people. That doesn't sound like a madman who needs to be taken down.

The thing is, much as any expansion called simply "Legion" would need to resolve the Burning Legion plot in some definitive (if not entirely closed-off) way, Battle for Azeroth needs to see some fundamental shift in the faction conflict so that it can feel like something was accomplished.

But we also need to see that conflict flare up like it hasn't done in the past. Granted, the burning of Teldrassil and the destruction of Undercity both sort of accomplish that before the expansion even comes out, so the question then is "where do we go from there?"

BFA Pre-Patch Goes Live Next Week

With less than a month to go until Battle for Azeroth, it's perhaps not shocking that patch 8.0 is imminent.

So what will we be seeing with this patch?

First off, we're going to see artifact weapons brought low - having absorbed the power of Sargeras' sword, they're currently hyper-powered, but that energy is going to wind up burning out their power, and all artifact traits will be disabled - but fret not, as many of the big ones are either becoming baseline class or spec abilities or they'll become talents.

Characters leveling up through the Broken Isles in the future will now effectively use artifact weapons as heirlooms, which will power up as you level (which I believe means no relics? I could be wrong about that.)

The next big change will be the second stat squish. This one is going to be more radical than the Warlords one because we'll also see item levels get squished. Right now, 1000 is (I believe) the highest item level you can get, and a lot of players (depending on their raiding habits) might be somewhere in the mid 900s range. After the squish, we'll be closer to Wrath of the Lich King levels, around the 200s. Obviously the world is going to squish to compensate, so if all goes well you shouldn't be any less powerful than you were, but you're going to shave maybe two or three zeros off your damage. I presume that we're going to get hidden buffs in anything Warlords or earlier in order to compensate for the shrunken damage range.

Specs, they are a-changin'. As with any expansion, all specs are getting tweaks or in some cases radical redesigns. I don't think anyone's seeing anything as drastic as the Legion changes, but a few specs are getting big reworks. A lot of artifact traits and abilities are getting worked into the specs as either baseline or talents, so the specs ought to feel complete even after our artifacts get de-powered.

First Aid is GONE. Tailors will now make bandages and Alchemists will make antivenom. Achievements related to the secondary profession, such as the Field Medic title, will be unattainable.

Some other things are no longer going to be attainable. The phoenix off of Heroic Argus will no longer be attainable, and I believe the Mage Tower artifact appearances are going to be unattainable (unless that's going to wait for the expansion itself - but I wouldn't count on that if you're still working on it. I got the Prot Paladin one, so officially I'm satisfied.)

Now, let's get to the fun stuff:

The pre-patch events are also going to start. The big ones are going to be the twin scenarios: one seeing the attack on Teldrassil that leaves it burning, and the following one is the siege of Undercity, which leaves it a plagued ruin.

I don't know if there will be Bronze Dragonflight members like there are at Theramore and in Silithus, though I'd suspect there will be (for people to help out low-level friends.) Still, canonically two of the major cities that have been there since vanilla are going to be destroyed. Wait, is this the fun stuff?

At this point I think we're pretty much done with Legion stuff, but this is a good vantage point to take a moment and look back on what has been possibly the best expansion World of Warcraft ever had. BFA has plenty of new mysteries yet to be revealed. While I don't think we can reasonably expect it to top Legion (though that would be a pleasant surprise,) let's hope for something more along the lines of Mists of Pandaria than Warlords of Draenor. (Sorry Warlords lovers, if you exist.)

Odyn's Benefactor and the Power of Death

I realize this is a topic that I come back to quite frequently, but I'm somewhat obsessed with the cosmic chart at the beginning of each volume of Chronicle.

Mainly, the thing that strikes me is the position of Death and its associated Necromancy magic on equal footing with Chaos/Fel and possible Void/Shadow.

In Warcraft, we've seen the undead arise from many sources - anywhere from the Scourge to simply unhappy spirits who have lingered due to unfinished business.

For each of the major cosmic forces, there seems to be a primary manifestation or representative. The Old Gods embody void (along with the Void Lords, who are arguably purer a representation.) Chaos has demons, Order, interestingly, has Titans. Life has the Wild Gods, and the Light has the Naaru.

But for Death, we simply have "undead," which is a pretty broad category.

One of the vexing things about the undead in Warcraft lore is that they often seem to come from other sources.

The Scourge, despite having a very different feel from the greater Burning Legion, is ultimately an off-shoot of Fel power. I had hoped to see new information introduced about the creation of the Lich King in Chronicle Volume III, but unfortunately, it looks as if we've simply gotten the old explanation - that the Lich King is just the undead creation of Kil'Jaeden, who started with Ner'zhul's spirit.

That the Lich King could be so recently created and yet seemingly be irrevocably tied to Azeroth's fate seemed to me to suggest there was something else going on. At this point we've permanently killed Kil'jaeden and yet the Lich King has persisted even after the death of Arthas. If the Lich King is only about fifteen years old in-world, why, then, must there "always be a Lich King"?

In Warlords of Draenor, we saw Ner'zhul turn to Void magic, but much of this actually wound up manifesting as control over the undead. Is it not odd that both users of Fel magic and that of Void should call upon the undead?

The other question is whether we've seen any "pure necromancers" - i.e. spellcasters who only use Death Magic.

Granted, I'd be willing to believe that the Scourge is, in fact, an example of this. We know that the Legion did, paradoxically, use Void magic, and so it's not so crazy that Kil'jaeden might have simply been trying out a different school of magic when he created the Lich King. But if we set aside the Scourge as "tainted" by its connection to the Legion, what do we have left?

The only clear example I can think of is Helya.

To recap the story: Odyn is an arrogant jerk, and when Tyr suggested imbuing the dragons - a non-Titanforged form of life - with titanic power, Odyn preferred instead to find a way to further empower the Vrykul. He wanted a way to create deathless champions, and so he traveled to the Shadowlands and made a deal with "an entity."

Giving his eye for the knowledge, Odyn learned how to create the Val'kyr, and then turned on his adoptive daughter, transforming her into one of these undead beings capable of bringing people back after they died.

We still don't know what this Shadowlands entity was. I had, for a time, thought it could be the true identity of the Lich King - something that Kil'jaeden hadn't created, but simply harnessed. This explanation is looking less likely as time goes by, though, unfortunately.

But what I find interesting is that this entity seems very unlikely to be either demonic or eldritch (Fel or Void) in nature. To be certain, Odyn being fooled by Yogg-Saron or some other Old God is far from outside the realm of plausibility, but one imagines that any gift from an Old God would come with its own clearly corruptive influence. We didn't see Odyn turn out like Loken or Deathwing, so I doubt that he's got Old God corruption. And we've never seen the Legion's influence in the Shadowlands - indeed, this probably happened before the War of the Ancients, which is, I believe, the first time demons ever showed up on Azeroth.

So I think we can make the assumption that this Shadowlands entity is a being of pure necromantic nature.

What else do we know about it?

There are of course possible connections to known entities. If I'm actually right, it could be that there's a lot more to the Lich King than we previously knew. Bwonsmadi, the death Loa worshipped by the Darkspear, is also in a position to be a major cosmic player.

It's also quite possible that we simply haven't encountered it yet.

The question, then, is where it fits into the great cosmic struggle.

The Legion has been, if not destroyed, then neutralized. This would seem to be a win for both life and good guys as well as the Void. Other than us, is there anything the Void could fear?

In a recent comic, the three Windrunner sisters reunite to clear some monsters out of their old family home. Naturally, each has taken a seriously different path in life, and there's friction. What's interesting is that we find that Alleria, with her connection to the Void, is constantly hearing whispers from the Void, compelling her to violence. Having mastered it, of course, she does not act on these whispers, but what's interesting is that when she sees her sister Sylvanas, the whispers say "she is the servant of the true enemy."

True enemy?

Now granted, this could be feeding on Alleria's own thoughts, but with Sylvanas as Warchief, it's not clear to whom she would be a servant.

But if we can align Sylvanas with any cosmic force, it's clear Death (if we place Scourge and ex-Scourge outside of the Fel context.) Indeed, Sylvanas' main strategy now appears to be something like a slightly-less-totalitarian Scourge. She wants to kill all humans (and probably all Alliance) and raise them as Forsaken, seeing this as the only path to peace.

It's pretty crazy (especially when events in Before the Storm suggest that at least some Forsaken and Humans would be happy to simply be reunited now, despite their differences.) One wonders if there's something that's really hoping for the undead to take over. Sylvanas changed her whole outlook after being raised by the Val'kyr following her suicide at the Frozen Throne. Is it possible that something got into her mind?

So why might the Void fear the undead?

Well, let's talk about one of my favorite unstated plot threads in Wrath of the Lich King.

I'll certainly allow that there are alternate interpretations of what was going on in Icecrown - that, perhaps, the whole "there must always be a Lich King" thing was a ploy by the Old Gods. But my interpretation has always been the opposite.

Why did the Lich King build his fortress out of Saronite? Why the hell would you surround yourself with void-saturated metal that drives people insane unless you had already been corrupted by it yourself?

Because the undead are immune to the void.

Yogg-Saron wasn't the final boss of Wrath, and sure, the order in which we beat things is not always an indicator of their in-universe power (Archimonde was definitely more powerful than Gul'dan) but I think that the fact that we could fight Yogg-Saron before we faced Arthas was actually correct, lorewise.

The threat of the Lich King and the Scourge is that it's new and powerful. Seriously powerful.

Remember how I was talking about how odd it is that the Lich King is already, after only a decade or two, seemingly inextricably entrenched on Azeroth? What that means is that we really don't know how powerful the undead are going to get.

To genre-shift, think about the idea of the AI singularity - once computers get smarter than we are (and in a lot of ways they already are,) and once they can improve themselves, the world could, theoretically, start to shift in very sudden and unexpected ways. All of a sudden, the old dynamics could be gone, and we'd be dealing with threats that dwarf the ones we previously worried about.

That's the power of death.

Short of eliminating every last Scourge entity, we can't be sure the Scourge will ever be gone. In fact, we don't even trust ourselves to try that. And it doesn't look like the Old Gods can do anything to them.

Consider the fact that the Icecrown's fortifications were built of Saronite - literally the congealed blood of Yogg-Saron. Yet there was no madness among the undead. You didn't see abominations or zombies or ghouls suddenly sprouting tentacles (ok, Putricide did, but it didn't seem to change his personality.)

Consider the Saronite mine in Ymirheim within Icecrown. The mine is run by the Ymirjar - the Lich King's sort of icy, necromancy-fueled equivalent to Odyn's Valarjar - and several Val'kyr. These figures appear entirely unaffected by spending all their time in a mine full of Saronite with an actual Faceless One (Darkspeaker R'khem) right there. The miners - captured slaves of the mortal races - however, are going totally insane.

Hell, R'khem's an actual quest giver, who asks you to free him. Have you ever seen a N'raqi imprisoned before? Generally not, as they tend to drive their captors insane. But not the Scourge.

So if you think that the construction of Icecrown's fortifications from Saronite was a means to allow Yogg-Saron to corrupt the Scourge, let me make a counterargument: The Lich King was demonstrating his mastery of the world and his superiority to the Old Gods.

In many ways, the Lich King is the New God. Yogg-Saron was theoretically the Old God of Death, but it wasn't him that the Vrykul were pledging themselves to when they raised the banners of the Death God.

The Void is chaotic (even if the Fel is technically the manifestation of Chaos,) while Undeath is anything but. Is it possible that the Undead - maybe as something larger than even the Scourge, incorporating all manifestations of necromancy everywhere, would be a force to rival the Void? The Void imagines all possibilities to be true, and yet the undead put things in stasis, marching toward one conclusion - a world in which there is no distinction between the living or the dead, where all things are eternal and changeless.

The force of death comes suddenly, but it also marches on with inevitability.

And now one of the major player factions is run by an undead woman who wants to spread this "gift."

Highlord Kruul is Dead

I finally did it.

With BFA coming in only about a month, time to complete the mage tower challenges and get the fanciest of artifact appearances (which will be unobtainable once BFA launches) is ticking down.

I also just flew back from Greece, and this ten-hour time difference is driving me insane.

So I decided to log on and drain Sargeras' sword (Gorshalach? I believe?) of its energy.

Doing so maxes out all of your artifact weapons, automatically giving you 88 levels of Concordance of the Legionfall. This gave me a huge edge in beating Kruul, because tank artifacts give you both increased health and increased damage as you gain new artifact levels. Getting about 55 more in a single go raised my max health by about two million.

So at this point, if you're still struggling with Kruul, here's a basic (very basic) guide for Prot Paladins:

In the Kruul fight you have two phases - the first is a sort of combination dance/race where you need to kill Variss, the inquisitor demon who locks down Kor'vas. He'll chain-cast spells, but if interrupted will briefly move toward his target before casting again.

The biggest things to worry about with him are his drain life ability, which heals him up, and the aura he puts on the ground around him (it moves with him) that lowers your max HP as you stand in it. I recommend a "step in, step out" approach where you let the HP debuff fall off before going at him again. Depending on where you are health-wise, you can gauge how long you want to stay in each time.

The thing that makes this phase tricky is adds.

The simplest to deal with are the little eyes that pop up. They'll channel a beam at you that knocks you back if you don't face it. You'll still want to take these out, but if you're busy, simply facing the beam will give you a little time. The annoying thing about these is that they don't move, so you'll need to chase them down (if you get a lucky crit with AS or Judgment, you can kill them from range.)

The next are these little shadow demons - I don't know if there's a category name like succubus or felguard. Anyway, these will generally come four at a time and swarm Velen, but they will attack you instead if you get threat on them. They put a stacking debuff on you as they attack, so you'll want to make sure that they eat your Consecration and Blessed Hammer (which you'll probably want to be running.) I have the legendary that buffs Eye of Tyr, which puts them down a good chunk.

The trickiest to deal with are the Infernals. These will slowly chase you around and wind up for big hits that can knock you off the platform (meaning an instant death.) Once you get them to 10%, they'll burn out for the rest of their health, but they won't permanently die, and eventually reform. That's one of the soft enrage timers on this fight.

So basically what you want to do is dps down Variss while dealing with any adds that pop up, stepping out to focus on adds when your debuff gets too high. Make sure to interrupt Drain Life, which heals Variss a lot (save a Rebuke or a Grand Crusader proc for it.)

Once Variss is dead, there's good news and bad news. The good news is that Kor'vas comes to help dps. The bad news is that Kruul shows up.

Kruul starts with 30% health, and this becomes a kind of mad race. At the levels of gear one can have now, you probably won't need to worry as much about timing your defensive cooldowns (but I'd recommend being liberal with them.)

The biggest thing to worry about here is Twisted Reflection, which is a debuff that heals him for a lot of health. So always make sure you can interrupt this cast.

Infernals and Shadow demon will continue to spawn, though the eyes won't. Kruul also gets these shadowy beams that will shuffle you along the platform (and damage you,) but don't insta-kill you. He'll also place patches of nasty stuff on the ground that you'll not want to stand in.

Burn Kruul quickly, and interrupt that Twisted Reflection, and you'll be able to do it.

One important note: Velen provides a fantastic service in addition to periodic heals: he creates these light balls that show up on the platform. Running into one will heal you to full health and stun every demon on the platform for a couple seconds. If you're getting overwhelmed, these are a lifesaver, and they're also great if you can't get an interrupt off.

If you burn Variss quickly enough, you can use these balls to quasi-stunlock Kruul, which will give you much more time to burn him down.