Newcomer's Guide to Dwarves (And Earthen) in Azeroth

 Dwarves are, of course, another staple fantasy species that have been part of D&D since, if not its inception (as that weird "Elves and Dwarves as classes because we don't have a concept of races" I believe, of Basic D&D) then since the very early days. And of course, they are are also part of the Tolkien tetrad, which is probably why the 5E basic rules provided for Humans, Dwarves, Elves, and Halflings.

Funnily enough, the TvTropes page for Dwarves is "Our Dwarves are All the Same," because there are some assumptions made about Dwarves that are often more rigid than other classic fantasy species. WoW, largely by virtue of a shared origin with Humans, Gnomes, and some other non-playable species (and kind of Orcs, though there's a more tenuous connection to their origin) does make them a bit distinct, but they're not going as far as, say, Draw Steel's dwarves.

Like humans, Dwarves in WoW are descendants of the Titanforged, sentient constructs built by the Titans to transform and safeguard Azeroth (and also kind of shape it to their liking - look, I'm still a "Titans were mostly good" believer, though there's certainly some elements we might call problematic about their approach to Azeroth). The Dwarves were descendants of the Earthen before they were changed by the so-called Curse of Flesh, whose role was to excavate the deep places of Azeroth and construct the extensive, massive machinery there.

Like your classic Dwarves, Azerothian Dwarves have a long tradition of mining, due to their original purpose as excavators. What's interesting is that this prediliction for digging also translated to a grand and proud tradition, at least among the Bronzehammer Clan, of archaeology. It was thanks to Dwarven archaeologists that we players at least first learned of the Titans and their role in creating, well, at least the Dwarves.

But let's talk about the various dwarf clans, and then about the surviving, still-rock-and-metal Earthen, who are also playable. Note that Bronzebeard and Wildhammer Dwarves will likely be represented simply by the standard D&D Dwarf species, while Dark Irons and Earthen will have their own (I think).

Most modern Azerothian Dwarves are denizens of Khaz'modan, an extensive kingdom spanning the middle of the Eastern Kingdoms. Once united under the Anvilmar Kings, who ruled from the mountain city of Ironforge, the death of the last king of this line led to a three-way civil war between the Bronzebeard, Wildhammer, and Dark Iron clans.

Bronzebeard Dwarves:

The Bronzebeards are the largest Dwarf clan, and have held Ironforge since the War of the Three Hammers, though currently they share it with the other major Clans, even if it is their "home territory."

The Bronzebeards have been staunch members of the Alliance since the Second War, and are a highly industrial people, making use of the city's eponymous massive forge and likewise taking advantage of ancient allies, the technologically-advanced Gnomes of Gnomeregan, in their city that sits just across the valley of Dun Morogh from Ironforge, to produce sophisticated machinery at an industrial scale, including airships, tanks, and flying machines.

The Bronzebeards were historically ruled by a hereditary monarchy. King Magni Bronzebeard was the sovereign, and his younger brothers, Brann and Muradin, were also prominent members of the Clan. Brann is probably the most famous and respected adventurous archaeologist on Azeroth, while Muradin was a great warrior who had the unfortunate fate of accompanying Arthas to Northrend. Left for dead after Arthas claimed Frostmourne, Muradin was later discovered to have survived with amnesia and returned to Ironforge years later.

When the dragon Deathwing shattered the world, Magni sought out ancient wisdom to help save the planet, but was transformed into a diamond statue. He eventually regained the ability to move and speak, but his status led to the creation of the Council of Three Hammers, which became the ruling council of Khaz'modan, with representatives of each of the three major clans on it. Muradin currently serves as the Bronzebeard representative.

Wildhammer Dwarves:

Unlike the Bronzebeard and Dark Iron Dwarves, the Wildhammer are drawn to open spaces and fresh air, and have a deep and close bond with their gryphons, whom they ride in the sky as flying warriors, and have long been central to the Alliance's air superiority strategies.

After their exile from Ironforge, the Wildhammer relocated to a similar "interior of a mountain built around a giant forge" city of Grim Batol, to the northeast. However, while they made peace and even allied with the Bronzebeards, the Dark Irons remained hostile to them. The Dark Iron Sorcerer-Queen Modgud brought with her Xal'atath, Blade of the Black Empire, an ancient ritual knife containing the soul of a profoundly powerful void-aligned creature. (Notably, no longer in the dagger, Xal'atath has been the main villain of the current and previous expansion, and when she was still in the dagger, she was the Shadow Priest weapon in the Legion expansion.) While the Dark Irons were turned back, Modgud's dying curse, using the Blade, left Grim Batol tainted with evil and uninhabitable.

While the Wildhammer still have settlements outside of Grim Batol, their de facto capital is Aerie Peak, off to the north in the subcontinent of Lordaeron, not far from the Plaguelands.

The Wildhammer are somewhat more spiritual and tied to the elements and the natural world, and are the main proponents of shamanism among the Dwarves. They are represented on the Council by Falstad Wildhammer, High Thane of the clan.

Dark Iron Dwarves:

The Dark Iron remained hostile to the other dwarf clans long after the War of the Three Hammers. Following the death of his Queen Consort Modgud at Grim Batol, the Dark Iron Sorcerer-Thane Thaurissan sought a power that could turn the tide of the war, seeking out a power he had learned of beneath the Redridge Mountains (the mountains between Khaz'Modan and the human kingdom of Stormwind). The power he found was the Firelord Ragnaros, elemental lord of Fire, and upon summoning him, a massive swath of the Redridge Mountains became a fiery, charred wasteland, and the Dark Iron Dwarves were suffused with elemental fire, leaving them with grey, ashen skin and a core of elemental fire, visible in their eyes and hair.

The Dark Irons built an extensive city throughout Blackrock Mountain, the largest peak in the Redridge Mountains, eventually calling this Shadowforge City, where a cult to Ragnaros became the state religion, and the totalitarian state engaged in slavery and all other manner of terrible acts.

However, the Dark Irons were not all evil. The story, though, gets complicated when we introduce a new element: Moira Bronzebeard.

Moira, the only child of King Magni Bronzebeard, was thought to have been kidnapped by Emperor Dagran Thaurissan, and brave heroes of Azeroth descended through the Blackrock Depths (the lower parts of Shadowforge still firmly in the Dark Irons' control - it's a bit of a distraction, but the Horde actually took Blackrock Mountain as its main stronghold during the First and Second Wars, but the upper parts of the city are still held by a hard-line extremist faction that doesn't recognize the authority of the modern Horde, known as the Dark Horde). Coming to "rescue" Moira, they discovered, after killing the Emperor, that Moira had come of her own free will, and was genuinely in love with the Emperor and also pregnant with his child.

After her father was transformed during the Cataclysm, Moira came to Ironforge to present her infant son as the rightful heir to both the Bronzebeard and Dark Iron clans (guess it's still male primogeniture? Come on, if England can update this, surely the Bronzebeards can). This obviously caused a lot of confusion and panic, but while things looked headed toward some sort of renewed war between the dwarves, the Alliance ultimately intervened and mandated the creation of the Council of Three Hammers, with Moira serving as the representative for the Dark Irons as a kind of Queen-Regent before her son, Dagran, named for his father, would come of age.

Millennia (I think) of strife and conflict have largely resolved, with the Dark Irons now fully integrated into the Alliance (it didn't hurt that Ragnaros was slain, and actually permanently after he was killed within the Firelands) and the three major dwarf clans working together.

Earthen:

The Earthen are the original ancestors of the Dwarves, a Titanforged people created, as mentioned above, to excavate underground and to build and maintain Titan machinery. The Earthen are, true to their name, made of stone and metal, with hair like copper wire and gemstones emerging from their stone skin. They are, though, otherwise largely similar in shape and appearance to Dwarves.

While most Earthen were affected by the Curse of Flesh and became modern dwarves, there are pockets of Earthen to be found in various regions, including the Titan sort of "central command" facility of Ulduar, far up in Northrend, as well as the mostly-underground realm of Khaz'Algar, which houses the Coreway, a passage that leads down toward the Worldcore, the Titan facility that houses the Worldsoul of Azeroth.

The Earthen are sentient, but they are much more construct-like, with a culture built on ironclad laws and responsibilities. That said, over the eons that the Earthen have worked and maintained the facilities, they have deviated somewhat from the programming, developing behaviors that sometimes go against the Titan's "edicts."

Among the traditions of the Earthen is the existence of the Thraegar - Earthen who take on gem-like forms and have immense power. Magni, when he appeared to the Earthen of Khaz'Algar, was mistakenly, or maybe not mistakenly, identified as such. The Thraegar seem to be directly empowered by the Worldsoul, which is what Magni had been attempting to commune with when was transformed.

As constructs, Earthen society is very different - bodies and souls are sort of recycled through Titan machinery, with memories of individual Earthen archived in some kind of magical digital record. As alien as this existence seems, they also have proud cultural traditions, including theater (though their theater also might actually be Titan propaganda, a method of indoctrination that has evolved into an art form).

While they naturally have kinship with the Dwarves, the Earthen are not inherently tied to loyalty with the Alliance, and so there are Earthen who have joined both Alliance and Horde.

    The other ones:

So, the following aren't playable, but are worth taking a look at:

Troggs:

It's not clear if this was the result of the Curse of Flesh or some further mutation, but some Earthen transformed into aggressive cave-man like beings known as Troggs. Not to be confused with the reptilian Troggs of D&D, these are actually far more like Grimlocks.

Frost Dwarves:

Apparently some kind of independent offshoot of Dwarves from Northrend, the Frost Dwarves rescued Muradin after the incident with Arthas and nursed him back to health, later elevating him to a position of leadership thanks to his martial skills. That's... like all I got for these guys.

Grummles:

The Grummles are native to Pandaria. The Mogu, themselves a Titanforged species that reverse-engineered the Curse of Flesh to transform themselves back into stone, and generally ruled as brutal tyrants before the other Pandarian peoples rose up against them, peformed a lot of weird experiments on the other peoples of the continent.

When the Mogu got their hands on the Troggs, they performed flesh-shaping magic on them, transforming them into the Grummles. With humanoid intelligence restored to them, they look nothing like the Earthen or Dwarves they once were, and are more rodent-like. Peerless mountaineers, they live on the great mountain of Kun Lai in the northern part of Pandaria, and act as guides and traders, and engage in Yak husbandry.

Newcomer's Guide to Humans (in the Broadest Sense) in Azeroth

 Humans, am I right? The most boring species to play, one might argue, given that as far as I'm aware, the only people ever to play D&D are, in fact, humans in real life.

And yet... there's something I find compelling about playing a human in a fantasy world, perhaps because it's easiest to picture them in just about any genre tropes (or genre-bending tropes). You sort of know the gist of what it's like to be human, so you can move on to other questions of identity and the place in the world from a familiar kind of bedrock.

Humans are the founders of the Alliance faction, and among the most populous humanoid species on Azeroth. But there's been a lot of crazy stuff that has happened to humans, and some of WoW's playable races, and by extension, the new playable species in the D&D book, are humans who have undergone a transformation.

Let's talk the broad origins of humanity in Azeroth, because they're a bit unusual compared to other fantasy settings:

Ages and ages ago, the Titans came to Azeroth, finding it overwhelmed by the eldritch horrors of the Old Gods and their Black Empire. Seeking to protect the embryonic Worldsoul within the core of the planet, the Titans tried to excise the Old Gods, with the leader of the Pantheon, Aman'thul, physically tearing the Old God Y'shaarj from the surface of the world. This... didn't go well. While Y'shaarj died, he (it?) unleashed a curse with it essence called the Sha, and the physical trauma of this extraction tore a hole in the surface of the world, with the magical blood of the planet pouring out like a wound.

The Titans changed tack.

First off, they decided to imprison, rather than destroy the remaining three Old Gods. They would also build a complex set of world-spanning machinery known as the Manifold to protect (and also kind of control) the Worldsoul and keep it safe from the Old Gods' corruption. To do this, the Titans created the Titanforged, myriad species of sentient constructs who would serve as technicians and guardians.

Among the Titanforged were the Vrykul, hulking half-giant warriors who were the primary soldiers of the Titanforge armies, tasked with fighting back against the armies of the Black Empire.

The Old Gods defeated and sealed away, and the Old Gods' creations driven to hide underground and out of the way, things seemed pretty good.

But gradually, the Titan Keeper Loken was driven to madness by the Old God Yogg-Saron. Amongst his treacheries, Loken installed a glitch into the creation forges that built new Titanforged - something almost like a computer virus, which came to be known as the Curse of Flesh.

This hit several of the Titanforged, including the Earthen, Mechagnomes, Mogu, and Vrykul. No longer constructs of stone and metal, they were now beings of flesh and blood (in theory more easily corrupted and mutated by the Old Gods).

Society continued onward, and without the Pantheon to intervene, and Loken's treachery sending the Keepers into total disarray, the Curse of Flesh spread and took hold of most of the Titanforged.

It's not explicitly clear that this was the further effect of the Curse of Flesh, but at some point in the distant past, the Vrykul began to give birth to stunted children. Vrykul kids were historically born capable of walking, and would grow to be, like, twelve feet tall by adulthood, but these tiny children were born weak and crying, and even by adulthood would only sometimes even grow beyond six feet.

In other words, they were humans.

When the Vrykul King Ymiron declared that the "malformed" children should be put to death, lest their weakness spread through their people, many Vrykul took their human children and fled. The Keeper Tyr, tireless champion of justice and good, took many of them with him when he fled monsters sent after him by Loken.

Tyr, who had lost his original hand to the mutated dragon Galakrond and replaced it with a fist of pure silver, would remain a powerful figure of myth and legend in human culture. Taking them south to the lands that would be known as Lordaeron, Tyr ultimately fell in battle with one of the C'thraaxi monsers Loken sent after him, but the humans settled in those lands, their disparate tribes eventually forming into a unified empire known as Arathor, or the Arathi Empire.

For centuries (at least - the timeline is not explicit) the Arathi Empire grew, clashing with the nearby Amani Trolls. Finding the High Elves of Quel'thalas, and intrigued by the elves' command of magic, the humans made a deal to aid in the defense of the elven kingdom in exchange for one hundred humans being taught arcane magic.

These mages became known as the Kirn Tor, and founded their own magic city of Dalaran.

Eventually, the Arathi Empire splintered into seven different kingdoms. The nobility of the empire went northwest, to found the Kingdom of Lordaeron, centered in Tirisfal Glades (where Tyr fell). The royal line of Emperors, though, traveled far to the south, past the Dwarven and Gnomish lands of Khaz'Modan, to build the kingdom of Stormwind.

Dalaran remained something of an independent city-state, while the kingdom of Alterac was created in the mountains in the center of the subcontinent. On a peninsula to the southwest was the kingdom of Gilneas. Then, on islands to the southwest of the subcontinent, Gilnean sailors settled and founded the kingdom of Kul Tiras. Those who remained behind in the old imperial heartlands created the Kingdom of Stromgarde.

Seven kingdoms. Ok?

Stormwind Humans:

The standard "human" in WoW is from Stormwind. While Stormwind historically found itself with hostile neighbors from the Gurubashi Troll Emprie to the south and the Dark Iron Dwarves to the north, for the most part Stormwind thrived and prospered until the coming of the Horde.

The Guardian was a position created by the Kirin Tor in which a single mage was empowered with immense magical energy to serve as Azeroth's greatest protector. Unfortunately, Aegwynn, a woman who had remained Guardian for centuries, extending her life magically, had allowed an insidious bit of corruption to enter her when she was fighting an avatar of the Dark Titan Sargeras.

While Aegwynn herself was not really affected, her son, Medivh, was. Aegwynn saw to it that when she finally gave up the mantle of Guardian, Medivh would take over. But Medivh carried with him a fragment of Sargeras, and when he reached adulthood, this fragment utterly took over him, possessing him. Sargeras, ever eager to claim Azeroth for himself, used Medivh to open The Dark Portal, which connected Azeroth to the planet Draenor. There, Sargeras' lieutenant Kil'jaeden had manipulated Draenor's native Orcs into forming the Horde, which was then a force of pure brutal conquest and genocide.

The Horde invaded without warning, attacking Stormwind as the nearest major civilization. Such an enormous force ultimately proved too much for Stormwind, and the First War ended with Stormwind overrun and conquered, its young king, Varian (after his father King Llane was assassinated) had to flee to the north as a refugee.

Unsatisfied with their conquest of Stormwind, the Horde pushed north across the continent, up through Khaz'Modan and into the subcontinent of Lordaeron (where the other kingdoms other than Kul Tiras were). However, this proved an overextension (there were also a lot of moving parts, including a whole thing with Deathwing, the mad Black Dragon aspect) but the ultimate upshot of the Second War was that the Horde was defeated, with some of it fleeing back through the Dark Portal and a large number of Orcs (including lots of civilians who had followed the armies) being put in internment camps indefinitely.

Varian, now an adult, was able to lead his people back to rebuild the kingdom, with the newly-formed Alliance at its back. Since then, and especially after the devastation of Lordaeron in the Third War by the Scourge, Stormwind has been the most stable bastion of humanity.

Lordaeron and the Forsaken:

Lordaeron, after Stormwind's conquest, was the largest and most powerful of the human kingdoms. This is probably the reason that it was targeted at the outset of the Third War by the Legion using its new weapon, the Scourge.

As Stormwind rebuilt, Lordaeron was struck with a devastating plague. Horrifically, this plague began to turn those it killed into mindless zombies and ghouls. The crown prince of Lordaeron, Arthas, was apprenticing as a paladin under the first human paladin, Uther the Lightbringer. But as the Scourge spread across Lordaeron, Arthas' methods grew more and more extreme. Desperate to find any weapon that could defeat Mal'ganis, the Legion demon who was overseeing the spread of the Scourge, Arthas gave his soul over to the runeblade Frostmourne - actually a tool of the Scourge's Lich King. Arthas returned home victorious over Mal'ganis, but he had become a Death Knight, murdering his father, the king, and unleashing undeath upon the kingdom that he had technically just become sovereign over.

For a time, the vast majority of Lordaeron's population had been converted into mindless undead, slaughtering their living friends and family.

However, after the Third War, the Lich King had broken the Scourge free of the Burning Legion's control. Illidan Stormrage, having led a coalition of allies to Outland, was confronted by one of the Legion's masters, Kil'jaeden. Kil'jaeden extorted Illidan into trying to destroy the Lich King, and back on Azeroth, Illidan began a powerful magical ritual to sunder the Frozen Throne and thereby cut off the Lich King's power.

While he was interrupted, the damage done to the Lich King loosened his grasp over the undead, and fully half of Lordaeron's undead suddenly regained their free will. Confronted with the horror of their condition and the knowledge of what they had done as part of the Scourge, the Plaguelands (that which had once been the kingdom of Lordaeron) fell into undead civil war.

Rising to lead the free-willed undead was Sylvanas Windrunner, the former Ranger-General of Quel'thalas whom Arthas had raised as a banshee. Under Scourge domination, she had been one of his top lieutenants, but now she plotted to assassinate him.

Sylvanas would unite the free-willed undead and push against both the living humans trying to reclaim the Plaguelands as well as the Scourge forces that a group of Dreadlords trying to reclaim the Scourge for the Legion had taken control of. (During this time, actually, Arthas fled back to Northrend to defend the Lich King from Illidan's forces, so while there were some "mainline Scourge" loyal to the Lich King here at the time, the main battle was between the Forsaken and those controlled by the Dreadlords.) The Forsaken, as they came to be known, emerged victorious.

Still, fighting against a persistent Scourge threat, as well as fundamentalist religious extremists in the Scarlet Crusade (who never recognized the Forsaken's humanity) and also mysterious assassinations of ambassadors to the kingdoms of the south (sent in an idealistic hope that the Forsaken could re-join the Alliance) led the Forsaken to a culture of extreme isolation, and something of an embrace of the "wicked and evil" way that they were perceived by others. They would go on to manufacture plagues that might be used to combat both the living and the Scourge, and used many of the Scourge's own tactics.

However, the Tauren, having heard of their plight, reached out, hoping to use their understanding of nature and life magic to restore the Forsaken to true life. Through the Tauren, the Forsaken were brought into the Horde, and have generally served as the faction within the Horde most willing to use... morally dubious methods.

Notably, Sylvanas Windrunner ascended to the mantle of Warchief following the death of Vol'jin, but betrayed the Horde in a complex plan that she thought would have removed Death itself from the world, but actually would have lead to the domination of all life on Azeroth. So, she's currently in the Maw (basically Hell) searching out all the souls that are there unjustly to send them on to the afterlife they deserve.

Meanwhile, the Forsaken are governed by the Desolate Council, a group of prominent members, including Calia Menethil, sister to Arthas, though she has emphatically refused to take the crown of the fallen kingdom.

Worgen of Gilneas:

The kingdom of Gilneas was a major industrial power of the Alliance during the Second War. When the Horde was defeated, the Orcs were captured as war prisoners, and the Alliance was left with a conundrum: a huge population of people who had just tried to wipe out humanity.

A very dark decision came before the leaders of the Alliance - either to keep the orcs imprisoned, or to kill them all. The vote between the seven kingdoms went 4-3 in favor of keeping the orcs alive (though a longterm plan to integrate them into society or, like, anything else, was left unresolved). Genn Greymane, the king of Gilneas, was among those in the "kill them all" camp.

Frustrated at the costs that his kingdom had incurred in defeating the Horde, Genn withdrew Gilneas from the Alliance, cutting off all diplomatic ties to the outside world and constructing a massive wall to cut off the Gilnean peninsula from the rest of the continent.

Now, this didn't prove to be universally popular. The Greymane Wall was built through the lands of a nobleman named Darius Crowley, cutting much of it off from the rest of the kingdom. Crowley organized a rebellion against the crown, sending Gilneas into a civil war. While Crowley was ultimately defeated and imprisoned, this left the kingdom weakened and divided.

But there was something else going on:

Thousands of years earlier, Night Elf Druids were exploring new animal forms to take. Their Druid forms were based on various Wild Gods - the Bear form an expression of Ursoc, and Cat form an expression of Ashamane. The Druids of the Scythe sought to create a form based on Goldrinn, the Wolf God (named for a powerful relic, the magical Scythe of Elune, built using one of Goldrinn's fangs). But it turned out that Goldrinn's ferocity was overwhelming, driving the Druids to feral madness. Malfurion had the Druids of the Scythe sealed away on a remote peninsula and locked into sleep within the Emerald Dream, a peninsula that would later be settled by humans and become Gilneas.

Ages later, the Gilnean Archmage, Arugal, sought out some new means to combat the rising threat of the Scourge. Finding obscure texts about wolf-like creatures that were immune to disease, he summoned some of these Druids of the Scythe from the Emerald Dream. But while they were effective against the Scourge, their ferocity was infectious, and as they bit humans, those humans became Worgen, basically werewolves.

The Worgen became a terrifying threat to humans and Forsaken alike. Eventually, a massive pack of Worgen broke through into Gilneas city, infecting a massive swath of the population with the Worgen curse.

Years later, Gilnean alchemists developed a concoction that could, at least for at time, restore the human mind to a Worgen. Around the same time, the Cataclysm struck, which, among other things, saw the Greymane Wall crack and partially collapse. The Forsaken, seeing this as an opportunity to expand their territory, invaded Gilneas with the help of a few traitors who were disgusted by Gilneas' embrace of the Worgen back into their citizenry.

In the face of a Horde-backed Forsaken invasion, the Gilneans were desperate, and mounted an effort to evacuate. They were aided in this by the Night Elves, taking responsibility for the Worgen given that it was in what would become Gilneas where the original Druids of the Scythe were sealed away, taught the Worgen techniques to manage their transformation further, and helped bring them back into the Alliance.

Genn Greymane is still king, but has learned a great deal of humility in his transformation into a Worgen. There are still plenty of fully human Gilneans, but it seems that for the most part, the population has gotten used to the fact that about half of them are werewolves.

Kul Tirans:

Ostenisbly, the people of Kul Tiras are just humans, no different physiologically than those from Stormwind (or Stromgarde or Dalaran. Er... Alterac kind of got destroyed in the Second War after they betrayed the Alliance to the Horde, and of course Lordaeron and Gilneas we've covered already).

So, take the rest of this with a grain of salt, because this is my headcanon, though I think it's reasonably well-supported in the game.

The first Kul Tirans were Gilneans who sailed out to an archipelago off the coast of the Eastern Kingdoms. They settled down in a sound in the center of the archipelago, but after they had gotten established, they were attacked by a people known as the Drust.

The Drust are mysterious - there's only one known living Drust we know of, but they are a druid who remains in their shapeshifted form at all times (also, this druidic tradition seems totally different, as he doesn't even recognize the word). However, it seems they were half-giants, and I have always interpreted them as being a branch of the Vrykul.

Now, while there was warfare and bloodshed between the Kul Tirans and the Drust, this wasn't universal, and it's likely that the hostile Drust were those particularly led by a leader known as Gorak Tul, a master of death magic (different than classic necromancy, and more kind of witchcraft).

Given that there are a lot of very big and burly Kul Tirans (if you play one in WoW, you'll play one of these) that are, like 8 feet tall, my interpretation has always been that the Kul Tirans actually have a lot of Drust ancestors mixing around in their gene pool. (And given that humans are descended from vrykul, they'd be easily compatible genetically... though there are also half-elves on Azeroth, despite elves and humans having profoundly different origins.)

Anyway, Kul Tiran culture is centered around the sea. Religiously, they don't have much of a tradition of worshipping the Holy Light, and instead have a priesthood called Tidesages who bless their ships to be able to sail safely through any storm and revere a being called the Tidemother, who is probably, unbeknownst to them, actually Queen Azshara (see the post about elves for a brief explanation of who Azshara is).

While never isolationist like Gilneas, Kul Tiras is naturally, quite literally insulated because it is an island nation, and so its culture has odd nuances, like the aforementioned Tidesages, as well as a tradition of witch-hunting Inquisitors.

    Other Humans:

These four nations are represented via playable races in WoW, and I believe that Worgen and Forsaken will both be presented as D&D species. Humans from Stormwind, Kul Tiras, Dalaran (which isn't a huge population because it's just a city-state with very little land of its own) and Stromgarde are likely only to be represented with standard D&D humans.

While the kingdom was destroyed in the Second War, I don't think there's anything really stopping you from playing someone from Alterac, either someone who remained loyal to the Alliance or maybe hides their past treachery. Or maybe you were just a kid at the time. (Notably, the treachery was due in large part to the dragon Deathwing disguising himself as a human noble named Daval Prestor and manipulating his way to become the leader of Alterac, so while Draconic Sorcerers are most often going to be Dracthyr Evokers, if you're willing to go for archetypes that exist outside of WoW options, you could tie this into a backstory).

There are humans from elsewhere. On Kalimdor, there is a group known as the Wastewander Bandits, usually hostile, who wander the southern deserts. Where they actually come from has never been explained, though it stands to reason that other populations of Vrykul might have undergone the same process that created humans.

There's also a weird question of the Hallowfall Arathi, a group who live in the deep underground realm of Khaz'Algar. Humans with some elvish ancestry, the Hallowfall Arathi claim to come from The Arathi Empire, but seemingly one that still exists. This truth of these Arathi is unknown, though my current theory is that they're from an alternate universe.

Newcomer's Guide to Elves of Azeroth

 With the WOW D&D book, there's at least some portion of the D&D-playing population that has not ever played World of Warcraft, nor have they heard about the specifics of the setting.

Azeroth (the world on which most of WoW takes place - though we have been to other planets, like Outland, Argus, and K'aresh, as well as other planes of existence, like the Shadowlands) has some profoundly ancient cultures along with some profoundly ancient individuals.

Like many fantasy settings inspired by Tolkien, elves have some of the most ancient histories and civilizations, though I think it's important to note that they are not the oldest civilization on Azeroth. That honor belongs to the Trolls, who will warrant their own whole post, even though there are fewer playable Troll options in WoW. Likewise, the Eredar species, which includes the Draenei, likely has an older-still civilization, but they are from a different planet (the aforementioned Argus) and so don't count here.

But while the ancient (and still existent) Zandalari Troll Empire pre-dates any of the elvish civilizations, the ancient Kaldorei Empire was probably the largest and most wide-spread humanoid civilization in Azeroth's history (note that I say humanoid).

In WoW, there are four playable elf races, though through character customization options, you can at least make a character look like a member of the fifth branch of the species. Broadly, there are two branches to the elves of Azeroth, which manifest in physiological differences. The original, larger Night Elf half (which includes the Nightborne) and the more diminutive High Elf branch (which includes the Blood Elves and Void Elves). Notably, among the playable options, there's an even split between the Alliance and Horde, with Night Elves and Void Elves on the Alliance side and the Blood Elves and Nightborne on the Horde side (the people who still identify as High Elves are also Alliance-aligned, though they are a tiny fraction of the old High Elf population).

Furthermore, we should also talk about the origins of the elves:

Three broad species, the Elves, Trolls, and Haranir, are all descended from the same ancestors. It has never been stated what their origin is, but unless we get information to contradict this, I assume they naturally evolved.

Now, the lore here is a little hazy: initially it was thought that the "Dark Trolls" who lived in the caves of Mount Hyjal were transformed after they descended the mountain and settled on the banks of the Well of Eternity. The raw power of the World Soul's blood reshaped them into modern elves. Since that lore was first hinted at, we were introduced to the Haranir, who truly look like a cross between Trolls and Night Elves, and it's not clear if these are the so-called Dark Trolls or perhaps if they are the best-preserved descendants of their common ancestors.

But let's get into the specifics of the elven civilizations:

Night Elves, or Kal'dorei:

The Night Elves are known as the Kal'dorei, meaning "Children of the Stars" in their language. Kal'dorei society revolved around the worship of the Moon Goddess Elune (whose true nature remains somewhat mysterious, but seems to be a power associated with the primordial power of life). Settling on the banks of the Well of Eternity and upon Mount Hyjal, the Kal'dorei civilization flourished for ages, until the rise of an individual among them named Azshara.

The most powerful Mage Azeroth has ever seen, Azshara became Queen (it's not clear if this was a position she was born into or if she established herself as the queen). Azshara was (and is - she's still alive, though... different) beloved and glorious, and also utterly narcissistic. She restructured society, elevating an elite upper class around her known as the Highborne. To the Highborne, she taught the secrets of arcane magic, and this aristocratic upper class became something also of a magocratic regime. She renamed the capital city, once named for Elune, to Zin-Azshari, more or less elevating herself to godlike status in their society.

Azshara ruled for untold years, but never married, sure that no living mortal was a fitting match for her radiance. In her arcane practice, she made contact with Sargeras, the Dark Titan, who had turned against the Pantheon and created his demonic Burning Legion to destroy the universe. With promises of power, Azshara allied with Sargeras and agreed to help the Legion invade Azeroth if she could rule over the Legion and, presumably, the entire cosmos as his co-equal partner.

The result was the War of the Ancients, one of the most important events in Azeroth's history.

Ultimately, a resistance movement against the demonic invasion rose up, led primarily by Malufrion Stormrage and Tyrande Whisperwind, respectively Azeroth's first Druid and the high-priestess of Elune. Malfurion's brother, Illidan, worked behind the scenes amongst the ranks of Azshara's mages to subvert the Legion's plans, earning him (unfairly) the title of Betrayer, as very few if any knew that he was fighting for the good guys.

While the Legion was repelled, the only way to prevent Sargeras from fully entering Azeroth was to destroy the Well of Eternity, which led to the Sundering - a massive "great flood" that saw the single massive Pangea-like continent of Kalimdor split into pieces and drift apart, destroying most of the land and separating out the various peoples of Azeroth - at least those who survived.

A number of Highborne, during the war, defected from Azshara to join the rebel cause, led by Dath'remar Sunstrider. However, given how Azshara's arcane magic had led to this contact with the Burning Legion, the Night Elves banned its use, forbidding what had become the core of Highborne life and culture.

In protest of this, the Highborne unleashed an arcane storm over the forests of Kalimdor, and were banished for this outburst.

Following the war, a vial of water from the Well of Eternity that had been preserved was used at the top of Mount Hyjal to grow a World Tree, Nordrassil. The Night Elves' draconic allies blessed the tree, including a blessing from the bronze Aspect Nozdormu that gifted them immortality (they were fairly long-lived before, but this prevented any aging).

For the ten millennia following the War of the Ancients, the Night Elves lived in relative isolation in their forests, many of the men following Malfurion's Druidic tradition and sleeping for centuries on end to commune with the Emerald Dream, while a matriarchal warrior culture led by Tyrande guarded the forests. When the Legion invaded along with the Scourge in the Third War, the Night Elves were forced into the fight, and when the demon lord Archimonde attacked Mount Hyjal, seeking to use the World Tree to burn Azeroth, the Night Elves were forced to sacrifice it to destroy him, losing their precious immortality, and forcing them to engage with the world once again. While they had fought alongside allies from both the Alliance and Horde, the Horde's efforts to cut down their ancient forests for lumber pushed them toward the Alliance, and to this day they are one of the core members.

Nightborne, or Shal'dorei:

The Shal'dorei, or "Children of the Night," are from the city of Suramar. Suramar was one of the great cities of the ancient Kal'dorei empire, sitting across the Well of Eternity from Zin-Azshari (I'll note that there's a dungeon from the Cataclysm expansion that portrays the Well as being, like, 100 feet across tops, but I think it's meant to be understood more as a big in-land sea). It is actually from the outskirts of Suramar that Malfurion and Tyrande hail originally.

The leader of Suramar was a highborne mage named Elisande. After it became clear what the empress had aligned herself with, the people of the city used ancient Titan artifacts to seal their city away, living for ten thousand years with nothing but the shimmering shield above them and sustaining themselves through magically-conjured fruit and wine.

Thousands of years later, during the last major Legion invasion of Azeroth, the evil orc warlock Gul'dan appeared before Elisande, heralding a new invasion, and warning Elisande that they were capable of breaching the barrier over the city.

Elisande capitulated and became a collaborator, but a resistance led primarily by First Arcanist Thalyssra, aided by outside heroes, toppled Elisande and liberated the city.

Because of the close cultural ties with the descendants of the Highborne amongst the Blood Elves, the Nightborne joined the Horde.

High Elves, or Quel'dorei:

Quel'dorei seems to mean something like "Children of the High," or quite literally "Highborne." Dath'remar Sunstrider and the fellow highborne rebels left Kalimdor in exile. While some went off to different parts of the world, those following him sailed east to what is now called the Eastern Kingdoms, and claimed lands in the north that they called Quel'thalas.

So distant from Nordrassil, the Highborne started to change, physiologically, becoming smaller (though still only shrinking to, like, human size). Dath'remar had taken one of the other preserved vials of water from the Well of Eternity and, on the island of Quel'thalas to the north, they created a font of arcane magic known as the Sunwell, which fueled their arcane power as a kind of lesser replacement for the Well of Eternity.

The Highborne became known as the High Elves, and clashed with the local Amani Trolls, whose lands Quel'thalas originally was. (Yep, colonialism!) When they encountered humans to the south, they formed an alliance against their mutual Troll foes, and taught the humans arcane magic (the original hundred human mages becoming the Kirin Tor, but that's a story for another time). While the high elves were still somewhat insular and distant from their human allies, there was some cultural exchange.

In the Second War, when the human kingdoms formed the Alliance to combat the invading Horde, and particularly when the Amani allied with the Horde, the High Elves also became members of the Alliance.

However, in the Third War, when the kingdom of Lordaeron fell to the Scourge, the Death Knight Arthas Menethil (former crown prince of Lordaeron) invaded Quel'thalas in order to use the Sunwell to turn the dead necromancer Kel'thuzad into a Lich. While the invasion was sort of incidental to this goal, Arthas' campaign was one of utter brutality and atrocity, killing off 90% of the High Elf population, and the process of Kel'thuzad's dark resurrection tainted the Sunwell, cutting off its power from the elves.

In the aftermath, Prince Kael'thas Sunstrider (refusing to take the title of king after his father was slain by the Scourge) renamed his people the Sin'dorei, or "Children of Blood" in bitter memory of the genocidal trauma they had endured.

However, as Kael'thas' actions following this took the Blood Elves down a dark path, some High Elves refused to follow him, and kept their High Elf identity. Remaining loyal to the Alliance and acting as a small but persistent resistance to the Blood Elf regime, the tiny fraction of the elves who still call themselves High Elves are led primarily by Vereesa Windrunner, the youngest Windrunner sister (a very prominent Quel'thalas family).

Blood Elves, or Sin'dorei:

As stated above, the Blood Elves were initially just a kind of renaming of the High Elves, and honestly, they're the most physiologically similar branches of the elf tree.

However, a couple things troubled the Blood Elves. First of all, while the Third War ended, the Alliance's efforts to wrest control of the Lordaeron subcontinent from the Scourge were led by just about the worst person to do so, a general named Garithos. Garithos, for some reason, hated the elves with a passion, and always used Blood Elves as cannon fodder. When Kael'thas accepted aid from the Naga (remember how I said Azshara was different? She and her closest followers made a deal with an Old God called N'zoth to survive the flooding of Zin-Azshari and were transformed into monstrous underwater-serpent people) Garithos declared this a treasonous offense worthy of death.

Now, on top of this, with the Sunwell tainted by Arthas and Kel'thuzad, the font of magic that had sustained their society was unavailable, and it turned out that the High Elves had developed a physiological dependency on it. Without the Sunwell, the Blood Elves would gradually deteriorate and lose their minds, becoming husks known as the Wretched.

After forming this alliance with the Naga led by Lady Vashj, Vashj introduced them to her ally, Illidan Stormrage. Illidan had been cast out of Night Elf society for his use of demonic fel magic (which he used to fight the Legion, but it had made him into a half-demon himself,) and Illidan offered to help them secure a source of Fel, rather than Arcane magic to sate their magic addiction.

This, of course, further pushed them away from Alliance society, and ultimately led them to align themselves with some rather strange bedfellows. To ensure that the public would not protest this move toward demonic magic, Quel'thalas became somewhat more authoritarian. Kael'thas followed Illidan to Outland, but those who remained behind (led by Regent-Lord Lor'themar Theron) were sold a whitewashed narrative of eventually coming to some sort of utopian promised land on the shattered homeworld of the Orcs, even while the Kael'thas plotted behind Illidan's back to more or less join the Burning Legion and see the Blood Elves transformed into demons.

Now at odds with the Alliance, the Blood Elves found unlikely allies in the Forsaken. Not only were these sentient undead humans also now outcasts from the Alliance, but their leader was actually a former high elf, Sylvanas Windrunner (middle sister of the Windrunners, who had led the defense of Quel'thalas against Arthas, but had her soul ripped out of her body for her defiance to become a banshee. She later found her body and essentially possesses her own corpse). While their tenure within the Horde has been rocky (especially under the leadership of Garrosh Hellscream, the racist prick) it has allowed them to stabilize their wounded nation and even cleanse the Sunwell of its corruption (though that story is complicated and has more chapters as of the current expansion).

With the discovery of Kael'thas' treachery, the authoritarian tendencies of Blood Elf society have diminished, and Lor'themar Theron seems to be a far more admirable leader.

Void Elves, or Ren'dorei:

The Void Elves are a weird fluke: The High Elves, and later Blood Elves, have a proud tradition of magical research, with their Magisters (high-ranking mages) acting as leaders of government even as they pursue arcane research.

One of these Magisters, Umbric, led a large research expedition to study the power of the Void, and through some mishap, the void energy suffused their beings, reshaping them on a physiological level.

Given the dangers of this cosmic power that can often lead to madness, Umbric and his followers were cast out of Blood Elf society (not entirely unlike how the Highborne had been cast out of Night Elf society). While somewhat independent in her own exploration of the Void, Alleria Windrunner (oldest of the Windrunner sisters,) who was one of the greatest heroes of the Alliance, brought Umbric and his "Children of the Void" back into the Alliance fold.

Bonus Elves: Highborne Night Elves:

So, after ten thousand years and the Night Elves' exposure to Mages among the other Alliance races, Tyrande and Malfurion relaxed their ban on arcane magic. Not all the Highborne had followed Dath'remar, with some going south to Eldre'thalas (what is now known as Dire Maul, a dungeon you can find in the new book). With this relaxation of the ban, Highborne came and taught the Night Elves the secrets of the Arcane. These Highborne, never that far from Nordrassil, remain physiologically the same as the rest of the Night Elves, and have integrated back into their society somewhat (though with a more egalitarian balance of power).

    The Elves of Midnight:

So, that's the 5 or 6-ish kinds of elves of WoW.

I don't believe we're going to be getting new species for them in the book, though we might get a new "lineage" for Nightborne and Void Elves. I would say that Night Elves really pretty emphatically can just use Wood Elves as their equivalent, and both High Elves and Blood Elves are just D&D's High Elves.

Now, a bit more history:

The current expansion (as of my writing this) is Midnight, which takes place primarily in Quel'thalas and Zul'Aman (though we go to a couple other places beyond). In it, the evil void-being Xal'atath (which just so happens to be possessing the corpse of a dead blood elf, so she looks like an elf as well) invaded Azeroth using the Sunwell. While all the heroes of Azeroth, Alliance and Horde alike, have come to help stop the invasion (allowing the unprecedented move of letting Alliance forces stay in a Horde city,) this has also become an opportunity for a reconciliation between the various elves. While the Kal'dorei and Shal'dorei have their own homes elsewhere (and the Shal'dorei are already on good terms - hell, Thalyssra and Lor'themar are married) it has in particular been a hard-fought homecoming for the Ren'dorei and Quel'dorei.

There's bad blood on either side (especially with the Quel'dorei, as Vereesa's followers helped violently purge those Blood Elves who were in the city of Dalaran in one of the Alliance's less admirable moments) but there's a real sense of rapprochement.

While I suspect that the book will probably roll a lot of the ongoing story of the World of Warcraft toward one where the Alliance and Horde are more heatedly in conflict, there's certainly a place for reconciliation among the elves, even if reunification is never likely to happen.

Oath of the Ebon Blade "Paladin"/Death Knight

 I do not have the new WoW/D&D Book, but with the NDAs lifted on those people who got it early, I'm going to do the thing of watching through a video (that of Insight Check) going over the subclass and give my own commentary on it. Obviously, you can watch that video and get their thoughts on it as well, which I would highly encourage because hey, I wouldn't be able to write this post without it (well, not for another week at least).

World of Warcraft has three "hero classes," which, at least when they were first released, started at a higher level (I think they still start at level 10 now, but so does any character playing an "allied race") and broadly are flavored by being more than just a discipline, but the result of some fundamental physiological change that allows them to use the class's abilities. In the case of Death Knights, they were once heroes of Azeroth who were raised by the Lich King to serve the Scourge, and then broke away from the Lich King's domination to fight on behalf of the living.

Death Knights are, of course, a well-established trope in D&D and even fantasy in general (I've often cited the Ringwraiths and Darth Vader as the clearest examples) so I would encourage DMs to allow players to play one of these even in non-Azeroth campaigns. Admittedly, this subclass does incorporate some of the specific-to-WoW idiosyncrasies of the Death Knight, such as its thematic elements of Blood, Frost, and Unholy (which are WoW's three specializations for the class, but also a recurring theme in the expansion where they were introduced, including the three main wings of the final raid-dungeon of the expansion). But I don't think anything here is too obtrusively WoW-specific that you couldn't use this in another setting.

Now, Death Knights use the Paladin as a framework - ultimately, this is a Paladin subclass (fitting given that Death Knights are classically fallen paladins) but it goes a bit beyond that, altering some class features. Still, as I understand it, you'll still have full access to the Paladin spell list, and most of your features are going to be retained (Aura of Protection, arguably the best Paladin feature, is still there, thank the Light).

Notably, in WoW, Death Knights don't use shields (actually, only three classes in WoW can use them,) so while there's nothing mechanically preventing you from using one, most Death Knights will use big two-handed weapons, or potentially dual-wield (personally, I've never loved the look of a dual-wielding Death Knight. Even in WoW, the one spec that can dual-wield, Frost, can also use a two-hander, which can sometimes be suboptimal, but only a tiny amount).

So, let's get into the subclass.

Level 1:

Death Coil:

This replaces Lay on Hands.

Your creature type is Undead. Additionally, you have a pool of d8s equal to 1 plus your Charisma modifier (minimum 1). As a bonus action, you can force a creature you can see within 60 feet to make a Con save while you expend up to your Charisma modifier's worth of these dice. On a failure, the creature takes Necrotic damage equal to the amount you roll on the expended dice, or half on a success. If the target is Undead, it instead regains HP equal to the amount rolled. You refresh your pool of d8s when you finish a long rest.

    Straight up, this is not as good for healing as Lay on Hands. While early on you'll likely have 3-4 dice here, it'll at best go up to 6 (if you're pushing Charisma over Strength, which isn't necessarily the ideal). It's less precise, and of course,  you can't heal your non-undead allies with this. Now, it is a way to put out a bit of extra bonus damage, and at decent range. It's not terrible, honestly, but it's just not as reliable and versatile as Lay on Hands.

    Being Undead has its benefits, though you'll want to talk with your DM about what this means for resurrecting you, as some resurrection spells specifically prohibit someone from being revived if they are undead. I think the intent is that you're not supposed to restore someone to true life from undeath until you get something like True Resurrection, but maybe the exception can be made if you're still going to be undead.

Level 2:

Runic Smite:

This replaces Paladin's Smite

You always have Runic Strike prepared, and can cast it once per long rest without a spell slot.

Runic Strike works like Divine Smite, but it deals Necrotic instead of Radiant damage and gets its bonus d8 when striking Celestials.

    Look, this is flavorful, but it's also almost always worse than Divine Smite. Necrotic damage is a pretty reliable damage type, but not as reliable as radiant, and you're also (even as a Death Knight) far more likely to be fighting fiends and undead than celestials. Depending on your campaign, though, this might not make a difference, and also, I don't think there's anything here stopping you from preparing Divine Smite or any other Smite spell, so it's not that big of a problem.

Level 3:

Runeforging:

When you finish a long rest, you can inscribe a rune into a melee weapon ou are holding or transfer it to a different weapon. When you gain a level, you can replace this with a different rune.

    First off, an ambiguity here: it's unclear to me if you can simply swap runes on a long rest or if you need to level up to switch them. I would say a literal reading of the feature would let you change every long rest, and even inscribe runes on multiple weapons, though the latter part seems to imply you're locked in until you level up. So... it's weird. Generally, I tend to be generous to players who want to swap something if they have buyer's remorse, so I prefer the long-rest switch, though I feel the intent at the very least must say you can only have one active rune at a time. Let's look at the options.

Blood: When you inscribe this rune on your weapon and whenever you finish a long rest, you gain temp HP equal to your Charisma modifier plus your Paladin level. While wielding the weapon, you gain these temp HP whenever you reduce an enemy to 0 HP.

    That's a pretty hefty number of temp HP, and especially if you're going for a high-damage build using things like Great Weapon Master, this is going to give you a lot of Temp HP over the course of a day. Quite good.

Frost: While you are wielding your inscribed weapon, damage from your attacks, paladin spells, and paladin feature ignores resistance to Cold damage. When you make the extra attack of the light property and hit while wielding your inscribed weapon, you deal an extra 1d4 Cold damage.

    This is pretty terrible. I mean, 1d4 extra damage once per turn - that's all we're getting here (even if you take the dual-wielder feat, I don't think that counts as "the extra attack of the light property.") Ignoring Cold resistance can be good (and there are some fun new cold spells,) as this is a damage type that you will see resistance rather than immunity to, but certainly this doesn't seem nearly as good as the Blood one.

Unholy: While you are wielding your inscribed weapon, damage from your attack, paladin spells, and paladin features ignores resistance to Necrotic damage. If your inscribed weapon has the Heavy property, the first creature you hit with it each turn takes extra Necrotic damage equal to your Charisma modifier (minimum 1).

    This is a bit better than Frost, but not by much - we're talking probably 3 damage and then maybe eventually 5 if we push Charisma hard (though likely only by level 16 or something). I don't believe Necrotic resistance is very common, as more creatures are just fully immune. Again, I have to think Blood is the big winner here.

Oath Spells:

Usually I do this before all the leveled features because it's really more of a subclass-spanning thing, but in this case because there are 1st and 2nd level features, we'll cover it here.

We get one spell of each of levels 1-5 universally, and hten a second spell depending on your runeforge choice.

All:

1st: Death Grip

2nd: Death and Decay

3rd: Summon Undead

4th: Freedom of Movement

5th: Circle of Power

    First off, Death Grip is a bonus action spell that forces a strength save against a target, and on a failure, they get pulled into melee range with you. An iconic WoW ability Death Knights have (I believe the very first forced-movement ability in WoW). Death and Decay is an AoE spell that has, I believe, pretty underwhelming damage. But Summon Undead is good (if a little less powerful on a half-caster) and Freedom of Movement is a great spell for late-game boss fights.

Blood:

1st: Vampiric Blood

2nd: Spiritual Weapon

3rd: Leeching Strike

4th: Evard's Black Tentacles

5th: Bonestorm

    Vampiric Blood is a self-buff that increases your max HP without increasing your current HP, but then increases your healing received, and winds up having some interesting synergies with tiny bits of healing. Leeching Strike is a smite-like spell that deals necrotic damage and heals you (presumably the equivalent of WoW's Death Strike). Bonestorm is an AoE emanation that I believe is undertuned for a 5th level spell. These are fine - Spiritual Weapon isn't what it used to be, though Paladins are more likely to have concentration free for it.

Frost:

1st: Chains of Ice

2nd: Frostscythe

3rd: Remorseless Winter

4th: Ice Storm

5th: Cone of Cold

    Chains of Ice is not great - slowing targets on a failed Con save and doing tiny Cold damage. Frostscythe is a cone that I believe deals equivalent damage to Shatter, though Cold, but is pretty decent. Remorseless Winter is an emanation that I believe slows and deals cold damage, and is kind of akin to Spirit Guardians (and might do better damage, actually). These are pretty decent, though of course the runeforge sucks.

Unholy:

1st: Scourge Strike

2nd: Ray of Enfeeblement

3rd: Bestow Curse

4th: Blight

5th: Contagion

    Man, it sucks that Blight sucks so much. Scourge Strike is a smite-like spell that I believe (I don't have the spells up here) deals necrotic damage and frightens a target. I think that Frost actually gets the best spells here, but for Death Knight-specific spells, you should be able to grab any of these regardless of your rune.

Runic Power:

Yes, still level 3.

Immediately after your cast Rune Strike, you can expend a Channel Divinity to gain one of the following benefits based on your rune.

Blood: You regain a number of HP equal to the Necrotic damage done with Rune Strike.

    So, for a first level against a non-celestial, this will be a little less than  Cure Wounds. But if we save this for a crit, we can get a nice burst of healing on top of our damage.

Frost: Frost covers your weapon and shatters on impact. The target of your Rune Strike and each enemy in a 10-foot emanation takes 2d6 cold damage.

    Notably, this doesn't have a save, so that's going to be a consistent 7 damage. At low levels, that'll be great, though at high levels it's not a ton.

Unholy: The target of your Rune Strike is cursed until the end of your next turn, and while cursed, the next time it makes a saving throw, it subtracts 1d6 and the curse ends.

    This is interesting: 1d6 off a saving throw can be pretty powerful. You'll just need to time this. I wouldn't worry about debuffing them for something like Death Coil, but if you have an ally with a nasty spell or ability, this could be helpful.

Level 5:

Faithful Steed:

You gain a new option when you cast Find Steed, allowing your Otherworldly Steed to be Undead. The undead steed deals Necrotic damage with its Otherworldly Slam and has the following Bonus Action:

Ghostly Stride (Undead Only, Recharges after a long rest): The steed and its rider can move through other creatures and objects this turn as if they were Difficult Terrain. Both the steed and rider take 1d10 force damage if they end their turn within an object.

    Note that this will only last for a turn, so don't feel you can hide inside a rock to avoid a foe's attacks, because you'll be stuck. Still, a brief burst of incorporeal movement will let you get past barriers or pass through a wall or some such thing to either pursue a foe or evade attacks. There's uses here, for sure.

    The necrotic damage on the attack is unlikely to be relevant given how controlled mounts work.

Level 7:

Aura of Deathly Endurance:

You and your allies have Resistance to Cold, Necrotic, and Psychic damage while in your Aura of Protection.

    That's three damage resistances, and all that monsters and spellcasters will inflict, so this is not bad at all.

Level 11:

Runic Strikes:

This replaces Radiant Strikes.

When you hit a target with an attack using a melee weapon or an unarmed strike, the target takes an extra 1d8 necrotic damage.

    Again, this is nearly identical to the feature it replaces, except that Necrotic is a less reliable damage type than Radiant. It's still a pretty good damage type, but I do think that where it does make a difference, this is going to be worse the vast majority of the time.

Level 14:

Improved Death Coil:

This replaces Restoring Touch.

When you use Death Coil to deal damage, the target takes extra Necrotic damage equal to your Charisma modifier whether or not it fails its saving throw. If the target is undead and you have it regain hit points, it regains HP equal to your Paladin level.

    The guaranteed damage here is going to be probably like 3 or 4, maybe eventually 5. But the healing is very good. As before, the targets for your healing are limited, but to just keep yourself up, this is going to be quite a hefty heal.

Level 15:

Runic Mastery:

You can invoke the power of your rune once per long rest. The effects are the following, based on the rune.

Blood: When a creature hits another creature you can see within 10 feet of you with an attack roll, you can take a reaction to reduce the damage the target takes by your Paladin level, and then you lose HP equal to your Paladin level.

    Weirdly this feels more like a specific paladin spell in WoW, but setting that aside: the only real problem here is the short range. But given how good at self-healing Blood will be, this is a great way to save a squishy party member. It's also damage reduction, which will significantly lower an ally's concentration saves. So I think this is good, if situational.

Frost: When you take the attack action, you can replace an attack by exhaling a 30-foot cone of frost magic. Creatures make a Dex save, taking 8d6 cold damage on a failure or half as much on a success.

    This is decent - while a Fireball-damage-level mini-Cone of Cold might not be enormous at this high level, I like that it only replaces an attack. Once a day isn't going to wind up being huge, but it's something.

Unholy: When you cast Summon Undead, you can modify it so that it does not require concentration. If you do, the spell lasts 1 minute, and the Undead Spirit has Temp HP equal to your Paladin level, plus it deals Necrotic damage equal to half your paladin level the first time it hits a creature on its turn (round up).

    While I'd mostly prefer to have a longer-lasting minion (especially given that we can heal them pretty easily with Death Coil) this will be nice in a boss fight (which is when we'd want to be using a single-target spell like a Summon). Certainly not something to use every day, but we are getting nearly a flat 8 and eventually 10 more damage per turn.

Level 20:

Aspect of the Horsemen:

As a bonus action, you gain the following benefits for 10 minutes or until you end them (for some reason). Once you do this, you can't do it again until you finish a long rest, or expend a 5th level spell slot to regain a use.

Generate Runic Power: You can restore a use of Runic Mastery by expending a 4th level spell slot.

    This feels like a weird benefit for something that is, itself, a limited resource. We don't have a ton of spell slots to use this with, and especially if we want the Unholy version, we're probably spending a 4th level anyway to get Summon Undead.

Runeforging: When you use Runic Power and Runic Mastery, you can choose any effect, regardless of your rune choice.

    Ok, so now we're more flexible for these 10 minutes.

    Here's the thing: I think this is the worst Paladin ult in 5E. The reason is that this ult doesn't actually let us do anything we couldn't already do. It gives us the privilege of expending 4th level spell slots to get Runic Mastery back, and then the only other thing it does is let us use the Runeforge powers we hadn't picked.

    Now, if you interpret (probably as intended) that by level 20, you will never be able to swap your rune again, this is the only way for you to ever get the other features.

    But as an Ult, again, this gives us purely lateral benefits, with no actual increase in power.

Overall Thoughts:

This is not going to suddenly become the best Paladin subclass. I think there are arguments to be made that it's on the weaker side. What it has, though, is flavor dripping from every pore. You're really not a Paladin in this case, but the fact that you retain the core of the Paladin class means that even if this isn't the strongest subclass, you're going to be a real asset to your team.

Lay on Hands was never the most powerful thing Paladins got, and again, even if Runic Strike is probably weaker than Divine Smite, in 90% of situations, it'll be just as good.

Here are some issues I have with it, and which I might just homebrew in:

First off, I'd let you change you rune on a long rest. Hell, even a short rest. Just make it something you can flip between rather than turning these runes into "sub-subclasses."

Second, and this might sound radical: Replace Generate Runic Power from the Aspect of the Horsemen to instead just let you use Runic Mastery once per turn for free. Paladin Ults should be amazing showstoppers, and the version as written sucks.

But yeah, the only reason to disparage this is if you're determined to play the absolute most powerful Paladin. There's such a profoundly distinct flavor here that your top consideration should be if you want to play as a Death Knight. And if you do, you'll still be one of the most powerful members of your party.

Silent Hill, Cults, and Dark Magical Realism

 First, a caveat: the only Silent Hill game I've played is the recent remake of Silent Hill 2. It was fantastic (and I think while there are some people who will never agree that a remake is better than the original, it seems that a lot of fans of the 2001 version felt that Blooberteam did a great job with it).

SH2 is, of course, the game in the series that permeated pop culture the most, particularly with the iconic Pyramid Head (technically known in the game files as "Red Pyramid Thing," I think because James refers to him as that when he meets Angela in the Blue Creek Apartments - that's the second apartment building, right?)

Again, I haven't played the other games, but I've seen various overviews of them, including listening to the Lore Dump podcast going over it last year (what inspired this post was their Halloween follow-up this year covering the second game, and I assume they'll do 3 next year).

Given that so many people were first exposed to the franchise with the second game, there are some assumptions that they (meaning I) made.

In Silent Hill 2, most of what is going on, including the monsters that James Sunderland faces, are related to his own subconscious issues.

Uh, spoilers for a 25-year-old game, I guess. I'm not going to do a break. This was, like, the main thing I knew about the game going into it. Also, spoilers for the film Jacob's Ladder.

James Sunderland is not a well man. He has suffered a psychotic break, forgetting the terrible crime he has committed and rewriting a narrative that makes him innocent. He says his wife, Mary, has been dead for three years, but it is instead three years since Mary was diagnosed with a terminal disease (unspecified, but probably some kind of cancer). Nearing the end, she was released from the hospital to have one last chance to go home, and while the motives are open to interpretation (and probably multifaceted,) James killed her, smothering her with a pillow.

It is my interpretation, and one I imagine is not unique to me, that the very first moment of the game, when we see James staring at himself in the mirror of a dingy public bathroom and do this strange hand gesture as if to confirm for himself that what he is looking at is him, is probably the moment that the false narrative took hold in his mind.

While I believe it was only speculated on with the original game, the remake makes it fairly explicit that Mary's body is in the back of his car. And the In Water ending, in which James drives his car into Toluca Lake to drown himself, might be his attempt to reunite with her in death.

Now, I don't think anyone's interpretation of Silent Hill 2 is that none of what happens is "real," and that it's all purely within James' head, like a big hallucination before he drives into the lake. For one thing, that's not the only ending of the game (I got the "Leave" ending, which is probably the happiest, though I don't know that mentally ill wife-murderer James Sunderland is the best choice to act as guardian for an 8-year-old child he just met. Maybe instead he'll just get her out of the town and find a more appropriate home for her. Who knows?) But on top of the multiple endings, there's also the existence of Eddie and Angela. I think Laura is probably a real person, while Maria is not (though, cruelly, she's probably sentient even though she's a weird manifestation). But I fully believe that Eddie and Angela are both real people who are honestly on their own journeys based on the darkness in their own lives, and while their paths intersect with James (quite catastrophically for Eddie, though that's not really James' fault) it seems that they're going through their own hellish torments here - indeed, they kind of mirror one another, with Eddie existing in this frigid, freezer-like otherworld and Angela in a world that is always hot and on fire.

The point is that it seems that this place is truly special (not in a fun way) and is creating this metaphor-rich reality based on the individuals who are drawn there to torment them (and possibly give them the opportunity to process everything?)

The film Jacob's Ladder was a major influence on the game. In it, the main character is tormented by horrifying demons, but when he discovers what is actually happening: that he is dying, it becomes clear that the demons are actually benevolent figures who are trying to help him let go of the living world and move on. The film implies that this truly is a benevolent process, given that it ends with embracing his son, who died years ago.

So, is Silent Hill actually some kind of purgatory? A place for James to process and recognize the act that broke his sense of self? To confront the truth of what he did, and accept what that makes him?

No.

Because there's an evil cult there.

While I think within the world of the game, you could view the town in this metaphorical lens, and while there's a "real"-ness to what is encountered there, it also certainly exists in this profoundly subjective manner. While James does get a glimpse of Eddie's and Angela's respective Otherworlds, it's pretty clear that in numerous interactions with them, they must be seeing different realities. When James and Angela speak in Blue Creek Apartments, is the room on fire for her? As she stares into the reflection of the knife, are there flickering flames?

(Here, I think there might be some discrepancy between the remake and original - I think both apartments in the original might have been in the "real" "Fog World" in the original, while the remake gives us our first explicit glimpse of the Otherworld in Blue Creek. Though that distinction kind of breaks down in the latter half of the game.)

The point, though, is that even if there are sort of "mechanics" of what is going on in Silent Hill in the second game, there's no explanation of what is actually causing all of it. The story focuses entirely on the psychological aspects of things, the plot being entirely about James and his strange interactions with this bizarre doppelganger of his dead wife (a reasonable interpretation of Maria as embodying the version of Mary he felt was robbed from him when she got sick. The deeper you go, the more there is to unpack about latent misogyny - something that every man has internalized in a patriarchal culture and has to kind of dig out to confront. Most of us don't allow this misogyny to manifest in violence toward the women in our lives, but a shockingly large number of us do, so... yeah. If only James had processed this before murdering Mary. But then we wouldn't have this story. At least in this case, the characters are fictional) and monsters that represent aspects of his psychological issues.

But in the first game, Harry Mason is not, as far as I can tell, actually burdened with any terrible psychological guilt or trauma. The monsters are not manifestations of anything happening with his psyche, but are instead born from a person with weird magical powers. There's a cult trying to summon some kind of evil demon god.

Again - I have not played this game. I think that, even if it does have these tropey elements, it's still a more surreal and psychological horror game than, say, Resident Evil (which it was made as a kind of response to - Konami trying to get their own survival horror franchise to compete with Capcom). The sort of questionable reality, and multiple layers of reality, and the lacing of tragedy throughout it, was already present with the first game.

But there's a bit more of an explanation to things, with clear villains and heroes.

Who is the villain in Silent Hill 2? Is it James himself? Is it Maria? Is it Pyramid Head? I don't think that it really works that way.

(Hey, random thought: has anyone done an analysis of the story as it relates to the myth of Orpheus & Eurydice? After all, James "looking at" Maria and recognizing her as something other than his wife means that he does not get to leave with her. In the myth, it's tragic that Orpheus' spark of doubt at the last moment dooms Eurydice to remain in Hades. Ironically, the one ending where James does get to leave with "his wife" is probably the darkest - the "Maria" ending where it feels implied that he might wind up murdering her too.)

Anyway, I know that some fans of the franchise feel really disappointed that, as the series went on, the cult stuff got sort of abandoned, with more of a focus on pure psychological horror, and that even if it's the best game in the series, Silent Hill 2 kind of "ruined" the franchise.

I can't speak to that (maybe ironic given that I'm writing this whole post about it) because of my limited experience with the series. My understanding of the plots of the first three games is that 3 is more of a direct sequel to the first.

But also... I really have to wonder, and maybe ask: is all the cult stuff actually good?

I guess having grown up in the 90s, when the Satanic Panic was starting to run out of steam, the idea of devil-worshipping cults just does not scare me all that much (I get that the cult in Silent Hill isn't' strictly a satanic cult, but the monster they summon as the final boss of the first game is classically demonic in form). Indeed, the religious right pushed this narrative of satanism everywhere so hard that it just became laughable. (Perhaps the last gasps of it were the condemnation of the Harry Potter books when I was in high school in the early 2000s, which felt utterly ridiculous. Of course, the problem now is that the author of said books is a rabid transphobe, which sucks, because while it was never, like, the core to my nerdy identity, I enjoyed those books when I first read them.)

I imagine that if you grew up super (by which I mean sort of fundamentalist/conservative) Christian, maybe you have a more deeply-instilled fear of the satanic. But, again, as a franchise newcomer, I'm really curious (and partially skeptical) about how those integrate into the tone.

Obviously, the cult stuff came first, so it's not something that was thrown in out of the blue to an existing psychological horror franchise, and there I can see where the indignation about this comes from the old-school fans.

I do believe that Blooberteam, having proven themselves with the remake of 2, are working on a remake of the first game, and I'll be eager to see it. I know that games 1-3 (maybe 1-4?) in the Silent Hill series are deeply loved by the fans (though I think that's partially in contrast with the later games).

And to be fair: I think that Twin Peaks was one of the influences on the first game, and while much of what I love about that show is how it feels like a whole dream-mythos cooked up in David Lynch's brain, the truth is that there is a lot of real-world myth and philosophy that is integrated into its own mythos, just that a lot of it is concepts that I'm less familiar with given my cultural background. I truly thought that "tulpa" was a term that was invented for the show in its much-later third season, only to discover that, nope, that's something from Tibetan Buddhism. I had grouped it with Garmonbozia, which I'm pretty confident is a pure Lynch invention.

Massive Influx of WoW/D&D News Stuff

 So, I've spent the better part of the day listening to Insight Check's various videos and streams after there has apparently been a lifting of a lot of NDA stuff regarding the WoW D&D book.

I'm not going to summarize everything here, but let's see about the highlights:

Death Knights:

Death Knights, which are Paladins that use the special Oath of the Ebon Blade subclass, look like they'll be ok, but not overpowered. Indeed, at least when looking at the features that the Death Knight replaces from the Paladin (mainly Lay on Hands, along with a replacement for Divine Smite as a spell that works almost exactly the same) it's arguably less powerful (Rune Strike, which replaces Divine Smite, does necrotic damage and only gets bonus damage against Celestials, both of which are going to be nerfs in most campaigns,) but you're still mostly using the Paladin chassis, with no alteration to the Paladin's best feature, Aura of Protection. In other words, it's probably going to wind up still being quite good.

Demon Hunters:

Demon Hunters actually seem to have less extensive changes to the base class than the Death Knight (given that Death Knights count as Undead, I'm sort of surprised that Demon Hunters don't count as Fiends, though to be fair, that might have been a bigger problem for them, potentially). Primarily, the subclass seems to introduce a new resource mechanic that works a bit like the Phantom Rogue's soul trinkets, which can be used for utility like getting free (or rather, alternative-cost) castings of the Jump or Feather Fall spell, or getting a "Soul Cleave" action where you can do essentially an AOE swipe around you.

Monks:

The Warrior of Mystic Brews has some really great stuff once you hit level 6 - the level 3 features are basically the same as they were with the Drunken Master in Xanathar's, but the brews you can pick up are very powerful, even if you need to pick one per rest (and I think you'll basically always want to spend the FP to make the brew last 8 hours). I don't know if it will stack up with the Mystic Arts (boy, that'll be confusing) subclass, but I have high hopes for this one, and certainly seems to be delivering on the cool concept of the Drunken Master. The terrible Drunken Master feature, Drunkard's Luck, which was your sole level 11 feature and let you spend 2 Ki to cancel disadvantage on a d20 test (not give you advantage, just cancel disadvantage) is now just one of three brews you can take, and works infinitely better, by literally giving you Heroic Inspiration every time you make a d20 test while you don't have Heroic Inspiration. I don't think this means that you just get permanent advantage on everything (I assume it's like: you get HI after you roll, say, a Stealth check, and then you can of course just spend that on your Initiative roll after you failed that stealth check, and then you make an attack roll straight, earning you HI, which you can then spend on the dex save when the dragon you just punched breathes fire at you. But still, this is advantage on basically half of all d20 tests you take, which is still freaking amazing. And the other options are good too.

Monks also have a few feats designed to emulate elements of WoW Monks, including one... I can't remember if this is called Fists of Fury, but in addition to treating 1s as 2s on unarmed strikes and light weapon damage (meh) you'll get a stacking bonus to damage for each hit you land with unarmed strikes on a single turn on the same target. So, by level 10, if you're making 5 unarmed strikes with a Flurry of Blows and hit on all of them, that winds up adding up to 10 more damage, which is not quite Great Weapon Master numbers, but in the same ballpark.

Clerics:

We didn't actually get any real overview of the Discipline Domain, though they seemed to like it, but evidently Shadow is a let-down (especially with an insultingly weak capstone). That's a shame, as I think we could use more good dark Cleric subclasses.

Druids:

While there's no new Druid subclasses, the Cat and Bear forms added as options for Circle of the Moon (which represents the Feral and Guardian specs in WoW) gives us some templates. Bear Form seems likely to be the better option in most cases, as Cat form bizarrely does not let you make two attacks with its multiattack, instead letting you Prowl and then attack from stealth with some bonus damage. To be fair, this does mimic Feral in WoW, where your Cat form functions effectively like a Rogue. Bear Form has higher AC and just lets you make two attacks, and honestly feels a lot more like the general "Land Animal" form that we might have gotten for 5.5 had they stuck to their guns with the One D&D Playtest (this time, though, the AC is 15+Wisdom, which means you'll have a perfectly reasonable AC).

Barbarian:

While it's still the most controversial idea out of the WoW book, Barbarians are representing Shamans. We didn't get a ton from this discussion, but supposedly the Spiritual Guardian update to the Ancestral Guardian is a buff to the old subclass, which was already one of the best (I've been DMing an Ancestral Guardian Barbarian in my Ravnica game, and he's such a good tank that it honestly makes me a little frustrated at times, which probably means it's good design). The Path of Elements is evidently not at all like the Storm Herald, which is a relief, though its focus on an elemental cycle is something I wonder about given how short D&D combat goes (that said, if it's a three-turn cycle, maybe that's fine, as it's not unusual to get three turns in a combat).

Paladin:

No word on the Oath of the Holy subclass, and obviously we covered Oath of the Ebon Blade already. But I did want to say that Divine Shield is in and seems to be very good - a reaction-speed spell that gives full damage immunity, prevents any forced movement or reduced movement speed, and then gives you advantage on your next attack - the last bit being sort of whatever, but still: this is the ultimate defensive reaction spell. Imagine using this when the big bad drops a Meteor Swarm on you and shrugging it off like it was nothing.

Ranger:

Again, we already talked Demon Hunter, but Beast Master Rangers are also getting an alternative feature to Roving, which lets your pet have one of three specializations, each of which grant a passive benefit as well as giving the pet the ability to cast a spell on both you and itself once a day without components. These spells are Haste, Freedom of Movement, and Stoneskin. Note that Stoneskin has a costly and consumed material component, which is why you never see people cast it. These are also 3rd and 4th level spells, and I think you get this feature at, like, level 6, which is way earlier than a Ranger would get such spell levels.

    Generally, the vibe I've gotten is that there are some interesting big swings here in terms of design, but also that there's a wide range of quality and power between the various options. Tons of this should work perfectly fine in a non-Azeroth campaign, so I'd encourage those who have something against WoW or just are against the idea of Universes Beyond (the latter of which I'm more sympathetic to,) to still consider allowing these options at your table, even if you don't want to vote with your dollars (or whatever currency you use) to buy the book yourself. Hell, between Insight Check's roundtable stream and spell videos, I think you get literally the entire Death Knight, so just copy it all down without paying a cent! (Not advocating for piracy in general, but in a case where the stuff is all out in public with WotC's blessing, I mean... no issues there, right?)

    One thing I think we might need to consider, though, is how the existence of the Ebon Blade "Paladin" gives us a dramatically different way of making playable Death Knights real in comparison with the potential "Feat Path" approach they tested in the "Villainous Options" UA. Frankly, I think that this is a more elegant solution, given that this kind of a Death Knight will still have the feats open to take things like Great Weapon Master or Inspiring Leader.

    In a world where WotC had a design team about three or four times as large, maybe we'd get fully-fledged classes for things like this, which in the end might actually be the ideal scenario.

    But I think that this book's approach to "hero classes" could open up a new avenue of "design tech" that WotC could use in the future to make more dramatic variants on existing classes.

Is Fimbulwinter Coming for the RCU?

 I only just caught this, and was admittedly led to this via TVTropes' Wild Mass Guessing page for Control Resonant, but something just clicked for me:

Oh, and spoilers for some things from Control Resonant.

Spoilers Ahead: