The Queue: The difficulty of writing

So, yeah, how about that sports team?

This is the Queue. Let’s see what people want to talk about.

I don’t know the answer to this question, but it is interesting to think about. As of right now we have no idea what the Arbiter or the Jailer are, exactly. Are they dead Titans or some sort of gods of Death? Are they powerful figures who once lived in the very distant past who have grown into their current roles and power after uncounted thousands of years in the Shadowlands? Are they forces inherent to the Shadowlands themselves?

We don’t know. For all we know, one or both of them might in fact be the World Soul that Sargeras destroyed. One or both of them might be Y’Shaarj. One or both of them might be something else entirely — something utterly outside our frame of reference, entities as powerful and mysterious as the Void Lords themselves. We just don’t know. The Shadowlands is a realm we have never really explored.

But it’s something to consider as we go forth into this expansion.

Nope. Not all Paladins are Lightforged and not all Lightforged are Paladins. There are Lightforged Warriors, Hunters, Mages, and Priests as well as Lightforged Death Knights coming soon, and lore wise, we know that both Xe’ra and Turalyon intended Alleria to become Lightforged before she chose another path.

Alleria is absolutely not a Paladin.

There’s a specific ritual that prospective Lightforged go through, and it isn’t Paladin specific — it involves confronting your own inner self and dealing with it, and it still works after Xe’ra’s demise. Keep in mind that neither Paladins nor Priests own the Light. As long as you can successfully confront and triumph over your own inner darkness, you’re able to be Lightforged.

Now, I certainly think that members of other races besides the Draenei should be able to pass the ritual. Turalyon did, and Alleria was intended for it. So we could theoretically have Lightforged Humans, Lightforged Gnomes, Lightforged Forsaken (at least one member of the Scourge can touch the Holy Light, why not a Forsaken?) and so on. But at present, we don’t.

I think that’s a little simplistic. Garrosh first appears in TBC, and has a pretty significant arc in Nagrand that then moves to the period between TBC and Wrath, where he and Thrall have a confrontation. He then moves into a pretty big secondary role in Wrath, where he’s in charge of the Horde forces in Northrend, which sets up his role in both Cataclysm and finally Mists of Pandaria, both of which feature him heavily.

But Warlords is interesting because narrative wise, Garrosh is less a character and more a cause. He’s the one who travels to an alternate Draenor’s past, and essentially everything he does is the reason we have to go there as well, but he doesn’t dominate the story. He dies during a leveling zone, and his death has an impact but doesn’t really change the story all that much — we still have Grom and Gul’dan as the major forces and focuses of the story, I would argue.

As for Sylvanas, her current arc was set up all the way back in Wrath. Her confrontation with Arthas in the Halls of Reflection, her leap off of Icecrown that led her to meet Annhylde and make the pact, her interaction with Garrosh that led her to support the coup against him, and then her elevation to Warchief in Legion is all part of where we’ve ended up. So I’d argue that her story and her role in the game at large has been growing and building for six expansions now.

As for Classic, it kind of cheats because every major patch focuses on a different adversary. In a way, Classic is more like a series of mini-expansions every major patch. We go from Molten Core to Blackwing Lair, from BWL to AQ, from AQ to Naxxramas. And that’s not even counting ZG or AQ20, which both also served as mini-raids of their own. Classic doesn’t have one single arc, it’s more like a series of novellas.

Quite frankly, if I was going to do that, I’d just go with a giant otter. They’re cute. I don’t like how fossil recreations of any of the transitional whales are always reconstructed so they look almost skeletal to me. We have no idea what integument they had, but they look exceedingly shrink-wrapped and reptilian and not at all like whales. I feel like animals like seals and otters should be studied and the way they have things like blubber and fur should be considered when reconstructing Peregocetus, Pakicetus, Ambulocetus and others.

So yeah, giant otters instead. Super cute.

There is a bit of a discrepancy here, admittedly, but I think it comes down to the way they died. Malthael had infused himself with the power of Death by tapping into mortal souls, and the Nephalem who struck him down had likewise done the same. While Malthael’s essence was returned to the Crystal Arch to be recreated in a new Angel, Tyrael was destroyed by the explosion when he destroyed the corrupted Worldstone, but that happened on Sanctuary, and he wasn’t fighting a death-charged Nephalem. He also wasn’t using the power of the seven Evils in the Black Soulstone.

Malthael’s actions left him uniquely vulnerable. He’d forsaken his role as Archangel of Wisdom to become the Angel of Death. He’d trafficked in Mortality, literally using Death itself as his power source. And he used the power of Evil itself. Any or all of these factors could have led to his fate being different than Tyrael’s. It’s specifically noted that when Malthael is defeated, the souls of everyone he’s devoured over the years, including the Evils he absorbed from the Black Soulstone, erupt from him.

But ultimately it’s not clear why Tyrael was able to reform his body, and Malthael will not be able to do so.

Okay, that’s the Queue for this week. Have fun, remember to ask Anne lots of questions.