Watch the new Alleria: Light and Shadow animated short and punch your ticket for the The War Within hype train

With The War Within‘s release date rapidly closing in on us, the World of Warcraft team has been pushing little teasers and images and rundowns to pique our collective appetite for the upcoming expansion, and Alleria: Light and Shadow may be the pinnacle. It looks like a hand-drawn Saturday morning cartoon, and serves not only as another lore recap, but spells out explicitly Alleria as a character. Her motivations and reasoning for her actions, and especially what’s at stake for her, are all laid bare in this gorgeous new video.

Plus, tons of badass action sequences. Who doesn’t like badass action sequences?

Of course, none of this is new information. Both in game and in other tertiary media, Alleria and Turalyon’s sacrifices have been at the forefront, right from the very first Human load screen in Vanilla, showcasing the statues serving as tribute to the missing heroes in Stormwind. Their return in Legion and their reunion with their son was particularly wrenching, as is the path of the Windrunner sisters as foils for each other — Sylvanas, Alleria, and that other one who I’m sure we’ll hear about at some point.

If you’re not already bought in to the larger WoW universe, this video will ground you in what you need to know about Alleria going into the expansion. And even if you’re already bought in, preordered, and ready to go, dang, is this cool or what. We’re in the final marketing push as we count down to The War Within, and I’m really excited to see what other stops they’re going to pull out over the next week or so.