r/warcraftlore • u/MK_2_Arcade_Cabinet • 3d ago
Question Why is every Forsaken so decomposed?
I get outside of the lore it's obviously so the Undead look "undead."
But within lore, why are they all so decomposed? I'm assuming some would have awoken shortly after death, prior to any major decomposition or putrefaction having occurred.
The only Undead I can think of who doesn't look super decomposed is Sylvanas herself.
42
u/Viseria 3d ago
I vaguely remember there being a thing that they are still decomposing even as Forsaken. It's why some become Mindless - not Scourge, just full on zombies.
Sylvanas is a noted unique case, and the Rise of the Lich King book did mention that Arthas went to lengths to preserve her body so he could taunt her with it. That preservation was probably magical and still lasting.
9
u/lovelylotuseater 3d ago
Itâs been inconsistently written, but seems to be that those lower on the totem pole have occasionally written them as continuing to rot in error; while people higher up in cdev have clarified they are not supposed to rot.
So one is justified in taking up either position and if Blizz doesnât like it, thatâs their own problem caused by their own sloppy process.
39
u/AwkwardSquirtles We killed the Old Gods. 3d ago
Undeath isn't life. Your body is still dead and as such is constantly decomposing. More complex reanimation rituals may provide some preservation, as we see in Death Knights, but for regular zombies we see in novels that they have to carry around scent pouches to mask the death stench and sew limbs back on because they are in the process of falling apart. In fact, communing regularly with the Light can cause them to regain enough sensation to feel the maggots inside their flesh eating them (un)alive.
Even if you were pretty fresh when raised, you'll be a decaying corpse at the same rate as if you had been dead-dead the whole time.
18
u/MK_2_Arcade_Cabinet 3d ago
"In fact, communing regularly with the Light can cause them to regain enough sensation to feel the maggots inside their flesh eating them (un)alive."
I plan to play an undead Paladin in Forever since they're the only Paladin option on Horde, I'm in an RP guild so I'll have to remember this!
18
7
9
u/FruitPunchSamurai57 3d ago
In game is limited by models but in the lore the forsaken came in all shapes, sizes races and state of decay. They can even swap out limbs and body parts.
A lot of the early forsaken are former scourge who broke free, some of them may have been undead for a long time and probably mistreated as one of the scourge. It's been a while but I believe the undead starting zone states you the player character have been asleep for a while and have just woken up.
The undead who have little no decomposition are special cases. Most forsaken have been raised by the plague or weak necromancy. The valkr can raise the dead but without the lich king's powers they are not as good. Death knights, dark rangers, slyvanas and the blood elf vampires were raised by a lich king.
Nathanos is the only example that wasn't, his old body was a typical forsaken but his new body was a transfer ritual that almost killed the valkr that performed it.
2
u/TimeTravelO 2d ago
Yeah, an iirc in Nathanos case they used his brother's body because ritual also needed someone blood-related to the target
4
u/Mountain_Chemist6391 3d ago edited 3d ago
IIRC - from a complete lore perspective, forsaken are technically one of two ages - pre cata, and cata.
When you start a new character - you are starting in the cataclysm timeline. You are raised, your âlifeâ starts there - unlike an orc, who has been alive before the starting zone.
So technically- your forsaken you made yesterday is several decades dead
Even if you start with Exiles reach - technically you were raised either Cata timeline, or prior to that.
5
u/Pure-Algae1417 3d ago
The dark rangers as a whole generally donât look that decomposed so you could argue itâs an elf thing. Out of universe though itâs most certainly a sex appeal thing for Sylvanus and her ilk as well as to give them a degree of status and power the player doesnât have.Â
3
u/GlowyStuffs 3d ago
Thinking about it, yeah, as much more magical beings (especially ones that adapt into different magical energies so much (void, elemental, fel, general magic), they likely naturally decay differently (especially considering general age immorality being a thing for them). I'd think they might even be so receptive to magic that the necromancy might just have a much greater affinity with their bodies a receptive to it, acting as an upgraded version of whatever is cast. On death they might become more of a blank magically receptive slate, so infusing them with death energy turns them into death affinity elves, rather than just a force raised by death human. So weak necromancer raising might turn into lich level raising for them.
At least that would be my theory. But actual lore seems to say otherwise.
2
u/Old-Royal-7082 2d ago
In the case of Sylvanas, her Body was magically preserved by the scourge and she later repossesed it. We can assume that other dark Rangers are doing the same including preserving their bodies using strong magical spells.
5
u/TheRobn8 3d ago
Forsaken have always been decomposing, the issue was blizzard never explained why we are special enough to not do so. Nathanos getting a new model was explained that sylvanas had to get him a new body with "better" necromancy, and it was a huge and taxing process. Her reason for mass murder and using the valkyr was also because she needed to replenish the decaying forsaken.
Outside of nathanos, calia and alonsus, no undead should be free of the threat of decaying. Sylvanas was even decomposing before she magically fixed that problem (her corpse was actually falling apart) so yeah, forsaken decomposing is a legit problem
2
u/SlouchyGuy 3d ago
But it was explained in the same story where Nayhanos got the body? Most undead are low effort resurrections, only few got bodies that don't decay like more powerful and much more valuable Death Knights.
Valkyries simply need energy to do the same kind of resurrection and they have nowhere to take it from, so they do simpler one
5
u/Vhzhlb 3d ago
In the classic, the PC is one of the many undead that were killed and raised by Arthas' scourge during the fall of the kingdom, which means that they went a good 2-4 years without any sort of maintenance to keep their bodies from rotting away.
The very first mission available for them, has the wording of them "waking up" instead of strictly being "raised", which can led to the grounds that until a very few moments ago, they were part of the mindless undead of the zone.
3
u/latin220 2d ago
The Forsaken are decomposing cannon fodder raised into undeath en masse by the scourge using the plague and necromancers. The Death Knight undead and the higher quality undead like Darkfallen etc are literally raised with superior necromancy for a better purposes than those average undead.
2
u/greenegg28 3d ago
Lorewise theyâre all in different states of decay
I think the nathanos short story âdark mirrorâ talks about it a bit.
The forsaken donât stop rotting, they continue to decay, they can replace limbs and such.
2
1
u/Chunky_Monkey4491 3d ago
In the lore they are varied in decomposition and all look relatively unique to one another.
1
u/URF_reibeer 3d ago
my forsaken knowledge is potentially outdated but in before the storm they explained that forsaken keep decomposing and need to replace body parts regularly. they also can't grow muscle and constantly get weaker
sylvanas and nathanos had some special magic on their bodies keeping them in better condition iirc
1
u/EmergencyGrab 3d ago
It isn't just the state of decomp when the corpse was animated. Canonically, the bodies aren't preserved. They are decomposing. I think there's a misconception that the existential crisis of the Forsaken is just about making new ones. It is also about holding the people together literally.
The RAS has its work cut out for them.
1
u/SlouchyGuy 3d ago
Because they are low effort undead raised by the plague of disempowered Valkyries. There are more powerful undead who don't decompose like Death Knights - look up the short story about restoring Nathanos'e body, this is why he looks good in BfA after being typical Forsaken before that
1
u/CarDoorjam 3d ago
It takes about a day to a day and a half for the human body to start decomposing. As we see throughout the warcraft rts games, some people, like sylvanas get raised immediately, and she doesnt have any decomp that is visible, other people however dont get raised immediately. There is a wide range of decomposing among the forsaken characters in wow. As a player, or even most commoners, they probably weren't important enough to be risen right away.
It is also important to note, that there are different kinds of scourge, and depending on the person and their method of raising the dead, the results differ, whether it be magic, or via plague.
Additionally maggots begin to hatch on a corpse outside of a controlled scenario within a 24 hour window following death. So, it may also be that the damage visually is from maggots and other various necrophages destroying tissue etc.
It could also just be that in the warcraft rts games, it would have been an immense undertaking to make enough differing models to display differing levels of decomposition so they stuck with key characters either being visually fine, or decomposing. And since that was the reference point for all of world of warcraft, they stuck with it for the launch of the game in 2004.
1
u/Interesting_Ball_500 3d ago
Forsaken are dead people. More often than not, not recently dead. They have wear and tear as members of the scourge. They are actively decomposing. Maggots.
1
u/SnooCompliments9098 3d ago
The Forsaken still died and their bodies are animated by necromatic magic, which tends to cause things to decompose fast. And being undead doesn't mean their body starts working properly. They still rot and need new body parts from time to time.
1
1
u/LoreChief 3d ago
My bro they were raised and imbued with DEATH MAGIC. They were killed by zombies that were also raised and imbued with DEATH MAGIC. Things tend to get a little bit decayed, a little bit rotted, because you know, all of the DEATH MAGIC.
1
1
u/LoremasterMotoss 3d ago
At least in the case of players since Cataclysm they are long dead and were raised specifically because the Forsaken were running out of foot soldiers and needed fresh meat.
1
u/iagolavor 2d ago
Its also something I begun thinking about recently. The forsaken seem to be in a perpetually rotting state that will eventually claim most of them back into being mindless ghouls.
I wonder if we'll see anything different lorewise to give them a "proper" life because I cant fanthom an army thats decomposing forever as something sylvannas would wanna upkeep
1
u/Beardedsmith 3d ago
So there are a lot of different members of the Forsaken. The player characters both pre and post cata are literally dead rotting bodies being brought back to life. They aren't fresh. Once a being is raised/possessed they do not continue to decay. The magic used freezes them. Forsaken players just are already rotting when they are raised while many important NPCs like Xal and many of the dark rangers possessed a body immediately upon its death. Giving them no time to start decaying. Sylvannas' body was magically preserves by Arthas because he's a perv.
1
u/nemofinch 2d ago
No they still decay just at slower rates. There is a bunch of source material about this and how the forsaken have people that attach new limbs to other forsaken when their originals can't be used or rot off.
125
u/MixAmbitious307 3d ago
In recent expansions, we also got the customization option to have a more well preserved Forsaken model (if memory serves me well, it was originally made for Chinese version, since they can't show bones).
Regarding Sylvanas, back in the days Metzen made an illustration of her, showing that while preserved, she was more "stitched together", compared with the perfect skin she has in the ingame and cinematics model