I’ve been thinking about World of Warcraft and Diablo., and the depcition of Evil which Blizzard used in them. Here’s a quick spoilered recap.
In Blizzard’s fantasy universes, good and evil seem to be absolute, but the latter can grab hold of mortals against their will. Those who lose their sanity are especially vulnerable to the will of evil, as are those tainted by dark magic, sort of a “disease” idea.
In Diablo, for example, we see in the first game that the holy priest went crazy and became a raving prophet of doom, that the King was murdered and became an undead slave, and his son becme host to Diablo himself. Meanwhile, IIRC, the chief knight was enslaved by evil for slaying his corrupted king.
Woo, right there we have four examples of evil taking control of people, with one instance where it might (or might not) have bene voluntary. Suffice it to say I have doubts that the Bishop was totally under his own will when he had a series of nightmares and then suddenly decided to unleash Hell upon his kingdom.
In Warcraft, we likewise see a number of examples.
During the first game, the mighty super-wizard Medivh is influence by a nearly-almighty demonic force (the history of which I won’t go into, but said force affected Medivh before he was even born). He unleashes the orcs upon the more-or-less decent Kingdom of Azeroth (now Stormwind).
The orcs themselves have been dominated by demonic powers, of which they were largely ignorant before it had already affected them. A few were able to resist, but most seemed to have fallen into blind bloodlust. There are notable examples (like Guldan) of outright villains who sacrificed others on the alter of their own selfish power.
Skipping ahead. During Warcraft 3, the nightmarish undead unleashed horrific monstrosities and raised armies of the dead, usually ordinary people. This was after the Lich King had enslaved nations of the Nerubians as eternally dead slaves. he was aided in this by a selfish and power-hungry wizard, Kel-Thuzad. K-T was definitely not a good guy in any sense of the word.
We also have Arthas Menethil. As a Paladin, he was brash but honorable and posessed of a surprising sense of humor.
On a related note, he was reviled for his decision to slaughter helpless villagers during the war. However, said villagers were already dead mean; they were inevitably goign to die and become undead slaves augmenting the enemy army, and one way or another had to die. This may not have been a kind action, and might not have been the Right one, but it is not clearly evil. It was definitely an ambiguous response to a desperate crisis, and Uther’s pious refusal to do anything was not a rational response to the problem.
In hs attack on the Lich-King’s strongholds in Northrend, Arthas eventually discovered that he needed a powerful weapon to defeat a mighty demon. He does find, but the blade kills Arthas’ friend and ally Muradin Bronzebeard in exchange for its power. In act, Arthas was willing to pay any price himself. Supposedly Arthas was uncaring or unfeeling, but this seems odd in light of the fact that Muradin was a close friend and that Arthas had previously grieved for the loss of soldiers and peasants he did not know. It is later revealed that the sword “stole Arthas’ soul”, as it was all a trap laid by the Lich King.*
*It’s implied that the Lich King discovered Arthas’ immense talent and potential and wanted it as his own host, and that the Wandering Prophet who warned Arthas might have known this. If so, Said Wandering Prophet gave possibly the most useless advice in history, and failed to offer anything but the weakest and most obscure arguments. instead, he spoke in stupidly empty generalities. Moron.
Later, Arthas kills his father, yada yada unleashes hell on earht, yada yada, beats up Illidan, yada yada. He eventually joins with the Lich King in one super-mighty form. What’s interesting in this is that Arthas at no point even questions the Lich King’s actions, even while the Lich King was weakening. Some other undead did and some did not; those who did seemed to be predominantly victims of the Plague or second-order undead like Sylvanusm, how were made by the Lich King’s servants. Those who received his “personal attention,” including Arthas and Anub’erak, remained his slaves.
Warcraft RPG pretty much says that Frostmourne, and other Death Knight blades, steal the user’s soul into the blade and can control the body with its host’s memories and skills and their own blind evil will. The swords may have no mind without a mortal (well, soon-to-be-undead) wielder, but that they have an emotional will.
So is Arthas in any meaningful sense anything but an imprisoned slave, or did at some point he willingly throw in with the Lich King? The latter just doesn’t make any sense to me. His transformation from hero to villain was shocking and sudden, with almost no warning, and it doesn’t make sense that he’d just willingly sign up with his greatest enemy.
In a related matter, consider the Blood Elves. They’ve adopted a darker, crueller tone to their society (though with many shades of their former devotion to the Holy Light). This may be partly due to the shock and pain of losing around 90% of their nation and race, while humans did nothing or joined the enemy, and were later betrayed by humanity (who were under the control of a demon in disguise). On the other hand, I noted that apparently High Elves/Sun elves far away from the Sunwell, which Arthas used in a blasphemous magical ritual, were not affected. They are less aggressive and do not have an addiction to magical energy sources.
I therefore submit that in the case of the Blood Elves, Arthas’ polluting the Sunwell caused the need for magic, not its “removal.” The Blood Elves within their ancient domain were probably hit by the equivelant of magical radiation, or a “mystical disease” or something.
yes, this thread is pointless.