#but i lich rally dk what to do to help

[faaun]

how to tutor a kid w a pda profile online i'm actually struggling lol she will just Not Engage im out of ideas atp

[brazenautomaton]

Fixing Afterlives: The Maw, First Visit

So our Shadowlands journey starts with the Maw. You know what? People hate this scenario now because you can’t skip it and have to go through it on every character, but the first time through, this is actually really good. You’re kicking in the gates of Hell with a platoon of Death Knights and then everything goes tits-up and you don’t have a beachhead and you’re lost and wandering and there are awful, awful things everywhere and you’re hiding and isolated and need to learn how to escape. You just need the option to skip it on your alts.

Plus the aesthetics of the Maw are great. They sell what it is -- the hostile architecture, sinister crystal formations, the way everything seems swept and shaped by a windstream of souls. We’ve seen plenty of environments that look like a Hell of flames. This is a Hell of pure suffering. Pain is what lives here. Pain is all that enters and pain is all that is produced. It’s only after you went farming Stygia for a while that the pain gets inflicted on you.

So we assemble the crew, get the exposition while we put together the Helm of Domination, get given a portal stone to establish a beachhead, and we bust in to find the four captives: Anduin, Jaina, Baine, Thrall. We rally the Death Knights into enough of a formation to make it in and find the evidence of Jaina, and I like that, I like how you track her by the huge formations of ice -- it shows you her power and the mark she leaves. Finding her is mostly the same although her dialogue is less generic and content-free (from now on assume I apply this caveat to all dialogue). She’s more confused and disoriented and even though she’s fighting it’s with a resignation that she knows it won’t work and she’s starting to think she’s only hurting herself by trying. She acts like she has been there for years. But you say you and the DKs are here to save her and she follows against her better judgment and agrees to try and find Thrall, who she struggles to remember, but seems to be trying very hard to be able to remember.

Then the Mawsworn Kyrian show up and laugh about her hopelessness, and you fight them. And they kill the shit out of you. 

More and more and more of them keep coming and they’re level 60 when you’re level 50 and if you do some bullshit to survive eventually one of them will grab you by the neck to Silence you, lift you into the air, and do the ol’ Val’Kyr Special and fatally drop you. You unavoidably die.

This is necessary early to establish what dying in the Shadowlands means. Play a special graphic effect when the player dies, something more drawn out and grasping. Play a sound effect appropriate to race/gender of the PC of them struggling against great pain and gasping. Then you appear next to a Spirit Healer (yes normally in the Maw you just respawn alive so you have to pick up your Stygia like in Dark Souls, we’ll explain the discrepancy later), a Mawsworn Spirit Healer, who says “No. Your suffering will not end. The Maw claims you.” and then starts to chase you the fuck down with a bunch of shades. You need to run, as a ghost, to claw your way back into your body. Obviously, if the shades catch you, you get dragged back to the start and the Spirit Healer fucks with you a bit. 

Your body has been dragged over to the area where Jaina and the rest are hiding; they fled while you were being merced. Jaina sees you stir. And she says “I’m sorry, champion. Death is no respite here. It is so hard to fight the pull… I struggle to even remember my body when I try to return.”

Jaina has been brutally killed over a dozen times. This is not her first rodeo. This is not her first escape attempt. This is not the first time she’s killed that particular Mawsworn tormenter whose name I don’t recall. It doesn’t end. It never ends. She doesn’t know why she tries any more, when she knows it will fail and she will die and suffer and claw her way back to her flesh and every time it gets harder and harder. All it buys her is the ability to offer futile resistance and maybe that isn’t even worth it.

Mood: established.

From there it goes mostly the same. You try to pump the shades for info about how to escape and they don’t know, they can’t know, they can’t even want to escape. The info you get is a memory of spitefully hating someone who fled to the waystone. You rescue your buddies. You see the Jailer fuck up Baine, only instead of giving him a spirit poison, he fucking snaps the dude like a Kit-Kat and drops his lifeless corpse, and you drag it to safety. You don’t need to find a poison dagger to counteract the spirit poison; you need to keep him safe and clear a path for his spirit to flee back to his body. Thus reinforcing what the danger here is and how it’s different and what they fear.

And while you do this, at some point, you run into Sylvanas. Maybe she just walks up to you while you’re all collected around Baine trying to help him revive. Since the Jailer won’t be saying “it’s not like you won anything b-b-baka, it was just a temporary setback,” you need to establish that feeling that he views your victories as completely meaningless. Sylvanas knows you’re here saving Baine. So does the Jailer. It does not matter. You cannot accomplish anything. 

Thrall kills her dead. She just gets back up. She has an escort for her soul to go back to her body. “How many times are you going to try that before you learn it’s futile? Come now, Thrall. I know you’re smarter than this. I know you respected me more than this.”

And then stuff like “How could you do this, Sylvanas? How could you betray the Horde?” Thrall is incredibly angry and offended at her. He thought he knew her. “Neither of us had any illusions you were not a monster, Banshee Queen. But I trusted you anyway because I knew you wanted what was best for your people. You were a monster, but a loyal one. How can you now turn your back on what little principle you had?” Sylvanas is hurt by this, but she doesn’t linger on it.

Jaina, however, is desperately trying to flatter her. Do this to sell the kind of impact this has had on Jaina, and what this suffering drives her to. “Please, Sylvanas. I know you were my enemy but you were an honorable one. It isn’t too late. Someone as cunning as you must know that this will end in ruin. I promise… I promise… I will surrender if you let me return. Kul Tiras will become servants of the Forsaken. Just, just let them live… please, you could rule our world, not slaughter it…”

Jaina breaks down in tears. Yes, she just tried to surrender her people to the enemy for mercy. Jaina is breaking. All of them will. The Maw is a Bad Place and makes them give up hope. That’s how we sell the threat. Not by making the enemies bigger or spikier, showing how they have broken these heroes. Less screaming anger. More pain.

Sylvanas scoffs at her offer. “It doesn’t matter where your people’s loyalty lies, Lord Admiral.” And then she says the phrase that will become a motif: “Nobody escapes the Maw.” She leaves. She doesn’t care what you do. It doesn’t matter.

But you have to still hold on to that sliver of hope that maybe the waystone is a way out. So you get Baine up and you sneak past this big-ass Maw army that can fuck 31 flavors of your day up. The jailer notices you and sends out a force to stop you at the waystone, and he repeats the phrase when he sends out the order: “Nobody escapes the Maw.”

So there’s the event, you fight off the army while the waystone charges, the army gets bigger and bigger, the charge meter gets stuck at 90%, you go to kick it and it teleports you to Oribos.

The mob descends on the other captives. Sylvanas and the Jailer look completely unconcerned with your escape. After having clearly seen you physically leave the Maw, Sylvanas brushes it off with “Nobody escapes the Maw.” Dun-DUNNN! Cutscene end.

You appear in Oribos. The Protectors stop you because you stink like the Maw and what the hell dude, yada yada. This is when you get a tour of the city, here’s the profession trainers, the bank, the transmog. Only secondary details need to be changed here. One, this is an instanced version of the city where no other players exist (you are the first one there, nobody else is). Two, Lich King Bolvar (hashtag #notmylichking) arrives from Azeroth and says SOMETHING to justify other players coming from the Maw but being less important than you. Something like, he saw what you did, there are other adventurers from Azeroth still in the Maw, his DKs are hunkering down in defensive positions and will try to make their way to the Waystone once it cools off because you already activated it, since you are the more special one, and there might be a chance that a couple others might have an echo of your power because they have had similar adventures. You are the True Maw Walker, and the context of the massively multiplayer element is “for your story, all those other guys have shitty Maw Walker powers that only work once you opened the pickle jar for them.” They can’t bring passengers, either.

Third, not the most importantly but yes the most importantly, if you are Forsaken or a Death Knight or Mechagnome or whatever you get a special dialogue where you say “Why do you keep calling me a ‘living mortal’? I’m not alive. I’m undead / a machine / maybe something else like maybe I missed the fact that vulpera are made of rocks and string.”

So Tal-Inara or whoever can be like “Oh, THAT’S what that is. Something was odd about you, mortal, that I couldn’t quite place. I call you ‘living’ because your soul is still tethered to a body. To us in the Shadowlands, to be bound in a vessel like this is far more important than the nature of the vessel itself.” That’s why people keep calling you “living”, to them you’re easy to mistake for one.

Kyrian in the Maw is disturbing news, and also WEIRD, because as Tal-Inara reminds us, “Nobody escapes the Maw.” Why would the Kyrian go down there when they can’t come back? It is terrible but not unheard of for mortals to try and speak to the Jailer but they never GO there because they can’t get out. And yet Sylvanas just walked in there? And he is mustering armies? Better go to Bastion and find out what is up. Let’s crank open this gateway, and...

[space-cops]

yoshi was talking about the dk campaign ending on her oc sideblog and it got me thinkin about it too and LIKE........ i hate that there’s a perfect opportunity for there to be a change in svet and kas’s dynamic/relationship via the dk order campaign ending but like?? so much of it would be so against kas’ personality and moral compass. readmore because i talk forever

i guess to start, he’s one of those death knights that while he doesn’t seek out his second-death he is in no way going to fight against it. kas doesn’t think he should be kickin around in the first place!! not in an ‘i’m an abomination and disgrace’ sort of way but that he feels he was robbed of rest and peace. and it’s complicated because he appreciates the second chance. to be part of his brother’s life, to have met svet, and to have traveled to all sorts of amazing places are so, so important to him. at the same time, he’s just... really tired. he’s tired and he believes that the dead should just. stay. dead. 

so to be asked to raise these people who deserve to stay dead (for the best or out of respect) to replace the horsemen is a slap in the face to kas. obtaining the twin blades felt like a job he had to do. raising the dead though? he balks at the idea and i imagine at that point he absconds with his artifact and never reports back to the ebon blade. that’s it. that’s the end. 

and it’s when he has to raise the horsemen that possible stories start branching, and there are so many ways i could take his character if i wanted to change him and/or his dynamic with svet. 

kas stays the same, with his morals in tact, and does not partake in the attack on the paladin sanctum. in fact, if he finds out about the attack he will attempt to find a way to warn the order, whether or not that would cause the ebon blade to turn their blades on him.

kas goes against his better judgement and follows the orders of the lich king and raises the horsemen and subsequently leads the attack on the sanctum. his moral compass flips- not from what he does but how he rationalizes it. this is war and he is a soldier. he would have done anything to prevent what happened in silvermoon, and he applies the same rationale to fighting the legion. so he raises his horsemen, he desecrates the crypt at lhc, and he kills dozens of innocent paladins in the process. it’s all a means to the end, and the lives of the many outweigh the lives of the few who had to die. 

kas begins the campaign and hochrot finishes it. he passes the title of deathlord off to her early on, though holds on to the twin blades. hochrot follows the orders of the lk and takes the ebon blade by the fucking balls, ruling it with an iron fist. kas abandons the ebon blade and escapes with his morals intact. 

kas begins the campaign and hochrot takes it over by force. he and hochrot are fairly close- they fought together at lhc and kas is the one who reunites her with svetlana. he tells her the orders of the lk. this particular scenario splits in two. a) he explains to hochrot he won’t go through with it: because of this, she sees kas as weak. hochrot rips him down from the position of deathlord, rallying the ebon blade to her behind his back until the highest members confront him and he steps down/leaves the ebon blade. everything at that point follows the standard campaign. b) he plans to go through with all of the plans. hochrot feels slighted by the ebon blade. this is something she wants, something she deserves! so she murders kas, most likely while they’re in acherus, and takes the title of deathlord for herself. whether the order follows or revolts is another story.

and these are only the ones i’ve bothered giving any thought to!! there’s probably even more i could weave from that point, and there’s countless ways to take the story if i branch off from the main dk campaign later on. but it’s these ways that make or break kas’ character and the dynamic/relationship he has with svet.

their relationship is strengthened by his clear cut morals. she has always loved him and trusted his judgement, but has consistently worried about his involvement with the ebon blade. that he so willingly cast them aside without her pressing him to is a relief. she knows one of his biggest fears is being controlled and to see him take up the reigns of his own fate like this bolsters her own resolve to do the same and stay to fight the legion, despite every part of her screaming to run and hide. if he finds out about the attack, he will absolutely tell svet. in this case, she would warn the paladin hall and pray that they take her word more seriously than they would that of a death knight. knowing he trusts her to do this also helps them grow closer. 

this tears them apart indefinitely. svet trusted him with the information that the priests went to the paladins for help and that they agreed, and he used it against her allies. not only that, she knows how adamant he is against raising the dead. she knows this is something he had to have thought about endlessly, and to come to this conclusion hurts. svet thought he was better than this, better than the people who made him what he is. to know that he turned his back not only on her, but on his brother, is also painful. though they are not terribly close, alveth is important to her. svet wonders what he’d have done if alveth had been at the sanctum rather than fighting at netherlight. kas won’t tell her because he doesn’t know. the fact that he doesn’t know is the final straw, and she leaves him to the ebon blade. 

their relationship remains the same. when the attack on lhc happens, she doubts kas and questions him on whether or not he knew about it. this scenario assumes he doesn’t know because he’s abandoned the order, and he explains that to her. svet believes him. her relationship with hochrot, limited as it was to begin with, is severed. 

a) their relationship is strengthened. though svet cuts ties with her sister, she grows closer to kas for many of the same reasons stated in the first scenario. she is proud of him for leaving the ebon blade, especially for stepping down rather than fighting due to being insulted (which would be more along the lines of his personality). b) at first, things are strained because svet has no idea where kas is. he never returned from a trip to acherus and she suspects the worse as she learns more and more about the ebon blade’s activity. she assumes it is kas running the show and hates him for it. every move he makes hurts...until she finds out it isn’t kas. the deathlord was killed. the new deathlord is her sister. and so she delves deeper into her work at netherlight and with xal’atath, and the dagger convinces her to reach out and create a tighter bond with hochrot to do one thing and one thing only: kill her for killing kas. whether or not svet is being controlled by the dagger enough to trust it to help her while killing hochrot is another story.

basically i need to stop thinking about things bc i hate change and want all of my kids to be safe and happy but also i’ll never write them and even if i did my writing is most definitely not good enough to write any of these things out as well as they could be.