Sylvanas Windrunner: Edge of Night

[JVNemesis]

...Has anyone else seen this short story? I only came across it today for the first time.

Yes, that shoutbox comic totally brought this on.

For reference: Here and again as a PDF Here.


Spoilers below, FYI.





Any problems I have with Kosak's writing aside, there are some very interesting things in there. Like why the Val'kyr showed up all of a sudden, and how Sylvanas now has the highest death count of any Warcraft character...ever, I think. Most don't even get one res; she still has four left.
Also, this is much more along the lines of what I was expecting after Wrath ended/Arthas died. All we got in game was that lame quest with her blood vial where she just goes "D'oh well." Now we get the "...Well, shit. What do I do now?.../suicide" that I was expecting.
Now she has motivation for the crap she's doing rather than doing it for the lulz, and that makes me like her so much more, even if she was one of my favorite characters already. 'Let's take revenge on that asshat' was all well and good, but after her rather lame response to Arthas's death in WotLK, I was wondering what the hell her deal was in Cata, raising all the new Forsaken. Now we know.

She's terrified of what's waiting for her after she dies. As she said several times, the Forsaken are her shield now, not her arrow. How are they going to react to how their Queen is using them, and damning more to unlife, as they were damned?

And, as it was the Lead Quest Designer who wrote that...I'd say it's a decently safe bet that we'll see more come of it in the future.

Thoughts? Comments? Predictions? "Hey JV there was already a thread on this even though the Search didn't bring it up"?

...Also, this brings up an idea I ran out of time for nigh on eight months ago. Are Dark Rangers playable? Because my interest has been...inexplicably rekindled.
And I mean the old school WC3 ones. The best ones. As in undead (gasp) high elves. Custom model submission/special profile?

[Xigo]

It would be a custom-model if you want to be a high elf one, aye.

[Reigen]

Oh gosh, good luck getting a high elf though.

It was an interesting story, and I can see Sylvanas being a sort of tragic hero gone evil at this story. Though, if she never dies while those things live, she might just be an imposing figure over others with the fact that she will outlive them all, no matter how you kill her.

I do like the fact that once the lich king was dead, she sought to free herself of the 'curse' of undeath, the poor thing. It's a bit of a nice change that even she fears what lies beyond the void, though one would think it would give her more respect for life.

[CappnRob]

I always "assumed" that by Cata, Sylvannas had found her wit's end, so to speak. Her entire existence was based on destroying the Lich King that cursed her, and now that 13 years later, it has come to pass, what is there for her? It's a harrowing emptiness. I've always disliked Sylvannas as a person, but I've always loved her as a character, because she's so unstable and flawed.

Now all we need is a story that dives into the mind of Garrosh as warchief, where he learns to wear his big boy pants and make daddy proud

[Delta]

One of the things I was quite curious about when reading on the Forsaken for the first time, was why they possessed such single-minded reverence for Sylvanas.

I've always suspected that they were going to turn on her one of these days, simply because they've built up the Forsaken's unwavering love for her so much, and for so long. One thing you can seem to count on in Warcraft lore is that when things are going smoothly, everything is about due to be turned on its head.

http://www.wowpedia.org/Sylvanas_Windrun..._Cataclysm

Some have wondered if something has changed within Sylvanas due to her extreme behavior in the recent battles against the Alliance. A forsaken apothecary even leaves the forsaken and joins the Argent Crusade at Plaguewood Tower. He says that "I used to admire her, but something's changed within her. She's not herself anymore".

I'm not completely up to speed with Cataclysm, however, so I can't make any kind of educated guess about that.