Orc Quest; or, A Critical Examination of Agency Through in Interactive Fiction (Warcraft)

Be aware that the more nature related classes will have sort of virtue checks associated with them. You can be a 'dark Druid' but you'll get hunted down by the Druid police if you do.
Yeah. Druid and Shaman work on permission from the local forces of nature/life. With druids facing the strictest criteria of the two. Beating them into submission also works, but that tends to shorten your life expectancy.

This is in no way me pushing for a loveable rogue.
 
[ ] Plan SleepyBeep
-[ ] (Name)
-[ ] Male
-[ ] Mag'har
-[ ] Druid
-[ ] For Yourself

Well, I don't feel we'd be all 'dark/evil' shaman, but it doesn't mean we have to be nice. Might still play out being more nice than not, though.
A quid-pro-quo relationship with nature sounds intersting to me, not one of reverance or "for nature's sake" but more "sincere dealings/equal trade". Basically a bit like how i view orc shamans dealing with spirits, but only doing druid.... stuff.
Happily the Tauren are loyal allies and you hope to speak to one of their druids to learn more about this power.
Regarding the above, @FractiousDay what sort of things do druids do? Like. Plantbending? Soil enrichment? Weather stuff? How does it differ from shaman, and is there a link you can throw in that covers "Tauren Druid" abilties/basic lore

Edit:

So tired. Plze make note of the clan i picked, should give interesting mix it going to the Tauren.

Can't think of a good name. Either Tim, or John? Idk. Have to sleep.
 
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[X] Plan the dark arts
-[X] (name idk)
-[X] male
-[X] clanless
-[X] Necrolyte
-[X] for yourself
 
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Just thought I'd mention that I'm very happy with the reception so far!

do we consider the Warcraft RPG (not WoW) to be somewhat canonical?
I might make an infopost on my interpretation of canon if this comes up lots. Generally I go for a more realistic and grounded version of the games, eg more realistic travel times, no levels etc, but if there's additional info in the RPG books then sure that's fine. We can address specific points as they come up.
Not been a good few years for the franchise IMO.
generally agreed, and as such I'm not going to include any shadowlands stuff. I played up to MoP so i know the lore better before that
Druid and Shaman work on permission from the local forces of nature/life. With druids facing the strictest criteria of the two. Beating them into submission also works, but that tends to shorten your life expectancy.
quid-pro-quo relationship with nature
what sort of things do druids do
Shaman are sort of fixers. They have a quid pro quo relationship with the elements, who otherwise are in constant chaos which causes earthquakes etc. Shaman generally go about fixing stuff which is going wrong or trying to bring the elements into balance. They make contracts with specific elementals to gain power to do this. However they do have to 'call' on the elements, it's borrowed power and the connection can be lost or broken through various means. Some shaman are termed 'dark shaman' and instead bully or bind the elements into contracts etc to make them do stuff, they also go a bit edgier in doing more risky things which are generally prohibited by the shaman police.

Druids on the other hand while also dealing with the natural world are far more servants of balance. Ive just edited the class to require an uncorrupted clan origin as I think that's probably required by lore, and the Druid police are even more strict than the shaman police. Druids serve the natural world which in wow is different from the elemental world. That gets into cosmology which I suppose is necessary but I'll go into it another time. Druids have more personal power, it's not borrowed as much, but they still require a connection which has certain downsides such as far higher likelihood corruption, spending a lot of time asleep, and liking industry even less than the shamans do. As for what they do, the have nature powers. Shaman do elemental stuff like lightning bolts, making rivers run etc, Druids do tree stuff so plantbending, they turn into animals as well.
 
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[X] Plan: The Reverse Image
[X] Plan SleepyBeep
I like both of these, so I'll vote for both :p
 
[X] Plan: The lost one
-[X] Male
-[X] Stormreaver
-[X] Necrolyte
-[X] For Yourself

Dont think i have see someone do a Stormreaver clan before and Necrolyte is a Necromancer with parts from Warlock and Shadow priest, so that could be fun
 
Necrolyte is a Necromancer with parts from Warlock and Shadow priest, so that could be fun
What exactly a nectolyte is I've never really understood. I interpret it to be 'amateur necromancer'. Orcs who basically played about with shadow and death magic, not really understanding it and using it it a fairly quick and dirty fashion. Comparably the Cult of the Damned might be regarded as 'proper' necromancers because they brought some more rigour to the tradition.

Here you being a necrolyte is someone who does shadow magic a bit. You might grow into a proper necromancer, but you'd have to get training
 
Becoming a independent necromancer sound like it might be fun, hell if we get good enough we could turn our ourself into a Lich or start our own necromancer order
 
[X] Plan SleepyBeep

The idea of a druid twisting nature to his own ends does seem interesting and the prospect of a self-serving MC is a rare one.
 
[X] Plan: Wandering Blademaster
- [X] Grokmash
- [X] Male
- [X] Burning Blade
- [X] Warrior
- [X] For Azeroth

I really liked blademasters in WC3, so I made plan focusing on becoming one.
 
Notes on being a druid
So one of the things I'm somewhat less sure of is how I as the QM should present information that is easily available to read up on, but that some questers are less aware of. I'll go a little bit into the specifics of being a druid now and the difficulties therein. As I mention in the class choice area, you don't need to single class it, and an Orc druid is unlikely to completely follow the same traditions as other druids. Druids follow particular animal spirits called 'Wild Gods', and an individual druid with serve and worship different gods. Druidism could also be described as the 'Church of Cenarius' and one of the first things the Orcs did upon getting to Kalimdor was to kill Cenarius.

Some individuals use a little bit of druidic magic without being full druids, most notably Varian Wrynn, the King of Stormwind. Here's a picture of him with his furries:



Varian has historically had problems with his temper and being a bit 'wolfy' in general. He doesn't worship the wolf god directly in the same way a Night Elf druid would, but be aware that being a 'Druid of the Pack' as the wolf form is called will have certain effects on you. Below my I go into some of the issues with trying to be a druid. This isn't to say you shouldn't choose it, this is Agency Quest after all, but you could potentially use only a bit of the magic, as part of the @BeepSmile plan to be a druid but also be primarily self serving (I'll go into motivations more later today), rather than be a druid in the Night Elf tradition and worship and serve the wild gods like the elves do.

As mentioned I know what the restrictions might be because I've played wow etc, but I'm aware not everyone has. For now I'll put it in a spoiler. If you want to read this that's fine, if you want to play the quest without the spoiler that's also fine.

1. The Tauren druids are a lesser tradition and have less knowledge than the Night Elves, therefore they might be able to give you the basics, but they won't be able to train you properly
2. The Tauren are not familiar with the 'Pack Form', that is to say, being a wolf-druid
3. The current leader of the Night Elf druids is xenophobic, and would not support the teaching of an orc druid
4. Orcs killed Cenarius, most elves wouldn't be willing to teach you and might even try to kill you to prevent such a dishonourable people as the orcs from learning druidism
5. The 'Pack Form', wolf stuff, is explicitly forbidden by the druid police. The only person who could overrule this is currently asleep (its a druid thing) and won't wake up for 10 years(ish). There are however 'druid heretics' who do wolf stuff, but you'd have to find them
6. Wolf stuff is forbidden for very good reasons, as it tends to drive druids made and turn them into mindless beasts. There are ways to avoid this however.
7. Being only a bit druidy like Varian is would allow you a moderate amount of power, but would require you to fulfil certain virtue checks to retain this power. Unless you get a handle on things it would consume most of your effort and you'd have very little time to do other stuff. Just like being a shaman means your main duties will be doing shaman things, so too would the quest reduce your agency by forcing you to go do druid stuff. Varian is a king and a warrior, not a druid, but in canon he still had to go on various vision quests etc.
8. Druids are one of the classes most susceptible to external corruption. Warlocks are frequently corrupted, but at least they choose to get corrupted due to their actions, a druid is explicitly a participant in the many thousands of years of the 'War of the Nightmare' which is a constant battle against corruption in the druid magical realm that you go to when you sleep.
9. Speaking of sleep, you might arbitrarily fall into a coma occasionally, more druidy magic = more chance of comas, the most powerful druids sleep for hundreds of years. I think that would probably make for a pretty boring quest so I don't think I'd actually make you go through that, but its something to note.
 
Clans are one of the most interesting parts of character identity, and culturally important to the orcs, so I'll base the character choice around that.

Of the clans, the most interesting to me are the obscure clans, Burning Blade, Mag'har, Mok'Nathal and Twilight's Hammer.

Which means...
[x] Plan SleepyBeep
[x] Plan: Wandering Blademaster
leaning more towards the first one, as I do not particularly dig "For Azeroth" as a motivation.
 
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I don't know why it is, but for some reason, I can see this in my email notification, but I can't see it in SV?

As an aside, my first thought seeing that was "why is Varian Wyrn trying to be a sugar glider?"

[X] Plan: The Reverse Image
[X] Plan SleepyBeep
[X] Plan: Wandering Blademaster
I also like blademasters and wish they got more seeings, so voting for that too now.

GAH Damn you @FractiousDay :p why can't you just let us...you know...

Be ALL the things? Then we'd not have any worry about any problems like hard choices and could just T pose to assert our green dominance on Deathwing and Arthus all day! :mad::cry::D

(Nah seriously you doin a good job don't worry.)

Edit: Also to check when are we?

My knowledge of events in WoW is ok, but timeline not so much you said 10 years until Worgen, are we like...at the start of Vanilla?
 
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I don't know why it is, but for some reason, I can see this in my email notification, but I can't see it in SV?

As an aside, my first thought seeing that was "why is Varian Wyrn trying to be a sugar glider?"
I do hope all my pictures are working, I put all the clan banners in at the start and stuff as well.

Also Varians pose, yea... I can imagine him having misjudged the jump and bellyflopping onto the flood and awkwardly picking himself up as all the worgen pretend not to have seen.
Be ALL the things? Then we'd not have any worry about any problems like hard choices and could just T pose to assert our green dominance on Deathwing and Arthus all day! :mad::cry::D
If you want to do a lot of things I'd advise Blademaster probably. The Burning Blade already combine martial ability, (probably) arcane magic and fel magic into their combat styles and they have the fairly broad remit of either supporting or opposing the burning legion depending on which side of the clan they are. Within this broad remit they can follow various paths, you could go down the industrialisatoin route and use cannons against demons, you could go the diplo route and get alliances, or you could support the burning legion (who for the record are objectively correct in their anti-void aims), or whatever really. It would also be one of the classes which has a lot of personal power, rather than borrowed or bestowed power.

This is however exactly what I wanted really, I want there to be meaningful choices you have to make, and I want those choices to have drawbacks. Burning Blade would mean your instantly suspicious to all non-demony people given that most of the burning blade are still legion followers.

So yea, there are hard choices, but once again you're not locked into these choices. If you wanted to go shaman, then become a dark shaman because you need the power etc, then go more into dark shamanism and do some industrialisation that would be fine. I know lots of people like the empire building stuff so you could invent the Iron Stars by, for example, binding a couple of elementals into a metal case and creating a steam engine.
Edit: Also to check when are we?

My knowledge of events in WoW is ok, but timeline not so much you said 10 years until Worgen, are we like...at the start of Vanilla?
So lets say you're 5 years after the 3rd War. You're at the start of Classic, there are some weird bugs to the south, there's rumours of dragons in Blackrock Mountain and so on, but there's no immediate crisis like Naxx floating about etc. The canon timeline is stupidly compressed, so lets say in 5 years BC will start, then in another maybe 3 after that Wrath, then Cata, MoP etc. However, keep in mind some things will speed up or slow down certain events. Deathwing launched the Cataclysm as an invasion, and he was able to do this partly because the Nexus War weakened Azeroth's metaphysical stuff, so if the Nexus War didn't happen then maybe the Cataclysm would be later on etc.

As for Worgen, Malfurion woke up because Staghelm (who as I recall was poisoning him) was deposed in the War of the Nightmare, which occurred between Wrath and Cata. Again happy to answer specific questions about the timeline and other issues as they arise.
 
Thanks to FractiousDay's expanding on what being a druid would involve, I no longer want to be a druid @Mask, @Doomed Wombat if one of you could expand your 'SleepyBeep' vote into the full vote please, I'm taking the [x] out of my plan and making a new one.


[ ] Plan: Lost one world? Save the next.
-[ ] (Name)
-[ ] Male
-[ ] Mag'har
-[ ] Crafter
-[ ] For Azeroth

I was torn between this and

[X] Plan: The legion broke my home. I will burn them with my light.
-[X] (Name)
-[X] Male
-[X] Mag'har
-[X] Lightwielder
-[X] For Azeroth

@FractiousDay - I played warcraft many a year ago, and with the mess of storytelling that is "warcraft" we can't just make assumptions, also, as qm, you can throw out any worldbuilding you like. My points are:

- Will we need teachers to get anywhere at all with 'Lightwielder', or can we get a moderate amount of ability with just like... meditation and self exploration?
- If we need teachers, are we stuck trying to reach out to alliance faction, or is there a chance we can meet up with Draenei in a reasonable amount of time?

" Eventually, they managed to escape Draenor on the Exodar, a vessel of the naaru fortress of Tempest Keep, crash-landing on Azeroth; more specifically, on the Azuremyst Isles off the western coast of Kalimdor."
 
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I no longer want to be a druid
The Cenarian Circle collective breathe a sigh of relief :D
I played warcraft many a year ago, and with the mess of storytelling that is "warcraft" we can't just make assumptions, also, as qm, you can throw out any worldbuilding you like.
Yes I'm very aware of this, and I'm happy to answer specific or really general questions like 'druids do what???'. The last thing I want is you to make a decision and it being annoying for everyone.
- Will we need teachers to get anywhere at all with 'Lightwielder', or can we get a moderate amount of ability with just like... meditation and self exploration?
- If we need teachers, are we stuck trying to reach out to alliance faction, or is there a chance we can meet up with Draenei in a reasonable amount of time?
Generally speaking you'll need teachers to do anything of significance. Consider that at the start of the quest you might have a 'heal minor wounds' and a 'light punch' level of spells. These are undirected, crude and largely ineffective. You could acquire more ability over time, but you'd massively benefit from help.

Teachers can be found in a few places. The Tauren for example have a very small sect of light users, Orcs already use shadow magic (necrolytes) and the shadow is just part of the light. You could potentially go to various alliance places like Theramore, or to the Eastern Kingdoms and try there instead. Whether they'd teach you would be based on your ability to persuade them, their desire to prosthelytize, as well as other things. You could wait for the Draenei, but this would take a while. Having said that, the first Paladins (Uther et al) were all grown men before they became proper lightwielders, therefore if you wanted you to concentrate on other stuff and eventually learn more light stuff. As with most of the classes, you're still an orc and can still hit stuff with an axe.
 
I do hope all my pictures are working, I put all the clan banners in at the start and stuff as well.
Nah clan banners some of em worked, most of em were borked yesterday though...

Yeah Warsong and everything after bleeding hollow are borked...as is Varian still.

[X] Plan: The Reverse Image
[X] Plan: Wandering Blademaster

Not too interested in the Light (like it conceptually, but its a bit of a mess ATM.)
 
Not too interested in the Light (like it conceptually, but its a bit of a mess ATM.)
You know, I think you're missing something important. If you like the idea of the Light in Warcraft canon, but think that it has been executed poorly because "lol blizzard/activision forever war plots" - then consider who is writing this.

Someone who says something along the lines of:
I'd like to take a look at agency, and as such have given this quest a poncy title in the hope that it'll attract critically minded people who are interested in such matters as well as the normal questing crowd.
In an explicit attempt to attract equally poncy[1] (e.g. me) and has demonstrated good grammar and communication... I think they are likely to put honest effort into developing 'the Light'. And maybe even succeed.

Basically: If you like the concept, then this quest might one of your best chances to see it done well. Why not go for it?


[1] I can nod along to critically minded people saying critically minded things. Does that count? I hope that counts.
 
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