Also cause now I am actually annoyed I'm going to go do a rant on the shadow/the void and why it is objectively the worst magic for anyone who wants to be even vaguely heroic to pick, why I'm so ****ing hung up on it and why it is a terrible idea even before you consider that we have two other magics we were already investigating and finally why if we keep doing this we're going to likely end up dead or at least even worse off than before.
Part 1 the void is useless this is why
Setting aside the obvious consequences upon one's mental state upon using magic which generates feelings of "despair, doubt, and panic" in the users mind while also hiding reality half-truths yet also doing the assassin thing of saying "everything is an equal option" (if you don't see where I'm going here its the magic of being a ****ing positivist, the only thing that matters is me fuck everyone else I can do whatever I want)
the void is useless!
I don't mean this in a poetic sense I mean this in a very objective sense, shadow magic's main deals are
1. Mind rape
2. Corruption
3. Curses
4. Drinking other people's souls.
Note anything? Why yes,
every other tradition can do the same.
Void has nothing unique to it, so what's the main difference? Ah yes, scale and potency.
You know what else? I am very uncomfortable with the idea that to get actual use out of this tradition Grok needs to essentially break the minds of people, I was uncomfortable with the decision to sacrifice POWs to make an evil dog daemon powered by their tortured souls, but at least fel can chuck fire balls, Void magic's main attacks are shadow word pain and mind flay! One strikes the target down with agony the other literally turns their minds into pudding.
That is bluntly speaking useless to us both in an ethical sense, but also in the sense
@Jasten wants, for "new traditions."
It does not have anything that especially benefits a
warrior, whose job is to kill their opponents, but it doesn't have that at low levels.
What about at high levels? Well if you want to create not one, but
three different races of evil bug people it'll help you do that. One was more than enough why did the Old Gods feel the need to saddle Azeroth with three different varietals I don't know! In fact its four if you want to get technical, just to really hammer the point home, because apparently blizzard really has no originality.
Its also great if you want to build a parallel dimension powered by billions of tortured souls or seemingly irrevocably corrupt a dragon flight...or make fish elves.
Also very good for torturing people double checking what the void is good for really helps explain why so many torturers in wow use the stuff its perfect for their work.
None of these are things that are useful to Grok, which leads into the next point, that's a good damn reason that there were no void traditions on Azeroth or Draenor until otherworldly forces showed up (The orcs and a dying Naaru respectively). The void has no use in society much like objectivists it is anti societal magic, down to the fact that the citizens of the black "empire" were explicitly insane and needed faceless ones to more or less point them in the right direction. Its also the reason that of the two "long standing" shadow traditions, the one founded by Seline ended its first edition by murdering her because she preached caution, and the other is the
twilight fucking hammer!
Even going into a more mechanics focused sense and to reiterate why its not a great thing to use void magic is the only type that is actively excludatory. First to use it one must shove their head into the void, (if you shove yourself in even further the mechnic that represents how long until you have to pull yourself out is called insanity I wonder why?) Not only is this a thing of doubling down on the magic, but it also inhibits using spells from other traditions. Bliz eventually got rid of it, because priests found it frustrating to unable to heal, but the original lore justification stands.
Perhaps we can make our own techniques, say a shadow blade. However the actual
gods of shadow/void use it this way and I somehow don't think its because they want to try and be special and unique I think its because this is what void magic is best for. Every magic has a wheel house of things that its good at and this is what shadow magic does. To get it to a state where its not that we'd have to first
1. Invest excessively more effort into it.
2. Waste time doing that when we could be trying out another tradition that can do the same things for a fraction of the effort.
We could say use it to create a shadow sword like Jub's. I say why, when we could learn arcane magic and create a teleporting one, go back to elementalism and get our damn light sabre back, or a water sword to create a bendy one and that's just for swording people, never mind anything that isn't for stabbery.
To put it
very simply, there is a reason only 1/3rd of a single class actually uses void magic, but there's an entire class dedicated to using fel one is literally too evil for people to play as it. One is evil incarnate, the other is the thing that evil incarnate dedicated its existence to wiping the fuck out.
Part two, time management matters
I have reiterated this point so many times I feel like a ****ing lawyer, but we need to actually focus on getting shit done. In part this is due to personal life experiences and changes, but I also think that it should be common sense to everyone that focusing on things gives results, especially when said things are really complicated. Kinda like how you have to dedicate your life to science for years just in the hopes of becoming a surgeon not study for it in a few weeks.
Much like a surgeon Grok also needs to learn because if he does not people will die. Unlike most surgeons if he doesn't learn he might also die as well.
While Jub is specifically hunting us I do not fancy Grok's present chances against say a Necromancer or Death Knight. Hell I'm even cautious of an abomination quite frankly if an Ogre would be pushing it, Ogres are just occasionally too dumb to feel pain, they don't literally not feel it.
Then let us recall in the skies above is Kel'Thuzad, with an entire army of the same and worse (lets not even get onto my assumption that Akinos is being turned into a member of the four horsemen, but given that he was apparently not even in the top three I guess I was overestimating him.) That's just the worst, but point stands Grok is very mortal and there are many things that can kill him when he was already having trouble with an oversized bat.
As such we need to focus, and lacking muscles we need magic, but magic is complicated all magic is complicated really. So why the insistence on self-sabotage?
Unlike our survival we do not have time pressure on getting knowledge of shadow magic, there are a disturbing number of users who are far too willing to share, nor are we anywhere near to creating a magic tradition of our own, for that we'd need some actual goddamn magic. The thing we don't have and are likely to never have at this rate given how slow it is to learn 1, never mind
two types of magic, adding in a third is just utter foolishness,
particularly now.
Part 3 why this might kill Grok.
This relates to both sections above, but first Grok is depressed and this is not my opinion.
main ways to get over depression,
Hell the GM just reiterated it a little up the page very convenient for me thank you.
This is the perfect state for using shadow magic, it is after all the magic of what was it again "despair, doubt, and panic?" Ah yes, exactly the magic he needs pumping into his fragile brain at this point, the same magic that turned a large proportion of the orcish species into a nihilistic apocalypse cult.
Fractious has never been shy about pointing out that he will punish our actions well let me make a prediction (hubristic I know) that a depressed person, who starts using shadow magic, is going to turn into a nut job.
I can even back that up
This is Archbishop Benedictius
https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/w...est/scale-to-width-down/250?cb=20210327234530
I don't know why the pictures are not inserting, but I'll keep on!
Anyway he's a good chap Archbishop of the light in Stormwind, general good dude. Also as of right now real ****ing depressed!
And why wouldn't he be, he got pushed to his breaking point during the first two wars, then the scourge hit, he's questioning the light, his purpose, he's lost and he doesn't know where to go too or who to turn too. Then the twilight hammer showed up and he learned a bit of the shadow, and it offered him an out.
https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/w...ctus_HS.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20170731104215
"Freedom" it said and so he the Archbishop became the Twilight Father, successor to Cho'gal, attempted assassin of both Wyrnns and almost managed to let Deathwing destroy the world, from zero to monster in around 2 years in WoW's canon time line considering his corruption happened during BC and his death in Cata.
That's what I'm afraid of cause while Fel amplifies emotions like anger, Void actively produces negative emotions the ones designed to trap you in a cycle of hopelessness, offering false truths of an "out" but that out is essentially embracing the void AKA the nihilistic, somewhat objectivist oblivion that precedes literal oblivion.
Based on what we know yes Grok could be very strong in the Void rn, arguably there's no point in his life where he'd be stronger, and that's the ****ing problem.
As for the other I've already stated repeatedly that I think we're setting Grok up for death by not trying to make him strong enough to face the threats he wants to fight in his somewhat suicidal mind or the threats that are going to be fighting him whether he likes it or not.
Though given "Absolute worst" is a pretty high bar, I'll admit to beginning as a heavily skeptical party.
It is the absolute worst as certified by Warcraft Satan.
I don't trust his judgement on most things, but I am more than willing to believe him on this issue, when looking at the evidence.
If people who would otherwise traiters are given avenues to utilize their talents productively and disincentivized from being sketchy the sky is the limit. But without at least trying nothing gets done.
This would indeed be quite valuable.
Yes, it does not have to be the burning blade however and I do not think we have a proper way to stop them from being sketchy considering how many of them are likely current members of the burning legion fan club and how the magics they operate work.
alot the famous schools of the Ancient world here started as people sitting around in clearings chatting. I believe that there are enough intelligent orcs in the Burning Blade to explore both magical research/applications, and the actual theory to use it safely if given the chance.
Ok from a historical perspective this a funny thing to read considering how yes they were areas for discussion, and while they were very good at pushing thought, they were also wrong about a lot of things.
This maybe my personal hated for Plato talking, but I also find Aristolte especially amusing for how literally every scientific "fact" he discovered was logically correct, but wrong and how his influence managed to kill off the answers of people who were closer to being correct like Democritus.
Also lets me comment on another thing, too many cooks spoils the broth. Having a lot of perspectives is good, having too many is not.
Not specifically. The Cult are the undead organisation, but shadow priests exist outside of it. They may be remnants of Seline's tradition but without the old god influence from Xal, or they may be others who've independently discovered it. Some shadow priests are in the cult certainly, but not all. I also imagine people like the Night Elves have their own shadow priest traditions like the 'Guardians of the Crescent Moon' or something to do with the moon and shadows.
No the cult is explicitly founded by undead who found a bunch of her books which she stored away, apparently she stored away a lot of them all over the place. This is the canonical explination of where they all come from and while the cult is specifically the forsaken, given that they're all pulling from the same mentor and same source material I think they're broadly the same.
Also no if they do I imagine they were destroyed.
First, because Elune is almost certainly a being of the light, AKA the polar opposite of the void and seemingly one of the most powerful beings of the light in the entire universe.
Second they fought a massive war against the Quiraj and C'thun, only 900 years ago, did not leave a good impression.
Third, the emerald nightmare.
They've had nothing but bad experiences with it and the moon diety they worship would absolutely not appreciate it.
I suppose I should reiterate, but there is a reason no faction that isn't out to destroy the world entirely that also has a shadow tradition, not the ancient Zandalar, not the Mogu, not even the goddamn Pandaren.
The only one is the cult and well...I'm not 100% sure they're not either.
Akinos is also canon, I tend to use canonical characters when convenient.
I am aware, I was making a joke about it.
There's a particular action relating to Jub's delay which will bring this issue to the forefront somewhat.
Oh noooo how many people are going to die for this one I can't wait to see
Unclear, the rpg says there's stuff there at least, though I think if there was a massive city with lots of Nightborne in it there then someone would have noticed by now. I'll consider it more when you actually get there.
The city's sealed itself up in a massive barrier, that is also invisible or at least not permeable to light.
Hence why its pitch black inside.
where did you get that he was important and not just the only person they had for the job who could be spared.
