Undead can only be raised from dead human?

[kejer]

Nice catch about that ancestor quest, I was wondering why there were vrykuls.

Mostly this, however not exactly true.

Forsaken, as their name suggests are scourge free from their masters grip, what happened back in W3TFT, when the lich king was under the attack by the Illidan forces and was loosing his might and control over his own undead minions.

Sylwanas, as a "higher level" undead brought back to life by Arthas (avatar of the Lich King himself) was one of the first undead to regain her free will.

However, the Scourge in Loarderon, were not only humans at that time. The Plague was meant to turn humans into mindless zombies, yes, but many of the scourge minions were also raised from the high elves when the siege of Silvermoon took place. There was even a quote on one mission, if I remember correctly, that says "How can we stop them? for every one we kill 10 of OURS fallen warriors raise in their place" or something like that, said to the Sylvanas when they were defending their city.
So, nowadays Forsaken are, imho a composition of human/elves origins. However only Lich King was free in "what do i can bring back to life, I wonder" and Arthas as a avatar of the Lich King was also limitless in that matter. With them gone, gone is the power to raise "anything" as an undead who can have a free will.
Sylvanas herself can't raise anything, and she's using for that Valkyries who however can't raise, with free will, anything but humans and Vrykul.

So, considering that FORMER forsaken were of human/elves origin, now the new forsaken can be brought to life only from humans/vrykuls (there is even an quest in MoP, while playing an undead that shows Your "ancestors", only humans/vrykul are shown there, and as an undead who was brought back to life AFTER the events of W3 the frozen throne, it imho, clearly shows that forsaken can only be made now from those "corpse sources")

On a side note, as many stated already, ANYTHING can be brought back to life (anything but worgens i assume), yet those brought back to life won't be a part of forsaken as they won't have their free will, and they will be bound to whomever they would call their master. And most probably, when their master (call it necromancer woo hoo) dies, they are decimated as a power that granted them undeath is gone(or maybe not, but they'll remain mindless either way).

---------- Post added 2013-06-20 at 06:37 PM ----------

Going to re-rephrase my original question, post title and the first two questions were actually setup for the Sylvanass SoO plot question.
If Sylvanass is after horde fallen forces for Val'kyrs to bring back as new Forsakens, does that mean her Val'kyrs' power expanded to other races or bliz is screwing up the lore?
Let's assume she is not after fallen horde warriors' body parts for new abomination.

A new question for alliance players, will you quit the game if Varian dies and gets turned?

[delus]

Nice catch about that ancestor quest, I was wondering why there were vrykuls.



---------- Post added 2013-06-20 at 06:37 PM ----------

Going to re-rephrase my original question, post title and the first two questions were actually setup for the Sylvanass SoO plot question.
If Sylvanass is after horde fallen forces for Val'kyrs to bring back as new Forsakens, does that mean her Val'kyrs' power expanded to other races or bliz is screwing up the lore?
Let's assume she is not after fallen horde warriors' body parts for new abomination.

A new question for alliance players, will you quit the game if Varian dies and gets turned?

Maybe it always was in her power.

[ro9ue]

will you quit the game if Varian dies and gets turned?

Varian becomes Forsaken? WHAT?

[huth]

Actually...Forsaken = Undead, there's not even room for doubt.

I think what we should be saying to clarify is:

All Forsaken are undead, but not all Undead are Forsaken.

You're contradicting yourself there. If not all Undead are Forsaken, Undead != Forsaken.

[kejer]

I wish bliz had the balls to do this. Wow is almost 10 years old, it's time to jump the shark!

Varian becomes Forsaken? WHAT?

[leaks]

Going to re-rephrase my original question, post title and the first two questions were actually setup for the Sylvanass SoO plot question.
If Sylvanass is after horde fallen forces for Val'kyrs to bring back as new Forsakens, does that mean her Val'kyrs' power expanded to other races or bliz is screwing up the lore?

Assuming she actually does try it she might not need them for it. The Forsaken were looking for other ways to solve their numbers problem before they got the val'kyr. And as I mentioned they've already raised and recruited one of Kel'thuzad's students. Maybe they trained up some necromancers or Helcular will be there himself, whipping out his rod all over the place.

[Skorpionss]

All the UD players support this conclusion.
For other races you become deathknight?
All the banshees and Sylvanas are from dead high elves I suppose.
So what's Sylvanas doing in SoO? She should follow ally troops instead of horde.

Depends of what method you speak of Sylvanas can only raise humans with the help of val'kyr and the plague, Arthas could raise anything...
Perhaps she found another way or a way to boost the strength of the Val'kyr...

[Maxilian]

Depends of what method you speak of Sylvanas can only raise humans with the help of val'kyr and the plague, Arthas could raise anything...

True but as @Leaks says above the forsaken have one of Kelthuzad's students and he was trying to find a way to ressurect worgen, maybe he found a way to ressurect all other races (Remenber... MAYBE!)

[crakerjack]

If you can't answer that question for yourself, then you're an idiot. The obvious reason why undead are just humans and nothing else, is because they didn't want to make the undead look like every other race in the game... it would ruin the diversity of the game. Even undead don't really look like humans... you can tell they came from humans, but when you compare them to humans, they don't really look the same. It's easier the way it is, maybe they could change it, but they don't really want to. Go play WC3 if you want something else rather than undead humans.

[Grocalis]

Going to make this simple. This is all information gained from the old website lore, the game, and novels.

When Ner'zhul created the Plague, he designed it specifically to attack humanity. He needed something that could sweep over the land quickly and decimate the highest population centers of Lordaeron, thus why he engineered the plague to quickly and violently transform the humans into zombies, and over time, the infection would further evolve them into ghouls. Any non-human that got sick with the plague simply died a horrible death over a longer period of time.

Due to it's limited scope, any raising of other races, like the High Elves, would have to be carried out through conventional necromancy. This is why Arthas had to siege Quel'Thalas, rather then just letting the plague obliterate it. The plague wouldn't be able to viral attack the High Elves and turn them in the same way, thus he instead marched the Scourge north to take the city by pure force. Sylvanas herself was killed by Arthas and through his gifted necromancy, turned her and her closest followers into banshees. These banshees would later reclaim their old bodies, becoming the Dark Rangers that now work a limited but skilled force at the side of Sylvanas.

Because for every undead creature raised conventionally there was dozens raised through the plague, the vast majority of the Forsaken are human. More specifically, they are the ones that were still in the process of transforming into Ghouls. This is why their bones started to expose and their hands became like claws. They were mutated, but not enough that all free-will was lost.

When the Forsaken formed, they had no necromancers, since the necromancers stayed with the Scourge. Because of this Sylvanas had no way to replenish the Forsaken population, and for a long time the Forsaken started to simply dwindle away with each loss. It was after the death of the Lich King that Sylvanas made a pact with the Val'Kyr, which in turn allowed her to raise more people from the dead.

However, the Val'Kyr gained most of their advanced necromancy from the Lich King directly. Without him feeding his power to them, they became limited in what they can do. They were designed as a way to "ascend" their fellow Vrykul into undeath, and thus that power was all that remained. Since the humans were descended of the Vrykul, this meant that the Val'Kyr could raise them, and only them, into new Forsaken. Any other race would require the Val'Kyr to kill itself to achieve, which they only utilize for special circumstances, like bring Sylvanas back from the dead.

TLDR: The majority of Forsaken are humans, and thus the playable ones. There are few other races in the Forsaken, most being high elves who were killed by Arthas and raised as banshees, who later became Dark Rangers. The Forsaken even with the help of the Val'Kyr are still only limited to human conversion, as attempting to raise the dead of other races ends with the Val'Kyr dying.

[kejer]

After some googling I failed to find this "student of Kel'Thuzad" except Helcular, so i assumed they are the same necromancer you guys are talking about.
Yes he is working on "find a method by which to remove the Worgen's immunity to the curse of undeath."
But one thing i need to point out, even if he succeeds, worgen=human with a curse.

[Florena]

From what I recall, Worgen DKs were raised by the lich king according to a blue when this question was raised, and the Val'kyr, especially now without a proper LK, are not capable of raising them, and can only raise humans.

Maybe this is because they were once vrykul and vrykul are ancestors of humans?

Come to think of it their main function in wrath was raising Vrykul, either 'empowering' the strong or 'punishing' the weak, I forget what the terms were for the vrykul that passed and failed their tests. I don't recall them doing a lot of raising other races even in wrath.

[leaks]

After some googling I failed to find this "student of Kel'Thuzad" except Helcular, so i assumed they are the same necromancer you guys are talking about.
Yes he is working on "find a method by which to remove the Worgen's immunity to the curse of undeath."
But one thing i need to point out, even if he succeeds, worgen=human with a curse.

Yes, that's who I meant. I don't actually expect there to be anyone being raised, personally. I'm guessing it's just a response to Sylvanas suggesting it or even just mentioning it. She probably just gets annoyed and says something along the lines of "if only I could" and gets scolded for it. I was just making guesses as to how it could happen if she actually does try it.