Allied Races thoughts : Human realms

[DatToffer]

I know the "Allied races speculations" threads are getting old. But with all the fuss about classic, I don't see much spoilers and datamining about the next patches. So I wanted to open a topic on "Shits that would be fun but might never happen anyway" -> the reason why I called it "thoughts" and not "speculations".

I really loved the Alteraci human Fan concept from shoc , and it made me wonder... What if the other human realms appeared as allied races ?

When you think about it, you already have a separation of human kingdoms in races : Stormwind are the standards, Lordaeron has undeads, Gilneas has worgen and Kul tiras has the tough guys. Of course it's never all the population who is made different, and you get alive people from Lordaeron, non-worgen gilneans and even thin human from Kul tiras.

So what about the remaining realms : Stromgarde, Alterac and even Dalaran ? You never know when a global curse strikes or when Blizzard suddenly decides that part of your population was actually always gigantic and fat.

Well, I won't talk about Alterac because shoc's fan concept on the matter was actually pretty good (though I may not have put them on the Horde, but eh, they were betrayers after all )


Stromgarde : the Stromjar

Lore

Seeing the warfront in Arathi leading to nothing but an impasse, Trollbane looked for strength in the very roots of humanity : their titanic heritage. But on his way to find the power of the ancient keeper Tyr, he fell into an Horde ambush and died, but not without fiercely defending his life and his men. In fact, he delivered such fury on his opponents that he ended up catching Odyn's attention. And when he gave up his last breath, he found himself in the Halls of Valor, facing mister lava beard himself.

After hearing about the man's story and lineage, and seeing his determination, Odyn chose to grant Trollbane and his follower his benediction : Every son of Strom who would die for his realm would be picked by his val'kyr to be reborn into a Stromjar, a warrior of gold resolution and thunder fury, and be sent again to the battle. That way, the city of Stromgarde would always have watchers on its wall, and its inhabitant preserved from the depravation of the undead.


Appearances and Mount
As you can guess, the Stromjar would look a lot like the Stormforged Valarjar, except they'd be humans. I originally thought of them as just buffed humans, like super soldiers stature. But regular humans are already stupidly buffed, so I thought a little bit more pizazz would be alright.



Mount : Fenryr's child

A wolf with golden eyes and a shiny armor !




Classes and racials
Warrior (of course), Paladin, Priest, Hunter, Mage, Monk, Chaman

Intervention of the Val'kyr : Allows you to resurrect yourself upon death. Basically a Reincarnation.

Keeper of the realm : Increases your Versatility and Armor, also reduces the duration of sleep, fears and charm effects.

Feast of the Valarjar : Set out a glorious banquet to feed up your raid or party. Basically a scaling Banquet.

Vigor of the Valorous : While above 85% of your health, increases your critical strike bonus damage and healing. While below 35%, increases your haste.

Power of the Stormforged : For a short period of time, your auto-attacks and single-target techniques become storm-infused, granting them a cleave effect.


Dalaran : the Dragonbound

Lore

Even though he never wanted to take on the mantle of the Guardian, Khadgar knew that this power could never really be safe in the hands of a mortal. He also knew that Azeroth's magic original protectors -the Blue flight- could no longer assume that role. He then had an idea that could both safeguard the magic of the Guardian and preserve the dragonflight from extinction. Because in his mind, mortals owed that much to the dragons.

If he was able to divide the Guardian's powers and share it between a population of capable mages, that power would lose its appeal to any evildoers. But what was the part of the dragons in this plan ? Well, Khadgar knew of the weakness of men (and women, and any other really). So he thought of a way for the dragons to share this burden and keep the mortal mind in check. He gathered volunteers on both sides, had a bunch of adventurers collect specific amounts of crystals and stuff and researched Arugal's process on adapting the worgen curse to humans.

After weeks of study and a few failed experiments, Khadgar came up with a spell that could fuse a blue dragon and a mortal mage, spirits and bodies together. Conveniently, the power of the Guardian was the best element to bind the two creatures. The enterprise was successful and Khadgar fused together with Kalecgos, in a vow of eternal cooperation between the dragons and the mortals. Together, the mage and the dragon became an avatar of cheesy romance and corny comedy, but most importantly the leaders of the Dragonbound.

They were quickly followed by other mages and dragons, binding their lives together in order to share the power of the Guardian (though a certain Milhouse Manastorm was excluded from the event). By doing so, they could disperse the magic of the Guardian around Azeroth, making it difficult to retrieve for someone with bad intentions. And if need be, the Dragonbound could always gather round and work that power together.

The event led to many changes in the floating city, as more dragons and mortals involved themselves in the ritual. Whelplings and apprentices shared study rooms, looking for partners for the binding. Dalaran was a theater of the Nexus war, but it was now becoming an utopia of cooperation between the two species. That initiative quickly spread, and other dragon flights and races worked together to find ways to reproduce the process (leading us to a class of Dragonkin, because I liked the concepts I've seen there), ways that were suited to their natures.


Appearances and Mount

Now, you see where we're getting. Dragonbound would have an updated model of Drakonid together with a human form, pretty much like worgen.



Mount :

That allied race wouldn't need a mount. Instead, they could just shapeshift to a drake (Dragonkin for mount ground, Drake for flight)


Classes and racials
Mage (of course), Warrior, Rogue, Hunter, Monk, Priest

Breath of the Guardian : Breaths a cone of pure magic, eradicating the magical buffs of your enemies and debuffs of your allies and yourself.

Resonance : For each other Dragonbound in your party, you gain increased Haste, Mastery, Critical Strike and Versatility.

Eye of the Kirin tor : Increases the radius at which you detect invisible foes. You deal extra damage for a time if you force them out of stealth.

Dragon Friend : You're immune to fall damage. When you're about to die, you instead get stuck in an iceblock, healing up to 20% of your health.

All about magic : Increases skills in Enchanting. You sometimes get bonus components from Disenchanting.


Hope you enjoyed this, don't hesitate to talk about your takes on human realms, even the ones already done by Blizzard if you wish !

[Kyphael]

Nice concept. Despite all the hate humans get from... er, human players, I do love the lore of all the different human kingdoms we've had and the more become playable, the better. I like that we have so many flavors of humans between like you said, Lordaeron represented as Undead, Gilneans in Worgen, Kul'tirans as monster humans and of course the regular Stormwind, I'm open to more, as well as more dwarf and elf variants too. Fuck the naysayers, this game exists because of Tolkien's works, and those 3 races remain the crux of all things fantasy, not just WoW, but D&D, EQ and most MMO's based on fantasy.

[DatToffer]

I myself am not a big fan of the humans as a whole. But even then, I must admit it's a damn shame we have what used to be kingdoms reduced to a pitiful ingame zone or subzone. And since adding story is more likely than rewriting it, I was thinking about giving some boost to those "secondary" human factions.

But you're right, even though everyone is fed up with elves, there's only so much you can do until you go round. People complain about too much elves, too much beast-men. But if you focus on the other, they will complain about too much trolls, too much dwarves and so on. I guess the idea is to take a variant, but work it enough to make it interesting and different from the others. That's the result I tried to get with these human allied races !

[Madkat124]

I'm a simple man. I just want some Stromgarde colors. I love red but I'm an Alliance at heart.

[Futhark]

I love both of these ideas. Trollbane is a little busy as one of my Horsemen back in Acherus, though

[DatToffer]

I'm a simple man. I just want some Stromgarde colors. I love red but I'm an Alliance at heart.

But players would be confused by red humans and think they are Horde or enemies !! D: I'm mildly joking, you must never underestimate how dumb players could be.

I love both of these ideas. Trollbane is a little busy as one of my Horsemen back in Acherus, though

I was thinking of the alive Trollbane of course. Danath who's currently fighting in the Arathi Warfront. I mean he does sometimes.

[therealbowser]

If we were gonna add Stromjar, I'd rather just see Vrykul. Don't get me wrong; I like Stromjar, I just don't see the point of adding them over vrykul, when vrykul are regularly asked for and, well, make more sense.

Honestly, though, making Vrykul an allied race feels like a bad idea. They are much too unique of a race to be an allied race. They should be a fully-fledge playable race, instead. Maybe alongside Ogres for the Horde, or something.

Drakonids are the same thing, except I can't fathom how they would be playable. Cool idea, though!

[DatToffer]

Yeah, Stromjar would be just gold and thunder humans. I'd see the vrykuls as a full race as well. It's just... Well same problem than ogres : they'd need to be made smaller to fit our doors. But they actually did it for the taurens (who are supposed to be bigger than what we play). But why not, after all ? How would you imagine them ?

The main problem I had with thinking the drakonids was to leave the other flights aside, that's why I mentioned a Dragon-related class. I've seen a few topics talking about Dragon riders or Dragon Knights and I found it pretty cool !