A Ramble About the Forsaken

It's been some time since I wrote anything on this blog. The truth is that, after spending most of the year working in Special Education, writing five novellas and two full novels, as well as helping out a project for Wycliffe Associates by checking the English text of a translation against the Greek, I've been taking a break from pretty much everything except my nine dollar an hour summer job and waiting until my regular twenty dollar an hour rest of the year job resumes in a couple of weeks.

And I've been playing World of Warcraft all summer.

It started out being just me, but eventually my whole family got into it and so my wife, son, daughters and I have been running through the Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor seeing new sights, killing monsters, going on quests together, and, in some ways, running the ultimate family summer vacation road trip without ever having to leave the house.

Up until now, I've created human characters, night elves, blood elves, orcs, Tauren, Dreinei and dwarves. Most of the time I've played either Paladins or priests, warriors or hunters depending on the race. I've identified more with the Paladins and priests than any of the others, but I've found that all the races have interesting and engaging histories and story lines. I've felt like I could empathize and come to understand the position and situation of all of them.

All of the races, that is, except one.

Up until today, I've been steadfastly avoiding the Forsaken or creating a Forsaken character. Let me explain why. The Forsaken are undead. For all intents and purposes they are a nation of zombies a la “The Walking Dead” except retaining all of their intelligence and personality. They look like rotting corpses. They excel in dark shadow magic, and most of the quests that I had encountered previously where they were involved seemed atrocious and dishonorable. I had absolutely no desire to be involved with them unless they were on the receiving end of my holy attacks.

But, after several months of playing very similar characters and seeing the same terrain over and over again, I decided to go ahead and try one; just to see what their starting area was like if nothing else.

It turns out that the Forsaken are, essentially, the people who got caught in a devastating plague during the events of Warcraft 3 and were left behind to suffer the plague's effects. They were transformed from living breathing husbands, wives, sons, daughters, farmers, soldiers, and loyal citizens of their kingdom into almost mindless zombies enslaved to the Scourge, a demonic, brutal faction that is a mutual enemy to both the Horde (orcs, trolls, Tauren, Blood Elves, and Forsaken) and the Alliance (humans, night elves, dwarves, Dreinei, and gnomes).

The undead who became the Forsaken were able to free themselves from their enslavement, and began to fight against the Scourge like everyone else, but found themselves rejected and hunted by the friends, family, and nations to which they had formerly once belonged. They are a broken people, angry and in pain on many, many levels, and unable to get any kind of relief. Even the relief which death was supposed to bring.

I've found, in the story lines of the starting quests, a woman who just wants a blanket to keep warm because she's always too cold now. Another woman wants to bring peace to the soul of her friend by making sure her husband is buried in the grave next to hers. Still others just want justice for what has happened to them; something which always seems just out of reach. And yes, there are others who are so angry and in pain that they want to take their revenge by seeing all of those who are still living and breathing either become like them, or dead.

As I played through the first few levels of my undead priest, I couldn't help but think about all the very real people I have encountered and know about who, on first glance seem equally twisted and atrocious; the kind of people whom I would just normally try to avoid. How many of them are also that way because of a “scourge” to which they were just innocent bystanders? How many of them are now equally as broken, hurt, and angry and have become “forsaken” by all the “good” people, that is, those who claim to represent the light? How many of them are just trying to put their lives back together the best way they can, even if it's not the “right” way, because that's all they can do? And how many of us condemn them for it when it doesn't live up to our standards of “the right thing to do”? How many times has such an attitude driven them even further into anger, revenge, and shadow?

Warcraft is just a game. But the attitudes and story lines it presents are something of a reflection of real world problems like self-righteousness, racism, intolerance and pride and the damage all of these can wreak on both the least significant of families and the world as a whole.

I plan on returning to writing and reflecting more here in the near future. I think my time binging in Azeroth is coming to a close, although I think I will still visit from time to time. But, as with everything, I think it will have been worth it if I can learn from the lessons those stories try to teach.