Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Hello everyone! The upcoming expansion Legion will introduce a brand new hero class into
the game, namely demon hunters which hopefully will be quite handy to have around when we're going to fighting against the legion. A lot of you came up to me with questions
like what’s the history of the demon hunters, how do they gain their skill and powers and
what might the backstory be for the demon hunters that we’re going to play? That’s
something I want to talk about in this video so ladies and gentleman, sit back, relax and I hope you’ll enjoy!
The first of the demon hunters is of course Illidan Stormrage, now I’ve done a full
video on him but we can’t really talk about the demon hunters without talking about the original
one. Illidan didn’t start out with those beautiful demonic wings, horns on his head, eyes
burned out...At first Illidan was a night elf mage thirsty for power and recognition.
During the War of the Ancients he did his best to assist the night elf resistance against
the Legion, eventually coming up with the plan to act as a double agent. He forced a
felbeast to act as his mount as he rode up to the palace like a boss offering his
service to the queen and the lord of the Legion. In truth, Illidan actually wanted to prevent
the queen’s plans but he wanted to do it from the inside. His talents, his magical abilities, allowed him to shield his real thoughts from
even one such as Sargeras and in the palace, he assisted Manoroth and the others by empowering
the portal they had created to summon Sargeras. Not even Illidan was strong enough on his own to bring
Sargeras into the world though, but he did come witha plan. With the use of a black dragonscale
belonging to deathwing, he would be able to track down the mighty aspect and steal the
powerful artifact known as the demon soul. This artifact would be all the power they
needed to make the portal work, get Sargeras to cleanse the world and Sargeras agreed to the plan.
This is taken from the novels where Illidan is at the portal, he offers his plans to Sargeras and Sargeras accepts:
His own amber eyes were lost, but Illidan’s new eyes did come with certain perks. At first, swirling
energies and constantly shifting colors assaulted his senses, but after focusing, Illidan found
out that he could see more clearly than ever before. He could even sense the level of power someone
possesed, like for example queen Azshara was extremely poweful and nearly hypnotic. Illidan
could see her spellwork nearly taking him over and on top of that, not only his eyes
were burned out, Tattoos now also covered his body. Sargeras had truly marked him as one of his
own and the markings amplified his abilities. In the end though, at the end of the story, Illidan’s plans of deceiving
the legion failed because of the old gods and he was imprisoned by his fellow night
elves. 10.000 years later, during Warcraft 3 they let him out of prison because the Legion had returned to take another
bite out of Azeroth and someone like Illidan, someone who knew how the enemy worked, how they thought, how they
planned, was a greay ally to have. His twin brother Malfurion didn’t agree though, he didn't agree with the
choice of releasing Illidan so Illidan left Malfurion and Tyrande to do their own thing, he came acros the
death knight Arthas who told him about the skull of Gul’dan and he decided to absorb the skull.
After drinking from the skull his powers increased, but Illidan's
body transformed even further. He now looked like a demon himself. He had horns on his head, he had bat like wings, but he did save the forest.
When Malfurion and Tyrande finally found Illidan, they didn’t even recognise him at first, so much
had he changed, but when they did...when they realised what Illidan had done, they decided
to banish him from their lands. The events of WC3 transpired, Illidan failed in his mission
given by Kil’jaeden to destroy the Lich King and he decided to take over Outland where we would eventually meet him again during the Burning Crusade.
Illidan had teamed up with the blood elf prince Kael’thas Sunstrider and he had begun training both
night elves and blood elves in the ways of the demon hunter. Now naturally they didn’t have a Sargeras
around to burn out their eyes or give them a nice set of tattoos so instead they had
to go through a series of complex rituals. The next information is taken from the World of
Warcraft RPG books and the RPG books have been declared to be non canon, so it's not officially part of the lore.
Bits and pieces of the RPG's have made their way into the official lore and this bit
from the RPG books, it seems very similar to what we've seen so far and it gives a very good explanation as to how those that followed Illidan's footsteps
gained a similar appearance. The book says the following:
This does seem very similar to the demon hunters that we're going to play as since they have an ability called Spectral Sight. The demon hunters apparent
blindness belies their true powers of perception. They rely on magically augmented sight to
detect enemies, even those that hide behind obstacles. This is taken from the demon hunter description on the Legion website so this has made it in so far. Now
The rpg continuous because there's more information:
Now all of this information from the RPG, it seems to line up with what we’ve seen in the previews, it seems to line up with the screenshots that they've given about the demon hunters.
So maybe, possibly the information from the RPG will make it into the official lore. Now
becoming a demon hunter on its own. We have these rituals, we have these transformations that they go through, but the whole training is not easy at all.
During the Burning Crusade we met with a night elf demon hunter, Altrius, and he had deflected from Illidan
since he saw that Illidan had become the very thing they were fighting against. He tells
us about the demon hunter training grounds at the Ruins of Karabor. He tells about the history of the blood elves joining them. This is what he says:
As a reward for his years of service, Illidan allowed Kael'thas to send him five warriors
to train under him. It would be the first time blood elves would be allowed to train
as demon hunters. The training was brutal. Illidan put Kael's
warriors through trials that would defeat most fully capable demon hunters. Three of
Kael's elves simply died in training - another one went mad and there was one who succeeded.
The one blood elf that went mad during training, he would later show up as a boss within Serpentshrine Caverns known as Leotheras the
Blind. During his fight we can see him struggle with keeping control over his demon inside,
so it seems like that piece of information from the rpg, the binding of a demonic spirit
inside the demon hunter, it seems like that bit made it in to the overall story as well.
The one blood elf that succeeded where all others failed was called Varedis and he had
such a gift, such a talent for the craft that Illidan assigned three master demon hunters
to train this blood elf further. Within a year, Varedis had surpassed them all, had surpassed his own teachers and he was as thirsty
for power as Illidan himself. He came up with the plan to find the book of fel names,
which is a tome said to contain the name of every demon in existence. Knowing a demons true name
gives a certain amount of power over that demon so Varedis made sure to
memorize the pages in the book and with all of his power, he was placed on the task of training
more demon hunters. As we follow the questline with Altrius, he
sends us on the task of collecting the book of fel names since without it, we simply wouldn’t
stand a chance against Varedis. His teachers, Alandien, Theras and Netharei (sorry if I butchered those names)
all of those teachers, they fall down to our might until finally we face of against Varedis. We're told to rip the pages out of the book of fel names since
this will weaken Varedis as he’s doing his metamorphosis thing and we take out the prodigy student.
So those are the demon hunters that we encounter on Outland taken care of, but
there are 3 more demon hunters, all night elves, that we can find in the game.
First there’s Loramus Thalipedes which you can find within the blasted lands. He was
part of a quest chain during classic in which you were send to take out the dreadlord Razelikh,
but Razalikh survived that encounter to make a return in the cataclysm. Loramus went out on his own
to hunt the demon once again but this time he was slain by the ogre Grol the Destroyer who literally ripped his body into pieces.. Adventurers were send out to claim the
body parts of Loramus. We put him back together with the help of the alter of storms and together with the demon hunter
they face of once more against the demon. With the knowledge of his true name, Loramus
has power over the demon, but Razelikh or Rakh'likh as his true name really is, does not go down
without a fight and he enters Loramus’s body. This is the moment we’ve been waiting
for, the moment that we planned for and with the stone knife of sealing we slay Loramus and Rakh’likh at the same time.
We might see Loramus in the future again though since as we slay him, he says “Leave me here, then, while I wrestle
with Rakh’likh in the next world. Your job here is done, heroes.” So who knows. He might show up in the next expansion, he might be around in twisting nether.
The second demon hunter was one added during the cataclysm, Feronas Sindweller who at first
seems to be the bad guy, but he turns out not to be such a bad guy at all. He’s in the
area killing druids, but sometimes our eyes can be deceived. These druids are actually
demons in disguise as Feronas shows us, while he also tries to show us a different side to Illidan’s
story. He shows the events of when Illidan picked up the skull of gul’dan, sacrificed
so much to do what had to be done,. He was able to cleanse the lands of the demoninc influences and what
did he get in return? He was banished. Illidan: "So be it...brother.
After opening our eyes to the truth, after showing us the other side of Illidan's story line, Feronas has a task for us.
He wants us to take out the leader of the emerald circle, Arch Druid navarax, who’s actually
just another demon disguising himself. After taking care of the arch druid, Feronas disapears after these events, probably taking
care of a lot more demons in the area, but there's one more demon hunter to talk about and this one you can find in Darkshore.
Buried beneath the maw of the void, the spirit of Telarius Voidstrider, herald
of the dark embrace awaits. This demon hunter is actually a spirit who's been killed by Maivh many years ago, but
he holds an interesting item called Writings of the Dark Herald.
The scrolls are vague and appear to be a piece of a much larger puzzle, but if you are not
mistaken, they seem to reveal some of the steps on the path to becoming a demon hunter.
The dark oaths and rituals necessary for becoming a demon hunter are frowned on by most of the
night elves, so this is likely something they would be very interested in keeping quiet.
We need to turn in these scrolls to finish the quest, but it’s interesting see that
scrolls describing how to become a demon hunter can be found within the world since we know
for certain that the blood elf demon hunters were trained by Illidan during his time in
Outland, yet the night elf demon hunters are up for speculation. The RPG states:
Considering that it said with the scrolls that certain night elves frown upon how to become a hunter,
it’s possible that some night elves they did not follow Illidan's teachings immediately, they found their own path towards becoming demon hunters.
I couldn’t find a solid example though of a demon hunter that did this. The night elf demon hunters that we see on Azeroth, the night elf demon hunters that I just talked about... They could have
trained themselves, they could have found their own path in the way of the demon hunter or they could have simply been send back by Illidan, or they could have made their own way
back from Outland after being trained by Illidan.
That's up for grabs, that's up for speculation. I couldn't find any solid source claiming that Illidan trained these
specific night elves but then again I also couldn't find a source where they found their own path so that's up for speculation.
Now what about the future? What can we expect for the demon hunters that we’re going to
play as? Part of the story has been revealed while a lot of it (obviously) is still being kept in the dark.
The background to the demon hunters that we're going to play as, is that these demon hunters were part of Illidan’s troops, the Illidari
who were imprisoned by Maivh after the fall of Illidan.
She placed the demon hunters within the vault of the wardens, but in the next expansion, in Legion, the burning
legion is making a return and the wardens believe that we’ll need the aid of the demon
hunters to fight back against the Legion. We're going to use the powers and the knowledge of the enemy against them so the wardens open the
cells, they release the demon hunters and they get to be part of our society.
Before that moment though, before the prison doors open up, you’ll start your story set around 10 years before Legion,
with a super secret mission given by Illidan before he was taken out. Illidan decides to send his elite
team on a so called suicide mission to a different planted called Mar’duun. I probably pronounced that one wrong, my apolegies, now this world was
used by Sargeras way back when to imprison the evil of the universe, but when he turned to dark side,
when he turned against the mission of the titans, he returned to the planet to release
the evil that he had imprisoned and form the Burning Legion. For some reason, Illidan thought
it was critical to go on this mission instead of helping him defend his seat of command
in Outland and we can only guess what exactly is going to happen there. They did say that
when all is said and done, players will understand what it means to be a demon hunter and the
true meaning of sacrifice. My personal hope for the story is that we’ll be given a reason
for Illidan’s so called madness during the Burning Crusade. Back then, the lore wasn’t
the best and they turned Illidan from this anti-hero who tried to do good, but just failed time and time again, into this crazy *** bad guy. I would love
to see a bit of story development explaining what exactly happened here, but only time
will tell what kind of story we're going to get. We’ll also get a new novel surrounding Illidan so I’m very excited about that, maybe we'll
even get a proper story line to the twin blades of Azzinoth since all we know right now is
that Illidan obtained the twin blades somehow from a called Azzinoth, but we don’t know
all the details as towhen did this happen, what was the battle like, why were these blades so legendary, why did they let
him keep his weapons even though he was imprisoned...all that good stuff, I'm really hoping that we'll get more details. We’ll still have to wait
a little bit for all of that to be revealed. It's going to be 2016 for all of that to hit, but hey! 2015 flew by, I'm sure we'll be in 2016 before we know it.