Runeswords
So it occurs to me that I've put a lot of thought into what exactly a runeblade is. And that others might have done the same. So it makes sense to discuss and air our vairous takes on these things, and see what makes sense, so no one ends up blocking someone else's RP.
From the sourcebook Alliance and Horde Compendium it indicates that in order to become a death knight (prestige class), a specific weapon was forged for the neophyte, and they had to swear themself to the Lich King:
To become a death knight, a Paladin must vow before Ner’zhul (or one of his designates) to serve the Scourge, be accepted, and then receive a vampiric runeblade forged specifically for him. Once the runeblade is used to corrupt his holy powers and turn a hero into a death knight, it becomes that knight’s personal weapon and is slowly charged with the life energies of those it injures and slays thereafter. Death knights are immune to attempts to alter their alignment magically. Holy weapons and spells that specifically target those of evil alignment (such as holy smite), however, do extra damage to death knights. A death knight gains the ability to inflict disease upon a touched target, as per the spell contagion. Death knights may project a beam of necromantic energy, called Death Coil that unerringly strikes its target. Similarly, undead creatures are healed of a like amount of damage when struck by the death coil.
The death knight may summon the dead to fight alongside him in combat. This ability is similar to the animate dead spell. As he continues to embrace the darkness, the life force of the death Knight ebbs as it is focused into strengthening and maintaining his physical form. An experienced death knight discovers how to leech the life force of those he slays in combat. For each living creature he kills, the death Knight recovers some of his health. A death knight can become undying; in doing so the death knight becomes immune to all death spells and magical death effects. This immunity does not protect the death knight from other sorts of attacks such as physical damage, poison, petrification or other effects even if they might be lethal. A fully trained death knight may project an unholy aura, in a ten-foot radius that will heal damage to any undead controlled by the death knight and/or to those of evil alignment allied to the death knight, divided among those in the area of the aura’s effect as chosen by the death knight. The death knight can also heal himself. Those of good alignment take damage instead.
From Wowwiki:
"Just as the blade rends flesh, so must power scar the spirit."
Vampiric runeblades are empathic weapons given to new death knights by the Lich King Ner'zhul or one of his designates to turn them into death knights. Once the runeblade is used to turn a hero into a death knight, it becomes that knight's personal weapon and is slowly charged with the life energies of those injured and slain thereafter.
Death knights are now few and far between, but their legacy lives on. The runeblade is one example of their terrible power. It channels life force, which bestows a kind of life upon the blade itself. Though not very intelligent, the runeblade has a strong survival instinct.
When a death knight who owns a runeblade is destroyed, the sword dampens its powers, taking on the appearance of a nondescript magical weapon. It uses its empathic powers to manipulate its next owner — encouraging feelings of possession and anger, discouraging kindness and altruism. Once it gains enough control over its owner, it encourages him to seek out the secret places where death knights still dwell. Only then can the runeblade accomplish its goal of gaining a new master.
After rolling a Death Knight and doing quests, you are given the following quests directly concerning your runeblade:
Quest:The Emblazoned Runeblade
Objective
Search the weapon racks in Ebon Hold for a [Battle-worn Sword] and then use it on a runeforge to craft a [Runebladed Sword].
Return the Runebladed Sword to Instructor Razuvious in Ebon Hold.
* [Runebladed Sword]
Description
A weapon rack in Ebon Hold
The single most important piece of equipment to a death knight is the runeblade. It is through the runeblade that a death knight commands the powers of frost, blood and the unholy. The runeblade also acts as a vessel to store the death knight's runic power.
The time has come to create your first runeblade. Search the weapon racks on this floor and locate a Battle-worn Sword. Once found, take the sword to a nearby runeforge and use it to create a runeblade.
Progress
The runeblade is an extension of your being. A death knight cannot battle without a runeblade.
Completion
Well done, <name>. You have successfully created your first runebladed weapon. With it you will sow the seeds of chaos and destruction! In your wake will be a bloodied field of battle, littered with the corpses of all that would dare oppose the Scourge.
You will learn: Runeforging
You will also receive: [Runed Soulblade]
Quest:Runeforging: Preparation For Battle
Objectives
Instructor Razuvious in Ebon Hold has commanded you to use your Runeforging ability to engrave a rune [of your choosing] upon your [Runed Soulblade].
You may freely replace the engraving upon your weapon at any time, so long as you are near a Runeforge.
* Weapon Emblazoned
Description
The mark of war is etched indelibly upon your soul, death knight. You have learned the dark art of runeforging and with it you will engrave runes of power upon your weaponry.
Preparations for battle must be made. Return to one of the runeforges, here in the Heart of Acherus, and use the power of runeforging to emblazon your weapon with a rune of power!
Return to me when your blade glows with dark energy!
So as I've read and interpreted that lore along with ingame lore, here's how I figure it:
When a death knight is either raised to serve, or kneels before the Frozen Throne or a designate of the Lich King to become a Death Knight of the Scourge, a portion of his or her soul is sectioned out from the rest. This process occurs willingly or unwillingly, and what he or she is given or crafts, a runed soulblade, is ultimately that fragment of soul forged into saronite. It's an intimate, semi-sentient part of the death knight, which is likely even darker and more semi-sentient than even the various sections of lore indicate. Because it's made out of the same stuff all the starting DK gear is - saronite.
Which is, as we recall, the madness-inducing black blood of Yogg-Saron, congealed and forged by the Scourge. The god who makes people go mad through whispers into their mind.
So in my bubble of RP, Ythgar's sword is the very worst portion of his soul, sliced out using Scourge magics, forged into a blade of congealed blood of an Old God of death and madness, and etched to resemble various weapons every time he runeforges it at a runeforge. I fail to see otherwise how a semi-sentient evil sword bound to your being could be discarded and replaced due to ingame stats and upgrading gear, otherwise. The blade alters its shape as other weapons have in the past to be of the greatest use. As Ythgar no longer actively serves the Scourge, I also imagine that the semi-sentience of his vampiric runeblade (Blood spec) would suggest that it and he do not always at all work toward the same ends. It is a hunk of evil metal infused to be even more evil and controlling - it wants him Scourge again, and its goals are aligned with the Scourge. This promotes a level of tension within the character, as not only is a portion of his very soul trapped and held in corrupt metal form, forever prevented from being redeemed or purified, but he is literally divided in terms of his goals. Every time he relies on the weapon for power (rune tap) without the balancing energies of priests or paladins channeling the Light through his form to burn away the Scourge taint before it forms, he is risking losing the delicate war and fine balance between his dark Scourge self under the LK's power, and his humanity which seeks redemption and forgiveness.
So that's how I figure runeblades. I was thinking today that if they're all forged of saronite, and infused with dark magic and souls, it'd be cool if they were all in a semi sentient hive mind thing and all pushing to tip their free-willed masters/partners over the edge.
How do YOU each RP your runeblade? Do you RP it?
I dunno, I don't see
I dunno, I don't see anything in those passages about removing a portion of the DK's soul, nor about the blades having to be made of saronite. I do entirely agree that, in an RP sense, they should not be replaced.
It sounds like they aren't particularly interested in corrupting new bearers, they just want to be in the hands of a death knight, and can manipulate people in some degree. As far as being aligned with the Scourge, it's highly probable. But note what the blade wants the wielder to do. It doesn't want them to become a new DK, it doesn't want to be returned to Ner'zhul, it doesn't want them to fight for the Scourge. It wants them to get the blade to a new wielder.
In fact, based on what those passages say, I would interpret them as being jealous and not particularly friendly to one another. If a blade's bearer is lost, then they can find another - but only if the others don't already have their own runeblades. So it'd be to each blade's advantage to be the only blade in existence.
Another, related, question, is the forging of Shadow's Edge and then Shadowmourne, and comparison of these weapons to a runeblade. How similar are they, how different, and why?
Standard disclaimer: these are all just my (quick) opinions on this stuff. Do what you like in your bubble.
In mine, were I playing a DK, his runeblade would only want to be used. That's it. To kill, to consume souls, to unleash his powers through itself. Like a junkie crossed with a starving man, I suppose.
Dum Spiro, Spero
Dum Spiro, Spero
Interesting stuff and
Interesting stuff and thoughts. =) The reason I interpreted a soul portion being in there was because what one recieves upon completing the first quest is a runed soulblade. Frostmourne drinks souls as we know, as does Shadowmourne, whatever we want to call it - sentient or semi-sentient vampiric runeblade? I don't know! - so I've tended to assume that like the sword all of these blades are evidently a deliberate reference to - Stormbringer of Michael Moorcock fame - the runeblades are souldrinkers. Just my take, mind you, and excellent point on the jealousy aspect. I hadn't thought of that and it makes sense.
I mostly assume saronite because that's what all the DK starting zone gear is made of, and evidently it's what the Scourge use above anything else for metal and imbuing things with power. It seemed logical that if you were RPing the prestige class style DK, with a semi-sentient vampiric runeblade specially forged for you, it would likely be forged from saronite as that's what the Scourge use. Just how I read it, mind you!
The gods forgot they made me, so I forgot them too.
I listen to their shadows - I play among their graves.
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Sir Thomas More: I think that when statesmen forsake their own private conscience for the sake of their public duties, they lead their country by a short route to chaos.
When a man takes an oath, he's holding his own self in his own hands like water, and if he opens his fingers then, he needn't hope to find himself again.
I think the soul sucking
I think the soul sucking thing is unique to Frostmourne.. I could be wrong though. I'm very far from being an expert on the lore..
"How do you expect to beat me.. When you're not wearing any pants!" Cartoons and their strange nightmares...
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"I don't want any trouble. I just want to be alone and quiet in a room with a chair and a fireplace and a tea cozy. I don't even know what a tea cozy is, but I want one."
If it's not clear by now how
If it's not clear by now how I play my Runeblade, don't think it ever will be. I consider it very much a part of my troll here, but it's a matter of his perspective in how he interracts with it. All told, he's a gentle soul. Rather, the parts that remain separate from Sefu, the Blade, are gentle and easily forgiving and categorically 'nice.' The chafing comes about when Sefu, as the angry, selfish, unforgiving, xenophobic, very Amani, hateful bits of his soul, come to recognize that he's growing 'soft.' It's a very similar conflict to yours, Ythgar, but Aji never really had a means of controlling it. He was weak in life, and his means of reconciling the dark, deep-seated emotions that he associates with the Blade are few and far between.
Sefu himself just wants to kill things. He is single-mindedly consumed with the thoughts of rending flesh and generally ending lives. It's what he does. Since Aji has done very little recently in this regard, I've played him as growing restless, and, later, entirely obsessed with the goal of killing things for his own satisfaction, and when Aji couldn't deliver, he pushed the issue.
Thus, the Adventures of Sefu the Ravenous.
Some might disagree that the Runeblades are capable of doing much in the hands of another wielder, but if they spend their existence absorbing the life force of others, who's to say what sort of power they have on their own? I put Sefu outside of the hands of my wielder, Aji, as more a means of experimentation, at first. As this whole scenario has grown and progressed, I've found it really easy to believe that one of these decidedly dark entities could, in fact, play to the whims of a non-death knight character and result in a temporary (or perhaps not so temporary, depending on the individual) corruption of the spirit as a result of contact with the Saronite and the entity trapped within.
I've also been very careful through the blogs to make it clear that while Sefu does desire blood and pain and death and suffering and all that jazz, he is still only 'whole' in the hands of his bearer. It's an interesting dynamic, mostly because Aji and Sefu share a mutual hatred for the other, but in order to reach their full potential as a single entity, they have to be together.
Nutshell'd: I consider the Runeblade to be a separate, sentient entity, but only to the extent that they have goals and will attempt to reach them through their available means. They are also deeply tied to their Death Knight counterpart, and represent the parts of them that were suited to the form of a blade: Hatred, malice, a desire to end all life (bit of a Scourge bent, eh?), etc, etc. I also believe they possess their own power in addition to that of the Death Knight, which is, in my mind, what makes them so powerful when the two are 'in agreement.'
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Silence is Golden.
Retired Main!
Mains: Honani (H), Aethelu (A)
Alts: Tekuja, Greesie, Tev, Jabari, Darma, Rhosyn, Nalaji
That's a really neat take on
That's a really neat take on it, Faraji - like but unlike my own, and with some neat twists! Very Elric's Stormbringer (or its brother sword Mournblade), which to me is the epitome of a runeblade, and which evidently was the model for Frostmourne and ironically also Ashbringer.
The gods forgot they made me, so I forgot them too.
I listen to their shadows - I play among their graves.
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Sir Thomas More: I think that when statesmen forsake their own private conscience for the sake of their public duties, they lead their country by a short route to chaos.
When a man takes an oath, he's holding his own self in his own hands like water, and if he opens his fingers then, he needn't hope to find himself again.
I don't think every
I don't think every runeblade is intelligent/sentient. A starting DK just grabs a rusty sword off the weapon stand and imbues it with some magical power, that's all. Frostmourne is an exception. Most, if not all, other runeblades are just magical weapons.
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Let me die without fear as I have lived without it.
The process of becoming a
The process of becoming a death knight in the Warcraft tabletop RPG and in WoW as a hero class are rather different. In the tabletop, the weapon made into the runeblade is certainly unique, possibly literally forged with the new death knight's soul. However, that RPG also requires you to be a paladin and then convert. And there's no possibility for a death knight who isn't 100% evil and sworn to the Lich King.
Besides being raised from all sorts of heroes, the DKs of WoW are not given a specific runeblade. They are taught to forge runes onto blades, making even a [Battle-Worn Sword] into a potent weapon. This difference was almost certainly designed with the idea in mind that WoW characters acquire and discard weapons the way a ferret goes through shiny objects. In this case, I think it's a deft manipulation, because with the power of the runes in the Death Knights' own hands, it helps me at least see how they can free themselves along with Morgraine when the Lich King has the Helm of Domination and Frostmourne. Sure, they're phenomenally powerful runic artifacts, that's why all those NPC death knights in Naxxramas and such places are still under his sway, but he made the mistake of giving too much autonomy and power to the ones we get to play and fight alongside, like the power to make their own runeblades.
Recently found an
Recently found an interesting article on DKs and their runeswords, using some examples from WoW and the RPG of how becoming a DK usually seems to work in lore, and the runeblade's role in that, as well as using Frostmourne as an example (which doesn't seem quite comparable, as Frostmourne is a unique artifact, but it can be a template for some functions of the lesser/more common blades).
Like our posts here, the post is another player's opinion and viewpoint on the Lore, but I thought the reasoning and wording sound enough to present here as another idea on the matter.
I've tried to play DKs myself, even made a few blogs for one, but I can't seem to keep them around for any length of time. Part of it is my difficulty with melee classes, maybe (casters are much more intuitive for me), and part of it is the general "feel" of the class story and mechanics wise. Otherwise I'd delve more myself into the ideas of how and what a runeweapon is and how it'd work for my pov of the game.
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Alt chars: Daevra, Alynore, Lormar, Aerella, Lilane
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I think it's useful here to
I think it's useful here to conceive of WoW's death knights (and most player death knights) as the cheaper, mass-produced version of the originals. Remember that WoW's death knights were never meant to last; they were used to crush the Scarlet Crusade, but they were primarily raised as a tool to draw out Fordring at Light's Hope Chapel. This, I think, is why we have death knights who understand runeforging, but don't necessarily wield runeblades. Why give such a powerful weapon as a runeblade to a tool that will soon be obsolete?
Szeharia packs a Shadow's Edge, but I don't see it having any real affect on her; she's damn near immune to outside mental influence because something else has already quite a strong hold on her. Appropriately, she has one because she's got the wherewithal to wield the best. She does think it a validation of her power that the Lich King likes to have conversations with her, though.
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The wandering earth herself may be
Only a sudden flaming word,
In a clanging space a moment heard,
Troubling the endless reverie.
- W. B. Yeats, The Song of the Happy Shepherd
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So come on honey cut yourself to pieces
Come on honey give yourself completely
And do it all though you can't believe it
Youth knows no pain
- Lykke Li, "Youth Knows No Pain"
My own opinions...
To be fair I think everyone has very excellent points on the subject, and at some point everyone's own ideas do seem to fit into a general agreement on certain subjects, if not most of them.
My own take on the Runeblade is this:
Frostmourne is an example of a vampiric runeblade, i'd like to quickly quote the passage taken from WoWwiki:
"Vampiric runeblades are empathic weapons given to new death knights by the Lich King Ner'zhul or one of his designates to turn them into death knights. Once the runeblade is used to turn a hero into a death knight, it becomes that knight's personal weapon and is slowly charged with the life energies of those injured and slain thereafter.
Death knights are now few and far between, but their legacy lives on. The runeblade is one example of their terrible power. It channels life force, which bestows a kind of life upon the blade itself. Though not very intelligent, the runeblade has a strong survival instinct.
When a death knight who owns a runeblade is destroyed, the sword dampens its powers, taking on the appearance of a nondescript magical weapon. It uses its empathic powers to manipulate its next owner — encouraging feelings of possession and anger, discouraging kindness and altruism. Once it gains enough control over its owner, it encourages him to seek out the secret places where death knights still dwell. Only then can the runeblade accomplish its goal of gaining a new master."
Notice they use the words Empathic:
–noun
(Sounds like you and I read
(Sounds like you and I read and interpret that section pretty much in the same sense. I RP Ythgar much the same - though with a few different spins. I find the other takes also very interesting, and I personally think that it's up to each individual roleplayer how they RP their runeblade. And we oculd open a whole new question up - what about trollish runeblades like Sul'Thraze the Lasher? I recall it being described somewhere along the quest chain to forge it as being a runeblade of a kind.
Either way, I personally lean toward the 'section of self/sentient demonblade' myself, for my RP, because it fits how Ythgar is written, and I read far too much Michael Moorcock as an adolescent.)
The gods forgot they made me, so I forgot them too.
I listen to their shadows - I play among their graves.
__________________________________________
Sir Thomas More: I think that when statesmen forsake their own private conscience for the sake of their public duties, they lead their country by a short route to chaos.
When a man takes an oath, he's holding his own self in his own hands like water, and if he opens his fingers then, he needn't hope to find himself again.
I've taken a very similar
I've taken a very similar route to this. Daenyra has only ever tried to part herself from the thing once. And for every moment of every day that it wasn't in a sheath next to skin she was completely and utterly mad. If such a thing is created from a portion of your own soul, it is and will always be intimately connected to you. To even put the thing aside for a short period of time would take a great effort of will, and in the end she caved and retrieved it... if only to stop the scratching on her brain.