A year and a half or so after I started playing a Forsaken, it suddenly struck me: Forsaken might be really funny.
I thought a lot about how to play the emotions and personality of someone who didn’t have functioning glands to release the hormones and neurotransmitters that spur a lot of what makes us human. I was originally going to make that first Forsaken a horrible junkie, but I realized that without a circulatory system, it’d be hard for that to make sense.
Blizzard isn’t consistent on these kind of points, but I wanted to play a character that made sense to me. And I felt sober, cold, logical, and unemotional would sum up a Forsaken personality. While they wouldn’t have sudden bursts of passion or anger, they’d evaluate threats and consider long-term prospects. They would be consummate strategists.
They wouldn’t feel jealousy when someone got what they wanted, but they might plot to discredit them. They wouldn’t lose their temper in rage, but they’d eliminate threats to their power or well-being.
(Disclaimer: I am not a brain science person, philosopher or witch doctor. I am a dilettante.)
So recently I was thinking about these things, as everyone does, and I noticed that humour doesn’t seem like one of those glandular things. It’s more like one has an expectation and then that expectation is confounded, and it’s hilarious! Anyway it seems to me more like it has to do with cognition, perception, pattern recognition–that kind of thing–than with a zap of adrenaline or something. And I could be wrong, but…
I started imagining. Maybe, without constantly having your endocrine system shoot you up with endorphins and steroids and stuff, maybe the Forsaken would cultivate comedy as the only entertainment that really mattered to them. Since they don’t have to sleep, they’d have all kinds of time to develop jokes and polish their delivery. They would be in demand all over Azeroth. When the living spend their down time flirting and getting drunk, the Forsaken would be telling jokes.
Forsaken on the front lines of battle would be all “That’s not what your mom was saying last night in bed.” (Disclaimer: I am not a comedian. I am a dilettante.) Sylvanas would prank Garrosh something awful.
Undercity would need a fifth quarter for all the novelty shops and comedy clubs.
Next expansion, mark my words.
incomprehendium 