New Blizzard forum personality to focus on lore and story

In a break from tradition, I am not a member of the Community team; long have I gestated within the Story Development division of the Publishing Team, itself a division of Creative Development. My purposes here are myriad, but to mention a few:

- Increase the transparency of how we develop stories within our games and ancillary fiction.
- Encourage more constructive discussions of the lore, so that we may better understand your likes/dislikes in order to shape our future projects.
- To serve as a scapegoat for when something happens in the lore that you don't like.

Again, those are just a few of the reasons I will be monitoring and posting on the Story Forums (WoW, SC, Diablo). Perhaps you will discover more reasons for my presence?

Doubtful.

I remember when Nyorloth came to our department the cold, the twisted, the terrible Community offices of unnumbered crimes. Our manager had told me of him, and of the impelling fascination and allurement of his revelations, and I burned with eagerness to explore his uttermost mysteries. Our manager said they were horrible and impressive beyond my most fevered imaginings; and what was thrown on a screen in the darkened room prophesied things none but Nyorloth dared prophesy, and in the whirl of his papers there was taken from men that which had never been taken before yet which showed only in the eyes. And I heard it hinted abroad that those who knew Nyorloth looked on sights which others saw not.

It was in the cold winter that I went through the night with the restless Community moderators to see Nyorloth; through the stifling night and up the endless stairs into the choking room. And shadowed on a screen, I saw wailing forms buried under Global Writing Contest entries, and grinning faces hidden amidst ruins of cities. And I saw worlds battling against blackness; against the waves of destruction from ultimate space; whirling, churning, struggling around the dimming, cooling suns. Then the paper storm played amazingly around the heads of the spectators, and hair stood up on end whilst shadows more grotesque than I can tell came out and squatted on the heads. And when I, who was colder and more scientific than the rest, mumbled a trembling protest about paper cuts and ocular fortitude, Nyorloth drove us all out, down the dizzy stairs into the damp, hot, deserted developer offices. I screamed aloud that I was not afraid; that I never could be afraid; and others screamed with me for solace. We swore to one another that the Community offices were exactly the same, and filled with purpose; and when the florescent lights sometimes do fade we curse the electric company over and over again, and laugh at the strange faces we make.

What I know of Nyorloth is his inscrutable purpose; sinisterly sentient, dumbly delirious, only the Old Gods can tell. To look upon him now I see a sickened, sensitive shadow writhing in hands that are not hands, and whirl blindly past ghastly midnights of rotting creation, corpses of dead worlds with sores that were cities, charnel winds that brush the pallid stars and make them flicker low. Beyond these worlds vague ghosts of monstrous things; half-seen columns of unsanctifled temples that rest on nameless rocks beneath space and reach up to dizzy vacua above the spheres of light and darkness. And through this revolting graveyard of the universe the muffled, maddening beating of drums, and thin, monotonous whine of blasphemous flutes from inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond Time; the detestable pounding and piping whereunto dance slowly, awkwardly, and absurdly the gigantic, tenebrous Old Gods the blind, voiceless, mindless gargoyles whose soul is Nyorloth.