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Know Your Lore: The mysterious connection between spirit healers and the Val'kyr
The World of Warcraft is an expansive universe. You're playing the game, you're fighting the bosses, you know the how -- but do you know the why? Each week, Matthew Rossi and Anne Stickney make sure you Know Your Lore by covering the history of the story behind World of Warcraft. They are about the only thing you're happy to see when you're dead. Beings of ghostly blue, these winged saviors of Azeroth's adventuring masses have been there since the very beginning of WoW, and are the closest thing Azeroth has to angels. They possess the power to bring the dead back to life, when said adventuring masses have had their adventuring cut abruptly short by accidentally pulling one or two more murlocs than they could handle. Gracious and kind, it seems that these beings only exist to help Azeroth's lost find their way back to the world of the living. You only see the true scope of their power when you're dead, and it's safe to say if you're coherent at the time, you're probably not prepared or happy for what comes next. From quietly resting beneath the earth to a shambling mass of undead material, these ghostly creatures exist to pull the dead back to life -- at a cost. Where once was a whole and complete adventurer, now there is only forsaken; a living corpse with free will, although it's questionable as to how much of that will is actually free. One brings players back to life; the other curses them with a life of undeath. Is there a connection between the benevolent spirit healers of Azeroth, and their dark doppelgangers, the Val'kyr? It's a question that's been posed to me on more than one occasion, and since we've slogged our way through the order of the Warcraft cosmos, it's one we can take a look at now.
