World of Warcraft®

I've only played through the starter zone for Worgen one time and my knowledge is kind of rough around that area, but I have a question.

In the near future I plan to change my old hunter Wulfgrin into a Monk for story reasons. Doing this leaves a yet to be named hunter open and I had an idea on something I wanted to try but was unsure if it could happen in lore.

Wulfgrin's long term pet has been a white wolf named Meatbag and has been at his side(in game) since the first day I tamed him. I have never changed him nor have I tamed a wolf of the same color and just named him again. He has been on every adventure Wulf has ever done and some can even say he is a legend in some of my older guilds heh. So you can imagine changing Wulfgrin has left me at odds on what to do with him since he can't go with Wulf on his future journey.

What I want to do is kind of "reward" the old pup for his services and make him his own master and leader of his own pack by having him take Wulfgrins place as the hunter.

I want to know if there is a way to do this. Meatbag was tamed as a wolf and is in fact a normal wolf. No magical properties, no curses, nothing really special. So no "oh, he was a Worgen the whole time??" senarios.

From what I can remember, the druids came to help the cursed find a way to be able to shift between human and Worgen through their powers(I think). Would it be possible to do the same thing if it were reversed (wolf to human vs human to wolf) using the same method?

Any help with this is welcome or suggestions. As I finish Roses background story, this is the next thing on the list and I want to get it right and have it be somewhat believable heh.

i am horrible with lore. i've been through the worgen starting area three times, but that's it. i've always thought about anything is feasible if done well. there have been a few well done dragon rpers in the past. of course with the vial of sands now everyone and their uncle is a rawr dragon. point being imo it's how you play it out. imperon and galahn might be able to help find some canon to back it up.

The ritual to bring balance between the wolf form and the human form took place at the great tree Tal'doren, a tree with a connection to the Emerald Dream, in the middle of the Blackwald in southern Gilneas; Daral'nir is its "counterpart" in the Dream. I (as Zherron) have twice conducted the ritual at the Howling Oak in Darnassus, invoking its power along similar lines. The full details of the ritual as played out in Tal'doren are here: http://www.wowpedia.org/Quest:Neither_Human_Nor_Beast

As to whether it can be reversed, turning an actual animal (as opposed to a beastman gone feral) into a sentient being...short of considering it Titan magic, since they did that crap all the time (or so it seemed), I'm not sure. But worgen masquerading as wolves has a precedent; there was a worgen in the Howling Fjord named Garwal, who masqueraded as a white wolf to take control of a worg pack near the border with Grizzly Hills.

Hm. There used to be an RPer around who played as a wolf who got stuck in night elf form (not to be confused with the night elf who thought he was a wolf, or the night elf who became a Druid of the Pack and turned worgen...wolf-humanoid stories are popular it seems!) I don't remember the details, but I want to say it was from a magical accident.

So...I don't see why not. You may get some odd looks, especially if you consider the worgen form a true wolf form rather than a werewolf thing. And read up on your wolf behavior...there's been a lot of breakthroughs in the past few years, and things like the old dominance theory have been overturned as wrong. Makes me want to bang my head against a wall when I see RPers still using that for their pack RP, when it has little to do with real wolf behavior...

The small background story I have for the pup is he is one of the surviving wolves from Wulfgrins old clan. Wulfgrins group was an explorer group that worked solely with wolves and as a coming of age tradition, Wulf had to tame his own when he was able.

As partly explained in Roses story(not yet posted on the realm forums), his clan fell in battle while exploring in the blasted lands. Wulfgrin, Meatbag and several other wolves did survive the attack. Taking the wolves as his own, Wulfgrin moved on to other adventures (yadda yadda heh). Even though Wulf is the master, Meatbag would be the pack leader in that ragtag bunch that survived the fall of the clan.

Meatbag I suppose is the leader not through dominate means as he is more the leader through age and kind of a caretaker of a group of lost pups. He is not the strongest of the group and at times I guess not the smartest either heh.

If you're wondering if there is any precedent in lore, then no, there is not.

The worgen history states that the curse first came about from a group of Druids, the Order of the Pack, who spent too long in their elf-wolf form (associated with the Ancient, Goldrinn) and were corrupted by it, being unable to shift out of it. With great sorrow, Malfurion banished them to the Emerald Dream to keep them from running rampant through kaldorei society and causing damage.

During the Second War, Arugal wound up summoning them back into the world. The condition was communicable, and once they got out of his control, they started running all over Silverpine. There's some shady stuff with the Scythe of Elune that accounts for the worgen in Duskwood, but they're apparently native to Kalimdor, as they started off as night elves.

The highly-communicable curse ran rampant in Gilneas due to its isolated nature, and would have torn apart the Gilneans, who were already embroiled in a civil war and fending off a Forsaken invasion, were it not for the timely arrival of the night elves, who had decided to take action to rectify the wild curse, since it was sourced with their people to start with. As the night elves at this point were part of the Alliance, they also brought additional forces with them to help repel the Forsaken from Gilneas. That... didn't work out so well.

A ceremony took place at the aforementioned Tal'doren that brought balance to the bestial and sentient sides of afflicted Gilneans. As mentioned, Tal'doren has deep ties to the Emerald Dream, and a Druidic ritual there rectified the curse's worst elements.

In theory you could "reverse" the curse to make a sentient worgen feral again, but I'm not sure you could use it to take a wolf and make them into a worgen. You might be able to come up with something involving Goldrinn's shrine up on Mt. Hyjal, but you should understand that Gilneans who found out about it would be appalled, and the night elves likely would as well: they feel bad enough about bringing worgen into Azeroth to begin with. ;)

A "gift from Elune" has done similar things. In example, legend tells us that Moonkin and Wildkin were guardians gifted to the Land of Night (old Kalimdor) by the powers of the White Mother.

Especially to special heroes of the Alliance, I could imagine that High Priestess Tyrande could be coaxed into gifting the noble pet of such a hero Elune's Boone.

It might be a bit of a hard sell, but if the character is a good one, I don't think many people would complain.

04/03/2012 05:02 PMPosted by Raoul

If you're wondering if there is any precedent in lore, then no, there is not.

Well, crap heh.

I might be stuck with "oh, he was worgen the whole time" after all.

Something I'm looking at now since my original plan has too many holes in it to stay afloat.

04/03/2012 03:00 PMPosted by Saavedro

But worgen masquerading as wolves has a precedent; there was a worgen in the Howling Fjord named Garwal, who masqueraded as a white wolf to take control of a worg pack near the border with Grizzly Hills.

I do remember this quest and now I wonder if he was a special case. One thought I had was that MB was born by his parents as worgen, but raised with them to believe they were normal wolves trying to stay away from the rest. It would make sense that he would believe himself to be a normal wolf if he lived his whole life as one.

Could your hunter's wolf not return to the pack? Then, your new monk could use the Worg Carrier companion pet, and RP it out as raising, say, the newest pup?

Then your hunter can have an entirely new story.

Brainstormed Idea:

You could have Meatbag (1.0) befall some terrible fate, like being mauled by forsaken, and work that into your crossover story of Wulf becoming a monk.
Then have your new hunter be raising an offspring of Meatbag (Meatbag 2.1). New hunter, new story line; but with an old thread to Wulf.
You can also always have Wulf run around with his Worg pup companion, who could also be from Meatbag's same litter (Meatbag 2.2). [Much like Eslyn suggested above :)]

Alternately, you could roll out a shaman and just always RP in wolf form as the original Meatbag. Sinlin, a shaman in the Watch, does a great job of that :) You could also work in some sort of Elvish Boone [similar to what was mentioned above] to explain some of his 'new found independence' or 'intelligence'. In that way he could be more than just an old wolf.

OR... :P ...you could figure out a way to merge the being of Meatbag with said shaman, thus creating two characters in one. This way Meatbag could draw on the shaman's strength and intelligence to 'manifest' himself and offer wise-sagely advise to Wulf the monk. Then you could run around as a dwarf shaman when you feel like it :D Kinda like Banner with the Hulk...if the Hulk was a really old and wise wolf. 0.o and Banner was a mystical shaman.

In general, my feelings towards lore are.... unless the Powers That Be say "No, it's not possible" it's possible. It's a fantasy universe, after all. Although there's no precedent in lore, I don't see why it wouldn't be possible to do this as you originally outlined it -- I don't know of any precedent against it either.

Though, y'know, I'm kind of big on divine intervention (in the most obtrusive ways), so if *I* were playing this out, I would make the sentience a gift from Elune or Goldrinn as a reward for heroic acts done as a wolf.

04/03/2012 04:11 PMPosted by Fallenrose

Meatbag I suppose is the leader not through dominate means as he is more the leader through age and kind of a caretaker of a group of lost pups. He is not the strongest of the group and at times I guess not the smartest either heh.

I think the best way to describe it is wolf packs are like human families. The alpha pair is actually the breeding pair, and mother and father of all the rest. (Though there may be some extended family or friends of family hanging around that aren't offspring.) When a wolf--usually the male--is ready to have their own family, they go out and find a female, and take her to a new territory. Like us moving out of our parents' homes. Sometimes they'll be adopted into other packs, or another outside male will try to steal alpha-man's "wife", but that's more rare. And, just like humans, some wolves decide not to live with either their parents' pack or take a mate, and that's what we'd call the lone wolves.

The other roles in a pack are also more like jobs or best-fit personalities in humans. Some wolves are better hunters, others better at taking care of the pups, some are even best at solving disputes with other wolves. In terms of "dominance", there's no more structure to what you would see in a human family. Sometimes big sister is boss just because that's her personality, but if it comes down to it, she'll give little brother first pick of the food and best sleeping grounds. Sometimes there's a "stinky uncle" wolf no one really likes that we could call the omega, or the alphas might have a good friend that we would call the beta, but that's where the rank system stops making sense, as the who-listens-to-who is actually pretty fluid.

Packs will also have gang wars with each other...they speculate a lot of the fights they based dominance theory on actually happened between packs, and not wolves inside the same pack.

And your fun fact for the day...some don't think the correlation between how human families and wolf packs work is a coincidence. Since humans are one of the only primates to maintain families like we do, there's some lines of thought that wolves, when they became domesticated, taught us how to make our own packs. A lot of traits that make us unique among the primates are canine traits, too. But there's yet to be solid research to back that one up....

I do remember this quest and now I wonder if he was a special case. One thought I had was that MB was born by his parents as worgen, but raised with them to believe they were normal wolves trying to stay away from the rest. It would make sense that he would believe himself to be a normal wolf if he lived his whole life as one.

That would work. Actually several scenarios would work. Just pick what you'd be comfortable with. This is a fantasy world. Blizz itself is constantly rewriting its own lore so who knows what it could be in the future or can guarantee that could never happen?

I once mentioned something about I shouldn't be purring in cat form on Charitye and Imperon asked why. I explained large cats like that don't purr. He reminded me this is a fantasy world where we have humanoids who can shapeshift into animal forms at will. Getting hung up on details about what large cats or wolves do in the real world and saying because this is what happens here, it has to be the same in the fantasy world will drive you nuts.

A "gift from Elune" has done similar things. In example, legend tells us that Moonkin and Wildkin were guardians gifted to the Land of Night (old Kalimdor) by the powers of the White Mother.

So...if Elune is real...she is likely kind of a jerk since all these "gifts" tend to led to insane feral creatures:P

Edit: Oh, right, to the main point...lore-wise there doesn't seem to be a precedent. Though, I recall there not being any Worgen and Goblin monks at release (yet gnome monks are okay apparently). Unless, of course, they changed that and I am just unaware.

Edit: Oh, right, to the main point...lore-wise there doesn't seem to be a precedent. Though, I recall there not being any Worgen and Goblin monks at release (yet gnome monks are okay apparently). Unless, of course, they changed that and I am just unaware.

Currently Wulfgrin is an 85 Dwarven hunter. What I plan to do is just name change the hunter and take Wulfgrins name and make him a Dwarven Monk. The pup was going to take over name wise as the hunter, I just needed to do a race change/name change when the time comes. I still don't plan to use MeatBag as the hunters name either heh. I will have to come up with a new name and use that as his nickname or something.

Though I did find it funny that there was already a hunter out there named MeatBag.

Thank you all for your help in this. It may have strayed from what I was hoping to do, but this has given me some ideas on other angles. At the rate it takes me to finish a section of this darn story, I might be ready to do all this change by the time MoP comes out. Though I do hope to get the main part finished before then heh.