Madam Delamorte

Specifically, this profile combines :

• A primer about the Forsaken species in World of Warcraft.
• A rough translation of basic shadow priest abilities in DC Heroes terms.
• A discussion of modelling WoW characters in a tabletop RPG without a levelling logic.
• A sample Player Character with a… well, “fleshed-out” isn’t the right term, but with a background and personality.

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More context

• This profile features a sample or customized Player Character. See our video games writeups FAQ for more.
• This profile assumes a specific video game playthrough. See our video games writeups FAQ for more
• This profile features tabletop RPG mechanics about the video game’s gameplay. See our video games writeups FAQ for more
• This profile features non-canon hypotheses about in-game events and mechanics. See our video games writeups FAQ for more

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Background

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Powers & Abilities

Madam Delamorte is almost completely useless, but she’s sweet and likable (if obviously demented). She’s a bit like a much older version of Spider-Man‘s Aunt May.

On a good day she’ll be able to work at her craft – and she’s a genuinely talented, very experienced toymaker using intricate clockwork mechanisms similar to those developed by the gnomes .

Her toy soldiers, dolls, mechanical pets, etc. are essentially low-tech robot toys (though they need to be wound up). Under the influence of the “dark thing”, Delamorte has occasionally turned her mechanical talents to the building of weapons and similar martial supplies.

As a Forsaken Madam Delamorte is resilient to mental control, can hold her breath for quite a while, and can eat brains to heal herself.

“The Dark Thing”

The “dark thing” is an unliving shadow that possesses Madam Delamorte, and might be something similar to a banshee  – the ghost of an Elven woman. It apparently cannot speak, but can gesture, read, or have Delamorte’s body write. The possessed Delamorte usually carries a Goblin clipboard and attached pen.

It can cast many spells, usually having to do with vampirism, shadow, darkness, fear, etc. Examples include :

• Eldritch, shadowy, snaking beams that snare, drain and eventually kill their target by sucking their life-force through their face.
• A shimmering bubble of force that protects the person within by absorbing a set amount of damage.
• Various “hungry shadows” spells that latch onto a given person and drain their life force (possibly feeding Madam Delamorte and/or her allies and healing their wounds).
• Spells of entrapment against fellow undeads.
• Counter-spells against enemy curses.
• Levitation, usually used to cross watery expanses or jump from cliffs as a shortcut.
• Briefly becoming intangible, which is usually used to flee from an untenable situation.
• An occasional medium-powered healing spell that can be used even by shadow beings, but takes a long while to recharge.
• Blasts of psychic agony.
• Shadowy doubles of herself that float toward the target of another of her spell and disrupt them on contact before vanishing (in DC Heroes terms this is a visual triggered by rolling a double when attacking with a spell, explaining the extra damage).

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Soundtrack

The WoW theme by the Danish National Symphonic Orchestra.

Available for download on Amazon .

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We Are Forsaken

The World of Warcraft universe centers on the world of Azeroth . Azeroth stands in the path of terrible demonic armies called the Burning Legion , but despite several devastating invasion attempts it has proven too tough a nut to crack.

One of the senior officers of the Burning Legion is called the Lich King , and wields a weapon of mass destruction called the Plague of Undeath. It was unleashed on Azeroth to soften it up – not only was the plague an horrendous disease, but its Human victims arose as undead soldiers for the Legion. These unliving were called the Scourge .

The Lich King was ambitious and treacherous, and during a critical phase of the invasion of Azeroth he betrayed the Burning Legion to establish his own undead empire on Azeroth. This made it possible for Azerothian forces to prevail and save the planet – which in turn left the Legion unable to take their revenge against the Lich King.

The next plan didn’t go so well, in large part due to the intervention of the grandmaster druid, Malfurion Stormrage of the Night Elves . The weakened Lich King lost part of his magical ascendency over his undead armies, and a new player moved in.

Sylvanas Windrunner

In life, Sylvanas Windrunner  had been the commanding officer and deadliest fighter of the elite elven Rangers .

She was slain and raised as an undead by the corrupt Arthas Menethil , and served among the Scourge as an officer. As the ghost of an elven woman (a “banshee”), she had her own elite force of similar spectres and was called the Banshee Queen.

Delamorte testing infra-red goggles.

When the hold of the Lich King faltered, the extraordinarily strong-willed Windrunner broke free. She then managed to possess and animate her own cadaver. After narrowly failing to destroy Arthas, she fully rebelled and carved her own faction with the help of her banshees and the shifty demon lord Varimathras . Meanwhile, Arthas became the new Lich King.

Sylvanas established herself in the Plaguelands  – formerly populated by Humans but ravaged by the Plague of Undeath. She named her people the Forsaken, claiming that they would never again follow another’s will.

Most Forsaken  were Scourge creatures who were magically freed from their servitude to the Lich King. In life, they had chiefly been Human commoners.

For the Horde !

Though they treasured their independence, the Forsaken could not hope to stand alone – especially since they were widely seen as no different from the Scourge by the nearby Human powers.

Sylvanas, now known as the Dark Lady or as the Queen of the Forsaken, had little choice but to ally with the main enemies of Humans – the Orcs .

The Forsaken thus joined the Orcs-led coalition called the Horde, though the Plaguelands were quite distant from Horde territory.

Statue of Sylavanas Windrunner in a Forsaken burg.

The relationship between the Forsaken and their new allies never was easy, as so many of the Forsaken had been driven into insanity and/or moustache-twirling evil by their oft-awful death and service with the Scourge.

However the undead killers, necromantic magic, magico-bacteriological weapons of mass corruption, monstrous creatures, etc. that the Forsaken brought to the table were too good to pass up.

The Forsaken nearly collapsed when the treacherous apothecaries’ guild  allied with Varimathras to deploy a new version of the Plague of Undeath to kill thousands and make them Forsaken. Thanks to her ties with the noblest and most powerful heroes of the Horde (such as the orc Thrall  and the troll Vol‘Jin ) Sylvanas Windrunner ultimately foiled them.

Still, the Forsaken were left weakened and low on credibility, especially after Thrall stepped down from his leadership position. The unstable, angry, misogynistic, hypocritical Garrosh Hellscream  took over the Horde – and he didn’t like Sylvanas or her people one bit.

This in turn forced the Forsaken to increasingly desperate measures.

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History

Phyllis Delamorte was a Human commoner in Hearthglen , albeit a well-off one. An artisan, she specialised in crafting unique mechanical toys for noble children. Though single and childless, she reached an advanced age as cousins cared for her (and her savings).

The Very Dark Thing on Delamorte’s undead horse.

When the area was ravaged by the Plague of Undeath, Delamorte was half-senile. She was unable to process what was going on, and her frailness and dementia made her quite useless as a Scourge soldier. She spent decades drifting westward among the Scourge, still thinking that she was living in Hearthglen and these monstrosities were her neighbours.

The Lich King’s influence didn’t really work on her addled brain, but it apparently created a sort of split personality – a dark thing of rolling shadow that possessed the elderly artisan from time to time. The “dark thing” did not seem aligned with the Scourge, and mostly manifested to protect its host.

Rise of the Forsaken

When the Dark Lady rebelled against the Lich King, Madam Delamorte was coincidentally in the area. One of Windrunner’s banshees found it trivial to release her from the Scourge, and Delamorte was thus technically among the earliest Forsaken – though of course she did not understand what was going on.

The “dark thing” definitely did, though, and threw its lot with the Forsaken. As a result it manifested much more often as an agent of the Dark Lady, climbing in the ranks as it tackled increasingly sensitive missions.

Not being suited to any sort of political, administrative or leadership position, the “dark thing” remained a field agent with a specialisation in relentless violence.

In time, both Madam Delamorte and the “dark thing” gained minor access to the Dark Lady herself, and eventually to other Horde generals and leaders.

The Blacksky Company

Madam Delamorte regularly associated with a mercenary corps, the Blacksky Company , to procure deniable assets.

Founded by a Tauren shortly after the Orcs came to their homeland, the Company had grown large and powerful, but fell on hard times after the Lich King betrayed the Burning Legion. A fighting organisation with that many soldiers was ill-suited for peace.

Company captain Baelor Blacksky eventually accepted an exceedingly risked contract in Northrend  in the hope of replenishing the coffers, but this campaign destroyed the Company. It thus fell to Baelor’s son Blackbraid to rebuild, as he had refused to join the Northrend fighting – which he had rightly denounced as suicidal.

The “dark thing” was among those who helped rebuild the Blacksky Company into a major asset for the entire Horde. The Company participated to all major campaigns and many minor ones, the invasion of the Outland  and the invasion of Northrend.

The end at last

Madam Delamorte and the “dark thing” were destroyed in Northrend while assisting Sylvanas Windrunner in an unsuccessful attempt to kill the Lich King.

Madam Delamorte and Dark Ranger Loralen (Sylvanas’ bodyguard) died buying enough time for Sylvanas, her ally Human leader Jaina Proudmoore , and a cadre of Blacksky shock troops to escape.

The remains of the “dark thing” were later magically consumed by the Sisters Strange, a blood elf family working for Blacksky, to increase their power.

Epilogue

Though Windrunner’s latest attempt at killing Arthas failed, the Lich King was soon destroyed by a major strike led by Tirion Fordring . An aged but mighty paladin, Fordring led the Argent Dawn coalition as well as Horde and Alliance soldiers – plus their best mercenaries such as Blacksky.

The famous “face melting” magical shadow beam.

The fall of the Lich King was a boon for the Forsaken as some undead, freed from the hold of their fallen master, joined the Forsaken. Key among these were a cadre of Val‘kyr , powerful women capable of raising slain Humans to become Forsaken – just as they used to turn bodies into Scourge troops obeying the Lich King.

Thus, for a time after Delamorte’s destruction, it seemed that the war in Northrend had, despite the apothecaries’ plot and its dire consequences, given the Forsaken a brand new future as they were no longer doomed to extinction.

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Description

Madame Delamorte is a small, hunched, very aged Forsaken lady wearing heavy robes (since she feels cold, though that’s obviously impossible). When possessed she seems made of translucent, smoky evil shadow.

Dusk in Orgrimmar with guards patrolling on flying mounts.

The dark thing has poor color vision and some odd tastes, which has occasionally resulted in garish wardrobe choices.

The dark thing likes to levitate, spookily floating off the ground and advancing without motion.

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Personality

Madam Delamorte is a sweet, maternal little old lady who is lost in a mostly hallucinatory world. To her, everything around her is everyday life in Hearthglen as it was before the Plague.

She blabbers a lot but she’s remarkably likeable, and is something of a mascot to both the Blacksky Company and the Dark Lady’s senior officers.

The “dark thing” chiefly seems interested in personal power and occult lore, and amassed a vast amount of books, relics, scrolls, curios, trapped minor spirits, Burning Legion artefacts, etc.. It is highly loyal toward Sylvanas Windrunner.

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Quotes

Madam Delamorte

“Dark Lady watch over you.”

“Remember : patience, discipline.”

The very dark thing

“Hssss…”

Scared and angry Orc NCO: “Um… Well you see, our problem is quite simple… THIS CAVE IS SWARMING WITH SOULLESS KILLING MACHINES !”
Very dark thing: (cocks its head to the side and makes a upward shrugging motion with its hands, to request more details)
Orc NCO (not getting it): “Only me, Ut and this guy here are left ! Can you imagine what it’s like to face these… these… SOULLESS KILLING MACHINES !”
Dark thing: (stays silent for a moment, then makes a sort of horrible grin and emits a kind of laugh sounding like rustling, echoing ghost chains)

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Emulation notes

As usual with MMORPG material, the game stats aren’t modelling the exact workings of the little bits of equipment, talents, spells, etc. They just keep the essence of the character and streamline everything – see the FAQ for more.

This is especially true for World of Warcraft, which has a strong video game logic (with rotations, cooldowns and whatnot) that doesn’t translate well to other media. WoW also has a notorious scaling problem, making its numbers unusable when deriving game stats.

Scaling

Another aspect of WoW’s scaling system is its incoherence – minor wildlife (say, a single wolf) from a endgame zone could easily destroy all life in a low-level zone, and the world simply cannot work that way. The low-level areas are often important to the world and the plot, and yet a single soldier from a high level zone could be sent in and take control of them within a few hours.

Riding a goblin rocket

This makes it very difficult to assess what are the “actual” power levels at play in the setting, barring a research initiative based entirely on non-game material about the settings, such as the novels. The faction leaders and their ilk seem to be low super-heroic, but the question remains – compared to what ?

Our game stats thus go for a mundane-to-cinematic power level with lead values for a confirmed adventurer being around 06 APs. The movers and shakers of the setting, such as Thrall or Sylvanas, can go higher to match their low-superheroic stature.

We pair that with a potentially high hero points total to explain why the high-level adventurers face such an immense list of challenges.

The HPs allow for keeping the AP scale under control, so the big monsters and heroes remain vulnerable to war machines like ballistae and cannons. This is what is featured in multiple cut scenes, and is apparent in the numbers flying around during most missions where you drive a war machine. Level 80 Scourge zombies get blown up by low-tech tanks and mortars just as easily as Level 5 Scourge zombies in early zone.

The choice of making the scale HPs-centric also matches the “chosen one” themes that are recurrent in WoW, where some people are just way more competent and heroic because the plot says so. It is best coupled with a high genre — Action should work fine — so these HPs can have their full weight.

In the Barrens.

A rule of thumb might be to scale APs until level 20. Beginning adventurers would be slightly under the level of a generic shock soldier, but reach 05s and 06s in their key Attributes, Skills, Powers, etc. at level 20.

This tends to be the level where one leaves the starting zone, but cinematic combat power has been demonstrated and quests with heavy stakes (such as preventing the destruction of Darkshore at Malfurion Stormrage’s side) have been handled.

Subsequent progression for Player Characters is reflected by additional HPs – and Powers reflecting new capabilities gained while levelling.

In many ways, levels past 20-ish in World of Warcraft seem holographic – that is, it’s extra information used to create the illusion of an additional dimension, but this dimension doesn’t really exist outside of the onlookers’ minds.

Milieu scaling

Video games often present a world with a sped-up time scale (where an entire day from the point of view of the characters takes minutes or hours for the player), and with the uninteresting bits of geography abstracted out.

I’ve never been too sure of how WoW manages time, but it is a clear example of space compression. For instance there are large agricultural expanses around Stormwind City, but these are abstracted out since they’re not interesting.

Typical Forsaken country manor.

Which in turn means, as some dialogue indicates, that going to Stormwind City to Goldshire isn’t a quick stroll down the road as experienced in-game, but a fair bit of commuting.

Likewise, Goldshire as seen in game is meant as the compressed, geisted version of a medieval burg with a population in the thousands. One assumes that inns actually have rooms to rent rather than being the pared-down common room we usually see in-game. Etc.

This space compression affects DCH modelling, particularly when it comes to ranges and speeds. Perhaps less intuitively, it also affects the assumed level of stealth of characters.

Stealth and furtivity for all

The aggro range for most creatures are very low – you can be on grassy plain 15 metres away from a creature killing your kind on sight without it noticing your presence.

Of course, the space compression thing means that it’s not actually 15m away, and that the grassy plain may actually be more varied and complicated than the geisted version rendered in-game (presumably there’s some kind of bush, knoll, ditch, etc. and/or it’s nighttime.)

This is particularly noticeable during quests involving invading enemy perimeters. The Player Character can avoid most detection due to limited aggro ranges, and thus sneak into supposedly secure areas without much of a problem. If a guarded gate is wide enough, you might just stroll down its center and be too far from the guard on either side for them to see you !

What actually occurs in-universe is presumably closer to a special operation setup, where the Player Character is stealthy, waits for the night to fall, has the gear and skills to silently climb walls, etc. – but this sort of thing is not normally part of the WoW gameplay and gets abstracted out. You just waltz into a smaller, very simplified version of the stronghold being invaded.

Since every Player Character does that, navigates heavily-patrolled areas without an alarm being raised, boards pirate boats without most people on the deck reacting, etc. giving everyone Thief (Stealth): 03 is a good general measure to represent the action as it would occur at a live, uncompressed spatial scale.

Giant wolves are commonly used as mounts by orcs and their allies.

03 APs also leaves room for characters with actual in-game stealth skills, primarily rogues.

Acrobatics (Climbing): 03 may also be considered for everyone – but World of Warcraft has a lot of areas that are impassable due to walls or even just tall fences and steep slopes, so having that Skill be there for most Player Characters might look odd.

We don’t need another hero

Another area that’s big on video game logic is the importance of Player Characters to the world.

The writing direction is… not as tight as the remarkable art direction. One minute you’re an epic hero celebrated by thousands for saving everyone, the next you’re a faceless peón hired by a cheap charlatan to shovel excrement. Yes, that happened to Herakles too, but the context was very different.

“Video game logic” strikes particularly hard on that one since WoW’s a MMO – there are thousands of player characters running around on any given World of Warcraft server. Each of those exists in a strange Schrödingerian state where they all accomplished the exact same solo heroic feats, and yet routinely if transiently band together.

Typical Forsaken burg, with Sylvanas statue.

In a given Horde pick-up group, it is entirely possible that all five persons were the operative hand-picked by Sylvanas Windrunner during the war against the Worgen in Silverpine.

Since I favour solo gameplay, I’ll opt for the take where the Player Character currently under the spotlight is a big-time hero in *their version of Azeroth*, and the quests riddled with lowbrow humour and now-dated pop culture references didn’t quite take place that way.

This is the same sort of continuity management as employed by Marvel, where the general events did happen but not necessarily exactly as chronicled.

This is also coherent with the compression discussed above – the actual world of Azeroth is way bigger, more complex and more populated than what is rendered in a simplified and scaled-down manner in the video game so it remains playable.

Hero points scaling

With our choice to make the levelling mechanics largely translate as Hero Points, a rough formula between HPs and level becomes useful.

Possible rules of thumb, based on the notion that the Player Character is a big-time hero rather than one adventurer among thousands of equally skilled mercenaries, are :

• A level 1 character has 15-ish HPs.
• A character at the level cap has 100-ish HPs.
• The “boss level” characters such as Thrall might have up to 150, though 120 is more likely since they’re also likely to have higher APs than Player Characters. We also assume that the power they display as raid bosses is exaggerated for gameplay reasons.

As of this writing the level cap is 100, so a formula would be a straightforward (15+(lvl * 0.85)). Back in the days of Classic WoW it would have been (15+(lvl * 1.35))

Mounts

Mounts in WoW are purely cosmetic manifestations of a movement speed buff (and, eventually, flight). They do not take part in combat, do not carry anything, do not have to be fed or groomed, conveniently vanish and reappear out of the blue, etc.

This seems true even for NPCs. There are some opponents who as a gimmick are composed of a fighting mount and the rider, but that’s it – at least when I was playing. For instance Alliance cavalry dismounts when wading into combat.

More tellingly, people riding animals who are well-established to be combat-capable do not field these in battle. For instance, when troops of Sentinels of the Night Elves are seen, their giant panthers are not among the ranks fighting along with their mistresses. At best there will be some mounted officers and messengers zooming around the battlefield but not taking an active part in the fighting.

Since this seems well-established, it is best to write up mounts in DC Heroes just like one would approach a motorbike or a skycycle. Especially if the mount *is* a motorbike. 🙂

Delamorte rides a netherwing drake – which is one of the borderline cases, since in some circumstances it acts as a combat-capable summonable pet. However, the item that allows that is quickly discarded as levelling continues in Northrend.

With the scale constraints of MEGS, pretty much all mounts will have Running and/or Flight at 04 or 05. However, it is advisable to rejigger the scale a bit, such as :

• Movement speed for most humanoids is capped at 03 even if they have a 4+ DEX (though they can Push it as if they had Running: 03, without having to buy Running: 03).
• Running: 04 is used for the 30 to 100% movement buffs such the shaman ghost wolf form or ground mounts. This is a reasonable speed for a horse, as discussed in our Animals File.
• Flight: 05 would fit the 280% and 310% flying steeds (using the riding skill obtainable at level 70+ as of this writing).

Miscellanea

The Powers used for Delamorte in this profile correspond to pre-Mists of Pandaria gameplay… as I remember it. It seems roughly in line for an undead shadow priest as of this writing (pre-Legion), though.

Ruins of Human kingdoms fallen to the Plague.

The Damage Over Time (DOT) spells are represented by a pet since that is what best fits in the DC Heroes frame, and the character had a shadowfiend (which back then was in the shadow priest talent tree). The vampiric talents and the movement-slowing aspect of Mind Flay were decoupled and turned into Combined Powers since it looked more interesting that way.

The healing abilities were ditched since they were not normally used in shadow form (the focus was more on health/mana vampirism abilities, and a more robust shield), with Desperate Prayer as an exception.

On the other hand, since there was a strong emphasis on collective-heals-over-time-stemming-from-shadow-damage in the build (we had character builds back then, you see), I went with the Vampirism and Skin Armor combo.

Vampirism handles the spot healing aspect of the HoT (it scores a RAP or two from time to time, which Delamorte can assign to a wounded ally or herself). Since the main effect of this healing when soloing is to increase the ability to facetank by erasing part of the damage as it comes, I opted for a simple AP of Skin Armor to model this durability boost in a simple and MEGS-friendly way.

Though Delamorte was usually kept at the Engineering Profession cap, it was more in the hope that it would eventually be useful. It never played much of a role in her gameplay, except for minor gear upgrades and convenient equipping of alts. So it’s not reflected in her DCH game stats, outside of her Skills and Advantages.

A mighty Val’kyr gives Madam Delamorte a ride on the Dark Lady’s order.

By Sébastien Andrivet.

Source of Character: Based on a World of Warcraft player character.

Writeup completed on the 10^th of August, 2015.