Hello everyone! The upcoming expansion Legion
will introduce a brand new hero class into the game, namely demon hunters which hopefully will be quite handy to have around when we're going to fighting against the legion. A lot of you came up to me with questions like what’s the history of the demon hunters,
how do they gain their skill and powers and what might the backstory be for the demon
hunters that we’re going to play? That’s something I want to talk about in this video
so ladies and gentleman, sit back, relax and I hope you’ll enjoy! The first of the demon hunters is of course
Illidan Stormrage, now I’ve done a full video on him but we can’t really talk about the demon
hunters without talking about the original one. Illidan didn’t start out with
those beautiful demonic wings, horns on his head, eyes burned out...At first Illidan was a night
elf mage thirsty for power and recognition. During the War of the Ancients he did his
best to assist the night elf resistance against the Legion, eventually coming up with the
plan to act as a double agent. He forced a felbeast to act as his mount as he rode up
to the palace like a boss offering his service to the queen and the lord of the Legion.
In truth, Illidan actually wanted to prevent the queen’s plans but he wanted to do it from the inside. His talents, his magical abilities, allowed him to shield his real thoughts from even one such as Sargeras and in the palace,
he assisted Manoroth and the others by empowering the portal they had created to summon Sargeras.
Not even Illidan was strong enough on his own to bring Sargeras into the world though, but he did come witha plan. With the use of a black dragonscale belonging to deathwing, he would be able to
track down the mighty aspect and steal the powerful artifact known as the demon soul.
This artifact would be all the power they needed to make the portal work, get Sargeras
to cleanse the world and Sargeras agreed to the plan. This is taken from the novels where Illidan is at the portal, he offers his plans to Sargeras and Sargeras accepts: His own amber eyes were lost, but Illidan’s
new eyes did come with certain perks. At first, swirling energies and constantly shifting colors assaulted
his senses, but after focusing, Illidan found out that he could see more clearly than ever before.
He could even sense the level of power someone possesed, like for example queen Azshara was
extremely poweful and nearly hypnotic. Illidan could see her spellwork nearly taking him
over and on top of that, not only his eyes were burned out, Tattoos now also covered his body.
Sargeras had truly marked him as one of his own and the markings amplified his abilities.
In the end though, at the end of the story, Illidan’s plans of deceiving the legion failed because of the old gods
and he was imprisoned by his fellow night elves. 10.000 years later, during Warcraft 3 they let him out of prison because the Legion had returned to take another bite out of Azeroth and someone like Illidan,
someone who knew how the enemy worked, how they thought, how they planned, was a greay ally to have. His twin
brother Malfurion didn’t agree though, he didn't agree with the choice of releasing Illidan so Illidan left
Malfurion and Tyrande to do their own thing, he came acros the death knight Arthas who told him about the
skull of Gul’dan and he decided to absorb the skull. After drinking from the skull his powers increased, but Illidan's body transformed even further. He now looked like a demon himself. He had horns on his head, he had bat like wings, but he did save the forest. When Malfurion and Tyrande finally found Illidan, they didn’t even recognise him at first, so much had he changed, but when they did...when they
realised what Illidan had done, they decided to banish him from their lands. The events
of WC3 transpired, Illidan failed in his mission given by Kil’jaeden to destroy the Lich King and he decided to take over Outland where we would eventually meet him again during the Burning Crusade. Illidan had teamed up with the blood elf prince
Kael’thas Sunstrider and he had begun training both night elves and blood elves in the ways of
the demon hunter. Now naturally they didn’t have a Sargeras around to burn out their eyes or give them
a nice set of tattoos so instead they had to go through a series of complex rituals.
The next information is taken from the World of Warcraft RPG books and the RPG books have been declared to be non canon, so it's not officially part of the lore. Bits and pieces of the RPG's have made their way into the official lore and this bit from the RPG books, it seems very similar to what we've seen so far and it gives a very good explanation as to how those that followed Illidan's footsteps gained a similar appearance. The book says the following: This does seem very similar to the demon hunters that we're going to play as since they have an ability called Spectral Sight. The demon hunters apparent blindness belies their true powers of perception.
They rely on magically augmented sight to detect enemies, even those that hide behind obstacles. This is taken from the demon hunter description on the Legion website so this has made it in so far. Now The rpg continuous because there's more information: Now all of this information from the RPG, it seems to line up with what we’ve seen in the previews, it seems to line up with the screenshots that they've given about the demon hunters. So maybe, possibly the information from the RPG will make it into the official lore. Now becoming a demon hunter on its own. We have these rituals, we have these transformations that they go through, but the whole training is not easy at all. During the Burning Crusade we met with a night elf demon hunter, Altrius, and he had deflected from Illidan since he saw that Illidan had become the very
thing they were fighting against. He tells us about the demon hunter training grounds at the Ruins of Karabor. He tells about the history of the blood elves joining them. This is what he says: As a reward for his years of service, Illidan
allowed Kael'thas to send him five warriors to train under him. It would be the first
time blood elves would be allowed to train as demon hunters.
The training was brutal. Illidan put Kael's warriors through trials that would defeat
most fully capable demon hunters. Three of Kael's elves simply died in training - another one went
mad and there was one who succeeded. The one blood elf that went mad during training, he would later show up as a boss
within Serpentshrine Caverns known as Leotheras the Blind. During his fight we can see him struggle
with keeping control over his demon inside, so it seems like that piece of information
from the rpg, the binding of a demonic spirit inside the demon hunter, it seems like that
bit made it in to the overall story as well. The one blood elf that succeeded where all
others failed was called Varedis and he had such a gift, such a talent for the craft that
Illidan assigned three master demon hunters to train this blood elf further. Within a year, Varedis
had surpassed them all, had surpassed his own teachers and he was as thirsty for power as Illidan himself. He came
up with the plan to find the book of fel names, which is a tome said to contain the name of every demon in existence. Knowing a demons true name gives a certain amount of
power over that demon so Varedis made sure to memorize the pages in the book and with all of
his power, he was placed on the task of training more demon hunters.
As we follow the questline with Altrius, he sends us on the task of collecting the book
of fel names since without it, we simply wouldn’t stand a chance against Varedis.
His teachers, Alandien, Theras and Netharei (sorry if I butchered those names) all of those teachers, they fall down to our might until finally we face of against Varedis. We're told to rip the pages out of the book of fel names since this will weaken Varedis as he’s doing his metamorphosis thing and we take out the prodigy student. So those are the demon hunters that we encounter on Outland taken care of, but there are 3 more demon hunters, all night
elves, that we can find in the game. First there’s Loramus Thalipedes which you
can find within the blasted lands. He was part of a quest chain during classic in which
you were send to take out the dreadlord Razelikh, but Razalikh survived that encounter to make
a return in the cataclysm. Loramus went out on his own to hunt the demon once again but this time he was slain by the ogre Grol the Destroyer who literally ripped his body into pieces.. Adventurers were send out to claim the body parts of Loramus. We put him back together
with the help of the alter of storms and together with the demon hunter they face of once more against the demon.
With the knowledge of his true name, Loramus has power over the demon, but Razelikh or
Rakh'likh as his true name really is, does not go down without a fight and he enters Loramus’s
body. This is the moment we’ve been waiting for, the moment that we planned for and with the stone knife of sealing we slay Loramus and Rakh’likh at the same time. We might see Loramus in the future again though since as we slay him, he says “Leave me here, then, while I wrestle with Rakh’likh in the next world. Your job
here is done, heroes.” So who knows. He might show up in the next expansion, he might be around in twisting nether. The second demon hunter was one added during
the cataclysm, Feronas Sindweller who at first seems to be the bad guy, but he turns out
not to be such a bad guy at all. He’s in the area killing druids, but sometimes our eyes
can be deceived. These druids are actually demons in disguise as Feronas shows us, while he also tries to show us a different side to Illidan’s story. He shows the events of when Illidan
picked up the skull of gul’dan, sacrificed so much to do what had to be done,. He was able to cleanse the lands of the demoninc influences and what did he get in return? He was banished. Illidan: "So be it...brother. After opening our eyes to the truth, after showing us the other side of Illidan's story line, Feronas has a task for us. He wants us to take out the leader of the emerald
circle, Arch Druid navarax, who’s actually just another demon disguising himself. After taking care of the arch druid, Feronas
disapears after these events, probably taking care of a lot more demons in the area, but there's one more demon hunter to talk about and this one you can find in Darkshore. Buried beneath the maw of the void,
the spirit of Telarius Voidstrider, herald of the dark embrace awaits. This demon hunter is actually a spirit who's been killed by Maivh many years ago, but he holds an interesting item called Writings
of the Dark Herald. The scrolls are vague and appear to be a piece
of a much larger puzzle, but if you are not mistaken, they seem to reveal some of the
steps on the path to becoming a demon hunter. The dark oaths and rituals necessary for becoming
a demon hunter are frowned on by most of the night elves, so this is likely something they
would be very interested in keeping quiet. We need to turn in these scrolls to finish
the quest, but it’s interesting see that scrolls describing how to become a demon hunter
can be found within the world since we know for certain that the blood elf demon hunters
were trained by Illidan during his time in Outland, yet the night elf demon hunters are
up for speculation. The RPG states: Considering that it said with the scrolls that certain night elves frown upon how to become a hunter, it’s possible that some night elves they did not follow Illidan's teachings immediately, they found
their own path towards becoming demon hunters. I couldn’t find a solid example though of a demon hunter that did this. The night elf demon hunters that we see on Azeroth, the night elf demon hunters that I just talked about... They could have trained themselves, they could have found their own path in the way of the demon hunter or they could have simply been send back by Illidan, or they could have made their own way back from Outland after being trained by Illidan. That's up for grabs, that's up for speculation. I couldn't find any solid source claiming that Illidan trained these specific night elves but then again I also couldn't find a source where they found their own path so that's up for speculation. Now what about the future? What can we expect
for the demon hunters that we’re going to play as? Part of the story has been revealed
while a lot of it (obviously) is still being kept in the dark. The background to the demon hunters that we're going to play as, is that these demon hunters
were part of Illidan’s troops, the Illidari who were imprisoned by Maivh after the fall
of Illidan. She placed the demon hunters within the vault
of the wardens, but in the next expansion, in Legion, the burning legion is making a return and the wardens
believe that we’ll need the aid of the demon hunters to fight back against the Legion. We're going to use the powers and the knowledge
of the enemy against them so the wardens open the cells, they release the demon hunters and they get to be part of our society. Before that moment though, before the prison doors open up, you’ll start your story set around 10 years before Legion, with a super secret mission given by Illidan
before he was taken out. Illidan decides to send his elite team on a so called suicide mission to a different
planted called Mar’duun. I probably pronounced that one wrong, my apolegies, now this world was used by Sargeras way back when to imprison the evil of the universe, but when he turned to dark side, when he turned against the mission of the
titans, he returned to the planet to release the evil that he had imprisoned and form the
Burning Legion. For some reason, Illidan thought it was critical to go on this mission instead
of helping him defend his seat of command in Outland and we can only guess what exactly
is going to happen there. They did say that when all is said and done, players will understand
what it means to be a demon hunter and the true meaning of sacrifice. My personal hope
for the story is that we’ll be given a reason for Illidan’s so called madness during the
Burning Crusade. Back then, the lore wasn’t the best and they turned Illidan from this
anti-hero who tried to do good, but just failed time and time again, into this crazy ass bad guy. I would love to see a bit of story development explaining
what exactly happened here, but only time will tell what kind of story we're going to get. We’ll also get a new novel surrounding
Illidan so I’m very excited about that, maybe we'll even get a proper story line to the twin blades
of Azzinoth since all we know right now is that Illidan obtained the twin blades somehow from a called Azzinoth, but we don’t know all the details as towhen did this happen,
what was the battle like, why were these blades so legendary, why did they let him keep his weapons even though he was imprisoned...all that good stuff, I'm really hoping that we'll get more details. We’ll still have to wait a little bit for all of that to be revealed. It's going to be 2016 for all of that to hit, but hey! 2015 flew by, I'm sure we'll be in 2016 before we know it.
