What would your character do, if he was put into the Stratholme situation?

And if someone manages to sneak out? Then it was all for nothing.

The right thing, just like Arthas did.

You could maybe say he wasn't quite in the wrong but it certainly wasn't like, a good heroic prince thing to do
Basically yeah, the "right thing" was probably not a "good" thing

I think the proper "good" thing would've been to burn the grain shut the city down and be ready to kill anyone that turns, but be willing to let some people live. Maybe it doesn't work but you avoid the paladins murdering children in the name of good thing.

Probably put some hunting parties together with the Silver Hand looking for escaped zombies.
It's not like there are any good choices. Burn the city, fall as a paladin and go crazy, or try and save people up until the last moment.

Arthas did nothing wrong, but him and I have different paladin oaths.

I'm playing a drunken pirate in plate Mail that floats and a halberd. He'd drink and then spin to win

It depends, we talking how my character is currently or how they were at the beginning of the campaign. Either way, my character has parallels to Arthas
>If currently, he does it without a second thought.
It is what needs to happen, plus he has been given a reason for a justified genocide in order to be a "Hero" then claim it will be justified when the villain lays defeated.
>If starting out, that shit will fuck him up and lead him to what he is now

>Dwarf Wizard that defies fate
He pisses off the death/luck domain cleric in the party by descending from the heavens, hasting himself, imprisoning Mal'Ganis in a piece of amber, and curing/reviving anyone afflicted by the plague with his Philosopher's Stone.

Screw the preconceived notion of a predestined hard moral choice, everyone gets a second chance! Just this once.

After that is all done, he would Polymorph into Donkey Kong, make a 360 degree turn, and blink out of there.

Never underestimate a Wizard with spare spell slots

>"Are you fucking for real ? Zombies ?"
>"Man fuck dat with the force of several supernovas. We're not even setting foot on the planet, tell our employer to gives a bonus and then maybe we'll orbital stoke the city from orbit before we jump the hyperspace as far as we can away from here. I'm hitting the minibar."
Zeltrons aren't known for their bravery.

Actually be able to give Uther a good explanation for what was going on.

>Maybe it doesn't work
>Maybe it does
Employing wishful thinking with the lives of your soldiers and the rest of the country at stake is not "good".

An Elf bard and her cohort, a Half-Orc Oracle of Battle who moonlights as an undead slayer.

She'd consider that situation a "whole lot of FUCK THAT," but would get dragged into it anyways because her cohort worships the goddess of death and loathes undead, and she's lowkey trying to hit that.

For a Paladin, Future King AND Diplomat to other races Arthas is fucking terrible at talking.

I think a lot of it depends on if there is any way to use personal skills to get around some of the things Arthas couldn't.

As my last PC was a D&D 4e Artificer who was utterly fantastic when it came to medicine.

She'd give curing it a damn good shot (or at least, do her best to find a screening process) and, unless it's just flat ruled 'No, you auto-fail' she'd likely have a pretty good chance at it. She's cured Paragon-Tier Diseases before, which seems about right for the plague in Strathholme (Being a continental threat but not a multi-planar threat).

But can she cure the entire city in one night?

I've never played this game. I really dislike the artsyle.

>"The city is already lost then, destroying it is the only good option"
>"I will go gather my tools"

>Willing to potentially murder children for orc dick
Chaotic evil?

Starting to kill everyone, infected or not, makes people more prone to try to sneak out than offering them medicine. What if your culling doesn't catch every one, then it was all for nothing.

they had to contrive some way to get uther out of the plot so arthas could go full retard

honestly it'd be better if he showed up after the whole purge happened

Likely not. Her rituals could cure a few people in one night but a full city is too many targets.

Her research would likely do more in finding something to treat other outbreaks or detect the disease rather than saving everyone here.

On the other hand: She could ward the place to prevent those that do die rising as the undead in while she studies the effects of the plague for a cure. She did that one once before when the city she lives in was going to be attacked by a necromancer. Set up hospitals to take the sick to both to allow treatment and to cluster people in more easily warded places. Warding 100% of the city would take too long but she could easily ward cathedrals and castles.

The issue would be dealing with Mal'Ganis, as sufficiently powerful undead can push through the wards (Though it does a lot of damage) and if she dies, they fail.

it's not a perfect solution but it's got a chance.

>Mal'Ganis, as sufficiently powerful undead
He's a demon, user.

>honestly it'd be better if he showed up after the whole purge happened

Yeah. It's a lot easier to believe Uther losing his shit if he turned up afterwards and saw Arthas in the middle of a city of slaughted civilians, doubly so if they didn't visibly look undead/sick. That tends to look pretty unambiguously evil.

>So Arthas, you killed an entire city and it's literally just your word saying they were totally going to turn into zombies?

The answer is obvious, I just wish it wasn't so meta.

I swear he was undead as well. Been a long time since I played WC3 but I remember him being affected by all the stuff that has a different effect on undead units.

That might have just been a gameplay thing though. If so, he'll be able to enter the wards. Setting them up vs both immortals and undead would add a lot more work to it that I imagine would add too much time to the process. I mean, that's literally twice as much warding.

So yeah, she could stop the undeath but the issue there would be that she'd have a giant 'If you kill me, you win' sign on her head to Mal'Ganis so her own survival becomes the issue. Hopefully she's got some sort of military forces like Arthas did in the situation as I don't like her odds against Mal + whichever units he has that are not technically undead (I think Gargoyles are alive?) on her own.

But if you start slaughtering people openly, anyone who hears about it is going to run for their lives.

I would open up the gates to the zoo and quarantine everyone in the cages, killing anyone who turns the instant it happens.

Falls in line with WC lore, desu senpai

Generally in the neutral spectrum, but tries to lean toward good. "Road to hell" and all that. At the very least, she and her cohort would most likely be making use of his divination and shit to figure out how many people could be saved. And I didn't think about kids. Neither of them would really be down for going THAT far.

And as far as orc dick goes, well...Technically he's only a quarter orc because I fucked around with racial traits, but he's orc in the right places c;

Arthas usurping Ner'zhul was such complete bullshit.

It was, because it was not even Arthas in the end. WC Arthas was a smug son of a bitch, constantly cracking jokes and taunting his enemies. WoW Arthas was a generic evil overlord with booming voice.

Man, I want to run a setting based in post-plague not-Lordaeron at some point, where the players are newly-awakened Undead trying to find a place in the world, after the Lich who was controlling them got his shit wrecked by some unknown band of heroes.

Y'know how in WoW, Forsaken characters start off as just another corpse that woke up as a person again, and are just left to fend for themselves? I never played far enough to get into the grimderp shit people always bring up, but that initial narrative has always fascinated me. You so rarely see stories about zombies that regain their sense of self, and it never happens in large numbers. The idea of the Forsaken - of a whole society of sapient undead, that don't know what to do with themselves - is downright unique, and full of potential.

It's Warcraft 3, which came out in 2002.

> "Road to hell" and all that.
Trying to get ork dick is not "good intentions".

I wouldn't have stopped at 100 zombies.

Demons made the Undead so the Light fuck them both evenly.

I don't think there was any medicine in the circumstance. Also, it may have been a "plague" but I don't think it was contagious from zombie to person. The culling was presumably because the zombie horde would be super dangerous, and presumably more dangerous than killing the peasants. I think the dilemma here was intended to be ethical ("good" vs not), because if there was a straight-up more effective way of handling the threat then it's a no-brainer to pick that way.

>seeing innocent men and women die to demon worshipping orcs and then undead creatures couldn't possibly make an apparently emotionally liable young man hard to reason with

Sasuga autists

Try to kill them as humanely as possible. Or wait for them to turn and set up some sort of meat-grinder, so he can feel a little better about the whole purge thing.

>Reign of Chaos is 15 years old

Whoa dude.

Fug. I remember waiting for years for it to come out.

I feel old as fuck now.

If zombies were being created by a plague then the paladins in setting i'm in would be 110% for the purge and if anyone had an issue with it the preists of the death god would state its a justifyable mercy killing.

>preists of the death god
Fuck yeah.

I personally try and stick Morr in every setting.

Morally? He wouldn't even break stride as he stepped over the bleeding corpses of every civilian in the city. Supposing Stratholme was as strategically important of a problem as Arthas always suggested. Seeing as the nation still got overrun, he'd probably take the general sample size of the population, determine whether or not losing Uther's support outweighed the benefits of slaying the villagers, and depending on these two figures would either let them turn for the sake of keeping Paladin support, or kill them for the sake of preserving the Kingdom.

Physically? He's an ancient wizard who looks about thirty because he devoted his entire life towards the arts of Restoration and physical perfection, with side-studies in the schools of Destruction and Mysticism relevant to stealing or draining the attributes of others. He'd probably spend the day preparing a giant Turn Undead Ward that he could set around the outer limits of the city, then have the Paladins set up evacuation zones where survivors who didn't turn could escape to for safety. From there they would be quarantined and held under watch while the rest of the dead were slain.

Hes not the Warhammer one

Enginseer Ossian Thale would likely advocate for orbital bombardment, rather than risk any of the Machine Gods precious and perfect Leman Russes going into the city. On the other hand, there is a potential for a LOT of extra Servitors in that city.

Chambers > Metzen

?

Arthas didn't do anything wrong until his hunt for Mal'Ganis consumed him and he started killing his own men because morale was down.

Here's a thought; maybe instead of setting fire to people's homes and killing them in the street, just fucking ring the alarm bell and round people up.
Ask them who feels sick and who doesn't. Ask the sick people to go to some warehouse or something and lock it up. While they turn, simply protect the people who spoke the truth from the few liars who turn in the "healthy" group?

The people were loyal to arthas, and there's no reason he should have to tell the infected that they're fucked.

This would also make it easier for his men to protect the people and keep the zombies from the dreadlord faggot who was collecting them.

What's wrong about trying to save as many people as possible?

By the time he got there the infection was starting to begin. The zombies rampaging the chaos of people turning into the undead and the Cult of the Damned+more speicalized combat undead had made it impossible to orginize a repsonse.
Arthas had to start anothor fire(Culling) to snuff out the fire that was already raging(People turning into the undead).

DEUS VULT

Or how about this fucking thought; ring the (mandatory in every medieval town of any size) alarm bell or equivalent and then let the survivors be saved by a group of knights (who can then cull anyone who turns)

Then, if he thought it was necessary, sure; set fire to the town.

Arthas didn't even try to save anyone, he just gave up and murdered everyone indiscriminately.

Don't care. Morr is awesome.

I would imagine the problem is that that would be a time-consuming effort that places a lot of soldiers at risk, for a few reasons.

The first is that the peasants can change at any time, and it seems to be in large groups. Spreading out your men to defend organized camps of people when all, half, or none of their charges can suddenly start trying to kill them at any time might lead to utter disaster.

The other is Varimathras- He was going around actively turning people with a coterie of Undead. If you split up in to groups so you could perform an organized evacuation of the city, it would be all the easier for him to pick at you, made worse still if he strikes at the same time that a bunch of villagers turn.

I'm not saying it's impossible to save everyone, by any means, but you are leaving your men -and- the city vulnerable to complete annihilation trying to evacuate them, while purging the city ensures that the root of the problem is dealt with before it can become something far worse than it is.

I think the way Arthas looked at it, was that these people are probably dead no matter how this turns out, because a bunch of peasants aren't going to survive very long either following an army camp as they wade through the dead, or a long trek down to Lordaeron with undead popping up everywhere. If they were saved from conversion now, they'd be slain and raised later.

Now, if you want to be the true blue Saturday morning cartoon Paladin about this, then you'd say these are all necessary risks that soldiers and Paladins should be prepared to take on, and that an assumption people will be damned later does not mean you have no obligation to save them now.

That's all fine and good, but when people talk about 'Arthas did nothing wrong', they're saying that he responded realistically to a situation that most people would want answered idealistically, including Uther.

Between the two presented options? Culling.
In a purely theoretical optimal scenario? Quarantine everyone in their houses, lock them in for a day, kill everyone who turns undead, quarantine the living for a few more days (they'll still be given non-tainted food for that period) and then order all the living who remain to retreat to a safer location (like the capital). Then burn the entire city down to the ground for good measure.

Then again, that's a very optimistic scenario that presupposes means Arthas almost certainly didn't have available to him.

The mistake Arthas made wasn't culling Stratholme, which I understand as a necessary decision, but rather the depths he fell to pursuing Varimathras: betraying his soldiers, his father, and his friend Muradin, then taking an ancient cursed sword.

Instead of tempering his emotions and understanding that he did what had to be done, he sacrificed everything to kill Varimathras by his own volition, rather than Stratholme which was being forced into an unfortunate situation.

Try to confront Mal'ganis and save as many people as possible, believing that somehow we could cure the infected.

We'd probably end up dead or surrounded by zombies having to fight our way out.

>Stratholme had a Port

>Arthas lacked the troops and ships to ensure a full quarantine

>every infected turned into a dangerous zombie

>The fucking kingdom was crumbling and at that point in the campaign Arthas had realized how dangerous the undeads were

Tbqh i don't even consider Stratholme worthy of falling. He Fell when he slaughtered his own men. Stratholme was a pressured decision a future King has to make. In my books Arthas was right with this one.

Use the chaos to round up some healthy-looking peasants, use their blood in a ritual to open a gateway to Hell, welcome the demonic hordes that swarm through with open arms, and make the whole situation several orders of magnitude worse.

I dunno, but I'm gonna think it over while I make some bread.

Cast a spell to bolster the town's magic resist if it's actually a curse, entitling them to rerolls to break the curse.
If it's an actual disease, magical or no, Arcane Level Heal Diseases will do the trick.

Creation/Essence Wizard best support healer, all healers.

>Ask them who feels sick and who doesn't.
Early renditions of the plague don't work like that.

You feel perfectly OK until you become a shambling corpse, and then you and your wife are chowing down on the baby.

The Scourge was pretty scary shit in that game.

Probably the same, but probably not go to Northrend afterwards.

Never be put in charge of Quarantine situations.

Mal'Ganis.

But yes, the Scourge would have been fed too hard should they have tried the proper way.

Although that said the proper solution was to have sent Jaina off earlier to gather reinforcements than she was.

>cast cure disease
>cast remove curse
>rinse repeat

...

What, for the entire city of, presumably, a million?

Yes. Have everyone line up. Kill anyone who turns into a zombobo. Cure as many as possible.

While the Dreadlord, Undead and cult of the damned run around?

He'd probably join Arthas. Probably would've disagreed at wasting time at kicking Uther out of the Paladins, but whatever.

I'm not too well versed in Warcraft lore, did the purging of Stratholme actually help a lot?

Don't think it did. All it really did was delay the fall of Lordaeron.

Let uther's army deal with that.

In the end no, as no one in Lordaeron did shit to prepare for the Scourge afterwards.

Instead Jaina just ran away over to another continent and Uther went and mopped. King Tyrenas didn't do anything until Soulless Arthas killed him, Quel'Thalas (elves) did jack shit beyond rely on existing defenses.

Only Dalaran did something, an anti undead aura over their city but by then it was too late.

I'm sure that'll work out.

I doubt I'd be able to make much of a difference.

If anything, it made it worse (Indirectly).

The fight would have been long and bloody if the undead had been spawned but the Lich King wouldn't have been wandering about in Arthas' body, destroying all the leadership of the country.

That's more the fault of deciding to hunt down Mal'Ganis in Northrend.

Things to remember:
You can't cure the plague
Everyone in the city is infected
If you start butchering civilians, Jaina and Uther will bail, as well as the present members of the Silver Hand
Mal'Ganis can't be permanently killed here, and will continuously teleport back and forth from Northrend with more undead reinforcements
He will also hunt down anyone left unguarded

Yeah, hence 'Indirectly'. Doing this led to him chasing Mal'Ganis down like an idiot.

Well, the first and the second last are really more tied to the capabilities of the Warcraft people. Perma-killing demons isn't really a rare thing for a lot of PCs and Warcraft seems pretty shit at curing any disease at all.

>What would your character do, if he was put into the Stratholme situation?
>Lawful Evil Drow Rogue
Laugh and laugh and laugh and laugh.

>Lawful Good Dwarf Forge Cleric
Divide the populace into manageable cells, Purge infected cells. Pray for a miracle.

god i hate jaina, shes such a god damn stupid cunt that has would betray her comrades at the drop of a hat for dumbass reasons.
i legit hope one day theres a raid where we can smite her ass in WoW,

He'd go along with the culling but he'd be as far back as possible, wearing full combat armor and strumming on his guitar, trying to hide his terror from the fact that zombies exist

Her and Sylvanas are the two worst written characters in Warcraft Desu.

Sylvanas was good up until just after Arthas died in Icecrown

She should have died after she jumped off the Citadel, because the only reason she was alive was because she wanted to kill Arthas

Anyways have a meme

Wait, so it's a betrayal to go 'No, I won't kill civilians with you'? Arthas literally ordered her to leave and didn't really explain shit about the situation other than 'Look, they may seem fine but they'll soon be undead! Kill them all!'

That's the sort of order that soldiers are legally supposed to disobey in war. You can argue about if it was the right decision or not but 'right' and 'moral' are not always the same thing.

I don't know why but the AFK at fountain thing made me laugh.

More her actions in WoW (also depending on how you view them, her actions towards her father and Theramore).

She basically keeps avoiding and stalling the death of Arthas/Lich King as she wants some of that sweet cadaver dick.