Can undead become demons?

Say a Forsaken Warlock wants to turn himself into a demon, all the way with horns and spikes and so on. Does his undead status somehow impede him from doing that? Can only living things be mutated through fel? Could he actually cease to be undead and become full demon (whatever this means in detail).

I’m currently playing a Forsaken Warlock in Classic and had this lovely idea, that he’d be an apprentice of Varimathras or something and that he 's striving (but not necessary succeeding) to become more nathrezim-like.

Thanks in advance for your answers!

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He can corrupt himself, and infuse himself with fel energy, if he has a source for it, but as far as i know mortals (including elves) can not really become demons, only more demonic in appearance.

Not even demon hunters with their horns and wings are really demons, they “fuse” their body and soul with a “real” demon (as far as i remember they have to eat it.) to get the boons of being one.

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Demonic augmentations (re: mutations) wouldn’t be unreasonable to me, but becoming fully demonic is probably hard to achieve for anyone; and if your body is technically dead and decayed, that’s bound to be another issue in itself.

Mortals can fully become demons under certain conditions, such as night elves birthing the satyrs and Demon Hunters being considered “half-demons” within the Warcraft setting. But it’s not something that happens from something so simple as throwing Fel spells or drinking demon blood, as we’ve seen with Felblood Elves and the demonic orcs of Outland.

Demons can turn into undead (see Mannoroth in HFC), so I don’t see why the opposite couldn’t be possible. They’d probably just turn into a zombified demon.

Demon Hunters.

isn’t there like some sort of monstrous thing whats made out of draenei heads, would that count as undead + demon? dreadlords hiding in undead bodys?

No, Ur’zul is made out of Draenei souls, but in a demonic kind of way. Like you should see it this way:

Demon: Lives physically

Undead: Don’t live physically but his body is magically animated

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I expressed myself misleadingly before, i meant that you don’t just become a demon. Demons are made, and as far as i know only Sargaras has the power to do so.

Demonhunters take demonic powers from demons by consuming them, they don’t themselves become demons and have to struggle against their inner demon constantly to not be taken over by it. So DHs have real multiple personality disorder by nature :slight_smile:

I’d call them part-demons. They’re pretty much near demons physically and can become demons of they get psychically overwhelmed by their inner demon.

I thought DH’s metamorphosis turned them into demons for a short time? I don’t really play DH, have 1 at 110 which is barely played, and even less remembered…

It gives their inner demon form for a short time, but still the demon hunter is a seperate entity to the demon they have inside themselves. The only demonhunter who achieved true demonhood, was Illidan.

The core of a demon is their demonic soul; I.E. that’s the stuff that travels back to the Twisting Nether when their physical body is slain, and the reason why a Fel Guard is reconstituted as a Fel Guard and retains their idiosyncrasies, memories and personality; twisted and corrupt as they may be.

And when turning someone into a demon, it’s their soul and its corruption that is the most important component.

So theoretically, anything that has a soul could be transformed into a demon soul. You may require additional material, such as power, fel, blood etc depending on the process, but the soul is the most important component.

If a forsaken turns himself into a demon, it’s very likely he may look nothing like an undead at all anymore. His demonic form may take that of a demonic human, or even something else entirely.

Well, the eredar were turned fully into demons and many other races of the Burning Legion that were assimilated. So it certainly is possible, though it requires fel infusion in a specific way, as simply tunneling it can cause the target to explode from the power, or something along those lines.

From the looks of it Demon hunters are half way there, even though they use a specific ritual to keep everything in control and from transforming into demons completely.

That being said…undead into demon? Possibly if we assume that soul can be fully corrupted and flesh is irrelevant as Fel augments it…But then again, the shadow/death magic that raises them and keeps them together and Fel magic are very distinct, one would have to replace the other at a suppose cellular level or whatever…eh, i don’t know really.

Yes, they were turned. Everyone can be turned into a demon by Sargeras and propably his highest commanders.
The few cases were people turned themselves into demons were Either by consuming a demon and “fusing” their own soul with the demon soul (like domon hunters do, and i still think they are still mortals just taking the benefits of the demon soul within them while controlling them) or People consuming very powerful corrupted artifacts and Demons like Illidan.

I had written a fairly long post about this matter before deciding against it, as I wasn’t happy with that I’d come up with. As it stands, this is actually an extremely complicated question. But I have finally managed to arrive at some sort of a conclusion.

Let’s take an extremely interesting case when it comes to demonhood and undeath - Mannoroth. In the alternate universe, we see Gul’Dan effectively raising Mannoroth’s body, consciousness and all, from the dead, before sending him off to fight us. Now, when the fight starts, Mannoroth is literally a skeleton. Undead in all but name. Yet, he isn’t. He’s a Demon, not and Undead, and the ritual Gul’Dan performs is seemingly not necromantic in nature. He’s raising a dead body, sure, but what he’s actually doing isn’t raising someone from the dead, but rather rebuilding a Demon by pulling them back from the Twisting Nether and giving them a body to inhabit.

In short, he’s rebuilding and summoning Mannoroth, not resurrecting or raising him.

Why is this? Well, it’s due to the simple fact that demons, as confirmed countless times, cannot actually die in the traditional sense of the word. Any demon slain outside of the Twisting Nether simply goes back there, and any Demon slain within it apparently ceases to exist, meaning that there is no “dead” state for Demons the same way there is for mortals. You simply either exist or you don’t.

The implications of this are clear: It might simply be impossible to both be undead and demonic at the same time. They cancel each other out! A Forsaken who ascended to demonhood would no longer be undead, he’d be tied to the Twisting Nether and effectively have resurrected himself as something entirely different. However, it’s also possible that the fact that a Forsaken is undead would leave him cut off from the Twisting Nether. We know there are methods to ascend to demonhood, but it’s entirely possible that undead in particular are incapable of becoming demons, the same way a Worgen can’t become undead, for example. Their ties to life-magic and nature are too strong to be severed by necromancy, rendering them immune to the powers of death. Although this is apparently only the case sometimes because… Worgen Death Knights…

Ultimately, it’s impossible to say for sure, because Blizzard has never addressed this, and the lore around who can ascend to what is extremely inconsistent. We’ve seen both a demon and an Undead ascend to become beings of Light, and we’ve seen beings infused with the void or necromantic powers become priests or Paladins, capable of using Light magic. We’ve seen Worgen be described as impossible to raise as Forsaken, yet we’ve seen Worgen Death Knights - perhaps the Lich King was so uniquely powerful that he could break through the barrier and sever their bond to life and nature, or perhaps it’s a massive plothole.

Now, could you become a Nathrezim? No. That’s not how ascensions work. Although material from the Shadowlands reveal trailer and lore revealed in Legion might suggest that the Nathrezim, the Shadowlands, death magic and the void all share a unique connection. I would assume we haven’t seen the last of them.

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