Help with Shadow lore

Lore Story
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hello everybody! Im somewhat of a lore noob when it comes to specifics and class history and I need some help with understanding shadow priest lore since this expansion Ive gotten way more into story than progression raiding which had previously been the main reason I play WoW.

A couple of weeks ago i rerolled my undead shadow priest (that I made in vanilla just because they looked cool) to a zandalari shadow priest and Ive made this headcanon for him to try and fit him into my memories of doing all the raids from vanilla up to bfa.

So basically, in my head, my Zandalari priest (holy back then) decided to join the Horde instead of go back to Zandalar way back in vanilla when we raided Zul Gurub and the Zandalari needed our help. And then during the Horde raid on Cthun in Ahn Qiraj, my priest was tempted by the whispers of the old gods and succumbed to mild madness for a little while before learning how to control it and ever since then hes been struggling to keep it in check while using the voids powers to help the Horde (hes mostly good but with a few moments of slipping into madness).

Now as far as my knowledge of the lore goes, this makes sense for the current iteration of the shadow priest class fantasy of using the powers of the void, going a little insane etc (please correct me if im wrong). But I read a few hours ago on reddit while trying to learn more about Spriest lore that this fantasy is a somewhat recent version and that in the past its been more about “shadow” than “void”. But as far as i know arent shadow and void are the same thing?

When i made my spriest in vanilla i was pretty young and dont remember any class fantasy/lore stuff from back then so I was hoping you guys could clear this up for me:

  • What is the difference between shadow and void and is the void at all connected to the shadowlands?
  • What is different between the current void fantasy of shadow priest and the previous fantasy (vanilla,tbc,wrath?)
  • What races fit in best with shadow priest?

Thank you for any insight into this!

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If Im correct after Chronicles magic school map reveal several things got bit confusing. Shadow Priests turned into Void users. But the fantasy stayed the same. Still all about old gods and their whispers. While Human Paladins accept only powers of Light, priests of Church believe there is no Light without Shadow (that was the idea of shadow priests back then iirc). I dont know how true is that about rest of the races.

As for Void and Shadow - they have been separated a bit nowadays. While Spriests use mostly Void magic, Unholy Death Knights use Shadow Magic to deal damage and for necromantic skills.

This is bit of headcannon but I think shadow magic is more of death magic and Void is Old God power opposing Light. But even Shadow magic is listed as Void in the picture. So :man_shrugging:

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Thank you for your reply! Its a shame that its gotten abit muddled but I think I can work with that. I suppose as a headcanon I could roleplay it as my /shadow priest/ side gives me control over the void while my patron loa being bwonsamdi gives me some insight into death magic. should be a nice setup going into any void/old god and/or death related xpacs

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The lore of a playable priest class is unclear garbage.

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Is it really though? They may have gutted the racial flavor of the class when they removed our racial spells waaaay back in the day and again when they shoved all of the orders into the most bland Draenei temple/prison in the known universe. Still salty about that btw.

But they also defined the themes of the three specs in doing so. Shadow in the context of the Priest class is more or less interchangable with the Void as stated by Coupedegrace and is of course the cosmic force Shadow Priests draw from.

Holy is the polar opposite while Discipline utilizes both Light and Shadow to maintain balance between the two.

Before Legion priests of all three specs drew power from both of those forces making Discipline the red headed stepchild without a clear identity. Shadow was also pretty muddy since it was often regarded as a pretend Affliction Warlock both in how it was designed and also because the Void as a cosmic force wasn’t established as the primary force Shadow Priests drew power from.

Note that this is all in the context of the playable class. It does complicate things some when you factor in the different orders and their unique roles and themes in their respective societies.

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