Blizzard has released a new World of Warcraft: Midnight animated short titled All That Is Sacred, centered on Lady Liadrin.
A Personal Story Before Midnight
Unlike large battle cinematics, this short focuses on Liadrin’s past and her complicated relationship with the Light. The animation revisits the fall of Silvermoon and the events that led to the creation of the Blood Knights.
According to Blizzard, Liadrin once served as a priestess before losing faith during the Scourge invasion. When the Sunwell was destroyed, and the blood elves faced magical withdrawal, the order began siphoning Light from a captured naaru instead of receiving it willingly.
Setting Up The Expansion
The later restoration of the Sunwell changed that path, leading Liadrin and the Blood Knights to abandon those methods and follow the Light as protectors rather than conquerors.
With WoW: Midnight just around the corner, Blizzard seems to be establishing the major characters before the main campaign begins. Liadrin is expected to play a central role in Midnight, and this short helps explain her motivations going into the expansion.
You can read the full official post from Blizzard below.
Liadrin Animation: All That is Sacred
In Azeroth’s darkest hour, Liadrin stands against the Void, knowing that with the Light by her side, darkness will never prevail.
Character Profile: Lady Liadrin
Lady Liadrin walked the path of devotion as a priestess of the Holy Light, until her prayers went unanswered as her world drowned in ash and undeath. In that moment her faith in the Light shattered and soon only enmity remained.
As the Scourge descended on Silvermoon during the Third War, it was not the undead nor sorcery that ultimately broke the high elven lines but treachery from within. In the chaos that followed, the kingdom of Silvermoon was brought to its knees and their beloved Sunwell, the very heart of their culture, was corrupted.
Amid the ashes of their kingdom, the price of subsisting was steep. Prince Kael’thas was forced to order the destruction of the Sunwell to save those that remained. Deprived of the arcane energies from the Sunwell, addiction clawed at the survivors. Unrelenting, maddening, and fatal. In desperation, the blood elves turned to new methods, siphoning energy from external sources.
When a captured naaru, a being suffused with energies of the Holy Light, was delivered to Quel’Thalas, the magisters discovered a dangerous truth: the Light could be stolen. Liadrin, devastated by the Light’s failure to protect her people, accepted this method without hesitation. Thus, the Blood Knights were born. Paladins who did not seek the Light’s blessing but its servitude. And Liadrin would lead them as their matriarch.
Following invasion and betrayal, the reconstituted Sunwell fell to corruption once more. Lor’themar considered destroying it as they had before when hope appeared in the form of Prophet Velen. Drawing on the essence of the same naaru siphoned by the Blood Knights, Velen transformed the Sunwell into a radiant source of both Holy Light and arcane energy.
The restoration of the Sunwell marked a turning point for the blood elves. For Liadrin, it was a moment of reckoning. She and her Blood Knights renounced their methods and chose to walk in the Light not as conquerors, but as its champions.
Liadrin is a paragon of both conviction and consequence. She is a devout adherent of the Light not through blind faith but through understanding its purpose and responsibility. Tempered by trials and forever transformed by her journey from doubt to devotion.
“…the Light showed me that I was not lost. It helped me to find the strength to survive in spite of all that had happened and all the evil I had wrought.”
For more updates on Midnight, head back to our WoW News Hub.
