"Horrible, Violent, and Stinky" - Beware the Kobyss in The War Within
As we venture beneath Azeroth's surface in The War Within, we will meet many strange and sometimes disturbing creatures. Everyone knows about the spider-like nerubians, but the kobyss are a special nightmare.
Horrible, Violent, and Stinky
The Kobyss are anglerfish-like humanoids who are first encountered during The War Within's main quest in Hallowfall. We are told that they lurk in the shallows of murky water and snatch any who come near.
One thing that makes the Kobyss particularly interesting is their use of extremely convincing lures. They are skilled in illusionary magic, and their «Shadeshifters» can create a lure that perfectly mimics a living Arathi — when you try to rescue the Arathi, the illusion disappears and the trap is sprung.
If players ask Faerin more about the Kobyss, she makes her disgust clear, calling them «horrible, violent,» and «stinky». She tells us that Kobyss are skilled in a form of necromancy, and will either raise their victims as undead soldiers, or eat them alive — either way, a terrible fate.
Apparently, the Arathi did attempt to arrange negotiations with the Kobyss, even sending scholars to study how they communicate, but everyone who was sent ended up dead — usually, dead and eaten.
<Faerin scowls.>
Horrible, violent. and… stinky creatures. They've plagued us since the moment we arrived in Hallowfall.
We've tried to figure out how intelligent they are. Could we parley for peace? But every scholar we've sent to study how to communicate with them has ended up dead. Usually, dead and eaten.
And worse, they seem to wield some kind of necromancy. As if eating us wasn't enough, sometimes they chose to dishonor the memory of our allies even further by raising them to fight against us. I have no idea how they choose which of us to eat and which of us to raise. Raise the strongest, eat the plumpest?
It churns my stomach to contemplate these things.
Apart from their magical abilities,
