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The first banshees were former elf women who had been returned to a horrible, spectral existence. However, nowadays some human banshees exist.
History[]
When the Burning Legion and the kaldorei clashed in the War of the Ancients, 10,000 years ago, many night elf women fell. Their brutal murders returned them as banshees, and for millennia they wandered the world in lamentation, losing ever more of their dwindling sanity. Eventually, the Lich King, Ner'zhul, learned of their existence and recruited them into the Scourge. Banshees fought in the Third War alongside other undead, and when Arthas attacked Quel'Thalas, he found that he could make banshees of high elves as well.
Banshees are undead spirits, many of them from high elves who were taken and enslaved by the Lich King after his conquest of Quel'Thalas. While under Ner'zhul's control the banshees were kept just aware enough so that they could experience the pain, desperation and anguish of their existence, and were then filled with a desire to spread that pain among the living. Most known for their chilling and deafening screams, banshees can also cast a number of curses.
After the Third War, the Lich King lost control of some of the banshees, including their queen Sylvanas Windrunner. Not long after Arthas raised her as a banshee, she broke from his control, taking fellow banshees with her. She regained her physical body and established the Forsaken. This act gives many banshees hope, and a strong cadre of free banshees can now be seen serving with the Forsaken. Most banshees still remain enslaved to the Lich King's will though, and can be found throughout the Plaguelands. Many wild, unaffiliated banshees exist.
It is thought that some banshees wandered Azeroth long before the Scourge, and were subjugated to the Lich King's will. This is supported by the presence of Banshees in ancient kaldorei ruins throughout Kalimdor, like Dire Maul.
Ecology[]
Description[]
Physically, they appear as spectral elven women, with wild flowing hair and long talon-like hands. Banshees have the unsettling ability to force their way into the bodies of living creatures, thus replacing the creatures' spirits with their own. A banshee who does this, however, loses its original form.
Relations with dark rangers[]
Sylvanas Windrunner, the first high-elf banshee ever created by the Scourge, later regained her physical form to become a dark ranger. It is not explained how exactly this occurs, but it is implied that it had to do with Sylvanas replacing former elven ranger druidic knowledge with necromancy.
Trivia[]
(None)