When themes go bad: Magister Hawkhelm

I often speak of "themes" in my evaluation of various rare mobs. This is because there is so little about most of them that I look deeper, analyzing them in a way I never would otherwise. Oftentimes I note that they have an evocative, fitting name for what they are. This happens a lot, but not always. Some raremobs have oddly chosen or just weird names, which may refer to something I don't know about, or possibly just be chosen because it "sounds cool". Sometimes though, you get a weird incongruence between what a mob does and what it's named. And today's rarespawn is a good example of that.

This post is about Magister Hawkhelm.



Where to find the Magister

Magister Hawkhelm is a rare mob blood elf found in Azshara, on Kalimdor.



Magister Hawkhelm spawns in the small blood elf-controlled area near some ancient ruins called the "Thalassian base camp". She can be located in two places that I know of, and does not stray from her spawn point. Take note that one of her spawn points, located at the tallest cliff of the camp underneath some ruins, sometimes obscures her quite a bit from casual study, and makes her harder to spot visually.

Defying the sin'dorei

Magister Hawkhelm is (perhaps surprisingly) a hostile mob to both Alliance and Horde players. There are fewer rarespawns which are hostile to the Alliance only, for some reason, and Hawkhelm is not one of them. This has a good lore reason, which we'll get to in the next section. Suffice to say for now that anyone straying near (perhaps for one of the quests in the camp) will invoke Hawkhelm's wrath.



Now, here's the surprising part. Magister Hawkhelm has no magical abilities of any sort. I know that is a bit of a stereotype for a blood elf, but come on. She's named "Magister", a title usually only seen on spellcasters within blood elf society (it is related to the word "mage" after all). However, Magister Hawkhelm only attacks with a normal melee, a ranged bow attack and a multi-shot that hits all her enemies.



Because of these simplistic abilities, Hawkhelm is an easy kill for any class. She has no unique loot, providing only the generic reward in the form of a drop.

Sin'dorei stories

Actually, we can infer quite a bit about this woman from her location. She is clearly party of Magus Rimtori's expedition in search of long-lost Highborne artifacts, and works for the Magus in some capacity. Rimtori's thirst for arcane power drove her to betray the Horde, and she murdered the orcs accompanying the team. Rimtori's search for demonic magic and betrayal makes her a dangerous and hated individual, and Hawkhelm seems to be one of her loyal followers.



Of course, as I mentioned, with that name I fully expected Hawkhelm to be a mage herself, as are many of the traitor blood elves in the camp. However, with her purely mundane abilities it seems she may be a magister by some other means, perhaps by some form of knowledge or academic expertise? She would appear to have ranger training, though she still dresses in the simple robes of a spellcaster.



It's always great to see blood elves outside of the areas introduced in the Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King expansions. They're somewhat unexpected, and almost always have a specific story or purpose. Of course, it should be noted that prior to the release of Burning Crusade, Hawkhelm, Rimtori and the other elves here had quite different models (and much uglier ones) made from retooled night elf models. If you want to see what these look like firsthand, look into the Scholomance, where some students still bear this quite freakish model.

All in all, Magister Hawkhelm is amusing because of how her name and abilities don't match up. She has a nice little spot in lore, and is a quite cool rare in my book. With the enormous changes to Azshara coming in Cataclysm, this rare is quite likely to vanish forever, and thus now is the time to seek her out if you so wish.

Until next time, don't betray your allies over objects of power.

~Dragonshade