World of Warcraft: The War Within permanent stone TF

[Kyshenkovi-Monstry]

In the first area of the latest World of Warcraft expansion, the War Within, there is a small series of sidequests in which your player character is roped into helping a human jewelcrafter named Natalia Pearce. She tasks the player with locating the legendary rock spirit Basalteous who supposedly has endless knowledge of gems. Through the quests, she proves to be a very selfish, egotistical woman who only wants to become a master jewelcrafter for the fame that comes with it, and she ignores warnings about Basalteous from the locals while browbeating your player character into helping out.

In a little twist on the usual WoW formula, you do not fight Basalteous when you unearth it. It turns out to be a conscious, talkative rock elemental who does not care for Natalia's attitude. Basalteous twists her wish for gem knowledge by transforming her into a rock. She's not encased in a rock or petrified into a statue of herself, she actually transforms into a nondescript boulder.

It's a twenty-year-old video game, so the animation of her transformation is fairly basic and undetailed, but I think certain people on this site will still appreciate it due to the dialogue from Basalteous afterwards. It describes how Natalia is still conscious within the rock, silently screaming, and how she will learn her desired knowledge by experiencing the true existence of a gemstone: waiting for thousands of years inside a cave. Basalteous doesn't even promise to turn her back to normal at the end. It just says she will learn patience over the eons in the form of a rock.

The final quest of the questline, Gems Are Forever, which includes Natalia's transformation and Basaletous's dialogue, can be watched here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXd3e2b592U

(Not a big fan of perma TFs myself but I've seen lots and lots of people in the community be into this exact thing, so I knew I had to share here when I came across it.)