Pelagos Arbiter seems to embody Ephemera Death Magic. Considering the Attendants’ manifested Sigil appears to be Ephemera I would assume Ephemera was originally Zovaal’s sphere of influence until the Primus bound him with Domination Magic.
The Arbiter’s Core of course only emanated Blue Anima because of the Primus binding Zovaal with Domination Magic(I.E. the same Death Magic used by the Drust) to force Zovaal to Judge Souls even as he controlled his original Body in the Maw.
Since Zovaal was still Judging Souls and was starting to master Domination by the time Bolvar donned the Helm of Domination he was able to sentence Sylvanas to the Maw himself!
Every sentence the Arbiter sent out was Zovaal’s. Every Soul sent to the Maw by the Arbiter was sent by Zovaal himself despite the Domination forcing him to judge “fairly”!
Domination forced Zovaal to judge Souls “fairly” but it could not stop his bias from getting in the way. It could stop him from sentencing Innocent or Redeemed Souls to the Maw or Revendreth but not the Guilty Souls.
He probably only sentenced Sinners to Revendreth as part of his deal with Denathrius.
The Mawsworn’s Death Magic at the moment is probably a hybrid of Sylvanas’s Darkness(that was released when Frostmourne wounded her Soul), Domination Death Magic, Ephemera Death Magic and Necromantic Death Magic considering the Magic is Green, Purple, Blue and Yellow blending together(the Mawsworn Models have those Color variants as well).
Pelagos speaks as the Arbiter, unlike the old one. I thought he was supposed to lose his memories, but he recognizes us just fine. Also, he becomes the Arbiter before the Jailer is defeated.
It’s now been confirmed that Argus was the one that caused the Arbiter and Death to break.
Doesn’t really make sense though.
How was Argus being twisted by Death when the only one that was ever really involved with him was Sargeras.
And why would that somehow overpower a dead Titan’s soul from being naturally drawn to the plane of Arcane.
I guess they are going with the “The Dreadlords secretly tampered with Argus” route, with the idea whatever they did to him sent his soul to Zereth Mortis instead of Zereth Ordos.
But yes, it flies in the face of basic planar logic of this setting. Planar beings go back to the plane they are born from. So Argus should of gone back to the plane of Order.
Or they keeping with When you’re sufficiently tainted by a opposing cosmic force, you become a part of that force instead route with Argus. He’s a Death Titan. Makes sense he would to the Shadowlands.
Except he wasn’t being tainted by Death, if anything Sargeras was tainting him with Fel.
The only connection to death he ever really had was just being called “Death titan” in the files.
And his whole “unmaking” deal is just the counterbalance of “making” aka Order vs Disorder.
https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Dapperdew outright states that he was turned by the Legion into a Death Titan.
Dapperdew yells: Argus, the Unmaker! They sought to create a Death Titan, knowing full well that Death falls under the purview of the Shadowlands and our illustrious Queen! This clearly would not do, so the adventurers struck out to achieve the impossible: to slay a world itself!
Elune might have even been the one to bring Eonar’s Soul to Elunaria… That of course would mean Elunaria might be Elune’s Garden of Life in the greater Gardens of Life…
If that’s the case then what is that Purple Moon? Elune is the White Moon… Could the Purple Moon be a Queen Nehelenia-type Character(I.E. Dark Moon) spying on the White Moon?..
Dapperdew in Ardenweald does call Argus a Death Titan too. It’s the first official time a NPC labeled Argus as such. My theory is a bunch of uncorrupted Dreadlords were secretly corrupting him with death magic.
Even the Fel-Corrupted Nathrezim have their Bodies disperse into Bled out Sin Death Magic in Revendreth. They were the ones who introduced Death to the Scourge so why wouldn’t they be able to infuse it into Argus?
That’s true. They certainly would be able to. And that’s probably what they were doing while Sargeras was busy with his plan with killing and resurrecting the Titan Patheon
He also got his power due to the Primus turning the Helm of Domination into a Crown to ascend the new Arbiter which means he controls the Scourge and the flow of Souls.
The First Arbiter was Zovaal and the second Arbiter was Zovaal reduced to a Core whose only autonomous Body was in the Maw while the constructed Body in Oribos was forced to sort Souls due to Domination Death Magic.
His Core sorted Souls to any potential match(which was not ideal as far as he was concerned but the Domination Magic would not allow otherwise). Unfortunately he was not bound to send Redeemable Sinners to Revendreth provided they fit elsewhere as seen with both Sylvanas(sent straight to the Maw) and Kel’Thuzad(sent straight to Maldraxxus after Devos brought him before Zovaal’s Core).
In the end the sorting of Souls was flawed due to it being run by the exact same tyrant it always had been.
The thing is, the dreadlords were never portrayed as being involved with Argus. It was a bunch of shivarra who were shown to be dealing with the corruption of titans, and they’re rather specifically the dogmatic “church” of Sargeras’ fel agenda.
Something to consider though is that while they went to the Nether/Antorus and regenerated there afterward, each demon slain was still technically being killed, so every demonic soul sent there over the ages could have imparted some measure of Death to the world-soul that was being used to fuel the rebirth machine in Antorus, gradually warping its nature as billions of demons died billions of times across billions of worlds over a span of millennia (perhaps even eons, since the rate of Time’s passage is less consistent in the Twisting Nether.)
All that being said, this all feels extremely…hasty and lackluster. They’re beating us over the head with the “revelation” that literally the entire history of WarCraft was Zovaal’s big scheme, yet his defeat already feels like a complete non-event. Like they’re just in a hurry to wipe the slate clean and sweep decades worth of fleshed-out history under the rug as some “First Age” so they can start focusing exclusively on whatever ideas the current team has been itching to replace it with instead. Like they’ve been chafing at having to play in someone else’s sandbox, and this is the chance to nuke it all.
And if the sloppy, bland presentation we’ve gotten with Shadowlands is indicative of the stories they’re bringing to the table, I’d gladly take another twenty plus years of the Burning Legion and the Scourge any day over a future of more Zovaals.
