This is funny, because I think by showing up in Oribos like he does, this is the Admiral Taylor that was at your Garrison.
Which means Taylor was off…somewhere after WoD and just chilled through the entire Fourth War lol
Worse enough would be Nazgrel remained in Outland.
Considering dying as a Ghost would kill him Deader than Dead one should not be all that surprised at this!
His only thought when we talk to him in Oribos was him only being a week from earning his helmet which is pointless now that he has no body thus making a physical helmet stick out like a sore thumb among the ghostly armor!
The helmet comment, as the wowhead article speculates on, would be a reference to special memorabilia Blizzard employees get after so many years at Blizzard. After working there for 20 years they get a replica of the Lich King’s helmet. Well, a stylized one.
It really does seem odd that he’s in Oribos as a Ghost, as if he wasn’t sent anywhere.
The Kyrian clearly never picked him up! He must have been on Azeroth since WoD and used Stormwind’s Portal Room to get to Oribos!
His death in otherwords was cheapened as he never passed on! The fact that Alliance and Horde can pass to and fro from Azeroth and Oribos is an interesting Plot Point!
Or… the Kyrians did did, and we just never saw it. Ghosts lingering in the mortal plane before passing into the afterlife is nothing new. There was a huge period of time between his death and the Arbiter’s breaking where Taylor could easily have been taken to the afterlife by the Kyrians - it probably happened there.
If it happened before the Arbiter broke, then he’d have been sent to his rightful afterlife. If it happened after she broke, he’d have been sent to the Maw. The Kyrians have not stopped bringing souls to the Arbiter.
I’m confused now- do Kyrians bring all souls to the Arbiter? If so, why haven’t they been ferrying souls to some location other than the Maw? Assuming that it isn’t just the Forsworn carrying them?
Because I always assumed the souls just reach the Arbiter on their own.
Because the kyrians bring souls through the veil and into Oribos, and that’s it. Once a soul crosses the veil, its sucked straight to the Maw.
So why can’t they stop carrying souls in the first place? Better to leave them as ghosts than send them to the Maw.
No explanation has been given other than, “It is their duty to ferry souls to the Shadowlands.”
I imagine if Blizzard ever addresses it we’ll get something along the lines of, “Souls allowed to loiter in the mortal plane are often snatched up and used by other cosmic forces. Were the Kyrians to be negligent in their duties, one of the other cosmic powers could grow strong enough to topple another, thus ending the balance between the cosmic forces, and dooming existence itself.”
The question after that is, “Why not just store souls somewhere in the Shadowlands, rather than sending them to the Maw?”
It’s only barely addressed in the Kyrian campaign with “Our duty is to deliver them to Oribos and we will keep doing our duty”, as if once they get to Oribos what happens next isn’t their concern. Granted, Kleia didn’t know about the Maw, so it doesn’t seem the rank and file Kyrians know. But once she did learn that was the reason she was given by the higher-up.
It really reads like Blizzard wanted to have their cake and eat it too, and refused to come up with a different plot for the Kyrian campaign even though it really makes no sense with the main plot of the expansion.
I would say it would be indicative of “maybe we shouldn’t like the Archon?” except Blizzard only writes in hard black and white, and given how hard they hit Lysonia with the villain bat over and over again it’s firmly established who the Good Guys and Bad Guys are here. If they wanted us to dislike the Archon they’d make her a lot more obviously villainous.
Because the Purpose and Polemarch Adrestes(Will and Second in Command of the Archon) says so!
Fortunately the Archon is becoming less rigid over time so things are infact going to change.
The Kyrian have no objection to sending the Player to grab the Souls already in the Maw and bringing them to Bastion(the other Covenants have no objection to gathering Souls from the Maw for themselves either)! The Maw is becoming a brutal detour for Souls once the Maw Walker starts joining Covenants!
Just a theory here, but it’s perhaps possible that if new souls stop passing through altogether, the Eternal City will just cease functioning, followed by everything else in the Shadowlands collapsing in its absence.