A bit confused here, so I’d appreciate any insight. After finishing Revendreth, everyone mentions how Denathrius manufactured the drought. But I thought the drought was the result of the Arbiter being sidelined and the souls just pouring into the maw as opposed to the various realms. What am I missing?
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I think they blame him too because he did not share the vast about of Anima in Revendreth and instead fed it to the Maw.
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Watching the Arbiter cinematic again, the bolt that hits him is red in color. At the end of Revendreth, you can see the anima pouring into the Maw is also red in color. Red is a prevailing color for Revendreth.
It’s possible that Denathrius somehow managed to disable the Arbiter and thus helped to manufacture the drought. How? Beats me. Maybe it was a massive anima bolt or something and the Arbiter couldn’t handle it. Just a theory rattling around in my head.
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He does seem to be essentially taking credit for knocking the Arbiter out, and has both the means and motive established to do so. What he exactly did to her is anyone’s guess.
I will say Venthyr magic is really good at causing pain in its targets, and in incapacitating them… and the red bolt came in at a different angle than souls do and rammed directly into her as if a targeted attack.
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Yeah, I think this makes most sense. While a lot of people want to say it was Argus’ soul, I think the right take is Denathrius was likely behind it.
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I agree. The issue with it being Argus’s soul is that this plan has clearly been in the works for a long time, and that’s an event nobody could have reasonably predicted. There’s simply no way that the Jailor’s entire plan revolved around the assumption that we would kill Argus. The red soul had to be something under his control.
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What about Xavius from Emerald Nightmare? Compared to Argus he’s far weaker and therefore easy to manipulate, used a lot of red in raid design and abilities, and died waaay before so it would make sense given the timeline.
I think it’s the same/similar point about Argus. Us succeeding and killing Xavius isn’t something that could have been reasonably predicted. I mean, yes, from a game perspective it’s a foregone conclusion, but from a story point not so much.
In Revendreth the Sire had massive reserves from the Anima rich souls that went there. Even though new souls have not gone to any of the 4 covenants. Revendreth was in a unique position before the malfunction because of it’s reliable work horses and how anima rich the souls they got. Unlike Bastion who’s average soul had little bit of anima to be grinded down into a new Kyrian or Ardenweald which mostly got souls from wild gods and nature aligned folks who while powerful were few in number to begin with. The Maldraxxi are the only other faction that should have lots of anima relative to Oribos and the other factions with Revendreth being the premier reservoir outside of the Maw.
Remember Garrosh in the cinematic? Imagine the souls of tyrant kings like the Thunder King or Kael’thas or beings akin to them like Gul’dan or members of the villain factions we’ve murdered over the years. Azeroth alone must be sending thousands to Revendreth from the enemies we’ve defeated while some like Vashj went to Maldraxxus. I assume the leadership which is arrogant and fearful would be tortured and stripped of their rich anima laden souls as part of the path of perdition to paradise.
The Sire, elected not to share this wealth and manufactured the crisis by taxing his denizens even more in spite his obscene wealth and already anima rich coffers. He took the opportunity to betray his people and make them suffer and that’s why the rebellion formed. The drought in Revendreth is unique compared to the other factions. There drought was born from the Sire’s indifference and greed. The irony of it all considering what they’re meant to be.
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So I don’t disagree with you, but it was framed as Denathrius was responsible for the drought in all of the Shadowlands. Not just Revendreth.
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Sire Denathrius actively plundered the Anima of other Worlds the whole time according to the Accuser so Sire Denathrius has caused the Anima Drought while the Arbiter shutting down caused a Soul Drought.
The denizens of Oribos are ignorant of how the Anima works and assumes the low Anima is the result of not getting Souls. Everyone assumes this to be the case.
Anima is constantly generated by the Nature Loving Souls in Ardenweald according to the Tirnenn so if Sire Denathrius hadn’t been plundering the place there wouldn’t be an Anima Drought there!
Same should logically go for Bastion and Maldraxxus!
The Death Realms aside from Oribos have enough Souls that new Souls aren’t necessary but Sire Denathrius is plundering the Anima for the Jailer!
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Souls equate to anima, so to cause the drought requires that you manage to make the Arbiter take a nap.
The Shadowlands was a pretty robustly built place, and the Arbiter undoubtably has a number of security systems in place for her. Due to these issues Zovval and Denathrius had been planning this attempt at a coup for a long, long time (and Denathrius likely was the Ancient ally that the Primus warned us of). They surely knew they would have one shot. With that in mind there is no way they left it to some random person dying to fry the arbiter. And the thing that hit her did not move like a soul, it went right at her like a directed attack.
Given it is red, also, that would lead me to think it was Denathrius’ doing. No one else would fit the bill of someone who would have the means and motive. For sure none of the other cosmic forces would help the conspiracy to unmake themselves. That is just ludicrous.
I know some people think it might be nightmare/void… but consider back in the BFA comics the void screams at Alleria that Sylvanas is dangerous and seeks to destroy all possiblities. It then goes on to accuse Sylvanas of Serving the “True Enemy” and demands she immediately destroy her sister in a panicked manner quite unlike its normal whispers.
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It may be worth considering that of all four realms, only Revendreth actually has a built-in system for passing souls on to the Maw. None of the other realms are really mechanically connected to it, while Revendreth outright operates on the premise that any souls who don’t become Venthyr either get sent back to the Arbiter for reassessment or go straight down to the maw for damnation. By virtue of that, it wouldn’t be surprising if Denathrius knew how access to the Maw works and had a hand in disabling the Arbiter so that the souls would all go there, since he’s the only Eternal One whose realm is actually designed for sending a certain number of souls there already. So far the other three don’t even seem to have any direct routes into the Maw. Only Oribos and Revendreth do.
We even see Denathrius outright chuck a soul into the Maw during the release cinematic, which means when a soul is deemed beyond redemption, Revendreth’s stewards apparently banish it to the Maw unilaterally, bypassing further Arbiter involvement via any need for the Kyrian to come fetch the soul and take it back to Oribos for final judgment.
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The drought =/= the arbiter stuff.
He hoarded the anima from the other realms etc etc then gave it to the maw, they had anima plenty before the arbiter got hit.
For lack of better words.
Think of anima as poop, and the arbiter as a toilet sort of.
People pooping in a toilet makes the toilet go to its destination.
If people stop pooping there will be a poop drought.
I am no expert in poop btw.
But you could probably see it as fertilizer or something else.
Or logs and fire
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My headcanon is that after Xavius failed again, N’zoth just ate his soul. Kind of like the ending to Disneys Princess and the Frog. Would’ve loved to see a Xavius cameo somewhere in Ny’alotha though. Being tortured by one of Xanash’s minions in the distance.
I still believe that Vashj went to Revendreth first, after all she was a very prideful person during her life. Who knows, maybe after you are redeemed and sent back to be reassessed, you have no memory of your time in Revendreth, while those who become Venythr do (as seen with the Accuser).
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Someone else pointed out on the forum that as one of the Eternals, Denathrius would’ve been trusted enough that gaining access to Oribos wouldn’t have been an issue. Denathrius also has a living, red-glowing runeblade that can fly around and attack people for him. The Arbiter was hit by a red-glowing object- and it caused her to shut down and then all souls were diverted directly to the Maw.
Go with the simplest explanation. He had remornia attack the Arbiter to shut her down and then began his new ‘policies’ in Revendreth to hoard further anima. There’s a reason Revendeth is the last zone we’re sent to while leveling because of the ‘reveal’ that he’s a bad guy (which wasn’t exactly a reveal since he oozes bad guy from his admittedly sexy pores…but the extent of his bad guy-ness in that he’s working for the Jailer/caused the drought).
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Seems like the default blame when none of the other Covenants are smart enough to be conservative with their anima.
In the intro to Revendreth quests Denathrius mentions normally he’d give his vast coffers to the other realms but there’s a civil war so sucks to suck
Normally Revendreth is the “backup” Anima it seems.
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This is the theory I’m going with unless we officially get a different explanation
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