Are souls just sentients blobs of anima that coalesce , like the formation of stars ? Do we have any cannon sources on exactly what souls are. What I think I know
Life seems to attach souls to matter , binding anima to our physical world. I would extrapolate that all the powers can do something akin to it.
Anima collected into a soul becomes self aware and can form memories
Souls can be burned as fuel by at least Fel (Disorder) and Death (remnants creating Stygia) It seems from at least the Ardenweald and Venthyr quests that a soul can give up much of its strength, its anima and still recover and continue on but that there is a point where it can no longer exist as the being it once was.
Souls do not seem to be immortal. Do they fade and wither over time ? Is there a friction to existence where a soul just fades or rather dissipates ? We see in Shadowlands that some souls don’t “make it”. Outside of beings like the Eternal Ones are mortals possessing of only mortal souls and thus even death may die for them ?
Is there a cycle of some sorts, where anima like energy can never be destroyed just changed into a different form or maybe even converted to matter. That a dissipating soul in the Shadowlands gets reborn through Life, or reorganized through Order etc into something that may even , depending on the will of the original being or strength of their pattern, remember its previous life or at least in some way be influenced by it ?
Are there soul sinks where anima could flow never to be recovered ? Could any of the powers claim anima in such a way that there is no more flow ? Can anima leave the cycle completely ?
It seems that if drained of enough anima they cease to exist, so if they are not made of anima then is anima just something they need to exist ? What are souls then ?
I don’t know that they cease to exist, but it’s definitely not a positive experience. Souls drained of anima in Ardenweald lose their soulshape, and souls drained of anima in Revendreth seem to be denied their redemption, no matter how far they’ve come in the process.
The rules seem to be somewhat flux and on the fly, but largely, what Cantaloupe said is the most succinct way of putting it.
With the sacrifice of Ursoc and Stygia being the byproduct of a soul destroyed in the Maw I think we could agree souls are not immortal. That and the Soul Ash we use to make our legendaries. I still wonder where souls come from and if they have a purpose in WoW. Are they what give free will and self awareness for instance.
Personally (as an RPer amidst other RPers), I’m operating under the headcanon that it’s possible to recompile a soul, it’s just not happening right now cause we’re in a drought. But yes, souls don’t seem unbreakable at all in Shadowlands.
Souls in Maldraxxus stripped of Anima faded away though what Blizzard means by faded away is unknown to me. It might even be that the Shades of the Maw are Souls that faded away with fading away being the same as wasting away.
I’d like to believe that. I have a whole alternate headcanon on how I would’ve had the Shadowlands functionally work re: souls. I’m…not enamored with Blizz’s vision of how the WoW afterlife works.
I like this explanation, you can gather anima from a soul to kinda look at its memories, just like you can analyze blood from a body and check for diseases that it might have/have had.
I used to adhere really strictly to the lore in my RP and only work in the realms of what Blizzard gave us, but once I started exploring the vast expanses of grey area that the Warcraft world has and started finding loopholes for myself, I found I enjoyed things far more.
There’s a lot of people I know who share the sentiment.
In that we don’t have a consistent definition of immortality, I would refine that statement to simply say. Anything can die. And that there are deaths that are truly the end.
With the lack of any very old characters in Shadowlands I am wondering if there is a shorter than we think lifespan for a soul after death unless held together by an extremely strong will.
The lack of modern medicine means that people die at earlier ages. Also Humans have a higher chance of Death by Demon, Death by Orc, and now… Death by Death.
I’m not talking about death of the body but rather of the soul. A recurring issue in Shadowlands is if the soul is eternal. As an example - is any crime worth endless torment if the soul is immortal. If the soul is ground up beyond self awareness in a year in the maw then the punishment is far less severe. If a soul were to never be picked up by the kyrian would it haunt the world forever or would it fade over time, what variables decide this and what is the average time ?
