It makes sense if Muehzala wasn’t always like this.
Within IRL Voodoo, the Barons are the heads of the Ghede Nanchon (ie, the Dead, the Ancestors) but they do not control the door between the land of the dead and the Loa and the land of the living.
That is controlled by Papa Legba, who is nominally Rada Nanchon instead.
However there is a Petwo aspect of Legba called Met Kalfu, who is 100% Muehzala.
So if Mueh was fun and chill but became dark due to the Jailer and more power (Bwon during the encounter says something to this effect, Mueh always wanted power) then it’s cool.
However Blizzard never cares about Trolls enough to provide consistency.
Disturbing indeed, but look!! For once an actual happy ending if you people get Bwon -who apparently DOES care for the souls under his command- deffinitely as top dog Loa of Death.
I think good ´ol Bwonsamdi is “trolling” Rastakhan a little and making him work for his “good afterlife” -after all the king kinda despised the Loa and took advantage of the blessing Rezan gave him in life to dismiss the Loa of Graves-.
Maybe because all things considered, he could “hide” you from his despicable boss if you begged hard and long enough?
The fact not 100% of the souls ended up becoming anima for Mueh´zala to devour is telling in itself.
I am hoping that the upcoming book will explain what is going on with Bwon and his apparent floaty burlap sack robe boss, it certainly needs a rather lengthy explanation to make sense.
I want to know is, if Mueh’zala is Bwons boss, what did he want to do with Vol’jins soul that would make old Bwonsamdi freak out and scared for his life when Vol’jins soul was not in his urn?
I agree it would make more sense if someone like the Winter Queen was Bwonsamdi’s boss, given that De other side’s entrance in is Ardenweald and she overseas the rebirth creatures that have a powerful connection to nature, such as Azeroth’s wild gods (some of which are loa, like Shadra).
Also considering the hints from BFA that imply that Vol’jin might be turning into a Loa, someone like the Winter Queen might have the power to do that, considering her connections to such creatures.
I don’t get where do you see the trolling part? It’s just souvenir. And I wouldn’t go as far as to claim that Rastakhan despised Bwonsamdi, if that was the case then he wouldn’t make him the prime loa.
That doesn’t really make sense really. We had evidence in plenty of troll souls doing absolutely fine. Even beings as ancient as Dazar. They had to have decent afterlife for millennia, and Mueh’zala wouldn’t allow for that to happen, he is extremely greedy and fixated on destroying the Azeroth.
Bwonsamdi and Mueh’zala philosophies and codes are directly opposite. Devs would have a really hard time explaining their relation without screwing it out, and giving even more disturbing retcons. This is why I hope they will do small alterations in dialogue and Make Mueh’zala just his rival. In this way it wouldn’t screw up already existing lore.
I think the best boss figure should be Arbiter itself. The machine. Each Shadowland Lord,like Winter Queen, Archon would be under Arbiter, and I see Bwonsamdi next to them with the Other Side as hisown ‘covenant’.
But between her and Mueh’zala she would make more sense becuase her politics wouldn’t be in directopposition to Bwonsamdi’s.
I feel like there may be something pertinent to the indications that Mueh’zala and Hakkar don’t seem able to physically exist in Azeroth however and whenever they want to, while none of the other loas seem so limited. Both seem to have to be summoned in some way. Like perhaps something happened at some point in the very ancient past that led to them being banished or otherwise removed from the physical world so that not only do they need help and sacrifices from adherents just to manifest themselves there, but it’s treated like them becoming fully tangible and present would be an extremely bad thing for the rest of Azeroth as it currently exists.
Powerful loas like Rezan or Bwonsamdi are/were able to live in the world without negative consequence, but Mueh’zala and Hakkar have both been saddled with this idea that just them becoming present in flesh and blood would be portents of disaster for Azeroth, and their efforts to do so pose an existential threat to all life on the planet.
With Hakkar’s presence and Bwonsamdi’s talk of Mueh’zala “never really caring about about his people” I’m honestly kind of wondering if at some point (be it Shadowlands or later) we might find out Mueh’zala and Hakkar were part of some original loa pantheon that the first trolls worshiped when they originally evolved, before perhaps turning on them and casting them out with the aid of their current loas for being monstrously vicious and cruel. Perhaps even as part of those first primordial trolls coalescing as a group into the original Zandalari.
Bwonsamdi seems invested in the balance between Life and Death, but Mueh’zala and Hakkar both come across as driven to kill and consume without end until nothing’s left. So maybe in the ancient prehistory of mortal life on Azeroth, the first loas to rise might not have had reason to care about balance because the world’s uncontrollably growing new life and the resulting widespread death such rampant, unrestrained propagation would cause had Life and Death as forces being fundamentally at odds and trying to snuff each other out rather than cyclically complementing each other.
I think Bwonsamdi shouldn’t have a boss at all imo. It just makes he seem more submissive because if he does something wrong, he know he’ll likely lose his head (literally). Bwonsamdi should just rule his Afterlife realm on his own, and let no one rule over him. However this may make the Devs change his personality to rude, haughty and even bloodthirsty if he lets no one be his boss. Or, they could just make up whole new Loa and have him/her be his boss then.
Also, I want a Bwonsamdi/troll covenant now lol
Maybe a Papa Legba figure should be Bwonsamdi’s boss instead?
Also there’s more than one Baron in RL Voudou, so why not have more than one Bwon?
(I mean like, more troll Death Loa with ‘Bwon’ at the beginning of their names, not more than one Bwonsamdi lol)
I mean so the way it works, and note this is me being EXTREMELY reductive because I’m not gonna write an essay lol:
Papa Legba (Rada) is the one honored first to open the crossroads
The Ghede Nanchon = The Dead
Barons are many but there’s primarily “three”: Samedi, de la Croix, and Criminel
Criminel is the most brutal/dark/scary of the Barons
Samedi is the fun cool one but is also petty
Baron Samedi is married to Maman Brigit, who is a derivative colonial syncretic product of Irish Saint Bridget, who is a syncretic derviative of Brigid the Irish goddess and part of the Irish Tuatha de Danann, which is the basis of Ardenweald as a whole, from the Winter Queen to the Tirnas (Tir Na, Land of)
There is another Lwa, considered by some to be the Petwo aspect of Legba, called Met Kalfu (Maitre Carrefour, Master Crossroads), who controls the “backdoor” of the crossroads, and is one of the three Lwa that have dominion over workings/“magic”.
So the way I had WANTED it to work in Ardenweald is
It is revealed that there was once three equal Death Loa: Hakkar of Blood, Muehzala of Death, and Bwonsamdi of Graves, parallel to the three “main Barons”
All three Death Loa lived in what is today Nazmir (The Necropolis) and taught the very first Zandalari that lived in the swamps, before they had a King and were an Empire, when they were just tribes, how to care for the dead and taught them death-related “voodoo”
Hakkar’s spooky appearance that is like a monstrous permutation of Quetzalcoatl could have been revealed is because he was “kidnapped” by the Titans and experimented on in Uldir, driven insane and evil, like the one multiheaded loa monster boss
Muehzala was always a brutal Loa and demanded sacrifices, so Bwonsamdi convinced him to stay in the Shadowlands and Bwon will serve as the primary Psychopomp
However between the Amani genocide during Elven colonialism, the repeated raiding of the Gurubashi trolls, the mass extermination of the Farraki, etc, there’s less and less worship
Muehzala began to get “greedy” and was tempted by the Jailer for more power, but hid this from Bwon
Bwon just stuck in the real world, and its been a VERY long time since he’s stepped foot in the Shadowlands
So Muehzala is the boss in as much that he’s the one that has the “most” power in the Shadowlands per se, as his dominion is Death itself, whereas Bwon’s dominion was always The Dead (Thanatos vs Hades, to put it in Greek terms)
But instead they’re doing:
Muehzala is The Boss!
Bwon was a servant all along!
No idea how Bwon didn’t notice souls disappearing/being consumed by Muehzala all along since Bwon regularly is present in the Shadowlands!
Hakkar is a side boss minor character with zero explanation in questing!
Gnomes?!?!?!
The afterlife of All Trolls For All Eternity is a dungeon
This could also explain how MOTHER got hold of Hakkars blood, which when combined with G’huuns blood, turned into Vectis (unintentionally).
We do know that the blood trolls initially worshiped Hakkar before G’huun made his power play. So it would make a bit of sense to have some form of place of worship to Hakkar in Nazmir.
You could also have it where Hakkar, wanting revenge on G’huun for stealing his followers, makes a deal with us at some point. Or we learn about Hakkers history with G’huun and we make a deal with Hakkar to help us against the false blood god. Maybe giving Hakkar some of Bwonsamdi’s mojo in return. You know, a sort of enemy of my enemy is my friend kind of deal.
Like why even set up this connection through the blood trolls if it went nowhere.
I actually have a headcanon of this. I kind of like to think that he rarely goes to De Other Side unless to sleep/ for ‘private time’ (if you know what I mean) or if something really really bad happens in the Shadowlands, such as what Sylvanas/Mueh’zala did.
Ok so I did some Googling and Mueh’zala defiantly seems like a Met Kalfu/Devil like figure to me. But what was Bwon originally? Maybe he could’ve been Mueh’zala’s ‘son’?
I like this idea. But what if Nazmir wasn’t always a swamp?
(plus, those Zandalari could be the ancestor’s of my character’s clan, the Sam’de )
They could of made it a small ‘sub zone’ in Ardenweald, or even a totally separate one. Would of been cooler than a dungeon imo
Maybe Rastakhan is just ‘serving’ Bwonsamdi in the Shadowlands version of his temple? Sen’jin I’m not sure, but he could be hiding somewhere in the dense forest by Hakkar’s area
You should make a separate thread for all this, it’d be really cool!
What makes you believe that? He making deals with other shadowland being proves opposite, he is deffnietly having a look on what is going on in the Shadowlands.
If that would be true, he would be a terrible host.
I literally said it’s “what I wanted to happen in shadowlands” dude lmao
Exactly. Blizzard refused to follow up on any of the Uldir lore. They could’ve easily included Hakkar and Mueh during the Voljin Questline, or during Talanji coronation questline.
IMHO all three could’ve been “native” to the Shadowlands, but Bwon takes the form of the first Troll to die, to parallel IRL how the oldest male grave in the cemetery is the altar for Baron Samedi in some workings.
We could’ve had the First Dark Troll in Ardenweald too, looks like Bwon but isn’t.
As far as family relations go, within Voodoo a lot of the Lwa are family. We know Rezan Loa of Kings (whose power tends to Life and Light) is the Son of Xibalba, who was a giant T-Rex who caused everyone to look at her to instantly die.
Muehzala could’ve been Xibalba’s son and Rezan’s brother. Hakkar too.
Now for Bwon they could’ve done a thing where the “Tidemother” was revealed to be a Kraken Loa that was once worshipped in Zandalari (after all, Kul Tiras and Zandalar would’ve been right next to eachother Pre Sundering), and since we know we’re getting Dambalah in Shadowlands as a Snake Loa, we could’ve had Bwon be their son. Which is incorrect Voodoo lore but would’ve been a better tie-in for the Horde to be introduced to the Tidesage Spooky Stuff than the incoherent mess they did instead.
Yeah sure don’t remember what the quest and chronicles state but I’m pretty sure Nazmir was always swampy no?
Yeah they should’ve done a zone ruled by Mueh and Bwon that is 1/3rd Trolls, 1/3rd Orcs, 1/3rd Tauren, and have it be the “tribal” zone of Jungle, plateaus, and Nagrand style plains.
What we got sucks.
And yeah maybe but point is we are getting as of right now zero follow up on Rastakhan and Senjin which is super dumb.
I did make a thread on all the real life parallels to lore in shadowlands and got zero attention lmao
I guess, but I think I’d like it better if Bwonsamdi just looks like a troll, but has no other form
Not sure about this, but I think Mueh defiantly came from somewhere
Wait, who’s the “Tidemother”? Is that some kind of leader of the Tidesages? I haven’t done the Alliance quests in Kul Tiras for a while lol
As for Bwonsamdi being Dambalah’s son,
I’m …not really a fan of that tbh
I might have to do some research, but I think I remember seeing something about Zandalar being mostly jungle before the Sundering
One part of it could’ve been the real Other Side, and the rest is all Ancestral tribal Afterlife. Also Bwonsamdi should be ruling something, to me he’s a King of the Dead
I’m not a fan of them sticking Bwonsamdi in Ardenweald, but it looks like that’s probably the best fit for him
Rastakhan (and Sen’jin) are no where to be seen in the Datamined Alpha either, and that really worries me
Oh you did? That’s kind of unfortunate that no one saw it. I could see comparing things in Shadowlands to their real life counterparts sparking an interesting conversation
There’s no lore reason for it, and I REALLY don’t want the Trolls to be "actually descended of * insert Titan Construct or Wild God here * "
It’d be a cool tie-in. Xibalba was never expanded upon even though she appears to be Galakron level spooky and powerful, and very much tied to Death/Decay, as well as being named after the Mayan underworld.
We still don’t know. Within the lore The Tidemother would speak to the Tidesages, and then recently (as in, just before arriving at Kul Tiras for BFA, probably around the time of the Cataclysm) the whispers got “Darker”. There’s a few options here:
The whispers were always Nzoth
The whispers were always Azshara
The whispers were a Kraken Wild God whose voice was overshadowed by Azshara/N’zoth during the Cataclysm
Given the Tidesages were cool and one of the ONLY instances of WoW Human Religion that isn’t The Light or “weirdly worshipping the scourge or the burning legion”, I really wish Blizzard had confirmed the Wild God theory and denied the Nzoth/Azshara theory.
Within Voodoo lore Dambalah is EXTREMELY powerful and the creator of all life, and we still don’t know what level of power WoW Dambalah will have, all we have is a datamined serpent model with the name.
If Rastakhan gets completely forgotten I will be mad lol
There is a new update in the feedback thread which suggested on how to actually use the opportunity that we go to troll afterlife and give the characters some justice:
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