We also see a lot of villainous Trolls claiming to be going to the Otherside with glee and anticipation… It’s almost like they either don’t know what awaits them or we don’t understand the system as well as we think we do.
This is conjuncture. Bwon is worshiped in every Troll culture, even in addition to their regular Loa but all indications say The Otherside is for his worshipers only.
To honor the loa of death, Zandalari would don these masks in their rituals and pray to him. Bwonsamdi in turn would either answer in kind, or curse them with pain, depending on his mood. Bwonsamdi himself is the protector of the dead and brings the spirits of any who worship him into his realm, “Da Other Side”.
Your placement isn’t necessarily dictated by whether or not you were a “good person” in life, only your worth to Bwonsamdi.
That’s only the current state of affairs. This wasn’t true prior to breaking of the Shadowlands. The Other Side was created a long time ago as somewhere for Bwon to keep his collection.
Define “villanous”, not every troll antagonist is a bad guy. Not every troll that we put down is a bad guy, they could’ve simply fight for wrong reasons.
Not every. Farraki responds to Mueh’zala. And No, even in BfA we saw that not even his direct worshippers go to the other side.
Bwonsamdi still has a say on how to deal with certain souls, some have a peaceful afterlife like Sen’Jin and some are tormented like Zalazane.
It was true, because that subject appeared in Shadows of the Horde.
The only ones who go to the Ohterside who aren’t his worshipers are the ones we kill and Bwon harvests because of his power to snatch them out of the cycle.
That’s what I said. Bwon chooses who is of worth to him.
Right but that’s only true NOW. And only because he’s only recently learned of Mueh’zala’s part in the breaking of the Shadowlands. Prior to that, he was funneling those he didn’t want to Mueh’zala (not known if he was aware of their fate after that.)
It doesn’t work like that when the other part has credentials of helping other and had show results aka saving thousands of souls from hell.
Which is the whole Trollkind
Which is nobody as Mueh’zala went MIA for centuries and he even specifically says that he only returned to confront Bwonsamdi
as he haven’t send anyone to him to feed.
I get some of his quest might look shady for somes, especially as the game went bland and treads on a very blanke and straightforward nuance in ethics and cultural aspect for each race.
Fear of death is pretty engrained in all living things even though afterlives exist in the world of Warcraft. We see several trolls who are trying to circumvent death through Nazmir. Some do so by making a deal with Bwonsamdi. Some choose to become liches.
This is common in real life mythologies too. A fair few characters in Greek mythology try to circumvent the will of Hades even if they don’t truly have anything to fear about their own death. The idea of dying is scary so they try to avoid it.
Bwonsamdi’s deal with the mother is the same mythological story we see in countless real world religions. It is a scared mortal who hopes to circumvent the natural order of things by making a deal with their death god. Usually a shady as Hell deal.
In this case the mother sacrificed her daughter for immortality. Bwonsamdi upheld his end of the bargain, but in a very monkey’s paw kind of way. She was immortal but not unkillable, and her sacrificed daughter’s spirit would hunt her down eventually.
It is a morality tale as old as human civilization. You can’t hide from death. Bwonsamdi, being a trickster god, went forward with the deal with the mother to teach her this lesson.
Nope, that is again your assumption. Each Loa like Shadra or Hi’reek directed their own followers to the Other side to the Bwonsamdi. Another example was Rastakhan and Rezan, from their conversation you could tell that despite Rezan being patron of Kings of Queens his still let of his previous pupils to go to Bwonsamdi after their service was done.
He is interested in getting all the troll souls, he is not picky on who to dump and who not.
Nope, If it was a thing back in MoP that by definition proves you wrong.
That is your assumption again. We know that Bwonsamdi was collecting and sparing all the troll souls he could. He couldn’t waste any of them if he wanted the power-up. We don’t really know how their relationship actually looked like but we do have a track record that Bwonsamdi is doing very well as the caretaker of the dead despite his shady nature.
We have zero evidence of the stuff you’re accusing him of.
Apparently his only fault is that he can be deceitful in order to take power, but he uses this power for protection.
That makes him actually pretty fun and interesting character.
And seriously, it’s fitting. I’m bored to death (lol) by goodie two-shoe characters.
I feel like this whole debate would be unnecessary if it weren’t for Blizz’s habit to retcon old lore.
That all troll souls go to the Otha Side was just the way things were and nobody had a problem with it, not the trolls obviously, nor anyone else because it didn’t concern them ( unless they made a deal with Bwon for whatever reason ).
There was no reason to believe that it was a bad thing for trolls in general, on the contrary, Bwon obviously treated them well as we can see with Sen’jin in Shadows of the Horde.
But neither did it mean villainous subjects were absolved of their crimes in the afterlife, as shown with Zalazane.
It only became an issue because of the new lore with Mueh’zala suddenly being the loa of death all along and Bwon his servant who took care of troll afterlife in his master’s absence.
And began hiding the souls from him once he learned of his plan to feed them to the Jailer.
Special treatment? Sure. Is Bwonsamdi a bad guy for wanting to save as many souls as he can, as is his job as caretaker of troll afterlife? Certainly not.
You’re right, of course, but there was no indication that Mueh’zala was worshipped by any other troll tribe except for the Farraki.
The tablet and a one-time appearance in the Traveller book were the only times he was mentioned, so his sudden importance came pretty much out of nowhere.
But he wasn’t. Not the whole time, unless you’re saying that Trolls would naturally go to the Maw without Bwonsamdi.
Only those who worshipped him.
You’ll have to back that up with a source because everything going on in BfA indicates Bwon was reporting to Mueh this whole time, not to mention his activities on Azeroth for the last 30 years.
But the point is, he didn’t HAVE to accept the deal. But he did. And he let her sacrifice her own daughter to him.
That’s not an assumption. That’s actually the quests we did in Nazmir.
He WANTS all the souls. For his own power, yes.
But he still shares them with Mueh’zala.
No it doesn’t because MoP is still part of “Right now.” As in, Post Shadowlands Breaking, assuming it was broken in Wrath, which all indications it was.
But if it was broken after MoP, then you’re wrong because he wasn’t “saving” them from the Maw because they wouldn’t of gone to the Maw (except the truly Evil ones.)
Not an assumption but literally what the (new) lore is.
He COULD of stopped sending souls to Mueh’zala altogether but that would of been suspicious. He had to continue sending at least some of them on or Mueh’zala would of put a stop to it.
Which, btw, is exactly what we see in Shadowlands. Mueh catches on to what Bwon has been doing and returns to put him down.
But you’re trying to justify him doing what he does for Benevolent reasons.
Anyone going to the Maw prior to the Shadowlands breaking would of been the Evil ones. Not really doing the rest of Trollkind any favors by circumventing their Judgement.
And in the end the daughter got what she wanted; An eternity with her mommy dearest. Which just so happens to be the punishment said mother deserves.
That is pretty much mythological god 101 stuff.
Bwonsamdi punishes wicked trolls that go to his realm. We see this with the sort of afterlife Zalazane got.
Honestly I get the impression you’re trying to come up with reasons to dislike him. It is fine if you don’t, but he’s pretty firmly in the “not a villain” camp as far as the story goes as of the latest novel where we see he’s sacrificing his own power to try and keep his followers safe from damnation.
Did you skip the rest of my post on purpose? I elaborated on why you are wrong and why it was an assumption.
You have no knowledge on how it works, so another assumption. The datamined stuff showed that Mueh’zala went MIA for a long time.
I suppose you talk about “broken machine” which is what happened in Legion, not in MoP.
No, he was just collecting them the regular way, as he did for last centuries. But I fail how that changes anything? He is going out of his way to use all his powers to save all trolls he can. That puts him ahead of literally any other deity, especially “the one true” Moon one.
Let me repeat again. That is your assumption as there is literally zero knowledge on how the whole job management between Mueh’zala and Bwon looked like.
No, Mueh returned for a long AFK to see that Bwon has been acting against him the whole time.
I don’t justify him, I literally see nothing wrong with him, to justify something it would imply that he is doing something wrong. And he isn’t.
He is doing exactly what he is supposed to for caretaker of the dead.
I’m not going to say Bwonsamdi was blameless for allowing the temptation, but I’m 100% confident that someone willing to sacrifice their own child for a selfish goal would absolutely find another way to harm them anyway, and that’s just the angle they chose to go about it.
We can make a fairly reasonable deduction based on what we do know.
Mueh’zala was THE Loa of Death from the beginning.- From what we do know of him, he was probably just as greedy as he is today
Bwon was a Worshiper of Mueh in life - possibly, one of only a few.
We also know that Bwon still takes orders from Mueh in death.
Now, it’s reasonable to conclude that there was no Otherside prior to this, which meant all Trolls went to the Arbiter and which meant Mueh’zala got nothing from all his worship, except for the ones who he can steal away, probably through Bargaining.
We can conclude that something caused Mueh to elevated Bwon to Loa, undoubtedly for Mueh’s Benefit. (Maybe Death worship was at an all time low and Bwon was to bring up more business) but if Bwon created The Otherside, it was certainly by Mueh’zala’s order/approval. Mueh’zala wouldn’t of allowed this if he didn’t get anything from it, indeed he most definitely got something from it; All the Troll Soul delivered directly to his domain and not having to share them with the Arbiter. Basically his own personal buffet.
Not saying Bwon liked it but it was his role, this much is certain. He was to usher soul into The Otherside, where Mueh’zala was waiting.
The Only reasonable excuse I could think of is that he was worried she would appeal directly to Mueh’zala if Bwonsamdi denied her. If this is true, I’d be willing to Forgive him.
