The break was stated to have happened ‘a few years ago’, so it probably happened just before Legion, because that’s the first instance they mention of her actively plotting to get into a position to help fuel the Jailer, that being leading the assault alongside Varian.
While she did see the Maw, and that was her first interaction with the Jailer to some extent, many are making the assumption that she was destined for the Maw when she committed suicide, but I don’t think that was the case at all. I think the Jailer actively reached out to pull her to him and show her the Maw, long before death was broken.
Why? Because Sylvanas hated the Lich King, and the Lich King and the Scourge appear to have been made as artificial branches of Maldraxxus. All other members of the Scourge were potential parts of that same machine, that army of death that defends the Shadowlands and advances its interests. Ergo, the group the Jailer wants dealt with the most. So he showed her the Maw, and that’s what started her journey.
Or, even more simple, she crossed to the Shadowlands and ended up at the Maw because the Maw is directly on ‘the other side’ from where she died, Icecrown. The vision of the Maw is very short in the story, before the Valkyr whisk her back, she could very well have been on her way to the Arbiter for sorting, before they intervened.
Per this lore, the Arbiter needs to judge where the new arrivals go, even the ones damned to the Maw. Sylvanas didn’t see the Arbiter, therefore she wasn’t properly sorted, therefore she probably wasn’t destined to go to the Maw in the first place.
The exact timing could put Cairne’s death before Slyvanas’ suicide so potentially before things fully broke, since Slyvanas appears to be the first known case of a soul going directly to the Maw.
As for the whole Slyvanas and the Jailer thing I think Blizzard might have been oversimplifying things in how they described it.
The likely story board goes
Slyvanas commits suicide and the Jailer takes notice of her, especially when the Valkyr pull her out of the Maw.
Godfrey kills Slyvanas and after getting pulled back from the Maw by the Valkyr again, this sets Slyvanas off on the path to learning about the Valkyr and their power, convinced their her and the Forsaken’s salvation.
By the time Legion comes around Slyvanas is already planning her trip to Stormheim to meet Helya and learn the secrets of the Valkyr one way or another. The Legion however threw a wrench in her plans and Slyvanas is forced to spearhead the counterattack and work with Varian to ensure the Legion doesn’t overrun Stormheim.
While Slyvanas has been learning about the Valkyr in secret the Jailer has their agents watching Slyvanas judging her worth as a new agent. Deciding she is motivated enough to go through with his goals the Jailer orchestrates the death of Voljin and Slyvanas becoming warchief, knowing he has an offer too good for her to pass up.
The Jailer uses Helya as a go between (or like she already works with him) to make his offer to Slyvanas of giving her the power she needs to gain power similar to the Valkyr. The Jailer however leaves out that he’s responsible for killing Voljin and making her warchief.
When Genn ruins the lantern the Plan A of using an army of Valkyr for the power the Jailer and Slyvanas need is stopped. The Legion invasion however shows the Jailer he can gain the power he needs just from mass death of lesser souls.
Sometime after Before the Storm the Jailer lays out how the faction war has to happen to increase both their powers enough for the next stage of the plan.
Slyvanas at first tries to do things in a way that makes the Alliance pay the brunt of the anima bill, but sadly her incompetent general spared one of the most Anima rich souls around for weak reasons, forcing her to mass harvest anima from Teldrassil to make up for the loss of Malfurion.
Slyvanas tries again with Lorderon to collect the Anima of alliance high command and army, but deus ex Jaina ruins everything.
As her fellow Horde leaders start turning on her for using cruel methods to try and win the war while inflicting high casualties on the Alliance, Slyvanas becomes more and more fed up with both sides. The Alliance being constantly trying to use kid gloves under Anduin and the Horde leaders turning against her when she’s not betrayed the Horde while perusing her own goals at the same time.
Seeing the peace instead of victory crowd on both sides was a threat to ending the war too soon, Slyvanas decides to help Azshara free Nzoth knowing that Nzoth is a threat that unlike each other we couldn’t reason with.
Come the duel with Suarfang, Slyvanas reaches her breaking point with putting up with the Honor Horde and Alliance, and leaves realizing we have no choice at this stage but to fight and give her and the Jailer the last power needed to destroy the Lich King.
I find it very unlikly Cairne died before sylvanas suicide.
None of know when the maw kicked into high gear, im going off an event that could qualify as setting off somethingn of that magnitude, and i believe it could have set that off because of how catastrophic sundering the helm of domination was.
The timeline i see as most clear is.
Sylvanas kills herself shortly after lichking is defeated.
Thrall names Garrosh next warchief.
Cairne dies in mok’gora against Garrosh for warchief position.
Cataclysm expansion.
When it comes to blizzard portaying events. I find that they are either very simple or convoluted to the point of makeing no sense. If they are over simplifying things, it will likely end up a jumbled mess.
Baine’s rebellion and the response from Sylvanas were planned out in advance with a high level of grainy detail, right? Like, Sylvanas probably had the whole thing written up in flowcharts somewhere in Undercity.
Footnote
(You might ask how Sylvanas could possibly have seen this far in to the future, and the answer is that Sylvie is actually an example of artificial superintelligence that can process billions of possibilities simultaneously–but you already know that.)
So clearly the Jailer would just make sure Cairne wound up where he’s supposed to go so as not to let people in on the plan. The same explanation applies to Calia and to any others whose afterlife destination doesn’t fit with the breakage in Shadowlands.
Slyvanas was missing at the time Garrosh was commanding Grand Apothecary Lydon to orchestrate the siege of Gilneas so that would imply her suicide occurred after the war had already started, which should put it after Cairne’s death.
The Legion has been burning whole planets(along with all life on them) to ash for tens of thousands of years. That’s a steady source of anima that the Jailer could have used then, no? I mean why are the casualties of one legion invasion and the fourth war so much more substantial than those of the entire Burning crusade?
I have to disagree, Edge of Night most certainly makes it appear co-current to Garrosh beginning the Invasion, with Sylvanas returning and taking over.
I find it very unlikely that Sylvanas’ suicide happened before Cairne’s death.
We know Sylvanas loosing control of the Horde wasn’t her plan, so no, not really?
A Spiritwalker has a vision of Sylvanas executing Baine, so I think that really was her intention.
It’s implied she planned to eventually, but Saurfangs death moved up her timetable.
Since the spiritwalkers get their visions from the spiritt, and those have proven to be under the influence of the Jailer to some extent, it’s uncertain if this was a true vision or just a way to provoke the rebels out of hiding.
Honestly I feel that Golden’s writing of Sylvanas in her books(warcrimes, BTS and the Sisters comic) was off and the proof checkers didn’t do a good job making sure that the writing of direction of Slyvanas character was going in the right direction.
So all the points of the writing where it indicates where she would care about others or she might have a conscience were not supposed to be there.
Like all the characters Golden writes, they seem to be completely different from how they are portrayed in game. Also why the writing in BFA has taken a nose dive since she got involved.
its far fetched but could even play into the prophecy “The Light has struck a bargain with the enemy of all”.
Maybe the reason Ashbringer was able to break it was because the jailer made a deal with the light to weaken Frostmourne so that Ashbringer could break it. Simply so the champions could stop the lich king from taking over Azeroth. I mean we were basically defeated and about to be raised as the Lich kings champions. Maybe the light(possibly elune or arbiter) made a deal with the Jailer.
I think Frostmourne shattering could have been the very beginning. The first domino if you will. However, other things had to come into play. Such as Sylvanas dying so the Jailer could get his hooks into her,the whole Stormheim adventure, and the death of Argus to name a few.
All these things happened, some orchestrated by the Jailer, others he got lucky that they happened at all. But until Argus died I think souls were still going before the Arbiter. When that happened, it created a disturbance so profound that the Jailer was able to usurp the natural flow of souls to the Maw, and thus started his and Sylvanas’s power up. Then Teldrassil gave them a major boost.
I also agree that at first, she wanted to go after those who had a greater amount of anima to keep things as quiet as possible. So when Saurfang didn’t kill Malfurion, she was forced to improvise by destroying Teldrassil. Someone in another post said that and I am sorry but I can’t remember who but if you see this major kudos. It does explain that whole mess rather neatly.
There is something new I’ve thought of on this conundrum that maybe the answer is this isn’t an either or proposition like flipping a switch and suddenly all souls go to the Maw, but rather the problem has merely gotten worse over time, since Frostmourne was shattered.
This would explain how Cairne didn’t end up sucked into the Maw, if at first only some souls were getting diverted to the Maw instead of all.
John Hight specified Legion in an interview at Blizzcon:
This is- I mean- this has actually been part of her plan all along. Certainly in the events in Legion where souls stopped going to the rest of Shadowlands- to the rest of the Covenenats, and they were all going into the Maw. And the Maw is the place where the souls that cannot be redeemed go. And so basically have this shortage of souls going to the rest of the Shadowlands- they're all piling into the Maw- Sylvanas is part of this master plan, and she's going to use that power.
That doesn’t actually refute the point that the problem of souls being drawn to the maw could have gotten worse over time to where around Legion all souls started getting sucked there.
We know from Slyvanas’ recount of her first death that she wasn’t destined for the Maw, meaning when she died the 2nd & 3rd time something pulled her there instead of getting sorted and going to a purgatory realm like Revendreth to repent her evil acts as the Banshee Queen.
Thus the system of death had to at least be partially broken back when Slyvanas committed suicide.