We don’t have actual proof that every single cosmic force must have a pantheon. And the only group besides the Titan Pantheon that were ever murmur’d by blizzard developers to be described as a pantheon were the Eternals of the shadowland…and we subsequently saw that story put that entire description in doubt for any objective narrative. They made it entirely possible to say that the 4 eternals were just robots put as a barrier in between reality and death that maybe doesn’t represent the cosmic force of Death at all. But I’ll put that aside for now and say… sure, I guess whatever those are, they count as your pantheon of death. So if all the 6 cosmic forces have a pantheon of some kind… what about Disorder?
I could see a minimum of 4 possibilities, most of which contradict each other but do not so far contradict the lore of warcraft. In other words, they can’t all be true.
1st possibility = There is no pantheon of disorder at all, it may be the only one of the cosmic forces that doesn’t have any pantheon and any ruling structure. Various demon forms just come into existence by interaction between light and void in the Nether and then they compete with one another. The arrival of Sargeras was not normal, and he gave structure and hierarchy to demons that they didn’t have on their own.
2nd possibility = There is a pantheon of Disorder, but they did not reveal themselves to the reality dimension and they did not plan on Sargeras’ activity. They have plans for what goes on in the twisting nether itself and only allowed the tiny and lesser demons to roam into the reality dimension to make deals and contracts and take life energy then consume it and eradicate it back in the twisting nether.
3rd possibility = The Pantheon of Disorder is actually a collection of one ‘rebel’ individual from each of the other pantheons of cosmic forces. So perhaps something like Zovaal and Sargeras and a Void lord that treats the other voidlords as bitter rivals, and a Life lord that works against life, and a Light lord who opposes the other Holy hosts, something like that. Each of them acts either separately or in unity with one another to disrupt and try to start over with what could exist.
4th possibility = There is a Disorder Pantheon but the demons prior to Sargeras were not wanted by them and not planned by them. A very real possibility that cosmic team Life was creating lifeforms to infiltrate all the other cosmic forces including disorder. So team Life created naaru and wild gods and old gods and world souls (titans) and eternals and demons. In this interpretation… fel magic itself would just be a way for team Life to shove life magic into the twisting nether and try to influence or dominate there. All those middle-managers would believe that they were mostly doing things to benefit those forces…but really they were controlled by team Life. In this model the Disorder pantheon doesn’t really like fel magic and they did not participate with it when Sargeras came around; they viewed the burning legion as an interference with chaos and so they would even allow probabilities for him to fail or be defeated eventually…but the wiping out of lifeforms on so many worlds throughout reality would reduce the threat for them from life. This 4th possibility then contains quite a large mystery…in the sense that we don’t know what role Disorder actually wants, and they don’t necessarily have to be evil toward us as mortals, and we don’t know how chaos without fel actually looks out in the pure twisting nether. It could be a purple space dreamland with no hierarchies that constantly changes because they want instability…who knows?
I think it was during Legion? That some sources claimed there were demons in the Twisting Nether that even the warlocks of the legion were afraid to call upon/summon due to how insanely powerful they were.
People have speculated about those beings being a Fel Patheon. But I could be wrong, not entirely sure.
Disorder having a pantheon seems opposite to it’s nature. Sargeras trying to create a pantheon of Disorder in Legion seems like he was defaulting to his Titan nature to Order the disordered.
Maybe the only cosmic force to have a pantheon is Order, unless Order created the other patheons to establish order.
My guess? A Disorder patheon would work almost exactly like the Chaos Gods from Warhammer work. They fight amongst each more often than not, but if someone were to worship ALL of that patheon said person would get the equivalent to a Chaos Undivided buff/blessing.
It only makes sense if said patheon is well…disorderly 99% of the time, but certain major events cause them to occasionally work together
With how Azeroth is hinted to not be a Titan what with Vyranoth claiming Azeroth’s Blessings to not be Titan what if Azeroth is A-Zereth which would mean what the Void has in K’aresh is also a Zereth.
Since we know Shadow has a Zereth Umbrae that means the Void can’t be the Shadow but a potential 7th Cosmic Force(manipulated by Shadow which likely includes the Nathrezim and their master Denathrius who was stuffed into an Automa and forced to join the Pantheon of Death by the First Ones what with him stating that the only power to emerge from Zovaal’s torrent of change will be Death and those who aided in it’s victory) waiting to be realized via K’aresh’s Zereth being fought as the Final Boss of War Within.
This would mean all the Cosmic Realms started off the same way and started spawning new Elemental Planes as a result of the Zereth of each Realm exploring the aspects of the Elemental Plane it’s in.
The Infinite Truths: There are Infinite Elements waiting to become Cosmic Forces via a Zereth to be shoved into their Elemental Plane. The One Truth: any Concept can be an Element or Cosmic Force! The reason there can be no Light without Shadow? Because all Elements/Cosmic Forces need something to give them substance to define their existence!
What if, other than Sargeras and his imposed Order on the Legion, the leadership of the Twisting Nether goes through a massive amount of turnover. As in cosmic level survival of the fittest/king of the hill.
Beyond that… we’d need to figure out what demons are actually native demons. Dreadlords are out of Death. Doom guard are from order, came with Sargeras. Eredar were a sentient quasi mortal race. A lot of Demons were converted by the Legion.
I think Annihilan/Pit Lords may be native to the Nether, mostly because their blood has been used to corrupt orcs, elves, etc. Similarly, Fellhound hearts and blood are used to empower Demon Hunters, so I’d contend they too are directly out of the Nether.
Based on this, there would be a Fel god of Brutality/Violence/War for the Annihilan. Another for Hunger for the Fell Hounds. Maybe a great hungering beast. It need not be sentient.
Actually, if any Pantheon had gods who were a a few cards short of a deck, it may very well be Fel.
Not sure to what you are referring…would need more details pointing to a quest or an event.
That would be covered by the 1st possibility in my list.
That tendency could be happening in the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th possibilities in my list.
Sadly…that behavior of saying you know things which we do not know is happening again.
Apologies for feynman’ing your quotes so I could condense them in there only once. But I would say nether turnover is included in all 4 possibilities from my list. Dreadlords I agree seem like they came from death. Doomguards I do not agree came from order at all…what we were told by one of them under compulsion was that their pre-demon activities included being used by the Titans to search for people abusing or using arcane magic improperly. That could mean those doomguards pre-demon may have come from anywhere…maybe even a rare evolution of life somewhere in which predation on magic users was advantageous and so became a favorable trait for genetic exaggeration. Then the Titans found them and used them as described…we can’t be certain about them coming from order. Eredar weren’t just “semi” mortal, they were fully mortal before Sargeras offered an alternative, and before naaru offered another alternative more favorable to them still. There were both draenei ghosts in shadowlands zones as well as that Eredar one we see during the Bastion questing that shows his culpability for things he did within Sargeras’ burning legion…although since Sargeras had been defeated and Argus disconnected prior to shadowlands that would explain why the Eredar soul was taken into Bastion instead of being sent back to Argus for resurrection. At any rate, Eredar seem just as mortal as every other playable race. The holographic emitter in the Exodar draenei city does not specifically confirm that Annihilan were directly from the twisting nether, so we don’t know for sure, but they could be. Regarding there needing to be Fel Gods…I don’t think we have any evidence that there ‘must’ be…I would just say that there could be some, and several of the possibilities in my list include that. But it must also be said that the Pit Lords never seemed to have any loyalty anywhere else besides Sargeras…none of them made any hints that they were unhappy with Sargeras or wanting to receive orders or do any worshipping of anybody else or anything else.
The more I think about pantheons… it makes me wonder… are we entirely sure that World Souls didn’t awaken in our reality dimension and already “tame” part of the Arcane force because it was too wild and dangerous? I never see any of the Titan Pantheon trying to make anybody become arcane elementals or to use only arcane and more arcane magic… if anything, the Titans seemed like they wanted people to calm down with arcane magic and only use a little bit here and there. So what if World Souls are from reality, and they went “to” Zereth Ordos to make them less threatening rather than everybody assuming any titan ever came “from” zereth ordos? Even the villain Odyn says that Titans got gifts “from” zereth ordos, he does not say Titans were from there.
Keep in mind also, that the Twisting Nether isn’t ideally a realm solely of pure fel-energy. There’s demons and beings born & created in the nether that aren’t necessarily of the fel — but simply dark, twisted or beyond comprehension.
So it’d be cool to see some nether-beings that are benevolent but egotistic & considered and aberration to the Pantheon of order — or Void beings who were ‘ascended’ by the nether and regarded either as demons or heretical void beings, due to their newfound personalities or desires.
Personally I find ‘the fel’ to be an overused concept – especially with any involvement towards the Twisting Nether.
I’d love to see more nether beings on the same scale of the Netherdrake flight, but with other beings and various ways of how it changed them.
Narratively, that’d be awesome — Having me both deeply and thoroughly hooked.
You’re either being very disingenuous… or you’re not correctly making any syllogism when you start off paragraphs with “since we know”. Nobody is denying that the saezurah character mentioned the word umbra. You didn’t stop at “since we know saezurah acknowledges shadow” …you went off to invent premises which were never demonstrated or proven in any of the lore. We think it likely that there could be a zereth umbra facility… we do not “know” any such thing to be true. Nor has it ever been demonstrated that shadow is any different from void. You assume that, you wish that, you rub your hands together and say “wouldn’t it be cool if…” but none of that equates to “Since we know”. You don’t know anything about the origin of Denathrius, again you assume it and wish it and operate on your “wouldn’t it be cool if” modus operandi all while falsely pretending there is any objectivity to your claims, let alone any logical connection from one premise to any of your conclusions. There are way too many non-sequiturs in your replies when you do that behavior.
Yep… which is included in my 4th possibility from the list. The denizens of the twisting nether could be entirely bizarre and unfamiliar purple space beings with an aversion to hierarchies or probabilities. Which can have any number of interesting reactions or interactions with us as mortals.
It’s funny that you posted this right before I re-posted my cranky complaint about the devs constantly wanting to talk about pantheons . I guess you’re proof that some of us are excited about them!
People who think the Titans are the pantheon of Order are in for quite a surprise. Titans are empty shells, and the Order pantheon just managed to corrupt the first one (Aman’thul) to their side. The Titans are strictly beings inherent to the mortal universe.
Bookmark it or whatever. 100% probability.
I am, yes. I don’t give a rip about all this small side-story diversion baloney like Dragonflight.
I think the whole multiple pantheon thing is a reference to the cycle of time in the universe and how persistence leads to a state change.
So for example the old gods could’ve been a more primal symbiote in the universe when it was younger. Acting as a multiheaded yet unified source of “order”, which views the past as true order and as time shifts forward all else is becoming chaos. The only thing to revert that state to their former view of order is to reset it all.
Meanwhile you have the plane of death which is residual of what was. Because it becomes after something that has been it would have traces of the old gods definition of order (when the universe was young) but it would have consciously adapted and grown in a new image as newer and newer examples of life entered and had influence, pursuing a created order rather than being born into order itself as the old gods were.
The pantheon of titans in a sense is a mixture of the two, they see order forming rather than the order that came before them… probably because they weren’t there to see it.
I think the closest thing to a pantheon of disorder was the dragonflights when they received power from the titans. They each had individual takes on life and the titans chose to make a safe bet with making them powerful enough to rule. Of course they left keepers and such across the planet incase something went awry.
A pantheon of disorder wouldn’t necessarily be seeking to create disorder, more it would be disorderly in its attempt at maintaining order. Being young,naive, ignorant to their lack of understanding the dragonflights represent an example of such, of course they could’ve grown to be more chaotic, less life loving, more robotic like the pantheon / old gods / realm of death, but instead you’ve seen them relinquish their powers just as the titans did them. Meaning as mortals become more powerful relative to azeroth they represent the prime candidates for the pantheon of disorder.
The concept of a disorder pantheon is interesting, but i feel like maybe… order and disorder are parasitic in nature. So my take on it is amanthul was not originally a order being, it just happened to be that its planet was mostly arcane based, and therefore nurtured it into being an order type being that he named himself a titan. He explored, found other sleeping proto beings and encouraged the planets development into order.
On the other hand, the demons of the fel are compelled to do the same. Sargeras himself became part of the fel pantheon imo. Both these forces are considered opposites so why couldnt they both have a similar nature in that regard. Both are also not static forces, order and chaos both naturally fall apart.
On the other hand life and death are a permeant existence and have static pantheons.
Light and Shadow most likely have lords. One singular leader imo. A Light Lord and a Shadow Lord.
Not really, there have always been gods of chaos and disorder in IRL religions, A pantheon doesn’t mean that all gods cooperate or even belong to the same godly bloodline just that they exist in the same religion
A pantheon usually indicates someone is in charge promoting at least some sense of order. And usually where disorder exists its purpose is to bring ruin to the pantheon if not held in check. A purely chaotic pantheon would require some external influence or unique condition for an existential status quo to be maintained.
If there’s a person/people behind Disorder, like a Titan is behind Order or the Eternal Ones are behind Death, I like to imagine that behind Disorder is no structured pantheon of any sort. It’s perhaps “force of nature” type creature that just revels in stirring the cosmic pot, spreading chaos in the truest sense of the word. So when Sargeras came around, this thing of chaos was in delight to see what kinds of abrupt change and mess the Dark Titan would become. Let him run amock with demon kind, invading the Dark Beyond however he wanted, knowing fel would spread.
Maybe there’s just one person/thing like that, maybe there’s multiple spread about the Twisting Nether, disorganized. In any case, we hardly know much about the Twisting Nether still. We’ve hardly visited its realm. Perhaps one day we can as an expansion setting. I imagine it would look a lot like Krokuun most of the time, and probably has some some spots where demons like felhounds live in a natural habitat as wild animals, however that may look.
I think people take the word disorder so literally that their brains are falling out of their heads. Fel may be the force of disorder, but obvously Fel magic follows rules, and rules imply patterns that are governed by physics/mathematics/logic, which means ordered in the general sense. To be disordered in this general way is contradictory to the entire concept of things having coherent existence.
Fel is ordered, but not Ordered, get it? Stop equivocating the force of Order with the general English term order. This is pretty elementary stuff.
And obviously, Fel will be ordered in the sense that order is brought on by the biggest and baddest demon(s) who demand all other demons be subservient to them. If that isn’t order, what is? This is inescapable.
The forces should have been named Arcane and Fel, the words Order and Disorder are an absolute disaster, and you have to stop taking it so literally.
in fairness, blizz seems to be waffling quite a bit on what the hell the words mean in any context. both arcane and fel are described as, verbatim, “volatile” and “difficult to control” in various sources. even despite the obvious fact that their phraseology is pretty terrible, because it is vague and internally contradictory, i don’t think it’s difficult to see what the affectation the writers are going for is. kalec tells jaina arcane magic is “math” because the writers (mostly golden, RIP) don’t really understand mathematics and figure that it’s precise and narrow and technical, which all seems to consist of what they mean by “orderly;” it therefore also doesn’t seem difficult to see how this lends itself to a very literal read of the word. fel, by contrast, proliferates itself, warps things around it to be radically altered from their original state, has activity that is hard to anticipate, and is depicted as mostly and simply being useful for destruction; all of this strikes me as meeting something like a literal definition of “chaotic”
the capitonymous idea of “Order” hasn’t really been seen before dragonflight. only recently has it become such a buzzword divorced from the conventional sense of the word. now it seems to just mean “in the vein of a control freak,” which is how the titans are increasingly depicted
Narratively, that’d be awesome — Having me both deeply and thoroughly hooked.
. I guess you’re proof that some of us are excited about them!
