Because…I don’t think so. I do, however, thing that it fractures them.
I picture fel magic as the parasite of cosmic forces - something that can corrupt any other force and draw energy from it. You can fuel fel with life, with the shadow-aligned anima, you can sacrifice void to it, even the light can be drained and infused with it.
It’s just a catch-all furnace - but souls are a little special. They’re full of energy, but no matter what, they’ll end up in the shadowlands one way or another. Whether it’s us physically beating them back into it, or exorcising them through more peaceful means, they’ll get there.
I think that fel magic just uses a soul’s anima as fuel for it’s own magic, turning it volatile and explosive. When a soul runs out of anima, the soul’s discarded, and the Kyrian can finally pick it up and put it somewhere where it can recover.
Unless it’s a demon soul.
Then it heads back to the nether to slowly regain energy.
Honest answer: they’re playing so fast and loose with the lore, going so far as retcon’ing things between patches, that God only knows whether the logic of “fel destroys souls” will be upheld or thrown out the window for the sake of an Anduin-Varian:Arthas-Terenas parallel
I mean to be fair we haven’t known that for sure. All we’ve known is that after a certain point, you stop being able to use a soul’s power. That could mean anything tbh.
It’s somewhat inconsistent. Chronicle states that the soul is destroyed, but given that we see souls intact (but crazed) spilling out from the engines of a down Legion ship, I have to imagine this is an exaggeration. You’ll most often hear the argument of “fel destroys souls” when people discuss if Varian is in the Shadowlands.
Personally, I can’t imagine they’d do his character like that.
As of right now the word of god is that Fel destroys souls. However, no one says +how long it takes* for a soul to get used up, nor is there much talk about what is left over afterwards (if anything).
Souls are described as ‘fuel’ for the Fel, but if you think about other combustion processes that require fuel then you’d know there are fumes, exhaust, a little bit of water, and usually some sort of carbon or clinker left over after all is said and done.
As such, what Fel is probably doing is burning up the souls anima, stripping away memories and personality in the process, for power. After the Anima is used up you probably end up with the souls dregs, likely a shade or some sort of amalgamation of leftover souls. It’s possible that these leftovers are the raw stuff that new demons are born from, but that’s just speculation.
what if by “destroys” it’s more in relation to how we’d perceive “intact”. Like…an intact soul is sane, essentially in control of itself, and still able to affect the mortal plane in some way.
But a “destroyed” soul is twisted beyond recognition, occasionally even drained of its ability to sustainably provide power to warlocks, necromancers, and the like.
That’s kind of how I perceived the line. For instance, if I say something is “destroyed,” that can easily mean it’s devastated without being obliterated altogether.
In the most heinous of rituals, such as when scores of Draenei were being used to fuel the opening of the Dark Portal, it most likely did.
There ARE reasons why the magic practised by warlocks is so reviled. It’s a shortcut to power and those shortcuts come at a price… Warlocks just make others foot the bill.
I mean, even if they’re not actively in use, being saturated in that much fel probably wouldn’t leave them intact to that degree if it’s as volatile as people suggest.
Well he said a downed ship, which means a crash or shot down so those souls are just unused fuel that where prematurely freed from their engine prisons.
That Fel destroy souls are straight from the first chronicle book. Which is currently the best canon we have, even if it’s technically from the titans perspective now.
I always interpreted it that fel first corrupt the souls/beings that come into contact with it, and only very large amounts or directed use of it (like warlocks and soul shards) destroy souls. It also would not be that great if the fuel for the ships just burns itself out no matter what.
Thing is that we don’t know too much about it, outside that it’s stated that fel destroy the soul, and that we see it with warlocks and their soul shards.
The titans souls was also almost consumed by a fel storm, and it was only thanks to Norgannon that the pantheons souls escaped.
I mean, it sounds like that last one goes in line with what I’m saying. Yeah, we’re TOLD that fel destroys the soul, but we’ve got a lot of evidence contradicting that.
If we go by show, don’t tell, then they haven’t really shown anything they’ve told.
I’d imagine Fel would perma-kill a demon soul if nothing else. They perma-die when they perish in the Twisting Nether “or places saturated with the Nether’s fel energies.”
I wouldn’t say “a lot of evidence”. With respect to souls coming out of the ship- the draenai says they are stored in the soul engine, and need to be rescued before they “perish”.
I guess we can argue that an “utterly destroyed” or “perished” soul isn’t really as bad as it sounds. Varians’ death cinematic would be less impactful, I guess. There might be a few other implications, as a result. Warlocks are slightly less mean if they say “well, they’re just taking people’s anima, and letting their soul go”. Not sure it’s a concept worth challenging.
I honestly don’t see it, Jeremy Feasel even stated in this tweet that fel does indeed consune the soul. https://twitter.com/Muffinus/status/608521632945012738
We’re told repeatedly by different sources, in game, lore books and even devs that fel does in fact destroy the soul. I see no reason to contest this. I don’t think anyone argues that a soul immediately disintegrates by touching the tiniest amount of fel, but as I said earlier, either through a major amount of fel energies OR targeted use of fel energies to destroy the soul.
All we’ve known is that after a certain point, you stop being able to use a soul’s power. That could mean anything tbh.
They know a lot, but not everything.