Something that’s been tickling at the back of my head for a few months now.
We know Odyn’s lied out his platinum-coated cheeks about just about everything, but the Chronicles he created, and that have formed the foundation of most of our established Lore on the WoW setting, are somewhat true. Like all good liars, Odyn understood the three primary rules of a believable lie are the following.
- Always cleave as close to the truth as you can so the lie holds up to scrutiny for longer.
- Omission always works with uncomfortable truths since you can claim you never knew.
- Pitch the lie to the inclination of the listener, so they will subconsciously believe it due to internal bias.
And Odyn has done this flawlessly to everyone he needed to serve him. We see this in the Warrior Class Hall where he omits the fact he tortured and betrayed Helya to make the first of the Val’kyr to serve his personal ambitions. He neglects to mention to the Vrykul that he tore his floating palace out of Ulduar and probably was the reason that the Old God, Yogg’Saron, was able to make such gains in the first place. And he pitches his entire crusade, and war against Helya, as to the benefit of the world as a whole and we should be grateful to him for it.
But we saw something interesting in the Shadowlands. The ‘soul’ of Argus, a dead Titan, was to be the core of a whole new Arbiter. And yet, somehow, Argus’s soul was flung into the Shadowlands, corrupted and swollen with red anima, and if we go by color coding, Revendreth Anima, leading to the theory that Sargeras, Zo’val and Denathrius were all co-conspirators in the great plot to unmake and remold reality to suit the Jailer’s design.
If the soul of a Titan was never meant to go to the Shadowlands, why was it conveniently tucked into Zerith Mortis to form the core of the new Arbiter? If Argus was a square peg violently punched into and through a round hole, why would he be the First One’s ‘first choice’ to replace the Arbiter? We saw other ‘backups’ of the Pantheon of Death in there too … are they also Titan Souls?
My theory is that the Titans aren’t agents of Order, they’re agents of The Pattern that the servitors of Oribos and the pilgrims in Zerith Mortis. It explains why these ‘agents of Order’ have access to and control over the chaotic Primal Forces, they’re not meant to be agents of the Arcane, they just use the Arcane because it is (absurdly complicated) maths to cast spells and weave enchantments, significantly less corruptive or manipulative than the Void, the Fel or the Light, and as a force of Order, is quite keen on keeping everything in balance and its rivals in check, which in turn limits its ability to upset The Pattern in its own right.
Argus would have been a Titan of Arcane, hence why his essence caused such damage to the False Arbiter, and why the Draenei never had religion until the Light bestowed the Ata’amal Crystal on Velen to try and uplift and ‘turn’ the Draenei to the Naaru. Azeroth, by that definition, is a Titan of Death, due to her essence being the necessary, and presumably only, source of fuel that could allow Zerith Mortis to activate and re-originate the Multiverse. Aman’thul, the Titan of Time, has yellow eyes and can control Time (albeit not totally, but nearly perfectly) and due to this I assume he is a Titan of Light, since he will Originate and re-Originate a solar system over and over again until it fits his vision of perfection.
The Titanic Pantheon isn’t the Fist of Order, keeping a stranglehold on the Material Plane and pushing the agenda of the Arcane, it is the training grounds for proto-forms of the True Pantheons! The Pantheons of Death, Life, Arcane, Fel, Void and Light. It is why the Winter Queen could refer to Elune as her ‘sister’, despite the fact that the Winter Queen is of Death, while Elune is, as yet, unaffiliated with any of the known Pantheons.
The Titanic Pantheon is charged with upholding the balance between the Primal Powers and thus continuing ‘The Pattern’ and keeping this mysterious ‘7th Primal Power’ shackled in the constantly shifting fractal patterns that define the boundaries between the various Planes and the Material Plane (our level of reality), and are given access to powers that they will inevitably take direct control over when their time in the Material Plane is done, either due to conflict, accident or need from these ‘Higher Planes’. It explains why the Titanic Pantheon exists naturally and without issue in the Material Plane, yet the Void and the Fel have to tear open holes in reality to push their servants through, the Old Gods and the Demons respectively, and it explains why they were so hellbent on making sure Azeroth either ended up a Titan or was destroyed outright when the Old God infestations were first uncovered.
Now, something that occurs to me, the Players have no histories.
No parents, no siblings, no hometown, no nothing.
We’re blank slates that just show up and toddle on out into the world and go full-on sicko-mode on anything that threatens the planet. A big part of this is ease-of-story, we as Roleplayers write our own backstories, and narratively, it makes sense for us to just focus on turning the threats to Azeroth into a fine bloody mist.
But where did we come from? Most of the short lived races certainly make sense as orphans from the constant conflicts, raised by the state or the surrounding people and who then grow up to become adventurers, but what if that’s not the case?
We’ve seen that Azeroth is sentient. We know that she’s self-aware and cognizant of her situation, even with the Titanic Facilities keeping her suppressed while they ‘cleanse’ her of Void Corruption. Yet there’s no outcry from those facilities about the Sunwell, which is infused with the Light and is actively interacting with the natural energies of Azeroth? Uhmmmm.
What if, and hear me out here, what if all the ‘Chosen Ones’ of Azeroth are extrusions of Azeroth’s sub-conscious mind, her attempt to subvert the Titanic safeguards and controls on her sleeping mind and learn about what is really happening to her? Since she’s mostly dormant, we’re patterned on the people around us, adopting their likeness, physical traits and social attributes. We show up, we’re immediately brought into the fold because nobody knows everybody and we sure as heck aren’t picky about who gets shoved into the army right now, and somehow, we’re the best thats ever been, and are seemingly immune to being corrupted permanently, much like Azeroth herself.
What if that’s the plot twist? That the Champion(s) of Azeroth aren’t the best of the Mortal Races, but extensions of the Planet’s World Soul itself, just another generation of Azeroth trying to learn from and understand the Mortal Races that populate her surface?
And finally, the theory that the Titans might make their Titan Watchers and Constructs from stone and metal, but they still need an animating force to be more than simple machines.
We’ve seen the Mogu able to infuse the ‘anima’, the ‘animating force’ of living slaves to either create their Mogu Statues like the Quilen Hounds and Mogu Juggernauts, but also to revive their Emperors and other elites who returned to unliving stone and who needed a living sacrifice to undo the process and return to living flesh.
And the Mogu built their entire technology and magical knowledge on reverse engineering Titanic designs. What if, and hear me out, what if the Titans harvest organics to provide the animating force for their Constructs and Titan Watchers? Certainly, the facilities provide the Arcane Energy to empower and sustain the inorganic constructs, but the actual Titan Watchers and Constructs who have personalities are far more ‘alive’ than the mindless drones that serve to repair, fight and provide brute labour to their masters.
What if the Titans needed organic life to make their Constructs truly capable of independent function, so the Titanic Pantheon could go about their business without needed to go back and check to make sure some unanticipated variable wasn’t derailing their plans? Sentience is one thing, but Sapience allows the Titan Watchers to adapt and counter organically without needing constant manual input from their masters, and the Arcane is strict, orderly and mathematical in nature. It is unflinching, unyielding, and linear, which works great in a vacuum, but not so well in an environment of conflict and rapidly shifting variables.
What if the presence of Sapient Organic Life (The Mortal Races) on a World Soul-carrying planet isn’t so much a by-product of such an entity within the world, but a vital ‘biological’ function to allow the Titanic Pantheon to create Titan Watchers and Constructs who will act harmoniously with the World Soul to encourage and protect its growth into a full Titan? And the reason Azeroth’s Titan Watchers are so 
crazy and incompetent is that the Titans couldn’t use Azeroth’s native life-forms at the time, because the Old Gods had pretty much spread out and contaminated the local Sapients, from the Trolls and Tauren to other species, as well as the proto-race that would eventually form the Mantid, the Silithid and the Nerubians.
Our Titan Watchers are not truly compatible with Azeroth’s natural energies and hold it at arms length, remembering the War against the Black Empire and being possibly biased against full integration with a World Soul that is still corrupted and possibly infect themselves in the process … which is ironic because after Odyn tore up Ulduar in a fit of pique at being over-ruled by his ‘lesser’ Watchers, Loken fell prey to the whispers of Yogg’Saron and kicked off the whole mess in Northrend that scattered the Titan Watchers across the world and allowed an Old God to nearly dominate the planet via stealth.
Just some more rogue/dumb thoughts floating through my head that I had to get out. What are your thoughts?