Dumb Thoughts : Plot Holes we've still not explored : Sargeras and the Argus Raid

Wyrmrest Accord
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What was Sargeras doing to Azeroth while we were on Argus?

Now, while we’re in the Argus Raid, we can look up and see Azeroth surrounded by a large, fel-tinged fart-cloud that, at the end of the raid, was revealed to be Sargeras himself getting a bit too handsy with a World he wanted destroyed at all costs?

If he could just summon Gorribal at will and destroy the planet, like what he did to the planet where he’d imprisoned the original Demonic enemies of the Pantheon, why wait?

Surely he would have been aware that Azeroth’s Murder-Hobo Population was chewing through his defences at the heart of his Legion, threatening to unravel his entire plan. Even if he didn’t care about the Legion itself, the moment we freed the Pantheon, he should have shattered Azeroth.

If not then, the second that Aggramar died, that should have been the instant that Go-Time kicked in for the Dark Titan. Unleashing Argus the Unmaker should have been his last ditch ‘buy me a few minutes’ move.

So why stay as a fart-cloud engulfing Azeroth?

What was the Dark Titan looking for, that he’d ignore the Army of Light and Azeroth’s Florida Man Expies beating the cheeks off of his most powerful servants and would only make a panicked swing at the very end, when his whole shtick is ending all of creation and the mere existence of Azeroth, and how often she’s been threatened with full corruption of the Void, that when Illidank was stupid enough to open a direct inter-dimensional portal between the Heart of the Legion’s forces and an Azeroth reeling from multiple wars, demonic invasions and Old God eruptions, he didn’t just step through, go “… 'Aight.” and treat the planet like a Piñata?

We know we don’t fully understand all of the Titan facilities on Azeroth. We’re aware that there was an Origination Process intended to wipe out all life, and possibly even kill the World Soul in the process, if the Old God corruption should reach a certain threshold. But there’s facilities that simply don’t fit into this theme. The Engine of the Makers in Northrend, hidden in the Storm Peaks, we still don’t know what its ultimate end-purpose is.

We’re told that it draws upon the energies of Azeroth to infuse the slumbering world soul with ‘Cosmic Energies’, and in turn create sentient life on Azeroth through using the combination of those ‘Cosmic Energies’ and Azeroth’s own life-force to create new life through the Forge of Wills.

What’s also in Northrend, tapping into this same vein on natural energies? The Forge of Souls, hidden beneath the Saronite plating of the Lich King’s fortress. If the Titan Watchers or the Old God had been able to see what had been built, how quickly might they have turned all possible forces against the Scourge, rather than the bitter skirmishing we saw? Smaller in scale compared to the Engine of the Makers, yet focused on a single goal and needing only to transfer the energy through the rift in the sky between Azeroth and the Shadowlands. Power enough to kick-start a Re-Origination of all of reality.

Every plane of existence. Every alternate timeline. Every pocket dimension and fold in space-time. Undone, made one and ready to be reshaped at the Jailer’s whim.

So why did Sargeras wait to stike?

If his whole game-plan is to wipe creation clean of all life so the Void cannot step into the other Planes of reality and remake it in its maddening horror and mutations, why wait.

Azeroth was literally right there, he can summon Gorribal at will, the other Titans are bound and shackled. Azeroth was still asleep at the time. There was nothing, literally nothing, in that plane of existence that could have stood in his way … and he had turned into smoke, was covering the planet and was trying to do something.

The only thing I can think of is that Sargeras was afraid of Azeroth. A Titan so powerful that it awed even Amun’thul. A World Soul that had been touched by the Void, the Light, the Arcane of the Titans and possessed so much Spirit Energy that it broke every record the Titans had, and yet was uncorrupted by none of them.

What if the World Soul woke up at his presence? We’ve never known what happens when a World Soul transitions from its slumbering state to a fully roused and awakened Titan. Argus was fully awake and aware in his planet, having been tortured for potentially millions of years, given the time-dilation aspect of the Twisting Nether vs our Material Plane. For all we know, Azeroth could awake at any moment and immediately start showing Sargeras that her hands are rated E for Everyone.

And Sargeras is corrupted. Normally, the Arcane and the Fel are wholly incompatible forms of Energy. Arcane is Order and Logic, Fel is Chaos and Entropic. We see Aggramar corrupted, yet he returns whole and pristine after we destroyed his corporeal form … but Aggramar was merely tortured and mind-controlled into obedience. Sargeras? He’s an impossible fusion of Arcane and Fel in the one form.

For Sargeras, there may be no return from death. With his essence corrupted and torn between these two conflicting powers, death might end in his complete destruction, with no cycle of rebirth and renewal.

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snortlaugh

And stuff like this is why your threads are my favourite, aside from them being generally interesting. :blush:

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My thought is that maybe Sarge was just about to wake her up and then had a glimpse of her turning into Unicron and her inhaling to take a massive chomp on him like he’s Cybertron’s moon.

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It gets even more complicated, when we consider Shadowlands’ additions to the lore.

I know, I don’t want to either, but it’s impressive as to how it so catastrophically breaks the entire motivation of the Legion and Sargeras.

So the Nathrazim have been in cahoots with the Jailer from Day One. The Nathrazim are also the ones who corrupted Sargeras in the first place. We know the Jailer wanted to use Azeroth’s power to unmake all Reality. Sargeras’ whole purpose, in accordance to what the Jailer wanted, was to kill as many people as possible as to maximize the amount of souls brought to the Shadowlands and presumably the Maw. We’re going to figure Argus taking the Arbiter offline was a happy accident, because if they want us to believe the Jailer went into tasking the Nathrazim with the creation of the Burning Legion specifically knowing Argus would be killed and start shunting everything to Super Hell that’s way too much of a stretch for even suspension of disbelief.

So what if Sargeras hesitated not because of some instinct of self preservation, but because he finally worked out he’d been bamboozled? That he drove his sword into Azeroth in the end not to kill her, but to wound her in such a way that it sapped her strength to prevent the Jailer from being able to use Azeroth to unmake all of reality. Because the Sword was going to kill Azeroth, but not swiftly. Had we not used our Legendary Artifacts (Some of which came from across the universe, not simply based on Azeroth itself), Azeroth would have suffered a slow, wasting death that would have likely robbed her of the power the Jailer needed to remake creation.

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I thought Sargeras was just corrupting Azeroth, trying to force her to his side like the other titans? Then the other titans started reeling him in and he was like ‘plan b’.

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Who knows! Certainly no Blizzard at this point. :sweat_smile:

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I think Sargeras wanted the Soul for himself, but had to deal with Old God stuff, right?
So he’s probably floating around trying to figure out how to turn it all on to do the cleanse.

He was probably on his way to the Re-Origination, but got interrupted and went with a stab

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I always assumed Sargeras was doing tricks on his giant space skateboard to strike terror in the hearts of anyone on Azeroth with a telescope.

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The problem with using the Burning Legion to send souls to the Maw is that Fel magic destroys souls. Would be like using a wood chipper to send someone a package.

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Just imagining some one sending an expensive present through the wood chipper and being like “How’d you like your new tv?” And the person just has a confused expression as they open a box of plastic mulch. :laughing:

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No, it worked, it starved the Shadowlands of souls while Revendreth kept a stockpile of anima to send to the Jailer.

And there’s Spirit Healers who keep reviving us, yet don’t work with Bastion, because they’re mortals who were tortured and twisted into the Val’kyr by Odyn, and while some sided with Helya, others refused to serve either side and went on to watch over Mortal souls and give second chances to those they deemed ‘worthy’.

And the Light needs souls, Naaru consume souls to stave off, or return from, their Void State.

The Void, and the Old Gods, consume souls for the lulz.

All of that, along with the Burning Legion going full slash-and-burn across reality really put the screws to the Shadowlands, and with the Kyrian Krew just mindlessly following ‘The Plan’ and refusing to deviate even a millimeter in case Big Mommy Kyrestia got mad at them.

I do think that Sargeras was a willing participant in the Jailer’s plan, and that he actively worked alongside the Nathrezeim and obscured their origins, allowing them both to prepare him to imbue the Fel without being destroyed, as it did the other Titans, and to infiltrate the ranks of the Legion to keep it working towards its intended Goal, and to allow Denathrius to contact potent Souls to turn to Revendreth, both to stockpile more Anima and to turn into useful Mawsworn for the Jailer.

Remember that the Nathrezeim can absorb the powers of the other Primal Forces without being destroyed or losing themselves to the ‘Wills’ behind these Primal Forces, hence why they were able to masquerade themselves as ‘natural’ Demons to the vast majority of the cosmos, to the point even the Pit Fiends and Shivarra were fooled. If they were able to share with Sargeras, or prepare his body to be able to survive absorbing the Fel, it would make for a powerful aid to Sargeras to topple his fellow Titans.

This also works when we go along the line of thinking that Sargeras was informed of the same Flaw that Zovaal went into rebellion to ‘fix’, and did this via the Nathreziem, and the Jailer was also a powerful agent of his Pantheon whom had tried to stop a disaster, only to be stopped and shunned by his brethren who refused to look outside their comfort zones or dare to question their leaders. So Zovaal and Sargeras, and later Denathrius who came to assist once he was sure the other Pantheons were distracted, became conspirators together to re-write their flawed reality and solve the problem, once and for all.

Re-write reality. Erase everything and start again from the ground up, without the Fel, the Void, the Arcane or the Light. No more Titans, no more Void Lords, no more First Ones. All of reality re-written to avoid the great flaw that so terrified Zovaal and eventually Sargeras himself.

And best of all? Sargeras has already won. He has the Fel. He has the Arcane. The Titans are notoriously vulnerable to the Fel, to the point Sargeras alone was able to slaughter the Titanic Pantheon in a single battle while his Legion distracted and tore apart their endless armies of Titan Watchers and Constructs.

We didn’t stop Sargeras. Sargeras is holding the entire Pantheon of Order captive, forcing them to expend all of their power to keep him ‘contained’, while he waits for Zovaal to do his thing.

Except Zovaal failed. And Sargeras still has his Legion, and he still has them infected with the ENTROPIC, aka Death, Magic that has infected the entire Fel magic of the Twisting Legion. Every Demon not cleansed through exceptionally pure arcane energies like beneath the Black Temple are still infected and addicted to this Entropic magic. The only ‘fix’ for this addiction is arcane magic, and Sargeras and Argus were the primary sources of that magic. Argus is dead. Azeroth is too fortified for the Legion to attack without a reliable commander to keep them all focused and on target.

That leaves just Sargeras. And Denathrius is still out there, the Nathreziem freed him and probably are preparing a new vessel for his essence.

Denathrius and the Nathreziem could quite easily head out to find and free Sargeras, rebuild the Legion with the Mawsworn, Maldraxxi and Venthyr along with the loyal (addicted) Demons and disappear into the infinite chaos of the Burning Legion to recover and plan their next moves. We may even see the return of Zovaal, in a limited sense, if his essence has survived or is somehow still around due to First One meddling or the nature of his death in that one, specific location.