So, a couple of dumb thoughts cropped up today.
Who is the Locus Walker?
We know that the Titans, the Dark Titan, even the Pantheon of Death, can all use puppets and lesser avatars to walk amongst us. Sargeras used the body of Medivh to personally bring the Orcs to Azeroth, the Titans used lesser avatars to walk Azeroth in places where their true might would do harm to the newly-claimed world, and so on and so forth.So who is Locus-Walker. We’re told he’s a very important Ethereal from their Homeworld who dived deep into the Void and learned many of its secrets, and we see in the new Pre-Patch quest where we’re re-introduced to him and Aleeria Windrunner, he apparently has enough power and authority to send Blade Bae herself running after a sarcastic reply from Xal’atath about not overstaying her welcome.
We know Dimensius was able to send a lesser Avatar into our layer of reality via Outland, due to the planet being partially phased into the Twisting Nether and thus lacked the full protection that keeps the Void separated from the Material Plane, aka our layer of reality. If this ‘Avatar’ of Dimensius was going to allow him actual, physical access to the Material Plane, or was just going to become a new Old God that would fester on Outland, we may never know, because we booted his incorporeal cheeks back home, and I doubt Xal’atath’s boss has forgotten who thwarted him the last time …
Rogue Dumb Thought, but what if Locus Walker is a Void Lord who doesn’t want the Great Cycle to end, and sees the conflict between Light and Void as a necessary, if not vital, mechanism to keep all layers of reality stable and functional. Much like Medivh was a potent arcane vessel that Sargeras, a former Titan, could easily puppet with a sliver of his great burning spirit lodged inside the Guardian’s own soul. What if Locus Walker is the same thing?
But it begs the question as to why he’d stop Xal’atath, and why he’s on our side. Because the Void is all options at once. Some of the Void Lords want us all broken and enslaved to the Void, heedless of the cost to the rest of the cosmos, or even their own layer of it. Others might have no interest other than new territory to expand into. Others still might see themselves as benevolent beings, shattering authoritarian rules and freeing the Mortals to embrace and explore every facet available to them.
We’ve also seen the various Pantheons are not unshakeable. The Titanic Pantheon is riddled with personal conflicts and feuds, echoed down the line to their Watchers and Keepers, and even the servants of these, least examples of the Titans’ social structure. The Pantheon of Death was riddled with conflicts, and Zovaal’s rebellion was just the most devastating one to date, not including whatever snit caused the Pantheon of Death to not speak to each other or pay attention to anything outside of their own personal realms, and not including a literal invasion by both the Naaru in revenge for Denathrius’s treachery via the Dreadlords, and the Void attempting to invade and take over Bastion for some reason, probably related to Kyrestia’s mind-wiping ways and enforcing mindless obedience to The Path in every soul that came under her wings, and how so very Clockwork Orange it all was.
The fact that Xal’atath realised Locus Walker had rolled up, threw off a sarcastic reply and then scarpered is very concerning. If Locus Walker is so powerful, or so influential, within the Void that Xal’atath decides discretion is the better part of valor, something is up. And her knowledge of, and willingness to, Aleeria’s trauma makes me think the former High Elf, and the soul of a ‘Void-Touched Naaru’ fused to her own, might be what Xal’atath is after, and given that the Bae Blade is only borrowing her current flesh-tube vessel, makes me wonder if she wants Aleeria so traumatized, off-balance and unstable that she won’t be able to put up a proper fight if Xal’atath tries to possess her.
But all worries about what Xal’atath is actually after pales to the fact that she ran away from Locus Walker. She does not fear the Old Gods, indeed she regards them with disgust, as lesser servants, ridden by their emotions and desires rather than masters of such, and hopelessly impotent at their sole task of taking over and corrupting the World Soul of Azeroth. She talked to N’Zoth as an equal, even with the Old God still in torpor he was still a Power capable of toppling an army, and she was in a cave riddled with his undying flesh and dark powers, in a mortal form.
She was vulnerable and still bargained with him as an equal in that state. And yet Locus Walker rolls up and tells her enough, and she bails. Who is Locus Walker, really? Xal’atath is a smarter enemy than most and knows better than to needlessly taunt us or monologue at us when she could just go for the killing blow and be done with our Plot-Armor’d nonsense.
How many Alternate Realities are there anyways?
As I'm punching away in Re:Mix, something occurs to me that the Red Star of Argus is still visible. We saw in the quests involving the reintegration of the Bronze and Infinite Flights that certain points in time will always play out, but certain details in those points in time can still be changed for a better outcome, so long as it does not derail the overall flow of time, such as allowing a clutch of Bronze eggs surviving rather than being destroyed by a Rogue Black Dragon, but their mother dies every time, regardless of the fate of the eggs.So how many ‘test’ timelines are out there, where the Bronze, and presumably the Infinites, tested their abilities and studied how alterations to these ‘Canon Events’ (Borrowed from Spuddermun terminology) can play out, and certain Canon Events can be poked and prodded over and over again under safe conditions and with dozens of powerful Adult Dragons on hand to reset the timeline if something goes awry.
We’re told the Pandaria Re:Mix is the Infinites studying how time can be altered without causing harm or derailing the Sacred Timeline, while still holding onto their morality of ‘fixing’ harmful moments in history to avoid unnecessary grief and suffering, although up until this point, their concern seemed to be more pushing our Timeline into the ‘End Times’ event, because all other Timelines navigated and visited by Murozond convinced this twisted version of Nozdormu that only everything dying and all of Azeroth being left a sterile, barren world haunted by feral Undead and Ghosts locked into the moment of their greatest failures as a ‘blessing’ compared to the other options.
Are there other versions, other ‘Re:Mix’ timelines where the Bronzes and Infinites train their young in safety, where their actions cannot derail the Sacred Timeline and Time might play out in similar but uncannily different ways.