So this came to me at work and I wanted to take a few hours after work to get the idea settled in my head before tackling the forums.
We are aware that every single Primal Power in the setting gets moister than butter-cake at the thought of taking Azeroth’s World Soul for their own, and I think I’ve got an idea why.
We know that any Primal Power can do anything the others can do, but it is easier to do things that Primal Power is more naturally suited for than it is to work against that nature, ie you burn less energy doing what you’re synergized for.
We know (?) that some Primal Powers can be substituted for each other quite easily, Life for Light, etc and some violently react to each other (Fel and Arcane, Void and Light, Void and Fel).
We know that Sargeras was able to use the power of a World Soul to ‘cheat death’ for his Legion, and we assumed he was drawing upon the potent arcane energies of Argus the Unmaker, but we’ve since learned that that’s not quite true.
Arcane energy was useful to Demon-kind because it countered and eased the entropic magic that Sargeras used bind and enslave the various demonic races that would comprise the Burning Legion to his will. Even if they did manage to break free, the ‘addiction’ caused by the entropic magic would destroy them in time, and weaken them enough that the loyal demons within the Legion could track them down, drag them back to the Legion, and torture them back into submission.
Yet somehow, the Jailer was going to use that energy to ‘remake the universe in his image’. It can’t just be the Arcane, if that was the case, the Titans wouldn’t need armies or have been defeated by Sargeras, they’d just fart in the general direction of whatever annoyed them and wipe it out.
My theory is that Azerite, and all World Soul ‘residues’, as it were, including Argunite, is not, in fact, arcane energies, they’re something significantly more.
Azerite is all energies of the Primal Powers, at once, balanced and in harmony.
It explains why everybody wants it, everybody’s willing to commit cosmic-level genocide to get it, and they’re all willing to risk the universe collapsing in on itself to avoid the others claiming the World Soul.
Possession of the World Soul grants any of the Primal Powers a nearly-infinite source of the very building blocks of creation, so long as they may continue to claim possession of said World Soul. Argus was tainted with Death Magic, the Arcane, and the Fel, by Sargeras’s order and the machinations of the Dread Lords, to pervert the ‘natural deaths’ of the Demons in the Twisting Nether, preventing their ‘True Death’ in the Twisting Nether or in areas suffused with the Fel, ad coupled with Titanic facilities on the planet being repurposed to facilitate this unnatural resurrection.
Azeroth has, as we are able to confirm at this point, multiple different Primal Powers all able to tap into the World Soul.
Light, via the Sunwell.
Death, via Bel’ameth and Icecrown Citadel.
Life, via Bel’ameth.
Void, via the Old Gods’ ‘graves’ and several key sites around the planet that remain tainted despite our best efforts.
Arcane, via several Titanic facilities, mostly in Northrend and Kalimdor.
Azerite just … does everything. Slap it into a weapon, the weapon does more of what it was made to do. Put it into a potion, you super-charge the potion. If you can survive exposure to Azerite, it will make you the very best, or worst, version of who you are, spiritually and mentally.
It empowers Old Gods, it super-charges Titanic facilities, it drives the Elementals insane from the power it infuses into them, and it was potentially able to re-write all of Creation, across multiple planar levels, with the right kind of facility.
The World Soul, as it is, is pure, unfiltered and untainted potential, hence why it is so powerful, it hasn’t been defined by any limits at this point. If and when the World Soul ‘wakes up’, it will then choose, or be made to choose, a form and a function to exist within the setting, which will make it incredible powerful, but not also highly limited in the scope of that power, much as the Void Lords, much as the Titans, much as the Eternals, are all ‘mode locked’ into a very specific niche due to the nature of the Primal Powers they either serve or embody.
And that leads me to a rather damning realisation … nobody actually wants Azeroth to wake up. If she remains dormant, unaltered and with minimal corruption, she’s the perfect vessel to reshape reality as her potential new Masters dictate.
We were always told the Titan facilities were intended to heal and nurture her, but what if they’re actually keeping her in stasis, because if she ever does wake up, this might be the last, and most powerful, World Soul left in creation, and without her power, the Eternal Stalemate between Light, Arcane, Death, Void, Fel and Life cannot be broken, and the only thing before these immortal, unchanging God-like entities is an eternity of brawling with each other, and never being able to truly win or claim the upper hand against one another.
On a more fun and trollish topic, everyone knows about the giant Rave Stick in Hallowfall, right?
We know that there’s a Mural depicting an Old God-like entity being fed Nerubians and Faceless Ones, with the glowing crystal involved somehow.
We know that Naaru turn into Void Gods when they run out of Light, turn to Void, and start sucking up Souls to slowly return themselves into creatures of Light. We know that a Naaru generally leaves their Core behind when slain, unless absorbed (Alleria) or absolutely shrek’d by a hostile Primal Power (Illidan and the Fel).
So … what happens when an Old God is drained of the Void? What does it turn into? And how did the Nerubians earn their freedom from the Old Gods in the first place?
Rogue, probably stupid thought … that giant Sun-Crystal-Thing in Hallowfall is the core of a Old God that got drained during the Black Empire, and in an inversion of the Naaru, their ‘lost and misguided kin’, turned into an entity of Light and remained dormant until the Arathai showed up and began dying around it, their souls feeding it anima and slowly rejuvenating it … but we’ve seen a Void Naaru because it was tortured and denied its normal life-cycle by the Legion on Argus, and was about to be claimed by Void Ethereals as a great prize.
We might be about to encounter a Light-aligned, or adjacent, Old God. Or, the line between an Old God and a Naaru is a lot thinner than we realized, and its a matter of allegiance, rather than bizarre cosmic biology, that separates the two in form and function.
Naaru, serve the Light, and thus have ‘crystalized’ forms that represent the singular focus they are expected to maintain on behalf of whatever it is that they serve in the Realm of Light. Naaru use crystalline objects like the Ata’mal Crystal, to uplift and guide the evolution, both physical and social, of the races they choose to aid them in these highly specific tasks.
Old Gods, serve the Void, and thus have fleshy, mutating forms that can adapt and change to serve every ‘truth’ they are to bring into existence on behalf of their masters within the Realm of Void. And being entities of eternally mutating flesh, either create from that flesh the servants that they require, or mutate local life-forms into suitable minions for their goals.
But what are your thoughts?