We know that Freya shaped the Emerald Dream, we also know that G’Hanir, the Mother Tree was also created by her.
It is stated that:
It served as an afterlife for all winged creatures of Azeroth including even dragons, all of which could be seen flying amongst its many branches.
Can Titanic Keepers create afterlifes if they so desire? Also how would this interfere with Ardenweald or the work of the Arbiter.
Odyn did. So did Helya.
Makes me wonder exactly what point is there to the Shadowlands if a powerful enough character can create an afterlife.
Standing theory given Blizzard confirmation of Argus as Titan of Death and Alleria’s visions of Argus predating The Titans (the group) while being A Titan (species) and the insistance that the Arbiter predates the Titans:
Argus shaped the Shadowlands as Eonar shaped the Emerald Dream; the Arbiter is made by Argus as Freya was made by Eonar.
Ardenweald is described as a “dark mirror” of the Emerald Dream and is implied to be tied to it, and explicitly is where Cenarius went to recover long ago, so the question remains is if Ardenweald was shaped by Eonar/Freya or Argus/Arbiter.
But to answer your question yes, Titans, Keepers, and even Loa can make their own afterlife pocket realm.
Like Bwonsamdi or the Scourge or the Legion stealing souls, it all seems to bypass the Arbiter. I would almost guess that this is what might have broken the machinery of the Shadowlands, but that seems perhaps too complicated an idea.
I speculated on this in another thread to try to make sense of it without relying on some dumb retcon of existing lore:
How do you factor in soul theft into your idea?
Speaking of soul theft.
There are supposed to be Soul Traders in Oribos, like, how is the Arbiter letting others use Souls as currency, when he is the one who’s supposed to say where they are supposed to go.
Arbiter is a she.
But the GameInformer article said, “In the wake of the recent calamities, the Brokers have taken this chance to capitalize on new opportunities for profit and perhaps more.” So it might be a case that they’re only able to do what they’re doing, at least to the scale that they’re doing it now, because the Arbiter isn’t able to judge the souls right now, since they’re all going to the Maw.
To add to that, it’s hinted that this may not be the first time souls have ended up somewhere they were not supposed to be. It’s implied the Brokers may have acted as smugglers for such souls, selling them on to better (or at least different) circumstances.
At this point the brokers seem like Coyotes to me - human traffickers, but for souls instead of bodies.
Like others mentioned, the existence of the revealed Brokers who serve as soul traffickers likewise implies there are magics to undermine the powers of the Arbiter and each respective realm’s ruler; this extends then to Bwon’s Other Side and the Emerald Dream. Brokers may be the “original” soul stealing magic technique but not the only ones.
Odyn and Helya only achieved that by stealing their powers from the Kyrians though, thanks to Odyn making a deal with one of the Jailer’s agents for one of his eyes, and then Odyn forcing Helya into the Shadowlands to turn her into the first Valkyr.
Yes. This is part of what makes me think that all of this bypassing the Arbiter’s judgement would make sense for what broke the machinery of the Shadowlands, and so it was in the Jailer’s interest to give Odyn access to this knowledge.
As we get things semi stabilized there are so many interesting potential stories of the denizens of the Shadowlands crossing to our side to try and right such wrongs.
Like the Kyrians declaring a crusade upon Odyn for stealing the souls of Valkyr.
Venthir trying to find a way to help the Sanlyan deal with their blood thirst.
Maldraxian’s trying to gather the mindless Scourge remnants to take them back and getting into a tussle with the Forsaken who are trying to recruit those that can regain their mind.
Night Fae, not so sure here but given their fae nature like something amoral involving nature to gather souls to save their realm.
Necromancy and other such magic to bring people back from the dead should also logically be a problem from the Covenants and Shadowland realms.
Bwonsamdi is in the side of balance which means his realm isn’t causing any problem and his realm seems to be one of the few that keeps working and doesn’t lack anima as the others.
However for the wording Danuser and the others did, it seems to imply Sylvanas did something that broke the machine with the help of the Jailer and the deal with Helya is more important than we think.
There is also the chance the burning of Teldrassil overhelmed the very fragile soul machine and broke it
We don’t know this to be the case. He didn’t get Vol’jin’s soul. For all we know more of his souls went to the Maw than he realizes.
We also don’t know this to be true. The souls of the people his followers kill going to him sounds like a direct problem for the Covenants who are being denied souls that the Arbiter would have sent to them without Bwonsamdi’s interference.
The Legion has killed entire worlds. I’m sure they’re used to large influxes of souls by now.
Where was this confirmed? Sounds more like pyromancer conspiracy theories.
The legion used those souls as fuel. Hence their soul engines. Their weapons (including their ships) use souls as fuel. Which is why when we destroyed the ship during the 7.2 opening scenario, all of the souls that weren’t used were trapped in some sort of limbo state in which we had to kill.
Fel magic also requires souls to use as well.
" The Burning Legion uses sacrificial souls to power their demonic machinations of war. The soul engine is where the harvested souls are collected and stored."
https://wow.gamepedia.com/A_Fate_Worse_Than_Dying
Eh…I doubt it was Teldrassil. If it were, then the Sundering would have caused infinitely more damage to the way Death works a long time ago as it immediately inflicted countless deaths throughout multiple empires, kingdoms, and cities and regions spread across the whole planet, followed by centuries of widespread deaths from famine and war as the remaining places struggled to survive the environment re-acclimating itself to not being one big continent. Huge chunks of the night elf and troll empires - along with the span of Pandaria that used to connect the Thundering Mountain/Isle to the mainland - were sunk to the bottom of the sea along with the populations still living in them, and most of those peoples didn’t get to survive it like those who followed Azshara in Zin-Azshari and became naga.
For that matter, the Horde wiping out the civilizations of the draenei, the arakkoa and the Highmaul ogres and Ner’zhul simultaneously killing most of the life on Draenor when he exploded it were each events that dwarfed the scale of just one city full of night elves burning down before it was fully evacuated.