There have also been planets destroyed like Draenor and K’aresh. I do not think it Teldrassil was the first nor worst massive influx of souls to the Shadowlands that there has been.
I’m in that same boat, but we have trash tier writers working at blizzard now. And they will retcon anything to make their undead waifu be the most OP person in WoW lore.
These “writers” have to ignore elements of the plot because they need to get from point A to point B. For example, what was the vindicator doing during the war of thorns? Having a holiday? It is never explained why an orbital space station with a lazar beam that could easily cut through legoin blast doors did not get involved. Simply because “sylvanas needs to win”.
The burning of Teldrassil was not the most influx of death in a singular event. However blizzard is willing to retcon so much to make it so that it was.
We are talking about writers who view GoT season 8 as something shakespear would write.
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This was especially annoying in-game where there were Draenei Darnassian Citizens that needed saving, too, in the quest you couldn’t actually win.
I don’t think it will be what broke the Shadowlands, but I certainly think it will be where Sylvanas got most of her power.
He would had commented about that. War of thorns and BfL have some troll casualties. He even mention he hasn’t lost a soul since a long time ago
They are still being send to an afterlife that generates anima just like the covenants. After Bwonsamdi chat about the balance pretty much confirms this or else he would be supporting Sylvanas if he has the same agenda as the Arbiter. Just connect 2+2
But that should had destroyed the machine years ago. I don’t deny the legion pretty much screwed the whole universe, in fact a good thing we get rid of them and the demons are back to be small groups of raiders.
However Blizzard own words seems to imply this process started in Wotlk and became serious issues by the time of Legion.
I know this is obviously a move to make Sylvanas more “cool” but honestly I am even thinking into taking this bait from the writers if that means Sylvanas stays there and takes a back seat of the storyline for a long very long time(either dead or just imprisioned for a long time)
He only noticed Vol’jin was missing like a year after the fact. We don’t know how many more have gone missing without his noticing.
Afterlives do not generate anima. The aferlives use anima of the souls that are sent there by the Arbiter. Bwonsamdi is effectively stealing anima from the Covenants and other realms.
That was my point. As it didn’t. So I do not think it has anything to do with a massive intake of souls.
Conjecture at best, he is pretty vocal in losing souls and as we saw in Nazmir, the souls of the trolls are still flowing to his temple. Actually that was part of the storyline of Nazmir, he comments G’huun has started to take souls that were mean to cross the other say.
Literally the point of the shadowlands realms, those afterlives use the magic of the anima to keep the realm in balance and those they generate the one energy the realm is feed off. The 4 we go are only because they are casually near of the Jailer zone
Any proof for this? Because we have an entire cinematic of him warning to Baine and Talanji of Sylvanas tiping the scales
I know it would be a silly event or Danuser saying “Sylvanas did it”. However I’m more interested in when this thing broke since It has to be either at Cataclysm forward or during Legion but not for them.
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In the visions of Alleria in the short story lol
Further conjecture: If G’huun could steal souls from Bwonsamdi, why wouldn’t the Maw?
Use anima. Not generate it:
- Every living soul bears a vital force—an energy known as Anima. This essential force is the lifeblood of the Shadowlands, allowing trees to grow, rivers to flow, new things to be forged, and more. Great or important souls—like those of Arthas, Garrosh, or Varian—bear more Anima than others.
The machine of death is broken, and players entering the Shadowlands will find the realm of the dead in disarray. In the natural order of things, souls are sorted and sent on to an afterlife realm appropriate to the lives they lived, but now, but over the past few years, all souls who have perished—including the innocents slain at Teldrassil—are being funneled directly into the Maw. The Shadowlands are starving for anima even as the Maw continues to grow from the glut of fresh souls.
If that’s not conclusive enough for you I’ll go back to the panel on the Blizzcon app and transcribe their description myself.
It is self-explanatory. The act of being killed by a follower of Bwonsamdi making that soul go to Bwonsamdi directly bypasses the Arbiter judging that soul and placing it somewhere based on the lived they lived rather than being poached by Bwonsamdi’s followers.
Honestly none of it makes a whole lot of sense because from Cairne appearing during the Heirloom quest, to the spirits of the fallen rising up to protect Light’s Hope against Kel’thuzad, to benign spirits drawn to defend places and people from their past lives, to the centuries-to-millennia-old elders who appear all over Azeroth during the Lunar Festival, whenever the dead have been called back they’ve appeared as they were in life, complete with memories of who they were and what they cared about.
Despite this, one of the Shadowlands’ fundamental “processes” portrays the mechanisms of Death as basically a Scourge on steroids with a shinier coat of paint, where every soul is judged and placed accordingly, but whatever that judgment is the soul ultimately still gets transformed into something other than who and what it was before to serve as fuel or a servant for the masters of each respective realm.
In fact the only ones who aren’t made out to be changed are the ones tossed into the Maw, since it would contradict the whole point of punishing them forever if they could be absolved of their former lives’ misdeeds. So unless you’re horrible enough to be subjected to eternal torment (or unfortunate enough to die in the current situation), your fate is apparently to labor toward being erased as a person and rewritten as a useful minion, fuel for a construct, or some form of currency for one of the Covenants. That makes Death itself sound like less of a necessary cosmic counterbalance to Life and more like a predatory and malevolent exploitation of it. It’s like the Shadowlands feed parasitically off the souls and anima coming from the living world without really justifying the need for their own existence by providing anything back to it.
The only one of these Covenants who seem like remotely “good guys” are the Night Fae, because since their job is rejuvenating the spirits of nature to return to life, the Ancients and loa who travel there in death at least remain who they were instead of being processed into the “machine of death” like raw materials the way the other Covenants seem to operate. Ardenweald comes across like a natural part of the systems of the universe, clearly involved in the back-and-forth cycle of life and death, but the other realms all come across like dead-ends hoarding the anima and the souls that bring it.
It’s honestly pretty messed up. As if the Arbiter looks at someone who’s been brave and noble and generous throughout their life and thinks “clearly you belong in Bastion where they can just boil you down and extract all those virtues for use in their raw form.” Like the fact you were good and valorous doesn’t matter; you were just a host soul cultivating that stuff in life, and now in death it’s time to harvest what your life grew to add to the stockpile and toss away the rest of what made you the person you were like some waste byproduct.
At least when the Legion would torment you it could be assumed someday they might win and you’d cease to exist along with everything else. The Shadowlands are a dystopian horror show of an existential nightmare from every angle. The whole presentation of it acts like we’re going to this wondrous place when the entire premise of how the people we’re helping there operate is heinous at its core. Other than the Winter Queen they basically all come across like Lich Kings, adding every dead person in the universe to their respective hosts of obedient slaves while snuffing out the identities of who they were before they were made to serve.
In otherwords whoever broke the machine had broke the machine in the wrong manner as that person should have broke it to funnel the Souls into Ardenweald and Revendreth not anywhere else.
For the hundreth time, these are FOUR worlds out of many, just FOUR particularly central fundamental worlds to the infrastructure of the Shadowlands. There very much probably is a Tauren Afterlife where everyone minds their own business and lets these four particular worlds do what they gotta do.
Got a direct quote from the source? Or will you end up telling me to “look it up yourself”
I mean you’re incredibly pretentious with an entitlement complex and some deep seated bitterness given the dismissive tone you used toward my speculation with only engaging the part you felt you could nit-pick at when this is easily looked up on your own accord but here you go:
Blockquote
“The Legion knows something is wrong,” she warned. It fought against its bonds, and
tremors rippled across the world. Unable to escape, it screamed again.
But this time, it tried to communicate. Alleria felt as its raw emotion gave way to something
else. Memories. It was sending her its entire lifetime in a single, uncontrolled burst. In that
instant, while the corrupted fount of arcane might was upon her, her mind was transported
elsewhere.
This being was so much more powerful than the minion of the Shadow had been. Then, she
had witnessed flashes of destiny. Now, she lived a history that surpassed the existence of the universe.
Blink.
It was energy, spinning out into the cosmos.
Blink.
It found warmth near a sun, and a world formed around it to protect it as it grew.
Blink.
Generations of life lived and died upon it.
Blink.
It was betrayed. It was bound by something powerful.
Blink.
Pain. Pain. It hurt so much. Its only solace lay within its dream.
Blink.
They enslaved worlds. They burned worlds. They used its strength to revive their fallen
souls. It hurt so much.
Blink.
They found another. It was much more powerful. They wanted to claim it, too. Then they
would be unstoppable.
Blink.
It screamed into the cosmos for help. Two children answered the call. Two bright lights.
Blink.
Two bright lights… from Azeroth. A world that was like Argus.
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So asking for evidence to back up your claim makes me entitled?
Again, asking you to back it up does not make me entitled. What is entitled is thinking that you are the only one who is correct and everyone else is wrong.
That does not mean that Argus was the every first titan that came into existence. Aman’thul takes that role. It also does not mean that Argus was the one who made the shadowlands.
Also I think you need to learn what surpassed means. What that phrase is saying is that Alleria was having a vision of a history AFTER the universe of created. You can’t surpass something by going backwards.
It does not mean before the universe came into existence. Clearly Argus came into existence well after Aman’thul, as Aman’thul was the first titan to awaken and went across the great dark awaking other sleeping titans. So your original claim that Argus came before any of the titans is bogus. Hence why I compared it to mindless speculation like Pyromancer does.
I wonder, are you actually pyromancer? Would explain a lot to be honest.
Asking for evidence in a standoffish tone does make you entitled yes.
That’s literally what you did.
She’s literally getting visions FROM ARGUS and his memory as a world soul being surpasses the existence of the universe.
Actually that’s not how the English language works. If something surpasses something, it means it is of greater value, whether that means power, numer, size, or whatever; it is when something exceeds something else more generally. If the history she is recieving from Argus surpasses that of the existence of the (material, created) universe, that means that it is, in fact, longer than the universe. Do pick up your nearest dictionary of choice, I’m partial to Merriam Webster.
- Denona voice * source? are you going to make me look for it myself
Blizzard already confirmed that Chronciles is a history from a particular perspective, not THE history from the absolute canon “author as god” perspective. Whether anyone likes it or not, the Titans are gonna get a retcon bat via “new revelation”.
Not only that, but Aman’thul has Time powers in particular. Wouldn’t be that hard to Time jump by his damn self in order to shape a narrative to his favor, not unlike the Bronze Dragons used to do with their “maintaining the main timeline”, which was literally their job given by Aman’thul.
Lol I am not Pyro, but it’s pathetic there’s so many Lore types that are mad he ended up being right on so many things just off of following strings of hints.
The reality is WoW shapes their lore more than anything on two principles: Rule of Cool and basing it on “real life” mythologies. Blizzard isn’t subtle in any way. It is intentional that Argus is the Titan of Death, that the Arbiter, the Eternal Traveler transmog, and the Argus Scythe all have very similar aesthetics, and that in “real life” the notion that “Heavenly” powers usurp/conquer Death/Underworld beings (see: Norse, Egyptian, Aztec, Chibcha, Inca, Christianity, etc) is undoubtedly going to be used.
There’s just too many similarities between say, the Nathrezim and the Venthyr and Argus and Oribos for Blizzard to not be trying to lead us in that direction.
It’s like the whole Bastion-Kyrian vs Odyn-Valkyr situation. Not only is it increasingly clear within the lore that Odyn ripped off the Kyrians for his Valkyr, but within mythology the Aesir and the Vanir were originally at war and half the dead go to Valhalla (Halls of Valor) and half go to Freyja in her realm.
Or the fact that Ardenweald has a female fae ruler, which neatly parallels real life “Unseelie Queen” Fae myths, which in turn are a dark mirror of the Seelie realm, which is how the Emerald Dream is being described.
This is like back in Mists of Pandaria, even during beta, where folks here tried to convince others where the plot was going based on real life Chinese myths and folklore and everyone insisted that was dumb and they ended up doing exactly that.
Blizzard has never succesfully surprised us lorewise.
And you can get tone from text?
Asking you to verify means that you were wrong? It sounds like you like getting offended over nothing.
And how does that prove that Argus’ existed before the titans? By all accounts, the other titans could’ve existed before or around the same time as Argus came into existence. Also the quote linked even says that Argus found a star to call home and make his planet like shell. Like all the other titans did. The first thing she saw could’ve been the war between the light and the void, then the universe came into existence and saw Argus creating the planet, Argus to host his soul. That would still mean she saw a history before the universe was made.
You do know that the current writers for WoW did not write chronicles? So they could be (and most likely are) pandering to his conspiracies because “it is cool”.
All of the energy that would eventually become world-souls predates the universe. They’re like concentrations of pure Order around which certain planets formed.
Her vision began before the universe existed, when Argus - as all titans - was just disembodied energy spinning out across the cosmos. Then at some point after the universe as it exists came into being, that energy coalesced near a star, where a world eventually formed around it.
The vision includes the Burning Legion enslaving Argus and using it to regenerate their demons for enslaving and burning other worlds, as well as the Legion discovering Azeroth’s location and seeking to claim it and become unstoppable. Most of the vision takes place well after the universe was in place; only the first glimpse of Argus as energy lacking a form was from before, and was indicative of the origins of titans in general.
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Because he was doing physically with his followers, same way Odyn gets his Valajar souls. Bwonsamdi does that with his followers and his temple acts as a nice anchor from troll souls, plain and simple
Literally it’s what I’m saying, the raw anima is taken and used to feed the realm. Dude it’s just taking raw material and making it into a product which is why those realms “generates” the anima the realm needs or else it wasn’t necessary at all, then there wouldn’t even so many afterlives for those task.
Ok so you think just because the Arbiter hasn’t judge every troll soul and the ones killed by his followers that means he has stealen souls? Don’t you think The Abirter would had done something about it if this was case? Besides this has been happening for more than millenians and I’m sure that entity would had objected against Bwonsamdi if he was breaking the cycle
But what I found more intriguing is why are you ignoring his talks about his boss not liking about him losing a soul and all his warning on Sylvanas on why she is destroying the balance?
Literally dude I want to know why are you ignoring that particular piece of his character in order to push your headcanon?
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The Arbiter wasn’t able to do anything about necromancy, either, and look where that has lead us with the Jailer using the Val’kyr raising Sylvanas up over and over to she’d fulfill the plan to break the veil.
I don’t ignore it. I don’t think Bwonsamdi is above working with the Jailer or with bending the balance in Bwonsamdi’s favor. What he cared most about was that Sylvanas kept what she killed, because Bwonsamdi is doing the same and so that’s less souls for him. Bwonsamdi doesn’t actually care about the balance, not at more than he actually cares about necromancy, as long as he’s the one doing the unbalancing.
I think there is a pretty good chance that The Arbiter is Elune… A keeper of Balance, the one who distributes souls across the various pocket realms. It would explain why Bwonsamdi’s temple sits under a blood moon. And why the Moon is a symbol of balance and the natural order to Balance Druids, and why Ardenweld has the starry appearance it does and be a place do rest for being connected to Nature, such as Night Elves.
Edit: It would also explain her seeming connection to Titans and Naaru… As the keeper of the Balance between life and death, all living beings answer to her. Even Naaru and Titans live and die.