Helm of Domination (SPOILERS)

I can’t remember where I’ve seen it, but I watch a lot of streamers who have access to Shadowlands. At some point one of them suggested that the Helm of Domination would have given Bolvar visions of the maw while he was idle at ICC. I can’t remember if this is covered in Shadowlands or just their speculation. But what is everyone’s thoughts on this? If it is true, does it mean Arthas would have had similar visions? Would it be maddening? Does Bolvar know things about the shadowlands as a result that no one else knows? It sure seems that way when he’s having the player-character construct a group portal to the maw.

That aside, I’m also curious about why the Helm of Domination was made. Assuming it was intended for the jailer, what purpose would such an artefact serve? Dominion over the maw (or whatever the zone was called before it was the maw) or dominion over all shadowlands zones? I can’t get my head around it. But I’m intrigued by the enslaved runesmith, and expect my questions will be answered “this fall”.

Feel free to discuss any other interesting things related to the helm of domination here.

I thought the helmet and frostmourne were made by the Legion and thrown into Azeroth to begin the cultivation of the scourge.

Which means… could the Legion have knowledge of the shadowlands as well?

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Apparently they were both originally by the runesmith, and then stolen by the Nathrezim thus ending up in the hands of the Legion.

Essentially, the Legion has knowledge of the shadowlands in some shape or another.

i don’t like the retcon that the demons didn’t make all the scourge stuff

it’s just a big question why Sargeras never bothered to mess with the slands more

could’ve become way more powerful if he kept stealing from the place

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I mean, it could just be that the Lich King experiment failed, so better to just nuke the lands after the living, using its own anima.

One helm to rule them all.

One helm to find them.

One helm to bring them all.

And unto death, bind them.

I’m sorry. It just reminded me of the ring.

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Or! Or, Blizard just writes whatever the heck they want with no thought to their established lore, and have never cared whether it made any sense.

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obviously.

I was initially highly skeptical about the Helm of Domination NOT being made by the Nathrezim.

That said though… from everything we’ve seen of the Legion, Necromancy is not their strong point. And yet, they used it to create a powerful faction of undead, so powerful it could ultimately totally break free of the Legion’s influence and become perhaps the biggest threat in the modern history of Azeroth. Greater even, in overall impact, than the biggest Legion invasion in world history.

The more I think about it, perhaps this new lore makes more sense. That the Nathrezim dabbled in powers beyond their full knowledge and control… and ultimately were surpassed by them.

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I think they cared at one point.
They had their characters, their important figures, the factions and their politics.

Just somewhere along the line they ignored cohesion and relation to the huge over-arching plot just to introduce the next big baddie.
Like you’re reading a book that switches characters who never meet. You’re the reader and know this is happening, it’s in the same world, and there may be a slight word or two to what happened in the other character’s chapter, but all in all, there’s no relation to the major problem at hand, just one major plot point to be settled by that chapter’s protagonist before they’re forgotten; barely mentioned in the future.

It’s nice that they’ve revisited things in Legion and some in BfA, but it’s hellaciously late in the game to really glue the pieces back together and go “Hey guys, it’s one big MoRaLlY gRaY story, see?”

Edit: Or not. They have money so who cares anymore?

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I’ll be disappointed if this isn’t mentioned in any quest text in Shadowlands. There should be a very good reason why repeated thefts or all-out invasions weren’t a thing. Something about how targeted this was seems off to me. Like it was an inside job. I’m wondering if the runesmith being chained up when we first see him has anything to do with that. The fact that he’s chained up in the maw and not working for the armies in Maldraxxus is probably telling.

There’s a Theory that the very name, the ‘Titans’, is a clue to the Shadowlands.

The Greek Titans were the children of Uranus (yes yes, snicker away, I did too), the ‘Heavens’, and Gaea, the ‘Earth’. Uranus would eventually become sickened and disgusted with his children and, depending upon both the translation of, and the author of, the particular version you get, either ate several of them or hid them away inside Gaea’s physical body to the point Gaea became so distraught and disgusted with Uranus that she made her youngest son, an adamantite sickle which he then used to ambush and castrate his own father and, after that, went on to lead the Titans before his own son, Zeus, would begin a ten-year war against the Titans, pitting the ‘Old’ Gods against the ‘New’ ones.

In the aftermath of this, the ‘Old’ Gods, or at least those who refused to stop fighting or whom had grievously wronged the ‘New’ Gods, were shackled deep in Tartarus for their sins, an ironic echo of the very acts that supposedly spurred Gaea to turn against her husband in defence of her children, many of whom now were imprisoned anyways by their children.

And historically, the Greek Titans were often considered the ‘Gods in the Underworld’, versus the Greek Pantheon who were often considered the ‘Gods of the Heavens’ in addition to their other portfolios and duties, in-between screwing each other, and the mortals, over for the sake of their egoes.

It may be that Sargeras was very, very aware of the Jailor and openly refused to allow the Dreadlords any access to the Shadowlands and the knowledge therein because he was afraid that without the rest of the Pantheon, as we saw him gathering from various alternate timelines where their essences hadn’t been scattered across the universe during their cataclysmic final battle, to rebuild the Titans in his twisted image, because even with the Legion itself, and draining Argus to ‘cheat’ the rules of the Fel, an unleashed Jailor could have been capable of single-handedly wiping the floor with Sargeras and his demonic army if allowed to escape his prison.

Remember, the Chronicles is a ‘biased narrator’, giving us only the Titans’ view on history and, naturally, omits the facts that they would find inconvenient or that they themselves are not aware of.

And there were twelve Titans, six males, six females, three Cyclopes, and three ‘Hundred Hand Giants’, born of Uranus and Gaea, in total. That could mean that we’ve only seen a little over half of the Pantheon, but the ratio also doesn’t add up. We’ve seen seven Male Titans but only one Female Titan, so it could be that there’s a mix of ‘generations’ going on, and that the remaining women of the Titan Pantheon are still out there and in hiding from Sargeras.

Assuming the Greek angle still holds, that could also mean there’s one or two ‘Cyclopes’ and ‘Hundred Handed Giants’ hiding out in the Multiverse, and considering the historical abilities of both of these beings, they’re going to be absolutely deadly if they set themselves against Azeroth, especially the Cyclopes who were Zeus’s own forgers and weapon-smiths, and may be, in WoW at least, responsible for controlling and maintaining the Forge-Worlds that produce the Titan Watchers and Titan Facilities that we’ve met and dealt with thus far.

But going back to the Uranus-Jailor angle, the Titans were shackled into the Underworld after their defeat by the Greek Pantheon. Assuming the above still holds true, that could mean that the Titan Pantheon bound their creator into the Shadowlands to separate him from the source of his powers (The ‘Heavens’, which could possibly be the Light itself?) and hopefully keep him weak enough to remain imprisoned, at least until we ‘broke’ the Machine of Death and allowed the Maw to start funnelling enough souls/anima into the Jailor to allow him to brute-force his way out of the Shadowlands and re-take the universe now that his treacherous ‘children’ are busy playing the most awkwardly belligerent intervention with Sargeras.

It also opens up a rather interesting angle that, if Blizzard did plunder the Greek mythology for inspiration, if the Jailor is Uranus, who is their Gaea analogue?

But on to Bolvar.

Remember, Bolvar was a Paladin of great faith and power. He was then seared by the flames of the Lifebinder, which are capable of killing things but also bring forth new life from those ashes, and tainted by the Blight, an alchemical agent of both Undeath and destruction, and then turned into an Undead and eventually crowned with the Helm of Domination by a Paladin wielding the Ashbringer, which contained the core of a Naaru, a being of ‘perfect’ Light. The Helm of Domination itself an artifact from the Shadowlands that holds a deep connection to both that realm, has been touched by the Legion and the essence of the Fel, stolen by the Nathrezim, Demons who once served the Old Gods and had a deep knowledge of the Shadow/Void, and this artifact was capable of uniting many minds into one under the will of the one who wore it.

Bolvar has basically out-Med’an’d Med’an. There is a lot of Primal Forces being brought to bear on a single target here, and the only one not included into the mix was Arcane. I think that’s going to be rather telling as the Shadowlands plays out…

And Sylvanas broke that artifact like it was wet paper bag, presumably with power granted to her by the Jailor.

We need to remember that the Titans are not good beings. They effectively magically castrated the Dragonflights once they triggered certain events, they’ve completely destroyed and remade worlds inhabited by sentient beings simply because they didn’t ‘measure up’ to the Titans’ designs, and we have yet to know the full extent of their ambitions and designs on the Multiverse, especially since our only sources are information are biased, or trying to murder us all. The Titans betraying the ones who helped imprison the Jailor and also trapping them in the Shadowlands seems pretty consistent with their MO.

I do think that the Jailor is going to be an entity that we have to keep sealed up, that if he’s ever allowed out, everything ends, that he’s not just a prisoner, he’s an anchor, he’s being used to hold down reality as we know it via the Machine of Death, and he’s the being that Odyn, being the magnificent prat that he is, made the foolish bargain with for one of his eyes for the knowledge of the Shadowlands. If the Jailor breaks free, the rest of the Titans’ works will start to unravel and we could see a ‘Titan vs Progenitor’, or ‘First Ones’ as the Shadowlands Leaks have revealed to us, war with Sargeras being loosed and tentatively working alongside the Titans, and us working alongside the Legion, to fight back against this released and re-invigorated ‘Uranus’-type character, who then sets about freeing and unleashing his imprisoned siblings across the Multiverse, and we see the very laws of reality being deformed and twisted as Titans and First Ones clash, warping the very laws of physics to lash out at one another.

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I…think that’s probably way more thought than Blizzard has put in to any of this. If that were the case though the obvious Gaia analogue would be Elune.

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https://i.imgur.com/9JZpgav.jpg

Actual footage of me diving into the Lore of, well, anything.

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Especially if you destroy a 3-cheese thin crust from Dominos the night before.

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I actually spent 10 minutes debating if I should purposefully mis-spell the name to avoid all these jokes, but then I decided I’d rather die on my feet than live on my knees.

That wouldn’t have stopped me bro

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Kinda late reply to the initial question, but

Summary

During the questline for opening Torghast, where you save Baine, Jaina and Thrall, Bolvar leads you through bc he got “glimpses of the Shadowlands” through the helm in his years as the Lich King. He still has limited vision of inside the Maw, but it’s drastically reduced so he can pretty much only narrow it down to specific wings, then you do the legwork to actually find what you are looking for.

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