How necromancy works

We have seen necromancy can bring people long since dead back to life. But how does that work in conjunction with shadowlands covenants. Say you get sent to Bastion, go through all the Kyrian training, then a necromancer gets hold of your bones and brings you back, wouldn’t you have all that Kyrian knowledge, training and powers? How are necromancers able to yank your soul back to your dead body, wouldn’t the Arbiter have something to say about that?

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You know this kind of makes necromancy even more confusing now, used to be just pulling a soul from the shadowlands but with the specific covenants and how these realms function I’m not so sure how it’s supposed to work. We now know that the scourge are all pulled from maldraxxus but does that mean all necromancy is pulled from that realm or is there different flavors?

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Unless a retcon happens :joy:

Needlessly speaking it raises a valid question that’s yet to be given a solid answer; hello blizzard???

Gives more curiosity for every raised forsaken against their will too. Not every forsaken came from Maldraxxus or whatever it’s called. The Val’kyr might hold answers for that or be held accountable for profaning such act unless a mutual pact was made between the an anonymous death-being and a Valkyr. Maybe the Jailor is that being held responsible for Necromancy connection

You would be under the pretense that necromancy brings back ones soul and not just reanimates the dead. I would use the best necromancer in game kelthuzard in this noting the fact that he keeps coming back because the relequist that contains his soul is never destroyed

When was this? Was this a Blizard tweet? I just thought Maldraxxus was just the visual inspiration for the Scourge.

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Retcon, retcon everywhere. Weeeee

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wouldn’t be hard to say that the soul doesn’t remember what happens in shadowlands. It’s like Soul Vegas, what happens in Shadowlands Stays in Shadowlands… until Sylvanas broke the veil at least.

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I would argue that necromancy has to bring back the soul. Or else they’d just be a flesh or bone golem.

What difference would there be animating flesh over metal or rock? The only thing that would make necromancy different would have to involve the Soul. Why would animating flesh require a different school of magic over making any other type of golem.

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The idea that Necromancy traps souls is absolutely fundamental - direct and indirect references to this fact pop up constantly whenever Undead are on-screen.

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Blizzard stated it during blizzcon, it’s not just the aesthetics but the entire undead scourge that are drawn from maldraxxas

Because a necromancer raises skeletons, cadavers and ghouls all representations of the soulless undead. Vampire, wraith, spectre are undead with a soul something a necromancer cannot do

We’ve seen numerous examples (more often than otherwise) where it denotes the soul is returned. And was a core premise of the Ask Cdev answer explaining most undead are beings with their soul imperfectly attached by dark magic.

The most likely explanation is most people don’t remember experiences in the Shadowlands. For one reason or another.

But they do have souls. There are quests where you free souls trapped within those things, and others retain their personality.

They are the mindless undead, as in the souls are not in control and they are more animalistic. But they do have souls.

Vol’jin struggled to remember, and Cairne couldn’t quite spit out what the problems in the Shadowlands actually was, so that is possible.

I do not believe that was what was meant by saying “forces”.

Magic is a force, and Maldraxxas is the birthplace of necromanctic magic. The Lich King, Kel’thuzad and the Scourge draw forces from Maldraxxas yes, because they draw it’s necromancy to their will.

I did not take it to mean the Scourge itself was drawn from Maldraxxas, but the powers the Scourge use were. Mostly cause we know the origin of the bulk of the Scourge came from Azerothian races like humans, elves, nerubians, etc.

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The Buildings were outright shown to be summoned in WC3. In all likelihood the buildings, Acolytes, Gargoyles and WC3 Ghouls all came from Maldraxxus and helped the Scourge experiment on how to create Undead such as Frost Wyrms, Abominations, Crypt Fiends and Zombies.

After WC3 The Frozen Throne the Scourge was a dominant enough power to forge the Undead it had Re-Animated into it’s own grand army and preform it’s own experiments which resulted in Geists, Saronite Ghouls, Blightblood Trolls, Flesh Giants, Flesh Titans, Flesh Beasts, Bone Golems and Bone Wraiths.

The Scourge build those buildings in Northrend and summon them elsewhere. The architecture is based on Nerubians and they use nerubian buildings as well.

I do think gargoyles probably came from the Shadowlands, but to point out the only Shadowlands gargoyle we’ve seen are from Revendeth, not Maldraxxus.

Acolytes are just Cult of the Damned members, their description calls them humans who serve Ner’zhul.

And ghouls are just ghouls, they are basic undead. While the magic to create ghouls may have come from Maldraxxus, the ghouls the Scourge use come from the human colonies in Northrend they wiped out.

I think you’re jumping the gun by assuming all of these things have anything to do with Maldraxxus. They all have previous lore, and while it’s true they might be retconned, there has yet to actually be lore to do so, this is all just assumptions based on one statement at Blizzcon.

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It’s said that the knowledge of the living and the dead does not transfer easily from one realm to another. Just as the memories of life tend to fade once you’ve truly passed, you really can’t remember much of your existence in the afterlife if somehow you’re brought back.

The reason the memories of life mostly fade seems to be because they are removed from you by deliberate means!

I’m inclined to agree with the idea that your soul just doesn’t remember what happened there. And even if it did, the rules governing how things work are probably also different there.

It’s like how…I’m trying to remember something specific, because I recall quests saying things like “magic works differently here” for the Firelands, or something. Or another example would probably be the Emerald Dream.

Necromancy, from everything I recall, is not a gentle process. Ripping someone’s soul from somewhere and forcefully putting it into a rotting body is probably traumatic. It’s like trying to shove something back into a broken bottle: There’s some spillover. So, even if those abilities did work, the way they worked might be spilled over on the ground.

As for a reason why this might happen? Well, you could theorize that the goal of necromancy is getting a specific soul, and not so much something from a general plane. Someone mentioned Kel’thuzad as an example. You’d probably need the actual mage, and not the essence of wherever he was from. If you think of the soul like a sponge, and the realm it’s been sitting in as, say, soapy water. Or grease, or whatever. The point is, you need the sponge, so you squeeze out all the stuff it’s absorbed. Stuff you don’t need, don’t even necessarily know you want, and that might make a huge mess if you’re trying to just get a sponge.

That’s just, like, a theory.

As for the Arbiter, I like to think of it the same way as people summoning things from other planes. The Arbiter (or whomever) has full control over its domain, and the people who are there. Less control over some external force coming in and mucking things up. It probably wants to do all sorts of horrible things to get back at them. But, alas, it can’t, as the border between realms is something that–

Hm? Oh. Right. Sylvanas.

–welp! This is gonna be super awkward for warlocks.