I dunno why people think Sylvanas's soul was split

I hear a lot of people saying the Jailer restored the other half of her, as though her soul had been divided the same way Uther’s was.

But, Uther’s soul was split specifically because the Light attempted to answer his dying prayer, only to be only partially successful. Normally, when Frostmourne kills you, it takes your entire soul. The Sylvanas that Arthas reanimated didn’t have a soul. The Jailer gave her her entire soul back.

Uther getting to go to his afterlife AND be trapped inside Frostmourne is a unique occurance. It doesn’t happen to everyone killed by Frostmourne.

In the Bastion cinematic, he was like “Light, save my soul.” right before he died, and then it shows his soul clearly splitting in two, half being pulled into Frostmourne while the other half drifts into the sky.

If splitting souls in half was something Frostmourne ALWAYS did, then it doesn’t make sense that Uther showing up in Bastion with his soul damaged was a huge deal, when all of the thousands of people Shadowmourne killed should have been showing up in Shadowlands with holes in their souls if that was the case. Devos would have just been like “Ah, another soul with a chunk missing.” instead of her being like “Holy ****! What happened to you! This is impossible!!”


Update:
Apparently, the Grimoire implies that Uther’s soul WAS split at least 3 ways.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E6sRq7gVcAo3NYR?format=jpg

So if that’s one more than Sylvanas, that gives her 2. The part animating her corpse, and the part in the shard. Which are now rejoined.

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Sylvanas’ soul was turned into a Banshee by Arthas. She then reanimated her own body by possessing it. At least, that’s what the story used to be. I have no idea if Shadowlands has retconned that.

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This is a preferable and distinct outcome to her only having half a soul this whole time? Wouldn’t a soulless Sylvanas be a completely dispassionate creature, not the firebrand we’ve known?

That was the lore before Shadowlands . Is it still the case now?

Inconsistency isn’t really a point in favor of your hypothesis.

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It’s well-established by the fairy tales book and content that is coming up in the future in 9.1 in a few weeks from the PTR involving Uther.

There is no doubt that it is what happened.

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Based on the reaction to Uther in Bastion, yes.

Unless you think no other paladin Arthas killed would have ended up in Bastion.

? The inconsistency conflicts with the fan theory. Not with what I said.

Your claim is that Devos’ reaction is inconsistent with soul-splitting if it’s a permanent feature of Frostmourne. My position is that such a case is not an impediment to Frostmourne always splitting souls being the new lore - or lore+ if we want to consider it expanded.

In any case, if what Kaleaon says is true, then it’s a moot point.

Edit: Quick search found this wowhead article on it.

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Uther’s soul was split three ways: Light, Frostmourne, and Shard.

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You mean, new as in…this update then.

I think it’s confirmed that Frostmourne shatters souls and sends a piece to the maw now.

Spoilers for later campaign stuff:

There's a point where you dive into the maw to retrieve Uther's missing fragment and encounter an area where the shards of almost all of Frostmourne's named victims are being kept. I think Sylvanas's isn't there because the raid has already canonically taken place by the time you get the quest, but pieces of Anasterian, Sapphiron and others are all down there.
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Only partially. His soul got split three ways, not two. Part was sent to Bastion, part kept in Frostmourne, and part was turned into a shard and kept in the adamant vaults in Torghast (along with the soul shards of many other victims of Frostmourne.)

This has been retconned to be no longer the case. We know now that it injures souls, but it may only keep part of them while the rest is sent to the Maw.

Untrue, she was entirely a fragmented soul when she was brought back as a banshee. She did not reclaim her body until some time later, so for awhile she existed only as a soul fragment.

That’s true, but Sylvanas was not sent to the afterlife, was she? The part of her soul that Frostmourne kept was turned into a banshee.

It is a huge deal because it he was not a half, he was a third, and it was a big deal because his was the only fragmented soul to not be kept entirely in Frostmourne or the Maw.

Not necessarily. We made Shadowmourne, not the jailer, and if you recall part of empowering the axe was collecting soul shards from the servants of the Lich King whose souls themselves were already bound to Frostmourne. As such we were carving out soul shards from souls that were already fragmented and bound to the maw.

Since we don’t collect soul shards from any other creatures it can be assumed that either Shadowmourne consumes the entire soul of its victims or it simply does not fragment them the same way Frostmourne does.

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Something to keep in mind is that just statistically, most souls - even those split by Frostmourne - would have probably gone to other, less actively “regulated” afterlives per the Arbiter’s judgment.

Uther was noticed because Bastion is one of the few realms that’s actively sorting and training souls who arrive there. There could well be other damaged souls in other afterlives who just go unnoticed because those realms aren’t part of the “machine” that keeps the Shadowlands operational, so they don’t have internal hierarchies of denizens whose job is vetting every soul for atonement or service.

Somewhere in the Shadowlands Dranosh Saurfang may exist as a similarly damaged soul fragment living his earned eternity in a timeless and pristine manifestation of Nagrand, and nobody in power would know because that place isn’t made to internally scrutinize everyone the way Bastion does with potential Kyrians and Ascended. In most afterlives, if you’re sent there that’d be the end of it. Since they aren’t trying to train you into something new, there would be no further need for testing to see if you actually belong there.

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Did Arthas become dispassionate when he became soulless?

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well…have we seen any of the other lore characters killed by Frostmourne? I haven’t seen Arthas’ dad wandering around… :man_shrugging:

When he went completely Soulless(as in shoved the other half of his Soul into Frostmourne) he became a relentless icy cold blizzard who refused to let people tell him what to do! He wasn’t dispassionate at all! We could hear his anger towards Drakuru when he failed him and his rage towards Overthane Balargarde for talking back as well as towards Lady Nightswood for trying to trick him!

I’d say no. So I see your point.

But now I’m curious if he could be considered soulless with the whole soul-sharding thing now among other things.

The Arthas Book stated that the Soul fragment that remained was a Child which he proceeded to shove into Frostmourne which in WotLK revealed was followed by him cutting out his Heart when it became clear there was still a fragment left behind from that!

So of Arthas’s Soul there is the Bitter Paladin desperate to avenge and save the Civilians of Lordaeron at the expense of Soldiers he saw as tools, the the first Child trying to make him atone and second child Matthias Lehner warning us of the extremes that Arthas’s Soulless Body went in order to be free of it’s Soul!

Matthias is somewhere in Icecrown probably hiding underneath Icecrown Citadel constantly listening to the Faceless Ones’ whispers! The first Child is now in the Maw by default and the Bitter Paladin was thrown into the Maw by Uther so all of Arthas’s Soul is accounted for!

Because her face relaxed and her eyes turned blue again. This of course isn’t proof it is just speculation just like everyone else is doing. When Arthas killed her she didn’t go to Shadowlands but instead got her body back. But Clearly the Jailer gave her something back would make sense that it was a part of her soul.

So either it was a split similar to Uther’s or they’re gong to say that Sylvanas that we’ve had since RTS/Vanilla WoW has been some puppet the entire time (or something like that) and now the real Sylvanas is back. Which both I can see happening and one would be incredibly disappointing.

I don’t see how or why it has to be always or only once. We just learned about this splitting thing. We don’t know how often it happens or what makes it happen.

Fair enough. That all seems to fit if that’s really the case.

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It’d be nice if someone told us what a Mourneblade is.

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I think you need to provide a source for this. If you’re correct, what happened to the piece that was in Frostmourne when it was destroyed? It didn’t go to Uther, because we saw Uther when Arthas died, and he didn’t seem to change any. I’m pretty sure the part in Frostmourne and the part that was turned into a shard are the same piece.

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