So anyone who has at least done the Demon Hunter introduction knows about the “Inner Demon” and how it constantly seeks to overwhelm the Demon Hunter. From what I recall from the Illidan book, the inner demon is quite literal and exists as a sort of split personality not too different from Gollum and Smeagol in The Lord of the Rings, with Smeagol in this case being th Demon Hunter who wants to stop the Legion and Gollum being the inner demon who wants to join the Legion.
Thereafter, Vandel constantly heard the whispered thoughts of the demon whose soul had been bound to his, tempting him not only to violence but to join the Legion. (Wowpedia article on Vandel)
The success of a Demon Hunter is thus measured by how well “Smeagol” is able to simultaneously tap into and suppress “Gollum” for power.
With the Legion’s defeat, how would you think this has changed? AFAIK there isn’t an official source for this so it would seem it lies in the realm of headcanon. I imagine that the dark personality still seeks to drive the Demon Hunter to chaos and destruction even with the threat of the Legion ended.
On that note, Illidan remarks during the DH experience (should you die) that you have a demon soul and are this bound to the twisting nether like other demons. With the retcon/reveal that demons were able to regenerate in the nether thanks to the imprisonment of the world soul Argus, would that mean that the demon hunter would no longer be immortal in that sense? For that matter, do demons age or fall ill?
Lastly, have the Illidari been up to anything since Legion? Obviously their story is on the back burner much like the Death Knight story was between Legion and Shadowlands but I’m wondering if anything has happened that I missed.
Regenerating in the Twisting Nether in and of itself was always a thing for demons; it’s why Sargeras created Mardum to imprison those he “killed.” The world-soul in Antorus seemed to basically accelerate the process and centralize it to Argus where revived demons could thereby immediately be reincorporated into the ranks and redeployed (and whenever appropriate, readily subjected to discipline by the Legion’s masters if their death had resulted from some form of punishable failure.)
Specifics of precisely where they regenerated originally are unclear. Those who were “flagged” by death at Sargeras’ and Aggramar’s hands were being sent to Mardum once that particular situation was implemented, but prior to that it’s possible they may have been naturally regenerating on their species’ respective homeworlds within the Twisting Nether, or the exact location of their rebirth may have just been random in keeping with the chaotic nature of the Nether itself.
So ostensibly demons - including sufficiently altered demon hunters - would still be regenerating in the Twisting Nether even after the Legion’s defeat. The rate and location of said regeneration is likely just reverted to however it functioned prior to the introduction of Argus or Mardum to the process.
Player Illidari seem to have decided to hang around Azeroth and get involved in local conflicts there, but the disposition of the Illidari Class Order (and really most of the Class Orders) is unclear. They still have the Fel Hammer, so maybe they’re out there planet-hopping and further clearing out demons on worlds that are still under attack.
Though that’d make the Army of the Light look kind of bad, since despite there still being countless worlds languishing under demonic thrall even with Kil’jaeden and Sargeras beaten, Turalyon and the Lightforged seem to have elected to abandon the rest of the universe to fend for itself and fully dedicate their forces to messing around in Azerothian geopolitics instead.
We know Demon Hunters now have immortal souls, and as Raselle wrote, Argus’s death should not revert that. Again, a big part of Sargeras’s story is how his frustration with demonic immortality led him to create the prison that would eventually be the source of the Legion.
What I wonder is what sort of body they would form. I suspect it would not be identical to their original mortal-elf-body-plus-demonic-influence. I think it would be overly ambitious to think they’d get the big, strong metamorphosis form permanently. Maybe Satyrs?
I think it was ridiculous of Blizzard not to bring in some Demon Hunters for shadowlands. We literally saw the re-emergence of the Nathrezim and apparently the Illidari had nothing to say about it.