When the maw-walker first informed her of the cause of the anima drought, she just sent us off to Revendreth and then proceeded to do a whole lot of nothing, expecting Sire Denathrius to solve the problem for her.
The drust were invading, and she just ignored the problem until they were right at her doorstep. If she had actually done something sooner, many lives could have been saved.
Her people were becoming possessed, and she made no effort to find out of there was any way to free them. The only time anyone ever thought of even trying to free someone from the possession was during the covenant campaign!
Spirits were being abducted right in the very realm she was supposed to be presiding over, and she made no effort to investigate. In fact, she never would have even known about this if Bwonsamdi didn’t investigate and then solve the problem for her. There was nothing else stopping Mueh’zala from filling the Loa with dark energy from the Jailor and then unleashing them upon Ardenweald to destroy everything.
Devourers are sucking the anima out of the land and the only effort she makes is sending a lone moose-man to take care of it. You’d think this would be a higher priority since there is an anima drought. You’d also think she would actually show some concern once it was revealed that one of the devourers was a worldeater capable of rapidly draining all the anima in her realm.
Compared to the other leaders, she barely makes any effort and seems completely incompetent. Draka actually joins us on several quests during her campaign, as does Renethal during his. Can’t say much about the Archon since I haven’t done much of that one yet, but even she is more involved.
Believe it or not, still no. The Archon and Kyrians as a whole are aware they are ferrying souls straight into the Maw and continue to do their duty because it’s what The Path says and them ending up in the Maw is someone else’s problem.
Yeah I’d go with pedantic. The argument could be made that refusing to stave off oblivion by doing one simple thing because it conflicts with your duty is both dumb and incompetent.
Well, incompetence means you don’t know what you’re doing. The Archon absolutely knows what she’s doing; I buy into the ‘there’d be consequences if they stopped ferrying the souls’ theory.
Thing is, they could ferry them to Bastion or something as a stop gap solution. There’s no Arbiter in Oribos to get shirty over it. It’s better than continuing to empower the greatest threat the Shadowlands has ever known.
I feel like the people who say the Winter Queen is incompetent don’t have all the facts straight. She is single handily keeping Ardenweald alive, her power is stretch thin, and she knows she can’t deal with all the problems assaulting her realm at once at the same time. It’s why they’re making hard choices about which groves die and which ones must be defended at all costs, until we show up to help set things right.
The leaders of Bastion are far worse if you ask me. They are knowingly dumping souls in to the maw, further empowering the Jailer, but refuse to stop because of some dogmatic view of how things should work.
I know it may be hard to believe but the Winter Queen is actually doing the most for her realm among the eternals. She is actually omnipresent, putting out millions of little fires at once when the player character first arrives in Ardenweild - that’s the whole reason why we have to help out to get an audience with her, it’s not that we or our cause is unworthy but there is so much going on that the Winter Queen can’t stay in one place for long enough to hear us out.
It’s reasonable to say that as in shambles as Ardenweild may be it would have already been destroyed or completely overrun were it not for the Winter Queen. I don’t think she can be blamed if her enemies used the distraction of her realm being on the verge of collapse to take advantage of her divided attention and sneak away with a few souls or mount an invasion. That’s just them being opportunistic jerks.
Further, I am not surprised that Death entities first ideas on solutions to deal with the possessed is to kill them. It’s not the Winter Queen who commands you to destroy them either, but their own friends and families that ask you to put them out of their misery. For them, you are just returning them to the cycle that they would all eventually return to anyways - it’s not a bad thing, or at least not as bad as leaving them under the Drust’s control.
I also don’t think her trusting Sire Denathrius to provide extra anima to her realm is unreasonable, as that was apparently a big part of his role in the Shadowlands originally. She can’t be blamed for expecting him to fulfill a role he had served for eons when no one else outside of Revendreth knew of his betrayal! Besides, the request for more anima was to reinforce Ardenweild’s world heart, which is key to keeping the Jailer banished to the Maw, she was never expecting Denathrius to actually solve the anima drought.
Well, no, and we need to take into account that Eternal Ones have different behaviour than non-Eternal Ones leaders like Renathal and Draka, mostly due to their position and power.
She didn’t ignored the problem, the Wild Hunt are fighting actively against the Drust. The Archon did less with Forsworn issue. Denathrius – even if he is a traitor, he was the original leader of Venthyr – didn’t destroyed the leaders of rebellion probably becuase he didn’t considered them as a real threat. Primus also seems to knew about these traitorous house leaders in his domain, but I don’t know if keeping them alive is a part of his plan or not. Even Zovaal doesn’t deal seriously with the Maw Walkers in his domain and his tower.
I don’t know if Eternal Ones could have the power to break any curse or not, at least at their full power, but with the exception of that moment when we kill Devos and the Archon has some emotions there, the Winter Queen is the only Eternal One that really care about her subjects fate and promise to revenge these possessed or killed by enemies.
I don’t think she is really omnipresent, and the first ones that should ring the bell about these abductions were tenders. Also, it is just weird that Bwonsamdi know about these stolen loas, but we need to investigate too with him to see who was stolen. Then wasn’t Bwonsamdi the one that solved the problem in Ardenweald, it was the Maw Walker with the Wild Hunt at her orders.
Devourers are present in all realms, and no leader have these as top priority in their list.
Prince Renathal, Draka and their companions aren’t Eternal Ones, they are not de jure leaders of their realms, they are closer to their people than the Eternal Ones, they don’t have the upper hand at the start of these events, etc.
between her, the archon (and her stupid path) and the primus (betrated and MiA) she’s he most competent, with all her court being in order without traisonous elements… i mean its not much but she is being framed as someone extremely busy, scrambling to save everything she can within her realm and being extremely callous because of that, imagine you are a king, you gotta take important choices every minute that will likely cost thousands of lives, thousands of people trying to get your attention to solve their problems, all these souls dying while you hear some whisper about the drust or whatever that may or may not be true, of course you’re not going to pay attention, its lampshaded that practically everyone had to start nagging to her about ysera so she could give us a dime of her time.
If she is incompetent then the other ones are completely useless like the archon example, they yeeted my man ben to the maw instead of chilling in oribos, it looks completely idiotic.
The Devourers are actually why the Archon can’t just have the Bearers drop souls off at a waiting zone or a death plane that wasn’t inhabited. If you concentrate too much anima in one location it will cause a full scale Devourer Invasion. If you read the Story of the previous Paragon of Humility Mercia, it shows that even before the anima drought it took the full strength of Bastion and armies from Maldraxuus to stop devourers from overwhelming Bastion. None of the realms in their current state have the strength to deal with that. At best you would be damning them to be consumed by devourers and destroying a realm of the Shadowlands. In the Maw they at least have a chance of being rescued as things are fixed.
They appear more bestial than anything so the same force that scares off our mounts likely scares off the Devourers from the Maw.
We also even see the theory of anima concentrations attracting Devourers in action when restoring the Path of Ascension to Tier 2 triggers a Devourer to attack the arena.
Ill concede i didnt thought about the devourers, however the choice she made still looks incredibly retarded, i could argue why not leave them on azeroth or whatever place they are, since time goes faster in the shadowlands it doesnt really matter maybe its 100 years/minute real time that may bring problems however you would think it would be better than giving MORE energy to the jailer.
Even if we agree to disagree if the solution hangs in safeguarding bastion, there is the problem of sending the souls to hell instead of just letting them wander their planes then come for them later, “Welp better them than us lets chug them to hell” is not a valid excuse when there are options, besides thats not the only fault the archon has, like the queen the archon is incredibly stubborn however the queen seems to listen to her subjects instead of asking compliance, you have to admit that make her look a little bit more competent or at least the story tries to make that it is like that.