Lore Question

Community General Discussion
1

Hey guys. I’m having a blast in classic, but the shadowlands Xpac looks pretty cool too. But it got me thinking about a couple of things (apologies if these have been answered):

  1. If the lich king’s power is broken, wouldn’t all the undead’s souls be put to rest? Especially considering the separation of the afterlife and the living has been broken.

  2. Why wouldn’t the undeads’ soul be separated from their bodies if they tried to enter the shadowlands since it is where the souls of the dead go?

Thanks all!

2

Yep, this is definitely a Classic topic!

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1 - no bolvar was just acting as their jailer, they’re already the scourge, losing the helm of dominion just sorta makes em like a colony of ants without a queen i guess
2 - no idea man, blizzard lore
3 - lady prestor was onyxia the whole time

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4

I always thought they had to have a Lich King, else the dead would run rampant and unchecked. Arthas exploited this, Bolvar just kept it in check.

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5

Sorry moved

6

As far as I know, the fact that there’s no longer a Lich King means that the Scourge are free to run rampant throughout Azeroth. Seems to play right into Sylvanas’ hands.

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My question applies to scourge and Forsaken, maybe I should have specified that

8

The reason there must always be a Lich King, is because there are a lot of Scourge.

Arthas raised the dead of virtually the entire city of Lordaeron and its surrounding areas, of Andorhal, Darrowshire, and all the little villages and towns throughout what are now known as the Plaguelands and all the way through to Silvermoon during the Scourge’s advance.

Not to mention all the undead Nerubians, frost trolls, etc. etc.

The Scourge were always built up as this virtually unending horde of undead, most of whom are mindless and would simply wander attacking anything and everything living in their path. Spreading corruption and killing the land as they go.

There are also more intelligent undead, Necromancers, Death Knights, Liches, Banshees and the such that are controlled through the Helm of Domination that, left to their own devices would carve out their own undead kingdoms and seek to expand and create even more undead to prolong their own power/eternal undeath.

Arthas had the numbers and the power to wipe out all life on Azeroth the entire time. However, what he wanted was an elite corps of Generals to replace his treacherous Death Knights, and so he attacked the Horde and Alliance, then “retreated” to Northrend and allowed the Horde and Alliance to fight their way through to him. Only the most skilled, most powerful of Heroes would make it that far, and the plan was to kill them, turn them undead, and use them to lead the Scourge out amongst the world.

Then Tyrion remembered he had a CC break and broke Frostmourne.

However, the Scourge remained, and so Bolvar took up the helm in order to hold the majority of the Scourge in Northrend, and keep the Scourge members who would otherwise have caused untold destruction and chaos amongst the world paralyzed while Tyrion reforged the Argent Crusade and sought about purging as much of the undead as possible. Healing the plaguelands, etc. etc.

The trouble is… the Argent Crusade is really small, and the Horde and Alliance have not been focused on killing off the Scourge either. The Argent Crusade has also spent several years fighting the risen Scarlet Crusade who were risen into undeath outside of the Lich King’s control by Dread Lord infiltrators(Balnazzar and possibly even Mal’Ganis) of the Burning Legion, so they haven’t been able to do much more than dent the Scourge’s numbers.

With the Helm of Dominaton gone, all those hordes of undead are free to roam Azeroth. All those Death Knights not loyal to the Ebon Blade, all those banshees, and necromancers, and liches are free to follow their own schemes. Even the Cult of the Damned may make a resurgence since we know it has remained active and undetected in both the Horde and Alliance since Arthas’ defeat.

Heck, a single Cult of the Damned Necromancer was enough to wipe out the entire Garrison of Admiral Taylor during Warlords of Draenor.

Without Bolvar telling the Cult of the Damned to not murder everyone… well… They make SI:7, and whoever the Horde’s intelligence service is look like amateurs.

9

But what your saying is that the helm is not the source of power to keep the undead souls in their decaying bodies? The spell that raised them is permanent and the helm was merely to control them?

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The first is a really good question bcuz it gets me thinking about Saurfang’s son. Unless his soul was only in Frostmourne and not in the helm. But then again we are going to be seeing Uther in Shadowlands, who was killed with Frostmourne. So why didn’t Blizz say that we could end up seeing Dranosh Saurfang in Shadowlands? I think it would be pretty cool to see him again since Wrath.

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11

Pretty much.

I believe it’s touched on during the Forsaken starting quests, but basically the Helm/Frostmourne were merely conduits to put the soul back in the body. It was the Necromancer’s power and the power of the spell the Necromancer placed on the body that reanimated it.

For most of the Scourge the source of that power came from the original plague formula, which turned them into mindless undead which required little actual Necromantic power.

More intelligent undead with greater powers and free will like Death Knights required focusing the power of Frostmourne to create. Once created, though, they didn’t need anything else to keep going.

This is also bolstered by Warcraft 2 Lore with the Original Death Knights being similarly reanimated through Warlock rituals by Gul’Dan and the Shadow Council, and we even see that years and years after being created Teron Gorefiend, the first of the original Death Knights is still powerful and around.

I kind of like that the hordes of undead don’t simply fall over and die once you kill the baddie that raised them. Makes them a much more lethal threat and less “hollywood”-ish.

12

Without a sort of ‘mind’ to control the rampant undead, they all tend to frenzy and threaten to destroy the world - which is going to be the catalyst for getting us to Northrend.

Because…

…

The writing is awful?

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13

No, he just lost his hold over them, so they go back to being mindless undead.

I’m guessing because they’re technically living.

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14

Uther was trapped in Frostmourne, the ICC Dungeons confirmed that, but with sufficient power he was able to free himself from the prison temporarily. (As evidence by early Classic Quests near Andorhal and his tomb.)

Once Frostmourne was shattered, though, all the souls that had been trapped inside it to power it were freed, including Uther’s.

15

Well it depends on which version of the lore.
At one point the Scourage and Forsaken have no souls. They lost their souls becoming undead. That is why they went into nothingness if they die again. Also, why they take special effort to prevent a downward spiral into insanity.

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1: No the Lich King’s power let’s him create and control the undead but they’re not dependent on keeping them undead. Simply put an undead is like a living being except the soul is imperfectly attached, but it’s still attached. Once it is attached it’s self sustaining. If the Lich King had to be the one provide and constant source of “unlife” to each undead then yes the scourge would have all died with the loss of his power.

  1. A soul is a soul. There no such thing as a “dead soul” or a “live soul” (I guess unless you destroy the soul itself but that’s a different issue). Being dead is your body losing its soul. Being alive is having a soul attached to the body. Undead is just an imperfect attachment of body and soul and usually attached through unnatural means.
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