In the quest line where you take Arator to see Sylvanas there is a quest named The Long Vigil - previously a name used for time time period where the Night Elves watched over Nordrassil for more than seven-thousand years - there is a quest to look for four souls that were in the Maw wrongly.
Of those souls, three are Horde members, two of which are calmed, and one refuses to go with Sylvanas.
The fourth soul is a Night Elf soul that died on Teldrassil when it was burned. And unlike the other three souls who stick around, the Night Elf soul âdespawnsâ using a particular kind of special effect.
⌠What was that all about?
Before the Night Elf soul disappears it says:
Smoldering Soul says: Mother Moon⌠I hear you. Please, save us from this tormentâŚ
And after the soul is gone:
Sylvanas Windrunner says: I hope your Goddess awaits you beyond the Maw.
Is Elune personally taking Night Elf souls out of the Maw rather than Sylvanas putting them in Ardenweald style baskets and floating them out? Or was it too late for the soul and it obliterated?
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If true, this would set a good precedent for a final destination for souls that goes beyond the Shadowlands. Reducing the Shadowlands to a transitory realm would be a good first step to dampen the impact of that expansionâs disastrous world building without having to outright remove it from the setting.
They could go even further with this and at some point make a cinematic similar to the one we see in Valâsharah, revealing a new constellation in the shape of a great bear to emphasize that the fates of noble souls like Ursocâs ultimately arenât subject to matters as mundane and asinine as a ressource crisis brought about by petty schemes. This would somewhat remystify what the afterlife is in the context of Warcraft and put it back where it belongs: in the hands of the divine.
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I am hoping thatâs what sheâs doing. And then perhaps they can be sent up to Amirdrassil with the rest. Weâve seen Ardenweald and the Emerald Dream are connected multiple times now.
That was Sylvanasâ whole point after all, wasnât it? That the old Arbiter was too arbitrary and separated families. Would be stupid if half the night elf souls were put in the seed and eternally separated from the other half who would remain in the Shadowlands. If it really did disintegrate, like the Tortured Amalgamation we had to help Tyrande perma-kill, then Iâd have to assume the writers are gearing up for another night elf humiliation conga.
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I think itâs more setting up future retcons of Shadowlands. Her message to us in the final quest about things Being too orderly seems to hint at it at least
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It probably is, but Iâm unwilling to make any assumptions on that front yet. People have been running wild with theories based on what weâve seen so far, but we have so little to go on. So for now I just prefer to operate on what we do know and have seen in past expansions. Maybe SL will turn out to be some fake Titan afterlife and things will change as people expect, but for now it could go in any direction, or nowhere at all even.
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No, Iâm pretty sure she wonât. I donât see why and how.
Also⌠Nathanos seems to be in good health for someone who is died like everyone and went in the Maw like everyone⌠Not even in soul or ghost form. Just here in the Maw like nothing happens at the end of BfA. The whole Tyrande arc about the Night Warrior was a joke at the end. Same thing for the Night Elf story in BfA with all the stuffs we get in the next expansions.
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The best part of the questline was the hint that the Shadowlands arenât the true realm of death.
Perhaps thereâs still hope for some familiar characters.
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Wasnât he a generic ghost on the PTR? Why would they make a change like this? Thatâs not something you do by accident. If this evil pos ends up coming back âundead/aliveâ, then everything really is a joke. Then they really do need resurrect all the night elves as well; a long shot Iâm still hoping for.
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I always figured it was inevitable that Nathanos was coming back. Especially since they been teasing Sylvanas return a lot lately. I figured Nathanos wouldnât be too far behind.
Ressurrecting the Night elves is impossible at this point. Most of them literally became Amidrisaal when it bloomed from the Tear that the souls chose to imbue
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But Sylvanas is still alive, at least in the undead sense. So her coming back is physically possible. Nathanos legitimately died, and as far as I know he didnât get an offscreen Valâkyr resurrection after Tyrande killed him. He should be just like any other mortal dying and sent to the Maw during that time period. On the PTR he was a disembodied ghost same as all the others souls. No idea why heâd suddenly come back with his body when no one else has, unless thereâs something even more nebulous at play with whatever is in the pipeline for Shadowlands retcons.
And yeah I really donât expect theyâd be resurrected either, but part of me still hopes it happens. Everything else about BFA/SL is such a joke anyways, so why not. Yes those souls did go into the seed/tree, but they all still exist individually at Amirdrassil. Many are named NPCs from Teldrassil/Darkshore/Ashenvale, and from when we rescued them in the Maw, and some are still individually named/targetable wisps at Amirdrassil. Some also still retain individuality based on Delarynâs interaction with Ferryn. Can wisps be resurrected? Who knows.
It is indeed a long shot, and part of me does think it would be too outlandish. But then the whole story feels that way anymore, and I expect all sorts of cosmic absurdity by the end of TLT anyways. And probably an appearance by Elune, too. For me it was always the massive loss of civilian life that bothered me about BFA so much, not the stupid tree or the zones. Which is odd, since itâs merely a statistic in a fictional game. Only a few dozen were named NPCs, most of little note. The rest is just us being told second-hand that thousands were burned alive. We donât even see most of it. But it just hit different for me than most of the violence we experience in game, and part of me just canât let it go. That thousands were burned alive, yet SL just conflates the whole thing as just some unfortunate accident, and as long as Sylvanas gets them out of hell then everything is fixed. It still feels like such an insane act of war went unanswered. Well, thatâs life I suppose, but this is also a game with all sorts of other crazy stuff happening anymore. I just want to let it go finally.
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They called the end of SL Eternityâs End so they probably do it just to ignite nostalgia in players⌠again
There are 2 options
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NOW Elune has a power in The Maw. At this point, it seems that Jailerâs power blocked her influence in SL, but we still havenât received confirmation after 6 years
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the soul really disappeared and Sylvanas only comforts her. Blizzard had a strange fetish for tormenting the souls of NE. Especially in SL but also in Fyrakk raid where saved souls sacrificed(?) themselves to defend Amirdrassil heart from shadowflame. And now here.
Unfortunately, I suspect the latter. Blizzard can highlight Elune intervention using moonlight or Night Fae magic effects. But we didnât get anything like that, even when a minute earlier we got a pointless but beautifully animated music video for Sylvanas.
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Who says itâs impossible to bring the Night Elf souls back? Not Blizzard, theyâd never make such a bold claim. Because if they did, less than a month later theyâd have a side quest where that exact situation occurs, and then theyâd go all Obi-Wan Kenobi and gaslight you, mumbling, âIt was true, from a certain point of view.â
Honestly? The Kaldorei souls inhabiting the tree could just function as like, a soul repository, kinda like the Eldar of Warhammer 40k. The souls of the Kaldorei in the tree just remain there, close to their people until theyâre like.. reincarnated into new families, or just become whisps that hang about the branches.
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I hear that theyâre dropping hints about the Shadowlands we saw being a Titan construct rather than the âtrueâ afterlife. So souls that disappear from there could be going anywhere.
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The Generic Ghost is still there. Itâs not Nathanos.
Nathanos is in the Maw with Sylvanas while the Generic Ghost regularly visits her.
I suspect itâs the Child Fragment of Arthas claimed by Frostmourne when he cut out his Heart. The same Child that Sylvanas met in Edge of Night.
It is naturally bigger than the Fragment claimed when Arthas first claimed the Sword(which cuts off and claims pieces of Souls for the Maw when wielded in Anger like all Mourneblades) since surely the Body on Autopilot(thanks to the Soul being Dominated into the passengerâs seat) was angry that the Soul was getting in his way.
Not as Angry as he is with Uther and especially Sylvanas which naturally means Matthias Lehner is more intact than either were. The Body on Autopilot was especially Angry with Sylvanas which is why Uther claims her wound was deeper than his.
Imagine Sylvanas giving us the Quest to reunite Child Arthas with Matthias Lehner!
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Yes, it does beg the question of whether itâs a discrepancy or if something else is going on. Why have Nathanos as a generic ghost during the main quest but full-bodied during the loyalist part? Or perhaps, like you said, the generic one is not him at all. Once upon a time I wouldâve thought it madness to consider it could be part of Arthas, but now⌠if itâs not Nathanos then Arthas does seem probable. I canât even think of who else it even could be if not one of those two. Lirath? But he shouldnât be in the Maw.
Still, this whole thing is nonetheless bizarre. Itâs creepy Nathanos is just lurking there behind a rock listening to the loyalist conversation, full body, seemingly âaliveâ, and with name and title. Youâd think it was a bug or oversight, but something like this doesnât happen by accident. And personally Iâd find it very unpalatable if theyâre walking this back too, and later let him waltz out of there no big deal.
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Knowing Blizzard, theyâre just going to say that the Jailer âremade his bodyâ then put him in a fridge to use as leverage against Sylvanas, but never needed to because she was committed up until he had what he wanted. If theyâre not going to update his model, or be bothered to even put the ghost overlay on him, then itâs the only thing that makes sense to me.
Dudeâs undead. The only thing the undead have to their name is the ability to return from death inexplicably, or be extremely hard to kill while everyone else dies normally.
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Undead have survived beheadings before, could just be that nathanoâs wasenât actually dead which would be very funny.
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I want it to be Arthas so badlyâŚhis ending in Shadowlands as a blue puff of smoke was so utterly horrid to his legacy (good and bad) as a character.
If his wet fart of an âendingâ gets reconnected, then Iâd be completely happy.
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I read on WoWhead that it might be a left over bug from when he was cut during the beta and it somehow made it into the game. Since he has no lines, doesnât interact with anyone and is just kneeling behind the rocks
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