So, consider the unaccountably large number of afterlife doors in the Arbiter’s room, which are representative of the nearly infinite number of afterlives that exist. The necessity of so many of these seems to indicate that very few people are plucked by the four main covenants, since almost all people may get nearly unique afterlives—or at least, the ratio of people per afterlife is fairly small.
Bastion, Maldraxxus, and Ardenwealde likely just take what they need from the absolute best candidates, just as a matter of resources: you can’t pump too many people into these four, or it will overcrowd instantaneously with trillions of souls per day or what have you.
From a logistical perspective, then, not many people can be sent to Revendreth. It is already the case that virtually no souls go to the main four covenants, and even fewer go to one in particular. Even if they wanted to shove more in, they would quickly overwhelm their finite resources.
Based on this alone, Revendreth will only select the most vile beings in existence. This seems to hold true, as most people who’s sins we read in Revendreth have more or less caused the genocide of entire species.
When Shadowlands was revealed, we assumed that [insert hated character here] would go to the Maw for [insert crimes here]. But now, it almost seems like most evil characters would have a hard time even getting into Revendreth, let alone the Maw. The truth seems to be that the Shadowlands are extremely forgiving by necessity, and most evil deeds go ignored—whether we see that as a benevolent thing, or an evil thing.
Game scale is a thing to consider. It seems likely the zones of the four covenants would grow as needed to accommodate more souls.
As an example, I was at the edge of Ardenweald yesterday, looked down over the edge, and saw a few more of those massive trees, which seems to suggest there are more islands of Ardenweald floating around beneath the one we are active on.
Oh, Revendreth is for sure the equivalent of the Federal super-max prison for severe crimes in life. I imagine there are the equivalent of low security prison realms where lesser offenders might serve out some penance.
alternatively, the length of your sentence in Revendreth might be proportional to the severity of your crimes and how quickly you accept contrition. you might end up with the equivalent of a two week stay before getting resorted.
Seems intentional. During questing, you learn the Heart of the Forest is what is keeping the Jailer Imprisoned, and that it needs a lot of anima to remain functioning. That’s why the Winter Queen sends you to Revendreth to ask Sire Denathrius for anima for Ardenweald. Since the whole goal here is to free the jailer, focusing the drought in the place(s) to redirect anima from the Heart of the Forest would be ideal.
The amount of anima a sinful soul bears is proportional to the scope and vileness of the sins, so there may well be lesser realms of atonement where less severe methods are used to reconcile souls whose misdeeds were so minor they can be far more quickly and easily redeemed and wouldn’t provide enough anima to make it worth putting them through Revendreth anyway.
Or as Solarion suggests, like Ardenweald there may be smaller tributary regions of Revendreth that we just don’t see in-game where such souls arrive for a short visit and a redemptive slap on the wrist before moving on to a different afterlife.
Regardless, the existence of hundreds of visible doors in the Arbiter’s room sets an upper bound on the percent of souls going to the main four: less than a fraction of a percent. So even if you’re right, my point still stands on that alone.
With regards to your argument, though, we seem to be introduced to the entire upper echelons of their bureaucracy, and they absolutely could not handle infinite growth. While these zones are undoubtedly enormous beyond our comprehension, it is still true that perhaps quadrillions or more souls occupy the totality of the Shadowlands, and these four realms can’t contain even the smallest fraction of that.
Yes, this is a good argument, and can definitely take the wind out of my argument’s sails.
Something you may be forgetting is that there is also movement between the afterlives. For example, we’ve already been told that Draka could very well complete her tour of duty in Maldraxxus and be able to leave it and reunite with Durotan.
So, it’s quite possible souls that spend time in the big four, do end up leaving, and the realms could be so vast that those who choose to leave do so at a rate equal to those who come in. It’s arguably a bit different for each covenant, but that is something else to keep in mind.
Do most souls go to one of the four? No way. But I don’t believe there is some kind of tracker that goes, “Welp, Revendreth is at 1 billion souls and 100,000 Venthyr, stop the flow of souls in there until they yeet some into the Maw or back at the Arbiter!”
I think the interesting consequence, though, is that with so few souls (as a fraction of total souls in the universe) going to Revendreth—that much is an indisputable fact—it makes it seem unthinkable that anyone could ever deserve the Maw. We’re talking infinitesimal fractions of an already infinitesimal fraction.
The soul-current into the Shadowlands is surely billions if not trillions per day. I just can’t believe that a finite realm like Revendreth could handle that kind of turnover with their finite size—no matter how seemingly large they may be.
Well the issue here is that you’re assuming Revendreth is finite. For the purposes of the game and for our ability to explore it, it certainly is finite. In terms of the lore, it could very well be infinite, just more and more dark rainy forests going on into forever, with villages and small castles dotting the land here and there, etc…
And these infinite covenants are ruled by a single Eternal and a small class of upper tier bureaucrats that are able to oversee the entirety of a literal infinity?
There’s also a trash object from an ogre soul in the halls of Atonement (random spawn) that’s like “he was dumb and bad but mostly dumb” (paraphrasing)
Not sure if I should bother but since I’m talking about a couple of quests, I’ll stick these in spoilers anyway.
One of the methods the venthyr use for torture is just locking away a soul and let good ol' fashioned solitary confinement drive them batty. In one quest, you're looking for a sinstone, and one of the mausoleums you open has a spirit rushing out screaming about how he's learned his lesson and that he doesn't want to be locked away anymore. A venthyr doesn't need to actively work on a soul to torture it.
As for punishing people until they repent, it's possible for penitent souls to become doomed to the maw anyway. In fact, you inadvertently cause this to happen early on with one spirit that had been working for eons to purge himself of his sins, all because you got a venthyr to take the last of his anima even though he was so close to being free. Thus, he became permanently saddled with his remaining sins because there was no anima left in him to pull it out.
Revendreth isn’t cruelty on the purpose of cruelty. It is purgatory, where sinners are punished based on their sins in life. It isn’t for purposeful crimes in societal measure, but extreme immortal sins that stain the soul like the seven deadly sins (for example, the Accusor is drenched in Wrath and Pride, where she took pride in the pain she inflicted, but she is given pause because she regrets killing her own child out of misdirection, thus sending her to Revendreth, because she is capable of feeling empathy and is not beyond atonement, rather than the Maw, where monstrous beings are locked away).
Rather than going straight to hell (or, in this case, the Maw), they go to purgatory because it is possible to show them the error of their ways, atone for them and emerge from it reformed, where they either move on from Revendreth or pledge fealty to the Venthyr to do their part, according to Rendle and Cudgelface.
Venthyr might seem aloof, capricious and perhaps sadistic, but their charge isn’t to be their caretakers. At least, not like a citizen and a guard, but more like a warden to a prisoner, where their well being is apart of their responsibility, but only that, until final judgement.
I’m sure it’d grow infinitely to scale appropriately for the influx of souls it’d see. It isn’t a physical thing. The scale of it is insignificant to what is possible.
Well there are three things you must remember about Revendreth.
Sure the souls sent there are evil but they all have one thing in common. They have done something in life that, despite their evil deeds, deems them worthy of a chance of redemption.
Not all the souls who are redeemed in Revendreth become Venthyr some actually get sent back to the Arbiter and then sent to one of the other afterlives.
Because the way Sinstones work many Venthyr are very cautious of not giving out their true names as this could be used to find their sinstone and thus be used against them. As such even if we did encounter a venthyr we sent to Revendreth during our Adventurers on Azeroth (or was even sent to Revendreth from before the start of World of Warcraft) they will very likely not be eager to let us know who they are.
Not necessarily. There’s one readable sinstone that states the guy was truly 100% bad, he’s just an amazing engineer and inventor, so once he’s done with Revendreth he’ll go to the “Craftenium” (Inventor afterlife)
But the sinstone does not mention any redeemable qualities except “being smart”
MOST get sent to the Arbiter, siring someone is actually a weak point of a venthyr
No, there are infinite afterlives, some do go to the other three, most would go elsewhere
Other way around, they guard their sinstone so others won’t know their true name. The true name of a venthyr can be used against them.
Well take for example there was another sinstone that mention a person who wiped out SIX civilizations and it mentioned that the only reason he was not sent to the Maw was because he spared a single village.