Shalamayne is actually two swords, Shalla’tor and Ellemayne. When Varian was split into two beings, each was given one of the swords by Jaina, who was the owner of them at the time. When Onyxia fused the two beings together back into the ‘proper’ Varian, the blades fused into Shalamayne.
Varian split the blades into Shalla’tor and Ellemayne at the Broken Shore, where he died, the blades were left there until Anduin picked up Ellemayne and it responded to him, once he accepted his responsibility as king. He would have likely picked up Shalla’tor as well and merged them back together before leaving.
Ok,I got the weapons messed up with another. There not much history on the blade so that one much easier now to remember .lol.
Can you imagine a time-gated storyline quest where you have to pick up 3 fragments of Varian’s soul a week for 8 weeks? I can.
Well, he certainly fell after he let go of that airship.
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This brings up an interesting point, I wonder then, can we theorize that KingsMourn might have both Arthas and Varian’s soul wrestling for control? One in each sword?
Since Shalamayne is the just the two names put together, maybe Kingsmourn is the same, while also being a homage to Frostmourn.
I think you’re overthinking it.
No. Varian was obliterated by Gul’Dan-body and soul. There is, quite literally, nothing for the Jailer to dominate unless you count the pile of ashes that used to be Varian.
Which, now that I think of it, would make for an amusing phase.
Tanks swap on sweeping duties, healers handle the dust pans, and DPS stand around making usless and unintelligble noises while spam posting DPS meters and insulting each other’s dead mothers in raid chat.
Us being able to freely travel to and from the Maw is a rare exception, not the norm. Other than the Kyrian and souls that requested to be sent back to the Arbiter to be sorted into another afterlife, the usual way of things is that you get sent to whatever afterlife Arbiter deemed appropriate to you (which as people pointed out is infinite rather than just the four covenants we as players have access to, with entirely new ones being created in Zereth Mortis as needed), and you live out your eternity there. There’s probably little to no communication between the ‘normal’ afterlife realms, so how would Varian even know what happened?
No, it was there so we could see the vision of the conversation he had with Sylvanas. If we didn’t have that, the Bolvar couldn’t have pulled that vision from it.
Don’t see them using Varian there. Also, even in the long term, as various posters have pointed out, Varian’s soul was obliterated by fel magic. Varian’s soul is not going to make any future appearances ever.
People should really rest easy in that knowledge, because WoW is well known for sticking to its guns and not engaging in lore retcons about how time, or space, or various brands of magic work just to shoehorn in characters that wouldn’t otherwise make sense to create dramatic or cool moments.
They’re really above all that as story-tellers.
I posted a cinematic up above that shows Anduin meeting his father’s soul.
We fight Arthas in the Anduin encounter?
That makes absolutely no sense. Varian was incinerated and his soul destroyed.
His soul was not incinerated, there is literally a cinematic that shows Anduin meeting his father’s soul.
It’s a vision from Shalamayne. The vision happens when the sword is placed in his hands. Varian was linked to that sword. Fel destroys souls. Varian was destroyed from the inside out.
No, it’s literally just Arthas’s soul…
Varian’s soul is either in the Shadowlands, or, it’s watching over Anduin. It’s not in his sword, it wasn’t put into Kingsmourne. It’s just Arthas in there.
We don’t have any lore to support that.
The passage of souls being destroyed comes from lore surrounding the Soul Engines, which are buildings the Legion uses to power their war machines. The Legion captures living mortals, kills them, has a jailer demon or other powerful demon capture the soul, and then has that soul consumed by fel to produce energy to be stored.
This did not happen to Varian. His body was destroyed. Not his soul.
If using fel magic on a mortal creature to kill them obliterated the soul, then almost every victim of the Burning Legion (and any warlock) would lose their souls and the Legion would quickly run out of souls to power their machines.
Fel literally destroys souls. We absolutely have lore to support it.
Fel is fueled by drawing life from living beings and consuming their souls, utterly destroying them in the process.[4]
I literally just covered that.
Yes, Fel energy will destroy souls it consumes, absolutely. But getting killed as a result of fel magic isn’t enough. The soul actually has to be ‘consumed’ by the fel.
We haven’t got any concrete information that such a fate befell Varian’s soul. We just see his body get obliterated. Gul’dan doesn’t capture his soul, doesn’t destroy it, so by default it would have gone to the Shadowlands.
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No I’m pretty sure in my belief that it’s Arthas.
Varian was I thought taken outta existence because of how he died.