Question Regarding Domination Magic

Lore Story Forum
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In Shadowlands we learned of Domination Magic, and how the User can subjugate others and compel them to do their bidding. The Primus and Zovaal also explained how the Helm of Domination & Frostmourne (armaments of Ner’zhul/Arthas) were tools of said Domination Magic, as was Kingsmourne (Shalamayne, sword of Varian/Anduin).

My question is: Why is it that Zovaal can use Domination to control everything (especially the living) but the weapons of Domination i.e. “Mourneblades” are seemingly only capable of Dominating the dead? If it had something to do with Domination being some kind of Death Magic or that Mourneblades can only influence the deceased, that’d fit with what we saw in W3: Frozen Throne & Wrath of the Lich King. However, seeing Zovaal utilize Domination Magic against us (who are very much still alive) caused me some confusion, and I’m having trouble trying to figure it out.

The impression I was given from the Primus/Zovaal is that Domination Magic can control pretty much everything in the cosmos, and we see that in some of the quests in Zereth Mortis, where we use the fragments of the Helm to dominate the local protoform fauna & automa, as well as weaken the automa and the Nathrezim in the N.Eastern sand pit. Zovaal even momentarily Dominated everyone atop Oribos at the end of the Sanctum of Domination raid. But, the Mourneblades are only ever used to subjugate Undead. Even Kingsmourne, crafted by Zovaal and his forgesmiths in Torghast, is only seen raising undead during the fight with Anduin.

I dunno if there’s a difference between “existing” and being “mortal”, but originally I thought that because we’re mortal and have “souls”, that would allow us to resist the Mourneblade’s influence. The automa, protoform fauna, and Nathrezim exist in the Shadowlands/Zereth Mortis, but they’re probably not “mortal” if we’re basing it off of having a soul. Same goes for the Brokers - not mortal, yet existing nonetheless.

Unfortunately, this theory falls apart due to the Helm of Domination eventually controlling Arthas, and Kingsmourne doing the same to Anduin; both of whom were alive at the time of being Dominated.

Thus, I’d like an explanation (or theory) as to why Mourneblades only affect the dead, yet Domination Helms/Magic apparently affects everything.

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Kingsmourne dominated the Mawsworn we struck down during the Quest where the Primus regained his Memories so it’s not just Undead that are Dominated.

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Yeah,what Yvenathilm says. But it seems that the mournblades have a preferency for undead. Maybe they canalize the magic in a different form that the most “raw” form of domination magic?

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I went back and rewatched the cutscene just to refresh my memory of what went down. There’s 2 things I noticed:

Video: https://youtu.be/2GiFOgGs_zQ?t=382

  1. Anduin isn’t holding Kingsmourne when he channels “Mass Reclaim” and brings the Mawsworn back to fight. Furthermore, at 7:03 we see Anduin draw forth Kingsmourne to sever the Primus’ sigil from his body. This could possibly just be an oversight on the Dev Team’s part, but still, until otherwise stated he’s just channeling pure Domination Magic to resurrect the Mawsworn versus using the Sword to do so.

  2. The Mawsworn were literally struck down dead, and we clearly see Anduin’s Domination magic resurrect them. So even if he was holding Kingsmourne at that time, the Mourneblade still would’ve demonstrated to only have an affect on those who are dead, as opposed to Domination Magic itself.

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Are the armor sets apart of the “weapons of domination” classification. Frostmourne was struck out from the frozen throne? Implying there is a connection between the two parts. Could kingsmourne have had two parts in the severed shalamayne, varian and varok both died wielding it and then we saw them after the Anduin encounter.
During the dk intro quests mograine shows up at lights hope when mograine falls to tirion, the idea of souls being attached to weapons of power would then be implied, no? Not necessarily then requiring mourneblades to be the thing which cause the dead to linger but weapons which hold power / are crafted in particular ways.

Mograine Saurfang and Varians attachment could be taken as voluntarily, while when looking at frostmourne so too could Terenas’? The weapons seem to dominate the wielder while the victims of the weapons seem to be either outright slain or voluntarily dominated rather than decidedly held on to by the wielder?

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I’m having a hard time understanding what it is you’re suggesting/implying in your first 2 paragraphs, but I’ll try to explain my reasoning further. Just like the Mourneblades, the Helm of Domination (and the armor that we see Anduin wear during the Sanctum Raid) are tools of Zovaal to Dominate the wielder.

For example, during Arthas’ path to becoming the Lich King, he initially discovers Frostmourne and begins to wield it, slowly changing and becoming more unhinged as time passes by. Only when he finds and dons the Helm of Domination does he essentially complete the transformation. I’m uncertain as to whether or not Arthas was being Dominated just by wielding Frostmourne, but he for certain is Dominated upon donning the Helm.

With Anduin, we see Sylvanas point Kingsmourne at him and threaten him to either willingly serve, or be Dominated. After he refuses, we don’t see the process of him being made to serve, so it’s left up to us to speculate how it happened. Was Anduin forced to hold Kingsmourne in his hand? Or was it the Domination Armor he wore? The cutscene implied that it was the former, but we don’t know.

Let’s assume that those who either wear Domination Armor or wield a Mourneblade are Dominated; It still doesn’t really explain why the wielders of Mourneblades are only able to Dominate the dead. During ICC, Arthas states that he wanted us to join the Scourge because we were the most powerful champions he’d seen, but he had to first kill us with Frostmourne before attempting to raise us in Undeath. If Domination Magic is really as potent as Zovaal demonstrated both at the end of the Maw Intro Cinematic and again atop Oribos at the end of the Sanctum Raid cinematic, then why couldn’t Arthas/Anduin just wave their Mourneblades around and enslave us during those raids?

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I just want to touch upon this. Zooval calls both lich kings(ner’zhul and arthas) failures because they both seemingly went rogue at one point and started doing their own thing.

For some unexplained reason, the domination magic used on both of them didn’t hold for long. But it worked on anduin by turning his body into a glorified sock puppet for zooval to control at will

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Nerzhul was in the lich kings armor, Terenas was in frostmourne.
I’m saying they were there partially by choice, not entirely domination. Therefore could one speculate that they were what kept their wielder Arthas from being fully dominated by the Jailer.

On the flipside complete and total domination by the jailer, has it ever existed outside the wielder of a runecarved item? We saw with sylvanas this expansion that she always has had apart of her stricken from her undead shell, meaning even Arthas could not completely dominate her will, with frostmourne, maybe with the helm of domination her entirety would have fared differently.

We don’t know the origin of frostmourne, in the sense of knowing kingsmourne, which is where I was going with Varian and Saurfang “helping” Anduin resist total domination in such close proximity of the Jailer.

I think in a symbolic storytelling sense, death is meant as saying where ones convictions are faulty, and only in defeating those wrongful directives can someone dominate another. However as was seen with Sylvanas being defeated by a mourneblade, similarly to any other weapon causes one to enter death with nothing more extreme implied. However a mourneblade actually severes part of their soul for later use / redemption; as seen with both Terenas and Sylvanas, and I think Uther?

I think you’re overevaluating how strong domination magic is. The most the jailer could do is dominate us for a time and tell us to walk off a ledge, I’m not savvy on mythic but do we even turn on our friends? It seems to me that sort of domination requires one to pick up a mourneblade of their own.

If it was as cut and dry as you’re wanting it to be, mourneblades dominate the dead, the dk intro experience would consist zombified deathknights, surely Arthas at that point in time was powerful enough to completely enact his will on the minds of the ebon blade? Or maybe mograine in the ashbringer was what kept the knights somewhat severed from the lich king / the jailers grasp… but thats much deeper speculation with nothing to back it up other than the fact the only two spirits we see coming out of weapons in wrath are mograine and terenas.

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The Primus created domination magic, and is a necromancer and lord of death.

Zovaal intuitively uses and expands domination, and is basically ruler of Hell.

Seems pretty plausible to me that while death magic has a preference for controlling those who have died, it is weaker (but not weak) in that regard for a sufficiently powerful user against anything else. Similar to how arcane magic is the best at making portals generally but every other major force can too, under the right circumstances, or how Light and Life are best at healing but we’ve seen Arcane, Void, and Fel do it too under certain circumstances.

I’m firmly of the opinion that the reason we don’t see ‘undead’ tags EVERYWHERE in the Shadowlands was purely mechanical decisionmaking, and a terrible choice for gameplay-story separation since all of our abilities get redefined and rebalanced for every expansion. The Mawsworn (fallen Kyrian who are the souls of the once-living) should be affected by things like Shackle Undead far more than they should things like Kidney Punch.

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Because what can be done is as much a function of the wielder. Arthas was not Zovaal, so his abilities were considerably limited in comparison.

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With Terenas possibly, but I think it’s moreso that he was just one of the more prominent/noteworthy souls that were trapped within Frostmourne that had one of the strongest connections to Arthas, hence why he appeared at the end. Ner’zhul was supposed to be in the Helm of Domination since the beginning, and during the Sanctum Raid, he remarks how the Jailer said he was a failed Herald. In the Lich King novel, it’s further noted that shortly after the Lich King(Ner’zhul) and Arthas merged, the personas of Ner’zhul, Arthas, and Matthias Lehner were vying for control inside of a dream. Arthas killed Matthias & Ner’zhul, announcing that he wanted the power all to himself, and became the dominant Lich King personality.

That’s because we entered the raid after we had been empowered by the Crown of Wills to resist Domination. At the end of the Sanctum of Domination raid atop Oribos, Zovaal pretty much waved a hand and Jaina, Thrall, & Bolvar instantly fell to their knees completely Dominated.

My question to you then is this: If the wielder of a Mourneblade determines the power output of said weapon, then are you implying that only Zovaal (and by extension the Primus) would be able to Dominate more than the dead when wielding a Mourneblade?

Let’s assume that when Arthas became the dominant personality of the Lich King and thus severed (or at least limited) the amount of influence Zovaal had over him via Ner’zhul, it also limited his utilization of Frostmourne’s true Domination powers. Fastfoward to Shadowlands, and there are several points leading up to Sanctum of Domination raid where we see Zovaal take control of Anduin personally, yet never Dominates other “living/existing” beings in Shadowlands with Kingsmourne although he of all ppl should have the power/ability to do so. Again, this could’ve been chalked up to Zovaal being overconfident, a plot oversight with the Writers, or maybe I’m just looking too much into things.

I guess my main overall concern/thought is this - We’ve seen that wearing Domination Armor and wielding Mourneblades will cause the wearer/wielder to become Dominated. We’ve also been told/shown that Domination magic essentially subjugates its victims to the will of the Caster. Therefore, if wearing armor can dominate the mind of the wearer, then why doesn’t simply being cut automatically compel the victim to obey? Why do the victims first have to die before becoming Dominated?

By that logic, Arthas/Anduin should’ve been killed before throwing Domination armor on their bodies for Zovaal to have any control over them.

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I’m implying no more than what I said. Zovaal is essentially the architect of Domination Magic so it stands to reason that he can get more out of an artifact than someone who’s by comparison an apprentice at the magic.

Since the Primus’s abilities are not known, I can’t answer for him.

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The Primus invented domination magic. Zooval simply learned how to use it during his eons being imprisoned

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Maybe he did, but I don’t recall him using it throughout the entire campaign where as Zovall uses it liberally. The inventor of an art is not always the best practiioner.

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c.f. the inventor of Magic: The Gathering

not a bad player, but not even close to one of the top players

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That certainly is true. Zooval is quite powerful and inventive with the use of domination magic. The Primus…I’d say is a glorified necromancer at best

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Ner’zhul apparently used Domination to enslave Mortals before scrapping that plan.

Furthermore Arthas is the one mostly controlling Anduin so he would use what he is used to.

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One way you can look at it is that Frostmourne and the Helm of Domination were prototypes if you will. The Primus had knowledge on how to craft such devices but they weren’t perfect. Kingsmourne however is intended to be an improvement over Frostmourne. As Zovaal learned how to control and improve domination magic, he also worked out how to remove any ‘bugs’ in the system.

Another way is that the Primus secretly placed a flaw that Zovaal simply overlooked.

Either way what doesn’t make sense is that Zovaal could see through the Helm of Domination and can even use it as a conduit, as seen in Shadowlands. Where he tries to kill Bolvar for ‘looking through’ the fragments of the helm. So surely Zovaal would’ve told Daddy D and Denathrius would’ve told the Dreadlords to pull the plug on Ner’zhul. Considering Ner’zhul was going off script and actively worked to undermine the Legion. Hell, Ner’zhuls dialogue in Shadowlands implies that corrupting Arthas wasn’t part of the ‘plan’. As Ner’zhul being usurped by Arthas was considered part of his failure.

“He said I… failed him. A flawed herald… usurped by another”

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My assumption (though I grant I tend to be generous about inferring things that should be said) was that Zovaal could only use the helm in that way either because the helm was in the Shadowlands, because the helm user was openly “widening” the path back to Zovaal, or both. The helm was only intended to be downstream of him magically, and when you make it an upstream conduit, he can turn that back on you hard.