Rewriting Zovaal

[Oakleåf-moon-guard]

It is safe to say that the overall community verdict regarding the Jailer’s story is unsatisfactory to the way it is laid out. So, why not participate in a bit of rewriting for fun? Everyone is welcome to contribute an idea.

Zovaal, the Jailer, is a soul eater of unspoken horror. It is said when the cosmos came into being, from it the shadowlands was birthed, Zovaal was the first sentient entity.

Zovaal is the true Death Incarnate, a walking definition of entropy, existing to devour souls that pass through Shadowlands.

It would be the First Ones that became aware of this unstoppable entity after discovering the Shadowlands, and while as powerful as they were, could not stave off the hunger of Zovaal.

Therefore, Zovaal would be imprisoned within the Maw, a pocket dimension residing within the shadowlands however, in order to keep this prison sustained, Oribos, the eternal city was created. It’s custodians would be the Eternals, omnipotent creations of the first ones who dictated a soul’s worth before assigning them an afterlife fitting specifically for that individual.

And as a soul existed in eternity within the Shadowlands, it would produce Anima - Soul energy that ensured that the maw remained locked.

This greatly impeded the entity Zovaal, but it didn’t stop him, for souls of great malice and irredeemable morality were drawn to him, naturally drifting into the Maw where their anima would be used to form the building blocks of domination magic and necromancy.

If a mortal harnessed, or became afflicted by either of these powers, their soul would immediately be damned to the maw, regardless of their moral compass.

And thus the prison weakens as a great many souls have found their way into the maw, Zovaal using them to break open the prison that he resides.

Well, it would seem I rewrote shadowlands a bit. But this certainly gives him a bit more character. He can be an emotionless, single minded being, but it would be nice to convey to the audience that he is the way he is because… That’s his nature. He’s quite literally death, and death just wants to consume life, that’s how it works.

[Marionos-moon-guard (Marionos)]

My personal thoughts drift towards a different methodology entirely, though it is nice to see that our thoughts are in the same headspace.

THA JAILUR is a villain who desires so strongly to be a force of nature, rather than any one person with any one plan. Everything that is wrong within the Shadowlands has him as it’s common thread, between the legitimately decent storytelling all the way to the truly horrendous.

In short, the sheer idea that THA JAILUR is an entity with sentience and thought is something that is part of the inherent root of the problem. He’s this villain who is supposed to be presented as a man with a well thought out plan of action and has utilized so many facets of cosmic nuance to achieve, and much like his only slightly better inspiration/source material who desired The MacGuffins to wipe out half of humanity because he wanted to knock boots with Death, the end result is all that nuance and planning being crunched down to a same, dumb plan: Use MacGuffins to unmake reality, remake it as he sees fit, and Dominate for Reasons™.

I like that THA JAILUR was locked up within Torghast as punishment for creating a more “proactive” form of death magic that was deemed heretical to the natural flow of life and death. So, what would be done with it?

I would personally make it so the form of magic THA JAILUR created ended up backfiring, ended up consuming him, becoming enthralled by the very form of Domination magic he sought to create in the first place, and having that magic just eat away at who he is until very little was left but a mindless, primordial mass of stygia and unbound magic. Certainly it is contained within Torghast, but cracks form in anything, and those who desired to utilize it certainly could have found out and done so: it would be how the Scourge was able to be formed in the first place, for example’s sake.

So, Shadowlands gets all broken, enthralled husks Dominated by this magic would do their thing, and we venture in to figure out what exactly is going on. The mystery is still present, the balance of the Shadowlands continues to be all askew, and very little would need to be genuinely rewritten to accommodate this shifting focus, and in a game series that has always ended up with us killing The Big Bad we’d be presented with a different task altogether: how do we contain what literally personifies Death itself, a literal force of magic that has no genuine idea of what it was before, and just is lashing out and Dominating because that is precisely what it was created to do?

Hell, Sylvanas’ entire wishy-washy, out of character development and her serving as a literal lynchpin to push forward this whole plot would make SO MUCH more sense if it was ever revealed that because she and so many of Azeroth’s undead were made from this unyielding, primal force that, as it began to break free from it’s prison, she and a great deal of others would have begun to be enthralled by it once again over the years. Y’know, rather than what we got, which was her “totally not being under control or serving THA JAILUR by any means whatsoever by the way she has Good Girl Eyes back now so pls forgive her horrible atrocities.”

Unfortunately, what we got has been a continued form of the actual worst writing from a series not named Game of Thrones.