An alternate title for my topic could have been “Dagran a dummy, Brinthe a baddie, Archaedas felt anomie” but I figured that might be spoilers for anybody who is months behind on their titan disc questlines. But basically, all 5 titan disc questlines through the various weeks were presented in an unreliable narrator way so I wanted to evaluate how I interpreted them all when combined. By unreliable narrator, I don’t mean the way that Verbal Kint in the Usual Suspects was telling a story which was false on purpose. I mean more like unreliable narrator in the Forrest Gump sense where he is telling a story about something that happened but not explaining it objectively for what was really going on…and you have enough information to re-interpret and disregard and recontextualize what he said to more accurately match events. Unfortunately, while the Dagran character is okay in previous questlines as a naive child tagging along…in this one his inclusion ended up with a bunch of logical non-sequiturs and hyperbole and exaggerations and rhetorical questions to which the answer would actually be “No” instead of the yes that some biased fans are wishing. So the Dagran quotes never amount to any lore and they don’t have logical backing as being proof or confirmation for anything; so for all intents and purposes I have to conclude Dagran was temporarily being dumb and naive and presumptuous and I’ll ignore his statements for the rest of this entire topic.
Now, the Machine Speaker Brinthe character did have ‘some’ contributions to lore; such as her saying that the Earthen didn’t have any instructions to go investigating Beledar or anything like that, so that is helpful. But unfortunately many of the rhetorical questions she was asking and implications and assumptions she was making; not to mention the bizarre emotional violent threat of saying damn the titans without ever having any evidence or proof for anything----means that most of what she said is not lore either, and she was very much showing that she is an unethical villain acting in psychopathic ways without proper justification. Her jumping to conclusions in that menacing way is demonstrating to us that the plan to download their memories and reset them to factory settings was probably a “good” idea, and a necessary one.
That brings us to Archaedas, where each step of the quest chain showed some mistakes in reasoning by him, as well as some likely missing information that he would have needed to make other conclusions. And also, there were some interpretations that even he started to question and be humble about in later steps of the quest chain. I don’t think Archaedas was being malevolent or deceptive, I think there were just things that he didn’t know accurately and he just presumed things that didn’t quite follow.
So here are my interpretations and predictions and speculations on what the actual lore might end up being that could have led Archaedas to say the things he believed. Since the stated reason in vanilla Uldaman for the Titans creating the earthen out of stone and metals and trace elements of Azeroth’s existing materials was because they were worried about the vulnerability of standard flesh mortals to void whispers of old gods; then what if that also blocks or prevents the Light from being able to do any whispering to those same earthen and watchers and keepers? Archaedas and Khaz’goroth were probably making a mistake about Beledar and all signs indicate Beledar has a connection to the Light and that it came down from above. Not from the world soul, not coming up from below. So what if Beledar is of the Light and it wanted to communicate with the Earthen, but it was very difficult to do in their stone form. However, since Earthen are made from magical stone that was already on Azeroth, maybe there are trace fragments of light crystals in those earthen or Beledar can convert some of them into crystal forms and those crystal forms “ARE” vulnerable to hearing voices from the Light. Therefore, Beledar could have been whispering to those ancient Thraegar to get them to dismantle the core-chamber. If that core-chamber was designed to prevent the Void from being able to reach the World Soul then it is entirely possible and likely that it blocks the Light from reaching the World Soul or communicating with it also. I reject the idea that there is anything villainous about the core chamber; but it could be a hindrance in the Light being able to cooperate with the world soul to fight the Void Lords. If Loken can be corrupted by the Void, then Tyr and Archaedas could be corrupted by the Light a little bit over time. The Azeroth World Soul would not be hating Titans, she would just view them as mistaken in their methods for defense. Let’s be honest here, whatever voice Magni was hearing in Legion genuinely wanted him to go find the imprisoned Titans and “save” them, to “help” them, to “return” them to power. If that voice was Azeroth, then Azeroth wants the Titans safe and free. If the voice was from the Light then the Light wants the Titans safe and free. In both cases, none of them see the Titans as bad or as villains.
However, what could the Light and the World Soul be planning if they could dismantle the core-chamber? Well, one possibility is that Beledar was a fragment of a naaru spaceship that either was attacked or fell apart and crashed long ago, all over the planet. Maybe the Light isn’t acting as a villain either, but it wants the World Soul to take a risk of cracking and quaking itself temporarily to shake loose those fragments like Beledar; thereby allowing them to float up and re-assemble as a Naaru Light Ship that could fight the Void Lord which Xal’atath wants to summon. And yet, this could be an opportunity for Xal’atath to ambush them all and unfortunately maybe flip some of the fragments to Void Naaru that would start opening the very void portal in the sky that Azeroth was trying to prevent. All those cracks and quakes could poetically be considered a Third Death for Azeroth…after the Sundering and Shattering…maybe we coin this one “The Shaking” ? And at any rate, that could fulfill the old god whisper about how the hour of her third death would usher in their coming. That would then be an appropriate transition to the Midnight expansion. Maybe that entire Midnight expansion will be about finding alternative ways of stopping the full emergence of the Void Lord; like using the Sunwell back in Quel’thalas or at least the entity inside the Sunwell to rekindle and reflip the void naaru back to Light Naaru. And then maybe Holy Light laser-beam Dimensius so he fails at the end.
Then what would “The Last Titan” be about? Well, maybe it means the Titans return from the pantheon to Ulduar and the source of their Reorigination beams was those light crystals, which are not available to use anymore. And whereas the Titans were mistaken about Azeroth before, now they can have a method of communicating with her, through us mortals. Maybe this is where Iridikron comes back out of hiding and tries to attack the Titans. But we could discover there was a conspiracy by the Life Pantheon and they were involved with making the Old Gods flesh rather than just void long long ago before the Black Empire; not to help void…but to distract void from finishing their conversion of the World Soul to a void titan. I suppose the Life Pantheon doesn’t have to be evil either, but we could do a raid to essentially punch them in the nose and remind them that they should only be 16.67% influence on the World Soul, and not 90% dominance. So with Iridikron dead and the Titans restored, we could then willingly remove the core-chamber and a fully healed Azeroth World Soul should manifest as the Mother of all the world souls, the Prime World Soul, the World Soul of Wisdom, aka Sophia or Sophic. She could be the Last Titan to join the Pantheon, even if she had been the Mother of all of them before a pantheon was organized. Thus simultaneously being the First and Last Titan.