Hey there, Sint again. You’ll never get rid of me.
So… Shadowlands, huh. I know a lot of people liked it. I know a lot of people disliked it. I strongly fall in the range of “dislike”. Now, I preface this because I am going to retcon a LOT of Shadowlands. I’m even going so far as to retcon the buildup for it, rewriting that portion of the story to fit a new narrative.
I want to put this forward because I want to ensure that I am not claiming to do better than Blizzard. I am not claiming this is a superior version. I am just claiming that, if I were to write a cinematic conclusion to the arc that began with Warcraft 3, I would do it this way.
With that preliminary text out of the way, I will begin by posting the long but VERY important setup to the FIRST PART of this 1-2 punch. If you have any comments, questions, or concerns, please do respond! I love talking about these very random brainworms.
Sylvanas, the Lich King, a Knife, and How the Titans Are to Blame
The Rise and Fall of Warchief Sylvanas Windrunner
Before we get into the meat of the expansion itself, it’s first important to explain some very necessary setup.
Sylvanas Windrunner. She’s a… troubling character. I don’t necessarily seek to undo her actions or to redeem her, but I do wish to serve her something a little more deserving. So, let’s start with Legion.
Sylvanas is the last person you’d want in this job. She’s been growing increasingly more and more unstable since the death of Arthas (for very understandable reasons),and should never be entrusted the position as the leader of the Horde’s armies - but then Vol’jin makes the unilateral choice to appoint her as Warchief. Cast into leading the Horde through the Legion’s invasion, Sylvanas is quite frankly panicking.
Sylvanas had grown to somewhat respect Vol’jin, as while she viewed him as being a bit too soft-hearted as a leader, he kept their people safe in a period where it would have been particularly easy for the Horde to utterly collapse. Whilst Garrosh had very little good will within the Horde’s actual leadership, leadership isn’t the only thing that matters. Vol’jin navigated this issue, this division between the people and the Horde’s leadership, with a fair bit of grace. The Horde’s actual salvation wasn’t the reason she cared so much, rather, it was the fact Vol’jin prevented the Horde from re-provoking an already aggrieved Alliance. Should the Alliance be angered, she was certain their first destination would be Lordaeron.
So given that the Horde’s army had been crushed and Vol’jin was now dead, Sylvanas had the painful and extremely difficult task to not only defeat the Burning Legion - which is currently the single strongest force on Azeroth - but to also keep the Horde together, and to keep the Alliance from making good on Varian’s promise.
Sylvanas agreed to let many members of the Horde shirk their allegiances to the Horde for the sake of Azeroth. She put her trust into much of the Horde’s leadership, believing that it would not behoove them to act in lockstep during a time of such severe crisis, as she herself bounced between Orgrimmar and the Undercity to organize the armies of the Horde. All the while, she took the Forsaken Fleet to Stormheim after Dalaran’s relocation above the Broken Isles, as she’d learned a fair bit from the Kirin Tor (given her status as one of the most important enemies of the Burning Legion). Hearing about more Val’kyr gave Sylvanas hope that she could sustain the Forsaken, and by sustaining the Forsaken, she could more safely wage a prolonged war against the Forsaken.
It’s in this effort that Helya first makes contact with the Banshee Queen. Helya wants Odyn dead, and she knows about Sylvanas already due to Sylvanas’s alliance with the Val’kyr of the Scourge. Helya wants to weaken Odyn and so she offers Sylvanas the ability to not only bind Val’kyr, but to bind the most powerful of the Val’kyr in Eyir, all so that Odyn’s defenses would be greatly diminished.
Sylvanas leaps at the opportunity, but then Greymane’s gambit plays out. This is a major blow to Sylvanas for a lot of reasons. Not only has the shadow of her and Hellscream’s war in the north come back to destroy her, but that shadow had also destroyed the future of the Forsaken. Sylvanas retreats. She almost goes to war with the Alliance then and there. But she maintains that the Legion’s defeat is far more important, and given that Anduin had yet to come into his role, she believed that there was a chance for Anduin to reign in the Alliance.
Still, the paranoia remained. After the Legion nearly got the Alliance to wage war against the Horde, Sylvanas couldn’t keep it out of her mind.
Anduin wasn’t keeping the Alliance in check. Proudmoore was nowhere to be seen. Greymane was allowed to attack her unprovoked, and he damn nearly killed her. The compromised SI:7 nearly got the factions to war during the darkest hour of Azerothian history.
Sylvanas is already struggling. Her grasp on life is largely in shambles, as she had died multiple times at this point, feeling the dividing line between life and death blending together. While she’d genuinely done all she could for her people, her people were reviled, and the anti-Forsaken sentiment had only grown over time. Her actions to secure Lordaeron were an attempt to bolster their image following the Wrathgate, thinking that aligning herself with the warlike tendencies of the new Warchief would earn her a lot of good will - yet it backfired.
Now much of the Horde viewed her and her people as warmongering monsters.
She needed them to see how tenuous the Forsaken’s position in this world was. So by the Legion’s defeat, Sylvanas began to seed anti-Alliance sentiment. She didn’t want war, not yet.
She simply wanted the Alliance to have a weaker position against the Horde, and especially against the Forsaken. She also wanted to safeguard the Forsaken from the Horde itself. So when Azerite appears, the panic goes into full overdrive. The Alliance, with Azerite, could blaze a warpath across the Eastern Kingdoms in days. Quick enough to bulldoze through any defenses she could muster, and that would be it.
So she… slipped. She let Gallywix be the little monster he is. She got rid of the Desolate Council and Calia Menethil to safeguard her role. She began to resent Vol’jin and the Horde as a whole.
Then, right as it seemed a new Cold War would begin between the Alliance and Horde, Sylvanas was approached by someone. Here’s a big retcon.
A woman named Inanis tells Sylvanas that her war is going to fail, full stop. She’ll be able to harm the Alliance deeply, but by attacking them, she’s going to unify the Alliance and the Horde against her. While her brutal tactics will save her time, and while new allies and her new war will briefly stall her enemies, it’ll come down to her death and defeat. Tyrande Whisperwind would take her head.
Sylvanas doesn’t trust Inanis completely, but she does comprehend the truth in her words. Garrosh also suffered this fate. He won a few battles against the Alliance, but the Horde collapsed in on itself, and the Alliance eventually brought justice upon Hellscream’s armies - bolstered somewhat by Horde rebels.
So Sylvanas continues talking with Inanis. Inanis gradually lets more and more of her identity free, until Sylvanas is able to recognize Inanis is somewhat undead. She appears to be a High Elf, but her aura is wrong. This woman is dead.
Sylvanas continues down her path and does all of the things she does in BfA. None of it is in the name of a higher cause, she’s just genuinely losing her mind, and has the worst people pushing her forward. It comes to a head when Inanis’s vision comes to fruition, as the armies of both the Alliance and Horde hit her doorstep.
Death Is Broken
Inanis is not the person who visits Sylvanas this time. Instead, it is Xal’atath. Inanis is simply a corpse that she inhabits, this entire time being a grand ploy by Xal’atath for some greater scheme. The Harbinger of the Void tells the Banshee Queen simply that today is the end of her life… unless she does Xal’atath a HUGE favor. Then Xal’atath will save Sylvanas.
Sylvanas agrees to whatever it is, as she’s out of options and isn’t sure that the Forsaken will survive the day. Out of genuine, yet clearly misguided and misplaced, love for her people - Sylvanas makes her deal.
And she escapes with her life.
Xal’atath is the Fifth Old God, and she is finishing the narrative journey that began with Sargeras’s fall to evil. Plainly, the Void is coming. The Void wants nothing more than to spread chaos and disorder to bolster its power and to weaken Azeroth’s wards. Should the World Soul become defenseless in this time, then their corruption will finally take root. Should that fail? They have other means to invade reality.
Xal’atath manipulates Sylvanas because Windrunner is in a very, very vulnerable position. Her family rejected her. The Horde rejected her. Despite all of her rage, all of her effort… it all furthered the hatred towards her. To the point she saw herself as no better than the man who set her down this dark path, so many years ago.
Xal’atath finds Sylvanas days later where she expects her to be. Windrunner Spire. Some of her loyalists have come, Nathanos included. And they greet Inanis as one of their own, not knowing Xal’atath’s true nature. Only Sylvanas knows, and so Inanis asks Sylvanas to speak with her alone.
It’s here that Xal’atath explains to Sylvanas that she’s been wronged.
The Herald illuminates a few things. When the Titans came to Azeroth eons ago, they brought order to it. While most people see the ordering of Azeroth as a broadly beneficial thing (even Xal’atath admits that the Titans had helped more than they had hindered, viewing the Black Empire as a mistake), Xal’atath points out (somewhat correctly) that the Titans hadn’t simply just ‘ordered’ Azeroth. All life on Azeroth would sincerely not exist without the Titans, but they didn’t just let life exist.
Xal’atath explains thusly that Azeroth’s cycle of life and death is heavily modified. In the rest of the universe, souls just kind of exist. She points out to Sylvanas that the Scourge had never been made before, not in the thousands of years of the Legion’s existence, because the Scourge wasn’t possible on any other world. Necromancy is usually considered a joke.
These strangely extended lives, the undead, the immortals - this just doesn’t happen elsewhere. Why? The Emerald Dream and the Shadowlands, and the Veil between them.
Sylvanas knows about these things, albeit at a somewhat limited capacity. Xal’atath then explains that, beyond the Primal Light and Primal Void, no one magical power owns its own ‘realm’. Afterlives aren’t these hard constructs, rather being formed by the cultures and the peoples that go into them - their latent magic giving form to their beliefs.
The Dream and the Shadowlands, on the other hand, are firmly constructed. A machine of Life and a machine of Death.
She doesn’t quite know how the Titans managed it, but they created a system (via the artificial Veil) to strictly give rigid form to mortal afterlives and to cycle souls in a way that’d benefit the growth of the World Soul - as well as to defend it from harm.
In a way, Azerothian souls were a supplement to elemental spirit.
In a way, Azerothians are fuel for Azeroth.
The undead then carry the taint of the Twisting Nether and the Void because they are a result of the machine… glitching out. Necromancy only works because the Veil pulls upon all of the souls of Azeroth’s people, allowing dark magic to then step between the pull of the Afterlife and the Veil, keeping a soul stuck on Azeroth.
The Burning Legion took advantage of this during the Third Invasion. The Nathrezim were able to penetrate the Shadowlands and use the ordered magic of Death to create powerful tools to bind the dead to an overriding will, their twisted magic and the very twisted machine of Death being used to manipulate the system. Undeath is unnatural. There’s a reason so many things hate the undead by nature. Fel hates it. Void hates it. Light hates it. Even Death itself. Because if things were right, it simply wouldn’t exist.
Hearing that sends Sylvanas over the edge. She can’t dispute what Xal’atath said, and she’s at the point of morbid curiosity and extreme paranoia that tells her to hear out the Herald of the Void. So, she finally asks. What exactly has she agreed to do for Xal’atath? That gets Xal’atath to smile. All in due time. But, instead of leaving Sylvanas to keep running from the Alliance and Horde, she shows Sylvanas to a set of tunnels beneath Tirisfal. Dug out by the Tyr’s Guard in ancient times to defend Tyr’s Tomb from the subterranean Old Gods, they’re completely devoid of anything but undead and aqir these days. Sylvanas will be able to hide down there.
Vacating the Frozen Throne
Xal’atath leaves through a Void Gate. Next stop: Northrend. The Lich King has an idea that Xal’atath is coming and prepares for her, and so when she arrives, the Lich King has had a room in Icecrown prepared for her. Since he is still on the Frozen Throne, he speaks to her through a proxy, using the corpse of Orbaz Bloodbane to speak to Inanis.
He makes note of how interesting it is that two very powerful beings choose to speak to one another in these mortal shells. The Lich King asks her plainly why she has come so far to visit a simple jailer, especially a jailer she knows she cannot sway to her cause - the cause of inviting the Void to Azeroth.
She laughs him off, though not rudely. She seems bemused by the Lich King’s words. She asks if he knows what lies beyond the Veil, and he responds that it doesn’t matter. He again asks her why she’s here.
She doesn’t answer him. She simply asks him if he knows why the Nathrezim chose to use Saronite as the basis for the Helm of Domination.
When she leaves, it becomes apparent what she meant. When he looks across Northrend, he notices the Scourge moving. The taint of the Void on their souls… it had been there from the very beginning. The Void was the key to trapping the souls of the dead. Death magic drew them out, the Void bound them.
And now the Void, which Arthas had built Icecrown’s defenses from, what he’d armed his armies with… and the armor that Bolvar now wore was constructed with, had been claimed. The Lich King begins his process to exit the Frozen Throne.
Sylvanas watches the undead begin their rampage as the Scourge has been let loose. Xal’atath reappears and asks her to make good on her promise, and tells Sylvanas that if she is able to collect the fragments of Frostmourne, she will be able to tear a gate straight through the Veil to enter the Shadowlands. The Scourge is a distraction. Sylvanas will be able to undo the curse of Undeath. She will be able to free this world.
This world… is a prison!
Part 1 Conclusions
Xal’atath is a master manipulator, telling half-truths that few can dispute to serve forward vital lies for her grand plan. Being lost to the High Priest and the Conclave after purging the Sword of Sargeras, she was able to entrap the already weakened mind of Inanis, a member of the Kirin Tor turned to madness via her occult studies. She chooses Sylvanas as her vessel for Sylvanas is kind of a perfect target. Consider the following.
The Warchief position’s continuation after Garrosh is already kind of insane. The fact nobody recognized the dangers of the position is a huge issue and is, in my view, an acknowledgement that Garrosh and Sylvanas are a perfect mirror for each other (until they aren’t). Garrosh says he loves the Horde, he says he loves the orcs. He really just likes killing people because he’s a petulant dictator. Sylvanas says she loves the Forsaken. She really means that. She will do anything for them. Garrosh never had a place for love in his life, as his adoration of his father only came about after decades of shame, his view of Grommash is extremely twisted. Sylvanas has a huge hole in her life thanks to love, as she thinks her sisters have abandoned her, and that she can never truly love again. But then, why does she care for the Forsaken the way she does? She loves, she just hurts… and she hurts a lot.
Garrosh has no sympathetic core. He also has a really weak core. He’s a weak person, deep down. Sylvanas is all sympathy. She’s got an incredibly strong core. It took unfathomable strength for her to hold it together as long as she did.
So when Garrosh “fell”, it was expected. Everyone was ready for him to turn. With Sylvanas? It was expected of her, because everyone assumed she was going to be evil from the get-go. Not that they were wholly wrong, her tactics in preserving her people’s power and waging war against her enemies were often outright vile, but it didn’t come from a place of utter hatred. Where Garrosh was destined to fall, Sylvanas was forced to fall. There is no world where she’d feel safe enough, loved enough, accepted enough to not go down this path.
Xal’atath, as she is a Void being, can see where all of Sylvanas’s paths lead. And she knows that if she pushes Sylvanas the right way, gives Sylvanas the things that she’ll need in her most dire hour, she knows that Sylvanas can be manipulated to her ends.
The Horde just happens to be a perfect vehicle for it. Long-standing hatreds are just a piece of the puzzle, as Xal’atath targets something more frightening than surface-level hate. She targets the Horde’s insecurity. Just as Sylvanas is paranoid about ever even being accepted by the world, Horde and Alliance, neutral or not - the Horde is paranoid about its own standing. Many of the orcs just recently threatened to crush the other members of the Horde under their heel. Gallywix supported Sylvanas and few goblins spoke out against him. Many of the other leaders were too indecisive, too slow to act. They enabled the genocide at Teldrassil, and each of them knew it.
If they had done this simply against the Kaldorei, they might’ve not feared so greatly. While Night Warrior Tyrande Whisperwind and Archdruid Malfurion Stormrage are worth armies by themselves, the Horde has many armies. But the whole of the Alliance? Whilst Anduin promises peace - it’s not hard to see how easy it would be to, following the tense armistice, aggrieve the Alliance into beginning a Fifth and final War.
Broken people. Broken trust, broken peace. And in the shadows, age long conspirators finally bringing about their endgames.
Xal’atath is not the main villain of this story.
She also lied, somewhat, about the Machine of Life and Death. You’ll discover how later.
Next Part: The Scourge Unleashed