Now that the Shadowlands are a whole other dimension instead of just a grey foggy filter over Azeroth, how do ghosts work? Do spirits just exist in two places at once or something? Like Uther is simultaneously at his tomb in WPL (Legion paladin quests) and at Bastion.
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Mysterious are the ways of the force. The Uther thing will never be reconcilable, unless they state that it was just a âmemory made into a phantasmâ.
Ghosts are probably just the good old classic ~soul who has unfinished business who isnât ready to pass on into the afterlife~.
Some of these things you just have to ignore/pretend it wasnât that way.
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Eh Iâm sure blizzard could explain it as
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Spirits that escaped whatever afterlife they were in but were still tormented about whatever during life.
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Those killed who refused to pass on to the afterlife due to some connection they have with someone or something.
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Time to get the soon to be retcon/ quick lore fix hammer out?
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Uther was temporarily pulled back to Azeroth in ghostly form to make his speech, then elastically snapped back to the Shadowlands.
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A lot of ghosts seem to be hanging around due to the âunfinished businessâ thing. Particularly when it comes to being killed by necromantic or fel magic. If Iâm remembering correctly, the ghosts of Darrowshire were âreleasedâ after you beat their corrupted spirits (or something like that). So itâs possible that being killed by undead or certain magic twists your spirit in a way that it cannot pass to the Shadowlands.
This doesnât really explain Uther, though. He was killed by one of the greatest necromancers ever, so⊠?
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Iâm increasingly of the opinion that the SL factions and covenants are just fundamentally bad at their jobs. Thinking through the history of WoW, it apparently isnât all that hard to summon souls back from the dead (either as some form of ancestor worship, voodoo, or outright necromancy). The ONLY time I can think of in all of WoW in which a soul couldnât be found and summoned due to where it went was VolâJin, and thatâs them directly tying him to SL.
For some reason, Arthas never actually raised Uther. He was, however, trapped in Frostmourne, along with everyone else Arthas killed with it.
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Now Iâm wondering whatâs going to happen when we die in Shadowlands⊠maybe no more running back to corpses eh
You go to ghost afterlife.
You become a wisp.
The Shadowlands has what amounts to a waiting room or âsoul bufferâ built in as its outermost level, coterminous to the entire material plane.
Most souls only spend moments here before they naturally are drawn up into the vortex above that leads to Oribos (or the Maw, atm). The Kyrians oversee this flow of souls.
Now some souls become stuck in the waiting room, usually by some manner of curse or supernatural issue. These souls are what we know as ghosts.
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Most can can probably just handwaved them as echos, a tiny fragment of the individual that lingers among the living, usually remaining at the place where they died in a state of unrest. But then you have things like banshees that are bit harder to classify, since they are behaving very much like their fellow undead or living.
As a general thing, I think ghosts are dead souls stuck in the world for various reasons. Whether unfinished business or magic in an area.
As for Uther, I assume his visit(s) to his tomb were temporary summons at certain points. We do know he had trouble letting go.
Another option is there are rules in places in how the Shadowlands operate that prohibit the powers that be of the Shadowlands from stopping the conjuring of souls.
It seems there are complex rules which bind and dictate what all the planes are allowed to do or not do.
âŠA tangent pondering the bureaucracy that controls the Shadowlands I sort of hope all souls are given a book named âHandbook for the Recently Deceasedâ
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it is a mystery
oooooooooooo
Canât die dead, until youâre dead until you⊠die. And when you die with the dead, youâre dead already. Uh⊠and thatâs not dead until you wake up again. Then you wonât be dead anymore. Except, you are dead.
By definition ghosts are spirits who did not pass on from the material plane. Or like the Night Elves of Azuna were cursed to have their spirits bound to the mortal plane. Thatâs why so many quests involve killing or otherwise liberating their ghost forms to allow their spirits to pass on.
Fun fact: All those ghosts you helped liberate from Azsuna, or Zin Azshari? Instead of helping them you kind of damned them to eternal torment the maw. Congrats.
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I have no idea anymore either.
Sometimes itâs just not worth falling out of the hammock in the evening.
Ghosts donât work, silly. They get money from the spirit coffers.
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