Arator says:I expected the maw to be… alien, unknowable. But these structures are… Sylvanas Windrunner says:Familiar? I agree. I have seen past the veil of true death, Arator. There is more to the Shadowlands than it seems.
Sylvanas Windrunner Says:You have noticed, have you not? The Maw. The Shadowlands. All of it. The question that has plagued me since the Jailer’s demise. I know the truths of death better than most. This? It is too convenient. Too ordered.
With just these two exchanges in the .7 patch, they have begun laying down a soft retcon on the Shadowlands, likely leaning into the Progenitors in fact being Titans given how unnaturally ordered Death is under the sway of the great machine that grinds up souls as fuel. This place is not the true afterlife, likely. the entire elaborate system is like a net that catches souls from going somewhere else.
What do you guys think will be the angle they take with this? It feels like a setup either for TLT, or a True Shadowlands beyond the Machine expansion where metzen tries to salvage the afterlife.
Chronicles 4 already retcon’d that Zereth Mortis was made by the Eternals rather than the First Ones, and they just slapped all the First Ones tech in that zone
They’re probably going to do “Titans bad, they ordered the Shadowlands Long Ago, among other cosmic metaphysics crimes”
This lets them resolve one of the worst aspects of the Shadowlands—They could make it so that souls that ‘die’ in the shadowlands are actually just slipping past the grip of the Machine of Death to wherever it is souls actually are meant to go.
Well, that’s a given. Considering they were going to have to demonize the titans eventually in order for The Last Titan to even remotely have a plot point and bringing back Iridikron so he can put whatever his plan is into action
Shadowlands was so awful it would genuinely be better if they just ignore it and move on rather than try to make it “work”. I’d rather never hear the name again than any attempts to retcon it, because if they try to retcon it then that means I have to think about it again.
Souls go to the Veil. The Kyrian remove them from the Veil and dump them into the Shadowlands as per the orders of the Titans when they shoved the Eternal Ones into Titanforged Constructs.
Why did the Titans make Maldraxxus, Revendreth, Bastion and Ardenweald? Why does the Cosmic Void have an interest in the Maw that the Titans designed to be inescapable?
Xal’atath mocked Ve’nari for thinking she knows what the Void fears so clearly she isn’t attacking the Maw out of fear but simply to devour that which Ve’nari thinks it fears!
If Xal’atath gets the Dark Heart to the bottom of the Maw and feeds what’s there into the Dark Heart her plans enter the next phase: getting L’ura to invade the Sunwell!
Maw Magic resembles the Sha by the way… The Burdens the Kyrian remove also use that same Whitish-Black Magic.
So is Zereth Tumult just a fancy word for Mardum then?..
As for the First Ones: Zovaal’s exact words on them are:
The Jailer says: Your grandest design… to claim the final prize.
The Jailer says: The secret that the First Ones sought to hide.
The Jailer says: Yes. Your finest mourneblade…
The Jailer says: …and a crown fit for the king of the damned.
The Jailer says: The vessels… of Domination.
Domination was invented by the Primus to capture and claim Zovaal whose existence as the Arbiter he and the Eternal Ones tried to bury.
The Eternal Ones are the First Ones!
Yes the Titans probably usurped even their own creators for the sake of Order! The Titans are declared God-like yet not Gods themselves! If they were beings as powerful as the Eternal Ones of Order and usurped them then them being declared God-like yet not Gods themselves is understandable!
Good. There being an uber pantheon of super gods who created every other pantheon of gods was very very lame anyways. As was the concept of each cosmic realm essentially being a different flavor of the same thing.
Zerith Ordus? Really? It was always clear that the Titans were the Pantheon of the Great Dark or “physical reality.” They are literally born from eggs forged in the fires of their universe’s creation.
But Afrasiabi and others tried to go ,“Nah actually there’s totally an arcane realm that they somehow came from first… totally”
Absolute trash, I’m glad to see that era of lore die even if it’s done in a messy manner. Good riddance. The decent parts of Shadowlands can stay. I don’t mind the Dreadlords originally being shadowland’s creatures or Frostmourne/Helm coming from there originally.
Though, if we’re retconning the first ones into the titans or a local phenomena lets throw Zovaal tricking Sargeras into the trash too while we’re at it. Please and thank you, Metzen.
The big implication of this that I don’t see anyone discussing is the fact that Death isn’t the only cosmic force that’s weirdly “Order oriented.”
It’s always been strange how the Light on paper is supposed to be the raw power of creation, yet seems so bent towards ordering the cosmos in a similar manner to the Titans. I wonder if the implication of the Shadowlands being a Titan construction hijacking the natural order of death says anything about the nature of the Light and it’s more zealous servants.
I kinda predicted that the Shadowlands was some kind of massive “Soul Engine” that captured the souls of mortals to cycle the Anima out of them… if that makes sense?
Like whoever built it (Titans I guess) use it to capture souls rather than let them go to their true resting place in order to get Anima, which they might use to power the rest of the cosmic framework they’ve built.
Hell, Sargeras could have just have had enough of the horror of all of this and rebelled against the titans due to that, and then the titans wrote the Void lord bit to cover up why he really rebelled.
You can’t save it. You can only make it worse.
The attempt inevitably involves you explaining cosmological “afterlife” mechanics again.
So you don’t remove the dirt, you rub it in.
The best thing would be to just retcon it directly - like Me’dan - or never mention it again.
I get the feeling Blizz kind of does regret doing this though. Maybe I’m reading too much into it, but the few times we’ve seen dreadlords since SL, it’s been demon/Fel related. One was the main villain of that recent warlock quest when they opened the class up to everyone, you can summon a dreadlord in Legion Remix by going down the Fel path, and I believe affliction warlocks are also getting a dreadlord ability in Midnight as well. These are all small examples obviously, but it does seem like Blizz prefers using them with demons.
We know Lothraxion is showing up in Midnight, so I guess it depends on how he’s used there. I know he’s a dungeon boss, but the description makes it sound more like he’s a victim of the Lightblindness that is affecting other light users and not some secret dreadlord plot.
Dreadlords have been demons for twenty irl years and millenia in WoW. Just because they seem capable of shedding fel corruption and returning to the shadowlands doesn’t mean that potentially millions of them don’t remain in the Nether aligned with Chaos.
It also doesn’t change the fact that they’ll probably remain associated most strongly with the Legion in the mind of the playerbase.
I’m sure we’ll continue semi-regularly seeing Demonic Nathrezim but will eventually see the Death aligned ones again whenever Denathrius shows back up.
I am curious about Lothraxion though, the question on if he was a spy has come up since Shadowlands. I guess they’re going with him not being a spy and genuinely being a lightbound Nathrezim.
Ngl - I’m just gonna wait and see where this all goes. There’s already a good amount of evidence in Shadowlands that the realm is an artificial afterlife that was built onto something that already existed.
Even the landmass we quest on in the Maw just consists of land that was pulled into the realm from the In-Between by Zovaal’s chains from Torghast.
That said, still not entirely convinced the reveal will be “Oops, All Titans”, given that the first time we saw the teleporter to Oribos, they called specific attention to how it didn’t appear to be of Titan origin. Not to mention the mention of Zereth Ordus in DF. I’d sooner expect the reveal that it was done, at least in part, by some kind of “First One of Order” or something.
Much as I’d love for my DK to have a moment where she can sneer at the Fallen Prince eye-to-eye… Nah. His soul was burned out as fuel and nothing remained of him but a blue fart. It sucks, its a terrible send-off to a character as important to the game’s lore and history as Arthas, but its what he got.
Having said that,
IF they do that and come up with the actual for real this time trust me bro send-off for him and we get a better closure for the character in a way that is actually satisfying, I’ll gracefully concede a ‘well played, blizzard’ and move on. But I’ll remain a doubter until I see it happen.
Oooo this looks like an interesting twist! Must resist to not spoil myself to much!
I already decided not to play the Alfa… but man it’s becoming more and more difficult not too! Can’t wait to play through it!
I also wonder if maybe Arthas wisp puff moment or even the forgotten Ner’zhul will be retcon enough to maybe at least see what is their connection to the Void Story… never understood the story refresh of Arthas storytelling with Cho… as it didn’t had any extra bits after it was told, like the other ones to connect to the current plot. (IMO)
However, where is Kael’thas!?
Don’t do this to me Blizz!
I waited and suffered through TBC… when I had my first rage quit as a kid over this story character I was a fan of in WC3… and didn’t look back until literally Legion were I got hook again on the story, suffered through BfA and then finally got a glimpse of hope in SL with his “redemption!”
I know this is mostly a Windrunner family show with a complement of Thalassian Elves on the side… but please give Kael’thas the change to at least help save Silvermoon in its dire moment of need! Give him this closure at the very least, I know Lor’themar and Rommath sourly need it as close friends of his IMO.
If your going to serve a nostalgia expansion give me the whole thing! PLeeeaaaaseee~~!
We had one, its called the end of the Shadowmorne questline but Blizzard decided to exhume Arthas’ corpse for cheap points. Now I say they should bury him properly.
I’m personally hoping that “death” for Souls in the Shadowlands isn’t really their destruction — but merely a transition that puts them into dormancy.
As I’ve said in other threads: IMMORTAL SOULS
It’d be cool to reveal that souls are in fact, despite previous belief, are actually immortal and indestructable → Their “Destruction” merely makes them simply reduced to fine soulsparks amongst the stygia of their collapsed form … and that with enough energy, they can be restored.
This would give additional storylines to why the powers of death may want more power — To restore lost souls over the ages in their realm, of numbers beyond our wildest imaginations
You could potentially even build up ‘The Primus’ towards being a villain, attempting to seize this kind of power for such ambitions later on …
You could also reason that particular souls that are heavily bestowed upon by other powers, or dedicated to them can go to those respective realms — and that various powers that have invaded the Shadowlands before in the past, sought to “reclaim” souls that they believe were unjustly stolen from them.
Grand Conspiracies
Perhaps later reveal a conspiracy kept hidden from us, by the Eternals of the Shadowlands:
That they knew this fate of souls who “perish” in their realms, yet without both the soulspark and tremendously vast amounts of power, can do very little about it.
And that the Eternals form treaties of their own – with outside forces & powers from those of the Shadowlands, to allow them the peace of mind towards their former followers, to grant them the refuge of souls they attained and to ultimately keep what peace they can between their realms …
You could use this lore as to partially why the void invaded Bastion — and why the light invaded Revendreth and build many, many more between other realms too.
Repairing & restoring the unfathomable damage that Shadowlands had done to the overall lore & world-building of the Warcraft universe.
IMMORTAL SOULS 