The Scourge, The Plaguelands, and Maldraxxus [A lore question]

I’m thinking of getting into the books because there’s a lot of things that don’t really add up to me. For example:

The Western & Eastern Plaguelands. Covered in the Plague, presumably from the House of Plagues. But the Jailers main actor, iirc, in Maldraxxus was Kel’Thuzad who, at the time of WC3 was a human transitioning to a Lich (the timeline is fuzzy).

So who would have given the plague to the jailer’s forces? Or did the Dreadlords acquire it? And how did the plague - which in the Shadowlands just kills people - raise the dead or convert the living into Zombies? At what point did either Necromancy or Domination magic come into the Plague?

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The House of Plagues has more than one plague, and presumably they aren’t the same as the one in Azeroth. The Undead plague was originally created by Ner’zhul as the Lich King. Now, we just know where the Helm and Frostmourne came from.

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Ner’zhul made the plague while trapped in the helm?

Yes, Kil’jaeden ordered him to do it.

So an agent of the Burning Legion, gave orders to a pawn of the Jailer, and somehow came up with a plague from one realm of the Shadowlands in which the Jailer had no servent - and Kel’Thuzad wasn’t involved at all?

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It’s implied that the Dreadlords tricked Sargeras into starting his crusade. And yes, Kel’thuzad didn’t join the Jailer’s side until Ner’zhul was already the Lich King and created the Plague.

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Ok, well I don’t need to keep bothering you, but that still doesn’t add up. The scourge was meant to combat the Legion, no?

The Scourge was used as a tool for the Legion to conquer Azeroth, while both the Lich King and the Burning Legion itself were also being used as pawns of the Jailer. It’s confusing…

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They did SO much, “… but WAIT, there’s more…” weird retconning/surprise!!1111!! bs, in connecting Shadowlands with Azeroth it is unreal.

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It weirdly seems like Death wasn’t on the Cosmology Chart until we needed to expand the Death Knight Lore, and we decided we didn’t want them to be Fel-based.

If we didn’t have the DK class, we might not have needed the retcon.

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Actually, Blizzard did say that the Void is what created undead. They said that an undead’s soul was imperfectly attached to thier body using the Void. That might not be canon anymore. Actually, I think it was called shadow magic back then.

Although, since the First Ones created all six of the cosmic forces, that may be enough for a connection Void and Death.

Stratholme, where jailer aligned denathrius dreadlords face off against jailer aligned kelthuzad.

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It used to be much more coherent. The Legion was using Ner’zhul and the scourge to wipe out life on Azeroth.

Ner’zhul betrayed the Legion and they recruited Illidan to kill him. Easy peesy.

Then the rewrites came and ruined all the things.

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Shadow magic used to be a catch-all term for any kind of dark-associated magic, before they wrote Chronicles and established the six forces. Presumably when they said “shadow” back then in that case they meant death magic.

None of the things you just said were rewritten.

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There’s some STV quest giver the references the Twisting Nether as the afterlife, but I just assumed there was one massive volta for lore. I just assumed there were answers.

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There’s room for an unreliable narrator there, too. Some random dude in the jungle might not have all the information on how the cosmos works.

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Yeah, people used to think everyone went tot he Twisting Nether. Even Scarlet Crusade members say things like that. Nobody knew what the afterlife looked like until this expansion.

hey man, how about that christie golden!

And I’m sure the Alliance Priests had a different story.

Well the changed Illidan’s story to make him a misunderstood hero, the helm was made to imprison ner’zhul, don’t recall the sword’s origin before it is found by Muridan and Arthas though.