Wasn’t he responsible for the drust acting the way they are? I thought that was a thing hinted at in a late Ardenweald quest, but I might be mixing them up with bogarts.
It doesn’t really matter to me. It’s just some name for a meaningless rank. Like Elune being the “true god”. But she isn’t really that impressive. It doesn’t matter to me that she is considered to be the true deity. Troll Gods are to me as much if not more real, simply because they actually interact and help their followers and have a huge impact on their everyday life.
This is the stuff that matters IMO. Not some affilation to made up recently “boss club” which will turn irrelevant soonish after.
Anyway, I already wrote what I wanted to say. I just don’t like the Idea of mixing up all shamanistic races and make them all under troll God. Let them have their own thing and let trolls keep their own afterlife.
Small plane or not, it’s their own plane still.
(And Muehzala plot doesn’t make sense still to me but it’s another subject).
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Boggarts take Drust forms but that isn’t explained.
Muehzala being The True God Of Death would’ve made sense if he were the Eternal One for some ancestor land.
I’m expecting Mueh’zala being revealed as the one who taught Gorak Tul his stuff though. Because Blizzard. Think it’s dumb.
It’s a power level of the cosmology, and puts someone we were familiar with in the Pantheon of Death.
What themes get used for the Pantheons to come tells us where blizzard is going
Taken right from the main description of what a Shaman is. First sentence,.
“Shaman are spiritual guides and practitioners, NOT OF THE DIVINE, BUT OF THE VERY ELEMENTS.”
One more time.
“NOT OF THE DIVINE”
Shaman in wow are not naturally attuned to the spirit world in terms of life and death. they are attuned to the spirit world of the Elements. It is only through the joining of Tauren and Trolls that shamanism expanded to include more spiritual aspects, but even then those aspects are not the primary focus of what a shaman does.
WoW Shamanism focuses on the elements and the elemental planes. We know that when elementals die on Azeroth, they instead go to the elemental plane…if they die there, they are truly dead.
So while maybe there could have been a zone in shadowlands dealing with what happens to elementals when they die on their home plane, I have to disagree.
Nothing about Shamanism, or playing one for 15 years, leads me to believe that they are well suited for the Shadowlands lore.
Rather, Trolls and Tauren should have had their cultural aspects that they brought to orcish shamanism expanded upon, with zones that follow their beliefs.
And yet in Shadows Rising we are told the Shaman feel what is happening in the Shadowlands, and for the past ten years Shaman have been able to access the Shadowlands in some capacity in the lore.
Moot point.
Gameplaywise yes they are elements heavy, but there is more than sufficient evidence for the Shadowlands connection, even explicitly stated in a book.
Orc Shamanism is based on Draenor’s Elements and the Spirits who congregate around Oshugun.
The Ancestors can only be joined if one perishes without disposing of oneself. I would presume disposing of oneself would get you sent to the Shadowlands due to your Soul having no attachments to the World of the Living unlike the Ancestors who have a lot of attachments.
Tauren Spirits in their heritage Questline first show up as Animals apparently according to some posters I’ve heard of. Either that is the usual Spirit Wolf Form normally used by Shaman or the Ardenweald Animal Form…
Not since WoD, where the Orcs were practicing ancestor worship before Oshugun crashed, using tattoos of runes they learned from the moon and stars to communicate with them.
That I would attribute more to them using Lakota/North American Indigenous motifs in Tauren again rather than attributing it to Ardenweald, since their turning into Tauren is tied to us connecting with the veil more (at Sun Rock Retreat, blessed by An’she).
I’m gonna have to pass on this. Shamans are more tied to the elements, which aren’t part of the Shadowlands. Their ancestor spirits part doesn’t need its own realm either, since their ancestors could easily be spread across various realms of the Shadowlands.
I’d prefer if they just made it so the elemental planes were no longer tied to Azeroth and encompassed the entire cosmos, making it a proper elemental “afterlife” like how the twisting nether is akin to the fel “afterlife”.
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Problem is every single “ancestral worship” race believes they’re all in the same place, which would have been cool to see (at least a majority of the ancestors, e.g. where Draka plans on retiring later after she is tired of Maldraxxus), and fits the narrative.
Plus thematic diversity of the Eternal Ones is lacking.
As a troll shaman, I feel like I’ve been slighted twice by the covenant system. If I can’t join Bwomsamdi’s covenant, I should at least have been able to join an ancestor themed covenant.
It’s weird to me that they created another druid zone in the death themed expansion. I don’t have the firmest grasp of WoW’s cosmology, but I thought druids were firmly in the Life domain. I thought reviving Wild Gods was what the Emerald Dream was for.
Shaman were the perfect tie-in class for this expansion, and they ignored us. Did Blizzard just forget that shamanism was about more than shooting lightning bolts and talking to elementals? I have to assume so considering how underutilized Thrall has been. I mean, this should have been obvious, and the utter lack of shaman content is actually jarring. This is the kind of crap that makes it hard to have any trust in Blizzard.
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It was, but the people at Blizzard decided they wanted a nature like zone for this expansion, so the purpose of the Emerald Dream was made redundant. The made it so the ED was instead just the return point for Wild Gods from the Ardenweald… even though Azeroth required Freya to make it? So does that mean Ardenweald came after the Titans? Or does the Shadowlands need outside help to function? Doesn’t this mean Ysera is more of a deathwing than Deathwing is? Since she controls the portal to the dead? Eh, whatever.
They didn’t forget, they just don’t care. They want to tell their version of the Shadowlands, of Warcraft. If they want a zone regrowing Wild Gods, things that are tied to the Life Realm, then that’s how it works now. If it doesn’t match what is already there, doesn’t matter, they’ll change it and make up some explanation.
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Nature does not exist from life alone.
Death is integral to the continuation of life.
Life, death, rebirth.
Shamanism, as approached by Warcraft as a class, has almost nothing to do with the dead and 90% about talking to elementals. The nearest thing to relevance is the Tauren heritage armor questline, where they actually reference ancestors as spirits of the land, not just holier-than-thou talking rocks.
Death Knights are the perfect tie-in, and they used that with the Ebon Blade and Bolvar.
Well thank goodness I wasn’t talking about Shaman the class but Shamanism the religious construction consistently portrayed within WoW as heavily involving the ancestors through complex rituals, practices, and beliefs that have a visible effect and reality on the souls in question for the races listed.
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Shamans interact with spirits and ancestors, they always have. I don’t know why tf people are balking at this.
https: // www.wowhead .com/quest=24573/honoring-the-dead
Honoring the Dead
Use the Funerary Totem on the corpses of Krulmoo, Dranh, Yonada, and Omusa in the ruins of Taurajo.
https: // wowpedia.fandom .com/wiki/Ancestral_Spirit
Ancestral Spirit
Returns the spirit to the body, restoring a dead target to life with 35% of maximum health and mana.
https: // wowpedia.fandom .com/wiki/Rune-Inscribed_Note_(quest)
“As quickly as water falls from the sky, here you are before me. I am pleased by your haste. It means you realize both the importance of our meeting and you being here. I am no leader, but I do understand the elements, and I can speak to the spirits of our people. I will teach you to do the same.”
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Horde lore gets forgotten. Face it only time spirits and Ancestry is brought up is for villain batting. Like Voljin making Sylvavans war chief.
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Then make a nature zone that reflects the death part of the cycle with rotting, decaying, or withering flora. Or, at the very least, deliver on the promise of Ardenweald being the Autumn/Winter to the Emerald Dream’s Spring/Summer. The “Winter” Queen governs a thriving forest with plants and flowers in full bloom.
Blizzard has a super narrow idea of what nature is, especially as it pertains to druids. That’s why the only biome we ever see as the “nature” or “druid” zone is overgrown deciduous forests. Druids are only ever seen to draw from the Life domain. They don’t have any ties to the Death domain. Shaman do.
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I would have called it “The Ancestral Grounds”, with the eternal one being some sort of primordial death elemental. Or maybe some sort of primal chieftain
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As the person who first suggested “shaman afterlife” have more of a tie to the elements. You have convinced me I’m wrong, I retract my critique.
So we’re just talking about a tribalistic friendly afterlife based on and fueled by reverence to ancestors? Allright, I’m still on board with the mechanics and narrative. But I’m not sure about the aesthetics.
wtb jungle subzone of ardenweald for 100,000 anima
Bastion, Revendreth, and Ardenweald all rely on European aesthetics. Bastion is Hellenic, Revendreth is Gothic + Balkan, Ardenweald is aggressively Irish + Shakespeare
Maldraxxus uses a lot of Roman themes (Colosseum, Primus title, Secutor title, Gladiators, the zone geography is a mirror of the 7 hills of Rome, etc) with some of the buildings using MENA-derivative aesthetics (due to Tomb Kings references in turn based on Egyptian and West Asian structures).
Should an “ancestral zone” exist, it should definitely use Sub-saharan African, Amerindigenous, South Asian, and East Asian aesthetics, which relate most to the Ancestral Worshipping races of the game (the Horde ones), but also choosing to include structures that include the other races (the Alliance ones)
Ergo the geographical layout of my idea and making Mueh’zala an Eternal One.
If you want to tie elements in, then yeah confirm that all the elemental planes naturally exist on each world that exists, but the Titans (as always) “Ordered” the Azerothian elemental plane to turn them into prisons, and that traditionally the elemental planes relate to both the realm of Life (via Spirit) and this Ancestral realm (via Decay). Each Ancestral subzone relies on that planet’s elements maintaining them.
Dark Shamanism (in the sense it’s decay using elements, except it’s not subjugation/enslavement) but Good.
Have Mueh’zala be the normal Eternal One, but he’s MIA, make Bwonsamdi the leader, council as I’ve outlined, with subzones as I’ve outlined.
The Draenor-ancestral places (Auchindoun, Shadowmoon Burial Ground) both would be “near” eachother, with a copy of the Draenor Throne of the Elements there for advising if needed.
The Azeroth-ancestral places also near eachother, with a copy of the World Pillar and the Earthshrine model (replacing the five portals with four “Thrones” for each element, with the exception that Atal’Dazar is more toward Mueh’zala’s/Bwonsamdi’s necropolis in the center (since they use elements less).
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