While working on a cosmology mapping project something which I noticed something that seems like a conflict within the lore, or more specifically the new lore and old lore.
So according to the New Lore each cosmic force has its own plane, which differs from how they were presented before as mostly simply cosmic forces acting on reality, except for the Emerald Dream, the Shadowlands, and the Void (by proxy the Light also).
Within the original framework the Titans being born of World Souls in the Great Dark and largely ignorant of the larger scope of things beyond the Great Dark was sensible. It was OK that they just roamed around and brought order to the cosmos.
When Shadowlands came and they were turned into the Pantheon of Order it put a spanner into the works. By all logic they should of been in the plane of order, but they aren’t. Even the Seat of the Pantheon itself seems to be in the Material Plane, unless you want to make the Plane of order some sort of D&D-ish astral plane of logic? (which would be a cool parallel to the Twisting Nether, but I digress). On top of that the Titans are depicted as far younger than the Eternal Ones, even though the cosmic force of Order is at least as old as Death.
This leaves three possibilities:
The Plane of Order has been without leadership and stuck on autopilot for aeons.
The Material Plane IS the plane of Order.
The Titans are not the actual intentional Pantheon of Order, the Real one has been quietly doing its own thing.
All of these has issues, certainly. I am curious about the take of others on the issue. I for sure can see a possible story of them as part of the greater Order pantheon in exile… Though I think a more cleaver answer would be to say the Titans are the greatly diminished reincarnations of the long dead First Ones, and there is a created pantheon of Order also. That, of course, means it is wrong.
My current headcanon in order to retain sanity and a modicum of affection with the franchise is the following:
Light + Void via Destructive Interference = Twisting Nether (Fel) (this is from Chronicles)
Light + Void via Constructive Interference = Great Dark Beyond
So the “Plane of Order” and “Plane of Chaos” are actually “Reality”, so to speak.
So the Pantheons of Order and Chaos are born of World Souls.
So Sargeras thus “became” one of the Pantheon of Chaos, and possibly maybe a member of the Pantheon of Chaos (which we otherwise haven’t met) could “become” one of the Pantheon of Order.
Order exists to uplift Life, but inherently suppress Death (given Titan Constructs don’t die naturally), while Chaos exists to uplift Death (by killing) but inherently go against Life (since Demons autoregenerate in the Nether).
Void “corrects” Order’s immortality by turning Titan Constructs into Living Beings, thus sustaining Death.
Light “corrects” Chaos’s infinite nature by turning Mortals into Lightforged immortals.
I’m kinda confused by the OP. I’m not sure what you mean by material plane, but I think it’s the plane of Order if I understand correctly. I don’t see any conflicting info the new lore gives in regards to the Titans. The Titans hatch from planets instead of being created born from the start like the Eternal Ones, which I assume is due to how Life and Death works through Order. Since Life is opposite of Death, there’s no reason for beings of Death to be born.
Ah, my D&D was showing there. In WoW parlance it be the Great Dark Beyond, or “Reality” on the chronicles map.
There has been an indication that there is a plane for every cosmic force, The Shadowlands, for Death, the Void, the Light, the “Gardens of Life”,… and something for Order that is where Titans “come from”. Which makes my head hurt a little.
I’ve always been under the assumption that the universe we’ve always played through has been the Plane of Order. All the planets are part of the Plane of Order besides those that are in the Twisting Nether.
Okay, I think I understand now. In that case, the Great Dark Beyond is the Plane of Order.
I hope so. Though there is still the thorny issue of where Titans go when they die, as Danuser did confirm them as planar beings. That would mean they have a plane of origin they return to upon death as we know they are not mortals that go to the Shadowlands.
Personally, assuming our reasonable assumption is right, I’m hoping that there’s a Titan City on one end of the cosmos, the starting point of the Great Dark Beyond, and a Demon City on the other end, the starting point of the Twisting Nether.
Do we? If there’s a source for it I’d like to see it since I haven’t heard about that. I assume they go to the Shadowlands when they die because everyone else that’s part of the Plane of Order goes there.
This all goes back to WoW’s writing team trying to switch from a strict canon everyone-is-on-the-same-page style of lore that Warcraft has always had under Chris Metzen basically until Shadowlands, where the Warcraft 3 manual was word-of-god stuff vs. the current team trying out an “unreliable narrator” style of cosmos building which means all of our assumptions vis a vis the Titans are thrown out the window, or only have as much meaning as the Titans themselves inject into it. Are the Titans lying? Are they unaware of their own nature? Etc. Etc.
It’s just a new style of storytelling.
I do think the abrupt change from one style to the other has caused a lot of unnecessary confusion. They should have more lore Q&As. Or maybe spend more time answering lore questions on twitter. I don’t know why Necromancy was important enough to warrant a dev response on Twitter and not…you know questions about the nature of reality in the Warcraft IP.
I don’t think lore Q&As would help much. Danuser usually doesn’t give direct answers and causes confusion when he answers questions. Would probably cause more frustration than anything.
I’ve noticed that quirk about everyone on the creative development side of things. Remember when they apologized about how terrible BfA’s storytelling was and promised to do better and then Shadowlands was a worse dumpster fire?
I like Sylvanas. I like the character. I like the voice actor. I want Sylvanas to be in the narrative for many years to come.
I hate the direction the storytelling/narrative team went with the character. I hate how much they had to retcon her storyline to make their current…story?..fit. I hate…hate hate hate…I hate that they used her the way they did with Teldrassil.
I do not believe the current team at Blizzard in charge of the WoW story is capable of holding the torch moving forward. The dialogue between the characters in the raid is atrocious, kindergarten writing. The way they have handled the Jailer so far has been boring, saturday morning cartoon evil dude trash. Trash. It’s trash.
I’m not opposed to unreliable narrative as a format, but the current C-Dev team is not capable of making it happen. They aren’t. I’m happy my favorite character is not being killed off in a brutal and humiliating way. But I’m angry at how they are approaching the cosmology of Warcraft and the Eschatology of Warcraft.
Q&As aren’t interrogations after all. Interrogations might force someone to answer questions thus pushing them to make a cohesive story but Q&As are another story.
Of course Interviewers would benefit from treating Lore interviews like interrogations by asking very specific questions in a manner as if the person is trying to dig up secrets that would normally be hidden.
As for making actual attempts to interrogate the Lore Dev: You are not the Absolute Dictator of the Country(as far as we know) so you have no way of interrogating the Lore Devs and if you were and attempted such Blizzard might just drop the guy since he is clearly compromised.
Unreliable narrator is a fine technique to use, but it requires a decently static degree of world building as a backdrop to utilize properly. Otherwise? You are just changing your mind all the time and avoiding calling it a retcon.
I think your entire argument is sort of coming from one false statement: the Emerald Dream is not the plane of Life. By assuming that it is the plane of Life, Order then feels like the odd one out, as it is the only force where a plane has not been explicitly stated to exist.
But, the plane of life has not been explicitly stated to exist—and neither has the Light or Void one, either, although we know they exist. So Arcane isn’t actually an odd one out, and we can safely assume an Arcane plane exists. The plane of Life has been hinted at being called The Garden of Life by some anecdotal text, and the Emerald Dream is almost assuredly going to be retconned into being a sub-zone of the Garden.
Should be noted here that the Shadowlands are apparently not the same as the Plane of Death. The Shadowlands are tied with material reality and make up the core of overlapping forces the Brokers call The Great Cycle.
So while the Eternals are a pantheon of Death, they don’t exist on the plane of Death Andy more than the Titans exist on the plane of Order.
As such it would seem that each plane has a Pantheon tht represents it somewhere in the Great Cycle - which would imply that the Pantheons are just the most direct means by which the six primal forces interact with both physical and spiritual reality.
Who, if anyone, actually runs the primal planes is still an open question. This also makes me wonder if the Void Lords are just another Pantheon.
