Hey there. This question arised after my old thread called “Good Warlocks?”. In part of the thread it was mentioned that they can erase your existence even your afterlife by using your soul as fuel for their spells.
I used to believe the palyable Warlock, or the SW/Org Warlocks didn’t drain a whole soul, but fragments of it and said soul regenerated, but the wikia and even blizzard’s official artwork displays the opposite. Which led me to believe really “Good warlocks” would not be as they’d be negating someone’s rest by purely destroying the stored soul to cast a spell.
Do you think the soul regenerates after being used as fuel? If not, what happens with the Shadowlands? Can a Warlock negate your entrance there?
Is it possible to be a Warlock that doesn’t get into this? Or a way to, officially lorewise avoid the soul draining and being used as fuel to attack and summon demons?
Or would you just tell me to play a Fire Mage?
you could RP as a Warlock who only uses the souls of ‘evil’ people, essentially making you a good warlock 
Or, you could use the souls of demons or other irredeemably bad spirits to power your spells
I haven’t seen anything online saying that a whole soul has to be consumed and in at least one wiki article I have seen Soul Shards also referred to or defined as Soul Fragments.
Unless directly countered I would take it as Warlocks tend to use the whole soul because why would they waste the power, but a “good” warlock could put in the extra work and harvest only parts of many souls or only the whole soul of demons and the like.
Then going with the energy can only be converted but not destroyed concept the demons still reform and spent soul shards (fragments) eventually return to their original souls. Still the process of breaking a soul into shards or consuming the Fel energy of a demon might send someone down a “Voldemort path” where each heinous act committed, and shattering of the soul, drove someone to a more and more inhuman state. In that case even a good warlock would eventually become an unholy abomination unless somehow they balanced the tearing apart of others souls with repentance and compassionate acts ?
Maybe they would become almost a Jekyll and Hyde character. Always regretting when they let their Fel powers free and only doing it when they felt forced to. When the danger passes and they revert to normal they desperately look for a way to avoid the curse and make up for the harm caused all the while being watched by their darker side knowing it will be needed to be called on again but resenting the weakling in charge while it slumbers.
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In this case, you’d say the souls, after being used, return to where it was or go to the Shadowlands? In this case, it means Warlocks would not deny a person the chance to reincarnate?
My character would have a hard time if the soul shards actually denied someone the chance to the afterlife, even if it’s an enemy. However, if not, he’d not mind as he’d not be doing anything different than what other classes do, kill enemies.
One can presume, nothing really either way in-game outside of mechanics.
As far as game mechanics can be used as basis for lore speculation, this is the case. Multiple soul shard fragments and produce one “full” soul shard.
Not all of our spells use Soul Shards. Affliction DoTs, Drain Life/Drain Soul, Shadowbolt, Incinerate, etc all use Mana.
Lore wise yes there are other sources of power, e.g. Blood Stones (which are made from blood, a technique developed form an artifact found in Tirisfal which is theorized to be Old God developed), e.g. Verdant SPheres (which in the Warcraft lore was demon souls used to fuel other magic), and within Council of Black Harvest lore (Legacy of the Masters 1 and 2) as well as Jubeka’s Journal, there’s implications that elemental magic isn’t off limits to us either.
Since your shards do naturally regenerate up to 3, you can just claim that you’re using your own pain to power your magic.
Or you can just say that you’re an Edgy “Grey Jedi” sort of character who dips into the dark side for the greater good.
Cheer up, at least you’re not doing what my Undead Warlock had to do to gain her Succubus back in Vanilla.
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