Something to keep in mind is per Revendreth, the redeemability of a soul seems connected to it still possessing its own anima. After eons of conditioning and atonement, if a soul is fully expended of anima and still defiant of any wrongdoing, it can’t be processed any more. As the fundamental energy underlying Death, anima may function as the force by which anything in the Shadowlands can change, including a soul that startsout resolute and unapologetic about its deeds becoming contrite and redemptive.
So once a soul’s own anima has been entirely exhausted by efforts to redeem it, that soul may well be outright incapable of changing itself henceforth, including further seeking redemption, because with no more anima it’s become an inert entity depleted of the fundamental dynamic energy that allows for souls to change their natures.
It’s never truly been suggested that the nature of a sin itself in the Shadowlands makes it irredeemable; a soul is only irredeemable if every avenue of redemption of a sin has been exhausted and there’s mechanically no further way to continue trying to change a soul’s ways. By the very nature of the place Revendreth has every reason to never stop trying as long as it’s till possible (until Denathrius’ and his followers started wrongfully fast-tracking souls to Zovaal), meaning under normal circumstances the only reason any souls would ever be marked as irredeemable would be due to there no longer being any means left to continue trying to redeem them after a full tenure of eons in Revendreth proved fruitless and expended every drop of anima by which they might be changed.
I don’t think it has anything to do with anima. Souls who have great deeds in life, good or bad, have a lot of anima, while souls with humble lives have little. The four giants from Kerxan, Nilganihmaht, Bamethra, Hrestimorak, and Salaranga, were sent straight to the Maw, despite having a lot of anima, likely more than Garrosh, who was being drained of anima in Revendreth. The giants had a “brutal thousand-year reign,” and killed “countless rivals.”
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This is such a random one-off during a quest that is never addressed again that I just think that on top of the Story Team writing sucking, the Quest Team is unwilling to verify narrative cohesion with the Story Team or the Story Team is understaffed and are unable to check the story.
I think it should be destroyed. We’re in Zereth Mortis, the place that makes these afterlives. It can presumably also unmake them so we have the means to destroy the whole zone.
And not replace it. The issue with a Maw zone is all these bad bad souls are left to fester and get worse. They’d always be a potential danger to the SL. Far in the future we may get another Jailer in power, who knows. And even though these souls were so hopeless that even Revendreth couldn’t help them you’re still more or less just tossing them away to not have to look at them, rather than solving the issue.
We need an alternate solution to those truly black souls. Permanent death might even be an option too. Or some kind of more secure and beneficial afterlife. But deleting the Maw would end the rest of the Jailer’s army, free the innocent souls in there and forever spare the SL from it.
Also the old Arbiter as far as we know rarely sent souls directly to the Maw. Even the worst criminals were given a chance in Revendreth first and the venthyr made the final decision. Pelagos probably wouldn’t be much different. He might not even be Pelagos anymore depending on what happens.
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Wasn’t that shade able to pose as a normal lost soul, and doing so to lie to the player character to trigger the rare event? If so, what evidence do we (or the son-soul for that matter) have that the impostor shade is really anyone’s father?
The shade, Yero the Skittish, was not lying. His son, Moraa, was twisted into a mawsworn shade, and once he is found, Moraa warps his fathers mind.
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Thanks. I only did that encounter once. Still, I had been hoping for even an acrobatic way of closing the hole in the lore.
They…had notes…?
Remember we have compression to deal with, the zones have to be bigger “in reality” or they make no sense. Their size as we know it is that they’re in the game.
For an actual afterlife you should presume that space (area) and time have no meaning to the Shadowlands. (LOL, yes, this makes yet a new problem for Shadowlands.)
So, uh, this is a Shadowlands problem: There is no posit that normal souls ever are reborn. Nature souls in Ardenweald are set apart in the story.
Add in Danuser talking about Shadowlands being about “eternity” and we have quite the existential quandary; its a one-way trap.
I was kinda hoping that the ouroboros would be a real giant snake around the Cosmos, and the realms of death would be a controlled feeding mechanism to keep it from eating creation; cause that made more sense.
What a mess, souls as giant snake bait was the step up and they missed it…
/sarc But, dude, aliens!
There have to be a ton more Venthyr than we can encounter, or, the entire claim that this is the universal afterlife place for a cosmos is a lie. So, presume compression.
I really like the part where Azeroth’s “physics” aren’t supposed to apply, and I see a heck of a lot of Euclidian geometry.
That needed to be: “You see all these very simple physics, very simple beings, because this is one of the places where that all began.”
But… thanks to a jumpy story… since Denathrius sided with Zovaal, do we even know how Revendreth was supposed to work originally? (No, of course not, neither do the Devs.)
it will be forced to go out of business as more and more people are using Amazon for their irredeemable soul needs.
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Moraa was scattered across the entire Cavern from the looks of things and infusing his Maw Essences from multiple locations into his Father telling him to embrace his inner Shade. The Shade Moraa turns Yero into is a Shade Amalgam which is not surprising since the scattered essences of his Son infused themselves into him.
Moraa is what happens to Souls who are brutalized for too long to the point where they are scattered across the landscape. It’s not for nothing the Broker Grimoire claims that the Shades are Echoes of the original Soul.
The Maw destroys the Soul until there is an intelligent Echo and if the Echo is useless scatter it across the landscape or if the Shade needs shutting up feed it to the Soul Eaters and Shadehounds.
I wouldn’t be surprised if multiple Shades are formed per Soul. The Mawsworn will beat and torture you until they have an Army of you!
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We also have to remember that we’ve seen four of the afterlife realms. Mainly speaking on the rebirth/reincarnation for normal mortal souls issue…ardenweald is where wild gods/loa go to reincarnate and mortals who were so dedicated to serving nature that tending the groves where those gods are nurtured before rebirth would be a great afterlife for them (there’s also plenty of suggestion that if you’re not interested in being a grove tender you can spend your eternity just being lazy around the forest as whatever animal you prefer).
When we go to the Arbiter’s chamber there are tons of gateways visible, each one going to a different afterlife realm. There’s probably some where mortal souls can be reborn from, not just wild gods in Ardenweald.
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While I do not like this explanation, I believe it may be a possibility of merit…
Why could this not have been what caused “Arbiter Zovaal” to “snap” in the first place?
He was the judge of every soul, until he first came across a soul so unredeemable, that he kind of “broke mentally.”
How could the First Ones create a cosmos with such villainy? Their “Path” didn’t include a “Maw” yet, someone- somewhere- was created so evil that a Maw was required.
This soul spiraled Zovaal into turning against the First Ones, seeking the sigils to go to Zereth Mortis too see how the First Ones created the Shadowlands, what their line of thinking was…
Big - IF - but, if part of Argus’ soul, or all of it, whatever, is what broke the current Arbiter. Then couldn’t a parallel have happened to Zovaal? (Be it been a titan soul, or not.)
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It’ll be mentioned in passing once or twice and then never mentioned again except in story table missions