Why do some of the most evil go to Maldraxxus?

Spoilers for the story, I suppose, but to cut to the chase, what is the line in the sand that makes a soul a candidate for Revendreth or the Maw? How did Kel’thuzad of all people not get sent to the Maw, or at least Revendreth? He gleefully delighted in cruelties and engineered atrocities that killed millions. The Arbiter was working just fine both in Vanilla and in Wrath of the Lich King, which we know through things like Ursoc’s soul making it to Ardenweald even in Legion. How does someone like him not even go to Revendreth to be forced to confront their sins? Plenty of souls both in the Maw and Revendreth refuse to admit that they did anything wrong and staunchly insist that they were in the right, or that they simply regret nothing, much as I imagine Kel’thuzad would. So how did he not wind up forced to confront his sins?

I know he thematially fits Maldraxxus like a glove, so it makes sense to have him there stylistically, but unless we reveal some grand contingency plan that he had set up to wind up in a plane of the afterlife other than one he deserved (a repentance plane), then I genuinely don’t understand what Blizzard is going for with Revendreth and the Maw. How does someone like Kel’thuzad not wind up in either while the Arbiter is functioning? I understand that the Arbiter likes sending combat-worthy souls to Maldraxxus for the sake of the Shadowlands’ defenses, but that clearly isn’t universally true, otherwise she likely would have sent souls like Uther’s and Nadjia the Mistblade’s to Maldraxxus instead of Bastion and Revendreth respectively, so a soul’s combat usefulness does not dictate what afterlife they go to, only their character does. So why did Kel’thuzad not have to face his crimes? Just because he’s a lich and Maldraxxus is the zone with liches in it? What’s next, Athrikus Narassin showing up as a soul in Ardenweald simply because he’s a night elf, even though he’s a forest-corrupting necromancer that sided with the Legion against his own people? What about someone like Gul’dan? For the sake of simplictiy let’s just talk about the main timeline one that died before Warcraft 3. Where would someone like that go? I would be baffled if the answer was anything other than Revendreth or the Maw, but here we are with Kel’thuzad, and he makes just as little sense to me outside of those realms. Gul’dan betrayed his entire species and his home planet to the Legion. Is that enough to justify a penance plane?

Kael’thas did way, ways less horrible things than Kel’thuzad and he still ended up in Revendreth. I understand that Kael has potential for redemption, which is why he didn’t simply get thrown into the Maw, but if that’s how things work, why isn’t Kel’thuzad in the Maw? He has plenty of sins to be confronted with, he would deny any wrongdoing, and he would get thrown into the Maw if the Arbiter didn’t choose to toss him in directly, such as we see is possible in the cinematic where she takes a red bolt to the face and powers down, since we can see puffs of souls going directly beneath Oribos as well, down to the Maw instead of other realms.

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Revendreth serves a utilitarian purpose, not a judgemental one. It’s for people who aren’t useful because of personality flaws, not for people who are bad. The shadowlands supposedly sends people to where they are ‘best suited’, and apparently for a lot of souls they are best suited to a torture realm - it doesn’t make sense, honestly. Revendreth has the aesthetic of a punishment realm but its stated goal is meant to be reform.

If Kel was more useful going straight to Maldraxxus than he was going to Revendreth first, then that’s where he goes. (Or he/the Jailer cheated)

The shadowlands sucks, but honestly I respect brutal utility over some backwards concept of cosmic judgement. The whole thing is suspect as hell, though.

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If the Arbiter could see what kind of person Kel’thuzad is, that person being a backstabbing schemer who only looks out for himself and will turn on his allies at the first sign of a better offer, then why would she send him to Maldraxxus to sew discord within the ranks of the Shadowlands’ defenders? Then again, I suppose that could be asked of Maldraxxus in general, since the entire zone seems to celebrate betraying one another if it results in more power for the betrayer. An army that’s all at one another’s throats undercutting each other is not a cohesive unit, and it feels like that zone encourages it despite their supposed purpose of working as a unified army against existential threats.

Overall, I cannot comprehend the Arbiter deigning Kael’thas less useful than Kel’thuzad in the sense you’re talking about. Both are selfish, delusional magic-wielders of great power who work terribly with others. If anything the biggest defining difference is that Kael, at least up until Burning Crusade, believed he was acting in the best interest of his people. Kel’thuzad knew he was only ever out for himself from the start. I can see how Kael is worthy of redemption while Kel’thuzad is not, but I think they were both equally useless souls when they passed through the Arbiter’s hands, even if they happen to be fantastically powerful by mortal standards.

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I don’t want to get into a discussion on KT or how he might have been useful, so suffice to say that I think it’s obvious at this point that we were meant to conclude that the Shadowlands has been ‘broken’ for a long time, even before the Arbiter stopped working. Place sucks. What you’re pointing out is likely just all part of that.

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To me it just feels like inconsistent writing and logical fallacies on Blizzard’s part. One’s usefulness in combat has a huge role to play in whether or not they get sent to Maldraxxus, but Uther, one of the biggest heroes of the Second War, gets sent to Bastion to be a glorified ferryman for souls, as opposed to being assigned to a realm revolving around military defense. Kel’thuzad, one of the most evil beings imaginable that devised atrocities like Thaddius, somehow doesn’t get sent to the realm meant for irredeemably evil beings, and is instead assigned to a military unit where he can betray more people.

At least we have some positive examples to counteract those, such as how Garrosh, Amber Kearnan, and Alexandros all have very fitting afterlives.

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Kel’thuzad is likely not in Maldraxxus naturally. He is still an Azeroth-bound Lich, and isn’t fully dead. He is planted there by the Jailer, presumably, and is causing mayhem as one of the Barons.

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Is he still Azeroth bound?

Unknown. Unlike in Naxx 1.0, we don’t loot his phylactery in Naxx 2.0, so presumably it was never actually recovered. If it wasn’t destroyed, he can still return on Azeroth.

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Are you referring to how his phylactery didn’t drop from him in Wrath’s 10 and 25-man version of Naxx, and how it canonically was never found, Portergauge? It might be a stretch to assume he’s still got a horcrux on Azeroth if he’s in the Shadowlands at all. Wouldn’t his body have just respawned on Azeroth if he truly had a place to return to there? Since a phylactery is literally a soul vessel I’m not sure how things would work if a being tried to go to the Shadowlands in a corporeal sense while leaving their soul in an entirely different realm of reality. Still, I suppose he could have hypothetically respawned, gotten his soul from the phylactery, and then found some way to cross over into the Shadowlands. Death knights are plenty capable of popping into that realm at will, such as when they got their class mounts, so I guess it’s fair for an archlich to be able to make the same kind of plane-jump.

The Arbiter looks on the whole soul, not just their actions at their lowest. Kel’thuzad was a noble mage who wanted to use necromancy to protect his people before the Lich King broke him.

That desire to protect is likely what made the Arbiter place him in Maldraxxus, where he could indeed use necromancy to protect.

Honestly he probably needed some therapy before being sent to Maldraxxus though. Because at the end of his “life” he was just flat out insane.

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I agree that the Arbiter weighs the whole soul, and actions matter much more than intentions. Kel’thuzad, while he might have been under duress to some degree, chose to do horrific things to hundreds, if not thousands directly, and countless more indirectly by engineering the Scourging of Lordaeron. When he felt threatened during his first journey to Naxxramas, he could have decided he would never partake in anything so vile, and yet he chose self-preservation instead. At the expense of countless others. His actions in Caer Darrow alone warrant him being thrown right into the Maw by the Arbiter. And you argue that Kel’thuzad’s main goal back in his Kirin Tor days was the ability to defend others, but while I can’t recall the exact source at the minute (it could be an in-game book or an out of game source), I vaguely remember some quotes from Kel’thuzad where he angrily rants about how the Kirin Tor stifle his pursuit of progress, condemn his research, have outlawed his studies, and how they are too weak and cowardly to pursue true power. He was only concerned with his own personal self-preservation and ability to do what he wanted, which went part in parcel with always trying to get stronger. In that light Maldraxxus fits him quite well, but the weight of his sins is grave enough to warrant the Maw a hundred times over.

He may have just broke in.

A Lich isn’t dead until you destroy it’s phylactery. We didn’t destroy his, and we know from the DK intro and class hall that necromancers can get into the Shadowlands easily enough.

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I don’t think it would be very satisfying if Kel’thuzad’s reason for being in Shadowlands was something like “well I had my phylactery hidden in some cliffs in Un’goro and then I rezzed there after dying in Wrath then immediately noped out to the Shadowlands.” I hope there’s a better explanation, but I’m expecting we’ll probably never even hear the story of how he wound up in Maldraxxus since it’s not all that important compared to the simple fact that he’s there being a problem.

Because for all we know, he didn’t get sent to Maldraxxus, but instead entered of his own volition. Unless his phylactory was destroyed off-screen, which would be terribly anticlimatic.

What if he instead made a pact with his master’s master, to have the ability to enter Maldraxxus. It is afterall the birthplace of necromancy, so he would give anything to study it’s secrets.

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I would accept it if there was a good explanation for how Kel’thuzad got in contact with the Jailer without going to the Maw himself, wearing the Helm of Domination, or wielding Frostmourne. It would actually be quite interesting if there were a story behind it such as Sylvanas choosing to team up with the person who indirectly created her murderer, bringing Kel’thuzad into the Jailer’s fold herself if he was still on Azeroth during BfA or what have you. I just wouldn’t want the answer to be that Kel’thuzad went to the Maw through a death gate of his own making or something to that effect, made friends with the Jailer, then popped out into Maldraxxus as a Maw Walker. It’s supposed to be stupidly hard to get out of the Maw once you’re there, even if necromancers can enter and leave the general Shadowlands easily, so I really don’t want it to be something like this.

Technically, as far as anyone can tell Kel’thuzad is not actually dead like most of the other denizens of Maldraxxus. His phylactery was never recovered or destroyed after the Naxxramas raid in Wrath, after all.

Assuming he actually is dead, I’d wager he was sent to the Maw as per the Arbiter’s judgment but was shipped out to Maldraxxus as part of the Jailer’s machinations.

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I’m with everyone who thinks he snuck into Maldraxxus, I don’t think he’s supposed to be there. Scourge magic techniques were supposedly stolen from Maldraxxus, maybe his phylactery was connected to it somehow? There are already liches there, how difficult would it be for him to masquerade as having arrived by the usual route?

Speaking of liches and Maldraxxus, I have questions about how the Maldraxxi liches work. Are they liches because they already were so in life? Do they choose that form upon arrival? Do they start off in Maldraxxus as a different form and become liches through rituals there?

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Could honestly see him becoming a big bad for a patch where we discover his plans to use his Phylactery still on Azeroth and return to cause issues for us back home.

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Well, he probably met the jailor when he died in vanilla Naxx before he regenerated from his phylactery. That’s one possible explanation for why he’s not in the maw right now. He probably struck a deal with the jailor back then around the time of Sylvanas’ second death and was let out of the maw to sow chaos on the Jailor’s behalf.

Kel’thuzad never died. His phylactery is still around in Azeroth and hasn’t been broken. He’s in the Shadowlands because he’s so attenuated with the realm he could easily cross over. Doing such he allied himself with the Jailer.