Why don't the Kyrian just drop souls in other realms?

I’m of the Honest opinion that none of the Kyrian understand how Bastion works or what their purpose is.

The Kyrian believe their Soul Mirrors extract Memories yet not only to said “Memories” not feel right and kill them but one Winged Kyrian reclaimed a Memento and regained all Memories instantly!

The Memories are nothing more than the same Shades extracted by the Jailer via hacking away at the Soul! We arrogantly assume they are a natural part of the Soul but the fact that they are implanted by what I assume is Bastion’s Counterpart to Revendreth’s Mirrors I suspect they are invaders!

There are secrets to Bastion and it’s function that the Kyrian know nothing about!

The Shades the Jailer liberates from favored Souls in the Maw via cutting away the Soul/Stygia seems to be allowed by the First Ones into Aspirants via the Soul Mirrors because the Entities seem to block the Memories of those who kill them!

The “Memories”/Shades not returning to their Aspirant Hosts when they try to reclaim them seems like an easy way to keep the Aspirants from reclaiming the actual Memories! The First Ones were cunning regarding the Kyrians while keeping them in the dark.

This seems to have been answered in the Shadowlands collector’s edition artbook:

https://wow.zamimg.com/uploads/screenshots/normal/989883.jpg

    Without guidance, those souls would be forever lost within the infinite realms of the Shadowlands.

So before the Kyrians, souls would go to the Shadowlands, but then just end up wherever, and potentially wander around aimlessly for the rest of eternity.

This is brought up in a Kyrian Covenant exclusive world quest given by their Anima Conductor, where a player judges if a soul should be brought to the Shadowlands or returned to life, with the most obvious answers of returned to life applied to beings tied to other cosmic forces such as Naaru, Demons, and Elementals, however, the other answer given is for returning to life is any soul affected by necromancy, which, for some undisclosed reason, supersedes a Kyrian’s duty to collect the soul.

There is no real explanation given for this, and it is indeed a major flaw in the Shadowlands’ system allowing the circumventing of the Arbiter - one that I imagine applies to Bwonsamdi as well.

It really feels like all that’s said on the matter is “Nope, you can’t collect that soul. Someone called dibs on it.”

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A Soul is also returned to Life to get rid of Necromancers so that they can bring Souls into the Shadowlands to give it Anima(which is necessary since Denathrius was actively draining the Realms of Death behind everyone’s back).

The Kyrians not respecting the Soul’s desire to return to Life makes sense when you realize how Denathrius’s corruption resulted in the Death Realms being drained of more Anima than the Souls in them can produce. The Arbiter being shut down made Denathrius’s effect on the Shadowlands more apparent!

Proof that the Souls can produce Anima on their own: https://wow.gamepedia.com/Recovering_the_Heart#Notes

Warden Casad says: Anima given shall return in time.

The Realm of Order itself seems to have called dibs on the Player’s Soul it seems since the Oribos Attendants mention us having a strong connection to the World of the Living AKA the Realm of Order.

Did that one make it to live? I’ve seen datamining for it, but I haven’t actually run across that NPC when doing the world quest on my Kyrian covenant character.

I ran across him myself while doing the Quest.

I’ll keep an eye out for him. Though if anything that just makes me like the Kyrians even less, as they would be just as culpable of bypassing the Aribter as other flaws in the system allow.

Ironically if it weren’t for Sire Denathrius the Realms of Death wouldn’t need a constant flow of Souls since the Souls already in the Realms of Death would just generate the Anima needed to keep them going.

The Kyrian being required to bring Souls to the Shadowlands rather than continuously revive them on request is itself a sign of how badly the Machine of Death is Broken. The Arbiter shutting down compounds on the damage already brought on by the Jailer and Sire Denathrius!

The fact that the Shadowlands has to make new Death Realms for the sake of new variants of Souls is a symptom of one of the problems!

The thing is, circumstances that prevent a soul from being taken at all are probably less a matter of ignoring the rules of Death, and more cases of not being able to just ignore the rules of Life, i.e. living universe.

The system of Death isn’t self-contained; by necessity it operates in tandem with Life and the living world, so they probably have to observe the laws of things like ordered Fate and how necromancy works in living reality as part of keeping things between both realms functioning properly.

If they suddenly just ripped away souls irrespective of these things, it could feasibly cause untold damage, because it would mean that suddenly one or more of the cosmic forces involved in those souls’ dispositions is no longer being allowed to operate in the way it’s supposed to. Suddenly necromancy doesn’t work any more, which means a living universe that operates on the premise of these forces functioning in some semblance of balance is being bereft of an entire facet of that balance.

So letting someone return to life who’s destined to slay a necromancer would still be in line with observing how the living universe works, as is leaving a necromantically bound soul to be recalled by its phylactery or master. Trying to directly prevent a soul that’s been so bound from returning on the other hand, in order to drag it off to Oribos instead, would be defying the way necromancy works and effectively constitute an attempt to reverse the mechanics of a fundamental cosmic agency in the universe.

Their job is to collect the souls that are supposed to pass on; by definition, according to the laws of the living universe, a soul that’s been necromantically raised or is fated to live again isn’t supposed to pass on yet, and they may be straight-up incapable of denying such realities.

Why necromancy works at all is actually one of the things that hasn’t been explained at all yet in Shadowlands.

So far at base appearance it only seems to work because the Kyrians allow it to. There isn’t any indication that a Kyrian couldn’t take a soul before a Val’kyr takes it or while a lich’s phylactery is still intact, but rather it’s presented that the Kyrians as simply told to choose not to, but no reason given as to why.

Ironically the best solution to Shadowlands lore is to adopt the Kyrian mindsight and simply don’t think about it.

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I mean, it also hasn’t been explained as far as raising someone whose been dead for years either. Who assumedly had their spirit already go to the Shadowlands.

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Danuser states that Undead can be raised even after the Soul goes to the Shadowlands(though loses their Memories) so a Kyrian returning the Soul to the dead Body merely removes the problem of the Soul being Reanimated mid-judgement by the Arbiter which could have unpredictable consequences!

It’s more than a little bit of a plot hole considering the role Sylvanas plays (and to a lesser extent the Lich King because of Frostmourne and the Helm of Domination).

I have no idea how souls are supposed to work but as members of the Forsaken their souls are supposedly “imperfectly reattached” to their bodies. I can accept that if they’re raised from the dead quickly enough, the Kyrians may not have been able to flap their wings fast enough to grab the soul. I can accept other realms may have placed a claim on certain souls such that they bypass the Kyrians (i.e. Wild Gods). But what about everyone else?

To put it into perspective, we have the curious case of Derek Proudmoore. He died and approximately 30 years later was raised as an Undead by Sylvanas and the Val’kyr. Unless there is some cosmic force that is omniscient (i.e. Fate or some such) then it’s difficult to see how the Kyrians would know that in 30 years Derek’s soul would be required, so they should leave it be. If some power does exist, then the implications are far larger than just necromancy, so let’s just put a pin in that for now.

So what happened to Derek’s soul? Was he dropped into some realm of the Shadowlands? If so, his soul probably went through some level of transformation. In Bastion for instance, it would have been made to forget memories; in Revendreth it would have been made to seek atonement. At the very least, it experienced something and those somethings seem to change a soul.

We can try to explain it away by saying memories are stored both in the soul and in the brain and that the brain overrides the soul when there is some conflict. We’d have to ignore the fact that corpses rot, but we have magic so maybe we magically repair them in the process. Maybe the level of dissonance is what leads to some of the craziness after being raised.

If that’s the case, wouldn’t realms notice some souls magically disappearing randomly? The Kyrians seem to have a somewhat hierarchical system in place, so it seems reasonable to suggest a team of retrieval experts might have a lead of some kind. It would seem he’d have to go to his bosses and say, “Well, we performed fantastic, a 98% retrieval rate, and the 2% we missed are due to one of my team members not returning from the field. Not sure what happened to him, but another reported seeing him slowly disappearing into nothingness so maybe someone might want to look into that. Also, that means I have an opening on my team, so if we could backfill that position I would appreciate it.” Maybe they explained it away as some part of a cosmic conflict. The Void has invaded Bastion before after all, so maybe a cunning Void Lord plan killed one. Maybe the in-between is particularly treacherous and sometimes folks didn’t get away from being devoured.

What about cases where they just mysteriously vanished while training? “Hi there Mr. Paragon, sir. I’m sorry but it happened again, my soulbind just disappeared into nothingness. I don’t really know what happened, we were doing jumping jacks and poof. I’m not murdering them I promise!” Maybe they just decided, “They must have failed their training. Well then crazy person, off to the memory wiper to forget everything.”

Maybe the Venthyr guessed they had drained too much anima and destroyed the soul. Maybe the Necrolords figured the soul had finally had enough of their Bloodsport and died a final death. Unfortunately, with an infinite number of realms it’s hard to imagine nobody decided to poke their head into Oribos and say, “Excuse me, my souls seem to be vanishing, maybe someone could take a look into this?”

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Thank you, I don’t have the collectors edition book. Though even that is confusing. If all the Kyrian do is shuttle souls, then why would a soul roam aimlessly if they just went naturally? If a soul went to Ardenweild just randomly through the normal means of death, why would it wander instead of being treated like any other soul that came there?

At this point, that option seems better for the souls, and the realms of death, than the current system where everyone goes to the maw. I wonder why no one told the Kyrian to take a break.

Probably wouldn’t work too well because of the drought. For your example of Aredenweald, the soul would arrive, and the Night Fae would be elated and welcome the soul and say along the lines “Now you can give your anima to help revive nature spirits!” and, given all the people in existence, there would be a large possibility of the soul going “No? Why would I do that. I don’t care about nature. What’s nature ever done for me?”

Even if some did that, it would still mean some wouldn’t as well. Anima from some willing souls is still better than no souls coming at all. Plus even the souls that don’t give them anima would then be denying anima and souls to the maw as well.

Another issue is that traveling between realms itself seems to require anima, so it might be more detrimental during the drought to just let souls wander from realm to realm, if possible at all, considering how we had to open the way to the realms one by one.

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But if those gateways are closed, and the souls are being instructed in the zones they land in, then they wouldn’t be able to travel around anyway. Either way, at least the Maw wouldn’t be getting them if they’re in other zones. I would think anything would be better than ferrying souls just for them all to go to the maw.

I don’t necessarily disagree, but Kyrian stance is “Not my responsibility. I have a job to do.”

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Imagine Naz’grim spending four years in Bastion for his absolute loyalty to the Horde and his code of honor, then being pulled away into undeath as a bloodthirsty Death Knight.