Out of curiosity, is there any reason beyond “The Path” that the souls couldn’t just… be asked where they want to go?
I mean sure. Revendreth is screwed in that regard. Nobody but Saurfang would’ve willingly chosen that afterlife. But Ardenweald and Maldraxxus? I am sure the vast majority of the Teldrassil souls would’ve volunteered for Ardenweald so they could give back to nature as the final stage of their existence. Many of the orcs who died would love Maldraxxus.
And the best part? The souls aren’t actively being used to empower the Jailer and bring about the end of the unverse.
Even if you do end up with a chunk of people who lied and don’t belong where they went it still seems way better to me than channeling every soul ever to the Maw where they can do nothing but make the big bad stronger.
It seems souls rarely know the best place for themselves.
You can talk to Lady Vashj and she’ll mention how she always imagined the afterlife would be more like her time in the Highborne Empire, that she would lounge in luxury being waited on hand and foot. She goes on to say now that she’s in Maldraxxus she knew that sort of existence would never have fulfilled her the way Maldraxxus does. She exults in the thrill of the struggle for supremacy, to rise, to protect the Shadowlands with guile and cunning.
Alexandros Mograine has a similar epiphany during the Campaign Quests. When he goes to Bastion his immediate reaction is that he should’ve been sent there. Eventually the Kyrians allow him access to the soul mirrors, and when he realizes that to have become a Kyrian meant giving up all memories of his family, he knew he could never do it. His love for his family was his source of strength, and that strength made him worthy of Bastion.
Fair, but I am not saying that is how the Shadowlands should always run. Only that it seems like a decent emergency option so that we aren’t feeding souls to the Jailer to be heinously tortured and then ground up into weapons and armor to fuel his evil war machine.
They could even keep a list of what souls have been taken to where so that when the Arbiter is brought back into commission these souls can be re-assigned an afterlife more appropriate for them.
The problem is the threat these souls would pose to the Shadowlands. For example, if Alexandros had chosen his own afterlife, he’d now be among the Forsworn, destabilizing Bastion.
Imagine the entire Venture Company from Azeroth going, “So, there’s a forest with pristine waters that other afterlives want, and anima acorns and everyone wants anima? And we can just… GO there because we want to? And the losers running the place are dealing with an invasion to boot? SEND US TO ARDENWEALD!”
Then you have to consider there are apparently some souls that inherently pose a threat to the Shadowlands that need to go to the Maw. Imagine one of these souls suddenly set loose somewhere like Revendreth or Maldraxxus. How long would it take for either or both to fall to this soul?
This is why I didn’t advocate for letting people choose Bastion. They uniquely had no way to deal with people there NOT choosing the Path for some reason.
The goblins in your scenario would be outnumbered by the people who chose Ardenweald earnestly. Most goblins would choose Maldraxxus or some unknown money afterlife rather than go to a place they’d be explicitly told is a land of self sacrifice where they’ll be expected to take care of nature. Plus, because Ardenweald wouldn’t be experiencing a drought, they could actually deal with their internal issues without needing to sacrifice wild gods.
As I said, I am sure some people would lie and cause problems. But I can’t imagine the number of people who’d lie would pose a bigger threat than what the Jailer with infinite anima represents.
As for the big danger ones… What souls in the universe could pose a bigger threat to the Shadowlands than The Jailer with an infinite anima supply?
That is what it all comes back to, really. Just about any option is better than empowering the guy trying to kill us all. We as players can come up with excuses all we want, but the actual lore explanation given is “it is what we’ve always done”.
And that strongly suggests there is no greater reason for what they are doing. No logic. Just broken machines that can’t make decisions for themselves.
There’s no guarantee Ardenweald wouldn’t experience a drought. The souls living there now can give their anima or not freely. Some have been building up anima for a long time, as we’ve seen in quests. Others share theirs among their fellow souls if they grow too weak to hold a form. If a bunch of souls are given the option to go there, but are unwilling to help, it’s just wasted space. Also, I think you’ve underestimated Goblins.
A Goblin’s drive for profit is great. They’re dead, meaning their only asset is their anima. While that’ll fetch some kind of wealth, there is no goblin that would be satisfied with just one source of wealth. Being told they can go to ANY afterlife is going to be a business opportunity to your average Goblin. Not only that, but in the case of, say, the Venture Co, the idea that Ardenweald is collapsing makes it even more appealing, because it’ll drive up demand. If they stock up and push Ardenweald over the edge, they’ve created a limited supply that cannot be replenished, increasing the value of what they’ve hoarded much more.
It’s less about lying and more about going somewhere you don’t belong. Let’s assume a bunch of souls go to Maldraxxus, because they like the idea of helping the Shadowlands in a more tangible way, by fighting. However, they were never meant for Maldraxxus. They’re weak, they lack ambition, they had good intentions but no hope of fulfilling them. The rebellious houses would scoop these souls up in a heartbeat for fodder.
Following the above example in Maldraxxus…
Let’s say a powerful and Charismatic soul decides what Maldraxxus needs is a new Primus, and that THEY are the one to fill that vacant throne. They gather the disenfranchised souls never meant to go to Maldraxxus, empower them, and basically create the Scourge in the Shadowlands, and swarm Maldraxxus, destroying the other houses.
Why would they be content there, knowing there are other Afterlives? Bastion is the key to ferrying souls to the Shadowlands, well, why not conquer it? Kill off all the Kyrians, use them to create Kyrian constructs from their flesh, and have them funnel all souls to Maldraxxus? What to do with all those souls? Well, go to Maldraxxus and conquer it. Giving the subjugated Venthyr a choice; serve, or die. Suddenly the Venthyr are tormenting innocent souls for anima to empower this one soul that had been meant for the Maw.
Ardenweald would fall as a matter of after-thought, and this one soul would certainly be looking at every other possible afterlife as just more territory to claim for their personal empire.
These souls meant for the Maw pose a danger to the Shadowlands itself. If they don’t play Age of Empires with the Shadowlands, I’m sure you’d find some that’d just start blowing up different Afterlives for amusement. That’s to say nothing of those who wouldn’t reach out to the Jailer either.
Just about anything will hasten the doom of the Shadowlands that much more.
It doesn’t matter how powerful the Jailer becomes so long as he remains imprisoned in the Maw. He could one-shot entire zones, but if he can’t leave the Maw, he won’t have any zones to one-shot. He could have an army large enough to conquer all the cosmic powers, and it doesn’t matter if he can’t get that army outside of the Maw.
The Jailer is a contained threat.
Is sending souls to the Maw horrible? Absolutely. But anything less is likely to cause bigger problems immediately.
I’m not arguing against that. Blizzard has been slacking on giving answers/explanations to a lot of stuff this expansion. The recurring theme of the Shadowlands is that the Covenants have to question the status quo. You don’t even see them defending it, just accepting it.
Sure, but they’ll gravitate toward afterlives that actually encourage that mentality. Not ones where there are very powerful beings in place specifically to hinder their “free market” mentality.
Maldraxxus seems a lot more appealing if I am an ambitious goblin with an eye on profiting off the anima drought.
Honestly I imagine any goblins that appear in Ardenweald would immediately get crushed by the Wild Hunt if they tried to start draining it of even more anima. The place is just innately hostile to that kind of behavior.
This is actually a GOOD thing in the context of what is going on, though. The weak get ground into weapons and armor to be used for Maldraxxus in defense of the Shadowlands rather than being ground into weapons for the Jailer.
It is grim, sure. But… Still better than letting the Jailer use them for fodder instead.
What you’re describing would take a long time and there are powers already within Maldraxxus to oppose such an attempt at a coup. Plus it would still be less dangerous than the Jailer in the short term.
This would be a stronger argument if the Jailer wasn’t preparing for an escape within the immediate future. The Jailer is a now problem. He’s already sending agents into the living world and building his army. Any anima sent to him hastens his return and ensures he’ll be that much harder to put down when he does escape.
Indeed. Which I think is supposed to be the main takeaway. We can come up with reasons to justify sending souls to the Maw, but I think it is fairly clear the narrative isn’t trying to present that as a good thing and that we should probably convince the covenants to stop that.
The kyrians don’t realize they are doing their job wrong.
It may not be their place to judge souls and only ferry them to the arbiter however the arbiter isn’t currently active meaning they are not doing their job of delivering the soul to the arbiter. They are placing it at the arbiter. There is a difference.
If anything they should be dropped at orobos and put into storage or something until the arbiter is fixed.
That’s not their job. They cant stop because they cant cast judgment and ferry souls to their preferred after life because that may cause them to bias their responsibilities. The Arbiter is supposed to judge and send them to the appropriate afterlife.
If they don’t stop ferrying souls millions if not billions of souls across the universe would begin piling up waiting for their time to move on and if they arent ferried quickly they may become wights, banshees or angry spirits. Haunting the living and whatnot.
Yeah but if they keep sending souls to the Maw the Jailer gets stronger and will eventually be worse than letting those souls stay in the mortal world.
Yeah true, but the mortal world filling up with souls who remain after their time may breakdown the veil between the living and the dead even more and millions of souls beginning to appear as ghosts, banshees, and poltergeists will only make things worse because they’ll eventually do the work of the Jailer for him because restless souls become ghouls or worse. It’s damned if you, and damned if you don’t. At least if they’re kept in the Maw and as far as they know only the maw walkers are the only ones able to come in and out. Then it’s not as bad what the Jailer does otherwise.
I believe the Bastion storyline eventually covers the problem with the soul from Redridge who was murdered by the rampaging Scourge we left behind on Azeroth.
Did you choose the Bastion covenant and did the Redridge storyline? You help this guy make peace and relive his last moments.
Ghouls also naturally appear if you leave spirits in the mortal plane. The bodies rise due to spirits being unrelenting and wanting to live again. We have two types of ghouls/banshees/wights etc who are the natural variety who rarely are undead who come back because they’re unwilling to let go of the past.
Then you have the unnatural variety which are necromancers who do their nasty work to pull souls at peace into the mortal plane then force them to fight and do their bidding.
You also forget that millions if not billions of souls from all over the universe are dying and being sent to the Maw. If even a portion of those souls are left waiting on their planets where they are not meant to be. Those souls will eventually get antsy and want to live again or meddle in the affairs of the living. Kyrian prevent this by grabbing these souls who are ready to pass on and move them forward. The failure is Oribos not creating a shield or something stop the souls from pouring down into the Maw. Maybe manually take billions of souls and try to discern their “purpose” then send them to the appropriate afterlife.
As for Ghouls: The only Ghouls that appeared seemingly outside the Scourge are the Ghouls in Westfall and Stranglethorn and the latter case those are specifically stated to be cursed by Voodoo while the former has no backstory whatsoever.
And if you are going to claim Duskwood Undead as Natural let me remind you that the Scourge Event for Shadowlands revealed them to be Scourge!
Exactly this! It’s extremely hard for me to entertain the suggestion that sending everyone to the worst place in the universe is best. I’ve never seen anything so wrong on so many levels.
Zovaal totally pulled Kyrestia’s card. Bastion is the weakest link, goodbye.
Incidentally the Maw’s attacks are of the more Brutal sort rather than the Sadistic sort yet not so Brutal that it has chains digging into the Soul’s flesh ripping the Souls apart! The Maw’s Brutality is the slow Efficient type that gets the Maw what it wants
The slow type of Brutality of the Maw is frightening considering one can easily picture a Villain having a dozen chains digging into the Soul’s flesh tear the Soul apart abruptly ending the Soul’s suffering immediately! The Maw takes it’s time destroying Souls.
Of course since the Maw likes to destroy Souls it doesn’t bother with disembowelment nor various horrific disgusting assaults upon the unmentionables and orifices over simply hacking them off!
This. Honestly, the initial play through I disliked Bastion very much. Then folks said to me “oh play their covenant and it works out” so I had an alt play their covenant. It didn’t really help their case.
Bastion needs to be rebuilt from the ground up. At first glance it’s a horrifying cult. A fuller exploration leads them to be portrayed as … a horrifyingly powerful cult. Forget leaving all these souls on their own worlds, or finding an empty realm in Shadowlands, or whatever else we can offer as a solution. Just maybe someone says, “Hey guys, so I know we’ve always just dropped the souls at the Arbiter but … well … with her disabled maybe we should see if anyone has a new plan? They all seem to be getting sent to the Maw … and …” Never mind, last person to criticize the Path ended up being smacked by the villain stick. By the way - honestly - the Forsworn got portrayed as far more likable and relatable than the Kyrians (until tentacle lady got involved and they’re - of course - pure evil).
Maldraxxus is what you’d expect to be honest. You put a bunch of folks into a perpetual bloodsport and shockingly some folks turn “evil” by … trying to kill others … more than they were supposed to do? I think we just kind of sweep them under the rug and say, “they invaded Bastion and colluded with bad guys in Revendreth!” Because honestly without that … aren’t they always fighting?
Revendreth is truthfully not very surprising. You’ve created a perpetual prison world where souls exist in various forms to be tortured into atonement. Surprise twist that some of their torturers end up displaying some tendencies toward evil. Never would’ve seen that coming.
Ardenweald is pretty much the only “good” place but I really don’t trust those moth abominations.
Oh and the Arbiter gets shut down by a magic space death laser and the folks in Oribos are just like “Must be the Purpose.”
THIS is the great designed system in place? It doesn’t take an infinitely wise set of supreme beings to see this has some awful big vulnerabilities.
I don’t think that there is a consistent answer on that. The Kyrians do seem to do the soul collecting but the story has them both ferrying souls to Oridus and then conducting them to individual realms such as Ardenweald. Whereas the short implies that they arrive there on there own directly from death.