It is what happens when layers of lore are built up like some weird cake over 16 years and counting. Glitches start to stack up in the best of stories, which WoW has never exactly had. I think their current efforts are part of an ongoing attempt to expand the lore and make some of these things make sense… but as its an incomplete project things look even worse.
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I guess if you think about it this way, it’s probably better (at least for death as a cosmic force) for souls to go to the Maw than for them not to go to the Shadowlands at all (But still pretty awful for mortals).
It seems like a terrible flaw to have everyone going into the Maw if something happened to the Arbiter, but maybe it was that way by design- to unleash the Jailer if the Shadowlands was ever overwhelmed by an outside entity…
But the Jailer’s plans seem to be something along the lines of “re-make the universe” so, it still seems like a bad idea. Unless he isn’t actually capable of doing that, in which case it’s slightly less bad.
I’m caused to wonder if maybe the Jailer’s betrayal of the other Eternal Ones might involve having altered the Shadowlands to funnel all souls to him, and the Arbiter might have been installed specifically to intercept the souls “halfway” because they lacked the means to actually undo what he’d changed.
Well, supposedly the Arbiter is an eternal one too, and has been in Oribos. But it’s likely that the Jailer did plan to get all the souls for himself, considering he has the Mawsworn, which are basically his own Kyrian which he controls, and he has that chest cavity for the orb, which he might have even made himself to use that orb. He definitely planned on taking over.
“This technology is divine”. Nice catch. Explains why the Arbiter’s name is “the Arbiter”.
The mawsarn would just do it then
I was actually starting to wonder what the role of the Kyrians actually was after leveling, because it made me think “if the Kyrians bring souls in personally, but they don’t have any new ones either, they must have stopped, but if souls are still coming in, then I guess souls don’t need them to arrive.”
The Covenant storyline just clarified that for me. They are still the ones doing it.
This is absolutely and completely insane and it’s ridiculous that the only characters who bring it up are either villains or immediately “decide they were wrong to question it.” It’s insane that they are bringing people in just to drop them right into the Maw.
In other words, at this point, in Bastion, there are two factions…
- The Forsworn, who directly serve the Jailer.
- The Kyrians, who are directly powering the Jailer up by knowingly funneling souls right to him.
Both of them are serving the Jailer!
And to make things worse and even more baffling, it’s partially the latter situation that created the former faction to begin with. I’ve been enjoying the story and lore so far, but I really just can’t get over this. The Forsworn are 100% right about the Archon, and I really hope we get to take her out by the end and put someone in charge who isn’t actively and knowingly making things worse.
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Poor Ben Howell. He deserved so much better.
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I picked up on that too… like, why are the Forsworn even bothering to fight the Kyrian?
I partially suspect that Kyrestia might not even really “trust the purpose” and that she is actively helping the Jailer herself, and was just trying to shush Devos. But then why not just work things out with the Forsworn if they’re on the same side?
None of it adds up, unless all these souls are somehow going to backfire on the Jailer. Or maybe the Path is just… dumb.
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Seriously. I was really confused when Kleia was like “why did no one tell me about this?” I was thinking, “Good question, my character should have known this was a bad idea.” In fact, I assumed we had something else planned precisely because my character should have said something.
When it happened anyway, I thought, “Okay, now I’m going to hop down into the Maw and rescue him like I do for others every week” but the quest just moves on!
To the topic in general again, though, it really is baffling. The Mawsworn wouldn’t even exist if the Archon didn’t go “We found proof that the ultimate evil found a loophole to break and cheat the system? Trust the system!”
I really hope this is a Revendreth situation, where it’s really obvious who the villain is, but the story still wants to treat it like a twist.
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The problem is Kyrestia is totally unwilling to back down from her duty as assigned by the First Ones, no matter what happens. Souls that come to Bastion are those with a strong sense of duty, and Kyrestia seems to be the most dutybound of all. Perhaps she made an oath, for example, and is unwilling to break it.
If she were to have a rigid concept of duty, well… it would be a Nazgrim situation, then.
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I still think that there are factors to which we aren’t aware as of yet.
For example, what happens to souls just, left in the mortal plane? Aren’t they at risk of being poached by the other cosmic forces? Not only that, but with a small army of Maw Walkers constantly rescuing souls from the Maw, would it be wise to prevent souls from going there? For all we know, we’re rescuing souls at a rate equal to or greater than that of their arrival.
Without the Arbiter it’s impossible to just hold souls in Oribos either; the place would be overcrowded in seconds. They can’t just be sent to whatever afterlife seems like the best match for them because only the Arbiter knows for certain where they belong. We’d just get situations like the Forsworn elsewhere, and considering the rough shape of the four covenants, that’d be disastrous.
Allowing souls to be sucked down directly to the Maw is not the most ideal of positions, but in the grander scheme, it might just be the safest.
It’s a morally grey moment to be sure.
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That’s the sort of thing that bothers me about these sorts of stories. It’s not even so much about whether or not there’s an answer, as much as it is that no one asks if there is, even though it’s the only reasonable thing to do.
When you’re knowingly and willingly funneling power into the hands of your archenemy, the characters need to recognize and address that it doesn’t make sense. There’s room for faith or trust when a situation is ambiguous, but that’s far past ambiguous.
It reminds me of when Teldrassil first burned, and some of the night elves were brought back. The characters just seemed to take it for granted that they would come back from the dead hating Elune and wanting to kill their friends.
We’d eventually get an explanation for this, and it made a lot of sense! Their souls were being directed right to the Maw and were rightfully feeling betrayed because they didn’t know the real reason that happened.
The characters in-universe didn’t know there was an explanation any more than we did at the time though, so they should have been looking for one, not just rolling with it like it was a totally expected series of events.
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Likely he can’t and needs a titan world soul which seems his main goal
That’s Blizzard, if they like more x group, then said group will never face anything negative and everyone that is a “hater” is culled down, pretty bad if you ask me
It is noted in one of the quest they didnt suspect a thing until after it was too late. They were just sending a few souls at first to the Maw, then hundreds and then every soul. I am not sure if they are currently sending souls though.
Lol what, your just carbon dude, who cares about life, let alone about a video game
Most likely he needs Azeroth in specific, as she seems to be able to tip the cosmic war decisively in any one direction she wishes.
And as for those curious if they are aware:
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Honestly, this just feels like a bad writing thing. Logically, you would expect some kind of temporary system to be set up to stop souls going into the Maw, with maybe even the current realms dividing the souls between themselves. That apparently the Player didn’t inform the covenants (going off the events of the Renown 5 Kyrian Campaign chapter) about the borked Arbiter and the souls being funneled to the Maw is… baffling. Especially when that’s exactly what the leveling campaign was about: telling everyone she’s borked. But the plot needs:
- For all the souls to go into the Maw and give the Jailer power and
- For the anima drought to still be a thing that drives the covenants forward.
Can’t do that if an emergency system is in place so everyone gets to hold the idiot ball while the writing just quietly glosses over how illogical it is.
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Kyrian Valley Girl: “Why dont we just, like, not?”
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