This seems like extremely poor planning on the first ones part. It sounds like going to to the maw is a very rare occurance. In fact no one might be sent to the maw at all by the arbiter they have to fail revendreth to be sent there. (unconformed)
So why is it when the arbiter is disabled/killed all souls go straight into the maw?
Did the first ones lack critical thinking and a back up plan?
Why wouldn’t they create a specific afterlife for when the arbiter is unable to send someone to a specific afterlife?
The shadowlands is a machine and like any machine can mess up. Why would superhell be the default afterlife?
Or is the maw older than the first ones and just the default for all souls and the arbiter exists to incercept and redirect souls? If that was the case was there no way to put like a catching filter to capture souls that free fall and put them somewhere else other than the maw? So only purposeful deposits can go into the maw?
There is a theory that the maw was the first realm of death. And that they sort of got “ordered”. By the first ones and or titans. The titans probably learned to “order” from the first ones.
If you noticed death seems rather tame for the afterlife.
Anyway the Jailer was the first Arbiter or at least the one that came before the one we saw when we got in the Shadowlands. Now its pelagos. He knew how it would mess up the new one. The death of Argus infused with death magics was enough to knock her out.
Oh ok. So they just lacked critical or rational thinking.
Cuz basic intelligence and reasoning suggests you have contingency plans. Ideally multiple contingency plans especially when you’re making something like an entire universe filled with sentient souls that can experience suffering and pain.
Like
Seemed to be their core problem.
You can’t just create a universe an design a machine of existence and then like not think about every feasible way it could go wrong and prepare in advance for it. That’s pretty poor craftmanship.
If I was a teacher and the students were the first ones and they offered to me the warcraft universe as a project. I’d give them a -D. Not an F simply because it technically works. But certainly not a good grade because of how spectacularly they refused tho account for literally anything that could potentially go wrong.
Look if you can’t create a universe without coming up with some sane safety features, redundancies, and contingency plans maybe don’t create a universe is all I’m saying.
I got the vibe that they were big mechanical thinkers so they were curious about creating life since machines kinda can’t. All the experimental synthetic things in Zereth Mortis showed that.
In the “First Ones” defense it’s not like anyone left a guidebook on this stuff. Imagine trying to learn how to operate a vehicle with no one around to teach you or a book to read from.
the maw seems to be a bit of a ‘meatgrinder’ or dumping ground for souls. since it seems to be the only realm in which souls are actually -destroyed-
which means that its the only one of the realms that could actually handle an unfiltered flow of souls without rather quickly running out of space, and manpower to properly deal with the influx.
lets say they instead filtered every soul to revendreth (the most likely one imo, because worst case, they have few if any sins in need of redemption so they just pass on relatively quickly to whichever comes next) the venthyr would still very quickly get overwhelmed by the massive influx, just not enough bitey-boys to properly process and atone every soul. which would result in spirits just wandering around willy nilly (even more than they already are) likely at least some of them causing havoc, further disrupting the realms ability to actually do their job.
the maw doesn’t really have that same issue, sure they may still have a limited number of tormentors, which would limit the rate at which souls get consumed. but even if there are a bunch of random souls kicking about, it doesn’t really distrupt or upset the operations of the realm (if anything, souls causing further chaos and destruction might even aid the overall churning of souls)
its basically the garbage chute. it might not be the most ‘ethical’ option, but when the filtration system breaks and the spirits gotta go somewhere, tossing em in the trash till you get the system fixed is a logical enough solution rather than flooding one of the other realms and causing even more damage.
Little did they plan that of the Eternals, one would be the one that knocked the Arbiter offline, one would be missing, and the other two would have turned into idiots.
Probably why it makes sense to have a designated afterlife simply to dump souls if something goes wrong. No attendents. Just souls sitting there until admin gets its stuff figured out. Kyrians would probably have access to it and find out if folks are getting dumped there. And if the arbiter was working take em there.
I don’t think is that way, I think the Jailer did something else to pull all the souls to the Maw because Elune tries to send souls to Ardenweald and they go to the Maw.
Unless the Maw is the default place and Elune just assumed they were going to Ardenweald after dying, which would make thing and even dumber, and I’d not be surprised with how Elune waa written here.