I think I can add more hot sauce, and say that I suspect I would genuinely love the Calia story, had she simply been risen with Death magic like every other Forsaken. I don’t like that she’s the only Light-Forsaken, and I don’t like that it’s Light of all forces. Her uniqueness is so jarring, that it undermines her relateability to Forsaken existence.
But if everything was the same, and she was raised via a more traditional method? Bravo, muah, delicious, I’ll take it.
Elric of Melniboné is a 1972 fantasy novel by Michael Moorcock.[1] It is the first original full-length novel to feature Elric, the last emperor of the stagnating island civilisation of Melniboné who wields the cursed, soul-drinking sword Stormbringer.[1]
Just a hunch but-
Eric, last emperor of the stagnating island of Melbourne. My new RP OC donut steel.
Michael Moorcock’s Elric of Melniboné was one of the prime sources for both Warhammer and early DnD, right next to Jack Vance’s Tales of a Dying Earth and Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. Sword and Sorcery for daaaays.
It is not shocking Metzen drew on those sources given he is an ardent fan of both franchises.
This has been your daily friendly librarian information tidbit.
Isn’t orcs being aliens also a warhammer thing? I know nothing about warhammer 40k, but I heard that.
I can stand her being Light-risen because there’s a very specific story that can be told with it. It’s the only story I can see that would change my mind completely to actually enjoying her.
I want her to start using Shadow and have the Shadow effect her the way Light effects regular Undead.
Her sole motivation is serving her people, but the power she wields is caustic to them.
A Forsaken get injured and she instinctually reaches out and heals them, only to be horrified as they scream in agony.
So to better suite them, she respecs from Holy to Disc and works with Aelthalyste to wield the Shadow. But it’s a painful process that threatens to warp her body and mind.
Wielding Light is said to be a self-destructive act for Forsaken, and I’d have it be the same for Calia and the Shadow.
Plus, it lets her get spookier.
Make her model more undead-y and have her mind struggle with the darker emotions the Shadow amplifies.
Lore hot-take - hmmm. Here is my hot take (i.e. tin foil hat theory that nobody other than me has because it speculates off a tiny lore detail that has bothered me forever).
It has always bothered me that in Tides of War, they have Garrosh mysteriously survive a massive explosion caused by an Alliance ambush and have never (to my knowledge) ever explained how he survived. So here is my tin foil hat theory - that wasn’t Garrosh. Somewhere between Wrath and Cataclysm or some time during Cataclysm, Garrosh got replaced by a dreadlord or something or someone else. And everything that we see of Garrosh after that isn’t the real Garrosh. Somewhere out there the real Garrosh is in a test tube on ice waiting for us to rescue him.
And yes, I realize that this theory is completely insane. But hey, you asked for lore hot-takes 
I didn’t go through the entire thread to see if these are duplicates and not sure how ‘hot’ of takes they are but here I go:
I thought about this and it’s not a bad theory. It’d explain his increased ruthlessness in MoP. If Garrosh won in MoP then the dreadlords would think that Azeroth was in their hands. Garrosh’s death in WoD lead to Gul’dan taking over the Iron Horde which resulted in Legion, and the dreadlords used this to convince Sylvanas to get on their side by giving her prophecies that they knew would happen. That’s a way to bring back Garrosh if they ever want to.
Shadowlands kinda put a kabosh on that as his soul was defiantly there, and definately blew itself up in one final act of spite.
It would of been more interesting, though.
The broker’s speculation in Merith Zortis and how there can be other ones kinda saved the cosmic nonsense in my eyes, though they should probably retcon some things about the afterlife.
But for my take (idk if hot take), the bronze dragonflight never should’ve been anything more than comic relief. Nozdormu has to keep coming up with reasons as to why he can’t do anything and Chromie, bless her heart, was designed fully as a side character and needed a voice change to make people take her seriously as a character with more screen time. Hopefully they’ll go back to goofing about, having Chromie show up only to give loose lore reasons to why your character can play past expansions or viewing alternate realities/futures like she did in Mechagon. Nozdormu is just boring, he needs to take a hike and be the old hermit collecting stuff again lol
Surely there are other Garroshs alive in other timelines, allowing some sort of soul to exist.
There are other Garroshs, confirmed by Blizzard to be almost exclusively good guys. Problem is, Blizzard also confirmed there is only one soul across all timelines, and all versions of a person get funneled into one atemporal soul in the Shadowlands. So the infinite good-guy Garroshs all get to experience the fun of eternal nothingness after getting blown up. What a just reality!
If those Garroshs aren’t dead yet then their portion of the soul hasn’t reached the Shadowlands yet. With no Garrosh soul in the Shadowlands, a new one would have to take its place when a Garrosh dies after the one in the Shadowlands blew up.
Time doesn’t flow like that in the Shadowlands, you missed two expansions worth of lore regarding demon and mortal souls in the Nether and Shadowlands. Blizzard has addressed this exact question. The future Garroshs all travel in time to meet up within the same soul in the Shadowlands “like threads” (as stated by Blizzard).
I know Blizzard said that but it’s just not logically possible. The Shadowlands would run out of anima at some point because every soul in existence would already be in the Shadowlands and only small amounts of fuel would be able to be obtained, on par with what we’re facing with fossil fuels IRL. Winning against the Jailer would’ve been a pyrhic victory.
Warcraft Lore in a nutshell
that idea never made sense and would be a injustice in of itself as it would mean that if you had a morally wrong alternate self you would be judged for that. And i do not believe the writers intended that even if they wanted the afterlives to look bad.
A interview answer should just be thrown in the bin, its even worse than a answer in a book since you cant even tell if the answer was just made up on the spot or not
now Imagine how that works for characters exclusive to alternative timelines.
Like every mag’har orc playable, including the daughter of Durotan and Draka of alt Draenor, does she have a soul? Is she sharing thrall’s soul?
It’s definitely dumb, but also not just relegated to an interview. Draka and Durotan in the Shadowlands appear to have memories from both MU and AU Draenor, do they not? And if each universe had different souls, the odds that Thrall meets his MU parents over all other infinite ones is a not just a soft 0%, but a literal hard 0%.
Furthermore, the entire plot of WoD and Legion depends on having a singular Legion. The entire Warcraft lore now crumbles if you discount the one-soul logic.