Zovaal's Gambit - Argus and the Legion

Lore Story Forum
1

So I was watching Doron’s movies and he recently published a new one about the Jailer’s gambit. 30,000 years ago a plan went into motion to cause a chain of events which led to his liberation.

First part - Get Denathrius to switch over and have his agents i.e the Dreadlords begin to corrupt and influence the other cosmological forces. Insuring chaos would ensue. I was watching this and it actually makes sense.

The Dread Lords traveled to each realm in the cosmos and started to antagonize each force. Light Realm responded in Revendreth. The Void responded in Bastion. The damage these two forces did to these realm helped weaken the forces of the Shadowlands, but not enough to break his chains. He didn’t need that. He needed to test how the forces of the cosmos would respond. He also wanted to send a message which would distract Maldraxxi forces who would in turn attack the forces of fel etc. As we see in the Short Story, but also distract each of the other people who lead the Shadowlands and turn each cosmological force against each other even more than they would originally.

Second Part - The Dread Lords notified Denathrius and in turn the Jailer knew that Order was the easiest to corrupt while the Void was the convenient heel to use as the enemy to terrify the forces of Order while also using Chaos - Fel as a convenient force to weaken the Cosmic realm of our reality.

Why would the Jailer’s gambit need Argus and the Burning Legion. I think I figured it out… The Anima flow which would result. Now the Burning Legion eats souls up to fuel their machines, but those soul forges don’t use the entire essence and most importantly demons are notoriously well chaotic and leave a lot of collataral damage! Now you may ask, “So what?” Each of these thousands, millions, billions if not trillions of souls across the entire cosmos fueled the Jailer. EVEN WHILE THE ARBITER IS ALIVE!

How? Well imagine our population on Earth. How many of us right now are irredeemable people? Millions. Now imagine those that are prideful. Hateful? Fearful? Billions who would go to Denathrius. Who happens to send “FAILURES” to the MAW.

The Sire gets billions who he in turns tortures for every drop of anima. Then dispenses with them into the maw if he cant redeem them. Then stores the Anima for eons. At the same time the Arbiter sends a TRICKLE of souls to the Maw. Each of these evil souls will fuel his plans. Little by little, but with the Burning Legion ramping up under the leadership of Sargeras. Controlled chaos becomes an effective maul against the chains which bind him.

Third part - Argus. Demons take forever to rejuvenate in the Twisting Nether, but a world soul can expedite this to allow for the Demonic armies to return in months or years. The powerful demons wouldn’t need centuries to restore themselves. Just months or years. That’s powerful tool to use on the worlds of reality. Worlds brimming with mortal sinful souls. Each desperate to stop the onslaught and who would take any measure to save themselves.

Now for the crux and perfect pawns - Sargeras was led to the Eredar on Argus by the Dread Lords. They knew that Argus had a world soul and convinced Sargeras to use it to expedite his goals and in turn their unseen masters. They also used the Void as a way to terrify Sargeras. For where did he originally find the “demons?” On a Void drenched world likely a nascent titan who’s slow corruption he needed to end… They whispered to him of the Void Lord’s plans. Sargeras quickly rallied the demons of Marduum to stop these “evil” forces of entropy.

The Void played the heel and allowed itself to be exploited and created plans within plans to insure it’s survival. Here’s where Xal’atath’s whispers make sense as does N’zoth they begged us to stop listening to the other forces. ONLY they knew the true plan of the Jailer. Did they know it all? Doesn’t matter. They knew enough, but being a force of all consuming madness nobody dared listen. Perfect tool to use against Sargeras, us the players, and most importantly the forces of the Shadowlands along with the other cosmic realms who would be distracted. Especially the Light who proved to effective against his plans. As seen in Revendreth. By getting the Army of the Light so hyperfocus on Argus he achieved taking out 2 forces in the Cosmos who would delay or worse prevent his gambit.

The Titans broken by Sargeras allowed for trillions of souls to enter the Shadowlands through the actions of the Legion. Each soul that fell into the Maw helped the Jailer loosen his bonds. Denathrius does his thing in redeeming these wayward souls from broken worlds. Amasses a fortune in Anima. All the while 30,000 years pass.

How could the Jailer know we would stop the Burning Legion. He didn’t, but somebody. Perfect because for centuries these forces would play each into his hand. Someone will eventually realize how the Burning Legion generates so many demons so quickly. They would stop this soul engine… Argus. Now he needed to corrupt the baby titan right under the nose of Sargeras who would be convinced his Ordered view of the cosmos would be correct in stopping the Void.

Sargeras would eventually overplay his hand. As all great leaders do. Zovaal knew this. Argus fell corrupted by the Dreadlords and fell into the Arbiter. Causing the drought who the Sire had already had eons to plan for and make worse, by not sharing his reserves freely. IN DESPERATION others would eventually follow him and more importantly the Jailer. Here is where the Mawsworn get new recruits. A chain of events which he knew would work out in his favor. He isn’t a genius in the way people are playing him up to be, he just understands the nature of mortals and the desire to fight against death. He also is probably the most patient individual in the multiverse.

2 Likes
2

Here’s the link.

1 Like
3

The problem with this grand plan is that there are moments that simply fall into place purely on blind luck.

I mean we never would’ve went to Argus if Illidan didn’t use the Sargerai Keystone to return us to Azeroth following Kil’jaedens death. And we only killed Kil’jaeden to save Velen. Who chased Kil’jaeden through a collapsing portal. No dreadlords or anything influencing those events. Just an angry Velen who is tired of running and hiding. Who wants vengeance for what his former best friend did to his son.

Also when was it stated that the Dreadlords lured Sargeras to Argus?

Basing your whole plan on simple blind luck does not make a really good “chess player”. This is the core flaw of blizzard hamfisting Zovaal into the whole meta narrative. It is so easy to pick apart how stupid his plan was. A plan that blizzard is so desperate to paint as the most brilliant plan in the history of plans.

Hell, he only got one of the sigils because WE BASICALLY GAVE IT TO HIM ON A SILVER PLATTER.

No-one is doing this except for Blizzard. Nearly everyone here is mocking him and his stupid plans.

Argus killed us. We only defeated him because of a Deus Ex Machina by Eonar. Hell, Arthas killed us and he was defeated by a Deus Ex Machina by Tirion.

11 Likes
4

You fully well know you are being very generous here. Zovaal’s master plan hinges nearly entirely on blind luck and happenstance. The moments where his plan could reasonably called a plan are few and far between.

11 Likes
5

Yeah, basically every single thing that’s allegedly part of his “plan” was contingent upon a billion happenstances. Such that half or more of the WarCraft universe’s inhabitants must have been dreadlords in disguise all along to engineer it all to happen just the way it all “needed to happen.”

It’s a bunch of silly nonsense, and we’ll see further that it’s a bunch of nonsense when the next Big Bad inevitably turns out to have been fooling everyone all along, including Zovaal, making literally every single thing that’s ever happened anywhere in the history of the entire universe a precise and unwavering play-by-play of their master plan unfolding exactly as they intended it.

Mankrik’s wife? Clearly her death was part of the plan. Zen’kiki’s comical struggles at druidism? Naturally, that was part of the plan. The crimes of Stalvan Mistmantle? Totally part of the plan. Zenn Foulhoof tricking the player into collecting reagents for him, then getting turned into a frog? Oh boy, was that ever part of Zovaal’s (but someday not really Zovaal’s, right? :wink:) grand plan.

And we’re going to ignore that less than an hour into playing the expansion, Zovaal was completely blindsided by the Maw Walker activating a Waystone and surprised to find someone like Anduin among the captured heroes. Kind of a huge oversight to not see that stuff coming when he and his minions have allegedly had everyone in the universe - including our world - dancing to their tune for tens of thousands, if not millions of years, but we’ll just pretend those glaring holes in it all don’t factor into it and everything is still moving along according to a script he set into motion eons ago.

This is despite the fact that as we’ve interacted with various Attendants throughout the expansion, it’s become apparent that the Shadowlands have always been chock full of prophecies left behind by the First Ones themselves that explicitly presage that a mortal Maw Walker from the living world will come along and start reactivating the Waystones. How exactly did Zovaal and his cohorts miss that?

18 Likes
6

I think the contingencies of his plan was based on the idea that eventually some force in the universe shall defeat the Burning Legion if they didn’t he would still win because all the souls pouring into the Shadowlands were already loosening his bonds prior to even Warcraft 3. The events which led him to escape was not and “if” but a “when” as even the small trickle of souls pouring into the Maw even before the machine of death broke down. We know his bonds were already loosening that’s the Primus was investigating.

I don’t think he’s directly responsible, but he created a chain of events which caused pretty much everything we know in WoW. Had the Dread Lords not driven Sargeras to go on his Burning Crusade we wouldn’t have anything we recognize today. Horde wouldn’t exist, because Sargeras wouldn’t have looked for a race which would lead his demonic forces. Sargeras wouldn’t have corrupted Archimonde and Kil’jaeden. So on and so forth. I know it feels like bad writing, but its more like bad presentation and people feeling blindsided by the revelations.

7

Words words words, the story is stupid as hell unsub

8 Likes
8

Story isn’t dumb it’s presented terribly. Taliesen actually explained why the Jailer’s gambit isn’t so much him predicting events and orchestrating Machiavellian strategies in 12D chess, but basically being patient, taking opportunities where he could, and like I thought just knowing people will eventually play to his favor even if it took thousands of years.

Most people who think the story is dumb have a hard time understanding why patience is a virtue and why being clever is better at times than being all powerful or a genius strategist. You just need the ability to plan things to eventually hit on the right solutions. Contingencies within contingencies and an overall goal to seek. Given enough time even the implausible becomes inevitable.

Sadly, they presented this terribly and most people who think the story is stupid while ignoring what they’re trying to present are wrong. Blizzard failed to build up Zovaal and give him charismatic personality or even actual dialogue which allows us to either empathize or be antagonistic against him. They just told us he’s bad. So, he must die. That is the issue of the story and I wish people paused and thought about what is being presented and what is the intent of the narrators. I don’t disagree that they did a bad presentation, but it’s stupidity just terrible planning.

9

For once, I agree with Taliesen’s view, even if it does give Blizzard a sliver of credibility that they certainly have not earned and long since squandered.

1 Like
10

This is a dumb story.

The material text of the Jailer and Dreadlords within the game is them expressing this is all according to an incredibly detailed plan.

It is not a story of an Opportunistic Grim Reaper.

It could’ve been, yes. And that would’ve been better, yes.

But claiming that’s what it is is painfully dishonest analysis of the material text we have in-game.

The story we got is Folsom Festival Swole Alex Jones is the omega level giga brain genius who has meticulously orchestrated literally everything across the Warcraft universe since shortly after the dawn of existence with a stoic and grumpy disposition, alongside his much more charismatic and melodramatic Dorian Grey Dracula brother who apparently/allegedly serves him.

It is, sadly, under no circumstances, in no way, a story of opportunism and luck.

As much as we want it to be, that’s a very dishonest spin born from last remaining copium to justify the writers.

15 Likes
11

Yeah, the story is terribly presented and a lot of is cut from the game, so people are not happy. Understandably so.

The Dread Lords are known to lie and anything we read or take from their word of mouth should be seen as at best a dishonest truth or lie by omission. We know the implications aren’t perfect. I just don’t think it’s the worst story ever, but it’s as bad as WoD. Maybe WoD was better? Honestly it’s been a :poop: show since the BFA pre launch event.

12

WoD was bad because the Timey Wimey crap was not received well + the narrative itself was set up for a slow burn and required them to not cut anything, which of course undermined the story as half the expansion was cut, on top of Orc Fatigue, on top of some Weird Choices regarding Orcs and Draenei.

Shadowlands is bad because it doesn’t make sense from a metaphysics basis (aka How Does This Work And Why Is It So), from a motivations of characters basis (aka Why Are These People Doing This, What Is The History), from a teleological basis (aka What Is This Story Supposed To Be Saying, What Am I Supposed To Be Walking Away With), and undermined pre-existing lore (and our attachment to the world thereby) by tying far too many characters to Diet Sauron Lucifer Thanos in the body of Folsom Swole Alex Jones via recontextualization and at least one patch (possibly a patch and a half) of content was cut.

This is, unfortunately, the worst expansion WoW has had from a story basis.

Certainly looks wonderful and beautiful, to be sure.

Gowns, beautiful gowns.

4 Likes
13

You’re ignoring that if billions of souls are being fed into Revendreth and the Maw as the multiverse is wiped out by the Legion then the same is occurring in the other domains, strengthening them as well. Revendreth and the Maw do not exist in a bubble.

We can see via the people sent to each that the bulk of the cosmos is likely not to fall into the domain of either Revendreth nor the Maw. The Maw being reserved for the “irredeemable”, and Revendreth being reserved for those who were overly prideful or who outright couldn’t participate in the other domains for whatever reason.

The other domains are liable to receive the lions share of the universes souls should the entire universe be wiped out.

The issue here is that he doesn’t know that at all, he “hoped” that somebody eventually would but he could not have possibly “known” it.

And had the Burning Legion not been defeated and instead scoured the universe of life then do we know that Zovaal would have succeeded? Do we know how all of the souls being fed into the other domains (which like I said, would have likely been the lions share) would have impacted their ability to interact with his plans?

Except once again, he doesn’t know that Sargeras would overplay his hand at all, at best he hoped that he would. That hope was probably justified, but it’s still just that - hope.

Which is what people are talking about when they say that things had to fall into place for Zovaal. He didn’t actually play a tangible role in it, he hoped that a number of things would occur and they did.

The story is dumb. It does not make sense in a number of ways and it doesn’t serve any purpose. It is not satisfying at all.

Take the mechanics of the Maw for example. The implication here is that eventually Zovaal could have broken free should enough souls be fed into the Maw, that’s the whole point of the Arbiter being made inactive. On a basic level does this make sense?

Prior to us, it was explicitly stated to be inescapable and that none had ever left the Maw - thus us being heralded as “Maw Walkers”. If the Maw weakens (eventually resulting in many being able to “escape” it as they have in Shadowlands - including Zovaal himself) the more souls that are fed into it and those souls never return from the Maw in order to rejoin the cycle of life through the likes of Ardenweald then Zovaal’s entire plan is pointless. Had he just displayed patience, as you said, then eventually he would have escaped with no chance for anybody to interfere.

Not only that, but it all means that the function of the Maw itself was broken from the start. Why would the Maw even be made with the flaw that should too many souls be sent to it it’d eventually “break”? Isn’t that its entire purpose? To house all of the “irredeemable” souls? Did the First Ones just not consider the fact that if you have this domain that souls can’t naturally leave designed to house said souls that over time it would accrue those souls? Because that’s pretty apparent.

Once again, if “patience” was the virtue here then Zovaal wouldn’t have bothered with any plans at all. The very system of the Maw was apparently broken from the start and eventually the Maw would have overloaded itself with souls due to the very way that it functions.

“Patience” would be Zovaal simply waiting until the Maw overloaded itself naturally. Plans can go wrong, letting things take their natural course to an inescapable end result that saw Zovaal’s plan come to fruition can’t. Hell, if mass amounts of souls aren’t being fed into the Shadowlands through the likes of the Burning Legion then the other domains aren’t even building power like Zovaal is in the Maw because souls of the other domains can eventually rejoin the cycle of life. Whereas those in the Maw were “forever” trapped there.

The issue isn’t just how the story was presented. The issue was also that Zovaal was retroactively inserted into around a decade worth of lore.

To do that successfully they needed to put a lot of thought/care into how it would work and how the old lore could be properly integrated into this big “plan”. If you carelessly insert something into prior lore then you’re going to cause issues. They pretty clearly did not put the thought needed into it all and so many of their players are left entirely disillusioned with this story.

To say “they just don’t understand” is disingenuous.

3 Likes
14

This is why I like Savathun from Destiny as a manipulator. I mean her main plan so far is to get rid of her worm. A bargain she made when she was young and has since regretted it. However the only people who can remove her worm without killing her… are people who want her dead. So she set a series of events that would lead to a taken curse over the Dreaming City. The catalyst of this curse was the death of Riven via a wish Savathun made with the Ahamkara. Whom was taken by Oryx following the battle of Saturn in Destiny 1.

Savathun had no involvement with her brothers plans but she played his death to her advantage. Using the taken Axis mind Quiria (whom was given to her by Oryx) to create the curse and just sit back and let Riven find a way to get herself killed by the Guardians hands. Which is the storyline of Forsaken.

However something later happened that allowed Savathun to use as another bargaining chip. A close friend of Queen Mara Sov (the person who can remove Savathuns worm) was rendered lightless by Xivu Araths High Celebrate (Xivu Arath being the 3rd of the Hive God siblings). Savathun “saved” Orisis and took on his shape (form / appearance) and helped the Vanguard deal with the High Celebrate. While hiding from Xivu as she (Savathun) is now wanted by the Darkness for trying to stop the Darkness from communicating with the player in Season of Arrivals. She also used her position of being “Orisis” to try and act as a “friend” to the Vanguard. By helping them make an uneasy alliance with the rebuilt Cabal Empire. Whom lost their homeworld to Xivu Arath. Then used Quiria to trap the Last City into an endless night simply to expose traitors within the cities walls. While also bringing in the Fallen House, House of Light into the city and help with the endless night.

So now she has the curse of the dreaming city and Orisis’s life to make a deal with Mara. Remove my worm, while protecting me from Xivu Arath’s forces and I will undo the curse on your city and I will release Orisis from my Throne World.

The story is set up in such a way that the Orisis part of her plan was pure improv. She was hiding from her vengeful sister and just took advantage of the situation that unfolded in front of her. The Curse on the Dreaming City was the plan she made sure succeeded. And with Witch Queen being announced we know that her worm does get removed and she manages to take the Light for herself. Creating Hive Lightbearers.

She also got her Crown of Sorrow back from the Cabal via us. We investigate a Cabal ship and found it. “Orisis” said he will get a team to retrieve the crown. She attempted to use the crown to corrupt Emperor Calus. However, Calus gave it to one of his subjects instead. So not everything Savathun does goes to plan. But she does use events to her advantage to try and recover from those losses. She was the one that allowed Xivu Arath to invade the Cabal homeworld. Hoping that would remove the bounty on her head. But these were just side projects. They were not vital to her main scheme.

2 Likes
15

That’s the implication and it’s more or less correct. Given millions of years and as an immortal technically he has the time for it, but his overall goal is to remake the universe and the machine of death. (Why? I still don’t understand other than he thinks its flawed)

He has waited eons and probably would have waited many eons more, but he has another trait - the Opportunist. He waits, but if events can change then he can expedite his plan. That’s something they don’t explain. He just says, “THIS WAS INEVITABLE” or “CAN YOU IMAGINE HOW MANY EONS I HAVE WAITED?” We don’t understand the reasoning behind his statement. In game we just have to guess and listen carefully to statements between the lines.

That’s the implication from the attendants and those in Oribos, but we’ve learned Sylvanas was the first or at least as far as we’ve been told. The problem with this narrative is that we don’t know and they don’t give us information. I get the frustration because the “Patient villain” is also now the “Opportunist villain” but that’s badly represented story since he’s supposed to be a patient yet opportunist villain yet we don’t really get that feeling from our interactions with him. His voice, his dialogues, his actions they just seem vague and we feel indifferent or worse due to the story’s handling.

Yeah that’s difficult pill to swallow.

16

Which is odd, because the Maw was designed as the “final destination” for the unsalvageable. That the amount of souls present within it is does anything at all seems a bit strange, because by the nature of its design it will accrue souls over its existence. It seems a pretty obvious and crucial flaw in design.

Had there not been the whole “nobody escapes the Maw” stuff and the Maw was instead essentially just a worse Revendreth without the implication that none had escaped prior to Sylvanas then it wouldn’t be an issue because the implication would be that over time the souls inside of the Maw are also redeemed and eventually leave it.

It’s soo simple to frame as well, instead of having everybody lose their minds because you’re a Maw Walker and nobody escapes the Maw - just have them talk about how long it’s been since they last saw anybody leave the Maw. That bears the implication that something has changed and the Maw is no longer operating as it once was, that Zovaal himself was “stockpiling” souls in the Maw akin to Denathrius in Revendreth by disallowing them from leaving. Then “Maw Walker” is more a reference to our ability to circumvent the Jailer’s control within the Maw by being able to leave against his will.

The issue is that we have very little context for this “long game” outside of being told all the things he played a role in. We can ascertain through the Sargeras situation that at the very least the plan has been in place for a very long time.

In the case of Zovaal, he really could have used some dialogue either directly from himself or about him through his followers that really highlighted how many broken threads he’d had to follow before eventually this one arose. Instead the context we’ve been given by the Nathrezim seems to paint Zovaal in the light of a master manipulator and not an opportunist. Even the “Enemy Infiltration” book essentially goes on about how easy most of the cosmic forces are to manipulate and how solid the hold of the Nathrezim has on all bar the Void which they consider to be the force worth approaching with caution.

A few lines in that about the number of plots they have going and how most will fail but only a handful need succeed in the end would have gone a long way.

It’s not that the “patient” and “opportunistic” villain don’t mesh, they do. It’s that the framing we have in the story is all over the place.

The patient and opportunistic villain makes the most sense in the context of everything, there’s no denying that. However, the game seems more intent on framing him as a manipulator. We’re told far more often of his grand scheming than we are any failures of which the only ones we’re really aware of currently are the LK and the Nathrezim who were caught by the Light - which raises its own questions, like the fact that the Light still ended up infiltrated all the same despite having assaulted Revendreth because of the Nathrezim previously having been caught attempting to inflitrate them. The “Infiltrator” book mentions that if the Light thinks its converted one of the Nathrezim they’d trust them implicitly, but why would they ever trust a group that had previously been caught attempting to deceive them and even if they did why would they not still hold that Nathrezim at arms length in caution? Trust is notoriously hard to rebuild once broken, if a group was caught deceiving to manipulate before then it would take a monumental amount of work to convince anybody that anything coming out of said group moving forward is not also a deceit. Is every cosmic force besides Death just absolutely incompetent?

I’d agree that most of what Zovaal does/says is vague nothingness, but we have had him and his plans contextualised a bit through some of his followers. The issue is that he’s often framed as the master controller in such. Of course you could say “the likes of the Nathrezim serve Zovaal so they’re going to praise him and not bring up the failures” - which is okay from an in-world perspective, I can somewhat agree. However, from a narrative perspective if Zovaal wasn’t supposed to be a “mastermind” then we needed more context showing that and if you’re going to provide a lot of that context through the likes of the Nathrezim then you needed to have them provide details that highlighted the way that you wanted Zovaal to be seen. Meaning that if he was supposed to be seen as a patient opportunist then you needed more showing that.

Because outside of the Nathrezim that angered the light at some point, the only failures we’ve been given for Zovaal are linked with our specific “thread”. We’re as much as told through the “Infiltrator” book that the manipulation of the cosmic forces went largely without much issue. Now what that actually means is anybody’s guess as we haven’t been given much in the way of details and that’s an issue.

I’m confused by the lack of care that they’ve shown regarding it. Surely surely they were aware that retroactively inserting him into lore that people had grown with over the past 10+ years was going to be a tricky path to tread. These are characters and events that people have grown attached to over the course of years and you’re now telling them that their understanding of them (the understanding that you had provided previously) is incorrect.

Care needed to be taken to ensure that the previous lore wasn’t cheapened, which includes properly framing how Zovaal fits into it all.

The more I look at it the more it feels like Zovaal is not a properly fleshed out character at all. That it’s not just a matter of Blizz wanting to keep a sense of “mystery” but that they never actually plotted out his motives and storyline in the first place. His lack of personality on-screen, the lack of consistency in his portrayal (which swings wildly between master manipulator and patient opportunist), the lack of overall understanding we’ve received despite being in the home stretch of the expansion that he’s been headlining - all reeks of an overall lack of direction for the character.

As a result we’ve ended up with a bland and boring character as one of the main villains of the WoW universe - because he simply never actually had any “character” to begin with.

1 Like
17

Zovaal is a lucky bad planner with plot armor to rival Sylvanas’

18

While I get where Taliesin’s coming at, the problem still arises that there is no avenue for a remotely comparable “Plan B, C, D” and so-forth that could have been pursued. Two fundamental underlying premises in WarCraft for a while now have been that Azeroth is unique and (with Argus’ death) quite possibly the last world-soul in existence. That immediately makes Azeroth and Argus the only mechanisms in the entire universe by which the Arbiter can be disabled and Zovaal’s plan to remake existence fueled. Pulling a million “threads” becomes irrelevant because we know that those are all worthless threads, and without the surety of Azeroth and Argus no plan he tries could have ever even begun to succeed because no matter else was done, that “cork” in the Maw would remain in place and the Jailer trapped. A barrier that evidently required the soul of a titan to do away with - something not easy (and as things stand, not perhaps possible) to just replace.

Moreover, it hinges upon this idea that Zovaal could be actively involved in orchestrating the plans, when until the Arbiter was disabled and souls funneled to the Maw, he was still stuck in Torghast and cut off from the outside universe beyond being able to whisper to whoever was Lich King. If he could regularly chat with Denathrius and through him coordinate the dreadlords, then that needs to be clearly established as part of revealing his involvement in literally the entire history of WarCraft.

Otherwise the whole coin-flipping analogy is undone, because the parallel to Zovaal’s imprisonment until only recently would amount to the person tossing the coin actually sitting blindfolded with their ears stopped up while the coin flips itself, never being told what any of the outcomes to any of the flips were and never even being told if what he was tossing was actually a until finally the redired results occurred and magically removed the blindfold and earplugs, followed by the coin itself telling him that he’d finally gotten ten heads in a row.

See, we’re told that until the recent events, nothing was escaping the Maw. For Zovaal to be actively plotting anything, there would have to be back-and-forth between not only the Maw and the rest of the Shadowlands, but also between the Maw and the living world. The former of which would be detectable by the denizens of Oribos, and the latter of which was supposed to be impossible until Sylvanas shattered the veil.

For any of this to actually add up, they’d have to retcon extremely recent lore by revealing that the Maw was never really a prison at all and Zovaal’s allies were regularly leaving there and coming back all the time to keep him involved in the plan, basically making everyone important on his side a Maw Walker.

So when it comes down to it, the only way any of it works is if none of this is really his plan at all. It’s all been the dreadlords’ plans, because they’re the only ones who can actually run around between the different planes of existence making things happen while reacting to changes in circumstances. As things stand Zovaal would have been basically blind to anything not going on inside the head of whoever wore the Helm of Domination. Patient planning is meaningless to someone who can’t actually do something with the plans they concoct with the unlimited time at their disposal. At best, Zovaal would have just sat in Torghast blindly hoping his allies on the outside could eventually come up with a means of someday setting him free.

To this day it remains unexplained how the Jailer had the Helm of Domination and Frostmourne made from the plans in the Primus’ mind when for him to walking around free, the events of Legion had to have already happened? Are we to believe “time working differently” in the Shadowlands literally means there is no such things as “before” or “after” and the Vessels of Domination were somehow created after they already existed? That time is such a meaningless concept that Zovaal himself somehow escaped before he escaped?

At this point I’m just hoping Zovaal turns out to be one more harbinger of cosmic Armageddon that the dreadlords had “on tap” and ready to be sprung in the event that the Legion’s march of universal annihilation was stopped, “mechanically” tied to the Legion’s defeat itself and with other such agencies ready to be triggered if he fails as well. It just plain makes more sense for it to all be their plans toward some bigger goal of existential ruin because they’re actually “out there” in the universe aware of what’s going on and able to act upon it, while Zovaal wasn’t really supposed to be functionally capable of involving himself in anything beyond the reach of his own chains until relatively recently.