Shadowlands Questions

I've written here before, I think, about the disappointment I felt when Chronicle Volume III came out and there was no mention specifically about the Lich King actually being an entity out of the Shadowlands - not created by Kil'jaeden, but taken and used by him.

The book simply said that he made the armor, stuck Ner'zhul's spirit in there, and set him to work. Given that the Scourge are my favorite Warcraft villains, it felt underwhelming for them to simply remain a byproduct of the Burning Legion - just another failed scheme by the demons.

So I was very happy to hear that that lore is, in fact, getting expanded upon in Shadowlands. Sure, Kil'jaeden might have bound Ner'zhul to that armor, but even if he did make it, he had to go to the Shadowlands to do so.

We got some lore with the announcement of the expansion, but it's very fragmentary and thin - I think we're going to get much bigger stuff revealed some time early next year as the beta comes near.

We know that there is a major evil called the Jailor (or Jailer, if you prefer that spelling.) He seems to be malevolent, and he has pointedly been shown only in Shadow, and even appears to be bound by chains similar to the ones that Sylvanas used against Bolvar in their fight. I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that, while these chains might bind him, they also represent his own power.

Is the Jailor Mueh'zalla? I think that's possible, though it begs the question. We barely know what Mueh'zalla is, so giving the Jailer another name doesn't tell us a whole lot. It would mean that the Trolls know about him, but given that the Jailer is feared across the Shadowlands as a kind of afterlife boogeyman, it wouldn't be that hard to imagine that those who travel between the material world and the Shadowlands, such as Bwonsamdi, could spread that knowledge to mortals. His being Mueh'zalla only tells us that there's a name that people use to refer to him. That being said, it also gives him the epithet "Father of Sleep," which links him to certain Ilgynoth prophecies and also suggests a connection to, perhaps, the Emerald Dream?

Another big question that could be answered involves Odyn's eye. Much like his Norse myth equivalent, Odyn gives his eye in exchange for great knowledge, though Odyn's is specifically the necromantic magic required to create the Val'kyr. We're only told that he gave his eye to a powerful entity in the Shadowlands.

Now, we're primed to believe that such a being must be evil. After all, Odyn's a dick (a well-intentioned but egotistical, arrogant, and utterly callous dick) and this sort of bargain is usually struck with dark and evil beings (though I believe in the Norse myth it's done with the relatively benign Mimir.)

So was the Jailor the entity that he gave his eye to?

It would make some sense, except perhaps it doesn't.

The Val'kyr are, it would seem, a kind of imitation of the Kyrians. Kyrians are from Bastion, the afterlife of faithful service, and the Kyrians are basically a race of angel-people. If Val'kyr are Warcraft's Valkyries, that makes sense that they'd be connected, as Valkyries are kind of sort of a Norse equivalent for angels. While the Kyrian Covenant might be disturbed by the perversion of their system, it also seems that if Odyn were to learn how to make bootleg Kyrians, it ought to be here that he did so.

Maybe the biggest hole in all of this is that we're told that no one until us has escaped the Maw, the Jailor's domain and possibly prison. Is the Domination Forge, where Frostmourne and the Helm of Domination were created, in the Maw? If so, how did anyone get them out? And furthermore, did Sylvanas escape it first? And then, can the Jailor communicate out of it enough to make deals?

During BFA, we've heard talk about the "Hand of Valor" being some entity that even Eyir considers beyond her scope of power, and that this was what determined Vol'jin should become what he is - a Loa, maybe. Is the Hand of Valor the Arbiter? Or one of her instruments/servants?

Finally, we're told that the machinery of death is broken, and that we're at a point where every soul, whether it deserves to or not, is being sent to the Maw. Is that a new phenomenon, simply caused by Sylvanas' shattering of the Helm of Domination? Or has it been going for a while, and is the mystery of this phenomenon going to be part of the expansion's mystery?