I'll confess I was hoping for Oribos, the city at the center of the Shadowlands, to be weirder. Admittedly, it does seem to be on a tower suspended above an infinite skyscape where the locals are strange beings that seem to be floating masks and clothes without any real body in them, so maybe my expectations were too high.
We know that the story of the Shadowlands expansion will be all about how the mechanism of death is broken. The way it's supposed to work, and how it apparently had worked prior to Sylvanas' swan dive off of Icecrown Citadel a decade or so ago, was that the soul of a dead person anywhere in the physical universe (though I also wonder if this happens to demons who die in the Twisting Nether, like Kil'jaeden, or elementals who die on their respective planes, like Ragnaros) is sent to Oribos, where they are judged by the Arbiter, who determines which realm of the Shadowlands they should go to. There is an untold number of these realms, and each is designed for different types of souls (I'd hope that souls can hop between them in normal times, given how unlikely any of your loved ones would be to wind up in the same realm as you).
While not necessarily pleasant, these realms are typically meant to be the proper place for a person to go, serving as a mostly good afterlife. Revendreth, one of the realms we'll be visiting, is more of a purgatorial stop on a soul's journey, though like any of them, a soul that finds they're well suited to the realm might choose to stay and join the ranks of the vampiric Venthyr.
The Maw, however, seems to be exceptional. The Maw is the ultimate dumping ground for the worst, most worthless souls. Those who are so tainted by evil are sent here, and the rest of the Shadowlands is just thankful to be rid of them. There, they are tormented by the Jailer for all eternity.
The problem, as it's revealed in Oribos, is that it seems the Arbiter has been silent since the crisis began. The massive stream of souls that flows past her in Oribos simply travels onward, going to the Maw, where absolutely everyone - good or evil - is damned.
Not only is this horrific for the souls experiencing this (think about any NPC who has died since the end of Wrath - Cairne, Varian, Rastakhan, etc. - but it has also disrupted the economy of the afterlife. Souls carry with them some sort of life force to the Shadowlands called Anima (something we saw the Mogu manipulating in Throne of Thunder). While the soul seems separate from this Anima, the Anima provides fuel to all the magic in the Shadowlands, and seems to be crucial to keeping its various systems working.
Now, however, if all the souls are going to the Maw, presumably the Anima is as well, which could easily be the motivation for breaking things like this. Perhaps the Jailer has pulled off the ultimate Anima heist by hacking the mechanism of death.
What we don't know is practically anything about the Jailer. The model we've seen of him looks mostly humanoid, even human-like, though he seems to be very large (initially I saw screenshots that depicted him as about four times larger than N'zoth as he appears in the final boss fight, though I've seen others that shrink him down.
It seems that the Jailer is likely the primary prisoner of the Maw, but what cosmic deed he performed to deserve such a fate is anyone's guess. Indeed, I had initially thought that we might have a big twist - that the Jailer is actually the one who is being wronged, and that it's the Arbiter who is behind all this evil. But if that's the case, it'll take a lot more backstory to explain how she could have planned to be put out of commission like this.
Oribos is known to be a place where soul-brokers meet to trade. I'm curious how this intersects with the Arbiter's instant judgments. I could imagine that they arrange for exchanges of Anima between the realms, even if the souls are sent where they need to go. Alternatively, perhaps this system has been broken long before the current crisis.
The following might be a little more spoilery, so I'll put in behind a cut:
Bastion, one of the four leveling zones, is an idyllic, literally heavenly place where the angelic Kyrians live. There's clearly a strong implication that the Kyrians are the form that the Val'kyr have been made to imitate, and I actually now wonder if the entity in the Shadowlands Odyn made his deal with to learn how to make the first Val'kyr was not some sinister and dark figure, but could have been someone among the Kyrians.
In Bastion, we apparently encounter problems that are blamed on the Forsworn, a faction of Kyrians who are opposed to the general way that things are run. The Forsworn look very dark and creepy - like fallen angels with black wings. And it's something of a shock when we realize that Uther the Lightbringer is one of them.
However, Uther explains (or maybe a different NPC) that, to become a full-fledged Kyrian, you need to abandon your identity as you had in life. Kyrians start completely anew, and I believe it's implied that, regardless of your form in life, you'll look like one of these winged blue humans (I think one Kyrian used to be a Tauren.) Uther did not want to abandon all that he was and forget his life to become a full-fledged Kyrian, and thus took the Forsworn path.
Naturally, I think it makes sense for there to be problems in each of these realms for us to solve. We already know that Sire Denathrius, the leader of the Venthyr, winds up being in league with the Jailer and serves as the final boss of the first raid, Castle Nathria.
Still, the ultimate trajectory of the expansion remains distinctly hard to predict.
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