Returning to WoW after months off is reminding me how much I love to delve into the game's lore and story. Shadowlands is the highest-stakes expansion we've had, and the most cosmic in scale. In 9.1, we get a few reveals but also a few tantalizing mysteries. Let's break it down question by question.
If you haven't done the quests available as of Tuesday, beware of spoilers.
Why did Elune's power fade?
In the Battle of Ardenweald, Sylvanas leads an assault to capture the Winter Queen's sigil - one of a group of plot coupons that the Jailer needs to get something out of Korthia... I think.
While it turns out Sylvanas is a distraction, letting a body-snatched Anduin slip in and grab the sigil, the Banshee Queen actually looks like she's going to die when Tyrande slaughters her way out of the Maw, following the Jailer's forces.
(Oh yeah, we're getting to that.)
Tyrande and Sylvanas duel, but even if Sylvanas has been really exercising her smug muscles, Night Warrior Tyrande seems to be more than a match for her, breaking the chains that had bound the Lich King with ease and knocking Sylvanas out of the sky while in banshee mode like a freaking missile.
But for some reason that remains entirely a mystery (other than just giving Sylvanas a way to escape and be a raid boss,) Tyrande's power fades while she literally has her hands around Sylvanas' throat. I, for one, have been enjoying badass Tyrande (even if I'd be super worried about her if she was my friend,) and while I don't want her to kill-steal, it's also deeply frustrating to see vengeance robbed from her when she was so close.
We still don't know what Elune is, and what it would mean if she were the Winter Queen's "sister." There was nothing we saw to trigger her loss of power in that moment. Is Elune just capricious? Or was it something Tyrande did? Does Elune need Sylvanas alive?
Given that we've met both the Wild God who sired a child with her and have spoken personally with that demigod who was the product of their congress, it really seems like we ought to know more about Elune. On the other hand, Shadowlands has been built around the notion that we don't tell anyone literally anything. We could have warned the Archon about Anduin being captured, and in the Kyrian campaign it's not until Kleia drops a mortal soul off at Oribos that she learns that all souls are going to the Maw. Basically, we're really bad at our jobs, and maybe the Warcraft cosmos' biggest problem is that no one tells anyone anything.
Moving on:
How is the Jailer invading anywhere?
It was a bit of a mystery, if nothing could escape the Maw, how any Mawsworn Kyrian could venture into our world and capture Anduin, Baine, Jaina, and Thrall (I still love that they came for Tyrande and she was like "nope!") I suppose you could explain that via the rift Sylvanas tore open.
Though honestly, it seems as if the whole "The Maw cannot be escaped" thing is not nearly as hard a rule as we're initially meant to believe. Obviously Frostmourne and the Helm of Domination were smuggled out of it (presumably by the Dreadlords, which we'll get to) and handed to the Burning Legion.
But clearly something has changed, or else the Jailer would have invaded the rest of the Shadowlands a long time ago. In 9.0, it seems that almost all of the invasions were the works of forces loyal to the Jailer but from places outside the Maw. This is the first we're seeing actual Mawsworn outside of it (with the exception of those Kyrians.)
Now, we've discovered that we can bring people out of the Maw because we're Maw Walkers. And that makes me wonder: is Sylvanas a Maw Walker? Is that why the Jailer sought her out as an ally? And is she the key to allowing others to leave the Maw?
And what makes us and possibly Sylvanas a Maw Walker?
Oh Yeah, What About Nathanos?
In their duel in Ardenweald, Tyrande taunts Sylvanas, saying she'll take her head just as she took "his," referring to Nathanos. This comes as a surprise to Sylvanas, who clearly did not know that the Blightcaller was dead.
Again, no one tells anyone freaking anything in this universe! But as Tyrande tells Sylvanas that her master is keeping secrets from her, I wonder if that's a seed that might lead to some change of course for her.
But that does leave the following open: where is Nathanos' soul? Presumably it went to the Maw just like anyone else, but if the Jailer isn't telling Sylvanas that, I think we can be confident that he's keeping Nathanos locked away and out of sight - maybe to use as leverage? When we killed him for guaranteed Darkshore Warfront weapon transmogs in the pre-patch, I was sure we'd see him again, given that the expansion takes us to the afterlife. But that has yet to occur.
Dreadlords are Back, Baby!
The Dreadlords have made a return, with I think their fourth model update since vanilla (obviously with a recent one in Legion.) But the Dreadlords' allegiances have been called into question of late: thanks to the book you can sometime find in Sinfall (I haven't, but I think it's in the outdoor area everyone can access,) along with the pretty obvious aesthetic and taxonomical similarities between the "Nathrezim" and Sire Denathrius and Castle Nathria (not to mention that the Accuser literally calls Denathrius out as having once been "The Lord of Dread,") it was hinted in that very, very strong way that Blizzard tends to that those demons were going to have a part to play here.
And now, in Korthia, they finally show up, capturing the Fatescribe (possibly setting him up as a boss in Torghast?)
There's a ton to unpack with the Dreadlords, but let's run everything down:
After the retcons that made the Man'ari Eredar into a corrupted version of a humanoid race (that the Draenei are the last remnant of,) it was established that the Dreadlords were the demons who drove Sargeras to his omnicidal mission and create the Burning Legion. In Chronicle, we learned that the Dreadlords had been practicing void magic on a world corrupted by Old Gods which held a corrupted Titanic world soul, and that Sargeras actually feared the corruption of the void worse than he did the demons, hence his choice to work with them. (There's actually more lore from the Warlock green fire quests that suggests the Titans might have even employed demons in some tasks).
Anyway, the dreadlords always felt like they operated as their own separate sub-faction within the Burning Legion, and the "Scouting Report" found in Revendreth suggests that, in fact, they were never loyal to the Legion or the Old Gods, and have actually been working for Sire Denathrius this whole time, and by extension, the Jailer.
Their showing up in Korthia, sending that Fatescribe to Torghast, sure seems to confirm this.
I'm not sure how I feel about this: I don't like the idea that the Burning Legion had been played for chumps. The cosmos of Warcraft is expanding enormously, and while that's mostly fun for the lore, I don't want them to retroactively make the earlier iconic villains of the franchise less cool in the process.
I will note that the one Dreadlord you fight in Korthia in that quest does, in fact, have the "demon" creature type. As far as I can tell, this is the first demon we've actually seen in the expansion other than Warlock pets and Demon Hunters in metamorphosis mode.
What I want to know is what the Nathrezim truly are. Does being a demon inherently mean you've got Fel energy coursing through you? I remember noting earlier that the Maw is basically the Warcraft version of hell, which makes it ironic that none of the monsters there are demons. The Nathrezim do look a bit like the Stoneborn, whose gargoyle-inspired looks are not dissimilar to the Dreadlords' classic demonic look. Might they actually be some variant of Stoneborn?
I believe Tichondrius was (is? We killed him on the material plane) the leader of the Nathrezim within the Burning Legion. What does that mean, then, in relation to Sire Denathrius?
Indeed, what exactly did Denathrius seek to gain by allying with the Jailer? And are the Nathrezim his servants, or is he one of their number? And to whom do their loyalties truly lie?
We're two days into a patch that the developers are saying is going to have huge consequences for the Warcraft cosmos (though I don't think we're going to get the full story until we finish the raid, which is weeks away and longer for those of us who mainly raid via LFR.)
Anyway, it's good to have some new headscratchers.
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