When we came to Howling Fjord in Wrath of the Lich King, the local Vrykul had pledged themselves to the Lich King, swearing fealty to king of the dead, referring to him as the Death God. In addition to fighting on his behalf, the most ambitious of the Vrykul fought in honor duels presided over by the Val'kyr in the hopes of being elevated and allowed to join the ranks of the Ymirjar, who were given a place of honor within Icecrown itself. Those who failed in these contests were raised instead as Var'gul, rotting Vrykul zombies without the great strength of the empowered Ymirjar.
At the time, we had very little point of reference for all these ideas. As far as we knew, the Val'kyr were wholly a creation of the Lich King - a way for him to take a divine place within the Vrykul culture. Ironically, a culture that had vehemently rejected humans as malformed pygmy offspring now looked to an undead human as their god.
When we encountered the Tideskorn Vrykul of Stormheim, we suddenly got a lot of context for this ritual and tradition. Odyn, one of the Titan Keepers, who had originally held the position of Prime Designate, making him the very top of the Titanforged hierarchy, had balked at Tyr's suggestion that they empower the original dragons to protect the world, instead seeking to use Titanforged beings as Azeroth's safeguard.
Odyn sought a way to return the most valorous warriors from death so that they could continue to serve and protect the world. In order to do that, he journeyed to the land of the dead - the Shadowlands. It was there that he sacrificed his eye to "an entity," who taught him how to create the Val'kyr. The first of these was Odyn's adopted daughter Helya, a gifted (titanforged - this was pre-curse of flesh) vrykul sorceress who had aided Ra-Den in creating the Elemental Planes.
The greatest champions among the Vrykul would be retrieved from the Shadowlands by the Val'kyr and within the Halls of Valor, Odyn would create new, perfect metallic "Stormforged" bodies for them, naming them Valarjar. We would likely have seen a lot more of these guys except that Helya had been transformed against her will, and became bitterly (and I'd say justifiably) furious at her "father," and so sealed him and his Stormforged away.
So it would seem that the Lich King had corrupted the Valarjar ritual, exploiting a perhaps dimly remembered Vrykul cultural tradition to supplant Odyn as a figure of reverence among the Winterskorn in Northrend.
But what if it's the other way around?
There's one massive piece of the puzzle that is missing from this whole story, and that is the following: What was the entity in the Shadowlands to whom Odyn sacrificed his eye?
We know very little about the Shadowlands. Unlike, say, the Twisting Nether or the Void, the Shadowlands seem to be just outside of ordinary reality - a kind of dark reflection of the Emerald Dream. It's not the Nightmare, though. The Nightmare existed within the Dream, not as a reflection of it. But where the Dream was a realm of life, the Shadowlands are a place of cold death.
The only class that has any ability that explicitly refers to the Shadowlands is the Death Knight (Wraith Walk, specifically.) Death Knights also visit the Shadowlands during their early quests when they get their Acherus Deathcharger mount.
While I believe pretty strongly that players go to the Shadowlands every time they die and go into "ghost" form, that still hasn't been a great opportunity to explore the lore of that realm.
It's also possible, but never stated explicitly, that Helheim is within the Shadowlands.
Likewise, there are a handful of quests in which players enter a shadowy realm of death that is probably the Shadowlands (specifically, Alliance players go into a spirit realm in Howling Fjord that seems under control of the Lich King, and Horde do something similar in Dragonblight. There's also a couple quests in Azshara and perhaps only the pre-Cataclysm Tanaris.)
But none has answered who that entity might be. Helya could, until we killed her, be considered a major power within the Shadowlands, but this entity would have to have existed before hand, as it was only through the knowledge that Odyn gained from it that he was able to make Helya into a Val'kyr in the first place.
One candidate who stands out is Yogg-Saron. YS has been referred to as the God of Death, and the tentacles that Helya sprouts are very Old-God-esque (to the marine biologists, yes I know that they're technically arms, but you know, octopus-style ones.) And Yogg-Saron would certainly want to corrupt Odyn or his followers.
But why, then, are the other Val'kyr not similarly corrupted in a physical way? We know that Helya teamed up with Loken at some point, which is where you might see Yogg-Saron's influence introduced, and it's also possible that not everything with octopus suckers is necessarily related to the Old Gods.
The possibility that I like to advocate is that this entity would one day become the Lich King - that Kil'jaeden did not create the Lich King, but rather constructed a form for it that was more easily controlled.
This would explain a few things: first of all, that the Lich King as an entity seems to exist independent of which "person" is filling the role. Ner'zhul, Arthas, and Bolvar have all been Lich King at one point or another, but there's a consistency to the entity's behavior. Yes, Bolvar isn't launching a fullscale assault on the world, but Arthas didn't for a while either. Ner'zhul even helped (indirectly) win the Third War for Azeroth. The Scourge is decidedly lawful evil rather than chaotic evil - they want to win in the longterm, not just sow the seeds of destruction at all times.
It could also explain the "there must always be a Lich King" warning we received. The appearance of Uther and later Terenas telling us to preserve the Lich King after we defeated Arthas has always been fairly suspicious. But if it's not just a lie that we swallowed without question, it might be because the "Lich King" entity Kil'jaeden crafted is actually a really useful prison for an entity that would spell certain death to everyone now that it has been loosed upon the material plane.
Imagine, for example, that if the Helm of Domination were destroyed, a vast cloud of darkness would expand outward from it, sweeping across the planet, killing everything it touched until the whole of Azeroth was just dead. If that's the Scourge "running rampant," then you bet your ass I'd want there to still be a Lich King.
The Lich King is such a new thing (the third war was only what, ten or fifteen years ago in-game?) that the notion that there "must always be" one seems odd - unless the act of creating the Lich King was a far more destructive act than we had thought.
If the thing that is now the Lich King was an incredibly powerful entity that had been safely sequestered away in the Shadowlands until Kil'jaeden ripped it out of there, then we really can't be safe from it unless it is returned there.
From a meta-perspective, it would also really help Blizzard to establish new cosmic-level threats. With the Burning Legion truly ended (note that demons can still be a thing, just no Legion,) that puts all the pressure of Warcraft villainy on the Old Gods and the Void (which are two pieces of the same threat.) Having the Death God exist separate from the Void would give them somewhere to go after we kill, say, N'zoth, without immediately sending us to fight the Void.
It would also fit in with the cosmic chart at the beginning of Chronicle, where Death, its associated magic of Necromancy, and its associated entities of "Undead" would truly sit on an even level with the other primal forces.
What we need to do to build up to that, though, is to really explore the Shadowlands as a realm.
Given that we're likely seeing Sylvanas stepping up to a larger role in the next expansion (ask me again tomorrow, after it's announced) the mechanics of undeath and the realm of the Shadowlands seem like an important area for Blizzard to expand on its lore. And as someone who has always loved the Scourge, the Forsaken, and Death Knights, I'm all for it!
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