The ultimate timeline of Shadowlands is a little odd. While it happened relatively early in the campaign, there was a good period in the Kyrian campaign in which Devos is chilling out at Elysian Hold, and everyone's wondering who is leading the Forsworn, despite the fact that we players had been clearing Spires of Ascension for weeks at that point.
Oddly, there's also a world quest in Maldraxxus whose intro speech by Draka spoils not only some major developments of the story in that zone, but also the reveal of a secret villain who's been pulling strings all this time.
Because this is literally a post about spoilers, obviously, here's a cut:
So let's start with that Maldraxxus world quest. You sometimes get one that sends you to disrupt the House of Rituals, one of the two traitor houses (or three? I mean, I guess with Vyraz taking over the House of the Chosen that makes it a traitor house too,) this one being the one that's all about spellcasters, and is thus home to Liches. While Gharmal, the Margrave of the House of Constructs, has already fallen in the Kyrian and Necrolord campaigns (though oddly, it seems, while it's clearly the same event - and involves many of the same quests - the Kyrians do it a week earlier) the stuff Draka says is that we are to assist Margrave Sin'dane in routing Kel'thuzad's forces.
This before Kel'thuzad's presence in this expansion was even revealed.
Obviously, the return of KT is a big deal, and gives us another potential end raid boss for some future raid (possibly the first "tier" raid of the expansion, to the extent that that still has meaning) but it's also easy to gloss over that we seem to be helping Sin'dane - I suppose she defects to our side?
I'm not caught up on the Night Fae or Necrolord stories (I'm only human) but the world quest has been popping up for weeks, another example of Shadowlands sort of letting its story spill out.
This week, the Venthyr campaign basically treats the story as if the Castle Nathria raid is over, which... as someone who's really only been able to run LFR and is just barely starting to get the guild (that was basically inactive for most of BFA) going again, feels a little soon. (I'm also given to understand that Denathrius isn't quite dead at the end, despite what some people in these quests say.)
The point is, the Venthyr quests involve Kael'thas Sunstrider, liberated from Castle Nathria where they were basically burdening him with other peoples' sins to overload him with anima and make him some kind of weapon. The Accuser takes Kael'thas and tries to A: fix that problem and B: start him on the road to atonement, like any other soul in Revendreth.
Kael'thas is directed to help you investigate some of Renethal's enemies, and the two of you discover that they're wielding Maldraxxi weapons. Eventually, you find out that there's an enclave of House of Rituals folks working in Revendreth, and when you and Kael'thas take out their leader, a lich, she reveals that she's working for the Archlich, Kel'thuzad.
Which, I've got to say, really ranks old KT up pretty high. After all, Kel'thuzad was the first lich we saw in the Warcraft cosmos, but not, it would seem, the first ever, and certainly not the first that Maldraxxus has seen.
In the original Naxxramas (the level 60 version... oh wait, that doesn't mean what it used to mean) players could take Kel'thuzad's phylactery to Father Inigo Montoy at Light's Hope Chapel, where he said he would work with the Argent Dawn to destroy it so that Kel'thuzad couldn't come back. Of course, in Wrath, Alliance questers discovered that Montoy betrayed the Argent Dawn and helped Kel'thuzad return, and became a lich himself in the process. This helped explain the return of Naxxramas (behind the scenes, the real reason was that Blizzard had made a very cool raid that about 1% of players actually got to see in Vanilla.)
But there was no equivalent quest in Wrath - perhaps KT had learned a valuable lesson in not carrying his phylactery around (a real novice move for a lich). As such, it's always seemed inevitable that Kel'thuzad should return at some point.
And yet, in the 12 years since Naxxramas-80 came out, we hadn't really heard a peep.
EXCEPT! There's a quest chain in Spires of Arak from Warlords of Draenor in which we find that Admiral Taylor's garrison there has been wiped out, all its inhabitants left as ghosts. We discover that Ephial, one of Taylor's lieutenants, was secretly a necromancer. We fight him, and while we defeat him, we never discover anything about his unseen "master."
Now, at the time, I had a few theories, including alternate-universe-Ner'zhul, given that Ner'zhul in our time became the first Lich King and showed a capability for necromancy in our encounter with him in Shadowmoon Burial Grounds (even if his source of power was clearly the Void). But now I feel far more confident that it was Kel'thuzad all along.
This raises some questions.
As far as we know, the Lich King was not explicitly aware of the Jailer or the Maw, regardless of which of the three people to be the Lich King were. Sylvanas saw herself drifting toward what we assume is the Maw, but was rescued by the Val'kyr that helped her raise new Forsaken.
Yet at some point, we believe during her brief period of death, she made a deal with the Jailer, which set her on her current path.
Kel'thuzad was, I believe, originally conceived by Blizzard as a sort of evil Merlin figure (Arthas clearly as Arthur, Frostmourne as his evil Excalibur) and as such was a sort of mentor figure to Arthas as he rose as a death knight and later the Lich King. It's clear that Kel'thuzad knew a whole lot about Necromancy, but I think we generally assumed (and let's be honest, Blizzard probably intended when writing him originally) that his loyalties were to the Lich King - first Ner'zhul, and then Arthas.
Are we, then, to learn that Kel'thuzad has been with the Jailer all along? Or perhaps his connection to him came later. This is, of course, also assuming that Kel'thuzad is on Team Jailer.
This creates an irony, which is that Sylvanas and Kel'thuzad would be on the same team, even though the former held the latter in nothing but contempt - remember that the entire reason Arthas invaded Quel'thalas was to use the Sunwell to bring Kel'thuzad back as a lich (hey, isn't his phylactery Terenas' burial urn?)
We also still have not yet gotten to the connection to the Burning Legion - that would be something way too big to ret-con away, though I'm beginning to suspect that we might find that the Jailer & Co left the Helm of Domination and Frostmourne conveniently for Kil'jaeden to find - at least until Blizzard gets way more explicit about the Denathrius/Nathrezim conneciton.
What's kind of funny is that Kel'thuzad showing up in the Shadowlands actually could have happened even if his phylactery had been destroyed - we know that undead like Alexandros Mograine go there when they are destroyed, and are apparently judged more on what they did when they had free will than what they did in undeath.
But that then raises another question: why did Sylvanas see the Maw when she first (well, second) died? She had done some real nasty things at that point, but surely nothing worse than Garrosh or Kael'thas, two characters we know went to Revendreth. Did the Jailer have his eye on her already? And if so, why?
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