Hello everyone!
As I was thinking of ways and angles to get people up to speed on what they might have
missed with the storyt of the shadowlands, ultimately the best course of action seems
to be just doing the story of the jailer.
Talk about his history, his motives, his plans and how that echoed throughout the story of
warcraft.
It’s anyones guess if or when the events from the shadowlands will actually make an
impact on the overall story again....but it is still part of the story so lets get into
it!
|”beyond the veil lies darkness where every soul has its place.”
The jailer as well as the other eternal ones, the ones we know being...the primus, the winterqueen,
the archon and the sire, were created in Zereth Mortis.
This is a domain created by the first ones to act as their workshop, to create these
eternal beings and to create more afterlives for the shadowlands.
The first ones themselves are still quite a mystery and a lot of information is either
biased or speculative.
They’re seemingly responsible for the creation of the warcraft universe if not the ordering
of it.
With their design also comes a pattern, a purpose if you will... a predestined plan.
It might seem insane to have a force out there able to predict and potentialy manipulate
our stories, our heroes and villains but we have seen a really clear moment ingame in
which the designs of the first ones came to be.
“The sacred words tell us...the waystones would respond only to certain living mortals.
The ones destined to save the realms of death.
The mawwalker.
Let the prophecy be fullfilled.
IF it is the way of the first ones, this waystone will open to you mortal.
The sacred words spoke of your coming.
Blessed be the first ones.”
They were able to predict that at some point in time maw walkers were going to show up
in the shadowlands to stop Zovaals plans and they placed stones at precise locations which
these prophesised mawwalkers could use to escape and move their troops around.
You might argue that the stones were just randomly dropped in multiple places as like
a failsafe, but then one has to wonder...why do so in a place like the maw, a place where
no soul is supposed to escape.
Or a place like Zereth mortis, where none is supposed to go.
The fates have been read, people knew we were going to come.
Better yet, perhaps we should ask ourselves that if the first ones were able to predict
that we were going to need these waystones to stand up against zovaal....then why did
they let zovaal happen to begin with...
It’s a good question.
Speaking of...what exactly happened with zovaal since this is his story after all.
Well, he didnt start out as the jailer imprisoned within the maw.
His original design was to perform the rol of the Arbiter.
He judged the souls that arrived within the Shadowlands.
In an instant he would know the entirety of their existence.
And time after time, do you know what he saw?
Fragile beings left to the fickle whims of fate.
Their world, their kin; whether they were wise or simple, hale or sickly; these things
were forced upon them.
From the moment they drew their first breath until they exhaled their last, the choice
was never theirs.
“From our first breath to our last every decision is made for us.
Then the afterlife deicdes whaat eternity we must endure.
We cant even choose who we...”
And when their lives ended, it was his duty to decide their souls fate for all eternity.
Sending them off to whatever domain they belonged.
“YOu have betrayed your duty as Arbiter.
And shall be bound forevermore.
YOur madness has threatened the cycle of life and death entire.
YOu could have sought another way brother.
Imagien what we could have accomplished together.
WHy zovaal?
What drove you to this end?
You preserve that which is doomed.
A cosmos divided will not survive...
what is to come.”
Along the way he saw something that shook him to his core, that made him believe that
the designs of his makers, the designs of the first ones were flawed.
They were just preserving that which was doomed and a cosmos divided would not survive what
is to come.
What exactly did the jailer see, what is coming and why did he not just openly discuss this
with his fellow eternal ones or has he perhaps done so and did they just never tell us?
Who knows, again those are some good questions.
Regardless, Zovaal decided to take action and struck out at his fellow eternal ones
to take their sigils and open a path to Zereth Mortis to get to the sepulcher of the first
ones and rewrite the rules of the universe.
The others didn’t take kindly to that and under the leadership of the primus managed
to overpower zovaal.
Strip him off his arbiter powers which they used to make a new, more robotic arbiter while
zovaal was locked away within the maw.
Upon his body was placed domination magic, a creation of the primus to contain their
brother.
Over time though, Zovaal managed to turn his chains into a weapon and he became not just
the prisoner but also lord of the maw.
Hellbend on breaking free and fullfill his quest....he got to work and from here on out
pretty much caused the story of Warcraft to happen.
Manipulate events so that it would all come together in his liberation and reaching the
sepulcher.
That might seem like an impossible task, who could predict years and years and years of
events...well...
It seems like they’ve given him similar powers of prediction as they did with the
first ones.
A good example comes from the sylvanas novel.
As he’s working to get her on his team, he predicts some events that are to come.
1.
A fiery darkness will return.
– the burning legion attacking Azeroth, but a prediction vague enough to apply to
multiple things.
2.
You must step out of the shadows and lead – The words voljin spoke to her.
Impressive that he was able to forsee voljins death, but assasinations are not that hard
to plan and the words were wispered to voljin.
but then he goes on to say: 3.
A blade will pierce the heart of the world, and 4.
you shall hold the blood from that wound and sense its power.
He’s talking about the ending of Legion in which the dark titan Sargeras stabbed Azeroth,
wounding the world and eventually have the world race for all that delicious Azerite.
He’s very specific in his prediction aswell.
Sargeras did not slice the world in half, even though he tried, he wanted to destroy
it but he only managed to stab it as he was pulled back in time.
A prediction like that is in my opinion too specific to just be a random stab in the dark
or like the whispers of illgynoth, something that could apply to many different situations.
So how does one defeat an enemy that’s able to predict the future like that?
That’s a good question.
“THis place is of no consequence.
The sepulcher will soon be within reach...
Mawsworn, come.”
Either way, seemingly with the power to predict events that have not yet come to pass our
boy Zovaal went to work.
Recruiting allies to move his pieces across the board.
Most prominantly there was Sire Denathrius and his creation...the dreadlords.
They would play a critical rol with infiltrating the different cosmic domains and causing trouble.
For example, they caused havoc in the domain of order by stoking the mad titan’s fear
of the Void.
The fear that pushed Sargeras into forming his demonic Burning Legion and scour the universe
of its dark corruption.
Meaning that any story which originally had the Burning Legion at its source has now added
the jailer to its tail end.
Then, as Sargeras was raging at how long it took for his fallen demons to wake in the
Twisting Nether, it was the dreadlords that told him they could forge a resurrection engine
that would make his armies rise again in an instant.
All they required was the necessary fuel – the soul of a world infused with the power of
Death.
So it was that Sargeras enslaved the world soul Argus and the dreadlords went to work.
“A world soul twited by death.
A maul by which to crush the arbiter.
ANd now it shall take this vessel!
Argus will be eternal!”
Normally the shadowlands is reserved for mortal souls and beings like the titans would go
elsewhere.
However, pumping it full of death magics made it so that millenia later, when we defeated
Argus, its soul shot off into the Shadowlands.
The big influx of a titanic soul being too much for the arbiter to handle and then all
the souls instantly flowed down into the maw, fueling the jailers plans.
Denathrius was not his only ally, far from it.
We also saw Helya, Muehzalah, Devos, Valkyr and Sylvanas Windrunner.
By the time that she threw herself from the top of icecrown after claiming vengance upon
Arthas, she ended up in the maw, in the jailers domain and suffered eternal torment.
It was by his command that she was given a moments rest, a moment in which they talked.
He wanted her to join his side, not as a slave or servant but as a partner.
The motivation used to join his side is a bit mixed.
For example, part of it wasthe choice of either working with him or suffering more torment.
Part of it was agreeing to the idea that the designs of the first ones are bullshit.
Part of it, and a big part of it was that the sorting of the afterlife was done indiscriminatly
and without taking into account the bonds forged in life.
Meaning that someone like windrunner, even if she wasnt sorted into the maw, could still
be sorted into an afterlife away from the rest of her departed family.
A lot of people wondered where Durotan, draka’s mate and thralls father was hanging out.
THis seems to be playing into that, the seperation of the shadowlands being a reason to tear
it all down.
“Were breaking a system that has always been flawed and remaking it into one that
is just.”
All in all, the sylvanas novel does a pretty good job at selling the idea as to why sylvanas
would work together with the one responsible for the lich king.
It would have been great if that motivation was also explained in game.
Even the Jailers motivations of going against his creators designs are not without merrit.
One could wonder if the jailer was actually right, but ultimately as Anduin puts it best...
his motives might have been right, his methods certainly werent.
“Look around you at what and who you joined.
WHat makes you believe your not just a weapon to achieve his ends?”
Which is perhaps why it’s so odd that after all is said and done.
After all of the jailers plans came together and ofcourse ultimately failed.
After we closed the book on his story and supposedly 20 years of storytelling.... that
nothing in the shadowlands or the grand design really changed.
Pelagos replaces the broker arbiter with a mindset of souls need a chance at redemption
rather then be send to the maw which is nice, but doesn’t touch the whole pattern of the
first ones nor the unfairness of life or the seperation of loved ones or being put to work
in the afterlife.
Everything just kinda goes back to the way it was.
We close the door behind us and we’re going to focus our attention on dragons which at
the end of the day...might just be for the best.
From Firim, a broker that has done extensive research into zereth mortis and the first
ones:
Every new discovery in Zereth Mortis drew me back to the mysteries of the First Ones.
I sought to
Though the Jailer has been defeated and the Shadowlands made whole again, I find myself
unable to celebrate these victories.
For I have studied the inner workings of the Sepulcher.
Seen the powers with which the Jailer sought to remake reality.
And these observations fill me with a fear that shakes the very core of my being.
It is clear to me now that there must be a Zereth for each force of the cosmos, and within
them, an inner sanctum akin to the Sepulcher.
And if that is true, then these sanctums must be connected on some fundamental level; a
connection that the Jailer sought to exploit.
What he began in the Sepulcher was meant to cascade outward from one Zereth to the next,
until all were dominated by his power.
The heart of the Shadowlands acting as a doorway to the heart of each cosmic force in turn,
one after another bound to his will.
But if his scheme was thwarted, then why is my mind so ill at ease?
Because I have seen how fragile the pattern is.
How delicate the scales that keep the six forces in balance.
And if the Jailer, in his act of malevolence, left behind but the most imperceptible of
cracks in that pattern, then I fear what is tiny now will only grow, until the balance
itself is prone to be shattered by another force applying relentless pressure.
I pray that the First Ones anticipated such an eventuality.
That they would leave measures in place to preserve their grand design.
Unless...
Unless their design was never meant to endure.
And that... that is the possibility that haunts me.
“do you see the patterns, the fractuls?
Im so close to understanding...oh hello.”
For those curious on what happened to characters like sylvanas tyrande or anduin or just what
events have been changed by the shadowlands going forward..Ill cover that in a seperate
video so yea hope you enjoyed it everybody.
If you’re looking for me in other places on the internet just look for nobbel87.
I stream on twitch, have a second youtube channel, run instagram, twitter, facebook
discord, maybe even tiktok?
Basically everything that people living on the internet have.
Links to that are in the description down below.
Subscribe if you like my videos, leave a like if you enjoyed this one aaand until next time...see
ya!