#afterlives revendreth spoilers

LIVE

I was doing the Broken Shore scenario on one of my alts and the first demon I fought had some dialogue i never noticed before now. Dread Commander Arganoth is sent by the Legion to fight us but he has some rather interesting dialogue. He says “The Master will reward me for your souls” and “Your souls will fuel the soul forge.” wondering why a Legion demon would be talking about The Forge of Souls (a wing of Icecrown) got me to revisit this dungeon and I’m glad I did. Especially on today when the Revendreth Afterlives launched and the imagery is still fresh in my mind.

I was hoping to work on other lore posts but this ended up being the rabbit hole I fell down and I don’t even know if I want to come back out.

So what is the Forge of Souls?

It was essentially the place where all souls stolen from Frsotmourne were kept, where Cult of the Damned cultists tortured them and drained them of their essence which we now know is anima.

You quickly encounter this group if cultists ‘harvesting’ a tortured soul. It’s important to note that after Arthas was defeated the Cult of the Damned did not follow Bolvar, they became a shadow organization which didn’t do much of anything, were only vaguely hinted at in Legion because they had the Book of Medivh, which Gul’dan later stole. The fact that they even had the book of Medivh for such a long amount of time is a lore post itself, It’s safe to assume that the Cult of the Damned because of this has greater insight into the cosmic forces at large.

This didn’t seem all that important twelve years ago but since this imagery was fresh in my mind it stood out as a very important parallels.

They don’t just ‘harvest’ souls for anima in Revendreth, Ner’zul was harvesting them for himself or for a Master. You see when The Burning Legion promised Gul’dan power to betray Ner’Zul and trap him in the role of the Lich King to become Death’s Jailer, Ner’zul was promised that if he purged Azeroth of all life he would be rewarded with eternal life. That would be a lot of anima feed to his mysterious “Master”

It has become increasingly clear after that Revendreth Afterlives short that atonement is not truly what Sira Denathruis is seeking from his charges. He is draining them of anima because he too has a mysterious Master, which may or may not be the Jailer. It’s probably the Jailer but I digress I think the real Master of the Scourge is Yogg-Saron.

With the lore revelations found in the Prologue of the Inflitration book, which is located in Revendreth in the part of Castle Nathria connected to the Dreadlords it’s safe to assume that the Dreadlords were not working for the Burning Legion at all but used the Legion as a means to an end to acquire more anima for their Master.

The origins of Icecrown are becoming more and more clear. remembering that the San’layn are featured in the Icecrown raid I went upstairs to see if there was more lore to be had about who the San’layn are really working for.

This also explains why the Lich King had those vials of Sylvanas’s blood which he took from her as she was dying, he wanted some of her anima for the Forge. The origins of the San’layn are they were the heroes of the Third War, when Illidan and Kael’thas teamed up on a failed mission to destroy the Lich King prior to the events of Wrath of the Lich King, The Lich King raised these fallen blood elves as Darkfallen. If you remain idol for too long in the room before you kill the Shadow Council without music you can hear Blood Queen Lana’thel sing the Lament of the Highborne. This will be interesting as we delve more into Kael’thas’s trials in Revendreth. Kael’thas did have Sylvanas’s ring on him as a loot drop in Tempest Keep and he did accept the San’layn’s promise for power in Magister’s Terrece, so there is more to that story than we previously thought.

It seems like we may be asked to revisit the Forge of Souls in the Shadowlands pre-patch. The Cult of the Damned make a re-appearance in the pre-patch of Shadowlands. Secret plots from Battle for Azeroth are being unraveled.

In the pre-patch quest titled Secrets in the Shadows it seems that we are lead to Icecrown to see what the Cult of the Damned are up to. The cult of the Damned did not follow Bolvar after Arthas’s Fall, they most likely still followed Kel’thuzad who was secretly working with the Venthyr, the Jailer, the Nathrezim and the Legion.

It seems like they have aligned themselves with the Jailer, no doubt there will be more lore that delves deeper into this connection and the connection of the Forge of Souls to Revendreth.