Afterlife judgement of the Forsaken / Death Knights

[Karrde]

First of all. New account cause I tried to reset my old password and the link just takes me to the mmo forum main page. Old name is Ardac. Not a lot of post, mostly a reader.

Second, actual lore question. I know lore can and has changed and let's ignore our own general dislike for characters.

So on to the topic....

Another death brings another soul to Bastion for judgment, unlike others that have lived with their own choices (good or bad) you are now flooded with souls that seem to be tainted and scared. Among these would be the forsaken, Sylvanas, Arthas, the death knights, and more. Some, he pre forsaken undead for certain had no free will with the idea being they were simply undead husk. But back in wraith we went undercover as a ghoul and interacted with other ghouls and whatnot.

So, assuming lore is what is above. Should these souls be judged based on their actual first death and who they were in that life or their altered existence?
Arthas in the afterlife video is one example, Sylvanas is another. Both can be seen as heroes in life (Arthas was going mad at the end yes), but in undeath did truly evil things.

This isn't a question for how the game will handle them as much is how would you personally handle them if you were their judge in the afterlife. The names don't matter, I know Sylvanas gets a lot of love / hate. For this simply look at the person she was in life vs death.

[Aucald]

This is more speculation than lore-based canon, given that we don't really know how that works yet, but I would imagine it varies considerably. Factors would include whether or not the undead being had its own will, and if so, what it did with that will when all was said and done. Sylvanas, for example, shouldn't in my view be held to account for actions while her will was enslaved to Arthas and/or the Lich King - she had no choice in her own actions and therefore isn't responsible for them from an ethical standpoint. The same would be true for lesser undead like ghouls, geists, or normal banshees whose minds and wills were enthralled to the hive-mind of the Scourge. Now, upon regaining her independence and free will to act, the pendulum starts to shift in the other direction - a free-willed undead being starts to gain more and more essential responsibility for what they do. There are mitigating factors, I feel, in that such a being is probably wracked by traumas and deeply effected by its time enslaved to the Scourge; but those factors can only go so far toward justifying certain actions.

This is probably where the Arbiter's judgement really becomes somewhat subjective, to some degree; determining how much true will-to-self such an entity had and whether or not it could arguably stop itself from being evil or malicious. Arthas (in both Death Knight and Lich King incarnations) is another interesting case-study in free will, undeath, and the ethics surrounding ultimate judgment. How much free will did Arthas have once Frostmourne had claimed his soul? He stated he wasn't able to feel anymore as a Death Knight, which makes it impossible for a normal person to make ethical decisions. As Lich King he was subject to the compulsions and influence of the Helm of Domination, and was a part of the Scourge hive-mind himself (albeit also in control of it). How much free will did he have to act as himself? Do you judge him for both his actions as a Human and as a Death Knight/Lich King, and if so to what degree for the latter?

That's some pretty strong philosophic brew, and I find myself doubtful we'll get real answers in the lore any time soon.

[Soon-TM]

An interesting question, OP. While I'm not sure about DKs, who were pretty much mind controlled by the LK, and even after that they are conditioned to inflict pain just for the sake of it, Forsaken should be judged only by what they did in their natural life.

Why? Because we learned in Before the Storm that Forsaken weren't actually wicked sociopaths who gathered all sorts of poisons and toxins and fed them to their prisoners. They weren't tragic, callous survivors of Arthas' massacres, or people otherwise forcibly risen, but who had nevertheless decided to serve Sylvanas of their own accord . They weren't a bunch of paranoid, vengeful zombies who were hated by their enemies and barely tolerated by their allies.

Instead, they were just poor souls oppressed by Sylvanas and her caricature of a police state, they were actually good people who only wanted to hug their living relatives under the God King's benevolent gaze.

[Karrde]

Aucald - I doubt we will get answers on this as well, but the GM/Story Teller in me always loves to brainstorm stuff like this.

My theory, based on what I know and mentioned by both of you is that they should only be judged on actual life itself. Out of game, blizzard has mentioned that the forsaken can't be paladins because the light hurts them, I meant that makes sense from a lore standpoint because they are undead. Not from a gameplay standpoint where there can already be a priest. But that suggests that they are now just cut off from the light.

During the Voss / Zelling story I believe, Zelling is warned that his desire to stay alive in undeath may sound like the perfect answer to him. In time undeath will perverse and change him. My headcanon on this is just how their brains like their bodies must be slowly rotting away on top of being exposed to life as a forsaken as Soon-TM mentioned.

Thanks for the feedback / opinions.

[Raisei]

As @Aucald said, I think the question depends on free will.

Many Undead are just tools and their master should bear the responsibility and guild for their acts. This includes the Scourge with some exceptions, the Death Knights before they were freed and Sylvanas before she got free from Arthas.

However, a free-willed undead that chooses to commit more atrocities should be judged for them. Sylvanas is very much responsible for what she did, the plague experiments, Wrathgate, Teldrassil and all the other crimes.

The Death Knights tend to try to attone for their crimes under Arthas (though the Legion campaign was kind of a setback... not sure why Bolvar would want that...), so they should be judged on that.

[Nerovar]

I think it would be inconsequential for Undead to get off scot free even if they had no free-will because of the simple fact that Undead are unnatural beings that shouldn't really exist and the process of creating Undead taints the soul itself. So while they don't really need to "atone" they certainly have to be purified in some way (like Alexandros Mograine's soul who could only be purified and redeemed by his son's sacrifice).

[BrintoSFJ]

First of all. New account cause I tried to reset my old password and the link just takes me to the mmo forum main page. Old name is Ardac. Not a lot of post, mostly a reader.

Second, actual lore question. I know lore can and has changed and let's ignore our own general dislike for characters.

So on to the topic....

Another death brings another soul to Bastion for judgment, unlike others that have lived with their own choices (good or bad) you are now flooded with souls that seem to be tainted and scared. Among these would be the forsaken, Sylvanas, Arthas, the death knights, and more. Some, he pre forsaken undead for certain had no free will with the idea being they were simply undead husk. But back in wraith we went undercover as a ghoul and interacted with other ghouls and whatnot.

So, assuming lore is what is above. Should these souls be judged based on their actual first death and who they were in that life or their altered existence?
Arthas in the afterlife video is one example, Sylvanas is another. Both can be seen as heroes in life (Arthas was going mad at the end yes), but in undeath did truly evil things.

This isn't a question for how the game will handle them as much is how would you personally handle them if you were their judge in the afterlife. The names don't matter, I know Sylvanas gets a lot of love / hate. For this simply look at the person she was in life vs death.

Sylvanas is in complete control of her action, she is not completely dead, her soul is twisted and then forced into her body. Her soul can be considered intact and never went to Shadowlands. On the other hand, Arthas' soul was sucked into the Frostmourne and then when the Frostmourne shattered, his soul finally managed to escape. He had finally died and was taken to Shadowlands by a misguided paragon who manipulated Uther to condemn Arthas to eternal damnation without being judged.

All souls that committed horrendous sins in life are sent to Ravendrath to suffer torment and accept that they committed sins in life and continue the punishment until they are rid of their sins. Refuse to acknowledge their sins and they are sent to the Maw for their eternal damnation. Arthas was not given that chance by Devos. If she brought him before the Arbiter for judgment, it was highly likely that Arbiter would have seen his true self and maybe would have even decided that he actually deserve a position among Kyrians. Devos did not want that, she took the matter into her own hands because she believes that the system is flawed.

Judging by the ending of WoTLK and now the Afterlives episode 1, it is clear that Arthas was never in control but he was being controlled, either directly by the Jailer or by one of Jailer's underlings. If it were not for him resisting the control, all the lives of Azeorth would have already become food for the Jailer.

[Karrde]

Sylvanas is in complete control of her action, she is not completely dead, her soul is twisted and then forced into her body. Her soul can be considered intact and never went to Shadowlands.

See but that is exactly the point. Her soul was taken, twisted, and forced back into her body. She wasn't given the freedom to go into the afterlife.

After reading what you said and considering it, I have to wonder if all the undead (forsaken, ghouls, DKs, etc) wouldn't be bound for Ravendrath to basically prove to repent for what they did in undeath.

[Caerule]

The honest answer is that we currently don't know for sure how they are judged, because we only have two examples in Arthas and Sylvanas, and we don't know if they were judged by the Arbiter, or just delivered straight into the maw. In Arthas' case, I am guessing the latter. If Arthas had been judged for the Maw by the Arbiter, it would take away the Vengeance aspect for Devos and the struggle for justice versus compassion that Uther experiences. At that point, it would just be Duty. With Devos breaking the rules to ascend Uther before his time, I believe they broke the rules here too. Similarly, the Valkyr may have brought Sylvanas straight to the Maw, for the Jailer's scheme.

So, we don't know how Forsaken are judged. But we know that the raising process darkens the soul. And from Uther's wound, it seems souls are not repaired when they are sent to the afterlife. While those being mind-controlled into unwilling actions, are probably not judged for those actions, as their soul tried to resist them, I don't see how they would escape judgement for actions taken willingly, after being raised. Their Forsaken state would be the nature of their soul now.

[BrintoSFJ]

See but that is exactly the point. Her soul was taken, twisted, and forced back into her body. She wasn't given the freedom to go into the afterlife.

After reading what you said and considering it, I have to wonder if all the undead (forsaken, ghouls, DKs, etc) wouldn't be bound for Ravendrath to basically prove to repent for what they did in undeath.

All souls who committed heinous crimes and sins are sent to Ravendrath first. Nobody is directly sent to the Maw. Everyone is given a chance to repent. Currently that is not happening.

As for Sylvanas, she was completely free of Frostmourne's control. Her soul was taken into the Frostmourne and then immediately afterwards turned into a banshee without any self control. A lot later, she gained her freedom when Lich King began to weaken. She has a full soul, it is changed to suit her circumstances but a full sou nonthelessl. Her soul is like the soul of those who die and then are sent to Bastion or Night Fae or Maldraxxus or Ravendrath. The whole undead magic came from Shadowlands. Frostmourne had a mini dimension of Torghast inside it. It is like this, they are all in the form they would be in Shadowlands after death but they were allowed to stay in living world.

As for forsaken, they were raised by Valkyris the same way Kyrians take souls. And then they were given a sort of freedom. But yes, being undead is not freedom at all. No matter how we look at it, it is unnatural existence that should never have existed in living worlds.

Those ghouls and skeletons and abomination however just have a very very small portion of soul into them just so they can function. So their previous lives are already in Shadowlands. You can see it in Kyrian questline where we go to pick up Ben. He died and his body became a zombie but his real soul is still being taken to Shadowlands.

[Thage]

We don't know, but logically, if you as an undead are just vibing and doing your thing, you'll probably be judged the same as any other soul when you meet the Arbiter. She may have some cross words for you delaying your visit as long as you did, but undeath itself doesn't seem like a guaranteed sentence to Revendreth or the Maw, unlike in, say, Pathfinder's canon setting where Pharasma will make your afterlife suck if you're undead and willingly remain such.

Mindless undead in particular, I think, would get a complete pass on the matter. It's hard to make a conscious decision to delay your soul from judgment when your mental vocabulary is limited to, "Yes, master." or some permutation thereof. Death Knights probably get a ticket to Revendreth since they're hard-coded by the process involved in raising them to feel bloodlust they have to sate, lest they go mad and begin killing the closest thing.

Undead holy and discipline priests probably almost unanimously end up in Bastion given their dedication to service and self-sacrifice.

[Traveler Voltin]

Based on sylvanas seeing a happy afterlife after being killed in WC3, i am going to say her soul was never taken by frostmourne.

[shade076]

Isn't there a major issue with the afterlife of all undead now? If you were killed by the plague spent three days dead, on the third day resurrected into the scourge, wouldn't you have spent three days in the shadowlands (prior to a necro rebinding your soul to your corpse)? In my understanding the undead should have all been sorted already - during that period they spend in between death and undeath.

If anyone can clear this up for me I'd appreciate it, but I'm having a feeling that blizzard will ignore this.

[NED funded]

This is more speculation than lore-based canon, given that we don't really know how that works yet, but I would imagine it varies considerably. Factors would include whether or not the undead being had its own will, and if so, what it did with that will when all was said and done. Sylvanas, for example, shouldn't in my view be held to account for actions while her will was enslaved to Arthas and/or the Lich King - she had no choice in her own actions and therefore isn't responsible for them from an ethical standpoint. The same would be true for lesser undead like ghouls, geists, or normal banshees whose minds and wills were enthralled to the hive-mind of the Scourge. Now, upon regaining her independence and free will to act, the pendulum starts to shift in the other direction - a free-willed undead being starts to gain more and more essential responsibility for what they do. There are mitigating factors, I feel, in that such a being is probably wracked by traumas and deeply effected by its time enslaved to the Scourge; but those factors can only go so far toward justifying certain actions.

This is probably where the Arbiter's judgement really becomes somewhat subjective, to some degree; determining how much true will-to-self such an entity had and whether or not it could arguably stop itself from being evil or malicious. Arthas (in both Death Knight and Lich King incarnations) is another interesting case-study in free will, undeath, and the ethics surrounding ultimate judgment. How much free will did Arthas have once Frostmourne had claimed his soul? He stated he wasn't able to feel anymore as a Death Knight, which makes it impossible for a normal person to make ethical decisions. As Lich King he was subject to the compulsions and influence of the Helm of Domination, and was a part of the Scourge hive-mind himself (albeit also in control of it). How much free will did he have to act as himself? Do you judge him for both his actions as a Human and as a Death Knight/Lich King, and if so to what degree for the latter?

That's some pretty strong philosophic brew, and I find myself doubtful we'll get real answers in the lore any time soon.

Something to add here and I dont know if it also applies to regular undead but DK literally HAVE to kill else they go insane

[Dancaris]

I think that Arbiter judges your soul and not actions. If you can massacre nations or not. If someone give you authority to do so, what will you do? If you just a mercenary that kills to survive, maybe countless creatures and species, but not pleased to do so, you can go to some "normal" dimensions without tortures.
But if you were farmer, but love to kill kittens and birds just for fun , and you have no problems with mass massacre nations, but not with your hands - you go to the Maw.

[Razion]

The important factor I believe here is agency and free will.
It was an important story beat when the Forsaken were able to break free from the Lich King's will and were able to be themselves again and were no longer forced to do evil deeds. Some Forsaken probably spend their entire lives atoning for what they did and trying to live decent, simple lives away from the persecution of those who would see them as monsters. I wouldn't expect a Cockroach Salesman to deserve eternal damnation - that would just be cruel.

So, if the Shadowlands is meant to be a fair and just afterlife, which we can probably infer with how Revendreth and the Maw punish evil and how Bastion and Ardenweald seem to glorify the good, then we can probably assume that as long as the Arbiter has a good set of motivations or directives with the Purpose/Path - we should in theory be able to assume that if the Forsaken were judged by the Arbiter that they would have judged them based on the strength of their character and their deeds when they had agency and free will - not for the actions of villains who striped that away from them.

[RCA]

Get what you're saying dude, do we judge the soul now multiple time since they were brought to undead unfairly, even makes you wonder if anyone witnessed souls being pulled back into the world of living (which opens up the fragments of souls now, them not being wholly speculation). Long story short I wouldn't think too much into it.

I feel like with this expansion and their given answers it just opened up a can of million more questions.

I also feel like the afterlife would be an enormous airport line, just waiting and waiting for your judgement and quattuordecillion of souls before and after you...