Midnight 12.X Patches & World Soul Saga Speculation Thread

[Nightmare Queen]

What's more curious to me is the Bwonsamdi iconography going on here in this image, which certainly suggests we will see him, if not the Zandalari by and large come 12.1.

Do the Amani worship Bwonsamdi though?

[Dvalin]

Keep in mind that some assets could be WIP/placeholder.

Anyway, wasn't that imagery not used in the Maisara Caverns dungeon?

[Nymrohd]

These last few pages have been quite a read. The Amani stuff is much much much more interesting to me than anything Elf-related, which was actually kinda putting me off the main campaign til now.

To be fair, I don't think we've made any real effort to talk through the side quests and world building in Quel'thalas. It's true that the main questline through the zone is annoying, mostly because it is inane to have a half-elf that while not 100% Alliance clearly is not a Horde character escort you through the zone and the second NPC is Umbric . . . but there are plenty of sidequests and I am sure plenty of interactibles and details around the zone and we will probably talk a lot more about them once Midnight is live.

[Cheezits]

Power "from a source lost to us" sounds suspiciously like Fel power that was outlawed or restricted (hence Demonaics) by the Zandalari before the power could be reclaimed by the Amani. Maybe we'll finally be getting Demonaic lore which was missing from BFA?

The Bwonsamdi temple is probably a reference to how he had followers among the original migrants to Zul'Aman, hence why it's built on Atal'Utek.

[Sondrelk]

Do the Amani worship Bwonsamdi though?

Bwonsamdi seems to be a generic loa to everyone, with only the Darkspear (and later the Zandalari during BfA) treating him like a primary deity. All the others seems to venerate him as the generic Loa of Death he is.

[Hitei]

How can I fail to account for something I myself said the page before you contributed?

By seemingly still not understanding that Loa, Wild Gods or not, are not a rigid structure in which things like "domains" meaningfully exist. So the whole line of speculation on "what sort of domain could get her forbidden" is inherently flawed.

The trolls are not overly concerned with what the thematic space of any Loa's power set encompasses. As first pointed out, they run the gamut. It does not matter to them that Hakkar is called the "Loa of Blood" or that Shadra is the "Loa of Subterfuge" these are not meaningful categorization of their capabilities or the blessings they offer or their benevolence-malignance alignment. They are almost solely just titles. Hakkar is as much about snakes as he is about blood, but he also isn't any more "the Loa of Snakes" than Sethraliss, who is the Loa of Snakes, or Sseratus, who was the Loa of Snakes, or Tharanja and Quetz'lun who were also just sepertine Loa.

The point is that your whole framing here was likely wrong. You've noted that the Troll worship bad things and then gone "oh so she must be really bad, like the Loa of Turning Small Children Inside Out", when trolls do not particularly care about what a Loa is a Loa of and it's much more likely that her circumstances are built on the her fundamental nature as an entity making her more involved than just talking to a discount wild god, or the initial events of her summoning making it so that a repeat was a big or unwanted ask. That she was something special and irregular, not just an especially evil-powered snake wild god.

The "epistemological, evidentiary" derived explanation here is that she's first and foremost a Loa of Venom. Because the the island features corroding green muck front and center and little else and the island is also called the Isle of Fangs, the thing that snakes use to deliver venom. The fact that she required some secret unknown technique to summon, provided an army, and that the method to bringing her for was lost all pretty clearly suggest she ISN'T a regular Wild God because Wild Gods are a dime a dozen and the Amani have like eight other ones that they casually chat with all the time and talking to a Wild God or asking it for a blessing is a simplistic ritual that involves just making an offering, closing your eyes and going "Hey, Wild God, DM me." We have seen it done on multiple occasions. So she is probably something other than that if they didn't and don't know how to entreat her and also write about her in terms different from the exceptionally familiar Loa that they are very practiced at talking to and worshipping.

[JDBlou]

By seemingly still not understanding that Loa, Wild Gods or not, are not a rigid structure in which things like "domains" meaningfully exist. So the whole line of speculation on "what sort of domain could get her forbidden" is inherently flawed.

The trolls are not overly concerned with what the thematic space of any Loa's power set encompasses. As first pointed out, they run the gamut. It does not matter to them that Hakkar is called the "Loa of Blood" or that Shadra is the "Loa of Subterfuge" these are not meaningful categorization of their capabilities or the blessings they offer or their benevolence-malignance alignment. They are almost solely just titles. Hakkar is as much about snakes as he is about blood, but he also isn't any more "the Loa of Snakes" than Sethraliss, who is the Loa of Snakes, or Sseratus, who was the Loa of Snakes, or Tharanja and Quetz'lun who were also just sepertine Loa.

The point is that your whole framing here was likely wrong. You've noted that the Troll worship bad things and then gone "oh so she must be really bad, like the Loa of Turning Small Children Inside Out", when trolls do not particularly care about what a Loa is a Loa of and it's much more likely that her circumstances are built on the her fundamental nature as an entity making her more involved than just talking to a discount wild god, or the initial events of her summoning making it so that a repeat was a big or unwanted ask. That she was something special and irregular, not just an especially evil-powered snake wild god.

The "epistemological, evidentiary" derived explanation here is that she's first and foremost a Loa of Venom. Because the the island features corroding green muck front and center and little else and the island is also called the Isle of Fangs, the thing that snakes use to deliver venom. The fact that she required some secret unknown technique to summon, provided an army, and that the method to bringing her for was lost all pretty clearly suggest she ISN'T a regular Wild God because Wild Gods are a dime a dozen and the Amani have like eight other ones that they casually chat with all the time and talking to a Wild God or asking it for a blessing is a simplistic ritual that involves just making an offering, closing your eyes and going "Hey, Wild God, DM me." We have seen it done on multiple occasions. So she is probably something other than that if they didn't and don't know how to entreat her and also write about her in terms different from the exceptionally familiar Loa that they are very practiced at talking to and worshipping.

I think we're talking past each other. I'm not asking what's her domain title as the be all and end all' - I'm asking: what is her fundamental nature that makes her uniquely suppressed, and how might a certain domain figure into that?

And you'd do well to notice I was at using the domain trend to try suss out what makes her so different that we don't even get a domain, much less a name in the tablets of Amani history.

Domains are a useful frame of reference because you can infer from one of a god's many domains something of their character/personality, it acts as a lens or a heuristic.

Take Poseidon for example. God of the seas, storms, and earthquakes so we know he's a big kahuna, likely tempestuous in attitude, wrathful in vengeance and being a sea-faring people, that's a large spot to fill on a pantheon, after all you don't get to be ruler of the oceans by twiddling your thumbs. But I didn't mention the other notable domain: horses, which Poseidon is credited with creating but that sort of domain, doesn't feel particularly useful to the discussion of what Ula'tek is fundamentally like.

You've actually reinforced my question: if she's NOT a regular Wild God , requires special summoning techniques, and her method of contact was deliberately lost - that suggests something about her NATURE (not her domain title) is uniquely problematic. Whether you call her 'Loa of Venom' or not, the question remains: why is THIS potential non-Wild-God entity memory-holed when other dangerous non-Wild-Gods (Mueh'zala) get documented? What about her fundamental being makes even her successful alliance with the Amani something to suppress?

Does her continued favour demand too high a price? Is she imprisoned beneath the island? Is she dead, and bleeding rivers of poison ichor onto the surface of Atal'utek? Is she hibernating, still recovering from that battle some 15 000 years ago? Did she fall out of memory because she's keeping Kith'ix imprisoned, locked in an eternal stalemate by constricting him?

That's not purely a domain question - it's an ontological one. What IS she, and why is that dangerous to acknowledge? Because she's inherently apocalyptically dangerous? Or because what's she's imprisoning is inherently apocalyptically dangerous?

[whoisqnx]

Do you guys prefer playing through the campaign in Beta so you can no-life rush the levelling once it's released?

I have done this in TWW and also doing it in Midnight Beta. I read absolutely everything regarding the main campaign on Beta and once early access is out, I no-life rush to max. I kinda skip the side quests, I usually do those a bit later into the first patch but I take those slow, like one side questline per day or something.

[Jaggler]

I personally don't level during beta or run any new content. Most of my time is testing builds on dummies and the reworked seasonal dungeons and reporting issues i run into

[Nymrohd]

I personally don't level during beta or run any new content. Most of my time is testing builds on dummies and the reworked seasonal dungeons and reporting issues i run into

I do the main campaign to get an idea of the story on a character that I won't level early. Then especially now with early access I can take my time leveling, reading all the quest text and doing all the side quests.

[KyleEverett]

The lost power is more likely in my eyes to be the same being that powered Craishae. Same region, same lost origins.

[Auxis]

The lost power is more likely in my eyes to be the same being that powered Craishae. Same region, same lost origins.

And the poison/whatever it is a red herring (like, it's indicative of something being there, but it's not the same thing as the power that helped the Amani)?

[KyleEverett]

I don't think Ula'tek is lost, she's a known Loa, and poison is a common Troll tactic to this day.

[Jaggler]

I don't think Ula'tek is lost, she's a known Loa, and poison is a common Troll tactic to this day.

Thing is, we barely know anything about her. Almost all the information we have of her is from the non-canon RPG books and it is indeeed very weird that there is both a power preventing people to go to Atal'Utek and there being no mention of that apparently very powerful and central loa outside of the Isle.

[Foolicious]

Anyone else drawing paralells between atal'utek and rhuidean from wheel of time?

[Pyrophax]

Anyone else drawing paralells between atal'utek and rhuidean from wheel of time?

I see some serious WoT fans joined WoW dev team. With Arathi Empire are definetly not Seanchan Empire, Arator is definetly not temu-Rand Al'thor with twin dragon tattos, who seek forgotten power of man masculinity. I wouldn't be surprised atal'utek and rhuidean similarities.
We also need gambler dude with knowledge of some forgotten languages (Dagran II?) and dude speaking with wolves from Emerald Dream (Durak - first orc druid?).
Jaina can be Nynaeve, she even have braid. All we need is some sassy old dude for her love interest and bitchy student with god complex.

[Limayria]

The lost power is more likely in my eyes to be the same being that powered Craishae. Same region, same lost origins.

I think this is actually gonna end up in epl related to lights hope and whatever is going on there, especially considering that the arator quest sends us down into the pally order hall down there and specifically mentions that one guy got left there when the sunwell summoned everyone (maxwell i think?) and we see the scourge are still attacking lights hope

[Auxis]

I think this is actually gonna end up in epl related to lights hope and whatever is going on there, especially considering that the arator quest sends us down into the pally order hall down there and specifically mentions that one guy got left there when the sunwell summoned everyone (maxwell i think?) and we see the scourge are still attacking lights hope

Is it mentioned if Light's Hope is holy ground BECAUSE of the catacombs below it, or if it was already holy ground before they moved all of the exhumed paladins there?

[Nymrohd]

I really, really want EPL as a patch zone but I just don't see it happening. If it was planned, why delay it for a patch instead of delaying Harandar, especially considering they have quests in LHC

[Jaggler]

I think this is actually gonna end up in epl related to lights hope and whatever is going on there, especially considering that the arator quest sends us down into the pally order hall down there and specifically mentions that one guy got left there when the sunwell summoned everyone (maxwell i think?) and we see the scourge are still attacking lights hope

Zul'jan, the Amani Paladin of Ula'tek

I really, really want EPL as a patch zone but I just don't see it happening. If it was planned, why delay it for a patch instead of delaying Harandar, especially considering they have quests in LHC

yeah atm i think we'll go Sunwell -> Atal'Utek -> Worldcore, from what we have seen so far. I have a bit of a hard time think about how a Light-focused EPL patch would set us up for the Titan connection for TLT.