Transcript:
Hello everyone!
Last stream, I got this question from Batiladin:
Nobbel – with the new expansion going on in the elven lands – do you think we might see a return of Kith’ix – I mean Xal’atath sucked up Zakajz in Tyr’s Tomb in Tirisfall – can he somehow be a part of Xal’atath and want to resurrect his “brother”?
And I thought that was a pretty darn good question, let’s make a video about it! But I can understand that what I just said will, for some, sound like abrakadabra. What do you mean, well…. in the past, Xal’atath, while still in the blade, had been quite active and pulled strings behind the scenes.
One of those involved an ancient released due to the Darkness at Ulduar. Here we found the imprisoned old god Yogg-Saron doing his very best to break free, manipulate his jailers, and take over the facility, managing to get his corrupting tentacles into Keeper Loken and use him to nullify the other keepers. Keeper Tyr, Archadeus, and Ironaya figured out what was going on, and while they didn’t have the forces or opportunity to clean up the prison, they could take the discs of Norgannan, which had been recording Azeroth’s true history since the coming of the Titans, and when their creators returned, they’d have proof of Lokens’ betrayal. Quickly leaving Northrend behind them, their daring journey began, and Loken lost his mind, fearing above all that he’d be found out, he’d be punished, so he released the ancient forces of Yogg-saron locked away when the Titans brought order to Azeroth. The C’thraxx called Kith’ix and Zakajs. They caught up to Tyr and his party in the area we now call Tirisfall because that’s where Tyr fell, sacrificing it all so that his friends could journey on, so that the truth could be revealed. Zakajs fell where Tyr fell, while Kith’ix managed to travel a little bit further before also succumbing to their wounds… but that would be far from the end of their stories, and all of it could very much be connected to the War Within…
The world soul so long denied me, shall be mine!
Reeling from its presence, the ancient loa inhabiting the area had buried Kith’ix beneath the earth so that no other creature would disturb it. It was the only place forbidden by the tribe’s witch doctors and priests; the loa warned the tribe’s mystics of severe consequences should they disturb the black stones. For many years, none of the trolls dared disobey. But curiosity eventually won out… curiosity and Xal’atath’s influence. While in the dagger, she led the troll Zan’do and his followers to this forbidden place and convinced them that performing blood rituals would be really cool. Great power awaited them, enough to wipe out their rivals. With his mind corrupted by the blade, the witch doctor did not hesitate. He dismembered some of his companions with the dagger, and then he used their blood and organs as reagents to awaken Kith’ix once more. In a final act, Zan’do buried his gore-stained dagger into Kith’ix’s hide, and the giant rumbled to life… Zan’do and his followers were never seen again. Trolls would later visit the site and find only scattered bones picked clean of flesh.
Kith’ix knew how to harness Xal’atath’s true potential, knew it would delight the imprisoned old gods to see this pitiful vicilization rent to ashes. The C’Thrax reached out with its mind and controlled the aqir to wipe out the trolls, but the trolls were powerful and many. Under the leadership of the Zandalari and at great cost, they managed to fight back, destroy Kithi’x, and defeat its armies, but Xal’atath would haunt the dreams of the war’s survivors until the end of their days. Many tribes would recount legends about the black blade that had nearly driven them to extinction. And where did Kithi’x fall? Oh, you know… nowhere specia,l I suppose, except… atop the site where they’d killed him, the trolls established a new settlement. It would one day grow into a sprawling temple city…a little place you know as Zul’aman…
What could go wrong building your settlement upon the corpse of a C’thrax, and that’s only one of the first line up of dominoes, of events that cascade all the way into the War Within. Fun fact, the Amani trolls living at Zul’aman would end up in a war with the newly located High elves of Quel’thalas. The High Elves, in turn, teamed up with the recently formed Arathi Empire. Humans evolved from Vrykul hit with the curse of flesh. A curse provided by the old god Yogg-Saron, which literally gave them flesh. The vrykul had been ordered to murder their malformed offspring, but their parents could not and instead sent their children to the lands legends said Tyr and the others had gone to. This union of elf and human led not only to their victory in the so-called troll wars, and honestly, when you start to think about it, the ripple effect of this is nutty. You got the formation of the Arathi Empire, those Arathi we’re partying within Hallowfall, but you also got the formation of the Alliance of Lordaeron, Alleria and Turalyon meeting up, Lothar calling upon his ancient bloodline, introduction of magic for the humans…this moment in history is massive but Thoradin of Arathor, leader and founder of the first human kingdom, was far from done… He’d become super interested in the origin of humans, and legends of those days eventually led him to an ancient tomb…
Thoradin RP: “Long ago, my yearning for knowledge led me here, to a tomb that lies beneath the lake. Within its cold stone walls, I found something long buried…a terrible darkness, an ancient evil.
My men begged me to walk away, I refused. My pride would be my downfall…and theirs. The evil stirred, unleashing death upon us. With my last breath, I drove my blade, Strom’kar, into the beast’s skull. For many ages, the sword has kept the beast from rising again. But now it stirs once more.
Warriors would travel into the tomb first, taking on the beast and claiming Strom’kar as their artifact in the war against the Legion. Shadows Priests came in next, stopping the Twilight Hammer and overpowering Twilight Deacon Farthing.
Yes, we are eager to feast on the fallen Titan’s minions. But first…Zakajz. The cultists may try to stir him again, or he could awaken on his own. We must consume his essence to ensure he is gone forever. You know this must be done.
A nice little snack for our Xal’atath, who’d go on playing a vital role in the defeat of the Legion, getting herself out of the blade in Battle for Azeroth, and now of course prominently in the War Within. So, to your original question, when we go back to the old lands as they said with the announcement for the World Soul Saga…
You will be returning…ready? To the old world. To the fabled lands of Quel’thelas. There, the forces of the void have invaded Azeroth. Intend on snuffing out the light of the Sunwell and plunging the world into darkness and fear. You will not only help to reunify the scattered elven tribes of Azeroth, but you will make your stand with the forces of the light and banish the shadow forever.
I’d imagine that this history with the C’thrax, Kith’ix underneath Zul’aman will come back into play in some way, some form. If not, then Blizzard is in my mind letting an easy connection fall away, and it’s not like they’ve forgotten about Xal’atath’s influence in the past. Quite the opposite, they’ve been very clear in wanting to let us know what Xal’atath has done. If we go back to the War Within pre-event, then we can literally see previous wielders of the Blade of the Black Empire. The image of Zan’do is there, but also Modgud, great to the max grandma of Dagran Thaurissan, who also got abandoned by the blade. Her final words being, “you promised,” but before she fell, Modgud released such darkness upon grim batol while wielding Xal’atath as she was fighting in the War of Three Hammers that those stuck inside would eventually become corrupted and turned into the Skardyn. Originally, the Skardyn didn’t show up in corrupted Grim Batol, but they made sure to incorporate them and give them a model during the War Within, the point being that those events from the past most definitely played a part in Xal’atath’s plans for the future. She nearly made a whole army of Skardyn by infecting the machines of the Ringings Deeps.
Obviously, the connection is quickly made to someone like the Jailer, who also retroactively has been given a whole lot of credit for manipulating events in the past, but what I like with Xal’atath, and what I find a major difference so far, is that it’s not the entire thing. It’s not the entire history being thrown upon her shoulders, instead, it’s more critical smaller moments that cascaded into her favor, as well as it’s built up over a much longer period of time. From the moment she was introduced as an artifact, we learned that she played a role in the past through the artifact lore, and over time with whispers and bits and pieces of story revealed, we learn more and more about what she’s been up to, and those pieces are then offered to paint a bigger picture while also still keeping plenty in the dark. We still have loads that we don’t know about Xal’atath, which I really do hope to get some answers for soon…but going back to those wielders of the past, right… We have the trolls with Zul Aman and the C’thrax. We have Modgud with the Skardyn, but there was one more image…one more wielder… Natalie Seline… and I’m not sure how she’d fit in with overarching plans. We know that Seline is at the foundation of the Cult of Forgotten Shadows, which is a severaly underepresented part of the lore within the game.
Decades after Modgud lost Xal’atath, the blade was taken up by a human bishop named Natalie Seline. She had lived through the First War, when the orcish Horde invaded Azeroth and conquered Stormwind. After the war, Seline realized that to defeat the green-skinned orcs, humanity would need to study the strange powers they wielded. She closely examined their magics, and she visited battle sites where their dark arts had befouled the land. From her investigations, she learned of an otherworldly blade that the orcs had once used in their bloody rituals, a blade that held sway over the shadows themselves. Troubled that such a profane weapon could exist, Seline swore to hunt it down and destroy it in the name of the Light.
But the moment she touched the blade, she came into contact with Xal’atath, who showed her that there was not just light…there was also void. In the ebb and flow between these two forces, one can find power and knowledge beyond anything the Church of the Holy Light has ever revealed to us. One can cross the divide between Light and Void. One can pull strands from each side and weave a tapestry of day and night. Of course, there are consequences. There always are when walking in the shadows.
In essence, she brought us shadow priests, so from that, you could argue that Seline’s research provided more cultists and potential victims falling to the whispers of the void…yet it also created a whole bunch of enemies wielding their powers against them. There’s also this little thing that I hope they still remember… Alonsus Faol, the one who put us on the quest to pick up Xal’atath to begin with. In life, he was also a member of the Church of the Holy Light. In fact, he was Archbishop at the time, saw the death of the clerics at Northshire at the hands of the orcs, and proposed the idea of adding paladins amongst the ranks of the Alliance. It’s thanks to him we’d see legends like Uther the Lightbringer and Turalyon turning the tide of battle against the Horde’s Death Knights. At some point, someway somehow, he’d fall and be brought back into undeath, introducing himself with:
I am Alonsus Faol. At times, I have been a leader of a church, a mindless minion of the Scourge, and a commander in a secret war. But I have always been a priest first.
Is there a scenario we could imagine in which Seline, a member of the church, would confide in Alonsus about Xal’atath? There’s a fairly big gap in Faol’s history, what secret war was he a part of? Was it random chance that the bishop of secrets put us on the trail of finding the artifacts, or was this too part of a plan? We’ve already done a full video on the Dark Heart and its role throughout history, safe to say…long story short… Xal’atath has had her whispers influence history on Azeroth for a very long time, and I don’t think it’s crazy to think that the dealings with the C’thrax, the events at Zul’aman, the trolls, Arathi, and elves could play a part in the future, but only time is going to tell.
More ideas: We learn from Seline that the orcs also wielded Xal’atath when she was in the blade. When exactly did that happen? When did they find Xal’atath? Did she leave the planet?
We have a locuswalker that knows about Xal’atath, that’s like, oh she calls herself the Harbinger now? That makes sense. She’s connected to being this entity that used to serve Dimensius the All-devouring, so how come she ended up on Azeroth? How did she end up in the blade? We know that there was a bargain between herself and N’zoth, a bargain that set her free from the blade, but what exactly did it provide N’zoth? And how did they get in touch with each other? How did those parts play out that she ended up in front of N’zoth, okay, you can set me free now, what did she manipulate there?
In Hallowfall, as she’s draining the crystal, Beledar, she has a whole speech as to how she survived empires of the past, yet as we look where she’s standing in that moment, the design is very similar to the Dark Heart itself. The location as well, almost as if it was predetermined, as if someone pushed them to set up their holy place so that in the future, Xal’atath had this location to drain Beledar from.
There are a lot of bits and pieces that are being built up about what Xal’atath has done in the past. I remember someone once asking if the Jailer could have been done better. If he could have been accepted within the game. I was strongly of the opinion of nah, but over time I’ve changed my mind. You can retroactively fit your story to make it better, just look at the Illidan story. And in the case of Xal’atath, so far, she hasn’t been given credit for everything, and she has been given bits and pieces that work in her favor. There’s the potential of giving her too much power, in my mind, that would be able to predict the entire future, but so far, you can write it off as making use of opportunity, going with what’s happening while manipulating from the shadows.
So, for now, thank you so much for your question, and thank you very much for watching everyone! Subscribe if you like my videos, leave a like if you enjoyed this one aaaand until next time….see ya!
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