What is Xal’atath really up to? Some tinfoil-hatted speculation

We are near the end of The War Within, the first chapter of the Worldsoul saga that has promised to bring the first three decades of Warcraft’s story to an epic crescendo. Thus far our main adversary has been Xal’atath, the shadowy void entity with a knack for manipulation and a disdain for the mortals of Azeroth.

We already took a look at the Dark Heart, a magic-absorbing trinket that Xal’atath has been empowering with magical essences from Azeroth’s past and present. Today we’ll stray from a solid fact-based retelling of events and don our foil Helms of Speculation to make some predictions about what our adversary’s end game might be and what she is going to actually do with the Dark Heart.

Major spoilers will follow for all of the content through the patch 11.1 Undermined story.

Gather ye cosmic forces while ye may

As we saw in our look at the origins of the Dark Heart, it was acquired and started along its path to being a newsworthy MacGuffin by the earthy proto-dragon Iridikron. He liberated it from its dusty hiding place in the Forbidden Reach and enlisted the help of the Infinite Dragonflight to bring it to a pivotal moment in the ancient past of Azeroth: the fall of Galakrond. We catch the stony fiend absorbing the necrotic energies dripping from the corpse of the enormous corrupted Galakrond into the Dark Heart, and we are unable to stop him.

We don’t need to speculate too much concerning Iridikron’s motives because he states them outright. Before making his escape, he waxes poetic about his plan for revenge on the Titans: “All they wanted was our world. With this, the Harbinger will pry it from their grasp. And when the titans come to reclaim their prize, I will be waiting.” On the surface, that seems rather straightforward — Iridikron aims to lure the Titans to Azeroth so he can punch them in the face for meddling in dragonkind’s business with their order magic.

The War Within’s events kick off with the revelation that this Harbinger is none other than Xal’atath, former dagger and current wielder of the Dark Heart. After wading through a Nerubian invading force, we find her at the Violet Citadel absorbing Dalaran’s arcane essence into the Dark Heart. Khadgar’s counterattack is unsuccessful, and he is seemingly vaporized along with the storied floating city.

The next time we confront Xal’atath, she is once again using the Dark Heart to absorb powerful magical energies — this time the shadow essence of the void state of Beledar. She succeeds, although Alleria Windrunner then scores a point for Azeroth by striking the Dark Heart with a well-placed arrow. This seemingly damages the device in addition to releasing our trusty Archmage, Khadgar, from its grasp.

With that, we are able to put the first all-caps sticky note on our Corkboard of Wide-eyed Conjecture. The Dark Heart has now been infused with three powerful essences — all of them of different types of magic. Necrotic energies from Galakrond, arcane power from Dalaran, and void essence from Beledar — why those three sources specifically? They certainly aren’t the easiest targets on Azeroth, and they each required an intricate plan involving distraction and subterfuge in order to obtain. To dig deeper, we’ll need to take a look toward the future.

I’ve got a world soul but I’m not a soldier

Iridikron told us that Xal’atath would use the Dark Heart to pry Azeroth from the Titan’s grasp — what could that mean? We know that when the Titans came across our planet, it was firmly in the possession of the Old Gods. You could say the Titans pried it away from those fleshy many-eyed horrors by destroying or imprisoning them, followed by constructing a large number of mysterious machines and outposts all over the surface of the planet. Now Xal’atath’s mission is to pry it back? How? Why?

We have been told (by the Titans) that Azeroth contains a world soul, which is a nascent Titan. It needs to be nurtured, ordered, and protected so that it can fulfill its destiny of maturing into the most powerful Titan of all. And yet the little we know of the final chapter of the Worldsoul Saga, The Last Titan, indicates that we will need to question everything we have been told about the Titans, their motives, and the true nature of Azeroth.

Here’s our second shakily-written sticky note: what if world souls are not inherently Titan? It appears that many of the world souls nurtured by the Pantheon have indeed matured into Titans and joined their ranks. But we have seen another outcome. The world soul of Argus was infused with enormous amounts of death magic by the Nathrezim as part of a multi-layer plan that resulted in its complete corruption. The Titans brought the tortured world soul of Argus to their Seat and gave it form, but we have also seen world souls turned completely over to void such as the one that a not-yet-fallen Sargeras hacked apart with one stroke in the much earlier history of our universe.

Perhaps world souls are not inherently aligned with order. Perhaps our universe is a bit like a massive game of capture the flag, where a world soul can be ‘claimed’. Right now Azeroth’s world soul is in jeopardy of being claimed by Xal’atath, and Iridikron is confident the Titans would then show up to take it back. Perhaps any of the six cosmic forces (light and shadow, order and disorder, life and death) can be used to infuse a world soul once it is claimed in order to produce some desired effect. According to the Titans, the Old Gods seek to use their shadowy influence to corrupt Azeroth into a ‘dark titan’, but what if that’s not the whole truth? Perhaps a fully void-aligned world soul would mature into something else entirely, or even produce an effect instead of an entity — perhaps a portal to another dimension? A portal large enough for a Void Lord to travel through?

Azeroth hangs in the balance

We do have another probable example of the claiming of a world soul. K’aresh, home planet of the Ethereals, was invaded by the Void Lord Dimensius sometime in the distant past. As the shadow equivalent to the Titan’s Pantheon of Order, the Void Lords seek to claim world souls for their own nefarious schemes — the Titans claim that those purposes are to consume the universe utterly, but again, we are starting to doubt the Titan narrative at every turn.

When Dimensius was about to commence his invasion, the not-yet-Ethereal inhabitants of K’aresh heard a radiant song much like the one we have been hearing on Azeroth lately. When the Void Lord arrived, he bathed the planet in shadow and arcane energies. Break out the red yarn to connect our speculation so far to our third sticky note: what business did a Void Lord have using order magic to assault a planet? 

Using shadow and arcane together seems a strange combination…unless it was required. What if K’aresh inherently possessed a disproportionate amount of those two types of magic, and in order to ‘claim’ the world soul, a massive infusion of those same two types would act like a key? And once unlocked, any one of the types of magic could be used to create an effect benefiting the corresponding cosmic force. The ultimate fate of K’aresh is unclear to us as of right now. It’s possible Dimensius used the void-corrupted world soul to siphon more of his actual self into our universe, since we are told that even the siege of K’aresh was carried out by a mere echo of the Void Lord itself.

Bringing this train of thought home to Azeroth calls to mind one thing we’ve been repeatedly told about our planet’s world soul: it’s special. Whether our world soul is the last, most powerful, or otherwise has not yet been made clear. What if the reason Azeroth is so special is its balance? Perhaps we sit at the center of the universe, where all of the cosmic forces align and come into balance. This would make it the grand prize in our cosmic capture-the-flag game: forces in balance, tons of spirit, and the most available power to whoever can claim it. To accomplish that, you don’t need an inordinate amount of one or two types of magic —  you need all six. In that case, Xal’atath’s plan snaps into focus: three down, three to go.

Where Xal is headed next

On our journey of unraveling circles within circles, we are back at Xal’atath’s favorite trinket. Alleria Windrunner speculates: “Could the Dark Heart be absorbing magical power? And converting it to shadow.” I think that she’s on the right track, but Khadgar has it sized up better at the very end of the campaign: “The Dark Heart was created not to destroy, but to capture and harness all manner of power.” This is all we need to sketch out our very last unhinged sticky note: a sketch of the Dark Heart, with six lines labeled “necrotic”, “arcane”, “void”, “fel”, “nature”, and “light” emanating outwards and converging on a glowing constellation representing Azeroth’s world soul.

She’s got the first three, but where will Xal’atath gather powerful fel, nature, and light essences? Candidates for immense sources of fel include the Dark Portal and whatever energies might remain within the sword of Sargeras that is still conspicuously sticking out of Silithus. We have heard too much of the former world tree Elun’Ahir and seen far too little of the assumed guardians of its remaining roots, the Haranir, for it to not feature prominently in our saga, potentially as a source nature magic. These seem like possible places we will face off against Xal’atath in the Midnight expansion, with a final confrontation at the Sunwell where she will attempt to absorb its light energy into the Dark Heart.

After that our ancient void adversary will race down the Coreway to unleash all six types of magic to claim Azeroth’s world soul. This will give the Titans reason to drop back in on our planet, which we know is happening the The Last Titan. This is when we will at last learn the truth about the intentions of the Titans and the true nature of Azeroth.

An Ethereal wrinkle in the plans

Now that my tinfoil hat has caught fire and disintegrated, we’re faced with the events that occurred at the very end of the Undermine campaign. The Dark Heart was repaired, only to be stolen by Phase-Thief Azir, a void Ethereal. Is he simply seeking to stop Xal’atath from completing her goals, or does he have plans of his own that involve the power stored in the Dark Heart? The last glimpse we get of the shadowy artifact, it’s in Azir’s palm as he gazes up towards a glowing magenta…something.

Is that K’aresh? It this where we are headed next, or at least in the near future? This seems to be the prevalent thinking in the lore-minded community. And yet, K’aresh is on the opposite end of the cosmos. What if Azir is somewhere a little more close by — say, the bottom of the Undersea? What will Xal’atath’s next move be, and come to think of it, who or what is she, anyway? And is the Dark Heart still empowered after Alleria’s bullseye? If one cubic Khadgar’s worth of arcane energy leaked out, perhaps the whole empowering process will need to start over.

Speculation on the answers to all of these questions will have to wait for another time. For now, all we can do is sit back, crack open a fresh Kaja-cola, and complete all of the Undermine side quests while we wait for the rest of the Worldsoul Saga to unfold.