Where is Xal’atath from, originally? Some tinfoil-hatted speculation

With the opening chapter of Midnight concluded, we are left still pondering some of the most intriguing mysteries in the Worldsoul Saga. There is one in particular that I’d like to explore today, if you’re willing to take a walk on the speculative side with me: the origins of Xal’atath.

Last time I folded up a proper tinfoil headpiece, we took some wild guesses at her broad motivations and goals while she was still in her Dark Heart phase. Now that we have seen a few more of her moves across the chess board of Azeroth, it’s time to revisit one of the most burning questions we have been pondering for nearly a decade: who or what is Xal’atath, anyway?

Major spoilers ahead: we’ll be discussing all events of the Midnight campaign through the finale of March on Quel’danas and the associated quests.

She’s my third cousin, twice removed

Now that you’ve folded up your own foil Cowl of Paranoid Ramblings and decided to join me, I’ll get right to the point: Xal’atath recently admitted that she was once a mortal who lost her world, seemingly to invading forces of Void.

What if that world was Azeroth?

Could Xal’atath be the only survivor of a civilization that existed on our own planet eons ago, perhaps a million years or more? Could Alleria describing her as a “survivor from the depths of time” mean that she survived the arrival of the Old Gods on Azeroth? Is it possible that her obsession with our world, her disdain for its current inhabitants, and her millenia of scheming all stem from a burning desire to wrest control of her home back from its various invaders?

It sounds preposterous at first blush — at least that’s what I thought as soon as the theory crossed my mind. Yet the longer I spent trying to poke holes in the idea from different angles, the stronger the threads tied together into a web of red yarn funneling directly down into the center of both Azeroth and the Worldsoul Saga.

If you’re so great, how come I’ve never heard of you?

The first test for this ridiculous assertion is on the timeline: would it even make sense to assign Xal’atath an Azerothian birth certificate, given what we know of her whereabouts and status over the eons? It turns out that it largely would, with a few heaping doses of conspiracy and coverup.

The recent Supremacy animation features our enigmatic purple adversary in an uncharacteristically autobiographical mood. She reveals, via soliloquy aimed at Nexus-King Salhadaar, that she was a mortal long, long ago. We see a child-size figure gazing up as tendrils of void creep their way down before enveloping and mummifying her.

This infusion of void seems to be something Xal’atath has added to her bag of tricks: an offer of immense power to a desperate survivor stuck between annihilation and survival. But could this scene have played out on our own planet rather than some other alien world? There are a few ways to see the tale of primordial Azeroth through slightly warped lenses that would allow this to be so.

We are told that the only entities on Azeroth before the coming of the Old Gods were the Elemental Lords and their associated lesser fire, earth, air, and water spirits. Perhaps Xal’atath and her people were able to exist somewhere on the surface of the planet shielded from the strife between these primordial demigods. In that case, the Supremacy animation would actually depict the Old Gods invading early Azeroth and establishing their Black Empire.

Looking closely at the background of young Xal’atath’s formational infusion, you can make out the distinct outline of the top of a very Black Empire-like obelisk. Maybe all Old Gods flung across the Great Dark Beyond were fans of that particular architectural element, and we’re seeing some other planet. It could be that setting obelisks down was distinct to Azeroth’s Old Gods, and we are seeing the very beginnings of the Black Empire. Or maybe the Black Empire was actually Xalatath’s civilization, which was only usurped by N’Zoth and his brethren rather than constructed.

Why haven’t we heard of this theorized civilization, or seen any evidence of it in all of our digging? One of Xal’atath’s whispers mentions the previously unknown Scouring, along with the Cataclysm and the Sundering. We know that the Titans defeated the Old Gods and erased all physical remnants of the Black Empire from Azeroth. Perhaps that was the Scouring, which also would have included removing any evidence of an ancient intelligent mortal race native to the planet.

This is certainly within character for the Keepers. We know that Odyn has mandated that the history of primordial Azeroth be heavily edited to be more favorable to the Titans from his writings found in Uldaman. Perhaps wiping out an existing intelligent civilization during the process of Ordering the planet isn’t something the Keepers wanted on the record.

A career as The Harbinger

After being spared from obliteration and gifted with mastery over the void, we next see Xal’atath acting as Harbinger of the Void Lord Dimensius. While we only truly know of her work on K’aresh, it’s safe to assume that she spent much of the immense stretch of time between her transformation into void being and her arrival at the Ethereal home world acting as a true herald of doom (willing or otherwise). She would scout out planets across the cosmos and prepare them in some way for Dimensius to consume.

Perhaps witnessing the Void Lord manifest and devour planets over the course of thousands of years gave Xal’atath all of the intel she needed to finally make her move for freedom on K’aresh. We know that she convinced a group of its inhabitants to transform themselves into beings of pure energy via destroying their planet and shattering Dimensius.

At this point, the game was up. Xal’atath had turned her back on her power-bestowing patron. We learned via her Lorewalking chapter that she returned to Azeroth in order to launch an attack on the Old Gods and their now-full-fledged Black Empire. It’s a perplexing move, unless her motivation for defeating the Old Gods was not simple jealousy or contempt but millennia upon millennia of hate for their ongoing infestation of her home world.

Of course, Xal’atath’s assault on the combined forces of N’zoth, C’Thun, Y’Sharrj, and Yogg-Saron was unsuccessful. This is the part of the story where she becomes imprisoned in the horrible cutlery form that we first encountered her in during Legion.

Why not just annihilate her? The ringing taunt from Y’Shaarj gives it away: “Eternally sealed… You shall only watch this world as it gains untold power without you. You shall never lay claim to it.” As punishment for her treachery, the Old Gods punished her to bear witness to her home planet transforming into a void-empowered nightmare without being able to stop it.

It’s daggerin’ time!

It turns out that Xal’atath was anything but a powerless spectator during her time imprisoned within the Blade of the Black Empire. A close inspection of her actions over the ensuing ages and whispers to the Shadow Priest wielder align with an entity that is furious to be bound in a kitchen utensil on her own world, being passed from hand to hand among people that are not the rightful inhabitants of Azeroth.

Her disdain for mortals is hard to miss, but it makes so much more sense when you see the races of the player characters through her eyes as an original inhabitant of an unclaimed Azeroth. Titan-made descendants such as Humans and Dwarves are spawn of the Ordering usurpers. Tauren and Vulpera seem to be creations of the relative newcomer Ancient Guardians. Dranei are aliens and don’t belong on Azeroth. Orcs are aliens and creations of the Titans, earning them a double whammy of contempt.

On first glance, Xal’atath’s early actions during her sentient dagger phase seem like disorganized grand-scale manipulation and mayhem. A closer examination reveals that she consistently influenced her wielders towards unleashing immensely powerful entities upon Azeroth: Ragnaros the Firelord and two different C’Thraxxi generals. These actions absolutely align with a motive of cleansing the surface of the planet of its current unworthy inhabitants. Think of it this way: she can’t directly assault the guests at the zoo, but she can hypnotize the animal keepers into unlocking a few of the cages.

The events of Legion are more puzzling at first. Why would Xal’atath suddenly become a snarky yet helpful blade on the hip of a mortal of modern Azeroth, rather than continuing to sow confusion and destruction? The answer lies in the motives of her wielder, which suddenly align with her own: to repel the invasion of the Burning Legion from their home planet. She sees the encroaching demon hordes no differently than the Titans or Old Gods: an entity bent on claiming her world that must be stopped, even if it means working through a lowly mortal to get the job done.

Her prize has been right under our feet this whole time

With the Burning Legion taken care of, Xal’atath began to enact her grandest plan yet. It could be that witnessing Alleria’s absorption of the dark Naaru L’ura on Argus set her cogs in motion, because everything she has done since Battle for Azeroth has been with a sole focus: claiming Azeroth.

First, she regains a corporeal form. Her next move is to forge what has always seemed to be an unlikely alliance with Iridikron, the stony Primal Incarnate. In the light of our theory, this team suddenly makes perfect sense. Both seek vengeance for the corruption of their home world of Azeroth from outside forces. Iridikron is narrowly focused on the meddling of the Titans, and Xal’atath seems to be more concerned with re-claiming the Worldsoul for herself.

The last we see of Iridikron, he gives a short but straightforward speech in the Dawn of the Infinite dungeon before stepping through a shadowy veil to bring the partly-empowered Dark Heart to Xal’atath. When he says “All [the Titans] wanted was our world. With this, the Harbinger will pry it from their grasp,” maybe “our” isn’t referring to himself and the champions of Azeroth. Maybe he means “me and Xal’atath’s world.”

All of the events of The War Within and Midnight so far have culminated with Xal’atath descending through the Darkwell into the interior of Azeroth. Given that the ley lines of the planet converge on Quel’Danas, the popular speculation is that her forces are now akin to an invading virus screaming through the bloodstream of our world towards its very heart. In this analogy, we are the Little White Blood Cells That Could as we scramble to figure out how to follow the Devouring Host towards the Worldsoul itself, possibly within the Titanic construct of the Worldcore.

The ever-looming question that has plagued the Lorewalking fans of World of Warcraft for several expansions is: why? We have absolutely no idea what Xal’atath’s end game is after “claiming” Azeroth. However, this may be the strongest case for our theory of an Azeroth-born Xal’atath: she wants Azeroth simply because it is her home. She has been working against the Old Gods and Dimensius and the Burning Legion and the Titans for hundreds of millenia for one reason: they all invaded her otherwise pure planet.

She does not seek to corrupt the Worldsoul into some other form. She does not seek to open a portal for indescribable void horrors from beyond to enter our universe. She does not want to unmake reality. She does not want to bring the universe to heel and rule over all planets and beings. What she seeks is nothing more than the pure, untainted Azeroth of her youth. Her obsession with our home has been enigmatic, but the truth is that it’s her home as well.

Right now her plan seems to be working disturbingly well. The Old Gods are dead (we think). The Burning Legion is no more. Dimensius has been tamed. After luring the Titans back to Azeroth, Xal’atath will unleash the fury of Iridikron against the might of the Pantheon. If they annihilate each other that would eliminate every invading force, leaving Xal’atath free to perform her own Scouring of Azeroth’s current life forms. It’s even more of a stretch, but she could even be planning on restoring her once-mighty civilization to its former Worldsoul-attuned glory.

We’re closer to the truth than ever before

Xal’atath being an Azerothian has been my favorite type of absurd theory: one that is so fantastic and implausible that it just might be the explanation to many of our biggest mysteries. I freely admit it is also a hypothesis of the fragile kind: it would only take a single line of overlooked dialogue to puncture and deflate the entire idea.

I’ll leave you with one more piece of evidence that swayed me towards becoming a believer. While Xal’atath never seems to be able to mask her contempt for the Old Gods, she simultaneously remembers the time of their rule rather fondly. This can be seen in sharp relief while adventuring on the Broken Shore as a Black Blade-wielding Shadow Priest.

The whispers seem almost reverent of the Black Empire (or some other civilization lost to time) when she says, “That fel edifice towering over this land pales in comparison to the grandeur of what stood here long ago.” She also gets a bit nostalgic about the significance of the region, saying, “This was always a place of power. Aegwynn was drawn here, and before her, the elves, and before them, the trolls. And before them…”

Perhaps she refers to the Old Gods and their minions recognizing a hotspot of planetary energy and building a Black Empire hub on that very spot. Or perhaps she momentarily lets her guard down when brought back to the center of her own civilization’s past glories. Whether Xal’atath hails from a distant planet on the other side of the Great Dark Beyond or from the very same Azeroth that we call home, we are sure to uncover the truth as the rest of the Worldsoul Saga unfolds.