The Crypts of the Eternal, the place where the Arbiter was created. A cosmos divided will not survive what is to come.” Zovaal is the main antagonist and final boss of World of Warcraft: Shadowlands. The Maw Walkers pursued him and, after freeing Anduin and building up a resistance to his Domination magic, managed to confront and destroy Zovaal in the heart of the Sepulcher of the First Ones before he could complete his plan of harnessing Azeroth's life force to unmake existence. Sylvanas turned against him upon realizing his true motives, but he discarded her and used the sigils to escape with Anduin through a portal to Zereth Mortis. With Sylvanas' aid, he attacked Oribos itself, the home of the Arbiter, and claimed the final sigil-his own-from her. On Azeroth, Sylvanas destroyed the Helm of Domination, opening a rift between the mortal world and the Shadowlands, and brought several leaders of Azeroth into the Jailer's hands he used the power of Domination to turn one, King Anduin Wrynn, into his unwilling champion.Īlthough adventurers of Azeroth-dubbed Maw Walkers-entered the Shadowlands and helped strengthen and reunite the covenants, they were unable to stop the Jailer from obtaining the sigils of the other Eternal Ones.

Zovaal's allies-including the Forsworn in Bastion, Kel'Thuzad in Maldraxxus, Mueh'zala in Ardenweald, and Sire Denathrius in Revendreth-took advantage of the drought to sow chaos among the most important afterlives and the covenants that ruled them in order to prevent them from unifying against the Jailer.

All souls who entered the Shadowlands instead began pouring into the Maw, empowering the Jailer while the rest of the Shadowlands grew isolated and withered from a lack of anima. Not long thereafter, a plot by the nathrezim resulted in the Arbiter falling dormant. The Jailer later instead allied with Sylvanas Windrunner and convinced her that his end goal was to tear down the unfair system of Life and Death and replace it with one in which everyone would have true freedom. However, this purpose was rejected by all three mortals who came to bear the title of Lich King. He imprisoned one of his brothers, the Primus, and used him to create the Helm of Domination and Frostmourne-instruments that the nathrezim then gave to the Lich King, an entity whom Zovaal intended to use as a herald that would allow him to reach Azeroth. He set his sights on the mortal world of Azeroth and intended to use the power of its world-soul in the rewriting of reality. As punishment for trying to steal their sigils, his counterparts stripped him of his power, used the newly-created magic of Domination to imprison him in the Maw, and created a new Arbiter to replace him.ĭuring his ages of imprisonment, the Jailer learned to harness the Domination used to bind him and continued scheming and working with various allies in both the Shadowlands and the world of the living, such as the nathrezim, all with the unchanged goal of reaching the Sepulcher.

He tried to claim the sigils of his fellow Eternal Ones, intending to use them to reach the Sepulcher in the First Ones' realm of Zereth Mortis, whose secrets would allow him to unmake reality and replace it with one in which all would serve him. However, he later tried to upset the balance of the cosmos in the belief that the First Ones' creation was flawed and unable to stand against a coming threat that he had foreseen. Īges ago, Zovaal was known as the Arbiter, responsible for judging the souls that entered the afterlife. The damned souls who arrived in the realm were tortured and twisted by the Jailer until they willingly served him for eternity as his Mawsworn soldiers. Ruling from the Sanctum of Domination in Torghast, Tower of the Damned, he wielded powerful Domination magic and was the singular and absolute master of the Maw: the realm continually altered and changed itself to his whims, and he observed all actions of note within his domain through his magical eye. Zovaal, better known as the Jailer or the Banished One, was an Eternal One who ruled over the Maw in the Shadowlands.

Banished torrent codex