The machinery of Death seems to be a universal thing. You meet plenty of beings in the Shadowlands who came from entirely different worlds from Azeroth, and if only the souls of people from Azeroth were being affected, then the Anima drought wouldn’t be such a big deal.
Once upon a time, I saw such quote. From The Last Guardian:
Sargeras (possessing Medivh, to Khadgar):
You see, I am nothing but one more component in the great machine, one that has been running since the Well of Eternity was first shattered. The one thing that the original bits of Medivh and myself agree on is that this cycle needs to be shattered. Of course, I assure you, we are of one mind.
Now, is this the same machine or not - I have no idea. We might need a time travel to Kaldorei Empire days to learn how could it be a thing, if true.
Also, it seems to me that both Sargeras and Medivh has interest in breaking the cycle. Although for different reasons, and different goals, since the fact that is must be broken is the only thing they agree upon.
Perhaps, we might collectively search for possible options connected to Sargeras, Medivh, or the Sundering.
It was said at some point that Azeroth will be the strongest among titans once she is born. I think that alone was enough for Sargeras to make actual presence. Question is why he didn’t do that 10k years ago? Also his legion was burning down worlds because of void and it’s endless hunger for world souls.
This only shows how little we know, or even better how little we are told.
Shadowlands, twisting nether and the likes of it are way way waaaay older than any titan. So technically we know nothing about such places, okay twisting nether isn’t that unknown. But if twisting nether represents the very place where light and void clashed and formed the universe, what is shadowlands? And are there also other universal realms? Because everything we saw so far, was elemental realms and titanic realms all tied to a single world. Then we ventured into broken Draenor and alternate Draenor plus Argus. But that was it.
I do not know what he really wants. In the Tomb of Sargeras [trailer] there is a part where Kil’jaeden tell Sargeras that all that the Legion achieved by following the plan of the titan is a failure. So, even most of them had no idea what actually Sargeras wants.
I can’t tell you much. It’s all rather cryptic. One of things could be something like what Lothraxion said in A Thousand Years of War.
“Sargeras believes he has already defeated the Light.” Lothraxion offered a humorless smile. “What he truly wants is to destroy the Shadow. That was my duty, long ago. I hunted down creatures of the Void for the Legion. Very dangerous work.”
So, why would Sargeras try to defeat the Light?
Xe’ra (Ravencrest’s Legacy):
Without Light, the darkness cannot exist.
Apparently somehow that would weaken Shadow.
And it’s even worse with Medivh. It’s not clear at all what is he doing and why. Well, I don’t know, but maybe somebody has a better understanding.
Sargeras wants to destroy the void as he witnessed an end of a world before most likely. He came to a conclusion, that the only way to do so, is to cut the “food” supply for the void (titan souls) which means destroying worlds with a titan soul. Not every world has one though. For this solution he reached into twisting nether and recruited countless of demonic nations he fought before. I think the first ones to join this cause were Nathrezim. Thing is he never tells anyone what he wants to do. They all were convinced they are waging wars with lesser beings, an universal conquest for power. Which is partially true as Sargeras uses power and greed to recruit other nations. Eredar were ones to join in vision of more power. And then another combo breaker, commented by Algalon and few others. Azeroth is unique among the worlds, nobody knows why.
After giving this a thought, I’d say maybe it’s related to the cosmological balance of powers.
We see strange phenomena like Light in Shadowlands, which means the void has the means to exist there too. Which shows a serious imbalance, that perhaps wasn’t present there 10000 years ago.
In order to answer this question we would have to find out where do souls actually go after Shadowlands. SL seems to be a barrier of some sort between the true realm of death and the mortal realm.
We have the Maw, which contains the worst of the world souls, we have Revendreth with the purpose of redeeming the souls, Kyrians - serving as the guide for the souls to the other realm and to top it all, we have an army - Maldraxxus, to protect all of these.
The only one that seems out of place in Shadowlands is Ardenweald. A realm that bypasses the Arbiter’s judgment belongs to the creators of Shadowlands themselves, imo.
Well it is said that Sargeras cleaved a planet in two once. Still no idea why he didn’t do that with Azeroth. But that aside, he is not wrong. Imagine if old gods succeeded. Their purpose wasn’t to devour the world soul, but to corrupt it, thus creating a dark titan. A being that would obliterate the pantheon with a single thought, or maybe two. Shadowlands is indeed an interesting realm, most interesting to me so far. Odyn used knowledge from Shadowlands to create Val’kyr. Kil’jaeden tasked dreadlords to “borrow” helm of domination from there and even used materials to forge the Frostmourne. Most interesting thing however is player’s death. When you die, you are technically in Shadowlands.
Which means, that shadowlands are different, depending on the world where you are, cause it mirrors them.
I think he plunged the sword into Azeroth as a form of last resort, he was waiting nearby this whole time only using legion. I think he wanted to wake her up or something. After all Argus the unmaker is result of a world soul corrupted or turned by Burning Legion. I think he never wanted to destroy Azeroth. Or maybe he did want to destroy her. Only Sargeras knows the answer. I like WoW lore it’s quite overwhelming at times and of course stories could be better, least some of them. But then it’s also an mmorpg designed to host millions of players daily, so some complex storytelling can be quite challenging.
Looking forward, I think the Dreadlords can answer that better than anyone else. Based on a mysterious letter (https://www.wowhead.com/news=317833/enemy-infiltration-preface-shadowlands-book-on-cosmos-wide-deception-written-by-), we know - to a certain extent - that the dreadlords has some kind of connection between Sargeras and the Jailer. The Draka cinematic also shows her infiltrating a Legion watch-camp - although we don’t know where - could be in Maldraxxus itself (mind you the twisting nether is connected to both the physical and the spirit world, as mentioned many times in the lore - inadvertently giving demons easy access to worlds that might be difficult to traverse by other denizens - the Sargerite Key - key to enter all worlds - retrieved by Illidan from Natheza - land of the Nathrezims i.e. Dreadlords). The dreadlords were probably there to “take” Frostmourne and HoD for the Lich King (Ner’zhul) and act as some sort of an ambassador to Sargeras and the Jailer - in making some kind of a deal - a deal that satisfies both parties as far as the fate of Azeroth is concerned. Something to think about.
The normal way was to far and very hard because he didn’t know the location, and the portal was collapsed while still preparing to bring him to Azeroth.
So: He tried
