Aell

This article contains lore taken from Warcraft novels, novellas, or short stories.

The aells are a lava-dwelling race from somewhere in the Great Dark Beyond. They resemble sinuous black eels, with several small legs that they use to swim through lava as easily as snakes through water. In aell culture, devouring a mate who is suffering and near death is considered a supreme act of love.

In the Shadowlands, some—but not all—aell souls are sent to an afterlife consisting of a sea of liquid fire and molten earth, which to them is a perfect paradise. As part of demonstrating the supposed unfairness of the Shadowlands, the Jailer's Val'kyr showed the aell afterlife to Sylvanas Windrunner. There, they pointed out the soul of a female who had eaten her dying mate but had been denied reunion with him after death, as the Arbiter had assigned him to a different afterlife and thereby doomed the couple to be forever separated.