Soul

For the Warcraft III item, see Soul (Warcraft III). For the house cat, see Soul (house cat).

The soul (aka spirit or life essence^[1]) is the very personification of an individual. In living beings, the soul is anchored to the body by the cosmic force of Life. When a being is resurrected as an undead with necromancy, through the use of Death magic, their soul is imperfectly attached to their body through the same Death magic.^[2]^[3]

When a being dies, their soul crosses the Veil between life and death, so that they can be judged by the Arbiter in the Crucible atop Oribos.^[4] All of the soul's contents—deeds, misdeeds, thoughts, accomplishments, and failures—are laid bare before the Arbiter, who then judges in a mere instant and sends the soul to one of the infinite realms of the Shadowlands.^[5]^[6] Each soul brings with it a vital force known as anima, the product of all of the soul's experiences and actions in life. Great souls—both good and evil—have a lot of anima, while those who have lived humbler lives have less.^[7]^[5]

Manifestation

A soul in the Shadowlands.

After their death, mortal souls usually go to the Shadowlands; however, they may become ghosts, tortured spirits who writhe in the agony of undeath. Unable to realize that they are no longer alive, they roam the Veil, the trackless wastes between the realm of the dead and the physical world, seeking release from their eternal suffering. Though they are not necessarily evil, they hunger for physical contact, often causing great harm to any living beings they touch.^[8]

When a soul is consumed by the Void, an echo of the soul is all that is left behind. Neither in the physical nor in the spiritual sense of the word would these echoes be considered alive. The echo is merely a twisted reverberation of the anguish left behind by the soul as it is consumed. These twisted echoes of the dead are merely the distorted reflections of once noble spirits.^[9]

Wielders of the Light can use Holy magic to appease or grant peace to unrested souls.^[10] During an exorcism rite to evict a demon or an evil spirit from a possessed body, the Light purifies the body and the soul from corruption.^[11] When Darion Mograine ran the Ashbringer through his own chest, as a final act of faith and love to free his father's soul, this noble action awakened the spirits of thousand heroes interred below Light's Hope Chapel who erupted in pillars of light, purging the hills of all traces of the Scourge with their vengeful fury.^[12]^[13]

Fel magic, however, consumes souls.^[14] When a soul is devoured by fel energies, it produces more fel and is utterly destroyed.^[15] An echo of the soul known as a soul shard (or soul fragment) can be produced by the spell caster. Soul shards can be used to power spells or to create a connection to the Twisting Nether, pulling a demon through against its will.^[16] The Burning Legion is known to use soul engines where harvested souls are collected and stored to power their war machines.^[15] Some jailer demons are responsible for capturing souls and fueling the engines.^[17]

Souls can also be given physical existence again. This process is called resurrection. There are two main ways to resurrect a person, through necromancy, creating an undead, or through other means, most commonly Holy magic.^[18]^[19] The souls of the undead are imperfectly attached to their bodies; the dark magic that sustains them is a buffer that prevents their souls from properly joining with their bodies. This is why undead feel only faint sensations of pain or discomfort from most physical stimuli, and why the Light is so painful to their existence. The primary exception to this rule are liches, as liches bind their souls to a phylactery and then use the phylactery to generate a physical form; this process is why lich bodies look nothing like their mortal bodies, and also why it is necessary to destroy a lich’s phylactery to truly kill them.^[3]

When a soul is called from the afterlife, it is free to roam the material realm if it is not restrained within moments of its arrival.^[20] Mortal souls that cross over and are brought back do not appear, however, to retain defined memories of what they experienced in the Shadowlands.^[21] A spirit in the Shadowlands can, with enough power over other souls, tear a hole into the living world once they are strong enough. This is how Jin'do returned to Azeroth.^[22]

Soul gems were used to entrap the soul of Grommash Hellscream and Yenniku.^[23]

The first generation of death knights were souls of orc warlocks infused into the bodies of human knights.^[24]

Different types of souls

Demon souls are bound to the Twisting Nether. As such, when demons are slain in the physical world, their soul returns to the Nether, where they recuperate and reform a new body.^[25]
- Some souls of the Illidari demon hunters are also bound to the Twisting Nether.^[26]
The Wild Gods that Keeper Freya liked the most had their souls bound to the Emerald Dream. When these Wild Gods are slain, their soul returns to the Dream,^[27] only after a period of hibernation in Ardenweald.^[28]
Liches are bound to a phylactery. When they are killed, their soul returns to their phylactery, where they will reform their corporeal body.^[29]
The souls of the titans are called worldsouls. It has been hinted that when titans die, their souls would return to their own Order plane.^[30]
The elementals of Azeroth were bound to the Elemental Plane by Highkeeper Ra and Helya. When destroyed in the physical world, they return to the Elemental Plane and gain a new physical body.^[31]

As a power source

The souls of the dead attacking the Lich King after the mourneblade Frostmourne was shattered.

Demons and warlocks use fel magic, which requires harvesting and manipulating souls, for various spells.^[1]
- Athrikus Narassin found that he had been imbued with demonic powers, which he then used to chain the souls of lesser Highborne to himself, granting immortality.^[32]
Frostmourne was a demonic runeblade^[33] created for the Lich King. An extension of his will, Frostmourne had the ability to steal and imprison souls.^[34]
Shadowmourne and its precursor, Shadow's Edge,^[35] feed on souls.
The dark industries Bronjahm carried out in the Forge of Souls produced tortured, fragmented spirits.^[36] To prevent their escape, and use every scrap of the damned, the Lich King created the Devourer of Souls. The Devourer of Souls hunted and consumed the stray spirits and slowly broke them down within its terrible form. The consumed souls were driven mad with anguish and suffering, but the Devourer's hunger was never sated.^[37]
Voodoo figurines were built and animated to assist troll witch doctors in minor, everyday tasks such as washing loincloths or scrubbing blood off the hut floor. They were often powered by flasks of mojo, troll sweat, the flesh of tribal enemies, or by devouring tiny portions of their owners' souls.
A mortal on an unknown world sought to summon and contain Murmur. In order to do so, he devised a method to enhance his summoning through the capture and use of countless souls harvested from whole civilizations.^[38]
The mogu discovered how to animate lifeless rock with captured souls, creating the Stoneborn.^[39] In order to gather souls, a sect of assassin-priests called the Spiritclaws mastered a deathblow which ensnares the spirit of the enemy, trapping it in a jade bottle for delivery to a Spiritbinder.^[40] Gara'jal the Spiritbinder led a band of Zandalar trolls into the Mogu'shan Vaults to learn the mogu's ancient secrets.^[41]
Gul'dan drained the life essences of countless draenei prisoners to power the magic needed to open the Dark Portal to cross the large distance to Azeroth.^[42]
Khadgar used soul remnants to create portals to help the heroes move deeper in the Hellfire Citadel.^[43]
Jailers use their cages to capture both the soul and body of their enemy, which they then send to the Twisting Nether to subject their victims to horrific torture and interrogation.^[44]
Witches of Heartsbane Coven in Drustvar use various soul-related spells, either to harm, curse, or manipulate one's soul.^[45]
The Drust learned how to trap souls within objects as well as to create constructs of death in which to trap the souls.^[46] Eventually, they started to use souls to empower their constructs, but initially they used the bones of their dead as hosts. Once the ritual was complete, these fetishes were said to emanate an eerie blue light, presumably the essence of the soul's power made manifest.^[47] They also created prisons for unrestrained souls for later use in their dark rituals, during which time the soul would suffer within, become a twisted version of what it once had been.^[48]

In World of Warcraft

This section concerns content related to the original World of Warcraft.

Items are often "soulbound", preventing them from being traded to other characters.

Utilizing and manipulating souls is a big theme for the warlock class.

As a companion pet

Lost Soul can be caught from pet battles in Revendreth.
[Soullocked Sinstone] has a chance to drop from Secret Treasure in Revendreth.

Notes

The Spirit of Life is the essence of all living things.
When a soul is called from the afterlife, it is free to roam the material realm unless constrained to a prison within moments of its arrival.^[48]
Aessina is called the soul of the forest. She is its beating heart, the source of life energy that breaks down stone, devours ancient ruins, and fills dense thickets with mystery and fear. Aessina is the center of the web of life.^[49]
Within the Auchenai Crypts, many unsavory experiments were undertaken in the pursuit of a greater understanding of the necromantic arts. Many spirits were tortured or destroyed therein.
Crafted by the titans as gifts to their favored creations, the Celestial Orb of Souls channels the powers of the Light to bring back to life those who have recently fallen.
[Allari the Souleater's Coin] text says fish do not have souls. This is probably just a joke.