Lorewalker Mo' - And Stay Dead

As we made our way through the broken isles and emerald nightmare, you probably recognised people you’ve killed before. Why do they keep coming back?

Apart from resurrections from your friendly healer, we mere mortals can’t come back. Even then those spells only work if you died of a physical injury; old age and disease can’t be avoided. As heroes of Azeroth we do have a little extra protection in the spirit healers. These beings are a faction of Val’kyr who chose to remain in the shadowlands; the plane of death you see when running back to your body.

Not all creatures on Azeroth belong in the mortal plane however. For example the elementals are being of pure magic, bound eternally to the elemental plane by the titans after their defeat. The plane acts as their prison colony, essentially magic Australia. Elementals on Azeroth have been summoned by a mortal force, and on defeat their spirit is pushed back into its own plane.

Demons on the other hand have always lived in the twisting nether. The nether is another plane that exists in between all universes, so while we have seen two Draenors there is only one legion. Demons feed on the life energies of mortals, so they invade our worlds to feed. These invasions were simple hunting parties before the legion came, wiping out the hunting grounds only came about when the legion was formed. Much like the elementals, the demons return to their own plane when killed.

The forces of nature also seem to pull this trick. The wild gods and green dragons were bound to the emerald dream by the titans to safeguard the surface of Azeroth as the dreaming titan grew. While many of these beings were killed in the war of the ancients, their spirits were returned to the dream. During the cataclysm several of the wild gods were able to return, this is thousands of years after their deaths, so it appears to be much harder to come back from the dream.

So is there any way to make sure these things stay dead? Well the rule is you can only truly kill them on their own plane. The elementals we killed in Deepholm and Skywall were completely destroyed; we will not see them again. Ragnaros was also killed in his own plane and has now been replaced in the firelands. Demons killed in the nether, such as Archimonde in the siege of Hellfire Citadel are also fully dead.

The exception here seems to have been the wild gods we killed in the emerald nightmare. It is possible that since the nightmare was a corruption of the dream it didn’t count as their true plane. There are several beings capable of cheating death, but death is patient; it will still get them in the end.