It's important to remember though that the World of Warcraft: Chronicle, from which the cosmology chart and virtually everything we know about the forces that make up the WoW universe originates was written "from the Titan's perspective". We've already seen color shifts in Shadowlands as well, with Sylvanas' new model eschewing her former purple armor for a deathly blue palette similar to that of the Jailer. We saw a great deal of this in Battle for Azeroth, the pink and purple regality of Azshara, blue and silver representing the ocean, with red, gold, and black symbolizing N'Zoth well before the Old God's first actual appearance. This particular fan-made chart is very interesting because WoW has frequently used color schemes to always been big on color aesthetics to express character alignment.
WARCRAFT SKYCHART SERIES
In truth, the elements and planes are more a series of overlapping venn-diagrams stemming from the six prime powers. In this, a 2D representation of the cosmology might be somewhat limiting, because although they are opposite elements, Nature is still a byproduct of Death, just as Necromancy is dependent on Life. For example, Nature is still clearly represented in the Ardenweald, but the Shadowlands is a realm of the afterlife, not true creation. It may look like our realm, and it's still made up of the various primordial powers in at least some part, just not as fully as our own. In Shadowlands, we go outside the realm of reality, into the literal Shadowlands.
The same is true for beings of the Shadowlands such as the Bastion Stewards when one is destroyed, eventually the energies it was made up of will form into a new Steward (a lot of overlap here with the Diablo series lore).
Even then, the energies which made up the creature persist, eventually coalescing once again to form a new creature - it won't be Archimonde anymore, but the energies that made up the creature are seemingly never truly gone. We've been told that demons such as Archimonde don't truly die when they're killed on a material plane such as Azeroth or Draenor they'll eventually be reborn and must be defeated inside the Twisting Nether to be fully destroyed (such as the last encounter of Hellfire Citadel, wherein Gul'dan opened a gateway to the Twisting Nether for Archimonde to come through). Like space, worlds exist within it, but it stretches beyond the realms of reality found on the cosmology chart to tie together all of those cosmic forces. The Twisting Nether has been somewhat ill-defined, as various new sources of information have come out over the years, but it's a combination of outer space and the Lovecraftian Immaterium. It is essentially the canvas which the cosmic chart rests on. It's described as the astral plane between worlds, an ethereal dimension which connects all these myriad powers which transcends all realities. One final realm, the Twisting Nether, is not represented. Even worlds like Argus, near fully in the grasp of the Fel forces of the Burning Legion is still comprised of elements of Arcane, Nature, and the rest of the elements it has to be, it couldn't exist otherwise. At the center of it all lies Reality the place where our character exist and the world they live on inhabit is made up of pieces from every force, and each elemental byproduct of it.
These forces are categorized into six basic primordial powers which oppose one another.Īll of which break down into elemental powers - Holy, Void, Nature, Necromancy, Arcane, and Fel, which further make up the Elemental Planes and Spirit Realms - Earth, Air, Water, Fire, Spirit, Decay, the Emerald Dream, and the Shadowlands. While some realms we as players have visited are made up almost entirely of one particular element, such as the elemental plane of Fire and Water, all of these forces are necessary components of the universe, even the ones which intrinsically oppose one another - without death, there is no circle of life, and without life, there's nothing to feed death, thus at least some semblance of balance must always be maintained, lest the entire system collapse.
The Cosmology Chart shows the alignment of cosmic forces within the World of Warcraft universe, the fundamental forces of existence. The chart also brings up a lot of interesting lore beats tying into Shadowlands. A lot of interesting little detail, such as the Jailer's chains emanating from the Necromantic sphere, make it a astounding piece of art. Redditor AJT2k19 has created an updated World of Warcraft Cosmology Chart, adding color and updated images of the recognizable leaders or paragons from each respective power.
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