WARNING: Major 11.2 spoilers in this post!
Who is Locus-Walker?
We first met Locus-Walker during the Legion expansion in the 'A Thousand Years of War' audio drama. In that story, he was known as a mysterious master of the Void who, in spite of the corruptive nature of his powers, still held control of his mind. Despite the protests from her holy allies in the Army of the Light, the ranger Alleria Windrunner found his existence intriguing. In time, Alleria herself embraced the Void, and came to meet Locus-Walker in an unlikely place -- a Legion prison.
There, the partnership between mentor and student began with lessons on how to wield the Void with a more practiced hand, and the two escaped the prison together. From there, Locus-Walker taught Alleria a more fundamental lesson: how to maintain her sanity. In his view, the Void and its infinite possibilities have weaknesses just as the Light and its singular prophecy does.
The Locus-Walker kept her firmly afloat. "You have known the Shadow as nothing but horrors. The Shadow sees the Light in the same way. Neither viewpoint is true. Neither is wrong." The roar of the Void nearly drowned him out. The masters of the Void were clawing at her mind. She barely fought them off.
"The Light seeks one path and shuns all others as lies. The Shadow seeks every possible path and sees them all as truth."
Using the Void, he shows Alleria vision after vision of potential futures; one where the Light has crystallized Azeroth, another where she takes N'zoth's place as God of the Deep, yet more where Turalyon and their son Arator hunt her down and die at her hand. Amidst the Shadow's endless lies, Locus-Walker taught her the most important lesson to carry: the love she held for her son was a truth that could not be corrupted.
During her lessons, Alleria received a vision not of a potential future, but of an active present where Turalyon was under assault by the Legion. Denying her chance to fully embrace the Void for the moment, she chose instead to return to Turalyon and rescue him. While she was eventually imprisoned by Xe'ra and the Army of the Light for her heresy, Alleria regained her freedom soon after, as the final battle on Argus began.
Listen to 'A Thousand Years of War' Here
Locus-Walker would also appear again on Argus, when our fight against the Legion took us on a detour to the remnants of its former capitol of Eredath. The city ruins were inhabited not by demons, but by Void Ethereals from the Shadowguard who Locus-Walker had a keen interest in pursuing. While he had come there in pursuit of more students who could resist the Void, he had found only corrupted minds among the Shadowguard. Fortunately for him, he also found Alleria once again.
Reunited with his student, Locus-Walker began to guide her down the path of Shadow once more. Notably, he questioned whether she would be able to walk such a path with Turalyon at her side. As a shining beacon of Light, Locus-Walker did not believe that Alleria's husband would permit her to fully embrace the darkness, but Alleria had a different perspective. In her mind, there would be no Shadow without Light: the two must coexist just as Alleria and Turalyon do.
Together, Locus-Walker and Alleria pursued a void entity on Eredath that would suitably empower her, and with the aid of the player retrieved and consumed its dark heart. The two would then journey further into the Seat of the Triumvirate, where Alleria would battle a void-corrupted naaru and, at Locus-Walker's behest, consume its essence to fully embrace the Void.
He would again be seen in Legion shortly after Alleria's discovery of the Void Elves, a group of blood elf researchers who had nearly been transformed into void ethereals and now grappled with the whispers in their head. Despite his aura of self-serving adherence to resisting the Void, Locus-Walker chose to stay in their home of Telogrus Rift and learn about its inhabitants for a time.
Locus-Walker's Attachments
The next time we saw Locus-Walker was in the lead-up to The War Within, where we began to learn much more about his past as an ethereal. After Xal'atath attacked Telogrus and the void elves, Alleria was caught in the Harbinger's sights, taunted by a dark vision of a corrupted Turalyon. With Alleria unable to kill the image of her husband, Locus-Walker arrived to dispel it and ward Xal'atath off. Revealing her identity as the servant of the Void Lord Dimensius, he informed Alleria that his home planet of K'aresh had heard the Radiant Song emanating from their worldsoul shortly before its destruction, just as Azeroth's citizens were now hearing.
Despite the warning, Alleria was wary of the role she would have to play in fighting Xal'atath. Since returning to Azeroth, she had faced a more tumultuous situation with her loved ones than expected: the dark exploits of her younger sister Sylvanas need no explanation, and her son Arator had not accepted her back with open arms as she had hoped. In the years since the war against the Legion concluded, Alleria had begun to doubt if embracing the Void was worth losing her connection to her husband and son.
In response to her doubts, Locus-Walker took Alleria on a hunt for a nearby Void revenant that had been attracted to Telogrus by Xal'atath's power. Intent on teaching her a lesson about her attachments, Locus-Walker recounted to her a tale: the story of how K'aresh fell, and the part Locus-Walker played in it.
His story began long before the arrival of Dimensius. Back before its destruction, K'aresh was an arid planet, built around technological cities such as Tazavesh and ruled by Oracles who worshipped their planet's worldsoul. In that time, Locus-Walker was a technomancer in charge of studying mysterious arcane artifacts known as Reshii Ribbons, though he frequently drew ire for his interest in the Void.
Locus-Walker was driven towards researching the Void not by the allure of power or even knowledge, but love: for the cultures of K'aresh, and for his lover Krysson. The distrust that the Oracles held against him for his research increased as the people of K'aresh began hearing the voice of their planet's Worldsoul, with their leader Salhadaar declaring that it was beyond his duties to investigate the Radiant Song.
In secret, however, Salhadaar was not just the leader of the Oracles of K'aresh. He also led a secretive cabal of brilliant minds known as the Ravel, and he was intent on bringing Locus-Walker into their fold. Granting his name and his purpose, Salhadaar inducted him into the Ravel -- just as the skies above K'aresh turned to an unnatural dark. Unbeknownst to even his fellow Ravel members, Locus-Walker also heard whispers from the Void warning him of the coming danger: Dimensius.
As the darkness persisted, Locus-Walker continued to hear the voice in his head, unique from all others around him through his connection to the Void. Despite the love offered to him by Krysson in those times, Locus-Walker allowed her to pursue her own ambitions, and sank into isolation with his research and the whispers in his mind. What he discovered through the Void, however, is that the unnatural sky was a coalescence of Void energy that was rapidly accumulating, preparing to strike at the world itself.
Aided by his friends Nari (or Ve'nari, as we would eventually know her) and Ky'veza, Locus-Walker presented the Ravel a solution: using the Reshii Ribbons, they would erect massive barriers over their city that could transmute the encroaching void energy into pure arcane, indefinitely sustaining their own defenses and preventing Dimensius from destroying K'aresh. Despite hesitation from some of its members, Salhadaar and the Ravel worked tirelessly to create the barriers, which were successful in driving back Dimensius and his forces -- too successful.
In the process of converting Dimensius' attacks into pure arcane energy, the barriers surrounding K'aresh continued to grow in strength, searing the planet within and transforming the native K'areshi in a process known as the Wasting. As their flesh and features began to decay, they wrapped themselves in magical bindings to keep themselves intact, but eventually they discovered that the Wasting was transmuting them beyond the limits of their own flesh.
The first to begun undergoing this transformation was none other than Krysson. Amidst consoling Locus-Walker that the drastic action he had taken was for the sake of protecting his people -- or at the very least, preventing them from becoming warped monstrosities -- her flesh began to glow with arcane light. Spurred on by the voice in his head to bring this revelation to the Oracles, Locus-Walker proposed that they use the Reshii Ribbons again -- not to protect their world, but to transform themselves into beings of pure energy. Without the limitations of flesh, they would be able to depart K'aresh and survive the Wasting and Dimensius alike.
When Salhadaar and the Oracles delayed in their answer, Locus-Walker gathered Ve'nari and his Ravel allies together to use the Reshii Ribbons without approval, spurred again by the dark whispers. However, Salhadaar had gathered the Ribbons up himself, and in a court before the people of K'aresh made a declaration: that he was now their High King, and that the one responsible for the Wasting was Locus-Walker. Tearing down the barriers that protected their planet, he demanded that the 'traitors' be siezed.
Forced to flee, the group of Locus-Walker, Krysson, Ve'nari, and Ky'veza had a task: retrieve the Reshii Ribbons and complete the ritual to transform the K'areshi into beings of energy. To keep Krysson safe, she and Ky'veza left to a secure location while Locus-Walker and Ve'nari went for the Ribbons. Locus-Walker ended his tale there, declaring that he and Ve'nari were successful in transforming their people shortly before Dimensius devoured their world. That was the last time that he saw Krysson... that is, until the present day.
Eventually, they found the Void revenant they had been hunting while Locus-Walker told his story. The strange familiarity of the creature made Alleria hesitate to kill it, forcing Locus-Walker to join the fray to fight it and disperse it, leaving only its void heart behind. Alleria went to consume it, as she had with all her lessons from Locus-Walker, but instead he stopped her: the heart was his to claim.
“It is your tethers that make you unbalanced, Alleria. Release these things that weigh you down, these people you care about. This is holding you back from becoming who you’re meant to be."
“The people I care about? Like you did with Krysson? With Ky’veza?”
Locus-Walker came closer. “Perhaps you do understand. It was not the story of K’aresh that was the lesson—though it was the information you demanded of me—it was the story of Krysson. Through her tale I had hoped to show you that some paths are meant to fork, that some destinies are not designed to be so entwined. That some futures exist, but they must exist apart. To find your truth, you must see this and you must decide, balancing the good of your people, the good of your kin, against the good of yourself.”
In truth, the Void revenant was Krysson herself, and the tale Locus-Walker told was not his own, but hers. In telling her story, he had hoped to inform Alleria that the ties of love she held would only distract her in the fight ahead, as they had for Locus-Walker. In his eyes, had he not languished in Krysson's love for so long, he might have found a solution faster and saved more of his people.
Alleria disagreed. In her eyes, it was love that was her greatest strength, and Locus-Walker's as well. He had been motivated by love -- for K'aresh and for Krysson -- to delve as far as he did into the Void, and make the choices he did to save his people.
“You are wrong, Locus-Walker,” said Alleria. “My strength—my balance—comes precisely from those I love. They are not a weight that needs to be countered lest I be dragged down. My love for them is not a thing to be purged so I can be pure of mind and sure of focus. My strength comes from them.”
She stepped closer to Locus-Walker, holding the Void heart in her hand. “That was where your strength once came from too. You told me the story of two loves on a dying world, and I felt that love across the ages. You claim to teach me, but it is you who have forgotten the lesson. It is true that the future has many paths, and there is another open to me now. A path I fear you never saw back then.”
In this moment, it was not Locus-Walker who taught the lesson, but Alleria. Locus-Walker was alone with his regrets, the heart of Krysson all he had left of his love, but Alleria's choices were yet to be made.
Read 'The Doom of K'aresh' Novella Here
11.2: Ghosts of K'aresh
All of Locus-Walker's story culminates with 11.2 and his return to K'aresh. Shortly before the patch story, the planet had begun a resettlement process by the Brokers, fellow K'areshi who now sought to rekindle life on the shattered remnants of their world. Led by Ve'nari, Locus-Walker was recruited into her forces to deal with their most notable threat, the void ethereals of the Shadowguard. What he found was much more dire: the Shadowguard were looking to summon Dimensius once more.
Throughout the story of The War Within, our exploits have centered mainly around following Xal'atath and her exploits with the Dark Heart. During its brief repair stint in Undermine, however, it was stolen by ethereals of the Shadowguard and brought to K'aresh. Using the immense dark power within, they now intended to summon Dimensius at full strength to resume his conquest of the cosmos.
Called to K'aresh by Locus-Walker, Alleria and the player are let in on his plan: to ally with Xal'atath to stop Dimensius. The whole time, it turned out that the voice in Locus-Walker's head had been none other than Xal'atath herself, aiding him in forming a plan to defeat the Void Lord. For reasons yet unknown, she acted as his Harbinger in an unwilling capacity, and she had seen Locus-Walker and the K'areshi as a chance to break free from his control all those millennia ago.
Given her immensely hostile history with Xal'atath, Alleria is adamantly against such a partnership. She does not trust Xal'atath with good cause, and yet they need Xal'atath for one important reason: she was the one who wielded the Reshii Ribbons to transform the Ethereals. In order to reach Dimensius, they will need to wield the Reshii Ribbons again to enter the Shadowguard's Manaforge without being ripped apart by Dimensius' raw energy, and thus they will need to gather them once more.
While gathering their first ribbon from Ve'nari, our group all separate to do various chores for the Brokers, and it's here that Xal'atath begins to do what she does best and whisper in our ears. She reveals a simple fact to Alleria: Dimensius was not the one who destroyed K'aresh. Thinking over the implications of that, Alleria confronts Locus-Walker to learn the rest of his story. In truth, Xal'atath and the Ravel did not simply use the Reshii Ribbons to transform the K'areshi -- they also used them to obliterate K'aresh in order to destroy Dimensius. Ultimately, both tasks were unsuccessful, leaving K'aresh a shattered ruin and Dimensius fragmented across the cosmos.
At this, Alleria is truly horrified. All this time, Locus-Walker had preached letting go of his attachments in order to save his people, but in truth, it had been Locus-Walker himself who had doomed them as much as Dimensius. They had been left without bodies and without a planet for 100,000 years, all thanks to Locus-Walker.
Declaring her trust in her mentor truly broken, Alleria leaves our group behind, no longer willing to work with Xal'atath or Locus-Walker. Eventually, we retrieve the rest of the Reshii Ribbons, and find Alleria reunited with her void elf allies outside the Manaforge. After fighting through the Shadowguard, Alleria is forced to hand the Reshii Ribbon she had retrieved over to Xal'atath, who grants everyone the ability to become pure energy to fight Dimensius. Despite this, she has no reconciliation to give to Locus-Walker for his actions, past or present.
Locus-Walker says: I must talk to you before we cross the threshold, Windrunner.
Locus-Walker says: When you behold the Void Lord you will understand. You will know why my actions were necessary.
Alleria Windrunner says: No, Locus-Walker. I won't.
Alleria Windrunner says: You became a monster to defeat Dimensius. You sacrificed your world, your loved ones... I would never do that!
Locus-Walker says: There was no other way!
Alleria Windrunner says: That's what you keep telling me.
Alleria Windrunner says: We lied and manipulated our way to this victory, because that is how she does things!
Alleria Windrunner says: You think you've escaped the Void, that you are its master.
Alleria Windrunner says: But every dark whisper in my head confirms that you are lost. You are the Void's creature, no better than Xal'atath.
Locus-Walker says: Windrunner...
Alleria Windrunner says: I will follow the champion into that manaforge. For Azeroth! For K'aresh. For all the worlds unknown who we will spare this cruel fate.
Alleria Windrunner says: Then we are done. You are no longer my teacher, no longer my compatriot... No longer my friend.
Inside the Manaforge, our fight against Dimensius is immense and hard-won, taking us inside the Dark Heart itself to contain the Void Lord within it. As we prepare to retreat, Xal'atath informs us that she must stay inside to allow us to escape; a 'noble' act that will leave her trapped. Locus-Walker and Alleria leave the Dark Heart together, only to be met with tragedy outside.
As Locus-Walker grabs the Dark Heart, Xal'atath strikes at him from within. Locus-Walker is obliterated, and Xal'atath is not only free, she now holds the power of Dimensius in her hands. Swiftly leaving, she declares that she will soon take everything Alleria loves.
While Alleria is initially shocked and angry over the loss of of Locus-Walker, she eventually settles for a moment of quiet reflection. Locus-Walker was a complicated figure, even from her perspective as a close friend, and she struggles to grapple with his actions as she mourns his loss.
Alleria Windrunner says: I... I'm not sure what to say.
Alleria Windrunner says: Locus-Walker was my mentor, my comrade, my friend.
Alleria Windrunner says: Since I first embraced the power of the Void, he was there helping me to control and understand it.
Alleria Windrunner says: He alone supported me when my allies and my family pushed me away. He saw what mattered in people, for good or ill.
Alleria Windrunner says: He--He was my dearest friend. But when he died...
Alleria Windrunner says: His past with the ravel, the secrets of his ancient fight against Dimensius... I was so angry with him.
Alleria Windrunner says: I warned him! I did nothing but warn him about the path we walked down with Xal'atath. He wouldn't listen.
Alleria Windrunner says: She killed him because he trusted her. Because he understood who she really was.
Alleria Windrunner says: So this is my oath. I will hunt Xal'atath down. I will find justice for Locus-Walker.
Alleria Windrunner says: I will prevent her from becoming the new All-Devouring.
Ve'nari says: Alleria, to make an oath on K'aresh is no small thing. Are you prepared to take on such a vendetta?
Alleria Windrunner says: I am. I have seen the lengths you have gone to to fulfill your oaths.
Alleria Windrunner says: I will avenge my friend for all the good he has done in his long life. Even as I struggle to understand and forgive his evil.
Ve'nari says: Then we wish all fortune on your hunt, Alleria Windrunner.
With an oath declared in the sacred tradition of the K'areshi people, Alleria has one task ahead: to kill Xal'atath and save Azeroth. But how far is she willing to go to do so?
Midnight and Alleria
Ultimately, much of Locus-Walker's role in the story has been to highlight Alleria, and his story in The War Within has been no different. At his core, Locus-Walker is a glimpse at what Alleria's future may ultimately become.
In his fight against the Void, Locus-Walker sacrificed everything to defeat the Void Lord seeking to consume his world: his reputation, his loved ones, his people, and eventually even his world itself. In the end, Dimensius has at last been defeated in The War Within, but the cost has been immeasurable. From Alleria's perspective, she is more than justified to abhor his actions.
...And yet, what will Alleria do when those same choices are in her own hands?
By all accounts, Alleria now faces the same circumstances that Locus-Walker once did. A Void Lord now comes to consume her world, to destroy her people, to uproot her culture. As someone outcast from her people due to her connection to the Void, she has a unique insight into the oncoming threat, and a way to combat it that no-one else does. Just the same, Alleria is isolated in such a position, even more so now that Locus-Walker is gone.
Likewise, just like how Locus-Walker had Krysson, Alleria has Turalyon. Unlike Krysson and her unanimous support, however, Turalyon has been wary of Alleria's dark path since the moment she started to walk it. The two of them also have a son in Arator, who going into Midnight will have to grapple with the pieces he carries in himself from both of his legendary parents. Both of them may trust her, in the end, but they also both worry for her connection to the Void in a way even Locus-Walker did not suffer with Krysson.
Ever since she began to embrace the Void back in Legion, her struggle has been defined by her relationship to her family. Where Turalyon's holy nature has often been placed at odds with hers, Arator has always been her truth. In the same way she believed that Krysson was the love that motivated Locus-Walker, Arator is the love that motivates Alleria.
During her journey so far, Alleria has already struggled with the consequences of sacrifice. In the Light and Shadow cinematic, we saw how Alleria has made many sacrifices akin to Locus-Walker's -- sacrifices that come at the cost of those she is leaving behind as much as herself. From Sylvanas to Turalyon to Arator, Alleria's lonely pursuit of being Azeroth's savior has hurt the people closest to her time and again.
For Alleria, Quel'thalas is her K'aresh, Xal'atath is her Dimensius, and she is the Locus-Walker. Her mentor chose to forsake all of his personal attachments for the sake of saving his people, no matter the cost to the people themselves. When faced with those same choices in Midnight, the story of Locus-Walker leave us with one final question: what path will Alleria Windrunner walk?
