Bang's Blogs: Miraak vs Deathwing

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(Anonymous_Writer)

(Anonymous_Writer v2)

“If you want to conquer the world, you best have dragons.”  —George R.R. Martin

Lord Miraak, the First Dragonborn of The Elder Scrolls.

Deathwing, the Black Scourge of World of Warcraft. 

Traitors to their masters. Monsters with the might of dragons. Gods in search of eldritch higher power. Temples were raised and monuments were built for these draconic deities, as they are the first of their kind, and in due time, they will be the last. Despite the immense reverence they held, the pursuit of dark and eldritch might drove them to ruthlessly steal the souls of other dragons, growing into terrifying villains that history itself trembles at the mention of. But only one master of the dragons can prevail. The first dragon versus the first dragon slayer. Will the Dragon Priest be lost to the ages, or will the Dragon Aspect burn beneath the shadow of the wings? Let the flames dance and the legends burn through history upon this DEATH BATTLE!

Before We Start…

We will be compositing both gameplay and lore into this blog, so no “but these characters can die to wolves” arguments or any of that nonsense.

For Miraak, we will be using sources from the mainline games, legends, guidebooks, official novels, the Imperial Library and viable WoG statements from developers and Loremaster Kirkbride. While works from Kirkbride have sometimes been seen as contentious by people within the Elder Scrolls community, we feel like there is enough statements from other developers and loremasters within Bethesda, as well as some of Kirkbrides direct works being included into mainline Elder Scrolls lore (Chaotic Creatia was an idea originating from Kirkbride which became a key plot point in Elder Scrolls Online, and the book “The 37th Sermon of Vivec” was also included in the Morrowind expansion of Elder Scrolls Online. This combined with the various statements have led us to believe that Kirkbride’s works and statements are fine to include in the blog.

For Deathwing, we will obviously be using the games along with official guidebooks and lore encyclopedias like Chronicles Volumes 1-4 and the Dragonflight Codex, as well as books and novels such as War of the Scaleborn, Day of the Dragon, Beyond the Dark Portal, the Last Guardian, the Sundering, and the Demon Soul, etc.

To give credit to people who weren’t working on this blog, we used some scans and calcs from already existing blogs such as G1’s Chosen Undead VS Dragonborn and Sauron VS Lich King blog. As well as a blog on Deathwing made in the ODBD by one of our researchers, since both franchises are…fucking confusing.

But Why This Fight? Why Not Alduin vs Deathwing?

Also before we begin we should probably explain why this blog is being done as opposed to alternative matchups, namely Deathwing vs either Alduin or Ghidorah. The easiest answer to this is that several people were uniquely passionate about making a blog about Miraak, so this garnered more interest as a result. There are more reasons though stemming from the matchup itself. Deathwing vs Alduin and Deathwing vs Ghidorah were created a long time ago around the time of the Cataclysm expansion, prior to recent developments in Deathwings character, developments that made him a far more complex and “human” character. So whereas having Deathwing fight one of the other two big dragons makes sense because of what he became, the recent Dragonflight expansion from World of Warcraft, along with other media, shows off who Deathwing was. As such, Miraak best shows off this lesser known side of The Worldbreaker. This matchup also covers Miraak quite well too, touching on the important aspects of his character in some neat ways. 

Background

Miraak

“You have no idea of the true power a Dragonborn can wield!”

Many centuries ago, when Alduin alongside the dragons reigned over Nirn through their might, a prominent legion of mystical warriors who learnt the ways of the Thu’um as a return for their contribution to the dragons’ reign of terror for as long as they lived. This cult was led by the Dragon Priests, with Miraak being the leader of them. He alongside his Nordic comrades had temples built for them to worship their agenda as they acted as intermediaries between the people and the “gods” they worshiped.

Upon stumbling to a fabled Black Book through happenstance, Miraak traveled to a plane of Oblivion, Apocrypha, were he sought the forbidden teachings from Hermaeus Mora, the Daedric Prince of fate and knowledge. During his search for true power, Miraak learnt about his true potential: he may have had the body of a man, but had the soul and blood of a dragon. He found out that he was Dragonborn, the first in fact. But Miraak wanted more to his power within the Thu’um, so he learnt a few shouts unknown to the dragons themselves in Apocrypha, one that bends the will of dragons to their knees, and one that deeply taps into Miraak’s Dragon Aspect.

Using his newfound power, Miraak plotted a massacre against his dragon masters and succeeded, using his innate ability to devour their souls as Miraak’s arrogance relished his strength. To continue his conquest, Miraak influenced three of his Dragon Priest comrades (Ahzidal, Dukaan, and Zahkriisos) to turn against their masters and form a group of acolytes. But during the Dragon War, warriors from outside legions like Hakon One Eye sought Miraak out in desperation for a strong ally against Alduin. However, Miraak left mankind to their own fate due to his ego thinking that he could defeat Alduin if he wanted to, but Miraak’s overconfidence would lead to his downfall as this led to a devastating loss within a battle against his former comrade, Vahlok the Jailor, who split Solstheim away from the mainland of Skyrim upon clashing against Miraak’s might. After the First Dragonborn’s alleged death, Skaal legend would remember him as “The Traitor” after his temple was ravaged by dragons as a punishment alongside the undead husks of the Dragon Priests’ dungeons.

But it turns out that Miraak was resurrected by Mora who titled the traitor as his champion, with his presence being unknown to the people of Nirn as his strive for knowledge and power stayed in Apocrypha for centuries to come. But during that time, Miraak’s place as Mora’s puppet caused him to resent his eldritch master, honing his Thu’um powers to conduct a plan to backstab the Daedric Prince so he can become the master of his own fate once more. That wasn’t until 4E 201 where Miraak’s influence spread across Solstheim and a few other dragons, manipulating their minds to worship and help with his return by building temples and Stones of Power. Others came to praise Miraak consciously to a point where a cult was formed to his dedication.

However, Miraak foresaw a challenge of one who possessed similar power. So Miraak’s cultists were sent to assassinate this “False Dragonborn” who would travel to Solstheim himself to stop Miraak’s tyranny. And while Miraak seemingly won at first, it wasn’t until our Dragonborn (the one we play as) used the hidden knowledge of Black Books and Mora’s allegiance to defeat the First Dragonborn once and for all in the Summit of Apocrypha. Upon his defeat, Miraak’s attempt to escape from Mora’s grasp would be no use as the Last Dragonborn then absorbs the First’s soul after being praised as Mora’s new champion, leaving nothing but Miraak’s skeleton. With existence being long forgotten by all of Tamriel as his last words of resentment and arrogance to the one who came after he spoke “May he be rewarded for his service as I am!”.

Deathwing

“I AM DEATHWING, THE DESTROYER, THE END OF ALL THINGS, INEVITABLE, INDOMITABLE; I AM THE CATACLYSM!”

Thousands of years ago, when the world of Azeroth was young, mighty beasts known as proto-dragons wandered the earth. They were small, basic, bereft of arms and ruled by primal instinct. One such proto-dragon was named Galakrond. Galakrond grew hungry one day, and began to devour his fellow proto-dragons, growing into a monstrosity that dwarfed mountains and darkened the skies. Many proto-dragons cowered in fear of Galakrond, but five dragons overcame their base instincts and fought back. Together they slayed Galakrond, and as a reward for their valor, the five proto-dragons became something new. They became the first dragons on Azeroth. Now granted powers of near-divine origin by the Titans, these five became the Dragon Aspects; Alexstrasza, Ysera, Nozdormu, Malygos, and most importantly… Neltharion.

While every Dragon Aspect had their role to play in the newly forming society of dragons, Neltharion was revered for his strength. As the aspect of the earth itself, it was his duty to bear the weight of the world on his shoulders. His wisdom earned him the servitude and worship of many. However, little did any of his allies know, Neltharion was not quite as benevolent as he seemed on paper. The weight of his burden began to erode him. He started to resent his duties, the load placed upon him making him feel suffocated to the point of hatred. This desire to be free from his masters attracted the whispers of a long forgotten god. The Old God N’Zoth saw a worthy tool in the Earth Warder, and with promises of rulership of all dragonkind, and power beyond measure, Neltharion began an uneasy alliance with the void being.

During his time as an Aspect, the Old God’s influence continued to permeate his mind. In his madness, Neltharion began to desire only conquest. He wished to dissolve the leadership of the other Dragon Aspects so that he may one day rule over all dragons and native races of Azeroth. To achieve this, Neltharion forged a deadly artifact. A golden disc forged from his own blood, magically shielded from the sight of his brothers and sisters. This disc was known as the Dragon Soul, and its use would be made clear soon after.

When demons invaded the world of Azeroth ten thousand years ago, the Dragon Aspects all took to the sky to stop them. In this turmoil, Neltharion saw an opportunity to complete his Dragon Soul. Revealing it to his kin, he convinced the other Aspects to pour a portion of their power into the device. Trusting their noble brother, they did not hesitate, and gave him exactly what he needed. With the power and souls of dragons within his dreaded artifact, Neltharion revealed his betrayal. Neltharion, now calling himself Deathwing, struck out against his fellow dragons, slaying many of them and scattering their bodies and bones across the land. Those that survived were left with broken hearts, and secluded themselves to avoid his slaughter.

The growing corruption in Deathwing's heart began to warp his body. The once noble and regal dragon began to change into a more terrifying appearance. The power he absorbed from his fellow dragons filled his body with too much power to handle, cracks began to form along his body allowing magma to pour from between his scales, his eyes began to burn red. He was no longer Neltharion the Aspect of Earth. He was Deathwing, Aspect of Death, the Destroyer.

To hold his body together, his servants forged plates of adamantium steel, one of the strongest substances on Azeroth. They were bolted to his body by his Drogbar slaves, but in his vulnerability the Dragon Soul was stolen from him. The great hero Malfurion managed to snatch the artifact from the black dragon, and through a great series of events that involved the work of many heroes, Deathwing was banished from Azeroth, but not before vowing that he will one day return to cause death and destruction to the world. Sent to an alternate plane known as Deepholm, he waited, healed from his wounds and recovered his strength, so that he may one day make good on his promise.

While he would play minor roles in the background of many events, Deathwings true return to Azeroth would come in the form of a world shattering event. In this time, the whispers of the Old Gods had grown worse. The influence of the Old Gods had magnified Deathwings power tenfold, and in his long-burning hatred, Deathwing literally erupted into the world. His explosion into Azeroth was so powerful that it tore a rift between the Elemental Plane and Azeroth and caused earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and floods, reshaping the very face of the world. This event, referred to as The Cataclysm or The Shattering, sent the world of Azeroth into turmoil. While they had fought demon lords, elemental gods and necromancer kings, now they had a dragon to fight.

The campaign against Deathwing was long. Freeing former slaves to his influence and uniting his former allies against him took much time, but soon enough the final battle against Deathwing could begin in earnest. The Champions of Azeroth managed to turn the Dragon Soul against Deathwing. The unleashed power within the artifact blew Deathwing apart, leaving only fractions of his jaw for the Horde and Alliance each to keep to commemorate his defeat. If we didn’t manage to defeat him then it’s likely N’Zoth himself would have done so. In possible futures where Deathwing emerged victorious, he is seen having been betrayed by his former master, impaled once he outlived his usefulness to his eldritch benefactor. 

Even years after his death, Deathwing’s legacy continued to haunt dragonkind. His cruelty is legend, his lust for power remains unchallenged, and the consequences of his strength remain painted onto the maps of Azeroth to this day.

Experience & Skill

Miraak

Before searching for divine knowledge, Miraak was still highly experienced and intelligent. Miraak was the leader of the Dragon Priest, a legion of magical warriors empowered by dragons and learnt their language for as long as they lived. Ruling over Tamriel as a result to push Alduin’s agenda. Considering that Miraak was a highly ranked Dragon Priest at the time and was also compared to the likes of Vahlok the Jailor in strength, he should be knowledgeable with Magicka and the Thu’um respectively. He’s able to read Black Books and Oghma Infinium in the plane of Apocrypha, which can drive mortals to madness due to their incomprehensible nature. 

Miraak is notably a very manipulative and calculating figure who was able to conduct a plan to massacre his dragon masters and absorb their souls to gain their knowledge. Influencing three Dragon Priest to form a group of acolytes to move onward to his rampage further. That’s not saying that his influence left after his disappearance, as he was able to create his own legion of followers even while absent from Nirn. Though in Apocrypha during the Second Era, he was able to trick one of Mora’s Ciphers into smuggling cursed scrolls to Quires Wind, causing them to go mad and turn into Hushed as a result.

During his banishment in Apocrypha (which lasted from centuries to millennia), Miraak was under the teachings of Hermaeus Mora who is the omniscient embodiment of knowledge itself. Honing his newfound Dragonborn abilities to plot his revolt against his master with the endless wealth of forbidden knowledge. He even knew far enough to comprehend the ways to interact with Nirn from Oblivion, and even precisely predicted when the Dragonborn was present to engage.

Considering his place as Dragonborn and how he is on the same level of knowledge comparable to the one we play as, it is likely that he knows every Dragon Shout (except ones that are specific to other dragons like Dragonrend or Alduin’s Fog).

Deathwing

Deathwing holds a vast amount of experience. He took part in the battle against Galakrond, which is one of the earliest dated events in Warcraft history, taking place over twenty thousand years ago. Since then Deathwing served as a protector, and later tyrant destroyer of Azeroth. 

His skill as a combatant is considerable. He personally trained and instructed the Dracthyr, a race of humanoid dragon hybrids designed to be magical super soldiers. All Dracthyr are masters of the use of the following weapons; daggers, staves, fist weapons, one handed and two handed swords, one handed and two handed axes, as well as one handed and two handed maces. There are several Dracthyr that can also be the Warrior class in Warcraft. The warrior class is cited as being “a battle hardened master of weapons,” and are also stated to use a diverse array of combat tactics, and have mastered the art of battle. Neltharion is quite revered by those of the warrior class, as one of his scales is used as a legendary Artifact Weapon by Protection Warriors. Deathwing himself is known to use a two handed Sauron-style mace, as well as in the past using a sword named Ashkandur. He also led the Aspects forces against the Primalists in the War of the Scaleborn, winning a decisive victory despite being outnumbered. 

Deathwing has shown to have great skill when it comes to manipulating people. He has disguised himself as nobles several times to politically manipulate people, as well as using his powers to do so. A notable time when this occurred was when he manipulated an orc named Zuluthred the Whacked (yes that is his name) into finding his Dragon Soul for him after he lost it. His plan to imbue the Dragon Soul with more draconic power managed to fool Alextsrasza, who can magically see past lies, as well as Nozdormu who can see the future.

Magically he is stated to be a greater mage than the likes of Krasus, a dragon mage who was a member of Dalaran’s Council of Six, the second most prestigious and high-ranking title a mage can receive. He is also outright compared to Medivh, who to put simply is Wizard-Superman in Warcraft. Deathwing has the combined knowledge of all of the dragons absorbed by his Dragon Soul, granting him not only complete mastery over the arcane (an extradimensional source of cosmic power) but also a fundamental understanding of other extradimensional realms, as well as complete awareness of every timeline, the past and the future simultaneously.

Deathwing is also a skilled crafter. He has forged armor, and is implied to have created and engineered complex machinery as there are functional robots laying around his workshop in the Zskera Vaults. He managed to create an incredibly powerful magical artifact, the Dragon Soul, and also managed to biologically engineer and create the Dracthyr through genetic experimentation. He also created other similar beings such as Chromatus. He also knows how to make jewelry which is pretty neat.

Equipment

Miraak

Dragon Acolyte Mask

The squid-like mask Miraak obtained when he first conducted his schemes. Not only does it fortify his Magicka capabilities, but they are also comparable to Dragon Priest masks which are stated to defy the laws of time itself.

Dragon Acolyte Robes

Miraak’s set is capable of passively absorbing the Magicka used against him to an extent and poisoning the attacker back.

Firstblade

Miraak may be busted when it comes to his magic, but he isn’t a no-brainer in the way of the sword. Firstblade is an enchanted one imbued with stamina draining properties and can even stretch its blade to Miraak’s liking.

Staff

Miraak has a staff that can summon poisonous tentacles, simple as that.

Deathwing

In his dragon form Deathwing has no use for most conventional equipment, however there are some notable weapons and tools in his arsenal as well as weapons that have been forged from his body that can be mentioned.

Scale of the Earthwarder

A shield made from one of Deathwing’s scales prior to his corruption. This shield has been used to defend from attacks from Titans like Aggramar and Argus, as well as other heavy hitters in the Warcraft universe. The Scale has several passive effects related to its status as Deathwing/Neltharion’s scale. In particular several that involve the nullification and reflection of “magic” damage. Seeing as the Scale of the Earthwarder is…exactly that, just one of his scales, all of his other scales should have the same effect. 

Fangs of the Father

These are two knives made from his teeth. They also have some negligible passive effects. Side note, the reason why the stats are so low is because of several stat-squishes done by Blizzard over the years in an effort to keep player damage and health numbers to a reasonable level, so don’t worry these weapons are not fodder. 

Oathbinder

Oathbinder is a big shiny glove that he used to mind control the Dracthyr. As far as we know it should only work on Dracthyr so don’t worry about this one.

Ashkandur

Remember that sick ass sword he’s got? Here’s what it does.

Elementium Armor

See that armor he’s wearing? It’s made of Elementium, which is highly resistant to elemental damage, as shown when he used it to resist the ice, earth, fire and lightning attacks from the Primalists during the War of the Scaleborn.

The Dragon Soul

The Dragon Soul is Deathwing's greatest creation. A magical disk that Deathwing used to betray his fellow dragons and begin his ascension. The Dragon Soul has the ability to absorb the powers and souls of dragons, either by directly targeting them or by their power coming into contact with the Dragon Soul. The Dragon Soul has a ton of powers, which is including but not limited to the following:

Draconic Mind/Body Control

The Dragon Soul can control the minds and bodies of dragons.

Existence Erasure

The Dragon Soul can unravel beings from existence, even beings as strong as Deathwing. Keep in mind that Deathwing was able to take multiple hits from the Dragon Soul once it was turned on him, requiring it to be further amped by the other four dragon aspects in order to actually work on him.

Power Absorption & Adaptation

That’s right we’re getting all 682 up in this bitch. The Dragon Soul can absorb power/essence, and cannot be harmed by the kinds of power it has absorbed. This is not limited to draconic powers, as it has absorbed the soul of an eredar warlock. This means that, due to the Dragon Soul absorbing the powers of every kind of dragon, it resists basically every hax they can do. In addition it has the capability of bestowing the powers and immunities within it onto its wielder and others. This includes advanced expertise on these abilities since even mere newborn dragons are considered masters of their Soul granted abilities. As It has already given Deathwing abilities the magic inside will be discussed in his ability section.

Abilities

Miraak

Magicka

Among his Dragon Priests, Miraak has a great understanding and proficiency with Magicka, which is more than your average firebolt and shield spells. It’s also the cosmic energy of what’s left from Magnus’ power and drawn from the distant realm of Aetherius that holds reality together and is used to conjure a wide variety of spells from their respective classes. One’s Magicka can be enhanced with the use of potions and enchantments to fortify the strength and supply of the user’s energy. Furthermore, after 3000 years of study in Apocrypha, it is likely that Miraak’s magical aptitude far exceeds what he could do when he was just a dragon priest. Magicka flows through everyone’s bodies as they can also imbue it to themselves and other objects. Meaning that all spells and weapons do in fact scale to the user’s physicality.

Law/Conceptual Manipulation

(Pocket Guide to the Empire 3rd edition - Arena Supermundus: The Tapes of Heaven)

The general nature of Magicka breaks and defies the metaphysical laws and concepts.

Mathematics Manipulation/Existence Erasure

(The Four Suitors of Benitah)

Magicka is capable of nerding people out of existence.

Destruction School

The Magicka School that revolves around unleashing the natural forces of the physical world to deal damage to all forms of matter through magic.

Elemental Manipulation

What you’d expect from element based spells. Things ranging from magic fireballs, lightning strikes, ice spells along with their stronger variants are no exception. Though some spells can manifest these elemental aspects and coat them around the user’s body at an area of effect.

Power Absorption/Bestowal

(Response to Bero’s Speech)

Destruction Magicka is capable of absorbing spells from the opponent and applying it to yourself as well as many others (context of this scan, lad just stole an army’s power and transferred it to his own army).

Solar Manipulation

Miraak has a sunlight based spell to ward off the undead and vampires, simple as that.

Restoration School

While not considered one of the “greater schools”, Restoration Magicka is a defensive one that involves healing and defence against other influences.

Healing

Healing is Restoration Magicka’s specialty, with Miraak having a multitude of healing spells for him and his allies, even at a large area of effect. Miraak should also know Mora’s Boon which can fully heal his health, stamina and mana. Healing spells in The Elder Scrolls can cure diseases, increase your strength, agility and intelligence, or kill undead creatures.

Forcefield Creation

Restoration Spells such as Wards are defensive spells that generate forcefields out of Magicka to absorb damage from other spells or physical attacks.

Illusion School

Based around the psychological changes the user can make through one’s mind, tricking all forms of senses into making their illusion real to them.

Illusion Creation

With illusion spells, Miraak can…create illusions…. Whether it’s not just for the eye, but any other senses such as making people hear some shit with noise spells.

Mind/Perception Manipulation

(Proposal: Schools of Magic)

Illusion Magicka not only conjures illusions, but also manipulates the mind of the target.

Fear/Emotion Manipulation

Miraak has many emotion based spells to use for his advantage by maximizing one’s confidence into boosting their stats, forcing targets into fighting, pacifying them or just having them flee in terror. These can even work on emotionless beings like machines, undead and the Daedra.

Blindness Inducement

Illusion spells include ones that can blind the target. 

Clairvoyance

Clairvoyance spells help Miraak reach his current goal, perfect for side quests.

Invisibility

Miraak can turn invisible, self explanatory.

Extrasensory Perception

Vision of the Tenth Eye allows Miraak to see invisible beings

Alteration School

Alteration School is about…the alteration of the physical environment and reality with how it can be changed to the user’s desire.

Subjective Reality

(Reality and Other Falsehoods)

Alteration Magicka revolves around the conviction of higher powers to project one’s willpower onto reality and accept it as a falsehood to the user’s personality.

Paralysis Inducement

Single target or multiple, Miraak has some paralysis based spells that can render his foes the inability to fight back.

Telekinesis

Miraak can move things with his mind. That’s that. 

Statistics Amplification

Mages can imbue their physical attributes with Magicka. Several spells such as Dragonhide can increase Miraak’s physical defenses.

Transmutation/Matter Manipulation

While the spell description doesn’t fully do these abilities justice, the main idea of Alteration Magicka is to transmute targets and manipulate their matter. Furthermore, Miraak should know spells like Ash Rune and Ash Shell, which turns those hit with it into hardened ash.

Flight

Whilst no longer a spell commonly taught to the residents of Skyrim after the empire outlawed it, it is a common spell of Morrowind (which Solstheim is a part of), therefore it seems reasonable to assume that Miraak would have learnt of this spell during his time as a Dragon Priest (especially considering Dragon Priests are shown to float when you encounter them in game)

Conjuration School

The art of summoning outside forces from another plane, mainly the Daedric beings of Oblivion under the caster’s command.

Weapon Creation

Miraak can conjure weapons out of his spirit, ranging from bows, daggers, swords, and battleaxes.

Necromancy

Miraak can conduct Necromancy through a variety of spells such as Dead Thrall for reanimation.

The Thu’um (+ Magical Disclaimer)

It is said that Kyne gifted the first Nords the ability to “shout” and taught them how to speak Dragon Language. And as the First Dragonborn, Miraak is a master of the Thu’um. Most Greybeards commit to a vow of silence because their Thu’um is so strong that everything around them would be destroyed, though this isn’t a problem for Miraak, as Dragonborns like him are able to learn the Shouts faster than others, meaning that he has a long range of abilities through them such as rushing forward at the speed of a tempest within a blink of an eye, or disarming people. To which, whenever a Thu’um user learns a shout, they also gain an immunity to it by becoming the shout and take its very meaning into themselves.

And considering that the Thu’um is a minor form of Tonal Magic, which is not even really a type of magic at all, it’s inherent manipulation of sound and metaphysics used by the Dwemer to recreate the Aedra’s divine powers. While this will be expanded upon in the cosmology section, the Elder Scrolls cosmology is essentially a song. Imagine that regular magic allows a user to rearrange the notes of this song to produce their desired effect, Tonal “Magic” (like the Thu’um) would be creating new notes to be added to this song, forcing the Earthbones to shift to their will as they make a sound. So essentially, while the Thu’um wouldn’t be as broken as Tonal Magic due to being a lesser version of it, it’s still pretty strong regardless.

Conceptual Manipulation (Part 2!)

(The Dragon War)

The Thu’um is not only way above Magicka in terms of what it’s capable of (which is reality warping by default), but Thu’um users like Miraak can manifest their will into existence and truth so the Thu’um doesn’t just make you breathe fire, you create fire and project it through reality.

Space-Time Manipulation

(The Strange Case of Ragnthar)

The Thu’um, in nature, is a minor form of Tonal Manipulation in the TES universe, which was used by the Dwemer to alter the metaphysical tones and the Earthbones of Mundus (read Cosmology section) weave space and time together. And can even go further into it in terms of range.

Plot Manipulation

(36 Lessons of Vivec, Sermon 9)

The general nature of Tonal Manipulation alters the Earthbones which contain the scripts and narratives of the Aubris (read Cosmology section). While the Thu’um wouldn’t be on the same vein as “reshape the Aurbis” strong due to it being a minor form of Tonal Manipulation by default, that’s still fairly strong. Especially when considering a mere mortal known as Barfok, Maid of Planes, was able to use the shout Event Denouement to manipulate the narrative in such a way as to guarantee her victory in her battles. Considering Miraak’s studies under Hermaeus Mora, it would be logical to say that he too would have access to such a shout. So if Miraak was to hit a Fus Ro Dah then it’d essentially be him changing the plot by saying “this guy will get ragdolled” depending on what the shout does.

Soul Manipulation/Absorption

While this may seem surprising if you think about how in Skyrim, Soul Tear is a shout which is only known by Durnehviir, and as such Miraak should not know about it, right? Well, not really. For one, fodder dragons in Elder Scrolls Online have access to Soul Tear, and as Miraak has absorbed the souls of many of these dragons due to his nature as Dragonborn, gaining their knowledge and power while imbuing them into his voice, he would have eventually learnt it anyway. Furthermore, Miraak actually made his own, more powerful, soul consuming shout. It is the only shout in all of history to be made of four words instead of three, and allows Miraak to bypass even a dragon's resistance to getting their soul removed without having to kill them.

Mind Manipulation (Layered)

Bend Will, Miraak’s signature shout, manipulates others’ minds to their knees, inflicting this effect on the citizens of Solstheim to do his bidding even when he wasn’t present. Bend Will can work on mortals, stones, to dragons who have shown immunity to Molag Bal’s mind manipulation by default. This is especially impressive considering who Molag Bal is, he is domination given form, and as such has incredibly powerful mind control powers. However, even with all these powers he was unable to take control over a dragon within his own realm of Coldharbour, meanwhile Miraak specialises in controlling these very same dragons. Furthermore, Bend Will is also superior to a Dragon Priest whose Thu’um was able to break the minds of an entire city.

Matter Deconstructing Shockwaves

The most iconic shout of them all is Unrelenting Force, the Fus Roh Dah, a powerful scream that can ragdoll the targets or even disintegrate them as well as their surroundings.

Weather Manipulation

Similar to the Greybeards who can control the weather, Miraak can do the same by weaving cyclones or storms that can even be summoned inside buildings? And other realms like Apocrypha?

Incorporeality/Astral Projection

Miraak can shift his body to a spiritual state in the Void that is immune to physical attacks. Miraak’s range with it went far enough to cross the lines between Oblivion and Nirn to steal Dragon Souls. However, this shout is deceptively impressive. Note the use of the word “Void” which it claims to make you a part of, Pelinal Whitestrake claims that the very same “Void” is akin to when “The Dream no longer needs its Dreamer”, basically meaning that this Void that Miraak is becoming exists outside of the Godhead itself (The Godhead will be expanded upon in the cosmology section). Considering that Pelinal is a Shezzarine (an incarnation of the God Lorkhan), it seems likely that he would have knowledge as to the nature of this void, even if he is quite mad. 

Fear Manipulation

Dismay inflicts fear into the enemies’ hearts to the point where they run away from the battlefield in terror.

Fire Manipulation

Who's to say that you’re a dragon if you can’t breathe fire?

Ice Manipulation

Frost Breath and Ice Form are cryokinetic shouts that can freeze the target solid.

Statistics Reduction

Drain Vitality decreases the target’s magic supply and stamina on contact overtime.

Durability Negation

Marked for Death is similar to Drain Vitality, but instead decreases the foe’s defense and armor.

Time Stop

“Slow” Time commands time itself by slowing it down, or even better, stops it completely in lore. Also worth mentioning that regular Dragons in Elder Scrolls Online are capable of completely stopping time with their Thu’um, considering that Miraak will have absorbed the souls and minds of many of these Dragons, it would be reasonable to say that he should be able to do the same.

Illusion Creation

Throw Voice creates an illusion of sound to deceive those who fall into the Thu’um’s tomfoolery. Pretty useful for stealth missions.

Beast Manipulation

Miraak can tame the animals within the wild with Kyne’s Peace, or have them fight for him with Animal Allegiance!

Clairvoyance

Aura Whisper is able to detect the energy of any living being, even if out of sight.

Statistics Amplification

Miraak can increase his attack speed with Elemental Fury.

Power Bestowal

Battle Fury increases the attack speed of nearby allies.

Age Manipulation

(Five Songs of King Wulfharth)

Alduin reduced the entire Nordic population to six years old until Wulfharth reverted them back to normal after learning a shout. Considering that Miraak has studied under Hermaeus Mora, it seems reasonable to say that he would have learnt such a shout over his studies.

Dragonborn Physiology

As the First Dragonborn, Miraak has the blood and soul of a dragon, giving him a variety of resistances and immortalities the other dragons have.

Acausality/Immortality

(There be Dragons)

Dragons aren’t born nor are they hatched, they simply exist without change for as long as they live throughout eternity.

Miscellaneous Powers

BFR

Mora’s Grasp can trap the target into a limbo between Nirn and Oblivion, two different dimensions. Not to mention that Miraak can teleport the Dragonborn back to the summit whenever he tries to leave during his boss fight.

Precognition

During his time in Apocrypha, Miraak perfectly predicted the Dragonborn’s arrival and sent his cultists to kill them as a result. Which isn’t too far off from the sub school of Magicka, Mysticism.

Fear Manipulation

As a Nord, Miraak has the innate ability of “Battle Cry” which can make nearby opponents flee in terror.

Resistances

• Soul/Memory/Fate Manipulation: Miraak’s place as Mora’s Champion means that his soul is unbound to fate due to it being claimed by the Daedric Prince of Knowledge, Memory and Fate.

• Poison Manipulation: Can traverse through the poisonous waters of Apocrypha.

• Paralysis Inducement: Took a hit from Voldendrung which was shown to paralyse targets in other games.

• Disease Manipulation: Restoration Magicka has spells that can cure diseases.

• Reality Warping/Transmutation: Unaffected by Wabbajack which transmutes the target into…literally anything lmao.

• Death/Conceptual/Soul Manipulation: Survived being stabbed with Mehrunes’ Razor, a dagger that can instantly kill the target and send their soul into Dagon’s plane of Oblivion. It has also shown the ability to delete concepts.

• Soul/Mind Manipulation (Layered): During the ancient past of the dragons’ reign, they resisted their minds and souls being taken by higher dimensional beings such as the true form Molag Bal, the Daedric Prince of Dominance. (Daedra Dossier: The Titans)

• Existence Erasure: Use of Tonal Magic has caused its users to cease existing (Et’Ada, Eight Aedra, Eat the Dreamer)

• Madness Manipulation: Miraak and the dragons can traverse through planes of Oblivion such as Apocrypha, which can break the minds of mortals and drive them through insanity to the point where their body is completely mutilated. (ESO: 2023 Global Reveal)

• Space/Time/Mathematics/Logic/Conceptual/Plot Manipulation: The dragons thrived even during the Dawn Era, which lacks the narratives and concepts created by the Divines before their intervention (read Cosmology section). (ESO: A Matter of Voice and Brass (2018)

Deathwing

Another Magical Disclaimer

So that we don’t have to mention this under every single magical ability Deathwing has, we will put it here. All of Deathwing's magic should be layered. This is due to being able to affect Death Knights with his magic, who are armored in a magically resistant material known as Saronite. Saronite is shown several times to be unaffected by magic as seen against Kael’thas, Rimblat Earthshatter and Rayne. Deathwings hax can affect Death Knights, therefore bypassing their magical resistance. This along with Warcraft’s semi-complicated magic resistance system discussed later.

In addition, magic damage isn’t simply relegated to spells. “Magic” energies and the like are just the building blocks of the series. All forms of energy are consistently shown to be comparable to magic. Natural phenomena, spiritual powers, internal chi, it's ALL “Magic”. This includes concepts like Time or Fate. Even the very Song that weaves the Cosmology together.

Aspectral Powers

(Ebonhorn doesn't have a pretty illustration, so here's Wrathion.)

God this name is dumb but this is what Blizzard keeps calling it so I guess I will too. 

The Aspects are five exceptional dragons who were given immense power over 5(4.5 really) different important factors to life in Azeroth. As the leaders of their flight they are the strongest of their given flight. And as the Aspect of Earth, Deathwing has his own unique powers, such as…

Earth/Magma Manipulation

The Black Dragonflight are the guardians of the Earth, with this Dragonflight being the one Deathwing himself ruled over. Many Black Dragonflight abilities such as Deep Breath, Landslide, Eruption and Upheaval manipulate the earth to smack opponents with rocks, dealing volcanic damage. Deathwing can sense irregularities in the earth, shift the density of magma into rock, and levitate stones. He's able to create mountains and carve valleys, and other Black dragons weaker than him have been able to create walls of stone, and erupt volcanoes. His rival Iridikron, who also manipulates the earth, could create earthquakes, shift the state of earth from stone to something mudlike, and even create volcanoes again.

Statistics Amplification

The core ability of Augmentation Dracthyr, Ebon Might enhances the stats of four of Deathwing’s allies (which sadly doesn’t include himself) by a percentage of his own stats, with the effect lasting longer by using certain abilities. 

Defensive Abilities

The Black Dragonflight ability Obsidian Scales enhances the defensive properties of his scales for a short period of time. Meanwhile the ability Blistering Scales will apply extra armor to allies (this time it does include himself,) while simultaneously causing attackers to get fucking exploded. Sometimes the best offense is a good defense. 

Gravity Manipulation

High Priestess Azil from Stonecore, who gets her power from Deathwing, could manipulate and intensify gravity with the ability Gravity Well. This could also explain why Deathwing and other black dragons have demonstrated telekinetic abilities. Iridikron also demonstrates this ability against Neltharion himself. And certain mages also display a similar ability.

Energy Absorption

Deathwing was able to absorb the elemental energy of Deepholm.

Fire Manipulation

Deathwing can breathe fire and can set his claws on fire.

Arcane Magic

 Deathwing is one of the few characters in the Warcraft setting that is able to utilize multiple different kinds of magic. The one he familiarized himself with first, like all of the Dragon Aspects, is Arcane magic. Arcane magic is magic tied to the concept of Order, as well as the fundamental building blocks of existence itself. All of the Dragon’s powers fundamentally revolve around Arcane magic, and Deathwing has shown a great level of understanding of these powers himself. 

Mage Abilities

Since there are over a hundred spells to go through we are going to break down the important spells into categories. Say a hax, link which spells do the funny hax, move on.

Elemental Manipulation

Fire: Fire Blast, Fireball, Flamestrike, Blazing Barrier, Blast Wave, Pyroblast, Scorch, Phoenix Flames, Living Bomb, Meteor, Dragon’s Breath, Ring of Fire, Greater Pyroblast

Ice: Blizzard, Frostbolt, Frost Nova, Cone of Cold, Ice Barrier, Ice Block, Ring of Frost, Ice Nova, Ice Lance, Frozen Orb, Flurry, Comet Storm, Ray of Frost, Glacial Spike, Frost Bomb, Ice Form, Snowdrift, Ice Wall

Lightning: Arcane Lightning, Nether Tempest

Arcane Manipulation

The Force of Arcane is in itself a damage type, one with unique properties. In particular it interacts with things on an atomic level. Fundamentally it's the underlining math of the universe.

Magic Energy Shields

Mages can create magical forcefields with spells like: Blazing Barrier, Ice Barrier, Prismatic Barrier, Mass Barrier, Mana Shield

Portal Creation

Mages can create Portals which allows for the quick transportation of troops, an easy way to earn money, trick your friends into falling into a crater, and the flooding of a body of water into an occupied volcano and major city.

Teleportation

Teleport and Blink are more combat applicable spells that allow for instant travel between both long and short distances. Telefragging, teleporting something into something else to deal heavy damage, is very much an open possibility in Warcraft.

Duplication/Attack Nullification

Mirror Image and Mirrors of Torment conjure clones or objects that can nullify attacks on the caster.

Time Manipulation

Mages can alter the personal flow of time for themselves or others. Speeding up their actions or slowing their enemies. They are also able to reverse their flow of time to heal injuries.

Invisibility

Mages can turn themselves or others invisible.

Magic Nullification

Mages can counter spells in combat. This includes being able to reverse spells back at their casters.

Buff Stealing

Buff steal allows a mage to take magical buffs from a target. These buffs range from minor healing over time effects to powerful statistical amplifications. And since this is Warcraft magic, this can include technological effects, natural effects, etc.

Transmutation

Polymorphing is actually kinda cracked in WoW. It has turned entire kingdoms into a horse (not, like, individual horses. A horse, like, all of them into one horse,) and can even break the fourth wall as the blue checkered cube is what happens when an untextured item shows up when the game code breaks.

Curse Removal

Mages are able to remove curses

Magic Amplification

Mages can apply a buff to amplify the effects of spells on allies. They can also do the opposite.

Conjuration

Mages have a history of being able to conjure various items including: Buffet tables, pastries, water, gems made of mana. However they can also summon minor elementals to aid in combat, which will be discussed in the support section.

Fel Magic

Among the many elements Deathwing tapped into when experimenting with the Dragon Soul was the element of Chaos. The fundamental opposite of Arcane that feeds off of life force, in its rawest forms it is even entropic. As this is a learnable ability and one Deathwing seemingly demonstrates on Malfurion and Krasus, and absorbed into The Soul. This gives him another laundry list of powerful abilities

Warlock Abilities

Chaos Manipulation

Fel is raw chaos and destruction and able to tap into all sorts of magic types. In fact it can act as all of them including Holy, Nature and Physical damage. Even its own opposite in Arcane damage. It also bypasses armor.

Darkness Manipulation

Numerous Warlock spells, such as Shadow Bolt, involve the conjuration of darkness and shadow to assault a foe.

Magical Energy Draining

Warlocks can drain mana from a target.

Fear Manipulation

Several Warlock abilities involve inducing fear in the target. Whether it be cast or howling.

Extrasensory Perception

Warlocks can buff themselves or others to detect invisible creatures

Biological Manipulation

Warlocks are capable of allowing an ally to breathe water, altering their ability to breathe at all, or unwinding a foe into a pile of gore. Other Nefarius black dragons have also physically combined two separate species, implying more precise control over tissue is possible.

Demon Summoning

Warlocks are able to summon various demons from the Twisting Nether. Discussed in the support section.

Curse Manipulation

Warlocks employ a number of magical curses to debilitate their foes

Language Manipulation

With Curse of Tongues Warlocks can curse a caster into speaking demonic. Curse of Exhaustion can make them grow fatigued easier. Deathwing demonstrates a curse that is functionally both that he can activate manually. It's also more powerful, outright preventing the victim from speaking coherently at all or passing out outright.

Statistic Reduction

Curse of Weakness and Curse of the Elements both reduce the foes physical power and their magical resistances.

Void Magic

This is one of the fun ones.

Void is essentially hunger in magic form, being vampiric and parasitic. It eats away at both victim and caster alike, tearing away at sanity. So terrible is its might, only mere shades can exist in the universe as we know it. As a servant of N’Zoth, Deathwing has a slew of void abilities that he can use in combat. These include…

Void Manipulation

Warcraft has multiple types of Void energies. Cosmic Void users, like Neltharion, manipulate the energies of the void to potentially erase things from existence entirely according to The Knife.

Black Hole Creation

Deathwing created a black hole behind Raszageth, one with its own gravitational pull that was sucking her towards the center. He can also use these black holes as portals. Sarkareth, a Dracthyr who was also corrupted by the same Void as Deathwing, could also create black holes by crushing targets under the weight of space. Black Holes can also be created by the void minions of Xhul’horac and M’uru, two other void entities. Black holes can also be made by Constellars such as Algalon and Rygelon, Constellars being living and breathing constellations whose abilities are all themed around cosmic space shit. Suggesting these are all comparable to real black holes.

Old God Blood Manipulation

Deathwing can manipulate the crystalized blood of an Old God. Old God blood ain’t your normal hemo, as Saronite (which is also the crystalized blood of an Old God) can drive nearby people insane. 

 

Mind Control

One of the most basic abilities of the void is to dominate the will and minds of others, with Deathwing able to do this to humans and dragons alike. Deathwing has shown this ability himself when he mentally influenced the minds of several nobles. Using his control over one of those nobles Deathwing also erased and altered his memory.

Illusion Creation

Deathwing made this orc start seeing some shit, tough world.

Soul Manipulation and Consumption

The void is able to touch souls as evidenced by the spell Void Soul. The void is also able to consume souls. 

Miscellaneous Space Powers

Sarkareth was corrupted by the void inside of Deathwings laboratory so everything voidy he can do Deathwing should be capable of doing too. Including BFRing them into space, telekinetically drawing in meteors, and conjuring a supernova.

Shadow Priest Abilities

Deathwing’s void powers have been compared to the capabilities of a player Shadow Priest. Priest’s are another of the player classes in World of Warcraft, and are casters that specialize in the use of either the Holy Light or the Void. Shadow Priests (the specialization that utilizes the Void) show some of the above abilities, and even several N’Zoth themed abilities. Since this class has over 133 abilities I am simply going to break this down the important spells into categories. Say a hax, link which spells do the funny hax, move on. 

Sanity Manipulation

Shadow Priests have a wide variety of ways they can wear down the mental defenses of an enemy such as Mind Blast, Mind Flay, Dominate Mind, Mind Control, Mindgames, Surge of Insanity/Mind Flay: Insanity, Thought Steal, Psychic Horror and Psychic Scream. 

Death Manipulation

Shadow Word Death deals instant damage.

Disease Manipulation

Devouring Plague lets a priest inflict a disease that heals them whenever it damages a target.

Sound Manipulation

Silence, which prevents a target from speaking or spellcasting. This one Deathwing has been directly capable of using.

Attack Reflection / Perception Manipulation

Mindgames is a spell which essentially warps its target's perception of friend or foe.

Spell Mimicry

Thought Steal, which just lets a priest copy the spells a target can cast.

Tentacle Creation

Void Tendrils and Idol of C’Thun let a Priest conjure angry tentacles. These tentacles can wrap their foes or shred their psyche with lesser versions of the Mind Flay spell.

Dragon Soul Abilities

Deathwing has demonstrated a number of abilities he just should not have. But he has them. This is likely because of experiments done with the Dragon Soul, definitely see the before the verdicts for more info.

Dimensional Travel

Deathwing not only can freely travel to the Emerald Dream, but he also knows all of its inner workings and mechanics. Having such vast knowledge of the dream’s inner workings allows him to do things like…

Reality Warping

While inside of the Emerald Dream beings are freely able to manipulate the world around them as if they were dreams, as demonstrated both by Deathwing and Malfurion here. The Emerald Dream entity known as Stargrazer can also use this to pluck out stars from the sky like apples. 

Incorporeality

Beings who can access the dream, like Green Dragons, can become corporeal and incorporeal at will.

Age Manipulation

Deathwing rapidly decomposes a living being using the Dragon Soul.

Time Manipulation? Nuh Uh

Deathwing was able to explicitly hide a moment in time from Nozdormu, who can freely travel through and see through time as the Aspect of the Bronze Dragonflight. So if you try to manipulate time against him? Nope, do not pass go and collect your money.

All of the Aspects Powers

So the Dragon Soul also contained the powers of every Dragon Aspect This gives him…a lot of shit. As he was able to create the Dracthyr who are amalgamations of all of these magical abilities who were “created to wield the magic of all five dragonflights.” The Dracthyr also have many abilities of note, which are helpfully broken down into each color of the rainbow- dragonflights. Let’s list them off, starting with the Red Dragonflight. 

A more in-depth explanation of why he has these will be provided “Before the Verdicts”.

Red Dragonflight

When the first dragons came into existence after being empowered by the Titan Keepers, all dragons were split up into “Dragonflights,” with each Dragonflight being charged with a different task. The Red Dragonflight are charged with defending and nurturing life on Azeroth, guarding nature and promoting the flourishing of the world and all living beings within it. As such, their abilities revolve around life and vitality. 

Fire/Life Manipulation

Many of the Red Dragonflights abilities such as Living Flame, Fire Breath, Cauterizing Flame, Pyre, Dragonrage and Firestorm all use fire to attack. Simple stuff. The Red Dragonflight are guardians of life and can breathe life into things. Alexstrasza (the Aspect of the Red Dragonflight) has shown that she can literally breathe life through her flames (1:56.) Many of the Dracthyr abilities confirm this, with moves like Living Flame, Cauterizing Flame, Renewing Blaze and Lifeforce Mender demonstrating options to heal allies or yourself through the manipulation of a person's life force.

Blue Dragonflight

The Blue Dragonflight are guardians of magic. The energy of arcane magic is a great tool, one that can be used for both good and evil. The Blue Dragonflight serve as mediators of arcane energy, ensuring that it doesn't fall into the wrong hands to maintain stability and balance within the world’s ley lines (essentially veins of arcane magic throughout the world.)

Ice Manipulation/Arcane Manipulation

The Blue Dragonflight are the guardians of magic and often are closely associated with Spellfrost. Spells like Disintegrate, Azure Strike, Permeating Chill, Unravel, Eternity Surge and Shattering Star all deal Spellfrost damage, as do their breath attacks.

Statistics Reduction

The spells Disintegrate and Permeating Chill reduce the enemies speed. 

Durability Negation

The spells Unravel and Shattering Star explicitly target the opponent's defenses, causing them to take more damage as well as deal damage directly to their magical shielding. 

Causality Manipulation

The Blue Dragonflight spell Causality implies that they have some degree of control over cause and effect. While this is a somewhat shaky connection, more causality manipulation abilities will be explained soon. 

Enhanced Duplication

The aforementioned Kalecgos has shown that he can create more than a dozen mirror images at a time, and each are capable of different tasks and each have their own consciousness, even being able to hold conversations with one another. So this is less of a mirror image and more so just temporary cloning. 

Existence Erasure

Here we see Malygos shooting a beam of energy at the Dragon Soul in an attempt to erase it from existence. As the beam travels it quite literally erases everything in its path, including the sky itself.

Petrification

Malygos was the reason the Dracthyr were sealed away via petrification.

Bronze Dragonflight

The Bronze Dragonflight has a far more grand role out of all of the Dragonflights. Their job is to maintain the “True Timeline,” ensuring that history progresses as intended. Their job includes preventing time paradoxes, dealing with time travelers, and preventing changes to the timeline. They travel through and see through the past and future simultaneously in order to carry out their duties. 

Space Time Manipulation

That’s right, we went from throwing rocks to fucking with time. The Bronze Dragonflight are guardians of time, and have many time and space manipulation abilities. Bronze dragons can freely time travel, see into the past and future, and can see all alternate universes and timelines simultaneously

Abilities such as Time Spiral, Echo, Time Dilation, Breath of Eons and Temporal Anomaly refer to warping time, stretching time and even sending a vortex of temporal energy towards the target. With abilities like Reversion grievous injuries can be healed by rewinding time. Time Skip can send someone forward in time. Chrono Loop can trap someone inside of a time loop, and the abilities Time Stop and Stasis can freeze time. Hell, there is an ability called Time of Need which calls in an alternate version of yourself from another timeline to help you. Timelessness detaches someone from time. Warp lets you blink in and out of time and existence. Defy Fate sends lethal attacks into an alternate timeline, leaving you to fight another day.

Oh and Spatial Paradox causes…spatial paradoxes, as a nice cherry on top.

Fate Manipulation

Several Bronze abilities reference and manipulate fate, such as the aforementioned Defy Fate but also Threads of Fate.

Enhanced Movement

The abilities Motes of Acceleration and Temporal Burst increase a person's movement, reaction and combat speed.

Precognition

Prescience allows the target to see into the future.

Sand Manipulation

Bronze Dragons can shoot sand out of their mouths… an unexpected choice for a breath weapon. That can’t be comfortable.

Jump-Kaisen

Bronze dragons (or in this case a corrupted Bronze dragon) like Morchie can summon alternate timeline versions of themselves to jump you and help them in combat. 

Green Dragonflight

Much like the Red Dragonflight, the Green Dragonflight protects nature. However instead of protecting the nature of the planet, the Green Dragonflight protects nature within the Emerald Dream. The Emerald Dream serves as a blueprint and model for life and nature to follow, and it is the Green Dragonflights job to protect it. 

Life Manipulation 2: Emerald Boogaloo

They can do a variety of things. Abilities such as Dream Breath, Spirit Bloom, Expunge, Verdant Embrace and Emerald Blossom can heal allies and cleanse them of poisons and toxins, as well as grow and manipulate plants. How lovely.

Dream Manipulation / Dimensional Travel

Many of the aforementioned abilities pull power from the Emerald Dream, which is a separate plane of reality representing the abundance of nature. Green Dragons can freely travel to and from the Emerald Dream.

Sleep Manipulation

The spell Sleep Walk can disorient enemies by putting them to sleep, causing them to sleepwalk towards the caster.

Acid Breath

Oh. Didn't think it could get worse than the sand.

Gaseous Breath

Pretty sure this is just burping.

Bug Breath

WHY?

Dragon Aspect Physiology

Deathwing’s physiology has changed a lot after getting his hands on the Dragon Soul, and here’s some of what it can do.

Flight

Dis boy can fly. Who would’ve guessed?

Nuke Blood

His blood has turned into Nuka Cola. His blood can explode in a nuclear blast. It is also sentient and it’s pissed, and he can control it at will.

Elementium Plates

His body is covered in plates made of Elementium, which is a powerful material that can reflect all spells, even from people as formidable as Malygos.

Shapeshifting

Deathwing, like all dragons, can freely shapeshift between his human and dragon form. Dragons can really shapeshift into...anything, Nozdormu once turned into a pile of sand.

Size Alteration

Deathwing can change the size of his dragon form seemingly at will, which makes sense since he can shape shift. Nozdormu also once grew so large he could physically hold together all of the timelines and keep them from collapsing.

Healing Factor

In visage form dragons have been shown healing from mild injuries in seconds. Deathwings healing has been greatly increased because of The Soul, he can regenerate from lethal wounds. In Legion it was implied that Warcraft’s whole “creatures tied to the Forces resurrect in that Force” thing also applies to corrupted black dragons like Sinestra. If true this means he can resurrect from just his soul after a decade. But this is so far unproven.

Resistances

An Irresistible Disclaimer

Power levels are just kind of a thing in Warcraft. In Day of the Dragon this is shown to affect a character’s ability to resist hax. More specifically Deathwing. Now you’re probably wondering “doesn't that example directly contradict the immunity thing?”. It would if this were not Warcraft we were talking about. Simply put, the immunity thing was retconned into The Souls capabilities starting with The War of the Ancients trilogy. Which was released three years after DotD. And this general principle of power level = hax resistance has been shown to still be true as recently as Shadowlands with our Elephant in the Room.

The List:

Keep in mind we're going to omit duplicates. There is a lot of overlap between classes. This list is partially pulled from here. Also; it’s non-comprehensive. WoW is basically 10+ games stapled together with dozens of additional media to go through. Things are just going to slip through the cracks.

Direct Lore Resistances: Effects he’s survived from various bits of story.

• Fire, High Temperature, Lava/Magma: Black Dragons regularly bathe in lava. Elementium naturally resists fire elemental attacks. And he has shrugged off attacks from Shaman and Mages. He can also shrug off attacks from Infernals, which may burn as hot as the sun.

• Frost, Low Temperature, Water: Elementium naturally resists water elemental attacks. And he has shrugged off attacks from Shaman, Mages, and Death Knights. Death Knights can purge areas of all heat and Dracthyr can freeze things to absolute zero.

• Air, Lightning: Elementium naturally resists Air Elemental attacks. And he has shrugged off attacks from Shaman, Druids, and Mages.

• Earth, Gravity, Vibration: Elementium naturally resists Earth Elemental attacks. Neltharion has broken out of Iridikrons gravity manipulation. And he has shrugged off attacks from Shaman.

• Time, Age, Causality, Sand: Deathwing has literally powered himself out of Nozdormu’s attacks, and has personally blocked Nozdormu’s attempts at peering into his past. His corruption has also resisted a Time Stop.

• Life, Sleep, Poison, Acid, Plant, Fungus, Insect: Deathwing has literally shaken himself out of Ysera’s attacks. He’s also resisted attacks and crowd control effects from Druids, Shaman, Hunters, and Rogues.

• Math, Transmutation, Existence Erasure, Petrification: Deathwing casually deals with Malygos’ magic. Spitting in the face of his existence erasure, literally. Kalecgos’ experiments against his blood proved fruitless. He also has shrugged off attacks and crowd control effects from Mages, Shaman, and Hunter basilisk pets.

• Empathy: Survived a fight with Alexstrasza, who can force her foes to feel her own emotional torment, the specifics of which you do not want to get into.

• Mind, Memory, Sanity, Fear, Soul, Perception: Resisted the potent mind manipulation of the Old Gods for at least two centuries. Can shrug off magic and crowd control from Priests and Warlocks. Seeing as The Old Gods are his masters and on-par with Titans, this is a resistance that would apply even when a foe is supposed to be stronger than him.

Boss Resistances: Other abilities usable by the classes available to players. Including the later classes, because of Sarkareth.

• Chaos, Darkness, Energy/Stamina Draining, Biology, Corruption, Battlefield Removal: Can shrug off magic and crowd control from Warlocks. Note: Curses are some of the few hax spells that can work on Raid Bosses.

• Death, Blood, Disease, Corrosion, Rot: Can shrug off magic from Death Knights.

• Light, Pain, Sound, Dispelling: Can shrug off magic from Priests.

• Guilt: Immune to the Paladin spell Repentance.

• Binding: Can resist the spell Elemental Binding from Shaman.

• Chi, Paralysis, Instant Death: Can shrug off attacks and crowd control from Monks.

Indirect Resistances: Any miscellaneous effects that deal magic damage not found from player characters.

• Radiation, Magnetism, Plasma, Antimatter, Space

Domination

Mind, Will, Personality, Memory, Law, Concept, Fate, and possibly Plot

We now welcome to the stage: Shadowlands

Please clap.

Meet Domination, a super powerful form of Death magic. It is the singularly most busted thing about Warcraft and requires an in-depth description.

This magic originates from The Primus, a god of Death, who used it to subdue The Jailer, that guy every Warcraft fan hates and another god of Death. It inherently disrupts the target's understanding of itself. The Jailer turned around and eventually gained control over his own Domination and learned to wield it expertly and turn it on The Primus, erasing his memories in the process. In his and his minions hands it is primarily used to subdue a character's willpower, personality, and mind. rendering them a puppet to the Jailer. He has woven it into the very fabric of his domain in The Shadowlands. And seeks to do the same to the entire cosmology. In previous lore, basically things that are Domination now but weren’t always, It was also used to subjugate normally resistant or immune creatures and players.

Slight problem, this asshole also used it to alter the concept of Fate itself, Fate as a topic in Warcraft is somewhat complicated. Rewriting Fate to break free of the pre-ordained events all are bound to is also part of The Jailer’s goal (no scan, but it's Sylvanas chapter 21). Fate as per the Fated Raid questline, which is happening because of the Jailer cosmology plot, governs more than simply the inevitable future. But the set in stone events of the past as well. Its applications as plot manip are debatable but that's a conversation for the Verdict.

While there was a big questline about how impossible it is to counter, it has been countered or broken a few times. The most important right now: Darion resisting it from the broken Helm of Domination. Previously he was completely helpless against it from Bolvar, using the same albeit intact source. It’s worth mentioning he also briefly resists it again there, but fails once Bolvar puts more effort into the spell. Which makes sense under the whole Warcraft power level thing. The Lich King basically has complete governance over his minions at his peak. All other times Domination was resisted, barring one, involving the Domination user getting weakened. So power level is kind of vital to Domination’s function. That last time was stuffing an artifact full of willpower specifically to prevent the strongest possible source from insta Dominating the players, which notably does not fully protect them.

Oh and worse still, Control Undead is a Death Knight spell that is inarguably Domination. One introduced in Cataclysm. And which does not work on Nefarian, Deathwing’s undead son. So it's pretty reasonable to say Deathwing himself would resist it and the effects it produces. Provided the foe is weaker than himself.

Forms

Miraak

Dragon Aspect

A shout that deeply taps into the spiritual manifestation of Miraak’s very being as Dragonborn, heavily increasing Miraak’s powers within the Thu’um. This shout can also summon an Ancient Dragonborn to assist Miraak whenever he’s low on health.

Deathwing

Dragon Form

Deathwing’s most iconic form is his dragon form, which is used in his first raid appearance (Dragon Soul). In this form he focuses mostly on the abilities inherent to his physiology such as his flight, fire breath and manipulation of his blood. He uses it for widespread destruction and cataclysms, as well as against opponents his size.

Human Form

Deathwing also has a humanoid form, which is used in his appearance in the second raid he’s in (Abberus.) While his dragon form is more iconic, he utilizes his humanoid form just as much as his draconic one, and has shown no issues shifting back and forth as need be, and uses this form when facing humanoid opponents. In his humanoid form he utilizes either his sword or his mace, and will also make far more use of his myriad of arcane and void magic. It is worth noting that his magic is not specific to this form, the Aspects and Deathwing himself have shown that they can utilize incredible magic even while within their draconic form, it just seems to be based on preference that he prefers to cast spells in this form. Which makes sense, if I turned into a big ass dragon I’d wanna smash stuff too.

Support

Miraak

Sahrotaar

Miraak’s right hand man (or dragon) and main mount who is a Serpentine Dragon, and considering his nature as one, he can do more than Frost Breath (aka a lot of the BS we covered for Miraak).

Krosulhah

Another dragon Miraak sacrificed to the Dragonborn. Nothing else to note.

Relonikiv

Again, another dragon. Not much more to say for them.

Kruziikrel

Ok I guess Miraak can't absorb their Dragon Souls to gain more power and replenish his Magicka, stamina and health if they fall. At least they died to defend their master.

Seekers

As a Dragon Priest, Miraak is well versed in the Conjuration School of Magicka and has a bunch of Daedras working alongside him in Apocrypha, who are metaphysical entities manifested from pure thought. The Seekers on the other hand are a type of Daedra who both serve Mora and his champion. They are masters of Illusion Magicka and can drain their enemies’ strength or just send them to other realms.

Lurkers

Daedric guardians of Apocrypha’s knowledge, usually hailing from Oblivion’s murky waters. Their brute strength also comes along with regenerative abilities and poisonous tentacles they can spew out of their mouth.

Hushed

Former mortals who fell victim to Mora’s incomprehensible nature, though their minds have been destroyed, they still maintain their skill and Magicka abilities they had in their former life. The Hushed also consist of many other different types.

Deathwing

Onyxia

The first of Deathwing’s big dragons, and Deathwing’s daughter. She really doesn’t have a lot of super notable abilities beyond the inherent abilities of a black dragon. There’s one, but she’s not pulling it off mid-fight.

Nefarian

The second of Deathwing’s big dragons, and his son. Similar to Onyxia, Nefarian really doesn’t have many abilities of note outside of the normal capabilities of a black dragon, he’s kinda just a big dragon.

Ultraxion

Another big dragon, this time not related to him. His type of dragon, the Twilight, can turn intangible and even counter intangibility themselves. Not very notable otherwise.

Hideous Amalgamation and Corrupted Blood

In Deathwing’s raid fight as you deal damage to him, his blood and fragments of his Elementium plates will coalesce into these monsters. Due to being composed of Elementium they should have the same magical reflection properties Deathwing does, but aside from that they also aren’t particularly notable.

Elementals

Ragnaros the Firelord

Now for a good summon. Ragnaros is an elemental, and is the lord of fire elementals. He is a massive being the size of mountains, and simply manifesting a weakened version has devastated entire mountain ranges. Ragnaros’s abilities are rather simple, mainly being fire manipulation and hitting you really hard, but he is incredibly powerful. Ragnaros was capable of burning down the world tree Nordrassil. Nordrassil, like all world trees, is able to reach into the Emerald Dream, more on why that is impressive when we get to cosmology.

Demons

Far less impressive, the various demons Deathwing can summon don't have many abilities that Deathwing can't produce on his own. Uhh…there's Sayaad, who can magically seduce a foe.

Feats

Miraak

Overall

• Ruled over Solstheim for centuries, present or not

• Formed his own cult and group of Acolytes through his influence

• Successfully backstabbed his dragon masters

• Succeeded as Mora’s apprentice for thousands of years

Power

• Unrelenting Force can disintegrate people

• Storm Call can conjure country spanning storms (520.8 Gigatons)

• Separated Solstheim away from the mainland of Skyrim during his fight with Vahlok the Jailor at his weakest (300 Teratons of TNT, by DB themselves!)

• Can injure the Last Dragonborn even if they’re wearing Daedric Artifacts (read Cosmology Section)

Speed

• Can dodge arrows in game

• Whirlwind Sprint can have Miraak move as fast as a tempest

• Can evade lightning based spells, similar to average warriors

• Should have access to spells that are stated to be sunlight

• Capable of evading arrows that fly to the sun of Aetherius (Infinite, read Cosmology section)

Durability

• Miraak can fight through sword strikes, arrows, or the player’s magic 

• Can resist getting ragdolled by Unrelenting Force

• Can take attacks from weapons of the Daedric Princes which are higher dimensional objects (Read Cosmology section)

Deathwing

Overall

• Led the dragons to a decisive victory against the Primalists, a foe who vastly outnumbered them.

• Created the Dragon Soul, an incredible feat of magical engineering.

• Managed to correctly assume Krasus knew too much with just a glance.

• Deceived characters who can magically discern intentions, and time travel. Somehow.

• Nearly destroyed all of Azeroth.

• Successfully killed The Budget. Forcing his own raid to be almost entirely reused assets.

• Single handedly almost wiped out the entire Blue Dragonflight as well as the Dragon Aspects.

• Has directly fought and beat; Raszageth, Iridikron, Malygos, Alexstrasza, and Thrall

• Has a voice so cool they brought him back to voice his rival.

• A deathcore vocalist and guitarist.

Power

• Caused a volcanic eruption as well as earthquakes which nearly sank an entire island.

• His blood can create nuclear explosions.

• Could “crack the world in two” with a roar. (59.44 Zettatons)

• Caused the Cataclysm, creating massive earthquakes, floods and volcanic eruptions across the planet, and even reached into the Emerald Dream (see Before the Verdicts for why these feats could be Outerversal)

• Created a large chasm in a mountain range.

• Punched a hole in Deepholm, which is an elemental pocket dimension outside of Reality, rupturing the barrier between Azeroth and the Elemental Planes.

• His breath could summon a full power Ragnaros, a weaker variation of Rag was summoned with planet wide quakes.

• Linked to Azeroth’s power as Aspect of Earth (Debatable, see “Before the Verdicts”)

• Considering he bears the literal weight of the planet at all times that means the sheer kinetic energy produced just by flying at the speeds he does is tremendous. (10.15 Zettatons to 6.13 Ronnatons)

Speed

• Flew from Dalaran to the Dark Portal (Mach 80 to Mach 798)

• Flew from Wyrmrest Temple to the Maelstrom (Mach 11)

• Flew from some mountains to Stormwind in about 10 seconds (Mach 386)

• Flew from the bottom of the Maelstrom to above sea level (Mach 141-Mach 8454)

Durability

• His scales are unharmed by his own attacks. 

• Constantly bore the weight of the world on his shoulders. And can withstand that force being drastically increased. (59.44 Zettatons and higher)

• Survives multiple hits from the Dragon Soul.

• Took a hit from a high ranking member of The Burning Legion.

Scaling

Miraak

Alduin and Dragonborn

The main can of worms when it comes to Skyrim scaling, where the major plot point of the game is regarding how Dragonborn (the one we play as) is generally more powerful than Alduin, Odaviing (his right hand man) even admitted this himself. With Miraak being stated to be the greatest threat the Dragonborn has ever faced, literally one shotting him point blank without needing to use Dragon Aspect. See the Cosmology section for why these feats are Outerversal.

• Alduin’s mere existence can cause a localised Dragon Break, a catastrophic event that reverts the linear time of Mundus to what it was in the Dawn Era

• Alduin at his peak can devour Mundus as a whole to contribute to the Kalpic cycle of Mundus where it is destroyed until it begins anew

• Alduin’s nature as a god means that he exists outside of time and space by default, which is consistent with how Alduin can fly through the currents of time (Immeasurable).

• The sheer potential of stirring in his sleep can destroy the world.

• Alduin stomped the Jills who are not only unbound by time, but can repair the damages caused by the Dragon Breaks as “minute menders” (Outerversal and Immeasurable, read Cosmology section). 

• These guys can also take 16th dimensional attacks from the Hists (Hyperversal).

• The Dragonborn’s Clear Sky shout can disperse storms and meteor showers.

• The Dragonborn can shoot an arrow to the sun with Auriel’s bow, which can cause it to either burst or be converted into darkness

• The Dragonborn can potentially outrun Alduin’s meteor storm, celestial objects like shooting stars do come from Aetherius

Dragons/Misc Thu’um Users

It should come to no surprise that Miraak massively upscales almost every other Thu’um user, including the dragons and other Thu’um users such as Pelinal Whitestrake (before his madness) who is an aspect of Lorkhan comparable to the likes of Shor (which makes sense considering that Alduin fought a ghost of him once), or High King of Skyrim Wulfharth, who had to summon that ghost of Shor in order to fight Alduin after Alduin turned him and all Nords into children, especially when Miraak is comparable to our Dragonborn being the second most powerful behind Tiber Septim. Hell, the Dragonborn straight up tanks the full might of the Greybeards. See the Cosmology section for why these feats are Outerversal.

• Ulfric Stormcloak shouted the Markarth legions to death.

• Fodder dragons can create storms and world ending floods with their Thu’um.

• Olaf One Eye split the sky during his fight against the dragon, Numinex.

• King Wulfharth (or Ysmir) fought against pre-CHIM Vivec and Nerevar and uprooted towns in doing so.

• Wulfharth also moved the moons Masser and Secunda with his Thu’um

• Most of the Greybeards committed to a vow of silence, because even a whisper can destroy everything.

• The Greybeards’ shook the world with their voice.

• King Wulfharth’s smoke from his funeral pyre was able to reach Kyne (Infinite Speed).

• Pelinal can cleave months of time out of existence.

• Mankar was able to sustain a pocket plane of Oblivion through the manipulation of Creatia

The Daedra

Should be self explanatory as to why Miraak, the First Dragonborn and Mora’s Champion, scales to the Daedra. 

• Lesser Daedras are higher dimensional beings manifested from Oblivion’s chaos due to their conceptual albeit non-existent nature. See the Cosmology section for why these feats are Outerversal.

• When the Ideal Masters imbued themselves with Creatia, they created their own Daedric Realms and became distant platonic concepts in the process

• The Daedra feed on the thoughts of mortals to be given form.

• The Mind Terrors can shift through layers of reality

Daedric Princes (Debatable, read “Before the Verdict”)

We know how Miraak massively scales Alduin, right? The same Alduin who beat the ever living shit out of Mehrunes Dagon? While whether or not Miraak scales to the Daedric Princes’ peak is going to be looked at in the “Before the Verdict” section (considering that every Daedric Prince scales to each other by default), we’ll still take a look at where their Daedric Avatars scale. This is consistent considering that Saviour’s Hide (to which the Dragonborn has and is who Miraak fought) can defend blows from Daedric Princes. See the Cosmology section for why these feats are Outerversal.

• Merida’s artifact given to mortals can destroy Nirn (Complex Multiversal, read Cosmology section).

• The death of Mehrune Dagon’s avatar shook the Earthbones.

• Daedric Princes at their peak can create their own realms that transcend every other plane in Oblivion, which are described to be extensions of their very being

• An avatar of Mehrunes Dagon can destroy Lyg, the mirror Kalpa

• Hermaeus Mora can control Nirn’s tides of fate.

• Molag Bal’s realm, Coldharbor, was going to swallow all of Mundus

• A mere avatar of Mehrunes Dagon can merge the realms of Mundus and Deadlands

• The entire Oblivion Crisis shook Mundus by tearing rifts in the firmament which are the true forms of celestials whose mere existence can destroy Mundus

• Ithelia absorbed the Many Paths into herself in order to try and take over Apocrypha, and would have collapsed “all of reality” as a side effect

• Nocturnal was going to make herself one with the Crystal Tower.

Miscellaneous

• Normal Vampire Fledglings can move pretty quickly.

• Mages can incinerate armies with ease.

• A High Elf mage was able to petrify an entire village and revert them back to normal.

• A young High Elf mage with little experience was able to raise entire islands from the bottom of the sea and shape them

• A member of the Mage’s Guild was able to stop a realm that contains stars from exploding (Multi-Solar System).

• A Breton mage was able to destroy a pocket plane of Oblivion (Outerversal, read Cosmology section).

• The Vestige has a spell which can “pierce the Heavens” (Aetherius) in a short amount of time. (Infinite Speed)

• With the skeleton key, Mercer Frey (buffed by the Skeleton Key, Nocturnal’s Daedric Artifact) caused earthquakes that collapsed Dwemer constructs which are metaphysical structures created by Tonal Architecture that transcend space and time (Outerversal)

Deathwing

Titan Keepers/Servants

The Titan Keepers are incredibly powerful beings, who just like the Aspects were blessed with the power of the Titans. Same with the Titan Servants, they get their power from the Titans too. Their feats are as follows…

• Tyr was able to “shake the bones of the world,” and seeing as the world of Azeroth is a living entity this isn’t as hyperbolic as you might expect. See the Cosmology section for why these feats are Outerversal.

• Titan Keeper Thorim could turn an entire continent to dust in a single usage of his power.

• Ra Den split the clouds. (others have calced this out to be 51.84 Exatons)

• Titan Keeper Rajh can attack with the fury of 1000 suns (probably hyperbole but it’s cool.)

• Freya, with Eonar’s help, could order the Emerald Dream

• Freya made a massive tree that stabilizes the Dream

• Algalon can scan the entirety of Azeroth in seconds (1.002-180.4 Billion c)

• Rygelon is able to summon collapsing quasars, the strongest quasars having thousands of times the luminosity of entire galaxies.(31.3 ZettaFoe-907 YottaFoe)

• Rygelon can compress huge amounts of star matter into an “infinitesimally small point,” (~100 TenaGigaFoe to ~100 TenaExaFoe)

Noteworthy Heroes of Azeroth

(Please ignore that two of these people are future villains.)

Quite a few heroes and leaders of Azeroth were among the forces against Deathwing, forces that his peers felt wouldn't even stand a chance against him combined. See the Cosmology section for why these feats are Outerversal.

• Garrosh Hellscream, who was on the planet Draenor when it exploded. (121 Gigatons to 609 Teratons)

• Sylvanas Windrunner once screamed so loud it caused physical pain to people hundreds, maybe even thousands, of miles away. (10.57 Petatons-389.41 Petatons)

• Jaina Proudmoore survived the same magic nuke Kalecgos from later does, at a much closer distance.(High Universal, likely higher. Read the Cosmology section.)

• Jaina also fought some demon guy who traveled from Azeroth to the Nether in the middle of his monologue.(1.46 Quintillion c, likely Infinite due to cosmology.)

• Prophet Velen piloted the Exodar interstellar distances, such as between Outland and Azeroth. (At least 221 c, likely Infinite according to how the ship works. Read the Cosmology section.)

• Velen has also matched Kil’jaeden in combat.

• Thrall aided the Earthen Ring in keeping the planet from coming apart 

• Thrall even held off an attack from Jaina when she was using the Focusing Iris, which powered the magic nuke she survived. (High Universe, likely higher)

• Thrall also acted as a stand-in for the Aspect of Earth.

• Malfurion Stormrage scanned all of Azeroth and the Emerald Dream at the same time

• Malfurion also fought off Xavius, yet another threat to the Emerald Dream, with an Emerald Dream shaking storm.

• Khadgar survived a hit from Medivh going all out.

Noteworthy Villains of Azeroth

As one of the premier Warcraft baddies Deathwing has reason to scale to a lot of miscellaneous villains. Mostly fellow minions of the Old Gods. But the others, the Dragonflight bosses for example, are inferior to the Aspects. See the Cosmology section for why these feats are Outerversal.

• Ragnaros’ first summoning shook the planet with worldwide quakes.

• Azshara and her handmaiden Lady Vashj survived the Great Sundering (8.58 Yottatons-27.48 Ronnatons) 

• However the Well that caused it is far more powerful according to surrounding lore (High Uni-High Hyper)

• Azshara could destroy a Pillar of Creation, capable of the same durability feats as Deathwing’s scale.

• Elisande took a look through every one of the Timeways in 3 days. (403 Octillion c, more likely Infinite)

• Etraeus can pilot his observatory through the Nether (15.6 Million c-70 Quadrillion c, more likely Infinite)

• Tindral Sageswift can create supernovas. (1 Foe)

• Sarkareth’s Dimensional Puncture pierces the fabric of all of the infinite universes (Multiversal on its own, up to High Hyperversal)

• Volcoross coiled himself around the entire Emerald Dream and could devour it whole.

The Dragons & Dragon Aspects

If you’re still questioning why Deathwing would scale to these people then idk what to do I’ma be real, anyways...see the Cosmology section for why these feats are Outerversal.

• Alexstrasza dodged lightning one time. (Mach 665.45)

• Korialstrasz has created a pocket universe, and survived an entirely different pocket universe collapsing on his head in a different book. (High Universal)

• Kalecgos survived the Mana Bomb, a weapon capable of destroying entire realities. (High Universal)

• Chromie fought Eternus and their tumble through time almost destroyed reality. (Multiversal to High Hyperversal)

• Nozdormu visited every single one of the Timeways. (Infinite)

• Nozdormu held the Timeways together while being stretched across time. (Multiversal to High Hyperversal, with Immeasurable Speed)

• Murozond inherently exists in the past, present and future simultaneously. (Immeasurable)

• Murozond is officially stated to exist outside of time (Immeasurable)

• Murozond also shattered the Timeways. (Multiversal to High Hyperversal)

• Ysera is inherently tied to the essence of the Emerald Dream

• Malygos is capable drawing in galaxies and hurtling their power at the Wrath Player (6.57 Trillion c to 13.14 Trillion c, 35.95 PetaFoe)

• Malygos managed to damage the Twisting Nether

• Malygos’ gathering of power in the Eye of Eternity almost did harm to Azeroth’s Worldsoul (Up to High Outerversal+) (Debatable, see Before the Verdicts)

Sargeras & the Burning Legion

Yes, Deathwing scales to Sargeras and thus The Titans. The Titans are like gods to the world of Azeroth, and Deathwing most notably scales to the strongest of them all (for now) Sargeras. Deathwing scaling to Sargeras is actually pretty blatant. He’s shown taking an attack from him at full strength. He’s been compared to Medivh when he was possessed by Sargeras. And a single one of Deathwing’s scales was able to survive the highly volatile energies contained in Sargeras’s blade, despite exploding from The Soul’s energies. See the Cosmology section for why these feats are Outerversal.

As the Leader of the Burning Legion he should scale above all of The Legion.

• Sargeras scarred The Twisting Nether upon shattering Mardum

• In his fight against the Pantheon, Sargeras and The Titans ended up scarring vast stretches of reality.

• To seal a weaker Sargeras, The Pantheon required the energies of Argus the Unmaker.

• Sargeras’ last free act was to impale Azeroth, which would have killed her eventually(Debatable, see Before the Verdicts)

• Just an Avatar of Sargeras needed to be summoned with a Scepter that could collapse universes and rip apart the boundary between The Nether and Great Dark.

• Ulthalesh survived the shattering of Mardum. As did other Demons.

• Ulthalesh was used to create a rift stronger than himself, this rift was the site Karazhan was founded on.

• Medivh, after he lost Sargeras’ power, absorbed the power and memories from Karazhan. (Up to 20.86 Noventrigintillion c, though most likely Infinite)

• Lesser Guardians than Medivh could match and defeat Ulthalesh

• The Opening of the Dark Portal pushed the Sargeras possessed Medivh to his limits, Gul’dan was also integral to it in timelines where Medivh was not involved.

• Gul’dan raised the Broken Isles. (Calculated at 8.1 Teratons by Death Battle themselves.)

• Kil’jaeden could manipulate “extradimensional space” in The Nether. He also blew up his own warship, lesser warships like the Paraxis could harm Eonar’s Soul

• The Coven of Shivarra could torture The Titans.

• Xavius, Gul’dan, Kil’jaeden, Aggramar, and Argus all took hits from artifact weapons on par with the Scale, G’hanir, The Scepter of Sargeras, and Ulthalesh, all at their full potential.

• Argus the Unmaker could destroy all of creation in a single attack

Cosmology

HOLD ON! Bang here. Before you roll your eyes and scroll past this section, I would ask that you DON’T. We’ve tried our best here to make this section as smooth and beginner friendly as possible so both a less then savvy vs debater and longtime fans can understand it, since these are two very big and complex franchises, and if you choose to ignore this, at least go to the sections where it talks about why they scale to the cosmology and how. Thank you!

Miraak

Chapter 1: The Basics

“Planets” in the context of TES are manifestations of the gods, with them being planes of existence with infinite size and mass that take shape for the mortal eye to perceive them as ordinary planets. This is due to the mortal’s mental stress causing us to do so, such as how space is an interpretation of Oblivion from the mortal eye, with the stars and constellations (three others being embodiments of the Aedra who are unaffected by Dragon Breaks) being portals to Aetherius and the larger stars being tears in Oblivion due to being closer to Nirn. With the largest one being Magnus itself, the God of Magic that acts like the sun that washes over Nirn by creating all the other stars (aka the Magne-Ge who are lesser spirits of Magnus).

Nirn

But here we have Nirn being the only one with a finite size and mass as the mortal plane. The oceans of Nirn consist of higher dimensional properties as Kirkbride suggests the “lines” between directions within Nirn are practically timelines in a way as time is referred to by “motions of lines”.

(Augur of the Obscure dialogue - The Elder Scrolls Online/ Summerset Isles)

Such as Yokuda being in the literal past, Akavir being in the future, and Tamriel (the main continent) being the present. With Atmora being frozen in time while Aldmeris is outside of time as if both don’t exist at all. This is consistent regarding the nature of Hermaeus Mora’s domains containing Nirn’s waters as his purpose to control the tides of fate, which makes sense as they contain the memories of everything in Nirn. These timelines and motions of lines most notably contain infinite possibilities and dimensions with infinite angles and outcomes of non linear time beyond the motion lines themselves as described by Sotha Sil.

(The Truth in Sequence)

This also plays into how the “names” Y’ffre (the creator of Nirn) grants to every being after sacrificing himself to create a non chaotic celestial sphere with limitation. “Naming” in the context of TES are commonly referred to as “Nymics” which act as the true identity of the individual by making up their metaphysical nature (scan doesn’t fully do it justice but nymics do in fact apply to non Daedras like Mankar cutting his protonymic).

Mundus

This also plays into the creation of Mundus, a mundane celestial sphere that makes up all of the celestial bodies with ordered planes of existences and laws that were created after the death of the Missing God Lorkhan in order to give Aubris a soul. And when it was created, the Aedra embodied the laws that came with it and merged with the fabric of Mundus itself, losing their original power and status as they did so which plays into the nature of gods being conceptual embodiments of every known aspect. Thus ending the Dawn Era, a stagnant state of Mundus devoid of the narratives and concepts created by the Divines, which include the math and logic created by Julianos.

“The Ooze” is another iteration of this subject, describing the Earthbones as “storylines” as it involves the heavy association of Y’ffre’s storytelling singing the narratives during the Dawn Era, a stagnant state of Mundus devoid of the narratives and concepts created by Y’ffre and the Divines, which is what the Ooze is about regarding its context of “telling the tale” when it comes to applying the creation of Nirn and linear time that came upon it.

The Earthbones comprise the laws that define Mundus, including concepts such as time, gravity, as well the narratives that stem from the Aurbis itself and their existence is what gives Nirn limit despite it technically being infinite on its own. Not to mention that the Dwemer were able to alter the Earthbones with their architecture through the manipulation of the metaphysical “sounds” via Tonal Magic in order to surpass the Divines’ godlike powers (as explained in Miraak’s abilities section).

(Forum Scholar’s Guild: Final Report to Trebonius)

Not to mention also contains other parallel existences where some are non adjacent such as Lyg, that can be entered by walking sideways in order to disrupt the non cardinal points in your respective dimension. So damn, we’re at Outerversal so far!

Chapter 2: The Planes of Oblivion

Oblivion

Surrounding Mundus is Daedric realms of Oblivion, the infinite dimensional void of Daedric realms unbound by causality and space (and to give context on this scan, Oblivion having endless sea of dimensions is used in a way to describe a characteristic of Oblivion rather than what it contains as well as planes of Oblivion being referred to as islands).

(36 Lessons of Vivec, Sermon 19)

(Dyrus dialogue - The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion)

Oblivion is structured by limitless possibilities, making every scenario conceivable exist there.

(Lyranth the Foolkiller answers your questions (Ranks and Hierarchy of the Daedra)

The Daedras who inhabit Oblivion are weak compared to those in Mundus as they exist only in the “untime” of the Dawn Era where every concept is manifested into a physical form despite the place being described as non-existent. And going to Nirn (a place with defined laws) as a Daedra means that you wouldn’t be unbound by such concepts at that point.

(The Maelstrom Arena — Part 2)

This is supported by the several statements regarding how planes of Oblivion are not only, infinite sized (e.g. Azura’s Star), but are stated to exist past the non cardinal points by default. This means that they are above dimensionality and direction which is further backed up by Ideal Masters ascending to godhood after fusing with Creatia and the Morphotype.

(The Maelstrom Arena — Part One)

Vivec also described the nature of time there as a timeless world in a stagnant state, the moment he wakes up, no time has passed at all no matter how long he sleeps.

(Vivec dialogue - The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind)

This is supported by the statements from the Khajiit where if you step outside of time, events will still occur.

(Pridehome: A Place Outside Time?)

Realms created by the Daedric Princes themselves exist beyond all infinite planes of Oblivion to the point where it even reaches Aetherius itself.

(On Orcs and the Afterlife)

Chapter 3: The Towers

The Towers are metaphysical constructs powered by “Stones” created by Aedra after imprisoning Lorkhan and ripping out his heart before casting it to Nirn so it can exist without the presence of the Aedra (which is why Mundus still existed in the Dawn Era), forming the Red Mountain in the process. With each tower serving their own purpose as “echoes” of the Ur-Tower, the Ada-Mantia, which helped separate Lorkhan from the divine center..

(Nu-Mantia Intercept, Letter#5)

The aforementioned “Stones” are the cores of such structures, with them maintaining the flow of Creatia for it to create a barrier between Nirn, Oblivion, and Aetherius respectively.

(Nu-Mantia Intercept, Letter#7)

Another notable tower of which is Crystal-Like-Law, which served as a doorway to everywhere in the multiverse the tower anchors as an omnipresent construct.

Chapter 4: Greater Cosmology

Aetherius

Surrounding Oblivion is Aetherius, the Immortal Plane the Aedra originated from and is also where celestial phenomenons like shooting stars come from. Being the infinite source of all Magicka in Mundus as a higher plane of existence beyond the realms below it where Aetherius is described as “real” compared to Oblivion.

(Monomyth: Yokudan, “Satakal the Worldskin”)

So moving onto the Aurbis, the multiverse that contains Aetherius, Oblivion, Mundus, Nirn, all of it. Though that’s not saying that there are only three of these realms, in fact, it’s heavily suggested that there are infinite of them that go way beyond Aetherius (which is described to be the “first layer” of what the TES cosmology actually offers, with 40 layers being the highest anyone came across).

(ESO: Alternative Alinor and Ayarynne)

(Baladas Demnevanni dialogue - The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind)

The Many Paths

(Image depicts Ithelia, Daedric Prince of The Many Paths)

The Many Paths is a relatively new aspect of the Elder Scrolls cosmology, only added in the Gold Road expansion to Elder Scrolls Online (which came out in June 2024), and therefore isn’t as well known among those knowledgeable on Elder Scrolls cosmology, however it most certainly expands the size of the cosmology drastically. The Many Paths is essentially a web of all possibilities of the Aurbis, formed when Akha explored the heavens, and contains an infinite amount of other parallel universes, or reflections as they’re often called. 

It is said that within the Many Paths, all things are possible. The Many Paths can even link to realities into which concepts like Daedric Princes or even magic itself does not exist, or realities which are dark and timeless (which is actually the reality you look into whenever you look at a mirror).

These alternate universes contain alternate versions of not only the mortals within them, but even the Daedric Princes have an infinite amount of reflections, with Ithelia eventually using her Loom of the Untraveled Road to absorb all these reflections into herself, powering her up enough to defeat Hermaues Mora in his own realm of Apocrypha, to which she was going to turn it into her own realm of Mirrormoor, a realm Hermaues Mora had destroyed with the help of some other Daedric Princes after he saw what a threat Ithelia could be for reality, which is astoundingly impressive considering the nature of a Daedric Princes realm. 

Essentially, the Many Paths contain all possibilities, with an infinite amount of parallel dimensions being placed within the Many Paths, some even lacking stuff like magic, which was thought to be omnipresent throughout the Aurbis.

The Wheel

Furthermore, the Aurbis has been described as a wheel that contains infinite numbers of angles such as linear time, implying infinite spatial dimensions which is consistent due to the lore regarding those subjects. For example, Sothas Sil’s Clockwork City is an endless reality beyond mortal perception that replicates Mundus based on the structure of the wheel.

(ESO Live Lore of the Clockwork City)

Wheels in the context of the TES are represented by the Ouroboros and contain coiled potential with the concept of infinity and eternity as symbolized by a snake eating their own tail. Therefore, the wheel of Aurbis is contained by other wheels of Aurbis as it stretches out as a telescope to the Eye of Anui-El.

(Michael Kirkbride’s undated posts)

Moving onto the creators of the Aurbis themselves, Anu and Padomay, who are the primordial creators of the Aedra and Daedra respectively, being disembodied concepts of Stasis and Change themselves. With other concepts such as Good and Evil being significant to the creation of the Aurbis involving Anu manifesting his soul (Anui-El) into all concepts that exist while Padomay gave birth to his own (SITHIS) that would eventually turn into the Aurbis which was originally empty before Anu spun his own being which would bleed through the Aubris, creating Father Akatosh who would sacrifice himself and become one with all reality as the concept of time. Thus the Et’ada became limited by time and found themselves as beings within a past, future, and present which gave life to the Aurbis and everything else that came after it.

The Godhead and the Amaranth

And finally, there is the creator god of the creator gods, being the Godhead). The supreme being beyond the boundaries of all existences, manifesting the Aubris and the creation myths into a dream during an endless slumber. When one becomes aware of this truth, they achieve either CHIM (a form of enlightenment where they become a “lucid dreamer” within the Amaranth, being aware that they are figments of the Godhead’s dream), or be erased from all planes of existence via Zero Sum. All of which is a major plotline in Morrowind’s main quest, especially regarding Vivec and how he became self aware of the fact that he isn’t actually real after achieving CHIM.

(A model by the official TES Lore account on Tumblr implying infinite dreams of infinite Godheads, forming the Amaranth)

Additionally, by smoking some skooma or what not, all of this can scale higher with shadows which are…really weird in TES. They are not only projections of light’s absence, but are also reflections of alternate possibilities and parallel universes throughout the past and future. This makes sense with how Shadow Masters merge themselves with their other alternate versions, although this could retroactively be seen as them linking some way to the Many Paths, such a theory is unconfirmed. Keep in mind that there are a lot more scans and statements for all of these but the ones I provided should give you a good idea on their own cause this shit is CRAZY.

Why/How Far Does Miraak Scale to the Cosmology?

• Nirn: This one is fairly straightforward. The Thu’um and the general nature of Tonal Manipulation directly affect the Earthbones which stabilises Nirn and the laws that come with it. This isn’t disregarding how even avatars of Daedric Princes shake the Earthbones upon death, and Alduin (who is superior to said Daedric Avatars) being stated to destroy the Earthbones during Kalpa resets.

• Mundus: Aight, now onto THAT feat in TES scaling when it comes to Skyrim. Miraak stomped the Dragonborn in base when they first met, the same Dragonborn whose Thu’um is superior to Alduin, the World Eater who devours the current Kalpa and destroying Mundus in doing so while reverting linear time back to the Dawn Era. Alduin’s being above the space and time of Mundus by his nature as the god means that he also transcends Mundus as well, meaning that Miraak can scale way higher than this.

• Oblivion: As we already know, Miraak massively upscales the avatars of Daedric Princes, with the avatar of Mehrunes Dagon fodderising the Ideal Masters in the game Elder Scrolls Battlespire, who exist as platonic concepts within their own sub-planes of Oblivion. But as for the higher realms however….

• Aetherius: The true forms of the Daedric Princes can create their own planes of Oblivion, with Malacath’s one being able to reach Aetherius. But the arguments for Miraak scaling to this are faulty (read Before the Verdict).

• The Many Paths: While Miraak’s boss might get some scaling to the Many Paths, Miraak himself is not so lucky.

• The Wheel: It doesn’t roll like that….

• The Godhead: Miraak obviously does not scale anywhere near the cosmological segments of the Godhead, HOWEVER, there is a way that you could get him near those levels albeit it’s not through stats. Become Ethereal is a shout that makes Miraak’s Thu’um “reach out into the Void” which is outside the Godhead. And after being inflicted with Madness, Pelinal was able to become a dreamer alongside the Godhead while also tapping into the Void that exists outside of the dream. So Boundless intangibility and range, yeah. Furthermore, tonal magic in general manipulates the “song” of the Godhead, introducing new, unforeseen elements into it.

Deathwing

In contrast to Elder Scrolls, Warcraft’s cosmology is far less iconic and well known to the general versus community, but that is not to say it is any less impressive.

A Cosmological Disclaimer

Warcraft’s cosmology can be hard to parse. This is because it's not always been the most consistent or focused on. Most old material was not written with more recent ideas in mind. However starting from Warlords onward, it started to solidify. As such we will be focusing mostly on post-Chronicle material with supporting evidence from prior lore included. In addition the word “dimension” has been used to refer to both sub-spatial areas and mathematical ideas. Which also muddles things but we did our best to try and take the distinction into account.

Reality and Cosmology are a very layered issue in Warcraft. “Reality” and “Creation” are terms that mean different things to different characters. We took this into account when trying to quantify what sections of each cosmology would be considered.

This is the World of Warcraft Cosmology Map straight from World of Warcraft Chronicle: Volume 1. There exists a second cosmology chart from Grimoire to the Shadowlands but it’s literally the same chart just flipped around so for simplicity's sake we will be referring to this one primarily.

Ch 1. Conventional Reality

The conventional reality of Warcraft consists of two important pieces, the Great Dark and the Timeways. When average mortals speak of “Reality” these are generally what they mean.

The Great Dark Beyond

The Great Dark Beyond is the conventional physical plane, the Universe of Warcraft. Formed from a violent clash between the Light and Void. It seems to operate at a similar level to our own Universe, however it's either massive or truly infinite in scope. Keep in mind, it's canonically "so vast as to be immeasurable” to the Titans who vastly upscale Nozdormu’s speed. Described directly in Chronicle as an “infinite living realm of innumerable stars, worlds, and civilizations.” To destroy it, or otherwise fundamentally alter it, would be considered High Universal due to its infinite scope. To travel outside of it, without teleportation, is an infinite speed feat.

The Great Dark also has dimensional layers, above is the Well and its 1000 mathematical dimensions. Several effects involve tearing sections of space and time for instantaneous travel. There also exist texts that prescribe 5D shape to cosmology and confirming dimensional layers are indeed still canon all these years later. While Pala's Codex is interesting, and confirms more esoteric mathematical concepts are at play, it is highly unlikely to be the be all and end all of the scope of the cosmology. It refers to pure expressions of the cosmological powers as “impossible” when, like it or not, we've been to one such pure expression. While it's never explicitly stated, the number of dimensional layers can get as high as…

Infinite

Meet Firim. This broker is currently the most knowledgeable in-universe scholar on Warcraft Cosmology. And describes any reality formed from the clash or intersection of Cosmic Forces as a complex infinitely layered fractal of shapes within shapes not just the Great Dark. Matching at least one IRL interpretation of an infinitely dimensional object. To clarify since Warcraft has decided to tell its cosmology in the most confusing way imaginable. Essentially each fractal is its own dimension. It's being referred to as a fractal simply because it's being shown through a First One's writing of it, and the First Ones represent their structures through geometry and shapes. But essentially, at least as best as we can understand it

When two cosmic forces intersect and create a reality in their center, that reality in the center is an infinite dimensional shape, in the same way a square is a 2D shape, cube is a 3D shape etc. We know that the fractals are referring to dimensional layers as dimensional layers are explicitly called out in other sources, for example the Arathi explicitly mention them, and despite their limited scope of vision they're able to name 20 of them, as seen in Palawltar's Codex of Dimensional Structure; "Put simply, the cosmos appears as a hexateron. Imagine a four-sided tetrahedron internally extruded to form a multidimensional solid with twenty planes of existence, fifteen transitory pathways, and six vertices where interferon patterns create monopolar expressions of cosmic forces."

Each side of the cosmology sees things from their own perspective, seen quite literally in the cosmology charts. When seen in Chronicle (from an Arcane perspective) it looks like this, but in Grimoire to the Shadowlands (from a Death perspective) it looks like the one below it. They are the same chart but seen from a different angle, they're literally flipped around. So essentially, we have to look at both Firim’s observation, and Palawitar’s observation, and reach the logical conclusion. The infinite shape with shapes within shapes that Firim is seeing is the same shape Palawitar is seeing, Firim is just seeing it's full scope while not making the connection to dimensionality, while Palawitar is seeing a limited scope but is connecting it to dimensionality. Which actually makes sense, as Firim exists beyond the realms Palawitar exists in so the former can naturally see more of it than the latter. Meanwhile, because Firim is in the Shadowlands and doesn't know what life is like outside of it, he is beyond dimensions and thus wouldn't know to connect this thing he's seeing to dimensions, while Palawitar exists within dimensions and thus can make the connection. Combining these two perspectives (which is intended on Warcrafts end by the way, their approach to the cosmology is that each cosmic perspective has part of the truth and that they're meant to be combined to find the full truth,) makes this all makes sense…well, as much sense as shit like this can. 

This is a cosmological structure with an infinite amount of, likely dimensional, layers. This puts the full scope of The Great Dark Beyond, our starting point, at High Hyperversal.

The Timeways

(The Sundering, Prologue)

The Timeways are infinite universe-sized pathways of time regulated by the Bronze Dragonflight. Devs consider the Timeways to be Warcraft’s multiverse equivalent. It's not exactly known why but the Timeways also contain “Hyperspheres” of some form. They're never described in ways that would exceed High Hyper. Though Soridormi has described them in a way that might match High Hyper, since the infinite Timeways may also exist in their own “dimensional” layers. But this could be one of those awkward verbiage things.

Ch 2. The Sub-Cosmic Forces

These two are a little more complicated. Due to surrounding lore they essentially lie in between the conventional stuff and the Cosmic Forces. This is generally what more knowledgeable characters, barring the Pantheons themselves, mean when talking about “Reality” and “Creation”.

The Emerald Dream

This realm is meant to be a reflection of the planet Azeroth before the Titans intervention. A dream of the world as it was, so to speak. The Emerald Dream exists above such concepts as Time and Distance. It also has layers. And it’s most likely formed from Order clashing with Life, possibly even being part of the Force of Life. So this should also be infinite in number with growing complexity as described by Firim. A structure that exists past the concepts that the Dream does, as well as past the Great Dark, with an infinite amount of increasingly transcendent layers is considered infinitely layered Outerversal in scope. 

The Twisting Nether

The Twisting Nether is an infinite chaotic realm that exists outside of the Timeways. It’s a metaphysical realm. One that transcends all realities according to the Lead Dev at the time. Even shifting based on the perceptions of a resident. The Nether and similar realms like the Shadowlands don't really experience the concepts of Space and Time(Question 7) at all. Traversing through the Nether involves transcending dimensionality entirely, putting any speed feat that involves traveling into or through it at Infinite.

 

However, the Nether seems to also be yet another candidate for “intersection of Cosmic forces” as it exists where the Light and Void bleed together. Once again prescribing an infinite fractal of layers. It also transcends the Dream. Putting the complex structure at infinitely layered into High Outerversal due to encompassing the Dream according to the Cosmology chart made by the Titans. (Also, it's currently unknown if this would be considered the actual cosmic force of Chaos/Disorder. But it being a Force itself contradicts what we know of the forces being equal from Firim.)

Ch 3. The Cosmic Forces

The Shadowlands

The actual honest to god Force of Death, largely irrelevant to this discussion. But has its own, likely infinite, layers. And exists past the concept of time. Originally considered a counterpart to the Dream this is really the main thing that came into contention later with Shadowlands. Having infinite layers and existing above the Nether puts the Shadowlands infinitely layered into High Outerversal+

The Light and Void

Also mostly irrelevant, but they too exist past the concepts of time and space. As Firim mentions that all the Cosmic forces are ultimately equal this ties their peak to the Shadowlands. Also they were described with the word boundless one time..

Life, Order, and Chaos

We don't know enough about any of these to get any idea of how big they are. It's ultimately too early to know anything about them.

Ch 4. Greater Cosmology

The Zereths

After discovering the infinite complexity of Reality in the Shadowlands, Firim experienced yet another transcendent episode to flee to Zereth Mortis, a borderline nonsensical place that defies the laws of physics and reality. The next section of cosmology involves Firim transcending fractal layers… again. So infinitely layered into High Outer++

The Song of the First Ones

Firim had a third transcendent experience, someone please check on him, he might not be doing alright. Anyway, after hearing the mystical song of the oracle automa he actually experienced the Song of the First Ones, the very pattern that weaved creation into being. 

Why/How Far Does Deathwing Scale to the Cosmology?

• The Great Dark: The Mana Bomb and the miscellaneous universe busting/creation feats should scale to the High Universal base at least. Deathwing being far stronger than any of those. Half are even dragons.

• The Timeways: Deathwing scaling to these is very blatant. Seeing as Nozdormu and Murozond have explicitly interacted with and damaged all of them at the same time. One of whom did so on-screen, well as on screen as you can make a book passage. Nozdormu being one of the many dragons who he's absorbed significant power from and fought.

• The Emerald Dream: This thing is constantly tied to significant enough characters and just constantly in peril. Xavius manages to lift nearly everyone significant to this level by mere presence alone thanks to Legion and Stormrage. And then Dragonflight happened. Deathwing having a direct feat shaking it puts him on its level. And all the scaling he has.

• The Twisting Nether: Several characters have managed to explicitly tear into or damage the Nether. This is also always treated as a grand feat achievable only by some of the most powerful. Malygos, Legion high tiers, and Sargeras. All of whom Deathwing very explicitly scales(😏) to. He also technically has a feat affecting it himself.

• The Shadowlands, and others: Deathwing doesn't really have a direct way of scaling to these. He does have methods of scaling higher however.

• The Zereths: Due to The Titans differing perspective of what constitutes “creation”, in particular being the only characters who would know of the Zereths pre-Shadowlands, this is where Argus’ End of All Things and Sargeras’ fight with The Pantheon can feasibly reach. That's the max he, and thus Deathwing, can hit.

• The Song: It has come into danger exactly once, when The Jailer attacked the Prime Worldsoul of Azeroth in an attempt to completely remake the Song under his will. It failed, however this is implied to have left a very tiny crack in the Song. There exists a few avenues of scaling Deathwing to Azeroth but they are very flawed, again discussed further in the “Before the Verdicts”.

Weaknesses

Miraak

All this power aside, Miraak’s fatal flaw is his arrogance within his abilities and heritage despite the power being presented before him (such as the Dragonborn’s usage of Bend Will being stronger than Miraak for the former to control Sahrotaar). Which ended up causing his demise…twice in fact. Furthermore, Thu’um users like Miraak do need to be able to physically speak their shouts, otherwise they will not be capable of using them.

Deathwing

Deathwing can be rather hubristic and very prideful of himself and his abilities. This has been used by others to outsmart or outmaneuver him, although that’s moreso a feat for them than it is an anti feat for Deathwing. Deathwing has also shown to become more beastial and less thorough if his body starts to fall apart, which requires his plates to be pulled off of his body. 

Before the Verdicts

“Does Miraak Scale to the Daedric Princes?”

Yes and no, but mostly no. Especially considering how it’s a major plot point in the Dragonborn DLC expansion where true form Mora is presented to be massively superior to Miraak in Apocrypha where he is at his strongest, let alone Miraak being killed by him on the spot.

Furthermore, all of the other feats that suggest Miraak scaling to the Daedric Princes not only do not matter because of the aforementioned outliers, it is a major part of the franchise (especially in Oblivion) where their true forms can’t interact with Nirn and how they do so with avatars, thus they aren’t at their peak during the time they are outside of their respective realms. Such as Mehrunes being in a entirely different plane of existence when he was defeated by Alduin, Dragonborn bending the Earthbones to which true form Molag Bal can’t interact with anyways, or Clavicus Vile stating how the Dragonborn is just as strong as him when he was in Nirn as well as not having Barbas at the time, meaning that he lost most of his power (and also the fact that he’s the Daedric Prince of trickery). So even if we try to argue that Miraak scales regardless, the scaling chain would go by….

Hermaeus Mora > Miraak > Alduin > Mehrunes Dagon

Which doesn’t make sense considering the context, as Hermaeus Mora and Mehrunes Dagon should be somewhat comparable seeing as they’re both Daedric Princes, especially when regarding the fact that the Daedra didn’t participate in the creation of Mundus due to them residing in Oblivion. Though that’s not to say Miraak doesn’t have high AP considering the aforementioned feats explained in the scaling section where Daedric Avatars are strong regardless, Miraak scaling to the Daedric Princes at their peak is fairly unlikely.

“Wait…when the hell did Deathwing get all the powers of all the Aspects? And Dracthyr?”

We don't blame you for being confused about that one. We were too.

There was a common throughline with some of his more unexpected abilities. They all seem to be themed around the Flights. He can fuck with Time. He can get into the Dream. He’s a highly accomplished Mage. The former two are considered absurd ideas in canon. But there he is. Just doing things he shouldn't be able to do, with no official explanation. So let's explain it.

The Soul has displayed abilities from other flights and the capability to copy more. As of NotD can give others powers, rather than simply just stats like previously assumed. The powers absorbed are referred to as “essences”(another term for souls across Warcraft) in WotA and Night. It's a known fact that he’s messed with combining flights several times now; the Dracthyr, Chromatic, and Twilight dragons are all experiments of his or his family along these lines. The Dracthyr, the most successful of those, were even created by combining “essences” of all five flights. And giving himself these essences was literally his goal with it.

Combine all that with the fact he just… has unexplained Green, Bronze, and Blue abilities already. And that he actually manages to use The Soul to absorb some power, that was why he exploded. Giving him the rest of the abilities of the flights as well as immunity was the logical conclusion due to how the Soul works. At very least he’d have immediate access to them with The Soul. Really the only one that outright breaks things is time travel and precog from the Bronze. And if Nozdormu knew he could do that he could probably prevent it like Deathwing outright does. And Deathwing would know that he could do that because he’s done it himself, so he never bothered. Nozdormu’s precog is also famously terrible, it's kind of a meme in the Warcraft community for a reason.

Trust us, it could be far worse. In Night of the Dragon’s epilogue, Deathwing is revealed to be in Grim Batol during the events of the novel. Y’know where The Soul was imbued with types of magic from across Azeroth. Which can realistically include Domination, since even basic Death Knights use lesser forms of it. There are no mentions of him having used The Soul during this time, or which specific abilities are even contained within, which is why we aren't including those abilities. But It's extremely out of character for him not to have. He spent 4 entire books coveting the thing like it was his own One Ring.

“But he displays some of these powers before the Soul is used? And didn't you just say he exploded?”

Remember, Deathwing is a scientist. He experiments with the things he creates before actually employing them. Like the Dracthyr, there was actually a whole boss fight in Aberrus about that. And as such it's within reason that he experimented with the capabilities of the Soul before using it. Or even say a prototype or similar artifact previously in his possession. Especially one he probably used to create the Dracthyr.

Yes he exploded, however he then covered himself in those plates so he could absorb more power. This worked. He ended up absorbing power from Deepholm after the WotA. As well as got stronger between his two fights with Alexstrasza in Day of the Dragon and Twilight Highlands. And in the downtime between TH and Demon Soul, as well as over the course of that raid.

“Why does Deathwing scale to the Titans? I thought Titans were stronger than everyone else in WoW”

For a long time it was believed that Titans were simply stronger than mortals in Azeroth, however over time this notion has been challenged. I’ve already mentioned all of the examples of Deathwing being equal to or stronger than Sargeras, and other characters like Broxigar have been able to wound Sargeras. The player characters were able to fight Aggramar, another Titan, as well as kill Argus. For a long time this was considered to be simply an inconsistency, but that is no longer the case.

As of around…forever really, it has been clear that the Titans have been lying to us and hiding things from us, so it makes it hard for us to trust them, and all evidence of them being stronger than us comes from them and their servants. One of their servants, Odyn, outright tells his followers to lie to us and make us believe the Titans are all powerful creator gods. That’s right, the Titans being stronger than us is in universe propaganda. The Titans and their followers have been gaslighting, gatekeeping and girl bossing us this whole time.

Even if you don’t believe that Deathwing should scale to Titans for whatever reason, feats from Volcaross, Malygos, and even himself still get him to similar levels of Outerversal power.

“Why should Deathwing scale to current-era WoW feats when he died 13 years ago? Haven’t we gotten stronger since then?”

Well…no, not really. There is a massive misconception about Warcraft scaling, that WoW scaling works on the same linear logic as Dragon Ball, Naruto or other Shonen. The idea that later threats are astronomically stronger than prior threats. This kinda just doesn’t exist as a concept in Warcraft at all.

This conception mainly comes from the statement that Lei Shen, a boss from 2013, could defeat the Lich King, who we “beat” in 2009. This statement comes from a tweet from Dave Kosak, a former writer for Blizzard. There is a lot wrong with this logic. For starters, an 8 year old two sentence WoG tweet is not great evidence on its own, let alone from someone who doesn’t work at the company anymore and hasn’t for a long time.This is also contradicted several times. Illidan was able to fight us in Legion back in 2017 and put up a very good fight, despite us being able to defeat him back in 2007. Illidan didn’t get any stronger in the ten year gap, he was stuck in a crystal in stasis that whole time. Illidan was able to be a competitive and major player power wise through the events of Legion, which involved the events surrounding Argus, putting him on this similar top tier of strength Deathwing is at.

(This was however retconned in Chronicle 4 to say Illidan got stronger in Legion. But we had zero reason to assume so beforehand.) 

Or the Old Gods, we’ve fought them on four separate occasions. In Vanilla WoW(2006) we fought C’thun. In Wrath of the Lich King(2009) we fought Yogg-Saron. Both of them were imprisoned at the time. Then in Mists of Pandaria(2013) we fought Garrosh empowered by a fragment of the very dead Y’shaarj. Lastly in Battle for Azeroth(2020) we fought the fully unleashed N’zoth, who is explicitly the weakest of the four despite being our most recent competitive foe.

Hell the Dragon Aspects themselves are all over the place. We fought Malygos in Wrath(2008). Nozdormu in Cataclysm(2011). Weakened post Cata Ysera in Legion(2016). Yet we’re still fighting dragons weaker than them at their peaks as recently as Dragonflight(2023).

The most damning example is, well, the aforementioned Thunder King. Lei Shen in ancient times was able to beat and almost kill the Titan Keeper Ra Den, tearing out his heart in the process, yet we managed to beat Lei Shen in 2013 and a chained up Ra Den is literally the next fight of the same raid. Meanwhile we were able to fight against Ra Den again in 2019, and even significantly weaker Titan constructs like Mother have been tough foes for us all the way up to now in The War Within. Not to mention that Ulduar had the players fighting and defeating Titan Keepers equal to Ra Den back to back yet when the players squared up with Arthas they canonically got killed by him, making that statement of Lei Shen beating Arthas even less reliable.

Deathwing himself has no shortage of evidence like this. For starters, Sarkareth explicitly has far weaker versions of Deathwing's powers yet he was still a match for us in 2023. Iridikron is a new villain introduced to Warcraft, one that will be able to fight us in the future and who is as strong as his brother and sister who have already fought us on equal footing in 2023 and 2024, and Deathwing kicked his ass. In fact that sister, Raszageth, is the one we see Deathwing dropping a black hole on in the image I provided for his black hole ability. The dragon aspects are all major players in the second most recent expansion, Dragonflight, which ended in 2024, and Deathwing had all of their powers and beat them at a stronger point. Despite dying in 2011, he still very clearly scales to the likes of Argus, who again was still a match for us in Legion and holds the crown of one of the two WoW bosses who canonically managed to kill us (this is a title he shares with the Lich King.)

Simply put, WoW scaling is not a linear line of progression like most shonen. Think of it more as a web, where every major threat in some way connects back to each other in power in an elaborate, very weird pattern. Similar to how things like Marvel or DC are viewed. Characters like Deathwing, the Lich King, Illidan, Thrall and the like should all scale to the current peak of the verse, getting to “Titan tier,” in a similar way to Marvel and DC having “Heralds.”

“Azeroth can be powerscaled? Why doesn't Deathwing scale to it?”

Azeroth is a Prime Worldsoul. Long story short, exceptionally powerful. Enough to leave a tiny crack in the outermost part of the Cosmology so far, The Song of the First Ones. We have no clue how powerful that could even be considered, other than above the Zereths and thus about the same spot as Argus, because the First Ones are a completely unknown quantity. We literally just know their title, and that they made everything with a song.

Azeroth’s Worldsoul has always been damaged under extenuating circumstances. Malygos nearly harmed her but the only indication there is that it might've gotten bad. Never how bad over what period of time. Likewise Sargeras could only kill her over time. Certainly impressive since this was pretty urgent. But still hardly quantifiable given her mostly unknown level of strength. Even the Well of Eternity, it's established she was wounded but it was clearly non-lethal and can't scale to her full power due to just being a pool of her own blood. The planet bleeds by the way.

Characters have also been linked to her power, like Malfurion and Thrall, but it's also odd to claim Azeroth can just imbue people with her full strength. Especially when she’s so constantly in danger. Ironically the only one who could have a legitimate claim is Neltharion himself. But scaling him to the Worldsoul is still pretty questionable since his power and her power are blatantly two different things according to Charge of the Aspects. Also the less we scale characters to the Worldsoul the better.

Script/Fight Animation

Please enjoy this script made by one of our users who wished to remain anonymous for this fight, along with a special short animation made by Lakuita, who helped work on this blog. Now onto the verdicts!

Verdicts

Team Miraak

Stats

In terms of attack potency, there is no need to argue who takes the stat trinity as they are relatively the same in that regard. While the TES cosmology is greater than WoW’s, Miraak doesn’t fully scale to it but that doesn’t mean he isn’t strong in his own right. Mainly due to one shotting post-Alduin Dragonborn in base during their first meeting (and was also considered the greatest threat the Dragonborn has ever faced), the same Dragonborn who scales above Alduin destroying Mundus during the Kalpa which that alone is an Outerversal feat. While Miraak could scale higher in the Outerversal range due to massively upscaling the avatars of the Daedric Princes, like an avatar of Mehrunes Dagon who could destroy Lyg or take over the Soul Cairn, both of which are also Outerversal feats, and Alduin could make an avatar of Mehrunes Dagon literally beg for his life. Or even scaling to other Thu’um users like Wulfharth, who was capable of moving Masser and Secunda with his shout, another Outerversal feat, and saying Miraak upscales this is an understatement. However, Deathwing is already on a similar level by default. So overall, it would be safe to consider this a tie.

In terms of speed, the comparison is about the same as both are comparable to feats involving crossing infinite distances at a finite time (cause Cosmology goes crazy) as well as both going toe to toe with dragons who transcend time, scaling both combatants to solidly Immeasurable speed.

Essentially, stats become negligible for the fight as they both roughly even out. While you can argue for higher layers of scaling for either, they will both end up at around the same level given the same leniency, therefore it makes more sense to go for Outerversal and Infinite-Immeasurable speed for both combatants.

Arsenal/Abilities

Miraak has a wide variety of abilities and powers which he can pull from. Miraak’s magic is very powerful indeed, capable of bringing The Last Dragonborn to his knees with a single blast, as well as allowing Miraak to tap into a wide variety of different elemental and mind powers, all the way to altering concepts and laws of the universe with his magic. He can match Deathwing’s flight with his own flying magic, and can summon all sorts of different Daedras and weapons to fight with. However, most of Miraak’s traditional magic can be countered and adapted to by Deathwing’s adaptation abilities.

However, this is where a Dragonborn’s signature ability comes in, the Thu’um. The Thu’um is, to put it lightly, insane. Miraak’s shout allows him access to some very incredible abilities which should be able to bypass Deathwing’s magical adaptation due to the fact that they are not magical in nature. This means that Miraak’s Thu’um should not get adapted to after use, and should allow Miraak to continue to use it after using it once without it getting used against him, which is a problem for Deathwing when we look at the scale the Thu’um can work at.

Miraak’s Thu’um, and specifically his signature shout Bend Will, is capable of easily mind controlling Dragons. Why is this impressive? Because Molag Bal, the Daedric Prince of Domination, was incapable of mind controlling a Dragon. This is a guy quite literally existing beyond platonic concepts, who had a Dragon within his own realm of Coldharbour, where he had full access to his powers, and yet was incapable of controlling a Dragon, while Miraak does this on a whim literally all of the time. While Deathwing does have incredibly potent mind control resistance, capable of resisting domination magic, which alters beings on a conceptual level. However Bend Will can act on a level far deeper than a concept, as ridiculous as that sounds.

Furthermore, Miraak can use the shout Become Ethereal, which is strangely broken in how it works. Become Ethereal allows Miraak to enter a state of void, where he quite literally ceases to exist within the dream of the Godhead and can avoid all attacks which may be levied against him. This is… insane. The dream of the Godhead is quite literally boundless… yet Miraak can exist outside of it for a time… Why did they decide to make Become Ethereal this strong? Who knows? It just works. 

This isn’t even mentioning the more absurd nature of what the Thu’um is capable of. Tonal Manipulation (which is practically what the Thu’um is) alters the Earthbones to bend all forms of reality to the user’s liking, and the Earthbones comprise the narratives of Mundus, which means that the Thu’um is basically plot manipulation by default. This is further proven with Alduin’s role as the World Eater, where he basically reverts Mundus back to the Dawn Era (which is a state of Mundus that lacked any narrative before Y’ffre “sang” the Earthbones into existence) as well as Barfok, Maid of Planes, who won every battle she faced with her Event Denouement shout, by blatantly bending the narrative to ensure that all battles ended in her victory. And Miraak’s Thu’um is obviously massively superior to Barfok and Alduin, or any other Thu’um user in general who would technically be capable of pulling off such powers.

A question people may have is, why are we giving Miraak access to shouts and spells he’s never been seen to use? Well, there are a fair few reasons actually. Miraak, studying under the godlike manifestation of knowledge itself for 3000 years, a God who literally prides himself on collecting as much knowledge and as many abilities as possible, has allowed Miraak to perform a four-worded shout. This may not sound impressive if you haven’t realised that Miraak is the only person in all of Elder Scrolls history to use a shout with four words in it, everyone else throughout all of history has been limited to three word shouts. This should show you the level of genius Miraak has at his disposal, and with 3000 years to learn as many shouts and spells as possible, it seems only logical to conclude that he must have learnt of them through his master over this time. 

What about Deathwing’s silencing magic though? Surely this can counteract the Thu’um? Well, not really. While it is true that a Thu’um user does need to be able to physically say their words in order to cast the shout, this does not mean that silencing magic would work on Miraak. Miraak should be superior to The Last Dragonborn as of when he first got to Solstheim, which we know canonically happens after he has already defeated Alduin and saved Tamriel. However, this should also mean that The Last Dragonborn should have access to all of his Daedric Artifacts (with the exception of the various Black Books scattered across Solstheim) as of his first meeting with Miraak, which should include Peryite’s artifact, Spellbreaker. Spellbreaker has a very interesting stipulation in its lore, where it is noted to be “Silence mages before they’ve even started a spell”. If such a thing could have worked on Miraak, then he never would have been able to take down The Last Dragonborn in the first place, however seeing as he was able to do so, it implies that Miraak is capable of overcoming the effects of such an artifact.

While Deathwing does have arguments of the Dragon Soul adapting to them, those are very debatable as we never really see Deathwing show anything suggesting that he resists it. Starting with Domination Magic, which sounds more like fate manipulation at best with what it is describing, as there isn’t anything suggesting that Domination Magic alters the events of the past in a narrative level for it to be considered plot manipulation, as it explicitly mentions it altering fate than anything else. Now regarding the Heartstone and the Innkeeper which is…where things get less convincing? The argument is basically plot manipulation existing in WoW meaning that Deathwing should resist it, which gets weird when regarding how these happen in cross games, making it debatable of whether they are applicable or how the Dragon Soul can adapt to it anyways. we have the Song which, while it compromises every event in WoW, never mentions it doing so narratively while TES does so consistently with the context of the Dawn Era and how it lacked a narrative before the creation of the Earthbones (the reason this has been comprehended by mortals is how they got their information from creatures “of time” itself as no one but the gods could perceive a narrative anyways). Even if you can argue that Deathwing would still adapt to the Thu’um regardless, it would be a NLF considering that hax potency exists.

Tertiary Factors

While Deathwing is noticeably older than Miraak (4500+ years VS 20,000 + years), however Miraak has gained the knowledge and memories of many dragons after absorbing their souls, and these guys existed before time. And even before finding out about his Dragonborn heritage while under the teachings of knowledge itself, Miraak was considered to be one of the greatest Dragon Priests of his time, and the Dragon Priests are the ancient masters of Magicka who were given the knowledge of said dragons as they thrived during the Merethic Era. So while Deathwing could still be argued to be more experienced regardless due to his military teachings for his dragon super soldiers, Miraak still isn’t far behind due to the aforementioned reasons above.

This isn’t even getting to the support category, with Miraak’s Daedric allies being metaphysical manifestations of thoughts who should be capable of everything Magicka is capable of as demonic servants of knowledge itself. This isn’t disregarding Miraak’s dragons, with each one sharing most of the hax Miraak is capable of using. This can prove useful due to the aforementioned plot manipulation already being considered a hassle for Deathwing’s adaptation when up against Miraak alone. So unless Miraak has to absorb their souls to rejuvenate himself (which is unlikely due to having other healing options), Deathwing would have to try and adapt to five mfs with plot manipulation lmao.

Conclusion

"And so the First Dragonborn meets the Last Dragonborn at the Summit of Apocrypha”

Advantages:

• The absurd nature of the Thu’um can allow for some killing blows to give Miraak the win (i.e. plot manipulation, something Deathwing has shown no resistance to)

• His support is more valuable than Deathwing’s, especially with the dragons to which each one shares a vast amount of abilities Miraak has.

• Miraak can take Deathwing’s summons for himself with Bend Will.

• Miraak has more experience than Deathwing due to him taking the souls and memories of Dragons he has slain (and those that I killed myself which he stole)

• Miraak can avoid most, if not all, of Deathwing’s attacks with Become Ethereal.

• Deathwing’s silencing magic won’t work on him.

• Has a sick ass design.

• Has a sexy voice.

Equal:

• The entire state trinity is equal.

• They share both 99% of haxes and resistances, all layered.

Disadvantages:

• Deathwing has better feats of intelligence.

• Deathwing can adapt to most of Miraak’s magicka based arsenal and turn it against him.

• Deathwing’s shapeshifting allows him to always have a size advantage.

• Deathwing should be able to summon significantly more minions to aid in his fight.

Overall, while both are comparable in stats, this has been a weird debate to go through when regarding the amount of counters both have against one another such as Deathwing’s adaptation with the Dragon Soul which could give him a hand against the First Dragonborn, but it simply isn’t enough for Miraak’s narrative bending nature of the Thu’um, his handful support, and has more solid arguments for landing a killing blow before Deathwing can hold it off. Turns out that Miraak’s death won’t be taken under the wing in this world of warcraft, as the elder scrolls have foretold.

The Winner is Miraak.

Team Deathwing

Stats

In terms of attack potency, it is easy to say both are quite even. Their cosmologies are so vast and they're able to effect such large structures that they quite easily reach outerversal levels of power, if not high outerversal off of scaling to Daedra and the Titans. At more quantifiable ends Deathwing holds a massive advantage but that's not saying too much, since these two are obviously far more than math alone can quantify. In terms of attack potency, and therefore durability, they both should tie at Outerversal. While we have provided potential arguments for higher we also understand not everyone will agree, and Miraak also has his own similar higher arguments so that sort of cancels out and makes them even anyways. 

Speed is also a pretty solid tie. Both of them scale to dragons (Alduin and Murazond) that are outright detached from and transcend the need for time, as well as several feats of crossing infinite distances in finite time. They once again tie at Immeasurable. 

Arsenal/Abilities

In terms of hax and abilities this gets…tricky. They both have a lot of the same hax. Practically every form of elemental manipulation, the ability to control minds, the ability to absorb souls, manipulation of space and time, conceptual manipulation, necromancy, illusion creation and much, much, much more. These abilities can be somewhat useful in this fight as both have layers to their abilities, so their spells could see some use, but any use one spell has for one side could be equally attributed to the other, causing most of their hax to be pretty equal as well. 

The ace in the hole for both sides is Miraak's ability to manipulate plot versus Deathwings ability to absorb and adapt to magic, which is a very complicated matter to really lay out. 

Now for starters we should clarify, the Thu’um would be considered magic in Warcraft. While it is explicitly stated to not be magic in Elder Scrolls, magic as a classification of being in Elder Scrolls is very unlike what it is in Warcraft. In Warcraft magic is, in the truest sense of the word, wizard shit. Magic is anything that falls outside the realm of normality, anything that causes the world to function contrary to how it otherwise would. A quote from Medivh (or wizard Superman as he was referred to previously) says it best; “Magic is the art of circumventing the normal. The stars march in order across the sky, the seasons fall one after the other with lockstepped regularity, and men and women live and die. If that does not happen, it's magic.” Now this is not to say that everything would count as magic, that is a gross no limits fallacy. However this shows how broad the classification for it is, and the amount of things that have already been classified under magic backs this up. Technology counts as magic, as antimagic abilities function against things like orbital lasers, tesla cannons and turret fire. Ki/chi counts as magic as Monks are able to weaponize their bodies chi, and again antimagic works on it. Cosmic forces of mathematics and logic like Arcane magic, pure entropic darkness like the Void, holy energy powered by faith like the Light, superstitious and spiritual shamanism, all of these count as magic, and most specifically the Song. 

The Song is essentially the script of Warcraft. Sung into being by the First Ones (the supposed creators of the Warcraft cosmos,) the Song is a metaphysical cosmic noise that dictates the flow of all of reality. As new verses are sung, new events naturally occur, and if the song was ever to cease then reality itself likely would as well. The Song is the progenitor of and has all of the properties of its creations (and therefore the properties of all magic in Warcraft really,) and antimagic can and has resisted and reflected it. The Song in its makeup is incredibly similar to the Thu’um, and thus it's reasonable to say the Thu’um would be affected by things such as Deathwings spell reflecting scales and his spell absorbing Dragon Soul. 

Now the question becomes, is plot hax too much for Deathwing to absorb? The answer is no. While Deathwing himself has never absorbed plot hax, plot hax does exist in WoW. This lovely chap is named Caseo- I mean the Innkeeper. The Innkeeper runs the game Hearthstone from his tavern where…a lot of weird shit occurs. The Innkeeper, as evidenced by his Innkeeper Blogs, creates the cards and stories of Hearthstone by simply telling stories about them. At very least the tavern always seems to be conveniently right where Hearthstone‘s adventures end up happening. Stories that literally retroactively change the history of Hearthstone. 

The plot of Hearthstone follows the plot of WoW (just to clarify Hearthstone is a spinoff game of WoW but it does share a universe and canon as I am about to demonstrate) as evidenced by the appearance of the Wildhammer Fact Checker. The Wildhammer Fact Checker’s whole job is to literally fact check the story, spawning from a humorous interaction at Blizzcon where a fan wearing a red shirt pointed out a plot hole in the story, a plot hole that was quickly patched up and represented by the addition of the Wildhammer Fact Checker. The Wildhammer Fact Checker isn't just a throwaway character, as he literally appears in a Hearthstone comic to “um actually” someone in the lore of WoW. This comic ends with someone teasing the “true story” behind the Frozen Throne. This is a comic leading into the Frozen Throne expansion of Hearthstone, which is meant to portray the events of Wrath of the Lich King. The problem is that the events are wildly different than how they are in Wrath of the Lich King, entire characters that weren't even a part of the expansion like Gul’Dan and Rexxar show up and their fates are entirely different than how they are in canon. The fact that this is being presented as “the truth” now off of the Innkeepers story about this event is suspicious. 

This goes even further when you realize that characters from the Innkeepers stories just…exist now? Characters from Hearthstone stories like Dr Boom and Reno Jackson just show up in Warcraft (yes Dr Boom is a real name for a real character, same with Reno Jackson who is a wizard dragon treasure hunter with a gatling gun wand and an immaculate jawline he's badass) with no explanation for their existence, despite originating from a seemingly fictional story being fabricated by the Innkeeper. This is most easily demonstrated by his companion Sarge, and more specifically the item “Sarges Tale.” The mount journal for Sarges Tale explicitly says “Hold on a sec, Sarge isn't that large, someone must have spun a tall tale in the Hearthstone Tavern..." Someone quite literally told a story about Sarge being huge and Sarge just became huge. Sarge is not normally that size, he's a rat. Two things to note. While Hearthstones canonicity to the main timeline of Warcraft is debatable, that doesn't ultimately matter for reasons we’ll explain in a bit when we get to the Song in about a paragraph. The second is the argument that Hearthstone is a different game than World of Warcraft, which is true…in an out of universe sense, but not an in universe sense. Hearthstone is a different game client than WoW, as in you need to open a different app to play the game, but it is not a different setting or world than WoW. It's like comparing the Pokemon Games and the Pokemon Anime, or comparing the Witcher and Gwent. They are the same universe but different games because you can't exactly slot an entire complex card game into an MMO without some sort of code breaking. 

Which leads us into the second bit of potential plot hax, as we now come to Domination Magic. Domination Magic just straight up rewrote the past story in the quest Crossing Fate. In Crossing Fate, the past was rewritten in order to make us fight previous bosses and events in the story in entirely new orders with new abilities, mechanics and sequences, completely contrary to what happened prior. Now to get the obvious out of the way, this is not time manipulation. The quest explicitly states that our memories of the events are being rewritten, and our memories don't get rewritten when the timeline is altered, we always remember the changes. The Shadowlands also exist outside of the concept of time as we know it, so it being time manipulation is incredibly unlikely. This has to be something else. And while fate manipulation on the surface is an obvious choice, that seems to be a misnomer here, since standard fate manipulation does not include changing the past, and the term “Fate” in Warcraft is just in reference to the Song, it is describing lots of things not specifically “fate.” The only reason to assume that Domination magic alters only fate is because it only names fate, and again that's simply because Fate in the context of Warcraft is a very catch-all term like magic is. This rewriting of event sequences is actually something that might’ve happened in canon with the introduction of Chronicle Volume 4 (again, the lore encyclopedia,) which completely altered the order of events of both Legion and Battle for Azeroth from what they were in game, which we know was influenced by the Jailers domination.

Now here's the fun part. Both Domination magic and the powers the Innkeeper possesses would be included in the Song, even if Hearthstone was in an alternate timeline as the Song created all of those timelines as well. The Song is their creator (well as far as we know with the current story of Warcraft) and has all of their properties, so by spells like Spell Reflect (which all of Deathwing's scales can do passively) being able to effect the Song, the vastly superior Dragon Soul should be able to as well. In fact far weaker characters with less magical resistances like Darion have outright resisted the effects of Domination. For all of these reasons, adapting to the Thu’um is not outside of the realm of possibility. 

Even if you don't believe that Domination and the Innkeeper alter the plot, the ability to adapt to plot manipulation isn't immediately written off. Yes Deathwings doesn't have an inherent resistance at the start of the fight, but then again he didn't have inherent resistance to anything the soul gave him prior to absorbing it, the whole point is that it circumvents the need for an inherent resistance. It's not the best argument, but it's a fallback in case we've failed to convince you on Domination and the Innkeeper. 

This is not Deathwings only counter. The Thu’um can be countered surprisingly simply by things such as jamming your thumb in the user's mouth and gagging them, essentially removing their ability to speak. Thankfully Deathwing has the ability Silence which does exactly that, making the subject unable to speak for as long as Deathwing wants (which, side note, explicitly works on the shout-based abilities of warriors.) Or he could use Curse of Tongues, making Miraak unable to speak in the language of dragons and instead forcing him to speak demonic, something that would hinder shouts immensely as they require the user to speak draconic tongue. He could also simply teleport something inside Miraak's throat, or telefrag as you might know it as. The mishaps of teleportation show that there should be nothing stopping Deathwing from teleporting a rock, a book, or even a small version of himself into Miraak's throat, which would be quite the pickle. These are all things Deathwing would know to do as he can see the past, present and future simultaneously with The Soul, and all of these abilities are instant cast spells. It is worth noting that the argument exists that Miraak would counter silencing, due to being able to (supposedly) resist the effects of Spellbreaker. This is, to put it simply, very questionable. The argument comes from Miraak being able to overcome Spellbreaker in alternate timelines/possibilities of his fight with the Dragonborn, and therein lies the process problem…it's an alternate timeline/possibility. We have zero clue how those fights went down outside of Miraak winning in the end, there are quite literally infinite variables on how those encounters could have played out, so using them to argue a surefire counter is unreliable at the absolute best. Not to mention that, of the Deadric artifacts, Peryites in particular are not well documented and acknowledged as much in canon sources. To the point where no elaboration on Spellbreaker’s capabilities was offered when specifically asked about. So being able to automatically silence mages is especially questionable.

Even if Miraak got off a dragon shout that wouldn't immediately be a fight ender. While the dragon shouts can affect the plot, they don't do so in a way that would be immediately game-ending. Tonal magic has been resisted by normal people in Elder Scrolls. As evidenced by this one Telvanni guy just resisting tonal hypnosis for a bit. If Tonal magic, and thus The Thu’um, overwrites resistances this wouldn't be possible. This is even reflected in Skyrim since magic resistances and wards also mitigate damage from shouts. Unrelenting Force specifically gets downgraded from a ragdoll effect to simply staggering its target if they are heavy enough, like with mammoths or dwarven centurions. Which is especially notable since that's an effect exclusive to a shout. And there is at least one instance of a powerful archmage fighting a dragon and driving it off temporarily. So while the creation of these effects can be considered a form of plot manipulation that doesn't necessarily mean one needs to resist plot manipulation to resist a shout. They should just need to resist the base effect of the shout. Take Fire Breath for instance, it is rewriting the plot to shoot fire…but the fire is still fire. So therefore, Deathwing basically already resists most of Miraak's shouts, and if Miraak hits him with something he resists then he's screwed. Now not only does the shout have basically no effect, but now Deathwing absorbs the shout with the Dragon Soul and Miraak loses most of his offensive options, as Deathwing is now immune to Dragon Shouts. The Dragon Soul is busted, as seen with the aspects, by simply absorbing the power of one spell from each of them he got immunity to and access to all of their powers and spells. All it takes is a single Dragon Shout to be absorbed and Miraak loses a huge ace of his kit. Hell, this doesn't even have to be from Miraak. You may recall he has several dragons who use the same source of power.

Even the method of using Tonal Magic to ensure Miraak's victory specifically is shakey, as when Barfok used the tonal magic to do so the victories were relatively low stakes. It never showed that it could make her win anything, as the fights won with this technique were relatively trivial. Saying that this technique would make you win any fight regardless of how evenly matched or unmatched you are is a massive NLF. Compounding this, if all Shouts can affect the plot offensively, why is there one that does this specifically? Barfok having that Event Denouement shout makes no sense if that's just how all shouts affect their target. 

Even assuming Miraak goes for a fight winning shout immediately, Deathwing still has counters such as pulling a Funny Valentine and sending his death into a different timeline, or calling in an alternate timeline version of him to take the hit, or creating dozens of himself with Mirror Image so even if one of them dies there's still several more who can now adapt to the shout and jump Miraak. And if he went for a soul devouring shout immediately that's a massive double edged sword, since the power Deathwing has is already tearing him apart. Absorbing even a part of Deathwing’s soul/essence(or the Dragon Soul’s) would in all likelihood just make Miraak explode like Deathwing did from the sheer power overload. Become Ethereal is very powerful but is not a very reliable counter due to its pitiful duration of 18 seconds, not even half a minute, which is a time limit Deathwing would not only be more than capable of outlasting but would also have the ability to speed up with his time manipulation, as the Dracthyr (who Deathwing created and gave powers to) can alter the cooldown and duration of abilities with things like Sands of Time, Blessing of the Bronze, Temporal Compression, Timeless Magic, Interwoven Threads and Tomorrow Today. Not to mention that if Miraak attacks or casts a spell at all, regardless of if it does anything the effects of Become Ethereal ends. 

Bend Will would be extremely useful if it weren't for one problem, the source of Deathwing's resistance to Mind Hax. See, he's resisted Mind hax from the Old Gods, specifically one considered between Titan- and Titan+ in power. And it's characters who don't have reason to scale above Titans, like the Aspects Ysera and Malygos, who start interacting with things above platonic concepts like The Dream and The Nether. And keep in mind Deathwing has gotten far stronger, albeit to an unknown degree, since his own time as an Aspect. The Old Gods have also broken through heavy resistance to Mind hax, including one connected to Azeroth herself. This actually brings things full circle, since his corruption was only possible through her in the first place. (To clarify, we don't think Deathwing scales power wise to her. However corruption/Mind hax resistance wise there is an explicit connection.)

After the Dragon Shouts fail, all that's really left for Miraak is Magicka which Deathwing would be able to absorb as well, given Magicka is incredibly similar to Arcane magic in nature and effect. Overall as the fight goes on, Miraak is just going to have less and less offensive options he can pull against Deathwing. 

The final nail in the coffin. If Miraak dies? He's dead. Miraak’s only form of immortality is simply eternal life which is not going to help against being actively murdered. Meanwhile, even if Miraak squeaks out a killing blow against Deathwing with his offensive options dwindled, Deathwing has methods of coming back to life and rendering that small victory moot. If Miraak gets burnt to a crisp by Deathwings breath or has his head crushed in with a mace, that's it.

Tertiary Factors

In terms of tertiary factors, Deathwing should take skill and experience considerably. Not only is his lifespan considerably longer than Miraak's (around 4,500 years old vs 20,000+,) but he has a vast amount of experience fighting in and commanding wars and militaries. His combat skills are so vast that he was able to train an army of super soldier dragons into becoming master martial artists, and the Warrior class reveres Neltharion for this same reason. He is also a master magic user, being compared to some of the most skilled mages alive and also having the knowledge and experience of the keeper of all arcane magic Malygos, as well as the more esoteric knowledge of Nozdormu and Ysera. While Miraak can be argued as having infinite levels of experience due to absorbing the memories and experience of dragons, who existed prior to time itself, the exact same can be said for Deathwing since has the knowledge and experience of void beings, who also predate time, making this point cancel out. Tertiary factors solidly go to Deathwing.

As a final note, support. Deathwing’s dragons Onyxia, Nefarian and Ultraxion sadly won't be much help here due to their relatively weak power level, but Ragnaros would be an incredible help. Ragnaros has feats that get him scaling quite high into Warcraft cosmology and at worst can serve as a great distraction or partner for Deathwing. However this isn't as much of an advantage as it is for Miraak. However it is worth mentioning that in the same way Miraak can't absorb the souls of Deathwing's dragons to empower himself, Deathwing can do the exact same. he would then adapt to the Thu’um just as if he absorbed Miraak’s own shouts, making Miraak’s army just as much of a risk as it is an advantage.

Conclusion

“I am power incarnate! You are nothing but shadows of the past!”

Advantages: 

• The Soul’s incredible adaptation would limit Miraak's offensive options.

• Has several ways of countering the Thu’um even beyond his adaptation such as Silence, Curse of Tongues, Telefraging or just outright resisting it

• Magicka would be very quickly adapted to, already eliminating half of Miraak’s kit essentially at the start of the fight. 

• More versatile offensively and defensively.

• Absorbing Deathwing’s soul/essence is a bad idea, and one Miraak would likely try. 

• Better healing options. And he has methods of coming back to life should he suffer a defeat in the fight.

• More inherently skilled and experienced due to his longer lifespan and combat prowess.

• His sick ass design, look at that dragon form.

• Way more attractive, look at that human form.

Equal:

• The entire state trinity is equal.

• They share both 99% of haxes and resistances, all layered.

• Can profit off of Miraak’s army and use them as a way to power up

Disadvantages:

• Less devastating hax at the start of the fight

• His draconic support (Onyxia, Ultraxion and Nefarian) are less impressive than Miraak's support (Sahrotaar, Kruziikrel, Relonikiv and Krosulhah).

• He made these ugly things.

• Literally so self obsessed he started an Opera where the other aspects adore him. Ending first.

This is an incredibly complex debate with a lot of moving parts, and will ultimately come down to what you buy and your mileage for certain concepts, and no matter who wins it would be extreme difficulty for the victor, but in our opinion the true dragon took one too many advantages. Miraak is an incredibly powerful foe and is definitely the most impressive enemy Deathwing has ever fought, but the fallen aspect’s incredible adaptability, vast experience and unstoppable survivability lets him reduce the first dragonborn to nothing more than a history lesson. Miraak will suffer a cataclysmic defeat as Deathwing takes the wing.

The Winner is Deathwing.

Final Tally

Miraak (3)-  Echo Awakens, Aggravating_Floorgor, Albeanies1

Deathwing (3)-  Anonymous_Writer, Remercer, Lakuita 

A Tie!??!?!

Yep, we’ve hit a true milestone; first tie on Bang’s Blogs. Everyone participating in it wouldn’t budge, and sometimes these things happen, no one is to blame. Ultimately to you dear reader, it comes down to what you buy or believe personally, but we hope you enjoyed one of the more serious attempts at tackling these two fantastical franchises, and while it should go without saying, take the time to actually read what was presented before throwing shade at the stats given to both or saying one side was ‘trash’ or ‘bad’. In other words, don’t be an asshole!

Next Time…