Things sure have changed over time all the way back in Wrath of the Lich King all we knew about gallichon was histitle father of dragons but then in dawn of the aspect we discovered the truth he once was a proto-drake just like the other aspect before their Ascension the father of dragons thing was a lie or a misunderstanding or merely some shifting lore told by alexstrasza to perhaps cover up what really was going on with gala grant that he was in fact a failed experiment on the road to the aspects this area is but one example the whole history of dragons is filled with twists turns rat cons time loops and so much change.
Today we're going to explore that Madness and discover just how dragons went from a few green pixels with big potential back in Warcraft 2 to the aspects reclaiming their power on the dragon Isles and the expansion we are playing right now and if you would like to support this Mission also get some dope loot you can check out our patron don't actually have the art on me right now there's gorgeous art coming from that little card game project we’re at currently tinkering around with but if you want to get the first ever Journal yes we've made a little uh little notebook very exciting and uh the uh oh man the pin series for this year is so gorgeous uh in terms of its art style so the lantern pins, lovely.
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So dragons were introduced in Warcraft 2 the real time strategy game they were reclusive creatures from the Untamed Northlands of Azeroth then only a consonant stretching from Stormwind to to 12 less column door wasn’t really talked about wasn't the thing dragons had little contact with their mortal neighbors that is until they became unwilling Servants of The Horde Rand and maimed two of the invading Orcs masterminded the capture of the Dragon Queen olestras her children raised up by the dragon Mall Clan Of Orcs And made to serve as the horde’s most powerful weapons of war used in the siege of dalaran and the Battle of BlackRock Spire this was the first iteration of dragons in the Warcraft setting and it gave much room to grow but there are some even immediate retcons to that story as an example.
Now it wasn't Rand and Mame who captured Alex trouser it was zulahet the Warchief of the Dragon Ball he in fact as it turns out was directed by Death wing in his ambition to dominate and torture his other aspects his fellow aspects.
Now that he's gone Rogue it goes to show how the relatively Simple Story of Orcs capturing dragons then evolved into a vendetta between dragons stretching back thousands of years but even by this stage Death wing had not been introduced into the game back in Warcraft 2 all dragons had green scales that’s just what the Sprite was there were no dragon flights or any other distinguishing features apart from Inestroza who was essentially a building at the time and Death wing.
Deathwing was represented with black wings and a unique armored Dragon portrait introduced in beyond the dark portal the expansion to Warcraft 2 he was the first big step up in Dragon lore Death wing wasa key Ally of Nerz’ll during the eventsof beyond the dark portal where he personally helped gather powerful items from across Azeroth like the scepter observers and the skull of gul ‘dan thesebrought together at the black Temple allowed ner'zul to open countless portals from the Oracle world as seen in their final cinematic the game's manual gave Deathwing a brief backstory his motivations are really straightforward in this version he began supposedly roosting with a group of renegade dragons in the northeastern mountains ofdraanor this of course would be massively expanded upon in the 2009 novelization beyond the dark portal which I'd recommend reading.
In that Deathwing makes a deal with ner'zul in return for Gathering the ritual items that ner'zul would need for his whole portal thing Deathwing would be able to hide a clutch of his eggs on drainer to keep them safe from the other dragon flights and as we can see with sibelian arriving from Draenor Laden with black dragon eggs today that plan actually worked out the manual described Deathwing as second only in power to alexstrasza but this lore developed so radically that through old God corruption and even his own raw power pound-for-underthing was absolutely the most powerful of the aspects the other aspect’s ability to cooperate would always be the thing that would take him down.
But another rat con even a small one is deathwing's adamantine plates, the original lore actually stated that horde aligned goblins fitted them upon him for protection during the second war yet the new lore States the ten thousand years before that second war deathwing's raging power began to warp his body so much that the plates had to be fitted by his own servants yeah it's a bit more out there but you know what the new lore certainly more fun so to finish our Warcraft 2 story Deathwing was defeated in the blades Edge mountains buts Balian and the other black dragons were able to hide out and right just before khadgar closes the dark portal in the alliance and cinematic UC the shadow of a dragonflight over him that is the shadow of Deathwing who would return tothe Eastern kingdoms and go under the guise of a noble Lord of humanity.
Day ofthe Dragon in Warcraft 3 we began to see dragons in a totally new light Booth came up and you would find five color variations of dragons each with unique breath attacks like the blue dragons one that slowed movement speed the type of dragon that you could recruit from a roast depended on the map's tile set which gave each of them an environment and just kind of setup more Rich feeling for them but behind the scenes their lore was already developing thanks to the efforts of Richard Knack and his 2001 novel day of the Dragon which came out the year before Warcraft 3.
In this and very much unlike the rest of his Red Dragon family Crassus had decided that he is not he’s not given up on freeing Alex Strasse whoyou know canonically was a building but more realistically was chained up Ingram battle so after the second war Hemet the aspiring Mage Ronin and sent him on adventure to grim batol where Inestroza was being held captive he was of course successful using a gemstone made from deathwing's own scale to destroy the demon soul thus freeing Alez.
Longer was she a building in a real-time strategy game now the Queen of Dragons was free and with that it was time for Richard knack to define the dragons of Warcraft no longer were they reclusive creatures from Untamed lands but instead powerful Guardians of the world blessed by the Titans themselves to hold power over a fundamental part of the planet each flight defined by a color and responsibility and at their head a mighty aspect these aspects weren’t Invincible but they were Larger than Life beings chosen by what we knew at the time as gods you’re the lore in such a fledgling State much of the details in this book would change have been left out or became disputed over time.
Ronan’s story had been heavily condensed for chronicle and the game but the greatest change to the dragons was the characterization ofmalygos initially he was betrayed as an anxiety-ridden insect-esque being unableto overcome his depression and Aid the world this later was changed to a seething Madness that would Wrath of the lich King spark the Nexus War even another character that changed was Norris dormu who began as a collector and cataloger of artifacts from different eras one two preoccupied in his work to Aid.
Crassus in rescuing the queen yes he soon was morphed into a character devoted to safeguarding the fate of the world at that time he was still unaware of the looming Madness of Morrison who at this point did not exist within the law with this incarnation of on-storm move only just beginning to embrace the fact that he could manipulate timelines something that we would later see in knack's work the war of the Ancients if you've played Warcraft long enough you will have existed through two canonical versions of the war of the Ancients because monosodium they sort of both still happened what happened without Time Travelers.
The initial War of the Ancients and another one happened where Ronan Crassus and the orc Champion Brock cigar joined malfurion in the Caldera rebels in their war against achara that was the adventure but the rest of the novel shared life on the conflicts that not only broke the world but broke the dragonflights the first iteration of the war of the Ancients was told to us in the manual of Warcraft 3 but it made no mention of dragons at all obviously there would be further developed in the works of Richard neck the First full telling of the law 4 was from an in-game lore book found within the library of the Scarlet Monastery and in this book the Betrayal of Deathwing is mentioned but that the details are lost to time well one big detail last time was the demon soul originally called the dragon soul it was a simple Golden Disc created by notharian who would go on to be known as Deathwing.
By this time he had already given in to Old God corruption but he was still fronting as the noble earthwolves he convinced the other dragons to imbue this item with their power essentially as a super weapon this was super convincing at the time to the other dragons because the legion were launching their first full-blowninvasion of the world so the dragons felt that. Okay Desperate Time,s Desperate Measures of course Death wing revealed his betrayals the dragon flights gathered to fight the legion he unleashed the demon soul over finisher where the blues were the first to realize his betrayal and strike back but disastrously so they were all but obliterated with no hope of renewal malagos fled to kuldara in despair but fortunately the time traveling Crassus had actually managed to secure a clutch of blue dragon eggs from deathwing's betrayal.
At the very end of the book nosdormu took the eggs implying that this was to give New Hope to the blue dragonflight so the thing that changed here is the fate of the blue dragonflight before after the Lich King they were incredibly rare the likes of azurgos and kaligos were some of thevery few remaining members but behind the scenes blizzard wanted to introduce more villainous dragons who weren’t corrupted by all gods mangos was chosenand his flight needed to be much larger if it was going to realistically portray the villainous role that they would playing the Nexus war of Wrath of the Licking now funny enough the lore of near total obliteration again emphasizing the near total they were still pretty much obliterated and but that lore and assuaging the flight through time travel that has been seemingly dropped instead the blue dragons just slowly rebuilt their strength over ten thousand years ready to fight in Wrath.
Which to be honest with you I think is a good bit more clean than having to rely on timeline not that everything from that should be retcon because Brock cigar is pretty damn cool I think we all want to see something of him in the future dawn of the aspects followed the now blue aspect kaligos's Vision Quest to understand the birth of dragon kite he found the spark of tear ataluren’s rest and through this he was sent to the primordial days of the roto-drakes hunting in ancient calendar he experienced the fight against kalacron through malagosa's eyes and learned many truths he learned that the aspects were not blessed by the Titans themselves rather by their Keepers which contradicted the charge of thedragonflights.
In the bookright its first rendition where the Titans directly interact with the aspects this is a small change shifting it over to the keepers of the Titans and small but it did have huge consequences because at the time we were only just discovering the Titan Keepers were more free willed than just mere machines we had stories like lokan's betrayal and much later well the entire personality of Odin as a testament to that tear though was friendly and warm he saw big potential in the proto-drakes and he went out of his way to protect them even losing an arm in the process but below Val draken we are finding a bit more of what tyr was interested in specifically the halls of infusion a Titan facility designed to infuse order Magic into a Wellspring of azerothian energy to well.
Tyr States himself by ingesting the water or causing their eggs to absorb its effects it should be possible to keep even the most willful of dragons aligned with the Titans philosophies you know just some Titan vitamins in the water to make sure that the dragons come out the right way far from spontaneous interest in the prototricks as described in dawn of the aspects tears Fascination goes much further back to an intentional program of uplifting azerothy in life this Fascination is seen once again in his secret Labs only just discovered every form of dragon life even the roto-drakes they are cataloged and examined we see this at the very end of the valdracken Accord campaign where the most shocking thing that we discovered is that whether it's tears or someone else’s some negligence may have allowed either the halls of infusion to be infected by yogg-saron or yogg-suron or something to go wrong.
Leading to galachrond yeah it's kind of implied that titan forged meddling led to the roto-drake galicron mutating out of control takes us right back to dawn of the aspects where tyr said that gallichons not intended which does kind of tell us that a lot of these ideas about tear and the background of that Titan lore it kind of did exist back in dawn of the aspects where tyr said that and of course in the light of g'hoon the quasi-old god creature that was resulting from titanforged experiments that we saw in battle for Azeroth it is hardly a surprise and this then brings us to the greatest draconic lie as the alliance and The Horde marched on the wrath gate.
Adventurers were sent to worm restTemple they needed the dragon Queen to stop the scourge resurrecting fontomfrom the bones around gallichon’s restand she said of kalakand progenitor ofdragon kind it is from gallichon that theTitans created the aspects imagine then the power of galacront that is the story that we were told in Wrath of the Licking and there was no reason for us to deny it at the time but even dawn of the aspect showed us gallacron and the aspects lived around the same time and now we've even heard much from tear himself that galachrond was an unintended consequence of essentially those the forces of order the Titan forged meddling with life on Azeroth something we've always known they’ve been doing the prime lists.
These are the newest dimension of dragon lore they’re massive change but they do cut to the core of what it means to be a dragon they are well god-like forces of nature that whilst intelligent are still very very dangerous they're really closer to Warcraft 2 dragons than our aspects but the primalists challenge so much more they really exist to challenge everything that we had taken for granted about the dragonflights right down to the very idea that they are the good guy now I think they are definitely the good guys I think they do have good intentions but again we're learning more once proto-drakes turning into dragon’s felt like a Natural Evolution but Isuppose much in the same way that Earthen turned into dwarves because of old God meddling proto-drakes turned into the dragons.
We know because ofTitan meddling it does seem to be that way which just shows the impact that all of these different forces have had within life in Azeroth for a very verylong time indeed with the curse of Flesh being I mean foundational lore in the Warcraft setting for a very long time indeed I guess we're seeing that more than just all gods do that but it also does seem to be the source of much of the power of Mortals anyway now we are discovering that the Titans and their servants you know they're not evil but they are beings of order if they find something that's unordered they're going to order it they're not evil or nefarious schemers they they just have a way of doing things and I suppose like any God or Stellar civilization.
They just see things a certain way and that'stheir policy for some like the aspects it works out for others like the incarnates it very much does not we cannot longer believe in a manifest destiny-esque myth with the aspects that their power is just inevitably better than that of the proto-drakes or the elements of Azeroth I suppose there is a great leveling of things going on right now no longer just being the bottomof an evolutionary ladder that is a massive tonal shift for the prototroches the dragons they're not like one than the other they are Forks in the road and this is exemplified in the ancient war between the dragon aspects and the prime lists it's a war the details of which we don't really know right now.
But I imagine we're going to learn pretty damn soon at least we do know the extremes to which both factions went in the pursuit of Victory the In departments became avatars of a brutal form of azeroth's Elemental energies apparently a radio Crown did the most heinous of things in order to further his goal and then you look at the aspects who did lock up or kill their kin wholesale the whole thing brought dragons back to being the engines of Destruction that Wesaw in Warcraft 2. and that's what leads me to corruption over all of this looms.
Deathwing and even being long dead we find ourselves still grappling with the legacy of that character and his Creations over the years the specific flavor of deathwing's corruption has shifted in changes he began as a sort of arrogant wannabe ruler as earth forefeeling that it was kind of his right to rule the roost in cataclysm and Dawn of the aspects.
We found the more deeper empathetic motivations he saw these-called blessing of the Titans as accurse feeling the weight of the world upon his shoulders a responsibility just too great that led him down this path of corruption but either way the all gods long had an interest in Death wing that even when he was a proto-drake he would absolutely stare into the mountains if as if something was whispering to him.
Now this scene from legacies shows us the exact moment he gave in to The Whispers And the promises of the old gods the possible rat con here then is that he intentionally gave into the void making a fausty impact in a desperate moment this happened when racepath the youngest of the incarnates assaulted The Forbidden reach cutting through natharian's drachma even if the mountains whispered to him he made terakihi trying to win this war conventionally but as everything that he built crashed down around him and he felt the full force of the storm's wrath as he still felt the weight of the world upon his shoulders that is when he accepted the power of void in order to try to defeat Razak.
This A Change Is there something new that we didn't know yes absolutely but it doesn't change his core motivation she was still an arrogant warlord trying to dominate Azeroth all right he's still making secret armies he still felt the weight of the world and his shoulders but think about the journey from being Azeroth’s second ever-named dragon whose main motivation was just destruction to now being the progenitor of the latest playable race in the game from a Sprite to the cavernous Mysteries that lie underneath the dragon Isles Deathwing really is.
A perfect example of just how much dragons have changed and a perfect example of just how much Warcraft has changed and to be honest when I look at the depth of the lore that's being presented with the dragons when I look at even the Geraldine I do think that the new dragon lore is basically more interesting than the old Dragon lore something that was often just relegated to books where most players didn’t really know know what was going on with the dragons.
Here I think we have just a more active story with a lot more to just grasp onto as a player of the game and a follower of the world so let me know what you think how you feel about this new incarnation of the dragons and if you would like to get some really cool loot including gorgeous art I mean I think Dragon oldies back there a little bit of a bestiary inspired by that a be story page as well as the little mini uh you know like mini notebooks uh that we're doing.
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