First off, this post contains some kind of big spoilers regarding the Klaxxi, the Sha, and the Mantid in general. It might be stuff you've figured out on your own, but if you want to stay totally spoiler-free, wait until you've hit exalted with the Klaxxi to read this analysis.
The Mantid are one of the off-shoots of the Aqir - arthropod-like yet sapient races that were either created or mutated by the Old Gods. They appear distinct from the Faceless Ones, though. The Faceless seem to be related to the Old Gods in some way - as if they are symbiotic organisms or even of the same species. It is unclear whether the Old Gods are biological or celestial in nature (though I think this mystery is one of their inherent draws - they defy definition.)
While the Faceless are pure C'thulu territory, the Aqir actually resemble much more closely the other mortal races of Azeroth. While those races tend to be more individualistic and, well, mammals, (though with the Saurok we do also have lizard-people, and of course there have also been fish and amphibian people as well,) the Aqir races - the Qiraji, Nerubians, and Mantid - have cultures refined enough to build great cities and maintain a history. Their culture is certainly alien - structured more along hive lines - yet we can communicate with them, and even fight alongside one another when we share mutual goals.
As far as creations of the Old Gods go, this is quite surprising. After all, we just spent two years dealing with Deathwing, who was driven insane by the Old Gods and wanted to very explicitly destroy the entire world - not conquer it in the name of the Old Gods, but to actually reduce the place to a cinder, where presumably only elementals would be able to live.
I've posited that Deathwing may have garbled the message a bit. The Old Gods want to undo the works of the Titans, but that might mean more explicitly to break them out of their restraints so that they could rule Azeroth and do as they chose (which would mean lots of wars and destruction and insanity, but maybe not destroy the planet itself.) Deathwing's task as Earth Warder was, in part, to keep the Old Gods from getting out, and perhaps his insane epiphany was that in order to keep the Old Gods from taking Azeroth again, he would destroy it. Even knowing this, the Old Gods might have egged him on anyway (we have no idea what their ultimate motivations are - perhaps N'zoth, for instance, just wants to die in a blaze of horror) and he may have come to the conclusion that he was doing their will. He does seem to get some support from them, as the Faceless aid him during the Dragon Soul raid, but it seems that the whole "burn everything to ashes" idea is coming from him. Maybe.
Anyway, the reason I'm inclined to believe that the Old Gods may not have quite wanted to go all the way to the Hour of Twilight - to break the world a bit, making their eventual escape easier but not quite destroying the planet - is that they seem to have gone to some effort to build up these Aqir empires.
Speaking with the Klaxxi is quite an interesting experience, because for the first time we have worshippers of the Old Gods who are neither hostile nor insane. The Mantid do not necessarily live very long, but those Paragons preserved in Amber can last indefinitely, and indeed, people like Korven the Prime speak of a time before the "Usurpers" came, and in this case he does mean the Titans, usurping the Old Gods.
The question of who came first, the Titans or the Old Gods, is one that has been tough to pin down. In Halls of Stone, the computers say that the Titans showed up, did their thing, and then left. Later, the Old Gods showed up and did their thing. The Titans come back and discover the infection, only to realize that removing the Old Gods would cause the host (Azeroth) to die. (We can assume Y'shaarj's destruction and the release of the Sha was the demonstration of this principle.) Depending on when you enter the picture, what you believe could be significantly shifted. To creations of the Titans (like about half the playable races) it seems like the Old Gods are the interlopers, but to the Aqir, the Titans are the Usurpers.
Now frankly, if I had to guess, I'd think the Elemental Lords were the true original deities of Azeroth, but they were not the most powerful by far (after all, we've killed two of them.)
Still, it is an intriguing thing indeed to think that the Mantid worship the Old Gods. If we remove them (and, if you'll take the leap, the Old Gods they worship) from the realm of "pure evil," the oft-discussed issue of why the Klaxxi are so upset about the Sha taking over the Empress actually makes a lot of sense.
Imagine the you view Y'shaarj as a holy entity - a figure of reverence and worship. He may have given you life, and while he isn't all about love and goodness, your culture isn't about that either. You have a culture of relentless determination, and utter dedication to the swarm. Y'shaarj was the font of that power and determination, and so you look up to him truly as your god. Then, beings that you had never heard of before come and try to wrest the planet away from your god and his kind, taking the world you knew and bringing forth new entities to serve them. In the war, Y'shaarj is killed. Naturally, you'll consider the Usurpers to be horrible cosmic villains, worthy of your hatred.
But that's not the end of it. The raw power of your deity is now leaking out, and uncontrolled in is causing nothing but chaos. Without the control of the god's mind, the essence is infecting everything around it. It is worse than the Usurpers - it is a perversion of everything that you worshipped and revered.
To the Mantid, the Titans are desecrators, and now what was once a source of strength and power is now driving people insane.
It would be as if, oh, say, a Naaru were to be harmed by some enemy. Perhaps they are taken to a holy place, but the natural effect of their injury caused dark power to spread out and infect people, desecrating the Naaru's very place of rest. You know, like Auchindoun.
I'm not trying to say the Naaru are the Old Gods here (not at all, for the record) but it does invite some interesting questions on perspective.
To us, the Old Gods are clearly a threat, and it's not likely that we're going to ever find ourselves singing around a campfire with a mass of tentacles playing guitar - hell, we've had a hard enough time just getting the Horde and Alliance to get along - but it almost looks like a system that consisted of only the Old Gods, the Aqir, the Faceless Ones, and a few elementals to keep things warm might not actually look so evil to its inhabitants.
Of course, there's another possibility.
It could be the Aqir are deceived. Maybe they were just another race - native to Azeroth or even created by the Titans. It could be that the Old Gods really do just want to revel in the pain and suffering and insanity of evil. They love war, so they pick one of the major species on the planet (for the sake of argument, let's say Trolls and Aqir) and pit them against the other, getting off on the conflict.
The Old Gods are truly alien, and as such, it's perhaps inherently a fool's errand to attempt to discern their aims, or indeed, their origins. Yet in the future, I'd like to delve down the rabbit hole and see what kind of crazy stuff we can come up with.
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