Monday, February 2, 2015

Cho'gall, the Void, and the Old Gods

We've had Voidwalkers as creatures within the world of Warcraft since its inception. Warlocks use them as rather reliable tanks when soloing. They're creatures of pure darkness, and thus seem to be on the evil side of things, but we've always just generally considered them to be among the rogues gallery of demonic species that make up the Burning Legion.

And it certainly seems to be the case that the Legion employs Voidwalkers and their ilk.

However, at a Blizzcon (and sorry for not citing this, but I can't remember if it was the most recent one or the previous one,) we were informed that, technically, Void Walkers are not demons at all. Sure, Warlock minions are still going to classified that way to prevent weird bugginess (like whether rival Warlocks can banish them or not,) but lore-wise, they're not demons. What are they?

In-game, the answer seems to be Aberration, but to be clear, Aberration (which only came into the game in 5.2,) is more or less a catch-all for "damned if we know!" Thus Aberrations can apply to slimes or mutants or... Old Gods.

More on that later.

In the Burning Crusade, we were introduced to the Nauru - benevolent creatures that seemed to be made of pure Light who aided and were revered by the Draenei. The Naaru named M'uru was allowed to fall into the hands of the Blood Elves, who drained its powers to create their equivalent of Paladins. In fact, this was M'uru's intention, and the Blood Knights, despite their pretty messed up origins, actually led the charge on rejecting Kael'thas and fighting off the Burning Legion on Quel'danas. M'uru, however, was too far gone, and eventually collapsed into a being of shadow, as Naaru do when they are near death. When he/she did so, M'uru became a creature known as Entropius, who looks a whole lot like a Voidwalker.

So it stand to reason that the Voidwalkers might actually be more closely related to the Naaru than any real demon. Demons instead seem to be creatures of flesh (well, except Infernals and Abyssals, who are more like elementals) who are imbued with horrible amounts of arcane and Fel energy, whereas Voidwalkers are creatures of literal darkness.

In Draenor, we've seen that while the Iron Horde has rejected Gul'dan and his demons, they seem perfectly happy to allow the Shadowmoon Clan to use Void magic and summon Voidwalkers like Nhallish. These guys are classified in-game as Aberrations, but it's pretty clear they're the same basic thing as the Voidwalkers Warlocks learn to summon at... well it used to be level 10, I don't know what it is now.

The Void is wielded by Ner'zhul and the Shadowmoon Clan, but he's not the only one associated with its power. Off in Nagrand, Cho'gall discovered the ailing Naaru K'ure. In fact, a whole subspecies of Orcs were drawn to its power, becoming twisted and horrible creatures that seemed almost undead called the Pale. Cho'gall, already a Warlock of the Shadow Council, decided that this was his chosen source of power. He rejects Gul'dan and attempts to take the power for himself, potentially turning his back on the Shadow Council entirely, and he uses this power to assault Highmaul, his own people's capital.

But the Void and the Legion are distinct things, even if they sometimes seem to be in league.

K'ure's ailment is not unique to the alternate timeline. When we traveled into Oshu'gun in Burning Crusade, we found that the Naaru was being held within and was unwillingly absorbing the souls of the dead. It's perfectly imaginable that Cho'gall would have been drawn to Oshu'gun by K'ure in our timeline as well. But why would he then change his tune to march to the drums of the Old Gods, as he so famously did when he was on Azeroth?

It's possible that the Old Gods reached out to him as soon as he set foot on Azeroth. As a Warlock, it's not hard to imagine that he'd jump on the tentacle bandwagon as soon as he felt that he could get more power from them than from the Legion. But there's another possibility:

Perhaps he was already working for them.

The origins of the Old Gods are mysterious. We know that they showed up on Azeroth and started ruining the works of the Titans, and we know that they did all sorts of nasty things, spreading madness and chaos.

In fact, the Old Gods seem to be masters at manipulating minds. They have a penchant for getting in peoples' heads and turning them to evil. Neltharion was created to guard the deep places of Azeroth, presumably against the Old Gods. Yet he became their greatest tool, Deathwing.

Ready for another trip down the rabbit hole?

Consider Shadow Priests. Shadow Priests work with Shadow magic (duh,) but it's not in the form that Warlocks use. Warlocks send bolts of shadow energy at their opponents or assault their bodies with shadowy ailments like Corruption. Shadow Priests, on the other hand, assault their enemies minds. A Shadow Priest induces a horrific madness in their opponent and terrible psychic pain. They've also historically been able to take over their enemies minds entirely (I did a UBRS run earlier where a Shadow Priest marched those two big guys right before Zaela off the bridge to their deaths.)

That sounds like the Old Gods to me.

So what am I getting at here?

I think that the Void is not directly related to the demons of the Burning Legion. They have their own dimension, the Twisting Nether. No, the Void is not the home of demons. It's the home of the Old Gods. To go back into game mechanics, think about the Shadowfiends that Priests can summon or the Void Tendrils that can grip their enemies. Those are very clearly related to the Old Gods.

And that might enlighten us to what the Old Gods really are. They are creatures of shadow. They are monstrosities of flesh that come from a dimension where that should be impossible. The Old Gods are the denizens of the Void.

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