On its surface, the story of Dragonflight has been pretty straightforward in this first patch (I'll state here I've done the Renown 11 campaign quests for the Vadrakken Accord and Iskaara Tuskar). The Dragon Isles have awoken, and the Titan machinery has been reactivated, which has allowed the dragons to return to their ancient home, and we've come along for the ride.
Then, we've also got the Primalists - both the proto-dragons and their mortal followers - who want to make war on the dragons and undo the Titanic ordering of Azeroth and restore it to its previous elemental chaos.
But will the story remain so simple? I'm almost certain it will not.
So, I wanted to talk about things I've noticed - loose ends and complexities that might inform the ongoing story of the expansion.
Where Did the Humanoid Primalists Come From?
The first question to look at is where all these primalists came from. We know that the Primal Incarnates were around in the distant, pre-War-of-the-Ancients past, and had a conflict with the Aspects, which the Aspects wound up winning (evidently with some help from the Old Gods, though only Neltharion was aware of that bargain). Kurog Grimtotem, who you can now kill in LFR, shows up during the Evoker starting experience and frees Raszageth, who then goes to the Vault of the Incarnates to free the other three Incarnates.
What do we know about the Primalists as a faction - the ones who are not dragons themselves?
The Primalists use elemental magic similar to shamanism, and seem to be made up of a limited number of Azeroth's playable races. By my count (and it's possible I've missed some) I've seen Night Elves, Dwarves, Draenei, Tauren, Trolls, and Vulpera among the Primalists. What's interesting about this is that these are all races that can be Shamans, with the exception of the Night Elves. This is not, however, all the races that can be Shamans - I don't believe we see any Orcs, Kul Tirans, Zandalari Trolls, Dark Iron Dwarves, or Highmountain Tauren.
Now, given their use of elemental magic and their chaotic bent, one might be tempted to think that they're the remains of Twilight's Hammer. However, there are quests in the Waking Shores that imply that Twilight's Hammer is a faint shadow of its former self - a single ogre uses illusion magic to try to convince a group of dragonkin to do his bidding, but you can take him out and they'll become neutral to you.
While most bad guys think they're the good guys in the real world, in WoW there's a tendency to have a fairly mustache-twirling quality to evil factions. Here, though, the Primalists are constantly admonishing us for being deceived and manipulated - one random enemy in a quest in Azure Span's dying words were "For Azeroth." And really, their claimed purpose isn't entirely unsympathetic: they claim to be champions of nature and the natural order, and believe the Titans imposed a cruel and unnatural system upon the world.
So, where did all these people come from?
Kurog's last name associates him with one of the longest-running and most elusive villains in WoW. Magatha Grimtotem has been around since vanilla, and while she's been behind such evil acts as having Cairne secretly poisoned in his Mak'gora with Garrosh (a fight he might have won, despite his age, and whose death by that poison robbed Garrosh of a clean and honorable victory... who knows, maybe Hellscream wouldn't have become such an asshole if he'd been able to feel secure in his legitimacy? Or maybe he'd just be dead and the Horde would have had the wisdom of Cairne guiding it for this past decade.) Despite being pretty explicitly evil, Magatha has positioned herself in such a way that we've never really been in a position to fight her - she even winds up one of the Shaman class champions in Legion.
Magatha was associated with Twilight's Hammer, but seemed to never really be loyal to the cause or subservient to Cho'gall. When we see her in Thousand Needles, we wind up helping her deny them a powerful destructive artifact (that she just so happens to take for herself).
The only reason I'm skeptical that she's really behind this is that I think she's not one for ideology - rather, she's in it for personal power. And you really have to respect someone who has remained a mortal enemy of basically the entire Horde for this long and hasn't yet been taken down.
Was Tyr Really a Good Guy?
The general impression we've gotten about Tyr is that he was a great guy - of all the Titan Keepers of Ulduar (which was the command center of the Titanforged on Azeroth... and also the prison of Yogg-Saron, which... maybe wasn't the best idea?) Tyr seems to have cared the most about helping the mortal races. He's also strongly associated with the dragons, because he was the one who facilitated the uplifting of the Dragon Aspects.
But there are some things that are a little unsettling about the process.
The Primalists attack the Ruby Life Pools claiming that they want to rescue the eggs and whelps from Titanic corruption. We learn that the waters that flow down from Tyrhold (or Uldorus, as it's officially called) instill Order magic (aka Arcane) into the eggs, and basically create a predisposition toward order within the dragons who hatch from those eggs.
That's... kinda shady, is it not?
Now, to be fair, reading the various books one can find in the new Uldaman dungeon, it seems that the truly shady figure here is Odyn - something we've kind of known since he was introduced in Legion.
Tyr is, of course, also associated with human culture on Azeroth - Tirisfal is called that because it's where Tyr fell, and the tradition of Paladins is deeply tied to symbolism related to Tyr - the Silver Hand, etc.
Now, given the direction of the campaign quests in 10.0, it's likely we're going to have a chance to get to know a lot more about Tyr pretty soon. What is it about what Tyr did that the Primalists object to so much?
What's With All the Whispering Shards?
The story in Ohn'aran Plains is relatively straightforward - the Nokhud Clan of Centaurs allies with the Primalists and tries to conquer the other clans. But there are a couple of quests in that zone that deal with something else - a number of weird crystals and shards that seem to tempt and corrupt people they encounter. In one case, a wounded centaur takes one of these crystals and jams it into his wound, which "heals" him enough to go out hunting, but he's so supercharged with power that he winds up hurting his brother. Another is found by the Sundered Flame and seems to be compelling anyone who finds it to obsessively hold onto it.
Now, this expansion shares a lot of DNA with Cataclysm. Both are expansions about dragons that are also heavily about elementals. Deathwing's legacy is a huge part of what's going on - indeed, Alexstrasza's goal is to try to regain the power the Aspects lost when they gave it up to defeat Deathwing.
Cataclysm was also, in part, about the Old Gods. Deathwing had been driven to madness by them (N'zoth in particular, if memory serves,) and it was actually in Cataclysm's final raid that we first heard about N'zoth.
Of course, as of the end of Battle for Azeroth, the four Old Gods of Azeroth have all been slain... right?
Y'shaarj was killed in the very ordering of Azeroth (before the Dragons were even uplifted,) and then we adventurers have taken down C'thun, Yogg-Saron, and N'zoth.
But the Old Gods are so weird and alien and insidious that one wonders if they're truly gone. Y'shaarj left behind the curse of the Sha, after all.
And let's not forget all the stuff surrounding The Blade of the Black Empire, and our discovery that Xal'atath was merely an entity that was trapped within said blade - and who now walks freely in the body of an elf that it possessed.
It seems highly possible that N'zoth's essence now sits within that blade, almost like a Lich's phylactery.
But regarding these shards on the Dragon Isles, do we even know that these are associated with the Void? There's also a cursed spellbook of some sort that captures the souls of various Sundered Flame folks in Azure Span, and that seem very much an Order/Arcane item.
Murozond Rises?
So, I'll confess that I've been a bit obsessed with time travel since I was a little kid and saw Back to the Future and Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure. As such, the Bronze Dragonflight are by far my favorite dragonflight, and I'd be all in on a time-travel expansion that actually leans into those tropes, unlike Warlords of Draenor, which did everything it could to pretend like it wasn't a time-travel expansion.
The leveling campaign in the Dragon Isles ends with the Bronze and Infinite flights, and even has us part... not exactly amicably, but non-aggressively with Eternus, and with Chromie's resolution to find some way to rescue Nozdormu from becoming Murozond.
Now, is that just a coincidence?
It's also Nozdormu who is featured in the Dragonflight animated shorts with Emberthal, delving into the history of the Dracthyr - sure, he's one of the Aspects, and one of only two of the originals still left, but should we read anything into the focus on him?
Another thing I think is worth noting is that the Primalist Future we visit in the Thaldraszus campaign quests remains visitable - it's even where this week's world boss dragon is found, and is a location for Primal Storms. Is Blizzard trying to remind us that the timeways are open in this part of the Isles?
Overall, my suspicion is that this expansion has a lot of hidden details that aren't going to make themselves apparent until we get farther in. I haven't even touched on the Brackenhide Gnoll's use of Decay - our first explicit mention of this force since the introduction of the concept in Chronicle Volume 1 (though I think we had retroactively associated it with Dark Shamanism and the pollution of Garrosh's "True Horde" shamans).
I also haven't gotten through all the renown campaign quests (though the Iskaara Tuskar one at renown 11, while dramatically satisfying, didn't feel like it was blowing me away with any big new lore drops,) so it could be that there's big information I'm missing that's even available in-game already. But we'll see how things go over the coming months.
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