Who Wants Chromie Dead?

The Deaths of Chromie scenario is a repeatable activity that is meant to be "evergreen" content - it scales you to a particular level and item level (112, 1000, respectively) in which you contact Chromie - everyone's favorite Bronze Dragon who typically takes the form of a female gnome - and find out that someone is trying to kill her. Or rather, a whole bunch of people are trying to kill her. At the wrong time.

See, Bronze Dragons have a weird relationship with mortality. At least until the Hour of Twilight was averted, they had the ability to see through time as a kind of solid object - past, present, and future all existing simultaneously within the timeways. Nozdormu was given a vision of his own death when he first received his power (though the initial story - that it was given directly to him by Aman'thul - doesn't really check out anymore.) Chromie states plainly that she knows how she is supposed to die and when, and that this attack is coming too soon.

So who are the culprits? Well, much of the scenario takes place in the near future - presumably a year or two from now after the Legion is defeated and we hit level 112. Chromie, hanging out at Wyrmrest Temple (which must have been repaired after Deathwing's attack) is simultaneously struck by lethal bolts of magic from the Azure, Emerald, Obsidian, and Ruby dragonshrines - interestingly not the Bronze one.

There is a Satyr at the Emerald Shrine, a Void Lord at the Azure shrine, a Lich at the Ruby Shrine, and a Dreadlord at the Obsidian shrine. Generally, these aren't the types you typically see working together. Satyrs are demons, like Dreadlords, of course, but are more affiliated with the Nightmare - which we thought we had ended after killing Xavius. Void Lords also link to Satyrs through the Nightmare, but first they have to go through the Old Gods - they're a step removed from being directly tied to the Nightmare. On the other hand, if this takes place after we defeat the Legion, it might be that the Nathrezim, for the first time in thousands of years, are free agents once again, and might have taken up their old affiliation with the Old Gods and the Void. Meanwhile, the Lich looks very Scourge-like, especially as he has a death knight, a banshee, and an abomination as minions. But we don't really know what the Scourge is going to look like in the future (so far, the Death Knight quests in Legion have hinted that Bolvar is only somewhat better than Arthas, now that he's Lich King.)

But even halting those attacks reveals that there are another four planned in other time periods. Alliance and Horde forces are both seeking to kill Chromie in Andorhal. Demons are coming after her at the Well of Eternity during the War of the Ancients. The pre-Arthas Scourge is attempting to kill her in Stratholme during the culling. And fire elementals are attempting to kill her on Mount Hyjal shortly after the Cataclysm.

This is an absurdly well-coordinated, cross-temporal attack that utilizes agents who would be highly unlikely to work together without someone pulling the strings.

So who the hell is doing so, and why?

There is a note that we find in one of the Time-Lost Keepsake Boxes - these hold items that can allow you to quickly prevent the non-Dragonblight assassination attempts. The language sounds unhinged, but is most likely written by the person who has gone to all this trouble to have Chromie killed.

Whoever is in charge of this assassination attempt has some clear characteristics: First, this is a master Chronomancer. This is an operation that goes across five different time periods, and any one attempt would leave Chromie dead. That, of course, means having access to the magic needed to coordinate such an effort, which your average mage does not possess.

Not only that, but the killer is able to block Chromie's own power to arrive with more than fifteen minutes to prevent the attack. I imagine that blocking a Bronze Dragon from time-traveling means you have to be a real expert in the field.

We also know that they must really, really want Chromie dead. And there must be a solid reason for that. Chromie has pissed off plenty of bad guys by helping good guys, but given how distinct the various threats against her are, I am inclined to think that none of the represented forces are actually the one behind it.

So who is?

Given all of this, it seems like the most obvious culprit would be the Infinite Dragonflight. They never show their faces in the scenario, but given that they are corrupted Bronzes who have all the same powers, but want to shatter the timeways rather than maintain them, it would make sense that they have the means and the motive. And as a time traveler, you always have opportunity.

Going a step farther into weird territory: how does a Bronze dragon become an Infinite dragon? We see this process only once, in the Culling of Stratholme dungeon, where we see a Bronze dragonspawn (not technically a dragon) getting turned by Infinites into one of their own. But I had this bizarre theory: what if the way one becomes Infinite is by killing your own past self. You thus become a walking paradox, and perhaps in the Warcraft universe, this results not in a universe-shattering paradox, but in you having that kind of photo-negative look the Infinite dragons have and probably going apocalyptically insane. In which case, could this be Chromie herself behind the attack?

Alternatively, what if it's the Bronzes? Chromie has always been a good guy, but we know that all the Infinite Dragons were once benevolent Bronzes. Is Chromie safe from this doom, or is she destined to become one of the most dangerous Infinite Dragons in the new flight. Remember, while we've seen the Infinite flight, as far as we know, it hasn't actually formed yet at our point in history. Kairoz seemed likely to be the first, but Garrosh killed him before he did anything like transforming into an Infinite Dragon. What if that role is now Chromie's, and it's the Bronze dragons - perhaps even Chromie herself, though this time in a more noble and self-sacrificing way - who want her dead.

Which brings us to the weirdest possibility:

What if it's us?

We're not Bronze dragons, or any dragons, but we've become nearly unparalleled heroes of legend, and have enough experience (and potentially will have had enough experience) that we might be able to coordinate these strikes. After all, Chromie was in all of those places, but so were we.

What are our motivations? Well, perhaps we go evil, or perhaps we are trying to prevent a greater evil. Given the power our characters have achieved at this point, it doesn't seem that hard to imagine that we're capable of pulling something like this off.

I've always wanted to have a time-travel expansion - one very, very different from Warlords of Draenor, which took all the fun stuff out of a time-travel plot. In fact, if we could get an expansion that worked like this scenario, but with new locations and periods that we hadn't seen before, I'd be a very happy player.

I don't know how much to read into the lore of the scenario - for all I know, it's really just an excuse for Blizzard to try a different kind of mini-game for WoW.

But the details sprinkled in there are tantalizing. I know that there's basically a 99% chance that the next expansion is going to be a nautical one with Naga and N'zoth probably central. But if the Deaths of Chromie is a sign of things to come and not just a one-off with an anticlimactic ending, I'm very excited.