Thursday, September 13, 2018

How Far Back Have the Infinites Gone?

We killed Murozond in the 5-player dungeon End Time way back in the last patch of Cataclysm. That's four expansions ago, and while there have been some out-of-game references to the Infinite Dragonflight, they've largely dried up as a visible threat. Even in the alternate-universe/time-travel expansion, we barely heard a peep from them - the only reference to them was that Kairozdormu seemed to be on the way to becoming such a dragon had Garrosh not killed him.

Indeed, I've got on record saying that I think Warlords' biggest mistake was shying away from the complicated time-travel aspects of the expansion - we didn't see a single person encounter their 35-year-younger doppelganger, for example. Velen died, but it wasn't our Velen, who then got to play an important role in Legion.

Warcraft usually has big threats function as a pretty top-down organization. The Qiraji ceased to be much of anything once we killed C'thun. The Legion seems like it's unlikely to ever be nearly as big of a threat as it was prior to Sargeras' capture.

So it would stand to reason that people might feel that Murozond's death meant the Infinites were no longer a problem.

But you never know with a time traveler.

See, time travel narratives mean that we don't all necessarily have the same sequence of events, and causality can be messed up. We first learned of the Infinites in Burning Crusade, and fought them for three expansions, which in story terms comes out to maybe three years. But Nozdormu is still Nozdormu at the point in time where we are. Sure, given that we've seen at least one alternate timeline (not to mention the End Time, which was a cancelled future where Deathwing had enacted the Hour of Twilight, is certainly "alternate,") it could be that Murozond is not actually "our" Nozdormu. Still, Nozdormu at least seems to think that that's his fate, and is in the very difficult position of having to plan for his own descent into madness and chaos - plans that his future, corrupted self, will have full awareness of.

We have his corruption to look forward to, though we don't know how long from now that will be.

But there's another problem to worry about as well:

How far back to they go?

Again, they're time travelers, which means that even if the Infinite Dragonflight hasn't even been created yet, our past is presumably already infested with them. We've seen them pop up in several points already (the early Caverns of Time dungeons,) but who knows? Maybe there were Infinite Dragons visiting the Black Empire. Maybe they fought against the early Troll empires. They could have set plots in motion eons ago and then caught up with them far later without having to wait.

Here's a tin-foil hat, sort of cribbed from folks like Bellular Gaming and other WoW commentators.

There is apparently a separate Loa of death than Bwonsamdi - possibly his "boss," and also someone who has been put forth as a potential candidate for the Shadowlands entity that took Odyn's eye and taught him how to make the Val'kyr.

This loa is named Mueh'zalla, and is worshipped by the Sandfury/Farraki Trolls (the desert trolls of Tanaris who live in Zul'farrak - represented by the evil General Jak'razet in Vol'dun.) Among his many names, one is the "Son of Time."

Now, that could easily just be a classic connection between gods and symbols of death being associated with time as well.

But let's make the biggest logical reach: Doesn't Mueh'zalla kind of sound like Murozond?

Oh, it's a stretch for sure, which makes this post a clear tin-foil hat one. But if we want to take what is very likely just a coincidental similarity between the two names and read way too into it, what could it imply?

Well, first, we know Odyn didn't trust the dragons, which is why he wanted the Valarjar to serve their function instead, so why would he treat with an evil dragon (or are the infinites chaotic neutral?) Perhaps Murozond was merely disguised - something dragons certainly have a propensity for.

Also, the Infinites have generally been linked with the Old Gods and the Void, whereas this entity seems more of a death-domain being. On the other hand, we've definitely seen Void-related creatures engaging in Necromancy, so it's not unthinkable.

The reason I think this clicks so well is that Odyn's sacrifice of his eye is such an ancient thing, and one that had some nasty repercussions for the world. Helya was able to trap Odyn, which likely led to the corruption of Loken and the chaos in Ulduar that left the world's Titan facilities basically unmanned for tens of thousands of years. So much of Azeroth's history would probably have been very different had Odyn not turned Helya into a Val'kyr, and that seems like the perfect sweet spot for a time-traveling agent of chaos to screw things up.

We're at a point where we're inclined to think of Odyn's actions as so far in the past that it's hard to imagine things going differently. But to a time-traveler, the ancient past's immutability is a falsehood.

Was there a different timeline? One without a Sundering? One in which the Titanforged never fell to the Curse of Flesh?

And here's a tricky question: are we better or worse off?

No comments:

Post a Comment