Alexstrasza and her Scourge

| Saturday, January 3, 2009
She will make her own army of the undead. Why? The Aspects are being corrupted, turned against their purposes by madness.

First was Neltharion. I don't actually know what he was supposed to do, but clearly he is no longer doing it. Earth-warding sounds like something dealing with the mountains and dirt, not explosions of rock and lava. The Old Gods corrupted him. Strangely, I see hope for him since they tried to take the Demon Soul from him, so they are now his enemies. With him ignoring their whispers, perhaps he will see his own madness.

We see Malygos now. Once the aspect of magic, he is now fighting it. Is he insane? Perhaps not, but he is clearly failing in his duty. If magic is hurting Azeroth he should fix it, restructure it, not destroy it. His current method could actually turn out to the worse than the reckless use of magic, since shooting pure magical energies out into the Twisting Nether is bound to attract even more enemies. I wonder what his flight does after he dies.

Nozdormu, now this is speculation, but he is possibly the leader of the Infinite Dragonflight. We saw him in the Dragonblight when attempting to reveal the leader of the Infinites. Further, in War of the Ancients he talks about Malygos as if he knows about his future reversal of role and says the same about himself: "Know that I now asssk forgiveness for the wrongs I will cause you in the future, but I must be what I am destined to be... as Malygos is" (p. 712 in the combined books). Will, is Nozdormu already, betraying time?

Ysera is the Dreamer. Her realm is the Emerald Dream. Yet it is turning into a nightmare. I don't think she will remain uncorrupted for long, if she is even now. Already four powerful members of her flight have begun to spread the madness which they experience; we know them as the four green world dragons. Eranikus was also corrupted, though we redeemed him from what I've heard. I suspect that when she and Malfurion hid the Demon Soul where Neltharion could not get it, they put it in the Emerald Dream. The Aspect's spell on it wore off and through it the Old Gods were able to start corrupting the Dream.

Alexstrasza has not yet fallen, as far as we can tell, but I expect something to push her. Perhaps it will be her encounters with the Scourge which... inspire her. She protects life and the Scourge is the current greatest threat to life. Now that Malygos is dead, she can focus on Arthas. Yogg-Saron may give her an idea: what better way to protect life than to make it unending and persist even after death? She will see undeath as the solution and will create her own Scourge. Already it has been shown that the Red Dragonflight, having mastery over life, also has the same knowledge of death.

A plagued dragonflight seems possible. In Scholomance we saw the beginning: plagued whelps. I doubt Alextrazsa would have as much difficulty in transforming her flight to undeath. How long before we adventurers are sent to kill a new set of plagued whelps?

5 comments:

Kiryn said...

That's an interesting idea. I liked how WoW revered dragons to where MOST of them were good, and only the corrupted ones needed to be slain.

I can't say I like the new direction they're taking with "eventually ALL dragons need to be killed."

Klepsacovic said...

WoW has a strange way of creating enemies. With the exception of the Old Gods and most demons, most being in the universe are good beings. They just have a tendency to be driven insane or are too focused on protecting Azeroth that they sacrifice some of themselves and ultimately fall to ruin.

Neltharion: Driven insane by the whispers of the Old Gods.
Illidan: Grew obsessed with Tyrande and protecting Azeroth and went mad in his pursuit of power.
Sargeras: Fell into despair in his pursuit of evil demons, gained a new perspective on chaos.
Orcs: Deceived by demons, betrayed by Gul'dan, driven into bloodlust.

Generally if left alone, most beings are peaceful or at least have no desire for large-scale destruction (I'd be lying if I said the Orcs were pacifists, however before the Old Horde they were honorable in combat and had a purpose other than destruction). However they also seem to be easily corrupted.

Suicidal Zebra said...

Bah, I had a post of speculation very much like this one drafted but I never got round to posting it :(.

A few things I noted in my draft:

1) Alexstrasza is advocating genocidal actions against the Blue Dragonflight (destroying Blue Dragon eggs around the Nexus). Even with the Nexus War at a peak this action is out of character for the Lifebinder.

2) The Infinite Dragonflight are the Bronze dragonflight, tarnished through acting against their nature and attempting to change history in order to 'find' Nozdormu. Has the Aspect himself been corrupted? Well, apart from the allusions regarding the BE Orphan (which may or may not be referring directly to him) he is merely missing in action. Obvious points would be awarded upon the (now grown) Orphan using fragments of the Demon Soul to control the Aspect.

3) Looking at Wowwiki, it was apparent that we don't really know much about the status of Ysera. She appears to have ordered that every non-Green lifeform entering the Dragonshrine be terminated, but apart from that every single conversation in Vanilla and TBC make no mention of fighting 'With' Ysera in the Emerald Dream, just against the Nightmare. Obvious points would be awarded for Ysera actually [i]being[/i] the Nightmare.

4) Malygos is the only aspect at this time acting totally in keeping with his own charge: to protect the legacy of magic and Azeroth from the Burning Legion. It would be ironic if Malygos was actually the sanest and least manipulated Aspect at this juncture.

---

Blizzard love weaving the 'power corrupts...' principle into their stories, especially with regard to former Hero's becoming villains through the use of the power accumulated to defeat evil. The Aspects are almost certainly on the list of superpowered beings to undergo similar transformations. The question will be what becomes of the Aspects powers and the dragonflights themselves upon their defeat.


Nice post Klep :)

Kiryn said...

I keep hoping for an interesting story twist. Like Alexstrasza has been trying to take the other Aspects' power all along, and she wants you to destroy Malygos because he's the only one who's still strong enough to stand in her way.

Or for example that the Titans are really evil, the Old Gods are the rightful owners of this planet who gave us life when the Titans just wanted us to be soulless stone construct slaves. That maybe Sargeras and the Burning Legion was right all along.

But no, the storyline in WoW is usually pretty straightforward. Burning Legion evil, Scourge evil, dragons are powerful therefore corrupted. Never anything deeper than that.

Green Armadillo said...

The other point with old Nozdormu is that, if I remember the lore right, he was one of the only guys out there who knows when he dies. Maybe that knowledge is what drove him to try and screw with the timeline.

That said, the Infinite Flight story arc has just been a bit too touristy for my taste. The only thing that would redeem it in my view would be if Nozdormu KNEW that the rest of the flight would send dozens of adventurers into the past to slaughter bystanders (for example, all the occupants of Durnhold Keep) and loot their stuff, and that's why he's messing with those events in the first place. This would at least provide some reason why the players in particular need to help with the final battle ("you guys looted the weapon that's supposed to kill Nozdormu from its owner's ancestors").

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