#gronn

The primordial lore of Draenor, with creatures of stone or plant life that towered higher than mountains and caused the world to shake with every step, was awe-inspiring, terrifying, and epic.

Er...take my word for it.  It was awesome.  *ahem*

Grond, the rock giant created by the Titan Aggramar to fight the Evergrowth, broke down into a series of lesser beings as time went by, each kind smaller but smarter than the last.  Thus were created most of Draenor’s sentient creatures (minus arrakoa, saberon, botani, and sporeggar).

I know Blizzard is trying to sand off the rough edges of the lore and make things fit more seamlessly, and in the vast majority of cases I think the Chronicles book do that well.  At first I thought orcs being descended from ogres was an exception, but then I really looked at the pictures and realized...yeah, it works.  Orcs and ogres share the same jaw structure, at least.  (I’m still not sure how one eye turned into two, though, and the number of toes increased a lot in the last two iterations.  Also, it appears bad posture skipped ogres and popped up again in orcs...)  ;)

(All images in the above graphic are from Wowpedia.  And of course I used Varok Saurfang as the quintessential orc because he’s freaking Saurfang.  ‘Nuff said.)

I wonder if dwarves know that orcs are technically descended from rocks, too...  It also means that ogres and orcs have Titan origins, albeit not as directly as vrykul, mogu, gnomes, dwarves, etc.

Goria, the capital of the ancient ogre empire, was destroyed by orc shaman, working with the elements of Draenor to avenge the desecration of the Throne of Elements.  (The ogres had barged in and tried to take the power of the elements with brute force, which...didn’t go well.)  The city was buried by the forces of earth, and none of the races of Draenor wanted anything to do with the site afterward...until the draenei crashed and were like, “Hey!  This looks like a great place for a city!”  Thus Shattrath was founded.

Meanwhile, I imagine the orcs, ogres, arrakoa, etc. were peeking over a hill nearby going, “WTF are those new guys doing? Everybody knows better than to build there!”  It’s like building a subdivision on top of a cursed native burial ground.

As it turns out, none of Shattrath’s problems had anything to do with unhappy ogre spirits, but the bad karma didn’t do the city any favors, either.

In WoD, Alliance players drink an elixir to witness a vision of the Iron Horde using the Dark Star to conquer Karabor despite Velen’s best efforts to defend the holy site.  

In our universe, the non-iron Horde did basically the same thing, but Velen was able to escape.  The void energies corrupted the site into the Black Temple.  Fel seeped in later when the demons took over, but initially it was the void that wrecked it.  Interesting.

When Grom Hellscream learned of Draenor blowing up, he assumed Garrosh was killed, and “the news was devastating.”  He forced himself to “put aside his grief” for the greater good of orckind and led the remnants of the Horde into the Swamp of Sorrows.  

If only Garrosh knew that his father cared that much about him, even with the red pox, maybe he wouldn’t have been such a mess.  :p

Long before anyone on Azeroth had heard of an orc, the Gurubashi trolls attacked Stormwind (as seen in the Bonds of Brotherhood graphic novel that was a movie tie-in.)  All seemed lost until Medivh stood on the ramparts and unleashed a firestorm of magic down on the invading trolls.  

My question is, did it take as long to clean up the charred mess from that incident as it did to repair the city after Deathwing damaged it at the beginning of Cataclysm?  ;)  

(At least there were no huge statues near the gates to tip over in those days.  I still remember the first time I saw the cinematic of Deathwing casually knocking over Danath’s statue on his way by, and how freaking awesome that was.  Oops, this was supposed to be the non-dragon section.  Ahem.  Moving on...)

Taria Wrynn was killed while she and Varian were trying to escape the city during the fall of Stormwind.  Lothar saved the prince but could not save the queen.  :( 

No mention of Varian’s sister from the movie-verse.

Miscellaneous tidbits:

Before the Scourge, the Eastern Plaguelands were known as the Eastweald.

Maraad had a sister named Leran.  She was captured and killed by orcs in one of the first clashes in what would end up being the draenei genocide.  No mention of our universe’s Yrel, though.

The Scepter of Sargeras that my warlock has as her Legion artifact shows up in one of the art pieces in Chronicle II, in Ner’zhul’s hand as he splits Draenor asunder.  Pretty damn cool.  I mean, I knew the history behind the weapon from playing my lock, but to actually see it being used at that historic moment gave me a thrill.  (Although the thought of such a powerful weapon bumping around on some chucklehead player’s back is kind of scary...  Stand in the fire, accidentally shatter the planet...LOL!)

The cutscene in original Karazhan showing Nightbane’s origins was revisited and expanded upon significantly.  It seems that Arcanagos (Nightbane, pre-crispification) was one of Aegwynn’s few true friends (along with Moroes!), and they came to Karazhan together to confront Medivh about the Dark Portal after they sensed his magic behind it.

Sargeras took over Medivh and was like, “Hey, Aegwynn, long time no see!  Remember me?  You thought you killed my avatar, but I actually hitchhiked in your body for awhile and then possessed your son.  How do you like them apples?”  

And Aegwynn was like, “WTF?  YOU ASSHOLE!”

They fought, and although Sargeras was, y’know, a freaking Titan, he was working with a sliver of his real power in a body he had only been inhabiting for a relatively short time, and Aegwynn was not only more experienced fighting as a human, but she was extremely pissed off.  Arcanagos got fried when he tried to help her.

Sargeras was like, “Shit, I’m actually losing,” and sucked the life energy out of everyone (except Aegwynn and Moroes) in the tower.  Thus all the ghosts you see there today.  With that power, he could have obliterated Aegwynn, but deep in his brain Medivh was like, “Not my mother, you bastard!” and exerted his will so that Aegwynn was banished to some far-flung, unknown corner of the world instead of being killed. 

When he came to his senses again he was like, “WTF just happened?  Did I black out and kill everyone again?  Ugh, I hate when that happens.”  And he felt very bad.  As one does.

[#tw:  mention of rape and vague allusion to incest in the following section]

Garona’s plot definitely draws from the comics, but there is zero mention of her having a romantic and/or sexual relationship with Medivh, which I assume is Blizzard’s way of saying, “Med’an?  Who’s that?  Never heard of him!  Ooh, look, a squirrel!”  Which is honestly fine by me.  Briefly canon or not, Medivh/Garona is kind of a NOTP as far as I’m concerned (one amusing screenshot not withstanding.)

I actually rather liked the movie-verse idea that Medivh was her father, partly because it made for an interesting, poignant story (and got rid of the rape element), and partly because it made the original Warcraft I story of her being half human, half orc canon again. Retcons are a necessary evil, but clever ways to get around them are fun, too.

However, Chronicles II makes it clear that Garona’s father was an orc warrior and her mother was a draenei prisoner.  Which, okay, fine, it would be pretty jarring to go from “babydaddy” to “actual father” in main canon, so as long as they got rid of Med’an, I’ll take it.  They were still friends, and bonded over their shared feeling of being an outcast.