The Queue: Vampire robots vs cannibal apes

Sometimes it’s just word salad that got stuck in my head. Not always… not even often… but sometimes.

Hi, all. I’m your emergency Cory this week, as he broke the glass and informed me he needed a fill in for the Queue. I don’t know if it’s an earworm or not, but I’m listening to Switchback by Celldweller.

Pong. Left rectangle is Sloane. Right rectangle is Cameron.

I promise we’ll probably answer this for real on Lore Watch, but I’m trying to get my brain off the vampire robots vs. cannibal apes thing so I’m easing my way into this Queue.

The character I was maining from Legion to Shadowlands was a Night Elf Warrior, who replaced my Draenei Warrior who retired to his Garrison at the end of Warlords and who I assume must have died at some point between his semi-retirement and when the Mag’har were recruited by the Horde and that version of Draenor seemingly blew up or whatever happened to it. Before either of them, my main was a Warrior who race changed from Human to Draenei to Night Elf to Tauren to Orc to Human again, so I’m gonna go with my most recent character.

All of this is to say I have no idea what I’ll be maining in Dragonflight. Probably my Dwarf or a Lightforged Draenei or something.

Anyway, for my Night Elf, her favorite food was her mom’s Mystery Stew, which was made with whatever meat and vegetables were available by hunting around the area in Dolanaar that they’d settled down on when Teldrassil rose from the waters. My Nelf is very young — barely a century old, and was a surprise baby, so her parents coddled her a lot even though she was off fighting in wars since she was a ridiculously young 70 or so. Mystery Stew was something she remembered fondly from when she was growing up in Ferelas and their brief stay in what’s now Felwood.

But then of course while she was off fighting the Alliance’s various wars, the Horde burned down Teldrassil and killed her parents. So now she doesn’t eat it anymore.

See, depressing stuff like this just keeps dominating my head every time I think about Teldrassil, so you can understand why I want to play someone else for a while.

Honestly, WoW has had pets since it’s inception and vehicles since Wrath, just come up with some way to control the helper NPC, maybe something as simple as an action button that calls it to your side and keeps it there. I used to have my companions in Legion set to just show up when I entered combat and vanish once I was done, I think that’s a brilliant way to keep me from ripping chunks out of my beard in pure frustration.

Keep in mind, Drak’Tharon Keep was meant to represent a structure originally created by the Drakkari as a bulwark, similar to the forts that existed around the real-word Hadrian’s Wall in Roman-era Britain. It was a projection of forward force, not actually designed to serve as a defense. The Drakkari considered themselves to be the power in Northrend before the coming of the Scourge, and while that’s debatable, they were the group that defeated the Aqir (ancestors to the Nerubians that were driven underground by that conflict before the rise of the Night Elf empire) and at one time had pretty much free range of the entire area.

It wouldn’t have been hard at all for them to have made trips across zones like Crystalsong Forest and Wintergrasp to reach Sholozar to find dinosaurs to tame, and we know that Trolls are culturally descended from the Zandalari — the entire reason the Drakkari were in the lands that would become Northrend was because the Zandalari encouraged fractious Troll tribes that might have tried to take power in Zandalar itself to go fight the Aqir and claim territory for themselves. Almost every Troll tribe we encounter has at least a few dinosaurs they use as mounts, pets and even living siege weapons, so it’s not hard for me to believe that the Drakkari made trips across Northrend for that purpose.

As for Tharon’ja, we have to separate the Loa itself — which we last saw regenerating in a Wildseed in Ardenweald — and its Prophet, who stole the Loa’s power but still fell before the Scourge and was reanimated to serve their invasion of Zul’Drak. He used the power stolen from Tharon’ja in the service of that mission.

As for why we kill everybody when we go in? I mean, I can’t really blame the Drakkari for being a bit unstable after seeing their own people rise from the dead to attack them. By the time we arrive they probably think everything they see that isn’t a Drakkari, and even a lot who are, were just Scourge.

I should really do a lore post on the Drakkari and Drak’Tharon Keep, I think there’s a lot of story there that people miss and it gets confusing for them as a result.

As a head’s up, I’m gonna talk about a comment that has been spoiler tagged in the next answer.

If you don’t want to read that, don’t read Falrinn’s question or my answer therein.

I’m serious.

This is absolutely going to have some spoilers for Dragonflight, okay? Only read that comment and my response if you want that. Otherwise, consider this the end of this Queue. I don’t want to spoil stuff for y’all.

It is weird but ultimately not bad to look up, see a Black Dragon, and not immediately prepare for the murdering. Dragonflight in general is a fascinating expansion story wise for me just because it means that we get to have all this cool Dragon stuff — gear, lore, mounts — without having to be murdering Dragons for it. This pleases me.

I’m assuming that the return of Dragon fertility is indeed tied to the rising tide of mana that awakens the Titan Watchers and causes them to activate the beacon revealing the Dragon Isles to the world as well. It’s interesting to consider if the Dragons were actually having trouble breeding before the Cataclysm expansion — on at least one occasions I can think of, Alexstrasza had to step in and use her power as the Aspect of Life to help preserve a Dragonflight — there would be no Blue Dragons left on Azeroth if not for the Reds.

Perhaps it was less that losing their aspect powers made them infertile, and more that they were so tied to Azeroth and the planet’s life force that they were steadily having difficulty having offspring after the Sundering as the Ley Lines tried to recover from having much of the ancient continent of Kalimdor ripped apart and mostly drowned.

Just something to ponder — it’s telling that we saw a lot of whelps in World of Warcraft, but not many were doing very well.

Okay, that’s the Queue for today. Be kind to Anna in the comments, y’all.