What is the Dark Heart, and why are we chasing after it again?

There have been various magical MacGuffins that we’ve pursued across Azeroth in the past two decades of World of Warcraft’s story — The Pillars of Creation, The Helm of Domination, The Scepter of the Shifting Sands — and our current adventures in The War Within task us with traipsing across Khaz Algar in pursuit of Xal’atath and the powerful Dark Heart.

So what exactly is this mysterious void-flavored accessory, and why is it so important? Where did it come from, where is it right now, and what nefarious deeds will it be used for in the rest of the Worldsoul Saga? Let’s take a look at what we know all the way up through the current point in the story, and speculate on the future of the Dark Heart. Obviously, spoilers follow.

The Dark Heart’s draconic origins

While the motive behind the creation of the Dark Heart is shrouded in mystery, we do know that it was crafted by Neltharion the Earth-Warder during his Old God-inspired manic experimentation phase. Among his many creations was the Dragon Soul, an incredibly powerful artifact that was able to wipe out entire battalions of foes while absorbing their energy. That particular object has its own deep and troubling story involving draconic betrayal, time travel, the obliteration and subjugation of nearly all dragons, time travel again, and the ultimate destruction of its maker (in Deathwing form).

It turns out that the Dragon Soul may not have been Neltharion’s first attempt at creating an energy-absorbing disc of incredible power. Our ageless wizard compatriot Khadgar considers it likely that the Dark Heart was a Dragon Soul prototype that was discarded by the Earth-warder and his Goblin artificers. It could have simply been a practice craft. Before bothering the Old Gods for a bit of their power to assist in making the Dragon Soul, perhaps he wanted to ensure that could create an adequate vessel.

Regardless of the reason for making the Dark Heart, Neltharion stashed it away in the Forbidden Reach along with his Dracthyr armies. Using the raw power of the Dragon Soul, he turned traitor on the rest of dragonkind and embraced the mantle of Deathwing during the War of the Ancients 10,000 years ago. That conflict ended with a bang, as The Sundering forcibly rearranged the face of the planet and resulted in the Dragon Isles being hidden from the outside world.

We can only speculate about the further nefarious deeds that Neltharion would have been capable of while wielding the Dark Heart, because he never managed to make it back to his hidden laboratories. It’s even possible that some of his scheming, searching, and Cataclysm-ing during the next era of Azeroth’s history were directed towards finding or revealing the Dragon Isles once more. The Dark Heart, along with countless other machinations of Neltharion, would lay undisturbed beneath the surface of the Forbidden Reach for millenia.

Iridikron’s infinite vendetta

After the veil shrouding the Dragon Isles dissipated at the beginning of Dragonflight, the heroes of Azeroth spent much of their free time battling the newly awoken Primal Incarnates. These four incredibly powerful proto-dragons rejected the orderly worldview of the Titans and instead embraced elemental power. Despite being defeated long ago and imprisoned for an incredible 20,000 years, when they awoke from their stasis their grudge against the dragonflights or Titans hadn’t faded. While the lightning-infused Razsageth perished in the process of freeing the other three, the stony Iridikron wasted no time in leading the remaining Incarnates straight to the Forbidden Reach.

Everything that we know about Iridikron suggests that he always strives to be two steps ahead of his allies and five steps ahead of his enemies. After obtaining the Dark Heart from the depths of Neltharion’s catacombs, his frosty Incarnate ally Vyranoth used it to decipher the location of another of the Earth-Warder’s underground hideaways — the laboratory Aberrus within the Zaralek Caverns. Iridikron sent the final Incarnate, Fyrakk the Blazing, into the caverns to claim the power of Shadowflame from the abandoned lab.

While the citizens of the Dragon Isles were distracted by Fyrakk’s newfound power and growing djaradin armies, Iridikron sought out the Infinite Dragonflight. His goal was to infuse the undead essence of the monstrously corrupted proto-dragon Galakrond into the Dark Heart. To accomplish that he needed to travel back in time to the point when the five original dragon aspects teamed up with Keeper Tyr to slay the enormous, hungering wyrm.

Luckily for us, Bronze dragonflight all-star Chromie recruited some strapping young adventurers to follow Iridikron across the Timeways in an effort to thwart him and his new infinite allies in the Dawn of the Infinite megadungeon. After some missteps, timeline shuffling, and everyone getting a lot of sand everywhere, Iridikron managed to succeed in his task of powering up the Dark Heart. After explaining that it will be used by The Harbinger to take control of Azeroth, we got one last glimpse of him escaping through a portal to join a shadowy figure.

Xal’s well that ends well

In the lead up to The War Within, we found out that the menacing shadowy Harbinger is none other than Xal’atath, an ancient void entity who has played a nefarious role in events throughout Azeroth’s history. While the champions of Azeroth were cleaning out their Dragonflight quest logs after defeating Fyrakk, Xal’atah was busy striking a deal with the Nerubians of Azj-kahet. In exchange for their allegiance, she offered their most formidable warriors the chance to evolve into an ascended form.

After luring the mages of Dalaran to teleport the floating city to Khaz Algar, Xal’atah unleased her Nerubian swarms upon its citizens. The heroes of Azeroth were tasked with strengthening the city’s magical defenses. This also turned out to be a ruse, as those instructions had come from The Harbinger posing as a long-lost Archmage and were actually intended to facilitate her next move. Xal’atath absorbed the arcane essence of Dalaran into the Dark Heart before blasting the city apart, vaporizing Khadgar, and escaping.

We spent the next few chapters of the expansion dealing with the encroaching Nerubians. During their largest attack on the borders of Hallowfall, Alleria Windrunner received an interdimensional tip-off from Khadgar and raced to the Priory of the Sacred Flame. While we had grown accustomed to the light and shadow shifts in Hallowfall, Xal’atah was taking advantage of Beledar’s dark phase (and the many-legged distraction force) to absorb the void essence of the colossal crystal into the Dark Heart.

Alleria confronted Xal’atath inside the Priory and managed to fire off a well-placed arrow which scored a direct hit on the Dark Heart. The Harbinger fled as a battered raven coalesced out of the energy leaking from the shadowy artifact. Khadgar molted back into his human form, and the heroes of Azeroth regrouped in order to continue their pursuit of Xal’atach and the Dark Heart.

Hey, I’m tinkering with an unknowable horror here

Despite her cunning and power, it seemed that some hands-on fix-it work was beyond the capabilities of The Harbinger. Given that Goblins assisted in the creation of many of Neltharion’s experiments long ago, she sought out the most ruthless of their number on all of Azeroth, Jastor Gallywix. In exchange for repairing the Dark Hearth, Xal’atath offered him access to enough power to take the Goblin capital of Undermine by force.

Gallywix eventually resorted to what he does best and forcefully recruited someone smarter than him to do the actual tinkering. When he held out on delivery of the repaired Dark Heart in order to continue producing powerful weaponry, he found himself at the mercy of a group of Xalatath-aligned Ethereals who have embraced the void — the Shadowguard. Their leader, Phase-Thief Azir, materialized in Undermine and claimed the Dark Heart from Gallywix.

What Gallywix didn’t know was that Azir was no longer working for Xal’atath, which he found out just as the heroes of Azeroth bust down the from door of his swanky Gallagio casino to overthrow him. The last glimpse we get of the Dark Heart, it is in the hands of Phase-Thief Azir as he gazes up at an enormous glowing structure of some kind that seems to have been shattered.

Where in the Great Dark Beyond is Phase Thief Azir?

With Undermine liberated, our pursuit of the Dark Heart is likely to continue across the cosmos. It is possible that Azir has taken the artifact to the Ethereal home world of K’aresh, which was destroyed by the Void Lord Dimensius long ago. But why suddenly double-cross Xal’atath in order to bring the Dark Heart to the remains of a broken planet? Could it be used to heal the planet, or confront Dimensius himself? What were The Harbinger’s ultimate plans, and how far will she go to regain her void-charged vessel?

The fate of the Dark Heart and Azeroth itself will play out over the next few patches of World of Warcraft. Our motives for seeking it out thus far have been to simply thwart whatever evil schemes that its shadowy powers have enabled. That may change as we suddenly have multiple actors seeking to use the Dark Heart for their own purposes — will we need to align ourselves with whichever seems to be the least evil? I’ll leave my tinfoil hat off until next time, but it’s worth betting your Gallagio Loyalty Rewards points that we’ll uncover the truth about all of these shadowy motives as we progress throughout the Wold Soul saga.