All the recent quests with the Bronze Flight coming up made me realize that they’ve seriously been dropping the ball for a while now. They’re supposed to patrol the pathways of time and preserve the true timeline.
WoD was just a monumental failure in that regard. Where even was Nozdormu for that nightmare? That had to be their single greatest failure, and they were utterly absent for it. A literal alternate timeline invaded Azeroth.
I could look past that since mortals managed to almost wrap it up save for the fact an alternate Gul’dan wound up on the loose.
But then the Bronze Flight just… looks the other way when the Horde wants to bring the Mag’har to Azeroth? Arguably they helped the Horde on that one. It wasn’t bad enough that an alternate timeline army invaded the planet, they then brought it back.
If the true timeline requires this level of meddling to preserve, what even is it at this point?
The Mag’har are not strong enough to pose a threat to the universe. Things would change if Yrel comes over since they made it clear she wants to subjugate the entire cosmos under the light. The Orcs however are just more bodies to throw at the alliance and unless you want to claim the alliance is the sole protector of Azeroth when the entire reason for Sylvanas starting the war was political(The dragons are it actually), then there is no problem with their army entering Azeroth and aiding the Horde through a few battles.
I don’t have a verifiable source on-hand, but I remember hearing that the Bronze dragons were originally slated to have a big role in WoD, with a “Chronal Spire” (or something like that) datamined in Talador that the player was supposed to visit as an endgame hub or something. And Wrathion was supposed to have a bigger role, I think? But apparently those concepts got cut before launch.
Seems like a lot of WoD was just cut content. What a pity. In the process we’re left with lingering questions of what the heck the Bronze Dragons are doing/thinking.
I realize that this is a semi-Doyalist answer, but if the non-mortal planetary guardians were actually competent at their job, what would the PCs have to do then?..
When we approached Anachronos, he responded with “Is it time for you to visit me already? Yes, I suppose it is then.” Thus suggesting that the Horde was always meant to recruit the AU Mag’har.
However it’s unclear if that means the main timeline interjecting with an AU timeline like WoD was always meant to happen or if the connecting of the timelines created new events for the main timeline.
Solarian we just got through an entire week of multiple current and ex employees of Blizzard revealing there is no Brain Trust at Blizzard, there is no Lore Bible, there is no well thought ought effort to world build, there is no obligation to canonicity nor consistency, and the Historian Team is 3 people for all of the WoW Teams whose job is not to correct/inform but to help them bend the lore or steamroll retcon to make their special individual ideas work.
There is no answer to this question, to any lore question, because Blizzard does not give a flying fortified flip.
It’s all been smoke and mirrors and a puddle that was molecules deep and micrometers wide giving the mirage of depth and breadth and effort.
They simply didn’t think MU Maghar were cool enough, they thought AU Maghar were cooler, and they ignored the fact all the Iron Horde tech was born of an Azerothian Goblin
I understand that, it’s just that recent events have made me wonder about this more and more.
Kairozdormu was specifically a traitor to the Bronze Flight. His actions were to undermine the flow of history. If the AU Mag’har were always meant to come to Azeroth as a part of the True Timeline, then he’d have NOT done that. Instead, we have another Bronze Dragon acting as if it was all according to plan, which in turn undermines this idea that Kairozdormu was betraying them to begin with.
My issue with this is that even the smallest changes can have big impacts. Removing the rocks that would cause Invincible to fall would’ve drastically changed Arthas’ entire life, for example. I cannot believe something like the Mag’har coming to Azeroth (with Botani and Saberon which are running loose no less), would be inconsequential to the True Timeline.
Things might be different if the entire Iron Horde went through again but as far as it stands only a few hundred followed us to Azeroth and they were in no change to affect anything. I suppose we see Yrel and her light army next expansion since her goals are obvious and she has the numbers and magic to mess up the reality of things.
Then just make up a headcanon you vibe with the most cuz it’s more effort than Blizzard is putting into any of this.
Personally in my Headcanon/AU Azeroth, I’m borrowing the nature of how fate/destiny works from some antiquity cultures and some modern occultism
TLDR there are two kinds of events: Fork Events vs Tower Events. Tower Events are those upon which all Timelines converge as all Timelines have, Fork Events are the natural flow of time due to individual free will.
There is a True Timeline only inasmuch there is a Common End (Tower Event) to all of reality and various Tower Events littered within the Start and End. But Everything Else™ is a Fork Event.
Fork/Tower Events is language I’m poaching from Goodkind’s Sword of Truth series.
Except they’re trying to bring about a future which only exists in the True Timeline. Or rather, keeping the True Timeline on track towards that specific future. Knowing the Titans, its probably the Timeline in which Azeroth awakens as a Titan.
The ‘one true timeline’ thing comes from the blessing that Aman’thul gave to Nozdormu, which has been retconned, since Aman’thul never blessed Nozdormu, and he was instead blessed by Ra, meaning that the words that Aman’thul supposedly said to Nozdormu about there being a ‘one true timeline’ never took place.
And that’s been reflected in current events, well, ever since they changed the lore surrounding the Aspects really, so back in 2013 when the Dawn of the Aspects book was released.
Hence why Nozdormu permits Chromie to try to find a way to stop him from turning into Murozond, because even though he sees that happening in the future, he knows the future can change rapidly. If he and the rest of the Bronze Dragonflight were set on preserving a ‘one true timeline’ then he would not have allowed Chromie to find a way to save him, because him turning into Murozond would be inevitable.
It’s also why you don’t see the Bronze Dragonflight stepping in and interfering in current events, or attempting to stop disastrous events from happening in the future (hence why they do not kill the child that you go to the Caverns of Time with during Children’s Week, because they know what that child -could- do, but it is not their place to stop the child from making their own decisions). The only thing they really care about is when the past is altered.
That’s why they attempt to stop the Infinite Dragonflight as often as possible, because the Infinites are the polar opposite of the Bronze Dragonflight. They want to meddle with the past for their own ends, and that’s something the Bronze Dragonflight will not permit.
