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…Penguins.
Nefarian created Chromatus. It was his masterpiece only succeeding because it had 5 heads even if Arygos had to have his Soul stuffed into Chromatus(Chromatus outright confirms that Arygos lives on inside of him) with large amounts of Magic in order to awaken him.
Benedictus try as he might couldn’t create any other successes from Nefarian’s experiments despite knowing the means to convert Dragon Eggs directly into Chromatic Dragons of Nefarian’s type.
Neltharion/Deathwing is the only one to succeed in any Experimentation involving Dragons. His Twilight Dragonflight was Stable/Perfect unlike the Twilight Dragons made by his mate Sinestra despite her receiving instruction from his whispers.
It seems his Experiments need to be overseen by him personally in order to work as him simply giving instructions cause the Experiments to fail.
Benedictus’s Chromatic Dragon Experiments while attempting to give life to Nefarian’s Chromatus was done while Deathwing was busy with other matters we know nothing of.
In all likelihood Deathwing was creating another Dragonflight until Thrall obtaining the Dragon Soul called him to personally arrive at Wyrmrest Temple with his best Twilight Dragon. What he was working on before the threat of the Dragon Soul forced him to rush over is unknown though it probably is safely hidden away in his labs awaiting awakening.
Incidentally N’Zoth once Deathwing perished wasted no time attempting to experiment on Twilight Dragons himself infusing them with his Void Energies even though some were harmed by the procedures and left to rot in Nefarian’s laboratory in Blackwing Descent.
N’Zoth, Sinestra, Benedictus and Nefarian were all incompetent scientists who paled in comparison to Deathwing’s natural genius!
Deathwing was the pedestal all looked up to and envied and yet all 4 failed to measure up to him even with him sending advice to them.
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The big difference is the design philosophy and how the disparate aspect powers are glued together. In the Drakthyr, pre-insanity Neltharion used essences of the mortal races. Chromatus was pure dragon, without anything to buffer the conflicting powers. Just… dragon parts fused together. Nefarian was a dragon supremacist, so that impacted how he went about things.
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I’m thinking they just looked at Deathwing’s predilection for draconic eugenics and applied it in a less terrible way to what he might have gotten up to pre-corruption. More retcon, but the good kind. Creating a new species with existing building blocks might be easier and more ethical than torturing and twisting the existing flights into something different.
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I’m gonna be honest, I expect the Chromatic Flight and Chromatus to be Neltharion’s attempt to recreate what he achieved with the Dracthyr in the form of a Retcon.
Something Something “Without the Primordial powers of the Dragon Isles it was far more difficult” Something Something.
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Again the Chromatic Dragons are Nefarian’s creation not Neltharion’s creation!
Nefarian is Neltharion’s less capable Son!
Neltharion is more than capable of properly creating the Chromatic Dragonflight himself!
Infact during Twilight of the Aspects he actually suggests that he was tempted to stop whatever project he was working on to personally take over the Chromatic Dragonflight plan from Benedictus whom he put in charge of the experiment after removing Nefarian from it some time before Twilight of the Aspects!
Neltharion actually goes and drops the project he was working on once news of the Dragon Soul being acquired by Mortals was made known.
What role did Neltharion give to Nefarian after he was forced to give the Chromatic Dragon project to Benedictus? Just experimentation in general it seems. He created Chimaeron as his newest project while also working on reanimating Onyxia without her sentience. He considered Onyxia reanimated without sentience to be his finest work.
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Fair, but at the end of the day, they were able to do it successfully 10,000 years ago.
During the time period where the Chromatic and Twilight Flights were worked on, they struggled significantly. If memory serves correctly there was only one Twilight Dragon capable of natural reproduction. And that was with Neltharion/Deathwing being involved.
The mere existence of the Dracthyr and the their success seems to imply that there is something missing in the current age.
The Dragonsoul did quite a number on all the Flights, most notably culturally. when the Dracthyr were created, the Flights were in harmony—Both working towards a single common goal and at at the height of their civilization.
When the later Chromatics and Twilights were created, Dragon civilization was broken and diminished. Neltharion was broken. Literally. He was an insane old god puppet that had to be bolted together to keep his body from falling apart. His flight were all broken as well, in their own ways.
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Something to perhaps keep in mind is that at the time of the WotA, Deathwing wasn’t entirely cognizant that the whispers in his mind were the Old Gods. He was convinced they were his own errant thoughts and inspirations, and only finally rationalized that they were an external influence when they tried commanding him to stop trying to reclaim the Demon Soul from the Well of Eternity when it was being used by the Burning Legion.
So while he may not have been full-blown mad yet, it’s possible that creating the dracthyr might have been the first inklings of the Old Gods giving him ideas that would ultimately lead to the Twilight Dragonflight existing, with Neltharion at the time having more benign reasons for doing it despite the idea potentially not truly being his. Because when it comes down to it, the Chromatic Dragonflight wasn’t necessarily even meant to succeed, and perhaps neither were the dracthyr. Not ultimately. It could have all have been just an ongoing means of getting Neltharion/Deathwing, then Nefarian, then Sintharia to begin and continue the research and gathering of material (especially dragon eggs) across the millennia that would eventually lead to Twilight Dragons, which started out with various powers early in Caataclysm depending upon their eggs of origin, but have since become their own “thing” with Twilight and increasingly Void powers and no real significant indication that they continue inheriting magics from their precursor flights.
Chromatus specifically had his uses for a time, but ultimately what the Old Gods actually wanted out of the Black Dragonflight’s experiments was Twilight Dragons. The Chromatic “Dragonflight” was just a means to that end, and perhaps ages ago the dracthyr were only meant to be the first step toward it as well. Neither could actually become the Twilight Dragonflight, but they could have both been necessary steps along the way.
It’s worth remembering that at the end of the day, from the Dragon/Demon Soul, to the Chromatic Dragonflight, to the Twilight Dragonflight, none of it was completely Deathwing’s, Nefarian’s or Sintharia’s plan. The Old Gods were influencing their behavior for a very long time, from the moment Neltharion allowed the first whisper to make him even start doubting himself and his purpose. So even if he wasn’t evil and crazy yet, the dracthyr could still be a result of him only just starting to doubt that the Dragonflights as they existed weren’t sufficient to protect the world.
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The biggest difference I see is dracthyr aren’t actually dragons. They’re humanoid dragonkin along the lines of drakonids or skardyn (please bring up skardyn somewhere in this expansion blizz). Just because Neltharion was able to get the process working on dracthyr doesn’t mean it could be applied correctly to actual dragons.
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I was going to post to say exactly this. Dracthyr appear to be a race similar to dragons, created by a dragon, but are not, themselves, dragons as we’ve come to know them. They are Dracthyr.
I’d say the connection is reusing ideas. I know Chromatus something of a favorite to some of the story fourm folks, but 99% of WoW players have no idea who it is. Since it’s a book character, that also means none of the devs or story members know who it is either.
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