Drust and the Kul Tirans

I know some people claim the Kul Tirans are a different “race” and that they interbreed with thre Drust but I am not sure if this was ever made canon or just something we have all speculated to no end and just deemed lore.

As far as I recall, Blizzard has never said that was the case and that the Kul Tirans are just as “human” as someone from anywhere else in the 7 kingdoms but have different body shapes to distinguish them gameplay wise.

As far as I know it’s more of a cultural adoption thing. Vrykul became drust. Drust perverted the Druidic magic into death magic. Gilneans came to Kul Tiras. Drust went to war with them. Not all of the drust believed in the war against the kul tirans. So some changed sides and taught them their ways. That’s why they can be thornspeakers.

We see all types of body sizes from the kul tirans. Normal , skinny, hefty…. But I’m not sure if their hefty size has anything to do with interbreeding with the drust. I believe their size difference is purely to look different to the stormwind humans that are playable.

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Yeah no according to devs the fat Human thing is purely aesthetical and has no lore behind it. Which is a shame. Kul Tirans being Human-Drust “hybrids” would have made tons of sense (and would have been super cool).

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But wouldn’t make much sense. Especially in the context that the people leading Kul Tiras are so different looking from a normal Stormwind/mainland human.

Pretty much this. If I’m not mistaken, there’s nothing really in-game that states they interbred or that there is any sort of Drust lineage within the Kul Tiran aside from Druidic practices that were taught by Ulfar and/or Kivarr. Most text discusses integration of some Drust who did not wish to side with Gorak Tul and that’s where it leaves it. Their drastic size difference isn’t really noted in anything that I’ve come across.

I would have loved if they went with this take because it’s probably as close as we’d get to any sort of playable Vrykul without getting to ridiculous size proportions. It would’ve also potentially given us some better options to make them look more rugged and primal as well.

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To add onto this, I don’t think we have seen a thornspeaker use the standard or skinny human models as their “base” form. They use the playable Kul Tiran rig.

Granted most of the thornspeakers we see stay in their druid forms.

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It’s not been officially stated, but frankly the sheer scale of NPC guards using the new models makes it seem like something is going on there. It’s not like half of Stormwind’s footmen are twice as tall as the other human NPC’s and it’s written off as “well, some humans are just big.” And we don’t have (non-dire/non-raid-or-dungeon-boss) orcs clearly towering over every tauren in Orgrimmar just because “well, some orcs are big.”

It’s so overt that despite night elves and draenei being around, basically since BfA the tallest Alliance race are humans now. And it creates a really bizarre incongruity when we’re expected to just accept that such a huge size difference is just “different body types” and evidently nine foot tall humans were a normal thing all along that just wasn’t being mentioned before.

I mean, if we ran into a tribe of adult tauren who were two feet tall, wouldn’t we expect some sort of explanation beyond “oh yeah, some tauren are just tiny like that?”

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Yeah I was mainly thinking about the Thornspeakers. They’re the living proof that Human-Drust interactions were a big thing at some point

A thought that suddenly came to me. With the fact Blizzard is thinking of removing the class/race barrier more, human druids(and human shaman) are probably the easiest to simply add.

I feel like the Thornspeaker Drust siding with Kul’tirans and their descendants hearing the call of the wilds and seeking out the Thornspeakers implies that they intermarried, but I know that’s conjecture.

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I think it’s a case of in game models not representing the lore accurately (not saying their lore size is actually confirmed, but still). They probably designed the model based on feel, and it ended up being a bit too big when compared to the normal human model. It’s sort of like how in game undead males, when they stand up straight, are taller than their human counterparts.

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Even in the real world, Humans do vary along genetic lines. Populations that remain genetically isolated can become quite different from the rest.

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Kul Tiras isn’t isolated at all though. It’s one of the most diverse places in azeroth actually. So many pirates and there have always been gnomes there with them. I really think they intended for kul tirans to be gilnean/drust descendants and went back on it for no good reason

I always thought it was implied that the Kul Tirans or at least some of them were intermixed with the Drust by the Thornspeaker guy. That makes a lot of sense to me and i’ve been a fan of that. I would say they’re more than just tall humans. Judging by their racial, they’re incredibly powerful too.

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