Dumb Thought : Dracthyr and the New Aspects

Wyrmrest Accord
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So rogue thought hit me on the way home.

The Dracthyr draw upon diluted and derivative versions of the original Five Aspects/Flights … which lost their powers, meaning the Dracthyr we face are much reduced in power from what they likely were back in the day.

The Aspects got their powers back … from Azeroth herself, including a new, sixth Aspect who apparently represents the raw elemental power of Azeroth’s World Soul. The Dracthyr are not tied to this sixth Aspect, and their powers derive from the Titanic versions of the Aspects.

This connection between Dracthyr and Flight may not have been rekindled with the ‘rebirth’ of the Aspects, as the Dracthyr are a Titanic-derived race and were thus not blessed by Ameredrizzle.

Furthermore, as we saw in Aberrus, the Dracthyr were shaped artificially in laboratories from mutated Drakonids and ‘Mortal Races’, and may not even have genders, or be fertile.

Assuming that the Dracthyr can reproduce, and believe me, the player-base has been testing this theory furiously ever since the Dracthyr became playable, there is no guarantee that their abilities as Evokers may even transfer down the line, or that their offspring will maintain any of their magical abilities. We might be seeing the first, and last, Evokers in WoW, and we don’t even know how long a Dracthyr can live for.

For all we know, Neltharion saw a short lifespan, by Draconic standards at least, as a boon, for the Dracthyr would stand, fight and die before being able to rise in revolt or the other Aspects would begin asking awkward questions, and with the Oathbinder, even the risk of a rebellion or even a revolution from his new creations was practically impossible. Or the reverse is true, and the Dracthyr have lifespans similar to Drakonids and Dragonspawn, in the millennia, or in the case of True Dragons and Proto-Drakes, tens of thousands of years.

What are your thoughts? Is it likely that the Dracthyr will have a future? Or will they be like the Forsaken, the Demon Hunters and the Death Knights in that regard, a momentary flicker on the page before the passage of time erases them all? Do you think their powers as Evokers will fade over time, or will their connections, both biological and spiritual, with the Dragons likewise keep their Evoker abilities going strong even unto their offspring?

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:joy: I’ve met quite a few Dracthyr with babies. Some who’ve had babies with dragons. It irks me if I’m being honest, but it’s a big lore hole. Can they even have babies? Who knows? The community certainly seems interested in trying to figure it out :rofl:

My thoughts are very divided on the matter. On one hand, Neltharion doesn’t seem to have seen his Dracthyr as anything but soldiers, despite his words to them at times. It seems poor judgement to allow a very fertile army to be wandering around, especially when they seem inexperienced in all BUT combat. I feel like things could go wrong very quickly back at the creche. So experimenting on them, shaping them, as he did, my personal headcanon would LEAN towards infertility.

That said, the unexpected often happens, and it’s possible Neltharion thought to rule out any biologically-driven horny variables with the gauntlet he used to command them. I’m open to either way. While I’m not really one of them, for the sake of horny RPers everywhere, we need to know if little Dracthyr eggs are a possibility, Blizz!

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:dracthyr_hehe_animated:

There’s also the issue we’ve never seen Dracthyr children. This might very well be their version of puberty, or the very process of a fully realised Evoker could make the Dracthyr sterile, in that they literally are so saturated with competing energies from the Flights that they become non-viable in that regard.

Too many things stacked ontop of each other, too complex and complicated to function in that regard.

Which might actually lead us to the playable Dracthyr being the ‘failures’ from previous experiments, or Dracthyr who, for some reason or other, were only able to manifest the barest example of a single Flight’s abilities, or not even that, who are viable in terms of reproduction. With the ‘Weyrn’ structure of the Dracthyr society right now, even if those hatchlings aren’t theirs, they’d still be expected to be a part of, and be invited into, any rearing duties and experiences.

Also Alexstraza could accidentally breathe on them and we’ll be up to our necks in baby Dracthyr asking “But why?” every five seconds … we don’t know how being ‘blessed’ by Azeroth has altered and/or affected the Aspect’s powers, yet.

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I do love the idea that Alexstrasza’s first serious use of her renewed aspectral powers is to cast “consequences” on horny dracthyr

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They officially reach the ‘Finding Out’ phase of their character arc …

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…egg.

/10

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I would guess that they can reproduce, just because I’ve not seen anything say or imply otherwise. I would just imagine that it doesn’t need to happen often as they are elite soldiers(Harder to kill them in battle), elite healers(At least some of them are, makes sickness and disease harder to kill them also makes it even harder to kill them from battle), and finally likely have such long life spans they are practically immortal and all these things combined could mean they do not need to get to egg laying. It also would fit Neltharion’s weird MO where I could totally see him have made weirder Dracthyr hybrids later down the line if he had gotten the chance.

Anyway, to answer your question. Yes. I believe Dracthyr will have a future. It’s sort of their storyline post Aberrus imo. As for if Evokers will continue amongst the Dracthyr? I also believe so.

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Is this known, or inferred? Because I know that the Drac’thyr’s powers are based on/drawn from the original flights, but I don’t remember seeing it said that they remained actively connected to the original flights on a metaphysical level after being imbued. Is it definitely canon that the Aspects losing their powers would have had any effect on the powers of the Drac’thyr at all?

It’s entirely plausible that this is explicitly stated and I’ve just missed it.

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Oh no, this is entirely inferred on my part. I should have been far more clear on the subject. But the thing is, power has to come from somewhere, and we’ve seen that the Aspects drew their power from an outside source, hence becoming depowered when they broke their oaths, and becoming even less powerful after slaying Deathwing.

So it begs the question, where are the Dracthyr drawing their powers from?. What source, if not the Aspects themselves? If Deathwing had the ability and the knowledge to tap into the Aspectral powers without needing the other Aspects directly, why was he not able to do this with his Chromatic and Twilight Flights? Was there some special MacGuffinite that was only on the Dragon Isles that permitted such chicanery, or …

And this is more theory-crafting, not canon! And I'm gonna need a minute to cook here.

Was the issue, since part of the need to create a blended Flight was the steady depletion of his Flight, and since most Dragons are children or grand-children of the Aspects and their Consorts, with only a small amount of other Dragons reproducing with each other within a Flight, and Deathwing had become so corrupted that he killed two of his three Consorts trying to mate with them, and had become so altered that the results were non-viable anyway.

We know that the Dracthyr were not just a more intelligent and dynamic leadership-caste for the Dragonspawn/Drakonid armies, but were they also an attempt by Neltharius to have the powers of all the Flights at his command, without needing to deal with divided loyalties from Dragons from different Flights possibly disobeying his commands at a crucial moment?

And is the blending of the Flights capable of protecting against Old God corruption? The Chromatic Flights took absurd amounts of effort and sacrifice just to produce one living member, and few of them ever actually survived for very long without constant, and expensive, care and support, yet the Dracthyr thrived without constant medical attention and care, were uniform in appearance and design and appear to have been able to hold their own against anything but an Aspect-level threat? And as we see with Sarkareth, he was easily able to be swayed by the Void, but why not his Weyrn? None of them ever showed Void contamination, but why? Why would the Void not turn them as well? Why not infest them with The Whispers and make certain that the Weyrn will fight to the bitter end and take as many down with them as they can, or flee to fight another day while carrying the dark secrets of Aberrus to the other surviving Void-aligned forces on Azeroth?

Imagine the Twilight Flight gaining knowledge gleaned from Aberrus and being able to truly unlock their genetic potential? The Twilight Hammer Cult being able to successfully produce new, mutagenic horrors that can more easily survive the infusion of the Void?

Could the blending of the Flights, the adaptability of Mortals and the unique layering process to make Dracthyr render them, unless mentally unstable or actively ‘letting the Void in’, theoretically immune to The Whispers of the Void? That the effort to turn one Dracthyr compared to one Champion of any other race is considerably higher and the Void has a limited amount of influence now, with the Old Gods either dead or in torpor once more?

Did Neltharius/Deathwing put the Dracthyr in stasis because some part of him knew that the Void wouldn’t be able to corrupt them, and with the last shreds of the good being he once was, he sealed them away both because The Whispers that had infected him saw the Dracthyr as a threat to the Old Gods’ plans for Azeroth, and because he knew that, inevitably, their seal would weaken and the Dracthyr would awaken, that the seals powered both by the captured Black Dragon in the Isles and the magic within the Weyrn facilities would fade, that the Dracthyr would awaken and be one of the most effective and dangerous forces on Azeroth, programmed and indoctrinated to defend Azeroth at all costs and, if his corruption had progressed even further, stand against even himself in the end?

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