Re-watching some old cinematics to rekindle my passion for WoW as I roll up to beat Garrosh for his shoulders for yet another year, and something grabbed my attention.
Medivh tells Garrosh, waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay back at the start of Warcraft III, that “The Sands of Time have run out, Son of Durotan.”
The Sands of Time. The thing that Nozdormu says are precious, but plentiful. The same Sands of Time that were used during the Trial of Garrosh to show the many and varied sins of the Acting Warchief and his True Horde. The same Sands of Time that Kairoz needed to make the hourglass-shaped artifact known as the Vision of Time, through which Kairoz not only pulled forth many dangerous and corrupt versions of Azeroth’s leaders, but allowed him to go back in time to a different world, something we’ve never seen any Bronze or Infinite Dragons able to perform.
The Sands of Time, plentiful by the admission of the one who would know best, had run out.
But they’re everywhere. And Medivh has become something else, not a Watcher, not a Guardian, not an Old God or Wild God, but something that seems to be able to see freely back and forth through the timeways and able to predict a great many things, but in terms of combat prowess, is incredibly limited. Much like Elune, who historically has eschewed violence herself, but has been more than ready to empower others to fight for her agendas, and to protect themselves. Remember, the Kaldorei Priestesses were traditionally peaceful, but in the novels, when the Legion came, they were more than ready to kick Demonic Derrieres and were arguably better equipped, trained and disciplined that the Kaldorei soldiers were.
Theory is that Medivh, after losing his vessel and still twisted by being possessed by Sargeras, ended up in the hands of the most benign and benevolent entity in the Warcraft setting, Elune herself. And being now a purely spiritual being and mangled by Sargeras’s possession, his ability to interact with the material world is limited, thus he needs mortal champions to save Azeroth.
But back to the Sands of Time, and our being in a ‘fused’ timeline, look to the Demon Hunters. Canonically, Kayn Sunfury is the Second to the Player Character in the Demon Hunter Legion Class Order Hall, but there’s also the option to make Altruis the Sufferer your second and turn the Demon Hunters to a more merciful path on their road to demolishing the Legion.
Regardless of whom you choose, the story still plays out, but this creates a time paradox. In one timeline, Kayn Sunfury ends up killing Akama and twisting his soul into a servant for the Demon Hunters, and through him, binding the other Broken and Lost that were spiritually connected to Akama into slaves for the Slayer to use in their war.
In the other, Altruis convinces Akama to aid them, and the Broken Leader agrees willingly, seeing Altruis as a nobler choice than Illidan ever was, and the Broken and Lost willingly fall in line to get revenge on the Legion that orchestrated their painful and dehumanizing mutations into their current forms.
Both of these timelines are mutually exclusive by dint of the choices of the Slayer (player character), yet the Demon Hunters who chose either one still share a single timeline now…
What if the whole reason Nozdormu has blind spots is because the timelines are fusing together? A timeline where Nozdormu does not fall to corruption, and a timeline where he does? The reason Nozdormu has those blind spots is because they’re irreconcilable differences in the Timestreams, and due to this, it creates a kind of bubble where nobody outside of that specific segment of time can enter from the outside. You either have to go ahead of the ‘blind spot’ and physically be in the timestream when the bubble starts to happen, or you have to have agents in there to do it for you.
Nozdormu can’t afford to be stuck in those ‘blind spots’, he’s the Aspect after all and has to be on hand to keep the bulk of the Timelines separated and rogue agents trying to destabilise the flow of time in check.
And one of the most potent tools Nozdormu has access to for such things, either empowering Mortals or his Bronze Dragons are the Sands of Time.
And if they are fading out, and Nozdormu can’t tell, then there’s three possible reasons:
- 1) Murozond is actively opposing Nozdormu’s will, and we know that some Bronze Dragons have defected to the Infinite Flight, but maintain their Bronze appearance to keep up the ruse. In doing so, they may be actively funnelling Sands of Time to the Infinites to allow them to penetrate Nozdormu’s will and allow small groups of Infinites to infiltrate the Timelines. This works due to the Sands of Time ‘detecting’ as natural parts of the ‘True Timeline’ that Nozdormu strives to create, and thus the ‘signal’ of the Infinites obscured the Infinites trying to enter the Timestream.
- 2) The dissonance of these incompatible events in history as the timelines fuse together is causing ‘cracks’ in the system. Much like an hourglass whose shell has fractured, sand is spilling out and being lost, and with all the distractions, Nozdormu doesn’t notice or is unwilling to distract himself trying to penetrate these ‘blind spots’, and instead assumes its a machination of Murozond or the Old Gods causing the depletion, since he can’t go check for himself and his Bronzes keep getting slaughtered when he sends them there. In truth, the Sands of Time are being scattered into the other dimensions, and it is this ‘spread’ that allowed Kairoz to breech into Post-Horde Draenor. He wasn’t going to Draenor, he was following the ‘signal’ of the lost Sands of Time, using them as beacons to jump into areas a Bronze or Infinite Dragon couldn’t naturally or normally reach.
- 3) The constant invasions from the Infinites, and the constant efforts of the Bronzes to repel them, has worn down the Sands of Time to nearly nothing. It could take thousands, if not tens of thousands, of years for them to run out, but due to the dissonance of the fusing timelines and the fact that both Murozond and Nozdormu can both sense the combined amount of Sands of Time, neither realises that they’re expending this resource at an alarming rate, and Nozdormu doesn’t care because he ‘knows’ that he will become Murozond, so expending this powerful resource well before he turns will only benefit those who will have to stand and fight against his corrupted future self.
Now we’ve got the Mega-Dungeon on the horizon with multiple version of Chromie.
Not multiple iterations of her in our timeline, like we’ve encountered before, but multiple versions of her, including one that does not belong on Azeroth, Crowdormu, which is an Aarakocra, which is native only to Draenor.
Multiple versions from multiple timelines that do not exist and are not compatible with our timeline.
If this is true for Chrodormu, then is it possible this is also true for the Aspects?
We may be about to encounter alternate versions of not just Chromie, but the other Aspects … except Neltharion, who Nozdormu actively snuffed out at the culmination of the Cataclysm Expansion, who used the fathomless powers of the Demon Soul to, and I quote:
"It is time. I will expend everything to bind every thread here, now, around the Dragon Soul. What comes to pass will NEVER be undone!"
Nozdormu bound every single timeline together to ensure Deathwing would be killed at that very moment, in every single timeline. That the Old Gods could never again twist and use his former friend for their goals, either by plucking Neltharion/Death Wing out of the timelines or trying to otherwise bypass that moment.
No matter what, no matter how, every possible incarnation of Neltharion, corrupted or not, dies at that moment.
By Nozdormu’s own actions, every single timeline merged together at the end of Cataclysm before splitting apart again. But such a colossal undertaking has risks, including timelines being permanently entangled, and after doing this, the Aspects lost all of their powers. They were still formidable, ancient and incredibly powerful (barring Kalecgos), but they could no longer freely manipulate the forces they once controlled, including the Timeways, and every Bronze Dragon, from Nozdormu down to the whelps, could no longer see through time clearly anymore.
If this will change once the Bronze Oathstone is restored and the Mother Oathstone presumably reactivates sometime later in the Expansion, we will see, but I theorize that Nozdormu and Murozond are, to borrow a Marvel Cinematic term, ‘variants’ who are mistakenly operating under the assumption they are the same being, not two nearly-identical beings from nearly identical timelines that have become hopelessly entangled together.
What are your thoughts?