Dumb Thoughts : Origins of the Dracthyr, or we can blame Sarestha for this one!

Wyrmrest Accord
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This actually got my noggin cooking, so excuse the shortness and the lack of editting as I bang this out on my phone.

How did Neltharion, aka Deathwing, make the Dracthyr, and from what? His technology is unlike anything we’ve seen, surpassing both Gnomish and Goblin mechanisms and appearing to be far more alchemical in nature than the arcano-tech of the Titans, but then it hit me.

We’ve already seen a machinery capable of sculpting and reshaping life. We used the Eye of the Watchers, recovered from a Titanic ruin in the Badlands, aaaaaaaaaall the way back in Cataclysm, that was able to combine the biological material of a dead whelp, a ‘wild’ Black Dragon Egg and the egg of Nyxondra, daughter of Neltharion, and not only purify this gestalt egg of Old God ‘material’ (aka corruption), but revitalize the dead tissue and recombine the genetic codes to make a perfect, uncorrupted and thoroughly puntable Black Dragon Whelp.

And this was back during the height of the Titanic Dragons’ civilisation, back when Keepers and Watchers were still around and the five Original Dragon Aspects had full access to most Titanic technology and knowledge, before everything turned to ash. I could fully see Neltharion ‘jail-breaking’ a bunch of Eyes of the Watchers and similar devices to achieve his goals. Titanic machinery is capable of turning whole solar systems to dust and rebuilding them, atom by atom, into something that more closely aligns with the Titan Pantheon’s ‘vision’ of a perfected, orderly Universe.

But, and here’s the key thing, like all machines, they’ll eventually run out of power, and even if Neltharion did ‘hack’ and repurpose Titanic equipment and technology, as we saw with V.O.X., the Vault Observation eXecutor, and the fact that Aberrus was either repurposed from, or built from, the discarded Titanic technology and the knowledge that Neltharion and his servants gained during their experiments. There’s a lot of similar archetecture between Aberrus’s internal designs and that of the Zskera Vaults of the Forbidden Reach, both areas closely intertwined with the creation and history of the Dracthyr race.

Knowing that these devices would eventually run out of power, or worse yet, may be recovered and his treachery discovered, Neltharion turned to less sorcerous methods of refining his Dracthyr, using Alchemy and breeding experiments to create the basic stock from which he would infuse and augment into his desired champions, and we’ve already met them. The ‘Dragon-Men’ of the Dragon Isles, the Tarasek. And while he wasn’t the Aspect of Magic, Neltharion was no slouch when it came to sorcery, and with the Void whispering secrets and his own studies into Titanic machinery and magic, it would be possible for Neltharion and the researchers of Aberrus to create magical devices and ritual rooms capable of mimicking the abilities of the Eyes of the Watchers devices.

But the process, without the Titanic machinery, was flawed and hard to keep within the boundaries, hence the ‘versions’ of Dracthyr we fight in the Abberrus raid, starting with a horridly mutated Tarasek, then some sort of half-way creature between a Dracthyr and a Drakonid (possibly hinting as to the origin of the Drakonids and Dragon-Kin races as being warped into being by the Titans, or more disturbingly still, the Aspects themselves), and then finally, what seems to be the ‘Ur’ Dracthyr, uncontrollably aggressive, gleefully malevolent and cruelly intelligent. If we follow this, we can assume that Neltharion and the researchers of Aberrus began by trying to infuse Draconic blood into the Tarasek, and when that failed, much as it did with the Dragon-Men we’ve met out of the Dragon Isles, the experimental failures of Nefarion created by fusing Humanoids with dead Dragons or Whelps.

So Tarasek eggs infused with Draconic blood and/or essence, creating the various Flight-colored Taraseks we see skulking around the Dragon Isles. Then, those Taraseks either made to reproduce and their eggs infused with more, different Draconic Blood/Essence, with horrendous mortality rates but eventually progress is made with every generation, and then finally, we got the Dracthyr, who ended up being sealed away just after Neltharion tipped fully to the Void, because he foresaw that they were too dangerous and could be used to obliterate the other Flights, or if turned against him, his Flight. This is also why he used a captive Black Dragon who acted maternal and caring towards the Dracthyr as the anchor and/or storage point for the ‘missing’ Black Essence of the Dracthyr, thereby both denying the Old Gods the ability to ‘corrupt’ them via the same Essence within them that was also used to corrupt almost every Black Dragon on Azeroth, and ensuring that the Dracthyr could never unlock their full potential without his aid (or so he thought …).

What are your thoughts?

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You keep posting things and calling them dumb thoughts, but they do not seem dumb. This is a terrible, cruel deception.

I won’t go into nearly as much detail as you did, but my thinking re: the Black Dragonflight and Neltharion is to look at how things kinda stack up against the other Aspects and their flights. Or, put a lil more simply, versus just other elements - earth, air, etc.

clears throat FEEL THE STRENGTH OF THE UUUUUURF—ahem. I mean…

He was the Earth Warder. ‘The Earth’ has a LOT of stuff in it. Dirt, yes, but also ore, gems, burrowing life, and even plant life with root systems beneath the earth, mushrooms, crystals, and so on. Everyone was made of stone before the curse of flesh, and as the Earth Warder, of course he’d be the best out of all the aspects at forging. Cause that’s pretty much what he did with the Dracthyr - forged himself an army. Earth-vibes always make me think ‘well of COURSE they’d be an excellent smith, how could they not’.

I have a black dragon (who is more of a supporting character) and, naturally, they’re a blacksmith. Because of course they are. You don’t get that kind of stuff with ‘FEEL DA STRENGTH OF THE AIIIIIIIR’ characters. Or water, or anything else.

That all said, I would add to your piece that since the Dracs are capable of using the powers of all the flights, I imagine there was some sort of (likely very bloody and brutally acquired) alchemical requirement to get that done, otherwise…how would they even be able to use all that stuff.

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Your theory makes sense honestly! There’s always been some things that bother me about the Dracthyr. For instance, CLEARLY they’re infused with draconic energy in a way we don’t typically see from the Drakonid or Tarasek. You know, we’re using powers from all 5 flights (at least with the introduction of the new spec). We also have visages, albeit -imperfect- visages. Not as convincingly mortal as your average dragon.

But what little the Abberus raid showed us was a vague evolution of Tarasek.

What I’d like to know is how many whelps “good” Neltharion used in the creation of Dracthyr. Or did he drain power in the way that he did to create the Dragon Soul? It’s a fascinating plot point that deserves more detail imo, at least from the Dracthyr perspective. Maybe if ever they get heritage armour lol.

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Pretty much everyone on the forums acknowledges that Gentarn should be working for the writing team.

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I wonder if a small cup was involved.

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I am dumb, therefore my thoughts are dumb. This is basically warning folks this is unfiltered, unedited brain juice squeezed straight from the source, mind the pulp.

We have seen Humans, Fel Orcs and other Humanoids transformed into Drakonids before, in the Burning Crusade to create Nether Drakinoids for the Armies of Illidan, the Twilight Netherdrakes in the Cataclysm raids and content, and we’ve also seen Nefarion experimenting to attempt to create less unstable versions with his Dragon-Men, but these were colossal failures in every way.

I think that’s part of both the strength, and the vulnerability, of the Dracthyr. They’re capable of using the ‘Magic’ of each Flight, but they possess none of the true power of the Flights they draw from.

Their fire, from the Red Dragonflight, can heal and harm, just as Red Dragon flames can, but its not their strongest healing magic.

Their ice attacks are infused with arcane energy, just as the Blue Dragons are, but they lack the innate talent for sorcery and immunity to Fel that the Blue Dragons boast.

They possess much of the temporal powers of the Bronze Flight, but cannot naturally go forwards or backwards in time, and their sphere of influence is limited to the here and now, and only a handful of targets.

They possess great healing from the Green Dragonflight, but lack any meaningful connection to the Emerald Dream, nor do they possess any Druidic potential.

And the Black Dragonflight is, ironically enough, the Flight they have the least connection with, being able to draw upon both defensive and offensive earth-aligned and -adjacent abilities, but lack the power to reshape and mold the earth, nor tunnel through it or even phase through it like Black Dragons are capable of, even from a young age.

Another Dumb Thought, but the ‘rare’ mutation of Dragonspawn (quadrupedal) Dragon-kin that possess wings might be proof that their ancestors may have been a part of the Dracthyr creation program at some point?

And another Dumb Thought, Drakonids are supposedly ‘uplifted’ from Tarasek as the Dragons were ‘uplifted’ from Proto-Drakes by the Titans. Did the Taraseks come willingly or not? And if not, is that the origin of the War between the Centaur and Green Dragons? They attempted to ‘uplift’ the Centaur (or stole corpses from the constant fighting between the Clans and used them with objects like the Eyes of the Watchers), created the first Dragonspawn, the Centaur were outraged at what they saw as the desecration of their forms and the ‘enslavement’ of their people, but once the Dragons had enough of a stable breeding pool, they agreed to ‘end’ the war and make peace, and over time and with how brutal the Dragon Isles centaurs are with their internal fighting that sees whole Clans rise to prominence and then get massacred by the next ‘generation’ of up-and-coming Clans, how distorted are their tales of the conflict with the Greens, and do they even remember the original reason for it?

It just struck me as really weird that we never knew what the original ‘race’ the Dragonspawn were made from, because of their Centaur-like form, but there we are, the birthplace of Titanified Dragons, and lo and behold, there’s whole facilities devoted to experimentation and forced evolution, and a heaping helping of Centaur who just so happen to share the land with the Dragons …

If my head gets any bigger, I’m going to get stuck in a door-frame. But thank you. I needed some affirmation this week.

I don’t get this reference, I’m sorry Sef, my brain is melted cheese this week.

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