I got a writing itch, so I’m tossing this down onto paper (sort of) before it gets lost in the wasteland that is my brain.
We know that AU Azeroth exists, the rogue Bronze Dragon Kairozdormu was only seeking a Draenor that was similar enough to allow Garrosh to create the Iron Horde, neither he nor Wrathion decided to give any thought to what that Azeroth from that reality would be like.
In Battle for Azeroth, we were re-introduced to the Mag’har, who were getting a taste of their own medicine and being brutally oppressed and hunted down by a resurgent Draenei and a number of converted Mag’har … and a vast swath of mentally dominated Mag’har.
And apparently, sweet little Yrel decided to Des Vult after watching us. …Oooops.
But the crucial thing was that she did this only after the ‘Mother of Light’ showed up and started talking about a ‘Great Crusade’ that required all of Draenor to rally behind. Naturally, she expected the Mag’har Orcs to fall in line for yet another fight, but most of them were still heart-sick and ruined by what they’d almost done, and desperate to reconnect to the Spirits and try to undo what they’d done.
And we’re told Light is Life, and nothing is lost when the two are exchanged … but what about Arcane Energy? Spirit Energy? Two Primal Forces that Draenor is rich with … but cannot endlessly reproduce, because they do not have a Titan World Soul, or whatever the hell Azeroth actually is, gestating in the core of the world.
We’ve seen that all Primal Forces can be converted into each other, but the process is not quick, easy or, and most importantly, efficient.
And it is never without a dire cost to the surroundings.
My concept is that while we’re off faffing about with Dragons, and during the Time Skip, Turalyon will have been contacted by a reborn, or AU version of Xe’ra and she will have re-established her mental control over him (See the below cinematic) and is pushing her version of the ‘One Path’ of the Light on him again.
You can see at 0:22 that Turalyon’s eyes change color to the same golden glow as Xe’ra, and again at 2:41 where the glow fades upon Xe’ra demise.
My theory is that we’re going to see the Alliance become far more aggressive and, with the Horde Council unwilling to risk open war, a gradual shift in the status quo will start to emerge. The Horde will aid and support the Alliance, while Stormwind claims the lion’s share, pun not intended, of these resources and manpower in the name of fairly allocating them across the Alliance.
At first, this is all going well and good. The Horde is desperate to restore good will to their Mega-Faction and after so many years of peace, are unwilling to risk upsetting the apple cart, especially given the actions of Sylvanas and Garrosh will make anyone who sees the Horde and Alliance mustering for war immediately blame the Horde for it, or find the Alliance justified in their actions. The Alliance might grumble that Stormwind is holding all the cards, but they are the hub of trade for the Alliance.
And slowly, ever so subtly … things start to go wrong. Resources ear-marked for the Kaldorei and Gilnean rebuilding attempts get diverted. Horde troops and peons just go missing without a trace. And every time it happens, the Lightforged Draenei, and an army of Humans built from Scarlet crusaders and the faithful of Human territories are there trying to solve the matter and attempting to stop others from investigating.
All seems to be going well, Stormwind is on the ball and chasing down this problem … but it keeps happening.
Eventually, some people start to grow more than suspicious. Shaw, Geya’rah, Velen, Tyrande, Baine and Calia all gather up and share notes. The same magic that allowed us to visit peoples memories from Mists of Pandaria and Battle for Azeroth is brought forth, and Geya’rah’s memories are pulled forth to show what the Army of Light did on Draenor … and it’s a nearly 1:1 match. Nobody on the Horde Council listened due to Geya’rah’s association with Sylvanas and Kottick Gallywix, and nobody on the Allianc was willing to cast doubts on a war hero and champion of the Alliance like Turalyon.
But its not enough. Proof is needed, proof that there is more to this than just Turalyon being a war-hawk and falling back upon military doctrine rather than political savvy.
Cue the Alliance and Horde players infiltrating old zones revamped with textures and slightly altered layouts, hunting for the truth and uncovering far more than they bargained for.
Army of Light hidden bases buried under Redridge and Westfall, hidden in Stonetalon Mountains and the Swamp of Sorrows, secret prisoner camps scattered across the world where the missing Horde troops and peons are being slowly Lightbound, and as the search continues, other races as well, Kaldorei, Gnomes, even Worgen and Dwarves.
Its explosive, damning evidence, and right before the players can bring it forth, Alleria and Arator appear before them and drag them away … right before the Vindicaar glasses the location where they were about to meet the Cabal trying to prove Turalyon’s treachery. The pair explain that while they’ve been absent, Turalyon has declared them traitors to Azeroth and provided false evidence that they collaborated with a known Azerite smuggler, and have been working to build a deadly super-weapon to restart the conflict between the Alliance and the Horde … and apparently we killed the Cabal when they tried to talk us down.
Here’s where things get freaky. Suddenly, we’re no longer welcome in our own cities and mega-factions. We’re attacked on sight in our Capital cities, and our Faction Zones are neutral or unfriendly to us, locking us out of NPCs and repair merchants, even flight zones. But hope is not lost. There are those who believe us, Geblin, Moira, and Genn for the Alliance, Mayla, Talanji and Lor’themar for the Horde, who provide us with discreet access to Auction Houses and way-stations we can use as we continue to hunt for the truth to not only expose Turalyon’s deceit, but also clear our own names.
Along the way, we head back to older zones from other expansions. Northrend, Pandaria, the Broken Isles, Zandalar and Kul’tiras and help plant the seeds of revolution and rebellion as the Horde is rapidly pushed into a corner by sanctions and the threat of being cut off from global trade for our (the Horde Players) actions, while the Alliance crushes slowly under steadily increasing conscriptions, curfews and rationing while Turalyon and his ‘Golden Hand’ Army grow and grow in strength. Eventually, we infiltrate Stormwind, free the Cabal who has been held prisoner deep under Stormwind Keep, and plant evidence against Turalyon, but the Court of Nobles dismisses it as heresay, almost setting us all back, before the sky bursts open in a brilliant display of glorious golden light … and there’s the Vindicaar.
But … it is still in high orbit.
Then another ship appears, then another, and another, until Stormwind’s sky is crowded with Vindicaar-class Draenei vessels, from which High Exarch Yrel descends and ‘graciously’ accepts the fealty of Turalyon and the Alliance, with a seemingly endless number of Light-Bound Orcs, Ogres, Aarakockra and Saberon in her wake.
And a vast army of Humans, High Elves and Dwarves, all recruited from AU Azeroth and Light-Forged and -Bound in service to the Mother of Light, Xe’ra herself.
The wars are over, for the Light has come to claim Azeroth and bring forth an age of peace and order to our shattered, war-torn world.
Cue the next patch, where we’re rushing to Outland to try and find a counter to this, with the Naaru from Shattrath telling us that Xe’ra was a zealot and an out-cast from their race who was monstrously powerful, and that unless we can find a counter to her, another Prime Naaru, we are doomed to fail. We head back to the Broken Shore where Geblin, Gazlowe and a handful of Draenei, Sin’dorei, Gnome and Goblin engineers are working on repurposing a Legion ship to serve as a star-vessel for us, and a message from Velen.
“Find Than’atos, the Fallen Prime. Only their wisdom can guide you to victory.”
Off we go into the Great Dark Beyond, hoping that Azeroth can hold out long enough as we head towards the last known location of the Fallen Prime. Several floating demi-worlds are encountered, including splintered sections of Outland as we skirt the edges of the Twisting Nether, and encounter the Legion again, but this time it is very different, and incredibly dangerous.
Without Sargeras to unify them and focus their destructive tendencies to a single goal, the Demons no longer have anything holding them back. Furthermore, the entropic energies Sargeras infused the Fel with to addict them and give them their hunger for Arcane energy to sate said addiction has vanished, and now the Legion is roving armies of crazed addicts needing a bigger and bigger fix of either arcane energy or life energy to avoid crippling pain from their addiction. We get to witness whole armies of Demons tearing each other to pieces in an orgy of staggering violence, the terrible technology and weapons created by the Legion now used with reckless abandon as Manari, Pit-Lord, Shivarra and Succubi war for control over the various war-bands and the few remaining stockpiles of slaves and arcane energy left in the Twisting Nether.
We only beheaded the Legion, not ended its threat to the universe in general, and without Sargeras, the Legion will fracture and fragment into petty warbands who will, someday, find a way out of the Twisting Nether on their own and consume all of reality to sate their addiction unless we find a way to stop them permanently …
Eventually, after several demi-worlds are explored, we finally find Than’atos on a thriving Demi-World where the Dimmed Naaru is recovering from the latest life-cycle they underwent and is trying to tutor and nurture a new brood of Naaru ‘children’. After a short chase, Than’atos finally, and exasperately, tells us it cannot aid us again Xe’ra directly, but we can stop her … by forcing the ‘Prime Naaru’ to undergo her Life Cycle fully, to descend into a Void God state. That the whole reason Xe’ra is the way she is, is due to her refusal to accept herself as a being of two opposing but interlinked forces. She only accepts her Light self, and rejects and suppressed her Void self through consuming the souls of her followers.
The Light-Bound? Souls consumed and bodies puppeted by the Naaru zealots that follow Xe’ra, living, soul-less husks.
However, we are warned that there is a balance to all things, and Xe’ra’s refusal to undergo her Life Cycle for millions of years, and potentially billions of victims, will result in a Void God of immense power. We have to make sure we’re not only able to defeat Xe’ra, but as Than’atos gives us the location of a potent relic created by the other Prime Naaru to do just such a thing, but be able to banish Xe’ra’s Void Self from Azeroth before she can try to restore herself by consuming the souls of her followers.
A race to the relic, with Xe’ra’s Naaru followers and several Vindicaar-class ships attempting to slay Than’atos and capture its children, and then rushing back to Azeroth, we find Light-Bound soldiers of all races standing guard over every major capital city, and even more Vindicaar-class, and even bigger ships, hovering over the planet.
This leads to a frantic attempt to land, which instead of warping us down to the surface, instead strands us on AU Azeroth for a patch, where we half to navigate a barbaric and broken Eastern Kingdoms where Humanity never rose above a tribal state, Dwaves ruled as tyrant Kings and Queens over the Eastern Kingdoms, and the Kaldorei remained under the control of Queen Azshara’s daughter, who sided with the rebels, and thus the Kaldorei never went full radicalised hippy, instead balancing their arcane heritage with druidism … and have spent the past 10,000 years scattered into warring city-states, each with their own Wells and armies of enslaved Tauren, Troll, Harpy and Centaur to fight their battles for them.
Eventually we topple the City-States and free the slaves, topple the Army of Light’s control over the Eastern Kingdom and rally what few Dwarves and Men will listen to us, and build a Portal that will take us back to our Azeroth, leading thousands of Kaldorei, Tauren, Trolls, Dwarves, Men, Dwarves and Gnomes away from this dying and fractured world as the Army of Light decides to pump out all of the arcane energy from this fake Azeroth, devoid of a true World Soul and possessing only an echo of whatever it is that slumbers within our own world, and lead this mongrel army to toppling the Army of Light once and for all. This dooms AU Azeroth to a slow decay that will take thousands of years to complete, but now cannot be stopped …
Within our first few moments of returning to our Azeroth, we are encountered by none other than Turalyon, who begs us to listen before we draw steel against him.
Xe’ra no longer needed him, and reversed her Light Forging of him, nearly killing Turalyon in the process, but also freeing him from her mental domination. Cast into prison by his own fanatical guards, Turalyon found a prisoner and, together with the Cabal, managed to escape and has been helping to organise a resistance to the ‘Dominion of Light’. The prisoner is revealed to be Yrel, or rather, a Broken version of Yrel, still possessing the Prophet’s Mark from her Velen, who explains that when she refused to lead her people on a bloody crusade against the rest of Draenor and instead begged the Mother of Light to pursue a more diplomatic approach to recruiting an army, stating that even if they all did not worship the Light, the Mag’har would still be a valuable ally to the Army of the Light.
Her punishment was months of torment and agony as Xe’ra tried to pull the Mark of the Prophet from Yrel, but could not without destroying the Mark in the process, so instead Yrel was punished with a Light-fuelled devolution into a Broken in an attempt to break her spirit and force her to give it up instead. Months of humiliation and torture turned to years, but she remembered the words of a prisoner who eventually joined her in her cell on Draenor.
“This wolf still has teeth.”
Grom’s indomitable spirit inspired Yrel to fight on even as her body was warped and twisted, as her flesh was beaten and scarred and her mind probed and lashed, as months turned to years, turned to decades.
Players embark on a world-spanning adventure to rally their people to push back, crippling the Army of Lights’ ships and weapon systems so they cannot fire on the civilians, and freeing prisoners before they can be Light-Bound. Ancient powers arise to aid us, from Wild Gods and Loa to the Queen of the Naga herself, the Dragon Aspects, the Mogu and the Vrykul and even the Titan Watchers, helping turn the tide as the war slowly pushes the Army of Light back towards Stormwind, and finally, the Isle of Quel’danas itself where Xe’ra hovers, desperately trying to force the Sunwell to bend to her will, but the essence of Anveena within the Well, and the slumbering consciousness of Azeroth herself, continue to defy the Prime Naaru even as we descend upon her last remaining forces.
In a climactic battle, we topple her last, and most powerful, agents and begin to assemble the relic to force Xe’ra to undergo the final stages of her Life Cycle, all the while she rages at us, stating we do not understand, she is saving us from ourselves, that free will is a cancer, a poison upon the universe, and that only under her guidance and control can everything be ‘made right once again’.
Eventually, we force the change on Xe’ra, who screams and turns into a sprawling mass of solidified Void Energy that we have to slow down and keep away from the Sunwell, the various mouths cursing at us for doing this to her, wailing about the souls she has robbed of their just ends, spitting and cursing at herself and everything around her as we mount Dragons, Wild Gods and Titanic Platforms to try and hold the Void God Xer’atos back until the Relic finishes charging and banishes it back to the Light.
There is a moment of silence, and then Xer’atos screams in a thousand voices as its Void-mass is broken apart and consumed, revealing Xe’ra’s Naaru form, in pieces, before dozens of tendrils of Light reach out from the Portal.
“Xe’ra, Child of Prophecy … you will answer for your crimes.”
She is dragged through, piece by piece, cursing us, begging for help, pleading for forgiveness, swearing retribution, weeping, screaming, howling as the souls she has consumed threaten to shatter her for good, before the Portal closes and there floats Than’atos … and M’uru, revived from the Sunwell and seemingly made from Azerite now.
The Dominion of the Light is over. M’uru will stand watch over the Sunwell, as it was instructed to do when it allowed itself to be captured by the Sin’dorei all those years ago, and keep Azeroth free from all corruption by the Primal Forces. Than’atos explains that without Xe’ra or her subservient Naaru around, the Light-Bound will eventually perish and we have a lot of work to do, leaving us with the Draenei ships as it warns us that while the Light did not condone Xe’ra’s actions, it did want to claim Azeroth for itself, as do all the Primal Powers, and our struggle to maintain our freedom is only just beginning.
With The Titans containing Sargeras, and Xe’ra now banished, there is nothing keeping the Demons of the Twisting Nether, the Watchers from other worlds or the other Naaru out there from pursuing their own agendas and plans. Due to his refusal to conquer Azeroth, Than’atos can never return to the Light, and will remain trapped in his semi-Void state for all eternity, so he can only provide guidance, but does warn us that not all the Naaru followed Xe’ra’s mad plan, nor are all the Demons afflicted with their addiction, nor are all the Titan Watchers obsessed with the ‘perfect order’ of their masters.
Our allies must be chosen carefully, not based upon their origin or race, and our enemies may be all too familiar to our eyes.
Our eternal watch begins …