Considering this will invoke a major spoiler for War Within, I’m both going to fill the first part of this with dead air to not spoiler people scrolling over, and I’m also going to be a bit vague in the descriptions. And this is just a theory (a game theory!) so don’t take this as gospel!
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
Okay, that should be enough.
One of the things that ‘Meh’d’ me on this Allied Race originally was the bedazzled angle with the gems, but the more I’ve thought about it, the more it makes sense.
When, before this point, have we met any Earthen with any real personality or skill? Northrend is the biggest collection and they’re just brute labor and fodder for everyone, be they Iron Dwarves, Vyrkul or even the Explorer’s League. we know that Krasus, Rhonin and Broxigar encountered one Pre-Sundering in Knaack’s timeways trilogy, but the physical description was rather vague other than ‘Dwarf that’s made of stone’, and said Earthen was wearing armor so it wasn’t clear if they had the magical gemstones embedded in them or not.
Now, in the War Within, the gemstones are a rather important feature of these Earthen as they hold the memories and personalities of the individual, and certain plot points in the expansion point to this being a feature that was removed from all Earthen outside of this area of the world, and all future iterations of them outside of this specific area, after a very brutal series of events involving the Earthen of Khaz Algar and the Watcher/Keeper overseeing them.
The Gems aren’t just Blizzard rizzing up Earthen to modern graphical standards, they’re the literal storage points for an Earthen’s consciousness and, indeed, their very souls, and that’s why part of the reason there’s three different factions all pushing and shoving at each other, because a HUGE plot-point in the War Within involves wiping and storing the ‘data’ in those gemstones and crystals in a certain Titanic facility that’s not quite doing what its meant to do.
The Earthen we’re familiar with from previous expansions might not be the real Earthen, but rather stunted, lobotomized versions to prevent another repeat of the events that we’ll uncover in Khaz Algar. And the rare few Earthen we’ve met who can speak, and have personalities other than ‘attack anything without clearance’, might be the result of factory flaws, where the process of making them from Azeroth’s earth and stone may not have removed or pulverized any gemstones or mineral structures within the matter they were made of, and thus, by accident, re-created the intelligent, ensouled Earthen we’ll meet in the War Within.
Your thoughts?