I was thinking about the story of Warcraft and while thinking about Shadowlands and the titular “Illidan” novel, I came to a realization.
In the second half of the book, Illidan led an attack on Nathreza, pre-retcon homeworld of the Dreadlords. It went exactly as planned. With most Burning Legion forces off-world, Illidan and the demon hunters he had trained ripped through what forces were there then snuck into their archives to grab a record showing Argus’ location (Kil’jaeden and Archimonde’s home world). They successfully evacuated, closing the portal in a way that decimated Nathrezar like Draenor was decimated, killing many demons permanently and dealing the Burning Legion one of their biggest defeats (alongside the Army of the Light uncovering Argus’ world-soul and Sargeras’ first defeat on Azeroth with the collapsing portal).
HOWEVER, as of Shadowlands, the Nathrezim aren’t all fel demons and are actually death entities playing 4-d chess with the rest of the cosmos. So destroying Nathrezar didn’t scupper the Nathrezim’s plans, destroy all their records or condemn as many of them to a permanent death. In fact, none of the Dreadlords even mention the destruction of Nathrezar in the Shadowlands, so it doesn’t seem like a big blow to them anymore (even Mal’ganis at least mentioned Arthas).
It’s pretty jarring, given how it followed Blizzard bending over backwards to try and give Illidan cool points after the Burning Crusade expansion.
I was actually just thinking about this last night as I was (finally) doing some of the story quests for Korthia. I was thinking to myself ‘What the heck happened with Nathreza then?’
While I’m unsure if they officially retconned that or not, I kinda came to a hypothetical conclusion that where Nathrezim aren’t really part of Revendreth as a populace that perhaps Nathreza was a realm built for them similar to how Revendreth was for the Venthyr? Especially where the Nathrezim/Venthyr are eons of years old at this point, I assumed that during the time of their creation up until now they sort of created a society and infiltrated parts of the Burning Legion to help Sargeras complete his goal, seeing as how Daddy Nips had some knowledge of that where he used Argus’ soul to decommission the old Arbiter.
Anyone can feel free to poke holes in that though, I didn’t finish all of Korthia yet so I don’t know if further story discoveries retcon Nathreza as a whole. I’m just trying to do story backflips in my head to try to make sense of it all and there isn’t much (if any) official lore that I’m aware of to support my assumptions.
The fact remains that millions of them permanently died - even if the Burning Legion was never their real endgame, even if Nathreza was actually their adopted “homeworld” rather than their original point of origin, that’s still a loss. I don’t think much has been taken away from the Illidari in that respect.
But it absolutely should have been mentioned.
It would have been so, so easy to just… have a single Demon Hunter character in Oribos, with a bit of dialogue about the Nathrezim. Any one of them would do. Much like the Death Knights, they’re a class that’s going to suffer from relevancy problems going forward, and they missed a golden opportunity to address that.
Imagine a Night Elf demon hunter being there in 9.0/9.1, (Maybe Kor’vas?) who explains she considers Sylvanas no less a threat than the Legion was, and no less worthy of being hunted. Then in 9.2 you could have had her pivot to the Dreadlords, perhaps joined by a couple others.
It’s amazing how much they could have gotten out of just a handful of lines of text.
It wsan’t mentioned because it wasn’t written before Shadowlands. You folk are like the Trekkies who complain that Spock never mentioned Michal Burnham during The Original Series.
Its like Blizz wants to expand on lore through books, but throws them in the burn pile along with the rest of in-game lore.
They’re burning their own books because theres not enough in-game lore to keep the fires going.
And in turn, a lot of the Illidan lore in Legion as well as the Demon Hunter lore retcons undermined what came before them. I’ve realized that what we’ve been seeing in Shadowlands is, in a lot of ways, what they’ve been doing since WoD, but people either didn’t notice or praised them for it. They take old lore or themes, either rush by them or retcon them, and then replace it with their own version they feel is better or with lore that they’re enthused about at the time.
Shadowlands is just the culmination of that, but it’s been happening for years and years. We’ve just gotten to the point where this current team has been doing what they do for so long they’ve circled back to doing it to their own writing.
It actually did confemn many of them to permanent death. The Nathrezim did become demons, their original origin as a being of Death did not mean they could consume Fel without being turned. Furthermore Legion implied that Nathrezar is still around, so the planet was most likeky shattered like Draenor was when it turned into Outland.
Plus with Balnazzar and Varimathras dead, the threat to Detheroc to stay in line makes more sense, either because his brothers failed or their deaths could make him waver.
Mid-Ranking Blizz writer, going over the new SL lore basics: Huh. Boss, I’m pretty sure that this stuff seriously undermines the material from the Illidan novel just a couple of years back.
High-Ranking Blizz Writer: You’re not thinking far enough! It undermines everything we’ve ever written before, ever!
(possible spoilers) The Nathrezim were created by Denathrius as the ultimate spies. They had an entire wing of Castle Nathria to themselves, and on these missions infiltrated each of the big six cosmic forces. Unfortunately for them, their infiltration of the Light was discovered
They were backtracked to Revendreth, and a Light counter-invasion of Revendreth happened (forces unknown, but it included many naaru). The Nathrezim’s wing of castle Nathria was destroyed, and only the construction of the Stoneborn army pushed back the Naaru… but not before they left beams of Light to scour that part of Revendreth, making the Ember Ward. To keep the peace with Venthyr angry over the whole thing (they knew Denathrius provoked the Naaru), Denathrius pretended to exile the Nathrezim, but they set up bases elsewhere and continued in secret. The story doesn’t even mention Nathrezar, so I’m not sure what that means for the story.
You’re absolutely right. In fact, this goes back much farther… all the way back to Burning Crusade and maybe even Vanilla. The entire nature of the Draenei and Eredar was retconned; they went from “whale-faced natives of Draenor” and “demons” to “horned aliens who refused to become demons” and “horned aliens who chose to become demons”. Speaking of Illidan, his backstory was rectonned twice.
The retcons got increasingly frequent, but previously a few were well received, or the naysayers were drowned out by cheers for fanservice and nostalgia-baiting; oh, we should have listened to the naysayers. Then we might have gotten better character progression.
At any rate, hopefully things can be fixed and the ridiculous retcon habit will end.
Like I said, it’s jarring that Blizzard did that given how much they bent over backwards to prop up Illidan (re-writing his backstory twice, loading him up with 90s Anti-Hero tropes, letting him kill-steal Gul’dan from us, literally sacrificing the credibility of the Light and the Naaru for him… smh)
If the nathrezim can travel between life and death planes does that mean their souls were different before denathrius first came in contact with them, and that when they were bound to the living plane (nathreza?) they would not have been the dreadlords that we now know them as.
This would create a limited number of potential souls (apparently nathreza has awesome koolaid) for denathrius to use
It would also make characters like malganis and lothraxion more special, because their species (souls) are near extinct, aside from the ones still to be found dwelling in the shadowlands which were not noticed by denathrius, if such exist.
Daddy D created them. Much like the original 7 Venthyr (of whom only 2 are left to our knowledge. That being Renethal, the first and hence Prince, and the Curator). He did not “find them”, nor were they already existing souls that were changed into them.
Nathreza was most likely the planet they called home after they were “banished” from Revendreth following the Lights attempted invasion. As many Venthyr, including powerful ones like Renethal and mainly the second (and current) Stonewright blamed them for the pointless conflict. Since the Nathrezim were caught spying on the Light.
That’s been my take on it too though honestly they’re playing so many dimensions of chess it’s quite possible that they only wanted the Illidari to think that the planet we know as Nathreza was their homeworld. In fact, they have also established so-called “homeworlds” for every different possible scenario.
The actual place they’ve come to reside? The forums. Or Gnomergan. Or maybe those are both false hints to throw you off my err- their trail!
Ha ha he he Ho Ho!!
No actually you blew up my home, but I hadn’t drank the green stuff so I’m an amoeba floating around the Shadowlands waiting on my respawn timer.
Honestly it doesn’t take away from the fact that the Illidari did destroy a world that the Nathrezim used and at least some of them were demons and they’re dead.
It just means all that knowledge was probably already elsewhere, and while they did probably somewhat hinder the Burning Legion in the process, the Illidari weren’t even fighting the real bad guy.
I’m still more confused about how Draka could go there. Death is merely a set back. If you are from Azeroth, once dead you can hop to all planes of existence, except the one you are from, because reasons.
That’s the point of this post. The retcon to the Nathrezim undermines the Illdari’s victory over them by destroying Nathrezar. It doesn’t take it away, it’s still an accomplishment, it’s just less of an accomplishment.
While I’m no Illidan fan, I know some people are, and I’m not a fan of Blizzard’s slapdash retcon habit. That is why I pointed this out; to draw attention to a lore problem it creates and hope this leads to the end of incessant retcons of WoW lore.
It is what it is. Whether Nathrezar was their original homeworld or not, it doesn’t really change anything of significance. It was their chief place of residence at the time Illidan gave it the destruction treatment.