There is a treasure in Harandar you can get by interacting with spirits that represent different points in the Haranir’s history. One caught my attention in particular:
- A mist envelops your mind. You can now see through someone else’s eyes. You are a child. A haranir child. You look around you and see a distant place, a mountain, a great tree. Your people are packing, getting ready for a voyage. You can feel anxiety, but also a great sense of excitement and adventure.
The Child-Like Spirit represents the Haranir when they lived on Mount Hyjal and were preparing to follow the echos they were hearing to head underground. But the most curious thing was the presences of a giant tree. Mount Hyjal would eventually be know for the world tree Nordrassil, but that would not have been planted for so many thousands of years after the Haranir had left Mount Hyjal.
Another tree that could have been around at the same time as the Haranir might be the mythical Elun’Ahir, though we don’t know for how long that tree would have stood before Aman’Thul tore it down. I also find it far more likely that Elun’Ahir had been the origin of Un’Goro Cater, as, well:
- The Highfather took hold of the world tree’s trunk and tore it from the earth.
Eonar wept bitter tears that rained down upon the resulting crater.
But then it came to me that there is one other tree from the same time period:
- In Azeroth’s ancient days, natural life never had a chance to emerge due to the horrifying reign of the Old Gods. Without help, nature would not have risen at all. The titans knew this. One of their final acts of aid for us was to give the keepers the knowledge and power to reverse the Old Golds’ unspeakable destruction.
In time, nature would rise. Life would flourish. Generations of plants and animals would grow and change.
This miraculous recovery did not come from any one place. But at the beginning, there was a source of healing and balance, a place where all life could rest and revive.
It was called G’Hanir, the Mother Tree.
Keeper Freya was charged by the titans to guide the seeding of Azeroth’s nature life. To aid in this task, she shaped a mystical realm that would become known as the Emerald Dream. She wanted it to be an unspoiled vision of nature, undisturbed by the forces of evil or external civilizations.
She began by creating a single, massive tree, set atop a high peak within the Dream. From it bloomed many different fruits and flowers, and new life flowed outward in waves, sweeping across the land.
Freya sculpted pools of life in other locations within the Emerald Dream, but this tree was the first, the tallest, and the most radiant. For millennia, it served as a source of healing and balance that extended beyond the Dream and into the physical world.
Obviously it is now blatantly aware that it was only Titan propaganda that Freya created the Emerald Dream when in actuality it was the Titans imposing their order on the section of the plane for Azeroth. So I posit the follow as a more likely actual chain of events:
Freya planted G’Hanir on Mount Hyjal during the Ordering of Azeroth as the means for the Titans to invade the Emerald Dream and take control of it.
In a quest showing the history of the Haranir it was shown that Freya was on Mount Hyjal before the Haranir left:
- Zur’ashar Kassameh says: Countless generations ago our people walked beneath the trees of the great mountain.
Zur’ashar Kassameh says: None knew of our presence. Not the giant whose steps shook the earth … nor her massive beasts.
The legend of Elun’Ahir also tells us that Eonar did not want the roots of Elun’Ahir known about, so couldn’t have let that be used as the means to get into the Emerald Dream.
- But as she peered down upon the sundered earth, the titan realized a truth she did not share with the Highfather. Though he had destroyed the tree, its winding roots still held firm beneath the soil, hidden from Aman’Thul’s gaze.
As the forces of the titans waged war against the Black Empire, Eonar bid her keeper, Freya, to watch over the crater and nurture the life that blossomed there.
Below ground, the roots fed upon the tears of Eonar and grew strong.
The war was long, but in the end, the titans claimed victory, And Eonar was pleased. knowing Elune’s legacy would endure.
G’Hanir would go on to die during the War of the Ancients, only to be replaced by Nordrassil immediately after, as told in the Tome of the Ancients:
- The great Mother Tree, home to the spirits of countless creatures, was dead.
As the night elves struggled to rebuild their society in the wake of the Sundering, members of the green dragonflight discovered a gift. A single branch of G'Hanir, with a single acorn hanging off its leaves, had been left in their keeping in the Emerald Dream.
The acorn was used by Alexstrasza, Aspect of the red dragonflight, to create Nordrassil, the great World Tree that would protect the second Well of Eternity.
Which leads us back to the tree we know now.