Well, I’ve done everything I’ve found interesting without starting the main Midnight campaign - Thank you Wormhole Generator for access to Harandar and the Voidstorm. There might be more things I can access at level 90, and though just exploring around and doing what I could amusingly got me to level 84, I don’t feel like grinding out the last six levels yet.
So lets fill our time up with a tinfoil hat theory! Yes. That sounds good. I am in agreement with myself.
As everyone has noticed and talked about (maybe someone else has even already proposed this in one of the other threads about it) the Old Gods are wildly different from anything else presented as being aligned with the Void that we have now seen more of in Midnight.
Now I believe the Old Gods were originally shadowy Void beings like any others we’d see in the Voidstorm. And I believe the Old Gods had managed to get through the crust of the planet and reach the worldsoul before any others. And I believe Azeroth’s energy changed them.
I believe the “Curse” of Flesh was not created by the Old Gods. I believe it was Azeroth that made the Old Gods flesh and blood, and that then the Old Gods merely then spread what they considered to be an infliction to the elemental beings on the planet, obviously including the Titanforged, who were made from those very same elements.
(Also, if you don’t know what a Thraegar is, now is a good time to look it up, to understand the relationship of how Azeroth’s energies can change beings, and what the Titans don’t want known about it.)
The Rift of Aln is the obvious knot that ties this all together.
In the area, the following are encountered:
The first two are obviously the same model as Sha creatures.
The third we first saw introduced through G’huun.
And I believe most recently seen in Excavation Site 9.
Behind the raid portal for the Rift of Aln you can find a whole bunch of these “Alnscorned” that cannot be interacted with.
Much more subtly, throughout the Rift of Aln questing area, eye stalks and mouth tentacles versions of the Alnscorned that cannot be interacted with appear and disappear, using the same models introduced with the Emerald Nightmare raid:
“Alnscorned” were described as the following:
- There are things in the Rift. It is impossible to describe the Alnscorned by comparing them to other animals, other people, other monsters. They are more than broken, more than misshapen—they were never meant to be at all. They come from the Rift of Aln, crawling nightmares.
Impossible bodies. Unbodies. Conglomerations of anatomies that could never work together except to produce unending agony: lungs that connect to stomachs, flowers and fruits bursting with claws, teeth, a thousand malevolent eyes. Butterfly bones carrying the weight of minotaur muscles, hearts that pump wind and flame and green sap into gasping dry veins meant only for blood. Flesh that hates itself. Gulping for air, breathing only pain. And all of them born starving, bottomlessly ravenous, no matter how much they eat.
A mass of writhing needle-teeth lengthening inside a rose of flesh, a long body of luminous skin and shimmering, slick, oily light coating freakish angles, claws carving their way out of a shattered spine… clawing clumsily forward like a child trying to walk on its eyelids.
Inhuman, unanimal. Nothing alive could make those sounds. They were just wounds you could hear.
its screaming, the clang of its malevolently glimmering face as its dozen translucent jawbones churned together, cutting into the delicate skin of its own throat.
While Midnight focuses on the Void’s hunger, we have also known the Void as being able to see all possibilities, and the insanity that causes:
- “You already understand one truth, Alleria. The Light is blind. It cannot see the whole of destiny, because it alone is not responsible for it… Now understand another truth. The Shadow is just as blind.”
Alleria began to see visions. Terrible, terrible visions.
On and on and on it went, until she could not even comprehend it all.
“Lies,” she whispered. “These are all lies.”
“Sear that into your heart,” the Locus-Walker said. “Know that, and never forget it.”
“I do not… What…?”
The Locus-Walker kept her firmly afloat. “You have known the Shadow as nothing but horrors. The Shadow sees the Light in the same way… The Light seeks one path and shuns all others as lies. The Shadow seeks every possible path and sees them all as truth.”
This is what I believe results in the Alnscorned and the Old Gods. Flesh and blood and bone allowed every possibility.
Orweyna and Amarakk’s short story said of the Alnscorned:
- Most die days or weeks after birth.
The ones that last are worse.
Unwholesome, un-haranir, un-anything.
they had heard tales of un-beasts much more gargantuan and starving.
South of the raid portal for the Rift of Aln, south of the Skyriding Glyph for The Cradle, there is an island you can fly to. And island with roots that do not reach Harandar’s “sky” like the rest of the world trees’ roots.
I am sure beyond a shadow of a doubt that these are Andrassil’s roots. Vordrassil’s roots.
Of which a Haranir comments:
- This ancient tree was severed from the Rootways. Sitting here, communing with the spirits, I can understand why.
There is something wrong deep within its roots. Something ancient, far more ancient than the tree itself. I am told the source of corruption was destroyed, but long after the tree was felled. I will have to see what our ancestors knew of this.
We are told the following in Chronicle:
- Andrassil, or “Crown of the Snow”—grew with astonishing speed, and the benefits were almost immediate. The spread of saronite ceased, and wildlife flourished anew.
Malfurion and the rest of the Cenarion Circle became furious upon learning that these branches had been planted without their approval. They did, however, agree that the plan seemed to have worked. For several decades, Andrassil towered over Northrend, and all seemed well.
Yet in time, circumstances changed. Bloody battles erupted between the taunka and the forest nymphs of Northrend, two races not known for their warring ways. The fighting was sudden and shockingly vicious, filled with barbarism and unspeakably vile acts. Word slowly reached the druids, and the Cenarion Circle launched an expedition to investigate the source of the violence.
What the druids found chilled them to their marrow. Andrassil’s roots had reached so deep into the earth that they had touched Yogg-Saron’s subterranean prison. The Old God had infused the tree with its foul energies, and thus all living creatures in the area were slowly being driven to madness.
The Cenarion Circle knew that, without the blessing of the Aspects, Andrassil was vulnerable to corruption. They were also aware that there was no way to spare the World Tree or ease its suffering. The Cenarion Circle sorrowfully decided that the only recourse was to destroy Andrassil. With heavy hearts, they felled the great tree. It slammed down onto the icy surface of Northrend with a deafening boom that echoed even through the ethereal forests of the Emerald Dream. Forever after, the druids would refer to the fallen World Tree as Vordrassil, or “Broken Crown.”
Although killing Andrassil had been a heartbreaking task, the Cenarion Circle was pleased it had stopped the growth of saronite. Yet unbeknownst to the druids, something dark had taken root in the Emerald Dream.
Yogg-Saron had used the trees planted by Fandral as a doorway into the Dream—a doorway through which the other Old Gods could grasp the ethereal domain as well. Small seeds of corruption were spread throughout Ysera’s realm. In time, these seeds polluted the dreamways. This marked the beginning of what would become known as the Emerald Nightmare.
Though Yogg-Saron had already been killed by the time of Stormrage, N’Zoth maintained the Emerald Nightmare that we saw in Legion through a connection with the Rift of Aln:
- And when Azeroth was free of the taint, Malfurion—Tyrande standing with him throughout—focused then completely on the Emerald Dream, determined that it, too, should be cleansed. The Nightmare dwindled, receded…
But in one small corner of the Emerald Dream, in a vast, deep fissure, known to the druids as the Rift of Aln and believed to be where the magical realm itself first originated, even the combined efforts of the archdruid and the high priestess could not entirely end the struggle. The Nightmare held firmly in that place, which those of Malfurion’s calling believed bled into the Twisting Nether and the Great Dark Beyond. Gazing into it, Malfurion saw it as a bottomless chasm which radiated with primeval energies that even he dared not investigate. Indeed, the very rift itself seemed half- dream, for it had a surreal quality to its expanse and to the archdruid now and then seemed to ripple as if ready to fade or change.
Curiously, only then did Malfurion truly sense that the ancient evil, though it fought to keep its grip there, did so from somewhere deep in the depths of Azeroth’s own seas. Bereft of Xavius’s link to the dream realm, it was still powerful enough somehow to keep that one place under its horrific sway.
And that’s where I see it all piecing together. The Rift of Aln had been where the Old Gods had first come in contact with Azeroth’s Worldsoul, long before the roots of Elun’Ahir had managed to make it down to form the Cradle. Where the Old Gods had been changed by Azeroth into what we know them as now: the unbound possibilities of the Void bound to flesh and blood. Where, long after the Titans had pulled Azeroth’s Worldsoul from the Cradle, Andrassil’s roots had made contact with Yogg-Saron. Where Vordrassil’s roots reached the Rift of Aln and had to be severed. Where Andrassil still stood tall in N’Zoth’s Nightmare vision of Azeroth.