[SPOILERS: TWW] Harronir Keepers Theory

Lore Story Forum
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Hello. I replied another topic with this theory of mine and I hope its ok to post it here as well, to make it more accessible.

My theory is based on the axiom that cosmic forces have agents in Azeroth in some way or another. Void has old gods and Aqir, Order has Titanforged, Earthen, Mechagnomes and whatnot etc.

We also know these agents can, over time, build societies, mutate, evolve, become the mortal residents of Azeroth (Humans, dwarves, gnomes, nerubians).

Given these very basic assumptions, I propose:

What if the Harronir are not the missing link between Trolls and Elves, but their common ancestor? I remember someone commenting the Harronir refers to us, players, as mortals. As if they aren’t.

Let me cook for a second here. We humans (I’m a worgen but you know cursed human), gnomes and dwarves are all mutated descendants of titan robots, right? Order cosmic force → makes robot bois → robot bois get cursed/mutate and get all squishy.

The Legend of Elun’Ahir tells us that Eonar planted a World Tree during the War of The Black Empire and Aman’thul pulled it off and chastised her. The roots survived and attracted mysterious caretakers that we as a community deduce are the Harronir.

What if the Harronir are Life cosmic force “robots” (or rather the life equivalent of a Titan Watcher/Keeper) that Elune sent to Azeroth to care for the roots and eventually some of them left for the surface and mutated into trolls, and later some of them mutated into Night Elves?

Midnight is said to be the expansion that unites the elven tribes and the community is theroizing it will be because of the Arathi being the latest elven flavor in Azeroth, but what if what unites them is actually finding out they all come from the Harronir?

Their unwillingness to work with us mortals in the Alpha, at least the way I’ve been told, feels reminiscent of the behavior Tyr and the other Keepers displayed towards dragonkind in the book where they kill Galakrond together.

I want to know your toughts, maybe I got some stuff wrong, I just think the Harronir being the dark troll missing link is a little too obvious and I know blizz likes to place loose threads that pull into cosmic shenanigans every other friday.

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One reason I think your theory could be true is based on what Blizzard said prior to the launch of Dragonflight.

They mentioned that we would encounter Proto Trolls of some sort in Dragonflight… but we didn’t. Some people postulate that the Djaradin were going to be the Proto Trolls, but that got changed.

It stands to reason that maybe they felt the notion of Proto Trolls was a bit much for this expansion. Enough already going on. Causing them to see about moving that concept to the next expac.

What you are describing would be Proto Trolls. Blizzard mentioned them being in this expac, but then didn’t show them. So, maybe they just moved that plot line to the next expac.

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I don’t think this is the case. Because these guys are clearly nelves and it would be a MASSIVE retcon to make a race that looks like furry nelves to be the progenitor of trolls while looking nothing like them.

Primal trolls were meant to be in DF but as the name suggest I think these trolls were meant to be of the elemental nature.

I think these Harronir are nelves that went to undergound long time ago and mutated with local bat species. And that these are protectors of Elun’Ahir.

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I really like this theory. It has always been strange to me that almost all living races descended from Titans, Elementals, or Old Gods, but we’ve never heard of any current God of Life creating, well… An actual Life. Harronir would be perfect for this. In my headcanon Elune created Harronir, when An’she created Tauren.

It is certain that this race comes from the domain of life. Their name refers to G’Hanir. If they lived only underground and appeared at the end of the war with the black empire, perhaps they were also the first users of nature magic and make their own bloodline from which trolls were created

If Harronir are the equivalent of Keepers, then who are the Wild Gods? They are always shown at the Old gods/Keepers level in the nature domain. I think they are more like titan-forged.

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Didn’t Freya have a hand in their creation. She went and discovered the nascent life on Azeroth and empowered them. The Wild Gods also spawned from the life energies, but Freya directed that power and influenced its outcome. Hence why the primal Wild Gods/Loa are actually very ordered for beings born of Life/Nature.

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Yes, the only ones that seem to predate the Emerald Dream as realized by Freya as a walled garden are Malorne and Q’onzu.

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I think all the wild gods predate the ordered version of the Emerald Dream because the lore does mention several of the wild gods choosing to follow Freya as she went around doing her thing

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Or, Barthcellos, the Harronir might be the cosmic Life equivalent of the nathrezim from cosmic Death. I don’t mean that there is any link between the two. Rather, that if one of the cosmic Death team members created nathrezim to be spies for him…and they view cosmic Life to be insidious; then somebody from cosmic Life could also think it appropriate to create harronir to be spies for them. And that cosmic Life member might not have even asked permission from the other cosmic Life leaders to make those spies.

Yes, I think that cosmic Life was on Azeroth long long in the past, maybe even before the black empire. And I think they created the Shu’halo and the Trolls and the very early proto-protodrakes. Then it was only when the Titans arrived that the work done by cosmic Life got borrowed and interfered with by them…to modify a small percentage of the above into Tauren and Elves and Dragons respectively. Maybe Elune was one of those cosmic Life team members, and that might explain why she kept in contact with all of those early Tauren and Elves and Dragons…and was tutoring them to be loyal to her first, and titans second.

To say this out in the open, I’m not convinced that Elune is ethically “good” at all. She could very well be a villain that wants domination by her cosmic force and manipulates us to achieve it.

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Also, the Harronir have you travel into another realm or plane of reality. That MIGHT be part of the Lifelands/Dream. As part of the questing experience. They’re also super Druidic…so I mean…it’s not a bad theory.

This has mostly all been retconned now.

Basically Freya is just a caretaker/preserver of Life on Azeroth, but everything relating to the Dream was there long before her.

The lore only said she did anything with it’s creation originally. Because the Titans wanted everyone to believe they did everything and were all might.

When really they just did OCD arranging and management when they got there, lol.

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There must always be a Night Elf zone.

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[Dalamaan-area-52]1 = retconned, 2 = lore on creation, 3 = titans wanted, 4 = just did OCD arranging[/quote]

1 …in this particular case I don’t think retcon is the proper term. Rather, Metzen wrote more than one interpretation of the Dream and what various characters in the game world believe about it all in the same Chronicles books that he wrote. So even if Metzen had treated the Chronicle as reliable and objective, we’d have to compare and contrast the various perspectives to interpret what really happened.
2… Very frequently I find myself wondering if people have a definition of creation that is more restrictive than the actual definition in a dictionary. When I bake a chocolate cake, I created the cake. I didn’t snap my fingers to turn empty space with no kinetic energy into quarks and leptons and electric fields that comprise a chocolate cake…but that’s not what the word create means. I don’t have any problem with saying that if a Titan or the assistant of a Titan showed up on Azeroth and entered an existing life land dimension and then put a small boundary around a pocket of it and converted it from chaotic green madness into a balanced and sustainable and flourishing emerald dream to access for templates which can be transferred into real ecosystems…that I consider that to be creation. If they found a jungle and made a small garden, then I’m fine saying they created that garden. They never said they created all life everywhere.
3 … I don’t think we have any evidence at all that the Titans wanted what you describe. Odyn is not a Titan. And the Titankeepers did not believe Odyn speaks for the Titans, and removed him from any control, and the Titans never asked about Odyn. I think the most we could say there is that when the Titans were absent for so long, their temporary titanforged plan was showing that it had failures and was not a permanent solution. Part of Odyn’s failure is in him developing a “Steward of Gondor” psychological complex…and any pronouncements that he made were opposed by so many titankeepers and titan watchers and titanforged that we know his pronouncements were “not” direct wishes or commands from the Titans at all.
4… Sort of already addressed in number 2… but again, there is nothing wrong in shaping and arranging. Shaping and arranging are very important, and I do want somebody to have done it. Regardless of whether writers now decide to villain bat the Titans, I’m glad they did the shaping which they did. I don’t want to be lined up and marched into the stomach of an old god.

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Dragonflight’s lore hands down says this is their purpose. Along with some stuff from SL.

The Titans will find things, and control/manipulate it, into a structure (ordering) that mostly suits them.

Granted some things they of course obviously created and used the power of Arcane/their force for.

Even the Timeline we are in as the main timeline, is just the Timeline the Titans want to preserve.

I agree, I’ve always interpretted the Dream as basically WoW’s Feywild. Which DF re-enforces. But early WoW lore is told to us from the perspective of the Titanforged and Titankeepers, who wanted everyone to believe that everything was of the Titan’s design.

I’m not saying what they’ve done is wrong, and personally I like Dragons over Proto Dragons for instance. But they are setting up each cosmic force to be morally grey.

My point was mainly emphasizing that the Dream has existed since before the titans got to Azeroth, and it extends to all worlds, effectively.

Which personally I’m all for the Life cosmic force to come in and just wreck everyone up, lmao.

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Everyone now knows that the titans( or at least amanthul) are liars and have worked against the very nature of azeroth just like the old gods did and every other firce tried to do.

The void used the old gods and their insectoids races.

The titans/order used the keepers and titanic races.

The light shoved the crystal in hallowfall to reach azeroth core and have some dubious actions that may or may not lead to an invasion/conquest of azeroth just as the legion.

Death via the Nathrezim used the legion to send an agent of pure death( the lich king) to conquest azeroth in the name of the Jailer and besides that manipulated all other forces to have death on top of the race as per Denathrius instructions.

The fell even though it was controled by Sargeras it almost got to win the race 3 times by using portals to invade azeroth but failed due to in and outside forces. The legion was created to fail now that we know of the true intentions of the dreadlords and how even Sargeras was just a player on the board.

So that leaves life for us to understand.

The Harronir could be the missing link to elves and trolls or just elves, at this point eveything I see points that elves are not troll related and thst was in reality the harronir are the “dark trolls” of legend who evolced by the well.

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Decent theory, but the Dark Trolls exist still to this day with at least one survivor who is in Zandalar as a representative for the Dark Trolls.

Like most Troll races, the Dark Trolls specifically were a group of Zandalari Trolls, who made camps inside of caves, usually around great sources of nature like World Trees. Over time they evolved into Dark Trolls.

At some unknown point in time. The Dark Trolls were led to/discovered the well of Eternity, and vast majority of them would turn into Night Elves. Thier culture shifting the Arcane, and shunning Nature for the most part. It’s not until after the Sundering, that Malfurion (a very FRINGE and weird outcast for doing anything nature magicy in thier society) was able to convince the Night Elves alongside Tyrande, that they should shift thier society back to Nature how it used to be.

So for YOUR specific theory, given what we know, Harronir would’ve spawned the Dark Trolls and Night Elves.

MY personal theory, is that since it seems like Elun’ahir was placed in Un’goro Crater. The Dark Trolls who would come to live in the caves around that area due to thier call to nature. Eventually evolved into Harronir from the LIFE magic of the Emerald Dream(Lifelands).

We know that Elun’ahir was like the FIRST(or it might later become ONE of the First, lol) world tree. With it’s starter literally being a GIFT from Elune at the time. Meaning these roots and this tree would be VERY heavily steeped with Life Magic.

Trolls & Elves BOTH are very susceptible to environmental and magical changes. Since ALL modern Trolls evolved in thier environment form Zandalari, and ALL Elf Types (including Naga and Satyr) evolved from Night Elves from exposure specifically to different levels & types of magic.

We also know that All of the Cosmic Forces want to control each planet and World Soul as thier own, espeacially Azeroth. We’ve not yet seen Life have tires at that. But lots of ppl believe these roots are Life trying to get into the World Soul. Which would make sense.

Not to mention Orweyna’s Audio is a mixture of light European like Night Elves, with some word choices and inflections that Trolls have. Which imo leads to the possibility that Harronir are just Dark Trolls + Life, where as Night Elves were Dark Trolls + Arcane.

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Since you already basically agreed with all the other responses that I numbered… I’m going to have to encourage you to challenge this one. There is a huge ontological problem with you thinking the Dragonflight writing “says” something. Giving the opinion of one character in an unreliable narrator story is not “saying” lore. It is giving the opinion of a character within a narrative that can be wrong, and has already been shown to be wrong before. Once again, I will have to repeat… Odyn is not a Titan. Odyn does not speak for the Titans. The Titans don’t seem to care about Odyn or talk about Odyn or ask about Odyn. All the other titanforged and titankeepers disagreed with Odyn, and the whole reason that the hundreds of memos written by Odyn were shown to us is to demonstrate that his opinion of a purpose is “NOT” the purpose that any other titankeeper or titanforged or titanwatcher believes. You are taking the statements of Odyn and ignoring all the Titans as well as the titanforged and titankeepers and titan watchers that you are accusing.

You did it again with that extra comment about timelines… where you heard Iridikron… a murderous liar villain… make a taunting opinion about Titans and timelines, and now you seem to be treating that as objective truth. Has it occurred to you that there could be steelman answers to the rhetorical question about why this timeline is preserved that don’t have the Titans as villains?

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This isn’t just an Iridikron thing. This is a thing that has loosely been threaded throughout all of WoW’s lore. Specifically with the Bronze Dragonflight.

Metzen has said that going forward they want to make Story Arcs like Marvel and FFXIV do. Instead of singular stories. So it makes sense that Marvel inspired some of the directions for thier story.

SPECIFICALLY the Bronze Dragons. In Dragonflight, the Bronze Dragons outright define thier purpose. While they’ve always been Dragons that have safeguarded the events in time. We know now that they safeguard and monitor all timelines to preserve the ONE TRUE timeline. Which is the timeline given to them by Amun’thul(The Pure Arcane and Time Based Titan) and Titans.

Like multiple sources have spelled out that the Bronze Dragons are the TVA form Loki, and that the True Timeline is the one that the Titans have chosen, as it gives them the best shot at thier goals. Which is an Arcane Dominated Azeroth.

The Titans made the Titan Keepers, and the Titanforged. They are all creations of the Arcane Pantheon as we know it (there are probably higher ups in the Realm of the Arcane/Order, that we don’t know of yet).

It is NO secret, that early WoW lore put the titans in the position of the Gods of the universe. With lots of thier lore citing that they created everything…the light, the void, the emerald dream, the fel, just all of it to some degree was thier doing. So that we, the races of Azeroth would follow them.

We know from BfA, SL, and DF. That they’ve been telling us lies and taking credit for things that happened form other Cosmic Forces. Such as the benefits of the Black Empire, the Origins of the Dream/Lifelands, More Old Gods, Titans just being 1 part of a bigger puzzle, etc.

We are currently told that when a World Soul, has enough Arcane and is born, it will become a Titan. MY GUESS is that Eonar had a lot of Life magic in her soul before Arcane won over, and she was born. Same thing with Argus having a Lot of Death Magic. Making him a Titan of Death, and consequently sending him to the Shadowlands when he died.

We also currently know that EVERY one of the 6 main cosmic forces we know of AS OF NOW. Are trying to get dominance of the universe, and Azeroth is the perspective we’re seeing this through, given that is our main world.

Follow that up with the fact that Arcane Magic is also the Magic of Order.

Order = Organization, Control, Cleanliness, Perfection, etc.

Just as Fel is Chaos, and we saw how the Legion was chaotic AF.

So given what we know so far about it all, and from various sources in game over the expansions, and out of game with books.

The Force of Arcane, through the Titans, are all about OCD ordering, controlling, and tailoring things into a perfect image, and they’re doing it to the best of thier ability in a way that will let Arcane come out on top.

Granted it’s possible that we may find out that Titans can be of ANY force, and they’re not actually the Arcane contenders…but that’s another topic.

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@Dalamaan-area-52 I had to scroll back and forth to see if I was missing something somewhere in between your present reply and my last reply… because there is no logical connection between the two. But apparently there was nothing. So unfortunately I will have to summarize and repeat that you’ve just made up a bunch of head canon and things you think you “know” but do not know, you assume and wish it… but the Lore of the game says no such thing.

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In otherwords, you’ve not read any of the lore, or the developer interviews about the lore. As well as the out of game books, since like Legion at least.

I literally gave you multiple characters and points that physically backed up everything. I think you need to accept that your current perception of the story is a headcannon, and no longer the direction Blizz is going for the cosmic war going forward.

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The exact opposite, you kept on repeating “we know” about things you don’t know, because the lore does not say that… you just wish it was true. You didn’t back up anything, because no such thing ever happened in the lore.

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Early on they stated the Titans are not gods, just god-like. That is what made Elune being called a “true deity” noteworthy as she is the only being that was given that distinction (and acted the part, with only indirect but but powerful divine interventions to her name) until Shadowlands did… what it did.

Danuser’s actions with Shadowlands opened some glaring holes in the lore they are likely going to address in the saga, particularly in TLT. Namely: How are they able to be in the material plane when other ‘pantheon’ type groups are seemingly unable to manifest there as pure expressions of their force. There are many paths they could take to address it, ranging from Titans (sans Aman’thul likely) not being true beings of Order but corrupted world souls, to the titans discovering a way to consume/merge with world souls to anchor themselves to the material plane.