And that’s when they are visible. You see them when going back up the elevator after killing that giant tentacle thing on your second trip into the vision.
They appear to be alive in Ny’alotha, but deceased in the real world. You can see it in this video.
The fact that N’Zoth put a Blueprint of Ny’alotha into the Forge from Ny’alotha means that the 4 corrupted Keepers are capable of coming back through Re-Origination.
N’Zoth’s minions weren’t dead in Ny’alotha… That means they aren’t dead in the Blueprint either since the Blueprint was intended to make Ny’alotha with the exception of the destroyed(in order to make room for N’Zoth’s body) Stormwind a reality.
Deathwing, Cho’Gall, Al’Akir, Ragnaros, Nefarian, Onyxia, Ultraxion, Chromatus, Xavius, Eranikus, the Nightmare, Ki’merax the Black Emperor and Sinestra are all capable of returning through Planetary Re-Origination!
Both the Blueprint and Ny’alotha are basically Azeroth if the villains of Cataclysm and the Emerald Nightmare never died and yet every other Expansion in WoW still happened!
Killing N’Zoth of course leaves them all with full autonomy and since Schnottz is still around and wants full dominion over Azeroth unlike Deathwing(who just wants to vent his rage according to Schnottz) he will take command of everything as the Black Emperor since N’raqi like Ki’merax go catatonic once their masters are killed.
Schnottz the Black Emperor… the thought of a Goblin Fuhrer ruling a Void-Ravaged Azeroth as the Black Emperor is frightening!
Honestly that entire plot thread hasn’t made an inkling of sense since this patch introduced it. If the Forge were capable of rewriting Azeroth in such a manner, then the Keepers could have just remade the planet from the start to remove the Old Gods and restore everything else intact.
The whole point of the Reorigination is that it wipes everything clean, making the world start from scratch, which is why it’s only a last resort. Being able to selectively decide what gets erased and what gets brought back completely negates the entire reason it wasn’t just fired off as soon as Ra-den finished building it.
It’s just one more of numerous nonsensical actions caused by N’zoth being a trash villain with no character-driven motivations whose every plan and scheme is based on the hollow premise of him (but evidently not the other Old Gods for no stated reason) apparently having received an advance copy of the story’s script and all of its upcoming retcons.
It’s suggested that doing something like that wasn’t even an idea in the Keepers head. So either it took mortal invention to do something different or it took a long, long, long, time for them to realize “Hey…why don’t we do this instead of nuking everything.”
https://wow.gamepedia.com/Archivum_Console#First_dialogue_with_Brann_Bronzebeard
Brann Bronzebeard says: Planetary re-origination? Speak plainly, ye blasted machine!
Archivum System says: The decomposition of the planet and its living organisms into base elements: metals, rocks, gases. This is followed by a period of reconstitution of each element into the original planetary blueprint.
N’Zoth of course replaced the original planetary blueprint AKA the Emerald Dream with his own from Ny’alotha.
Eonar of course would reject using Re-Origination(which would have killed the Lifeforms that Freya found resulting from the Well of Eternity) right off the bat(since she thinks Lifeforms should not be impulsively sacrificed even if new identical Lifeforms take their place) just as she objected to Sargeras’s plans before he became a Demon Titan.
As far as Eonar was concerned Re-Origination is an absolute last resort!
The problem is, that’s outright what they did with the Emerald Dream. The Dream’s function as a “backup copy” of Azeroth is itself an example of the same sort of thing N’zoth seemed to be doing by uploading a “backup copy” of the Black Empire.
If a blueprint could be made of primordial Azeroth, why not of Azeroth as it exists right before Reorigination? Mogu figuring out how to reverse the Curse of Flesh with the Engine of Nalak’sha is one thing, as it’s using a device expressly designed for mass production of mogu for a completely different purpose, but it seems bizarre that the giant stone robot-people would need to rely on mortal ingenuity to think of something as computer-basic as creating a fresh backup before reformatting the system. Especially when they already built that very functionality into the Forge via its use of the Emerald Dream as a backup.
Because the only backup copy they had was from Version 1.0.
The Current system is on Version 12.9.
If they were to back a backup copy of it is now, it’ll be with of all the Data Corruption and Bugs in place. It wouldn’t do much good.
So they’re trying to get by with constant Bug Fixes and Patches before they can do about backup save.
(Or at least that was the plan but it kept getting postponed and other projects had priority. So, really, it’s a result administration error and negligence.)
More importantly the Titan Keepers running the Backup were corrupted by the Old Gods due to Titans dying randomly, Ra-Den left the Forge of Origination unattended and Archaedas perished at our hands.
The Old Gods already had their tendrils in the old backup in the form of the Emerald Nightmare by the time we saved the Titan Keepers from Yogg-Saron.
Maybe, considering Odyn was supposed to be in Ulduar, it would had tied really well that quote of his with Helya defeat and his possible participation in SL. But I guess they run out of time and resources to pull that out and just went with “Mimir doesn’t want to chat with us”
I’m kinda upset that Windlord Thundaaran doesn’t send his air elemental armies to help the Uldum accord during N’zoth assaults.
Al’akir tried to conquer Uldum in the name of N’zoth. Fast forward a few years and now his successor is trying to stop N’zoth from conquering Uldum.
But alas that did not come to pass.