Weird idea, I know. But I’m doing the campaign and during the quest where we go into the transformatory there’s a mural on the wall that depects an Old God at an altar surrounded by three different types of what seem to be its servants. One type are N’raqi. Not much notable about them, the other two however, are strange. One of them resembles the “pack” bugs that we see the Nerubians using. The other ones seem to resemble Nerubians… but without the spider abdomens. Instead they stand on two legs, similar to the ascended, only they have just two arms and their faces aren’t as humanoid, instead being clearly Nerubian with two mandibles.
On the mural we also see what seems to be a procession of the two non-N’raqi races up the altar towards the Old God’s waiting maw at the top.
Could this mural be showing the genesis of the Nerubian race? Their former Old God masters taking two creatures and combining them?
I can’t link in my posts and I don’t want to dodge the rule in an OP, but you can find the mural I’m talking about by searching “Transformatory Mural WOW”. It also appeared in the pre-release animated short as well.
I’m not seeing what you are, sadly google search results are tuned based on past searches.
If you want to link to something without that privilege level just add an ellipsis “`”, usually found on american keyboards in the upper right just below the escape key, to the front and back of the url you want to link.
https://www".reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Fold-god-mural-in-the-city-of-threads-v0-kfk758cvr9pd1.png%3Fwidth%3D2475%26format%3Dpng%26auto%3Dwebp%26s%3De9093397d5845332c348bb10516a970c7d126cb
That’s the mural in question.
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Well, that was a bit of a mess, but I found it.
I see the figures you are talking about. Rather interesting indeed.
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Could be the skittering swarmers, but their proportions are off if that’s the case.
Or they could be a different form of Aqir that we never saw. Either they all died out during the Ordering or the troll Aqir war.
Now that you mention it, modern Nerubians do look like someone smashed the two creatures in the mural together.
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I hope the mural ends up being more than just throwaway art. I’m really enchanted by the idea of a 5th Old God that was orders of magnitude more clever and subtle than the others, and has managed to erase any evidence of its existence from the face of Azeroth.
Completely forgotten and lost to time, never imprisoned, pulling strings so gently that it’s imperceptible, and still alive. The last shred of evidence that it ever existed in a forgotten mural in a buried city, a small and seemingly insignificant loose thread that undermines its almost perfect execution.
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They look like a taller version of the skittering form. Possibly based on earlier artwork before the in game model was finalized? Possibly an ancestral form of the Aquir?
What exactly is going on in this image? The faceless ones and these skitter-like beings are standing with spears and swords bared and shields up, escorting large scarab-like insects towards the maw of an old-god. All under the light of what we can now reasonably assume to be a darkened essence of Azeroth’s world soul.
You may be onto something. This may be the inception of the nerubian race. A silent history on the walls, told in a very At the Mountains of Madness style bas relief.
I would feel some kind of way if a 5th Old God ended up looking that similar to N’zoth. Speaking of, I’m still holding out hope that we didn’t kill N’zoth. Given how much of a mastermind schemer he is supposed to have been, it would be on brand for his “defeat” to be part of the plan.
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I got around to doing City of Threads, which happens to feature the same chamber with the mural. In the leadup to it, the Executor says that she’s at the “Former site of our sacred evolution” and at the beginning of the boss encounter we see two normal nerubians transformed into both a Lord and a “Priest” Nerubian variant.
The implications for this are interesting. I always assumed that Lords and Priests were born as a variance on the normal Nerubians, but it seems to imply that they’re actually normal Nerubians who have earned the right to be raised into those roles.
Which makes sense. The Ascension is basically a corrupted version of what happens to make Lords and Priests which honestly makes alot of sense. It’s no wonder Nerubians are open to something like that, it’s part of their culture already.
And, if my theory on the mural is right, it’s not just part of their culture, but the origin of their species as it currently is.
Does the term “Sacred evolution” refer to making normal Nerubians into the two “higher” nerubian variants, or does it refer to their race being made out of two seperate species…
I think this is an interesting observation with merit, and the discussion is informative….
But my mind goes to how this may relate to the future.
It almost sounds like a solution to Playable Nerubians/Insectoids in the same vein as Dracthyr having two forms… but with a build up.
Part of me suspects/hopes he makes a play for the World Soul by trying to co-opt Xal’s plan. That or I can see Xal binding the Souls of the Old Gods to “make up for their mistakes” and use them as attack dogs against us
I’d like him to be the only one clever enough to realize that trying to claim Azeroth is a death sentence/fool’s errand, so he just took the path that would allow him to continue existing. I do not generally like how WoW’s approach to foundational elements of the setting (like Old Gods) is to turn them into raid bosses. It has the undesirable result of eroding the fertile ground for storytelling, imo, which eventually necessitates spinning off new things (like MacroTitan First Ones! gag)
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