"It be certain we were something before we became Trolls, and likely gonna be something after."
Unfortunately, it goes into no detail and Bwonsamdi simply remarks that Loa precede Trolls. He also makes mention of Loa favoring the Trolls because of their natural spirit.
Doubt it. That would make them descendants of Gonk, which would be weird with how their religious structure works. Gonk would probably receive much more worship if this was the case. Also the Raptors in Azshara were experimented on by Goblins to be dramatically more intelligent than normal raptors.
Their new skin tone is really all they need to protect them from the sun.
In fact it’s different. We know that Farraki culture has some pretty harsh things on it’s own, even for troll standards. Resurrecting their dead for labor and war is one example.
Blood magic is another example. Nothing gets wasted and everything is getting used.
I don’t know why. The tribes went in to different directions to fight the Aqir and then settled there.
There are other animals than reptilians with regenerating abilities and now you’re going of the rails for two reasons. Trolls are mamals. It’s fantasy. It’s not supposed to make sense.
True, thank you. I still had in mind that it had to be something with Bwonsamdi but I couldn’t’ pin point the location.
This seems very unlikely to me. Besides there are raptors building something like huts in the Barrens.
Isn’t theorized that goblins also might be some sort of troll offshoot, though? We know that living on an island may lead to dwarfism among a species in real life, combined with magic & magical ore & possible eldritch interference, who knows what that leads too? I didn’t follow BFA lore too closely beyond the war campaign, so I don’t really know the significance of Gonk & his relation to troll religion other than he’s a BIG OL’ RAPTOR/T-REX, maybe that has something to do with his prominence and raptor/reptile to troll evolution?
Theorized it was, from fans. They were slaves to the Zandalari for a thousands of years, the source is again Chronicles.
One Facles One claims he was there during the Goblins creation.
It hasn’t any effect on Trolls, well not like on Goblins. The Zandalari used it for some Voodoo rituals and that’s pretty much it. That’s also why Goblins even became smart, because the Zandalari let them mine that stuff.
Nope. They’re some kind of mutant from experiments performed by Mimiron that share an ancestor with the Pygmies. They WERE enslaved by the Trolls though for a hot second. No real connection beyond that.
As for Gonk, he’s the patron of Troll druids, both Darkspear and Zandalari. Lord of the Hunt, Master of Shapes and all that. While an important facet of Zandalari religion, he competes with other Loa, such as Pa’ku and Shadra, for followers. Rezan held the spot of Loa of Kings, being the most important Loa in the pantheon until his death and replacement by Bwonsamdi. However, Gonk receives little attention from the lesser tribes, only the Darkspear have any connection, making him irrelevant in the vast majority of Troll pantheons.
I’m not familiar with the new forums so I don’t know how to break a post down the same way you did, but to your first point, it’s fair. They didn’t need to do much to adapt to a desert lifestyle.
2nd: Isn’t that pretty similar to the Darkspear, albeit a bit more extreme? Cannibalizations, Resurrections, and Zalazane practiced some dark voodoo magic to create his zombie army. He was a Darkspear Troll.
3rd: There’s no reason needed, it’s just natural migration, you spread out to hunt, spreading out leads to new tribes branching off of the origin tribe. Argentine ants all came from 1 colony, then spread to multiple continents, eventually forming their own ‘tribes’ across the landscape.
4th: Raptors seem most likely due to physiological similarities. It is fantasy, I’m trying to create my own fantasy universe & I like poking holes in things, but I want my universe to make sense from someone on the outside looking in. So if I can find a reasonable explanation for something in another thing I love, I’ll take it. Raptors seem a good candidate unless you can produce a more viable one.
5th, Not me.
6th. I think raptors are the best bet for an extinct troll ancestor. Modern raptors are a distant cousin.
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Not really. Zalzane was an outcast who went against Darkspear traditions. Resurrecting the dead is a big no, no for them, because Bwonsamdi is their tribes most influential loa and he doesn’t like that one bit.
Cannibalism was the same, that’s true, before the Darkspear joined the Horde.
But there are more differences. For example: The Farrkai follow Mueh’zalla as their death loa, not Bwonsamdi. And they also have as the only tribe / sub species a holy hydra, perhaps loa thing, we know off.
Their blood magic is also unique. It was empathized that they see those things as necessary to survive on a dessert environment.
It may not seem like much, but I think there are quite some unique features to them.
I need a source for the first statement you need, that goblins are mutant experiments, I haven’t seen that, but if it’s word of God, I’ll accept it.
As for Gonk, I get that, but he still became prominent & recognized for good reason in Troll history, I feel like y’all 2 are getting caught up in semantics when I want to talk bigger picture stuff, the long term stuff. I’m not really interested in word of God, confirmed canon. I want to theorize. I know that we don’t know the origin of trolls, I want to talk about possibilities, because I want to create my own universe, heavily inspired by WoW & other fantasy universes, but create something more grounded & realistic. So I want to know, what can we theorize about the evolution of Azeroth’s native life, and come to logical conclusions about it?
Sure thing. The Mimiron thing comes from Chronicles 1. Don’t have the book itself to quote it. Sharing an ancestor with the Pygmies comes from the old Warcraft magazine. https://wow.gamepedia.com/Goblin has both pretty early.
Eh. The Trolls are extremely religious and attached to their gods. If Gonk was a father deity he would be recognized as such by all Trolls instead of a minority, and Gonk would likely not hide such information as it directly leads to more worship and more power. Rezan does not fare much better in this regard, with many in the lesser tribes not even knowing his name. Oddly enough, the most worshiped Loa we are currently aware of are Hir’eek and Shadra, who are worshiped by the Zandalari, Jungle, and Forest Trolls tribes.
However, if you want to theorize again it points to elemental descent to be a true native of Azeroth as they have always been billed. Chronicles mentions that the Proto-drakes are only one of the creatures of elemental descent, which means that it is indeed possible for mortal creatures to be shaped from escaped elementals and that the Proto-Drakes were not the only species birthed this way.
Otherwise, they may have simply risen as they are now from Freya’s tinkering like many of the other creatures of Azeroth, including the Wild Gods.
Their blood magic is also a natural evolution of what was already present, it didn’t just pop out of existence, it was a natural extension which was already present through natural means, necessity, so we already know they the tribes shared a similar core, origin culture, which then branched off to become what we know. That’s the only reason Zalazane was able to learn it in the first place if he grew up & only knew the echo isles, durotar & stranglethorn, he didn’t learn that information from know where, or he did because it’s a natural conclusion to come to due to troll cultural practices that we know of. Cannibalism was looked down upon after joining the Horde but it’s something we know that Trolls do, and I wouldn’t put it past raptors to do the same, feed on any source available to them. I don’t know why you’d be totally against entertaining to the possibility that trolls are the distant relative of an intelligent, tusked, extinct raptor species. That’s what the thread is really about, entertaining possibilities, that’s what I remember this forum being for, discussing the lore & creating ideas.
I go with this too. We know for a fact proto-dragons evolved from elementals so we know it’s possible, and Chronicle says more species did too but doesn’t specify which. It would explain the rocky growths on the Zandalari’s skin too.
The problem with raptors or any reptilian or saurian ancestry is that Trolls are mammals. They produce milk, bare live young, and have fur and hair.
Then you have The Titans seeding life on planets and experimenting on living beings. Who knows if they had some sort of hand in their creation.
Finally we have the Loa question. Mueh’zala could be the progenitor in the same way as some Wild Gods created mortal races. Or it could be the Loa came together and created Trolls to have subjects.
I think its better left a question than let Blizz make some lame answer. Lately they have been taking some of the mystique out of the story by explaining too much.
I mean, the line between reptile and mammal gets increasingly fuzzy once you work your way down the family tree to basal synapsids, and their amniote kin before the split.
And that’s not even accounting for magical shenanigans. Azeroth already has a reptilian lineage that came to be because a bunch of vaguely humanoid shaped beings of primordial elemental energy got locked out of their new house, and randomly grew organs.
I shouldn’t be suggesting this here, but nearly all the books are available in pirated form for free.
That’s how I got them at a point when I couldn’t afford to buy them.
Yes! Trolls also have a close relationship with Dinosaurs and in Mists are seen riding completely Stone Direhorn during their invasion. They are called Primordial Direhorn so I wonder what a Primordial Troll would look like?
It would be interesting if that connection stemmed from a common ancestry.
I wonder where the Trolls came from, as well. I hope they have as little connection to the Titans as possible. But then what exactly are they?
There is a good point to be made that Dragons are sort of a Mammal/Reptile hybrid depending on the story. They also can change their forms. Similarly, the Trolls and the Night Elves who spawned from them are able to tap into Druidic shapeshifting. Certainly, they are different things, but… perhaps there is a connection. Along the hybrid theme, it is also possible that Trolls are the spawn of an Ape Loa and a Reptilian Loa who mated.
On a different note… Trolls have a belief in reincarnation, and their Elven offshoots have all sorts of afterlife forms, such as Banshees and Wisps. It appears the Trolls and Elves will share alot of story in Ardenweald. They discuss evolution, in Azerothian terms. Could Trolls be cosmic entities from other worlds who are sort of spawned into places, and evolve over time? As if, for example, they have a far off distant root with Nathrezim or Draenei or other creatures, but evolved differently depending on the world they spawned on after a cycle of rebirth?
As far as Goblins… I wonder if we will find lore connecting the Vulpera with the Goblins. Maybe there was a connection and a divergence, somewhere, long ago. Similar to Mogwai like Gizmo and Gremlins like Stripe.
Depends on what is meant by natural. Trolls are a product of the Titans as well. No natural life could come about on Azeroth with the Elementals and then Old Gods. But the different engines and Well of Eternity essentially ramped up life after the Titans did some seeding.
The only native life would be the Elementals and beings descended from Elementals like proto-drakes.
There aren’t many know candidates that date back to that period when Trolls arose.