If 1,200 is accurate, the Orcs might be the earliest race to have found Shamanism in a relative sense. Orc Shamanism is 800 years old and the race is 1,200.
Whereas the first Humans are ~15,000 years old, yet Kul Tiran Tidesages only date back 2,700 years. So relatively speaking it took the Humans longer to figure it out. I don’t know about the other races.
I think it is tied between Tauren, Trolls, and Pandaren for actual oldest. The Jinyu Waterspeakers were prevalent in Pandaria even before the Mogu Empire, which was 12,000+ years ago (iirc), so they’re pretty old too.
This. Night elves are the first druids, but we’ve had yaungol use nature magic before them. It’s the same deal. Lei’shen was shooting lightning bolts a long time ago. Just because he used the elements, doesn’t make him a shaman.
I’d say these are the important aspects of shaman.
-element usage. Water, earth, fire, wind, etc. simple. Pretty much able to bend elements to some degree.
-communion with the spirits/ancestors/and the elements. Another trademark shaman ability. Even dark shaman hear the elements, they just ignore them and force them to their will.
The trolls definitely commune with the spirits, but is that just a shadow hunter/voodoo thing, and not so much shaman? There are cases of trolls using the elements, but they’re more interested in talking to their loa then any elemental spirits.
Compare that to the orcs beseeching the elements to decimate Goria, and you can see a clear difference.
This is how I view Troll Shaman. More of a witch doctor feel. Hell, even the Horde units in WC3 had different takes on Shaman, depending on race.
Tauren had spirit walkers and the chieftain; Trolls had the witch doctor and shadow hunter; Orcs had the plain old Shaman and Farseer. The WoW Shaman is a mixture of all of these.
Where would groups like ogres and kobolds fall into this? I don’t know how much true ancestor worship either of them do, but they both have very strong ties to elemental magics (koblods may be a bit limited in their fields though).
(Do the ogres know conclusively that their ancestors are the orgron, gronn, and magnaron? It’s a bit of a weird situation when communing with your ancestors means approach the giant rock monster and hope it doesn’t smash you into the earth.)
Shamans definitely seem to have a broader criteria to be considered shaman. For druids, the hurdle is strictly being able to access the Emerald dream. Which is why harvest witches and other nature users are more “Proto druids” than full fledged druids.
I’m not sure. We might not know enough of their cultures for it. Kobolds look to be short lived and hardly sentient, I doubt they have interest in ancestor worship, or anything besides candle
I can’t remember if Ogres care about ancestor or the spirits. They did try to take over the circle of elements and use it for power, so they at least have that going for them.
I don’t think the communion with elements is a trademark Shaman ability. At least not prior to WoW.
It’s been mentioned that WoW Shamans draw inspiration from Witch Doctors, Shadow Hunters, Orcish Shaman, Farseers, Chieftains, and Spirit Walkers, and among them, the only Elemental abilities are the Orcish Shaman’s Chain Lightning and Lightning Shield abilities. Both possessed by Orcs.
WoW expanded on this by making Shamans not just wielders of Lightning, but Fire/Earth/Water/Air and really pushing those elemental connections. Especially in regards to Orcs.
But not every person who wields lightning/air/fire/water/stone themed magic really has much Shaman coding or any of those other abilities. In fact, in Warcraft 3, it was mages that threw around fire spells and summoned elementals.
What’s most important to being a Shaman is a relationships to the spirits- and element spirits are usually treated as an extension of that.
You raise great points. My only issue with that route is that it’s wayyy too broad. Every culture in wow has some relationship with spirits. If that’s the bar, then things like Auchenai priests and Night elves could be Shamans. And the answer to the thread would be Draenei. They’ve been doing it since Argus.
The elements are core to the shaman class now. It’d be odd to ignore it or sideline it when creating criteria for shaman.
IIRC the Frostwolves didn’t. They continued practicing until the elements abandoned them because of the rest of the Horde’s actions on Draenor and the arrival of demons and their magic.
Not every culture has, as a general cultural tradition, a relationship with ancestral spirits, but of the ones that do, yes, they can be Shamans. It is, afterall, more or less the original model for religion on Azeroth.
Even the humans of Azeroth were at one point a more Shamanistic culture before adopting other traditions that placed more emphasis on the Light and other aspects and less focus on talking with great great great grandparents/culture heroes.
And Night Elves? Well wisps certainly exist, but Night Elves don’t have any kind of relationship with them. They don’t, as a general cultural practice, summon/speak with/visit them.
It’s also worth noting in terms of stuff like Wisps and Undead- these primarily inhabitants of the physical world of Azeroth or the area between Azeroth and the Spirit Worlds/Shadowlands. They are not the souls of people have moved on to the Afterlife/Spirit World/Shadowlands proper.
If you think “spirits” is broad, then “deals with the elements” is even broader. Every culture on Azeroth has some kind of tradition of magic involving lightning/fire/ice/wind/earth/water magic.
As mentioned before, summoning elementals was originally a Mage thing in the RTS.
Shaman can use Nature Magic and have just as much if not more capability to manipulate plants as Druids do. Druids chiefly use healing Nature Magics, Astral Nature Magics, Solar Nature Magics and Animal Forms!
Of course the masters of Plant-based Nature Magic manipulation are Botanists not Druids!
Honestly the biggest surprise for me is that Kul Tiras is 2,700 years old. Something tells me Blizzard didn’t reconcile the dates between Chronicle and the newer Kul Tiras lore all that well, because that would mean that the Arathi Empire was intact for less than a century, since Kul Tiras is specifically stated as a former colony of Gilneas.
And they share similar accents…
On topic, I’ll echo the assertions that it’s Trolls who have the oldest brand. While a contender might be Draenei, since Argus is a Titan world as well and thus would probably have had a healthy amount of elemental spirits as well… we know nothing about Eredar history on Argus before Thal’kiel’s failed attempt at a takeover. Since Draenei seem to have a natural affinity for Shamanism, it could very well have been a staple in their early history before they discovered Arcane. Alas, we don’t know, and instead there’s now even doubts as to when they actually left Argus…
You’ve been constantly referring back to Warcraft 3, don’t ignore that the wisps are one of their main units. Their society runs with them. Not to mention every night elf ruin that’s been disturbed and have angry ghosts. Calming those spirits and giving them rest is a shaman thing.
Why does it matter? Shamans deal with both kinds of spirits, shadowlands or not.
The rts games are almost 20 years old. Class identity has changed since then. They aren’t “Word of Law” and never have been.
Mage spells aren’t communing with the elements, they’re just manifestations of arcane. One of their elementals is just a construct, not a child of Neptulon. Shamans talk to the elements.
Nobundo became the first Draenei shaman by hearing the elements and listening to them. That is key. That openned the bridge for the BC era Draenei to have shamans.
Like I said earlier, just using elements doesn’t make you a shaman. Just dealing with ghosts doesn’t make you a shaman. It’s the combined use that separates something like Farseer or witch doctor to Shaman.
Which is why I said multiple times talking to them is the outlier, not just using them.
I reference back to Warcraft 3 constantly because this is really when the concept of Shamans and Shamanistic societies are introduced to the game lore. Before Warcraft 3, there were no Tauren, Trolls had no Voodoo, and Orc magic revolved around Demons and Undead. The entire aesthetic and most iconic Shaman abilities in WoW are inspired, if not taken directly from Warcraft 3.
The relationship between Night Elves and Wisps (both introduced in Warcraft 3) was not one of the living and the spirits of their ancestors. It’s even mentioned in the unit description that they aren’t even sure if they were the souls of the formerly living, which makes it clear that the Night Elves didn’t spend much time actually talking to them. And it’s only weakened since. Similarly, the faiths rooted in the Light are less interested in talking Undead (who aren’t really the original person as they were in life) and more interested in cleansing/banishing/destroying them. Necromancers and Warlocks are more interested in controlling undead.
Shamans talk to the spirits of the ancestors. They intentionally go back and consult the ancestral spirits dwelling in the Spirit World/Shadowlands for guidance and draw on them for strength and try to honor them in their lives. That is a very specific kind of relationship.
You mentioned the difference between an Shaman who channels some water to heal and a Frost Mage summoning a Water Elemental being that the Orc is actually talking to the elements, while the Mage sees the Water Elemental it as more of a tool.
The Shaman’s relationship with spirits of their ancestors are similarly involved.
And yes, the game has changed by expanding “spirits” to also include elemental spirits. Probably because Shamans needed something to give them flashy magic- as originally their magic was more support-oriented and their personal contributions to combat consisted a lot more of simply smacking things with a weapon.
But thinking that a Shaman that doesn’t commune with air/fire/water/earth elements is no Shaman is a mistake.
But, they do, as a cultural practice speak and visit with their non-wisp ancestors. There’s this quest: https://wow.gamepedia.com/Remembering_the_Ancestors
Which culminates in said ancestors showing their satisfaction at the offering. The Night Elves are also co-founders of the Lunar Festival (alongside the Tauren, Firbolg, and Earthen), the entire point of which is to speak with your ancestors and heroes and elders of the past.
Speaking of Earthen, Dwarven shamanism is something I want explored, as I have several questions. When did the Wildhammer and Dark Iron clans develop shamanism? Or is it something ancestral to them, that the Bronzebeards abandoned? Earthen might be another dark horse contender in the early Azerothian shaman race.
This is something I’ve long thought about. The Earthen are titanforged vanir (made of stone) and lost none of their size when becoming dwarves. The original mechagnomes also maintained their size when becoming gnomes.
But the iron vrykul, after becoming fleshy, eventually gave birth to the first Humans who are much smaller by comparison. If any of the titanforged mortals have a natural affinity for the earth, it’s the dwarves. They are children of stone in a very similar vein as the Orcs.
If you’ve done the Dwarf heritage armor quest (which I highly recommend if you’re a sucker for lore), it further discusses the link between the dwarves and the earthen, the ancient armor of the mountain king, and how despite being afflicted by the curse of flesh, dwarves have lost none of their ability to become stone at will.
imo, it is no coincidence that a dwarf was chosen as Speaker of Azeroth.
Like I said before, it’s really a matter of scope, scale, and the actual depth of the relationship.
“Remembering the Ancestors” doesn’t actually involve much interaction with the Ancestors. The player makes a rice cake offering at a temple of the Moon and receives a faint sensation of approval.
The Lunar Festival is just WoW incorporating the real world Chinese New Year into the game in the same way they incorporate Valentine’s Day, Christmas, Easter, Halloween, Thanksgiving, and even Oktoberfest.
As I recall the first Draenei shaman of Draenor extraction did not appear until after the fall of Shattrah created the first Broken. Some of these make their way through the Dark Portal into the Black Morass before it became the Blasted Lands, and later the Swamp of Sorrows. Presumably the first non-Broken Draenei Shaman appear after the crash of the Exodar on Azeroth.
The Argus Shamen probably have a simmilar origin, exposure to Fel energy changed them to Broken and at that point one or some of them in their desperation found a channel to the Elements.
And we see at least as much of a relationship out of them as we do from the modern day MU Orcs. And certainly moreso than other races with access to the class, like Goblins.
And yet, it still has in-game lore for why it occurs, and the rituals and ceremonies involved.
