It seems strange that there are male and female Nathrezim. While the same can be said of the Venthyr and many other peoples of the Shadowlands, they have the reason of being the transformed souls of deceased mortals who had genders. While this question could be asked of the Stoneborn too, I don’t understand why the Nathrezim would have it.
In the original lore, the Nathrezim were demons of the Twisting Nether, thus immortal and not needing to reproduce. When some demons were retconned into aliens corrupted by dark magic - including the Nathrezim, the Nathrezim still didn’t seem to have genders or display sexual dimorphism.
With Shadowlands, female Nathrezim were introduced to the game and we got the retcon they’re a race created by Denathrius shortly after the Venthyr. There’s no evidence of sexual reproduction. They can shapeshift, sizeshift, mind control and voice change, so genders seem unnecessary for infiltration. What purpose is there for adding it? (Note: if it was the other way around, I would be asking why male Nathrezim were added).
Denathrius has a sense of aesthetics as seen with Castle Nathria’s appearance and what Castle would be complete without Noblewomen and Noblemen?
The highest Noblemen and Noblewomen would be the Harvesters and the lesser Noblemen and Noblewomen would be the Nathrezim!
Of course the Nathrezim got the Light sent down upon Revendreth’s Ember Ward forcing Denathrius to ascend Venthyr from Mortals and publicly “banish” the Nathrezim.
The Light’s assault necessitated the Mortal-made Venthyr to replace the Nathrezim.
There was some evidence of Demon reproduction before. Aggonis was the son of Aggonar. Not only that, but it has always been known that both Incubi and Succubi existed in lore. There were just different rumors spread by the Succubi, about why we never saw them. One such rumor was that they were kept as slaves. Since they are adding Incubi all over the place now, it is likely that the existence of those rumors will be retconned.
The point of me mentioning the Incubi, was that if female and male Sayaad exist, then they must reproduce, and if the Sayaad reproduce, why not the Nathrezim? If you wonder why Demons would need to reproduce when they regenerate in the Twisting Nether, keep in mind that this is not a quick process. The more soldiers you can send to fight while the other soldiers get “R&R,” the better.
This is literally just because Blizz has never really bothered to make female models for all sorts of things.
Female ogres? Female Krokul Draenei? Female Jinyu? The list goes on.
I don’t think we could seriously argue that females do not exist in these species. And yet they have never been represented. It’s literally just the same for Dreadlords.
If anything I think it’s a good thing we’ve got some representation lol
After reading this I find myself wondering, since the Nathrezim already have female models… would they be likely to become a playable race over the other races that just have a single gender model to represent them like Ogres, Broken, etc…?
Female Broken and Jinyu were added to Hearthstone. For example, the rare Zai the Outcast became a female Jinyu Demon Hunter. They can take such models and reproduce them.
I think Blizzard dropped the ball to not give Nathrezim females when they were made mortals corrupted by demonic magic… which came before they were rectonned (again) into infiltrators for a Death Titan. And for those other factions too.
On that note, I think we also need male Shivarra (or at least an explanation for why they’re all female along with Harpies).
Zekhan did become more included in the story due to fan reaction, and from I’ve heard so did Bwonsamdi for Shadowlands. However Denathrius’ survival was a result of Steve and other Blizzard staff really liking how Ray Chase voiced him.
And Denathrius and the other Eternal Ones were, presumably created by the First Ones.
Some characters do have the lore warped for them due to favoritism (coughSylvanscough), but not Zekhan. He was just more popular than the writers expected and they ran with it. Zekhan got a significant, but not lore-breaking, role in BfA. The most he got out of his newfound popularity was a bigger part, a reference to the “zappy boi” meme and a unique model.
True, Denathrius’ story helped warp the lore. He was supposed to be a one-off villain, but fans and devs liked him for various reasons (including Ray Chase’s stellar performance) so the story was changed so he wouldn’t be killed off and previous lore was retconned to fit him in. Though I don’t know what Denathrius being a good villain (I like him too) has to do with Nathrezim suddenly getting genders.
I think we should throw the Hesiod’s version of the beautiful siren Harpy out, and go with Ovid’s interpretation of birds with human heads of any gender. That should make everyone happy.
