Why does the name of the Nerubian Scarabs start with Anubxxx?
Are you talking about Spider Lords? Because no not all of them start with Anub.
It’s not all of them, but it is rather common. Obviously there’s the meta “reminds us of Anub’arak” reasoning, but in-lore presumably “Anub” has some meaning in the nerubian language that’s pertinent to the nature of the Spider Lords’ role in their society.
Other than the base nerubians (the “crypt fiends” when they’re undead), the different nerubian “types” are products of deliberate mutation (which would explain why the Ascended thing didn’t immediately strike them all as bizarre; at first it would have seemed like just another fancy new form being introduced like the rest), so it’s possible that the frequent use of certain name conventions among Spider Lords might come from them adopting new names in accordance with their intended role once they’ve changed.
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I was curious about the evolution plot point. Were we aware that the Spiderlords were evolved Nerubians before The War Within?
I can recall the Mantid with their ambershaping, but I don’t remember anything about Nerubians.
It looks like Players get that as a title if they Max out with the General. Anub then your name.
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It’s seemingly a new thing as of TWW. Admittedly we didn’t learn very much about how the still-living nerubians “worked” back in Northrend, so it doesn’t really contradict anything we already knew about them.
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I get that. I was curious if I missed anything. It does connect well with the ambershaping of the Mantid. Maybe all Aqir descendants practice it to some extent.
I do prefer the idea that the evolution and division of labor happened more naturally though. I suppose nothing saying both cant be true.
Wait, these various nerubian body forms are magically induced? That’s strikes me as unnecessary.
Polymorphism in eusocial insects is a very real thing. Maybe not as drastic as one individual looking like a scarab, and another like a flying mite, but a queen ant and a soldier look drastically different. Like that one species of ant that has special soldiers with huge heads to block off tunnels durring invasions.
I had assumed that was what was going on in nerubian society. So who’s signing up to be transformed into a near-mindless flying mite? Is that like a punishment, or what.
Also, Spider Lords. They have wing casings. Have we seen them fly?
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One might speculate that when the nerubians abandoned the Old Gods, they might have been comprised of only a few types of aqir and lost access to a bunch of “breeds” that used to spawn “naturally” among them (as naturally as one might account for them being shaped to fit the purposes of their masters), so they started doing their own evolutionary tampering and “conscription” of other large arthropods to fill the functional gaps that left in their society.
Which could make something like the big and tanky Spiderlord form their replacement for the aqir goliaths, and the dexterous skitterlings their replacement for the “worker caste” breeds.
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Yeah it sounds like “anub” is a title. I think the equivalent would be something like “Lord”. So either nobility or royalty (in the case of Anub’arak).
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The “mites” seem to be largely associated with those huge honeycombed nests in Azj-Kahet, so they may not be true nerubians, but rather a species of insect or arachnid that they’ve “conscripted” and modified for military purposes.
But yes, the genetic modification into varied forms has been established during TWW as a preexisting thing (as in, not introduced by way of the Black Blood being used to create the Ascended), which in this case arguably makes more sense, because the nerubians aren’t being portrayed as a eusocial species. Unlike the mantid, their queen isn’t the mother of them all and they reproduce in paired couples like spiders rather than all descending from the queen in the vein of ants, bees or termites.
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Also the Nerubians don’t have an Old God to uplift them as well like the Qiraji did with C’thun.
I assume if we do get an actual Azjol’Nerub in The Last Titan we might see their Transformatory area.
It’s also possible that when they left the Old Gods, they might have left behind whatever “breeder” type aqir had churned out eggs that directly produced myriad forms, and had to start their new existence by modifying themselves just to be able to independently reproduce as a race going forward.
If we get to see Azjol-Nerub again, it’ll be interesting to see if some of the things missing in Azj-Kahet were cultural peculiarities to the Northrend nerubians. Like their practice of mummification, which was why baseline crypt fiends have bandage wraps and why undead Spiderlords were called crypt lords, as part of how Ner’zhul swelled the Scourge’s ranks during the War of the Spider was by raiding the nerubian crypts and reanimating their interred dead. There isn’t really any indication I’ve seen of the Kaheti nerubians doing the same, so it may have just been forgotten, or perhaps it’s intended to be something unique to their northern brethren.
Though there’s also an indication of nerubian development over time moving “vertically,” with the current City of Threads actually sitting atop prior iterations that exist farther underground, so maybe they inter their dead down in the old cities. That would also explain why Azjol-Nerub was so much closer to the surface than Azj-Kahet if it’s the older kingdom of the two, and it would explain the existence of Ahn’Kahet, “the Old Kingdom” underneath it.
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In the City of Threads, the Nerubian spiderlord Old V’k tells us that since the War of the Spider, they now burn their dead to ensure their dead can’t be used against them. Though it’s unknown if they took the extra step to burn all their dead or just left the lower levels of the City of Threads alone or not.
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Smart. Honestly, at this point the rest of the world should do that.
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I kind of laughed a little to myself when I was reading through what the rewards for those Spider Contracts would be.
Anub Cursewords
Almost sounds like calling yourself “a noob”
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For Anub’arash, one of the bosses in the Silken Court encounter, replace the second a and you get Anub’trash
A noob trash.
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Ok that is going into my “never to use” titles.
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I don’t know if any have ever flown in WoW, but Anub’arak can fly in Heroes of the Storm in place of using a mount to get around the map. The flavor text for the ability is “In the years following the Third War, Azerothian scholars hypothesized that the wings of spiderlords were vestigal, incapable of flight. They were very wrong.”
Given his size, he’d have to have a huge set of wings to be able to generate enough lift to get him off the ground and keep him in the air
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