World of Warcraft's Old Gods Explained

hello and welcome to the direct spans i'm rich the quack and i hope you're having a less quick day than myself today i'm going to be talking about what i think the old gods are and i'm going to attempt to make this explanation as short as possible as every time i attempt to write this script the length just goes out of control in world of warcraft there are a lot of different ecosystems in the physical universe from ashenvale to stranglethorn veil winter spring to the swamp of sorrows all these ecosystems range in various different ways due to environmental factors enacted upon them they are very similar to irl ecosystems in that regard now unlike the real world world of warcraft has magic and magic does affect ecosystems two of the most extreme examples of this phenomenon are felwood and the scene grove as the name would imply felwood has been touched by foul magic and the results are quite obvious in a similar fashion the seeing grove within the nexus has practically been drenched in arcane magic and once again shows the effect of magic on ecosystems for a more nuanced demonstration of how magic and environmental factors affect ecosystems in world of warcraft i would highly suggest flying around draenor each zone and certain subzones within each zone demonstrate how diverse and varied ecosystems can be when affected by certain magics and or events that have shaped a world with this basic concept established do i think shadow magic the magic expressly related to the old gods can have the same effect on the ecosystems of world of warcraft frankly yes the obvious proof of this is the nightmare now at this point i haven't actually gotten into the old gods i've just re-established a very basic concept that has been in world of warcraft since the beginning the reason why i've done this is because when coupled with the next concept the old gods and asteroids will suddenly make a lot more sense while simultaneously becoming an incredible enigma sporemounds the living ecosystems to cut a very long story short when durian or came into existence the plant life and plant creatures of draenor became the eggpex predators of the planet the monumental amount of spirits spirit of life on the planet had suppressed the elemental presence and a lot of flora and fauna had started to grow the thing is the element of spirit has a specific effect on floor and fauna it accelerates growth evolution adaptation think about what happens to the gorm that don't naturally ingest anima and what happens to them when they do they get bigger more aggressive and if they find a potent enough source of animal they gained sentience this is exactly what happened on draenor except the creatures that became highly aggressive were described as a carnivorous invasive strain of plant and just overall they were a thousand times more effective and dangerous than the gorm fun side note in one of the weekly dungeon quests a broker describes the potential uses of the gorm one of these uses is as a weapon as in leave a few on a planet allow them to breed and watch the carnage anyway back to the sporemounds these plants due to their exposure to spirit went from creating vast and diverse ecosystems that spanned draenor in search of sustenance aka the creatures of draenor to ravenous living mountains of tangled brambles and noxious pods that eventually tapped into draenor's elemental energies directly while looking for water when these plants started to feed off these potent energies directly the final transformation happened sentience this carnivorous plant mountains ecosystems sporemounds literally gained and i quote a communal sentence hive mines these living hive mines which encompassed all of the flora on draenor and did connect two other separate hive minds were called the evergrowth cough basically the green black empire now with everything i've said so far there's a bunch of living shadow corrupted mounds of flesh creating bugs and fleshy abominations and feeding off the elements and a world soul make a lot more sense now and if the titans did figure out a way to reverse the corruption of certain plants is the origin of most of azeroth's plant life and the emerald nightmare's effectiveness and persistence also makes sense i mean i would really like to go into fossil archaeology and explain how revealing those artifacts are when cross-referenced with the concepts of sporemounds and draenor's flora but every time i try it takes nearly two hours so i'm really hoping at this point the idea of a shadow corrupted ecosystem spawn mount evergrowth turning into an old god is quite solidly understood because that is my base understanding of what the old gods are highly dangerous living ecosystems that were corrupted by the shadow that eventually became unrecognizable as plants and turn into the fleshy mounds that we know as the old gods with that said i can imagine there are a few people disappointed at this explanation especially considering the stool cosmic horror aspects that have been connected to the old gods and the fun possibilities surrounding those ideas the old gods just being angry plants does seem to take away from the grandeur of their villainy with that said i'm in the opposite camp as i mentioned before this explanation simultaneously explains the old gods but also makes them incredible enigmas and honestly where we may understand one aspect of their story there is still so much more to understand for example if the old gods forms are just shadow corrupted plants okay but what corrupted the plants in the first place or more interestingly what part of the ecosystem was corrupted and could this explain the fifth old god or on a more speculative note who is actually in control of these ecosystems the main reason for making this content other than it being overdue is that in the hidden history of the dress i mentioned the idea that yogg-saron may have been a poddling and or something akin to them and i was adamant that n'zoth was basically a squid the reason why i mentioned these is because if my understanding of the old gods is correct then there is a very real chance that it's possible to figure out what specific parts of each respective ecosystem were corrupted by the shadow and eventually turned into the old gods or in exhaust's case what may have taken over these ecosystems so from the top following the line of law related to nazar's origin we start with drain or fishing yes drain or fishing there is a fish on draenor called a fire ammonite an ammonite just for reference is basically a squid the reason the fire ammonite caught my attention is because they are fished out of lava the implication being that in some way these squids are some form of elemental skipping over to azeroth fossil archaeology there is the twisted ammonite shell which reads as follows ammonites are an extinct type of shelled squid a shell can be long like a spear or coiled in a variety of different ways while this fossil is of a small specimen they could grow quite large so it turns out ammonites existed on azeroth we then get this artifact from fossil archaeology imprint of a crack and tentacle these gigantic squid are servants of neptune the tidehunter and normally dwell in the abyssal more and not on azeroth the fact this imprint is fossilized in ancient stone suggests that the mighty creatures have been visiting this world for millennia now with a little inference i feel like it's safe to say we just got confirmation that the ammonites on azeroth were also some form of elemental specifically water elementals and that they likely turned into kraken when they grew larger and the reason why they went extinct probably had something to do with the black empire and or the creation of the elemental plane so at this point we have two types of elemental ammonites one of water one of fire but overall elementals that we know can eventually evolve into more complex creatures as shown by the history of the pro-drakes moving back toward we then run into the amorphous cognitives squid that likely evolved into the creatures we see due to exposure to the element of spirit and or some form of magic and what do you know on azeroth we have the merciless and where they are quite specifically related to shadow magic on azeroth the merciless basically share identical traits to the amorphic cognitives and also another fun fact a possible simplification of amorphous cognita is shapeless protector and just in case that hasn't clicked faceless naraki who do they serve what do they protect i'm hoping the similarities and the concept of how the merciless are basically face huggers or at least worse face huggers is starting to make sense because from here we come back to what i mentioned in hidden history of the drast and the likely evolutionary diversion of the merciless into zoteroids and kraken depending on their exposure to magic and as of being a byproduct of a lot of shadow corruption a long time ago and or just overall if the voidlords did truly have issues manifesting their power in the physical universe then corrupting small creatures in an ecosystem and working their way up the food chain is an incredibly smart way to spread that corruption without being noticed and from a storytelling point it also allows you to incorporate all the aspects of the game in storytelling aka another reason why battle pet law is rather interesting and can be quite revealing but anyway with himself being the proof of concept the next old god was really easy yashiraj god of seven heads it could be a metaphorical name considering the shah however i think it's a literal name and with that assumption mandragora literal plant hydras seemingly spawned from vines fit the possible origins of yashiraj quite nicely as another than being a hydra and a plant creature mantra gora seem to be the apex predators of primal ecosystems outside of the sentient creatures this possible position in the food chain likely explains yeshua's dominance on azeroth that said marsh walkers may be the exception to that rule but even then they don't seemingly share the same ecosystems and actually speaking of marsh walkers just to do my due diligence it is possible yes raj may actually be connected to these apex predators instead of hydrants how so well marsh walkers turn up in aardville however in arden world they are called silk striders it turns out these creatures originated from silkworms don't ask me how but that is the thing and funnily enough with this being the case strange velvet worm an artifact from cataclysm suddenly makes a lot more sense as well as naga's connection to his creatures considering i doubt spiders were the only source of silk for the highborn but anyway this possibility explains the serpent-like nature of yasharaj yet yashraj seemingly being divorced from serpents and actually overall relates him to the your manga worms so that's two old gods origins moving to see thunderoxeron their origins are still incredibly difficult to figure out i assume sea thorn may have been a lasher the assumption being that its eye is an impressive display of magical control and projection the only thing that even remotely proves this however is the fact that we fight see thun inside its stomach and there is only one plant-based creature that fits the description of being all stomach alasha as for yorkshire on i originally assumed he may have been some form of crab spider considering his seeming connection to the nerubians and the makura with that said i eventually settled on him possibly being a poddling and or possibly a warped amalgamation of podlings because they both share two key traits the first rate being the morse yorkshire one's body is basically an amalgamation of moors looking to feed on whatever gets close the podlings are basically the same bar being amalgamated together instead they act like a swarm of land piranha overwhelming whatever they choose to feast on the other trait which for me was the dead giveaway is that both are incredibly deceptive york and his deceptions need no introduction what yogg-saron managed to do with loken speaks volumes to how cunning the old god is the podlings however you don't really see their deception until ward and the gloom shade grow where they literally convince you to walk deep into their territory with the express intent of eating you alive this is a shockingly notable trait because pretty much none of the other plant life on draenor even the bhattani attempt such a feat couple this with the fact we fight inside yoxuran's brain and the podlings looking like they're designed to just be ahead and the overall similarities add up even though i will admit they are a bit sketchy so assuming everything i've said so far is correct then the old gods we fought or more precisely their forms likely originated from a lasher mandragora and ammonite and something akin to a poddling and over time due to the corruption of voidlords and shadow magic they grew into the massive horrors we fought here's the thing though if these creatures are the original forms of the old gods then as i mentioned the questions of when and who corrupted them comes to mind as well as who is in control and where i know that may seem like a self-explanatory answer considering most of the law we already know i want to challenge that knowledge by pointing out the dungeon that really got me thinking about this seat of the triumph rate the dungeon that was introduced in 7.3 that we knew was going to have some important law inside considering it was introduced during a patch in the case of sid of the triumph red the forefront of the story focuses on illyria and how she absorbs shadow naira's power and gains her shadow form in the background of this story however there are some very interesting implications made about shadow magic which raise a plethora of questions when you think about the old gods what am i talking about well basically sea of the triumphant seems to go out of its way to show that not all creatures of the shadow want into the physical universe not only that though it also goes out of its way to show that where the creatures of the shadow are dangerous preachers from the physical universe wielding shadow magic are just as dangerous and can also quite easily be the cause to avoid incursions of their own volition no whispers or madness required now at this point considering everything i've been through so far from spawn ants the origins of the old gods i'm hoping the question of who is really in control has started to sink in because when i personally started to reflect on what we already know about the old gods after considering all this most of the information we have seems to be either superficial contradictory or implicitly begs questions about other factors that might be at play for example we have one description of the void lords and the old gods intent being the consumption and destruction of everything in the universe and we even have the story of the ethereals dementius and koresh to back this up yet we also have the apparent reason why the old gods were created which was out of jealousy on the void lord's part because the titans could create life which strangely enough was actually backed up in nailotha by the moor of gourma and ilgenoth how so well from the top down the boss chambers of the morgue were the more itself which contained a chain before shiddar the insatiable a room that literally contained the equivalent of stomach bile the war of decay where we fight dressed together who for a lack of a better description seems to be what happens when intestines get really really angry and where i know you can imagine what comes next this is where things get weird on the last floor we get the spawning chamber just outside the chamber of rebirth which contained ilgonoth who throughout his fight keeps talking about his perfect body you dare scar perfection seems to be an incredibly twisted attempt at creating slash rebirthing life which fundamentally contradicts the voidlord's apparent purpose of consuming everything this isn't mentioning in ward we learn thanks to the pillars of fate the fiscal universe seemingly has a naturifying effect on creatures of shadow which makes them incredibly weak when they enter the physical universe now admittedly this could be thanks to the magic of order or it's a phenomenon that could give an explanation behind the void lord's need to constantly feed in the physical universe but even then it raises the question of why would they want into the physical universe in the first place is the ability to create life that important to them or are they genuinely that spiteful and i haven't even mentioned the enemy infiltration preface which seems to indicate shadow is apparently more preoccupied with seeing the future at its thousand truths than anything else not forgetting to mention it seems as if the naturalism have set up the shadow to be the enemy of basically every magic whether they are the true threat or not and that's just the shadow end of these questions remember what the sporemounds manage to do as in tap into magics gain sentience etc etc here's a question for you do you think a plant that is practically eating everything cares what type of magic it consumes or do you think it's just going to adapt to consume that magic the only magic and world of warcraft i cannot see plants willingly consuming is fel magic yet fell wood at the tainted forest in particularly the tainted forest and the second boss of cathedral of eternal night say otherwise not forgetting to mention considering i keep mentioning this line way too much life is seemingly as deceptive as death which once again i cannot overstate the fact that line likely came from an astrazine which is the equivalent of receiving a compliment from a master in a field of work for doing that field of work but more importantly in my opinion at least it's completely believable life is as deceptive as death or at the very least it's believable when it comes to nature in the physical universe a myriad of primal related zones in ward display how dangerous nature can be and its ability to mimic and adapt to whatever it encounters i mean to put the really quacked stuff out there i think it's very possible life may have screwed over a certain and possibly large portion of the shadow as in there may have been those in the shadow that wanted to create life and through a very nasty circumstances life may have been able to get a significant portion of the show's power and possibly trap them slash that power in the physical universe why you ask well if the small mounds and even the drust being a third party assimilating into nature anything to go by it's rather obvious life has aspects within it which are far from pure and only care about consumption and power the shadow is a magic after all so why not use it as a power source and what i think would be an utterly brilliant and terrifying twist is that all of those shadow worlds we saw in legion weren't actually the shadow but something from life that's hijacked the shadow i mean it's twists go it would also be a rather interesting reveal if the thing that landed on faizanti definitely fit the description of an old god and may have actually been an old god but in reality the shadow wasn't in control something else was but that's a quack possibility relate to its concept overall i've hopefully explained what i think the old gods are what your gods and azeroth have originated from and clarified that where these may be explanations there are frankly still way more questions than answers when it comes to the old gods sanko right the fifth of god i almost forgot okay so before chronic volume 3 there were to our knowledge four confirmed old gods this number of old gods also just happened to perfectly match the number of spawn mounds that had appeared on draenor so overall the assumption i was working off was the four small mounds correspond with the four old gods and azeroth and the described ecosystems of each sporemound gave an insight into the old gods on azeroth and where tala the fourth spawn mound on draenor was created from a fossilized route of one of the original three sporemounds its story for the most part just left interesting speculation around how one of the old gods may have been created and how one of them may return then chronicle 3 happened on the cover page of chronicle 3 we are shown an image of creatures that are quite likely the old gods the price of this image however is that there are five old god-like creatures not four so the implication seems to be that there were five old gods in azeroth at some point not just four obviously with this revelation there were a lot of questions the joke was even more questions arose at least about cahoon being a thing started to appear around this time so considering all the information given at the time this seemed to be indications that there were actually six old gods now g'huun being an old god got crushed pretty quickly with further leaks for as it turned out gahood was an experiment of the titans and if g'huun was going to fit into the olga category he would be considered an artificial old god gehun was likely created in the same manner as tala however what the titans specifically did to create g'huun is still up in the air here's the thing though if tala and gahoon have a relatively equal equivocation in their creation this throws off sporemound old god equification i mentioned earlier and so now we only have three original sporemounds and one artificial spore mound and five original gods and one artificial god numbers don't match and where it would be completely fair to say i'm focusing on these equivocations way too much called it quacked feral insight or feral quacked in sight i'm certain the small mounds and the cut content of pharalan in ward were supposed to connect the small mounds and the old gods to the point where i would never need to make this content so if there are five old gods i am certain there were fire spawn mountains on draenor and where at first i couldn't find anything and stopped looking i eventually ran into a coincidence that explained a lot the spies of iraq the whole zone has mountains designed in a very peculiar way the reason why is because the spiders of iraq weren't originally spies they were a spire as in singular during the arakawa civil war the monumentally tall landmark the spire of iraq was destroyed now initially the only other place i noticed that seemed to mimic such a design were the trees of talador but honestly that didn't make much sense because the trees in that forest likely ended up that way thanks to bhattani that raised tala in the area and they were direct enemies of the arakoa then as i was reading chronicle vol 2 and flying over frostfire ridge it finally hit me and my oversight was revealed in chronicle vol 2 there are actually four sporemounds mentioned the three that fight grond zhang bhutan and nanu as well as the unnamed one the one that grond tore out of draenor and sparked the creation of the three moving small mounds that would eventually fight him now my thoughts initially went to where did this sporeman die because each spawn mound left a zone on draenor initially i started thinking the zone may have been the spikes of iraq and the remains of the dead spawn mound may have been petrified over time and turned into the spire but that's when i started to notice the stone formations of frostfire ridge spires of stone inexplicably reaching for the sky not just volcanoes but literally twisted pointed stone reaching for nothing what would cause that not only that though the blood maul and blades by ogres one of fire and earth and the other of air and water seemingly changed due to their exposure to the elements not forgetting to mention frostfire ridge has scarce pockets of nature and no primals every other zone on draenor feels the presence of the primals yet frostfire ridge is seemingly the exception it's almost as if the zone is naturally dead at this point i hope it's clicked frostfire ridge is likely the location grande tore out the original small mound and in the process turn the zone into a frozen uninhabitable wasteland only suitable to those that can weather the scarce conditions and the elements the pointed stone is likely the dead and petrified roots of the spore mound giving even more context to how big grond and these small mounds were and also explaining why mineral-rich lava constantly pours out of the zone what happened when aman'thul tore yashiraj out of azeroth he created an unhealable scar that bled azeroth which considering everything we know now likely constituted a lot of azerite an incredibly powerful mineral and where i know draenor doesn't have the exact equivalent of azerite we know the lava has powerful properties because of the doom hammer which is made of the stuff and using a bit of intuition the blood more ogres and the ring of blood and frostfire ridge which is just an area surrounded by lava suddenly make a lot more sense and where i know this has only given us four original sporemounds on draenor with the notion that these massive roots have the potential to turn to stone after the small mountain has apparently died which is actually something corroborated in dwarven archaeology the overall history of the spy of iraq becomes a very interesting point of law considering if the pillar of apparent rock was that large and existed during the era of the first small mounds it's kind of strange it's not mentioned and or it's kind of strange that it's not the mountain that grond was created out of which then considering the other well-known bits of law about the spire leads to the arakoa who are technically birds and it just happens that two out of three of their gods are also birds and so with this in mind i have to wonder about the possible similarities between them and the story of the wild goddambiana mistress of birds and the world tree gahania with the mother tree and where i know the statement question is going to be isn't gahanir dead so are you saying the fifth old god is dead the short answer is yes technically kind of probably not for long why well fun fact resto druids were carrying around a branch of ghania all of legion and in the information given about gahanir in the order hall it's mentioned aviana has been attempting to restore the tree since cataclysm so yeah assuming my understanding of how the old gods are formed and their connection to the small mounds is accurate we may have at least partially confirmed what slash who the fifth old god was and how it may return also raising a crazy amount of questions about what actually happened to this old god and how it ended up becoming the mother tree of azeroth and with its destruction almost destroyed azeroth entirely and i mean thinking about it yashiraj yogg-saron seethun nazarth and ghania geez it's in the naming scheme and on top of that when you consider we have the battalion on the loose on hatsroth crazed extinction-minded keepers turning up in bfa possibly some really weird connections between the shadowlands the razer fan and the quilboar thross as well as the drastic turning themselves into pattani i'm starting to think that possibility of nimble dream x-pac i've mentioned in history of the drust or at least a patch is a lot more likely than i first thought thank you for watching you

Channel: The Dread Expanse

Views: 18,100

Keywords: old gods, world of warcraft, yogg saron, warcraft lore, wow lore, old god lore, world of warcraft lore, cthun, yshaarj, Nzoth, void lords wow, wow archeology, the dread expanse, wow lore explained, sporemound wow, Botaan, nannu, Zangar, 5th old god wow, The Old Gods Explained

Id: 2UmNIjFEktE

Length: 28min 47sec (1727 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 15 2021