by Blizzard
Grond considered the vines nothing more than a nuisance, and he ignored them. Yet as the tendrils tunneled deeper and deeper, he realized the true threat they posed.
By then, it was too late.
The vines wrenched open Grond’s existing wounds and caused new fissures to erupt across his body. The elemental giant collapsed beneath his own weight and crumbled to pieces. The bulk of his corpse formed a mountain range at the edge of a region later known as Nagrand.
During the battles between Grond and the Sporemounds, pieces of the leviathans had fallen to the earth and given rise to new types of creatures.
The seeds and roots that had tumbled from Zang, Naanu, and Botaan contained a small portion of their life essence. Many unique beings sprouted from this plant matter. The strongest were lumbering giants called the genesaur. A mane of thick fronds covered the skin of these four-legged beings. Despite their enormous size, they were incredibly swift and agile.
Much like the plant matter that fell from the Sporemounds, the rocks that toppled from Grond stirred with life essence. The largest boulders arose as sentient beings called the colossals. Though they were not as mighty as Grond, their shadows still loomed large over the land.
Much of the stony debris that fell from Grond also contained the primordial elements of fire, air, earth, and water. These energies gradually coalesced into pools of power, from which elemental spirits took physical shape for the first time in Draenor’s history. If not for the Sporemounds, this would not have been possible. They had devoured much of the fifth element, which allowed the elemental spirits to grow in power.
These spirits were initially few in number. But after Grond’s defeat, their population exploded. Vast quantities of elemental power had bled from his corpse. As a result, countless physical elementals emerged around Grond’s mountainous remains. Among them were the Furies. They were the most powerful elemental spirits on Draenor, and they dwelled near what remained of Grond’s head. Their names were Incineratus, the Fury of Fire; Aborius, the Fury of Water; Gordawg, the Fury of Earth; and Kalandrios, the Fury of Air.
The four Furies lamented the death of Grond, and they vowed to dwell in his corpse’s shadow forever. The place that these beings called home would be known by Draenor’s future mortal cultures as the Throne of the Elements.
When the colossals emerged on Draenor, hope swelled in Aggramar. Though the creatures were not as mighty as Grond, they were many. Aggramar was confident that they could destroy Botaan and bring balance to Draenor, but they would need his help.
Aggramar fashioned immense stone discs from Grond’s remains and branded them with titan runes of power. He fused these objects onto the colossals’ craggy hides like plates of armor. The discs flooded the giants with primordial energy, enhancing their strength and resilience.
The colossals’ empowerment had not come a moment too soon. With nothing to oppose them, Botaan and the genesaur had free rein over Draenor. The Sporemound and its followers were cultivating the Evergrowth and reclaiming territories destroyed by Grond.
Before Botaan could fully restore the Evergrowth, Aggramar unleashed the colossals. He had learned much about the Sporemound while watching it battle Grond. He knew its strengths and its weaknesses, and he imparted this knowledge to the colossals.
Just as the colossals began their march, Aggramar sensed a faint ripple of energy cascading through the Great Dark Beyond. Its source was unmistakable: it was the death rattle of a constellar. These celestial beings kept watch over the titans’ ordered worlds. For one of them to have perished was a dire omen. Something had vanquished the constellar.
Though his work on Draenor was far from over, Aggramar could not stay. He needed to find out what had killed the constellar and whether the nearby world was in danger.
Aggramar charged the colossals with defeating the Evergrowth in his absence. He bade them farewell, vowing he would return one day. Then he launched himself into the stars.
He would never see Draenor again.
The colossals would never know of Aggramar’s fate. They fully expected their titan master to return. The giants were determined to bring balance to Draenor before that happened, but the task ahead was immense.
The Evergrowth had enveloped much of the world. As the wilds had flourished, so had Botaan’s strength. The monstrous Sporemound now eclipsed Grond in size. It stalked through the dense jungles at the Evergrowth’s heart, surrounded by hundreds of fierce genesaur.
Using the knowledge shared with them by Aggramar, the colossals debated how to defeat the Sporemound. Launching an attack into the Evergrowth, where Botaan was at its most powerful, would be suicide. The colossals needed to draw the Sporemound and its followers away from the wilds if they were to have any chance of succeeding.
The colossals gathered at the Evergrowth’s borders and hacked away at the forests. Just as they had hoped, the giants drew Botaan’s ire.
The Sporemound rallied its genesaur and stormed toward the meddlesome colossals. As Botaan’s shadow loomed closer, the stone giants retreated into the barren ravines and hills beyond the Evergrowth, where they could use the terrain to their advantage.
THE FATE OF AGGRAMAR
After leaving Draenor, Aggramar discovered that the constellar had fallen to the Burning Legion. He hunted down this vast demonic army, only to find that it was led by his beloved mentor, Sargeras. Aggramar demanded an explanation from the corrupted titan, but he received none.
Sargeras would not abandon his Burning Crusade to extinguish all life in the cosmos. Not for Aggramar. Not for anyone.
The mentor and his protégé came to blows. Aggramar was no match for Sargeras’s fel power. He retreated from the battle and gathered the rest of the Pantheon to stop their fallen brother.
Despite his earlier confrontation with Sargeras, Aggramar clung to the stubborn belief that he could bring his friend back to the side of good. He tried to reason with Sargeras one last time. He tried to awaken whatever nobility still remained in his mentor’s soul.
In response, Sargeras annihilated Aggramar.
The stunned members of the Pantheon made war on Sargeras and his Legion. Their apocalyptic battle warped reality and darkened the stars.
In the end, Sargeras prevailed. He engulfed his kin in a storm of fel fire and shattered their physical forms. Only the titans’ disembodied spirits survived the attack. Though they escaped Sargeras’s wrath, they would never be the same again.
The Burning Legion was victorious.
Botaan followed without hesitation, seeing the colossals as little more than pale imitations of Grond. When the Sporemound strayed beyond the Evergrowth’s borders, the colossals attacked. Many of the stone giants had lain in wait amid the rocky landscape to mask their numbers. Now they emerged from hiding, and the full might of the colossals smashed into Botaan and its genesaur.
The war that followed would rattle Draenor for thousands of years. Control of the world constantly ebbed and flowed between the colossals and the Evergrowth’s agents.
Over time, these battles took their toll on the colossals. Many succumbed to Botaan and the genesaur, and their broken bodies littered the ground. Just as the stone giants had risen from pieces of Grond, new creatures called the magnaron emerged from the colossals’ remains.
The magnaron were not as large or as intelligent as the colossals, but they commanded great power. Veins of fire and raw elemental energies coursed over their jagged skin.
The colossals called on the magnaron to fight the Evergrowth, but they did not obey. By their nature, the molten giants opposed the Evergrowth, but they felt no loyalty toward their progenitors. Some of the magnaron battled genesaur they crossed paths with, but most of the others wandered into the barren tracts of Draenor to seek out areas of volcanic activity.
With their numbers dwindling, the colossals could do little to stop Botaan from spreading the Evergrowth. Unless the stone giants took drastic action, they were doomed to fail.
Most of
the colossals gathered to make a final stand. Their hides were worn and cracked by millennia of fighting, but the titan relics fused to their skin still contained immense power.
With this power, they would sacrifice themselves to bring balance to the world.
The colossals forged into the Evergrowth and swarmed Botaan. They dug their rocky hands into the Sporemound and clung tight to its giant form. In unison, the colossals unleashed the energy stored within their titan relics, channeling it through themselves and into Botaan.
A massive explosion ripped through the Sporemound and the colossals. The blast was so immense that it shattered their bodies and hurled the pieces across Draenor.
Botaan’s death rattle blazed through every root and leaf in the world. Lush tracts of forest withered, and hundreds of genesaur dropped dead where they stood. For one brief moment, the entirety of the Evergrowth trembled with the shared agony of Botaan’s annihilation.
Then there was silence. No thoughts or emotions passed among the world’s plant life. Botaan’s demise had destroyed the communal sentience that connected Draenor’s wilds.
The colossals had triumphed, but they had paid a terrible price. No creatures would ever arise from their remains. Drawing on the power of their titan relics had burned away all life essence from the colossals and seared their corpses. Over time, their broken bodies would sink into the earth and become veins of a nearly indestructible metal called blackrock ore.
Unlike the fallen colossals, Botaan’s body still contained potent life energies. Wherever fragments of the Sporemound fell to the earth, forests and jungles bloomed. The bulk of Botaan’s corpse formed a vibrant region that would later be known as Farahlon.
Genesaur and other plant-creatures would continue to thrive in these havens of life, but they would not have a Sporemound to unite them in purpose and guide their collective will.
The Evergrowth was no more, but that did not mean peace for Draenor.
For many ages after the end of the Evergrowth, the descendants of the colossals and the Sporemounds vied for dominance over the world. Magnaron and genesaur were not the sole inheritors of this conflict. New creatures of stone and root emerged to join the war.
When Botaan had exploded, its body had released countless spores teeming with the Spirit of Life. These spores drifted back to the world’s surface and warped whatever they touched. They clung to the hides of magnaron and weakened their bodies.
Some of the magnaron devolved into half-flesh, half-stone giants called gronn. These massive predators stalked the edges of the wilds, terrorizing lesser life-forms and devouring anything they could find. The gronn were only moderately intelligent, but they proved to be exceptional hunters. The jagged spikes that protruded from their skin served as weapons to kill their prey, and rocky plates functioned as armor to protect them from other dangerous creatures.
Due to the lingering effects of the spores, a small number of gronn continued degenerating into the one-eyed ogron. They were more intelligent than gronn, but they were not as strong. The ogron feared the gronn, and they viewed the hulking beasts as gods.
Just as some gronn had evolved, so, too, would a number of ogron. Over thousands of years, the residual spores would transform them into fleshy creatures called ogres. These brutes were smaller than their progenitors, and many of them would become slaves to the ogron.
From the ogres would arise yet another race—a people called the orcs. They were the smallest of Grond’s line. Yet what they lacked in size and strength, they made up for with a fierce intellect and a sense of community. By banding together, they survived the harsh wilds.
The first few generations of stone-born creatures—the magnaron, the gronn, and the ogron—were known collectively as the breakers. They laid claim to the world’s barren mountains and rocky chasms. Though the breakers were different in many ways, they had all descended from Grond. Their common ancestry did not make them allies, but it did infuse them with a shadow of the ancient giant’s influence. No matter how diverse their individual customs or ways of life were, all of the breakers were opposed to the verdant wilds.
The breakers met fierce resistance from the genesaur and other plant-based life. These creatures were known collectively as the primals, and they traced their lineage back to the Sporemounds.
Like the breakers, many of the primals arose in the aftermath of Botaan’s destruction. The numerous spores released from the giant’s corpse settled in the wilds. While these spores weakened the creatures of stone, they had the opposite effect on plant life.
The spores gave sentience to existing forms of plants. The jungles stirred as new beings took shape and walked the land. Some were small and simpleminded creatures called podlings and sporelings. The most intelligent and prolific new race was called the botani.
The bark-skinned botani spread through Draenor’s wilderness. Faint memories of the Evergrowth lingered in their minds, but they did not know the full truth of the Sporemounds or their battles with Grond and the colossals.
Even so, what little the botani knew of the Evergrowth still had a profound impact on their culture. They revered the genesaur as gods, seeing them as echoes of the great Sporemounds. The botani also rejected the idea of self, believing that their individual souls were part of a collective spirit that interlinked all plant life on Draenor.
Along with the genesaur and other plant-creatures, the botani devoted themselves to protecting the forestlands. As they did so, they inevitably clashed with the breakers.
REMNANTS OF THE COLOSSALS
Legends say that a small handful of colossals survived the battle with Botaan. They, too, were affected by the spores that spread throughout the world. As the millennia passed, their bodies diminished and became fleshy.
When mortal civilizations later came to power on Draenor, these colossals were long dead. Creatures such as the orcs would discover their bones and use them to fashion weapons, dwellings, and trinkets. They believed that the giants’ remains contained power.
For many long ages, sporadic battles erupted between these two factions, but neither side could ever destroy the other. Their endless conflict slowly carved out the borders of the world and brought balance to Draenor. Over time, the breakers asserted complete control over lands such as Gorgrond, Frostfire Ridge, Nagrand, and Arak, while the primals cultivated the wilds of Tanaan Jungle, Zangar Sea, Farahlon, Shadowmoon Valley, and Talador.
The Spirit of Life that had saturated primordial Draenor had birthed many kinds of animals. Nearly all of these beasts had been consumed by the Evergrowth and the Sporemounds.
With the end of the Evergrowth, animal life had a chance to take hold in the world again. The scattered remains of Botaan had become forests teeming with the Spirit of Life. These energies transformed the land and accelerated the development of new species.
The first beasts to arise were enormous creatures that wielded extraordinary power over the land. Some of them had an affinity to the nature magics that the botani and other primals had mastered; others tapped into Draenor’s elemental energies. Still others reached beyond the veil of reality, touching the forces of Light and Void that permeated the cosmos.
Despite their considerable powers, Draenor’s giant animals faced a daunting struggle for survival. The botani ensnared them for use as food to nourish the wilds, or to infest them with fungi that transformed them into the primals’ minions. Elsewhere, the gronn and ogron hunted the beasts like game. The animals most suited to thrive on this unforgiving world were winged species that could soar above the reach of the primals and the breakers.
Most of Draenor’s avian races developed in Arak. A massive stone spire towered over the region’s dense woods and coastal scrublands. There, three godlike creatures took form: the majestic fire bird Rukhmar, the vicious wind serpent Sethe, and the cunning raven Anzu.
These animals were each powerful in their own right. Rukhmar’s spirit was touched by the primordial force of Light. Her connection to this energy allow
ed her to summon enchanted flames that could either destroy life or nourish it. White-hot fire constantly rippled over her reddish-orange wings without ever singeing her.
Sethe’s wings were short and leathery, and he could not fly as high as Rukhmar. He had an affinity to the shadow energies—the Void—that existed in the universe.
Anzu was much smaller than Rukhmar and Sethe. What he lacked in physical power, he made up for with a keen intellect. Ever curious, Anzu investigated the magical ley lines that crisscrossed the world, and he discovered arcane magic.
For many years, these three creatures largely kept to themselves. They eked out an existence in Arak, constantly fending off attacks from primals and breakers. Only Anzu dreamed of a better future for himself and his feathered kin.
Anzu called on Rukhmar and Sethe to work together to transform Arak into a sanctuary for birds of all kinds. Why should they live under the oppression of primitives like the primals and the breakers when they could rule this land for themselves?
As one, Anzu and his new allies drove the children of stone and root from Arak. With the breakers and the primals gone, the region flourished into a haven for winged creatures. Rukhmar, Sethe, and Anzu settled in as caretakers of the land and its varied species.
Rukhmar developed close ties with the most beautiful birds: the kaliri. She treated them as her own beloved children. She and the kaliri spent much of their time perched at the apex of Arak’s spire, basking in the warmth of the sun.
Though Rukhmar was noble, she was also arrogant. She saw herself as the epitome of grace and beauty among the world’s creatures. She never set her talons on the ground, and she regarded the creatures that dwelled in and around the forests with disdain.
