TenTonHammer

“Shades of Grey” has posted a very interesting article on the possible history behind Cataclysm:

The Old Gods

One of the largest players to date in World of Warcraft lore are these mysterious figures called the Old Gods. If you are a raider, chances are you’ve met and killed a couple of them in your raiding lifetime – C’thun, down in Ahn’Qiraj, and Yogg Saron, up north in Ulduar. But where did these Old Gods come from, and why are they here?

The Old Gods are, simply put, pure evil. These are malevolent deities that were said to have ruled Azeroth in the past – long before the Well of Eternity, long before the introduction of the night elves. While the nature of the Old Gods is well known, what is sketchy at best is the timeline in which these events took place. Some Warcraft lore suggests that the Old Gods were present when Azeroth was created, and their activities were responsible for drawing the Titans to the planet in the first place. Other lore, generated from the Wrath of the Lich King expansion, suggests that the Titans created the world, took off for parts unknown, and were called back because the alarms were being raised due to these nasty critters. As the lore currently presented in Northrend is the most current, this is the timeline I am going with.

The Titans are creatures of order and organization, of creation. The Old Gods are the exact opposite, creatures that seek nothing more to bring about chaos and destruction. In Wrath of the Lich King, it is revealed that the ‘Curse of the Flesh’, a disease that was created specifically to break down and assimilate the Titan’s creations, was placed upon Azeroth’s creations by the Old Gods. News of the Curse soon reached the Titans, and they returned to find the little world of order and perfection that they’d created in absolute chaos. The Old Gods ran rampant, their lieutenants, the Elemental Lords, assisting them in razing the world. A great war ensued, and the Titans were triumphant – but there was a catch. The Titans discovered that the Old Gods and the Curse that they placed on the planet could not be removed without destroying Azeroth itself.

Making planets is pretty hard work, and it’d be a shame to throw all that hard work away. So the Old Gods were imprisoned, deep below the earth where nobody could get to them, and left to rot for eternity. The Titans then put in a few safety measures and precautions, and created The Forge of Wills to re-create the seed races that had been weakened by the Curse.

Unfortunately for Azeroth, Old Gods are not so easily taken care of, and this has resulted in a small series of events that is, if my theories and speculations are correct, about to avalanche into something a heck of a lot messier than races up and turning fleshy.

Depending on the source, there are three, four, or five Old Gods imprisoned. Other sources imply that there were more, but for now…well, let’s just look at what I’ve dug up.

To read the rest go HERE.