Old Gods


 * "In the time before time, when the world was still in its infancy, a battle between a Titan and a being of unimaginable evil and power raged on this very soil. The prophecy is unclear about whether or not the Titan was vanquished ... but it illustrates that a Titan fell."
 * —Geologist Larksbane

The Old Gods (aka Elder Gods, old whisperings , or old lords of the earth ) are mysterious, godlike and greatly malefic entities which ruled in tyranny over the infant word of Azeroth before they were sequestered by the titanic Pantheon.

Few researchers know anything about the Old Gods and their mad worshipers; until C'Thun made its presence felt in Ahn'Qiraj, practically no one on Azeroth even knew the Old Gods existed. Even to most dragons they existed only as legends. The dark entities had ruled over a bloody chaos of which even the demon Lords of the Burning Legion could not imagine. They had ruled over the primal plane until the coming of the world’s creators. There had been war of cosmic proportions and, in the end, the Old Gods had fallen. The Old Gods had been cast down into eternal imprisonment, the place of their confinement hidden from all and their powers bound until the end of time. Nevertheless the Old Gods had somehow found a manner by which to reach out to the mortal plane and seek that which would free them.

Ordering of Azeroth
Before the titans came to Azeroth, the malign Old Gods - colossal beings of elemental fury - ruled the world and the savage elementals that dwelt upon it, a bloody chaos of which even the demon Lords of the Burning Legion could not imagine.

As the Titans found their way on Azeroth along their jouney and made their way across the primordial landscape, they encountered a number of the hostile elemental beings. These elementals vowed to drive the Titans in the name of their masters back and keep their world inviolate from the invaders' metallic touch. The Pantheon, disturbed by the Old Gods' penchant for evil, waged war upon the elementals and their dark masters. The Old Gods' armies were led by the most powerful elemental lieutenants: Ragnaros the Firelord, Therazane the Stonemother, Al'Akir the Windlord, and Neptulon the Tidehunter. Their chaotic forces raged across the face of the world and clashed with the colossal Titans. Though the elementals were powerful beyond mortal comprehension, their combined forces could not stop the mighty Titans. One by one, the elemental lords fell, and their forces dispersed. A battle between a titan and the Old God C'Thun raged in Silithus. The titan fell and it was thought that C'Thun had also fallen - but he survived unnoticed by the titans. For millennia this being lay dormant beneath the world - biding its time. From its prison it waited for the exact moment at which to strike back at those that would see it harmed.

The Pantheon shattered the Old Gods' citadels and casted the remaining ones down into eternal imprisonment deep beneath the earth, the place of their confinement hidden from all and their powers bound until the end of time. Yogg-Saron was sealed away within the depths of Ulduar in the far northern reaches of the infant world, and had six watchers assigned to it which served as wardens for its near eternal imprisonment. Without the Old Gods' power to keep their raging spirits bound to the physical world, the elementals were banished to an abyssal plane, where they would contend with one another for all eternity. With the elementals' departure, nature calmed, and the world settled into a peaceful harmony. The Titans saw that the threat was contained and set to work.

During that time the Old Gods rendered all titan systems - including the earthen - defenseless with an infection dubbed the Curse of Flesh. The curse changed the structure and appearance of these races from their original stony/metallic forms into the fleshy forms we know of today. The titans attempted to remove the curse (and the Old Gods), but found that the Old God infestation had grown too severe to remove without completely destroying Azeroth. While not entirely unwilling to unmake their creation (as the Algalon protocol would show), they were loath to do so unless it was a complete last resort. So instead the titans created new earthen with the Forge of Wills and implemented safeguards and protectors. These protectors were known as the Aesir and Vanir with Loken as their leader and also the Dragon Aspects were appointed to monitor the evolution of Azeroth.

War of the Ancients
10,000 years ago Queen Azshara and her highborne wanted to open a portal for Sargeras powerful enough for him to manifest in his full glory. In turn, Alexstraza contacted each of her fellow aspects. It was one of the most respected of these dragons, the Black Dragonflight's leader Neltharion the Earth-Warder who proposed a plan should the worst truly be coming to pass. Alongside his old friend Malygos, Neltharion proposed that a simple golden disc, imbued with the power of each of the aspects in turn, could be created that would be so powerful that no force on Azeroth or indeed even from outside could possibly stand against it. Should all these strange portents really be true, dragonkind would be ready. Convinced by Neltharion's arguments, the other aspects agreed and the Dragon Soul was created. Unknown by the other Aspects Neltharion had found himself intrigued by the whispers of the Old Gods pinned within the very earth he was assigned to watch over for an untold time. These entities knew full well who Sargeras was and what his appearance signified for Azeroth. Having worked over the course of thousands of years to suborn Neltharion, they now sought to make use of their newest and most powerful weapon. The Old Gods wanted to divert the power of Sargaras' portal to themselves and crack Azeroth open and after eons of imprisonment, they could be free. However Illidan Stormrage gained the Dragon Soul and used it to close the portal, thus saving his people.

10,000 years later the Old Gods invaded Nozdormu's realm and managed to open a rift in time, that, as they had planned, tossed some beings back through time, beings that would change the way the war of the ancients took place, and give Sargeras a new chance to enter the world, and therefore give them a new chance to set themselves free. Their plans were although crushed again by Krasus, Rhonin and Broxigar, who were sent back by Nozdormu in time.

War of the Shifting Sands
Over vast stretches of time, C'Thun seeked to subvert and corrupt. The very Well of Eternity gave it the silithid, who would become the aqir, which would lead to the nerubians and qiraji. The qiraji would come to C'thun and conquer for it the titan complex that lies today in the sands of Silithus, the fortress temple of Ahn'Qiraj. C'Thun waited, until at last its forces had grown strong enough to contest the hated kaldorei for dominion over Kalimdor itself. Thus began the War of the Shifting Sands, which would see corrupted titan creations like the tol'vir battle side by side with silithid hordes and qiraji leaders to push the night elves out of Kalimdor. C'Thun's plan nearly succeeded. At first, the night elves held fast and defeated the qiraji in several battles, thanks to the brilliant leadership of the archdruid Fandral Staghelm. Following his sons death, the kaldorei were driven out of Silithus by the qiraji, and victory for C'Thun seemed nigh. But the combined forces of night elves and the bronze, green, red and blue dragonflight drove the frenzied qiraji back. But neither could those forces hope to win out against the Old God itself in its den. Rather than risk such an apocalyptic conflict, a solution was enacted that sealed the qiraji and C'Thun up insider their very fortress, the city complex of Ahn'Qiraj itself. Fandral Staghelm, entrusted with the Scepter of the Shifting Sands used to seal Ahn'Qiraj, shattered it out of bitterness over the death of his son.

Recent history
C’Thun has been wakening for some time. He recently woke completely and physically returned to Azeroth. He now lairs in the ruins of Ahn'Qiraj, and packs of brave heroes have already begun to form and venture into the ruins. At some point during his stewardship of Ulduar, Loken came under the sway of Yogg-Saron imprisoned within and eventually betrayed both the Pantheon and his own brother, Thorim. He resides in Ulduar's Halls of Lightning, seeking to free Yogg-Saron completely. According to Malfurion Stormrage, one of the Old Gods is behind the Nightmare corrupting the Emerald Dream. Although the Nightmare Lord in the dream turned out to be the Satyr Lord Xavius, it is suspected that he was working for higher powers. This seems to be confirmed in World of Warcraft: Cataclysm.

Power and Strength
Krasus speculated that should the Old Gods open the gates of their prison even Sargeras would find himself pleading for the peace of death. Krasus further thought that the Aspects were the most powerful creatures on all the mortal plane. So if anyone had a chance against the Old Gods, it was them. Combined all five of the Aspects represented a force capable of defeating the elder beings. Even though the Old Gods are imprisoned or sleeping, so great is their power that their unconscious but destructive, maddening auras seep out and inﬂuence some denizens of Azeroth.

Nevertheless the Old Gods are neither omniscient nor omnipotent. The benevolent titans, though not gods themselves, cast a magical slumber upon the Old Gods and imprisoned them far below the surface of the world. It is possible for a Old God to exert influence over several locations simultaneously. Yet the power of a god is limited. Otherwise, of course, the Old Gods could not have been imprisoned. Nonetheless, an imprisoned, sleeping, or otherwise enfeebled god may still have an effect--conscious or not--on the god's surroundings. The development of the qiraji is said to be the result of just such an incidental influence. Can one ever truly destroy a god, putting a lasting end to its existence? Unfortunately that question has departed the realm of philosophy and become a matter of vital concern.

The Old Gods are unfathomable to mortal minds. They seem to delight in chaos, anarchy and constant elemental warfare, pitting the enormously powerful elemental lords against one another seemingly as a form of amusement. The Burning Legion under Sargeras has a twisted ethos that maintains that all existence is a mistake and that all things should be reduced back to entropic nothingness ; in contrast, the Old Gods have no ethos, no morality and operate through a raw amorality (one might even say they transcend things like motives and ethics) that seeks nothing more than endless, meaningless, motiveless destruction for its own sake. Under the Old Gods rule, nothing like a society or civilization could ever arise since those who survive communing with eldritch masters will little remain of their sanity. It's telling that even their former servitors, the Elemental Lords, do not seek their return or serve them willingly. Today, the Old Gods on Azeroth often operate through the Twilight's Hammer cult, who seek the ultimate destruction of the world.

Corruption from the Old Gods can be found all over Azeroth - even at the sacred moonwell of Blackfathom Deeps, a former temple to Elune.

Whispers
Since the dawn of life on Azeroth, the imprisoned and sleeping Old Gods have been whispering to the subconsciousness of mortal and eternal beings alike, subverting their thoughts and feelings, and sometimes driving them to great malice, complete insanity, or both.

The most notorious and tragic victim of the Old Whisperings is Neltharion the Earth-Warder; the once mighty Dragon Aspect who had been empowered by the Titan Khaz'goroth with dominion over the deep places of the world. Yet, not even Neltharion's great wisdom and power proved capable of breaking the grip the Old Whisperings had on his mind, causing the Earth-Warder to eventually lose all his sanity. Neltharion renamed himself Deathwing, seeking the genocide of all non-draconic life as well as the enslavement of the other dragonflights.

The night elves Malfurion Stormrage and Varo'then momentarily heard the Whisperings when they held the Demon Soul in their grasp. Malfurion has since stated that "Ysera's noble brood has fallen victim to the Old Whisperings", as well. The Highborne Queen Azshara is said to have heard the Whisperings moments before what would have been her death, causing her and her Highborne people to transform into the monstrous Naga-- an offer they either accepted willingly to avoid their fate or which has been coerced on them. The remainder of the surviving Highborne who made landfall in the Tirisfal Glades are rumored to have succumbed to insanity after hearing these same Whisperings.

The most striking historic account of the Old Whisperings however is found within the ancient scrolls of lore of the Tauren tribes, kept at Elder Rise in their capital city of Thunder Bluff. The legend of creation of the formerly nomadic Tauren makes direct reference to the Whisperings, stating that the first incidents of Tauren having committed acts of deceit, murder or warfare were because some among their early brethren "harkened to the dark whispers from deep beneath the world."

The Hour of Twilight
A very ancient prophecy speaks of the Hour of Twilight, the final days of the world and if the Old Gods that were chained long ago had their way set in motion, this chain of events would enact their final vision to remake the world in their image.

Number
Depending on the source, three, four, or five Old Gods lie imprisoned within Azeroth. Some of these sources seem to imply that these numbers were the limit to the number of Old Gods:


 * The Warcraft III manual states that five Old Gods were chained beneath the world.
 * According to the War of the Ancients Trilogy, there are three Old Gods activly trying to escape their prison. There may be more however, these three are indicated to have formed some sort of alliance in order to escape their imprisonment.
 * According to "The Old Gods and the Ordering of Azeroth", four Old Gods were imprisoned beneath the world. This could perhaps be reconciled with the War of the Ancients trilogy if it were taken to include the fallen C'Thun in the count of the imprisoned Gods. This is however unlikely as C'thun was believed dead and not imprisoned. Note that the version of this chapter presented in the story section of the official site does not reference the number of Old Gods.

Besides the five Old Gods of Azeroth there are more on other worlds. In the Burning Crusade expansion, a group of Arakkoa known as the Dark Conclave attempted to summon an entity described as an "ancient and powerful evil" into Outland. This ancient evil is one of these others.

C'Thun
C'Thun was the first of the three Old Gods to be named, having received this name from its creations; the Qiraji. C'Thun was struck down in the region known as Silithus during the dawning of the world, in a battle which is said to also have resulted in the "falling" of a Titan. C'Thun was believed to have been slain permanently by the Titans, but the Old God resurfaced over the course of history as the driving force behind the Qiraji. It is trapped deep beneath the ruined temples of Ahn'Qiraj, where it has exerted its will for thousands of years over its Qiraji avatars, who in turn command the Silithid swarm.

C'Thun is the final boss in the Temple of Ahn'Qiraj.

Yogg-Saron
Described by the demigod Ursoc as "the beast with a thousand maws", Yogg-Saron was the second Old God to be explicitly named such. The dire entity refers to itself in ways as "the lucid dream", "the god of death" or "the true face of death", and appears to secrete a substance named Saronite across Northrend which is capable of driving any that have been exposed to it to murderous insanity. Slinkin the Demo-gnome discovered shortly before his demise that a mysterious connection seemed to exist between the Old God Yogg-Saron and the undead Scourge. In his final note, he claimed to have overheard some of the undead uttering the name "Yogg-Saron" with a tone of tremendous hatred and contempt, which was usually followed by outbursts of rage from other undead. Yet, the Scourge appeared to be mining for Saronite on an industrial scale.

Yogg-Saron's underground prison extends through much of east-central Northrend; his influence has been felt directly in the Grizzly Hills (Vordrassil, the Grizzlemaw Furbolgs and Ursoc), Dragonblight (Ahn'kahet: The Old Kingdom, with faceless ones and a sect of the Twilight's Hammer dedicated to Yogg-Saron) and the Storm Peaks (Ulduar, and the corrupted Titanic guardian Loken). The Old God is located within his prison deep inside Ulduar, and is the final boss of the raid instance, much as C'Thun was the final boss in Ahn'Qiraj.

N'Zoth
The third Old God to be named, N'Zoth, was confirmed during Blizzcon 2010 to be the source of the Emerald Nightmare, which has twisted large segments of the Emerald Dream along with its corresponding regions in the waking world. N'Zoth makes several indirect appearances in World of Warcraft: Cataclysm during quest chains in the Vashj'ir zone, and the story implies it to be the driving force behind the naga and the faceless ones. During Blizzcon 2010's Quests and Lore panel, Chris Metzen also mentioned that N'Zoth may be the one "signing Deathwing's checks", adding the remark that this Old God is "a real problem".

Mortal worship
The Old Gods do possess worshipers, though, even from their prison below the earth. Most followers of the Old Gods are completely insane and wholly evil. In some cases, evil but sane individuals turn deliberately to worship of the Old Gods out of spite when the individual feels other, more mainstream powers have mistreated her. Anarchists also sometimes turn to worship of the Old Gods out of a desire to destroy the world; some believe a new, better world will rise up in the wake of the destruction. In either case, these worshippers are deluded or misinformed, and any who do manage to make even the barest real contact with the Old Gods go hopelessly and irrevocably insane.

Rarely does an entire organization turn to worship of the Old Gods; the insanity necessary in the faithful usually precludes any sort of cohesion. In truth, the Twilight's Hammer cult doesn’t worship the Old Gods in the strictest sense. Instead the Old Gods seem to exert a powerful fascination over the cult. The Twilight’s Hammer cult is dedicated to the idea of bringing about (or at least bearing witness to) an apocalypse. To this end they research the Old Gods, learning all they can about these mysterious forces and uncovering any inﬂuence the Old Gods might still possess over the world.

Large groups of the Twilight's Hammer have been observed to settle at or near sites where they believe the Old Gods or their minions are sealed away; many await C'Thun's awakening in Silithus, while others appear to serve Ragnaros in the Blackrock Depths alongside the Dark Iron dwarves. The largest concentrations of the Twilight's Hammer however are located at Grim Batol and within the Bastion of Twilight, in a region of the Eastern Kingdoms that is now referred to as the Twilight Highlands.

Quotes

 * See also: The Whispers of C'Thun and The Whispers of Yogg-Saron

Whispers to Neltharion

 * "The night elves will destroy the world..."
 * "The Well is out of control..."
 * "No one can be trusted... they want your secrets, your power..."
 * "Malygos would take what is yours..."
 * "Alexstrasza seeks dominion over you..."
 * "They are no better than the demons..."
 * "They must be dealt with like the demons..."

Whispers to Azshara

 * "There is a way... there is a way..."
 * "You will become more than you ever were... more than you ever were..."
 * "We can help... we can help..."
 * "You will be more than you have ever been... and when the time comes, for what we grant you... you will serve us well..."

Inspiration
The names and overall nature of the Old Gods are an homage to the various group of deities from the Cthulhu Mythos in the works of H.P. Lovecraft (first stage), Brian Lumley (third stage), and the Call of Cthulhu RPG. C'Thun is based on Cthulhu and Yogg-Saron is based on the Outer God Yog-Sothoth. N'Zoth's name is most likely derived from Zoth-Ommog of H.P. Lovecraft's shared Cthulhu Mythos. Furthermore, the story which concerns the Titans' imprisoning of the Old Gods is an inspiration from the story August Derleth proposed as the ancient outcome of the war between the Elder Gods (represented in the Titans) and the Outer Gods (represented in the Old Gods). Interestingly, the origin of the Titans is alien to Azeroth, while the Old Gods are native to it, swapping the names and some facts. An alternative name of the Old Gods is the Elder Gods.