Time travel is fun, you get to see past events and sometimes you even get to take part in them (in WoW's case it seems to be 100% of the time if you're not a bronze dragon). So this blog post will be looking at the masters of time travelling, the Bronze Dragons, and their adversaries, the Infinite Dragonflight. There will be many parts that I'll be speculating, so don't take too much of it as fact.
First thing's first, the Bronze Dragonflight. This is the dragonflight that we're familiar with in terms of the watchers of time, and looking after the past, present and future, all at the same time. Tiresome job, it seems, but they also seem to be able to detect when time isn't flowing as it should. Their leader, Nozdormu the Timeless One, rarely comes away from missions to the mortal world, seemingly preferring the place between times so that he can travel easily from one era to the next. His current mission however has severed the link between him and the rest of his flight, so he's dubbed as "missing". The rest of the flight have now taken up his mantle and fight to preserve timelines, along with trying to find their leader at the same time.
The direct cause for timelines being broken at the moment is whatever the motive the Infinite dragonflight have. Not much is known at the moment about them, although there are some fairly obvious links into who their leader is. Just not why they exist, and why they're hostile.
The first time we see them is at level 66 in Escape from Durnholde Keep (assuming you haven't seen the rare spawn outside CoT). In the original timeline, Taretha Foxton set off a diversion that allowed the young Thrall to escape Durnholde and start his journey. Meddling agents of the mysterious infinite dragonflight, however, have kidnapped Taretha. Since she is unable to create a diversion, the bronze dragonflight asks players to do it themselves. So what would have been the chain reaction if Thrall could not escape?
- Orcs continue to be stuck in internment camps, their lethargy from Mannoroth's blood/Shamanism becoming an increasing problem. The orcs would die out.
- More taxes required from the human nations to maintain these camps would have weakened the ties between the kingdoms further. Inter-kingdom feuds could become violent, resulting in wars that end up with Humans killing each other.
- Following on from the previous two points: no unitary Human or Orc nations = harder for Medivh to send the Night Elves backup for the Legion's return. It would also mean that races we have today would not exist - the Darkspear Trolls would have been wiped out by the Sea Witch and murlocs and the Tauren would have been killed off by the centaur. Which would end up being bad news for Azeroth as a whole... UNLESS:
- Without the threat of the orcs escaping from the internment camps, Arthas, Uther, Jaina and co. would be able to more time investigating the plague instead of dealing with orcish raiders. This could mean that Uther could have spent more time with Arthas, and guiding him in the right direction (as seen in Blackrock and Roll, Arthas had to be reminded by Uther to not exact vengeance on the orcs, as it would only bring him down to their level).
So overall we're looking at the Legion either not returning to Azeroth with a third failed race of pawns (first the Highborne, then the Orcs, here the Scourge); or if Kel'thuzad and Mal'ganis still managed to distribute the plague and have it grow to the levels it did in the Third War, then Archimonde would have taken the power he needed from the World Tree/Well of Eternity as needed to resurrect or summon Sargeras, or just utterly destroy Azeroth anyway. This equates to... Not a lot really, either the Infinites are working heavily for the Burning Legion, or heavily against them and are preserving Azeroth in that way. It would keep to a smaller world after all, the night elves sticking with themselves, or at a stretch the dark trolls and furbolgs, and the races of the Eastern Kingdoms sticking to themselves - until some dwarf goes exploring by sea or air, that is.
The next time we see the Infinites are in Caverns of Time again, this time in the time where Medivh was creating the magic with Gul'dan to create the passage between Draenor and Azeroth. Apart from the wildlife in the area anyway, the only mobs you fight are Infinite dragonkin. And a lot of them. Here if they succeed, Medivh will die and the Orcs will never have reached Azeroth. The chain of events are that:
- The orcs, filled with the bloodlust that Mannoroth gave them, would have continued to fight each other, and with the demonic energies slowly killing off the orcs, it is likely that they will have completely perished - that is if the Shadow Council also completely fail on creating the portal, as original lore states that Medivh had barely any influence on the creation of the Dark Portal, merely guiding Gul'dan to Azeroth.
- With Medivh dead, Sargeras's spirit could have been captured by the Infinites - as dragons do know more about the titans and the Legion than Humans did at that time - instead of being released into the Twisting Nether when Khadgar killed him.
- The Humans, High Elves and Dwarves would have remained separate from each other, and would have been unlikely to have received aid in their times of need, resulting in possible successful attacks from Trolls and Dark Iron Dwarves, to name a couple of powerful factions. The Bronze dragons claimed that had the bridge between Draenor and Azeroth not formed, then the human kingdoms would have raged into a civil war.
- With no Orcish Horde to have the thought of conquering other worlds, Ner'zhul would not have created multiple portals in Draenor in order to escape. If he had not escaped, then Kil'jaeden would not have captured him in the Nether and turn him into the Lich King. Essentially, the orcs would have served their original purpose to the Legion (extermination of the Draenei on Draenor), and would have been left to destroy one another.
- Following on from the previous point, with no Lich King on Azeroth, there would have been no Third War from the undead plague, and in turn no Scourge to have destroyed Quel'thalas and the Sunwell (and no second coming of the Legion). It in turn means that Kil'jaeden would have not been summoned through Kael'thas (in fact, the Blood Elves would still be High Elves, and likely still being separate from the Humans because of the lack of threat from the Horde).
- The Druids would likely still be in the Emerald Dream, Malfurion included. With the events concerning the Nightmare (spoilers for Stormrage novel incoming), would this have also meant that Xavius and N'Zoth would be a lot more successful in their attack against the mortal world?
The third instance in Burning Crusade's Caverns of Time was the 25man raid Battle for Mount Hyjal. While there are no actual Infinite Dragonflight in here, we are sent to this place for a reason. When you think about it, if you wipe in there, Archimonde would have easy access to Nordrassil and ultimately destroy it/Azeroth. So whatever it is the Infinites have done, they've done it and left, while the Bronze have sent us just too late (I personally blame how long it took to take Kael and Vashj down) afterwards. We're there to pick up the mess and vanquish the second coming of the Legion... A second time.
This one's a bit hard to see where the Infinite are coming from, but other than the obvious "Lololol let's destroy Azeroth, our home, 'cause we is crazy mofos!" I can't really see what benefit would come from Archimonde absorbing the power of Nordrassil. Perhaps they are testing things out to see what Archi would have done with the extra power - Nuke the place? Sacrifice himself as a worthy host for Sargeras? Simply go all Glubtok on us and turn to dust for having too much power in his body? Actually, that could work... Either way, the Infinite either knew something we didn't, or they're just messing around with the timelines for the sake of it.
Our most recent installment of the Infinite Dragonflight in Caverns of Time is in the Culling of Stratholme, another Warcraft III scenario that we get to play out in an MMO setting. The Infinites only turn up in the later half of the instance, similar to Escape from Durnholde, and largely try to stop Arthas from getting to Mal'Ganis.
Ultimately, in this instance Arthas has already stopped the more influential members of the Scourge in Stratholme, the only commander stopping him now was Mal'Ganis, where he met his ultimate fate of being puppeted (that's a word now) to Northrend. The first living citizen that he attempts to kill - as opposed to the already-turned Undead for the first part - turns out to be an Infinite dragonkin. Could this have been a plan to salvage Arthas and keep him in the path of the Light?
In addition, he would have failed to track down Mal'Ganis in order to follow him to Northrend. Arthas would not have turned into the Lich King's champion, Kel'Thuzad would have stayed dead, Quel'thalas would have survived, Archimonde could not have been summoned, the list goes on. As we've seen in WoW, it's not like having Mal'Ganis dead in Northrend seemed to last very long, so there's little to be changed about his storyline, apart from playing as bait again. The basic gist of it seems to point at the Infinite flight once again fighting against the Burning Legion and protecting Azeroth from encountering them a second or third time.
Another interesting point of note is the last Infinite that you see (assuming you get to that stage within 25mins) is that it's corrupting a Bronze Dragonkin.
This action in itself doesn't prove much, as we don't see what happens to the Bronze when the corruption is complete - only the Infinite goes back through the portal he comes from. It is assumed that this is part of the process to turn the Bronze into Infinite, and in Cataclysm the Infinites have some kind of link with the Bronze, more than just having the ability to time travel.
This supported by Occulus outside of the Caverns of Time. In vanilla he was one of three protectors to the entrance of the Caverns, and in TBC and WLK he was merely standing outside. Now in Cataclysm, he's now Occulus the Corrupted as a rare spawn patrolling around the Caverns - as a member of the Infinite Dragonflight. This shows that the Bronze do have some sort of link with the Infinite, and that's likely what's happening at the end of Culling of Stratholme.
With time travel however, it is hard to ascertain which came first - with the powers of Asaad being able to turn the Tol'vir back into their stone form, we can't for sure know which of the two time travelling dragon races came first, and which is the corrupted version. We just assume for the moment that the Bronze are the good guys, because they're the ones we're associates with and have been doing quests with, rather than against. However - don't forget that this isn't the first time we'd be working for the wrong man.
There is one time where we meet the Infinites outside of the Caverns of Time, but once again this is in Bronze domain. At the Bronze Dragonshrine in Northrend, Chromie sends us off to the Bronze Dragonshrine as it seems the Infinite have waged an all-out assault on the shrine. They've also put up a time storm above it meaning that immortals can't cross the shield - while no Infinite can get out, it also means that no Bronze (or any other immortals) can't enter. So Chromie has to send you, a mortal, to go over there and help defend it, as well as finding out some kind of intel as to who the leader of the Infinite is.
What you find, after a few waves of Infinite, is that the device Chromie gave you revealed Nozdormu - the leader of the Bronze flight! As far as we know (and that Chromie still lets on) is that the Bronze Aspect was away on very important matters and now that you've discovered him, it's all ok that he's there! Because obviously instead of the device working as it should have done, Nozzy is just fighting against the Infinite threat... Yeah, I don't think anyone questing in Dragonblight bought that. Although it would be nice if that was the case.
An upcoming raid in Cataclysm appears to be another Caverns of Time focused one. This time, we're sent back 10,000 years, to the War of the Ancients. At the time of writing this post, not much is known about why we're being sent there, how much Bronze/Infinite integration there will be (even if there is none, we can add the formula of the previous CoT raid, that what's done is done and we have to fix it before 10,000 years of history is changed).
Interestingly enough, if you've managed to read this far, you've probably guessed that I'm a bit biased to the Infinite being the antagonist against the Burning Legion, and have been trying to save Azeroth from these horrors ever happening. However in here, I'm assuming that if we fail, the Legion wins and Azeroth gets destroyed. This very much points the Infinite as working FOR the Legion, or their belief. When thinking about it in this respect:
- Durnholde: Thrall dead/still captured would mean that a very powerful Shaman is out of the mix.
- Black Morass: The Horde stopped from ever entering Azeroth takes away a large, powerful force from Azeroth.
- Mt. Hyjal: Archimonde succeeds and absorbs enough power from Nordrassil to either destroy Azeroth, or to help find Sargeras a new host and to let him destroy it.
- Stratholme: No Arthas would mean no champion of the Lich King, who would ultimately get destroyed by the Legion as a "failed experiment".
- War of the Ancients: The Legion wins.
It appears that the Infinite are looking to destroy Azeroth. While it is certain they are from (or causing) time anomalies, they don't appear anywhere other than Azeroth. At least they're not in Outland - dragons as a whole seem native to Azeroth, any other drakes either traveled to Outland, or had their eggs transported there (Netherwing). So why would they want to destroy their own home planet, especially when as far as we know, they're not present on any other planet?
Perhaps they're not destroying, perhaps they're just "reshaping" the world into their own image? It is through nether magic that black dragonflight eggs changed into netherwing, and in turn properties of the Netherwing fuelled the process for the Twilight flight. The Chromatic flight were created by infusing the eggs of different flights with all other dragonflights magic/blood. These have all been created while in the egg form, however the Infinite seem to be created from plain corruption of existing Bronze dragonflight.
With Nozdormu appearing as the leader of the Infinite, and Bronze dragonflight being corrupted into Infinites, it is almost certain that these two flights are one and the same, but from separate time frames, or from parallel universes, where the wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff seems to have collided. Who's to say that the time we're experiencing now is the correct one? It's the one we're used to and have memories of, but when a slight change in time far in the past can change the future, your "memories" may have been different to the ones a mere 5 seconds ago. Perhaps the Bronze are Nozdormu's creation from the Infinite, and the latter are attempting to restore their time.
Nozzy knows the cause of his death, it was the first thing shown to him in time travel. He knows he can't escape it, but damn as hell if he isn't going to try. Especially when on his doorstep there are ancient whisperings, deep underground, egging him on in the right direction...
