Phat Loot Phriday: Chained Essence of Eranikus

I know we've been pretty centered on Outland loot lately, just because all the stuff there is so, well, phat. But here's a cool little trinket you don't need the expansion to get, and it's just steeped in lore.

Name: Chained Essence of Eranikus
Type: Trinket
Damage / Speed: N/A
Abilities:

• On use, it'll poison all enemies in an 8 yard radius, giving them 50 Nature damage every 5 seconds for 45 seconds, on a 15 minute cooldown. Not great, but not too shabby for a level 55 trinket. I found this really helpful on my Warrior (at least until around level 60 or so), but YMMV, of course.
  

• Also, whenever you use this, you get a personal, only-you-can-hear-it whisper from non other than the tortured soul of Eranikus the dragon (he's the big green monster above). Yes, that is a voice in your head, and it's coming from this trinket. More on that in a second.

How to Get It: This is a long one. I'll leave the details for one of Elizabeth's great Know Your Lore posts, but all you need to know is that the Green Dragonflight is tied to a realm called the Emerald Dream, and that place is currently being corrupted into the Emerald Nightmare. Deep within Sunken Temple (on the same level as all the other dragons and Jammalan the Prophet), a Shade of the dragon Eranikus is sleeping. He was sent there by Ysera, leader of the Green Dragonflight, to take care of all the trolls messing about. But instead, corrupted by the Emerald Dream's troubles, he's sleeping on the job, which is when you come upon him.

After you take him down, everyone in the party can loot a gem from his body, called the Essence of Eranikus. You have to get a quest from that gem, and then take it to the font located in the back of the same room where you fight him. Instead of releasing Eranikus, however, it turns out the font itself is corrupted, and he becomes Chained inside the gem, creating this trinket as a quest reward from that quest.

Now, the trinket is actually a quest item in another series of quests that currently isn't done. You can take the gem to Itharius, an elf (some players say he's a green dragon in disguise) inside a cave in the Swamp of Sorrows, and give it to him to get a quest to meet up with someone else in Winterspring. But the questline ends right after that, with no final rewards or lore to show for it. It's widely assumed that this quest chain will eventually be where we have a chance, whenever Blizzard gets around to it, to actually enter the Emerald Dream, and confront whatever's causing the corruption in there.

Eranikus also makes a quick appearance in the questline to open up the Gates of Ahn Qiraj (along with Tyrande Whisperwind!), but that's a long story for another day...

Getting Rid of It: You can give it to Itharius if you want, but I wouldn't recommend it until Blizzard actually updates that quest chain. A vendor will give 64s 64c, or it will usually disenchant into Illusion Dust.