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Know Your Lore: Nozdormu the Timeless
Welcome to Know Your Lore, where each week Alex Ziebart brings you a tasty little morsel of lore to wrap your mind around. Sweet, sweet lore. Mmmm. Have suggestions for future KYL topics? E-mail us! Or, if you have a question for our sister column Ask a Lore Nerd, e-mail us those, too! Nozdormu is the fifth and final dragon aspect, since the filthy Netherwing aspect doesn't count! Silly mutant spawn of Deathwing, thinking they're special or something. Anyhow, Nozdormu the Timeless is the aspect of the Bronze Dragonflight, and was given his power by the titan lord Aman'Thul. Nozdormu has power over time and can, technically, alter it to his whims. Though he's capable of doing such, he is meant to watch over the timeline and prevent it from being altered by outside forces.Nozdormu, more or less, oversees the Caverns of Time. Or rather, he has in the past. Currently Nozdormu is preoccupied with some uberpowerful anomaly in the timeline, and has left his prime consort Soridormi in charge. You would think the Timeless One would have all the time in the world to get things done, but his history in Warcraft thus far says otherwise.
Know Your Lore: Malygos the Spellweaver
Welcome to Know Your Lore, where each week (except for last week, sorry guys!) Alex Ziebart brings you a tasty little morsel of lore to wrap your mind around. Sweet, sweet lore. Mmmm. Have suggestions for future KYL topics? E-mail us! Or, if you have a question for our sister column Ask a Lore Nerd, e-mail us those, too! Malygos the Spellweaver, Lord of Magic, is the fourth Dragon Aspect that we'll be looking at in Know Your Lore's series on the great dragons. Malygos was empowered by the Titan Norgannon, charged with guarding all magic and arcane knowledge. He calls the Nexus in Northrend, his home.The Aspect of the Blue was one of the more wise of the Dragonflights, and described as the most friendly of them. He was close to his 'siblings' back before the War of the Ancients, especially Neltharion of the Black. You know, before Neltharion went loco.
New WarCraft: Legends front cover
Richard Knaak, author of several great Warcraft books include the War of the Ancients and the Day of the Dragon, will be writing the script for the upcoming new Warcraft Manga "Legends." We've previously covered this when some sketch cover art was released at the New York Comic Con 2008, but we haven't seen the final front cover until now.The first manga story line he wrote about Warcraft revolved around the events leading up to patch 2.4 in the Sunwell Plateau. I picked up all three of the books in a archived version over Christmas, and it was quite a good read. I'm definitely looking forward to picking this one up, and according to a Blizzplanet page, the release date is scheduled for August 1st, 2008.The artwork pictured to the right (click for a higher resolution image) looks pretty cool, and appears to be an Orc Rogue. Since the book is called Legends, we can assume it's about some legendary figures in Warcraft. I would take a wild guess that the Orc pictured is Thrall, but I could be wrong, and feel free to disagree with me.[Via WorldOfWar.net]
Know Your Lore: Azshara
Queen Azshara might be one of the best-hidden characters in WoW lore. Her time of action came long before Warcraft I, she's never been seen in any of the games, and the only reference to her lies in the nearly abandoned wasteland that used to be her palace -- Azshara. But she's still out there, and one of these days Blizzard's going to run out of ideas and make that underwater instance that everyone but warlocks is dreading, and we'll have to fight her. And her tentacles. So on that future day, between the endless chain pulls of level 92 elite murlocs, you can read this and know who you're getting ready to wipe to. And by the way, the censored picture is from an official Warcraft RPG manual. Apparently octupi don't like wearing tops, even while posing for portraits. The pic links to the uncensored image. Who: Queen Azshara of the Kal'dorei, Empress of Nazjatar, the Light of Lights, Vision of Perfection, Glory of Our People, Daughter of the Moon, Flower of Life ... and it goes on like this. As you might have guessed, Azshara was not lacking in the ego department. What: Formerly a night elf, now a naga-like thing. History: Thousands and thousands of years before Medivh opened the Dark Portal and let in hundreds of arguments about whether the Horde is really evil, the most advanced civilization on Azeroth was that of the Kal'dorei, or night elves. They were split into two social classes: the common Kal'dorei, and the elite, magic-using Highborne, or Quel'dorei. The Kal'dorei were deeply jealous of the Quel'dorei, envying their social status and magical powers. But the one uniting factor between the Kal'dorei and Quel'dorei was their love of their queen, Azshara.
Know Your Lore: Sargeras
Hard to believe that this friendly soul over to the right stabbing what appears to be an entire planet was once not just a good guy, but indeed, the goodest of the good guys, huh? (Goodest of the good guys? What, am I a drunken five year old all of a sudden? Sheesh, that's just horrible.) But it's true: the ultimate big bad guy in the Warcraft Universe, the ultimate evil, the guy who comes up with plans that involve possessing babies was once the champion of the Titans themselves, before he started stabbing planets and possessing babies.I guess there's no evil, be it big or small, that Sargeras won't engage in personally. He's a real hands on villain.So what's the deal with Sargeras, exactly? How did he go bad? Why did he assemble the Burning Legion in the first place? And what's he up to nowadays? With the Legion running around being killed for loot and Marks of Sargeras in Outland (seriously, what is the big plan for Outland, exactly? So far all the Legion seems to be doing is being mad at Illidan because he promised to be Kil'Jaeden's BFF and then went back on it. Did they pinky swear? I bet they pinky swore. That seems like the kind of thing Kil'Jaeden would do) you'd think ol' Sargy would be in the thick of it, but instead his sidekicks are running the show and he's nowhere to be found. Why?It doesn't help that some of Sargeras' history has changed in the telling. (Hey, I like the Draenei a lot, but you guys really changed the lore around.)Well, you may have a hard time believing this, but it turns out that his whole baby possession scheme wasn't such a good idea after all. I know, I know, how could picking on an infant have gone so horribly wrong? But rather than dwelling on that, why don't we start talking about Sargeras' early days.
