Warcraft 3 til 10.2

We’re finally going to the Emerald Dream! Or should I say, we’re finally going to the eye of Ysera? We’ve been in the Emerald Dream plenty of times, from Nighthaven being the Dream incarnate on Azeroth during Vanilla, through to the Dreamway and Emerald Nightmare of Legion. But this is different. I mean, It’s the dragon expansion, right? So when they were trawling for the lore to build the expansion, they went back to the source. Back to the Manual of Warcraft 3, which didn’t introduce Dragons. That technically happened shortly before the game launched with Knaak’s Dragonlance series Day of the Dragon, which wrapped up all the Dragon lore from Warcraft 2 into a neat story. But the game’s what’s important, so the Warcraft 3 manual is where we’d look, and that's where it talks about the Emerald Dream. Explaining Nordrassil, it writes;

“Ysera, the Dreamer, also placed an enchantment upon the World Tree by linking it to her own realm, the ethereal dimension known as the Emerald Dream. The Emerald Dream, a vast, ever-changing spirit world, existed outside the boundaries of the physical world. From the Dream, Ysera regulated the ebb and flow of nature and the evolutionary path of the world itself.”

Notice that she’s the one who regulated the ebb of nature. What we understand as the Emerald Dream now is WAY bigger than that, but for a second let’s stick to the eye of Ysera. It played a big role in the Stormrage novel, but going right back to the RPG and we can see that, even thought non-canonical, it still influences the lore rolling out today.

Curiously, despite the fact that the Emerald Dream matches Azeroth place for place, (Much like the Eye of Ysera in 10.2 is mapped pixel for pixel onto the Ohn’aran plains.) determining exactly what point on the world matches the Eye's precise location is impossible. Perhaps the Eye moves about periodically, or the plane-transitioning magic subtly alters the dreamer's shifted position. Regardless of the cause, entering the Emerald Dream and landing directly in the Eye of Ysera is impossible.

But now we’ve got a solid location to enter. The Ancient Bough on the Dragonisles. Alright, onto the lore update, then we’ll do some free speculation at the end, just to make our days a little brighter

The Emerald Dream (For Real This Time!)

The narrative design of Dragonflight has been off the hook. The story has been great, but what I'm talking about is the ways we engage with the story. Gossip text, stay awhile and listens, quests dedicated to cultural pursuits etc. An old staple of that are lore books. But they’ve never been used in quite this way. Normally they’re ways to explore the distant past, or to put exposition you’d find in manuals or the website into a book you’d find in Ironforge’s Hall of Explorers. But now they’re expanding the lore, delving into the past in such a way that we can tell what’s coming next. DF launched with lore books talking about Earthen in Khaz’algar, 10.0.7 brought the tales of Nightsqual and the back of Azeroth. In the same way, 10.2 is bringing 3 lore books about the Emerald Dream.

Here’s the text of each, and a few thoughts I’ve had;

Elun’ahir

• Elune and Eonar have some kind of relationship, and it’s likely romantic
• They planted a World-tree, the first, putting the whole idea of a world tree WAY before the War of the Ancients
• Aman’thul wasn’t happy, destroyed the tree, but a crater and roots remained
• These roots stretch throughout Azeroth and likely represent some kind of travel system we have coming in the future
• The crater? Scholazar? That’s where Freya was. Maybe somewhere on the back of Azeroth? What about that crater on the Ohn’aran plains? Yea, its probably for a world-tree, but how did it get there? There’s no way it was there just because they didn’t feel like sculpting the terrain twice. It is likely the location of the Elun’ahir, and IF IT IS then we’re about to get connected to that travel system
• Here the hottest take - this lore book foregrounds a civil war within the Titan Pantheon, for full details, check out our Titanic Civil war video (which is currently in production and will release soon.)

Tragedy Of Erinthea

• Two major reveals from this
• Reveals the first; There is a clutch of Green Dragons on the other side of Azeroth (Can dragons reproduce a-sexually? Above my pay grade)
• Reveal the second - The Titan keepers knew about the back of Azeroth and actively warned people against it.
  • Why? Yikes, this is a big one, but it goes back to Odyn now being able to bring the heretics of Avaloren to justice. I speculate that his only solution to these unpolicable barbarians was to throw up a massive storm no one could get across between us and them
  • If you want a way hotter take, check out the Reforging of Tyr video (that should be up on the channel now!) In it, I speculate the Heretics of Avaloren actually worship life and Elune! Mad, I know, but it’s looking more and more likely.

On The Nature Of The Dream

• Another Al’firim special - some deeply metaphysical document that brings us no closer to the truth and feels vaguely patronizing (Shut up dude, it’s just a game)
• ANYWAYS! This codified all the stuff we were hearing in Shadowlands but could only guess at.
• Elune and the Dream are phenomenon throughout the Cosmos. Every planet (Including ones without World-souls, like Draenor; See Arakoa invasion of the Dream) are connected to the Emerald Dream.
• Wild Gods throughout the Cosmos are created through the Dream, then eternally rez through Ardenweald
• Each planets Dream is bounded by a sleeping wall and if you go out of it you fall asleep and end up back at your planets centre point (Ours is the Eye of Ysera)
• But this one plucky dragon fought off sleep until they got to the boundaries of a new realm.
• The Lifelands! Basically confirmed now, not just a thing I think is super cheesy when I write it into a script.
• More than that, there are Titan like beings hanging out.
• Pantheon of Life! Alright, you ready for the big one?
• If this Winter-queen, Elune, Eonar thing is right, then Elune is a Goddess from the Pantheon of life.
  • Still doesn't quite explain her connection to Azeroth as her daughter, as seen in Eyes of the Earth Mother.
    • Or her connection to the Prime Naaru (Khadgar beleives Elune created them)
    • Or her connection to the Void (through the opposite energy of the Light of the Moon in the Night Warrior)
      • Or Order through Eonar
      • Or death Through the Winter-queen.
        • WAIT A MINUTE! All she needs is a connection to Fel and Elune becomes the cosmic goddess of balance. Nope, I’ve gone to far, time to wrap up.

Closing Thoughts

That was a whole speculative journey! And I mean, it’s for good reason, they’re building the next arc, right? Throw into that Chris Metzen’s return and the guarantee that he’s in there weaving the story in a more Warcrafty Direction. We’re on the cusp of something and I have a feeling it’s going to be incredible. Not sure what it is yet, but for the first time in awhile, this Emerald Dream stuff is getting me excited about nature lore and the Night Elves. So yea, let’s see what happens when 10.2 lands! See you next week when, if nothing else turns up in the mean time, we’ll be talking about AVALORN!…Loren. Avaloren.