Hello everyone! ‘Great was the Old One, and
terrible was his wrath. He consumed hope and begat despair; He inhaled courage and breathed fear’
That’s the kind of testimonial that really sticks out, the true subject of that rather grandiose
statement being The Old God, Y’Shaarj. You may be wondering what is an Old God and why does that
name sound so sexy?” That takes us back in time, to the beginning. In a time before the reign of
Dragons, eons before the age of the mortal races that would later call it home. A planet had formed
around a slumbering world-soul in a far corner of the Great Dark Beyond. World-Souls are a pretty
big deal as when they awaken they become titans. Titans are an even bigger deal because these
are huge primordial beings imbued with the raw power of creation itself. They roam the cosmos,
doing what ever titans do, bringing order to the universe and seeking to awaken others of their
kind who still lay in their slumber, curled up in the shell of planets that had formed around them.
On the other side of this domain of order reside the Void Lords, beings of disorder. As
the name suggests, these beings are huge masses of shadow energy,
cruel and merciless beyond comprehension and with an insatiable hunger to seek and devour all matter
in the physical universe. Envious of the power wielded by the titans, the void lords sought to
corrupt a slumbering world-soul since corrupting a fully grown titan proved impossible. This
corrupted titan would allow them to fullfill their dreams, consume it all and so into the great dark
beyond which is a term used for warcrafts space, the unexplored cosmos still out there, they sought
out these slumbering world-souls. Not an easy task as like the titans, they had no idea where to look
especially when they were neatly packaged inside one of millions of planets.The void lords had
nothing but envy and malice and so decided that creating dark creatures to do their work for them,
and then flinging said creatures wildly into the cosmos and hoping one landed on a planet
harboring a world soul, was the best choice. These dark creatures are what we know as the Old Gods.
Hurtling through the Great Dark Beyond, four of these eldritch-horror esque monstrosities
landed on the unlucky world of Azeroth. C'thun, Yogg-Saron, N’Zoth, and Y’Shaarj.
These four mutants struck lucky, because not only was the planet they landed on
supporting a nascent world-soul, it was cradling a world-soul far mightier than any the Pantheon
of Titans had encountered before, rumored to be even stronger then their champion Sargeras.
These hideous amalgamations of fleshy hatred dug their tendrils deep into the earth seeking out
the very heart of the world soul. Their darkness spread across its surface,
the birth of the black empire. Azeroth’s elemetal lords were enslaved while the aqir, the faceless
ones and what ever dark powers eminated from the old gods spread further and further.
Azeroth wasn’t doing too well until the Old God party going on in Azeroth would be discovered,
by Aggramar, lieutenant of one of the members of the titan Pantheon, Sargeras.
The Titan Pantheon, having been informed of the dire plight of a world-soul,
arrived on Azeroth to push the Old Gods back and save Azeroth. Now all four of these pretty
wicked creatures were vile and despicable, but the most powerful of them was Y’shaarj,
and when the Titans created guardians of Azeroth from the very earth itself,
Y’shaarj was capable of preying upon the minds of these Titan-Forged guardians, drawing upon
their fears and darkening their thoughts. It wasn’t just Y’shaarj’s power that was
formidable however, his appearance was also pretty intimidating. Y’shaarj was immense in size and was
also sometimes known as the ‘beast with seven heads’ or the ‘seven headed one’. None of the
artwork we have shows him having seven heads, but it does show us a snake-like scaled body
with a massive head, goat horns and seven yellow eyes glaring out above a dragon-like maw.
The titans set their sights on the huge temple city built around the immense bulk
of Y’shaarj and they had it in their mind that destroying the huge stronghold would destroy
their enemies in one swift stroke. The titans were mighty enough to just rip out the old gods
and be done with it, but they were afraid that using their phenomenal cosmic powers would deal
too much damage to azeroth itself. When the battle against y’shaarj played out, they feared that
the Old God would overwhelm their Titan-Forged servants. Despite their better judgement, the
Titans knew they had to take action. Aman’thul, highfather of the Pantheon, reached down through
Azeroth’s skies and took hold of the writing body of Y’shaarj. With a giant heave of his arm,
Y’shaarj was ripped from the crust of the world, his gargantuan body ripped apart. His death cries
shattered mountaintops and obliterated hundreds of titan-forged where they stood.
It is also claimed that as his remains fell to the ground, Y’shaarj’s final dying breath manifested
as the seven prime Sha’s- Anger, Hatred, Violence, Fear, Doubt, Despair and Pride.
That’s where the description of the beast with seven heads might have come from. This was not
the only consequence of evulsing Y’shaarj from the world however. The Old God’s tendrils had worked
their way down far deeper than the highfather had ever expected and ripping Y’shaarj out of Azeroth
caused an eternal wound on the planet’s surface. Through this wound volatile arcane energies,
the lifeblood of the young world-soul, erupted and roiled out across the land.
The Titans along with their Titan Keepers worked around the clock to seal the wound that Y’shaarj
left behind and it would eventually become known as the Well of Eternity. They knew they could not
risk tearing the other Old Gods in the same way they had torn Y’shaarj from the world and instead
decided upon imprisoning them. They also realized that Azeroth would need fortifying if it was to
have any chance of awakening and so they installed two machines to imbue the slumbering world-soul
with cosmic energies, The Forge of Wills was installed in an area known as the Storm Peaks,
and Highkeeper Ra led an expedition to install the Forge of Origination in the South. As he traveled
South, Ra came across the remnants of Y’shaarj that had fallen back to the land, the land
we now know as Pandaria. They had corrupted the land around them. The largest remnant was the icy
heart of Y’shaarj, a mass of diseased flesh seething with void energies. Even in death,
Y’shaarj was proving to be a fierce opponent and Ra decided to seal the
heart away in an underground vault called (surprise, surprise) the Vault of Y’shaarj.
Ra was wise to think the remains of an Old God would attract attention,
as Aqir had already been gathering near the prisons of their imprisoned masters
and were also being attracted to the location of the heart. As a little bit of background,
the Aqir were an insectoid race which had joined the Old God party on Azeroth,
having been formed from the organic matter seeping from the Old God’s monstrous bodies.
The Aqir in the North gathered around the underground prison of Yogg Saron and would become
the Nerubians, the Aqir in the SouthWest gathered around the prison of C’Thun and became the Qiraji,
and the final group in the South-Eastern parts of the world gathered around the vile
essence of Y’shaarj which still polluted the land, eventually becoming the Mantid.
The Mantid had found themselves drawn to the valley around the Vault of Y’shaarj, unaware
that they were drawn to the lingering essence of the Old God, and unaware that his heart
was locked below them. They launched an attack on the Mogu guardians standing watch over the Vault,
but they were ultimately pushed back. The Klaxxi id not consider their defeat a failure. The
surving mantid warriors had matured, grown more powerful and cunning. The klaxxi patiently waited
one hundred years before assaulting the mogu again. They dispatched a new generation of young
mantid to besiege the titan-forged. Once again, the survivers returned stronger. Thus began the
mantid cycle. Every centure, a new mantid clutch amde war upon the mogu. The ferocious battles
removed the weak from the swarm, and only the strongers returned home. With only a few cycles,
mantid civilization had become tightly honed and rigid, utterely focused on erdadicating
weakness and empowering the mightiest of their kind. The mogu marked the change with cocnern.
They launched their own attack to eredicate this mantid thread and might have succeeded was it not
for one single mantid, Korven who eviscerated the mogu ranks and send them into retreat.
But the honored warrior was still not satisfied. He knew it was only chance that he arose in his
race’s greatest of hour of need and did not want to leave the mantid’s defense to chance alone.
After years of exerpimentation, they figured out a way to preserve these paragons of their race
within amber, stored away to be released whenever the need was dire.
We’re going to fast forward a lot of years now to the time of Mists of Pandaria. The alliance and
horde rediscovered the land, bringing their war and their many emotions with them. The curse of
Y’shaarj, the sha had become somewhat under control since the pandaren and the land had
learned to control their emotions and contain their enemy. Our arrival kicked up a storm,
fed the sha and caused a whole lot of trouble. The empress of the mantid,
grand empress Shek’zeer is taken over by the sha of fear, disrupting their ancient cycle and
corrupting their race. We’re able to join them in awakening the paragons in their our of need, learn
more about this ancient race and end their queen, however that doesnt make them our loyal allies.
“Be warned outsider.”
Warchief garrosh had his people search pandaria for new troops, artifacts and power. Imagine
everyone’s surprise when they actually found their way to the vault of y’shaarj...
“Cho speech.”
Garrosh had sent a group of Goblins, led by Grizzle Gearslip, to excavate the Vault and see
what lay inside. What the goblins discovered was something beyond their warchief’s wildest dreams,
the Heart of Y’shaarj. Grizzle was thrown aside by Hellscream’s personal bodyguard,
a giant oaf called Malkorok, who immediately claimed it for the warchief.
Garrosh having any kind of artifact is bad news all around,
but when it comes to Garrosh having the heart of Y’shaarj, well that’s bordering on apocalyptic.
He wasted no time in reviving the heart by using the magic pools in the Vale of
Eternal Blossoms and then taking it to his inner sanctum in Orgrimmar’s underhold.
“Mantid speech orgrimmar.”
As they promised us, they would always stand with their old god and this had quite a lot
of people wonder why they were against the sha taking over their queen. Isn’t the sha
an extention from Y’shaarj but I guess the mantid don’t recognise its curse as their true old god.
The heart empowered by the sacred waters of the vale in the hands of Garrosh makes them allies to
the warchief. Meaning that they stand between us and confronting Hellscream ourselves. We take them
on and fight through the siege of orgrimmar where Garrosh awaits. Having tossed aside Gorehowl,
the weapon of his father and his clan in favor of Xal’atoh desecreated image of gorehowl. He
and the old god have had quite a bit of bonding time, viewing visions of the future, handing
out shiny new weapons, empowering the warchief too make him qutie the challenge to deal with.
“Fight garrosh – whispers in visions – what i have seen.”
Nearing defeat Garrosh will absorb all of the heart's power in a last ditch effort,
dragging us into the vision of the future that he wants to make a reality.
“Final vision.”
With garrosh’s defeat, the last powers of the heart ebbed away,
leaving only a Fading Breath behind which would also gradually decay into nothingness. Y’shaarj,
the seven headed beast, was finally vanquished. The first old god to truely be dead and gone by
first being ripped out of the world by the titans, then its heart locked away and fully consumed.
Atleast that’s what we thought back then. Later in interview they have stated that
old gods like C’thun and Yogg-saron are also gone and with Battle for Azeroth,
the final old god N’zoth has been cleansed of the world as well.
Old Gods however, are powerful, capable of great and terrible things. So it might come
as no surprise that Y’shaarj simply...relocated. Appearing in Hearthstone with the Whispers of the
Old Gods expansion. The news post describing Y’shaarj’s arrival in Hearthstone is joyfully
chock-a-block with easter eggs from his Warcraft days, including a mention of his fury of his
remains being ‘panda-handled’ by scruffy little mortals, and mentioning how his last terrible
breath, which you might remember spawned the seven prime sha’s in warcraft, is capable of clearing
whole continents. The darkmoon faire expansion has him party hard as Y’shaarj the Defiler, while we
can only wonder if the old god will make a return in the story of Warcraft. We migth have cleansed
the planet of the old god infection, but the void lords, the source behind them, are still
out there somewhere. Time is going to tell if and when they’ll make their appearance, but for now
thank you very much for watching everyone! Hope you enjoyed the story of y’shaarj. Subscribe if
you like my videos, leave a like if you enjoyed this one aaaand until next time...see ya!