Know Your Lore: The Bronze Dragonflight, Page 2
by Matthew Rossi 
Mar 17th 2010 at 4:00PM
For a group of dragons mostly concerned with the ebb and flow of time led by a reclusive aspect who knows the exact time and place of his death, the Bronze Dragonflight has been surprisingly active. They have appointed 'Watchers', agents who move through time serving the unknowable goals of Nozdormu himself, and have involved themselves with events in Andorhal and beyond. It's interesting to note that in his/her appearance in Andorhal, Chromie seems to believe that the Scourge is tampering with time itself, an assertion seemingly borne out by the appearance of Temporal Parasites, but considering Chromie's earlier appearance in Stratholme (well, earlier from a pure timeline perspective, but later subjectively... this is why I love time travel, by the way, because events actually can precede their causes) where we see the Infinite Dragonflight at work trying to kill Prince Arthas before he could become the Lich King, it's possible that the Scourge were not involved at all. We certainly never see evidence of them traveling through time again.
Nozdormu himself makes a reappearance between the Second and Third Wars, being one of the Aspects who bands together to free Alexstrasza and defeat Deathwing. He's also involved in the events wherein Korialstasz/Krasus, Rhonin, and Broxigar are sent back in time and completely confuse the heck out of everyone reading along trying to figure out the original events of the War of Ancients vs. their changes and alterations. Good job there, Nozzie. That helped keep those timelines straight.
Since then, the various sub-factions of the Bronze Dragonflight (the Brood of Nozdormu, the Keepers of Time, and the Scale of the Sands) have each seemingly taken on specific duties. The Brood, led by Anachronos, seems most concerned with protection the Bronze Dragonflight itself, stopping the Qiraji once and for all and otherwise making sure the other factions continue their work unmolested. The Keepers of Time (led by the brother and sister pair Andormu and Nozari) seem more directly involved with the actions of the Infinite Dragonflight, a group of strange dragons and draconids who work to alter the timeline for some as yet unknown reason (which I will be going into next week) and the Scale of the Sands serves as Soridormi's personal servants, currently occupied with trying to preserve the timeline around the events of the Battle of Mount Hyjal.
At present (as much as that word has any meaning to a group of time travelers) much of the bronze dragon's efforts are taken up in their conflict with the infinites. It's impossible to say when this conflict actually started. For all we know, the Infinite Dragonflight won't even come into existence for thousands of years. Since both they and the bronzes are capable of moving through time, their skirmishes take place on a constantly shifting battlefield of when, not where. We do know that even during the Nexus war Chromie sends adventurers to the Bronze Dragonshrine in Northrend, where selected agents team up with themselves twice in order to do battle with the infinites and see a puzzling image of Nozdormu at the end of a rite that is intended to show the leader of that time altering faction.
Chromie reveals at the end of that quest (the first quest, where future you comes back to help present you in the dragonshrine, not the second quest, where present you goes back in time to help past you defend the dragonshrine) that the bronzes currently have no idea when Nozdormu is, merely that he's away dealing with important temporal matters. However, since the rite she sent you to enact was intended to determine who the leader of the infinite dragonflight is, quite a few have theorized that this means Nozdormu is in fact the head of the infinites. How could the Aspect of Time, in charge of maintaining the timeline, dedicate himself to destroying it? Well, there are many possibilities, none confirmed.
Nozdormu himself makes a reappearance between the Second and Third Wars, being one of the Aspects who bands together to free Alexstrasza and defeat Deathwing. He's also involved in the events wherein Korialstasz/Krasus, Rhonin, and Broxigar are sent back in time and completely confuse the heck out of everyone reading along trying to figure out the original events of the War of Ancients vs. their changes and alterations. Good job there, Nozzie. That helped keep those timelines straight.
Since then, the various sub-factions of the Bronze Dragonflight (the Brood of Nozdormu, the Keepers of Time, and the Scale of the Sands) have each seemingly taken on specific duties. The Brood, led by Anachronos, seems most concerned with protection the Bronze Dragonflight itself, stopping the Qiraji once and for all and otherwise making sure the other factions continue their work unmolested. The Keepers of Time (led by the brother and sister pair Andormu and Nozari) seem more directly involved with the actions of the Infinite Dragonflight, a group of strange dragons and draconids who work to alter the timeline for some as yet unknown reason (which I will be going into next week) and the Scale of the Sands serves as Soridormi's personal servants, currently occupied with trying to preserve the timeline around the events of the Battle of Mount Hyjal.
At present (as much as that word has any meaning to a group of time travelers) much of the bronze dragon's efforts are taken up in their conflict with the infinites. It's impossible to say when this conflict actually started. For all we know, the Infinite Dragonflight won't even come into existence for thousands of years. Since both they and the bronzes are capable of moving through time, their skirmishes take place on a constantly shifting battlefield of when, not where. We do know that even during the Nexus war Chromie sends adventurers to the Bronze Dragonshrine in Northrend, where selected agents team up with themselves twice in order to do battle with the infinites and see a puzzling image of Nozdormu at the end of a rite that is intended to show the leader of that time altering faction.
Chromie reveals at the end of that quest (the first quest, where future you comes back to help present you in the dragonshrine, not the second quest, where present you goes back in time to help past you defend the dragonshrine) that the bronzes currently have no idea when Nozdormu is, merely that he's away dealing with important temporal matters. However, since the rite she sent you to enact was intended to determine who the leader of the infinite dragonflight is, quite a few have theorized that this means Nozdormu is in fact the head of the infinites. How could the Aspect of Time, in charge of maintaining the timeline, dedicate himself to destroying it? Well, there are many possibilities, none confirmed.
- It's not Nozdormu at all, and Chromie was right, the hourglass did indeed show Nozdormu fighting back against them.
- It's a future alternate version of Nozdormu seeking to prevent his own death reaching back in time to change events on Azeroth so that he won't die. He's disabled his 'present' self so he won't fight him.
- It's present day Nozdormu doing the same thing, but because he knows he's supposed to. His awareness of the time and place of his death indicates he dies because he starts the infinite dragonflight, so he did so in order to preserve the timeline and bring out the foreordained events of his foreseen death.
- Nozdormu has gone mad because he has to maintain the sanctity of a timeline that leads inexorably to his own death, which he knows the exact date and means of, so his personality has broken and he isn't even aware that he's the head of the infinite dragonflight.
- It's not Nozdormu, but someone close to him that either wants to usurp his position or prevent his death against his own will (Soridormi and Anachronos would both be contenders here) - Nozdormu is either being kept out of the loop or actively subverted by his most trusted followers.
- Come up with your own crazy theory! It's time traveling dragons, it doesn't have to make a whole lot of sense.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Azure Mar 17th 2010 4:15PM
Very good article. My favorite Dragonflight.
Anna Mar 17th 2010 4:18PM
Awesome as always! I especially appreciate the hush around the Krasus/Rhonin/what's-his-face trio's actions. :)
Darkleeroy Mar 17th 2010 5:31PM
Broxigar the Orc, brother of Varok Saurfang, and quite possibly the most badass Orc ever to have existed.
leoaguiar Mar 17th 2010 6:29PM
Its Broxxigar the RED, he is orc but its not his title.
busuan Mar 17th 2010 4:21PM
My own crazy theory:
6, Nozdormu exists through out time, hence 'timeless'. He knew from the beginning (and to the end) that all the problems with Azeroth's timelines are because of the existence of the Bronze drogonflight and the VERY mechanism the Titans created to allow the time wardens to guard time. A paradox (am I using the correct word?): the supposed solution creates a larger (than before) problem.
Had there been no time wardens and the mechanism, evil (including the Oldies) might (just might) have a way to interfere with time to change Titans' grand plan for Azeroth, which could be next to impossible. But with the time-tampering mechanism, evil have now a much easier way to do the job: they only need to somehow control enough number of Bronze dragons.
Thus the Titans' perfectionist approach has generated the greatest danger ever to their own great work.
And Nozdormu finally understood it.
Therefore, the only solution to this problem is to eliminate (does NOT mean to kill) the time wardens themselves, their time-altering capability and the very mechanism allowing time to to altered.
It is the greatest sacrifice the Bronze dragons would ever (or never?) know.
busuan Mar 17th 2010 4:32PM
BTW, if you haven't figured it out, it's not completely my 'own' per se...
/cower Lawbringer
I was very impressed by the plot of Star Trek: Voyager episode: Year of Hell.
rich Mar 17th 2010 5:02PM
Year of Hell is great, right up there with Yesterday's Enterprise in my book (though seeing the C for the first time, learning of her heroic demise, and finally seeing the D go bad-ass on some Klingons really can't be topped, in context).
I've thought something similar. Every time we go to fight the Infinites, it's over some huge, world-shaping event. Without the Dark Portal, the orcs never leave Draenor for Azeroth, the Netherwing don't exist, etc. Without Thrall's escape from Durnholde, the new Horde never exists. Without the Culling of Stratholme, Arthas runs off with Jaina and only has emo Kael'thas to deal with.
Year of Hell was resolved by destroying the ship (and hitting the "reset button"). Maybe that's what Nozdormu is trying to do - hit "reset" by knocking out key events and reverting the world to a time before the Legion found Azeroth.
Cigan Mar 17th 2010 4:33PM
Personally I think this ties in with a theme across the caverns of time instances. The theme of doing something perceived to be bad when in fact the "greater good" is served. The Infinite Dragonflight appears to be quite malevolent, but I'm not convinced that they are. The consistency with which they have been destroyed, and the fact that they can so easily look through time to see what will happen indicate to me something else is going on.(heck the fact that they aren't even brought into existence until their plans have already been thwarted says a lot)
Personally I think Nozdormu creates the Infinites because he knows that strength is born of conflict. This is a consistent theme with the Bronze dragonflight. The scourge must exist because if they didn't we wouldn't have been strong enough to take the Burning Legion. The Alliance and Horde must exist and go to war because if they didn't we wouldn't have been strong enough to take the burning legion. The random happenstance of plot contrivance must happen because if not we won't be strong enough to take the Burning Legion. . . . Oh sorry metagaming. I should stop that.
Anyway, you get the point. At the end of the day Nozdormu is a creature of the Titans. The Titans are nothing if not meddlers. They fly to worlds within the Nether, mess with them and instill their idea of "perfect order" and then move on to do it again. If there is one thing that is consistent about the Titans it's that nature "isn't good enough". If nature isn't good enough then why would the natural timeline be good enough? The Infinite dragonflight is a later step in Nozdormu's path as a guardian of Time. For a while things have to be maintained. Then you hit the point where everything is going wrong. Well as far as the Titan's are concerned that point was probably the curse of flesh, but really and truly when Sargeras got back to meddling with Azeroth. That's about when the Infinites step in. It's convoluted because they seem to be helping the Burning Legion, but they allow the adventurer's to stop them. I know I know, we like to think of ourselves as "all powerful" but hear me out.
So we have stomped Malygos, we have beaten back Ragnaros, we have killed twilight dragons, and Onyxia, and presumably at the end of the coming expansion we will put an end to the twisted thing that was once Neltharion. The Infinite dragons are different. They know we're coming. I don't buy for a second that with their knowledge of time that after the first time we show up and stop them (which could be any of the Caverns of Time instances who knows in what order the Infinites experienced them) that they didn't realize we'd show up every other time. They know it because they were created in the future, they have power over time, and they know perfectly well not only that the Bronze Dragonflight can interfere, but will interfere through us. Do they try to stop the Bronze dragonflight, who are the ones that give us the necessary access to the Infinites to get in their way? No they don't.
You can maybe write off this behavioral quirk as "dragons don't attack dragons" in some other setting, and some other fantasy world. In Azeroth everyone attacks everyone, ESPECIALLY the dragonflights. The blacks attacking everyone, the blues attacking everyone, Nozdormu coming back and getting involved to save Alexstrasza. It never ends. If there is one thing the dragonflights are not it's one big happy extended family.
Now the one argument that could write all this analysis away is "Well the Infinites are ignoring this obvious path for the same reason every other evil overlord ignores the obvious path. The story has to end with the heros winning". In a game setting this is doubly true. Blizzard does have a long LONG history of ignoring the obvious and best story development in the name of game balance, and WoW has been hit by that harder than the first 3 WC games because of it's format. In this case there are too many ways for them to tell this story that involve the Infinite flight at least trying to stop the Bronze flight for me to think that's what's going on. It's just all a little too contrived.
Anathemys Mar 17th 2010 6:11PM
I think he made the Infinites to give us phat lewtz.
But seriously, think about it, what if the entire purpose of the Infinite flight is to strengthen and arm us against future challenges, thereby allowing us to fulfill our destinies and preserve the timeline that eventually leads to Nozdormu's death.
And, if Nozdormu can time travel, couldn't he just travel to a time after he dies? If you think about it (and read the War of the Ancients trilogy where multiple versions of Nozdormu all struggle with the Old Gods), if Nozdormu dies today, his version from yesterday could always time travel to today, meaning that, effectively, he never actually dies in the sense that he cannot appear at any given moment.
If that was too confusing (which I even had trouble with...), then think of it this way: If Nozdormu dies, wouldn't he die COMPLETELY? As in, he dies, therefore, he is dead. No passing go, he cannot collect two hundred dollars, and he may NOT time travel anymore.
Now, I gotta go get an aspirin...
Thyrial Mar 17th 2010 6:30PM
I love the theory but part of your theory is a bit wrong. The Bronze and Infinites are fighting at various places in time, so the theory that the infinites aren't going after the bronze is not 100% right. (look at the Bronze Dragonshrine and the infinite corrupter in CoS) There are also some very good reasons as to why they would not do a full on attack on the Bronze. If you think about it the Infinites could not have just materialized out of thin air, they need to have come from somewhere and there's only one realistic answer to that which is from the Bronze flight itself. They either came from Bronze eggs that were tampered with in some way similar to Deathwings various dragonflights, or they were actually Bronze dragons that were changed in some way (again looking at the infinite corrupter in CoS lends credence to this idea) or a combination of both. No matter what it would mean that for them to exist in the first place the Bronze dragons themselves need to exist and so they can't really afford to actually destroy them.
Tethra Mar 17th 2010 4:37PM
Every time I read about the Bronze Dragonflight, i feel like I need to smoke some weed. And I don't even smoke weed.
LiaG Mar 17th 2010 5:20PM
Now we can just watch the "Alice in Wonderland" movies (Disney's and Burton's).
brian Mar 17th 2010 7:37PM
How deep does the rabbit hole go?
kaion Mar 17th 2010 4:40PM
or giving Medivh a hand opening the Dark Portal and starting the Third War,
You mean First War.
Cobalt Mar 17th 2010 4:41PM
Perhaps Nozdormu is a little disturbed by the notions of predestination and destiny, and the implications that go along with them.
Perhaps disturbed enough to try to "break" them through the Infinite Dragonflight?
Omegan01 Mar 17th 2010 4:46PM
"It was here that Anachronos again showed how little he understood the minds of mortals. First he refused to help Fandral, an act that indirectly cost the night elf druid his son, and now instead of destroying the Qiraji he not only settled for a policy of containment, he handed the device necessary to release said containment into the hands of the elf he had already bred resentment into. Not surprisingly, Fandral rejected this gesture, smashing the Sceptre of the Shifting Shands into the sealed gates of Ahn'Qiraj. Offended, Nozdormu's son gathered the fragments and entrusted them to the various dragonflights who had lost potent offspring in the war. He kept one, and vouchsafed one to Azuregos, Eranikus and Vaelestrasz. (This ended up being pretty bad news for Eranikus and Vaelestrasz. Azuregos was smart and gave his to a giant fish.) Interestingly enough for a dragon so involved in time, Anachronos does not seem to have seen the eventual fate of the chosen shard guardians coming."
You know what would have been a fascinating end to this storyline? Imagine if, in Cataclysm, Nozdormu really does reveal himself to be the leader of the Infinites and threatens to join Deathwing in wrecking the world for reasons of insanity/evil/corruption/destiny/whathaveyou.
At first it seems like all is lost but then Fandral Staghelm and Hamuul Runetotem step forward, revealing that all the morrowgrain they gathered was for the purposes of cursing the leader of the bronze flight - Fandral motivated by anger over the loss of his son, and Hamuul enraged at the high-handed way the bronze dragons treat us mortals even when they need our help.
Imagine the controversy that would create in night elf and tauren societies - two of the great archdruids in the world conspiring to do something so completely petty and evil and yet now, we need the fruits of their labor. So, we go to confront Nozdormu and protect Fandral/Hamuul (depending on faction) as they lay the curse on him so we can smash the corrupted/evil/misguided/whathaveyou bronze aspect in one of the raids of the expansion.
Garrosh could praise the foresight and strength of the tauren leader, while Fandral could once again throw it in Malfurion and Tyrande's faces that once again it's HIM and not the two of them that saved the day. And ultimately it would be revealed that Anachronos himself set his own ascendance in motion with his treatment of the Cenarion Circle, actions that ultimately lead to Nozdormu's defeat.
...but no. Knaak had to put Fandral in a hole in the ground for trying to poison Malfurion. #@$^#%&$^ing Knaak.
Halegar Mar 17th 2010 5:12PM
Um...spoiler alert?
Omegan01 Mar 18th 2010 2:15PM
Blargh. I apologize. Normally I try very hard to avoid doing that kind of thing, but I'm still bummed over that one and it just slipped out. Again, I'm sorry.
Artificial Mar 17th 2010 4:58PM
One possibility that isn't covered: Nozdormu has seen the where and when of this death, and *it was in the past*, relative to today. The reason we don't see Nozdormu around today is not that he's been disabled by his alternate self or anything so strange, it's that he's already dead. So, the "good" Nordormu is not around because he's not supposed to be anymore, and being a good little soldier of time, he's gone and died like he should have. However, shortly before he gave in to the inevitable, he did spend some time (hah) trying to prevent it. During this momentary lapse in judgment, he did attempt to alter the timeline to prevent his own death. At first this started with some monkeying around near the events of his own death, but each alteration seemed to cause repercussions that required dealing with too. An ever expanding web of changes eventually stretched both well into the past and into the future. The Infinite Dragonflight we encounter today and the Nozdormu who leads it is this past Nozdormu trying to preserve himself while applying more and more patches to the timeline to try to fix the damage he causes by preserving himself. He eventually gives it up as impossible and goes on to die like a good little time-trooper, but in the meanwhile, people across time and space for millenia in both directions are having to fight the chaos he's bringing/brought to the timeline.
jishdefish Mar 17th 2010 4:58PM
I think that in the final battle against Deathwing, Nozdormu sides with the Azerothian heroes to destroy him, but it ends up with both Deathwing and Nozdormu dead. But, before Nozdormu's son and daughter can claim his essence, the Black Dragonflight steals it, and uses it to jump to a point in time to recover from this massive defeat. After they have recovered, they begin to launch raiding parties on various points in time in hopes of inadvertently creating a timeline in which their master, Deathwing has not died.