Into the Void [Fan Expansion Concept]

[The Stormbringer]

Dude, so hyped to see more creature concepts from you. The void ones are cool but they were mostly variations one ones we've seen (with several exceptions). Looking forward to The Emerald Dream!

[Golden Yak]

Nachitar looks and sounds great.

Thanks!

I really like Strata Giants(Fun fact: in my language strata means loss)

Oh my god that is so freakin' sad

I'm sorry I wrote you a tragic backstory, giants of Nachitar!

Has someone ever told that your art is amazing(of course, everyone does)? Just one thing, your art is amazing.

Just one more thing. I want to thank you becouse you inspired me to start my worldbuilding project. You are great.

Wow, thanks Kalmahi. It's always great to hear that someone has begun some new project because they've seen something I did. Have fun with it!

Dude, so hyped to see more creature concepts from you. The void ones are cool but they were mostly variations one ones we've seen (with several exceptions). Looking forward to The Emerald Dream!

Thanks Alar. Emerald Dream might be a ways away, but I'd still like to get there.

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Update! This post is about the realm of Vegathis!

Vegathis is a realm of death - the crimson sands are streaked with black ash, and huge swathes of desert are choked with the bones of the dead. Undead are the only inhabitants, wandering the dunes forever on guard for the intrusion of the living. Overhead, a blazing red sun of elemental flame burns eternally, holding back the darkness of the Void. But the sun's dreadful radiance only serves to cast the realm in a ruddy, blood-tinged hue.

The crumbling ruins of the lost vegathi civilization are scattered throughout the land. These are inhabited only by the ashen and their bound elemental servants of flame and earth.


The Ashen

The ashen were once a living race from the world of Vegathis called the vegathi. A terrible cataclysm they unwittingly unleashed upon themselves destroyed the entire race and saturated Vegathis with necromantic energy, causing all the fallen vegathi to rise again as undead - the ashen. Retaining their mortal intelligence, the ashen are tainted with hatred for all living things. They command a mastery over the elemental force of flame, and use it to purge the living wherever they find it. The ashen resemble charred humanoid corpses, their skin blackened, dry, and burnt, still smouldering within with elemental energies.


Ashen Immolator

Immolators are massive and powerful mechanical constructs created by the ashen and powered by elemental flame. The Ashen use them to great effect against their flesh and blood enemies. The Immolators have unleashed such terrible devastation against the living that the pain and suffering they unleashed has saturated the elemental power of the machines, granting them a ghost of cruelty and sadism that ordinary constructs do not possess.

Titan Ascendant

Lost Vegathis was touched by the hand of the Titans in ancient times, and their legacy inspired the living vegathi people to create the Titan Ascendants in the image of these cosmic beings. Understanding that the Titans desired in some way to coax another of their kind from the world of Vegathis, the vegathi built the Ascendants to contain the souls of the most worthy of their number. Ancient kings and queens were imbued with elemental energy and bound into giant vessels, creating the Ascendants. When Vegathis was devastated by the cataclysm that transformed the vegathi into the ashen, many of the Ascendants were lost, but a handful remain, watching over their ruined world. Mightiest among the surviving Ascendants is Incendra of the Living Flame, whose elemental power is the only thing that prevents the remnants of Vegathis from being devoured by the Void.


Shapeless

The hatred of the ashen for the living is partly born of their conflict with the Curse of Flesh, a malign Void-born sickness that has infested the surviving remnants of Vegathis. The Curse turns the inorganic into the organic - stone becomes flesh, sand becomes blood, and live becomes twisted, sick, and cancerous, devouring everything around it. Born of this Curse are the Shapeless, malformed and hideous servants of the Old Gods. These awful miscreations slough free of the Curse-infested regions to the south of Vegathis, spreading slowly across the realm, a threat to the entirety of the Voidlands.



The harder the Curse of Flesh is fought, the more terrible its reaction to attack. Greater and greater manifestations of the Curse are starting to emerge, horrible miscreations that serve to spread the will of the Curse's source - the malevolent Old God known as He Who Shapes.

(These guys were first depicted in concept art back for Cataclysm, but they have yet to show up in-game! This is worse than Void Giants and Fungal Whales! Blizz, please!)

The Cursewracked

Though undead, some ashen have embraced the Curse of Flesh in a desperate bid to live again. The Curse twists all things with the unfathomable reality-altering properties of the Void, and undead flesh becomes living again - though at the price of becoming an even more hideous abomination. The Cursewracked now live only to serve the cancerous whims of He Who Shapes, and the hidden Old God desires to spread his hideous gift throughout the Voidlands.

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The entire story of the realm of Vegathis and all its inhabitants can be found on WoWpedia with the rest of the Into the Void concept. Next update will explore one of the major raid concepts, the Dreadlords' Citadel upon the world of Xoroth, where the storyline of Nachitar is continued and the battle against the Nathrezim and their efforts to exploit the Voidlands takes a major turning point.

[Directionalk9]

Rakai and Autons, possible future Allied Races?

[KrakHed]

Thanks @LiPiNo. Looking at that Void God, it does sort've look a bit an Archon, doesn't it.

I started this concept before Chronicles came out and introduced the idea of the Void Lords and expanded on the nature of the Void, and it wound up changing a lot of what I had planned originally. But I worked some of my speculation about the Void Lords into areas like the Grove of Whispers and the Altar of the Deep Void as ways of presenting the lore I made in interesting ways.

In answer to your question, 2 Void Lords would combine together into a single more powerful Void Lord. And in fact, any number of Void Lords can merge to create a more powerful incarnation.

I have no idea what Blizzard intends for the actual Void Lords, but in my story, the Void Lords are vast in number but aren't actually that powerful as individuals (though some are stronger than others). It's only when the Void Lords pool their powers together that they become truly dangerous. It took thousands of Void Lords to create a single Old God, and hundreds of thousands (or possibly millions) to generate an avatar like Dimensius capable of devouring entire worlds. Separately, they are not especially formidable. Together, they can topple gods and Titans. A bit like the players, really...

I kind of have the reverse idea of Void Lords from what you have, based on what's been hinted at with Faceless Ones and other Old God minions. Xal'atath calling them growths and pustules of their god, them going catatonic when their god is slain, and a Faceless One being summoned as an avatar of G'huun in Nazmir, but still referring to G'huun as a separate entity. It strikes me that all the Faceless Ones are just split off pieces of their Old God and only semi-independent.

It always struck me as odd that a force of chaos had such devoutly loyal servants, and was supported by insectoid races when insectoids often represent order and hardly mesh with the selfishness inherent to the Void. But it makes sense. An insect hive functions as one organism. The Void favors hiveminds for that very reason. Every single one of Yogg-Saron's Faceless Ones are seemingly selflessly loyal to him because they are all just part of Yogg-Saron.

There might actually only be a few true entities in the Void, but who all exist in a state where there essence is split up into a multitude of bodies. The Old Gods could just be one of the larger hubs for their power. All the lesser Void Lords and Void Barons that don't seem so tough, and their entire army of Voidwalkers? They might all just be fragments of the same exact True Void Lord, splitting up his essence because that makes it easier to manifest his power in the mortal plane.

We might see an endless army of varying Void monsters, when the truth of the matter is that the whole army is actually just one guy who can split himself into a multitude semi-autonomous servants. Every single Voidwalker could be a distant echo of the Void Lords.

The Voidlords Dimensius and Pandemonius might just be greater and lesser manifestations of the same being, meant for different positions in the army of one. Kind of like command units for guiding the lesser manifestations.

[Dragnaxx32]

Whatever happened to that Dreadlord’s Citadel art? Was really looking forward to it 5 months ago.

[OverlordCMD]

Whatever happened to that Dreadlord’s Citadel art? Was really looking forward to it 5 months ago.

I'm pretty sure he's focusing on the Worlds of Warcraft fan Chronicles right now.

[Pua]

The Path of War was heavily influenced by WildStar, which is cool because it was a great concept.

Sadly, WildStar is about to be turned off... But World of Warcraft certainly isn’t.

[Nyel]

Abandon BfA and create this expansion @Blizzard.

Thanks!