User:GoldenYak/Azj'Aqir Subregions
Azj'Aqir Subregions
Listed below are summaries of the various subzones located in Azj'Aqir, the Shattered Empire, the ancestral homeland of the aqir.
Ur'Leng Plateau
A frozen cavern plateau of dark stone and glacier caves. Ancient ruins in this region predate the founding of Azjol-Nerub itself.
Azjol'Nerub Worldgate
The Worldgate of Ahn'Vekir leads to this counterpart Worldgate, buried deep in the underground glacier that engulfs the Ur'Leng Plateau. As the forces of Doorward and their champions march through the repair gate and emerge into the dark underground of Ur'Leng, they find the scattered remnants of the Newbreed that were drawn there. Pressing on further into Ur'Leng in search of Brann, the Doorward forces discover evidence that the Newbreed came under attack by another force.
The Frozen Expanse
The Ur'Leng Plateau is partially covered in encroaching sheets of ice. This underground glacier forms a vast plain known as the Frozen Expanse. Traversing this frozen terrain is no simple task - the ground underfoot is slick and treacherous, and the hollows of the glacier funnel wind from the surface into an erratic howling gale.
Pit of Nerg
This dark crevasse is a revolting pit of primordial slime, home to horrors older than any other living thing on Azeroth. From deep within rise the nergaloths, unspeakable horrors born of the Old Gods dark whims. They are related to the oozes and slimes that are found throughout the world, the original stock from which these lesser creatures arise. The Pit of Nerg is their birthplace, the cauldron from whence they were all born.
The bubbling ooze that fills the lower reaches of the pit has begun to stir to life in recent days, sending forth a steady stream of horrors that rise ever higher. When the Newbreed came through the Worldgate, many of their number swarmed into the pit, and stir the negaloths within to greater restlessness with a dark nerubian artifact. Their leader, Seer Yggzilk, is the wielder of this arcane instrument.
Sethis Sprawl
These ancient ruins seem even older than the cities of the nerubians, and lie completely buried beneath the glacial ice. Some effort has been made recently to unearth them, but the work has not been done by nerubian hands. A race never before seen by those who dwell on the surface has come to reclaim their ancient territory - the reptilian Cold Ones, creatures who walked the ancient world before the coming of the Titans.
Deep within Sethis Sprawl is an ancient shattered icon of worship, once venerated by the Cold Ones, now broken and powerless. Nevertheless, the Cold Ones desire to drive all intruders from their place of worship.
Icon of Sethis
One of the terrible idols of the Cold Ones, carved in the days of the Old Gods dark rule. The Cold Ones served the Old Gods and raised their dark cities across the world, carrying out blood rituals to please the Many-Angled Lords. The Icon of Sethis was one such altar, a source of worship and strength for C'Thun, the Unblinking Eye.
After an eternity, the Icon is shattered and still. Some glimmer of dark energy has recently sparked within it, however. Something is stirring in the underworld, in the very heart of Azj'Aqir.
Forest of Frost
The glacial caves of the Ur'Leng Plateau are many and treacherous. Prowling the countless ice stalagmites and stalactites are a great many threats, from rimeweb spiders and jormungar worms to icewing bats and wild frost elementals
Rimeweb Lair
A breed of giant spider dwells in the ice caves of the Ur'Leng Plateau. These rimeweb spiders pick along the ice walls on legs like razor-sharp icicles, binding their prey in freezing-cold webbing and draining the living heat from their bodies. Within the deepest cave, the great Rimeweb Matriach nests, a massive beast that rivals the largest breeds of Northrend. Many hapless explorers have fallen into her grasp, their frozen husks now decorating her lair.
The Broken City
Once an ancient city of the aqir race, now a desolate ruin, partially engulfed by underground glaciers. Towering spires and immense plazas can be glimpsed faintly through the encroaching ice, the splendor of the aqir civilization preserved eternally. A few regions of the city protrude from the ice, allowing adventurers to explore the buried buildings.
Within the frigid halls are swarms of ice spiders, spinning their freezing webs in the dark. In the deepest reaches slither nergaloths, who feast upon all trespassers.
Altcho
A crude camp made by the under-trolls, a primitive tribe adapted to underground dwelling. The trolls of camp Altcho guard their territory against any trespassers, typically giant ice spiders and the occasional nergaloth. Recently they have had the pleasure of fighting and killing Newbreed nerubians who have come to their lands, and are also looking to make sport of the members of the Alliance and the Horde that seek to explore the Lost Realm.
Lost Realm of Azj
A verdant subterranean jungle, hidden in the underworld since ancient times. The capitol of Azj'Aqir can be found within this lost land.
The Frozen Stairs
Mountain path of frozen ice.
Fist of Gendoc
Fort of the Under-trolls.
Thunder Mountain
Storm-wracked underground mountain peak, crackling lightning cloud.
Jungle Konja
Jungle filled with slashfangs.
Modaigh Battlefront
Under-trolls in pitched battle with cold ones.
Modaigh Sprawl
Cold one fortress in the heart of the jungle.
Icon of Modaigh
Broken icon of the Old Gods. No chronoplasmic energy present.
Ur'Konj
Under-troll camp surrounding Zul'Ur itself.
Sunken City of Zul'Ur
An ancient troll city, constructed deep in the Lost Realm of Azj. The trolls that dwell here are adapted to living in the underworld. They maintain an eternal vigil over the abandoned cities of the aqir, waiting for their ancient enemy to return so they may start the legendary wars of old once again.
The trolls are content to pass the time by slaughtering anyone else who happens to cross their path as well. They will not permit anyone to approach the ruins of the aqir capitol until they are dealt a lasting defeat.
Ulmaxon Basin
A verdant jungle basin hidden within the Lost Realm. Rivers flows into the basin from around the region, drawing many creatures.
The Broken Watcher
An enormous stone statue depicting a humanoid figure. Crafted in the image of the titans, this icon is unimaginably old. In reality, this 'statue' was once a being of living stone, an agent of the titans that fell during their war with the Old Gods an eternity ago. The aqir sealed the stone watcher with powerful wards, draining its power and causing it to bleed out into the surrounding landscape. The stone watcher has long since been bled dry, its empty husk of cold stone enduring long after the last spark of life has gone out.
The Blackpool
An ancient tarpit pool at the heart of the Lost Realm. The bubbling black tar flows from underground caverns, where hidden rivers of the substance boil up from beneath the surface. The remains of many long dead creatures are preserved in the tar. Their death has saturated the lower tar caverns with necrotic energies, causing undead monsters and corrupt tar elementals to appear.
Ruin of Neltharion
When the aqir went to war with the troll empire, they left the capitol hive-city of their empire unguarded. The dragonflights seized upon this opportunity to remove the growing danger of the aqir from Azeroth - the black, blue, and green flights attacked the hive-city, led by the black aspect, Neltharion the Earth-Warder. The assault succeeded in destroying the ruling class of the aqir, shattering the heart of their empire and leaving their armies leaderless.
In his victory, Neltharion called upon the powers of the earth to unleash devastation upon the aqir's lands. Earthquakes and volcanoes tore apart their empire, swallowing much of it into the deep earth. Some regions of Az'Aqir still quake with Neltharion's energies, cracking apart the earth and exposing flows of burning magma. Earth and fire elementals rage out of control in these regions, possessed of the bloodlust of the dragon aspect who summoned them, a fury that has not quieted in over 16,000 years.
Hive'Sard
The qiraji refugees who returned to their ancient homeland brought many silithid with them for protection. As the refugees settled in Azj'Naggai, the silithid quickly established a full-fledged hive in the jungles surrounding the city. The hive has rapidly grown thanks to the abundant resources, the silithid thriving in the heat of the magical suns overhead. The silithid have even begun the spawning for several great colossi.
A great silithid wasp named Bal'bleez has risen to become Overlord of Hive'Sard. Under the overlord's mental guidance, the hive has begun to produce a large number of wasps.
Azj'Naggai, the Dead City
Once the central nexus of the empire of Azj'Aqir, the city of Azj'Naggai is a necropolis, the largest tomb on Azeroth.
The refugees of the fallen qiraji kingdom have swarmed to their ancient homeland, seeking the lost power of their ancestors in order to rebuild their might. The records within the fallen city hold a secret that may spell doom for the surface world.
Path of Ruin
A treacherous cliff-side trail that snakes through the south-eastern mountains of Azj. This dangerous pathway is the only passable trail leading from the Realm of Azj into the Black Sands of Zhun.
Black Sands of Zhun
The Black Sands of Zhun is a vast underground desert, a wasteland of dust and ash baked by the blazing Black Sun of Azj overhead. An eternity ago it had been part of Azeroth's surface, a region where the Titans fought and defeated the Old God C'thun, and lost one of their number doing so. After C'thun's undying carcass was entombed beneath Uldum, the Titans buried the Old God's citadel and all the lands surrounding it. That region became known as the Black Sands of Zhun.
The dark energies of the sun stir the weather in the underground realm to create giant sandstorms, and clouds of dust roll across the black dunes, obscuring the unnatural light of the black sun overhead. Wailing wraiths and angry spirits wander the windswept sands, and the only landmarks are crumbling black ruins and ancient monoliths. Cold Ones prowl these fallen cities, waiting to ambush the unwary. The greatest threat are the lumbering Tarrasks who ceaselessly patrol the desert in accordance with some ancient, unknown edict of C'thun.
The Obsidian Gate
Across the thin black bridges that stretch over the deep darkness of the underworld lies the Obsidian Gate, a plateau of dark stone that stretches up from below. A vast flat stretch of ebon sand, with a mountain of black rock rising at the center. Carved into the mountain itself is a great temple devoted to C'Thun, shaped into two mighty gates. Disturbing runes crawl across the carved walls, throwing ghostly light upon the stone terrace that sits before it. The black stone doors are split asunder, shattered centuries ago. Titan constructs are strewn about, ancient and cracked, destroyed long ago. Statues of faceless ones leer down from the gates at all who approach.
The Cold Ones patrol the broken portal into the heart of their ancient lord's realm.
Chasm of Whispers
Beyond the gate, thin stone bridges lead deep into a canyon worn into a stretching plateau. Stone claws stretch overhead, blocking out the strange un-light of the black sun. Great flowing clouds of black sand scour through the chasm, and strange mutterings and whispers can be heard faintly on the wind. The twisted icons and statues that the Cold Ones honor line the twisting path through the chasm, shimmering runes marking a path through the depths.
Cold Ones and skittering spiders dwell here. Nergaloths lurk in the caves that honey-comb the chasm.
Nargul Sprawl
A fortress of the Cold Ones, built in the crumbling ruins of a city made for Faceless Ones. The buildings are tumbled and shattered, broken in the ancient war long ago. Every causeway and chamber is filled with the sinister icons of Old God worship, and the Cold Ones are present in force.
In Nargul Sprawl are born the mighty Cold One Formyr.
Icon of Nargul
A towering black icon to the Old God C'Thun which lies at the center of the Nargul Sprawl. A focus of the terrible dark might of the Old God, the icon shattered long ago, with black fragments of the structure hanging in the air. Crackling blue-green flame spills out from the icon, rising high into the air and vanishing into the darkness of the chasm overhead, swallowed by the light of the black sun. From the broken base of the Icon flows a glowing blue-green fluid, crawling with flame, flowing from the broken icon and falling in a never-ending flow into the distant darkness deep below.
The Cold Ones surround the icon, carrying out rituals of worship. As a result of their efforts, many ancient Faceless Ones who were mummified ages ago have begun to return to life. Infused with the glowing fluid from the broken icon, this ancient fiends have begun to live again.
Beruu Sprawl
Across the dark spans are another dark city of the Faceless Ones that has been all but swallowed by the black sands of the realm. Temples and towers and spanning bridges lead into the mountains of dark stone, and great icons devoted to the five Old Gods surround the city, carved from towering stone spires. The spires are carved in the shape of titanic Faceless Ones, giant hunched beasts whose eyes are made of enormous gems.
The air swarms with Dactyls, flight-capabled Cold Ones. These creatures called the Beruu Sprawl their home.
Icon of Beruu
This Icon is more intact than the Icon of Nargul. Thought cracked and broken, it has not yet fallen apart. Instead, blue-green light flares out between the cracks of the icon, casting a haunting light over the region. The temple-city of Beruu Sprawl rings this icon, and the Dactly flit about in great numbers, roosting on the chasm-spanning bridges and promenades of the city. An eldritch fluid flows from the cracks in the icon, collecting in stone aqueducts built throughout the city.
The Cold Ones are collecting the blue-green fluid that flows from the icons. They use it to forge weapons and armor and great metal structures, and gather it in great basins. This substance is chronoplasm - the blood of C'Thun.
Ahn'Qiraj Worldgate
A broken and battered Worldgate, crafted ages ago by the aqir and used by many of their number to flee the collapse of their empire. The gate once lead deep beneath the land of Silithus, and in ancient times provide the aqir access to the desert region and the titan city that would become their homeland, Ahn'Qiraj. The Worldgate collapsed with the fall of Azj'Aqir, and the aqir refugees who became the qiraji lacked the knowledge to fully repair it. When Ahn'Qiraj was broken open by the Might of Kalimdor and C'Thun was struck down, the surviving qiraji fled back to the Worldgate, using all of their remaining resources to open it for a brief time and flee back to their long abandoned homeland.
While most qiraji refugees returned to Azj'Naggai, a handful remaine around the Worldgate to guard it. These few refugees were set upon by the forces of the Cold Ones and slaughtered. Their carcasses have been impaled on spears and displayed around the base of the now utterly ruined Worldgate.
Mount Golgoth
The sandswept mountain of Golgoth dominates the northern regions of the realm of Zhun. The unnaturally weather born of the Black Sun overhead sends waves of black sand screaming across the dark stones, rasping raw the flesh of any who seek to cross. This inhospitable region is avoided even by the Cold Ones, for fearsome predators stalk the black cliffs.
Without question, the most terrible threat are the giant Tarrasks, giant Cold Ones who prowl the wilds. Towering overhead, these colossal reptilian giants wander the wastelands, heedless of the sand storms which cause not even the slightiest of harm to their thick hides. The mountains of Golgoth are home to many of their kind, who have been roused to greater activity recently. The mightiest of their kind is King Skarjand, a fearsome specimen who wields a club of solid obsidian, taken from one of the crumbling ruins found throughout the land.
Fane of Many Angles
A wide blackstone terrace found to the south of Mount Golgoth. Once a gathering place for worshippers of the Old Gods, it has fallen into ruin and been almost entirely buried by the black sandstorms that plague the realm. Towering icons and statues jut out of the sand, depictings of great leering horrors and Faceless Ones. The Cold Ones have begun to use this ancient ruin as a mustering grounds, with several bands preparing to the chronoplasm salvaged from the Icons of the realm.
Kathak Sprawl
In Kathak Sprawl, a great city of the Faceless Ones, the Cold Ones are gathering the chronoplasm forged weapons, as well as raw liquid chronoplasm, from all across the black sands. Here they are forging the raw substance into great metal shells, machine-forms that are in some strange way both ancient and simple, yet highly advanced in ways beyond the understanding of even the foremost engineers of the surface races.
Awakening from the deep chambers of Kathak Sprawl are the toad-like Sluagh, the great amphibious sorcerers of the Cold One race. These croaking fiends direct great numbers of Cold Ones in their dark rituals.
Icon of Kathak
Like the Icon of Nargul, these vast structure was a focus of C'Thun's power, and is responsible for warping the region of the Black Sands into the nightmarish landscape that it takes the form of. Floating fragments of black stone the size of buildings hang in the air around the Icon, frozen forever unmoving in time. Dark energy pours out of the fragmented icon, spilling over the surrounding mountains.
A long stone bridge stretches from the temples surrounding the icon across a great expanse, and leads directly into the blazing heart of the icon itself, eventually becoming lost in the blue-green flame. From within the flames emerge the Endless Ones, arbiters of C'Thun's will, called forth from their extra-dimensional exile by the prayers of the Cold Ones.
Span of Centuries
A series of plateaus marks the approach to the Nameless Citadel of the Old God C'Thun, each one the site of ancient ruins built an eternity ago. Once the bulwarks of the legions of C'Thun, these crumbling structures are now used as strongholds by the Cold Ones.
Atop the plateau known as the Span of Centuries are the ruins of the Altar of Grief. Sacrifices were brought to this place from all over primordial Azeroth, from races long extinct or unrecognizable from their modern descendants. The black stones still echo with the wailing of those condemned to feed the Old God C'Thun with their anguish.
Span of Aeons
The Span of Aeons plateau holds the crumbling remnants of the Altar of Hunger. Clerics and high priests from the ranks of the Faceless Ones offered up songs and prayers in praise of C'Thun. Intoned in a language older than Azeroth itself and borne from minds utterly alien to any mortal thought, these liturgies have a power that mere spoken words do not, and have seeped into the stones of the altar, imbuing the ruins with a malign power. The torment of those sacrificed long ago has been brought to life by these dark energies, and ceaseless prowl the ruins, waiting for mortal souls and minds to prey upon.
One such fiendish entity, an elemental of raw hunger known as the Maw of G'Resh, holds sway in the highest of the broken towers.
Span of Eternity
The final plateau fortress that lies along the path to the Nameless Citadel. The Cold Ones are in force here, watched over by the enigmatic Endless Ones, the mightiest and most unknowable of C'Thun's servants. Zzrom the Overseer reigns here, protecting the gate to his master's ancient dwelling.
Built atop the plateau is the Altar of Fear. Those who defied the will of C'Thun were offered up here as sacrifices, their blasphemous defience earning them the greatest punishment. Their mighty wills were subjected to visions of unimaginable horror, slowly erroding their spirit, until finally their courage failed them and they were left gibbering terrors until their bodies failed them, literally frightened to death. Their shattered bravery was an offering to C'Thun, and the Old God drank deeply of their fear-wracked souls.
The Nameless Citadel
At the center of the desert, the blazing light of the Black Sun grows twisted and unhealthy. Black ruins cast shadows on the sands, and the howling winds grow silent. Rising up from the desert is the Nameless Citadel, an ancient fortress of C'thun, the dread citadel from which his baleful eye gazed out upon the world he controlled. Now the Citadel has been abandoned by the Old God, long ago defeated by the Titans and imprisoned in what would become Ahn'Qiraj. But though C'Thun is gone, his dread will is still carried out by the beings who inhabit the twisting, non-euclidean halls of the Nameless Citadel.
The laws of the natural world do not govern the region around the citadel. Time is twisted and bent, ruins hang suspended in midair, bridges of sands mere grains thick but capable of supporting the march of armies stretch out over immense chasms that reach deeper than the world could possibly allow for. The reality-warping power of the Old God has soaked into the very air. Creatures made of pure, defiled time manifest themselves in the twisted spires and blackstone walls of the citadel. Cold Ones and Aqir wraiths lurk in every shadow.
Deep within the citadel, a terrible horror resides.
Dungeons
The Sunken City of Zul'Ur
An ancient troll city, constructed deep in the Lost Realm of Azj. The trolls that dwell here are adapted to living in the underworld. They maintain an eternal vigil over the abandoned cities of the aqir, waiting for their ancient enemy to return so they may start the legendary wars of old once again.
The trolls are content to pass the time by slaughtering anyone else who happens to cross their path as well. They will not permit anyone to approach the ruins of the aqir capitol until they are dealt a lasting defeat.
Azj'Naggai - the Dead City
The shattered capitol city of Azj'Aqir. Long abandoned by the aqir, it has recently become inhabited by scattered qiraji refugees, who seek some secret of their ancestors so they might rise to power once again. They have established a hive of silithid in the ruins of the city to protect them.
Azj'Naggai holds many ancient secrets about the aqir race.
Nameless Citadel - The Halls of Shattered Time
The exterior of the citadel stretches across the black plateau it is built upon. The dark walls are festooned with the stautes of leering horrors, massive glaring eyes, enormous stone Faceless Ones. Within the citadel is greater horror - built by the unnatural powers of the Old Gods, the citadel does not conform to the laws of nature. The interior seems impossibly vast compared to the exterior. Staircases meant for creatures vastly largely than mortal humanoids spiral up for miles and then end. Passage ways and promenades run vertically up walls. Black bridges stretch for leagues, ending in mid-air at great stone doors that lead nowhere.
Everywhere are the Cold Ones, the reptilian servitors of the Old Gods. Resurrected Faceless Ones wail and sing throughout the mind-warping halls. The Endless Ones, unknowable servitors of C'Thun, hold sway over all within the citadel, carrying out their tasks as they did in the age of their master's rule.
Raids
Nameless Citadel - The Orrery of C'Thun
Deep within the citadel is a vast and terrible device, a machine designed and built in accordance with the unfathomable edicts of C'Thun. Black, rune-etched gears of all sizes, from tiny wheels to cogs with teeth as great as buildings fill the interior of the citadel, like a nightmare landscape of clockwork. This enormous machine contains, at its core, what seems to be a representation of Azeroth and its stellar system, a dark twin to the Celestial Planetarium in Ulduar.
Yet it maps more than just the turning of worlds and stars. Strange currents flow about the spheres of the machine, twisting and bending in accordance with the placement of the device's clockwork. This great construct is the Orrery of C'Thun, built to track the flow of history itself, mapping the ever-changing timeways of Azeroth. For the purpose of this machine is to undo the flow of time, and change the history of the world, past, present, and future.