The Ata'mal Crystals

I'm considering commissioning a picture showing the Ata'mal Crystals. For now, I made this overview for myself.

The crystal was given to the eredar people by the naaru so long ago, that noone remembered it even 25 000 years ago. When the naaru saved the eredar from the Burning Legion, it shattered into seven crystals, one for each colour in the rainbow.

The crystals, especially Leafshadow, Heart of Fury and Spirit's Song, played a big role in Rise of the Horde, and also in some of the questlines in Outland in Burning Crusade (which I plan to do over again sometime soonish). Most of them seem to be lost in our timeline, but a recent questline for Harrison Jones got me thinking about them again. I wonder where they are in the alternate timeline?

/bow

One - The Crash

Year 26 - Entry 1

What happened? Everything hurts.

She opens her eyes and looks up at an unfamiliar starry sky, framed by a broken ceiling. Carefully, she tries to move her limbs, to check if she’s alright. Fingers, arms… The motion whirls up dust and makes her cough. She gasps, tears bursting from her eyes. Her ribs hurts terribly! She breathes shallowy, convincing her lungs that there is no need to cough. She tries adjusting her legs. Waves of pain shoot from her right knee, and she presses her eyelids shut, drums the pavement with her palm, and tries to not pass out again. The pain diminishes a little, and she becomes aware of a familiar sound. There’s water running very close; probably a small stream. Her left leg, although sore, seems fine. She turns her head gently from side to side. She feels dizzy, and her head is pounding.

She slowly rolls over so that she’s resting on the left side of her body, and takes a look at her surroundings. The entrance of the room, with the arched doorway, is intact, but the door is missing. Most of the rest of the walls are missing, with only pillars left. Some of the room is located in a small shallow pond, and beyond that she can see the top of a small waterfall. Beyond the waterfall there are rocks and tall green trees strecthing towards the skies. Still in this position, she slowly crawls towards the pond. When she is within reach, she places her hand in the water. It feels cool. She uses her hand as a cup, and lifts a small amount of water to her face. The water has no smell at all, so she carefully take a small sip. It tastes like normal water, and she continues to drink until her thirst is slated.

They had finally been able to flee the shattered remains of Draenor, Outland. Velen had led the few remaining draenei in a raid on the Exodar, which was one of four naaru vessels located in Netherstorm. Or Farahlon, as some still called it. They had to reclaim it from the blood elves, and there had been a fierce battle. She had tried to help as best as she could, but her elder sister had led her into an empty room and told her to hide. Kneeling behind some boxes, she had felt that they had started to move, but she could still hear combat sounds outside of the room. After a while, the noises seemed to move away from where she was, and eventually she couldn’t hear it at all. She had just decided to come out of hiding, when suddenly the entire ship had started shaking. The exodar seemed to be dropping, then it was hurled forwards, before it started to spin out of control. She had tried her best to find something to hold on to, the fear grasping a hold of her, clenching her heart, slowing her thoughts, and tightening her muscles. She heard terrified screams, and then loud noices, as the ship had grazed something. She had no idea how long she had been holding on to the nearest object, it could be 5 minutes or 5 hours, before the big final crash that had destroyed this room completely. She was knocked into the oposite wall by the violent movement, and had passed out. How on argus was she still alive?

She pushes the thoughts and the fear away, but can’t stop the tears. She falls to sleep, completely worn out.

An attempt to make a draenei timeline

I've been reading Rise of the Horde again. It's a very sad and infuriating book. And at the end, when I think there is no more that can shock me, there's a small scene that happens when the orcs open the Dark Portal that just breaks my heart. I also feel sad for the orcs in a way. Not for the bloodthirsty warmongering brutal idiots, but for the proud and caring people, that lived in harmony with nature. The first chapters show how good life could have been for them, and then they just fuck it all up.

My reasoning for reading Rise of the Horde over again, was that I wanted to get a better grasp on the hard facts. When did this and that happen, how many were they, and so on.

For example:

• Less than 1 000 draenei escaped from Argus. 
• About 25 000 years later they crash on Draenor, and they were then about an even number with the orcs, or slightly less. Without it really stating how many orcs there were on Draenor either. Velen states in Rise of the Horde that since the draenei are very long-lived, they don't have children very often. So I really don't know how much they've increased their numbers in those 25 000 years. Neither do I know how limiting Genedar/Oshu'gun was on space. 1000+X=Y draenei.
• The orcs killed more than 80 % of them. 20 % of Y=Z.
• About 70 years after the orc-attacks started, the draenei crash on Azeroth, with unknown losses.
• With WoD's time-/planet-/reality-jump, we're back only 35 years in time, and by that time in our history the draenei had already suffered major losses. However, alternate timeline Draenor seems to be holding up much better. So the combined number of draenei between the two realities seems to be approximately Y+Z.
• However, if we leave beautiful Draenor, and close the portal behind us, we're again down to Z. 

I've seen people argue for this being the case; we go there, we save the day, we go home again, we close the door. Well, I hope this isn't how it will turn out. My characters have undoubtedly had a hard time going back, but after spending a year or two on a Draenor that is whole again, see their culture, temples and cities "restored", meeting people they have lost in our timeline, and perhaps even getting new friends... I can't really tell them that this is something they will have to leave behind.

Here's the timeline I made, with a lot of help from Wowpedia.

/bow