Timeline Changes
For my own edification.
Lyren on WrA is referred to as main verse.
Long history summarization under the cut.
Main verse continues as normal - dead Lisaerys, dating Temeraith for roughly 20+ years, Temeraith dies. BUT sometime between Temeraith dying and meeting Flynn (period of 2-3 years) we have the split.
The getting lured in by Old God artifact that happens later in main timeline (and is thwarted by Lyn) happens earlier, and is not thwarted by anyone. With no Lyn around, their attempts on reopening the bond in his head to give an opening to Old God creatures works.
While not wholly under their control, Ly... can’t really fight against his bonded very well. Its wrong. Also they can feel it and slowly day after day getting more tendrils into his brain.
Meanwhile they’re doing the Phoenix Experiments except in an environment they control instead of haphazardly in the wild. This actually doesn’t work out as well for them since main verse Lyren stumbled over steps of it on his own over the years that they don’t know about yet. Probably with time they’d figure out the missing pieces.
But they don’t have time. Lyren struggles under their control, and when the void consuming his mind threatens the core of his self, it triggers a last ditch protection Temeraith had put in place, completely destroys the bond. Lyren, freed from control and with new fiery abilities he doesn’t know how to control, destroys the creature and attempts to kill the cultists before getting the fuck out of there.
Returning to Starsong, he refuses to let anyone touch his mind and check the damage - or leftover void taint - at all. But his fire magic is hard to control, elemental in design, and doesn’t seem to want to jive with his arcane based abilities at all - though the few times he dares touch it, it works just fine with void.
In an effort to learn how to never fall prey to it again by getting a handle on controlling what had tried to control him, he tracks down and joins Umbric’s crew. Which... works for a time. Cae’sava cares little that he’s exiled as long as he still gets artifacts from time to time, and Umbric’s people are wary but welcoming.
Until of course, Umbric’s research into a void ridden cube (and didn’t that seem vaguely familiar?) coincided with Alleria’s coming and everything went topsy turvy. Again.
Lyren is frankly, extremely angry with the universe at this point. The last few years of his life have gone from bad to worse to awful. The taint he so wanted to control has now changed his body. There are Light-be-damned (literally) tentacles coming out of his head. The fire he once tried so badly to control he barely even bothers now, a threat to ally and enemy at once. His send off from Stromwind (no one asked *him* if they should join the Alliance) is less of a “show our allies what a strong force we can be” and more of a “get out of here before you kill someone and go burn it off on these keep busy missions.” He has the distinct idea that certain bits of leadership probably won’t mind if he ends up an early casualty of war.