Ever since starting World of Warcraft, I've been enamoured by the Trolls -- they were my first race, a good ol' Darkspear Elemental Shaman. In a way, I've always felt a sort of kinship with them, as both they and my real life ethnicity are both the original stock of a land, and faced prejudices by those who came afterwards.
I've also had a deep love of scale-model recreations that people do using stuff such as LEGO, or Minecraft. Rocco J. Buttliere's SPQR Rome in LEGO is definitely what gave me the final push to jump in.
So to honour them, I'm starting a project using ROBLOX's studio to completely recreate and expand the continent of Zandalar! Yes, that includes Zuldazar, Nazmir & Vol'dun -- along with a few additional islands because, let's be honest, a naval empire is going to have insular holdings.
Largely, this will NOT be anywhere close to the scale you see in Warcraft, it will be far, far, far larger because obviously - a game world needs to be focused on the most important aspects and set pieces to run in a game as large as an MMO.
I'll be doing five tags: lore, language, map, screenshots, fanon. Occassionally a meta one incase I need to update people.
And now the IMPORTANT part!
If you have any fanon ideas about Trolls - tribal or Zandalari - and want others to share it, let me know! I'm more than happy to take it on board and weave it in if you give consent. This also extends to Vulpera, Sethrak and Tortollans as they'll gain focus in the other regions, but please - Trolls first. It'll be a hot minute before I can start planning Vol'dun.
So I’ve had to postpone a bunch of projects because I just, don’t have enough time. But there is a headcanon explored on the Kaia comic that I really wanted to share and talk about with others, so I’m gonna go ahead and just do that XD
I think that the Temples and cults of Akunda and Kimbul on the desert of Vol’dun are not there despite it being a place for criminals, but actually take a function there because of it. Let me explain!
So, for starters, I always found it curious that Akunda was stated to be the Loa of Storms and new beginings (edited for correction), and took away the painful memories of those who asked for it in his temple. Like, weirldy convenient that people that are sent to this place because of their “mistakes” or wrongdoings can just, forget about them.
Then on the Temple of Kimbul you have his teachings written on a visible spot and being very focused on courage, strength of will, not thinking you’re above nature, and just generally very noble values? And I’m assuming those are the ones the followers held when the Temple was inhabited.
And there is their placement on the map. Here I put my character on the entrance of each temple, in front of each Loa, and then compared.
It gave to me the impression that they were possitioned opposites of each other both geographically and also “morally”? As in, if we follow the logic of the Temples being there because of the outlaws, in one place they’d be forgetting their past pain and starting anew, while on the other they’d be faced with a specific set of morals that could revolve about facing their wrongdoings and rectifying them. Like, imagine rehabilitation.
Runing away from your mistakes vs facing them, sort of metaphor
(Obviously the out of game, IRL reason as to why the lessons of kimbul are so visible is for the player to have clues to complete the shrine of the ring quest, and Akunda erases memories to have to recover them for an important character, but I’m jsut havig fun here so xD)
Although, I don’t think all of the outlaws that Zuldazar sent to Vol’dun would go to either of the temples, nor all the people living in those temples would have been criminals. There’s always exceptions and variety. We also don’t exactly know what crimes entail banishment to Vol’dun, and if you know about caste social systems you know some ““crimes”“ can be bullshit, so... I won’t speculate on that end.
There’s also an object called [Chain of Exemption] that implies you can only leave Vol’dun with a special permit, so I’m guessing an exiled couldn’t easily leave Vol’dun, or maybe could never leave, but life on the temples is a better alternative than the desert for sure (this item was added on shadowlands though).
The fall of the temple of Kimbul must have upset the balance at some point, given how he refused to accept new followers until the last ones were avenged. And we don’t know when exactly the Sethrak started to turn hostile (I didn’t consider Sethraliss in this equation because I couldn’t find a Troll follower of her in game), so this is a headcanon I have of the past of Vol’dun, and not of current. It gets a bit more explored in the comic as I say, but this is the gist of it ^^
What do you think, too far fetched? Maybe some of it makes sense? Let me know xD
Also, noticed the modus operandi of the Naga when it comes to Kimbul and Gral? Kill their followers while the Loa is away, leave their temple in ruins? What’s that about, are we gonna get more of Naga vs Trolls in the future? I think I’ll have to make another post regarding that.
Notes: Even without any Old Gods around to corrupt everything they touch, the lingering eldritch mold problem is going to take years to fix. Bring a filter mask and a lot of fire if you plan on going artifact hunting in these particular ruins, and consider... not jumping into the ominous blood red pool. DISCLAIMER: This blog is not responsible for any respiratory infections, hallucinations, or loss of bodily control to parasitic fungi experienced while exploring these ruins.
Caveats/accessibility: BfA content, HORDE ONLY, may require quest completions. The pictured location is free of NPCs, but there are a few very sparse hostile mobs in the area beyond (not pictured). If the interruption is not a problem, the entire passage is a fairly unique location to use!
