Varian Wrynn <High King of the Great Glorious Alliance>
In this timeline, it seems that Varian Wrynn still returned to the Alliance, but somehow avoided his fate at the Broken Shore. Based on his appearance, that life hasn’t been easy though, as evidenced by the gray hair, eye patch, and Orc skull decorating his belt.
We previously discovered that this storied weapon would be returning as a Azmourne’s Corrupted Ashbringer quest item, and although we thought at the time that it might be a part of returning Naxxramas content, being named for Azmourne now tells us that it’s associated with the Scourge Time Rift in Fractures in Time. We don’t know as much as we’d like about Time Rifts just yet, but they appear to be world event scenarios similar to Primal Storms and Fyrakk Assaults, except involving deviant timelines spilling over into our world – in this case, one in which the Scourge were successful in overrunning Azeroth.
Don’t forget that we also discovered several prominent undead NPCs in this week’s build, suggesting that Vereesa Windrunner <The Banshee Queen>, Uther <The Deathbringer>, and Thassarian <Hand of the King> could also be a part of this Scourge-ridden timeline.
Mechagon was the last king of the Gnomes who led his people to a new land in search of technology, establishing what we know as Mechagon Island. There they worked to undo the Curse of Flesh, returning to their mechanized ancestry, but in doing so came to believe that all life should be mechanized, by force if needed.
Overlord Mechagon represents an alternate universe in which the island wasn’t closed off from the rest of the world, but instead marshalled its mechanized power to cleanse the Curse of Flesh from all of Azeroth. We’ll experience this cold reality through the Robot (A.Z.E.R.O.T.H.) Time Rift, fighting back against the robot overlord before he can spread this final solution to our world as well.
