Draenei is not hard to like especially when its history has been incorporated into the game in equal tragic, epic, and inspiring parts. Not many races in the universe can be said to have survived the personal attentions of Kil’jaeden the Deceiver for tens of thousands of years. Even now, after the near total genocide of the orcish Horde, the draenei endure.
The not-so-good thing is the steering Naaru dimensional ships. They’ve crashed two, one becoming the mountain Oshu’gun (ironically one of the orcs most sacred sites before they fell to darkness and corruption is a crashed Naaru vessel) and the most recent being the Exodar section of the Naaru fortress seized by Kael’Thas Sunstrider and renamed Tempest Keep.
What’s Draenei?
Who exactly are the draenei? Let’s go back 25,000 years ago. No draenei exist 25,000 or so years ago, given the word draenei means “exiles” in the language of the eredar or the people who rose to civilization on the world of Argus. The eredar looked similar to the draenei. They were prodigiously gifted, strong, intelligent and naturally capable of learning to channel magical energy of any variety. The abilities they possess came handy when they built a society that lasted for thousands of years. It turned out to be marvelous that it even drew the attention of the titan Sargeras.
Unfortunately, this was after Sargeras had decided that his fellow titans and their whole “let’s go from world to world changing things to be the way we would like them to be’ deal was pointless and futile. Anger and resentment built up in the former champion of the Pantheon until he stalked away from his fellows, abandoning his purpose as a defender of their works and instead choosing to work against them. So resolved, he began building a mighty war host to take his war of total destruction across the myriad worlds studded like gems throughout the Great Dark Beyond. Races like the Annihilan (Pit Lords) made excellent shock troops, and the Nathrezim were perfect spies and infiltrators, but what Sargeras needed were generals. Beings who could lead his forces, who were naturally powerful, strong, and intelligent enough to guide and direct a universal crusade of total destruction. And on Argus, he found the eredar.
At the time the eredar were effectively lead by a triumvirate. Even today, their descendants the draenei often break into such groups to deal with tasks of importance. The eredar leadership consisted of Archimonde, Kil’Jaeden, and Velen. When Sargeras first appeared to them, still clad in his glorious presence as one of the titans, both Archimonde and Kil’jaeden were very interested in his offer of even greater power and a role of responsibility and leadership in his vast new undertaking. To travel the many worlds, see things no eredar had ever experienced before, wield power on a scale undreamt of! Only Velen, of the three, was hesitant. He didn’t have any concrete reason to reject Sargeras’ offer,and thus no real objection he could make to his friend Kil’jaeden, but something about the titan seemed wrong to Velen and his suspicions gnawed away at him.
A vision Velen saw of the truth… of Sargeras’ supposedly benevolence exposed for the mad desire for destruction that it was, and the eredar twisted into loathsome parodies of themselves as they wreaked destruction and havoc in Sargeras’ name… led to contact with the Naaru K’ure and gave Velen both the resolve and the means to flee Argus. The Naaru instructed Velen to gather his followers and retreat to the highest mountain on Argus, and retrieved the Prophet and his followers just before servants of Kil’jaeden and Archimonde (who had taken Sargeras up on his offer) nearly destroyed them.
It is this event that made them ‘draenei’, or exiles. From this moment, one race became two, with the eredar servants of dread Sargeras known as ‘man’ari’ by their former kin. In time the eredar of the Burning Legion would even embrace the word man’ari (meaning foulness or corruption) and use it to refer to themselves proudly. Every modern draenei must live with this knowledge, that his or her greatest enemies are also his or her former people, that the darkness has demonstrated it can corrupt even their closest kin. That it can corrupt anyone, even the mightiest of their people… even Archimonde and Kil’jaeden fell prey to its insidious influence. Only Velen escaped their fate, and only Velen led the remaining one third of their people away from Argus.
For thousands of years the following pattern repeated itself: Velen and the Naaru would find a new world for the draenei to settle on, only to be discovered by agents of Kil’jaeden who had taken Velen’s decision as a personal affront (in great part due to their previously strong friendship - Kil’jaeden is said to have viewed Velen as a brother, or even more than a brother, almost another aspect of himself in Rise of the Horde) and who would not allow them to escape. Over and over again Velen had to use his prophetic gifts and the aid of the Naaru to escape Kil’jaeden and the Legion, who had only grown in numbers and power over the years. Finally, through a combination of luck and their combined abilities, they arrived on a world that would come to be named Draenor, or ‘Exile’s Refuge’ in ereduin.
This world was a relatively pleasant one, quiet, with a variety of flora and fauna making it suitable for the draenei to live but without any real reason for the Legion to seek it out. It was inhabited by a race of intelligent beings who lived in a semi-nomadic hunter/gatherer clan structure. As each people had little the other wanted or understood, conflicts were rare among them, although it did puzzle the draenei to see their crash site become a holy site to the orcs. Velen himself mourned his friend entombed within the gleaming mountain and set forth to lead his people on their new world, and for uncounted centuries the two races existed in a state of wary peace. The orcs had other things to worry about like ogres and gronn, while the draenei lived relatively free of those concerns in cities like Shattrah or Telmor, which was protected by a powerful crystal artifact.
This was the cycle of life on Draenor for millennia. Fingers can be pointed here at draenei complacency, although to me that’s a touch unfair. Still, it can’t be denied that after thousands upon thousands of years of running from demonic maniacs who used to be their friends and neighbors, the draenei as a whole just wanted to have a place to call their own. They didn’t react as quickly to the orcs and their sudden bellicose stand as they could have: having once hosted a young Durotan and Orgrim Doomhammer, Velen was under the impression that the up and coming orc leadership was admirable and could be negotiated with. Unfortunately he failed to grasp the true extent of the hostility that Kil’jaeden had created, nor did he know its ultimate source. Had he seen the hand of his old enemy, it might not have mattered, for with K’ure entombed within Oshu’gun the draenei lacked a ready means of escape. Velen made the mistake of attempting to visit K’ure’s resting place at this time, which only agitated the orcs further (and led with the Prophet being briefly held captive by the Frostwolf chieftain Durotan, who held Nagrand at that time).
The fall of Ner’zhul and the rise of Gul’dan ended any chance for peace between orc and draenei, and Durotan’s betrayal of the means by which draenei had brought him and Doomhammer into Telmor sealed that city’s fate, as demon blood addicted orcs slaughtered the inhabitants. While the draenei did not go quietly… their mastery of arcane power, the Holy Light first shown to them by the Naaru, and natural size and strength allowed them to fight effectively and the orcish dependence on the spirits meant that as they took actions the spirits disapproved of, their power waned…. Gul’dan quickly set about replacing waning shamanistic power with warlock magics that the draenei were not equipped to resist en masse. Eventually, even Shattrath City fell. Gul’dan set up camp in the former Temple of Karabor, Velen’s own private sancturary, and transformed it into the Black Temple.
This unchecked, unjustified, and rapacious violence was the result of Kil’jaeden taking advantage of the aggressive hunter mentality of the orcs and magnifying it first with paranoid and suspicion and later with demon blood taken from an Annihilan, Mannoroth. While these elements were already present (hey, you try fending off ogres and gronn with good looks, it takes some significant whacking with big, heavy objects to keep those dudes off your back) it was the culmination of Gul’dan’s manipulation that convinced so many to willingly enslave themselves to demons. The complete slaughter, the genocide waged upon the draenei was Kil’jaeden’s goal, but it was an afterthought to Gul’dan, something he engaged in merely to cement his own power.
As the orcs fell to squabbling and Draenor, poisoned by fel corruption, began to become unlivable, the few remaining draenei gathered together in hidden refuges placed in regions no one would really want like Zangarmarsh. Velen had been forced to allow himself to be protected and removed from the major centers of draenei life as they fell, forced to watch as his followers were slaughtered in vast amounts. Now some of the draenei were finding themselves changed by the fel energies unleashed by heedless orc warlocks.
Unfortunately, the draenei did not respond to this new problem with the equanimity one might hope for. Already reeling from the carnage of the orcish assaults, many draenei responded to these ‘broken’ with horror and revulsion and ostracized them from their already reduced society. These unfortunates were named ‘krokul’, or Broken and were often forced to become hermits… when and if entire tribes were not so stricken. Akama, formerly a priest at the Temple of Karabor, ended up leading an entire tribe of broken.
In their reduced state it would have been fairly easy for Gul’dan to have finished the job, but as was stated above, he didn’t really care about the draenei at all: it was Kil’jaeden that had wanted revenge, and he withdrew his influence, sated at having forced Velen to watch his people die by the myriad myriads. (Yes, I reference Procopius.) Gul’dan found himself much more interested in finding a way to keep his people alive, which not only led to his alliance with Medivh/Sargeras and the opening of the Dark Portal, but gave the remnants of the draenei breathing room. (It also allowed Lost Ones, a tribe of broken further mutated by fel energies, to make their way to Azeroth. To this day Lost Ones can be found in the Swamp of Sorrows and Blasted Lands.)
Velen and his followers hid at the former anchorage of Telredor, and Akama lead his Ashtongue tribe of broken. The former Vindicator Nobundo walked the land attempting to reconnect with the Holy Light that he had lost when he was one of the few survivors of the massacre at Shattrath. Then Ner’zhul tore Draenor apart, and created Outland, the shattered ruin of the once lush planet. In the aftermath of his action the draenei actually seemed to recover somewhat, as not only did the orcs have more pressing matters (like pure survival) to occupy them, but the Naaru of the Shat’tar faction arrived at Draenor in what would be known as Tempest Keep as well, to try and lead resistance to the Burning Legion. Together with the Aldor, they helped reclaim and rebuild Shattrath from the charnel pit the Horde left behind.
The coming of Illidan to Outland brought change that aided and yet also harmed the draenei. Akama and his tribe of broken allied with Illidan and helped him close the portals and reclaim the Black Temple (formerly the Temple of Karabor) from the pit lord Magtheridon but Illidan’s ally Kael’thas Sunstrider led a force of blood elves to seize control of Tempest Keep while the Naaru were occupied helping the Aldor at Shattrath, seizing M’uru in the process. This led Velen to determine that the time was at hand to leave Outland once and for all. With Nobundo having returned to Telredor and demonstrated that the draenei affinity for magic extended itself to the elemental and ancestral spirits of the land that the orcs had abandoned to chase after fel magic, Velen began to believe in the words of an old prophecy of his and took direct action for the first time in decades. A force of draenei and broken stormed Tempest Keep, managed to commandeer one of the four satellite structures, and escaped Outland, although not without sabotage from the blood elves loyal to Kael’thas.
A starting draenei PC picks up his story from this point: the Exodar, the crashed satellite of the Naaru dimensional fortress sabotaged by Kael’thas’ servants, has ripped a hole in the Twisting Nether and arrived on Azeroth, crashing into islands loosely controlled by the Kaldorei. A starting player gets to experience the aftermath, as injuries are tended to, the new world is explored, contact is made with the Alliance and eventually a great threat is dealt with, earning the respect of the draenei people.
The draenei, led by Velen, provide the Alliance with their real foothold back into Outland, while Nobundo’s teaching allows the draenei to tap into the same spirit magic as their enemies in the Horde. It seems that the draenei are in an expansionist phase now, as their presence can be felt in settlements in Ashenvale, in ambassadors sent to Stormwind and Aerie Peak, and even in Northrend where they work to root out corruption. They’re done running. Velen took part in the final banishment of Kil’jaeden and the restoration of M’uru, and in so doing re-created the Sunwell, proving that the draenei can do good even to those who have only offered evil to them. Survivors who have touched the Holy Light, heard the spirit’s call from their desertion and answered, and worked magic unlike any people before them have joined with allies to ensure that what happened to Draenor will not happen to Azeroth.
