Lorewalker Mo' - Val'Sharah

Val’sharah is the most important place in the world to druids, it has a world tree as well as an entrance to the Dreamway, but so do many places. Why is this place special?

The Emerald Dream was created by Freya as both a means for the growing titan Azeroth to learn from the life on her surface and for the protectors she empowered to safeguard that life. To that end the dream has several links to places across the land, these links make up the emerald dreamway.

The Dream is also linked to the waking world by the world trees; they spread the life-giving energies of the dream to world and life feeds back to the dream through them. The first of these trees was Shaladrassil, crown of the night. The tree and Val’sharah around it were home to many of the wild gods.

The land nearby was inhabited by the elven empire. Their forebears had settled around the well of eternity and spread out from there. Suramar city was the closest settlement, boasting the grand temple of Elune which stood as the centre of the elve’s faith. It was also home to the Stormrage brothers and Tyrande.

Tyrande had her place in the priesthood and Illidan was a mage, but Malfurion Stormrage did not feel at home in the empire, he sought out a different path. He knew the nearby forests were home to powers even the empire didn’t want to interfere with, and sought them out. In the glades of Val’sharah he met Cenarius.

The son of Malorne and Elune, he was deeply connected to the flow of nature and well aware of the empire. He could see the dark path it was starting to walk, and reached out to Malfurion in the hope of turning the tide. Malfurion took to the power well and asked his brother to join him, but Illidan had no time for power he didn’t directly control and nor did many of the elves he tried to reach out to.

As the war of the ancients kicked off he used the power of nature to great effect and impressed the many mages who found their powers weren’t working well without the well. The power of the well of eternity had been sealed off to power the burning legion’s portals so their arcane was greatly weakened. More and more elves turned to nature for an answer to their new enemy.

Val’sharah survived the sundering largely untouched and the forest became the centre of druidic teaching and sleeping. As druids draw their power from the dream it’s only fair they take a turn in there looking after the place. The legion are not Azeroth’s only enemy however, the old gods seek to corrupt the titan before she grows up.

To the old gods the dream was an opportunity: a direct link to the titan through the living world. So in the dream they created a nightmare, a creeping corruption of twisting and desecrated life spreading from a region called the rift of Aln.

The old gods seem to be working with the legion this time, and have corrupted a large region of the dream. They even managed to corrupt the world tree Shaladrassil, allowing it to act as conduit of corruption instead of life. Where else would they strike but at the heartland of their old enemy?