Keija’s recent romp through Cataclysm content reminded me of a question I’ve wondered about since that expansion was new: Where did the pygmies come from, really?
Pygmies are found in Uldum and on the Lost Isles. They apparently share an unknown common ancestor with goblins. I don’t have any good screenshots of my own of the pygmies in the Lost Isles, so here’s one that I’ve borrowed from Wowhead:
Then, while Keija was questing through Kun-Lai Summit, I saw these guys at Kota Basecamp:
And I wondered — could grummles be the unknown common ancestor of the pygmies and the goblins?
Grummles were created by a mogu emperor, so their birth, as it were, must have been millennia before the Sundering. After all, on the eve of the Sundering, the legendary Shaohao was the last emperor of the pandaren following centuries of freedom from the mogu, and the period of the pandaren emperors followed thousands of years of slavery under the mogu dynasties that followed Lei Shen.
What if, during the time of the great rebellions against the tyrannical dominion of the mogu, a troupe (or two or few or several) of grummles “got lost” — went missing, AWOL, exploring northward as far as they could go? They could easily have ended up in Uldum and in lands that became the Lost Isles of the South Seas in the Sundering.
Those that made it to Uldum or had islands to themselves might have slowly lost their original culture as they adapted their new homes, becoming pygmies.
Those that were unfortunate enough to end up sharing their islands with trolls might have found themselves enslaved again, forced to mine the strangely powerful mineral kaja’mite — exposure to which magnified their heretofore relatively limited intellects, tainted their skin green, and sharpened their facial features along with their minds… warping them into goblins.
But if pygmies and goblins are descended from grummles, then that means that, ultimately, goblins are descended from troggs!
Pfffffffffft. Goblins are descended from the Immaculate Explosion.
Ah, yes, but of course. š
Most of the races of Azeroth come from one Titan creation, or another. For a lot of the races, there were several branches that lead to the races we know today. :p
Magic usage has a large part to play in the evolution of Azerothian and Draenoric races, so I can see the need to tinker with high explosives would have ultimately branched the goblins from their parent race. Perhaps they have a little gnome in them, as well. :p
That’s for certain!
Even the races that didn’t arise from Titan creations have experienced some degree of branching — the different types of trolls and the tauren & their relatives.
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