Blizzard seems to be pushing a new narrative sort of under the radar by introducing decay magic. It is all over the Dragon Isles, it seems to be corrupting leylines, there are gnolls using it and most importantly a guy was quite a fan of decay magic, Galakrond. Galakrond was corrupted by Yogg-Saron who had given him this curse of rotting and decay which means his presence may be returning to the Dragon Isles once again. So what is all this new information and are we getting decay as a magic in World of Warcraft? Read this guide and we discuss all about the new Dragonflight magic decay. 

New Magic Decay in WoW Dragonflight - Where to Find Decay

Decay is not a new magic, it has been in the game for a while. It has been on the chart, the official cosmological chart from the Chronicle, but recently in Shadowlands that chart may have been BS and the other chart may be more accurate. However at the end of the day both charts are interpretations, different perspectives, so we don't really even know the objective truth. So what even is decay and where are we seeing it? 

Because it is all across the Dragon Isles, the entire expansion is just laced with it. Decay seems to be like the opposite of life, but not really as in death but as in like a process that leads to death and destruction. For example druidism, nature, spirit would be the opposite - the forces that grow life, create nature. Decay on the other hand is the polar opposite just on the death side. We have seen some users in the past using this magic such as dark shamans that used it to enslave elementals, and something like the plague that the undead had used would be in a way forces of decay despite being rooted in the Shadowlands. Now if you had quested throughout the Dragon Isles, you might have done a questline with the tuskarr in Azure span where a bunch of gnolls have mysteriously discovered decay and they just started rotting and spreading chaos. They went insane and they not only started destroying the land around them but they started rotting themselves and leading their own tribe into exctinction. There are corrupted treants affected by this, the land affected by this and this decay started corrupting the leylines which is a huge hint. This obviously isn't some random gnoll becoming a necromancer, but it seems like someone is actually launching this on purpose as if it is a part of a larger goal. The gnolls may just be collateral damage but the corruption of the leylines is huge as leylines may be connected to titans and the arcane as they are some of the most potent places if not the most potent places around Azeroth. This is super relevant because Galakrond had this rotting, decay thing going on.

How Galakrond Was Corrupted

He drank from the water source that Yogg-Saron had corrupted as we had recently learned. This decay, rot thing was like the curse of flesh before the curse of flesh as that is the first major attempt that we at least know for the Old Gods to start messing up the titan established order on Azeroth from within. The dragon aspects became the aspects because they fought against Galakrond and had proven themselves to the titans. We learn from the data that Malygos almost turned into one of the unliving, these rotted proto drakes, that Ysera wanted to make peace with the unliving and most importantly that Ysera and Alexstrasza actually had a brother. A dragon by the name of Dralad, who was killed directly by Galakrond himself and his rotting energies. His body has dissapeared and it has never been mentioned again. As you may know the Dragon Isles are holding many mysterie and this might just as well be one them. I don't know about you but if Blizzard does something about this it could be super interesting. Think about it a brother of the Dragon Aspects that fell against rot and his body dissapeared. What if he has been unliving this entire time, what if he could be that thing underground or whatever else has been going on.

There is a lot of potential with this stuff. However let us examine decay as an energy because with a bunch of these hints this could legit become a new magic and possibly something that we could learn to tame and use later down the line which could lead into a new possible playable class. So the most interesting bit of information is that the two opposing cosmology charts one from the Chronicle and one from the Grimoire of the Shadowlands actually give us super different data on what decay actually is. With the current hints, decay makes the most amount of sense when you examine the Chronicle stuff. So decay is super close to the undead and the shadowlands on one side, however on the opposite side it is tied exactly down to earth and the Old Gods and the void which really makes a lot of sense when you think about it. As we know it as the old gods that created the decay magic that corrupted Galakrond and that caused a huge problem for the world of Azeroth. 

On the other hand, Deathwing was the aspect of earth, so maybe he knew something about this more than we did and he was also tied to the Old Gods as well. Now on the other hand we have the Grimoire of the Shadowlands cosmological chart which is a lot more tame. The entire chart overall is as tame as it gets, there is the great cycle in the middle and all the 6 cosmological forces are surrounding it. Decay is super close to Death as an extension of it and it is the exact opposite to life. In regards to it being connected to earth it is the exact same thing as with the Chronicle chart, the only major difference is that it is far away from Shadow and the Old Gods. 

If we base it on this chart is that the Old Gods may not be inherent users of decay, that they are tied to it as a force but since they were imprisoned deep within Earth they managed to use the connection between earth and decay that is present on both of the charts in the exact same way. This makes a lot of sense because they did create this corruption a long time after they had been imprisoned. Furthermore if there is a really big deal with the connection to Earth, we are going to start learning some interesting things about Deathwing in the very near future as he is ever present all throughout the Dragon Isles despite not being alive. So as Deathwing was tied to this earth aspect of the chart, he was way more familiar with both the Old Gods and decay.

Devourer from Shadowlands

Now another interesting hint could be those devourer guys from the Shadowlands. They literally destroy stuff, they may be like agents of decay within the Shadowlands, just how these gnolls were agents of decay within life, although not exactly willingly. There is a lot of room to introduce some really interesting things here. Furthemore, the Dark Shamans that were super relevant as Garrosh had used them. Regular shamans generally make bargains with the elementals but these guys literally tapped into decay magic and started using it to enslave elementals. Dragonflight is like the elemental expansion, so once again there is a lot of room for new potential storylines. This could additionally lead us into us becoming users of decay and being able to manipulate it. We currently have a bunch of classes using all sorts of gnarly magic for good, with using fel and the void and even death magic which could arguablly be even more destructive. So there first hints could be the setup for us to get some sort of dark shamans in the future and to start manipulating the magic of decay.