The Titans and the Old Gods

Long before mortals kept records, the titans walked the Great Dark Beyond: world-souls grown into living giants. The noblest of them gathered as the Pantheon and searched the stars for sleeping world-souls like their own. Deep inside Azeroth they sensed one of extraordinary promise, but darker powers had found it first.

The void lords had hurled their servants, the Old Gods, onto the young world. Y'Shaarj, C'Thun, Yogg-Saron and N'Zoth sank their bodies into the crust and raised the Black Empire, with the elemental lords of fire, earth, air and water as their generals. When the Pantheon arrived, its titan-forged armies broke the empire's citadels. Highfather Aman'Thul tore Y'Shaarj from the ground, but the blow opened a wound that bled the world's arcane lifeblood. The titans understood that killing the rest might kill Azeroth itself.

So the keepers chose prisons instead. C'Thun, Yogg-Saron and N'Zoth were chained deep below the earth, and the elemental lords were banished to the Elemental Plane, whose realms include Skywall and the Firelands. The keepers calmed the bleeding wound into a shining lake, the Well of Eternity, shaped mountains and seas, and left titan vaults such as Uldaman behind. After a monstrous proto-dragon named Galakrond fell, the Pantheon empowered five great dragons as Aspects to guard the world, then departed into the stars.