infection - gamebastion.com

The Earthen of the War Within are interesting — similar to our own Dwarves and yet unaffected by the Curse of Flesh… Or are they affected after all? Nobbel87 speculates...

Curse of Flesh Origins

I was working on typing out some of the side quests for the Isle of Dorn, but quickly realised that there’s an interesting subject to talk about which relates to established lore and some of the lore that's coming up: the Earthen and the Curse of Flesh.

The Curse of Flesh originates from Yogg-Saron manipulating events at Ulduar to break out of his prison. Starting with Keeper Loken, he worked on taking over his jailers. Loken was then manipulated into using the Forge of Wills to create more of their Titan-forged and, unbeknownst to Loken, Yogg-Saron had added his Curse of Flesh to the machinery, tainting its creation matrix. Any Titan-forged created by the machine thereafter would fall victim to its affliction. Some would even spread it to previous generations of the Titan-forged. The Curse of Flesh would gradually spread and transform many of these infected servants into mortal beings of flesh and blood – beings who the cunning Old God knew could easily be killed.
Titan-forged like Vrykul, Mogu, Mechagnomes, Earthen and others. Titan-forged that used to help defend, shape, and maintain the world of Azeroth and its machineries.

It’s through the Curse of Flesh that we would see an evolutionary path in which Vrykul became humans, or Mechagnomes became Gnomes, or Earthen became Dwarfs. While Yogg-Saron had set out to weaken Azeroth’s defenses, by giving these Titan-forged flesh, it made them more vulnerable to the Old Gods’ corruption — but in turn, it also created their own worst enemy. The Titans could seemingly never have imagined ways of fully getting rid of the Old Gods without destroying the world and its soul within.

And so it would be these corrupted Titan-forged, once deemed by Algalon the Observer to be so