Who doesn’t like Mini Pets? They’re cute, they do adorable things, and they appeal to every WoW players inner Pokemon player. But what about for those out there who want their game to make coherent sense? I know at least one person spoke up during my discussion of Sparkle Pony Lore that they had issues with the RP aspect of the mount and how generally a lot about it just didn’t work. Well, if the Sparkle Pony is causing canon conflict, you can bet your disgusting oozeling that these little critters are bound to cause some issues! So what can you do? Well, you can continue reading this post for one, as I share my personal “lore” for some of Blizzard’s more ‘out there’ companion pets.
It’s Mini Tyrael and Diablo!
If you ever wondered why you shouldn’t ever cross the streams, this is why. Of all the things to cross over from the Diablo universe, it would have to be an Archangel and the Lord of Terror himself. Albeit shrunken in size, how did these two pint sized colossi of the Diablo franchise end up in Azeroth? Well, this one actually isn’t that hard to explain since Azeroth has its own equivalents that these two figures can easily be attributed to. Mini Diablo (The Lord of Terror) obviously once dwelt deep within the black heart of the Twisting Nether amongst his Burning Legions comrades. Deterred from the constant mocking about his diminutive size, Mini Diablo (The Lord of Terror) decided to embark on a journey to the mortal plane of Azeroth, to destroy the world personally! But when Mini Diablo (The Lord of Terror) arrived, the citizens of Azeroth found him to be just too cute and no matter how many Mini Diablo (The Lord of Terror) erupted fireballs at them, he could not get any respect. So he unfortunately became a pet, secretly awaiting the day he can rise up and destroy all life!
Sensing this dark, sinister and adorable plan, the Light dispatched one of its own to aid in the fight! A cousin to the Spirit Healers found in the realm of the dead, he is a fierce defender of the light! He is only 12 inches tall, and NOT in that way. He is the pint sized defender of the Light sent here to stomp out the devious (and adorable) workings of Mini Diablo (The Lord of Terror)! He is Mini Tyrael! Enemy to demons, Friend to worshippers of the light, patron mini guardian of paladins everywhere! He is often seen defending good and noble souls from the darkness of the Burning Legion and especially the machinations of Mini Diablo (The Lord of Terror).
It’s Grunty, Mini Thor and the Zergling!
This are perhaps is the easiest of them all, after all StarCraft is science fiction and what is science fiction without its vast array of plot hole filling goodies (Don’t believe me? Ask a Trekkie what a Heisenberg Compensator is. Now ask them how it works.) All 3 of these could be easily written off with wormholes, time travel or something like that. But how about we find something slightly less science fiction-y to explain these three, I’m sure someone will appreciate the effort. The first and probably easiest is the Zergling. Like Mini Diablo (The Lord of Terror) the Zergling is probably an abberation of the Burning Crusade that has found its way into employ of the mortals similar to the felhunters and imps of the Warlocks. It’s not hard to see it as a fleshy deviant cousin of the Felhunters actually (Fun Fact Kids! Felhunters are hunters of a fel origin, they do not hunt other fel demons. Yes, it’s bad naming. That’s why warlocks call them fel puppies).
However, Grunty and Mini Thor are a bit harder to explain. Where do you find a machine gun toting, power armor wearing murloc and a robot with a tons of guns? Ah, I see you think what I’m thinking: Gnomeregan. Yes, Thermaplugg is starting to feel the pressure with constant intrusions into his city. He’s having to turn out stranger and more powerful constructs to do his bidding. Riskier machines with dangerous amounts of weapons. Thus he began to design his newest weapon of destruction, the Tank-based Humanoid Offensive Robot. However, due to lack of resources he could only scrounge enough parts to make miniaturized versions of his original design. Thus the Mini T.H.O.R. was born. Of course a bunch of no good adventurer types keeping breaking in and stealing the prototypes.
But that’s not the only sinister project that Thermaplugg has up his sleeve. Oh no. You see, on top of machines, he’s begun to experiment on organic life as well. Finding ways to reinforce his own True Sons of Gnomeregan, the vile leper gnomes, he has begun to test fusing weaponry and armor to innocent little murlocs in horrific experiments to create half machine/half murloc soldiers. However, only having murloc intelligence, they are not the brightest little things (Bright enough to know to use that gun of theirs against demons like the Zergling though). Fortunately, the forces of DEHTA have descended into the Gnomeregan labs and freed many of this little critters and have begun delivering them to um… “safer” homes.
It’s the Spirit and Essence of Competition!
These two were very tricky for me. I mean, honestly, there are no other dragons like these two in the world. None of the flights have the appearance of this serpent like whelps. However, there are many skeletons from around Azeroth that bear a distinct similarity to these creatures. From the lake beds of Ashenvale, to off the coast of Stranglethorn large skeletal serpents are buried in the sand. Could these little guys be descended from these large serpents? If so, where have they been all this time? Well, there’s only been one place that no one in Azeroth has been to in all these years. One place where a dragon like these could be easily be bred as pets with out seeming out of place at all: Pandaria, the homeland of the Pandaren Empire. Is it that shocking? These pets are styled after Japanese dragons (Fun Fact, Kids! Japanese dragons are drawn with 3 toes, Chinese dragons are depicted with 4 or 5 toes) so it wouldn’t be out of the question that these dragons came from the heavily Asian inspired Pandaria (Chinese pandas wearing Japanese samurai armor). What? I can’t be alone on this.
It’s Deathy and Murkimus!
Murlocs sure do a lot don’t they? I put these two on here because quite honestly, I see the explanation for both them being the same: Goblins. Deathy really is the biggest stretch, but follow me here. Deathwing isn’t the type of dragon to just go through an elaborate procedure like having his body bound together by giant plates of adamantite without having a few guinea pigs try it out first. Enter the murlocs. By exposing them directly to the demon soul, their bodies would become wracked with the same destruction as Deathwing himself, allowing this charred and molten murlocs to be test subjects for the procedure at the hands of Deathwing’s entourage of goblin scientists, thus creating the Deathies, demented and broken murlocs who know eternal suffering of being burnt alive constantly from the inside and kept alive only by the power they were blessed with by being exposed to the Demon Soul. Now with the Shattering and the return of Deathwing, the Deathies have made it back to the surface and into your mail boxes. Let’s just hope they don’t go insane and try to kill us all.
Murkimus requires far less explanation in my opinion. Goblins like to make money, goblins run the arenas, an easy way to make money? Put murlocs into tiny arenas and sell tickets! Seriously, people love murlocs. Those tickets will be sold out faster than you can yell “I AM MURKIMUS!” at the Emperor. But when Murkimus is retired, what will happen to him? Well, he’ll be adopted probably. Maybe by you!
It’s Lil’ KT and XT!
I’m going to address Lil’ XT first, simply because he’s probably the easier of the two. Namely because Lil’ XT is the embodiment of gnomish reverse engineering. After the destruction of XT and the doors of Ulduar breached, the gnomes that worked with Brann got to collecting the various parts and pieces and doing what gnomes do – Tinker! Well they were able to create a smaller version of XT from examining the parts and pieces left by those who had ventured into the darkness of Ulduar. Now with their tiny version perfected, they can send it out to whomever! Right through the mailbox! With gnomish ingenuity!
As for Lil’ KT, well the only thing I can really say is that it may actually be part of Kel’Thuzad. A smaller, not fully regenerated one, mind you. If your curious how that happens, the first time we killed Kel’Thuzad back at level 60, he dropped his phylactery which we turned over to be destroyed by the Argent Dawn. However, due to some ‘accidental’ filing errors, the phylactery was never destroyed and thus Kel’Thuzad was resurrected. Well, if you note when we kill Big KT at level 80, we don’t destroy his phylactery then either. So Lil KT may in fact be a part of Kel’Thuzad’s soul regenerating to his full lich form. It should take him about 20 levels to do so, so no worries about your little lich to go insane and try to kill you. For now, he’ll just siphon the life off the rats.
It’s the Perky Pug!
Probably the hardest thing to explain in the game is the perky pug. No, I’m not joking. We’re talking about a world where until this little thing came along “dogs” were just domesticated worgs. So where did it come from? Well, historically pugs came from breeding animals for cuteness and size, so the creature is the result of some old school genetic engineering. Well, when I think genetic engineered animals, there is only one person in all of Azeroth that I can think of. Mei F-ing Francis. This woman has an endless supply of albino drakes, celestial steeds, and mounts of every color of the rainbow. She’s made more of a mess of the field of genetics than a Michael Crichton novel in a blender. Is it that hard to think that amongst all her freakish experiments she isn’t breeding adorable puppies for sale? Sounds like the thing she would do.
Well there you go, Oddcraft’s list of semi-canonical explanations for some of the oddest mini pets out there!
OddCraft 