Dawn of the Aspects is an E-book pentalogy written by Richard A. Knaak, set in the Warcraft Expanded Universe. It details the rise of the Dragon Aspects in pre-historic Azeroth through the Framing Device of Kalecgos finding an Ancient Artifact that shows him visions of it, alongside him watching the malaise of the dragons unfold in post-Cataclysm Azeroth.
This book contains examples of:
- An Arm and a Leg: Tyr loses his hand, as the human legends from World of Warcraft state. However, contrary to those legends, it was not a Deliberate Injury Gambit. Tyr reached for an item that was knocked off his person in the middle of battle, giving Galakrond the chance to tear off his hand.
- Big Bad: Galakrond, an absolutely massive proto-dragon who is devouring the others and has hideous mutations all over his body.
- Gone Horribly Wrong: Tyr implies that this is the case for Galakrond, the story's Big Bad, an attempt at Super-Empowering a planetary defender.
- Hulk Speak: More developed than most cases, but the proto-drakes have considerably limited vocabularies compared to the dragons they eventually become.
- Mental Fusion: How Kalec receives visions of the past, seeing them from the point of view of Malygos. By the final part he feels like he's always been a part of Malygos and has serious trouble remembering the present.
- Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Kalec's vision ends just before the Titans empower the Aspects, meaning they have still yet to appear in person anywhere.
- Oh, Crap!: An undead legion descends on the proto-dragons while they were challenging the Big Bad to a battle. Malygos appropriately reacts this way when Tyr's hand is torn off and devoured by Galakrond in the middle of battle.
- Shock and Awe: Talonixa. Three bolts of lightning from her were enough to collapse an entire cliff face.
- Shoot the Dog: Despite Ysera's attempts to stop it, Talonixa executes the proto-dragons infected by the undead who were succumbing to cannibalistic bloodlust by tricking Ysera into leading them to a cave for "quarantine" and then collapsing the entrance.
- Stopped Caring: Tyr says that none of the other Watchers (such as Thorim from Ulduar, Ra-den from Pandaria, and so on) are particularly interested in Azeroth's future and don't care to fight Galakrond. Two of them finally show up at the end, after Galakrond has been defeated, and agree that they should have helped.
- The Quisling: Coros.
- Red Oni, Blue Oni: Ysera is spitfire and stubborn to a fault, meanwhile her sister Alexstrasza is level-headed and thinks before acting.
