Fanfic / The Obsidian Dawn

The Obsidian Dawn is a World of Warcraft AU written by Iceworth (Previously known as Dusty the Umbravita) of Fanfiction.net.

Hora, a young Bronze dragon, uses an alternate timeline to try and save the Black Dragonflight from extinction and redeem them in the eyes of the world by altering the actions of Onyxia and those around her in Stormwind. Unfortunately, it involves making them incredibly miserable in the meantime.

As of June 21st 2014 it is finished.

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This Fanfic Contains Examples of:

• Back from the Dead: One cannot simply kill Onyxia and have her stay dead.

• Break the Haughty: Almost a year in the Stockades and participating in the Battle at the Wrathgate has humbled Tariona greatly, though she desperately tries to keep up her appearances.
• The Casanova: Rudolphus Withering was one in his youth and he sired an impressive brood of bastard children through it, only three of which are known: Leonardo Withering, Eduard Von Andorhol, and Samantha Inkweaver.

• The Chessmaster: Orion. He fakes his own death, plays Onyxia, Romathis/Nefarian, and Nalice for fools, and succeeds in using a proxy to wipe out a large chunk of the Black Dragonflight.

• Culture Clash: Between the ruthlessness of the Black Dragonflight (which Onyxia is a strong adherent to) and the human...ness... of the humans.
• Cynicism Catalyst: The blightbombing of Southshore during Cataclysm was the straw that broke the camel's back for Katrina Hackett.
• Dead Guy Junior: Sabelia. Subverted, however, with Sabellian's actually being alive.
• Decadent Court: The Stormwind House of Nobles, most notably Lady Katrana Prestor, Lady Tariona White and Lord Stephen Fletcher.
• Deadpan Snarker: Onyxia, Nalice, Serinar, and later on Bolvar Fordragon have shades of this.
  • Disabled Snarker: Sabellian. It seems to be a Black Dragonflight thing.
• Death by Childbirth: A very narrow subversion happened to Samantha Inkweaver in a timeline where Onyxia didn't drag her off the streets.
• Disappeared Dad:
  • Samantha Inkweaver's father left her mother, Samara. Norris Abraham later walked out on her when she was pregnant with Amandine.
  • Samara's father walked out on her. Inkweaver women can't get a break, it seems.
• Don't You Dare Pity Me!: Onyxia. She doesn't even think people should be pitied at all.
• Dropped a Bridge on Him In the lore Thrall takes Deathwings place as Aspect of the Earth and takes center stage in the war against Deathwing. Here? He dies unceremoniously by getting bit by a dragon and thrown into a wall. Nobody seemed to mind very much either.
• Epilogue Letter: The start of the epilogue is a letter to Bolvar Fordragon from Katrina Hackett, detailing her and Richard's plans to take up training and join the Brotherhood of Cinders. The rest of the epilogue is written as usual, however.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Though she contemplates both, Onyxia neither pushes Anduin off a roof or uses mind control to rape Bolvar Fordragon. She also calls out Richard Hackett and his friends for ganging up on Myth, who's much smaller than them, and Anduin. Despite this, she does nothing to stop the death of children from the Defias or her refusal to send soldiers away from Stormwind.
  • Nalice comes close to killing an infant Sabelia (and even suggests that Onyxia should do so), but to her credit she doesn't. It is actually implied that she has never directly killed anyone at all.
• Eye Scream:
  • Katrina Hackett takes a glancing shot to the eye and almost dies from the following infection after being mistaken for her doppelganger.

• Jettion loses an eye while defending Samia from Norris.

• Lirastrasza is blinded by the Ambassador after Onyxia uses his body to attack Alexstrasza and Lirastrasza moves in to attack.

• Framing the Guilty Party: Evanian and Onyxia scheme to pull this on Lady White, who Evanian fears will make an assassination attempt on Lady Prestor. He plots an assassination attempt with Lady White while Onyxia implants false memories in Bolvar Fordragon's mind about Evanian being present during a discussion they had at the same time. Evanian then plants an accusing letter in her room, which she takes as him betraying her and decides to drag him down with her, which fails due to the Fake Memories.
• The Ghost: Miss Perin is mentioned in part one from time to time, but never actually appears. This is mentioned in the epilogue, when Leonardo notes that Miss Perin is nowhere to be found 'as usual'.
• Glory Seeker: A large chunk of the Brotherhood of Cinders and the Frostmoon Federation are these.
• Grey-and-Gray Morality: With the exception of the Burning Legion and the Old Gods, everyone is varying shades of grey.

• Heroic Sacrifice:
  • After Nalice's attempts to save Serinar fail and he is incinerated, Indigosa attacks Deathwing to buy Nalice time to flee, blinding Deathwing in the process.
  • In the final battle, Onyxia uses the Dragon Soul against Deathwing, killing them both. However, her body is intact and she is resurrected by Bolvar Fordragon.
• Hired for Their Looks: Leonardo suspects this is the reason Rudolphus keeps Clarisse around.
• Honor Before Reason: Among the dragonflights, attempting to divorce your mate is punishable by death. Even in cases of rape (at least among the Black Dragonflight).
  • It is hilarious to note, however, that you can kill your mate and worst-case-scenario everyone will shun you for a couple hundred years before forgetting about it.
• A House Divided: The Black Dragonflight, even in the face of war and extinction, cannot stop infighting and being paranoid towards one another.

• I Need a Freaking Drink: Bolvar when Leonardo tries to talk to him after an assembly. Later on Onyxia tells Hora to bring her the strongest alcohol she has before some unpleasant business.

• Knight Templar: Onyxia. Lirastrasza is starting to show downplayed shades of this growing in size and frequency.
• Last-Minute Baby Naming: Bolvar Fordragon's parents were so convinced they were going to have a girl that they didn't bother to pick out a boy's name and had to make one on the spot.
• Leitmotif: An unusual written example. When Hora showed herself to Onyxia during a storm, Onyxia heard the repeating, tinkling bar of a vaguely familiar song, which is later revealed to be from a music box Hora showed whelpling Onyxia with a promise to deliver it to her as a signal in the future.

• Mama Bear: Onyxia.
• May–December Romance: Think the 10,000 year gap between Onyxia and Fordragon is creepy? Nalice and Serinar have almost thirty thousand years between them.
• Meaningful Rename: After being banished by Bolvar Fordragon due to her role in the Onyxia fiasco, Samantha Inkweaver takes on the name Samia Inkling.
  • The Naming is a tradition and the last freedom of a Dragonsworn in which they change their name to match the Flight they've sworn themselves into the service of.
• The Mole: Lord Stephen Fletcher, who is revealed to be Evanian, one of Romathis' agents. It is later revealed that Evanian was killed by Orion, who was working towards his own goals that included Onyxia and Romathis dead.
• Moral Myopia: A weird case. Outside of Onyxia, nobody in the Black Dragonflight were particularly bothered by the hundreds of dragons killed by the Brotherhood of Cinders. However, everyone in Stormwind justly considered the actions Katrana Prestor had to Stormwind to be vile and heinous, something Onyxia doesn't necessarily disagree with but claims to have done only to protect her children, while showing little concern of the countless humans her actions have killed.

• Only Known by Their Nickname: Sabelia is almost exclusively called Saya.

• Repressed Memories: The Old Gods are implied to regularly induce it in their minions to varying degrees of success.
  • Onyxia's memory of the War of the Ancients when Deathwing violently raped Sintharia and almost burnt her to death while Onyxia and her siblings were forced to listen. She also repressed the memory of being raped (and then killing her rapist) and summarily getting victim blamed by everyone but Sabellian.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Onyxia gives Bolvar one for not intervening on Samantha's behalf.
• Redemption Equals Death: Nalice attempts to invoke this for Samantha. It doesn't work.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Onyxia goes on one after the Brotherhood of Cinders slaughters Blackrock and the Wyrmbog's populations. Out of 70+ present, they've not had a single fatality before engaging her. Less than half survive.
  • Orion also goes on one, though with much more tact, that allows the Brotherhood of Cinders to do the above.

• Slut-Shaming: This happens to Samantha after getting pregnant out of wedlock.
• Spock Speak: Most of the Black dragons, though Onyxia's begins to fade a little in part two. Eduard Von Andorhal. Indigosa takes this up to eleven.
• Sympathy for the Devil: After going through shop records and realizing how many of Onyxia's children were killed and turned into armor, Kair Emberfleet, though recognizing the enormity of her actions, feels quite bad for her.
  • Tariona White, after hearing the inevitably of the Black Dragonflight's fate from Onyxia, calls it sad despite Onyxia being the reason for her suffering and says she feels sorry for her.
• Tampering with Food and Drink: This happens to Onyxia during Anduin's birthday dinner.
• Title Drop: The Obsidian Dawn is the name of the group of Black dragons in part two.
• Too Good for This Sinful Earth: Amandine Inkweaver. In her final moments, her mother, Samantha, cradles her, saying how proud she was of her, calling her "a gift from the Light" and saying that "The Light loved her so much it wanted her back".
• Took a Level in Badass: Katrina Hackett.
• Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: Sabelia. Justified, given her family.
  • Young Katrana Prestor came off like this to those who didn't know she was actually a 10,000 year old Black Dragon.
• Uncanny Family Resemblance: The Prestors.
  • Identical Twins Katrana and Katrina, who apparently look quite like their mother Alana Silversilk. Katrina's son Richard looks so similar to his mother that Anduin wondered if Katrana had mothered a bastard child or had an impossibly younger sibling, and Saya is almost a carbon copy of Katrana with green eyes.
  • The Black Dragonflight is so inbred that the usually unique, brood-based pattern of spikes on the eggs are similar to the point of being mistakable as another brood's egg.
• Unstoppable Rage: Onyxia. When she's enraged, people die. Horribly.
• Villain Protagonist: Onyxia, though she eventually turns into an Anti-Hero.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Onyxia just wants to defend the Black Dragonflight from encroaching mortals.
• Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?: Onyxia made no attempts to use more... forceful methods to get Leonardo Withering to stop poaching and enslaving her children. She even tried to defend him from Murkion during an attempted assassination.
• Xanatos Gambit: Orion pulls one hell of a gambit. He uses the lack of communication between Onyxia and Romathis/Nefarian to drive a gap between the two, then the status he has gained in the guise of the Scalebane Evanian to falsify suggestions from Romathis, up to the suggestion that, in order to avoid the Dragonsbane testing and increase her diminishing control over Bolvar, she get pregnant with his spawn.
  • If she failed, she'd die and Blackrock would fall.
  • If she succeeded, she'd be pregnant with a half-blood.
    • If she was found out, she'd either be killed for lack of Species Loyalty or forced to bend the knee to avoid an internal civil war, and he knew she'd take painstaking precautions to avoid such.
    • If she wasn't found out, she'd still have a biting paranoia towards Romathis because she thought it was his suggestion.
    • Regardless of outcome, she'd be unable to do anything for several months, because Orion knew she loved all of her children dearly, and wouldn't abort one even if she knew it could get a lot of people killed and would grow up with dragonsblood-induced insanity and likely die young and painfully.
  • He decided to try and poison her with dragonsbane to speed up the fall of Blackrock, but unforeseen variables results in her survival and suspicions of him. Eventually, she interrogates him using a mind control potion but he had a contingency plan. She sends Nalice after him when he flees to release Reginald Windsor, who had the tablets that would reveal her as a dragon and would also result in the aforementioned slaughter of Blackrock, but he frees Windsor before she catches up.