C'Thun

C'Thun is a legendary neutral minion card, from the Whispers of the Old Gods set.

Related cards

"Of course, no ancient unknowable evil is complete without a dedicated host of capable cultists. C’Thun’s followers have been fanatically preparing the world for the Old God’s awakening..."

C'Thun has a unique relationship with certain specific cards. Some of these cards' effects cause C'Thun to grow in power regardless of its current location, while others produce additional effects depending on C'Thun's current stats. These specifically related cards are listed below.

Lore

This section uses content from Wowpedia.

C'Thun (pronounced /k'θuːn/) is the Old God of Madness and Chaos one of the Old Gods, ancient and powerful creatures who ruled the world of Azeroth long ago before being defeated and imprisoned by the titans. C'Thun created the qiraji and resides within the city of Ahn'Qiraj in Silithus. It appears in World of Warcraft as the final encounter in the Temple of Ahn'Qiraj, implemented in patch 1.9.

C'Thun was the Old God who created the qiraji, a race of insect-men, who along with the ancient mantid and nerubians served the Old Gods as mortal kingdoms of old. After its imprisonment by the titans, it sent its children to conquer the world in the War of the Shifting Sands, though the qiraji were defeated by the combined forces of the night elves and Dragon Aspects. Thousands of years later, in World of Warcraft, C'Thun reawakened, prepared to imprison any dragons who dared enter its lair, but while its gaze was fixed upon them, a group of mortals managed to breach its chamber and kill it against all odds.

Throughout the Ruins and Temple of Ahn'Qiraj, players can periodically hear the whisperings of C'Thun:

• Death is close...
• You are already dead.
• Your courage will fail.
• Your friends will abandon you.
• You will betray your friends.
• You will die.
• You are weak.
• Your heart will explode.

In Hearthstone

C’Thun is basically a gigantic eyeball on a bed of the evillest pasta imaginable. Also tentacle eyebeams. And terror. And dread whispers that infest your imagination. In addition to having a name that is pronounced incorrectly in many different ways (hint: Kuh-THOON), C’Thun may be the most famous of the Old Gods. It lies imprisoned deep beneath the cyclopean desert ruins of Ahn’Qiraj. Its legion of insectile servants—the Qiraji—once helped conquer nearly all of Azeroth many millennia ago, and were more recently involved in a dustup that caused some high-profile mayhem. All this while still in prison! It’s hard to keep an Old God down.

C’Thun’s mortal cultists are some of the best in the business! Old Gods might not pay well, but the benefits can be great. Most of C’Thun’s devoted followers—16 in all—offer a direct buff to C’Thun when played. It’s not all volunteer work either; the more powerful C’Thun becomes, the greater the potential reward—it’s a squid-pro-quo kind of thing.

History

Design

C'Thun saw the least changes of all the Old Gods during its design process; its basic card text was decided early on, although the many related cards saw "a ton of iteration". One idea was to have "lieutenants", special minions which would gain bonuses equal to one of C'Thun's current stats when played. These were eventually turned into the "If your C'Thun has 10 or more Attack" cards, such as Klaxxi Amber-Weaver and Ancient Shieldbearer. One reason for their inclusion was to compensate for matches where C'Thun was drawn late or not at all, with these "C'Thun matters" minions ensuring the ritual buffs still had value, and giving the C'Thun player better chances.

The last idea to be discarded was to have other cards which directly benefited not C'Thun itself, but the many ritualist minions. Examples include "Battlecry – give your ritualist +2/+2" and "Battlecry: evolve all your ritualists", the latter functioning identically to Evolve. This more complex synergy was partly discarded due to the increasing number of cards devoted to C'Thun and related cards, and not wanting the set to feel like "Whispers of C'Thun", or to have C'Thun decks overly dominate the meta due to their many possible versions. The designers also wanted to avoid making it feel too similar to the synergies for Mechs.

Overall the designers found simple related minions worked better than complicated ones, opting for fairly "vanilla" minions over "trickier" ideas. Disciple of C'Thun was an exception, and "the last piece of the puzzle" of ensuring C'Thun had sufficient gameplay and interaction.

Removed cultist cards include a "mini-C'Thun", which dealt 1 random damage for each cultist that had died that game; another summoned 1 tentacle minion for each cultist that had died each game. This theme was intended to reward board interaction, but was ultimately trimmed. Many class cards were removed, determined partly by which classes C'Thun made the most sense for; one was a hunter card with a Battlecry that reduced C'Thun's cost by 2. Cult Apothecary was originally a C'Thun cultist (perhaps explaining its name), with its healing determined by the size of the player's C'Thun, but was removed due to there being too many C'Thun cards in total.

Flavor text

A few days after the card's revealing on March 16, a special poll was opened on the official forums allowing players to vote on which text would become the card's official flavor text, as seen in-game in the Collection.

The poll, titled The Old God C’Thun DEMANDS flavor text, mortal!, ran from March 16 to March 20, and was presented with the introduction "The bane of contact lenses everywhere, the ancient many-eyed Old God C’Thun is great at winking, but not particularly good at describing itself. That’s where you come in! Cast your vote on what flavor text makes it into Hearthstone for the Legendary card, C’Thun!"

The five possibilities presented for voting, and the percentages of votes they received, were:

• C’Thun really regrets creating the qiraji now that they've hung out together for millennia. (8%)
• It’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye. (28%)
• C'Thun's shopping list: eyedrops, contact lens cleaner, mascara. (8%)
• If C’Thun is too scary, just imagine it with a monocle and top hat, and say hello to your ragtime pal! (15%)
• C'Thun's least favorite Hearthstone card: Eye for an Eye. (41%)

While voting on card reveals has become common practice for new releases, this is the first time players have been able to determine actual in-game content, albeit only flavor text.

Trivia

• The designers are not planning on adding any further C'Thun-related cards in future content, with the original selection of cultists considered sufficiently strong.
• C'Thun is the first minion to be designed to grow in power while still in the player's deck or hand. With a slew of supporting cards, C'Thun was one of the first cards to be introduced for Whispers of the Old Gods, strongly depicting the expansion's Old God theme. The design concept for C'Thun was to allow players to "build your own monster" over the course of a match, with C'Thun considered the right Old God for that behaviour.
• C'Thun is one of the first cards to be specifically affected by several other cards, as well as named in their card text. It outstrips Silver Hand Recruit, the only card prior to C'Thun to have such diverse and specific synergies.
• C'Thun is also the first legendary card to be presented to players for free, and in combination with Beckoner of Evil, the first to present players with a specific deck type.
• C'Thun is the only of the Old Gods not to have a title. Ben Brode explains that this was partly in order to make it easier and more consistent to mention C'Thun on the 16 synergy cards which mention it by name, and partly to emphasise its gameplay differences from the other Old Gods.
• The developers decided to give players C'Thun for free because of its strong synergy with its 16 associated cards. Ben Brode explains:

"...if you open a pack of Whispers of the Old Gods and it’s got a bunch of cultists, you look at the card and say, “What’s a C’Thun? How do I use this? I have to get a legendary card to even build this deck?!” That doesn’t feel great. So by giving C’Thun away free, it’s all upside, it’s all positive. You have C’Thun, you understand how it works, so when you open up a cultist you have the reference, and you’ve got the foundation for building those awesome C’Thun decks already."

• C'Thun and the associated cards are the first cards to be specifically excluded from the Arena, for the same reasons.
• C'Thun's reveal quotes "That was a mistake." and "Well met." mirror Gul'dan's Oops and Uther Lightbringer's skin Greetings emotes respectively. The Paladin emote is almost certainly referencing the then-current popularity of Secret Paladin. (The heroes in game are different. Lightforged Uther and A Gul'dan Reskin respectively.)
• C'thun, makes a reappearance as C'Thun, the Shattered in the Madness at the Darkmoon Faire expansion, along with the other Old Gods.
• In The Art of Hearthstone: Year of the Kraken, C'Thun is described as "a ticking time bomb of destruction, always lurking in the corner of both players' eyes as its dreaming comes to an end".

Gallery

C'Thun, full art