Cataclysm’s Lore: The New Horde (SPOILERS BRO)

Go ahead and speculate or discuss at your leisure. This writeup has been put together from Alpha build questing and all that shit. I really have to tip my hat to Blizzard in making the Horde and the Alliance rock steady. I’ll do the Alliance part sometime when I finish figuring out what the balls is going on.

Serious Horde lore after the break for crybabies that hate spoilers.

Here is the situation: The cataclysm has just struck and the elements are in upheaval. Thrall, the world’s most powerful shaman, leaves Orgrimmar to temporarily join the Earthen Ring to restore balance to Azeroth. Thrall makes Garrosh the de-facto Warchief to see if he’ll be able to handle the responsibility properly, as Thrall is hoping that Garrosh will become his “heir”. Thrall then leaves on board Draka’s Fury, where his ship is sunk in an SI:7 ambush that causes Thrall to be captured. The Goblins save Thrall, and in his gratitude Thrall welcomes the Goblins to the Horde. Thrall then has the Goblin players deliver an SI:7 emblem to enform the Warchief of what happened to Thrall. Upon receiving the emblem, Garrosh becomes very defensive and basically blames the player for what happened to Thrall. Now I personally speculate he was defensive because Garrosh knew about the ambush beforehand and let it happen anyway.

As Warchief, Garrosh declares total war upon the Alliance and orders that all Horde settlements be heavily reinforced and he surrounds himself with Orc generals that he can trust. Garrosh intends to capitalize on the Cataclysm and use it as an advantage; he orders his generals to go out and conquer the weakened Alliance lands. The players then work with Garrosh’s various subordinates throughout the Horde leveling experience. He also orders that Sylvanas makes herself useful or his Horde troops will abandon any support for Undercity. As the Worgen players find out as they’re leveling, Garrosh has banned the apothecaries from manufacturing blight bombs after the disaster at the Wrath Gate.

Around this time (this part is not 100% confirmed yet, I’m trying to analyze an event that doesn’t even exist yet by only using a handful of Horde quests that acknowledge the event) Cairne Bloodhoof peacefully marches to Orgrimmar to question Garrosh on the direction he is taking the Horde. Cairne feels that this is not the time for petty politics with the Alliance; that they should be working together to fight Deathwing. They agree to settle their differences in honorable combat in the Ring of Valour. Unbeknown to everyone, Magatha has secretly poisoned Cairne to make any injuries Cairne receives fatal. Garrosh accidentally kills the weakened and aged Cairne. Around this time, Magatha sent assassins to murder Baine Bloodhoof in Mulgore but Baine survives the assault and exposes Magatha’s plot. The Grimtotems are permantly expelled from the Horde and Baine becomes new leader of the Tauren.

Some time after this occurs, the Troll players see a vision of a confrontation between Vol’jin and Garrosh. I suspect that Vol’jin confronted the Warchief because he was angry at Cairne’s death and Garrosh’s raw brutality. Their conversation does not end well with Vol’jin promising that he will be the one that kills Hellscream when the time is right. Garrosh has anyone he is suspicious about expelled from the centre of Orgrimmar, and has himself surrounded by loyalists.

If you didn’t like Garrosh before, you probably won’t like him now. He orders his men to destroy his enemies with savage strength. Although, he is not totally barbaric. There is an ambitious Horde commander that decimates a defenseless Druid settlement in Stonetalon Mountains. The Horde commander is very proud of himself and when Garrosh is alerted to what happen the Warchief is disgusted. There is a scripted scene between the commander and Garrosh, with Garrosh raging at the commander and asking if he was proud of slaughtering sleeping infants. The scene ends with Garrosh snapping the commander’s neck using Gorehowl (his father’s axe that was once in Karazhan).