The Queue: I also love prehistoric mammals

So I’m permanently taking over the Tuesday Queue for Adam, and I’m also temporarily taking over Monday and Wednesday for Alex this week. What does that mean? It means I’m writing four Queue’s this week, and that means I’m going to talk about stuff that interests me in the opening of these here Queue’s. For instance, the many, many times predatory mammals developed a catlike body and saber teeth. We have the Machairodontinae of course, what would be consider the true sabre-toothed cats, with species such as Smilodon and Homotherium, but there are also animals that aren’t cats at all that developed this body plan, such as the Barbourofelid lineage, which you’d be forgiven for thinking were cats. (They’re close relatives, but not true cats.) The slightly more distantly related Nimravids also developed sabre teeth and a catlike form, such as Hoplophoneus.

But not all of the sabre-toothed mammals were part of this closely related Nimravid to Feline family grouping. There were sabre toothed creodonts, such as Machaeroides,  and marsupials such as Thylacosmilus. And of course I’ve discussed Gorgonopsids such as Inostrancevia before – Therapisds like the Gorgonopsids predate the dinosaurs, and are incredibly ancient cousins to modern mammals. Wikipedia has a decent write up of all the various sabre tooth lineages in the mammals and mammal ancestors.

I was going to go on, but we’ll move into questions now. Tomorrow I may talk about Epicyon.

The short answer is, we don’t know. Why did Malchezzar have it? No idea. There’s no in game lore or explanation, and we have no idea where Thrall got the Gorehowl he presented Garrosh with – if he picked up the weapon Grom used to kill Mannoroth when the two of them fought the demon, he never mentioned it before that moment.

Heck, we don’t even know what happened to that Gorehowl – when Garrosh leaves it behind in the Sha of Pride’s chamber, the last time we saw it, no one seems to care. No one says ooh, grab that, it makes no appearance in the rest of the raid. So far as we’re presented, Garrosh drove that axe into the floor and everyone else left it there. The one he’s using in the fight with Thrall is the Gorehowl from this Draenor, the alternate Grommash’s weapon.

So there are potentially three Gorehowls out there – the  one from Karazhan, the one left behind in the Sha of Pride’s chamber, and the one we see Gul’dan toss back to Grom.

I certainly could go to that. I don’t know if there’s enough interest among you fine folks reading the site to make me showing up at a con something you’d want, especially one in Edmonton.

As of right now here’s the schedule:

Monday and Wednesday – Alex Ziebart. (I’m subbing for him this week.)

Tuesday and Friday – Matthew Rossi. (I am him this week, and every other week.)

Thursday – Elizabeth Harper.

Saturday and Sunday – Anne Stickney.

And then I get to sit outside the convention all weekend because I didn’t purchase a ticket, like a dog left tied up outside a 7-11 while its owner goes inside for a microwaved burrito he or she is going to regret soon.

No it doesn’t.

Someone already pointed out that we see Brutallus die in Sunwell Plateau and, after he’s dead, his blood soaks the ground and reanimates the deceased dragon Madrigosa as Felmyst. Furthermore, when Mannoroth died in our timeline, the orcs who drank his blood didn’t spontaneously revert to brown skinned orcs. What happened was, the connection between Mannoroth and the orcs that had drunk his blood (such as Grom) faded – in essence, with Mannoroth dead, his powerful demonic rage couldn’t inflict itself on the orcs any longer.

Just because he couldn’t directly influence them doesn’t mean they weren’t still affected by the blood. If it did, then all the orcs on Outland who were made with Magtheridon’s blood would have gone back to being Mag’har after we killed Magtheridon. Gurtogg Bloodboil wouldn’t have been a raid boss in Black Temple.

Okay, that’s the Queue for today. I’ll be back tomorrow, so tailor your questions appropriately if you’re of a mind to.