Garrosh-Hellscream

Warchief Vol'jin is an interesting anomaly in Warcraft lore -- he leads the Horde, an organization originally formed by Thrall with its roots firmly embedded in Orc society, yet he's a Troll.

Garrosh and Kerrigan, along with others from the Blizzard universe, can be seen hanging out inside the arcade game Fighters of the Storm 2 in the Overwatch map Hanamura.

Warlords of Draenor is coming to an end, and with the next expansion's announcement, we see that the story will continue right on into the next...sort of.

If you've been playing World of Warcraft for a while, or were familiar with the Warcraft 3 game or tie-in books like Lord of the Clans and Rise of the Horde you were aware of a certain conception of orcs and their nature and identity.

What does Wrathion want with Draenor, why is he there to begin with, and why did he ally with Kairoz and help Garrosh Hellscream escape? I think the answer to that question may very well have been staring us in the face all along, and it's been staring us in the face since the end of Mists of Pandaria.

You know, we spend a lot of time talking about the various Warlords of Draenor as they're presented in the latest expansion's version of history. Lords of War was supposedly Maraad's tales of these old warlords, but the stories were pretty specific. And in some cases -- like Kilrogg's vision of his death -- they seemed like a direct reference to the alternate version of Draenor's warlords, rather than our own.

It's not just Grommash's character we're looking at here -- it's the entire state of the Horde as we know it. Did the Horde need Garrosh Hellscream? Yes, it absolutely did, and now that he's gone, there's a void left behind that could be filled, oddly enough, by his father from another reality. But before you get me wrong here, I don't mean Grommash should fill that villain role. Far from it.

One could argue that by the end of the events that play out in 6.0 and 6.1, the Iron Horde has been effectively shut down, backs against the wall, leaving them with no other apparent alternative than to turn to tactics they weren't originally going to use. But the one thing we haven't done is really look at the situation and ask ourselves -- why the Iron Horde to begin with?

Wrathion spent pretty much the entirety of Mists of Pandaria sending us on errands -- and now it appears the Black Prince is on Draenor. Yet despite evidence of his presence, he's nowhere to be found. Then, of course, is the question of why Wrathion would be on Draenor when it's the safety of Azeroth he's concerned with, especially after his visions of the world being overrun.

This is the story of an orc whose life played full circle, ending where it began -- before it began actually, in an odd twist of fate, time and a little bronze magic. It plays in counterpoint to the tale of Emperor Shaohao, who hid away his kingdom, so confident and prideful in himself and his people's abilities that he was certain they would thrive in abject isolation from the rest of the world. The orc, on the other hand, came from an absence of pride into a sudden and overwhelming abundance of it... and it slowly ate him alive.