Orc

The orcs’ story does not begin on Azeroth but on another world: Draenor. There the orcs were a people of hunters and warriors living in clans; their skin was brown, and they were scattered across Draenor’s steppes, forests and snowy mountains.

The clans were guided by shamans: sages who spoke with the spirits of earth, fire, water and air, the elements, and with the spirits of the ancestors. The most revered was the old shaman Ner’zhul. The orcs shared Draenor with the draenei, a people who had fled another world and found refuge there.

Kil’jaeden, one of the lords of the Burning Legion, was hunting the draenei, and he decided to turn the orcs into a weapon for the hunt. He came to Ner’zhul in the voice of the ancestors and whispered that the draenei were preparing to attack the orcs. Ner’zhul saw through the lie in the end, but Kil’jaeden found his apprentice, Gul’dan.

Gul’dan founded a secret circle called the Shadow Council and taught the orcs demonic magic: fel. The elements turned away from the shamans who took it up; fel withered Draenor and turned the orcs’ skin green. The last step was a ceremony: the clan chieftains drank the blood of the pit lord Mannoroth. Grom Hellscream drank first; among those who refused was Durotan, chieftain of the Frostwolf clan. The blood gave the united clans, the Horde, a rage that would not cool, and the draenei cities fell one by one.

After the Second War the surviving orcs were locked in internment camps built across Lordaeron. Once the demon blood wore off, the Horde’s rage gave way to a deep lethargy; warriors who had once burned worlds sat out their days behind the bars.

The camps were run from Durnholde Keep, and the keep’s commander was Aedelas Blackmoore. Blackmoore took in a baby he had found beside an orc couple slain in the forest and raised him as a gladiator. He gave him a name that means “slave”: Thrall. He did not know the baby was Durotan’s son.

Thrall was taught the humans’ tongue, their tactics, reading and writing, but he was always a slave. The only one in the keep who treated him kindly was young Taretha Foxton. With her help Thrall escaped from Durnholde.

Free at last, Thrall went looking for his people. He found Grom Hellscream, still fighting the humans, then reached the Frostwolf clan hiding in the Alterac Mountains. The Frostwolves’ old shaman, Drek’Thar, taught him to speak with the elements; Thrall learned the way his people had forgotten, shamanism.

Orgrim Doomhammer came out of hiding to join him. Together they broke open the camps one by one. Mortally wounded in a raid, Doomhammer left his armour, his hammer and the Horde to Thrall before he died. The new warchief went back to Durnholde and defeated Blackmoore.

After the Third War Thrall settled his people in a dry, red land on Kalimdor’s east coast and named it after his father: Durotar. The capital, Orgrimmar, takes its name from Orgrim Doomhammer.

The peace did not last. Jaina’s father, Daelin Proudmoore, attacked Durotar with a fleet; Thrall and his allies defeated him, and Proudmoore died in the fighting. Soldiers of Kul Tiras still wait in Tiragarde Keep on the coast.

Today the Horde is not only orcs: the Darkspear trolls, the tauren and the Forsaken also stand under Thrall’s banner. The orcs fight the night elves in Ashenvale and, on their own land, the Burning Blade cult.