Tauren

Calling themselves the Shu’halo in their own tongue, the tauren are among the oldest inhabitants of the wide grasslands at the heart of Kalimdor. Rather than raising stone fortresses or spires of sorcery, they moved their tents with the seasons, following the great kodo herds and listening to the wind, the water and the soil beneath their hooves.

At the heart of their faith stands the Earth Mother, the gentle creator spirit who gives life to every hill and blade of grass. In tauren myth the Earth Mother watches the world through her two eyes in the sky: her right eye is An’she, the sun that warms the plains by day, and her left eye is Mu’sha — whom the night elves call Elune — the pale moon that guides hunters and dreamers through the night.

According to the oldest tales, the Shu’halo once lived free of sorrow at the Earth Mother’s knee, until dark whispers from beneath the soil sowed envy and bloodshed in the tribes’ hearts. Unable to bear the sight of her children turning on one another, the Earth Mother tore out her own eyes and set them spinning across the heavens as An’she and Mu’sha, though she never ceased speaking to her children through the winds of the plains.

In the ages before the Great Sundering the Shu’halo met Cenarius, demigod of the forests. Cenarius grew fond of the quiet giants’ reverence for nature and taught the earliest tauren mystics the ways of nature and druidism. When the War of the Ancients broke out, tauren warriors fought the Burning Legion beside Cenarius and the Kaldorei, then returned to the open plains after the world was torn apart.

When the Third War reached Kalimdor, Cairne Bloodhoof, the aged chieftain of the Bloodhoof tribe, feared his people would not survive another winter. The centaur ring had tightened and the pastures of the Barrens had dried up.

In those very days Thrall and the new Horde came ashore after the storm at the Darkspear islands. Seeing Cairne’s warriors making a desperate stand against a Kolkar raid, the young orc warchief led his troops straight into the fight and stood shoulder to shoulder with the tauren to defend Bloodhoof’s village against the centaur Khan.

Moved by the strangers’ courage and their reverence for the elements, Cairne told Thrall of the Oracle dwelling high on Stonetalon Peak in the north. In return Thrall swore to guard the kodo caravan through the dusty canyons of the Barrens all the way to the mountain-ringed green tablelands of Mulgore.

Even as Thunder Bluff rose atop the high mesas of Mulgore, centaur and harpy attacks did not cease, and Cairne’s son Baine Bloodhoof was taken captive by the centaurs. Sent by Thrall, the half-ogre Beastmaster Rexxar and the Darkspear scout Rokhan rescued Baine and brought him back to his father; the old chieftain took up his runespear once more and stood at the Horde’s side.

Within a few short years the tribes that had once retreated before the centaurs marched to the heart of the battles that decided Kalimdor’s fate. As you scroll, the map follows the tauren from the Barrens to Mount Hyjal and the southern cliffs.

Today Thunder Bluff stands atop four great flat-topped mesas rising above the emerald pastures of Mulgore. Linked by rope bridges and huge wooden lifts, its rises gather warriors, hunters, shamans and druids beneath the open sky.

After the battle of Mount Hyjal, Hamuul Runetotem studied under Malfurion Stormrage and revived the druid path the Shu’halo had forgotten for millennia. Today tauren and night elf druids share the Cenarion Circle in Moonglade together, even as Magatha Grimtotem, watching over the Pools of Vision on the Elder Rise, makes little secret of her cold distrust of outsiders.

When Sylvanas Windrunner’s envoys were turned away from every gate, it was Hamuul Runetotem and Cairne Bloodhoof who spoke for the Forsaken. Through their compassion Undercity was welcomed into the Horde, while across Kalimdor the tauren go on guarding the balance of the land.