pretty fast questline. feels pretty tepid and self-affirming ('no no garrosh was uniquely evil and bad. from the start, obviously. #NotAllOrcs') and kinda erases the reasons that geyah wanted him to lead the clan. very weird for her to NOW say "Strength and confidence must be tempered with wisdom", when in tbc she says, quote, "Garrosh can lead the Mag'har. He is strong and wise. All of the spirits approve of him. He just needs to believe in himself." he has no confidence (AND NO HEART) but it's thrall that gives garrosh the confidence (or "pride", as they keep insisting) to lead. why have a prompt asking her why she thinks Thrall picked Garrosh for Warchief? why did SHE pick him to lead the mag'har? obviously it wasn't an urgent decision made on her deathbed since she's still fucking here to talk about it!! so what did she see in him? if he was always this way and "power simply reveals who they are deep within", what did she refuse to see?
geyah confirms "Power did not change him. He merely grew from pup to predator. I wish his path had ended differently. That I had done more. [...] Perhaps [Thrall] thought that his Horde needed a single leader—that the wolf could be guided and trained to listen and speak for all." if he was always this way, if power just makes him more of what he is, was he not doomed from the start? what could she have done differently? "Train" him? what does that entail?
is "training" all that deters one from becoming a "predator", which wolves are by nature? if we're going with that metaphor, then is "training" domestication? did anyone bother to establish any kind of symbiotic relationship with garrosh? (beyond thrall and the champion, who both eventually are forcibly separated from garrosh?)
garrosh feared being consumed by rage because he knew it was inherent to his being, that his bloodline was cursed, and lost his heart. is anyone going to talk about his heart? how he lost his heart? hello? how he recovers the literal heart of a dead old god to make up for it and yet this very obvious parallel is never addressed (except in a heroes of the storm click quote??? 😭 and my dumb art)
i dunno man im not trying to say they need to stress that nobody loved garrosh, but that's quite literally his storyline. Nobody fucking loved him. He didn't love himself. all he knew his whole life was that everybody hated grom hellscream and so of course they would hate garrosh, because he was exactly like grom. because he was nothing like grom. because he wasn't grom from the beginning. oooh my god i cant go down this path again i cant start i cant i cant i cant i cant
well anyway. red pox mentioned!!
Greatmother Geyah says: Garrosh did not always have his power--or his strength. Speak to Osrok. He knows more of young Hellscream.
Osrok the Immovable says: I cannot afford to stop and talk. Help me hammer, and I will speak of young Hellscream.
> The red pox that plagued us hit Garrosh harder than most. It shriveled his muscles, weakened his bones.
> Yet he came to me determined to train and become strong. He failed, again and again. But every day, he returned.
> His body was not strong, at first. But his will was stronger than any I've seen.
the axe you can get as a reward for becoming exalted with the Mag'har is called Hellscream's Will. i cant find my post on it but i know i've said before: is this hellscream's will, his intent? or his last will and testament?
it just feels so cheap and stupid to solidify garrosh as someone who was somehow cursed from birth. it feels tone deaf for our current political climate, it flattens 20 years of lore into a yawn, and though it is leagues better than the quest it started as there is a palpable air of anticlimax about it. "did power corrupt garrosh? could that happen to me???" "No he was just Like That." "lol, okay."
side note: interestingly, jorin deadeye is not present in the phase of this quest line (garrosh is also obviously missing). jorin was last seen in the orc heritage armor questline but beyond that his whereabouts appear to be unknown.
