Garona’s on her way from Twilight Highlands to be briefed on the whole situation with the ogres and the Grimtotem and the Twilight’s Hammer and the WTF. From what I’m told all she really needed to hear was “Cho’gall” and she was already packing. Gotta say, if we do nip this Cho’gall thing in the bud, I really hope she doesn’t go all Maiev-post-mortem-Illidan on us. She’s high-maintenance enough as it is, let me tell you. Anyway, she should be here soon, so we can get to work on the Cho’gall problem, assuming we keep enough mood-balancing potions on hand. (Seriously, you have no idea.)

Thing is, though, I’ve been thinking about what the Grimtotem told us in Brackenwall. And I just realized – he said that the Dustwallow Grimtotem were put on the ogres by Isha Gloomaxe, and the Feralas Grimtotem were being directed by Arnak Grimtotem…and we know they’re two of the highest-ranking members of the whole Grimtotem tribe.  Which means, if there’s some scheme in the works, and the two of them are out coordinating, smart money says there’s only one place the overall plan could have come from.

Magatha.

And yeah, don’t get me started.

You know what? Never mind. I’m already started.

Look, I know people say I can be pretty cranky at times. And I’m not going to deny I’ve got a temper. There are lots of things that irritate me and a lot of people that piss me off. I’ve got no use for gnomes, and I think we’ve established how I feel about humans. Doubly so for a lot of specific humans – I’m looking right at you, Varian (also: fuck you), and I’m not too crazy about Tirion or Rhonin, either. Even closer to home, Vol’jin annoys the living shit out of me, and I still say Sylvanas desperately needs someone to take her down a peg or two to knock her off her snooty pedestal. But for all of my ranting, the list of people I really, truly, profoundly HATE is actually a pretty short one.

I hate Magatha Grimtotem.

It’s not just that she played me for a fool and basically turned me into a weapon to use against Cairne. It’s not even just her betrayal of her own people, plotting against her chieftain and throwing the entire tauren civilization into turmoil. It’s partly those things, but even those are small potatoes.

It’s that she robbed us. Cheated us. All of us – of so many things, on so many levels. She robbed us in ways that are so complicated, and overlap so much, I’m not even sure I can untangle them all. But here we go…Eitrigg told me forever ago that this blog might be helpful for hashing things like this, so it’s time to see if he was right.

She robbed the tauren of one of their greatest leaders. Hell, she robbed the HORDE of one of its greatest leaders. She robbed Baine of a father. She cheated all of us out of whatever time we would otherwise have had with him by our side.

Not to mention that she robbed me of my honor. My mak’gora duel with Cairne was meant to be honorable combat, two evenly matched warriors, armed with a single weapon and nothing else. By poisoning my blade, she put a shadow over me and forced me to spend the rest of my days hearing questions whispered behind my back about treachery and deceit and dishonor. Cairne’s death will haunt me for as long as I live. I wrote this to Magatha herself once when she called on me for aid: I deserved to fight Cairne honorably, to win or lose on my own merits. If I died, so be it. An honorable death is far better than a tainted victory. But this? What glory is there in defeating an opponent through trickery? In standing over a weakened, dying body that should still be battling strongly?

Because here’s the part that will never stop eating at me. You guys are all friends, so I guess I may as well come out and say it, because it’s not like it isn’t something you already know if you were there for the duel.

Before the poison took effect, Cairne was beating me. And I mean badly. I’m not going to try to dance around it at all – that old tauren was absolutely handing me my ass. I was just barely keeping it together when I landed the glancing blow that poisoned him. And then the venom kicked in. And that was it. There’s no two ways about it: if something hadn’t weakened him, there’s absolutely no way I was going to pull a comeback.

I should be dead. And Cairne should be Warchief.

And right there is the worst of the ways that she robbed us. She didn’t just deprive the Horde of one of its wisest voices. She robbed us of our rightful leader. The point of the mak’gora is “victory to the strongest”…and she managed to turn that on its head. (Hell, it’s like if someone rigged one of those Earth Online competitions for faction leader so that one guy won the contest, but the other guy got to be leader on a technicality or something.) And so now, every crisis we come to, we’re forced to face it without the leadership that Cairne would have provided. It’s one reason why, to be totally honest with you, many times when I’ve been faced with a decision, I try to think of what Cairne would have done in my place. (Not often enough, if I’m really honest.) Because on a really basic level, I feel like I’m serving as Warchief in his stead – serving out HIS term.

And all of this because of Magatha. And now she’s finding new and better ways to betray us all.

She duped me into killing one of the greatest among us, a man I admired and didn’t even want to fight in the first place. She stood right there and watched me do it, then had the gall to think I should be grateful to her for it. And if I ever find her, she’s going to have a front-row seat for what happens when I get my hands on someone I utterly, violently DESPISE.

And on the off chance you’re reading this, Magatha, this is the part where you run. Keep running. Don’t ever stop.

[Header image provided by Rioriel from Postcards From Azeroth, reproduced here with permission and many thanks. Click here to see the souped-up Postcard version!]