So here’s a curveball I didn’t see coming. After I talked with Rexxar, I flew to Bloodmaul Ravine to see what was going on with the ogres. Sure enough, they all seemed a lot more relaxed than I would have figured. There used to be a time when the Bladespire and Bloodmaul ogres were at each other’s throats, but now they’re acting like old friends – joking around, drinking together, the whole nine yards. Thing is, though…if you take a few deep breaths around there, it’s not too hard to figure out why everybody’s so much more mellow.

Uh huh.

Let’s put it this way: felweed’s a hell of a drug.

And I know what you’re going to say – isn’t felweed used for potions, like isn’t it medicine? Well seriously, dude…it’s ALL medicine, you know?

So it took some looking around, but I finally tracked down this new king of the ogres at the cave that used to be Gruul’s lair. And you’ll never guess this one – the new king of the ogres? A fucking TROLL. Specifically, a troll witch doctor named T’chali. Which was a hell of surprise to me, as I’m sure it is for you too if you’ve heard of this guy, because last I knew, fucker was supposed to be DEAD, buried alive by the Bloodmaul ogres down at the southern end of the canyon. All he would say about that was “Reports of me deat’ be greatly exaggerated, mon,” whatever the hell that means, and I really don’t know why I’m even surprised anymore when people who are supposed to be dead turn up alive again, because apparently that’s just the thing to do these days.

Anyway, T’chali was just a bundle of laughs, by which I mean, dude couldn’t stop laughing his ass off over nothing in particular, but it wasn’t hard to figure out why, seeing as every five minutes he was offering me a hit from his hookah. I’m not even exaggerating, every other thing out of his mouth was “hookah, mon” this and “hookah, mon” that. Fucking stoner.

When he wasn’t busy cracking up over the fact that his feet moved when he walked, I was able to get the story out of him about how he ended up becoming king. A ways back he’d gone on a whole big chain of quests for the ogres to help them break free of Gruul and his sons – this was before Gruul finally got his ass handed to him a few years ago. Eventually after all he did to help them, the ogre mystics gave him the blessing to visit Ogri’la – I guess this is some kind of a big deal to these ogres – and proclaimed him king of the Bloodmaul and Bladespire alike. Based on what I can see, it wasn’t long before he got some brews going and got the hookahs fired up, and I’m going to stick my neck way, WAY out and say that productivity in ogre-land probably took kind of a dive right around that point.

T’chali did mention one thing that didn’t really hit me until I’d left. He had made a passing reference to getting some help in his adventures from a human named Baron Sablemane, who had an axe to grind with the gronn for killing countless relatives of his. It didn’t hit me until later that the gronn in Blade’s Edge Mountains had been responsible for killing huge numbers of black dragons…and that there had been a high-ranking black dragon in Outland named Sabellian…which would fit right into how COMPLETELY uncreative most of these dragons are about their humanoid alter egos. (I mean seriously, people WEREN’T supposed to figure out that Victor Nefarius was Nefarian? Really?) And it would also mean there’s a son of fucking Deathwing still running around loose in Outland.

I asked Rexxar about this when I got back to Thunderlord Stronghold, and check this out – not only does Rexxar know about this Baron Sablemane guy, and not only did he confirm T’chali’s description of him and his personality and his woe-be-to-Gruul-and-his-sons-for-slaughtering-my-kin obsession, all of which might as well have been capped off with giant glowing letters over his head that read <Hey Guess What Everyone I’m the Son of Deathwing>, but Rexxar actually considers this guy a FRIEND of his.

Apparently the thought never occurred to Rexxar that anything might be up with this guy. Um…BLINDERS, anyone? Seriously? So I figure I’m not getting a lot of help from Rexxar in checking up on this. So I’m going to pay T’chali another visit later tonight and see if I can get anything else useful out of him.

[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!]