In November, my in-laws will depart for their 18-month mission to serve in the Bern Switzerland Temple. They’ll be leaving all their stuff in storage and renting out their house while they’re away, so the main event of the family reunion we attended last week was going through their house and earmarking what each of the kids wanted for themselves and what could safely be sold, given, or thrown away. While my sisters-in-law and I were going through the jewelry boxes — mostly stuff inherited from BTH’s paternal grandmother — we came across this:
At first I thought it was a bolo tie slide, but it’s a necklace pendant, carved of wood with real eagle talons for the horns. The story goes that it was given to one of BTH’s aunts by a suitor that she didn’t end up marrying.
I, of course, immediately thought of the Tauren, and I promptly claimed it.
It goes quite well with the Navajo silver & jasper necklace my Dad gave me for Christmas several years ago and with the feather necklace and hair clips that I found recently at Payless Shoes.
(I picked the hair clips that made me think most strongly of Thunder Bluff, but the white feathered necklace is much more like Tyrande’s style).
Seeing the bull’s head hanging from a chain also brings to mind the Tauren head trophies that I’ve seen dangling in various places around Azeroth.
This particular location sticks the most strongly in my mind because it’s such a BZUH? moment to see a Tauren head trophy at Stillpine Hold.
I always wonder, from a meta perspective, just what the hex a relatively isolated Furbolg tribe on a small group of islands far from the mainland of Kalimdor is doing with a Tauren head trophy. How — and why — did they get that thing?
In-character, it is not a particularly strange sight for a Draenei who has been to many worlds and seen many species, but it still provokes a “what is that?” response because it’s not like any of the native species of the islands or like any of the species that escaped from the Exodar’s menagerie.
Nice, that pendant is really pretty!
Decapitated tauren heads are so strange in WoW, didn’t know there was one at the draenei starting islands, that is really weird. They always occur in the strangest locations. You know, there’s also one of those hanging in a raptor den in the Barrens… raptors?!
I thought I remembered there being one in the Barrens, though I was thinking it would make the most sense to find them in Quilboar lairs.
The one by the Barrens raptor den was the one I was going to mention too! Poor Tauren. Even the DINOS have it in for them.
Evidence of the raptors’ nascent intelligence, I guess, that they’d keep a trophy to display their prowess and frighten off attackers?
It’s kinda a generic trophy model that they add wherever in the game, I guess. xD Kinda like the Horde crates you see everywhere, even if they don’t belong to the Horde. Or all the kegs with the hammer of Ironforge on it.
I guess you could come up with SOME reason for why they are there, but it seems rather unlikely or ludicrous a possibility.
I always found the tauren heads a little disturbing and depressing. :\ Similar to the centaur rugs. Eww.
I love the jewelry, though!
Yeah — but that makes it even more silly
The centaur rugs squick me out, too.
I always imagined the Tauren head washed up on the shore albeit in remarkably good condition.
The necklace is fascinating, I love the eagle talons as horns.
Ahh, that’s an explanation that makes sense! And then the Furbolg found it — or perhaps captured it from the Murlocs? — and said to themselves, “this is awesome! we should display it!”
The necklace got much more interesting when I found out that the horns were an actual keratinous substance, not just carved from the wood.
What a fantastic find! That’s a gorgeous pendant, and it’s really unique
Poor tauren, getting beheaded in every corner of the globe
:(
Heh, if the Tauren were having presidential elections, surely the candidates would be challenging, “but are the Shu’halo *really* better off than they were four years ago?”
OMG, I’ve never noticed the Tauren heads, how funny. Perhaps it’s just to serve as a warning to wandering horde not to mess with the quest givers
How serendipitous that you found that necklace, it’s really cool.
Lol, I like that explanation, too!
It was a neat thing to find the necklace! I picked up a few other nice necklaces, but this one is my favorite.
I think those Stillpine Furbolg bought it at someplace like Novica and put it up to imply just how bad they are.
That necklace is so beautiful and unique and so perfect for Kam.
Hahaha!
I’m very happy to have it