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Kamalia et alia

a resto shaman and "her sisters and her cousins and her aunts"

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Quest text? Who needs that, anyway? »

the trauma of the Tauren

March 30, 2023 by kamaliaetalia

Kamalia did the patch 10.0.7 questline with Baine and Scout Tomul in the Ohn’ahran Plains last night.
One of the key themes of the questline is confronting and overcoming the hatred and mistrust that the Tauren of modern Kalimdor have for Centaur because of the post-Sundering generational warfare between Centaur and Tauren on that continent*.
I’ve thought — briefly — before about how Thunder Bluff having been established following the events of Warcraft III means that Kamalia would have spent most of her life prior to the beginning of World of Warcraft as a nomad. Until I was playing through this new questline, though, I didn’t have any sense that her nomadic experience would have involved constant fleeing from, fear of, and hatred of the Centaur.
Though the arrival of the Orcs saves the Tauren from extinction at the hooves of the Centaur in Warcraft III, I feel like what mentions of that history exist in World of Warcraft‘s quests in Mulgore, the Barrens, and even Desolace — in both Classic and Cataclysm** — don’t convey that aspect of Tauren history & culture very effectively at all. The Harpies, Gnolls, and Quillboar are presented as equally important threats as the Centaur. Nothing that I remember of my leveling experience suggested this degree of cultural trauma:


I feel like I might have felt differently about Kamalia’s interactions with the Centaur of the Ohn’ahran Plains when I first played through that zone if I had understood that the conflict between the Tauren and the Centaur in Kalimdor was that horrific.
~*~*~
*In contrast, Lasan Skyhorn, standing near the flight master in Maruukai, comments that Highmountain Tauren do not have this prejudice.
**Perhaps it’s time to play through those zones again, paying more careful attention to the quest text in both text panes and chat bubble dialogs, in Retail with Kazithra/Kaiuna and also in Classic…

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Posted in Cataclysm, Classic/Vanilla, Dragonflight, Kamalia, Questing, Story/RP/Lore, Tauren | 2 Comments

2 Responses

  1. on March 31, 2023 at 9:05 am wrathofkublakhan

    Wowzers, that is a powerful little rhyme.


    • on March 31, 2023 at 9:48 am kamaliaetalia

      Yeah.
      I remembered the lore scroll in the tent with the Druid and Priest trainers in Thunder Bluff called “Hatred of the Centaur”, so I went and looked it up on Wowhead. That text says that the Centaur chased the Tauren out of their homeland and that the Tauren were forced to become nomads — but it doesn’t include that the Centaur continued to pursue and seek to eliminate the Tauren.
      At best, I had a sense that the Tauren occasionally, perhaps even frequently, had fierce battles with Centaur raiders during their peregrinations — but nothing like “at first sign that Centaur are coming, ‘flee, my children, flee… do not come back for me’ “.



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