Quick Overview
The centaur were born from the union of Zaetar, a keeper descended from Cenarius, and the earth elemental princess Theradras. Their children killed Zaetar, whose resting place became part of the sacred caverns called Maraudon. That tragedy preceded the centaur's long campaigns against the tauren of Kalimdor.
Full History
Cenarius's nature-bound lineage included keepers of the grove such as Zaetar, whose responsibilities belonged to the older guardianship of Kalimdor. Theradras was a princess of the earth elementals, a being rooted in powers very different from those of the forest guardians. Their union produced the centaur, a people whose later conflicts would profoundly affect neighboring tribes.
The offspring turned violently against their father and killed him. Theradras preserved his resting place within caverns later known as Maraudon. The site became a place where the centaur's origins, the elemental world, and the legacy of Cenarius intersected. Its significance was not merely geographic: it held a tragedy at the beginning of a people whose later history would be dominated by violence and territorial struggle.
As centaur clans expanded, they fought other inhabitants of western and central Kalimdor. The tauren became one of their enduring victims, facing raids and displacement that left many families and tribes constantly searching for safety. The pressure continued into the Third War, when Cairne Bloodhoof's people found an ally in Thrall and eventually secured a new homeland in Mulgore.
Maraudon and the tauren migrations are therefore parts of one connected historical story. The first concerns the centaur's birth and the destruction of Zaetar, while the second shows the long consequences of the people's emergence upon other inhabitants of the continent.
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