The Darkspear's Long Crossing — Two Exiles and a New Horde

Full History

The Darkspear did not enter the Horde from a position of strength. Long before Thrall's ships appeared on their horizon, they were one of several jungle-troll tribes left behind by the collapse of Gurubashi authority. The old empire had once commanded land and reverence across the southern jungles. Its decline did not leave a peaceful confederation of equal inheritors. Each surviving tribe fought to hold the ground and traditions it believed were still its own, and the smaller Darkspear discovered how little protection an illustrious ancestry could offer when more powerful neighbors wanted their land.

Driven from Stranglethorn, the Darkspear made a precarious home on remote islands. Their leader was Sen'jin, an elder whose authority rested upon more than the ability to win a fight. For a people pushed from the center of troll history to its dangerous margins, survival demanded a leader able to recognize when refusing an alliance would be more ruinous than accepting one. The islands were shelter, not a recovered kingdom: a narrow refuge ringed by the ocean and threatened by hostile forces.

Thrall's orcs were themselves refugees when a storm diverted their voyage toward the islands. Their first meeting with the Darkspear might have been another contest between desperate strangers, but the two peoples had a common interest in defending themselves. Hostile humans threatened the island, and the struggle soon reached beneath its surface. Murloc captors took orcs and trolls into a dangerous sanctuary where a sea witch demanded sacrifices. Thrall escaped and tried to save the prisoners, yet Sen'jin did not survive. According to the original campaign account, the dying chieftain had foreseen that the orc leader would guide his people to a new homeland.

This prophecy did not erase the cost of what happened. The Darkspear lost their leader as the orcs gained allies; the tribe left another home behind before it had time to make that home secure. Vol'jin inherited more than his father's title. He carried the obligation to keep a scattered people alive while binding their future to warriors whose own past was stained by conquest and demonic influence. Unlike the forest trolls who had once joined Doomhammer to recover lands from the high elves, the Darkspear attached themselves to Thrall's experiment in building a different Horde.

Kalimdor offered another beginning, not a happy ending. The Darkspear moved to the Echo Isles near the new orcish homeland of Durotar, only to face the attack of Daelin Proudmoore's forces during the founding of the Horde's settlements. The events of *The Frozen Throne* show why their alliance mattered: orcs, trolls, tauren, and other comrades depended upon each other while trying to hold a place against new enemies. Thereafter, the witch doctor Zalazane's domination of trolls on the Echo Isles drove many survivors to Sen'jin Village on the mainland.

At the beginning of *World of Warcraft*, a Darkspear adventurer does not inherit a triumphant empire. They inherit two recent exiles, a dead father whose name marks a village, a living chieftain who advises Thrall, and islands close enough to see but not safely call home. Their story turns troll history on its head. The great empires had measured survival by territory conquered; the Darkspear were learning to survive through loyalty freely given, adaptation, and the refusal to abandon their own identity.