Quick Overview
The Vilebranch are one of the largest surviving forest-troll tribes of the Hinterlands, with their principal stronghold at Jintha'alor. They inherited the Amani hatred of the elves, followed Zul'jin during the Second War, and abandoned the defeated Horde afterward. Under Vile Priestess Hexx, they turned their strength against the smaller Revantusk tribe and used captives in violent rituals. Their conflict makes the Hinterlands a struggle between competing troll futures, not merely a frontier contested by dwarves and orcs.
Full History
Jintha'alor rises above the Hinterlands like a surviving declaration of forest-troll power. The Vilebranch who occupy it are heirs to the same ruined Amani order that produced the Amani, Revantusk, and Witherbark tribes. After the Troll Wars, the Vilebranch withdrew to their ancestral eastern lands rather than disappear into another kingdom. Their continued occupation of ancient strongholds is a reminder that the defeat of a great troll empire did not mean the end of the peoples who built it.
The Vilebranch found a new opportunity when Zul'jin brought forest trolls into alliance with Orgrim Doomhammer. The Second War promised revenge against the high elves of Quel'Thalas, whose kingdom stood upon lands forest trolls remembered as their own. That coalition, however, was temporary. The Horde failed to fulfill the hopes attached to its invasion, and after its defeat the Vilebranch rejected the orcs. They returned to the Hinterlands with their bitterness intact and no intention of submitting themselves to a new foreign leader.
Their next enemies were not distant elves. The Revantusk, a much smaller forest-troll tribe, had taken refuge near the coast and would eventually make an agreement with Thrall's new Horde. The Vilebranch viewed these neighbors as vulnerable prey. The tribe sought captives for sacrificial rituals and attacked Revantusk settlements, expecting strength of numbers to end the struggle quickly. The Revantusk resisted fiercely, and their understanding with the Horde brought reinforcements into a dispute that might otherwise have remained an unequal war between troll villages.
In the original-era account, Vile Priestess Hexx leads the Vilebranch. Her position gives the conflict a religious as well as territorial dimension: ritual violence is used against a rival people whose political choices have already marked them as enemies. The cliffs and terraces of Jintha'alor therefore carry several histories at once. They are ancestral ground, a place of worship and authority, and the base from which a powerful tribe threatens survivors of its own broader civilization. Nearby Wildhammer dwarves at Aerie Peak are another pressure upon troll claims to the Hinterlands.
The tribe's continued defiance helps explain the divided state of forest-troll society at the birth of World of Warcraft. Zul'jin's old alliance with orcs has left no united nation; the Revantusk seek mutual aid, the Witherbark pursue their own feuds, and the Vilebranch measure survival through domination. Their fate is not settled by the existence of a quest or the arrival of an outsider. The live conflict is the story: an ancient capital still held by trolls, and a people's shared ancestry no longer strong enough to prevent them from preying upon one another.
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Through History
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