The Witherbark — Forest Trolls Between Arathi and the Hinterlands

Full History

The forests of northern Eastern Kingdoms were a troll homeland long before the human kingdoms drew their borders. The Witherbark belonged to the older Amani world, in which separate forest-troll tribes could share enemies and traditions without always sharing the same immediate interests. The Troll Wars broke that world apart. When the ancient struggle with high elves and their human allies ended in defeat, Witherbark survivors withdrew toward lands now called the Arathi Highlands and the Hinterlands. The division was not a peaceful retirement; those hills and valleys remained contested for generations.

The tribe's old hatred of the elves gave it a reason to answer Zul'jin's call during the Second War. Orgrim Doomhammer's Horde offered the forest trolls a chance to strike back at Quel'Thalas, and for a time the orcs and trolls marched against common enemies. The bargain collapsed with the Horde's defeat. Like most forest-troll tribes, the Witherbark turned away from their orcish allies. Their fight for an ancestral homeland was older than Doomhammer's war, and the Horde's failure left them to pursue it on their own terms.

The two Witherbark populations faced different neighbors. In the Hinterlands, where the ancient troll settlements stood close to Wildhammer territory, the Witherbark fought the small Revantusk tribe and regarded the dwarves of Aerie Peak as an expanding threat. The Revantusk had made the unusual choice of friendship with Thrall's new Horde, deepening a split among forest trolls over what loyalty to orcs should mean. Their struggle was not merely a dispute over village boundaries. It expressed rival answers to the same historical humiliation: isolation, negotiated survival, or another attempt to recover the old strength of troll lands.

Farther south, the Witherbark of Arathi found themselves opposite Hammerfall, a settlement established by the new Horde. The tribe made a reluctant alliance with nearby Boulderfist ogres to oppose those orcs. It was a hard-edged choice rather than evidence of trust between trolls and ogres. An enemy hated even more than a dangerous neighbor can make an unlikely ally useful. Meanwhile, the ruins of Stromgarde and the legacy of the Troll Wars recalled the generations of human expansion that had narrowed the forest trolls' world.

At the opening of World of Warcraft, the Witherbark remain neither a reunited empire nor a branch of Thrall's Horde. They survive in scattered strongholds and inherited feuds, close to Shadra'alor and other reminders of forest-troll religion. Their story offers another path through the fall of Amani influence: a people unable to restore the old kingdom, but unwilling to surrender the lands and memories that made them who they were.