Frostfire Ridge

Recently, Krasha reactivated some kind of magical rift he once had in his basement. I am told he used this to get into some other timeline that he then couldn’t get out of. Naturally, I doubted at least a large part of the story he told us, as did everyone else. Would you believe if your absent-minded employer told you a story about how he saved an alternate timeline and personally healed Jaina Proudmoore from a poison inflicted on her by Kel’thuzad himself? It sounds like a pretty tall story… until you get to realize it’s all true. Or at least it’s mostly true, as I recently had the chance to experience this alternate timeline, albeit from a completely different angle.

When Krasha reopened that rift, he couldn’t see anything through it. So instead of sending that Eye of Terokk, or using some kind of spell to divine what is on the other side, he opted to send someone through to report back with a communication device he rigged to work across various dimensions (don’t even ask me how, I’m an actual mage and I don’t understand half of what this druid is talking about). He started asking for volunteers but all the gnolls, murlocs and other creeps he hired for work at his tower were too scared to venture through. When he finally asked me, I wanted to refuse but I couldn’t let my mother call me a coward again. (Look, I know she wouldn’t know about this, but I was already hearing her nagging in my head). So I agreed.

First thing I saw on the other side was the top of a tower I landed on. An ogre was standing nearby cowering, but he seemed frozen in time. Everything was odd about that place – including an odd, swirling energy that prevented me from seeing anything outside that tower. Upon venturing downstairs and finding another ogre frozen in place, I concluded the only possible explanation. Verroak’s spell collided with some temporal experiment these ogres were conducting and affected the flow of time inside this ogre tower. I felt this effect creeping on me and realized that staying for much longer would attune me to the temporal stasis and quickly left it.

Right outside was another batch of ogres who immediately turned to attack me. As I quickly put the hostile to death with my expert frost magic, I noticed the landscape. I was seeing snowy dunes and rocky spires flowing with lava. This combination, and the ogres, could only mean one thing – this was Frostfire Ridge that once served as the home of the Froswolf Clan on Draenor before it was destroyed. The problem was, Frostfire Ridge collapsed during the shattering of Draenor – parts of it collided with Gorgrond and became Blade’s Edge Mountains, and other parts broke off the land. I must have been in the past of Draenor, before the Horde formed.

I never actually lived on Draenor or in Frostfire Ridge so I was hopelessly lost, being only able to relay the general landscape back to Verroak. I noticed the local frost wolves that seemed cautious of me, but not openly hostile, so I tried to earn their trust. I took some meat out of my bag and threw it to them. The beast wouldn’t even eat it, but grabbed a piece and ran off. Thinking I wasted the food, I continued on towards the rocky outcrops on the edges of the land where I was found out by the local orcs. Brown-skinned, uncorrupted Frostwolves – all my speculation was proving itself true, especially when I asked who’s their leader. Their current chieftain was Garad – yes, the grandfather of Thrall.

I was led to a settlement they called Wor’gol, where the Clan was resting at the time after Garad left. Ga’nar, another son of Garad, told me about the summit of the chieftains of the orcish clans that was happening somewhere in Nagrand. Here’s where this whole story gets really interesting. A prophet named Garrosh appeared along with some odd humanoid companions and warned the clans about the upcoming invasion of the Burning Legion. He said the Legion – which these orcs had no idea about – is destroying worlds across the universe just to catch the draenei who once fled from them. The only way to save themselves from the Legion was, according to him, to destroy the draenei before the Legion could find them again.

That was the last message Garad’s messenger relayed. The Frostwolves say it’s been two weeks since they last heard from their Chieftain and they’re getting worried. They do not want to believe that this prophet – who is undoubtedly the missing tyrant we’re looking for – could actually be telling the truth, but he brought magic and technology the orcish clans never heard of before. Not only has the promise of this kind of power emboldened them, thinking they could win this war, but also some of the chieftains began to sway to Garrosh.

This was troubling news that I immediately relayed back to Verroak. He wanted to pull me out of this past Draenor – or should I say alternate Draenor now? Undoubtedly it wasn’t because he was concerned, but he simply was afraid of further trouble he could get into by messing with this timeline. Despite his warnings, I decided to stay around and get to know these uncorrupted orcs for some time. Of course I didn’t have the will to talk to many of them, but just staying around and seeing their way of life invigorated me. That was how we were meant to live, not squatting in muddy huts in barren wastelands or building giant, ominous looking forts in an effort to relive the days of past glory – which was no glory, but corruption and death.

I returned back to Krasha in the end, but I’m already missing the time I spent there. If I could, I would just stay there forever and live like we were meant to. But alas, it will not come to pass. The dark clouds are already gathering above that alternate Draenor and even if Garrosh fails to sway the chieftains to his side, history will repeat itself and that’s something I wouldn’t want to live through myself. Ah, if only I knew how to make this portal go a few more decades into the past…