Warcraft Adventures: Lord of the Clans storyline

This article contains lore that is taken from the canceled game Warcraft Adventures: Lord of the Clans and is therefore non-canon.

The storyline of Warcraft Adventures: Lord of the Clans was rather different that the one that was eventually canonized by the Lord of the Clans novel.

Trailer

Three great wars between the human Alliance and the orcish invaders have laid waste to the once proud realms of Azeroth. Twenty-two years have passed since Blackmoore found the young orcling. Secretly raising the orcling within the confines of his prison fortress Durnholde, Blackmoore planned to mold the orcling into the perfect warrior. A warrior conditioned to human thinking, but with all the savagery of an orcish heart. - Drek'Thar, Warcraft Adventures: Lord of the Clans trailer.

Rough account

I. Durnholde

• After his parents were assassinated by two orcish assassins, the young orcling that would later become Thrall was found and taken by Lieutenant Blackmoore, a human officer who planned to mold him into the perfect warrior.
• Despite being raised in the next 22 years to obediently serve the Alliance, when presented to his first ever orc, Thrall refused to kill him. Disappointed, Blackmoore executed the prisoner himself, thus prompting Thrall to attack him in retaliation. This raised the ire of the human officer, who declared that Thrall would then be executed at dawn.
  • In an older introduction, Thrall was shown to be a slave-fighter in the arena instead, being made to fight a captured forest troll. Blackmoore ordered him to just sit there and take a pounding from the troll to prove his obedience, and once Blackmoore finally gave him the word, Thrall quickly knocked out his opponent. The human officer then ordered Thrall to execute the troll, which Thrall refused to do because it wasn't honorable, and so the orc attacked Blackmoore instead, only to end up thrown into a dungeon.
• To avoid death, Thrall escaped from Durnholde by breaking out of his cell, knocking out a guard, disguising as the chaplain of the keep to avoid the crossbowmen and then launching himself out of the compound with a catapult.
• After finding a paper about a bounty being placed on the head of Grom Hellscream in the outskirts of Durnholde, Thrall decided to start searching for the orcish chieftain. While walking around the area, he found the crash site of Gazlowe, a goblin zeppelin pilot.
• Gazlowe was here to steal gnomish plans from the nearby workshop of a group of inventors. Thrall offered the following deal: he'd steal the gnomish plans for him, and in exchange Gazlowe would transport him around with his zeppelin.
• After disabling the defenses, Thrall entered the workshop. He caused enough of a ruckus to be able to switch around the gnomish plans with false ones, which threw the inventors into the wrong direction for their researches. Gazlowe was satisfied with the plans, and agreed to bring Thrall to his next destination with his now-repaired zeppelin.

II. Ork Reservation

• At the orcish reservation, Thrall was disappointed to find a derelict orcish town ravaged by the effects of the black ale. The local drunkards were not too keen on helping Thrall, but after supplying them with ale taken to the gnomes a group of Shattered Hand members offered food to Thrall, who used it to trick the dumber head of Mugg'roth the ogre mage.
• After stealing Mugg'roth's playing cards, Thrall traded them for the claw hand of the aptly-named Clawhand, sole Shattered Hand orc not to have traded his blade to Zul'jin the merchant. The former troll warlord was fond of collecting blade hands from the clan, and gave Thrall the spellbook of Mugg'roth in exchange for the last missing piece of his collection.
• Despite being given back their missing spellbook, Mugg'roth still refused to help Thrall finding Hellscream, so the young orc made them walk into their own explosive rune. It turned out that Mugg'roth was protecting the hideout of the Warsong clan itself, and Hellscream ordered his guards to get Thrall so the chieftain could interrogate him.
• Thrall explained his desire of vengeance against Blackmoore to Hellscream, who appreciated to see an orc who hadn't succumbed to lethargy yet. Hellscream had strictly forbidden his clan from drinking black ale and wanted to unite back the scattered clans of the Horde against the orcish traitors Rend and Maim. A Warsong scout then arrived to tell Grom that the Frostwolves would join him in his war effort, which prompted Thrall to inspect the tattered clothes he was wrapped in as a baby - they were blue, and marked with a white wolf...

III. Frostwolf Settlement

Wendigo and Nazgrel.

• Thrall then went to the Frostwolf Settlement area and saved an orcish warrior from a wendigo by scaring the beast away with fire. The warrior was called Nazgrel and insulted Thrall for interrupting his sacred hunt and stopping him from avenging his dead mount.
• Inside Frostwolf Town, the shaman Drek'Thar received Thrall. The old shaman explained that the had a vision some times ago, where an orc raised in slavery would later rise to lead the clan. Drek'Thar told Thrall that he needed to find the Axe of Durotan in order to prove his identity as son of the lost chieftain.
• The axe was sealed inside a cave of the valley, which Thrall opened by luring a snow beast into head-butting open the door. After he came back to Frostwolf Town, Thrall was welcomed by Drek'Thar and started learning the shamanistic ways under him.
• Thrall then went back to his quest, now armed with three scrolls of power: Bridge of Bone, Shapeshift, and Phantom Image. Each of them required a reagent for the matching spell to activate. Gazlowe, feeling that Thrall was becoming someone important, offered to keep helping him.
• Bridge of Bone enabled Thrall to summon a bridge made of bones from the damned crypts of Necroth to cross the chasm leading to the hut of Orgrim Doomhammer, who lived as an hermit in the Alterac Mountains among his hell-hounds.
• Doomhammer welcomed Thrall when he recognized him as the son of his friend Durotan. The former warchief explained the story between him, Durotan and Blackhand, revealing that decades ago they were blood brothers but that Gul'dan had eventually manipulated Blackhand into sending the Frostwolf clan way up north before the First War, until Durotan was eventually assassinated by Blackhand's sons Rend and Maim.

IV. Gryphon aviary

• Next, Thrall traveled to a gryphon aviary and used Shapeshift to invoke a dark cloak of the Twisting Nether and shroud his body into the one of a dwarf. There, he fooled the local Wildhammer dwarves into thinking he was their new hammersmith, and used Phantom Image to steal an egg from one of the gryphons roosting there.
• Once the egg was brought back to the Frostwolves, Thrall was named as the new chieftain of the clan. Nazgrel grudgingly accepted his new leader, but right after that a Frostwolf scout came running after finding a dead orcish messenger. Before dying, the runner was coming with news of Hellscream, who was calling the scattered clans to Grim Batol.

V. Grim Batol & Alexstrasza's Cave

Alexstrasza.

• At Grim Batol, the Frostwolves, Shattered Hands and Bleeding Hollows were united. Doomhammer, Kargath and Kilrogg were there, waiting Hellscream with Thrall, until an injured Warsong messenger arrived to announce that Hellscream had been taken away by the warriors of Rend and Maim.
• The orcs of the Horde lamented their lack of resources, saying that if they still had the help of dragons they would be able to avenge themselves. Thrall decided to go search for Alexstrasza the Dragon Queen, who laid in her lair at Crestfall. The orc managed to calm her down by blocking away her firebreath with a shield reinforced with the dragon's own scales.
• Alexstrasza was initially unwilling to help Thrall after her slavery at the hands of the Old Horde during the Second War, but the orc offered to destroy her worst enemy for her. The dragon then told him to go and kill Deathwing, the adamantine-plated black dragon.
• Before that, Thrall used phosphorescent eels to create a lantern and enter the Temple of the Damned at Grim Batol, inside of which a death knight slept. The necromancer was hostile, and Thrall magically summoned him in the nearby swamps to have a tentacle beast destroy the undead for him.

VI. Blackrock Spire

• Inside the temple laid the secrets of the Decay spell, which Thrall used against the thorny vines blocking the entrance of Blackrock Spire, where Deathwing had its lair. There he witnessed that Deathwing was served by trolls with mottled and grey skin, which fed cows to the evil dragon.
• Thrall entered the carcass of a cow in order to be ingested by Deathwing and closed shut his fire-breathing organ with a metal trap. This prompted Deathwing to cough Thrall away, and then explode when trying to incinerate the young orcish shaman. Alexstrasza was pleased and surprised by this turn of events, and finally agreed to help the Horde against the Alliance.

VII. Finale

Finale.

• Back at Grim Batol, Thrall was promoted to being the new warchief. Drek'Thar also gave him the dangerous Eternal Torment spell. Doomhammer informed him that Rend, Maim, Blackmoore and Hellscream were all at Durnholde, the orcish traitors trying to make a pact with the human officer for even more gold and favors.
• Thrall declared Nazgrel to be his new general, and ordered the Horde to stand ready. The shaman infiltrated the walls of Durnholde and signaled the orcs to attack by blowing up a tower.
• While the orcs attacked, Thrall entered the main compound to witness Rend and Maim ordering their henchman Uglaz to bring a drugged Hellscream to Blackmoore. The orcish traitors were revealed to have had the gnomes engineer the black ale in order to pacify the orcs, and the latest batch was so potent that even the strong-willed chieftain of the Warsong clan had lost his will to fight.
• Blackmoore's offer was as such: the internment camps system would pay up to 5.000 gold coins per month and offer prosecution immunity to the Black Tooth Grin clan in the lands between Dun Modr and Stratholme. In exchange, Rend and Maim were to crush any Horde rebels and deliver 100 orcish slaves per month.
• However, Rend and Maim insisted for their pact to be a bidding blood pact made over warlock runes. As such, they filled a ceremonial bowl with their mixed blood, and asked Blackmoore to do the same.
• Thrall used a crossbow to shoot casks of black ale and a candelabra to light the room ablaze, permitting Hellscream to flee. Finally able to confront the murderers of his parents, Thrall used the Eternal Torment spell on their mixed blood, condemning them to a living hell for all eternity.
• Blackmoore tried to flee, but his former slave managed to catch him on the walls of the the keep. Thrall eventually decided that he wasn't worth killing, so Blackmoore waited for him to turn his back and tried to backstab him, but he was stopped by Hellscream, who threw his axe at him. The human officer died by falling off the walls and Thrall stood triumphant, finally finished with his vengeance.

Trivia

This account is incomplete considering that it was made out of a beta version of the game. Some scenes are missing, and it is also known that Blizzard intended to add more puzzles and dialogues before cancelling the game. As such, several details are still unexplained:

• It is unclear why Thrall had to bring a gryphon egg to Drek'Thar in order for him to be declared new chieftain of the clan.
• Uglaz disappeared during the ending scene, and it is possible that he was meant to have a bigger role in th game.
• Homing Chickens seemed to have a more important role, some of them being seen at the gryphon aviary and at Blackrock Spire, but they may also have just been humorous details added to these scenes.
• It was shown that goblins were spying on Deathwing's lair at Blackrock Spire by being hidden in a mechanical cow. Once again, this might have played a bigger role in the story, or it might have just been an easter egg.
• The concept arts of the game showed a blue dragon that was seemingly cut, but it is possible that it was just the concept artists not being familiar with the dragons of Warcraft.