WotLK Questlines - The Betrayal of Drakuru

For years the official forums had threads about WoW butchering the Warcraft lore, since almost every plot there ever was in the universe ended in World of Warcraft with just killing someone. No wonder, the main plots were raid-only where there's limited time for events. For years we didn't see a big, intriguing story starting, evolving and coming to a showdown in the game, only ending stories that started in previous games, books or comics. I think I found the first real big storyline that changes this. Below is an article about this storyline filled with nothing but spoilers.

In Grizzly Hills

It's Troll Season in Grizzly Hills and in order to get our troops to Zul'drak, to stop the Scourge there, I was sent to Granite Springs, a seemingly small camp to help with cleaning up some of the local ice trolls. But in the camp, there was this troll called Drakuru who really caught my interest. He seemed like he knew stuff, he even made a blood pact with me, then asked for help.

First, I gather some herbs to make an elixir that would help me summon his image at his pedestals around Grizzly Hills. He really was a leader of some sort around here. Ok, herbs gathered. So the stuff he knows is revealed: there were legendary artifacts that make Drak'tharon Keep impenetrable, unfortunately they were lost. Drakuru found some clues to their whereabouts but he was captured before decyphering them.

When I summon his image to the first set of clues, they point us to another shrine called Zeb'halak. Same deal there - of course to summon him this time, a pretty high ranking warlord has to die for his mojo - but now we also find one of the artifacts. Here he finds the location of the second artifact in possession of an excavating goblin. With two of the artifacts gathered things start to point to Drak'tharon Keep, should I "remove" all the bad trolls I would be awarded the greatest secret ever. Interesting!

My last mission before heading in, is to find some tablets in a troll crypt with walking trollghosts shouting "Where's mah mummy" and stuff. Kinda creepy, but it has to be done if I want to know the secret.

In Drak'tharon Keep

After defeating Prophet Tharon'ja, the last boss of Drak'tharon Keep, I summon Drakuru for the last time, who is now very happy to be back in the once prosperous and noble Keep. Time for the secret! Uh-oh. A familiar portal appears, that huge Death Gate...

That's right, the Lich King appears. He is pleased with Drakuru's doings, how he created a new army for him. Just what did I do! And that's not all, Drakuru gets a reward too, he is transformed into a brutal fat troll with extreme powers. "Da Lich King be generous to dem who obey", indeed. And even that's not all! Drakuru's new mission is the cleansing of Zul'drak.

Obviously I don't have any intention of helping him knowing all this, but the story continues.

In Zul'drak

Upon arriving into Zul'drak, we see the once great empire in chaos. Half of the zone already transformed into Scourge by 3 mighty necropolises: Kolramas, Voltarus and Zeramas. The upper levels of the huge ziggurat are in no less chaos, the trolls there sacrificed their own animal gods to gain power to defeat the Scourge.

In Light's Breach the Ragemane Tribe calls out desperately for help, they don't understand what is happening to their peaceful village. Drakuru trolls are setting their houses on fire, capturing their soldiers and generally spreading chaos. There, in the destroyed village I found the Order of Drakuru which confirms everything. He really is here already and doing the Lich King's bidding.

After successfully obtaining a Scourge Disguise - a funky looking ghoul -, the death knights of Ebon Watch send me on missions to gather intel about Drakuru's plan. While doing these missions I need to convince Scourge mobs that I am worthy of knowing a secret or capable of carrying out important missions, like feeding ghouls which is no doubt the funniest quest in the storyline. The death knights have me neutralize cauldrons, destroy siege weapons, but eventually a peculiar yellow crystal catches our attention.

Eventually I gain access to Voltarus to secretly investigate and steal some of that yellow crystal. This is Overlord Drakuru's own necropolis so the first thing he does is showing me around... around the already conquered part of Zul'drak carried by a bat. Now that was a very nice flyby of the zone.

To gain Drakuru's trust as a fuzzy haired ghoul he doesn't yet know me as, I get cool tasks. Well, not really cool because I do bad things, but still cool because they are max fun.For each of the 3 tasks, I get a powerful Scepter. The first one controls geists to have them harvest the yellow crystal, the second to gain control of a servant and kill Darmuk who apparently failed Drakuru with a batch of blight (the yellow stuff), but I think that was me earlier so... sorry Darmuk?

The third task is to take control of abominations that really aren't useful for anything else but exploding with everything else around it too. Since it is time to lay siege on Gundrak, the upper level of Zul'drak still not scourgified, I head to their closest outpost to clean it using the abomination, or several abominations to be precise. It's difficult to gather more than 5 of those pesky trolls onto the abomination for blowing up. Of course this makes the trolls angry sending out several of their chieftains on me, they are however picked up by gargoyles and taken away. But for what purpose?

This was enough for Drakuru, I am worthy of knowing all the secrets - these must be new... what did I do this time? - so I get access to the upper level of Voltarus, where a friendly skeleton, who got out of his coffin just for this occasion, shows me around. The blight is used to slowly corrupt and convert the Drakkari chieftains into monsters like Drakuru. They are the new army, superpowerful Scourge units to conquer Gundrak. The puzzle is complete.

That cannot happen so at Ebon Watch I get the task of stopping this by killing Drakuru. The last scepter I used to control Scourge will be perfect for this job, I can use it to control Blightblood Trolls to help me fight. Now this quest is quite possibly the toughest solo quest in WotLK so far, it is no small task. One of these monster trolls isn't enough to kill Drakuru, luckily I have 4 at my disposal on the very top of the necropolis. Close to the end I get to see a second showdown of the story, again on the top of a zone. Drakuru yells "ENOUGH!" and for the second time in the story, that huge Death Gate appears.

Yes, it's Lich King time again. Drakuru failed him, instead of punishing me for double-crossing them, it is Drakuru who must pay. His punishment is death. What about my life? My insignificant life is spared as a reward for the amusing betrayal. Ok, wow!

I think you now all see what I was talking about in the first paragraph. Brilliant story!

The first and second part of the questchain can be found on Wowhead.

Rewards at the end of the questchains:

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