Where's Wrathion?

Ok, that was meant as a Where's Waldo (Where's Wally for any UK readers) reference. Alternately, you could have "Where in... the... Draenor is Wrathion... San Diego?"

Point being: what's Wrathion up to?

Well, I just found something interesting on the Beta, but in order to really talk about any of this, we need to go into serious spoiler mode. So... Spoiler Mode, activate!




Ok, spoiler people. Are the others gone? (Or are the people who would want to avoid spoilers the spoiler people... whatever.)

As you may or may not know, Wrathion was seriously, seriously not happy that Varian allowed the Horde to continue and name a new Warchief. Wrathion felt this was ending the war prematurely, and that the Alliance simply should have conquered the Horde and integrated those willing to cooperate as full members of the Alliance. Granted, I think Wrathion's a little naive if he thinks that that's something you could accomplish in a couple of years. But Wrathion is also... unaccustomed to not getting his way - and he's only two years old, after all.

So Wrathion did something pretty stupid. He helped Kairoz and a bunch of Garrosh sympathizers break the former Warchief out of jail, all with the aid of the Infinite Dragonflight (which Kairoz - if he's not a member proper, is apparently allied with.)

Yet what happened to him? We really only know the fates of a couple of the people who helped Garrosh. Kairoz is dead after he tried to force Garrosh to work for him, rather than the other way around. Zaela came back to Azeroth and rallied her Dragonmaw Clan to take over Upper Blackrock Spire. And Garrosh, well, you know, that whole Iron Horde thing.

Wrathion's a pretty major player, but he's nowhere to be found. However, this thing I found in Spires of Arrak at least tells us somewhere he's been.

Now we head into double spoilers.

Turns out you're not the only person to set up a Garrison in Draenor. The Alliance sent Admiral Taylor out there to establish his own foothold (the quests revolving around him are available to both sides, as far as I can tell.) However, his Garrison has been wiped out mysteriously - there was apparently a mutiny, led by a man named Ephial, who must be working for either the Scourge, the Cult of the Damned, or, stretching a little, Ner'zhul (it would make a little sense that a human necromancer would revere Ner'zhul, given that he was the first Lich King, but on the other hand, this Ner'zhul's probably not going to trust a human from beyond the Dark Portal.) Fighting your way to his town hall, you'll find a locked chest, where the ghost of one of Taylor's administrators mentions he  doesn't know where the key is. Following the clues he gives you, (that part I'm not going to spoil,) you find the key and open the chest to find Taylor's journal.

It turns out that Taylor actually managed to capture Wrathion, who fled the Iron Horde looking for asylum. Wrathion was essentially a guest/prisoner in Taylor's Garrison, and they had a fun time as Wrathion attempted to buy off Taylor's guards. But Wrathion warned Taylor not to trust Ephial. After a brief trip to Nagrand, Taylor found the Garrison had been put under martial law, and Ephial had essentially taken over, and Wrathion was gone.

So I'm going to guess Wrathion's still alive, and still in Draenor. But where has he gone? It looks like he's fallen out with the Iron Horde, and is now paying for his mistake.

There are a lot of quests left that I haven't been able to see yet, partially because the weekly quests are either not entirely implemented or I've somehow been missing them, and also because I'm forcing myself not to run dungeons until the game goes live, which means I'm not doing the Legendary chain.

So far, actually, Wrathion has always been associated with Legendary quests - first with the Rogue daggers, Fangs of the Father, and then the cloaks in Pandaria. While it's nice to let someone else do it for a change, I wouldn't be terribly surprised to see Wrathion show up somewhere along the way.