Gallywix and the Horde

I'll put a caveat here at the beginning of this post to mention that Blizzard has an extremely spotty record of treating its diminutive engineering races with any real seriousness. Gnomes and Goblins have always been seen as the silliest playable races, and are often there for comic relief.

Despite becoming playable several expansions after the game launched, Goblins tend to get a bit more screen time, largely due to the fact that the faction-neutral Steamwheedle Cartel is there in addition to the Horde's Bilgewater Cartel. While the Gnomes and their experimental technology is a big asset to the Alliance, the Goblins fill a role split between Gnomes and Dwarves, serving both as innovators and as industry.

After his disastrous choice to give Garrosh the mantle of Warchief, Thrall followed up with an equally baffling decision to bring the Bilgewater Cartel into the Horde with Trade-Prince Gallywix as its leader.

To be clear, Gallywix was the main villain of the goblin starting zones, and it's clear that everyone in the cartel hated him.

Now, admittedly, goblins are typically not likely to hold a grudge if there's profit to be had - their entire culture is built on some kind of obsessive ultra-laissez-faire Randian capitalist system, and Gallywix's ability to amass wealth likely earns him a lot of prestige within the goblin community.

But that being said: can we trust this guy?

It's Gallywix who brings the emergence of Azerite to Sylvanas' attention, and before he even does so, he has his workers mining the stuff. Surely much of that is going to the Horde, but it's also not only likely but probable that he's skimming the stuff for his own purposes.

And is it possible he has other buyers?

Gallywix has flown under the radar for years - for a long time you couldn't even find him at his pleasure palace in Azshara despite there being voice files that seemed to indicate that's where he was supposed to be. Given how comic the goblins tend to be, we'd likely be expected to just think of him as the sleazeball in the background of the Horde.

But as he steps a little further into center stage with the collection of Azerite, I had a strange thought: what if he's sold out the Horde?

A week from now, we'll be seeing the Burning of Teldrassil, which could very likely involve some use of Azerite to ignite the tree.

While the official story will be that the Horde burned it down, justifying the attack on Undercity, I suspect that Horde players might see some implication that it wasn't part of the plan. There's indications that Sylvanas is shocked to see the tree burning, and had intended instead to occupy it so as to prevent the Alliance from shipping Azerite back from Silithus.

One theory is that Azshara might be the one behind the burning, trying to enflame tensions between the factions to divide and conquer.

Could Gallywix be supplying her?

This is all pretty wild speculation, of course, but I think Gallywix is just far enough out of the spotlight that discovering his betrayal would make for a really cool twist, and that perhaps even if it were discovered, it would be too late to actually stop the war.