User:Haleth/Garrosh Hellscream

Garrosh Hellscream (voiced by Patrick Seitz) was a former warchief of the Horde faction. He is the son of the heroic warrior Grommash Hellscream. When the orc clans of Draenor united to form the first Horde in order to march through the Dark Portal to conquer Azeroth, Garrosh remained behind in Nagrand due to being infected with red pox, a plague that had begun to infect the orcs. During the events of World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade, the Warchief Thrall, founder of the renewed Horde, travelled to Nagrand, where he met Garrosh. Though he wasn't demonically influenced himself, Garrosh was haunted by his family's legacy: his father was the first orc to embrace corruption by drinking the blood of the pit lord Mannoroth. Garrosh lived in the shadow of his father's acts until he met Thrall, who explained to the younger Hellscream that Grommash ultimately gave his life to lift the demonic blood-curse, and freed his race from servitude to dark forces. Learning of his father's great deeds, Garrosh returned to Azeroth with Thrall and became a member of the Horde.

During the events of World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King, Garrosh led the Warsong Offensive, the Horde armies sent to wage war against the Lich King. Following the war's end, Garrosh returned to Orgrimmar as a venerated war hero. Garrosh eventually became the Warchief of the Horde after Thrall stepped down to focus on his shamanistic duties in World of Warcraft: Cataclysm. Brash, stubborn and impatient, all Garrosh wished as Warchief was to conquer all of Azeroth in the name of the Horde, and was willing to crush any who stood in his way, even the other members of the Horde. As the events of World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria progress, Garrosh's increasingly brutal pursuit of dominance led him to turn to ever darker sources of power, earning the hatred and distrust of the other races and leaders of the Horde and of the denizens of Pandaria, particularly the Shado-pan, the order of Pandaren guardians. After narrowly surviving an assassination attempt by Garrosh, the troll leader Vol'jin began an uprising against the Warchief, leading the other races of the Horde in increasingly open rebellion against their former leader. The Alliance, although determined to make the most of this opportunity to dismantle the Horde and dispose of Garrosh, joined in grudging cooperation with Vol'jin's rebellion. Garrosh was defeated in a siege of Orgrimmar by Alliance and Horde champions. In an agreement to cease hostilities, both factions agreed to allow Garrosh to be tried for his crimes by the Pandaren, whose homeland suffered the greatest as a result of Garrosh's actions. Garrosh subsequently escaped imprisonment with the help of the bronze dragon Kairozdormu and initiated the events of World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor, changing the future by going back in time to his homeworld of Draenor before the rise of the Horde.

After influencing an alternate version of his father, Grommash, to reject the blood of Mannoroth offered by Gul'dan, Garrosh became warlord of the Warsong clan while Grommash became Warchief of the Iron Horde, based out of the fortress of Grommashar in Nagrand. A combined Alliance–Horde force led by Durotan attacked the fortress, where Thrall challenged Garrosh to Mak'gora, an honourable duel to the death. Garrosh agreed to meet Thrall "where it all began"—at the Stones of Prophecy, the site of the village he had led in Outland known as Garadar. As they battled, Garrosh claimed that his actions were for the good of the Horde, and that it was Thrall who had made him Warchief and left him to "pick up [Thrall's] pieces". Though outmatched physically, Thrall called upon the formidable powers of the elements to grasp Garrosh in a hand of earth. Garrosh raged that Thrall had made him what he was, to which Thrall retaliated by saying that Garrosh had chosen his own destiny, before Thrall ended his life with a bolt of lightning.

Garrosh also appears in Hearthstone and Heroes Of The Storm.

Reception
Engadget's Anne Stickey, while writing on ranking Hearthstone characters by lore instead of power, thought that "Garrosh Hellscream is certainly strong, but a lot of his strength relies on the armies and tools at his disposal. With no Heart of Y'shaarj and no Horde, Garrosh wasn't exactly the greatest warrior to ever walk the face of the planet." She also found Hellscream to be "one of the most polarizing figures in Warcraft lore at the moment. You either hate him or love him, and there are very few players who stand somewhere in the middle." Writing that Hellscream did not deserve to die an honorable death, as "Allowing Garrosh to die would be a mercy, and he doesn't deserve that mercy. He deserves to live on in shame and dishonor. He deserves to be reminded of what he's done [...] The name Hellscream, once lifted into infamy by the heroics of his father will now be blackened, tainted in history for all time -- because Garrosh Hellscream did not live the honorable life of a warrior." Stickney, while discussing the Christie Golden book World of Warcraft: War Crimes, also wrote that "Garrosh Hellscream is a murderer. He slew countless victims, both Alliance and Horde. He decimated Theramore. He decided to ally with those that Warchief Thrall had blatantly turned away, and even directed the Horde to attack, during his reign. He didn't so much try and redesign the Horde as he did give it a gut job, tear it down from the inside out, and try to rebuild it even stronger. He's guilty. He's beyond guilty. Golden herself said that "Garrosh has been with us for a very, very long time [...] In game and in the book he has been a character who has had this huge, huge run as it were."

Scott Andrews, also of Engadget, added that "Garrosh Hellscream, son of Grom, Chieftain of the Mag'har, Warchief of the True Horde, is no pushover when you meet him in battle. Nor should he be, as the final boss of Mists of Pandaria. He can break your raid team's spirit faster than he nuked Theramore." Sarah Pine continued that Garrosh holds a special place in [her] heart and praised his storyline as tragic yet interesting, stating "Garrosh's story [is] all the more heartbreaking. For here it is, at last -- that despondent and in many ways pathetic Garrosh we first met in Nagrand -- his worst fears are coming true. He has become exactly what he feared he would, if given the opportunity. There's an aching tragedy in that. It's not, fundamentally, a satisfying character narrative arc. In fact, it's a rather terrifying one." Stickney agreed, adding "Garrosh Hellscream is almost an enigma in his own right. You wouldn't think that, by first glance -- after all, right now he fits the bill of brutal orc bent on global domination. But Garrosh's story has had so many moments between the depressed and unwilling would-be leader of Garadar, and the bloodthirsty warleader of Mists of Pandaria that it's difficult to determine where, exactly, he went from point A to point B." She then referred to Hellscream as different from Warcraft other villains, whom are each a source of corruption, as "Garrosh [is] interesting, because his entire downfall was born from within, not born from an outside source. You could argue that had Thrall never shown up and told him the tale of Grom, Garrosh would have done nothing with his life -- and you'd likely be right. That's why Garrosh is unlike any other villain in Warcraft's history. Garrosh's downfall didn't begin with a moment of corruption -- it began with a moment of uplifting revelation."

Anne Stickney opinioned that "Hellscream is not my Warchief" as "His actions fly in the face of everything I've ever read or experienced, everything that the Horde is supposed to be. For both myself and my character, the Horde that I was introduced to was Thrall's Horde -- not weak by a long shot, but a smarter Horde, one that chose alliances where necessary, and fought where necessary just as well." Matthew Rossi disagreed, finding Hellscream's influence on the Horde to be more positive, arguing "I'm enjoying playing Horde a lot more now, because I can finally understand how someone could follow Hellscream willingly. If anything, Garrosh Hellscream isn't perverting the Horde or the orcish character at all. He's the ultimate fulfillment of it. Continuing, Rossi claimed that despite Hellscream being everyone's "Oh I hate that guy guy", "he [Garrosh] is starting to grow on me", as despite him being "an arrogant, petulant, mercurial and often ridiculously bellicose orc who has no direct reason for his ridiculous hatred of humans, but he's also out there doing things, which is more than certain other orc heroes can claim." Polygon's Philip Kollar agreed, writing that "World of Warcraft has gone through a lot of major bad guys — from Ragnaros, the fire lord in charge of the game's first raid, to Arthas, the Lich King who controlled an unstoppable wave of undead from his castle in the frozen wastes of Northrend. But whoever is your favorite, there's no denying that the biggest baddie of the last few years has been none other than Garrosh Hellscream." This viewpoint was shared by PC Gamer's Chris Thrusten, who viewed Garrosh as World of Warcraft’s new arch-villain."