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Card Smart: Gorehowl

by - 11 years ago

Sure, you can play that winning card and step away from your match the glorious victor. But where is the fun unless you can also drop some lore knowledge on your opponent and add insult to injury? In this column, we don’t worry about card values or strategy – all we care about is that sweet, sweet lore.

GorehowlToday, we are taking a look at Gorehowl, one of the 19 currently known weapon cards in Hearthstone. Weapon cards have an interesting attribute not shared with any other card in the game: durability. Weapons cannot be directly attacked, but causing damage counts against their durability rating. Once their durability level has been reached, the weapon “breaks”, rendering it useless.

The flavor text for the original Gorehowl weapon in World of Warcraft is “The axe of Grom Hellscream has sown terror across hundreds of battlefields”, and for some reason it’s currently a weapon drop from Prince Malchezaar, who hangs out in Karazhan. For the upcoming expansion, it will become a loot item that drops of Garrosh Hellscream, although the warchief has seemingly done some unspeakable things to it.

But let’s back up a bit: Gorehowl once was the mighty battleaxe of Grom Hellscream, chieftan of the Warsong Clan when the Orcs still lived on Draenor. Encouraged by the wicked influence of Gul’dan, a former Orc shaman turned warlock, Grom was the first Orc to drink from the blood of Mannaroth, leading to the demonic corruption of almost the entire Orcish race. The result of that corruption was the eventual opening of the Dark Portal and the invasion of Azeroth by the Orcs. The events of that initial invasion play out in Orcs and Humans, the very first Warcraft game released by Blizzard.

Grom Hellscream had a son, Garrosh Hellscream. When most Orcs got their taste of demon blood, Garrosh was away recovering from illness. As a result, Garrosh never fell under the demonic influence. However, while the Orcish Horde was formed under the leadership of his father, Garrosh felt left behind and worthless. Garrosh’s initial pride for his father and his despair of being unable to join the Horde later turned to shame when he learned that it was his father who had brought the demonic curse onto the entire Orcish race.

Years later, Garrosh is visited in Nagrand by Thrall who shares with the young Orc that it was Grom’s heroic act of facing down the demon Mannaroth (performing the killing blow with Gorehowl) that reversed the curse. Thrall presents Garrosh with the axe of his fallen father, restoring the family name and honor in the eyes of the son. Encouraged by Thrall, Garrosh would eventually assume the role of Warchief and work toward restoring the Horde to his interpretation of its former glory – but that’s a long story for another day.

Why after all this Gorehowl doesn’t fall into the category of legendary weapons is a mystery to me.

At least, thanks to the magic of Blizzard, we can relive that defining moment when Grom Hellscream struck down Mannaroth with his trusty battleaxe Gorehowl to sacrifice himself and free his people from the demonic curse (look out for Doomhammer, another Hearthstone weapon card in the video).


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JR Cook

JR has been writing for fan sites since 2000 and has been involved with Blizzard Exclusive fansites since 2003. JR was also a co-host for 6 years on the Hearthstone podcast Well Met! He helped co-found BlizzPro in 2013.


0 responses to “Card Smart: Gorehowl”

  1. eleanorundeadgoat says:

    There are no actual legendary weapon cards you can collect; Ashbringer is a token generated as Tirion Fordring’s deathrattle.

    Also Grom is a card. Garrosh has severe daddy issues . . .

  2. eleanorundeadgoat says:

    There are no actual legendary weapon cards you can collect; Ashbringer is a token generated as Tirion Fordring’s deathrattle.

    Also Grom is a card. Garrosh has severe daddy issues . . .