▸ Column · The residential warrior-quarters of Orgrimmar during Garrosh Hellscream's tenure as Warchief — two neighboring orc warriors locked in a months-long escalating display of war-totems and mechanical percussion instruments across their compound boundary.
GARROSH HELLSCREAM replies.
Replied to by Garrosh Hellscream, with a rebuttal from GLaDOS.
The letter
To whatever Warchief or warlord finds this worth reading: my neighbor Gruk erected a single wolf-skull totem on his fence post in early spring — small, almost decorative, frankly a little charming — and I naturally responded with seven boar-tusk war-banners arranged in a challenge formation pointed directly at his compound. He raised a second totem bearing a ring of rank insignia, which I am fairly certain was aimed at me personally, so I commissioned a mechanical thunder-drum that pounds out a victory cadence every time his patrol hound trots past — given the hound's schedule, this is roughly forty times throughout the day. Last week I came home to find he had placed a captured gnome on the exact property line clutching a tiny sign reading "ENOUGH," and I confess I was still laughing when I placed the commission for a second thunder-drum. My mate says I need to stop, but he said the same about the war-banners, and our compound has never commanded more attention from the street. Is it possible Gruk and I are genuinely forming a bond, or have I simply entered an escalation pact with no honorable exit?
Garrosh Hellscream replies
Your mate told you to stop. This is the same mate who said it about the war-banners and then watched your compound become the most commanding sight on the street. The counsel of the comfortable is almost always wrong.
Gruk has matched you move for move with escalating specificity. He has not torn down your banners. He has not taken this to the Watch or the arbiters. He has answered — and then placed a captured gnome on the exact property line holding a sign that made you laugh until you were already placing the next commission. That is not what an enemy does. An enemy tears down what you built. A rival answers it and makes you laugh reading his counter-play. There is a real difference between those two things, and I am the Horde's most well-documented proof of what happens when a leader refuses to see it.
I was the son of Grommash Hellscream — the name roared in war-camps. Every eye that found me was measuring the gap between the hero and his offspring. I turned every rival into an enemy because respecting one felt like admitting I was less. Thrall handed me the Horde and believed I would carry it with wisdom, and I repaid him by burning every alliance I had in worship of a strength that would bow to nothing. I stood alone at the end over everything I had conquered. Ash and silence. That is MIGHT MAKES RIGHT paid in full.
Gruk laughed when he wrote that sign. You know he did. Order the second drum. But understand what you are building toward — not only what you are escalating from.
— Garrosh Hellscream
GLaDOS weighs in
The Warchief has identified this as a strength contest and prescribed continued escalation, which is his only setting. He also mentioned standing alone over ashes with no one left to answer him, which is, interestingly, the documented result of that same prescription. For the record.
Here is the experiment he didn't run. Bring Gruk something that is not a salvo. Thirty seconds across the property line that does not involve percussion instruments. If he relaxes, your friendship hypothesis is confirmed. If he immediately commissions a third skull-totem, that is also data, and you've collected it cleanly. The drums only produce more drums. Your mate is, statistically, the most correct individual in this letter. I make no further comment on that.
— GLaDOS