Playable: Yes · Faction: Horde · Homeland: Mulgore · Capital: Thunder Bluff · Leader: High Chieftain Cairne Bloodhoof
Where They Stand
The tauren were scattered nomads hunted across the Barrens by the Centaur until Thrall's orcs helped Cairne Bloodhoof drive them off. Cairne repaid that debt by bringing his people into the Horde, and has never once regretted it — though he has frequently disagreed with it.
Thunder Bluff on the mesas of Mulgore is four years old and is already the most peaceful place on either continent. It is neutral ground where even Alliance emissaries have been received.
How They Got Here
They were always here. Tauren predate every other civilisation on Kalimdor except the night elves, and their oral history reaches back past The Sundering to a time when they hunted a much larger world.
Then the Centaur came. Born, the tauren say, of a violated earth-spirit — and the centaur have hunted tauren for centuries with the specific intent of exterminating them. This is not a border dispute. It is the defining fact of tauren history.
They went nomadic to survive it. Not by choice. A people that does not settle cannot be besieged, and for generations the tauren simply kept moving.
Then Thrall's fleet arrived. The orcs met Cairne's people mid-migration, helped them break a centaur host, and asked for nothing. Cairne has been repaying that ever since.
Then they stopped walking. Thunder Bluff is the first permanent tauren settlement in living memory, and there is an entire generation growing up in it who have never migrated. Their elders find this wonderful and slightly worrying.
And Cenarius taught them. The night elves' demigod took tauren students, and the first tauren druids in history are alive right now — with no elders to ask, because they are the elders.
Who Leads Them
High Chieftain Cairne Bloodhoof — old, enormous, and the most respected individual alive on either side of the line.
Tauren governance is tribal and consultative. Cairne leads the Bloodhoof tribe and speaks for the whole people, but the other tribes are not his subjects — Runetotem, Skychaser, Ragetotem, Winterhoof, Wildmane, Grimtotem. Chieftains speak, elders are heard at length, and decisions take as long as they take.
The spiritwalkers and druids hold parallel authority that has nothing to do with the chieftains. A tauren with a vision outranks a tauren with an argument.
Where They Fit
The tauren are the Horde's legitimacy. When Thrall needs to demonstrate that his Horde is not the old one, he points at Thunder Bluff — a city with no walls, that takes in refugees, and that has hosted Alliance envoys without incident.
They also hold the Horde's moral line internally. Cairne objected to the Forsaken joining and was overruled, and he has kept objecting. The tauren are the only people in either faction with the standing to tell a warchief he is wrong and be listened to.
Through the Cenarion Circle they maintain the one genuinely warm cross-faction relationship in the world, with the night elf druids — which is quietly the most important diplomatic channel that exists.
The Cairne Question
Cairne is the only leader in the world who is on speaking terms with almost everyone — Thrall's mentor, respected by Jaina Proudmoore, honoured by the night elf druids, and the one voice who consistently objected to the Forsaken joining the Horde. He is the campaign's best neutral arbiter.
What They Just Survived
- Near-extinction at centaur hands, within living memory
- The end of the migration — a whole way of life set down four years ago
- The Third War and the crossing into a Horde they had no part in creating
What They Are Fighting Now
| Where | Who | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Desolace, Thousand Needles | Centaur | The old war. It has never stopped and it will not be settled. |
| The Barrens, Mulgore | Quilboar | Razorfen raids on the herds and the roads |
| The Barrens, Stonetalon Mountains | Venture Company | Goblin strip-mining. To the tauren this is not commerce, it is a wound. |
| Internally | The Grimtotem | Not open war. Yet. |
| Mulgore | Harpies, gnolls | Persistent, local, and a young warrior's first proper fight |
What They Want
Cairne wants the Horde to be worth belonging to. He did not sign his people up to a war machine and says so, repeatedly, in council.
The tauren want the herd to endure — which now means a city, which is new, and which nobody is quite sure how to defend if it comes to it.
The druids want to learn faster. Cenarius is dead, the Cenarion Circle is short-handed, and a people who have had druids for four years are being asked to help heal a continent.
The Grimtotem want the tauren back, on their terms, without orcs.
Character Traits
- Deliberate — tauren do not hurry, and find it strange that others do
- Honour the kill — hunting is sacramental; waste is obscene
- Communal — the tribe decides, elders are heard, individuals matter less
- Physically enormous — tauren are the largest playable people and rooms are built wrong for them
How They Talk
Slow, formal, and full of the land. Tauren use fewer words than anyone else and mean all of them. Interrupting a tauren is a serious rudeness, which other peoples do constantly without noticing.
| Phrase | When |
|---|---|
| "Aho." | Greeting. Also acknowledgement, agreement, and I hear you. Enormously flexible. |
| "Walk with the Earthmother." | Farewell. The full form is may the Earthmother walk with you and yours. |
| "An'she rises." | The sun — one of the Earthmother's eyes. Said at dawn and about anything getting better. |
| "Mu'sha weeps." | The moon, the other eye. Said of grief. |
| "Do not waste what you take." | The first thing a tauren child is taught. Said as a rebuke to strangers, often. |
| "The herd endures." | Said at funerals, and after defeats |
| "I will consider it." | Genuinely means I will consider it, for days. Other peoples hear a no. |
What They Make of the Others
Humans — Few tauren have met one. The accounts that come back through Theramore describe a people who are brave, badly led, and frightened, which the elders find sad rather than threatening.
Dwarves — They would understand us within a day if they ever put the shovel down. A people who honour their ancestors and work stone are not strangers.
Night Elves — Teachers, and then friends. Cenarius took our first druids and the Circle takes our elders as equals. Whatever the two Hordes and Alliances decide, that will hold.
Gnomes — Loud, generous, and building things the earth did not ask for. A tauren will listen to a gnome explain for as long as the gnome needs, which gnomes find remarkable.
Orcs — They found us mid-migration, broke a centaur host for us, and asked for nothing. Cairne repaid it with a people, and he has never once called it a mistake.
Forsaken — The one thing the tauren have consistently objected to and been consistently overruled on. Nobody in Thunder Bluff pretends this is settled.
Darkspear Trolls — Quiet, funny, and carrying more grief than they let on. The only people in the Horde who have been guests as long as the tauren were nomads.
Playing One
Tauren PCs are natural mediators and natural druids, and the species that most easily justifies being the party's moral centre without being a scold about it.
Five shapes worth taking:
- Hunter of the Bloodhoof — you took the Rite of Strength, you killed a Bristleback chief, and nothing since has frightened you as much
- First-generation druid — among the first druids your people have ever produced. There is no elder to ask. You are the elder now, at nineteen.
- Spiritwalker or elder's student — you speak to ancestors, and they are not always helpful
- Grimtotem who disagrees with Magatha — your tribe is drifting toward something and you can see it. Nobody outside will believe you are not part of it.
- Born in Thunder Bluff — you have never migrated. The elders talk about the walk like it was holy, and you are quietly glad you missed it.
Questions worth answering at session zero: Which tribe? Did you walk, or were you born in the city? What did the centaur take from your family — because they took something.
