Centaur

Centaur legend traces the race to the caverns of Maraudon beneath Desolace. There, Zaetar, one of the immortal sons of the demigod Cenarius, and Princess Theradras, daughter of the elemental lord Therazane, sired the first centaur. Upon their emergence, the barbaric offspring turned on their father and killed him. Grief-stricken, Theradras trapped Zaetar's spirit within the winding caverns of Maraudon, yet she shielded her vicious children, who swiftly multiplied across Kalimdor.

Following their emergence, the centaur expanded outward from Desolace, waging a brutal war of attrition against Kalimdor's native populations. The nomadic tauren suffered the most: driven from their fertile ancestral homeland of Mulgore, they were chased relentlessly across the Barrens. Centaur warbands treated the tauren as prey, burning settlements and hunting them for sport. By the time of the Third War, centuries of relentless pursuit had brought the tauren to the precipice of extinction, leaving them desperately fleeing endless marauders across the savannah.

Everything shifted when Warchief Thrall and the newly arrived orcish Horde landed upon Kalimdor. Thrall formed a pact with Cairne Bloodhoof, uniting orcish steel with tauren might. Together, they crushed the aggressive Kolkar warbands, broke their grip on the plains, and enabled the tauren to safely establish Thunder Bluff and reclaim Mulgore. This alliance ended the nomadic exile of the tauren and established a debt of blood and honor that permanently bound them into the Horde.

Despite their staggering defeats, centaur remain an active threat across central Kalimdor. Their society is divided into warring clans—primarily the Kolkar, Gelkis, Magram, and Maraudine—each led by a khan and locked in perpetual blood feuds over territory and water. While their internal squabbles keep them from uniting into an unstoppable horde, aggressive raiding parties continue to strike at trade caravans and settlements across Durotar, the Barrens, Thousand Needles, and the borders of Mulgore.