Before the introduction of the extremely efficient (and transdimensional!) Horde Postal Service, the Tauren tribes would often use smoke signals, created with green-wood fires and blankets, to communicate messages across long distances. One of the difficulties was to know when a message was completed, so you could go back to fishing or whatever else it was you were doing.

By convention, the last sentence of any given smoke-message was “And the Crossroads is Under Attack.” This, back in the earliest ages of the Earth, was a call to arms, urging all Tauren and their allies to take up the defence of one of our sacred sites which — due to its central location — was a favourite target of centaurs, quillboars, anyone who happened to be walking by.

But after this had been going on for some time, and no one could really remember why the site was so sacred in the first place (and after orcs had dumped a lot of garbage on it, like malfunctioning siege engines and some ogres), everyone started to just ignore this bit, regarding it as pure formality.

And so it continues to this day. But why is the Crossroads Under Attack? Does anyone even know? How badly do you have to screw up to be nominated as the next Crossroads Flight Master?

Next: A Public Service Announcement »