Raider.IO Riddle Solution: Gruul's Lair

By VitaminP — Dec 5 2022 17:50 CET

To kick off our Race to World First (RWF) Hype Week for Vault of the Incarnates, we posted a Raider.IO Raid Riddle to our socials yesterday. The answer is: Gruul’s Lair!

When traversing through the Dragon Isles, we couldn’t help but remember the famed Gruul, aptly nicknamed “The Dragonkiller”. The imagery of dragons impaled on spikes like dragon kebabs in the Blade’s Edge Mountains is burned into our memories forever.

Want the full breakdown of our Gruul’s Lair riddle solution? Let’s dig in!

Background

Given that Deathwing (Neltharion) created the Dracthyr race 20,000 years ago due to the rift between the Dragon Aspects and Primalists, what better riddle topic than the guy who managed to damage Deathwing so much that he had to flee the scene?

Source: Wowpedia

Here is some background lore on Gruul and the raid instance of Gruul’s Lair that sets the stage for our riddle breakdown. Shoutout to Matt Rossi and Joe Perez for their Blizzard Watch podcast (episode 204) that heavily informed our research!

THE LORE

Gruul’s Lair was a two-boss raid instance in The Burning Crusade (TBC). As part of the attunement for Serpentshrine Cavern, players had to complete a quest for The Cudgel of Kar’desh, which required the retrieval of two elemental signets: the Earthen Signet from Gruul and the Blazing Signet from Nightbane in Karazhan.

To those who did not play during TBC, Gruul may not seem like such a formidable foe at first glance. However, he happens to be such a powerful gronn that he killed many members of the Black Dragonflight and even bested Deathwing himself.

Gruul is a gronn overlord that is a descendant of the original creations of the titan Aggramar. After his leader, Sargeras, stormed away from the Pantheon due to a dispute over how they should handle the threat of the Void, Aggramar went searching for more World Souls (titan souls). This is when Aggramar visited the previously undiscovered planet of Draenor to determine whether it contained a titan soul.

Although Draenor did not appear to have a titan soul after all, Aggramar realized that, in the absence of a titan on this planet, Draenor was still able to support life and even had some strange plant life manifesting in unusual ways. The plants seemed to devour other plants and life forms. Aggramar deduced that these plants would ultimately consume everything and eventually die off when there was nothing left to eat or fertilize from. Although Aggramar needed to hurry out of Draenor to find Sargeras, he decided that there was something about Draenor that was worth exploring later. This way, Aggramar created Grond, which was essentially a titan-forged walking mountain infused with Aggramar’s titanic force.

Grond then waged war on the plants of Draenor — a battle between the Breakers and the Primals.

Source: Wowpedia

Unfortunately, Grond was broken as a result of this clash. However, the titan force of Aggramar composing Grond could not be destroyed, so Grond was just broken down into smaller pieces to make the earth giants called colossals. The evolution from Grond was colossals to magnaron, to gronn, to ogron, to ogre lords, to ogres, and then to orcs. Later on, the planet of Draenor was torn apart by Ner'zhul and turned into Outland. Only the gronn, ogron, ogres, and orcs managed to survive this event. Thus, Gruul (the most powerful gronn) and his seven gronn sons were at the top of the food chain where they remained uncontested for quite some time.

Long before the Horde and the Alliance arrived at Nagrand during TBC, Deathwing had come to Draenor through the Dark Portal during the Second War. Deathwing thought that Draenor would be a safe place for his eggs to grow and hatch and that few beings there would dare contest dragons, so he left several drakes there to guard the clutches he placed all over the planet and returned to Azeroth.

However, the gronn are a particularly territorial species that Deathwing had underestimated when he had first arrived on the planet to hide his eggs. The residents of Gorgond and Frostfire Ridge were not okay with the presence of dragon eggs since it could potentially challenge their power in the region. After the sundering of Draenor into what is now Outland, Gorgrond and the Frostfire Ridge pressed together to form the Blade’s Edge Mountais. The gronn and ogres of this region not only managed to find and destroy Deathwing’s nearby dragon eggs, but they also ripped almost every dragon out of the sky with incantations of the Bladespire clan, killing them on land. Gruul impaled these dragon wyrms into the spiky terrain of the Blade’s Edge Mountains, as mentioned in our initial callout to the “dragon kebabs.”

Dragon bones litter the Blade’s Edge Mountain territory, and Gruul even put several of their skulls up as decorations to display victory and dominance over the Black Dragonflight.

Thus, Gruul became known as Gruul the Dragonkiller. Many clans of ogres and orcs served Gruul as their overlord, and he was basically worshipped as a deity in the area. Gruul and his seven gronn lord sons ruled over the ogres and anyone down the food chain.

During the Second War, the lost heroes Khadgar, Turalyon, and Alleria Windrunner went looking for the Skull of Gul’dan — a powerful demonic artifact that was in the possession of Deathwing.

Here’s where things get really interesting. Although Gruul seemed like a brute, he was a surprisingly intelligent brute. The three heroes bargained with Gruul to form a temporary alliance to confront Deathwing, who was currently perched in Gorgond. The party killed Deathwing’s eggs and the drakes guarding the clutch, so Deathwing flew down and attacked. Despite Deathwings formidable power as a Dragon Aspect, Khadgar managed to magically rip off several of Deathwing’s protective adamantium plates, creating some vulnerable spots for Gruul to land serious blows. As the fight went on, Deathwing realized he could not withstand Gruul’s increasing levels of power. Therefore, Deathwing ultimately retreated from combat and accidentally dropped the Skull of Gul’dan in the process.

Once Khadgar, Turalyon, and Alleria obtained the Skull of Gul’dan, they quickly left Draenor, knowing that there would be nothing else keeping them in a temporary alliance with Gruul. This way, Gruul and his followers were left uncontested and allowed to roam wherever they pleased, as they possessed no valuable resources and no one could really stand in their way. The Gorian Empire and various clans flocked to Gruul as their overlord, so his sovereignty grew in strength and numbers.

Fast forwarding to TBC, the Horde and Alliance arrived in the beautiful land of Nagrand — the last unscathed area of Outland. In the village of Telaar (Alliance) / Garadar (Horde), heroes were tasked with a quest to kill a pesky giant named Durn the Hungerer that was roaming throughout Nagrand and wreaking havoc. This seemed reasonable, as we were all new to Nagrand and wanted to help so that we could set up a base to then travel to the Netherstorm later on. However, unbeknownst to us, Durn the Hungerer was one of Gruul’s seven gronn sons. Thus, we failed to realize the implications of a simple bounty quest and accidentally declared war upon Gruul. There was absolutely no reasoning with Gruul after killing his son. If we hoped to ever make it through Outland, we were obligated to deal with Gruul first or leave the planet forever.

THE RAID INSTANCE

Although Gruul’s Lair was only a two-boss raid instance, players in the original TBC would remember it as a massive DPS check. As poignantly illustrated by Matt Rosi and Joe Perez of the Blizzard Watch podcast, the difficulty of the Gruul encounter felt extremely lore-driven in the way that Gruul continued to increase in strength and lethality the longer the fight went on. This was highly reminiscent of Gruul’s battle against Deathwing where the Dragon Aspect was forced to flee as he realized how increasingly formidable of a threat that Gruul posed. Throughout the Gruul encounter, he continued to stack up a buff called Growth that increased his size and strength up to 30 times over 5 minutes, which was the size he was when he was fighting Deathwing. Gruul was essentially the ultimate hulk.

When the first raid groups faced off against Gruul in TBC, they could tangibly see and feel the storytelling of Gruul and his impending deadliness. It was an extreme “DPS check” burn boss that would ultimately turn his enemies to stone with a Ground Slam and then break everyone out with a massive Shatter. It was a do-or-die situation on a tight clock because it was the Shatter damage and the subsequent Hurtful Strike on the tank that would eventually be completely impossible to survive or mitigate since immunities did not serve to avoid every Shatter. Ultimately, nothing could stop the Shatter and its increasingly lethal damage as the fight waned on.

For further details and insights on Gruul’s Lair from the experts themselves, please check out the full Blizzard Watch podcast below!

Source: Blizzard Watch

FUN FACT

Before the heroes faced off against Gruul the Dragonkiller, they first had to get through his trusted righthand man, High King Maulgar, and his council of lethal magic users. Maulgar’s crew consisted of Kiggler the Crazed (a Shaman), Blindeye the Seer (a Priest), Olm the Summoner (a Warlock), and Krosh Firehand (a Mage).

One of the notable hallmarks of the Maulgar encounter was that it relied upon a skilled Mage using high stamina armor to “mage-tank” Krosh Firehand. Krosh had a Spell Shield that reduced magic damage taken by 75%, which a raid’s Mage player had to Spellsteal to survive and make the encounter doable. If the Mage wasn’t perfectly positioned or if anything went wrong with threat tables, the group would surely wipe. Just like Khadgar teaming up with Gruul to deal incredible damage to Deathwing, Mages were arguably the MVPs of assists in the Maulgar encounter too.

The Breakdown

Without further ado, we will explain why Gruul’s Lair was the best answer to our riddle.

“By crushing a threat that a village implored,
an outrage was sown that could not be ignored.
Caught in a massive and unplanned dispute,
to kill or be killed was the only route.”

Starting with the first line, the word crush connotes the notorious “iron fist” style of Gruul’s ruling. Gruul even has an ability called Cave In during his raid encounter. The threat that was crushed was related to the quest mentioned in the Background section where, during TBC, we were tasked with killing Durn the Hungerer to help the villagers of Nagrand. However, upon unknowingly killing a giant that happened to be one of Gruul’s seven sons, we accidentally declared an unplanned war on Gruul…and this was a massive issue that could not be ignored considering that Gruul is THE gronn (giant) of all gronns. It was a kill or be killed situation with the famed Dragonkiller himself. War was the only route through the Outland if we wished to live another day.

We used the word sown instead of “grown” because Gruul has an ability called Growth, and the terms are closely related. Furthermore, the word “sown” has an earthy connotation that could potentially point towards Mists of Pandaria raid instances. The closest alternative answer to this riddle would be Mogu’shan Vaults, so we wanted to play with a little misdirection.

Lastly, the word caught represents Gruul’s ability called Gronn Lord’s Grasp. During the Gruul encounter, players accrued this stacking debuff, which would eventually catch them in their tracks and turn them to stone before Gronn casted his devastating Shatter to break them out and do massive raid-wide damage.

Although no one unearthed the answer to our Gruul’s Lair riddle, we’d like to give a shoutout to @Lucianoelmata for mentioning Highmaul, which was close!

About the Authors

VitaminP (VP) is the Content Manager of Raider.IO and has worked for the organization since the formation of the News Section in November 2018. Although VP is currently focused on pursuing her Masters of Business Administration, she specializes in tanking classes and has loved doing competitive Mythic+ on and off since early Legion.

Senppai (they/them) is an Indigenous, 2SLBGTQIA+, Canadian content creator and a huge lore nerd. Their stream consists of almost all different WoW content. They're always down to answer questions about lore. They're also the Lore Walker over at Azeroth: A History, a podcast looking at Warcraft lore and how it fits today. Many times, Senppai is joined everywhere by Jarvis, the ginger demon kitty.

Raider.IO Riddle Solution: Gruul's Lair