Warcraft: Legends

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

Warcraft: Legends is the name of a Warcraft manga anthology containing five volumes. It features short stories that are written by Richard A. Knaak, Mike Wellman, Dan Jolley, Troy Lewter, and Brian Yang and illustrated by Kim Jae-Hwan, Carlos Olivares, and Nam Kim. The first volume was released on August 12, 2008 and the second volume on November 11 of the same year. Volume 3 was released on March 17, 2009 and the fourth on June 16 of the same year. The 5th volume was released at September 2009.

Tropes used in Warcraft: Legends include:
  • Absurdly Sharp Blade: Nuri's final sword slices through the anvil that forged it.
  • Affably Evil: Magatha Grimtotem is nice to Kova Broadhorn, even asking her to call her by her first name, but the errand she sends her on involves retrieving one of her accomplices in her plan to depose Cairne.
  • Anthology Comic: Sort of the point.
  • Arms Dealer: Nuri, who makes many of the associated rationalizations about his work.
  • Asshole Victim: Cedric Falbrooke's brother
  • The Atoner: Trag Highmountain and Nuri.
  • Being Good Sucks: The point of the story Thomas tells his children is that the most morally sound decisions are seldom the easiest ones.
  • Buried Alive: Cedric Falbrooke
  • Cherry Tapping: Nuri kills Havoc with the same practically worthless sword he gave his son, and who used it to try to fight Havoc.
  • Downer Ending: "The Journey"
  • Fate Worse Than Death: Undeath in general.
  • Freak-Out: Thomas after killing his family.
  • Gotta Catch Em All: Nuri's quest is to track down and repossess every sword that he has made, whether by refunding the buyer, or by killing them.
  • Heel Realization: Renee Lauer. Given that she becomes one of the Forsaken, however, it's hard to call a Heel Face Turn. Nuri gets a straight example, when he realizes that his actions alienated his son, and his confiscating the sword he made for his son leads to his death at he hands of one of his former clients.
  • Heroic Sacrifice: When all else fails in his quest to retrieve the sword from the lake full of man-eating fish, the prince in Thomas' story dives in to retrieve it himself and succeeds in bringing it to the surface, but is bitten to death in the process.
  • How We Got Here: Nuri tells Havoc his story after capturing him.
  • Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: Reversed with Kova (a female tauren) and Miles (a male gnome)
  • It's the Journey That Counts: Draka kills several of Nagrand's most dangerous animals for reagents to use in a potion that will make her stronger, but learns that it was more about helping her to realize her true potential.
  • Narrator All Along: Renee Lauer, complete with the storyteller referring to herself in the third person.
  • Not So Different: Nuri gets this from Havoc after mortally wounding him. Nuri agrees, then commits suicide.
  • Odd Friendship: Kova and Miles. Despite being Horde and Alliance, and reliant on shamanism and technology, respectively, they become friends over the course of the story.
  • Off with His Head: How the future Headless Horseman dies.
  • Rhymes on a Dime: Thomas, once insane, and also the Headless Horseman. Foreshadowed somewhat in the rhyming story he tells his children.
  • Roaring Rampage of Revenge: The goal of the siblings of a blood elf and a Forsaken who were killed by the Scarlet Crusde.
  • Sanity Slippage: Sir Thomas Thomson, the paladin who eventually became the Headless Horseman.
  • Set Right What Once Went Wrong: Thrall dreams about having a chance to save Taretha, but every time, he fails.
  • Start of Darkness: The Headless Horseman's story.
  • Title Drop: Durotan saying thst Draka is "a warrior msde".
  • Took a Level in Badass: Draka, in the appropriately titled "A Warrior Made". Lampshaded by her future husband Durotan at the end.
  • Tragic Hero: Thomas Thomson again.
  • True Companions: The Darkmoon Faire.