The Auschwitz of Azeroth

I wanted Joy go to Hillsbrad Foothills for one reason only. I wanted to know what was up with the Sludge Fields and I knew this could only be done by someone of the Horde faction.

I’ve marked the place that I would call an Azerothian Auschwitz on the map below.

I had passed by this point a few months earlier on my draenei shaman and what I saw truly freaked me out. I’m sure we all remember this place as a Horde quest area in the old world, but the town, a human settlement previously known as Hillbrad Fields, has now been turned into an internment camp for the captured human prisoners.

It’s not just that, it’s also a horrific experimental lab for … I don’t know – judge for yourself.

The journal of Clerk Horrace Whitesteed, a prisoner of war held at this camp, can be read here and it gives a chilling picture of what happened to this place. I’ve included some of the passages below:

Whitesteed before Hillsbrad Fields was taken over

Day 20
The Hillsbrad Fields are no more. Those that did not flee were captured. The Forsaken have declared us as prisoners of war. We are to be laborers at their new plantation.

Day 25
They incinerated our farms and made us watch. Construction begins tomorrow.

Day 40
Construction of their plantation is nearly complete. This place resembles no farm or plantation that I’ve ever seen.

Day 45
We’ve started laboring in the sludge fields. They grow poisonous mushrooms in fetid water and muck.

Day 50
I hear screams coming from the Warden’s manor. People are starting to disappear.

Day 52
I overheard that some guards talking about the farmers, Ray, Getz and Kalaba. Something terrible has happened to them – of this I am certain.

Day 60
Those of us that remain are scared for our lives. Some of the farmers claim to have seen ghouls running amok at night.

I wrote my article on what I thought were the 10 most creepy things in WoW before Cataclysm was released. Had I written it today, I would have put this place at the same level of creepyness as Thaddius or even Karazhan Crypt. If the Crypt didn’t have the Upside Downs Sinners, which admittedly is the main reason the crypt is so nightmarish, this place could easily have topped it.

Speaking of Upside Down Sinners, the Sludge Fields did in fact have one more sample for the horror hungering: hanging corpses of the same model as the ones in Karazhan Crypt.

Poor Joy, she didn’t enJoy this place although it had moments of sillyness too. What she did like was the opportunity to “do the right thing”.

The quest is given by a shovel – the shovel of mercy. Notice how save is wrapped in inverted commas … fishy. It turns out this quest can be solved in two different ways.

Use the shovel to smash in the human seedling’s heads.
OR
[Right Click] the human seedlings to free them from the dirt.
Do the right thing.

Aha! Interresting. How often do you as a Horde figure get to act on your own accord and not as a tool of the Horde war machine? (this goes for Alliance too) When I made Joy I imagined she was barely loyal to the Horde, rather she’d go her own way, but of course this is not something I often got the chance to see relfected in her questing, except now.

I didn’t know about this choice when I completed the quest, but I’m happy that Joy at the time saved the human seedlings instead of “saving” them and so Joy did do the right thing, at least what was right for her.

The Tree Trunk Skeleton

When I was out leveling Joy my nerfed hunter, I randomly ran into this hollow tree trunk in Hillsbrad Foothills.

This is not a particularly noteworthy event, but if you click the above picture larger, you can see more clearly a skeleton sitting on the inside.

Given the vast amount of skeletons you can find around Azeroth and Outland, they are not exactly rare either, but this one had a doll sitting next to it, something which I find a little creepy. I couldn’t see if it was an adult or a child, but after pondering it, it’s not so much the skeleton, but rather the doll which is sitting on its lap, that makes it look eerie to me.

I would probably have been equally spooked if it had just been this voodoo-like doll with crossed eyes sitting alone in the tree trunk, staring at me as I passed by on the road.

The location is not far above Tarren Mill. It’s a little East of the path going North towards the Ruins of Alterac.

I leveled through the zone and never got a quest linking to this site, so perhaps we are dealing with another small and hidden detail, all of which makes the world seem less uniform and more random.

In case you get the thrills like me over both large and small exploration discoveries, you may enjoy the below articles.

The Alliance Fleet

Larsa allerted me of another hidden location, a fleet of ships off the shore of the Arathi Highlands Farm. The Arathi Farm as some of you might know, is one of those old, but now, well known secret places. If you go to the small harbor there, you can spot the fleet at the horizon, if your viewing distance reaches far enough.

They are located in a fatigued zone, so it’s not a place to hang out, but you can easily fly out there and back again without dropping dead.

I did a little research on this and found they are scenery with a very specific purpose. The quest that leads the Horde into Twilight Highlands has the player in a zeppelin flying over this particular area. The picture below is a screendump at 2:41 from a youtube video documenting this quest:

Since the fleet is so purposefully mentioned by an NPC, I struggle with the prospect of adding it to the Cataclysm Secrets and Hidden Locations post. Then again, if you’re an Alliance player, how would you know about this – ironically enough?

I decided to put the Alliance Fleet in a seperate post, I thought it was an interesting addition to the old hidden Arathi farm, which before The Shattering (patch 4.0.3a) was completely secluded and had that almost abandonded feel to it.

Funnily enough, when I visited to snap the pictures, I wasn’t alone. This striking blood elf rogue was standing there alone overlooking the sea wearing Bloodfang Armor. See, Horde players evidently know about the fleet, while Alliance don’t!