Ah, right, I was under the impression that the Titans had created Azeroth and its life from ground zero, my mistake. So the Curse of Flesh applied only to the Titan-borne races. Makes more sense indeed.

He was alive in Nagrand for the Thrall event. On a related note, Vanndar Stormpike never made it out of AV, or has yet to do so.

Galakrond is in Dragonblight, so it's entirely possible that he died a natural death there (or, for that matter, that the dragons hold him in such high regard that they use Dragonblight as a burial ground because his body is there).

It's a bit of a long shot, but I'm really hoping we see Galkarond in Icecrown. I know we disrupted the scourge's plan to raise him in a dragonblight quest, but I should think that wouldn't deter them. I'd really like to see what a fully grown proto-dragon would look like (even as a frost wyrm). We know Sindragosa will be Icecrown's obligatory "dragon boss", so maybe Galkarond will make an appearance in the 5 man.

Not to rain on all the speculation about how Thrall will be captured by the Alliance, but the quest text in the goblin starter zone made it fairly clear what happened, if not why.

The gist is, there was a single (I think) ship of orcs carrying a 'valuable cargo' that was ambushed by Alliance vessel(s) right off the Lost Isles; in a journal you get at one point (written by one of the orcs) it mentions that some bunch of dumbass goblins on a slave ship got caught in the crossfire and sunk (that is how the goblins end up there.) You hook up with some orc survivors to help them recover the 'valuable cargo' which turns out to be Thrall.

So, the basic story is, Thrall was on an orc ship going to or coming from somewhere, and was ambushed by the Alliance at sea. He wasn't kidnapped out of Orgrimmar, Cairne was not involved at all, etc., etc.

We still might not have 100% of the information, but we aren't going to have that until the beta opens up, and that's easily several months away. I think we can safely table some of this for now.

It's a pretty lame retcon if so, mostly because there was no hint of it in-game. Everything else has stuff people can figured out, but not this? The only real suggestion was his loot table, I suppose.

Keep in mind that we also had no official in-game explanation for what happened to Veranus. We had one hint, Loken's 'plans', and Razorscale's loot table to guess by. While it was fairly straightforward, there wasn't any official word until the Ulduar Bosstiary website was released.

Of course, there's no shred of help from Vezax' description.

While all of them were Keepers they all had their own assigned duties. Tyr could of just been the overall Warden for the Titans for example. With Uldums proximity to Ahn'Qiraj then it makes it look pretty likely that Uldums purpose was to serve as C'Thuns prison so maybe the events with C'Thun caused him to head towards Uldum to asses the situation there. It would actually be a neat way for Blizzard to have a Uldum raid be patched in and have Cho'gall be fought there instead of Grim Batol.

I can't recall the exact source of the lore (and it may not be 100% confirmed), but I believe the Titans were under the impression that they killed 2 Old Gods (1 who's remains are in Darkshore, the other being C'Thun which they had assumed they had killed), and imprisoned the remaining 3. Under that assumption, there'd be no reason for the Titans to believe they needed to create a prison for C'Thun. I don't believe Uldum serves that purpose, although it could be possibly linked to another Old God or Cho'gall'Tun could have occupied it in the meantime, possibly.

Edit:
# According to the War of the Ancients Trilogy, there are three Old Gods still living, imprisoned and chained by the Titans deep beneath the surface of Azeroth. There maybe more however, these three are indicated to have formed some sort of alliance in order to escape their imprisonment.
# According to "The Old Gods and the Ordering of Azeroth", four Old Gods were imprisoned beneath the world. This could perhaps be reconciled with the War of the Ancients trilogy if it were taken to include the fallen C'Thun in the count of the imprisoned Gods. This is however unlikely as C'thun was believed dead and not imprisoned. Note that the version of this chapter presented in the story section of the official site does not reference the number of Old Gods.

From: Old Gods - WoWWiki - Your guide to the World of Warcraft

WoWWiki might not be the best source of confirmed lore, but sources for those points are provided, at least.

It is very possible also that a lot of the original Old God lore is going to be retconned in place with the new lore that started in Storm Peaks and WotLK since the new lore pretty much establishes that they would of done everything they could to not kill the Old Gods.

/speculations:

According to comics - all plans, and recreating Council of Tirisfal takes place in Theramore. Lost isles are somewhere in the middle between Orgrimmar and Theramore. Potential scenario:

Thrall (without Garrosh) and Varian going to peace summit after Cataclysm happened.
Council of Tirisifal and Jaina Proudmoure are mediators in this meeting.
They agree that they have more important enemy now.
Peace is signed.
"Third side" (lot of possibilities) intercepts Thrall ship. Thrall is captured.
After no signs from Thrall - Garrosh, who didn't want to go to peace summit, claims that Alliance lured Thrall to Theramore to kill him.
Garrosh makes himself new Warchief and starts overall offensive on Alliance bases.
Varian was also advised by Jaina to come to peace meeting, but didn't believe in it. He signed peace, but then Horde attacked his bases - He starts counteroffensive attacking other horde bases.

I know this would be considered old news, but it's a new observation to me at least. I've had the chance to level a Horde toon since the the servers opened up having opposite faction on the same server.

At the Wrathgate, most of the forces stationed there were the Kor'kron, or Thrall's personal bodyguards, after the Wrathgate, Warsong Forces take up position in Ogrimmar for the Marshal Law, as well as the leading forces @ Undercity.

To me anyway, it appears as if Thrall loses those most loyal to him in that event(Saurfang sent his son out there to set an example for the Orc Warriors in Northrend and he died =/). Which does pave the way for Warsong control with Garrosh.

Again, I know this is relatively old, but I thought I'd bring it up from a new perspective.

This makes sense. Only, that "third side" you mention, it's SI:7 at the moment, so not those many possibilities (well, Blizzard can change it, but I'd say they've got this pretty much etched on stone).

Plus, it opens doors for the "treason reason" for Cairne to be dead, if indeed that's true.

Another possibility is that Varian get's pretty pissed at Jaina for breaking her promise to him and letting Garona go. He decides he can't trust her, learns - by one of the Theramore guards, who, as seen in the comic, share Varian's clairvoyance - of Thrall joining the new Council. He then sets up a SI:7 HUM (Highy Undercover Man o'War) on the Horde's boat route and bam. He just didn't count on the Goblins. I know this goes against my "Varian won't throw the first stone" theory, but the difference is, unlike razing and burning a Tauren camp in the Barrens, we're talking about a covert op that'll leave no bodies. Well, it will, but they'll be at the bottom of the sea.

On Cairne, I can't see an assassination/death plot with out the old crone Magatha sticking her oar in. It is well known that she wants Cairne dead and control of the Tauren for herself and the Grimtotem. She has also appeared in the comic books, which seem to be driving the lore of WoW at the moment making her a good candidate. She already has strong ties with the forsaken and through them the Blood Elves, probably protecting her from their intervention. The trolls are fairly inconsequential at the moment, just a subsection of the orcs. That just leaves the Orcs, and if she is in cahoots with Garosh, or at least on friendly terms. That just leaves the Tauren clans to oppose her, and I'm sure she could devise a way to deflect blame from her.

It could also explain Baine's disappearance, he could be in hiding mounting some sort of revolt against her. Or he could become a puppet for her but I doubt that, current lore seems to indicate he is as tolerant and level headed as his father, negotiating digging rights with the Dwarves to have shaman present to heal the land. I'd really dig an underground resistance type movement against Garosh and the like but I'm not sure it will happen.

In all these storys though it relys on Garrosh either sanctioning or letting slide an assassination on a fellow Horde leader. As annoying as he is he is pretty frontal about these sorts of things and I don't think he would resort to assassination, he would probably just challenge Cairne to a duel if he wanted him dead. That is why I think Magatha will be behind it as a "You leave it to me Garrosh, don't worry yourself about it" type thing.

I also have questions on Sylvannas, as to her true intentions and motivations. Does she want everyone dead? Or is she the wronged leader seeking redemption she seems to play in Battle of Undercity. Its like they can't seem to decide at the moment.

All this is happening Horde side though, there seems to be very little of interest going on in the Alliance at the moment. A bit of inner turmoil would at least make things more interesting. The SI:7 thing looks interesting, either Varian sent Assassins after Thrall which probably would not go down too well with some of the other Alliance leaders, or someone in SI:7 is rogue and doing whatever they want. I found it odd they had troops at all to put anywhere, imagined it more as a spy and assassin organisation.

It's obvious that Blizzard doesn't want to play all their lore cards right now with respect to Cataclysm. In the playable demos at BlizzCon they purposefully started players at level 6 with chunks of the backstory of Worgens/Goblins left out.

Their reasoning for this was because "level 1-5 play is slow" but in the case of Goblins I think there might be more to it than that. Clearly something is going on with Thrall/Garrosh/etc and I think the Goblin starting experience goes into that (we may even see some of it as early as Icecrown). If Blizzard wanted to keep that out of our hands for now it would make sense to start Goblins at a higher level and put in different models/mobs for the few quests that the demo allows. Those agents of SI:7 may have just been put there to obfuscate the real purpose of the quests. Altering a few mobs and a dozen or so quests to allow players to experience Cataclysm while keeping major revelations secret is well within the realm of possibility.

Looking at the Cataclysm trailer too, it clearly states that the Worgen are under siege/attack by the Forsaken but the Goblins are "fighting an unfamiliar enemy." Now maybe I'm reading too much into that but I think it's fair to say that Blizzard's goal is to give us a taste of what's to come while hiding as many details as they can.

We know exactly what happened. However it seems a bit like a left over from when Loken/"Father" was the final boss of Ulduar and not Yogg-Saron. From WorldofWarcraft.com

I read the first line of your post and immediately thought of Garrosh being replaced/manipulated by a Black Dragon. While it would make people potentially hate him less, I don't see it as likely for a couple reasons. The first is that Blizzard has done the "Black Dragon impersonation" too many times as it is. It's not a "plot twist" anymore if every character that does anything bad in the Alliance/Horde is actually a Black Dragon.

The second (big) reason I find it unlikely is because Garrosh is acting exactly the way his father did: ignoring his superior's advice (and commands in some cases), seeking battle to gain "honor". If this was way out of character, if for instance it was Thrall all of a sudden behaving this way, then I could see a replica more likely.

E: UNLESS whoever is impersonating Garrosh chose him for this very reason; this way it wouldn't be suspicous when they started picking fights with everything that moves. If they chose Thrall or Saurfang, people would be suspicous of an outside influence. With Garrosh, the other orcs can just view him as an "apple doesn't fall far from the tree" situation.

Well, some people - including myself - seem to have trouble understanding how a teenage Garrosh turned into such an blietzkrieging a-hole under the tutoring of Thrall. Of course, there's his father renewed image and kids don't always choose their "parents" (Thrall being the parent/tutor, here), but Garrosh is the stubbornest, well, greenskin I remember. His father, at least, was a good leader. Garrosh seems to just send everyone into a berserking rage and delight on his leadership position. What kind of responsible and difficult decisions does he even make, if he doesn't care about military strategy? He's a moral leader, that's all. Fact is, he does nothing substantial for the Horde but..."lead" them. And, every time he opens his mouth, sink the Horde a little more into hostility. I am clearly speculating, but it does seem either intentional or too artificial to be believable, most of the time.

Hmmm, it does kinda seem like young Hellscream has been hanging out with the wrong sort of crowd, doesn't it? And, much like his father, he's not as bright as to get delusions of grandeur on his own, so it's not impossible that somebody's been feeding him with all the wrong ideas. The Grimtotems, the Twilight Cult and heck, even Deathwing himself all fit the bill here.

Having the Black Dragonflight manipulate the Horde in a analogous way to how they did the Alliance would be a thing of beauty. I'd love that.

Deathwing told Khadgar - after the latter's awesome ability to manipulate an Aspect's blood was revealed (I'm sorry, it was the worst part of a WoW novel I've ever read, Knaak's books included) - he'd be in his nightmares every night, and constantly in his thoughts. It might have been the spell Dark Bragging, but it might also just be that Deathwing really has that kind of power (it's not THAT hard) and has been using it on Garrosh, destroying his sanity like the old gods did to him - yes, Garrosh does seem insane, at times.

Also, it's been a while since we've seen one a good guy turn bad. Granted, Garrosh doesn't seem good at all, but he might be the next Medihv, being turned since he's young. If Deathwing's indeed behind Hellscream's behaviour, he's mimicking an orc's violent temper perfectly. He's not being artificial, like he was as Prestor, and might just bide his time more carefully and set the correct events in march. Like accusing Cairne of treason with the aide of Magatha. Being the persuasive diplomat he his, Deathwing, through Garrosh, might have already started parlaying with some of shadowy figures within the Horde, like Sylvannas. The attack on Gilneas doesn't seem like something Thrall would approve.