Centaurs were a cruel and violent race. In fact, calling them a race was rather generous. In the eyes of many intelligent races on Kalimdor, they were better described as monsters.
Legend held that the centaurs were the descendants of Zaetar and the earth elemental Princess Theradras. Their lineage should have been noble: Zaetar was the eldest son of the demigod Cenarius, and Princess Theradras was no lowly earth elemental either.
Zaetar had inherited his father Cenarius's ordered nature power, while Princess Theradras's power belonged to chaos. Yet the centaurs born of their union were hideously ugly.
Some legends claimed this was the result of combining chaos power with ordered power. Others called it a curse brought about by the union of two different powers, making centaurs monsters that should never have existed.
From birth through adulthood, and even as they grew into a race, the centaurs endured prejudice, discrimination, and ridicule from every race on Kalimdor. Their naturally hideous appearance, in particular, became the focus of everyone's mockery.
The centaur race slowly grew stronger amid that prejudice, discrimination, and ridicule. But growing up under such treatment also made them increasingly extreme and violent, until they finally became savage, cruel, and bloodthirsty.
They began fighting back against those who discriminated against and mocked them. Their retaliation did not come in the form of words. It was fierce and merciless. Wherever their iron hooves passed, forests became wastelands, and countless people and races who had once mocked them spilled their blood beneath the centaurs' sharp blades, slaughtered in great swaths.
Out of hatred for the ugly appearance they had been born with, Zaetar's centaur sons eventually killed their own father with their own hands. Their mother, the earth elemental princess Theradras, carried Zaetar's soul into a cavern and imprisoned him there.