Trident of the Son

Quest Giver: Old Icefin — Small island on the Chillmere Coast, Howling Fjord [19.7, 22.2]

Turn In: Old Icefin (same location)

Objective: Kill Rotgill and return Rotgill’s Trident to Old Icefin.

Quick Facts

• Level: 71
• Faction: Both (Alliance and Horde)
• Standalone quest (no chain prerequisites or follow-ups)

Walkthrough

Finding Old Icefin

• Old Icefin is an elderly murloc sitting on a small island along the northern Chillmere Coast at [19.7, 22.2]. He’s easy to miss since he’s not a typical quest hub NPC. If you’re already working the Chillmere Coast quests (And You Thought Murlocs Smelled Bad!, It’s a Scourge Device), swing by his island on your way through.
• Old Icefin can’t speak Common or Orcish. He communicates by scratching symbols into a rock: a trident, a mur’ghoul, the sun, a wrecked ship, and a stick figure of you. The quest text narrates your character puzzling it out: the “sun” symbol actually means his son, who was turned into a mur’ghoul. He wants you to find his son near the wrecked ship and bring back the trident.

Finding and Killing Rotgill

• Head south along the Chillmere Coast. Rotgill patrols the area near a wrecked ship around [24, 34].
• He’s a level 71 mur’ghoul (undead murloc), larger than the surrounding mobs. He has two abilities worth noting:
  • Enrage — Increases physical damage and attack speed for 2 minutes. Triggers during the fight.
  • Searing Wound — His trident inflicts fire damage and increases fire damage taken by 10% for 8 seconds, stacking up to 5 times.
• Despite these abilities, Rotgill is a straightforward solo kill. The Searing Wound stacks can add up if the fight drags, so burn him down quickly.
• Loot Rotgill’s Trident from his corpse.

Return to Old Icefin

• Head back north to Old Icefin’s island at [19.7, 22.2] and hand over the trident.

Tips

• If Rotgill isn’t on the ship, he may be on patrol or have been recently killed. He reportedly respawns in roughly 1 minute.
• This quest overlaps perfectly with And You Thought Murlocs Smelled Bad! since both send you through the same Chillmere Coast area. Pick up both and do them together for efficient routing.

Lore Context

The quest text does something unusual for WoW: it gives emotional depth to a murloc. The completion text reads: “Reaching out to take his son’s trident from you, Old Icefin’s hand shakes a little. Could it be that the aged murloc is grieving?”

Then, even more pointedly: “Is that just extra moisture pooling at the base of his eye?”

Old Icefin’s son was turned into a mur’ghoul, an undead murloc. Mur’ghouls are the result of Chillmere Coast murlocs being reanimated by Scourge necrolords. This means Rotgill isn’t just dead; he was taken by the Scourge and turned into an abomination.

Old Icefin isn’t asking you to save his son. He knows that’s impossible. He’s asking you to put his son down and bring back the only thing left of who Rotgill used to be: his trident.

The quest title “Trident of the Son” plays on the sun/son confusion built into the quest text. Old Icefin scratches a sun symbol because, as the narrator explains, the murloc “words” for sun and son are homophones. It’s a rare moment of linguistic worldbuilding for murlocs, creatures usually played for comic relief.

Old Icefin belongs to the White Shark tribe, described in supplemental lore as having “more frequent dealings with surface-dwellers than many other murloc tribes.”

That willingness to interact with outsiders is what makes this quest possible: Old Icefin trusts you enough to ask for help, even though he can barely communicate the request.

Cross-Expansion Connection

Rotgill later appeared as a legendary Shaman minion card in the Hearthstone expansion “March of the Lich King.” His flavor text reads: “In the summer: Hotgill. Mechanized: Botgill. Everyone else: Notgill.”

Explore Howling Fjord’s hidden easter eggs, lore mysteries, and connections across Warcraft history in Vikstone’s Howling Fjord Chronicles, along with the complete quest storyline.