George Herbert Doyle IV


 * "Danger is just opportunity in disguise!"

Professor George Herbert Doyle IV, most commonly known simply as Professor Doyle, is a human explorer featured in promotional material for the Journey to Un'Goro expansion for Hearthstone. The exploits of he and his assistant, Eddie Malone, are recounted in E. Malone's Expedition Journal as well as the Wonders of Un'Goro web series.

Week 1-2
Doyle and his assistant, Eddie, first met at a tavern in Stormwind City, where the professor was telling everyone about a semi-mythical beast — Galvadon, the last existing kaleidosaur specimen in all of Azeroth — dwelling in the depths of Un'Goro Crater. When Eddie found out that Doyle was looking for an assistant to film the trip, he jumped at the chance.

After a brief stop in Gadgetzan where Eddie got attacked by tiny pirates and mugged, the expedition reached the rim of Un'Goro and made their way down into the crater. After a "bird incident" involving Eddie trying to capture a Jeweled Macaw parrot, the group set up camp and the expedition leader, Elise Starseeker, gave a speech explaining Un'Goro's beauty, wonder and extreme danger. Doyle was chasing a huge butterfly during the lecture, but Eddie took notes of the main points. Shortly after, Elise wanted to seek shelter due to the sky looking odd, but Professor Doyle instead wished to take a few quick shots to see what they would be able to discover.

However, Doyle and Eddie had just started filming when a massive lightning storm hit. Due to the storm, a mudslide, tree uprooting, cliff drop, and unfortunate trouser soiling, the two were separated from the rest of the expedition. Since the camera survived, Doyle decided to do some more filming and showcased a bush of fire thistle and lillyfeather he had found that morning, naming it the first "Doyle Discovery" before being immediately covered in venomous plant darts.

The following day, Doyle could move again. He was entirely uncoordinated and hard to understand, but as that's normal Eddie took it for a good sign. Since the professor's G.G.P.S. was going haywire and since Eddie's compass was malfunctioning, the two decided to press on, marvelling at the enormous plants and trees, which Doyle claimed had not been described by science. A few days later, the two managed to escape the plants chasing them and found themselves in a humid marsh where they were captured by "hideous lizard people". Eddie remembered Professor Starseeker's advice to be friendly to the natives and gave his compass to the creatures as a gift. The beings seemed impressed before tying Eddie and Doyle up and eating their provisions. Shortly after, however, the two were rescued by a tribe of friendly turtle people known as tortollans. Doyle was excited to meet an undiscovered tribe, while Eddie was simply happy to meet something that wasn't trying to eat them. At the campfire, Eddie asked the tortollan leader Umbra for help finding the rest of the expedition, but she simply smiled and said, "The greatest virtue is patience". Eddie suspected that she was going to lead them to a hilltop village he spotted before they made camp.

Week 3-4
Two days later, Doyle and Eddie were led to the village by the tortollans as expected, and discovered that it was full of strange, primitive-looking murlocs. Umbra handed the two explorers over to them, and the murlocs began drumming on driftwood totems to summon a lot more murlocs. Eddie thought to himself that he and the professor were safe for now, but he also started to wonder if it was a mistake to trust the tortollans.

The next day, while Doyle was rummaging around in the tent, Eddie watched a team of murlocs polish the strange purple floor with some kind of fruity-smelling juice. More murlocs showed up and started dancing around and singing while draping the two exploreres in seaweed and painting their faces. Eddie only managed to pick up a few words of what they were saying: "party", "feast", and "Megafin", and became convinced that the murlocs were going to feed them to "whatever a megafin is". As usual, the professor thought it was a perfect time to start filming, naming the murloc tribe as another "Doyle Discovery" before being offered a cup of murloc floor polish that caused him to suffer extreme hallucinations before passing out. He almost missed the arrival of Megafin, the biggest murloc Eddie had ever seen, and it turned out that the explorers were not destined for dinner, but guests of honor at a murloc "fin-dig". Megafin ended up being "really nice", and he and Eddie agreed to be pen pals. When Doyle woke up and saw the murloc party, he made a little whimpering sound and went back for seconds of the floor polish, causing Eddie to consider giving it a try as well.

The next day, after suffering the after effects of drinking murloc floor polish, Eddie and Doyle discovered that the entire murloc village was constructed on the back of a giant dinosaur. Umbra shouted something to Megafin and pointed in the direction of the volcano in the center of Un'Goro, causing the entire village to begin moving in that direction. Once the explorers, tortollans and murlocs arrived at the Golakka Hot Springs at the base of the volcano, Umbra took Doyle and Eddie aside and told them to climb the "fire mountain" to see "the truth". The explorers waved goodbye to their new friends and pitched a base camp at the base of the volcano, leaving them to decide whether to take the smoother but slower path, or the more jagged and faster one.

Doyle spent the next few days running around and drawing sketches of the small elementals that seem to be attracted to the volcano. Eddie wondered if some of the adorable-looking fire elementals would make good pets. After Doyle's observational sketches and Eddie's underwear burned up just after they had begun filming again, he concluded that they make very bad pets. The next day, the two explorers decided that speed was the most important thing when climbing the volcano and began hiking up the jagged slope. Eddie noted that they made really good progress, especially if you don't count all the time the professor spen with his eyes clenched shut muttering about danger being opportunity instead of climbing, or when the two were almost broiled alive by a huge fire elemental. Eddie and Doyle camped near the caldera, but Starseeker's expedition was nowhere to be seen. Strangely, from their position, the two should have been able to see all of Un'Goro, including the distant crater walls, but instead found that they couldn't see any crater walls. Instead, jungle could be seen carpeting the land as far as the eye could see in every direction. Even the professor wasn't sure what was going on, but Eddie wondered if it was what Umbra had been trying to show them.

While in the caldera camp, the two explorers observed a huge elemental seemingly made up of all the other elements and several of its smaller servants. Although it was fascinating, it was time to pack up and leave the volcano. The next day, they were trying to sneak past the elementals when Doyle tripped over a glowing crystal, which seemed to anger the elementals and cause them to start chasing the two explorers. As fate would have it, that's also when the volcano started to erupt. Just as the elementals and lava were closing in, a huge pterrordax swooped down and snatched Doyle and Eddie off the side of the volcano and dropped them off at its nest. As the creature could be back at any moment, it was high time for the two to get out of there as quickly as possible. On the way in, Eddie saw a cave and some ruins, leaving the two to wonder which destination to choose.

Week 5
The two explorers' stay in the pterrordax nest was cut short when the professor accidentally stepped on and destroyed one of the pterrordax's eggs. As they didn't have much breath to spare for conversation while running from the angry mother, the two humans ended up heading in the direction of the ruins. Along the way, they passed through an area filled with tarpits. They couldn't see far through the low hanging mist, but at one point heard what sounded like a dwarf screaming at the "scrubs" to get out of his jungle because they were scaring away all of the game. Once they reached the safety of the ruins, which contained a strange construction of several pillars with a stone ring on top, the tol'vir guardians there allowed them to set up camp but told them that they could only enter if they brought enough crystals to "awaken the Maker".

The next day, Doyle and Eddie embarked on a hike to the nearby crystal cave. When the professor saw the clusters of multicolored glowing crystals filling the cavern, he became extremely excited and began talking about how Galvadon must be close, and before long he was proven right. A group of paladins who were part of a lost expedition had made friends with Galvadon, who lived in the cave. When they introduced the two explorers to the great creature, Doyle started crying, dancing around and hugging everyone. The paladins told the two adventurers that Spiritsinger Umbra had told them to expect the professor and his asssistant, leading Eddie to deduce that she was the one who had sent the pterrordax to rescue them from the volcano. The group gathered up some crystals, and on the next day they all mounted up on stegodons that the paladins had tamed and met up with the tortollans and murlocs before heading for the titan ruins. On the way there, however, they ran into trouble with the saurok, who had brought an army of dinosaurs and demons with them. Thanks to Galvadon and Umbra's participation in the fierce battle, the saurok were defeated and their apparent leader surrendered. After working out some translations, they all decided to head for the Way Gate together.

Together, the group had no trouble getting to the Way Gate, which turned out to be the tol'vir-guarded titan ruins that Doyle and Eddie had visited before. The tol'vir performed a ritual using the crystals the humans had brought from the cave, and a giant stone being appeared. She told the group that they should return from where and when they came, and before long she had everyone casting spells that would help her open the Way Gate. The professor and his assistant decided to shoot one last bit of film before they went through the Way Gate. The two explorers looked back on their journey and hugged one another just before they spotted a giant meteor in the night sky heading towards them. Before they had time to panic, the Way Gate flashed with blinding light and the meteor was gone. Eddie remarked that it all seemed very strange; they were still in Un'Goro, but it seemed different somehow. After some celebration and a few farewells, everyone started going their separate ways, with Umbra and the tortollans solemnly thanking the two explorers and promising to help them get back to Starseeker's expedition.

Umbra's pterrordax friend dropped Doyle and Eddie off near where their adventure in Un'Goro originally began. Eddie thinks that the pterrordax dropped the professor a little harder on purpose. After a short walk, the two adventurers were back in Starseeker's camp. Oddly, Starseeker didn't seem to surprised to see them and simply said that they must have gotten the worst of "last night's storm" judging by the state of their clothes, and it seemed like no time had passed for the main expedition at all. Doyle and Eddie considered telling her the whole story but didn't think she would believe them, and since she was kind enough to lend them new gear they didn't want to spoil the moment. As a closing remark in his journal, Eddie stated that he was still a little confused about everything that had happened, but he was not worried about it. It looked like they were about to make the journey into Un'Goro all over again, and he couldn't wait.

Trivia

 * In the live-action Wonders of Un'Goro web series, Doyle is portrayed by American actor, who is best known for his role as Abed Nadir on the comedy series .
 * Several of Doyle's notes are featured on the official Journey to Un'Goro site. The notes describe the unbound elementals roaming the crater and how the professor thinks he should bring plenty of film stock, the astounding variety of megafauna that Doyle hopes to describe and catalogue (while also reminding himself that he must remember to bring flame resistant cloth, lightning rods and insulated jackets) as well as the rumors of an entirely new race of primitive crater-dwellers, with Doyle remarking that if he is able to bring back proof of their existence, his name will rank among Azeroth's greatest explorers.
 * The name "George Herbert Doyle" is a reference to, a major character in the 1912 novel , as well as to , the author of the novel. The book recounts an expedition to a plateau in the Amazon basin where dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures have survived to the present day, which is similar to the story of Journey to Un'Goro.