by Blizzard
Enticed by the offer, the Outcasts snuck into Skyreach and waged war against the city. They did not have the numbers to defeat the high arakkoa, but that was not their purpose. Using their shadowy powers, the Outcasts stormed through Skyreach and destroyed the mechanism atop the city. A blinding explosion tore through the sky, setting the heavens aflame.
When Kargath and his forces finally arrived, they slaughtered the high arakkoa and cast their bodies from the city. But they did not stop there. The battle-crazed orcs also turned on their “allies” and cut down the Outcasts. Kargath saw these wingless arakkoa as a threat. They were cunning and intelligent creatures. He assumed that they would one day learn to wield the same powers that the high arakkoa had. That was not a risk Kargath was willing to take. What was more, he simply enjoyed betraying the wretched Outcasts.
Kargath’s followers did not kill every high arakkoa they came across. Some, they took prisoner. Based on what the Outcasts had told him of Sethekk Hollow, Kargath ordered that these captives be cast into the region’s cursed pools. The chieftain reveled in the sight of high arakkoa writhing in agony as shadow energy transformed them into withered Outcasts.
In the end, the Horde assault on the Spires of Arak destroyed high arakkoan civilization and killed nearly all of the Outcasts. Only a small number of the wingless arakkoa survived, including those who were recently hurled into Sethekk Hollow. The Outcasts shrouded themselves in the shadows, and they took refuge from the Horde in the deepest corners of Terokkar Forest.
The high arakkoa who’d been transformed into Outcasts banded together under the leadership of a former Skyreach guard named Grizzik. He led his followers to Auchindoun, knowing that most orcs feared the haunted ruins. There, he nursed a bitter hatred of the Horde, and he awaited the day when he might exact vengeance on those who had spilled the blood of his people.
During the attack on Shattrath, Kil’jaeden met with Sargeras and informed him of the orcs and his work corrupting them. The Legion’s ruler was pleased by what he learned. The orcs were an unstoppable force, infused with demon blood and loyal to the Legion. Yet they were more than just another race conscripted into his army. Sargeras had been searching for the right weapon to weaken Azeroth’s defenses in preparation for a full-scale Legion invasion. The Horde would serve as the perfect tool to do so.
Sargeras ordered Kil’jaeden to cut all communication with his agent, Gul’dan, and the other orcs. They were flush with victory, and that made them arrogant and unruly. Sargeras wanted the orcs to be on the brink of self-destruction, so desperate that they would embark on any quest if it meant saving themselves—so desperate that they would journey to another world.
Unaware of the Legion’s plans, the orcs floundered on Draenor. They had conquered much of the world, but they were killing it in the process. Fel magic had transformed most of Draenor into a barren desert. Nowhere was this more apparent than in Tanaan Jungle. The region was now a cracked wasteland of red dust and bones. It became known as Hellfire Peninsula, and the Horde capital at its western edge was renamed Hellfire Citadel.
Warchief Blackhand knew that eventually the Horde would run out of water and food. He turned to Gul’dan for answers and demanded to know what orders Kil’jaeden had given him. Surely, the great benefactor had foreseen these events and would propose a solution.
Blackhand didn’t know the terrible truth. Kil’jaeden had stopped communing with Gul’dan. The demon lord’s silence had come suddenly and without warning. Panic and paranoia had seized Gul’dan. Kil’jaeden had promised him godhood if he destroyed the draenei, and the orc warlock had delivered his end of the bargain. Bitterness and anger consumed Gul’dan. He wondered if the demon lord had merely used him and the orcs as pawns to exterminate the draenei.
Gul’dan kept this development a secret from Blackhand. The warlock’s connection with Kil’jaeden gave him influence. If Blackhand knew Gul’dan was no longer communing with the benefactor, he would see it as a weakness and kill Gul’dan.
For now, Gul’dan convinced Blackhand to wait while Kil’jaeden chose their path forward.
In the year that followed, hunger took its toll on the orcs. They hunted most of Draenor’s native creatures to extinction. The Dragonmaw turned on their trained rylaks and used them as a source of food, while Warsong raiders did the same to their wolf mounts.
The threat of starvation only made the orcs more agitated and aggressive. Bloodlust still seared through their veins, but they had no other foe to fight. Many orcs turned on each other. They clashed in short-lived battles that left hundreds dead. The Lightning’s Blade, Whiteclaw, and Redwalker clans suffered greatly in these conflicts.
Some clans lost themselves completely to the depths of madness. These included the Warsongs, the Bonechewers, the Laughing Skull, the Shattered Hand, and the Thunderlords. To protect the rest of the Horde from these violent clans, Blackhand banished them from Hellfire Citadel. He drove these belligerent orcs into remote areas of Hellfire Peninsula, where they could fight among themselves. That way, Blackhand could preserve some of the Horde’s dwindling strength.
But Blackhand and Gul’dan knew this was only a temporary solution to a much greater problem. Unless something changed, the Horde would devour itself.
From afar, Sargeras watched the orcs spiral into uncertainty. Soon enough, they would find salvation. He had corrupted a vessel on Azeroth, an extraordinary individual whom he could use to launch the Horde’s invasion of the world.
This vessel was a human named Medivh, one of the most powerful magi in history.
The corruption of Medivh was set into motion long before he was born.
Thousands of years ago, a secretive order called the Council of Tirisfal began watching over Azeroth, protecting it from intrusions by the Burning Legion’s agents. The magi in this group channeled their powers into one member, who was known as the Guardian. This mighty individual single-handedly scoured the world for any sign of demonic activity.
While Sargeras was searching for a mortal on Azeroth whom he could use to initiate the Legion’s next invasion, his attention turned to the current Guardian. Her name was Aegwynn, and she was one of the greatest magi who had ever lived. She was also proud and bold, two traits that Sargeras knew would make her ideal for corruption.
Sargeras infused a sliver of his vast power into a physical avatar, and then he opened a temporary gateway through which this vessel could reach Azeroth. In an icy region called Northrend, the fallen titan confronted Aegwynn. Just as Sargeras had hoped, the Guardian expended her strength to vanquish the avatar, leaving herself vulnerable. The Legion’s lord took this opportunity to transfer a portion of his spirit to the mage’s soul.
Unbeknownst to Aegwynn, Sargeras subtly darkened her thoughts. Though the strong-willed mage proved to be too powerful to fully corrupt, the Legion’s ruler managed to turn her against her allies in the Council of Tirisfal. The order’s members had always considered themselves as the Guardian’s handlers, and they expected the mage to obey their commands and follow their advice.
Yet Aegwynn did neither. As time passed, she grew disillusioned with the council and its motives. Recently, the order had begun meddling in the politics of human kingdoms, which made the Guardian suspicious. When the time came for Aegwynn to relinquish her powers so another could take her place, she refused.
The council initially considered appointing a new Guardian, but the idea was abandoned for fear that the presence of two extremely powerful magi would draw unwanted attention to the secret order. A different approach would be taken. The council formed an order of mage hunters called the Tirisgarde to apprehend Aegwynn. One of these individuals was a human named Nielas Aran. He, too, came to loathe the council’s political schemes. Rather than fight Aegwynn, he became her closest confidant.
THE TOMB OF SARGERAS
After vanquishing Sargeras’s avatar, Guardian Aegwynn sought a place to bury the body so that its dark magic would not disturb the world. She settled on the sunk
en ruins of an ancient night elven temple—which some legends say was built upon an even older structure of mysterious origins. This site housed powerful seals that negated nearby fel energy. Aegwynn added her own magic, reinforcing the structure and creating defensive measures to keep intruders out. In time, this place would become known as the Tomb of Sargeras.
Aegwynn decided to bear a child with Nielas. She would bequeath her Guardian powers to this child, who would be free from the council’s control. For the first time in Azeroth’s history, the world’s Guardian would be beholden to no one. When Aegwynn gave birth to Medivh, she had no idea of the darkness she had passed on to him. Sargeras had possessed Medivh while he was still forming in his mother’s womb. For years, the Legion’s ruler would hide in the shadows of Medivh’s soul.
Medivh blossomed into a promising mage. He grew up in the capital of Stormwind, becoming friends with Prince Llane Wrynn and the knight-in-training Anduin Lothar. Nielas had taken on the position of the kingdom’s official court conjurer, and he tutored his son in the ways of the arcane. Aegwynn, however, was not present. Centuries of acting as the Guardian had taken their toll on her. Now that her powers had passed on to Medivh, she was overcome with exhaustion. She retreated from the world to rest, but the gifted mage kept watch over her son from afar.
On the eve of Medivh’s fourteenth birthday, his dormant Guardian powers awakened, and he accidentally killed Nielas. The trauma sent the boy into a coma that would last years.
While Medivh was in a coma, Azeroth enjoyed a time of relative peace. However, that did not mean the world was safe. Conflict was a daily occurrence. Tribes battled with tribes, villages squabbled with villages, and kingdoms spied on kingdoms.
Yet by and large, Azeroth’s inhabitants were prosperous. In the Eastern Kingdoms, humans engaged in rigorous trade with dwarves, gnomes, and high elves. Some nations, like Lordaeron, acted as regional leaders and trendsetters. They mediated disagreements between smaller kingdoms and used their strong militaries to impose order over the land. Others, like Dalaran, made extraordinary advances in the study of the arcane arts and other academic fields. Still others focused their resources on defending themselves from old rivals. The elves of Quel’Thalas spent much of their time fending off encroachments from the Amani trolls.
In Kalimdor, the night elves continued their ancient traditions. Druids explored the Emerald Dream, a realm of wonder and power that guided the natural life of the physical world. For the most part, the night elves kept their attention focused outward, to the cosmos, ever vigilant for the Burning Legion.
The night elves still remembered the War of the Ancients, that dark time in history when demons invaded the world and nearly destroyed it. Many night elves believed that the Legion would eventually come back. They expected the demons’ return to be dramatic, apocalyptic, heralded with fire and brimstone from the skies. None suspected that a mortal race from another world—a dying world—would soon seek to conquer Azeroth.
And none suspected that Medivh, a man born to protect Azeroth, would make it all possible. Almost ten years after slipping into his coma, he finally awoke.
In the days that followed, Medivh reunited with his old friends. Llane Wrynn was poised to become king of Stormwind. Anduin Lothar had risen in the ranks and was a highly regarded knight and military commander. They were both happy to see that Medivh had recovered from his strange illness, but they were preoccupied by new troubles brewing in the south.
Over the years, Stormwind’s farmers and settlers had been pushing south, claiming more and more territory near the jungles of Stranglethorn Vale. That had brought them into conflict with the Gurubashi tribes. Blood had been spilled, and the conflict had escalated from small skirmishes to frequent raids by troll warbands.
Llane’s father, Barathen, the elderly king of Stormwind, dispatched his forces in a defensive manner, commanding his soldiers to intercept raiding parties but forbidding retaliatory strikes into Gurubashi land. He had no interest in a full-scale war with the trolls. His son advocated for a sterner posture: Llane wanted to teach the trolls a lesson, even if that meant invading Gurubashi territory. The private debates between king and prince grew heated.
For months, Medivh took no part in Stormwind’s politics. Since waking up, he had struggled to deal with his guilt over his father’s death, an event he still did not truly understand. Unsettling dreams were also plaguing him. Sometimes he dreamt of a woman who urged him to travel to a place called Karazhan; other times he dreamt of a dark presence dwelling in his mind, twisting his thoughts.
He decided to ignore these dreams. Medivh felt most at peace when he was with his friends, so he focused his attention on helping them. He joined their efforts in dealing with the Gurubashi.
King Barathen’s strategy against the trolls was effective for a time, but it could not stop every attack. A troll raiding party slipped through Stormwind’s patrol lines and cut a path of destruction through Westfall, the kingdom’s breadbasket. Three towns were burned to the ground. Stormwind’s soldiers eventually caught and slew all of the raiders, but it was too late for dozens of humans. Their deaths had been slow, barbaric, and gruesome.
The atrocity became the talk of the kingdom. King Barathen met with Stormwind’s lords and other nobles to discuss a response. Barathen was still focused on de-escalation. He declared that the armies of Stormwind would be bolstered but used only to strengthen their patrol routes. There would be no offensive against the Gurubashi.
Llane challenged him publicly, demanding that the blood of Stormwind’s citizens be repaid in kind. Barathen was forced to rebuke his son in front of the royal court to end the protest.
Llane was furious, not just for the humiliation but for what he saw as his father’s cowardice. Lothar and many others felt the same way. In particular, Stormwind’s soldiers were itching for revenge. But they would obey the king. It would be unthinkable for any loyal soldier to do otherwise…But Lothar suggested that if anyone would escape the hangman’s noose for insubordination, it would be Llane and Lothar. Their ties to the king were too strong. And if they managed to stop the trolls for good, they would be forgiven.
Llane loved the idea. A small, secret mission into the heart of Gurubashi lands might go unnoticed by both trolls and humans. But he also knew that mere steel would not be enough to carve out the heart of the Gurubashi’s aggression. That would require something more: Medivh.
The majority of Stormwind’s populace considered Medivh to be simply a powerful mage, but he had told Llane and Lothar the truth. He had revealed to them the secret history of the Guardian, the Council of Tirisfal, and his destiny. Llane and Lothar used this knowledge to pressure Medivh. Since he was the Guardian, wasn’t he meant to protect the land from evil?
Medivh was reluctant at first. He still hadn’t found the limits of his power, and his hazy memories of what had happened to his father haunted him. After much consideration, he agreed to assist Llane and Lothar.
It was not simply a matter of making his friends happy. Medivh had another motivation. He had never seen battle before. He had never slain an enemy. He wanted to see what his Guardian magic could truly do. In truth, he hungered for it.
The three friends set off in secret, forging beyond Stormwind’s borders. They infiltrated Stranglethorn Vale without incident, shrouded by Medivh’s magic. The humans targeted a Gurubashi warlord named Jok’non, who dwelled in a ziggurat in central Stranglethorn. Their plan was to kill him quickly and retreat, leaving the trolls without a leader.
The plan was anything but flawless. Jok’non and his followers had been experimenting with forbidden blood magic derived from one of their gods, a mighty and ancient creature known as Hakkar the Soulflayer. When battle erupted, it attracted a tremendous amount of attention. The three humans soon found themselves in a brutal fight for their lives. Medivh dueled Jok’non himself, facing a breed of magic he had never seen.
THE TERRITORIES OF THE EASTERN KINGDOMS PRIOR TO THE FIRST WAR
Jok’non’s dark power nearly overwhelmed Medivh. The Guardian was forced to abandon his apprehensions and unleash his full might. The resulting spell destroyed every single troll inside the ziggurat. Their howls of agony were heard in the darkest corners of Stranglethorn.
Llane and Lothar had both seen death before. Even so, they were rattled by Medivh’s power.
The three men hurried back to Stormwind, but there was no joy in their victory. Llane and Lothar had seen Medivh’s dark side, and they realized that their old friend was different in ways they could never understand.
Even Medivh himself did not fully understand what he had done. He had never been taught that spell. He had no idea where that knowledge had come from or if it had even been entirely powered by arcane magic. It disturbed him greatly.
None of the Gurubashi who had witnessed Warlord Jok’non’s death survived, but it took little imagination for the trolls to guess who was responsible. The Gurubashi came together under the banner of the slain warlord’s son, Zan’non, and marched to war against Stormwind.
It had been centuries since the Gurubashi tribes had fought as one, and the humans were utterly unprepared for their fury. The trolls’ numbers were frightening. Within days, Stormwind’s southern defensive lines crumbled before the Gurubashi onslaught. Any civilians who could not escape were butchered in horrifying ways, their teeth, bones, and ears taken as trophies.
