by Blizzard
After Doomhammer slipped north, Lothar and his army arrived in the Hinterlands and came to the Wildhammer clan’s aid. The combined might of humans, elves, and dwarves soon pushed the orcs away from Aerie Peak and sent them retreating into the forests.
The assault on Aerie Peak changed Kurdran and his people. They now knew of the threat posed by the Horde, and they were determined to help defeat the orcs.
Kurdran pledged his clan to the Alliance. The inclusion of the Wildhammers and their gryphon riders was a much-needed boon. Though the orcs had not used dragons since the naval battle near Zul’Dare, Lothar feared a day would come when they would return. If the Alliance was to match the Horde’s aerial superiority, it would be through the gryphon riders.
From Kurdran, the Alliance learned that half of the Horde had slipped north. It was only then that Lothar realized he’d been outmaneuvered by Orgrim. The Horde contingent in the Hinterlands was but a portion of the orcs’ full strength.
It was a bitter revelation, but Lothar did not wallow in defeat. He immediately dispatched Turalyon and a large part of his armies to track Orgrim down. Meanwhile, the rest of the Alliance remained in the Hinterlands to deal with the Horde there. The other potential routes to Lordaeron’s capital seemed secure. The kingdom of Alterac was holding the line to the east. King Perenolde had set his garrisons to barricade those mountain passes, so if the Horde tried to march on the city through that route, the defenses would slow its approach.
Throughout the Second War, Garona had lived under the watchful eye of the Blackrock warrior Eitrigg. She had served many functions, sometimes translating missives taken from captured Alliance messengers. She’d also fought alongside her fellow Horde soldiers.
Initially Garona viewed Eitrigg as just another mindless warrior, a fanatic who had sworn his life to Warchief Blackhand despite his tyrannical disposition. But over time, she had seen a glimmer of something in the orc, a fading ember of pride and honor.
Garona believed she could win Eitrigg’s trust, and she told him everything she knew of Gul’dan and the Shadow Council. She also revealed her knowledge of demons and the true purpose of the Horde. The orcs were merely puppets of a terrible enemy. If the Horde destroyed the Alliance, the demons would transform Azeroth into a wasteland.
Eitrigg treated Garona’s words as poisonous lies. After all, she had been Gul’dan’s assassin. How could he ever trust someone who had committed such dishonorable acts?
After Eitrigg’s rebuke, Garona abandoned any hope of helping him see the truth. She bided her time, patiently awaiting an opportunity to escape her handler.
That opportunity finally came in the Hinterlands. As chaos engulfed the region, Garona slipped into the forests and vanished. Eitrigg considered hunting down the half-orc, but waging war on the Alliance was far more important than recovering a single prisoner.
Eitrigg had other reasons for letting Garona go. Some part of him sympathized with the half-orc and her tortured past. She had not been born an assassin. Gul’dan had made her that way. As long as she did not turn her blades against the Horde, he would let her go.
Perhaps on Azeroth she would find something she’d never had on Draenor. Perhaps she would find a true home.
With much of the Alliance bogged down in the Hinterlands, Orgrim led his half of the Horde toward Quel’Thalas unopposed. En route, Zul’jin visited the Amani capital, Zul’Aman, to gather allies. He whipped his people into a frenzy with the promise of spilling elf blood. Thousands of trolls, adorned in enchanted talismans and ritual tattoos, streamed out of Zul’Aman and took their place alongside Orgrim’s Horde.
An army the likes of which the high elves had not faced in thousands of years soon loomed on Quel’Thalas’s borders. The marauding Horde decimated the kingdom’s outer holdings in short order.
As Orgrim advanced north, he found that many death knights and Amani witch doctors were unable to wield their magics. Gul’dan eventually discovered what was dampening their powers.
Thousands of years ago, after the War of the Ancients, Quel’Thalas had erected a powerful magical barrier around its kingdom. This was Ban’dinoriel, “the Gatekeeper.” The shield was tied to a series of monolithic Runestones, relics that prevented the Burning Legion and other outsiders from detecting the arcane magics wielded by the high elves. They also weakened the powers of their enemies, such as the Amani trolls.
Gul’dan claimed that dismantling one of the Runestones would disrupt the barrier and restore the Horde’s use of magic. Then he and his followers would use the relic to strengthen the Horde for the siege of Quel’Thalas.
After much consideration, Doomhammer agreed to the plans. He didn’t trust Gul’dan. But thus far, the warlock had proved himself useful and loyal to the Horde. Orgrim’s spies in the Stormreaver clan reported no mischievous activities. What Doomhammer didn’t know was that Gul’dan had won these spies to his side with threats, promises of power, and other means.
Doomhammer still suspected a day would come when Gul’dan would try to betray him and take control of the Horde. He never could have imagined the truth: the warlock was planning to abandon the Horde.
In recent months, Gul’dan had nearly amassed the power to do so. Though the death knights had not proved to be as loyal to him as he had once hoped, he had the backing of two mighty clans: the Stormreavers and the Twilight’s Hammer. Yet that was not enough. Not nearly. The warlock needed as much power as he could get to fend off Doomhammer and any other foes he would meet on his journey to the Tomb of Sargeras. Quel’Thalas’s mysterious relics would give Gul’dan the strength he needed.
He and his followers quickly dismantled one of Quel’Thalas’s Runestones. They chiseled away at the monolithic relic to build structures known as the Altars of Storms. Gul’dan then turned to an ancient ritual used by the Highmaul ogres. In the distant past, they’d found a way to empower members of their own race. By channeling raw arcane magic into regular ogres, the Highmaul could transform them into highly intelligent two-headed ogre magi.
Few living ogres knew of this technique, but Cho’gall was one of them. He handpicked the brutish ogres who would undergo the transformation, and he oversaw the rituals himself.
Before long, two-headed ogre magi emerged from the altars. They were just as powerful as Gul’dan had hoped they’d be. More importantly, they secretly swore their loyalty to him.
Now, all that remained for Gul’dan was finding the right time to make his move.
INSTRUMENTS OF POWER
During the Second War, Gul’dan gathered information concerning some of the powerful artifacts he had learned about from prying into Medivh’s mind. He never had the opportunity to seek out these relics, but he did reveal their existence to the death knights.
With the Runestone desecrated, the Horde’s death knights and other spellcasters regained their powers. Orgrim’s forces stormed toward Quel’Thalas’s capital, Silvermoon City. They terrorized the countryside, pillaging settlements and cutting down every elf they found.
King Anasterian called on his greatest generals to stop the Horde’s advance. Elf magi and rangers spread across Quel’Thalas to resist Orgrim’s forces, but they did not have to fight alone for long. Turalyon and Alleria soon arrived with half of the Alliance army.
While Turalyon organized his soldiers and launched attacks against the Horde, Alleria met with Anasterian in Silvermoon City. She urged the elf king to pledge his forces to the Alliance, but he needed little convincing. Anasterian was furious about the Horde’s assault. Not since the ancient Troll Wars had the elves died in such numbers. Not since that terrible time had their lands been so defiled. Humans and elves had once banded together to save their respective kingdoms from oblivion. Now, they would do so again.
The Alliance would have the full support and backing of Quel’Thalas.
Though the Alliance and the elves were now unified in purpose, any hope that they had of a quick victory vanished in smoke and fire. The red dragons had come.
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After months of hard work, the Dragonmaw orcs had learned how to ride their winged captives in battle. Dozens of the monstrous creatures appeared over Quel’Thalas. The gryphon riders, unaccustomed to battling dragons, were forced to retreat. The orcs and their mounts then swooped down on the Alliance armies, bathing them in gouts of flame. A firestorm enveloped the forests around Quel’Thalas, and smoke blotted out the sun.
The enslaved dragons took no joy in the destruction. Far from it. Many of them wept in sorrow as they slaughtered the elves and burned the life from the wilds.
The roaring firestorm caused most of the elf defenders to seek shelter in Silvermoon City. King Anasterian’s people had no physical weapons that could stop the Horde and its dragons from invading the elven capital, but they had something else that could.
Elf sorcerers summoned an immense shield around Silvermoon City. This barrier derived its power from the Sunwell, a fount of magic that served as the heart of Quel’Thalas’s culture. For thousands of years, the elves had used its energies to construct their kingdom and protect it from outsiders.
The Horde smashed against the shield again and again, but the barrier did not give way. Even the red dragons’ mystical fire could not breach it.
Orgrim’s patience was wearing thin. Destroying the high elven stronghold had never been his priority. Lordaeron’s capital was. Though Orgrim had not yet satisfied the Amani pact, he had accomplished other things in Quel’Thalas. The gifted ogre magi now served the Horde. The Dragonmaw clan had finally brought the bulk of their winged servants to bear in battle. The Horde had also dealt a grave blow to Quel’Thalas, one that would take the elves many years to recover from.
Orgrim began planning the next stage of his campaign. He would need a route to reach Lordaeron’s capital from Quel’Thalas, one that would catch the Alliance by surprise.
After failing to breach Silvermoon City, Orgrim pulled his forces back and ordered them to march west. The time had come to resume his campaign and attack Lordaeron’s capital, and the warchief had found a way to the stronghold.
The roads and valleys between Quel’Thalas and Lordaeron were the easy routes to take if one sought to reach the capital, but they were also heavily fortified. Orgrim would not take them. He would move his armies through the rugged Alterac Mountains south of Lordaeron’s capital, giving him the element of surprise.
Not all of Doomhammer’s allies agreed with his plans. Zul’jin and the Amani rejected the warchief’s call to go west. Their hatred of the elves burned so hot that they would not abandon the siege of Silvermoon. Zul’jin vowed that he would attack Lordaeron’s capital only after all of Quel’Thalas was in flames and he held King Anasterian’s severed head in his hands.
Zul’jin’s stubbornness was both infuriating and troubling. Doomhammer had relied heavily on the Amani to guide the orcs through a land that was not their own. Losing the trolls now, at this critical moment, could spell doom for the Horde.
Gul’dan sensed Orgrim’s mounting fears. The warlock knew that now was his chance to finally break free from the warchief’s control. Gul’dan convinced Orgrim and Zul’jin that the Stormreaver clan had found a new way to destroy the barrier around Silvermoon City. All it would take was a few more days. Once the Stormreavers had succeeded, the elven city would fall; the trolls could sate their appetite for vengeance, and then they could rejoin the Horde.
Doomhammer was loath to leave more of his forces behind in Quel’Thalas, but Gul’dan’s words swayed him. The Alliance was scattered: half of its forces were in Silvermoon, and the other half were still battling the Horde in the Hinterlands. Lordaeron’s capital was ripe for the taking, and Doomhammer could not allow the opportunity to slip through his fingers.
Doomhammer left Gul’dan and his Stormreaver clan to unravel the barrier, but he ordered the Dragonmaw to stay in Quel’Thalas and keep watch over the warlock. If the barrier had not come down in three days’ time, they would force Gul’dan and his followers to march west.
And if Gul’dan was foolish enough to disobey, Doomhammer gave the Dragonmaw permission to feed him to their war mounts.
Doomhammer led his forces west, his mind plagued by doubts. Since the landing in Hillsbrad Foothills, things had not gone according to plan. But he knew that was the way of war. Those who adapted found victory, and those who refused to change were destined for defeat.
When the Horde entered the mountains, fortune smiled on Doomhammer. Alterac’s king, Perenolde, was awaiting the orcish army. He carried an offer of allegiance…
From the beginning of the Second War, Perenolde had been wary of fighting the Horde. He’d believed that the orcs were an unstoppable force. His fear of the Horde had only deepened as he’d learned of the death knights, red dragons, and ogre magi in its ranks.
The Horde’s arrival in the Alterac Mountains had finally pushed Perenolde to betrayal. Rather than fight his enemies, he would strike a deal with them. He would survive. Perenolde met the Horde to deliver a simple message: he would grant the orcish army safe passage through the mountains if Alterac would be spared from the Horde’s wrath.
TERRITORIES OF THE HORDE AND THE ALLIANCE DURING THE SECOND WAR
Orgrim eagerly accepted the offer, and Perenolde showed the warchief how to avoid the defensive positions in the mountains. Night and day, the Horde marched through Alterac’s unguarded passes. When they finally reached Tirisfal Glades, Orgrim gave his forces no rest. He threw every soldier at his command against Capital City’s walls.
Turalyon and his allies had long suspected that the Horde would eventually pivot west and strike at Lordaeron’s capital. Their fears were confirmed when Orgrim and most of his forces suddenly pulled back from Quel’Thalas.
Though some elements of the Horde army were still rampaging through Quel’Thalas, Turalyon ordered the bulk of his soldiers to move west with all due haste. With half of the Alliance army battling in the Hinterlands, the task of defending Lordaeron’s capital fell to him. At first, reaching the city before Orgrim did not seem so impossible. The Horde had ventured into the Alterac Mountains, and the region’s defenses would slow the warchief.
Then word of King Perenolde’s betrayal reached the scattered Alliance forces. No one could believe it was true. No one could fathom that any human would pledge loyalty to the bloodthirsty Horde.
But it was true, and the implications were disastrous. With the Alterac Mountains fully barricaded, Doomhammer’s journey west should have taken months. With a safe passage open to them, the Horde’s soldiers had already reached Lordaeron’s capital.
Turalyon feared that the city would fall before he could save it, but Lordaeron was not as helpless as he believed. King Terenas commanded the capital. Though he was not a warrior, he was a man of great charisma and cunning. As Horde catapults bombarded the capital, Terenas told his people that this battle would decide the war. The future of humanity—the future of the Alliance—rested on their shoulders. Terenas himself vowed to die if it meant keeping the Horde at bay until reinforcements could arrive. Against the wishes of his advisors, he took his place on the ramparts and organized the city’s defenses.
Orgrim admired Lordaeron’s tenacity. The humans and their king fought with a fearlessness akin to that of the orcs. Yet it wouldn’t last. Every day, Orgrim whittled away at the capital’s defenses. Every day, his siege engines pounded the stronghold’s crumbling walls.
Once the Horde’s reinforcements arrived from Quel’Thalas, the city would fall. The question was when those troops would arrive. The Dragonmaw, Stormreaver, and Twilight’s Hammer clans were behind schedule, and Doomhammer had received not a word from them.
Something was not right. Doomhammer felt it in his bones. His unease deepened when Turalyon and his army approached from the east. Their arrival distracted the orcish forces, giving the capital’s defenders much-needed rest.
Doomhammer did not fear Turalyon and his forces—he feared what their appearance meant. The other Alliance armies were en
route to the capital. The Horde had to breach the stronghold soon. Orgrim had the death knights at his disposal, but he also needed the rest of his soldiers from Quel’Thalas to secure victory.
He would never get them. The Dragonmaw arrived outside Lordaeron’s capital, bearing dire news. Gul’dan had betrayed the Horde. He had taken the Stormreaver and Twilight’s Hammer
clans with him toward the orcish fleet anchored off of Hillsbrad Foothills. On the heels of this discovery, more troubling news reached Orgrim. The Alliance had learned of King Perenolde’s treachery and barricaded the open passes in the Alterac Mountains. Calling on reinforcements from the Hinterlands was now out of the question.
In that moment, Doomhammer knew that the war was lost. Even if his forces were able to take the capital, they could not hold it against the full strength of the Alliance.
Fury burned through Doomhammer’s veins. The Horde had been so close, so very close, to total victory. Now, it faced total annihilation.
Orgrim called off the siege and ordered his forces into a full retreat to Khaz Modan. He dispatched a Dragonmaw messenger to deliver the same command to the soldiers in the Hinterlands. If the Horde could regroup, there was still a chance to put the pieces of its campaign together. It was a slim hope, but it was the only one Doomhammer had.
The warchief sent the Horde’s dragon riders to cover their retreat and waylay the Alliance forces as much as possible. He also sent the Black Tooth Grin clan to hunt down Gul’dan. Orgrim had spared the warlock once before. He would not make that mistake again.
