Velen warned his brothers of what he had seen, but they dismissed his insights and made it clear they intended to accept Sargeras’s offer. Fearing that Archimonde and Kil’jaeden would kill him if he continued to dissent, Velen feigned acceptance. Though he and Kil’jaeden were particularly close friends, Velen didn’t believe he could trust their bond to prevail over Sargeras’s enticing promises.
Velen despaired at the fate of his people. In this moment of desperation, the same beings who had granted him his vision of the eredar’s downfall reached out to him. One of the naaru, K’ure, contacted the eredar leader and offered to shepherd him and his closest allies to safety. Filled with renewed hope, Velen sought out other eredar whom he believed he could trust.
As Sargeras arrived on Argus to corrupt the unsuspecting eredar, Velen and his followers made their daring escape. They gathered aboard a massive naaru dimensional fortress known as the Genedar and fled their homeworld forever. From that day forward, Velen and his followers would be known as the draenei, or “exiled ones.”
On Argus, Sargeras bent the other eredar to his unholy will. Fanatical fel whisperings surged through the minds of the world’s inhabitants, drowning out their ability to reason. Sargeras also infused the eredar with fel energies, twisting their forms to resemble hideous demons.
Sargeras found quick use for his new fel-corrupted converts. The eredar settled in as commanders within the Burning Legion. Kil’jaeden and Archimonde would stand as the most gifted and powerful among them.
Sargeras molded Kil’jaeden’s innate cunning and intellect to suit the Legion’s designs. Known thereafter as “the Deceiver,” Kil’jaeden was charged with using his wits to beguile the mortal civilizations of the physical universe and transform them into agents of the Burning Legion.
Sargeras also saw Archimonde’s talent in motivating his people as an invaluable tool to strengthen the Burning Crusade. Archimonde, henceforth known as “the Defiler,” would use his powerful will to drive the demonic masses to acts of extreme violence and barbarism. He would draw out and temper the furious strength in all those who served under him, remaking them into weapons of annihilation.
Under the eredar’s leadership, the ranks of the Burning Legion swelled with new demonic races, gathered from the Twisting Nether and the worlds of the Great Dark. Archimonde empowered the monstrous pit lords and conscripted them to serve as living siege engines. They would inspire dread in all those they faced. The mo’arg, a highly resourceful and industrious race of demons, became the Legion’s armorers. They would forge fel-infused weaponry and constructs to besiege the worlds of the cosmos. Kil’jaeden also brought in the devious succubi to infiltrate prospective worlds for conquest and gather intelligence about their civilizations. The brutal doomguard, demon warriors of unsurpassed strength and cruelty, fought as the Legion’s shock troops. The zealous shivarra became the Legion’s foremost mystics and advisors. They fostered a fanatical loyalty to Sargeras.
FLIGHT OF THE DRAENEI
Velen’s rejection of Sargeras’s grand vision and his subsequent escape enraged Kil’jaeden. Even though the draenei had vanished without a trace, the Deceiver vowed never to stop hunting them, bent on vengeance for what he saw as Velen’s betrayal.
SARGERAS AND THE BURNING LEGION
These wicked creatures, among many others, bolstered the might of the Burning Legion. Pleased with his burgeoning forces, Sargeras launched the demons into the Great Dark, renewing his Burning Crusade against creation.
In the ages to come, the Legion would scour countless other worlds and civilizations from existence.
Meanwhile, unbeknownst to Sargeras, the last embers of the Pantheon’s power clung to life. Although Sargeras had destroyed the titans’ physical forms, Norgannon’s grand spellwork had preserved their souls. The disembodied titan spirits hurtled through the Great Dark toward the world of Azeroth and its keepers. There, the Pantheon hoped they could locate physical forms to inhabit. If they could not find such vessels, the titans feared their weakened spirits would soon fade into oblivion.
Upon reaching Azeroth, the depleted spirits slammed into the keepers, who had been crafted by the Pantheon’s own hands. The keepers were immediately overwhelmed as the titans’ powers flared in their minds. They witnessed fragmented memories of distant worlds, of lifetimes never lived and wonders never seen. But just as quickly as the influx of power had come, it dimmed.
The keepers, still retaining their original personalities, puzzled over the strange phenomenon. They knew they had been gifted with a portion of the Pantheon’s power, but they were unaware that the last remnants of their beloved makers had been infused in their very bodies. The bewildered servants called out to the Pantheon for answers, but they received no reply. The deep silence troubled the keepers, and they sank into a long period of confusion and unease.
The Old God Yogg-Saron, imprisoned beneath Ulduar, sensed these fluctuating emotions. In the eons since the Ordering of Azeroth, a sharp awareness had begun to stir within the entity. Yogg-Saron had devised a plan to weaken its jailors and escape imprisonment. It would corrupt the Forge of Wills, tainting its creation matrix with a strange malady known as the curse of flesh. Any titan-forged created by the machine thereafter would fall victim to this affliction. Some would even spread it to previous generations of titan-forged. The curse of flesh would gradually transform many of these infected servants into mortal beings of flesh and blood—beings who the cunning Old God knew could be easily killed.
To implement this plan, Yogg-Saron turned to Keeper Loken. Out of Ulduar’s guardians, Loken had been the most troubled by the Pantheon’s silence. Yogg-Saron assailed the keeper through fevered dreams, stoking the cold fires of his despair. Yet even in his disturbed state, Loken resisted the whisperings in his mind. Ultimately, his downfall would come from a much subtler place.
As Loken drifted deeper and deeper into despair, he sought comfort from a vrykul named Sif, the mate of his brother, Keeper Thorim. Loken often met with Sif in private, telling her of his darkest fears. In time, a forbidden love blossomed between the two titan-forged.
Yogg-Saron latched onto Loken’s love for Sif and twisted it into a dangerous obsession. The relationship quickly soured due to Loken’s increasingly compulsive behavior. More and more, he talked of openly professing their love for each other, an act that Sif vehemently opposed. She knew that if Thorim discovered the affair, it would shatter the keepers’ unity.
KEEPER THORIM DISCOVERS THE BODY OF HIS WIFE, SIF
Ultimately, she broke all ties with Loken, demanding that he leave her in peace. The thought of losing Sif drove Loken to madness. In a fit of anger and jealousy, he lashed out at his love and killed her.
Though racked by guilt, he could not bring himself to tell Thorim of what he had done. Loken scrambled for a way to cover up Sif’s death. It was in this time of need that her spirit appeared before his eyes.
Much to Loken’s surprise, this visage of Sif forgave him. She also warned him of the need to act with haste, lest Thorim learn the truth. If he did, the titan-forged would descend into civil war, and every pledge Loken had made to the Pantheon would be broken.
Sif’s suggestion struck Loken as devious, a characteristic he had never known her to possess. He sensed something strange in her spirit: an unseen darkness, subtle yet discernible. But Loken’s fear clouded his judgment, and he pushed away his doubts.
On Sif’s guidance, Loken dragged her corpse into the frigid wastes of the Storm Peaks. He informed Thorim of his wife’s demise and convinced the keeper that Arngrim, king of the ice giants, was to blame. The grief-stricken Thorim unleashed his unbridled fury, slaying Arngrim and many of his followers. This event ignited a catastrophic war between Thorim’s storm giants and Arngrim’s ice giants. Sif’s spirit continued aiding Loken as the conflict raged. Her guidance became ever more extreme and worrisome, but Loken forged ahead nonetheless. She convinced him to build an army of his own using the Forge of Wills, one large enoug
h to protect Ulduar from the depredations of the warring giants.
Loken was even persuaded to punish his brother for starting the war. He berated Thorim for letting anger rule his emotions and for creating such a terrible rift between the titan-forged. Loken further admonished his brother, claiming that Sif herself would look upon him in shame if she could only see the things he had done in her name. This bitter condemnation threw Thorim into a deep depression. Overcome with regret, he abandoned Ulduar and languished in solitude.
With Thorim in isolation, Loken used his newly forged army to overwhelm the giants and end their conflict. All those who resisted his will were locked away in stasis chambers.
But as these battles progressed, Loken noticed something unsettling among his warriors. A dark affliction suffused their spirits. Loken called out to Sif again for advice, but this time, she remained silent. Dread overtook the keeper as he realized that her spirit had not existed at all. She was an illusion created by Yogg-Saron.
Though Loken did not know it, the false spirit of Sif had also tainted the Forge of Wills while the keeper was creating his army. Yogg-Saron’s curse of flesh had taken root in the heart of the machine’s creation matrix. Loken had, in his selfishness, allowed Yogg-Saron to play him as an unwitting pawn.
This discovery shattered the last vestiges of Loken’s noble heart. He became obsessed with keeping his transgressions a secret, even if it meant embracing the power of Yogg-Saron. With such might at his command, he knew he could defeat the remaining keepers and destroy all evidence of his wrongdoing.
In order to defeat the other keepers, Loken realized that he would first have to neutralize Odyn and his mighty Valarjar army. But a direct attack against their floating citadel, the Halls of Valor, would be impossible. Instead, Loken took a more insidious approach. He reached out to Odyn’s adopted daughter, the Val’kyr Helya.
For millennia, Helya had dutifully followed Odyn’s commands, transporting the spirits of slain vrykul to the Halls of Valor. Yet even while she did so, Helya nursed the cold anger that stirred in her phantom heart. She never forgave Odyn for turning her into a Val’kyr against her will. Helya dreamed of a day when she might avenge what had been done to her and the others who had been transformed into Val’kyr.
Loken called out to Helya and played on her simmering anger and feelings of betrayal. He promised he would break the chains of servitude that bound her to follow Odyn’s will. In exchange, she would seal off the Halls of Valor from the world forever. Thereafter, Helya could usurp Odyn’s role as the caretaker of all vrykul spirits. Enticed by this chance to sate her appetite for revenge, she agreed to Loken’s plans.
After Loken had restored her free will, Helya called on the same powers she had used to secure the Elemental Plane in ages past. She bent the latent arcane energies swirling around Azeroth to her command, sealing off the Halls of Valor and the inhabitants within. Odyn and his mighty Valarjar struggled desperately to escape their floating citadel, but they could not break the impregnable barrier Helya had created. There the Valarjar and the keeper would remain, trapped within the golden corridors of the Halls of Valor for ages to come.
Helya, now liberated from her life of servitude, forged a new home for herself and the other Val’kyr. She created this enchanted refuge far below the Halls of Valor, binding it to Azeroth’s great seas. The ocean mists soon coiled up to envelop Helya’s domain and shroud it from sight. Known as Helheim, this realm would become the final destination for many vrykul spirits after death.
GUARDIANS OF SHADOW
Not all Val’kyr continued to follow Helya after Odyn’s defeat. Some of these spectral beings disappeared into the Shadowlands. The few who still retained a glimmer of nobility in their souls dedicated themselves to watching over the physical world. From within the Shadowlands, these Val’kyr would at times guide the dead back to the land of the living.
Yet the darkness that had long festered in Helya’s heart transformed Helheim into a place of nightmare and shadow. The souls of dead vrykul who arrived there soon found themselves turned into vengeful wraithlike beings. These cursed spirits were known as the Kvaldir. They became one with the ocean mists, bound to the ebb and flow of the tides. The eternal fire of malice and anguish that burned in their souls would drive the Kvaldir to raid and plunder the shores of Kalimdor for all eternity.
With Odyn and his Valarjar sealed away, Loken returned to Ulduar. He believed he now had ample time to orchestrate the downfall of the other keepers. Yet he soon discovered a new threat to his plans.
Mimiron had begun investigating strange anomalies in Loken’s new titan-forged. The brilliant keeper suspected that some malfunction within the Forge of Wills was to blame for the impurities he had observed. Before he could pursue his theory, Loken sabotaged the keeper’s workshop, killing Mimiron in what appeared to be a tragic accident. Mimiron, however, was not completely dead.
Mimiron’s faithful mechagnomes discovered that their master’s spirit lived on. They scrambled to build a giant mechanized body to house the keeper’s fading soul. This heroic act saved Mimiron, but he was never the same again. His brush with death had broken his mind. He secluded himself in Ulduar’s vast workshops, spending his days lost in the inner workings of his clockwork inventions.
Knowing Mimiron’s fate would raise suspicions among the other keepers, Loken dispatched his army to neutralize his remaining brethren. First, Loken confronted Freya at her verdant domain within the Storm Peaks, the Temple of Life. Battle raged between the two keepers and their followers, sundering the temple and bleeding its precious life energies dry. Freya struggled valiantly against her foes, but she ultimately fell to Loken and the shadowy powers Yogg-Saron had granted him.
Yogg-Saron itself seized on Freya’s weakened state, enthralling her spirit. The Old God compelled the broken Freya to withdraw into the halls of Ulduar. There, she would spend her forlorn days tending to a sprawling garden at the heart of the fortress.
As Loken confronted Freya, another group of his titan-forged waged war on the mighty keeper Hodir within his lair, the Temple of Winter. Two fire giants named Ignis and Volkhan led the assault. They enveloped the temple in blistering infernos, sapping Hodir’s wintry strength and decimating his icy followers. Loken later arrived to subdue Hodir directly, a task he completed with ease.
Just as it had done with Freya, Yogg-Saron warped Hodir’s mind. The entity forced the keeper to retreat into a frigid chamber within Ulduar, where he would remain in seclusion for millennia.
Two of the remaining keepers—Tyr and Archaedas—did not fall victim to Loken’s schemes. Tyr had long suspected that a darkness was growing within the fallen keeper, a suspicion that was confirmed when he witnessed Loken’s attack on Hodir.
Yet Tyr was in no position to confront Loken directly. Throngs of the fallen keeper’s loyal titan-forged stalked the Storm Peaks and the halls of Ulduar. Knowing he stood little chance against this army, Tyr took Archaedas and their close friend, a titan-forged giantess named Ironaya, to the outskirts of the Storm Peaks. Among the icy cliffs, they waited and watched Loken’s schemes unfold, planning their next move.
Loken dispatched his forces to hunt down Tyr and his companions. These titan-forged scoured the mountains and caves of the Storm Peaks, but they never found their prey. Believing that Tyr and his allies had fled the region, Loken asserted sole dominion over Ulduar. He altered the machineries within the fortress and used them to anoint himself the new Prime Designate of Azeroth. He also disabled the tainted Forge of Wills and banished many of his servants to the Storm Peaks. Thereafter, he sealed off the sprawling fortress of Ulduar.
Loken languished in regret within Ulduar’s silent halls. Despite everything he had accomplished, he was ever fearful that the Pantheon or their appointed watcher, Algalon, would one day return to Azeroth. If that happened, they would discover Loken’s horrific crimes and punish him.
But in truth, the greatest threat was right beneath Loken’s feet. No longer unde
r the watchful eyes of Ulduar’s jailors, Yogg-Saron began to stir, working to free itself from its impregnable prison.
As he dealt with the other keepers, Loken always expected that Ra would emerge from the southern reaches of Kalimdor to investigate the goings-on in Ulduar. But much to Loken’s surprise, the highkeeper remained silent throughout these world-altering events.
Overcome with curiosity, Loken dispatched a contingent of his army to the distant bastion of Uldum to investigate Ra’s activities. These titan-forged agents never found the missing highkeeper, but they did learn from the local mogu, tol’vir, and anubisaths that Ra had mysteriously vanished.
These meetings would have a lasting impact. In journeying south, Loken’s forces had unwittingly spread the curse of flesh throughout many of Ra’s faithful servants.
Unbeknownst to Loken and the titan-forged, Ra had experienced a revelation … one so terrible that it had driven him into seclusion. When the Pantheon’s power and memories had been infused in the keepers, Ra had reeled in confusion much like his siblings. Over time, however, he had concluded that this event was more than just an anomaly. The influx of power was the last remnant of the Pantheon’s spirits.
Ra struggled to accept the fact that the Pantheon had fallen. He extracted the lingering power of Aman’Thul from himself and carefully stored it in a mountain vault near what would become known as the Vale of Eternal Blossoms. There, the highkeeper hoped to preserve what little was left of his beloved titan creator.
Ra then retreated into the catacombs beneath the land to meditate on what he had learned. With the highkeeper gone, his loyal titan-forged developed new cultures, wholly distinct from those of their northern kin. Most of the tol’vir congregated around Uldum, making the fortress their home. To the west, the anubisaths continued their sacred charge of watching over the prison of C’Thun. Similarly, the mogu remained in the east, guarding the titan-forged vaults and machineries buried beneath the earth.
World of Warcraft: Chronicle Volume 1 Page 6