The Horde had failed because of internal conflict and disloyalty. The Legion’s next strike against Azeroth would not suffer from the same weaknesses. Kil’jaeden conceived of a dark, disturbing way to raise a new puppet army that would be utterly incapable of diverging from the Legion’s will. All he needed was a powerful spirit, skilled in the art of wielding magic, to control it.
The decimation of Draenor had given him exactly what he needed.
During Draenor’s destruction, Ner’zhul and his closest followers had escaped into the Twisting Nether. Kil’jaeden’s minions had been waiting for them there.
Ner’zhul suffered unimaginable torture at the Legion’s hands. The orc’s physical body was torn apart bit by bit, but his spirit was kept alive, intact, and utterly aware of what was happening. A group of dreadlords—Tichondrius, Balnazzar, Detheroc, Mal’Ganis, and Varimathras—took turns subjecting Ner’zhul to the most horrific agony.
The orc soon begged for death. Kil’jaeden agreed to grant it to him, but only in return for absolute servitude as the Legion’s new weapon. Death would be just the beginning.
Ner’zhul, his sanity cracking, finally agreed. Kil’jaeden passed the orc’s spirit through death and revived him as a spectral entity. The orc’s consciousness expanded a thousandfold, granting him extraordinary psychic powers. The dreadlords bound his disembodied spirit to a specially crafted set of armor and a mighty runeblade called Frostmourne. These items were locked in a diamond-hard block of ice to imprison Ner’zhul.
The armaments served a dual purpose: they kept Ner’zhul’s spirit contained, and they were a tantalizing reward. Kil’jaeden promised his servant that if he proved his loyalty to the Legion, he would be allowed to roam free in a new body. His armor would mark him as a king, and he would rule Azeroth. However, if Ner’zhul disobeyed, his spirit would be tormented forevermore.
Kil’jaeden had no desire—and no need—to make good his promise. However, the demon lord believed the lie would keep his servant more eager to serve than if he relied on threats alone to motivate him.
Ner’zhul’s loyal followers were also transformed. Their bodies were torn asunder and reshaped into powerful undead liches who would serve without question.
Ner’zhul’s past life had vanished. A new one arose in its place. This being was called the Lich King, and he woke into an existence of unending servitude and indescribable power.
When Kil’jaeden’s dark work was done, he explained his plan to his new minion. The Lich King would conjure a necromantic plague that would choke all resistance away from Azeroth. The living would die and be reborn as loyal, undead soldiers. These mindless servants would weaken Azeroth’s defenses in preparation for a demonic invasion by the Legion.
Kil’jaeden remained suspicious of the Lich King. The demon lord had long since lost interest in trusting his minions. The dreadlords who had helped torment Ner’zhul and craft his armor would accompany him to Azeroth. They would be both jailors and executors, meant to hasten the Lich King’s task by any means necessary.
Through a tremendous expenditure of power, the Legion opened a small portal from the Twisting Nether into Azeroth. The Lich King’s icy cask streaked across the night sky and smashed into an isolated part of Icecrown Glacier in the frigid continent of Northrend. His prison, warped by the descent, came to resemble a throne. The Lich King’s dreadlord caretakers soon joined him and began to construct fortifications around this Frozen Throne.
The Lich King let them do their work while he started his own. His expanded consciousness reached out to the scattered native inhabitants of Northrend, darkening their thoughts and afflicting them with terrible nightmares.
The Lich King treaded carefully at first, testing his powers. Kil’jaeden had been adamant that the nations of Azeroth not know what was coming until it was too late.
Isolated tribes and powerful beasts fell under the Lich King’s command. First came fierce creatures called wendigo and the savage ice trolls. Then came lost tribes of mighty vrykul.
The vrykul were a war-hungry breed. Millennia ago, they had sought to conquer the world, but their campaign was cut short by Azeroth’s foremost guardians, the Dragon Aspects. The majestic creatures had placed the vrykul in a deep, unending slumber to spare the world from their barbaric ways. The Lich King’s servants slew the vrykul in their sleep, and they were raised into undeath as powerful new warriors.
Pleased with his initial successes, the Lich King crafted an early strain of the plague of undeath. There was a remote human settlement on the fringes of the Dragonblight, unaware of the dangerous force that was rising nearby. The Lich King controlled the plague with his will alone, sending it into the village while the humans slept.
Within three days, everyone in the settlement had died. Soon after, they rose again as undead minions. Their thoughts and awareness were added to the Lich King’s own. He felt himself ascending higher and higher into realms of power he had never dreamed of. The more minds he controlled, the mightier he became.
As he continued to experiment with his manipulation of the undead, a fearsome stronghold rose around him. The dreadlords had constructed an impenetrable fortress called Icecrown Citadel. It would serve as the Lich King’s base of operations, from which his campaign of terror would flow.
Kil’jaeden was deeply satisfied with the way events were progressing. He ordered the Lich King to quietly keep amassing his power. Once he had control of Northrend, he could begin his real work on the rest of Azeroth’s living, starting with the Eastern Kingdoms. The nations there had suffered through years of conflict with the Horde. They were vulnerable and beset by internal strife. They would fall in short order to the plague of undeath. The Legion could then use the region as a staging point for gathering the full might of its armies on Azeroth.
THE VAL’KYR
From the vrykul, the Lich King learned of intriguing creatures called Val’kyr. These spectral beings could corral spirits and even delve into the Shadowlands, the realm of death. The Lich King tried to create his own Val’kyr, but the task proved difficult even for him. After several missteps, he finally succeeded. The Val’kyr greatly enhanced his ability to control the dark powers of undeath.
Kil’jaeden’s plan appeared sound. Yet the Lich King was plotting against him. Though the entity played the part of a loyal servant, he was secretly determined to break away from the Legion’s control. He held no allegiance to the demons. Kil’jaeden had forced him into servitude through acts of brutality. He knew the demon lord’s promise that the Lich King would be allowed to freely roam the world was a lie.
The Lich King would never forget what Kil’jaeden had done to him. Never. One day, he would make the demon lord pay for it.
The main obstacles to the Lich King’s vengeance were the dreadlords. Under Kil’jaeden’s orders, they carefully watched the entity for any signs of disobedience. The dreadlords were highly intelligent and crafty, but their cunning paled in comparison to the Lich King’s. With great caution, he manipulated the demons. The Lich King masked the true scope of his power. He made the dreadlords believe that they were in complete control of him. All the while, he watched his prey and learned their individual strengths and weaknesses.
The nations of the Eastern Kingdoms knew nothing of what was transpiring in Northrend.
They were busy with efforts to rebuild their war-torn lands. Most of Stormwind’s refugees had not returned home, and the unity between nations was fraying as the realities of post-war life set in. The orcs who had been captured needed to be imprisoned indefinitely. Huge internment camps were built to hold them, and these prisons became increasingly expensive to maintain. Kingdoms shifted the costs onto neighbors, inflaming tensions and sowing discord.
Though many of the orcs remaining on Azeroth had been captured, plenty of dangerous clans were still on the loose. The Warsongs, led by the legendary chieftain Grommash Hellscream, had ref
used to surrender. He and his people kept to the dense forests around Lordaeron, only emerging to raid local villages and farmsteads for food and supplies. The remnants of the Blackrock and Black Tooth Grin clans, led by Dal’rend and Maim Blackhand, had declared themselves the “true Horde” and dwelled in Blackrock Mountain.
Dal’rend and Maim had a tenuous alliance with the Dragonmaw clan orcs, who occupied the ancient fortress of Grim Batol and retained a dark secret from the Second War. They possessed an artifact called the Demon Soul, which contained the powers of four great Dragon Aspects: Alexstrasza, Nozdormu, Malygos, and Ysera. The orcs had used the relic to enslave the Aspect of Life, Alexstrasza, and force her dragonflight to obey their commands.
Most of these clans kept to the shadows. None wanted to attract the attention of the Alliance. The Alliance, in turn, was too busy rebuilding to spend much time hunting them.
The situation changed dramatically due to Orgrim Doomhammer, the Horde’s former warchief. The Alliance of Lordaeron considered him the most dangerous orc in captivity, and he had been held under close guard.
Orgrim’s jailors thought he was broken, physically and mentally. Such was not the case. He outwitted his captors and escaped his internment camp.
Rage swept through the Alliance. Orgrim Doomhammer’s capture in the Second War had sealed the Horde’s defeat. Now he was free to rally what was left of his army and ignite a new conflict. This colossal embarrassment strained relationships among most of the Alliance nations. Trust was in short supply, and each kingdom became suspicious that the others were utterly incompetent.
The Alliance dedicated more time and resources to hunting down the orcs who freely roamed the land. The unfortunate ones they found were usually killed on the spot rather than captured. Even so, the orcs too often slipped away, making the Alliance’s efforts feel wasted.
At the internment camps, the Alliance redoubled the guards and fortifications to make sure no other orcs would break free as Orgrim Doomhammer had. Escapes were virtually eliminated, but much to the surprise of the human wardens, escape attempts had vanished as well.
In imprisonment, the orcs were nothing like the battle-crazed warriors who had invaded the world. They had gradually become withdrawn, unable to muster the energy to retain their aggression…or even their pride. They accepted their confinement without much resistance at all.
This was a symptom of their withdrawal from fel magic. Archmage Antonidas of Dalaran was one of the few who studied the orcs’ condition in depth, but despite his best efforts to discover a cure, there was no magical solution. Their ordeal had left deep wounds in their collective psyche. It was up to them to find a cause to live for.
In truth, many in the Alliance were perfectly happy with the prisoners’ lethargy. As long as the imprisoned orcs remained aloof, they were no threat.
Once Orgrim Doomhammer escaped from his internment camp, he quietly traveled as far away from human cities as he could. Despite what the Alliance feared, he had no intention of rallying the Horde to continue his war against Azeroth.
Demons had treated the orcs like puppets, and after they had failed, they had been discarded. During his internment, Orgrim had seen the fire slowly disappear from the eyes of the other orcs. They had not simply been beaten. They had been broken.
Some blamed Orgrim for their plight, even though he had not led them into the demons’ clutches. In truth, he had never approved of the Horde’s use of fel magic. He knew of its destructive power and the way it had slowly corrupted his race.
Orgrim lived alone for years. On occasion, he would meet with the only clan he was certain would not regard him as an enemy: the Frostwolves.
He had been lifelong friends with the Frostwolf clan’s former chieftain, Durotan, and with his mate, Draka. The two of them had spoken out against the Horde’s formation and its use of fel magic. In retribution, Durotan and Draka had been cut down by assassins loyal to the Legion. Orgrim believed that their infant son, Go’el, had also been killed.
During his time in exile, Orgrim silently fought off the lethargy that plagued most of his kind, but he was only partially successful. His dreams of restoring his people’s pride and honor went unfulfilled, and he scraped out an existence as a hermit, trying to draw as little attention as possible.
The Horde’s defeat devastated more than Orgrim Doomhammer and his people. It also dealt a blow to the corrupted Dragon Aspect, Deathwing, and his black dragonflight.
Long ago, the titans had empowered Deathwing—then known as Neltharion—and the other Dragon Aspects to serve as guardians of the world. Each of the majestic creatures was given a specific role. As the Aspect of Earth, Neltharion was imbued with the strength of Azeroth itself. This gift granted him immense power and fortitude, but it also inadvertently made him susceptible to the influence of the Old Gods.
After destroying the Black Empire, the titans and their servants had imprisoned the Old Gods deep underground, but that had not neutralized their power. Their dark tendrils gradually burrowed through the earth, and their influence reached into the mind of Neltharion. The Old Gods slowly transformed the Dragon Aspect into their greatest weapon and urged him to engulf the world in chaos.
During the War of the Ancients, he did exactly that.
Neltharion crafted the Demon Soul and convinced the other Aspects to sacrifice a portion of their strength to empower the artifact. He claimed that the relic would help them drive the Legion from Azeroth. Only later did he reveal his true intentions. Neltharion betrayed his fellow Dragon Aspects and turned the Demon Soul against them. Thereafter, he was known by a more fitting name: Deathwing.
In the millennia that followed, the other dragonflights had hunted Deathwing’s children to the brink of extinction. Nowhere on Azeroth seemed safe for black dragons. Yet when the Horde invaded the world, Deathwing saw an opportunity. If he cultivated it properly, he could use the orcish army to destroy those who wanted him and his flight dead.
The Old Gods approved of Deathwing’s intentions. Though they were enemies of the Legion, they knew the Horde would bring immense suffering and death to Azeroth. With the world and its peoples weakened, the Old Gods could assert their dominion over all and restore the Black Empire.
Deathwing proved himself to be a highly effective agent of destruction for the Old Gods time and time again. It was he who had manipulated the nations of the Eastern Kingdoms in the First War so that Stormwind was left to face the Horde alone. It was he who had led the Dragonmaw clan to the Demon Soul—albeit without revealing his true nature to the orcs. And it was he who had told them how to capture Alexstrasza and her dragonflight.
Deathwing had taken a clutch of eggs to Draenor in the hope of rebuilding his flight in peace. In the end, his plans fell to ruin. The future of his flight had been destroyed along with Draenor.
But all was not lost. The Dragonmaw orcs still held Alexstrasza captive, as well as many of her eggs and young offspring. Deathwing could claim those dragons for himself and enslave them to his will. They would become his new dragonflight.
First, he had to ensure that the Dragonmaw would not be wiped out by Alliance forces. Shortly after the destruction of the Dark Portal, Deathwing took on the guise of a human lord named Daval Prestor, a persona that he had used before. Pretending to be a charming member of the nobility, he had kept the court of Lordaeron in disarray with lies and misdirection, hampering the humans’ awareness of how the First and Second Wars were unfolding. His efforts had been so effective that, even now, none of the nobles suspected that he had been actively working against them.
Lord Prestor rejoined the court, claiming that he wanted to help the Alliance recover from the war. Deathwing secretly called upon his son and daughter, Nefarian and Onyxia, to accompany him, also disguised as human nobles. Together they spread distrust and resentment among the nobility like a plague. Old rivalries flared bright among the Alliance’s nations. Alm
ost daily, fierce arguments erupted between nobles concerning the future of their faction.
The escape of Orgrim Doomhammer only added fuel to the fire. It was an unexpected gift to the Prestor family, who saw it as the perfect opportunity to chisel away at the very foundations of the Alliance.
After Orgrim’s disappearance, it was easy to play upon the humans’ mutual distrust. Deathwing and his children made sure Alliance scouts and raiding parties always had bad information. The hunt for the remnants of the Horde seemed constantly beset by laziness, incompetence, or both. None of these problems were ever connected back to the Prestor family.
Meanwhile, the threat posed by the Dragonmaw clan in Grim Batol remained hidden from the Alliance. Now Deathwing could focus on stealing the orcs’ power away from them.
Deathwing kept his involvement with the clan a secret, believing that the orcs would never trust him or obey his commands. He sent dark dreams to Nekros Skullcrusher, the Dragonmaw’s leader, offering premonitions that the Alliance was preparing a strike on Grim Batol that would wipe the clan off the face of Azeroth. To sell this fiction, Deathwing arranged for a small Alliance party—led by the powerful mage Rhonin—to stumble upon the Dragonmaw’s hidden lair.
Nekros panicked. He ordered his clan to abandon Grim Batol and move to a new cave complex concealed within the mountain pass of Dun Algaz.
Drawing the orcs out of their mighty fortress was exactly what Deathwing had hoped for. Yet he was no longer the only powerful dragon with his attention on the Dragonmaw.
During the Second War, the red dragon Korialstrasz was deeply concerned when Alexstrasza disappeared. He was the Dragon Aspect’s consort and closest confidant, and he vowed to do whatever he could to find her. When he finally discovered that she was being held captive by the Dragonmaw, he found that he was utterly helpless. The Dragonmaw had enslaved Alexstrasza with the Demon Soul, an artifact that could destroy any dragon. Korialstrasz could not free her. He pleaded for help from the Dragon Aspects Ysera, Nozdormu, and Malygos, but they were wary of intervening. Like Korialstrasz, they feared that the orcs would use the Demon Soul to destroy them, or even Alexstrasza.
World of Warcraft Chronicle Volume 3 Page 2