What if Azeroth's conflicts after the Third War were defined by politics rather than race? If Azeroth where the Horde and the Alliance were not the only factions interested in charting a future for themselves across the world under their own banner?
What if nobody in Azeroth carried the Idiot Ball anymore?
Azeroth: The Silent War and the Illusion of Peace
It has been four years since the Battle of Mount Hyjal, five years since the war that Stormwind Historians insist on calling "The Third War" began and ravaged the continents of Lordaeron and Kalimdor. Five years since Arthas Menethil destroyed his own kingdom and that of the High Elves and four years since Sylvanas Windrunner became the Queen of much of what he left behind.
It has been five years since the Orcs and Darkspear Trolls settled Kalimdor, founding Orgrimmar and establishing the Horde as the dominant power in central Kalimdor. Three years since their alliance with the Tauren resulted in Mulgore being reclaimed entirely for that race, driving the centaurs from the region.
It has been four years since Arthas and Ner'zhul became one in the form of the Lich King, and yet four years since the Scourge have been on the warpath - Kel'Thuzzad still commands the Plaguelands for his King, and the Scourge's hold on frozen Northrend seems tighter than ever, and yet the Scourge waits.
It has been four years since the Night Elves lost their immortality, isolation, and for some at least, much of their arrogance. Four years since the Night Elves learned just how much ignoring the rest of the world had cost them.
It has been four years since Illidan tried twice to destroy the Lich King, and four years since he or Prince Kael'thas Sunstrider have been seen on Azeroth, and four years since Maiev Shadowsong followed him into Outland.
The second invasion of the Burning Legion changed the world in ways exceeded only by their first - entire Kingdoms were destroyed, peoples ruined, and lands scarred permanently. It was only by luck, cunning and supreme sacrifice that they were repelled, and many fear that sooner or later, the Burning Legion will try again, coming once more to the world that has defied them twice.
Azeroth cries out for peace, for calm, and it is something it's people desperately need. But there is no peace to be had on Azeroth, it seems. For the world now stands divided between several great and lesser powers, and tensions between them keep the world perched on the edge of a knife. And yet, even as this Silent War between these groups continues to remain silent, each power finds itself in smaller conflicts along or within their borders.
On the continent of Lordaeron, the signatories of Ghostlands Pact wages war against the Scourge in the Plaguelands while seeking to rebuild their shattered kingdoms, ever watching the forces of the Alliance to their south, who have their own problems as the King of Ironforge seeks his missing daughter and Stormwind is beset by enemies internal, known and unknown.
But the Alliance must not only watch their rivals to the North, but watches across the sea, where their old enemies in the Horde have become a Grand Confederation of many peoples, building a new home and new unity for their races and seeking to forge a new sense of what it means to be, what the purpose of life even is. And to their north, the Night Elves have ended their long isolation and have formed the Hyjal Covenant - never again will they be so blind to the world that the Legion will launch a third invasion without them being there to stop it. And they will fight any they must to ensure Azeroth remains safe.
The Silent War rages across Azeroth, and the Illusion of Peace is more fragile than ever. And while the peoples of Azeroth remain focused on their own concerns, the Lich King looms in Icecrown, the Burning Legion waits beyond the stars, and the Old Gods lurk deep beneath the earth, plotting their freedom, the unmaking of the world and the corruption of the world-soul.
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Welcome to my AU of World of Warcraft - an Azeroth where politics and self-interest conflict with pragmatism and the imperatives of survival. Where almost no one carries the Idiot Ball or the Villain Ball, and where the four great powers of the world are led by people who may (in some cases) loathe each other, are at the very least, not stupid enough to keep fighting wars when their populations still need to recover, and mutual threats lurk. And yet, they are constantly seeking advantage for themselves over their rivals, and wage silent wars of espionage, diplomacy and sabotage,
It's a world where conflict is nearly constant on the fringes, but where an illusion of peace can remain, for most, that the horrors of the 'Third War' are in the past, that the conflicts of today are skirmishes at best, border wars at worst, nothing to be truly worried about.
I love the Warcraft setting - the lore, the characters, the peoples, the places, the story. I started with Warcraft 3 and Frozen Throne and even before playing WoW itself, I kept abreast of what was going on in the world, the stories and so on. And overall, I'm pretty happy with most of WoW, and mostly happy with what Blizzard has done with the setting.
But I'm not happy with all of it, and even if I was, everyone, myself included, has their own idiosyncratic tastes and interests. And being 'happy' with a writing choice doesn't necessarily make it my favorite choice or outcome.
This specific project started to develop when I realized that at least 80% of my specific individual complaints about WoW came from two, somewhat related issues - the fact that Blizzard decided to force the players into the Alliance/Horde dynamic, weave it into the very fabric of the game and make it a central point of the story, and the fact that WoW is an MMORPG.
The former is of course a choice Blizzard made, though for somewhat understandable reasons from a game design standpoint. The latter - well, much as WoW is a fun game, and has a good story overall, the medium of an MMO places inherent limits on the writers and their ability to tell a story.
Due to reasons ranging from the need to keep the player character both front and center yet invisible, the needs of PvP, the need for enemies, the demand for fresh content (and mutual content), the sheer amount of writing and coding all they have to do for the game and more, MMOs are, in my view, one of the least effective ways to tell a story in video game form. Video games can and have been truly great venues for storytelling, but MMOs are rarely going to ever crack the level of 'good' overall, with maybe some parts being great, and many more being 'meh' or downright bad (or worse).
I don't really blame Blizzard for not producing a great story given what they have to work with. They do need to step up their game more, but there's a ceiling to my expectations - plus, what I want and what the mass market wants are hardly the same thing.
This is not my attempt to rewrite WoW as a video game, and I'm not going to be concerned by video game mechanics or logic in this. It's not a full rewrite or rebuild of the setting from the ground up - were I doing that, the end result would be quite different. And while I will make a few small tweaks to the cosmology of the setting, largely I'm going to work with the cosmology that the canon lore has given us, insofar as it becomes relevant to the story I'm telling through this worldbuilding.
This is also not a pure divergence AU - while there will be something of a point of divergence, not everything that is different stems from it, and there will be things that are different before it. Largely, though, this timeline diverges from the moment Daelin Proudmore reached the shores of Kalimdor. Before that point, things mostly, mostly happened as they did in canon, with necessary expansions on limited information. After that, the changes pile up.
I am under no illusions that the basic premises of the setting are truly groundbreaking - people have taken issue with the two-sided faction war before, so breaking the Alliance and Horde back up into four factions has been a common solution. And other people have written or conceived of AUs where the characters don't carry as many Idiot and Villain Balls around, and certainly not as tightly as they do in canon.
I do think the particulars of my idea are at least somewhat unique in some places, though again, this is still well-trod ground. I will also admit that I've also borrowed two concepts/plot points/etc directly from @ganonso and their excellent Warcraft of Darkness project, which I will bring up when they're posted, and his worldbuilding has probably influenced this idea in other ways, because it is just... incredibly good, so there's probably going to be some less obvious unconscious borrowing as well.
So, after telling you what this isn't, what exactly is this? Well, as I said, it's an AU of Azeroth, written with a few basic notions in mind:
If it's sentient, it has a culture, a history, an organization and an agenda. WoW and Warcraft 3 before it are full of enemies that exist merely to be killed, mooks and creeps that are presented as basically some variation on 'acceptable targets' or 'always chaotic evil'. Given that a game that needs enemies, and an MMO needs lots of enemies, this is understandable. It has some unfortunate implications here and there, to say the least, but in the basics, I understand. Still, in this setting, gnolls and harpies and ogres and quillboars and centaurs and even murlocs will be more than just creeps. Some will still be hostile to the main factions, even to the point of de facto suicide, because mortals are prone to stupidity and suicidal dedication to their goals, but still. And each of these peoples will be more complicated and nuanced than in game, with different groups of gnolls or harpies or ogres behaving differently. Culture and Race are uncoupled here, to a great extent.
Azeroth Suffered Massively in Recent Years. Seriously - in the 25 years between the opening of the Dark Portal and the start of World of Warcraft, the Eastern Kingdoms especially have been utterly ravaged. Their population has to have cratered - World War I was a demographic disaster for Europe, and it took several decades for Europe to be ready to fight a new war, and even then, the effects of the population lost in WWI had huge impacts on the belligerents and their conduct. Meanwhile, the Eastern Kingdoms (not counting the undead commanded by the Scourge) probably have, at best, half the population they did before the Dark Portal opened? And while the continent of Lordaeron suffered the most there, Stormwind was sacked and devastated by the First and Second Wars, and even Khaz Modan was hardly untouched. The Night Elves lost their immortality, which will make almost anyone second-guess their risky actions, and the canon Western Horde isn't exactly bursting at the seams with overpopulation - they're all refugees to one extent or another, with a hell of a lot of death in their recent past, for crying out loud! The sheer cost in blood and treasure of the First, Second and Third Wars was massive, and yet both sides are willing to, forgive my language, stick their dicks into that woodchipper all over again? Yeah, I don't buy that. Not really. Not when they have all these other problems to be dealing with. So in this version of Azeroth, the powers of the world are aware of just how limited their resources are - no one is really equipped for a major war right now.
No One Is A Fucking Idiot. As I said, no idiot balls, no villain balls. There will be characters who do stupid things from time to time, and of course, no one will have complete awareness of everything and there will be 'wrong' decisions made, but they're not going to be morons. And while some of the major characters will indeed be 'evil' - insofar as that word can apply to mortal beings that have free will and free choice - that doesn't make them purely monstrous/pointlessly destructive, incapable of working with 'good' people for mutual goals, or again, stupid. Pragmatic evil will be the order of the day for many villains, and there's plenty of evil protagonists.
Politics. Just... politics. The four great powers that exist are specifically made up of distinct political entities, rather than races. The relationship between those entities inside each power is variable but they still exist to one extent or another. And pretty much all of these political entities, be it a tribe or a nation, have factions within it that have their own goals and agendas and ideas about how their people should deal with the world they face.
No Character Assassination. While this one is subjective, at least to varying extents, the Blizzard Writers absolutely assassinated some of the characters from WC3, Frozen Throne and the early days of WoW with some of their later writing. Which ones, and to which extent, of course, is a matter of debate, since we don't all agree on interpretations of these characters. And I'm sure some people will say that I'm assassinating this or that character, or at least getting them wrong. Still, however you slice it, Blizzard has had a problem with treating characters like narrative props, rather than people with their own histories, goals, motives and values, and in this project, I hope to avoid that.
Going forward, we're going to be looking at a detailed snapshot of the world as it exists in 25 ADP (After the Dark Portal, though no one uses that dating system in-universe, it's easier to use it here than to keep track of a dozen or more different calendar systems), and then we'll discuss some of the various storylines advancing the world forward.
One thing we will be doing is moving slower than the games - the canon current year in Azeroth is 33, possibly 34 depending on how much time Shadowlands takes. And it is an eight or nine year span that has been filled with so much insanity, so quick. Again, I understand why Blizzard does it that way, but realistically, things moving that fast doesn't work for me.
So, it'll be a few years in-universe before the Draenei arrive on Azeroth, and the return to Outland, and then several years more before the Invasion of Northrend and the renewed war against the Lich King. Which will also be a longer affair than the game presented. And yes, the Lich King will actually be killed, rather than just swapped out.
First up, we'll be seeing a closer look at the specific makeup of the four great powers I mentioned (Ghostlands Pact, Alliance, Grand Confederation, Hyjal Covenant), and then detailed looks at each one and their members, followed by a look at the various lesser powers, and then any minor powers. The Scourge, Burning Legion and the forces loyal to the Old Gods will get their own separate entries after that.
As a final note - because there have been several retcons and changes to the maps of Azeroth, as well as all sorts of compression and stretching at various points, getting a clear idea of what Azeroth actually looks like is... easier said than done. I've found various maps, fanmade, to try and correct the discrepancies, but even then, there's issues. So there's a certain amount of grain of salt here and there.
No one is entirely sure where the term 'the Silent War' came from. It was popularized by the book The Origins of the Silent War, Which Dominates our Times, published two months ago by the Stormwind-based Historian, Llore, though he lists several historians in Lordaeron, Darnassus, Ironforge, Silvermoon and Orgrimmar that he corresponded with to help in his research. In it, he detailed the development of the four alliances that dominated the modern world and how they had come to develop, their relationships among and within each other, and the conflicts they were waging beneath the surface.
Llore claims not to have coined the term himself, having heard it from others, and he cites the two possible origins for the term that he believes most likely:
The first was a council of war held by Lord Admiral Daelin Proudmoore and his senior Captains when discussing the deployment of various fleets 'in light of this silent war we're waging'. The second was a meeting between Regent Lord Lor'themar Theron, Grand Magister Rommath on one side, and the Archmages Rhonin and Modera, of the Kirin Tor. The purpose of the meeting, according to Llore, was to try to convince the two to try to ask Sylvanas to allow the Kirin Tor to return to the ruins of Dalaran and rebuild. Though Lor'themar was reportedly sympathetic to their desire to return home, Rommath was not, reportedly saying 'as things stand now, there's effectively a silent war between the Ghostlands Pact and the Alliance, and what's left of the Kirin Tor is far more partial to the Alliance than anyone in the Pact should be comfortable with.' That the Kirin Tor are still not welcome in the ruins of Dalaran should answer what the result of the meeting was.
Either way, the term does neatly encapsulate the issues facing the Ghostlands Pact, the Alliance, the Grand Confederation and the Hyjal Pact. For reasons of distraction, domestic priorities, friendships or simple lack of resources, none of the four powers are in a position to wage a war with one another, but there is distrust and hatreds, grievances old and new, and the paranoia of international affairs - are the armies the Kingdom next door is marshalling really to attack those ogres in the foothills, or is he going to be turning them against me?
The Silent War is not a declared war. There are no armies marching off to glorious battle, nor soldiers dying for the cause. The Silent War is one of espionage and diplomacy, spying on the efforts of your rivals and seeking to make allies with others before they do, or detach allies from your enemy's cause. It is a war of economics, as everyone tries to recover from the chaos of the last 25 years and all the attendant conflicts, and as everyone tries to stockpile weapons and other resources in preparation for whatever conflict comes next. It is a war of magic, as the spellcasters of all stripes work to develop powerful spells and weapons, new devices, constructs or summoned or bound entities - some with the intention of winning a war quickly in a brutal, single strike.
It is a war of border skirmishes, ignored and covered up, fought by accident or by zealots for either side clashing along the frontiers.
The primary Participants in the Silent War are the Ghostlands Pact, the Grand Confederation and the Alliance, but the Hyjal Covenant, much as their Ambassadors like to act above it all, are not immune to the suspicions and hatreds that create the conflict and give it continued life.
The Thrall may say the Horde and her allies do not want war, but when he looks across the sea and sees how much Daelin hates his people, how much Varian burns for war, he worries, and so prepares. In so preparing for war, Daelin and Varian have more evidence to support their claims that the orcs remain a militant threat, and so the cycle continues. And while he does not want war, there remain those among the orcs who, though not what the Horde was, would avenge themselves for the internment camps or other indignities. Or who think that ultimately, war still is what makes the orcs who they are - that in the end, they must fight, even if they shall do so with honor and decency, rather than the evils of their past.
In north-central Kalimdor, though the orcs withdrew from most of the forests of the continent, a small slice remains occupied, nominally ceded to the orcs, but Tyrande and Thrall both turn a blind eye to the attacks on the lumber-cutting operations there, and how sometimes, they cross the vague border set at the Falfarren river. It is a fight of few deaths, but many injuries, of destroyed equipment and ravaged nature. Stroke and counter stroke.
The night elves of Darnassus not only skirmish in Ashenvale, but look at their Blood Elf kin across the sea with utter disdain, see them embracing fel magic as a means for their revenge, and see the past repeating itself. They send spies and saboteurs, or try to turn the very land against their Blood Elves and their unnatural undead allies, and plan lightning raids or even invasion if they feel they must do so to set the world right. The Hyjal Covenant as a whole is not behind this, but the extremism of some night elves may force them into it.
The Ghostlands Pact in turn spares little interest or attention for the Hyjal Covenant, though their sneering disdain and quiet attempts to undermine them may change that. Aliden Perrenholde especially has little respect for the 'tree worshippers' and their 'bear and bird allies', but their enemies and rivals closer to home and heart in the form of the Scourge, the Amani and the Alliance attract their eyes more.
The Scourge and the Amani are obvious threats, but as for the Alliance - the Alliance is hated by Aliden Perrenholde for what they did to his Kingdom and his people, and he burns to see them all brought as low as he and his were. Even Sylvanas and Lor'themar, though admitting privately that Anasterian Sunstrider was a fool and an ingrate to leave the Alliance when he did, find the Alliance as it stands now arrogant and sanctimonious, having been safe and sound in their lands while the Scourge destroyed the north. Many Forsaken - living and dead - and Blood Elves believe that the squeamish Alliance does not have what it takes to do what must be done to defeat the Lich King, and worry that they will jostle their elbow at the wrong time. The Revantusk have old hatreds with the Wildhammer, and have a long memory for what their people have endured at the hands of many humans after the Troll Wars - their new alliance notwithstanding. But they are not equipped for war with the Alliance, and so they spy. They sabotage. Weapons enchanted by apprentices to the Magisters have a surprising tendency to turn up in the hands of the Defias Brotherhood, and the Revantusk have sold powerful acids and deadly poisons developed by the Forsaken to their distant kin in the Gurubashi League.
And the Alliance... the Alliance is divided, they are indeed struggling together - the gnomes want to reclaim their home, Magni Bronzebeard seeks his daughter, Stormwind has many who seek revenge, but the Defias Brotherhood and the King's inability to control his nobles, despite the wise words of his advisor Katrana Prestor, hampers their ability to prepare for war. The Dark Horde raids both Kingdoms' frontiers, and the cities of the Gurubashi League have grown closer together of late, rumors of a new Warlord rising among them reaching SI:7. Kul Tiras cannot carry a war by itself, while the leaders and people of Theramore largely see no reason for a new war, and Stromgarde cares only for reclaiming it's own lands and punishing Alterac for its crimes - real and perceived.
But many in the Alliance look at the Grand Confederation, and the Horde at it's heart, with concern at the very least, disdain more often, and hatred is far from uncommon. They look to the north and see in the Ghostlands Pact a mockery of everything the Alliance stands for - they see Alteraci traitors standing tall, and see in the undead a cruel parody of Lordaeron. They see Blood Elves who summon demons and use fel magics, and drain mana from any source they can to feed their addiction. They see trolls so treacherous and base they turn on their own kind - ignoring that trolls are no more a monolith than humans or elves. The Alliance sees a world gone mad that must be brought to order, brought back into the Light and they see threats to their people behind every corner.
And so the Alliance too, spies, and arms the enemies of their enemies, marshals resources and tries to keep their foes distracted and expending resources. The Scarlet Crusade is silently and secretly armed by SI:7 operating behind cutouts and puppets, while unusually well-armed pirates based out of 'hidden' Kul Tiran ports pillage the coasts and shipping of the Grand Confederation and the Ghostlands Pact. Gnomes and Dwarves have been spotted in Kalimdor, using their technology to spy on the Confederation, to harry it on the edges of what land it claims. And when soldiers fighting for the nations of the Pact and Alliance meet while fighting Boulderfist and Witherbark in Stromgarde, they are as likely to fight each other as those who brought that kingdom to the brink of ruin.
Though in all four powers, there are those who speak for peace, for accommodation, for ending the Silent War, there are those who push for greater and greater escalation.
But for now, with all the four must deal with, such escalation does not happen. But with so many cross-currents of fear, anger, hatred, suspicion and disdain, it is nearly impossible for those who preach peace to be listened to. For if one power starts to stand down, what if the others do not? And beyond that, everyone will need the soldiers and weapons they are preparing should the Lich King's gaze turn from Northrend, should the Burning Legion return, should the old gods shake at the prisons that hold them still.
And so, the Silent War continues - and Azeroth suffers not a grave injury, but a thousand tiny cuts, every day.
Considering itself to be the continuation of the original Alliance of Lordaeron, the Alliance as it is now simply called, or sometimes the Alliance of Stormwind (to the annoyance of people outside of that Kingdom), is the dominant power on the continents of Khaz Modan and Azeroth, though it is not unchallenged. It also has a small presence on both Kalimdor and a meaningful foothold on the continent of Lordaeron.
United by a shared history, and (mostly) a shared faith in the Church of the Holy Light, the members of the Alliance are tightly bound together, but are also pulled in a dozen directions by the myriad of threads and problems they face, internal and external. With two of its largest members having bypassed the Third War almost entirely, barring some expeditionary forces, the modern Alliance has the largest army and the largest warchest of any of the four powers, but also has some of the greenest troops, a fact that does not escape the wise among their leadership.
Rising from the ashes of the Second War, the Kingdom of Stormwind was entirely untouched by the Third War. While its detractors will claim that it stood by and let Lordaeron and other northern powers be destroyed, Stormwind's defenders will claim that by the time they both heard of what was happening and could marshal forces to do something about it, matters had advanced too far for them to be able to contribute much. In truth, between the terrorists of the Defias Brotherhood and skirmishes with the cities of the Gurubashi League, not to mention the presence of the so-called Dark Horde at Blackrock Spire, the Kingdom of Stormwind's ability to move forces to the north were greatly lessened anyway - even if King Varian Wrynn wasn't listening to his closest advisor, the Lady Katrana Prestor when she advised him his soldiers would not reach Lordaeron fast enough.
Regardless, Stormwind hosts refugees from the entire northern continent of the Eastern Kingdoms, and though it has still not resolved the threats it faces from within or without, Stormwind is powerful and knows it. Varian Wrynn is prone to belligerence and posturing, perhaps compensating for his inaction in the Third War, and some claim that the only reason he hasn't pushed harder for war is because it's unclear which enemy he'd like to defeat first.
Unlike their friends to the south, the Kingdom of Ironforge did indeed suffer at the hands of the Scourge, losing the brother of the King, and many soldiers dispatched to the north to aid their allies in Lordaeron and Dalaran, and then the forces under Garithos that fought to reclaim that land before the rise of the Forsaken. Still, with the territory of the Kingdom untouched, Ironforge is in good shape, but king Magni Bronzebeard must deal with the disappearance of his daughter and heir, as well as concerns regarding the Dark Horde and the Shadowforge Empire to the south. Magni does not burn for war, but stands ready to aid his friends and allies in defending or reclaiming their homelands, and hopes one day to pay Arthas back for the death of his brother.
When the gnomes of the Technocracy of Gnomeraggan dropped out of communication with even their closest friends in Ironforge, the worst was feared, and to an extent, those fears were proven true by the exodus of the gnomes to the surface after their loss to the troggs. This strange enemy that came from below the Gnomish city had bedevilled the gnomes for several years, during and after the Third War, until six months ago, when an attempt to defeat the troggs by flooding the city with radiation failed utterly, forcing the survivors to flee. With the help of the Ironforge dwarves, the gnomes under the lead of High Tinker Gelbin Mekkatorque have built their new haven of Tinker Town on the surface, and aid the Alliance with their technology, planning for their eventual return home.
In comparison to Varian's belligerency, Lady Jaina Proudmore, leader of the Theramore Freehold is as close to being a pacifist as one could find on Azeroth. Having lived through the horrors of the fall of Lordaeron, fought to establish their people on Kalimdor and then battled at Mount Hyjal against the legion, Jaina and her people are tired of war. Many would admit that they do not like the orcs of the Horde, nor do they trust that they have truly abandoned their past ways - but many admit that their former enemies are different. Made up of peoples from across the Eastern Kingdoms, Theramore is loyal to the Alliance, but as a constituent member rather than subordinated to anyone else, and they stand opposed to any new war, save that which might be fought against enemies common to all life - the Burning Legion and the Lich King.
Though ruled by Jaina's father, Daelin Proudmore, the Admiralty of Kul Tiras shares none of her commitment to peace. Daelin, unlike Varian, did what he could to aid Lordaeron during the war, providing blood and treasure to the remnants of the Alliance afterwards, and contributing forces and ships to Jaina's expedition to Kalimdor. Daelin hates the orcs for all they did in the Second War, and hates the Ghostlands Pact for being traitors, monsters and defilers. But despite his hatreds and his desires for war, he is unlike Varian in that he knows the Alliance is not ready for such conflicts yet, and so bides his time, while hoping to one day convince his wayward daughter to see things his way. Until that time, the ships of Kul Tiras harass those of the Ghostlands Pact and the so-called Grand Confederation under the cover of piracy, and Daelin strengthens his navy - when the war he craves comes, he will win it permanently, securing peace forever after.
The Wildhammer Clan was a member of the Alliance during the Second War, and did not depart it before the Third, but it only formally rejoined the modern incarnation - despite close ties to Ironforge and Stormwind - recently. Uninterested in fighting aggressive wars against Lordaeron or Quel'thalas, or even Alterac, it was only when the Revantusk trolls, fresh from their coup in Jintha'Alor, joined the with those three nations that the Wildhammer Clan, under the leadership of High Thane Falstad Dragonreaver, pledged common cause anew with their southern cousins and their allies, their gryphon riders an especially welcome addition to the forces of the Alliance.
A former member now returned to the modern alliance is the Kingdom of Stromgarde, under the leadership of King Galen Trollbane. Once a founding member of the Alliance of Lordaeron, Stromgarde left the Alliance in the aftermath of the Second War, and managed, by luck, to ride out the Scourge with minimal attacks on their frontier and a few scattered attempts by cells of the Cult of the Damned to undermine the Kingdom. When the Kingdom of Alterac formally reformed two years ago and claimed the Hillsbrad Foothills, Galen began preparing and marshalling his forces to invade - but was surprised by an alliance of Boulderfist ogres and Witherbark trolls, who ambushed his forces as they gathered and conquered a great swath of his Kingdom, pushing him to a mere quarter of what he once held. Desperate, and now facing Alterac conquering parts of his kingdom as they pushed back against the Boulderfists, Galen was eventually forced to reach out to the Alliance in the hopes of protecting what was left of his Kingdom to him, and in hopes of eventually taking it back. He desires nothing more than a war against Alterac once he has beaten back the trolls and ogres, but doing so would spark a greater war between the Alliance and Alterac's allies.
Those allies that Stromgarde cannot provoke - yet - are the four nations that make up the Ghostlands Pact. The Pact began as a treaty signed three years ago by Sylvanas Windrunner and Lor'themar Theron over the corpse of the late, unlamented Dar'Khan Drathir. This Treaty of Deatholme pledged mutual support between the Kingdoms of Lordaeron and Quel'Thalas and defense, and was signed with the primary goals of purging the Plaguelands of the Lich King and one day taking the war to Icecrown to bring final end to the Lich King and his Scourge. And that remains the underlying goal, but the needs of the current day, of defense against the Amani Empire, the Scarlet Crusade, the Scourge in the Plaguelands and the threat of war with the Alliance have seen the Pact expand.
Driven by convenience, mutual hatred and mutual gain, the Ghostlands Pact is a fragile one, but their common foes stand to keep them together, for now. The Ghostlands Pact, outnumbered and desperate, has turned to dire ends to ensure their survival and victory.
Forged in the aftermath of the Scourge Civil War that followed the Third War, the Forsaken Kingdom of Lordaeron, under the leadership of the so-called Banshee Queen, the Dark Lady Sylvanas Windrunner, is a kingdom of the dead, and the living. Ravaged as it was by Arthas, Lordaeron's few surviving citizens were left with few desirable options as the Scourge's grip on the region slowly tightened, until Sylvanas defeated the Dreadlords Detheroc and Balnazzar and claimed the city of Lordaeron for herself. Either out of genuine sentiment, or pragmatism, Sylvanas reached out to those still alive in Lordaeron, bringing them into the fold under her leadership. While not all embraced her reign or her regime, the security she provides has, for many, been enough to make them willing to give her the benefit of the doubt - and many more have come into the fold after the much beloved Calia Menethil, resurfacing after several years in hiding, endorsed Sylvanas's rule, and now serves as one of her advisors, representing the still minority living that dwell in Lordaeron today.
The Blood Elves of the Kingdom of Quel'Thalas suffered greatly at the hands of the Scourge, and it is only by chance, force of will and the deep wells of magical power in the hands of the survivors that Quel'Thalas continues to exist at all, in the diminished state that it does now. Having reclaimed the forests of their Kingdom from organized threats posed by the Undead, the Blood Elves continue to be concerned by the Amani Empire to their east, and by the threat of the Scourge coming back from the Plaguelands. Determined to never allow their home to be taken again, the Blood Elves pursue any magic they can, while feeding their own hunger for magic by any and all means available - including a captive naaru, sent to them from Outland by the Prince, Kael'thas Sunstrider. Though Kael'thas has been able to send more magic to help manage his people's addiction, he has not returned from Outland, leaving leadership in the hands of the Regent Lord, Lor'themar Theron. But in the ruins of Dalaran, far from the eyes of the southern powers, Forsaken and Blood Elves mages work to create a stable gateway to Outland, to allow for a much steadier flow of captured and stored magic to Quel'Thalas, and to reunite with their people that followed Kael'thas to that blasted world.
Occupied and then dissolved during the Second War for its treachery, the Kingdom of Alterac has been reborn under the leadership of King Aliden Perrenholde. Having spent the intervening years between the Second and Third War waging first a political campaign and then military asymmetric war for his Kingdom and Throne, Aliden's forces represented the only organized military in Alterac when elements of the Scourge started to reach the mountains and valleys of the former Kingdom, following the collapse of Lordaeron's military. Though the Scourge never put much effort into attacking Alterac before its own civil war, Aliden used this reality to rally the people to him, reclaimed the ruins of his capital and crowned himself King once more. It was this act that saw Sylvanas, eager for more forces to aid her in her eventual revenge and concerned about the Alliance jostling her elbow in an excess of self-righteousness, reached out to Aliden, offering to add him to the Ghostlands Pact, and allowing Aliden and Alterac to assume control of the Hillsbrad Foothills, a region that that had only been lightly hit by the Scourge and had not yet accepted Sylvanas's leadership anyway. Aliden and his inner circle burn to revenge Alterac the indignities it suffered, and as such, when Stromgarde was nearly conquered by ogres and trolls, took advantage of the chaos to steal the northern marches of that Kingdom for Alterac - only stopping when Stromgarde reached out to the Alliance. Even now, despite the fact that ogres and trolls nominally hold the land between them, soldiers of Alterac and Stromgarde skirmish in the lands that once served as the heartland of Arathor. Alterac's lately developed expertise in ambush and deception has stood it well, though if open warfare with the Alliance begins, some wonder if Alterac will stand up in prolonged front-line warfare.
The most unlikely member of the Ghostlands Pact is the Dominion of Jintha'Alor, made up of Forest Trolls, once of the Amani Empire. Their story of inclusion in the Pact is a complex one - pariahs among their kin for their continued support for the Horde even after the failure of the Silvermoon Campaign, the Revantusk under the leadership of Primal Torntusk nearly joined Thrall in his exodus to Kalimdor, before deciding to remain in the Hinterlands. This choice left them exposed to the Vilebranch, who had ruled in Jintha'Alor in the name of the Amani Emperors for centuries, and who desired sacrifices for their bloody rituals. But as the Vilebranch also began a campaign to subjugate the Witherbark, a campaign that went poorly at first, the Revantusk took advantage of their almost legendary silver tongues, convincing the lower classes of Jintha'Alor, and even some in the city's military leadership, that the Vilebranch were the problem. A palace coup after a well-timed riot saw the Vilebranch purged from control of the city, and the Revantusk taking their place and declaring independence from Zul'Aman, though the Witherbark were forced out of the Hinterlands and into the ruins of Stromgarde entirely. With the Amani Empire threatening to forcibly bring Jintha'Alor back into loyalty, the Revantusk debated reaching out to those they remained friends with in distant Kalimdor, before turning to the Ghostlands Pact - Lor'themar, knowing full well that the Revantusks were among the least objectionable of the Forest Trolls, and happy for any counterbalance to the Amani, was not the stumbling block Sylvanas and Aliden had expected. And while the Revantusk are now allies with Alterac, Lordaeron and Quel'Thalas, they do remain friendly with the Horde and their new Grand Confederation, a fact which keeps both Varian Wrynn and Daelin Proudmoore angry and awake at night, and doesn't do much for the sleep of Magni Bronzebeard or Falstad Dragonreaver.
I will not be releasing updates this quickly forever, but I have gotten my notes written up into comprehensible form for several more posts to go so for now, enjoy another post
The Grand Confederation
All too often, The Horde and the Grand Confederation are considered to be the same entity, but the difference between the two is real and substantive. When the orcs under Thrall's command and their new friends among the Darkspear landed in Kalimdor, they made quick common cause with the Tauren under Cairne Bloodhoof, but as they fought their way across Kalimdor, searching for their destinies, they made friends and enemies with several other peoples in the dusty and barren region they landed in. After the battle of Mount Hyjal and the near-miss that Daelin Proudmoore's expedition to Kalimdor represented, Thrall and the other leaders of the Horde sought to formalize those friendships - but those peoples were not interested in merely acceding to the leadership of Thrall as Warchief - necessitating the creation of a Grand Confederation, building on the term used when disparate tribes of multiple races on Kalimdor had found cause to unite in peace and friendship. The Treaty of Orgrimmar, though written down like a pact one might find in the Eastern Kingdoms, is indeed modeled on the many such oral oaths of peace and friendship that had preceded them. Pledging mutual defense and trade, the peoples that make up the Grand Confederation are most concerned with security a future for themselves beyond hardscrabble living and constant major or existential conflict.
First and foremost among the Confederation, of course, is The Horde, a true superstate uniting the orcs of the Nation of Durotar, the trolls of the Darkspear Tribe and the Tauren of the League of Mulgore. The Horde shares a common military command structure, a common system for military requisitions and exchange (the Horde has a largely barter and exchange economy, internally), and has begun to develop other common institutions between them as the ties binding the three peoples together grow deeper, such as shared shamanic and druidic education. And still, the Horde's future is uncertain - close bonds of friendship between Cairne, Vol'jin and Thrall serve to keep them together, and growing friendships between segments of the peoples they lead helps, but the question lurks in all their minds - what happens if one of them passes? There are among the Tauren and Trolls especially some who are not happy with the Horde, and while Thrall has done his best to excise from his people the ghosts of their past sins, there still remain those among the orcs who would quietly advocate for orcs ruling over other races, rather than merely allying with them.
Until such time, however, the Horde remains the greatest power in the Grand Confederation, overwhelming in sheer numbers the forces available to the other signatories of the Treaty of Orgrimmar - and yet, the others bring advantages of their own.
Harpies have long been powerbrokers in Kalimdor, able to make or break military campaigns or trade by raiding or not raiding those who might travel through or near the territories they claim for their own. Many flights of harpies are hostile to outsiders, only placatable by offering of gemstones or other shiny objects, greatly prized by the harpies. But some flights, either by long cohabitation with peoples they could not defeat, the exigencies of survival or by the random luck of history, have found themselves more willing to work with outsiders. Among those, two flights, the Bloodfury and Dustwind have joined the Grand Confederation, serving as aerial scouts and support, as well as messengers and couriers for their allies in times of conflict. Led by Bloodfury Ripper and Areva the Cyclone1 respectively, these two tribes made the decision to solidify their ties to the Horde, already developing by this point, after Rexxar defeated Bloodfeather, a powerful harpy of the Witchwing Flight that both the Bloodfuries and Dustwinds hated and loathed, proving that the Horde was truly an ally worthy of their time. Today, these two tribes keep to themselves apart from the matters of common defense, and to trade for the gemstones they so prize.
Even while the Tauren and Harpies lived there, the region of Kalimdor known as the Barrens was dominated by the Quillboars, an aggressive and tenacious people known for their deep religious faith and potent geomancy. Consumed by internecine warfare when the Horde first passed through the region on the way to Mulgore, they were initially of little relevance, fought or bypassed as needed. But during the struggle to fully expel the Centaurs from Mulgore, the Horde found itself receiving unexpected aid from two Quillboar tribes, who had their own grievances with the Centaurs, ranging big and small, for centuries and more. These two tribes, the Razormane, led by Mangletooth and the Bristleback, led by Sharptusk Thornmantle, were not friends with each other, but seeing their old Centaur enemies on the backfoot was enticing enough for them to momentarily put aside their differences - and, soon enough, reach out to the Horde. By the time of the battle of Mount Hyjal, both tribes had found much to admire in the orcs and their stubborn determination to carve out a new home for themselves, and they found value in getting the help of the Horde in staving off attacks by the more powerful, and increasingly necromantic, Razorfen Tribe. When the Treaty of Orgrimmar was written and the Grand Confederation established, both the Razormane and Bristleback signed on - though the two tribes still see skirmishes between young hotheads, there have been no casualties in those fights in the last few years.
In days past, during the Second War, ogres were members of the Horde, and indeed all ogres present on Azeroth came through the Dark Portal at one point or another. While today the relationship between Ogres and Orcs on Azeroth is rarely friendly outside of dangerous cults like the Twilight's Hammer, there are some instances where they have worked together - largely as mercenaries. But in the case of the Stonemaul Clan, as full members of the Grand Confederation. Their friendship with the Horde began nearly a year after the the Battle of Mount Hyjal, when members of the clan, then living in Dustwallow Marsh, appealed to the Horde for aid against their brutal new leader, Kor'gall, who was driving the Stonemaul to ruin in pursuit of his own power. Rexxar, by then an accomplished hero for the Horde, managed to rally the Stonemaul against Kor'gall and those few loyal to him, eventually slaying the ogre leader in single combat. The Stonemauls are now led by Mok'Morokk, an ogre less brutal and power hungry than Kor'gall, but the rumors suggest that may only be a matter of degree, rather than kind.
The latest and oddest addition to the Grand Confederation is the Dragonmaw Clan - or at least, that part of it that remains in the Wild Highlands, rather than those portions that continue to serve the Dark Horde in the Wetlands or Burning Steppes. Under the leadership of the Warlord Zaela, this segment of the Dragonmaw managed to stay relatively hidden in the remote home they'd made for themselves, reports of orcs in the area always being ascribed to the Dark Horde. During the events called the Third War, some elements of these Dragonmaw wanted to return to their former demon masters, but most did not - sparking a civil war that drew the attention of the Wildhammer to the Dragonmaw in the Wild Highlands. Still, the Wildhammer could only devote so many resources to the matter and for a time, things seemed to stall out, until the Revantusk's coup in Jintha'alor and their subsequent addition to the Ghostlands Pact led to the Wildhammer joining the Alliance - which prompted the Dragonmaw, in desperation, to reach out to Thrall and the Horde. Thrall was very hesitant to accept their entreaties, given the Dragonmaw's past, and the fact that though they were no longer servants of demons, they were still quite militant and unruly, as their growing skirmishes with the Wildhammer proved - nor were they as repentant of their former sins when under demonic influence as he might have liked. But he did not want to leave them to the tender mercies of Varian and Daelin either. After much deliberation, he finally agreed to let them sign onto the Treaty of Orgrimmar, letting them be allies of the Horde, but not members of the Horde, not folded into Durotar. There is some reason to believe that this holding at arm's length by Thrall has bred resentment among the Dragonmaw in the Wild Highlands, but they need the Horde and the Grand Confederation too much to make open issue of it, for now - with their signature on the Treaty of Orgrimmar, an attack by the Wildhammer against them would spark a war, and though that war may someday come, it will not come yet.
1: A wholly original character. Given the sheer dearth of named Harpies and none for the Dustwinds, I just had to come up with something that sounded appropriate and went from there. Areva got her sobriquet because she's highly skilled with wind magic.
Among the Night Elves, it is believed that no people were more changed by the events surrounding the Second Invasion of the Burning Legion than themselves. This would, of course, be disputed by almost any other being that heard such a bold claim, but there is at least truth in this: The Night Elves came out of the war greatly changed.
For ten thousand years, the Night Elves, as a whole, had been content to lurk in their forests, to guard the ancient ruins of their old Empire in a few places beyond in Southern and Central Kalimdor and in the Broken Isles, and little else. Only a few events, such as the War of the Shifting Sands, were enough to draw them from their splendid Isolation, where they worshiped Elune, dreamed the Emerald Dream, and seemed content to bask in their immortality and sense of superiority - they were the first civilization. They were blessed by Elune. They had driven off the Burning Legion, and no longer practiced the vile mages of the Arcane. They were one with nature, worked alongside the Ancients and the Wild Gods, and in the minds of some, the rightful custodians of the world - if they ever cared enough to take on that role.
Which, of course, they never did.
Ten Thousand Years of watching the slopes of Mount Hyjal, and they missed the events half a world away that could have told them the Burning Legion had turned it's eye back to Azeroth. And despite their success against the Legion the first time, they found that they could not defeat this second one - the Scourge that served them was a threat the Night Elves were ill-equipped to fight, and the Legion had learned from their previous failure. Only by working with the younger and - some would say - lesser races had the Night Elves managed to even stave off the Legion, and only long enough for a desperate gamble to work - and when it did work, it took from the Night Elves their immortality. And for many among the leaders of the Night Elves, it took from them a measure of their arrogance.
With their homelands ravaged and the World Tree undone, the Night Elves needed a new home, and they found it, in the boughs of a new tree planted by some among the Night Elves who still sought their former immortality anew. Though the attempt failed, the creation of the tree Teldrassil created a new center for the Night Elves, with the city of Darnassus being founded atop it, the capital of a newly reorganized nation now formally called the Teldrassil Sanctity. While the Night Elves have, led by Tyrande Whisperwind and the clergy of Elune still, dedicated themselves to purging the remains of the Burning Legion from their lands and cleaning up the damages their invasion wrought, as well as coming to terms with what it means to exist in this new world as mortal beings, they have also been taught a harsh lesson - they cannot ignore the rest of the world. And they cannot ignore that the Burning Legion will no doubt try again, or deny that the Scourge still exists, and may one day return to Kalimdor.
In the months after the Battle of Mount Hyjal, there were some in Darnassus who, when faced with the realities of all their people had lost in the Second Invasion, promoted allying with the Horde - the Tauren worshiped Elune via their Earthmother, the orcs showed a certain reverence for the natural world, even if in a much lesser way than the Night Elves, and Thrall especially had become a friend to Tyrande and Malfurion as a result of their blood spilled together at Mount Hyjal. But the Night Elves could not forget the death of Cenarius, and though the orcs who had been behind that crime had been punished, it was still not enough for some. Others looked to the Alliance, or rather, they looked to Jaina Proudmoore, who they had also fought and bled with at Mount Hyjal. In the teachings of the Light, there were the echoes of their own faith in Elune, some Night Elves believed. But there too were problems - Varian and Daelin were warmongers that Tyrande deemed more concerned about the Horde than the greater problems that faced the world, and too many Night Elves considered the humans especially to be far too short sighted and hasty as a species.
As a result, in the end, Tyrande reached out first to the Furbolgs, long friends to the Druids among the Night Elves. The Furbolgs, in tune with nature in a way that even Night Elves could not manage, were greatly affected by the Burning Legion's ravages, many of tribes becoming corrupted or driven mad by the damage to the natural world around them. Still, a few tribes managed to escape that fate, often with the help of the Night Elves, and among them, four tribes joined with the Night Elves in the newly forged Hyjal Covenant. The Stillpine Tribe of Azuremyst Isle under the leadership of a High Chieftain who has surrendered his name for that of his tribe, the Barkskin Tribe that still live on the Slopes of Mount Hyjal and led by a Shaman whose name has been left to the Wild Gods and the Spirits1, the Thistlefur Tribe of Ashenvale Forest led by Dal Bloodclaw, and the Timbermaw Tribe in the Felwood, led by Tur Ragepaw.
But the Barkskin Furbolgs were not the only people living on the slopes of Mount Hyjal, nor the only people to join the forces under Thrall, Jaina and Tyrande in their defense of the World Tree. The Shadowtooth Tribe of Dark Trolls, among the last of a dwindling people who never built empires to match those of their cousins, made common cause with the Night Elves at that momentous battle - for millennia the Dark Trolls had avoided the Night Elves and carefully refrained from drawing their attention in any form, but with their entire culture having survived by the sheerest luck, the Shadowtooth, under the leadership of the Shadowpriest Dan'jin2, have decided that if there is any hope for their long term survival, and that of their ancient traditions and customs, their long isolation must end, as it has for the Night Elves. The Shadowtooth may now be allies of Teldrassil, but there are some in Darnassus who look down on the Dark Trolls, and some among the Dark Trolls who instead look south to their distant kin on the Echo Isles, rather than northeast to Teldrassil.
The final member of the Hyjal Covenant is the Wormwing Flight, a group of peaceable and friendly Harpies that had long protected the Shrine of Aviana and learned from the Druids of the Talon that based themselves there. Under the leadership of their latest matriarch, Marion Wormwing, they have gladly accepted the chance to fight alongside their druidic friends and their people. Though they have long been peaceful, they can be roused to righteous anger when their lands are threatened, their friends are harmed or the winged and feathered animals of the world are slain recklessly or with abandon.
Unlike the Alliance, the Ghostlands Pact and the Grand Confederation, while the Hyjal Covenant is nominally a union of distinct units with equal standing, in practice, the Teldrassil Sanctity dictates policy to their allieson a far greater level than even the Horde does to the Grand Confederation. This is due to the fact that the member furbolg tribes and the Wormwing harpies are both long used to listening to and obeying the wisdom of the Night Elves, and the fact that Teldrassil overwhelms the others in size and power significantly more than even the Horde does for its allies.
1: Since the leader of the Stillpine Tribe is just called High Chief Stillpine, I decided to frame it as him surrendering any name other than that of his tribe. When I expand on the Furbolgs more, since the information in the lore is sparse, I'm going to build on that idea as a notion that many Furbolgs, especially leaders, surrender their names in some fashion as a sort of ritual representing their dedication to the community over themselves. The Barkskin tribe has no known leader, but some spectulation exists that the Shaman you meet in two earlier NE missions is the leader of that tribe, so I went with that.
2: There's no known Dark Troll NPCs with names that I could find save for the Speaker in Zandalar in BfA, so I made up a name. I realize it was a bit lazy to just go with a 'jin name, but since it does appear to be common... 🤷 Also, though I'll get more into it when I discuss the Cult of the Forgotten Shadow, the one thing about the cosmology I'm changing for this is the weird retcon of shadow and shadow priests actually worshiping the void. They channel 'Shadow', rather than the void, with Shadow being a distinct force. The details themselves will come later, but suffice to say Shadow and Void are distinct things in this version of Azeroth.
So this post ended up ballooning to nearly 4000 words, which was not what I had in mind when I started writing it, but splitting it up into smaller posts seemed to break up the flow of the discussion much more than I wanted.
So taking a step back from the kind of IC nature of the last five posts, let's talk about the four major powers in a bit of a meta sense.
The Ghostlands Pact is where I started with this idea - while I do like the Horde as a concept, I don't like it when my Blood Elf or Forsaken characters are in it. Aesthetically and thematically, I've never really felt like those two belonged in the Horde, and it always bugs me that, for instance, Sylvanas has to take the title Warchief, that she relocates to Orgrimmar (why does the Orcish capital have to be the heart of the Horde if the orcs aren't the ones in charge?) and the ranking titles and so on for the Horde don't fit for the Blood Elves or the Forsaken. And, to my eyes, Blizzard really goes out of their way to define the Alliance and Horde conflict as humans vs orcs, as if this is Warcraft I all over again.
I do get, in a step back and look at it from Blizzard's POV, why they did it - the Horde since WC3 anyway, was cast, initially, as all the maligned and 'mook' 'evil' races of fantasy being presented as good, or at least, goodish - orcs, trolls, minotaurs, undead, later goblins, and while the Blood Elves on the surface don't seem to fit, between their name, their red aesthetic, their revenge-driven mentality and the whole siphoning magic thing, they do fit. (Of course, then Blizzard decided to nerf that, so wtf). The Worgen joining the Alliance kind of ruined that theme as well, but by then they'd already decided to undermine their own ideas with the Horde anyway, so...
But I was, as others have, thinking, what if the Forsaken and Blood Elves had decided to go off and form their own faction, with blackjack, and hookers. Of course, those two alone can't stand up to the Alliance, so then I needed to find them friends. I debated going so far as having the Amani Empire sign onto their alliance of convenience, or be forced to, but I just couldn't see the Amani going for it - the Reventusk alliance alone is making racist blood elves explode, so Amani would be several bridges too far. Alterac was picked because they're a wasted opportunity in the canon, IMO, reduced to the Syndicate, who are just mooks, and a battleground we don't need.
As a faction, the Ghostlands Pact consists of groups and peoples that were all brought low, and refuse to be brought low again. There's very much a vibe of 'we've been hurt, and we will not be hurt again, whatever we have to do', and they are the faction that is willing to cross just about every line except Scourge-style necromancy (the Forsaken do ensure all undead who join them choose freely, no enslavement). But beyond that, there's little they're unwilling to do if it will help them survive and get them revenge on those who hurt them.
The Blood Elves are embracing fel magic. They're not stupid enough to eat it, though some have started quietly advocating it. But they are using bound demons and fel-powered constructs to support their tiny military and warlocks are nearly as common a sight as magisters. They're feeding on M'uru and anything else they can, to help them manage their addictions, and they treat those who go overboard with varying levels of callous brutality.
The Forsaken are not embracing any sort 'new plague', because honestly, the idea of a plague that kills living and undead just... makes no sense. How does that even work? Also, its more of that cartoonish evil I want to set aside. What they are doing is chemical weaponry - airborne toxins akin to Chlorine Gas or Mustard Gas, powerful acids, that sort of thing. Attacks to destroy morale by whatever means possible - when they're done in a smart, targeted way (or at least, intended to be done so, no plan survives contact with the enemy and all).
For the Alteraci, after years of asymmetric warfare, they're very good at it - they're terrorists that have become an army. They're the kinds of people that will sneak killers into your camp and butcher your officers and leave their bodies, flayed or otherwise done up in horrifying and gruesome ways, on full display before they leave. They poison wells and burn supply depots and target civilian support staff - not killing entire towns or villages, or at least not without very good reason, but if you're on or even near the battlefield, you're a combatant. Years of this have taken quite a toll on the leaders of Alterac's military, and they are harsh and cruel to their enemies. They work quite closely with Sylvanas's Dark Rangers - Halduron Brightwing and his Farstriders too, but Halduron has the most 'lines left uncrossed' of all the GP military leaders, so he's always a bit 'ehhhhh' about the Alteraci and the Dark Rangers.
For Jintha'alor, they were cast aside by the Amani Empire, then preyed on by the Vilebranch and attacked by the Wildhammer for old hatreds and old wars. They are, as I said, skilled diplomats and convincers - they have connections and friends with criminals and dissidents across the Eastern Kingdoms, they make friends easily. They're arguably the most approachable of the Ghostlands Pact, but if they need to, they will just keep you close while they line up your best friend to stab you in the back. They are willing to make use some of the darker, less moral Loa (though not Hakkar) if they must, especially Dambala, the loa of Treachery. They have no qualms about poison, and have worked up poisons more powerful than even the Forsaken Apothecaries (though the Forsaken are the ones who managed to make them airborne) and they use charms and potions and elixirs on volunteers among their best warriors to make them into killing machines - but the experience is incredibly painful and can go wrong quite disastrously if not done exactly right.
The Ghostlands Pact is, in other words, the 'edgy' faction, though I do hate that word for being too reductive. They fight hard, fight dirty, and will do whatever it takes to win. They may not be as large in population as other factions, but their advantage is their brutality.
Selecting the factions for the Alliance was pretty easy, because they already exist. With Daelin alive, there's no reason for Kul Tiras to sulk in silence for 10 years, and Theramore should already be a distinct entity anyway rather than tied to Stormwind. Stromgarde being included is another part of that - humanity has many nations, let's use as many as we can.
The Alliance, in contrast to the Pact or the Horde (in this and most universes), is fantasy tropes played mostly straight - they're the stereotypical good kingdoms, they have the Light's blessing, they have a long history of established realms, they have the largest standing professional armies, and so on.
They're also the faction that has the most racists in positions of power (the other three have racists, yes, but not running the show) and they're the most self-righteous faction. They are, after all, the good guys of the story, right? So they can't actually do anything that's questionable, because if they do it, it's right! And everyone else - well, they're the villains. They deserve what's coming for them.
This is not universal, of course, but it is the big flaw they have, apart from disunity - because the Alliance is pulled in many directions. Stromgarde doesn't really care about the Grand Confederation (at least not for now), being monotasked on reclaiming their land and punishing Alterac; Ironforge is distracted by Magni's missing daughter and questions of succession if she isn't found; Varian and Daelin are belligerent (while Varian is being played like a fiddle on most things by his 'highly capable' advisor Katrana Prestor) while Jaina is nearly, but not quite, a pacifist. The gnomes want their homeland back, and the Wildhammer really don't care much about Alterac, Quel'Thalas or Lordaeron (not enough to fight them if they don't have to) but do hate the Revantusk and Dragonmaw.
In a purely defensive war, or at least one there's no ambiguity who started it, the Alliance will hold together - Varian is smarting too much over his failures in the 'Third War' to be convinced to not help his allies if attacked again, though Katrana's influence could screw up a lot of things on the back end. But if there's ambiguity in who started it, or if it is outright started by the Alliance? Theramore is probably likely to declare neutrality, depending, and so too might Stromegarde if it's against the GC (Galen doesn't like the GC, they're barbarian savage monsters, but he's got much bigger fish to fry at home), and if Alliance - GP war happened, the Wildhammer would be divided by needing watch the Dragonmaw and probably focus entirely on the Revantusk. Plus, there's the endless brushfire frontier border wars with the Gurubashi and the Defias Brotherhood's terrorist attacks.
The Alliance also has the greenest rank and file troops, with the exception of Theramore and much of the Kul Tiras Marines (and some elements of Ironforge's armies). Their command staff and officer corps consists of first and second war veterans, and they have the most experience and expertise with the logistics needed for a modern, conventional war between nations. In a straight war against any one other power, they probably win. They're weak on magic, to a limited extent. They don't have the same depth of arcane magic the Pact has, nor the depth of shamanism and druids of the GC or the Hyjal, but they do have plenty to work with in magic. The Kirin Tor is a shell of itself, but has largely aligned with the Alliance. There are plenty of mages in Theramore, tidesages in Kul Tiras, the gnomes and their magic, including the gnomes willingness to accept warlocks. And they have the largest pool of priests and paladins, giving them plenty of healing power.
The Grand Confederation's name actually proved to be the hardest part - I wanted to include a bunch of the 'creeps' of Kalimdor, but I didn't see them joining the Horde outright as the superstate led by the Warchief. But equally, I couldn't suite see the orcs, Darkspear and tauren splitting up entirely just yet - not with the people who are in charge of them. So I figured some sort of supra-organization the Horde was in, and I cycled through several names, like the Orgrimmar League, the Kalimdor Union, etc, but none sounded good until I came up with the Grand Confederation and a good explanation for where the name came from in-universe. Namely, that in the past, when tribes of multiple races would make oaths of friendship and peace between themselves, the resulting collective would be called a 'Confederation'.
The Grand Confederation's great strength, overall, is the tight bonds of friendship between the three leaders of the Horde, and the overall sense of unity and common defense they have. There are certainly issues and rifts, like between the Dragonmaw and the Horde proper, and within the Tauren about how to handle the Centaurs pushed back to Desolace, the Razormane and Bristleback not liking each other, etc but overall, they're pretty tight. But that's for common defense - anything else, and they'd probably have a lot less closeness. Thankfully, warmongers don't run the show, at the moment.
Shamanism is the great magical strength of the GC, and they can call on the spirits to do some pretty fantastic things. They also have a lot of reserved resources under the earth - Southern and Central Kalimdor didn't have a lot of mining done in the last 10,000 years. They don't have a large standing army, but pretty much every able-bodied citizen can be a soldier if they're needed, and fairly quickly too. The GC does fall much closer to the 'warrior' side of that whole 'warrior vs soldier' dispute, especially among the Tauren, Quillboars and Harpies, but even the Orcs and Darkspear have tinges of that. Still, that fierceness can pay off in battle. The GC is tenacious and will not surrender until they've made their enemies pay for every inch of ground, and they will go on the offensive if you give them an opening, no matter how slight. They fight quickly, which can cost them if they act too recklessly, but it can also knock their enemy back on their asses if they're not prepared for the pace.
Overall, the GC's hat is finding meaning and purpose and new identities - the orcs of Durotar and the Darkspear are refugees twice over, and have to forge new senses of who and what they are in this new, shared homeland. The Tauren have reclaimed Mulgore, but they're transitioning to a settled people now that their friends and allies can help assure them that they won't need to pack up and run at an instant if the centaurs come back in force. The harpies and Quillboars and Stonemaul are all moving in the direction of a more 'civilized' (for lack of a better word) system, but slowly. Distant memories of the Gorian Empire are at least helping the Stonemaul rethink their life and society. Ogre Magi and Harpies are the primary source of arcane magic for the GC, and it's not on the same level as the Alliance, let alone the Pact. There are a few troll arcanists too, but the Darkspear Tribe doesn't have many, but contact with other trolls that do do it is rebuilding the notion. Trolls were once skilled with arcane magic, but the Darkspear lost most of that transition during their flight from Stranglethorn.
They're slowly building or rebuilding institutions, they're dealing with the ghosts of their past (in the case of the orcs especially), they still need to build a ton of the physical infrastructure of nations, and there's the question of if the friendships will last in the long run - who succeeds Thrall as Warchief? Carine leads the Tauren because almost all the tribes respect him and it was his friendship with Thrall that got them Mulgore. But it's not like every Tauren loves the Horde. Vol'jin has the same problem - his people follow him because he's Sen'jin's son and has their respect, but again, not every Darkspear loves the Horde.
In some ways, the GC as a defensive alliance could serve as a backup if the Horde proper unravels - if after the death of Thrall or Cairne or Vol'jin, one or more of the three members decided to leave, they could go from 'Horde' to 'Grand Confederation' and still enjoy the common defense. That was something Thrall had in mind when he created it - Thrall doesn't want the Horde to fracture, but he saw the Alliance fracturing after the Second War and knows it could happen. He's training a new generation of shamans and far seers with the help of people like Drek'thar, but who succeeds him if he dies is a question he has no clear answer to. He has ideas, but finding someone who could lead of all the orcs, let alone the Tauren and Darkspear Trolls is easier said than done.
The GC, as a whole, and in each part, are in a constant state of transition right now, and the needs of change, of traditions lost and traditions found again, of traditions needing to be made from whole cloth to begin new futures - all that defines them right now.
In war, the GC would make deals with spirits and use them against the enemy first, to soften them up, before charge and counter-charge, with orcs and tauren in the lead, Harpies attacking supply lines and picking off commanders, and trolls and Quillboar on the flanks. Largely, though circumstances varry. They are not possessed of a great depth of logistics, but they make for tenacious defenders, very good at using the terrain of Kalimdor to their advantage - they don't build one mighty fortress to defend a point, but a series of smaller fortifications that emesh you in a network of attacks before you realize you're caught. They are constantly mobile, not wanting to get pinned down during open battle, and they will surprise you when they attack you from an unexpected flank or you find your supply depots destroyed by Harpy raids.
The Hyjal Covenant actually was called the Teldrassil Covenant at first, but I swapped it out when I needed a better name for the Night Elf nation. It was always going to look like it does right now, with Furbolgs and Dark Trolls and the Wormwing Harpies, pretty much from the start, given the dearth of other available allies for them at the start.
Now, several people in the thread, and elsewhere, have pointed out that it seems off that the NElves are their own equivalent power in WC3, and yet are reduced to being just another member of the Alliance by WoW. There's a lot of truth there, but not entirely. Just because the NElves were one of four playable groups in WC3 doesn't mean they're necessarily 100% equal in power to the other three - after all, in Age of Empires II, you have the Mayans, the Vietnamese, the Mongols, the Ethiopians, the Berbers, the Chinese, the Franks and the Teutons, but the various nations those playable peoples represent, and more, weren't necessarily equal in power to each other during the span of history AoEII covers.
BUT, it is true that it's weird the Night Elves joined the Alliance, since even if they weren't necessarily 100% equal in power to the Undead, Horde and Alliance of WC3-era on a macro-scale, they certainly would have been powerful enough to defend themselves against Horde aggression in Kalimdor without needing to tie themselves to the Eastern Kingdoms (also, Horde aggression at that point seemed really unlikely, at least in terms of a whole scale assault)
The Hyjal Covenant, of the four alliances, is a bit of an odd man out. They are, unlike the other three powers, not really a collection of equals. While the GC may have the Horde as their largest and most powerful member, Thrall, Cairne and Vol'jin really do see it as a coalition of equals, and even within the Horde itself, Thrall does consider Cairne and Vol'jin to be equals, even if they are nominally under the Warchief's authority. By contrast, even at their best, Tyrande and Malfurion could be said to have something of a patronizing attitude to the Furbolgs, Dark Trolls and Harpies that they have allied with - they certainly regard their relationship to the Furbolgs and Harpies as one of teacher and student, which is largely returned. And that patronizing view is more common among the mid-ranked leadership of Teldrassil, and represented most by Staghelm, who, as we'll see, is something of a 'leader of the opposition' within Teldrassil.
Their goals are to not lose themselves in ignorance in their forests again, and to watch the world for any threat of the Burning Legion returning, the Old Gods rising, or the Scourge leaving Northrend. They'd love to go to Northrend and put an end to the unnatural evil that is the Lich King and his undead, but they can't do it right now, given their losses in the legion's second invasion. They are, however, prepared to be very proactive, and preparing for more than that. They wouldn't declare war, if they saw a threat - they'd just attack. Lightning raids with the Sentinels if that will do, to destroy cults or demonic threats (they have deployed a few teams to the frontiers of the Eastern Kingdoms when they've located Burning Legion cults doing anything more dangerous than summoning like, imps, and slaughtered them to a man) or threats to nature. They see history repeating itself in Quel'Thalas, but Tyrande understands what she'd be getting into if she ordered an attack, so she hasn't attacked yet.
So for now, she's watching closely - if she has to, she'll make the attack and accept the consequences. The Night Elves were the ones who, in her eyes, saved the world from the Burning Legion twice, and they'll do it again, whatever else. While she'll grant that in the Second Invasion Jaina and Thrall's forces were vital to victory, it was still ultimately the Night Elves who won the day by making the essential sacrifice.
They're the preservers of the balance, the natural order and they are quite convinced that they know the best way for everyone to live their lives. There absolutely are some Night Elves that think they should go a-conquering to make everyone else abandon the Arcane and live in total harmony with nature, like they do. Those people don't run the show, and even without immortality it will be a good long while until Tyrande dies of old age and gives them even a chance to make for a leadership position, but they're there, advocating their views to the rest of the kin, and they have a small but growing following.
The Dark Trolls are in a bit of a... catch-22. They do actually agree with the Night Elves a lot, they don't use arcane magic unlike some other trolls, and they are pretty in touch with nature, but they don't feel the same deep respect for the NE that the Furbolgs and Wormwing Harpies do, and some do look to the Horde and their Darkspear Kin, or to Zandalar or other Troll Empires. They're less interested in the being aggressively proactive about people playing with the Arcane or even Fel unless the Burning Legion/scourge/old gods are actively involved, whereas the Night Elves would be far willing to act on suspicion and possibility.
The HC as an alliance is dominated by the NElves and their agenda, which is 'protect the world' but... well, Tyrande and Malfurion and a mindset 10,000 years old gets to define what the world needs protecting from. They got a lot of the arrogance knocked out of them in the Second Invasion, but they both still have some - after all, they have the only true deity in the universe on their side, and nature lives in true harmony with them. Their way really is the Right Way.
Militarily, the HC has pretty damn good hit and run raiding, and pretty fast raiding at that, able to get in and out faster than any other faction - and they have harpies and the trolls to help with that. The Druids and the Furbolgs can come in as heavy infantry to exploit an enemy in disarray, with treants and nature's wrath acting on the enemy and so forth.
The HC does have a weakness in logistics - even more than the other three factions, they are not equipped or prepared for a prolonged campaign. The Second Invasion was a fairly quick thing, even quicker the parts the Night Elves were involved in, and it was the first truly existential war the Kal'dorei had been involved in for millennia. The War of Shifting Sands was practically a game, compared. They aren't a glass cannon, but they don't really have the stamina or experience for anything prolonged that isn't a guerilla war, and are so used to putting everything into their first blow - they can do a single mighty blow, and they can do guerilla defensive tactics, but right now, they can't do much else. That inflexibility has cost them before, and it will again, but changing when you're that old isn't easy - it's remarkable Tyrande and Malfurion have been as flexible in their thinking as they've been, in some ways.
And so begins a four, maybe five part series of posts about the Kingdom of Quel'Thalas. We'll do the rest of the Ghostlands Pact after that, and we may at some point circle back to Quel'Thalas later on, but we won't linger on any single nation forver.
Lor'themar: Silvermoon may never be what it was before, Sylvannas, but it has been rebuilt, and it's splendor restored. Alive or dead, you are a child of Quel'Thalas, and will always be welcome there.
Sylvanas: I will not subject Silvermoon to my presence, Lor'themar. Not after I failed it so utterly. Not until I have paid Arthas back for what he did.
Lor'themar: Sylvannas... no one -
Sylvanas: I do. On the day Icecrown lays in ruins and Arthas and his Lich King suffer the torments that await them in whatever truly waits after final death, then I will see what has become of my home. Not before.
Five years ago, Quel'Thalas was laid to waste and nearly destroyed forever.
Not by their ancient enemies in the Amani Empire. Not by their more recent foes in the orcs and ogres. Not by the humans that so many Quel'dorei disdained and pitied and even feared, in their quiet moments. It wasn't even the demons they knew were out there that destroyed them, not directly.
The Quel'dorei had defenses mighty enough to hold them against all foes, or so they believed. They had powerful runestones and mages mighty. They had the Farstriders and they had soldiers and commanders with decades or even centuries of experience. They had prepared for every conceivable foe, and they were certain they would always be safe.
Of course, there were two foes they never conceived of - treachery from within, and the endless ranks of the undead, led by the cruel and pitiless Arthas Menethil, Death Knight of the Lich King.
It was, of course, a duality of threats - had Dar'Khan Drathir not turned traitor, Arthas could have thrown himself against the inner gates of Quel'Thalas all he wanted, and never gotten anywhere for years or more. Had it not been for Arthas and his legions, there is little Dar'Khan could have done by himself, even with the access he had and the knowledge he had of Quel'Thalas's defenses.
But together, they were enough, and Quel'Thalas fell, Silvermoon fell, and the Sunwell was destroyed. And in the process, the death Arthas brought with him took 90% of the Quel'dorei population and leaving the remainder a shattered shell of themselves, feeling a gnawing hunger that had they had never felt before in their lifetimes.
The Sunwell, made from the waters of the Well of Eternity placed at one of the greatest nexi of ley-lines in the world, bathed the High Elves in magic and it's loss left them empty, bereft, and hungry. Addiction to magic, the old curse of the Highborne, had come back to haunt them, and without the Sunwell, there seemed no way sate it.
The return of Prince Kael'thas to Quel'Thalas after it's fall had a mixed reception. Though heir to Quel'Thalas, he'd always seemed happy to be apart from his kingdom, among the humans. His absence was often noted, and noted especially during Arthas's invasion. The few willing to be pragmatic in such a dire hour admitted that his presence would only have meant his death, but still. But Kael'Thas, to his credit, quickly redeemed himself in the eyes of many of his people - he did not take power from Lor'themar, who had been leading them since the death of the King. He rallied his people, and helped clear the immediate area around Silvermoon of the Undead, gathering all elves that could be found and, in a ceremony for the dead, including his father, he acknowledged that nothing could wash away the blood that had been spilled by Arthas and his undead. That blood would always be with them, and so his people would now be known as Blood Elves - and they would arise, like a phoenix, rebuild and seek revenge, and they would let nothing stand in the way of it.
It was not a speech of hope, of encouragement - it was an appeal to the basest anger rage of the people of Silvermoon, but in their desperate state, it was what the survivors of Quel'Thalas needed. Hope would no longer sate them, when despair had overtaken so many. But revenge - revenge they could hold onto, give them meaning, given them time and space to remember that perhaps there was reason to hope.
Not all embraced this new vision of their people, but with so few left, the Sin'dorei had no choice but to let them remain. Many elves that had been elsewhere in the Eastern Kingdoms returned to Quel'Thalas, and soon enough, Silvermoon itself, at least, was secure - the undead had left few forces that close to the city anyway, and much of the Scourge was already on it's way to Kalimdor.
With a retinue of warriors and mages in tow, Kael left Quel'thalas without accepting the crown that was his right, claiming that his father was the last King of his people. He traveled to the ruins of Lordaeron and offered his services to Garithos and his resistance, knowing that revenge against the undead could not be had alone. His people needed some proof the undead could be defeated for good, and so, he went to war.
In his wake, Lor'themar Theron was formally named Regent Lord, and took charge of Quel'Thalas, the effort to rebuild the city, feed his people and push back against the undead that lingered and the Amani forces that had begun to reclaim old fortresses and holdouts in Eversong Wood - Tor'Watha, Zeb'sora and others.
Though the Blood Elves were a minuscule number of themselves, those that lived and could fight, were driven with a new fire, and were, after all they had been through survivors. A hit and run campaign of sheer brutality drove the trolls from Tor'Watha and Zeb'Watha, and the undead in the northern reaches of Eversong Wood were hunted down and burned - it was here that more and more mages among the Blood Elves found themselves turning to once forbidden fel magics, summoning and binding demons. Lor'themar was hesitant, but his people needed all weapons they could get. Spellbreakers were dispatched to keep watch on these new warlocks and their demons, but that was all. Fel magic was bound into crystals to power their cities, and even power constructs for their defense, because the power it offered was greater than that of the arcane.
The conflict hardened the Blood Elves, but even as the last forest trolls fled south into the newly named Ghostlands or back to the Amani Empire, the Grand Magister Rommath returned from his time with Kael with word of their Prince - he had been betrayed by the Alliance's remnants, but in the process, had found a new solution for their people's hunger.
Siphoning magic from their surroundings, from mana wyrms and stored mana in crystals, from other animals who may have mana in small amounts, from their environment - it was a thing to be done carefully, to avoid taking too much, to avoid falling to the intoxicating power of raw mana unfiltered by the Sunwell rushing through you, but it could be done.
The effects this had on their society were many - criminals, who might have been put to hard labor given the shortage of population, were now subjected to regular siphoning of any mana they might have, arcane sanctums were redesigned with siphoning the maximum sustainable, rather than facilitating the flows of magic or powering their city and their defenses - fel magic served for that instead.
The rise of the wretched, those who lost themselves to their addiction, and the cruel way they were abandoned to their fate by many, alienated some among the Blood Elves who believed this went too far. Some would depart Quel'Thalas, rather than endorse this new strategy for survival, hoping to find their own cures for the addiction, or to suffer the withdrawal in peace. Lor'themar was not happy to let them go, but did not stop them.
Still, with this development, and with the knowledge that their prince had ventured to another world, Outland, to find new sources of magic for them, the Blood Elves redoubled their efforts, advancing into what had once been the outer holdings of Quel'Thalas, but was now called the Ghostlands. Here, they found that the undead were much greater in number, and much more intelligently led, and the Amani had a string of fortresses reclaimed, yet again.
The Blood Elves were vastly outnumbered, and had it not been for the sin of Pride, they may never have reclaimed the Ghostlands on their own.
Dar'Khan Drathir had, in betraying his people, hoped to steal the Sunwell's power for himself, but of course, that failed. Raised as a lich by Arthas, he was placed under the authority of Kel'thuzad and told to finish off what remained of his people.
Instead, Dar'Khan, retaining enough free will to act on his own, even if now bound to the Lich King's will, seethed at being placed under the authority of Kel'thuzad, and spent most of his time trying to recover lost and missing artifacts to fuel his own power, waging a very desultory campaign against the High Elves and then the Blood Elves. Even as his undead were pushed out of Tranquillien, he did not appeal for assistance from Kel'thuzad in Stratholme, feeling sure he could win. Of course, with the Forsaken and the Scarlet Crusade cutting into the Plaguelands from both sides by this point, it is unclear how much aid Kel'thuzad could have provided, especially as for a time, his forces were very limited in the wake of the scourge civil war - though he would diligently rebuild lost forces quickly.
Dar'Khan's arrogance assumed that Deatholme would be secure, and so, no matter what, even if Quel'Thalas pushed him all the way back, it would never happen. But slowly, he was. Large parts of the Ghostlands still remained under his authority, and even to this day, undead can be found roaming in the haunted forests of the region, but soon enough the Blood Elves had reached Deatholme. It was an irregular siege, to say the least. Even with summoned demons, bound elementals and arcane constructs, his undead outnumbered his enemies by a large margin - but every attempt he made to break out was beaten back. The casualties were nothing to be trifled with, given how little of the pre-war population lived, but Dar'Khan never once asked for more soldiers from Kel'Thuzad - and Kel'Thuzad was busy trying to kill and raise the leaders of the Scarlet Crusade as new Death Knights for his king.
In the end, the Blood Elves alone did not defeat Dar'Khan. Though Sylvannas's armies had not managed to reach Stratholme, had not managed to hold territory in the Eastern Plaguelands, her Dark Rangers could, as they had in life, cut and weave their way through any territory to reach their destination. Sylvanas had not forgotten Dar'Khan, and with the front in the Plaguelands stabilizing for the moment, she could deal with him, permanently. Velonara was sent with a small team to infiltrate Deatholme and put an end to Dar'Khan once and for all.
When they arrived, of course, they unexpectedly found an odd, asymmetric siege. At first, they ignored it, but when they got inside Deatholme, it became clear that they could not penetrate Dar'Khan's inner defenses... without help.
Velonara decided to do the same to Dar'Khan that he had done to Silvermoon - she and her forces dismantled the magical protections that made up Deatholme's outer defenses, and when the Blood Elves outside realized it, they could send their full force now, rather than spending the months they might have had to take them apart piece by piece.
Halduron Brightwing did not trust this sudden easy entrance, and he trusted it less when he led his Farstriders in carefully and saw Velonara waiting there for him. It's unknown exactly what his former compatriot said to convince him she was not his enemy, that she was not a corpse enslaved to Dar'Khan, but she did - and together, their forces were able to defeat Dar'Khan, and purge Deatholme of the Scourge.
It was that moment of working together that would lead to Lor'themar and Sylvanas to meet by the headless corpse of Dar'Khan a few days later and discuss an alliance - Kel'Thuzad still ruled in Stratholme and the Eastern Plaguelands, and the Amani were once again on the attack after the Blood Elves had been distracted by the efforts of besieging Deathholme.
Sylvanas still loved her homeland - it was a muted, distant love, as most positive emotions are for the undead, but it was real. And there was nothing to lose and everything to gain pragmatically, in allying with her former homeland. Lor'themar was horrified to see what Sylvannas had become, but the woman who had been his general and his friend for so long was still there, a little. And Quel'Thalas... they could not fight alone if Kel'Thuzad sent his forces against the Ghostlands anew. Nor could they go on the offensive alone.
Quel'Thalas has suffered greatly in the last five years, and even with the Ghostlands mostly secured, there is still more they suffer. Siphoning magic has changed the Blood Elves as a people, as a society - arcane sanctums exist to provide magic to the people, rather than to the city's infrastructure, and though the use of fel magic to rebuild their city has not turned them all into madmen or demon worshippers, one cannot use such power without being changed someone. The mana cells Kael sends from Outland are not themselves enough, but they help. Eversong Woods may be as beautiful as it was, mostly, close to Silvermoon, but the animal life is far less, tapped for what mana can be found. Mana wyrms are caged and harvested and a dying breed.
Concerns abound of what happens when the Blood Elves have to start siphoning even more mana, when the ley lines stop being enough, or when in time their population begins to grow. Even the recent arrival of the captured nauru M'uru from Outland - which has done much to help, placed where the Sunwell once stood and spreading magic through the leylines - isn't enough, and certainly may not last forever. And M'uru's presence has started to expose just how troubled some in Silvermoon and beyond, especially in the Farstriders, are with the measures that must be taken. Cracks are forming and lines are being drawn, and Kael'thas's continued absence, even if he does continue to aid his people how he can from afar, leads only to questions. Questions about if they have been abandoned, if their prince has given up on them. There are people who look at the sheer scope of the problem before them, the hordes of undead in the Plaguelands, the forces the Alliance could array against them, and the knowledge of how many countless undead lurk in Northrend and despair.
And there are those who say that the Blood Elves have not gone far enough. That using bound demons and fel energy for their cities is not enough, that perhaps... Perhaps their people have to do more. Siphoning magic in such small, safe, sustainable amounts - why bother? There is a world of magic out there, if only the Blood Elves were to take it.
Mathias Shaw: You're telling me that Silvermoon is fully rebuilt?
Renzik: That's what our people on the ground are telling us. I mean, they got part of it rebuilt quick, but they were lagging on the other half for a while. Then... poof, it's back in action. Practically overnight.
Shaw: There's got to be a mistake. Rebuilding Stormwind after the Second War was a matter of years! And we didn't lose 90% of our population and we had outside help! This has to be some sort of elaborate illusion.
Renzik: So you won't believe that they have the magic to rebuild a city, but you will believe they have the magic to keep a permanent illusion up forever? Seems a bit of a waste of work on their end to me.
The Kingdom of Quel'Thalas of today may have rebuilt Silvermoon. It may have reclaimed (almost) all the land it once held, but it remains a shell of its former self.
Visitors to Silvermoon can feel it. In days past, when the Sunwell was the ultimate magic in Quel'Thalas, the source of all that made their city glorious, the city was bright. Arcane magic was in the air, but the magic had a tinge of joy, of beauty, of glory to it. For most of the High Elves of the day, Silvermoon was paradise. It was the most beautiful city, the greatest place in the world. Simply being there could brighten your day, calm you down. Even those few humans allowed into the city over the centuries often said something similar, though they didn't always find everything about the city wonderful.
Magic did many tasks that other peoples might find mundane, but necessary. The streets were cleaned by magic, the water flowed by magic, magic defended the city and lit the streets and magic thrummed through the city.
Today, of course, Silvermoon looks much the same now that it has been rebuilt, though the color scheme of the city and the people has, overall, shifted in favor of red. Red everywhere, on everyone. Not just red, of course, but enough to feel excessive to some outsiders. Even some Elves, usually those who still self-identify as High Elves, feel the same.
But the real difference is in the feel of the city. Magic is in the air, magic still sweeps the streets and maintains the city. Magic still lights the city and powers it's defenses. But there is the sharp, harsh taste of fel in the air. A slight smell of sulfur, for those who know to 'look' for it. The Blood Elves do not consume fel magic to feed their addiction, not yet. But with the leylines of Eversong Wood needed to feed their addictions, with the Sunwell gone, fel magic has been turned to increasingly as the power for their city. Fel constructs stand guard at the gates, made of gold and crystal, powered by the same chaotic magic that demons are made from.
Fel magic and the destructive power it allows, the demons it can summon, has been turned to for victory, for revenge. The Blood Elves will rebuild their civilization and destroy the Scourge, and all else who would threaten them. Quel'Thalas is a monument to their willingness to do what they must to survive.
The leaders of Quel'Thalas are not ignorant of the risks of using fel magic. But Lor'themar cannot see a way past the need, and it would be hard for him to stop his people from going to it in desperation anyway. So he's accepted it, and moved to include Spellbreakers with every guard patrol, having the Magisters keeping a close watch on the warlocks and using both to put down (or more often, imprison and siphon) any that crosses the line or seems to be approaching it too close. It's an imperfect system for an imperfect world.
Still, all that fel magic has had an impact on many blood elves, even those who don't use it directly, giving their eyes a green glow, unless they've been away from the city for a while - it's not universal, but common.
Silvermoon of today also feels different due to the emptiness of it - while the majority of the population of Quel'Thalas now lives in the city (when before, while it was still by far the largest city, it wasn't the majority of the population), that still makes the streets much emptier than before Arthas's sack of the city. There is an eerie quality to the emptier streets and the emptier buildings, especially at night, in the green glow of the fel magic crystals that light the city after dark.
Silvermoon is also no longer a city that feels a peaceful paradise untouched by the outside world. Today, almost every citizen is armed, if only with a knife, but often a sword or a wand. The city actively prepares for war, and the people with it. The guards patrol more visibly, the arcane and fel constructs that exist for the defense of the city are not hidden in alcoves, deactivated, waiting to be called on, instead, they march openly, restating important laws loudly on regular intervals during the day, reminding the people of the need to stay vigilant.
But still, Silvermoon is a city - the Bazaar does do a brisk business, buying and selling goods, people live in homes and do trades, the Magisters meet and study and work their magic, even in a few quarters, priests of the Holy Light still preach to a flock, small though it may be.
But the city is still harder, harsher, with a stronger edge. The Light no longer has a strong purchase on the hearts and minds of many Blood Elves, forcing its adherents into small, out of the way chapels. For the rest of the survivors, magic is the only faith they need, though others have found meaning in the Cult of the Forgotten Shadow, popular among many Forsaken, the teachings close enough to those of the Light they once held so dear to be familiar, but different.
Quel'Thalas is more than Silvermoon, and the city is not the Kingdom. The southern half of the Eversong Woods is now the Ghostlands, a haunted shell of itself, home mostly to those there to stand on guard against Amani encroachment, attacks from the Plaguelands or those undead that still roam the deep reaches of the woods there. Something about the Ghostlands keeps the place from being free of undead, at least for now. Most of the animals there still spread the Lich King's plague, or have otherwise been changed or turned hostile by the damage the undead wrought in the region.
Still, the northern reaches of the Eversong Woods have managed to largely escape the worst of Arthas's rampage, save for the Dead Scar across the land - Arthas spent more time in the south fighting the hit and run campaign of Sylvanas as he sought to obtain the keys needed to break through the inner gates of the Kingdom. Once he had, it was a straight shot to Silvermoon.
Eversong Wood has less animal life than it once did, less trees in some places, but it is still a place that even a Night Elf Druid would find a place worth spending time in - though a Night Elf would pick up a taste of all the Arcane in the air, and find that less appealing. Still, Eversong Wood is changed - the small towns and villages of the forest where elves farmed in harmony with the trees are either abandoned or inhabited by a tiny fraction of their former population. Magic is much more prevalent in every aspect of farming and rural life, when before it was more of a departure from the sheer amount of magic in Silvermoon.
Of the towns and villages still inhabited in Eversong Wood, the most important is Sunsail Anchorage. Being the home of the Thalassian Fleet (much reduced as it is, due to a shortage of sailors to fill the ships, even with magic to reduce manpower needs as much as possible), it is already an important linchpin in the defenses of the Kingdom, but Sunsail Anchorage, being a port city, is Quel'Thalas's most important link to her allies - while the Ghostlands Pact does control a very fragile road through the Plaguelands, it is not reliable for regular trade or military movement.
And as a result of being the vital link for trade with their friends and the outside world in general, Sunsail Anchorage is the most diverse city in the Kingdom - by the standards of true commercial entrepots, like Theramore, Rachet, Booty Bay and Southshore, it's not all that diverse, but by the standards of Quel'Thalas before and after the undead invaded, it is indeed. Forsaken, living and dead, from Lordaeron can be found buying and selling to not just Blood Elves but humans from every Kingdom (save for Stromgarde), Tauren from Mulgore (via Ratchet, usually) Forest Trolls from Jintha'alor, Jungle Trolls from the Gurubashi League, Goblins from every cartel, even a handful of Night Elves - though the Night Elves in particular are noteworthy for sleeping on their ships rather than taking any leave in the port, and doing their business and leaving quickly.
Still, even with that, Sunsail Anchorage is a bustling center of business - the chief elvish exports are magical items of one sort or another, though most made with arcane magic (fel magic items are only sold to Lordaeron, Alterac, Zandalar and the Gurubashi League, being illegal virtually everywhere else that the Blood Elves would be willing to see to. Warlocks in the Grand Confederation and the Alliance have been known to be arrested with Thalassian-made fel magic items on their person or in their homes, though the kingdom has denied any deliberate policy of smuggling, suggesting that they look to their own merchants making the purchases), as well as certain sin'dorei made alcoholic drinks and foods that remain popular in other Kingdoms, even the nations of the Alliance (or are going to High Elves in other lands that want a taste of home).
Quel'Thalas's imports include food and raw materials of all sorts - with their population as limited as it is, the kingdom can no longer produce for itself as it was wont to do in the past, always striving to be as self-sufficient as possible (though even after the Second War and the splintering of the Alliance, some trade passed through Sunsail Anchorage).
Sunsail Anchorage is safe from 'pirate' attack, or from raids by the Amani, but the further ships get from the city, the more likely an attack is to come. The 'pirate' attacks that everyone knows are either Kul Tiran ships under false colors, or de facto privateers financed by the Admiralty, but no one forces the issue - are not enough to cut off trade truly undermine the economy of Quel'Thalas, though it is still a bite that gets felt. A few ships vanish in the span of a few months, others get captured and the crew ransomed back through intermediaries (usually Goblins, who charge a fat markup for the service).
Amani destroyers pose a much more meaningful threat, as they are rarely so kind as to capture ships intact or capture the crews alive, though they are at least more careful to only attack ships of the Ghostlands Pact (the Amani have a spot for the Alliance on their shit list, but the Pact has priority for now), thus allowing neutral shipping to pass by (the Amani do after all trade with goblins and the other troll nations, and there's a small amount of trade with the Alliance, though anti-troll mentalities are common among the Alliance).
Still, the greater threat that the Amani pose means that the Thalassian navy is forced to protect their shipping more in that direction, deploying ships to various smaller ports closer to the Amani Empire and trying to keep their shipping in convoys as much as possible. Naval skirmishes are common, but pitched battles are not common, with warships more likely to peel off before getting too damaged to leave rather than to stand and fight it to the death.
The modern Quel'Thalas is at once like and unlike it was before, and all the little ways that it is different is enough to feel... off. It is an omnipresent feeling for the Blood Elves - they remember what their homeland was like before, and this new version of it is close enough, but not quite - that feeling of disconnect for many is enough to be a constant feeling, a touch unpleasant, niggling at the back of the mind.
It is, some suggest, one of the many things that contributes to those who choose to overindulge in mana siphoning and become the hopeless, hollow addicts called Wretched, who are alternately cast aside or turned into cheap, expendable labor by many in the Kingdom - Lor'themar hates it, but overindulgence is a danger to the magic supply for everyone, and he has few options for what else to do with the Wretched for the moment, so he accedes to it, as he had for many things he's uncomfortable with that he can see no better solution for.
Halduron: Lor'themar, I'm not saying that we should embrace the Alliance with open arms, not after everything, not with Admiral Proudmoore being as small-minded as a Councillor of the Convocation, but the way you let the Magisters talk about them-
Lor'themar: When it comes to the Magisters, it's less a matter of what I let them do, and what I have the capital to stop them from doing. Not everyone is as friendly towards the Alliance as Vereesa.
Halduron: Vereesa doesn't love the Alliance, she just doesn't hate it like Rommath would have us -
Rommath: The Alliance and the Kirin Tor stood by when Garithos ordered us all imprisoned, to be executed in a few days. Stormwind and Ironforge had representatives there in Dalaran, as did the Kirin Tor. Vereesa can let her views be colored by her unfortunate choice of husband, but the rest of us have to live in reality.
Virtually every society, be it settled or nomadic, 'advanced' or 'primitive' will have groups of people who disagree with how best to organize their society, make use of collective resources and solve collective problems. Larger societies will have more groups, as a general rule, and sometimes the groups will have factions within themselves, sharing a common goal but arguing over the particulars, and sometimes the division will press even further, though after a certain point the arguments become either matters of personality conflicts dressed up with ideology, or debates over extremely miniscule differences virtually no one else cares about.
But this factionalism exists even within the Kingdom of Quel'Thalas - even the destruction the people suffered was not enough to end it.
But it was enough to utterly change it. In days past, the Kingdom was largely balanced by three factions - the Magisters, made up of the mages of the Kingdom; the Farstriders, who led the defense of the Kingdom in the forest, and the Silvermoon Convocation, representing the various noble families of the Kingdom (the Convocation itself straddled both the Farstriders and the Magisters, with nobles leading both organizations). Other factions existed, but those were the three that the King had to be most concerned about balancing the interests of. Anasterian, in his supreme - one might say self-destructive or suicidal - self-confidence about Quel'Thalas's ability to defend itself from attack, had a tendency to alienate the Farstriders and their allies on a regular basis.
In modern Quel'Thalas, the Silvermoon Convocation is dead. The majority of the nobility died with the majority of the population, and for those that remain, nobility is merely an empty title and perhaps some land ownership, if that land is even still useful (land owned in what is now the Ghostlands, after all, has little value for anyone). For many commoners that survived, the response to the formal dissolution of the Silvermoon Convocation by Kael'thas before his departure was 'good riddance' - the Convocation had never been popular with the non-noble citizens of the Kingdom.
But in the modern kingdom, the Magisters and Farstriders remain powerful factions, with supporters and allies beyond the official ranks of their members. The two organizations, as they did before, represent sort of opposite poles of political thought within Thalassian society, though it would be more accurate to say that they represent opposite poles of acceptable political thought within the Kingdom.
Unlike Ironforge, which has a Senate, or Stormwind which has a House of Nobles or even Kul Tiras which divides power between it's four noble houses, there is, theoretically, no limit on the Regent Lord's authority, in the absence of the Convocation.
In practice, of course, Lor'themar's own temperament and the need to keep order in the city has a tendency to prevent him from exercising absolute power, but ultimately, politics in the city is a more fluid, informal affair without elections or any sort of legislative counterweight - it comes down to if you can convince the Regent Lord to do things your way.
The most influential group in that sense is the Magisters, led by Grand Magister Rommath. Rommath, having been sent back to Quel'Thalas by Kael to teach his people about mana siphoning, speaks with Kael's authority on matters of magic, which often allows him to win arguments with Lor'themar on those issues, though he does not win every argument he was with the man. The Magisters have historically been, and still are, one of the most conservative - politically - groups in Thalassian society, prone to xenophobia, jingoism and in favor of strong measures of social control. Rommath is, by the standards of the Magisters, something of a moderate, which, given his strong views about the Alliance and the Kirin Tor, should tell you something about the depths of conservatism among the group he leads.
The Magisters advocate for increased Blood Elf leadership in the Pact, for ever more mana siphoning projects, and for more commitment to the use of arcane and fel magic as the greatest assets available to their people. They are also the loudest voices for continued unfriendly relations with the Alliance, and for treating the Wretched as worthless castoffs good only for exile or de facto enslavement. Moderation is key in handling magic addiction, and those who fail it are worthless as Blood Elves. Some elements of the Magisters have also advocated for government-managed programs to pair biologically compatible people up with the purpose of having as many children as possible, or even working on ways to increase fertility or allow children to be grown outside the womb. They have had little in advocating for this yet, however.
Of course, even the Magisters are not a monolithic force - Aethas Sunreaver leads the 'liberal' faction of the Magisters. A former member of the Kirin Tor and longtime resident of Dalaran, he returned with Kael after the fall of Quel'Thalas, though he was among those who stayed behind rather than joining with Garithos's forces. Aethas is a strong advocate for normalizing relations with the Alliance, though he also supports the Pact, and urges for the Kirin Tor to be recognized as a true neutral organization between the Alliance and the Pact, dedicated to the study and advancement of magic for everyone, and the defense of Azeroth from common threats. He's also less in favor of the social control methods of more conservative magisters - arts involving brainwashing, silent arrests and quiet imprisonments. He is not, however, an opponent to mana siphoning, nor against the campaigns of propaganda and censorship the Magisters have directed.
The Blood Knights are another hardline organization, closely aligned with the Magisters, and closely associated with the Silvermoon Guard and the non-Farstrider parts of the Thalassian military. Created by the Lady Liadrin, after Rommath and Astalor Blodsworn, another Magister, found a way to draw upon the captive M'uru to make use of the Light's destructive power, especially against the undead, without needing to follow it's teachings, which at this point, were not followed by many in Quel'Thalas. The Blood Knights are less xenophobic and jingoistic than the Magisters, but just as unfriendly to the Alliance that doesn't understand what they went through, that let the betrayal of Kael'thas stand, and didn't even try to reach out to them before the Ghostlands Pact was formed. Liadrin is especially militant against the self-righteous preachings of the Church of the Holy Light in the south, or it's remnants in Quel'Thalas, and she's not alone.
The Blood Knights are, at their core, paladins who draw upon the captive M'uru for their power, but in doing so, the ability of paladins to heal is much more muted - they can heal, but it requires far more effort than using the Light as a weapon - mostly against undead, but also in other ways too, cleansing and purging their foes with it. The Blood Knights serve as a more approachable and accessible faction for the militant segment of the Thalassian population - the Magisters' tendency to look down on anyone who doesn't have substantive arcane or fel power at their command makes them less of an appealing group to rally around.
Echoing their leader's example, the Blood Knights are a fairly cynical and jaded lot, but also pragmatic - they don't entertain fantasies of detailed and brutal revenge against their enemies, finding simple defeat enough, and they tend to favor merely letting the Wretched waste away on their own as better than enslaving or tormenting them. They do do their best to help those on the verge of becoming Wretched find a measure of control again, though their means for doing so is quite tyrannical, requiring total submission to the Blood Knights to help them find and keep that control.
One major weakness of the Blood Knights is their limited number - drawing on a single capture naaru as they are, one that is also being used to help channel magic through the leylines into the sanctums, there are only so many who can safely draw from M'uru at any given time. As a result, there are only about 100 Blood Knights, and only a handful can exercise their power fully when as far away from Silvermoon and Quel'Danas as the Plaguelands. As a result, these 'paladins' use the power at their disposal sparingly, spending more time as warriors in heavy armor than as true paladins in the more conventional sense.
Politically, the Blood Knights are much beloved by most of the populace - while some do have misgivings about either the practical or moral concerns of the use of M'uru, the sight of Paladins once again on the streets of Silvermoon, defending the city has done much for the people's moral. They and Lady Liadrin serve as a rallying for militancy and anti-Alliance sentiment, though like almost all of Thalassian society, the real ire is spared for the Lich King and the Scourge.
The last group that makes up the 'ruling party' of Silvermoon, as it were, are the Farstriders. Before Arthas's invasion, outsiders to Quel'Thalas sometimes made the mistake of thinking that the Farstriders were the only military the Kingdom had - only the Amani didn't make that mistake, given their long familiarity with the Kingdom's other military forces, but the Farstriders were the most visible part, and their generals were usually the ones leading Thalassian formations outside of the Kingdom. They guarded the frontiers and forests of Quel'Thalas, keeping outsiders away and engaging in ongoing skirmishes with the Amani Empire. It is the Farstriders that famous (or infamous) Windrunner Sisters belonged to, with one now undead and another lost beyond the Dark Portal.
The Farstriders were not the only military force available to the Thalassians, nor are they now, but they are still the tip of the Spear for the Kingdom, fighting on the front lines, protecting against Amani raids and policing the undead within the Ghostlands. They are masters of sword and bow, and of all the Blood Elves, at most in tune with nature. While it is not unknown for Farstriders to make use of Arcane magic at times, having had some training in the art, they are still one of the least-magic using groups in Quel'Thalas, even to this day, and are notable for being healthier and less prone to withdrawal than most Blood Elves, even before siphoning techniques were established.
Historically, and today, the Farstriders have long been among the most open-minded and liberal of Thalassian society, and today, they serve as a rallying point for those who, while accepting of the needs of the current day, worry about the trends they represent, or want to ensure they don't last forever. The Farstriders, led by Halduron Brightwing are not against the Pact, though they often take issue with the specifics of some of the darker actions of their allies (foreign or domestic) and tend to have the strongest sense of morality of the Thalassian leadership - or at least, perhaps more fairly, one might say that they have the most things that they deem unacceptable to do - a Magister would not say that they are immoral, they would merely say that what they're doing is moral due to the needs of survival.
The Farstriders have, directly and indirectly, rallied those who, while not pro-Alliance, are at least, not as anti-Alliance as others, who are uncomfortable with the censorship laws, the tyrannical power the Magisters are assuming, and who think that the use of fel is going too far. They are the most willing to entertain the idea of allowing non-Blood Elves to move into and live in the Kingdom long-term, at least on a case-by-case basis, beyond just the docks and taverns and warehouses of Sunsail Anchorage. They're not what someone from say, Theramore would call a strong advocate of diversity, but by the standards of Thalassian history, they are almost dangerously xenophillic.
Halduron may lead the Farstriders, and be the most visible rallying point for a more moderate set of policies within the Kingdom, but he's not the only one. Vereesa Windrunner, though rarely present in Quel'Thalas itself, represents the bleeding edge of what is politically acceptable within modern Silvermoon. She is unabashedly pro peace with Alliance and pro-Kirin Tor, often making common cause with Aethas Sunreaver, and has been the loudest advocate against the use of demons, against the chemical weaponry of the Forsaken, the brutal tactics of the Alteraci and the inclusion of Jintha'Alor in the Ghostlands Pact. She's also an advocate for ending Mana Siphoning, pointing out her own recovery from the withdrawal symptoms she suffered after the destruction of the Sunwell, suggesting more people take her route of simply... dealing with it.
Vereesa has run up against the Magisters and their authority (legal and otherwise) on multiple occasions, but her popularity with a loud segment of the Farstriders and her relationship to Sylvanas, and the deep respect that even many moderates have for her combat record (and the fact that, ultimately, she was right to say Quel'Thalas should have stayed in the Alliance after the Second War, even if admitting that out loud is verboten in Silvermoon) have stopped anyone who wants to (which does not include Rommath or Lor'themar) from trying to have her thrown in prison or assigned for some sort of 'reeducation'.
The Farstriders standing in such stark opposition to the influential Magisters and Blood Knights and their mild resistance to the more extreme aspects of the mana siphoning would seem to hamper their ability to hold much influence in Thalassian society, but the fact that they do represent a substantial portion of the population to one extent or another has kept them relevant.
That and the fact that Lor'themar, having served as Sylvanas's second in command among the Farstriders and having been named Regent Lord on the basis of his able defense of his people between the fall of the Sunwell and Kael's return, allows the Farstriders to wield more influence than a surface observer might think - in truth, Lor'themar finds himself agreeing with Halduron far more than Rommath, but in his position of leadership, often feels like he has no choice but to support the harsher methods of the Magisters and their control over Silvermoon.
Quel'Thalas is a kingdom divided, with multiple factions and groups - not just the three that make up the governing coalition - having their own ideas and notions about how to solve the problems the Kingdom faces, the threats posed by their neighbors and how to counter them, and, of course, the question of their own allies. Almost no one envies Lor'themar the headache he has trying to navigate it all, and even the most conservative of Magisters wouldn't even contemplate trying to replace the man, for all that they remain frustrated by his unwillingness to back their more extreme ideas.
