Azeroth: The Silent War and the Illusion of Peace [Warcraft AU Worldbuilding]

[Kylia Quilor]

So here's a fun fact about me: when I first played WC3 and skimmed over the accompanying guide book, I was under a number of mistaken impressions about the setting. Some of that is just being fairly young, some of it is WC3's weird writing re: the nations of the EK (namely, none of the human nations seemed to really exist apart from Lordaeron) and some of it is just assumptions.

Regardless, I was under the impression, way back when, that there were two human kingdoms before the orcs invaded the first time - Lordaeron and Stormwind. The orcs won in the first war, destroying the entire Kingdom of Stormwind or close enough to leave mostly a wasteland in their wake, the Alliance was Lordaeron (Humans) Quel'Thalas (Elves) and Ironforge/Khaz Modan/Whatever the Dwarven country was - I was unclear (Dwarves).

Yes, the guidebook had the 'the alliance splinters' section, but the game never mentioned Stromgarde or Gilneas, etc, so that all never really found purchase in my mind.

I was under the impression Dalaran was part of Lordaeron, subject to it, that Daelin Proudmoore was just a high-ranking Lordaeron nobleman who maybe had his lands on some island off the coast (which is how he had enough troops to go gallivanting off to Kalimdor in the FT Orc Campaign) and that the EK had been utterly ravaged - that there were very few large centers of civilian population left after that first undead mission in FT, that any survivors groups were either small and isolated, or actively fighting some desperate war effort like the Alliance remnants under Garithos were.

It was strongly implied - or so it seemed to me -that the largest portion of surviving humans from the EK were those who had fled with Jaina (and that it was a much larger group than the small population Theramore had in canon).

So I came out of FT thinking that apart from maybe the Dwarves, who we'd heard very little from, the EK were basically a post-apocalyptic wasteland created by the mess that was the First, Second and Third Wars, with maybe a few scattered handfuls of population here and there and desperate groups fighting a losing battle.

I also kind of assumed Sylvanas's Forsaken were able to take over more of former Lordaeron, not just the area around the capital.

Regardless, I was thrown for a massive loop come WoW. Admittedly, my first reaction was 'wtf are my Blood Elves you sons of bitches?!' and then it was 'you cut out the Elves - the real elves - for fucking GNOMES?! Where the fuck did these short little fuckers come from?' (I was a rude, opinionated little shit as a kid. So haven't changed much ) and then it was 'why are the Night Elves, Alliance, why are the Forsaken Horde and wtf are you guys fighting again - wait, STORMWIND?!'

So yeah, I came out of learning the details of WoW with a metric fuckton of questions, and a lot of annoyance. And I boycotted WoW until TBC eventually came out and I got my Blood Elves - when I got hit with several unwelcome surprises as well as the then-very annoying Draenei retcon (these days I think ultimately the new Draenei lore is better but still, stop retconing you guys!). But finally I started playing - and started reading more into lore I'd missed, learning about all these regions that seem to have been utterly untouched by the Scourge - Stromgarde apparently escaped unscathed but doesn't matter anymore, Hillsbrad is just... there and what is this about Alterac? And these Syndicate guys? Seems interesting.

Seriously though, of all the sins that WoW committed in transitioning the story from FT to WoW Vanilla, the presence of the living just chillin' in Hillsbrad has got to be the most annoying for me (apart from the cartoonifying of the Forsaken, which is more enraging than annoying anyway). With Stromgarde and Alterac, at least there's reasons - Alterac has mountains and with Alterac City in ruins, might not have had much population centers for the undead to work with. Stromgarde had the big wall and a narrow pass to guard and so could have held off, but there's like... no good reason on this earth that the undead shouldn't have gone for Hillsbrad.

Like, fine, the Burning Legion took most of the Scourge with them to Kalimdor, but the Scourge was still engaged in active fighting even after - see the NElf missions in the EK, and the first two Blood Elf missions, where the Alliance is actively fighting to reclaim and hold the ruins of Dalaran and surrounding environs, etc. And we know the Undead were right next door in Silverpine, so how did Hillsbrad just... chill?

Seriously?

Now, in hindsight, we can suggest that maybe Garithos's Alliance Remnants were part of the reason - and it would explain why fighting over Dalaran in particular was so fierce, as it would be a pretty powerful position to interdict any offensive into the Hillsbrad Foothills. But that leaves the question of why they didn't do anything once Detheroc mind controlled... all of Garthos's army? Like... all of it? That's a lot of mind control. If the Dreadlords can do that, if just Detheroc can do that, why did they need the Lich King again?

But we could explain the why no Hillsbrad by suggesting that Detheroc's efforts were fairly recent, during the midst of Sylvanas's war against the Dreadlord Trio, perhaps even in direct response to the way Sylvanas got a bunch of bandits, ogres, trolls, etc to join her war effort against Varimathras (and incidentally, did anyone else, when playing Sylvanas's missions in FT, wish that there'd been more opportunities to take control of a bunch of creeps en-masse? As a game mechanic, it was so much fun in the one mission and I kept hoping we'd see it again. Ah well :sigh

So fine, Hillsbrad survives. And just chills. For years. Despite ogres and Trolls and Syndicate and Scourge and Forsaken and everything else, it chills just fine. Sure. Okay.

Still hate it. I hated discovering that the Hillsbrad Foothills, when I went there when playing TBC/Wrath, were just... chill. Normal. Humans living their lives. I mean, sure, it's Azeroth so everything was covered in shit and on fire, but apart from that, they seemed to be doing surprisingly okay.

Oh, and of course, they were all nominally part of Stormwind. Because you know, all humans are loyal to Stormwind now, except for Jaina's homeland because their sulking.

Oh and yeah, remember Jaina, that bad-ass archmage to spat in Archimonde's face, forged a genuine peace between Human and Orc that was at least somewhat founded on mutual respect? The woman who by sheer guts of fucking STEEL led a whole fleet of refugees to the other side of the world?

Yeah, her?

Yeah, she works for Stormwind too. And Theramore is basically part of Stormwind. Yup. All humans, everywhere. Stormwind. Stormwind Stormwind Stormwind.

People that I, as a WC3/FT player who hadn't played WC1 or WC2 (which, let's face it, would be the vast majority of the playerbase coming into WoW from the RTS games) had barely heard of, and was pretty sure had been left in complete depopulated ruins after the First War anyway.

Yeah. Those guys. They're somehow the big dog on the block in the Alliance, and every human group that wasn't just pirates, bandits or terrorists is happy to be part of Stormwind now. Like, sure, Stormwind may be a good ally or protector to have, but that doesn't mean you need to subsume yourself to them (unless Stormwind made that a requirement before exteningh aid, in which case, Dick Move Varian, Dick. Move.)

So yeah, there'a a lot of inconsistency in the presentation - and a lot of assumptions the writers left the playerbase to have based on their poor gap-filling. So trying to understand just what actually happened when Jaina fled, what she brought with her, and what she left behind (or thought she was leaving behind) is very difficult. Especially when there's also all that expanded canon lore that has things like Jaina being in Dalaran when Quel'Thalas fell, and it actually being Arthas and the Scourge's Bone Boys marching on Dalaran that leads to Antonidas telling her to go to Kalimdor (not the Prophet?) and thus leaves you scratching your head as to when Medivh actually dropped by, when she left, and how on earth her fleet seems to have actually gotten to Kalimdor before the orcs? Or at least getting to Stonetalon Mountain sooner? They were in the Orcs way multiple times, after all. (Also, how did she know to visit the Oracle?)

(Granted, that last one could be explained by Jaina's ships being crewed by actual sailors who know what they're doing as opposed to a bunch of orcs who presumably mostly didn't, and also the sheer luck of maybe not getting stormwracked as bad, but still).

So yeah, the whole thing just... makes no sense. Because it's quite obvious that among other things, Blizzard doesn't have a Keeper of the Holocron-type position. (Like, yes the Holocron thing for Lucasfilm never 100% prevented discrepancies, but the star wars Legends EU was a much better handling of having a vast cohesive multimedia universe than the WoW lore of games in multiple genres, comics, graphic novels, RPG sourcebooks, short stories and novels. And we'll leave off discussing Star Wars Legends before I start bitching about Disney and JJ Abrams, because that is way off-topic).

But the point is, there's not really anyone at Blizzard who actually has to sit down and evaluate 'okay, so we've done X, Y and Z, how does this new thing fit? Does it? Doesn't it?. Like yes, sometimes it's clear they did think of some things and try to wedge their new bit of lore into the existing stuff in a way that fits, and sometimes it's just clear they didn't remember it at all and then had to either just pretend the contradiction doesn't exist, or use a retconning crowbar to force some space for whatever they've changed or added.

All of which makes making the story of Theramore, as well as the question of it's size, power and options, very difficult to actually pin down or construct.

On the other hand, it does lend itself to some interesting storytelling options - like I said, the way that Theramore accidentally invented something approaching modern Constitutional Democracy is going to lend itself to the belief, in later centuries, that Theramore was deliberately an anti-Monarchical project (because, given that Hillsbrad and large portions of the rest of the EK *did* survive unscathed, her flight all the way to Kalimdor seems a bit weird in hindsight. In my experience, many people have a strong tendency to take what actually happened in history as inevitable and obvious i.e. - Rome and Carthage were always going to go to war, the 13 American Colonies were always going to rebel against the British, Germany was always gonna 'start' WWI, some dictator was always gonna rise out of the post-Versailles mess that was Weimar, Rome was always going to fall to Barbarians, etc.)

So they look at how Hillsbrad survived the Scourge seemingly totally unscathed, and many people, even actual historians, will cite all the reasons it was obviously going to survive just fine (Garithos, the Scourge being distracted to Kalimdor, the weakening of the Lich King, Arthas having to go to Northrend, Illidan and his Naga pushing the undead out of Dalaran at one point, the random appearance of Night Elves for a bit, the defense of Alterac threatening undead Flanks, presumably a Dreadlord Loyalist-Kel'Thuzzad conflict, Sylvanas, overextension, etc) and then they'll assume that Jaina and her people could have at least seen some of this or guessed or something, and thus there was no reason to run.

All underestimating the sheer apocalyptic feel the region would have been dealing with - because again, sure the world didn't end then, but it got close, and it sure could have ended. And the people living through it sure felt it did.

So the people of Theramore feel like they lived through not one, but two apocalyptic-level events, and history is probably going to gloss over that, a lot.

All because Blizzard can't keep their own lore straight.

 

[Kylia Quilor]

Calia Menethil: Admiral, why do you have plans for attacking Theramore on your desk?
Admiral Tattersail: Contingencies. If war with the Alliance happens, we need to be prepared for anything.
Calia: I understand that, General Belmont has made his case for the invasion plans regarding Stromgarde and the Wetlands quite clearly. But Theramore poses no threat to the Pact, and holds no strategic value for Lordaeron.
Tattersail: You're not a military woman, Chancellor, so you wouldn't understand.
Calia: I do understand that attacking Theramore directly is the best way to enrage one of the most powerful mages in the world - certainly in the Alliance - who is otherwise the only leader in the Alliance favorably disposed to us in any sense. I would suggest burning those plans before anyone in the Alliance gets even the slightest hint they exist, Admiral.

The first thing that any visitor to Theramore (which will have to be by boat, as water is the only way to get to the island) will notice is the defenses.

For all that the Freehold has a reputation for being pacifists, pound for pound, Theramore has some of the most formidable defenses of any human-populated city. The infamously murderous defenses of Strom are probably more formidable overall, but short of that...

Part of the reason Theramore's defenses - begun first thing when the fleet reached the isle, as Jaina and many of the refugees believing the Scourge might chase them here - is the sheer amount of paranoia that went into them. Until the First War, most wars in the Eastern Kingdoms, for several centuries before - at least those between humans (as well as the endless border skirmishes between Stormwind and the Gurubashi) - tended to be... if not civilized affairs, then at least not brutal ones. The fighting was generally on the fringes and frontiers rather than besieging cities, and even when major population centers entered the warzone, they usually just paid a large sum to be kept unsacked, and even if they couldn't pay, were generally treated quite fairly.

In short, city walls tended to be neglected and unneeded. Castles and border fortifications needed the money instead, both of which required different paradigms than defending major population centers (cities, for instance, need larger gates, and often need more of them, among other things, and traps that could make the walls less safe for the city residents are also not generally viable)

The First and Second War had of course shifted that paradigm - the Sack of Stormwind, the Siege of Lordaeron City, the Sack of Alterac City, et cetera - but generally, completely rebuilding a city's defensive fortifications from scratch is a massive undertaking. Only Stormwind really managed to take all the new lessons about city defense that the First and Second Wars taught in building their new walls, and they are a well-defended city as a result, though the sheer cost is one of the reasons the Kingdom's government decided to default on Van Cleef.

The other reason Theramore has such strong defenses, of course, is the diversity of the engineers working on it. Dwarves were able to provide foundations that were deeper and sturdier than anything a human could provide, while humanity brought their logistical prowess to the fore, allowing for the movement the necessary stone and other components quickly and easily, the formidable gothic shape of the walls much like what you'd see in Lordaeron or Stromgarde. The High Elves among the Theramorians were able to work potent defenses magics into the city that are akin to those Quel'Thalas once had, even if on a smaller and less formidable scale.

The double walls of the city, encompassing the entire island save for the docks in the southeast (which are at the only safe landing point for large boats) present a formidable series of challenges, with murder holes, towers, secured anchor points, masterful magics and mortaring holding them together, and more. Getting through one wall then exposes a fifty-foot exposed open space where even taller walls provide the perfect platform for the defense, while hidden ditches, magical and blackpowder landmines and other traps turn the sace into a killing field. Any would be attempt on the city would be a murderous prospect.

As of the most recent census, Theramore now has 11,451 permanent residents (all the adults of whom are voting citizens). Of those the majority are human, but two-thousand odd Quel'dorei and another thousand dwarves round out the numbers. There's a few hundred gnomes, orcs, tauren, trolls, goblins and Night Elves who all told are also now citizens of the city. In addition, between ambassadors and merchants and associated staff and other visitors, there's another few hundred to a thousand others in the city at any given time, largely concentrated in the docks, which constitute a sort of '8th district' to the city.

When dividing the city into seven districts, Jaina very specifically left out the docks, outside of the walls as they were. Few citizens actually live in the docks area, and those that do are still assigned to one of the main seven for voting purposes, as are the farmers and goat herds on Alcaz Island (Theramore imports most of it's food other than fish gathered around the island, but in the interests of building a local stockpile and a supplement, small-scale farming and goat herding has been set up on Alcaz Island, which was unclaimed and uninhabited when Theramorians set up shop there and claimed the island).

The Council seats are elected, by district, for terms of a year, but they are staggered. Every district has two seats, and an election for a seat happens every six months. The citizenry is actively engaged in civic matters, and while politics is not the only thing that people discuss in their free time, the taverns and open areas are usually rife with political discussions and debates in the weeks leading up to election time.

The city is protected by the Theramore Guard, a 750-man active force, with several thousand part-timers that rotate in for service for a week every few months, as well as the ten ships of the Theramore Navy, initially consisting of the ten warships that had survived the journey from Southshore to Theramore in the best condition. Since then, several have been scrapped and rebuilt, and the ships of the small navy are second only to the Kul Tiran Fleet in quality. At any given time, half the fleet is in the waters around Theramore, and the other half is engaged in commerce protection, usually against the Southsea Pirates - Theramore-flagged ships are unique in that even most privateers out of the Ghostlands Pacts will ignore them (which has led to several mid-sized Stormwindian shipping companies to relocate the nominal registries and home ports of many of their ships to Theramore, thus legally entitling them to bear the Theramore flag and thus enjoy that protection).

Trade, of course, is the city's primary occupation. As the primary transfer point from goods leaving central and southern Kalimdor and bound for the Eastern Kingdoms (even Ratchet and Gadgetzan ships tend to use Theramore as a stopover point on their way to Booty Bay or other goblin ports in the Eastern Kingdoms), Theramore is able to charge quite low port and docking fees and still make a killing. Add to that the warehousing fees for goods to be held and protected for pickup, a sales tax on transactions between merchants of other nations and all the economic activity that spills out from that, and Theramore is a prosperous, bustling port.

Given that most citizens arrived with few possessions, the gap between the wealthy and poor in the city is also much smaller than in Stormwind or Ironforge, though not as minimal as in Lordaeron (given that Lordaeron is still half barter/payments in kind anyway), and the standard of living is quite high for everyone, relatively speaking.

Granted, it is not all sunshine and roses in the city - the largest single portion of the population is engaged in fishing or fishing-related industries (catching fish, gutting and cleaning fish, maintaining and repairing fishing boats, preserving fish, selling fish, et cetera.), which is, at best, hard work, and at worst foul-smelling, back-breaking or even dangerous.

In addition to stonemasons, carpenters, blacksmiths, coopers, weavers, tailors and all the other crafts that spring up in major cities (though the initial skill distribution as quite uneven, as there were few skilled weavers or coopers in the initial refugee population, for example), a large portion of the population is employed as shipwrights, sailmakers, longshoremen, warehouse workers and other shipping-related industries. Foreign ships needing repairs will find good workers and good prices to be had in Theramore, and they charge the same prices for everyone, regardless of port of origin.

With trade as important to Theramore as it is, brokering sales, shipping and cargo insurance and importation/exportation resale are where the wealthiest citizens of the city make their money. While most of the section of the docks district that isn't taken up by docks and warehouses are taken up with taverns and brothel, there are also two large coffeehouses - the Roasting Bean and the Coffee Lodge - that serve as unofficial offices to major brokers, dealers, translators and insurers. Captains (or more often, supercargos, ship's accountants or ship's quartermasters) with a load of cargo and no specific buyer will tend to start there when looking for a buyer, from Theramore or otherwise - and same, officials from ships without a cargo will come looking for goods to fill up on at both coffee houses.

Several banks from the Eastern Kingdoms (The Royal Bank of Alterac, the Ironheart Bank and the Silverfoot Bank, as well as the Stormwind City Merchant Bank) as well as the Steamwheedle Bank have small branches in Theramore, but the largest financial institution in the city (relatively speaking) is the Bank of Theramore, which is owned and managed by the Freehold's government, exclusively for citizens and operates at minimal profit, charging low interest rates on loans with good terms, and also managing the Freehold's mint (Theramore doesn't mint many coins, given the relatively large number of foreign currencies at work in the city. Moneychangers do make good money in Theramore as well).

Because of the island's size, space is at a premium - dwarven engineers have been put to work digging extensive and structurally sound underground tunnels and rooms all over the island to expand living (and more importantly, storage) space. As a result, the streets of the city are - apart from the main thoroughfare right through the center of the city - quite narrow, and often crowded during the day, with people moving, talking, standing, chatting, and buying and selling goods at various stalls.

That central thoroughfare leads from the city gates right to Theramore Keep (usually just called 'The Keep' or, from the more formal, 'the Freeholder's Palace' by the locals). Theramore Keep consists of four towers and a large central structure, as well as extensive underground tunnels. Jaina lives and works in one, spending as much time behind a desk doing paperwork of one sort or another as she does magical study and experimentation (much to her chagrin), while another serves as the meeting place for the Theramore Council.

The third tower is home to Tervosh, the other Archmage in residence in Theramore, as well as a space for magical tomes to be stored and magical experiments conducted, available to all mages in the city (visiting mages from outside Theramore) must pay a small fee. Several one of a kind tomes that Jaina, Tervosh or other mages leaving on the refugee fleet took with them from Dalaran (some they took with permission, some, especially the ones Tervosh took were... borrowed. Without permission).

The fourth tower serves as a place given to any distinguished guests - most notably Thrall, when visiting Theramore a year ago, was housed in this tower, to some discomfort of his (the rooms are still largely designed with Eastern Kingdoms aesthetics in mind, though the Keep's staff did try to accommodate Thrall and his entourage), and Shandris Feathermoon stayed here as well while engaging in unknown discussions with Jaina on behalf of Tyrande Whisperwind and the Hyjal Covenant a few months ago.

Usually the distinguished guests aren't quite that noteable, and there are months at a time when that fourth tower is not in use.

The rest of the keep is given over to the needs of the Freehold's government - record keeping, administrative work, the city's vaults, the headquarters (and primary barracks) for the Theramore Guard, the premises of the Bank of Theramore and extensive storage of food and other necessities in case of siege, shortage or economic sanction.

As a result of the origins of Theramore, institutional paranoia is practically universal in Theramore's government, with extensive contingency plans drawn up for even the most unlikely of scenarios, plans which are (as much as practical) regularly reviewed, reconsidered and rewritten. The Theramore Eyes - the intelligence arm of the Freehold - is somewhat infamous (and mocked) in Alliance Intelligence circles for having contingencies for, among other things: if Kezan becomes uninhabitable due to volcanic eruption (and the resulting effects worldwide), refugees or invaders from 'beyond the stars' arrive on Azeroth, massive sea-level rise that could put some coastal areas entirely underwater, a worldwide plague that resists all efforts to quarantine it, a receding of the ocean from existing shorelines, earthquakes and volcanos creating new islands, a Quillboar coup in the Grand Confederation, a successful Defias coup in Stormwind, civil war in Alterac or the Hyjal Covenant and even in one scenario likely written when the planner was on hallucinogens, the prospect of a physical portal between the mortal realm and the afterlife (called the Shadowlands by some) opening somewhere in Northrend.

Apart from the more absurd scenarios, the Eyes also have plans for every combination of wars that might emerge between the big four factions or various minor factions, as well as various scenarios for a third legion invasion or fresh invasions by the Lich King from Northrend.

More mundanely, Theramore has extensive plans drawn up for invasion and defense, various kinds of more realistic emergencies, famine and localized plague outbreaks.

Built by refugees fleeing the apocalypse, founded by people tired of war, tired of hate, and led by its own people, Theramore is a prosperous city that sits at the crossroads of the world. By accident and by design, the people are quite free, though social sanction and concerns about treason, sabotage and espionage (as much directed at Theramore's nominal allies in the Alliance as anywhere else) does mean that active dissent against the big picture of Theramore's policy does tend to be quiet, at best.

Certainly, public disagreement over all sorts of government policies are common, but most agree on the big picture, or tend to be quiet about it. The big picture, of course, is peace and trade, and the right of the free people of Theramore to live their lives, in accordance with their rights and duties as citizens.

The Theramore Council does very rarely work against Jaina or have members who are major opponents of the Lady Freeholder, but that is a function of both Jaina's popularity in the city, and the fact that Jaina has very few political hills she cares to die on. As Lady Freeholder, she is willing to let the Council set policy on matters in most areas, with minimal input from herself - there is still much she has to do and oversee in her position, but she rarely has strong opinions about many of the smaller details of government that make up the majority of the Council's business - and as such, there's no opportunity for disagreement to occur anyway.

Still, for all that Theramore has going for it, it is far from perfect. Dependent on trade as it is, Theramore is vulnerable to pirates, to economic collapse elsewhere, and of course, to sanction or blockade. If war were to break out, even if it didn't involve Theramore itself, the resulting economic spillover could destroy Theramore, as the island's role as an intermediary makes it vulnerable to all sides, in that sense.

And of course, eventually, the island may find itself running out of space for its population, wealth may start to concentrate too much in a few hands, or food may just become too expensive.

Internally, Theramore is quite unified, but it's not as if everyone feels the same way about the Grand Confederation or even the Ghostlands Pact. Eventually, people may tire of peace, or may find things that they value more than peace. While the Grand Confederation has nothing but peaceful intentions now (discounting the Dragonmaw), that could change - Thrall won't live forever. While for now, Daelin Proudmoore and Varian Wrynn both see more reason to not dispute Theramore's membership in the Alliance nor see any upside to trying to force the issue on the island again, that too can change.

More, perhaps than any other nation in the major powers, Theramore sits, vulnerable to the buffeting storms of politics and diplomacy, as the Silent War wages on.

 

[Kylia Quilor]

"....almost half of the revenues from our docking and warehouse fees come from trade with Durotar or other, further inland members of the Grand Confederation, and yet more than half of that shipping is in the hands of goblins! And that's not counting how much of our trade with the Eastern Kingdoms is carried by goblin hulls. If this worries you as much as it does me, join us at the front Steps of Theramore Keep at noon on June 17th to present our petition to Lady Jaina and the Theramore Council.

Don't let our future be in the hands of the Cartels!"
-Pamphlet posted on the streets of Theramore, June 4th, 24 ADP.

Theramore is the most politically open of all the members of the Alliance, save for Gnomegeran, but for all that speech is largely protected, the press is largely free and rights of assembly and petition are broad, there is still a window of acceptable political opinion that dictates the chances of people running for the Council.

That window is not prescribed by law, or by government action, but by the simple, broad consensus of Theramore society. For reasons that vary from person to person, as a whole, Theramore has unified around what some outside observers (mostly Gnomes, who have the most experience with robust politics) as the "Theramore Consensus'. Pretty much everyone who is elected to the Theramore Council agrees with the so-called Consensus to one extent or another, or at least has to pretend to to get elected.

This consensus is quite simple,at its core: Peace with the Grand Confederation is good, Membership in the Alliance is good, and Trade is Theramore's best path to prosperity.

As these are the three issues that Jaina is most personally invested in, apart from a general desire to see her new home kept safe from an all too often hostile world.

But of course, government is more than just the big picture issues of foreign policy, and disagreements are common in Theramore - the biannual elections for the Council are heated and contentious affairs, though so far there hasn't been any violence or significant property damage as a result of a lost election.

Because of how small Theramore is, and how small the seven districts are, elections are often down to personality as to ideas, but one can still, loosely speaking, divide the members of the Theramore Council into three groups - the Blues, the Golds and the Whites.

Political factionalism within cities and city-states is of course a longstanding tradition in the Eastern Kingdoms, dating back to the Arathi Empire, and in most cases, the factions within a city have had a tendency to be identified by a color - though whether the color they got stuck with was initially their choice or not has also varied.

Notable examples include the Yellows and Greens of Stratholme before Arthas's purge, the Oranges, Whites and Reds of Stormwind City before it was sacked or the Blues, Silvers and Blacks of Strom - though these days, the city of Strom no longer has any local government independent from Royal Administration and thus no elections or electoral politics.

Regardless, these factions are loose labels, but generally speak to some broad divisions about the direction of Theramorian society.

The Theramore Blues are, roughly speaking, the faction of shipmakers, fishers, shipowners, and anyone else who makes their living on the sea directly, or from the products of the sea (such as the extensive industries build around cleaning, gutting and preserving fish). People who self-identify as a Blue tend to support Theramore taking a greater focus in trade directly - Theramore does have a merchant marine of it's own, but the Blues want more such ships, and they want port policies that favor Theramore-flagged ships over those of other nations. Some have ambitions of Theramore leveraging it's unique position to go from just being the gateway between Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms, to dominating the carrying trade between the two continents.

There is, after all, a great deal of money to be made in not only selling your own stuff to other people, but charging other people to carry their stuff from point A to point B.

Dominance of the carrying trade would give Theramore substantial economic leverage, and keep more money in the city. It would also improve Theramore's shipbuilding, giving them more resources and expertise for that, potentially allowing Theramore to hurt Kul Tiras's powerful position in the shipbuilding industry.

The Blues also tend to be deeply skeptical towards goblins and the Cartels. Public opinion in the nations that would become the Alliance has never been very great to the goblins - seen as exploitative, greedy, short-sighted and reckless (all stereotypes rooted in reality, but hardly the entirety of goblin society, nor true to the extremes their detractors would say), and Steamwheedle ships (and the Steamwheedle port of Ratchet) are a huge part of the interface between Theramore and the Grand Confederation.

Of all the trade that passes between Theramore and the GC, much of it passes through Ratchet (the rest is smaller ships trading directly with Darkspear ports, largely) and Steamwheedle-flagged ships (and to a much lesser extent Bilgewater and Venture Co. ships) carry a lot of the goods that come to or go from Theramore, servicing Theramore's role as a vital middleman. But that does give these goblins a great deal of influence on Theramore's prosperity, should they choose to exercise that. The Blues desire to counter that by taking over more of the carrying trade themselves. Some have also quietly advocated for Theramore helping Durotar or the Darkspear create a port capable of rivaling Ratchet, to further reduce the power of this potentially dangerous intermediary.

The Blues are also very much pro expanding the fishing fleet, and expanding the sales of preserved fish - right now, much of the excess fish that isn't bought up by Theramore's population (whose diet, by necessity has come to be dominated by seafood, with fish and rice dishes - rice source from the troll and ogre lands in Dustwallow marsh and the Ech Isles - being especially common) is bought by the Freehold's government in storage, in anticipating of blockade, war or economic dislocation.

But still, some is exported, and the Blues would like to see that exportation increased. Blues tend to think Theramore is probably stocked up on food enough, or at least can slow down how much they stock up going forward but they also want more subsidies devoted to the fishing industry to allow more fishing vessels to be built and manned, so fish exports can be increased. The local crab and shrimp varieties especially have proven to be quite popular in both Stormwind and the Gurubashi League, being both similar (due to similar climates) to those native to those nation's waters, but also different, creating an exotic-yet-familiar quality that has been quite appealing.

Finally, the Blues favor a much more aggressive posture towards the Southsea Pirates - commerce protection isn't enough, the Theramore Navy should (in joint project with other Alliance Navies, the small Grand Confederation Navy and even - in this one instance - the Steamwheedle Navy) actively root these menaces out of their bases and drive them from the Seas, regardless of the costs and risks associated.

The Golds are, basically, the antithesis of the Blues in every way. As is often the case in politics, the two sides actively polarized each other, pushing one another into positions further and further apart.

Where the Blues are the party of the shipmakers and the fishers, the Golds are the faction of the warehouse managers, the tavernkeepers, the professional trades. The lawyers, the bankers, the ship insurers. The longshoremen. Largely speaking, they're the people who benefit from Theramore's role as a gateway and middle man, who would lose out economically if Theramore took over the carrying trade rather than kept letting other ships dock at their port.

The resellers, the wholesalers, the men and women who interface much more directly with the myriad of visitors to Theramore, whose lives and livelihoods depend on regular and frequent traffic to the island.

The Golds do tend to skew slightly wealthier than the Blues, but the Blues are by no means a faction purely of the common man, and the Golds have plenty of people of modest means in their support base (longshoremen, tavern staff, dockside foodstall owners, etc).

The Golds, then, believe in doubling down on Theramore's position as link between West and East - expanding the docking facilities, adding more extensive docks to Alcaz island to increase the space available to Theramore on that front. They support lowering the individual docking fees, to increase the attractiveness of Theramore as a port, and making the money on volume, and on warehousing, shipping insurance and related measures.

The Golds think it is more economical to stockpile imported food rather than expand the fishing fleet even more, and to devote most shipbuilding space to simply repairing and maintaining the ships of other nations when they dock.

Less skeptical towards the Cartels, it's not that the Golds are unaware of how rapacious and greedy goblins can be - the Golds are not entirely free of Eastern Kingdom prejudices against Goblins (though they do tend to be less so than the Blues) - but they aren't that concerned about the goblins leveraging their position against Theramore.

The Golds, being a party of bankers and financiers, resellers and retailers, believe - not without merit - that if the Goblins were to try to use their position in the carrying trade or the role of Ratchet as a central transit point into Durotar against Theramore, they'd be working against their economic self-interest. Theramore's dockyards are too useful for ship maintenance after the long ocean journey to and from the Eastern Kingdoms, and it even serves as a convenient stopping point between Gadgetgazan and Ratchet. While the nations of the Alliance will absolutely trade with the Steamwheedle and Bilgewater, they do still prefer Theramore, largely, and Theramore certainly has better trade relations with the Hyjal Covenant.

As a result, if the Bilgewater or Steamwheedle (and it would likely only be one or the other, not both given the competition between the cartels) tried to wage some sort of economic warfare on Theramore, they'd be cutting off their nose to spite their face. If Ratchet tried to mess with Theramore too much, they'd be losing out on all the revenue from both the Grand Confederation and from Theramore they got off serving as a transfer point. Same if they tried to leverage their carrying position to withhold goods from Theramore.

The Golds also tend to be more interested in keeping the Theramore Navy focused on commerce protection - convoying for ships, guarding the various routes for merchants to arrive at the port et cetera. While the South Sea pirates are a problem, they are not so significant as to be worth spending blood and treasure rooting them out - especially given how treacherous the waters around Lost Rigger Cove are. An attempt to attack the port by sea would risk too many ships running aground on reefs and sandbars without expert piloting, and the landward approaches are too harsh and difficult to move large forces through. The Southsea Pirates are a bigger nuisance to the Steamwheedle anyway, so if the Blues are so concerned about the Steamwheedle, why not just let the pirates be?

The Whites are, somewhat boringly, a faction of people who find themselves somewhere in the middle. The ship repairers, sailcloth makers, ropeyards workers and others, for instance, see value in both strategies, for their own prosperity - either repairing more Theramorian ships, or repairing more foreign ships. People who preserve food for long ship journeys (especially food that isn't fish) also tend to gravitate towards the Whites.

Many of the people closest to Jaina also tend to be Whites, if only because Jaina herself is temperamentally inclined towards this more middle of the road position. The truth is, both the Blues and the Golds have points. There is much money to be made in the carrying trade, but it also would require quite a lot of money to build all those ships, subsidize all that expanded fishing, it would take a lot of manpower that would take labor away from other necessary functions of the city's economic life, and leave the city more exposed to piracy, privateering and direct economic attack.

On the other side, relying too much on other nations to bring in the goods Theramore needs to survive does leave you vulnerable to, and leaves the city vulnerable in other ways - blockade, indirect strangulation, jacked up prices, et cetera.

The Blues would risk putting Theramore into economic conflict with the Cartels pointlessly, the Golds would risk expanding port facilities more than there is shipping to fill it, and put the city at the mercy of everyone - not just the Cartels, but Kul Tiras too.

And that is perhaps one of key things about the Whites that make them more than just a 'centrist' faction. While Kul Tiras isn't exactly popular in Theramore - even Theramorians of Kul Tiran extraction, like Jaina or many of the captains of the fleet aren't all that found of how their homeland has treated them - the Blues and Golds are less concerned about Kul Tiras than the Whites. The Whites can see Daelin Proumoore's charm offensive, but all it takes is for him to change his mind, and for Varian Wrynn to decide Stormwind is ready for war, and then Theramore finds itself torn between the GC, their desire for peace and trade, and the Alliance - not a good place to be in.

This is related in large part to the fact that the Whites are also the most paranoid of the three, overall. Institutional paranoia is the norm in the Freehold, and many people prepare for the worst in their daily lives, or are anxious about how things could go wrong to an unhealthy degree, but the Whites tend to be the most prepared (or the ones who agonize the most over being prepared) and the most anxious. That anxiety sometimes leads to doing nothing at all, or analysis paralysis, but it does mean that the Whites spend more time working the costs and benefits of policies more, which is usually what tends them to the moderate position - though spending too long to think about a decision often leads to overthinking.

The Council is rarely dominated by one faction for long - in general, if the Blues win control of the Council in one election, then six months later, the Golds tend to unseat just enough blues to change the balance. Currently, the Council is split with 4 Blues, 5 Golds and 5 Whites (all self-identified as such), with differences and gradiation within the factions and camps. That is likely to change in the next election, though it is hard to say to what extent it will change.

 

[Kylia Quilor]

Spoiler: Author's Note

As you guys have probably noticed, when I do faction posts I tend to name prominent individuals within those factions. For several reasons I didn't do this for Beve's faction in Alterac and in a few other places, but the Theramore factions post named nobody at all. That was mostly because the nature of the post focused far more on social trends and large popular groupings rather than personalities - an inevitable outcome of a more democratic society. But obviously the specific personalities of people in power or positions of influence also matter, even in a democracy, and people other than the known quantity of Jaina matter.

All these characters appear in canon, but like with most NPCs, they're very undeveloped, so I've had to expand on them greatly, or shift their roles around a bit.

Commander Samuel: I'll be the first person to say the orcs surprised me, being willing to put down that Hellscream bastard and then with the fighting back to back in Ashenvale, the Felwood and Mount Hyjal, but we're still talking about a primitive and brutal people. We can't just blithely assume that they're not going to fall back into old habits.
Tabetha: Only in your small mind, Samuel. The brutality you saw in the Second War was a new habit for the orcs, the orcs of today are much more akin to the way they were before they came to our world, and as for primitive... that says more about you than the orcs.
Samuel: I'm not saying they're going to be a problem, just that we should bear in mind the possibility! Saurfang is still alive and one of the most important military leaders in Durotar! Whatever his people's past, the slaughters he conducted in the First and Second War are old habits for him!

In Stormwind, Theramore is usually identified with Jaina. Both the court factions and the Defias Brotherhood have a tendency to identify the island as basically being the personal preserve of the Lady Freeholder - in Stormwind this is of course the aristocratic and monarchical bias of the courtiers (or in the case of the Defias, it's because by focusing on Jaina in their propaganda, they can ignore the fact that Theramore's government would be pretty popular with the commoners they're trying to get to join their revolution).

This is of course, an oversimplification. Even in monarchies, the personality of the King or Queen is hardly the only thing that determines the course of the government or the society, and that is even more true in Theramore.

Beyond Jaina and her friend and not-quite second-in-command Tervosh, there are a number of prominent figures in and out of the Freehold's government that can be considered influential or important individuals.

Among the mages of the city, apart from Jaina and Tervosh, the most prominent are Ysuria and Tabetha. Ysuria is a High Elf who, during the Second War, fell in love with and married a human soldier and moved to his home in the Hillsbrad Foothills with him afterwards. Together, they joined the refugee fleet and fled with Jaina across the sea. Her husband died during the Battle of Mount Hyjal, and Ysuria now serves as a Mage-Captain in the Theramore Guard - leading the Guard's detachment of mages, and with sufficient rank to order rank and file members of the guard around during combat, if need be. Despite the losses she has suffered, Ysuria remains a surprisingly optimistic and idealistic woman, and holds a great deal of despair of what has become of her former homeland in Quel'Thalas. She is rather virulently anti-Warlock, for understandable reasons, but her people's turn to the Fel (and Fel in general) is one of the few topics that can make this otherwise generally calm and serene woman angry, or at least visibly so.

Tabetha is a mage by training and an alchemist by profession. She made her living in Stratholme primarily by selling... marital aids to the nobility and wealthy commoners, but she also plowed a great deal of the profits she made on such frivolities into providing medicine for the peasantry at as low a price as she could afford (when she couldn't just give it away for free). Living through the Purging of Stratholme traumatized Tabetha, and she has started to develop several alchemical remedies to help both herself and others cope with traumatic events in general - sleep aids to help with nightmares, mild sedatives to help soothe the hyperaware paranoia and anxiety, treatments that can help people break out of flashback or hallucinogenic episodes, et cetera. She has become a leading expert on diseases of the mind in general as a result of her studies. In pursuit of this work, she has spent a great deal of time corresponding with shamans, witch doctors, druids and other magical experts among the Grand Confederation, wanting to pick their brains regarding alchemical remedies of all sorts.
She has written two books on the alchemical practices of the Grand Confederation and its constituent member peoples, both well received by open-minded alchemists all over the Eastern Kingdoms, though disdained by those who are less so. Tabetha has also actually lived among the Darkspear in Dustwallow Marsh and even visited the Echo Isles for several weeks once, in her pursuit of knowledge, managing to throw Vol'jn's schedule entirely out of whack one day by having an hours long discussion with him about various distillation techniques when it came to making medicines.

The Theramore Guard, being the police and military force of the city, consists of 750 full time personnel, and a lot of rotating in semi-conscripts. Citizenship in Theramore does require that all able-bodied citizens be willing and able to serve in the Guard in times of emergency, and as such they are rotated through the guard for irregular training and practice. No one is actually required - as of yet - to do this rotation service, but social pressure makes most show up and do the routine for the day.

The Guard reports to Commander Samual, the grizzled, hard bitten veteran of the Second War, the early campaigns of against the Cult of the Damned, the Third War on Kalimdor and the Battle of Mount Hyjal. A career soldier risen up from within the ranks (uncommon in Lordaeron until the Second War), he actually fought with Arthas at Strahnbad, Andorhal and Hearthglen, but unlike many of Arthas's soldiers, deserted rather than take part of the Purge of Stratholme. Had Arthas not needed all of his remaining men, the Prince probably would have dispatched men to take Samual prisoner and try him for his desertion. Instead, Arthas took his men to Northrend after the massacre, and Samual was left behind trying to help Jaina and the refugees.

Very much of the school of thought that a trainee with a few broken bones that can be healed is better than a soldier who goes onto the battlefield and either dies or puts their fellows in danger through cowardice or lack of confidence, Samuel is a harsh taskmaster on the training yard, but obviously he has to spend most of his time actually managing the Guard. He not really well equipped for the policing duties of the Guard, but is good at delegation on that front. He is notable for being mildly skeptical of the Grand Confederation - not at all pro-war, but he does think that while the orcs especially deserve the right to try to be better than their past, leftover baggage from the Second War and the Strahnbad campaign does not give him a high opinion of their chances of moving beyond their 'baser instincts' on their own. While he does not neglect preparations for attacks from other quarters, including Kul Tiras, he does consider the Grand Confederation thus the most likely threat to Theramore.

In stark contrast to Samual, Commodore Davian Mills is much more concerned with Kul Tiras. Originally just a captain of one of the Kul Tiran ships dispatched to evacuate the refugees from Hillsbrad in the face of the Scourge, Mills ended up being the highest ranking naval officer left in Theramore after the Third War and Daelin's visit, and now leads the small Theramore Navy, An avowed Blue politically, Mills comes from a naval family of gentry back home, though his continued loyalty to Theramore over Kul Tiras has seen him disowned by his conservative-minded father. Mills is careful not to let his politics get in the way of his job, but he has lobbied Jaina and the Council extensively for permission to take the fight to the Southsea Pirates harder, as well as for more ships. Very concerned about the prospects of what happens if Daelin decides his charm offensive won't work or dies and his successor, Tandred decides to resume hostility, Mills thinks that Kul Tiras is far more likely to try to invade Theramore than the Grand Confederation is. As such, he has pushed repeatedly to orient the navy out of commerce protection as the primary focus, and into being a proper military force with offensive and defensive focus in the event of war with his homeland.

Mills is much beloved by his sailors, the gray-haired man affectionately called 'Grandfather' by many, though not to his face, and he lives on his ship with his men most of the time, even when in port, despite nominally having a residence (currently inhabited by his semi-estranged wife and son).

Calia Hastings was an operative of SI:7 who found herself sent to Stratholme to 'investigate the rumors of a 'death-cult' in the Eastweald', after an unspecified incident involving a prominent Stormwindian duke's son, a roast duck, several barmaids and a half dozen fireworks. The assignment was meant to be a de facto exile while the duke she'd pissed off calmed down, but instead she got to live through the Purge - she actually was personally responsible for saving a half dozen people from a group of Arthas's men by managing to get them into her hidden basement just in time while being chased.

She stayed with the refugees, though she did report back to SI:7 repeatedly and her reports on the threat the Plague of Undeath represented (and even more, the threat that the mere threat of it posed, given the way Arthas had seemingly gone mad in fighting it) were instrumental in getting Stormwind to start sending help to Jaina and the Stratholme refugees. This had done much to raise her star in SI:7, and Mathias Shaw had actually sent a letter to Southshore recalling Calia from her 'exile', but by the time the letter had reached her, Lordaeron was on fire, Quel'Thalas had fallen and Jaina was preparing to flee all the way to Kalimdor.

Calia stayed with the refugees, missing the letter by mere days as they left. It was during the campaigns on Kalimdor, in which Calia served as a scout for the soldiers that Calia began to develop an abiding admiration for and loyalty to Jaina, though she still considered herself a loyal member of SI:7 as well. But always a realistic woman, she couldn't deny the orcs had changed, and when elements of SI:7 in Daelin's fleet tried to reach out to her to get her to help sneak some of Daelin's marines into the city, she refused. After the resumption of contact with Stormwind, there was a push to recall and punish her by some militant elements in SI:7, but Shaw refused - he did still want to recall her, but to promote her.

Unfortunately, King Varian, while tipsy at a feast, giving a particularly vicious anti-Theramore and anti-Jaina screed made it into the papers and Calia decided that she would not be loyal to such a man, formally defecting from SI:7 and Stormwind, and coming clean to Jaina about her role as a spy.

Jaina and Tervosh used extensive magic to test if she was telling the truth about her defection, and tested her several ways over the succeeding months, but once satisfied she could be trusted, they authorized her to create the Theramore Eyes, which she still leads to this day.

Fishing is of course vital to Theramore, and one of the most prominent fishermen is Michael "Dirty Mike" Crowe, who only owns one fishing vessel (albeit a quite successful one) but he has also served two separate terms in the Council (not back to back) and is an avowed Blue, and a skilled organizer and public speaker. Probably the closest thing the Blues have to a single leader, Crowe was a fisherman out of Southshore who came with the refugee fleet, convinced by Jaina's words of the impending armageddon. A poor man in Southshore, Dirty Mike (who got his name for being almost comically foul-mouthed) has become well-off and comfortable here in Theramore, though he has actively opposed trying to get rich (he could easily afford to invest his money in more fishing vessels and build up his wealth that way, but he is comfortable with upper-middle class comfort for himself and his family) and is very proud of the way he built his position himself. For him, that is what Theramore is and represents - a land of glorious opportunity, away from the established elites of the Eastern Kingdoms. A place where the sweat of a man's brow can let him make his way in the world, and only that hard work. Nothing more, nothing less.

The recently appointed manager of the Bank of Theramore, following the resignation of the previous manager following a personal tragedy is Lendry Vents. While a man without direct banking experience, he was a man known for his wealth and frugality in Stratholme, but also for his generosity. He had a firm policy of employing the poor underclass of Stratholme at better rates than most would, but he had a very strict set of expectations for employees and others he gave money to - he was a very much one-strike sort of guy, with little tolerance for perceived laziness or failure. Still, this put him head and shoulders above many of the wealthy of Stratholme. He survived the Purge of Stratholme by the expedient of being out of the city on a hunting trip with several local nobles (his presence being part of an effort to engage his daughter to the second son of one of those nobles). Unfortunately Lendry's wife and daughter were among those killed, and it nearly broke the man entirely. He was saved by the need to help provide for the refugees, giving greatly of his own fortune to help feed and clothe them as they fled Stratholme and set up in Hillsbrad, as well as buying several ships outright and having them join the refugee fleet when it was time to flee.

Lendry was able to recoup his fortune thanks to his skill in organizing. He remains a major employer in the Docks district today, generous with pay for all who work hard, but very much a strict judge of character. He has, since taking over the Bank, reduced the number of loans given out to people in Theramore, believing that several of the loans his predecessor made were too risky, or given to people undeserving of such help - but he has also reduced the already low interest rates offered on the loans he does extend. A fierce opponent of handouts, he is still a man happy to extend a helping hand to anyone who is willing to take help, rather than just being given what they think they 'deserve'. Lendry is a decidedly conservative sort of man, and while a happy supporter of the Theramore Consensus, is uncomfortable around orcs, trolls, Tauren and other members of the GC, fobbing any discussion with those members of those races off on employees and subordinates. Has recently remarried, his new wife being Decedra Williams, the non-nonsense, gruff and sturdy Harbormistress of Theramore.

Probably the oddest sight in Theramore Keep is Pained. A night elf who was assigned to be Jaina's bodyguard and liaison right before and during the Battle of Mount Hyjal, Pained, rather than joining the rest of her people in Darkshore and then Darnassus returned with Jaina to Theramore. Her reasoning is a matter of some curiosity - if asked, all she will say is that she was never relieved of her duty to be Jaina's bodyguard, but one would have to assume that by now, Tyrande could have relieved her of the position if she wanted to. What Tyrande has in mind by keeping Pained by Jaina's side has been a concern by some in Theramore who aren't huge fans of the Hyjal Covenant or are just paranoid by nature (Calia Hastings has said that she doesn't trust Pained to the woman's face, which elicited a soft laugh and nothing else from the Night Elf), but Jaina's trust in Pained has never wavered.

Pained is not by Jaina's side every second of every day, but invariably where one is, the other is not too far away most of the time. In addition to serving as Jaina's bodyguard, she has elected to spar with some of the more capable members of the Theramore Guard, but has proven capable of beating any one of them in a fight nine times out of ten - though given that she has several thousand years of combat experience under her belt, that is hardly surprising. She has also provided some select training to scouts and archers among the Guard, teaching them some of the tactics of the Sentinels, though nothing that a human might call 'classified' (The night elves don't entirely have a notion of 'classified')

Pained has experienced much culture shock over the years in her time in Theramore, but has been observed to say that she has grown fond of the people of Theramore in general, even if the human way of looking at the world and of social organization makes her feel like all humans are 'a bit mad'. She still has trouble understanding the electoral systems of Theramore, not understanding how such a chaotic system can actually work, but she tends to keep such critiques to herself, at least publicly.

These days, for most in Theramore, Pained being by Jaina's side is just seen as a fact of life, rather than something to be too worried about (Calia Hastings and many in the Eyes notwithstanding). Some rumors do still make the circuit, but respect for Jaina keeps most people from being too gossipy about the Lady Freeholder and her bodyguard.

 

[Kylia Quilor]

The orcs did a lot of horrible things, many of them of their own free will to one extent or another. They have not fully come to terms with or fully accepted the scope of all of those crimes in their totality, in part because nobody wants to be the bad guy, and in part because they really do have a legit excuse they can point to in the form of the demons (do they blame the demons for more than is merited? Of course they do, wouldn't anyone, in their place?). They have a complicated relationship with their past, and with people like Doomhammer and Hellscream, and there's a lot of things they need to work through before they'll be able to have an honest appreciation of what their people did in the first and second wars, and that may not happen for a generation or two. The orcs should also move past the grievances they have with the Alliance wrt the camps, and some, like Thrall, largely have. Others haven't because people don't just snap their fingers and forgive like that.

Stormwind, and the Alliance in general, suffered a lot at the hands of the orcs. They have every right to hate them. But the cycle of hatred is bad. Hating an entire people is just bad on principle. It's human and it's realistic and it's understandable and it's not evil in of itself, but it isn't a good thing we should be endorsing or embracing. I don't expect and have never expected Stormwind to 'move on' just like that. I do think that in the long run, it's bad for Azeroth, and bad for the people of Stormwind as a whole, and even Daelin Proudmore to keep holding onto this hate and anger, and that they would be better served (and Azeroth would be better served) if they could move on. But there's a difference between ideal (them moving on) and the reasonable expectation (them holding onto that anger for a good long while).

But it's also true that making such grievances the foundation of public policy, as both Varian and Daelin are doing, is just bad government. The fact of the matter is, as long as the GC continues under it's current paradigm (admittedly a big if) barring some incident in the Wild Highlands between the Dragonmaw and the Wildhammer (not impossible), if war ever does break out between the GC and the Alliance, it will be because the Alliance consistently ratcheting up the tension and provocations if not outright starting it. Because the GC, as a whole, doesn't really have any major desire or morivation to go to war with the Alliance (the Dragonmaw do, but as I said, that's aside for now, and the Dragonmaw are in the GC in part because of the existing tensions from the Alliance anyway). The Alliance has nothing the GC needs.

Varian and Daelin both would love a war. For understandable reasons, but still. The GC has nothing the Alliance needs, and poses no significant material, economic or physical threat, and right now, is exceedingly unlikely to attack the Horde. But because Varian and Daelin are still under the impression that the orcs are substantively the same in character, ideology and threat potential, despite the new coat of paint, as their previous incarnation, they are making all their geostrategic decisions on the basis that war is inevitable, let's start it on our terms. Plus, they have grievances that are legitimate. But they're letting those grievances decide their public policy.

This is bad. Again, right now, barring a major change in leadership in the GC, or a Dragonmaw border incident, the only way the war breaks out is the Alliance, ultimately, starts it. And the warmongers in the Alliance are largely warmongers because of thought processes rooted in their grievances against the orcs from the first and second wars.

Those grievances, then, could lead to a wholly unnecessary war that could kill thousands or tens of thousands of people that do not have to die. This is a bad thing.

Now, in the end, I can say that TSW will not feature open warfare between any of the big 4 until at least after Deathwing, and possibly not even then. In like two or three decades, maybe they fight a war for logical geostrategic reasons, or stumble into one by accident, etc, but that's all beyond the scope of this project. In the end -

Daelin is going to die heroically against the forces of the Lich King, and he will even be remembered by the orcs as a noble warrior whose actions ultimately saved as many orcish lives as human ones. His legacy will be ultimately one of a good man who never did stop hating, but when it counted, learned to save that hate for later, rather than let it rule him every day of his life.

Varian is going to see that the orcs are different now. He is never going to forgive and forget, and I wouldn't ask him to. He is going to realize that the orcs are just one part of the GC, and that more importantly, his hatred of the orcs and the desire on his part to focus on them above all other things is one of the things that made is so easy for Katrana to manipulate him. That he neglected his responsibilities in part because he let his anger rule him, rather than just being part of him. Varian is, at his core, a good man who sees himself as a father to his subjects and he will be upset with himself on realizing what his anger let happen.

The orcs are going to, come Outland, have to grapple with a fuller appreciation of what their people did on Draenor and with an honest understanding of how much free will they actually had at various points. This will still not lead to the kind of wholesale ejection from leadership of people like Saurfang or other such veterans that would seem justified in many ways, for purely pragmatic reasons if nothing else, but it is going to have an impact on the orcish view of themselves, and in time will lead to a reappraisal of what they did during the First and Second Wars. It will not be fast, unfolding in stages slowly across orcish society, unevenly and sometimes incompletely.

Will it lead to them changing the name of Orgrimmar? I doubt it. Will they stop appreciating the vital role Orgrim played in liberating their people and setting the stage for Thrall to give them a new path forward that allowed them to begin to work to redeem their race? Probably not. Will every orcish child, when learning about the heroic lasts months of Orgrim's life also be told about the kind of man he was before, the sins he commited? Absolutely. When telling stories of Hellscream and his noble sacrifice to finally end Mannoroth and free the orcs from his taint, will the orcs also speak of his role as being the first orc to willingly take up that taint in the first place? Yes. Will their histories say that the orcs would have done all the things they did without demonic intervention? Of course not. Will their histories admit that though the orcish people largely went mad together, they chose to go mad. That not everyone *did* go mad, and those that did made the choice to do so? That even though their madness and demonic whispers and corrupted minds left them in traps of their own making where the awful choices they made seemed like the only ones to make, they still chose to make them? Yes, their histories will admit that.

Will the orcs admit their crimes fully and honestly? In time, pretty much. Will they ever be reduced to abject self-flagellation and crippling guilt? No.

In the end, The Silent War is a story of cold war, of tense peace, of politics, diplomacy, intrigue and scheming. It is a story of learning to live with your neighbor even if you have very good reasons to hate them. It's a story where morality matters, but so too do geopolitical exigencies.

It's a story that firmly believes that, when possible, peace is better than war, that a quick war is better than a long war, and that no matter what, some things are still worth fighting for.

But it is also a story that believes, at the end of the day, vengeance is not one of things. Vengeance is one of the mosty fundamental of all human urges, and in a sense, the human search for the very concept of justice is rooted in vengeance - the first law codes were basically just legalized and regulated vengeance. We as a society have moved past an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Many countries have abolished or rendered moot the death penalty for a reason.

The Silent War is a story of peace being an illusion... but that just because something is an illusion, doesn't make it not real. Because if all something can ever be is an illusion, then you embrace it even harder, even tighter, value it even more, what you can get of it.

Humanity, as a whole, has almost certainly never been 'at peace', and that will probably never change, not completely. But we can still strive for peace.

Azeroth will probably never know 'peace in our time, forever and after', but people can still seek peace.

There's a quote I love, from Lois McMaster Bujold in the Vor Game: "War is not its own end, except in some catastrophic slide into absolute damnation. It's peace that's wanted. Some better peace than the one you started with."

Blizzard, it seems, views war as it's own end, Blizzard really does seem to want that catastrophic slide into absolute damnation.

In The Silent War, even if peace can never come, will always be an illusion to one extent or another, it is still a better peace that is sought, by means of war. Even at their worst, Daelin and Varian, when warmongering, are still hoping for a better peace. Even Orgrim, at his worst, was hoping for a better peace.

In the end, Orgrim died before he got to see that last vision for better peace he had come to fruition, Daelin never did manage to move past defining a better peace as the deconstruction of the orcish culture, nation and civilization.

But Varian does get the chance to do and be better, and Thrall gets to see his people survive, thrive and come to terms with their sins.

A better peace is always worth fighting for - but you need to make sure, before you fight, that the peace you seek, that 'better' peace really is better, and that it's worth all the people that will die.

If it isn't (and it rarely is), then you shouldn't fight the fucking war.

 

[Kylia Quilor]

Spoiler: spoiler

I was gonna just have one big post, but by the time I finished with the Gnoll War, we were all the way to 6100 words, and god knows what the length would be by the time I got to the present day. Objectively, I could cut this down quite a bit - while the sweep of Stormwind History is long, and the story I have in mind for Stormwind does require a lot of this historical context, I absolutely didn't need the detail I did. But between rage at how incoherent Blizzard's history is the moment you scratch the surface - and I'll probably have an informational discussing this further - and the sheer sweep of ideas I had as I wrote, I decided to keep it all. It's all in keeping with the general notions of TSW, it's interesting (to me, and I think to most of you), so here we have the first chunk of the Stormwind History.

I also didn't actually expect to start working on this until closer to the 15th, but I got struck with so much inspiration over the weekend, so here we are.

Katrana Prestor: Your people had many opportunities to reclaim the Marches in the last decade, when we were at our weakest. Why are you pressing the subject now?
Ambassador An'ghan: When your King's father so cruelly allowed his false friend Medivh to launch his magic against our forces, our losses were great. But we have recovered. We have no objection to Stormwind turning the gaze north to the so-called 'Dark Horde', but we will not agree to move any forces back from the border, unless that border moves.
Varian Wrynn: You want to reclaim the entire Marches without even spending a single coin or a drop of blood! Pathetic-
Katrana: Your majesty, please, there's no need to insult the Ambassador. It is merely a...pragmatic desire, as typical of the Jungle Trolls. As for your demands, Ambassador... surely you understand the entire march cannot be handed over so simply.
An'ghan: In diplomacy, little is simple, Chancellor. However, I think it best if we continue this discussion ourselves... your King seems more interested in insults than in talk.
Katrana: Mind your tongue, troll! He is my King, and this is his Keep!
Varian: The Ambassador is right that it would be better if you keep this going without me, Lady Prestor. I have better things to do than hear him insult my father. Keep me informed as to the state of negotiations - I have other things to deal with.

The History of Stormwind starts, in a sense, with the Sundering. All history does, but to understand the state of modern Stormwind, one really does need to understand the role of the Gurubashi Empire in the foundation of and history of the Kingdom.

The Sundering, which broke the world in pieces, broke the Gurubashi Empire in twain, and sank vast portions of it underground. Their far western holdings, in Zul'Farrak, would become utterly split from their homeland, lost for several millennia until contact was reestablished and the Farraki had emerged as a different people, with a different culture. But even in the east, the Gurubashi lost much land and territory, and the chaos of the Sundering, on the heels of Azshara's various wars against the troll empires, left the Gurubashi reeling.

Civil war, and civil disorder became the norm of the day, but in time, with a new dynasty claiming the throne in Zul'Gurub, the Empire was able to reassert control all the way to the mountains of Dun Morogh (as humans know them) by -7000 ADP - the forbidding mountains were not worth claiming, and a series of small troll city-states in what would later be called Loch Modan would end up being useful, neutral buffer states between the Gurubashi and the Amani.

Of course, as was the norm in the troll empires in this era, the Gurubashi ruled over more than just Jungle Trolls. Their subjects included Gnolls, Kobolds and Ettins, among others. Generally little more than an underclass, the Ettins were enforcers, the Kobolds miners, and the gnolls all sorts of manual labor. The Kobolds were kept in line by the expedient of controlling their access to candles, lamps and other light sources, the Ettins were controlled by manipulation of their simple minds, and the gnolls by force and hierarchy - the matriarchs of various gnoll tribes were used to keep the rest of the people in line, or else.

Though their empire extended all the way to Loch Modan, the further north one got, the less actual trolls you saw. But there was, due to troll adaptiveness, great variation within those trolls that lived in the north, versus those that lived in or closer to the Jungles. Climate and geography, among other factors, can lead to rapid change (even by Azeroth's standards) in the physical makeup of a troll group within as little as one or two generations.1​. Hence why Ice Trolls, Jungle Trolls, Forest Trolls, Zandalari Trolls and Sand Trolls have all emerged from the original Dark Troll template.2​.

Regardless, the Gurubashi were able to continue quite well like this until the Amani started to lose their wars against the invading High Elves - this began to force them to slowly withdraw forces north, allowing the Gurubashi to extend their suzerainity over the states in the Lock Modan region, though the Wetlands were of little interest to the Gurubashi - the region fell into general abandonment save for some overland trade, until reaching the Amani toehold of what would eventually become Dun Modr.

Unlike the Amani, the Gurubashi's biggest threat were themselves - periodic civil war was the norm for the Empire, when they weren't waging naval war with Zandalar, or putting down the occasional gnoll rebellion.

The wheels of the Gurubashi Empire began to (slowly) come off the bus in the late -4000s ADP, when their kobold miners were able to - on a large scale - steal the means to make their own candles and lanterns on their own, freeing themselves of their dependency on the Gurubashi. Rather than rebel, the Kobolds merely ran further underground, collapsing their mine entrances behind them. The loss of mineral resources until mines could be reopened - and gnolls and trolls could be put to work - led to problems for the Gurubashi. Their top-heavy palace economy was put under massive strain, and though it was able to recover to an extent, the dislocation led to a rise in banditry, a loss of their control over Loch Modan, and a general breakdown in control the further one got from the capital.

The Troll Wars, which broke the back of the Amani Empire, would not touch the Gurubashi. The Amani would ask their kin for assistance, but none - not the Drakkari, not the Gurubashi, not the Zandalari and not the Farraki - would care to assist their brethren, for various reasons. By the time the Empire of Arathor was able to establish itself, the Gurubashi had largely managed to recover, though their control over the regions that would become the Searing Gorge, the Badlands and the Burning Steppes were weaker than before.

It was not the elves or the humans that would begin the next decline of the Gurubashi, though the Amani regularly warned their kin such was coming. Instead, it would be the dwarves and the gnomes.

The first recorded contact between the Gnomes and the Gurubashi was in -2,800 ADP, and it was largely peaceful - the gnomes, inventive and clever were able to trade with the Gurubashi, but their mountainous homeland was of minimal interest to the Gurubashi state, so no war needed to break out. Even once the Dwarves became known, at first there didn't have to be war, and trade continued.

It wasn't until -2,300 ADP, when an incident known as the 'Battle of the Broken Tunnel' sparked a war between the Dwarf/Gnome alliance and the Gurubashi. The details are complex and the ultimate question of who started what remains in dispute, though of course the Gurubashi tend to blame the dwarves and the dwarves (Bronzebeard, Dark Iron and Wildhammer alike) tend to blame the Gurubashi.

The resulting series of conflicts and wars this created would not - in the main - go well for the Gurubashi. Their inflexible palace economy proved less adaptive than the dwarven arrangements, and with gnomish assistance, the dwarves were able to outproduce the Gurubashi in almost everything. The biggest advantage the trolls had, their magic, only served them so well.

Even still, the dwarves had only pushed them as far as the Redridge mountains when the trolls managed to stab themselves in the foot.

As the wars had gone on, more and more trolls had begun to turn to darker loa, and Hakkar was eventually on the lips of nearly half the leaders of the Empire, including the Emperor. Unfortunately for the Emperor, Muxoh'ti III, all was not well in Zul'Gurub. The leaders of the Hakkari Temple had decided that the best way to win the perennial wars with the dwarves for good was to summon the Soulflayer to manifest fully in Azeroth.

When word began to spread of this, Muxoh'ti's children, all of them, tried to turn their father against the Atal'ai priesthood, but when that failed, the greatest and last civil war to consume the Empire was launched. The resulting 20 year conflict, (-1531 to -1511) which would eventually pull in the Zandalari, would break the back of the Gurubashi empire, extinguish the dynasty, destroy the palace economy and indeed, break the unity of the Empire entirely, reducing the region to a series of city-states.

That said, despite the claims of certain slanderous Zandalari historians (claims which were later picked up by Stormwindian ones), Hakkar was banished at the end of the war, rather than sticking around in Zul'Gurub for centuries after.

It was in the immediate chaos of the post-Gurubashi collapse, with the gnolls now able to run rampant through what would eventually become Stormwind the Kingdom that humans from Arathor began to come in larger numbers.

There had been coastal human settlements in the area on and off for centuries, usually paying some nominal tribute to the Gurubashi, but primarily focused on fishing, and salt production. Between certain nature brine springs, and the generally warm weather of the region, salt production by evaporating brine and seawater was a year-round prospect, and the fishing in the area was excellent. Stormwind began as a small town with a good harbor. But with the Gurubashi broken, and the gnolls on the loose as a result, the people of Stormwind had a problem - the small network of fishing villages that very loosely belonged to Stormwind was under threat like they'd never experienced. As village after village was evacuated in the face of gnolls who were eager to undo anything their Gurubashi ex-masters had built (such as allowing humans to take prime coastal land in exchange for tribute, rather than letting gnolls live there) the town of Stormwind begged for help from Arathor.

Of course, with as weak as the Empire's central authority was, Stormwind wouldn't be able count on Arathi legions. Instead, ambitious second sons and daughters, veterans looking for a paycheck and others came, eagerly seeking glory, gold and grants of land.

The next resulting century was a pretty harsh one for both sides - the Gnolls would be pushed out of what is now Westfall, as well as the western half of the Elwynn Woodlands. By the time -1,400 rolled around, however, while the town of Stormwind had turned into a wealthy city (still mostly focused on fishing and salt production), but the surrounding hinterland was dominated by self-interested nobles who could be trusted (mostly) to rally to each other's defense, but very rarely could they be expected to work together on the offense. The Gnolls had been able to adapt to the human invasion to an extent, though the potency of human mages allowed more destructive flexibility than gnoll shaman.

The Gnolls situation was made worse by resurgent Gurubashi city-states - though they were as likely to fight each other as the Gnolls, they were still more sophisticated in their organization, weaponry and magic, much like humanity. When pressed at both ends, the Gnolls would slowly find themselves pushed out.

But the Gurubashi and the Stormwindians took very different takes on how to handle the gnolls. As humanity advanced slowly further into the Elwynn Woodlands, they merely pushed the Gnolls off their land entirely, into the less desirable Redridge Mountains, or other remote areas. The Gurubashi City-states - or more specifically Yojamba, Tkashi, Zul'Kunda, and Zuldaia, being the ones in a best position to attack the gnolls - instead preferred to develop suzerainty, forcing various gnoll tribes to become their subjects. Among those four city-states, it soon became the fashion to have the tribes under their control fight tribes under the control of others, as a form of proxy war, allowing them to save troops for conflicts within the Stranglethorn Jungle, as was quite common - while Zul'Gurub was largely content to rebuild their manpower and warchest the slow way, the other city-states regularly fought one another.

This state of affairs continued for several more centuries, as some Gnolls were pushed into Redridge Mountains, while gnolls of the open space along the edge of the Jungle, as well as the Duskwood were subjugated, forced to fight for the amusement of their troll suzerains - it wasn't the de facto slavery of the old Imperial days, but it wasn't great. The next great shakeup didn't happen until -1191 ADP, when the last Emperor of Arathor died without clear issue - a few cadet lines, but none with a good claim to the throne, and given how weak the Imperial throne had become... no one really cared enough to fight for it. The Arathi Empire died slowly, over the next decade as first Lordaeron, then Alterac, then Gilneas, then Dalaran, then Stormwind and finally Stromgarde itself all picked new governments for themselves, free of Arathor. The nobles around Stormwind came together and selected Rylan Bladesinger as their new King.

The realities of the Gnolls and the Gurubashi meant that the needs of common defense were the priority - so the nobility agreed to give the King very broad powers to rally soldiers in defense of the realm, but they were unwilling to agree to common offense, or giving much domestic power to the throne. But the King was able to wheedle out a tax on the sale of fish, which seemed a less offensive option than salt. But while a salt tax might have been more profitable, the fish tax was far less annoying to the common people - the Bladesinger dynasty worked hard to be popular with the common people. Unlike in other realms, however, the Bladesingers preferred to convince the common people to riot against the most troublesome nobles, rather than try to fold wealthy commoners into the government by expanding the House of Nobles with a House of Commons.

Over the next few centuries, Stormwind continued to slowly, oh so slowly push outward, piecemeal, with the King's ability to bend nobles further away significantly reduced. The closer your estates were to the capital, the more the Bladesingers could agitate your peasants.

Meanwhile, the Gurubashi were slowly unifying - renewed conflict with the Zandalari, as well as gnolls managing to adapt their magic and their combat to resist both human and troll even more (at this point, humans and trolls were mostly winning on sheer numbers, rather than anything else), was forcing the city-states to start allying more, and Zul'Gurub rose up out its quiescence, financing the more cooperative city-states with extensive subsidies, while cutting off trade with the more belligerent ones. The days of conquest were gone - the Gurubashi would rule their own by wealth. The manipulation of trade and money made many resent Zul'Gurub, and yet... elites across Stranglethorn feared renewed gnoll violence - after a major unified gnoll resistance across the future 'Gnoll Marches' and Duskwood kicked all trolls out in -861, representatives of all the city-states met in Zul'Gurub, eventually formally creating the Gurubashi League a decade later, after much haggling.

While both the Gurubashi League and the Amani Empire abandoned conventional dynastic rule, the Amani are still a centralized nominally autocratic state, ruled by and from Zul'Aman - and though Zul'jin rarely uses the title, he's still technically the Emperor. The Gurubashi, on the other hand, are a collection of city-states, with Zul'Gurub merely first among equals, and no one claiming the title of Emperor.

The unification of the Gurubashi League scared Stormwind - troll and human had rarely fought, but their borders were getting closer. In an uncharacteristic move, the reigning Bladesinger King decided to reach out to the gnolls - they needed help against resurgent trolls, and the humans wanted a buffer.

Unfortunately for the Gnolls, this aid was a poisoned pill. The King couldn't stop his more remote nobles from pressing the gnolls, but the gnolls needed the assistance of royal money (which hired 'mercenaries' who were mostly royal forces) too much to argue. It saw more gnolls pushed out of Redridge, into the remote parts, or pushed further south, as the trolls began to push north.

The first of many Stormwind-Gurubashi wars began in -812, after much saber-rattling, skirmishing and raids. The inciting incident was technically the Gurubashi's fault, but both sides had been looking for an excuse. This war was profoundly destructive for the gnolls caught in between, with whole tribes killed during the fighting, and still more decimated. Stormwind lost, though only just, securing Gurubashi suzerainty over everything south and east of the Nazferiti River.

Stormwind's loss would usher in one of the three defining features of Stormwind for the next few centuries - civil war.

The other two were getting involved in the wars of the Lordaeron subcontinent, and perennial warfare with the trolls.

The Bladesinger dynasty was overthrown by bitter, angry nobles, and a new dynasty elected. These new Kings, knowing they needed allies against the Gurubashi, looked north.

Since the fall of Arathor, the human realms of the northern third of the Eastern Kingdoms had waged regular war against eachother - it quick developed into a fairly civilzied sorty of war, but it was quite common. Lordaeron versus Alterac, Alterac versus Stromgarde, Gilneas versus Kul Tiras, Lordaeron versus Gilneas, Stromgarde versus Lordaeron, and every combination in between. Stormwind began intermarrying with these northern realms - the kingdoms of the north tended to look down on Stormwind's martial might, but an ally was an ally, money was money and more troops were more troops.

Who stormwind was allied with changed from generation to generation, but with regularity, Stormwindian soldiers and money would move north - and less often, Stormwind's latest ally would send soldiers down to help Stormwind against the Gurubashi.

By clever use of these soldiers and alliances, the Kings of Stormwind were able to increase their control over military affairs, but only by carefully handing out patronage in the army... which meant that when a powerful noble was also a powerful general...

Stormwind, when not at war in the north or not at war with the Gurubashi often found itself at war with itself. The Redridge Mountains were especially hard to keep in line, buit the arrogant nobles of Westfall were also prone to causing trouble for the Kings. But the Kings were able to win just enough of these civil wars to increase royal power, even though winning those conflicts often required cutting deals and granting concessions. As a result, by -500 ADP, Stormwind (which now encompassed parts of Duskwood, after some successful campaigns) was a patchwork of exemptions, special status, penalized zones and a crazy quilt of other legal distinctions and jurisdictions. As a result of the fall of the Bladesingers, the idea of rallying the commoners against recalcitrant nobles had become quite verboten, but the wealthy commoners of the cities were able to wield influence through loans and through urban militias - it wasn't the same as having a place in the legislature, like in other realms, but it fit the needs of the time.

The warfare between Stormwind and the Gurubashi had begun to skew Stormwind - the Gurubashi were able to stand on their own, and the humans had ended up alienating the gnolls entirely by this point, though the trolls weren't popular with the increasingly scattered and weak tribes. Centuries of their villages and hunting grounds being fought over had done little for the gnollish people.

The greatest and most destructive Stormwind-Gurubashi War, the one that made all previous ones seem like dress rehearsals, was the War of the Morass. Sparked by an incident in the Black Morass when a hunting party including the then prince of Stormwind was attacked by troll bandits who were very loosely in the pay of the Gurubashi League's elites, the War of the Morass (-367 to -341) would see both realms throw everything they could at each other.

It would strain the ability of Stormwind to marshal troops and resources, seeing more rights ceded back to the nobles outside of the war effort, including a return to the old defensive-only arrangements, once this war was done. Stormwind called on every ally or favor they could in the north, and drove themselves deep into debt with Tirasi and Ironforge banks.

The Gurubashi, on the other hand, initially went from strength to strength, but as the war went on, the strain on the unity of the city-states started to tax the League - the southern city-states of the League became embittered to the war, and the merchant princes of Zul'Gurub bemoaned the cost. The gnolls had stopped being profitable subjects long ago, and during times of peace, much money could be made selling spices to human realms - but during times of war, Stormwind (their best customer) and whatever Stormwind's allies of the month were were no longer an option. What was the League even fighting for?

When Stormwind managed to have a marriage pact with the Kul Tirans settled in -346, the tide of the war turned completely. Kul Tiran raiders ravaged the costal cities of the League, and marines even landed to begin to invest the walls of Mizah near the end, though a full siege never got off the ground.

In the end, Stormwind won because it was better able to leverage it's alliances and relations with the post-Arathi states of the north, while the Gurubashi were unable to get much traction from their toll brethren.

Stormwind could make promises to its allies it could keep. The Gurubashi would never make any promise to help the Amani reclaim their lands from Quel'Thalas, would never agree to be subjects of the Zandalari again, and they had nothing the Drakkari wanted anyway. And the Farraki couldn't have offered much even if they'd wanted to.

In the Treaty of Brightshire, since in -338, Stormwind was able to annex the entire Duskwood, and the Gnoll Marches were formally created. Both Stormwind and the Gurubashi League would jointly force all gnolls in their territory into the land between Duskwood and Stranglethorn.

Unfortunately, the Gnolls refused to cooperate. Instead, they scattered, fleeing into the Black Morass, the roughest parts of the Redridge Mountains, the most remote parts of Duskwood and Elwynn... and neither side was in a position to force the issue. The name 'Gnoll Marches' stuck, but they never did manage to pen the Gnolls in there.

The Treaty of Brightshire also formalized certain rules of warfare between the two Kingdoms - in the north, the human nations tended to wage fairly civilized war amongst themselves, and in a remarkable display of open-mindedness, King Belvor Wrynn, first ruler of the Wrynn Dynasty, agreed to extend those same notions to the League.

War would be generally limited, respect would be paid to prisoners, captured settlements, civilians and more. Trade would be cut off during war time, but property would be respected, as much as practicable.

---

1: This adaptiveness is why if, for instance, one took a village of Jungle Trolls and moved them to Northrend and kept them there long enough, by the time the villagers had grandchildren, those grandchildren would be nearly indistinguishable from ice trolls whose forebears have been there for millennia. Not entirely identical, but hard for a non-troll to tell the difference. The Firetree and Smoulderthorn trolls in the Burning Steppes, though forest trolls by origin, have begun to have children that have ashy-gray tinges to their skin, skin more resistant to ambient heat, and are able to handle breathing in ash much better. It is expected that in another ten years, a new troll race will emerge. Trolls and non-trolls have preemptively dubbed this new race 'Ash Trolls'.
2: Strictly speaking, the Dark Trolls, while probably the closest to the original troll form, have not been unchanged entirely in the intervening time, of course.

 

[Kylia Quilor]

Varian: Renault of Yonsport, you have been found guilty of the crime of aiding traitors to the crown in escaping Royal custody. Your sentence for the crime shall be a fine of one gold griffin and one day in the upper cells of Stormwind Keep, followed by thirty days of house arrest in the North Tower.
Katrana: Your majesty, please-
Varian: I can hear from the whispers of all assembled, and from my own Chancellor in my ear, that you find this judgment to be too soft? Normally, I would agree. But this is not a normal time. You stood before multiple judges and swore on the Light itself you only aided Van Cleef's pack of traitors because he held your son hostage. Every judge ruled that the evidence of your son's death a year ago was indisputable. But thanks to the tireless work of SI:7 and it's Director, Mathias Shaw, not only has the Crown been able to prove that the Defias faked your son's death, but that they did indeed hold him. And it is thanks to the heroism of the men and women of SI:7 that I can say this, Renault: Turn around, and embrace your son once more.

The Treaty of Brightshire was supposed to create peace between two powerful neighbors. And in many ways it did usher in a new era of peace. But despite that fact, the Gnoll Marches did not know peace.

Stormwind and the Gurubashi were able to avoid the ravages and the brutality of the past. Already there'd been intermixing, trading and raiding in the areas that kept changing hands, but now, that ramped up, for both sides. Light syncretism and Stormwindian music made their way south, while the elites of Stormwind began to develop a fondness for food even spicier than before, as well as the unique crabs of the coastal waters of the southern parts of the Vale, and the unique ways the Gurubashi prepared them.

It would be pointless to detail the many wars and conflicts over the March after the Treaty of Brightshire. In truth, the conflicts were limited - as much as an individual noble or a single city state wanting to get some gold and glory. It became about the game as much as about the land itself. Sometimes the 'battles' were entirely on paper. At one point a game of chess between a Stormwind Duke and a Gurubashi Merchant Prince decided the fate of a town that sat on a profitable silver mine. (The Gurubashi prince won the game), and in another case, the two armies - both quite small - agreed ahead of time to arm themselves only with slings and clubs, and use no magic.

But there were wars where people died. When one side or the other took too much of the Marches, open war would begin.

Stormwind continued to play a role in the politics of the North, but the ill opinion the north had of Stormwind continued - Stormwind "play acting" as though the Gurubashi deserved civilized warfare was of course because Stormwind couldn't beat them in true war. Stormwind couldn't fully control their nobles. Stormwind was constantly in debt, and unlike mighty Lordaeron, couldn't exact full authority over their outlying regions.

And of course, the Kings of Stormwind couldn't wage any sort of offensive war without the permission of the House of Nobles.

Of course, these perceptions in the north were often overstatements - Stormwind was regularly in debt, but they continued making payments on that debt. Yes, Stormwind's nobles were very independent minded, especially in Duskwood, the Marches and the Redridge Mountains, but their ability to openly flout royal decrees was overstated. And Lordaeron's nobles were also quite potent themselves, when it came to defending their prerogatives.

Even the House of Nobles was usually deftly maneuvered. They had a great deal of control over taxation and of course, declarations of war and the mobilization of troops en masse, but the Kings and Queens of Stormwind were usually able to play them against each other to achieve most of what they wanted, at any given time.

Over the next many decades, the only true disaster to strike Stormwind was the eruption of Blackrock Mountain. In the days after the War of the Three Hammers, when the Shadowforge Empire emerged as the home of the Dark Iron, distinct from the once larger Kingdom of Ironforge, and lost control of their summoned 'servant', Ragnaros. This eruption destroyed the once fertile, if hilly country that became the Searing Gorge and Burning Steppes, and rained ash and blocking sunlight all over the Eastern Kingdoms - Stormwind was especially badly hit, and the resulting crop failures that year led to peasant uprisings all over the Kingdom. Still, compared to some of the civil wars and total wars that had come before...

Stormwind had managed to leave civil war and destructive conflict behind them, but at great cost. They continued on in this mold until the days of the Gnoll Uprising.

Certainly, the scattering of the Gnoll tribes had not been the end of the threat of the Gnolls, but they had been scattered, without unity, and losing much of the sophistication they'd once gained after hard conflicts with their human and troll neighbors. In time, they ended up playing a key role in the bandit ecosystem of Stormwind's more remote areas, however - they would buy many of the things stolen by bandits, provide bases for them and sell food and other supplies. The Gnolls would specially seek out crossbows, using bandits as intermediaries.

It was Garfang, a brilliant warrior and a cunning leader, who saw the potential here. Using bandits as messengers and cut-outs, he was able to slowly assemble a large warchest, consistently cheating the bandits by playing to their racist stereotypes of his people - that gnolls were too stupid, too savage, too driven by hunger to be cunning, clever or smart with money. He sought the blessings of the eldest and greatest of the Matriarchs, and 76 years before the Dark Portal opened, he managed to pull it off. They gave him their blessing - both magical and spiritual - and Garfang was able to rally the scattered tribes to his banner - metaphorically, at first.

Garfang knew better than to try to mass his forces all in one place, because that would only draw the attention of Stormwind at large. Instead, he launched coordinated raids across Redridge and the Duskwood, operating from the Black Morass or remote mountain bases. He picked these independent-minded regions to target because they would be less inclined to call for help from the King, and the King would be less able to force the issue if they didn't. The raids were at first to build up experience and morale, give Garfang more credibility with his people. But soon enough, the point of the raids became to draw out the men at arms for the slaughter.

This continued for nearly a year before the regional nobles began to realize that the gnolls were acting in coordinated fashion... but once more Garfang's bandit links served him well - he had spies in the households of some of these nobles through those bandits, and as soon as he realized his enemies knew what the score was, he could finally strike. Convincing many of his bandit allies, and even hiring troll mercenaries, Garfang launched a full-scale assault on both Duskwood and the Redridge Mountains. The Kingdom of Stormwind could finally respond to something so blatant, and King Landan1​, who finally had the legal option to call on the soldiers of his vassals and move into the outlying regions did so, diving his forces and moving to push the gnolls out of both regions.

He expected it to be simple - but Garfang's hold on his coalition was greater than Landan expected. And though he had already proven to be cunning...

The Gnolls were able to use ambush and crossbows to great effect against their human enemies, and though their Shamans lacked the sheer destructive power of the humans's mages, the matriarchs that still technically commanded Garfang were potent crafters of magic. But the greatest advantage Garfang had was simple deception: the full fledged attack on Duskwood was a lie, a paper invasion that faded as soon as it experienced pushback from the Stormwind forces - the full force had been on Redridge, and with half the army now entirely out of position, the Stormwind soldiers in Redridge were flanked and routed by enemies who were not supposed to be there. Their supply lines were cut, and they were forced behind the walls of Lakeshire and the other fortified townships around Lake Everstill.

Garfang could leave some troops behind to maintain a siege and then moved the rest to ambush the second half of the army with a series of battles as they moved from Duskwood to Redridge - desertions among Stormwind's soldiers soared as morale plummeted, and Landan was forced to turn back to Elwynn before getting halfway to Lakeshire, needing to regroup. Garfang was in a position to secure his hold on Redridge.

But this is where Garfang's vision failed him. He had not expected to win quite this totally this quickly - the rate of Stormwind desertions, the sheer success of his diversionary tactics... it went to his head. Had Garfang decided to consolidate at Redridge, cut a few deals with the besieged forces and allowed Stormwind's soldiers to surrender with dignity, allowed them to leave, and allowed the inhabitants to leave as well with some of their moveable goods, Garfang might have been able to hold his little coalition together. Had he been even more visionary and agreed to let any human that wanted to stay in Redridge do so, he might have been able to create a path forward to an independent state in the region.

Instead, lacking a clear vision, but wanting to punish Stormwind for centuries of humiliations - understandably so - and determined to show Stormwind the cost of resistance, when the walls around the town of Alther's Mill were breached, his gnolls (and many of his bandit allies, to be fair) were absolutely brutal. Soldiers who tried to surrender were cut down, many women and pretty young men were handed over to the bandits to brutalize or kill as they sought fit, the elderly were put down with extreme prejudice and children were either killed or handed over to the bandits to be 'recruited'.

And of course, the dead were eaten. Not taboo to gnolls (indeed, it wasn't even notable, meat was meat), and even the troll mercenaries considered it with a shrug, but for human sensibilities...

Of course, the extent to which the human bandits took part in this brutality is disputed. Gnoll oral history says that the vast majority of Garfang's human allies enthusiastically took part, and Gurubashi histories of the war tend to agree with this interpretation. The Stormwind histories, of course, tend to put as much of the brutality on Garfang and his gnolls and as few humans as possible.

Regardless of what the exact proportions were, the sheer scope of the devastation - and the prospect of it being revisited upon the other towns in the area, or Lakeshire itself - alienated some of Garfang's bandit allies. It also enraged Landan, and rallied support to him from doubtful nobles who had been disparaging of his failures.

The compounded centuries of trauma the gnolls experienced made their anger understandable, but the Alther's Mill Massacre was Garfang's mistake. He tried to use the example of Alther's Mill to convince other towns to surrender, implying they'd be treated better, but no one believed him, and with a small stream of defecting bandits - and trolls deciding now was the time to get out with their pay and loot before they got killed - Garfang's forces began to thin. And of those defecting bandits, some went all the way to Landan, trading inside knowledge of Garfang and his armies for pardons (or at least exile from Stormwind over imprisonment and death, in a few cases). It was that information that allowed an elite team sent the crown's spymaster (SI:7 did not exist yet) to sneak behind enemy lines while Landan led his forces, bolstered by enthusiastic volunteers and fresh conscripts, as well as increased morale, assaulted Garfang's siege lines at Lakeshire.

This forced Garfang out of his position further into the Redridge region, and it was as he moved that his small escort was ambushed. The resulting battle was a disaster for both sides, with almost all of the Stormwind forces dead, but so too were Garfang and most of his men.

What happened next is of some dispute. The official Stormwind histories say that without Garfang, his gnolls fell into fighting each other and were rolled up quite easily. Gnolls, of course, generally say that they lost mostly because of the remaining bandits and troll mercenaries leaving after Garfang's death, their armies were defeated - some will also admit that Garfang did have a tactical brilliance none of his generals quite matched.

According to Kharad Ironfoot, a dwarven merchant in Stormwind's supply train, in letters he wrote to his brother back in Ironforge, the last days of the campaign did see the Gnolls disorganized and confused, and that there were signs of infighting among the leadership - but rather than pitched tribe on tribe warfare, it was general versus general in largely nonlethal conflict for leadership.

But, given that the Gnolls weren't given a chance to hack out a clear pecking order the soldiers on the front lines found themselves without clear lines of command, reinforcements were sent to the wrong places, supplies never made it where needed. Within a few months, as -73 ADP drew to a close, the Gnolls had been broken.

Mop up operations would continue for several years, but with increasingly fewer soldiers devoted to the effort. Gnolls fled largely into the Black Morass, or into even more remote parts of the Redridge Mountains, their hopes for revenge and for a new age for their people dashed.

Another result of the Gnoll Uprising was that, in the aftermath, the Gurubashi League managed to annex several towns and fortresses in the Gnoll Marches, secure key defensive and trade positions and become the dominant power in the region again. Stormwind was of course in no position to contest this for quite a while, and Landan was especially tired of war. He did station a few more troops in the south, and send what money he could spare to subsidize the troops of the nobles in the Marches still loyal to Stormwind.2​

When Landan died and passed the throne to his son Barathen in -38 ADP, Llane Wrynn, the father of Varian Wrynn was but 2 years old. Barathen, having been raised on his father's stories of the horrors of the Gnoll Uprising, was not inclined to start a war over the Marches. Instead, he tried a softer approach. He would spend the next fifteen years cajoling, bribing and occasionally intimidating nobles and townships to come back to Stormwind. With a careful strategy of economic carrots and sticks, he managed to regain by peace almost all of the parts of the Marches lost after the Gnoll Uprising, and a few parts the Gurubashi had had before that conflict. The Marches were still divided, but Stormwind now had the larger share.

In -23, however, the Gurubashi League was going through a bit of an economic recession. The economies of most of the city-states had dropped after a series of bad investments and overproduced goods bankrupted several families of the merchant nobility, threatening not only the wealth of the League, but it's very security - the League as an institution itself was financed from two sources - taxes on the Gnoll Marches and semi-voluntary 'contributions' by the elite families. With some of those family's bankrupt and others in increasingly dire straits, the finances of the League overarching were in danger. Especially if current trends in the Marches continued. While in times of war the League could call upon the soldiers of the individual city-states, the standing peacetime army of the League was financed by these revenues.

The Gurubashi League was especially worried about the city of Zul'Hiram (Hiramsfort, to Stormwind). The city was wealthy, and controlled several dyeworks and other industrial projects, as well as situated on the largest road through the Marches north, sat on a river, and in general, was a trade nexus.

Unfortunately, the elites of Zul'Hiram were known to be eying a switch over to Stormwind, and that was unacceptable. They communicated this to Barathen, threatening that if Zul'Hiram did offer to change sides, and Barathen accepted it, it would be grounds for war.

Barathen knew the reason why, and believed that the trolls were bluffing, that the financial woes would stop them from being able to force the issue if it came to that. But since he also didn't want to risk war when he could avoid it, he canceled plans to actively try to convince Hiramsfort. If they came to Stormwind by their initiative, he'd accept it, but otherwise...

Prince Llane found this to be a foolish capitulation, and told his father such. Llane, unlike Barathen, was fond of the romanticized vision of war and battle, and thought it time for the Gurubashi to be reminded - politely, gently - that Stormwind was the victor in the War of the Morass for a reason. He didn't want some total war, but he did think a quick war that showed Stormwind's strength of arms was needed.

Barathen dismissed his young, rash, 17 year old son's desires for war, but he did prepare for the possibility.

From -23 to -18, small-scale raids and counter-raids, always a common fact of life in and around the Gnoll marchs, stepped up. These raids were largely started by the Gurubashi League forces in the Marches (though there have been many times in the past when Stormwind was the aggressor in increased raids), out of a desire to get some loot - albeit usually though polite extortion rather than violent theft - and to ratchet up tensions so a war could break out. The Gurubashi League officers in the Marches believed that a quick, victorious war could turn more of the Marches back to the League, and resolve the revenue crisis.

Both sides wanted and expected a short victorious war.

In -18, the leaders of Zul'Hiram bit the bullet and offered to extend their allegiance to Stormwind. Normally this was a pretty simple process, but for a city as large as Hiramsfort, there was a bit of ceremony. The King, or someone close to them, actually had to go down for the formal handover. For a brief window, Hiramsfort wasn't actually part of either nation technically, but it was understood that an attack on it by the League would be an attack on Stormwind.

The League didn't care. They attacked Hiramsfort, but were repelled. Barathen, when he reached the city, knew that the League would muster for another attempt, but wanting to head that offer, offered to pay the League to let him have Hiramsfort without a bloody fight.

The Gurubashi League, while still marshaling their forces under the popular and beloved general Jok'non and his son Zan'non, was willing to entertain the idea.

This was, for Llane, the last straw. When SI:7 reported that the League was still gathering their armies, he decided this had to be just a stall tactic (in truth, while the League was using the negotiations as a chance to keep getting ready, they were engaging in a good faith negotiation, the army merely being a backup option).

None of the Royal forces of Stormwind were willing to disobey, but Llane was able to convince several Duskwood nobles to lend him some soldiers, and along with his friends Medivh and Lothar, Llane journeyed into Stranglethorn. He didn't really have a plan, just a general notion that he could find a group of trolls his force could take, and defeat them, showing the Gurubashi that they were outmatched.

Failing that, it would stop his father's cowardly and expensive efforts to pay the Gurubashi large sums of money for what Stormwind had won on their own merits.

Unfortunately for Llane, when he stumbled into his sought-for battle, he stumbled into Jok'non and his elite guard on a patrol. The general believed in getting his hands dirty, and he was a formidable combatant, enhanced by a dozen ritual tattoos drawing on the power of Shirvallah, the tiger loa of ambush and strength. Most trolls could sustain four, or five, but Jok'non had been willing and able to endure the rituals to have all twelve. In a hand to hand fight, he was brutal.

Initially Llane's little ambush was successful, and with Medivh's help, they were able to kill most of Jok'non's guard, but when Llane and Lothar crossed blades with Jok'non, they were quickly outmatched, and within minutes, on the ground and an entirely at the general's mercy. It was only with the intervention of Medivh, litterally blasting the troll to pieces that they were able to survive, with all of the Duskwood soldiers dead.

Llane had no choice but to retreat, and they couldn't take the bodies of his men with them, nor could they take their identifying armor and equipment. With Medivh's help they tried to destroy or hide the bodies, but when Zan'non went looking for his father, he was able to find enough clues to make it clear to him that someone from Stormwind had killed Jok'non.

When word reached the Gurubashi negotiators in Hiramsfort, they immediately accused Barathen of having had a poisoned knife in one hand and the gold of friendship in the other - in other words, that he had been the one playing them.

They immediately ended the talks, despite Barathen's (accurate) protestations of innocence, and ordered Zok'non to launch an attack, with the word going out to the city states: Stormwind had cruelly assassinated one of their generals while negotiating... in time of peace. It was exactly the sort of thing that would convince many of the city-states to add their own forces to the war.

The resulting war, called Jok'non's War in the Gurubashi League and the Hiramsfort War in Stormwind, was quite short. The Gurubashi quickly overran much of the Gnoll Marches, setting Hiramsfort to siege. Given that the city had started this whole mess, they were unwilling to accept the usual 'pay us and switch sides and the siege ends' norm for the Marches - they weren't planning on sacking the lizard that laid the golden eggs, but they did want the city's elites to feel the pain.

Meanwhile, Zak'non, obsessed with the idea that Barathen had ordered the hit on his father, kept trying to draw Barathen out. Even when Llane got back to his father's side, confessed and tried to convince Barathen to throw him under the cart, however, Barathen refused.

Llane was Barathen's only child3​, and thus best heir. And Barathen would not see his son executed for a mistake, no matter how deadly it was. So, as Zak'non kept calling him out to battle, Barathen had no choice. With as many forces as he could gather to him on short notice, Barathen made for Hiramsfort, intending to break the siege and force Zak'non to face him on his terms. Llane, Lothar and Medivh were supposed to be left behind, sent to Brightshire, but all of them snuck into the army anyway. Llane's plan was to turn himself in to Zak'non - he was horrified at how quickly things had gone, and how it was his mistake. He had not sought this, and he couldn't bear for his father to bear the blame for his act.

The Battle of Hiramsfort was a disaster for the stormwind forces - Zak'non was able to trick Barathen into thinking he'd broken the lines, then pin him against the city walls, away from the gates. With his forces unusually well equipped with ritual totems, tokens and fetishes provided by the Gurubashi's best witch doctors4​ thanks to Zak'non's extensive ties to several leading ritualists and the unprecedented popularity of this war back home, the Stormwind forces were outmatched. Barathen managed to push back and break out of the trap, leading his men into the gates of Hiramsfort, fighting a desperate rearguard action. He did manage to acquit himself well, however, felling many enemy soldiers by his own hand. Unfortunately, he was unable to get into the city himself - he was cut down by Zak'non himself in fair combat.

The Siege of Hiramsfort renewed, and now Llane, Lothar and Medivh were inside. Llane was now faced with a problem - he was, by the laws and customs of Stormwind, King. He had a cousin who could inherit if he died, but now that he was king...

Surrendering himself wasn't the same sort of option.

And... well, his father was dead. While he blamed himself, it was Zak'non who did it. Zak'non who hadn't listened when Barathen protested innocence, accurately. Zak'non who had called his father out to battle. Zak'non and Jok'non who had been assembling troops right next to the Marches while negotiating.

It was in part displaced guilt and a desire to blame anyone but himself, but there was merit to it. After several weeks of siege, and Llane trying to convince Zak'non to offer terms Llane could accept (Zak'non was demanding the entirety of the Maches, Gurubashi freedom from Stormwind tariffs for ten years and a massive indemnity, as well as 'the heads of the men your father sent to kill mine'), he finally convinced himself that while this was his fault, it was Jok'non and Zak'non's more.

He turned to Medivh. He knew how troubled the Guardian had been by how destructive his magic had proven to be in the battle with Jok'non, but now there was no other choice. He begged Medivh to give the army trapped within Hiramsfort - what was left of it - room to escape. His hope was to take the forces north, gather reinforcements and regroup.

With Llane gone and Barathen dead, hopefully Zak'non would finally decided Hiramsfort had paid enough and would be spared further siege.

While Llane had tried to negotiate and agonized over his decisions, more Gurubashi soldiers from the city-states had arrived, swelling the besieging forces. It was now or never.

Medivh was just supposed to clear a path. He would claim to Llane and Lothar that he lost control of the magic. Regardless, the Gurubashi army around Hiramsfort was nearly annhiliated. Fire and Frost were rained down on the trolls, and they were trapped behind still more walls of frost, flame, lightning and pure arcane magic. The storm of destruction spared Hiramsfort, but nothing outside the city - even to this day, the ground outside Hiramsfort still bears the scars of Medivh's wrath.

The destruction that was wrought horrified everyone who saw it. It flew in the face of the established rules of war in the Marches, and it was a destructive force never before seen in human warfare. Never before had any one mage destroyed an entire army like this.

Llane, despite being horrified, couldn't let this opportunity go to waste. With the Gurubashi forces in the Marches broken, he was able to take the entirety of the Marches into the Kingdom. But Llane knew that such a peace would not be sustainable on it's own. The Gurubashi were furious with Llane - though their Ambassadors were in no position to posture or rattle sabers, they made little effort to hide their rage. While Llane did not tell them of his role in the death of Jok'non (the truth would not come out until after the First War), he did offer them a concession, and a profitable one at that - he would offer the Gurubashi exemption from all Stormwind tariffs for 5 years, and a 50 percent reduction on tariffs on spices, coffee, sugar and cocoa for fifteen more years after that.

The Gurubashi tried to press for the financial payout that Barathen had tried to offer at first, even a reduced sum, but Llane was afraid of how the House of Nobles was going to react to his offer in the first place - and indeed, there was nearly a riot in the House when he returned to Stormwind and had to force them to accept his plan, even with him getting the entire Marches out of the deal.

But the Gurubashi had no further cards to play. So they accepted it, Llane returned home and soon married his wife, Taria (cousin and adoptive sister of Lothar, Taria and Llane had been courting for several years by this point)5​, and was left trying to sort out the aftermath of the war.

Llane would spend the next decade wrangling with the House of Nobles, while Medivh would travel to Deadwind Pass and Karazhan - when he wasn't throwing lavish and sometimes scandalously hedonistic parties, he was isolating himself and studying, trying to control his powers. Or so he would tell Lothar and Llane.

Llane was not supposed to become King when he did, and his initial acts, granting such extensive concessions to the Gurubashi despite winning the Hiramsfort War, cost him a lot of political capital. This slowed down his reign extensively, and while he'd recovered from this initial wound by the time Varian was born in -10 ADP, it is not hard to argue that had he not been crippled at the start of his reign like this, Llane might have been in a better position to deal with the Horde's invasion.

Though given the role of Medivh, perhaps it wouldn't have mattered. Perhaps it was even deliberate - just how much Sargeras planned and controlled everything Medivh did is still an unclear matter.

Regardless, Stormwind would know general peace until mysterious raids along the frontier of the Black Morass reached the capital. They were not trolls, nor gnoll, nor ettin. No race known to man, leaving behind none of their own bodies in their wake, but leaving behind many bodies of the slain. Innocent civilians and local guards, slaughtered by axe and spear

---

1: According to the Wiki and Chronicles, the king during the Gnoll Wars was Barathen Wrynn, Varian's grandfather. However, that doesn't really work with the changes I've made to the Gurubashi war - in canon, the elderly Barathen dies in a last ditch effort to break the siege of Stormwind the city. Since that's not happening in TSW-verse of the war, because geography, marching times and logistics are a thing here, Barathen being that old and battling on the front lines in the Gnoll March makes... well it makes far less sense. So Barathen wasn't King during the 'Gnoll Uprising', this verses' version of the Gnoll War. Landan is Barathen's canonical father.

2: Because of the way the Marches were traded back and forth so much, 'treason' in the region had a much looser definition. Actually conspiring against whichever side holds your allegiance right now is treason, but a surrender after a perfunctory battle, show of force or short siege? It might be deemed cowardly in the capitals of either side, but never treasonous. This does mean Marchers of both troll and human extraction have a reputation for being fair-weather friends, spineless and flighty. This is of course, not totally fair. You'll also often see nobles who have both Stormwind-granted titles and Gurubashi League granted titles and will change which one they use based on who is in charge at any given moment.

3: The fact that Barathen, Llane and Varian all have only had one child each has been of interest to the chattering classes in Stormwind and elsewhere. Some say the bloodline of the House of Wrynn is getting weak, that having more than one child is beyond the kings of the family.

4: Exactly how witch doctors work in the Warcraftverse has never really been clear. I've generally framed them as varying flavors of shaman, druid, mage and priest and even a bit of warlock all mixed together. I think this makes sense, especially if we build on the idea of the trolls having a unique magical paradigm. But I've also framed the trolls as having straight priests, and straight mages, and even what you might call shamans. But what makes a witch doctor special?

After some extensive back and forth thought, I've decided that witch doctors are masters of ritual magic. Ritual magic is more potent than the flashy stuff you can do instantly, but usually takes extensive and prolonged prepwork, and rarely works for battlefield conditions. Trolls have perfected the art of preparing all the components of a spell, and then boom, someone else, sometimes months or years later, can activate the ritual. It's the instant noodles of magic - just add hot water, and boom, you've got a ritual spell you can deploy anywhere, as it were. While other cultures have mastered some individual ritual magics as 'do ahead' stuff, trolls and more specifically witch doctors are the unquestionable experts of the art.

5: Taria is a movieverse character later incorporated into Chronicles. In the movie she's Lothar's sister, though Chronicles apparently doesn't say that she is in canon. I decided I liked that idea here, but I also think Lothar's narrative as the last direct descendent of Thoradin is weakened if he has a sister. Thus, in TSW-verse, Taria is Lothar's cousin on his non-Thoradin descended side, though Lothar's parents would adopt Taria after her parents died of illness when Taria was a child.

 

[Kylia Quilor]

Mostly because my brain is threatening to dribble out of my ears if I think about anything else First/Second/Third War related for rest of the day, here's a post I've been kicking around my head for a while.

As I've said, people have Embassies and Ambassadors in this verse. In the Eastern Kingdoms, Every organized state has embassies and ambassadors with almost every other organized state.

Mostly.

To elaborate further, let's look at it state by state. All Embassy/Ambassador exchanges are mutual, unless otherwise stated.

Quel'Thalas: Lordaeron, Jintha'alor, Alterac, Ironforge, Gnomegeran1​, Kul Tiras, Stormwind, Stromgarde, Theramore, Wildhammer Clan, The Horde2​, The Hyjal Covenant3​, The Gurubashi League, the Zandalari Empire, the Farraki Kingdom, the Steamwheedle Cartel, the Bilgewater Cartel, Argent Dawn4​.

Lordaeron: Quel'Thalas, Jintha'alor, Alterac, Ironforge, Gnomegeran, Kul Tiras, Stormwind, Stromgarde, Theramore, Wildhammer Clan, The Horde, The Hyjal Covenant, The Gurubashi League, the Zandalari Empire, the Farraki Kingdom, the Steamwheedle Cartel, the Bilgewater Cartel, Argent Dawn.

Alterac: Quel'Thalas, Jintha'alor, Lordaeron, Ironforge, Gnomegeran, Kul Tiras, Stormwind, Theramore, Wildhammer Clan, The Horde, The Hyjal Covenant, The Gurubashi League, the Zandalari Empire, the Farraki Kingdom, the Steamwheedle Cartel, the Bilgewater Cartel, Argent Dawn.

Jintha'alor: Quel'Thalas, Lordaeron, Alterac, Ironforge, Gnomegeran, Kul Tiras, Stormwind, Stromgarde, Theramore, Wildhammer Clan, The Horde, The Hyjal Covenant, The Gurubashi League, the Zandalari Empire, the Farraki Kingdom, the Steamwheedle Cartel, the Bilgewater Cartel, Argent Dawn, Shadowtooth Tribe5​, Darkspear Tribe, Drakkari Empire, Dragonmaw Clan

Theramore: Quel'Thalas, Jintha'alor, Alterac, Lordaeron, Ironforge, Gnomegeran, Kul Tiras, Stormwind, Stromgarde, Wildhammer Clan, The Horde, The Hyjal Covenant, The Gurubashi League, the Zandalari Empire, the Farraki Kingdom, the Steamwheedle Cartel, the Bilgewater Cartel, Argent Dawn, Dragonmaw Clan, the Amani Empire

Stormwind: Quel'Thalas, Jintha'alor, Alterac, Lordaeron, Ironforge, Gnomegeran, Kul Tiras, Theramore, Stromgarde, Wildhammer Clan, The Horde, The Hyjal Covenant, The Gurubashi League, the Zandalari Empire, the Steamwheedle Cartel, the Bilgewater Cartel, Argent Dawn,

Ironforge: Quel'Thalas, Jintha'alor, Alterac, Lordaeron, Gnomegeran, Kul Tiras, Theramore, Stormwind, Stromgarde, Wildhammer Clan, The Horde, The Hyjal Covenant, The Gurubashi League, the Zandalari Empire, the Farraki Kingdom, the Steamwheedle Cartel, the Bilgewater Cartel, Argent Dawn

Gnomeregan: Quel'Thalas, Jintha'alor, Alterac, Lordaeron, Ironforge, Kul Tiras, Theramore, Stormwind, Stromgarde, Wildhammer Clan, The Horde, The Hyjal Covenant, The Gurubashi League, the Zandalari Empire, the Farraki Kingdom, the Steamwheedle Cartel, the Bilgewater Cartel, Argent Dawn, Dragonmaw Clan

Kul Tiras: Quel'Thalas, Jintha'alor, Alterac, Lordaeron, Ironforge, Gnomegeran, Theramore, Stormwind, Stromgarde, Wildhammer Clan, The Horde, The Hyjal Covenant, The Gurubashi League, the Zandalari Empire, the Farraki Kingdom, the Steamwheedle Cartel, the Bilgewater Cartel, Argent Dawn, Amani Empire, Sethrak Imperium

Stromgarde: Quel'Thalas, Jintha'alor, Lordaeron, Ironforge, Gnomegeran, Kul Tiras, Theramore, Stormwind, Wildhammer Clan, The Horde, The Hyjal Covenant, The Gurubashi League, the Zandalari Empire, the Steamwheedle Cartel, the Bilgewater Cartel, Argent Dawn,

Wildhammer Clan: Quel'Thalas, Jintha'alor, Alterac, Lordaeron, Ironforge, Gnomegeran, Kul Tiras, Theramore, Stormwind, Stromgarde, The Horde, The Hyjal Covenant, The Gurubashi League, the Zandalari Empire, the Steamwheedle Cartel, the Bilgewater Cartel, Argent Dawn, Dragonmaw Clan

The Horde: Quel'Thalas, Jintha'alor, Alterac, Lordaeron, Ironforge, Gnomegeran, Kul Tiras, Theramore, Stormwind, Stromgarde, Wildhammer Clan, The Hyjal Covenant, The Gurubashi League, the Zandalari Empire, the Farraki Kingdom, the Steamwheedle Cartel, the Bilgewater Cartel, Dustwind Tribe, Bloodfury Tribe, Razormane Tribe, Bristleback Tribe, Stonemaul Clan, Dragonmaw Clan

Dragonmaw Clan: Theramore, Jintha'alor, Wildhammer Clan, Gnomegeran, The Horde, Dustwind Tribe, Bloodfury Tribe, Razormane Tribe, Bristleback Tribe, Stonemaul Clan, Hyjal Covenant, Gurubashi League, Bilgewater Cartel, Steamwheedle Cartel, Farraki Kingdom

Hyjal Covenant: Quel'Thalas, Jintha'alor, Alterac, Lordaeron, Ironforge, Gnomegeran, Kul Tiras, Theramore, Stormwind, Stromgarde, Wildhammer Clan, The Horde, The Gurubashi League, the Zandalari Empire, the Farraki Kingdom, the Steamwheedle Cartel, the Bilgewater Cartel, Dragonmaw Clan

Amani Empire: Gurubashi League, Zandalari Empire, Drakkari Empire, Darkspear Tribe6​, Shadowtooth Tribe, Farraki Kingdom, Theramore, Kul Tiras, Bilgewater Cartel7​

Zandalari Empire: Quel'Thalas, Lordaeron, Alterac, Ironforge, Gnomegeran, Kul Tiras, Stormwind, Stromgarde, Theramore, Wildhammer Clan, The Horde, The Hyjal Covenant, The Gurubashi League, the Farraki Kingdom, the Steamwheedle Cartel, the Bilgewater Cartel, Argent Dawn, Shadowtooth Tribe, Darkspear Tribe, Drakkari Empire, Sethrak Imperium, the Amani Empire, Jintha'alor

Gurubashi League: Quel'Thalas, Lordaeron, Jintha'alor, Alterac, Ironforge, Gnomegeran, Kul Tiras, Stormwind, Stromgarde, Theramore, Wildhammer Clan, The Horde, The Hyjal Covenant, The The Amani Empire, the Zandalari Empire, the Farraki Kingdom, the Steamwheedle Cartel, the Bilgewater Cartel, Argent Dawn, Shadowtooth Tribe5​, Darkspear Tribe, Drakkari Empire, Dragonmaw Clan

Farraki Kingdom: Quel'Thalas, Jintha'alor, Alterac, Lordaeron, Ironforge, Gnomegeran, Kul Tiras, Theramore, The Horde, Hyjal Covenant The Gurubashi League, the Zandalari Empire, Amani Empire, the Steamwheedle Cartel, the Bilgewater Cartel, Dragonmaw Clan

Drakkari Empire: Amani Empire, Jintha'alor, Gurubashi League, Farraki Kingdom, Zandalari Empire, Shadowtooth Tribe, Darkspear Tribe, Venture Co8​

Bilgewater Cartel: Fucking everybody except the Drakkari and the Sethrak9​

Stealwheedle Cartel: Fucking everybody except the Amani and the Drakkari

Sethrak Imperium: Zandalari Empire, Kul Tiras, Steamwheedle Cartel

---

1: The Gnomes don't have any foreign embassies in Tinker Town. Rather, other nations' embassies in Ironforge also double as embassies to Gnomegeran, for now. The Gnomes do have representatives in other nation's capitals, however.

2. Though the GC is not a superstate the way the canon Horde is, the TSW-verse Horde does handle Diplomatic relations between the other Kalimdorian members of the GC, and the nations of the EK (and Theramore). The native peoples of Central Kalimdor are not strangers to diplomacy, but standing embassies and ambassadors are not so much a thing for them historically. For now, the Harpies, Quillboars and Ogres of the GC are happy with this. The Dragonmaw are only represented by the Horde Ambassador in many, but not all cases.

3: The Hyjal Covenant, in Foreign Affairs, basically is a superstate akin to the canon Horde.

4: The Argent Dawn don't actually have a full Embassy anywhere, just one or two people, usually warriors too injured to be used on the battlefield, to represent the organization and lobby for resources or aid. There are no standing embassies to the Argent Dawn, but there are military and supply liaisons in Hearthglen from all members of the GP and Alliance

5: Though they are members of the Horde and Hyjal Covenant respectively, the Darkspear and Shadowtooth both maintain independent if sometimes informal embassies with other troll nations/polities separate from their larger superstates. (Including with each other)

6: They are the only embassy that doesn't get to be in Zul'Aman itself, and have been relegated to a small building in one of the Amani Empire's ports. Yes, Zul'jin is still salty over the failed Siege of Quel'Thalas

7: Zul'jin, in a fit of Pique, kicked all Steamwheedle businessmen out of Amani territory when he quit the Horde. The Bilgewater swooped in and filled the gap. These days the Steamwheedle do do business in the Amani Empire, but they don't get a full Embassy. And yes, I'm aware this and footnote #6 make Zul'jin look petty as hell, but honestly, the man quit the first meaningful alliance his people ever got in fucking milennia because things weren't going exactly how he'd have liked. It's not like Orgrim ordered the end of the siege of Quel'Thalas, but there was a bigger war going on. YMMV, but I think it's pretty clear that had he won at Lordaeron City, he'd have come back to Quel'thalas.

Of course then Gul'dan and Cho'gall screwed things up, but still. For all his ability as a political brawler, and the fact that he is the best politician the Amani have known in centuries, Zul'jin absolutely does things out of pique, pettiness, spite and massive grudge-holding, a lot. Of course so do a lot of other people (Primal Torntusk and Aliden Perrenolde come to mind) but Zul'jin's gotten the shitty end of the stick in terms of that not working out for him.

8: Compared to their Steamwheedle and Bilgewater rivals, the Venture co is freaking tiny, and as such, most people don't really think to treat it like a nation the way they do the Steamwheedle and Bilgewater. The Drakkari do mostly because they hate doing business with goblins (or any non-Troll) but the Venture Co, being so small, are the least objectionable.

9: Nobody knows why the Sethrak and the Bilgewater don't get along. Neither side is willing to talk about it.

 

[Kylia Quilor]

Spoiler: Spoiler

I know I promised the third history post would be the last one. And yet...

On the plus side, I can skip over 90% of the Second War and the Third War because while the Second War is just as nutty and incoherent as the First War (and nearly as retconned), it's writing is also eminently irrelevant to the direct history of Stormwind, at least compared to the First War. But this post got too long anyway. Like I said, no other history section should get this long winded.

As I also said, there's just a lot going on in the First War, and with all the retcons, counter-retcons and downright nonsensical plotlines (see: Me'dan) and the political dimensions of the First War for TSW-verse, It was... a lot. For instance, The fact that the majority of the surviving members of the House of Nobles, once it was reconstituted, were the feckless idiots who fled after stalling is absolutely one of the things that led to the series of back and forths that led to the Defias forming, and has not helped Stormwind in other ways either.

Also, we are absolutely going to see Garona again.

Tyrande: I'm afraid I still don't understand. You say that Varian is the King of Stormwind, but all the correspondence Ambassador Saledre has passed on to me has been signed by this 'Katrana Prestor'.
Jaina: Katrana is Varian's Chancellor. It's part of her job to handle foreign relations on behalf of the King.
Tervosh: As if that's all she handles for Varian.
Jaina: Tervosh-
Tervosh: What? It's not like it's a secret. Katrana has Varian by the balls, in both senses of the term. And then the idiot goes and lets Katrana run his kingdom. It would be like if the high Priestess here let Shan'do Stormrage make the decisions for her just because-
Jaina: I think you can stop there, Tervosh. Tyrande clearly has the general idea. But the truth is, Varian doesn't just do whatever Katrana says all the time.
Tyrande: I fail to see what is wrong with a ruler listening to the wisdom of their beloved. Malfurion does not lead me, but his advice has often been of great value.
Jaina: Unfortunately, Tyrande, your husband is wise. Katrana Prestor is... well, probably not.

When the so-called year '0' came, and the Dark Portal opened, spellcasters all over the Eastern Kingdoms felt it.

Khadgar, apprentice to Medivh felt it, and was assured by his master that he was looking into it.

Meanwhile, attacks were happening on the fringes of Duskwood. Villages destroyed, patrols taken. The enemy left no bodies of their own behind, and was clearly taking prisoners, but also left many bodies behind. At first, Gnolls were assumed, but then they wouldn't leave any bodies. Bandits would hardly be likely to police their dead like that...

When the nobles of Duskwood realized that the attacks on their villages weren't just bandits being bandits and gnolls getting finally uppity again, they first assumed it was the trolls. They did not reach out to the King, however. Not yet. Believing it was trolls, the nobles in the eastern Duskwood resolved to deal with the matter themselves. The League as a whole couldn't be responsible, but some rogues were no doubt trying to get payback.

If they went to the King, the King would have an excuse to start breathing down their necks and move his people and forces into Duskwood. If they got the rogues themselves, they could demand the Gurubashi pay up or they would tell Llane and let him start a war. They gathered their knights and attacked.

The resulting battles, which often went poorly for the humans even when the found the orcs, quickly disabused them of that plan, especially once their court mages and the local priests spoke of strange magic - green fire that water could not quench, life-draining energies, even perhaps demons - and inquiries were sent to the Kirin Tor. Which meant that word would get back to Llane. The cat out of the bag, the nobles asked for help.

While word was sent to the King, a strange woman arrived in Karazhan - she claimed to be an Emissary from a mage named Gul'dan. Khadgar had never heard of the man, but Medivh let her in, speaking privately with her, before she was sent back to her master. Medivh told Khadgar that the magical eruption they had felt was the opening of a portal to another world. That portal had spawned forth an army that was even now attacking Duskwood, but that Gul'dan was working against that army, an enemy of the army's leader. Together, Gul'dan and Medivh would be working on trying to find a way to close the portal.

Khadgar, trusting the Guardian, believed him, and further believed him when he said he was sending word of this to King Llane, that Garona would pass on intelligence that could be used against these strange invaders.

For Llane, when confirmation of the rumors coming out of Duskwood reached him, he wasn't sure what to believe. Where would these unknown invaders have come from? From across the Forbidding Sea? Across the South Sea? Were they demons? He sent word to Medivh if it was the last, knowing the duty of the Guardian was to protect Azeroth from demons.

But it could also be an overreaction by Duskwood, the problem may not have been that bad. These were just small battles, small raids. And the word of these attacks came at a bad time - Llane had long dreamed of bringing the Redridge nobles better under royal control, and had always planned to start on that as soon as he became King. But the delay as he shored up his position after the Hiramsfort War had cost him time. But now he was hip deep in negotiating a package of concessions, carrots and sticks to get the Redridge nobles to place themselves more tightly under Royal authority, and also trying to make sure he got the House of Nobles to pass it.

In short, Llane had other things on his mind.

Llane sent Lothar, knowing he was his best man for the job. But given his distractions, Llane couldn't financially and politically afford to send more than a thousand men with Lothar, for now.

Lothar, while he would have preferred more men, believed that this, combined with local forces in Duskwood, would be enough for now.

Upon arriving in Duskwood, he immediately changed the strategic situation. The Orcs, while formidable, were beatable. The Duskwood nobles had been reacting to raids and letting the orcs pick the ground to fight on. Lothar, instead, figured out the likely avenues of retreat for the invaders, and positioned men along them. The orcs, once done with their latest raiding, were ambushed. It was here - though he didn't realize it - that Lothar first crossed his sword with Orgrim's hammer.

Prisoners were taken, but they couldn't give much intelligence. Wrathful and raging, they always tried to escape and had to be put down in the process. But what little could be gathered, after magic was used to translate, spoke of a vast horde from another world. A leader named Blackhand, a mighty brute. Powerful magics. And a portal constantly bringing more forces to this world.

Lothar sent word of all this to the King, as reports of raiders on the backs of massive wolves pushing through Duskwood and into Elwynn reached him. He sent forces after them, but the raiders passed through the Redridge Mountains and into Shadowforge territory, so Lothar settled for sending word of it to the border and focusing on the problems in front of him. Open warfare around Sunnyglade had broken out, and Lothar was soon joined by his old friend Medivh, and his new apprentice, Khadgar.

Medivh professed concern about releasing his full power, that he might kill Lothar's men too, if he lost control again. But he did provide the mages in Lothar's forces with information about the Fel magic the orcs were using (though it turned out more than half of what he said was useless or even dangerous) and scryed on the orcs to help track them. He was wrong more often than he liked, claiming that the orcs were using their magic to shield against his sight, but his scrying still managed to save Sunnyglade twice.

Unbeknownst to anyone at the time, as Medivh went back and forth between the front lines in the Duskwood Campaign and Kazazhan, he intercepted most of the messages Lothar sent back to Llane, only letting a select few get through to him.

As both sides took each other's full measure around Sunnyglade, more orcish wolf-riders would be sent out, to spread fear and terror everywhere they could reach. But unlike the earlier raids, these attacks were far less deadly - no longer were entire villages destroyed. Instead, farms were burnt, but villages left intact. Civilians were as likely to be chased off as killed, and it became clear that Lothar was trying to herd the population into the cities and towns. While most of their raids at this point were concentrated to Duskwood, a few started to penetrate into the southeastern parts of the Elwynn Woodlands.

Though the dispatches were being intercepted, the reports of the hard fighting around Sunnyglade, and edging even closer to Brightshire, worried Llane. He sent more men and supplies to Lothar, but believing the threat was much less than it was, he sent far less than was needed. The Duke of Lakeshire had been killed by the orcish raiding party that had passed into Shadowforge lands, and Llane had his hands full trying to keep the Redridge nobles onboard, as they started to defect from his agreement or demand further concessions.

With the threat real, but still manageable, Llane sent word to the human kingdoms of the North, even to Ironforge, warning of this threat. He didn't beg for help, though it was clear he would welcome some. So far, the orcish threat didn't seem impossible for Stormwind to contain - the battles had shown that the famed Knights of Stormwind were still the best at what they did, and while the orcs had dangerous magic, their were limits to orcish numbers, as only so many had come from their world.

Still, they were a new kind of threat, and if they could come once, they could likely come again.

The Kingdoms of the North dismissed the news entirely, with Aiden, Thoras and Genn even laughing in the face of Llane's ambassadors - Terenas Menethil, advised by many priests that there seemed to be something to the worries about dark forces at work, was inclined to send some forces to Stormwind, but quickly talked down from it by his trusted advisor, Daval Prestor.

Daval Prestor was an advisor to Terenas who had recently become a court favorite. Charming, clever and fashionable, he was popular with almost everyone at court, and he had given good advice to Terenas before, drawing on his 'connections' across the Eastern Kingdoms. He advised that these reports of invaders from another world were nonsense. Llane was creating tales to try and trick people into sending him help in reigning his rebellious Duskwood nobles in. After all, Stormwind never could get Duskwood in line. And besides, even if there was some issue, the Knights of Stormwind would be enough. Llane had clearly thought so when he turned down marriage offers from Lordaeron, Stromgarde, Alterac and Gilneas, and then, when it came time for his son to be betrothed, had once more chosen to marry within Stormwind, rather than with anyone else.

Had Terenas himself not offered Calia to Llane, as a betrothed for Varian, only to have his offer spurned so Llane could betroth his son to Tiffin Ellerian, daughter of a poor noblewoman from Westfall?1​. Why help a man like that?

Given how wrong his assertions about Llane's motives in the Duskwood were, it is amazing Daval kept his place by Terenas's side. Eventually, though during the Scond War, the man disappeared under mysterious circumstances (Terenas always suspected assassination by Beve or Aliden, but could never prove it), leaving his niece, Katrana, to inherit his title and holdings in the aftermath of the Second War.2​

Ironforge took the problem a bit more seriously - they were receiving reports of strange humanoid warriors riding wolves in the Badlands, even in the Wetlands now (the reports were confusing and contradictory) but the question of whether or not to send aid to Stormwind was quickly bogged down by procedures in the Senate. And there were strange reports coming from Shadowforge lands. Magni felt for Stormwind, but since Llane had made it clear he could handle things on his own, Magni didn't see a point in trying to push the Senate too hard.

Even without help from the north, Llane had to rally his Kingdom to war. Still not acting with the urgency needed, he decided this was a great way to grow royal power. With the orcs based in the Black Morass, beyond the borders of the Kingdom, Llane needed authorization from the House of Nobles to attack them in the swamps.

He asked for permission for that, and indeed, blanket authorization to move all the forces of Stormwind and her nobles as he saw fit for the duration of the current crisis. Llane's motives were both genuine, and political. He did see a need for a free hand from the House, but he also hoped to leverage this position into greater control over his nobles. Tricked into thinking the threat wasn't quite as bad as it was, Llane played politics and slowed his Kingdom's response.

Meanwhile, as Llane and the northern realms dithered, Lothar found himself at risk of being outflanked. With a better idea of the names of his enemies, his scouts reported that Blackhand's second-in-command, Orgrim Doomhammer was moving on Brightshire. Lacking enough men to save both, Lothar ordered Sunnyglad evacuated, and moved to defend Brightshire, the city being larger and more valuable. He begged the King for more help, begged Medivh to step in more than he already was.

Medivh, for his part, was being even more reclusive and secretive, and more and more when Garona arrived, she was left waiting for hours. Khadgar started to make conversation with her, though she was reticent and untalkative at first. Khadgar would confront her with the crimes of her people, and Garona would defend them... somewhat. Her people's world was dying, they had sought a new home. They were merely fighting a war of survival. Blackhand's slaughters were an example, not a goal. She professed opposition to Blackhand, but still, she hated Khadgar acting as though her people were purely monsters and nothing else.

But Garona also made comments that raised doubts in Khadgar about whether or not her master Gul'dan was actually an enemy of Blackhand, whether Medivh was actually working with the man to oppose the invaders. He would try to press Garona on them, but she would clam up on certain topics, sometimes shutting up mid-sentence.

The fall of Sunnyglade was not met by a massacre. Many of the people left in the town were killed, yes, but not all of them. Skilled craftsmen, young children and their mothers and anyone able-bodied enough to be put to hard labor were spared, if they surrendered fast enough and didn't piss off any orcs in the vicinity. Those who did were killed in brutal fashion - and given how short the orcs tempers were, it was frequent. But still. Lothar at least could let his conscience rest a tiny bit easier.

The war continued, but now with Sunnyglade fallen, the orcs were in a position to flood into Duskwood, and Lothar was left to divide his forces. He tried to stay on the offensive, and led many successful sorties against bands of orcs and ogres, but the orcs were increasingly intercepting his supplies and reinforcements from outside of Duskwood, and he simply couldn't defend everywhere at once. For a time, when several powerful mages from the Kirin Tor arrived as observers decided that they needed to get involved, there was almost a chance to turn the orcs back, or at least hold the existing line, but soon almost all of them would be found dead in their tents over the course of several days, killed by green fire. Somehow, the orcish warlocks had managed to kill them from a distance.

Faced with being outflanked, Lothar knew he needed to shorten his lines. He ordered the eastern half of Duskwood evacuated, and pulled back to a new line. He was ceding Brightshire, and he tried to get as many out as he could, fighting a holding action in the process, delaying. Many of the fleeing refugees would flee out of Duskwood entirely, and it was now that the first refugees fleeing to the north got on ships.

Llane was furious Lothar ceded brightshire, and demanded his friend account for himself. Meeting the King in Raven Hill, with Khadgar present (Khadgar was serving as a go between with the increasingly reclusive Medivh). Lothar, incredulous, demanded to know why Llane had been so stingy with men and resources, and it was here that they realized just how little Llane knew about what was really going on. Llane, furious at himself to learn how badly he'd misjudged the situation, immediately retracted his proposal in the House of Nobles. They'd worry about going on the offensive in the Black Morass later, right now the kingdom needed to fully mobilize and do it now.

This exchange only furthered Khadgar's suspicions. Wasn't Medivh communicating with the King? Had Medivh's messages to the king been intercepted too? But he was using powerful magic, no?

Meanwhile, with Stormwind mobilizing, the situation seemed ready to change in humanity's favor. It was not uncommon for Stormwind's wars to go poorly at first, but... Stormwind was mighty once they fully got their wheels moving.

But as the war entered a second year and more and more troops poured into Duskwood, Blackhand appeared in Redridge, crossing the mountains from the Morass unexpectedly and besieged Lakeshire. This ended the Duskwood Campaigns and ushered in the Mobile Campaigns.

This period was defined not by the orcs making grand thrust and pushes, but by mid-sized detachments of the Horde on the move, forcing Stormwind to dance to their fiddle. designed for mobility if need be, but also able to hunker down and hold territory if needed. The war was fought in Duskwood, in the southern and western parts of Elwynn, and even in Redridge. Redridge especially went poorly for Stormwind, and though Lakeshire continued to hold, large parts of the rest fell to Blackhand's attacks, while Orgrim was able to keep Lothar pinned in the south - the two traded victories at nearly even rates. It was during this phase that Cho'gall became de jure leader of Twilight's Hammer.

With more and more land under regular attack, more and more people fled for the cities. In territory under Horde control, the population was put to work, backbreaking, often murderous labor, but labor. Sometimes Gul'dan or his warlocks would pluck a few specimens to drain for their magic, to fuel the Dark Portal or otherwise service their needs, but most were allowed to live, for now.

But the orcs would fly off the handle at the slightest provocation, and could kill a dozen people before they calmed down. Irritable and bloodthirsty, the orcs were at best cruel masters.

With Stormwind hemorrhaging money and less food making it to the cities, with supply convoys sometimes vanishing in green fire, with orcs seemingly blinding Medivh's scrying all the time and a thousand and one other things going wrong, matters began to look dire after another six months.

Good fortune game in two forms: One, Orgrim suddenly vanished from Duskwood, and for another, Garona suddenly became a lot more talkative with Khadgar.3​ She warned the apprentice that her master, Gul'dan, was lying, and was no friend to anyone but himself. He had used magic to bind her, and somehow, it was weakening. She didn't understand it, but her ability to speak freely had grown exponentially. She specifically warned of Blackhand's latest plan: He had broken the Bleeding Hollow and Twilight's Hammer clans into several detachments each, and each was on their own path - seemingly they were pushing through Elwynn to turn into Westfall, but their real plan was Stormwind itself. With so many forces trying to defend everywhere else, Stormwind was vulnerable - to a point. Once the capital (and largest port, even more important as Stormwind was forced to import war materiel at increasingly exorbitant prices) was besieged, Lothar would have to cede either Elwynn or Duskwood to relieve it. And thus leave himself open to being flanked.

Khadgar didn't know if he could trust Garona, but Medivh was hidden away somewhere in Karazhan and couldn't be reached, and if there was a chance that Garona was telling the truth...

He took Garona to Lothar. The news from Garona, if true, only made Khadgar even more suspicious of Medivh, but it all seemed so unthinkable, and he had no proof, just concerns and conjecture. If Garona was telling the truth here...

Lothar didn't know if he could trust Garona either, but he couldn't risk being wrong if she was telling the truth. So he sent word to the King, and sent out his scouts, and found several detachments right where they were supposed to be.

Sending a screening force down to cover the Duskwood (easy with Orgrim still gone), Lothar moved with the bulk of his forces for the Twilight's Hammer and Bleeding Hollow detachments. He pushed at them from the south and east, while Llane led the reserves out of the capital from the north and west, pushing at the detachments once they were met.

Cho'gall and Killrog were being corralled, and they didn't realize it until it was too late. In the battle of Crystal lake, the Bleeding Hollow and Twilight's Hammer were defeated, though Cho'gall was able to blast a way clear for the survivors of both clans' forces to escape, fleeing back to Redridge. Llane and Lothar together reclaimed all of Elwynn and then proceeded to outflank the orcs in Duskwood. The Mobile Campaigns were ending, with the orcs holding Redridge and large chunks of Duskwood, but no longer in the driver's seat of the conflict.

The war had tilted in the favor of Stormwind, but at great cost. Llane and Lothar debated what to do. Lothar wanted to push forward, kick Blackhand out of Redridge before Lakeshire could fall. Llane wanted to save Lakeshire, but he knew that their forces just... couldn't. Victory at Crystal Lake aside, the armies of Stormwind were tired, short on supplies, and had far too many conscripts who only barely knew what they were doing.

It was also here that Llane met Garona for the first time. Unlike orcish prisoners taken in the war, Garona was able to provide Stormwind with a better picture of the reality of their foes.

The Horde, orcs and ogres, had conquered their world, under the leadership of Blackhand, the puppet of Gul'dan and his warlocks. Gul'dan sought a mysterious power buried away on Azeroth - she did not know what - that the man who helped him bring the Horde here had told him of. But the orcs could not be turned back so easily. Draenor was a dying world - it would take time, perhaps many years, but it was dying. There were many, many orcs and ogres left on Draenor, and they could come. The orcs numbers were not infinite, but enough.

Blackhand had promised the orcs a new home, new foes to conquer, and sought to enslave all who lived through this war, to use them to fuel a machine of endless war - across Azeroth, and thence to other worlds, in time.

Garona did not know how the war could be ended short of one side or the other conquering the other. She did consider herself an orc, and wanted her people to find a home. But she also would do anything she could to stop Gul'dan, who she hated above all else. Gul'dan's plans required the conquest of Stormwind. And she would not subject any people to Blackhand's cruelties, if she could help it.

Llane, Lothar and Khadgar did not know what to make of Garona. She had possibly saved the Kingdom from losing the war, certainly saved Lothar and his army, and the intelligence on the Horde and its weaknesses, on the personalities of Blackhand's officers that she provided over the next few months allowed Stormwind to throw back multiple attacks out of Redridge, and even from occupied Duskwood. But the orc numbers were growing, and despite repeated entreaties, Stormwind was getting no help from other Kingdoms. Ironforge occasionally seemed like they were going to, but then nothing came of it, and at least Ironforge banks were offering generously low rates on the loans they provided, but the most the north was willing to offer was, essentially, 'thoughts and prayers'.

Refugees continued to flee the areas close to the fighting - but many stayed behind. The orcs weren't killing them all. Many felt that if they just kept their heads down... but others did not. The orcs were beasts, monsters, and anathema to the Light, or so it seemed.

And even with Stormwind holding the line, crops were failing with less people working to collect them - the able-bodied men and women dragged to the war front, conscripted to save the Kingdom. The economy of Stormwind was falling apart around Llane's ears, and while many in the nobility were now agreeing with Llane that this war could not end in negotiation, too many told Llane he had to negotiate, and tried to withhold resources until he did. SI:7 was soon working overtime to find and punish these nobles and their allies.

Every repelled attack saw dead soldiers, and luck seemed to always be just a bit on the orcs side - they would still find themselves to weak points in the line all too often. Supply wagons were still destroyed all too often by raiders. Stormwind's mages and priests in or near the battle lines kept falling to fel magics.

Garona warned that as long as the portal was controlled by the Horde, Stormwind would lose. Lothar suggested that if Stormwind could take the portal, or even close it, then it wouldn't matter. Large though the portal was, from what Garona said, it would be nearly suicide to try to launch an invasion directly into hostile territory through it.

But taking the portal would be difficult. Expensive. And there was the question of who it was that had helped Gul'dan. Garona finally, believing she'd earned their trust enough for them to believe her, accused Medivh - she had not been able to understand the messages she passed back and forth between Medivh and Gul'dan, but from everything she'd seen, heard and learned, who else could it be?. Gul'dan had not been tricking Medivh as Khadgar had tried to tell himself had to be the case. As Khadgar had told Lothar he believed was the case.

Garona's testimony killed what little doubts Khadgar had, even as the thought of the Guardian being a traitor filled him with dread.

Llane and Lothar refused to believe it, and the King's angry outburst in response to the accusation had Garona afraid - Gul'dan did not take bad news well, killing the messenger as often as not. Instead, he merely told her to leave the council chambers.

Khadgar tried to defend Garona, explaining the suspicions he'd had. The ways Medvih's words on how to counter the fel were as often wrong as not. The dead mages of the Kirin Tor, killed in their sleep by green fire. The inconsistencies in what Medivh had told her about Garona's meetings with him. His increasing reclusiveness, weeks when Khadgar couldn't find him in Karazhan, couldn't contact him with magic. The 'failure' of Medivh's scrying.

He wasn't believed either.

Khadgar, in desperation, used a rare spell to see the past. It was draining, and he could not easily cast it again, but it showed the portal. It showed Medivh in the Black Morass, using his magic to construct a massive gateway, opening a tear between worlds, and inviting Gul'dan to come through with his Shadow Council.

Khadgar and Garona had thought they were alone, but Lothar had seen it, having come in to try to convince them both they had to be wrong. Instead, he'd seen proof. Interrogating Khadgar about the spell, Lothar was forced to admit that... it was possible. There were too many inconsistencies. The duty of the Guardian was to protect Azeroth from exactly these sorts of threats, and yet... he did so very little. Khadgar could not cast the spell for Llane, and Lothar did not believe anything but concrete evidence would convince the King anyway. Instead, the three stole out of the Keep, Lothar traded an old favor with the Wildhammer's ambassador, being granted a pair of gryphons to ride to Karazhan. There was no time to waste.

Khadgar, Garona and Lothar never shared publicly the details of what exactly happened in Karazhan. It is believed that the only people given all the details with were Llane and Taria, and later, after the fall of Stormwind, Khadgar would speak them to Dalaran's Council of Six. Regardless, they discovered that Medivh truly was the man behind the invasion, that during the ensuing fight, he seemed to be turning himself into a demon. Medivh's motives were unknown. There had been no time to discover them. The battle had nearly killed Lothar, Khadgar and Garona, but in the end, Lothar had been the one to land the killing blow.

The death of Medivh, in the next few weeks, was followed by an end to the myriad of little failures that had piled up, and an end to the orcs good fortune. Lothar once more encouraged that Stormwind strike now, take the portal now. Llane saw no other choice. He feared it would not work, but he saw little choice. He ordered Stormwind's navy, and all merchant ships that could be drafted, to begin sending the old, the infirm and the young north. This was a desperate gamble. Stormwind's walls, like most of the walls of the human kingdom's cities, were not designed to hold out against dedicated assault. Lakeshire was a rare exception, and word arrived of the city's fall to Blackhand just before it was time to set out. The deaths in Lakeshire were reported to be even worse than most captures, Blackhand lost in rage after his forces's failure at Crystal Lake.

If this attack failed, then Stormwind might very well fall. But if the attack didn't happen... Stormwind was doomed.

Marshaling almost all the forces left to the Kingdom that were not needed to keep Blackhand pinned in Redridge and provide the barest of protection against raiders behind the lines, Llane and Lothar led the army, through Elwynn, through the Duskwood. Forcing their way into the swamps was costly, but it was done within days. They had to act quickly - once Blackhand got wind of what was happening, he would lead his man back through the passes. If they could take the portal before he could get back...

But it was not to be. Though the army got within sight of the Dark Portal, distant though it was, they did not reach it. Though the forces protecting it were many, most of them were orcs fresh from Draenor, not yet prepared for human tactics and strategies. The battle could have been won, the Kingdom perhaps saved...

But the bulk of the Horde, returned from Redridge, came at their flanks, under the leadership of a new Warchief: Orgrim Doomhammer.

For many years, Khadgar and Lothar believed that Garona had betrayed them, told Orgrim. That with the death of Medivh (and, as was later learned, the coma of Gul'dan) had been enough to see Garona now return her loyalty to her people. That it had been an elaborate trap. They believed this in part because it made sense, but in part because of what came next.

Orgrim, in truth, had not known there was an attack on the Dark Portal when he crossed back into the Black Morass. As would be learned later, Orgrim had returned from wherever he'd vanished to during the Mobile Campaign, and challenged Blackhand for leadership of the Horde, defeating him in honorable combat. He was returning to the Dark Portal to take Blackhand's children, Rend, Maim and Griselda as prisoners if they would not bow. He was returning with the bulk of his forces so he could gather all his armies together to reassess, develop a new strategy, and stamp his vision for what the Horde should do, what the Horde should be.

But the ensuing battle was a defeat for Stormwind. Soon, Lothar was cut off from the King, Khadgar by his side. They pushed, trying to break through the Horde's lines to reach Llane, Khadgar burning orcs with fire, freezing them with ice as Lothar cut them down, soldiers on their flanks.
The king fought, Garona at his side, but one by one the soldiers with them were felled. Llane did not see any path to escape. As Lothar and Khadgar drew close, to within sight of the King (but the King did not see them), he gave one final, fatal order. One way or another, Llane believed, he would die here, now. But Garona did not have to die. He ordered Garona to kill him, to save her own life. If her kin saw her felling the human king, she could say she had never betrayed her people. She had merely been biding her time for the perfect chance to strike.

Garona resisted, tried to convince Llane they could force their way out...

But with just two of them left... Llane pleaded with her. If she lived, then she could try, within the Horde, to make sure that Orgrim spared Llane's wife and child. There was a chance, anyway.

Tears in her eyes, Garona killed Llane. Khadgar and Lothar would only learn the truth, years later - when Garona was captured shortly before the Battle at Blackrock Spire.4​

With Llane dead, and the battle lost, Lothar sounded the retreat. Barely a third of the forces that had entered the Morass escaped, and still more died on the retreat. Lothar spread the word - the war was lost. Run.

Not everyone ran. Too many were stupified, dumbfounded. Others believed that they could survive occupation. Others believed they could hold out, survive.

The Gnoll Marches - who had managed to mostly ride out the war save for a few raids, by virtue of there being no easy path into them from the parts of Duskwood the Horde had taken - had the quickest expedient. They didn't see a need to flee. Even now, too many people didn't understand the nature of the conflict, nor how it had changed, but they acted anyway, and managed to make it work.

They simply lowered and removed every Stormwind flag or banner and pulled the Gurubashi flags out.It shouldn't have worked. The Gurubashi were in no position to move a lot of troops into place to defend the Marches - they moved as many as they could spare, and actively accepted refugees fleeing into the Marches and further south, lending their navy to move people from the Duskwood at least as far as Stormwind.

In the end, though interrogations with surviving officers would make it clear Orgrim did consider it, he accepted the shift. The Gurubashi did a fantastic job of bluffing how many troops they had in the area, and though Orgrim suspected it was a bluff, he couldn't prove it.

But that was for later, after the fall of Stormwind. As Lothar reached the capital, trying to step up the pace of the evacuations, many in the House of Nobles tried to tar his honor, say that he had let Llane die. That his trusting of this orc assassin had been the problem. They tried to take control of the situation, force a regency for the young Varian with one of their own, unseating Taria and Lothar, who were now in de facto control of the Kingdom. As the House dithered, evacuations slowed, though they did not stop. Many nobles in southern Westfall decided they could just fortify and then offer surrender to the Horde. Agree to provide them food, in exchange for continued existence, their place at the top of the power structure. The call to flee was clearly an effort by Lothar to rob the nobles of their peasant labor.

Taria and Lothar managed, for a week, to fend off the political attacks, barely. There were enough in the House who understood the reality of the situation.

But all that ended barely a week after Lothar finally reached the capital with the survivors of Stormwind's army.

Orgrim Doomerhammer, Warchief of the Horde, had sent a message. The message had been sent along with the heads of several Redridge Noblemen who had refused to surrender their castles - and along with every single human resident of the Redridge Mountains he could round up and force out, at the point of a spear.

He offered terms to Stormwind. Or rather, one term.

Survival.

Stormwind belonged to the Horde now. Everything from the edge of the Marches to the Burning Steppes belonged to the Horde. There was no place for humans in this land. His people were coming from Draenor, and they would not stop coming.

He gave Lothar and Stormwind time until he reached the capital to surrender. He would meet with Stormwind's emissaries to make arrangements for their departure, but that was all. As long as they were leaving, he would give them time to do so. But if they did not leave, if they tried to play foolish games, he would kill them.

Every.

Last.

One.

Reports quickly came - Orgrim Doomhammer and an army larger than anything they'd faced before was now coming directly for Stormwind, marching through Duskwood. They gave every chance for humans to flee, but if they didn't, they were killed. If they fought back, they were killed brutally. They were allowed to take what they could carry and little else.

The atrocities were many on the march - Orgrim lost control of his men in more than one case, and he didn't really try that hard to reign them in. He would later claim he was too new as Warchief, and couldn't risk alienating his men. But more than once, he ordered civilians who collapsed under the weight of their property to be just killed. Reports exist of him force feeding merchants their own gold, beating a blacksmith to death with his own tools, all sorts of 'poetic' justice. But proof is hard to come by. Orgrim may have done this, he may not have, there simply is no proof. Orgrim denied such claims, and no orc has ever been able corroborate them, and while some human refugee witnesses have claimed to see them, that's all that exists. Reports.

Orgrim's letter should have been enough to convince everyone to flee Stormwind City. And many did flee. But many more couldn't, because the House of Nobles tried to hold every ship in port.

The competent nobles of the House, the ones who understood the gravity of the situation, were quickly outnumbered by the panicked, the idiotic and the feckless. They refused to accept reality. They managed to force through a regency, placing one of their own in charge of the Kingdom, refusing to talk to Orgrim, refusing to organize a proper evacuation. The parts of Westfall nearest Stormwind, where Tiffin's family had their connections, proved to be willing to flee as required, but the rest did not. The people of Elwynn Woodlands fled into the capital, or the mountains or the remotest parts of the woods.

Orgrim reached the capital. He called the inhabitants out to talk.

The House of Nobles didn't even send an emissary to say no.

Orgrim ordered his men to assault the walls. Stormwind was not made to withstand a frontal assault like what Orgrim could offer. The defenders of the city fought bravely, holding him back for four days and three nights. On the second day, the feckless members of the House of Nobles, the corrupt, the stupid, the greedy, the incompetent. They fled, stealing onto the ships they had held back with their wealth and their servants and abandoning the city to its fate.

This left the capable nobles back in charge. At the urging of Taria, Lothar was named Regent. Lothar took control of the city, fighting at the front without sleep to hold the line while as many who could flee fled. Varian was among the first on the boats north now, too young to fight, he was the future of Stormwind. He was Lothar's nephew, the last of his friend Llane.

On the third night, Lothar begged Taria to flee. Varian needed his mother. Taria told him to leave, that she would die with her people if she had to. That Varian needed his regent. That Stormwind would need Lothar if they were ever to reclaim their home.

Lothar refused. Taria refused. And then Taria ordered her guards to knock Lothar out, and drag him into a ship. Taria and those remaining members of the House of Nobles would run the city for as long as necessary. As it turned out, the ship Lothar was tossed on was the last ship left in Stormwind. There were more coming, if the defenders could just hold out one more day and night.

They couldn't.

In the end, only a little more than half of the city of Stormwind's pre-war population escaped the city. The rest were slaughtered. The streets ran red with blood. Orgrim kept to his word. The humans had refused to leave. He killed them all.

But the devastation of Stormwind, an orgy of violence that lasted a week, was enough time for people all over the rest of the Kingdom to continue to flee. When orcs finally reached Westfall, there were still some stubborn holdouts, but they were soon killed.

By the end of year 2, the Kingdom of Stormwind had fallen, and organized human presence in the former kingdom, outside of the Gnoll Marches. Some humans still lived, in hiding, in the remote fringes. Some would still be there years later, when the Second War reached.

---

1: Llane married Taria for love, though obviously she was more than noble enough to be acceptable for Llane as King. Varian was betrothed to Tiffin shortly after Tiffin's birth because the Ellerian family, though poor, had extensive connections to noble families in Westfall and Elwynn, and it was necessary to shore up Llane's position with them. The moment Varian had been born, he'd agreed to betroth him to the first eligible daughter that would be born from a list of related families he was courting (which is what had allowed Llane to finally consider his reign secure, ten years into things), and he had to honor this. But of course, from Lordaeron's POV, it seems like Llane spurns Terenas's daughter - the daughter of a rich, powerful and glorious Kingdom - for some minor Baron's daughter. Quite the insult.

2: So far as I can tell from Canon, no one who wasn't a dragon figured out that Prestor was actually Deathwing in disguise. Some members of the Kirin Tor were suspicious of his apparent magical power, but no mortal knew he was a dragon. Hence how Katrana was able to pick up where she did, trading on her uncle's name.
3: In-universe, Khadgar would later theorize that some part of the real Medivh, resisting, weakened the control Gul'dan had placed on Garona.

4: So yeah, I just ripped this right from the movie. Both the attack on the Portal, and Garona killing Llane at his request. As I said, the movie's version of the First War is actually pretty good. Short, yes, but good nonetheless. And I've always found mind control as opposed to be mind-influence to be a limiting and generally useless plot device. Plus, way the movie did that scene was so good, and honestly, I think it's a compelling narrative in general. The attacking the portal part was also an effort to explain how Orgrim suddenly wins so soon after becoming Warchief, which is necessary for more of Stormwind's population to escape.

But the takeaway here is that until Lothar and Khadgar learned the truth (and spread the word), and even in the eyes of many to this day, Garona's activities were all part of an elaborate plan by Orgrim to knock Gul'dan out of commission, kill Blackhand, take the Horde and destroy Stormwind's armies in one fell strike. Varian still tends to subscribe to this theory.

 

[Kylia Quilor]

Calia Menethil: Varian's never been a scholarly sort of man, but he's not an idiot. He's just angry. And lonely. And everything your spies say about him - not to mention everything our allies tell us their spies say about him - makes it clear Katrana's taking advantage of that.
Sylvanas Windrunner: Given the decisions that have been coming out of Stormwind Keep, either Varian's an idiot, or he's been letting an idiot run his government. Which also makes him an idiot.
Calia: Do you think Mathias Shaw is an idiot?
Sylvanas: Hardly.
Calia: If Katrana was an idiot, Shaw would have gotten rid of her by now. Katrana isn't an idiot. I know Varian - a lot of the stupid decisons Stormwind has made are all him, but a lot of them aren't. But they are deliberate. I don't know what Katrana is up to, but she does what she does for a reason.

The Second War was, of course, foundationally important in the history of Stormwind. It would be wholly inaccurate to write the Kingdom out of any comprehensive history of the Second War, for many reasons. Chief among them, of course, the fact that Anduin Lothar, Regent of Stormwind after the death of his sister, was named Commander in Chief of the Armies of the Alliance, once the war got going.

While the majority of the political and economic power of the Alliance rested in Lordaeron and Kul Tiras (Kul Tiran banks essentially financed the entire war effort), the question of military leadership proved vexing in the early days. Lothar was picked as a compromise candidate - as a Stormwind noble, he was distinct from the conflicts between the Northern Kingdoms. His authority was great in theory, but in practice, it was supposed to be limited - none of the members of the Alliance really liked the idea of ceding command to Lothar.

But to his credit, Lothar was charismatic and able - and after setbacks during the invasion of Hillsbrad (including the battle that saw Zul'jin freed from Lordaeron custody) - he was able to take real control over the army. Though his final defeat at the Dark Portal tarred his name, he proved that he was an unquestionably able commander, pinning the Horde in Hillsbrad for a time, until Zul'jin's help allowed new paths through the Hinterlands, into the Eastweald and onto Quel'Thalas.

Of course, despite Lothar's role, and the fact that Stormwind was a member of the Alliance from the moment of its foundation... the Second War passed Stormwind proper by, in a sense.

In the land that Stormwind once held, the orc and ogre reigned supreme. Ogrim brought as many of his people in from Draenor as he could, civilian and soldier alike. This was to be their new homeland, and he would need all the manpower he could get. Shadowforge and Ironforge were threats first and foremost, and he doubted the northern powers would be so silent, now that Stormwind has fallen.

He expected he'd have to give the northern kingdoms a thorough defeat or two, something to rattle their cages.

For the humans of Stormwind, most were killed. In the rural countryside, especially the more remote areas of the mountains, small bands survived - bandits, drawing on their long history with the gnolls, were able to serve as surprising havens of support for these scattered groups. The Armaeggedon spoken of by heretical sects of the Holy Light had come to Stormwind - this was the afterscape.1​

Even more survivors, of course, had fled into the Gnoll Marches, and the Gurubashi Empire. Through a combination of bluffing and Orgrim's gaze being turned northwards, the jungle trolls had managed to keep the Horde from attacking them. Orgrim's stated motives for the lack of invasion have been varied based on who he spoke to, based on second-hand accounts, largely (as well as what Orgrim told Thrall).

The Gurubashi were tough enemies, and would have required more resources than Orgrim wanted to devote to it, with the north still a threat.

Their lands were - Gnoll Marches aside - largely inhospitable to orcs, full of poisonous animals and plants, biting insects. It was hot and humid, even more so than the jungles of Draenor - and for Orgrim, being a Blackrock from Gorgrond, especially unappealing.

The Trolls were too weak to be a threat for now, and could be left for later.

Even the extent to which Orgrim fell for their bluff, as they aggressively made use of what few soldiers they could to patrol the borders in such a way as to make their numbers seem higher. But Orgrim may have seen through it, he may not have. Again, the reports of what he's said are conflicting.

In the end, he left them be, and the Gnoll Marches, overpopulated and overstuffed, horrified at the apocalypse they'd seen, were left alone by the Horde.

Unfortunately, with the destruction of Stormwind, and the refugee population swelling their numbers, the Marches suffered economic collapse. The Gurubashi economy suffered too, but trade through the Marches was one of the prime economic engines of the region, and even when the Marches were ruled by the League, Stormwind was always the Marches best customer - and best person to buy from.

Food shortages led to starvation in the streets for some settlements, and food riots in others. The Gurubashi's desire to avoid open war with the Horde led them to crack down hard on anyone that even seemed to be thinking of poking the Horde with a stick - and the fact that the Marches would not be defensible if the Horde attacked in force meant the League was already drawing plans to abandon the region, with full on scorched earth as a possibility.

The League, having seen the fate of Stormwind, did not think the orcs were neighbors they could work with.

The Gurubashi hunkered down, and prepared for invasion. They kept trading with the North, and fed reports from their border scouts to the Northern Kingdoms too - but only Lothar and other Stormwindians took those reports seriously. In the north, everyone associated 'troll' with the obstinate, closed-off, hostile and unfriendly Amani. Even when illicit black and gray market trade between Human/Elf/Wild Dwarf and Forest Troll happened, it was almost always laced with a level of hostility and suspicion unknown in Stormwind-Gurubashi relations.

Another thing that inhibited any desire on the part of the Gurubashi to get involved in the brewing Alliance and then the Second War was a revelation, made public in 5 ADP, of Llane's role in the death of Jok'non. Orgrim had found documentation of this event in the papers of a Duskwood Noble during the last stage of the war, and it was while he had some of his best officers studying such records to get a better idea of their enemies in the war to come that he found reports of the men the noble and some of his neighbors had lent to Llane, and the disaster that came out.

To say that the Gurubashi were not feeling remotely charitable to the Wrynn family or Stormwind as a result of this would be an understatement.

In Stormwind proper, the scattered groups of bandits, refugees and gnolls did launch a few strikes on the orcs (mostly for supplies), they largely kept their heads down. The orcs were not Stormwind of old. The gnolls hated the kingdom, and did not mourn the deaths (largely), but the orcs were a different kind of threat.

Meanwhile, Orgrim had his hands full trying to establish a whole new logistical base in Stormwind, import more people from Draenor and prepare for (and then fight) a war quite some distance away. One of his most important strategic coups was to ally with the Steamwheedle Cartel. Using the vast sums of gold looted from the ruins of Stormwind, Orgrim made contact with the goblins and offered them the money (which the orcs largely had no interest in) and future trade if they helped the Horde even the naval playing field.

The Steamwheedle took the deal eagerly, though they also leveraged an additional promise out of Orgrim - once the war with the north was done, the Steamwheedle wanted the Horde's help in some 'readjustment' in the south. The Goblins had a nice chunk of land north of Booty Bay, they wouldn't mind a bit more. Surely Orgrim could help with that?

Since Orgrim had plans to make the Gurubashi well aware that they would thrive only on his sufferance, this fit well.

And so the Horde of old had its first ally.

In Westfall, the Horde tried to set up farming - though tribal and semi nomadic as the orcs generally were, they did have a notion of farms, but Westfall was not, as it turned out, super conducive to orcish farming methods, nor orcish crops. And with humans all dead or driven out, there was no one to teach the orcs how to properly grow and process the wheat for which Westfall was known. With time and practice, the orcs figured it out, but a whole year's crop was wasted in the process, or nearly so.

Importing herd animals, and engaging in farming in Duskwood and Elwynn was more useful, but only so much so. Stormwindian mines were reopened, forges lit anew... and the whole process cost valuable time and manpower. Logistics would remain the orcish Achilles heel for most of the Second War.

That Achilles heel would cost the Horde again and again - they would outrun supply lines, become exposed at all the wrong moments, and be short of critical resources at vital moments.

But that weakness can be overstated - the goblins were able to help fill a lot of the gaps, and the orcs continued to pay them for their services with extensive loot from their conquests. Indeed, though the Steamwheedle would never admit it, the Second War saved their cartel from complete implosion - and the Bilgewater's counterpoint by increasing their sales to the Alliance would in turn, save them.2​

Orgrim fought a war to the best of his ability - but in the end, a series of tactical blunders, exacerbated by the logistical issues, the collapse of Alterac, Zul'jin's break with the Horde and Gul'dan's betrayal ended up costing him the war. Orgrim's attempts to deliver a single knock-out blow to the Alliance may well have worked... if he could have actually done that. His notion appears to have been rooted in those logistical issues that he was so hampered by.

The Horde, ironically, was - by the time of the sieges of Silvermoon and then Lordaeron City - in the same place Stormwind found itself in by the end of the First War. Exhausted, stretched, strained, and lacking the depth of resources to continue the war at the current pace. Orgrim needed a victory. He needed something so unquestionable that he could force the Alliance to the table.

Origim's failure is the story of almosts. He almost managed to break out of Hillsbrad. He almost managed to overrun Stromgarde. He almost managed to break Silvermoon. He almost managed to take Lordaeron City.

Even after, the Horde could perhaps have held the line somewhere between Thandol Span and Blackrock Spire. But the debacle at Grim Batol that cost the Horde their remaining dragons and drove half the Dragonmaw Clan's forces into the Wild Highlands, Orgrim's baffling decision to (during the siege of Lordaeron) dispatch the Black Tooth Grin to chase Gul'dan and Cho'gall cost the Horde yet more vital manpower.

And his gamble to kill Lothar and break the Alliance's morale... under other circumstances, at another time and place... again.

Almost.

Orgrim would spend many years cursing the word 'Almost', following the Second War.

His defeat - his humiliating surrender - at Blackrock Spire broke the Horde's coherence - they didn't call to infighting, but with no clear leadership, and the Alliance barreling down on them from the north, and with Gul'dan's death seeming to leech the orcs of the sheer depth of their demonic power3​, albeit slowly, the orcs were pushed back. And pushed back.

The Gurubashi, seeing the Alliance forces coming down from the North with blood in their eyes, with Stormwind led by a 16 year old Varian Wrynn, decided that there was no way they'd be able to hold onto the Marches. The full force of the northern Kingdoms was about to be right on top of them, Varian Wrynn was young, aggressive and eager to prove himself as a King once his throne was retaken, and he had the last six years in the North, imbibing the fiercely anti-Troll attitudes of the North.

So once more the Marches changed hands by a simple shuffling of the paperwork and a changing of the flags. On the heels of the Alliance forces were stormwind citizens from all corners of the Eastern Kingdoms - those who had fled north, and those who had fled south. Battles were fought, at Lakeshire, at the passes out of Redridge. The amphibious assaults on the ruins of Stormwind. Most histories of the Second War tend to treat everything after Blackrock Spire as an afterthought, but arguably some of the best generalship of the war, under Alleria Windunner, Turalyon, Danath Trollbane and Daelin Proudmoore happened in the retaking of Stormwind.

The routing of the orcs at Crystal Lake was a showpiece of cavalry tactics that even now makes for the ideal strategy of dashing, daring cavalry officers across the Eastern Kingdoms. The landings to retake the ruins of Stormwind are rightly considered to be one of the most brilliant actions ever undertaking by the Kul Tiran Marines.

Even the final battles approaching the Dark Portal (the region was already becoming corrupted into the Blasted Lands by 7 ADP, when the war got there) were strategic masterpieces.

In part, it was because the orcs were so disorganized, chaotic, weakened that defeating them was easier. In part it was because the soldiers of the Alliance were now a well-honed, well-oiled machine that knew how to work together.

And in part, it was because the men and women now commanding the Alliance, had learned from the brutal years of warfare. Lothar had promoted the best and brightest to lead the Alliance's armies, and put them all through a baptism of fire, and they came out the other end. Daelin had not been one of Lothar's students, but he too had learned from the war - and suffered greatly, especially with the loss of his son Derek.

Finally, the Dark Portal was taken, the last of the orcs pushed out of Azeroth, or taken prisoner. Tereneas and Turalyon had managed to beat everyone over the head with the fact that killing orcs who surrendered was a surefire way to make sure no more orcs surrendered, so as the war continued to go on, many thousands of orcs were taken prisoner - and orcish civilians, even children, were discovered en masse for the first time.

Stormwind suffered during Ner'zhul's attempt to escape dying Draenor, but apart from the sacking of Nethergarde Keep, and an unexpectedly stealthy strike on the libraries underneath the rebuilt Stormwind Castle, Stormwind rode out that conflict with relative ease, though they did still contribute forces to the expedition into Draenor. The final stages of that conflict saw countless more orcs arrive in the Kingdom as many fled dying Draenor in an effort to save themselves - the conflicts around the Dark Portal were numerous and back and forth, with the portal changing hands repeatedly.

Though no one knew it at the time, it was during this chaos that the Black Tooth Grin under Rend, Maim and Griselda moved into Blackrock Spire once more - the Alliance had left the spire to the Dark Iron, who had claimed (correctly) that the orcs had forced them to cede the upper levels of the mountain.

Many of the orcs that escaped the camps managed to make it to the spire, but many more were captured and handed over to the camps, and by the end, even orcs who had never taken part in the Horde, such few there were left by that point, were fleeing through the portal and surrendering to the Alliance.

In the end, the portal was sealed, though not in time to stop the Blasted Lands from fully earning that name - years of fel corruption from proximity to the portal was capped off by an explosion of fel power that turned the region into the lifeless, ruined landscape it is today.4​

Victory even in that effort did not mean that all was right with Stormwind. The rebuilding, not just of the capital but of the entire Kingdom, proceeded in fits and starts, at great expense. Stormwind, already deep in debt to Kul Tiras and Lordaeron, only got more so. Both Kingdoms, as well as Ironforge and Dalaran, did contribute money as a pure gift to the Kingdom and it's people to help in the rebuilding, but the generosity was not limitless.

Taxes were thus forced to be high, even as people had to rebuild their lives. The House of Nobles had been gutted, and left to be dominated by the self-interested, though Katrana Prestor quick rose to the top of the body as a capable figure, often able to cobble together just enough votes to get the Crown's measures passed. She became a friend to Queen Tiffin as well.

Prestor, niece of the (presumed) late Daval Prestor, was not a Stormwind noblewoman by birth, but she did have proper inheritance rights to several small estates in Duskwood and Elwynn, and citing a desire to get away from her uncle's lands in the north - where everything reminded her of him - Katrana sold off those possessions and lands and moved to Stormwind, assuming the titles that were hers by right. She was ambitious and hoped to leverage her position into wealth and power, but she was also a magnetic personality, generous to many, and a patron of the arts. She quickly took the rebuilding Stormwind's court by storm, and

Though many people in Stormwind managed to escape or otherwise survive, massive portions of the Kingdom's population was still dead, and Stormwind soon found itself full of people like Katrana - people from the North who had legitimate inheritances of land and wealth in Stormwind.

Of course, not always was inheritance so clear. The Crown was left to adjudicate countless disputes over theft, inheritance, broken contracts - there was so much legal and financial detritus leftover from the destruction of the First War that King Varian spent almost all his time serving in his function as the court of last appeal - an exhausting, tiresome and thankless task that made him more enemies than friends.

Banditry had taken root in the remote places of the Kingdom, and while some were happy to lay down their weapons now that order had been restored, many more were not - Stormwind had failed them. The nobles had failed them. Better to rely upon themselves.

And on top of everything else, Stormwind needed to pay for the internment camps for the orcs - highly unpopular as they were - and rebuild their army. That was popular. Even with overtaxed peasants, no one opposed rebuilding the army. Not after the compound traumas the First and Second War and Ner'zhul's war had left on Stormwind.

Stormwind's constant financial woes, a problem dating back to the earliest days of the Kingdom, were only made worse, and it was into this mess that two compounded problems arose:

The Dark Horde - though no one called it that at the time, as it was just the same Horde - finally revealed itself. Reports of free orcs in Dark Iron territory had been circulating, and Rend, Maim and Griselda were still believed to be at large, but the sheer scope of their forces, as well as their troll and ogre allies had been kept well under wraps in Blackrock Spire. It became obvious that the Dark Iron and this new Horde were allies. The raids on the Redridge Mountains were small, pinpricks, but yet more of a problem for Stormwind. Only the absence of any camps in Stormwind's territory stopped an order to start killing orcs in job lots.

But soon even the Dark Horde took a second-seat to Edwin Van Cleef and the Stormwind Stonemasons Guild.

Distracted by everything else he had to deal with - including a contentions months-long trial involving disputed claims to multiple Lordships around Brightshire - Varian left everything involving the Stonemasons and their rebuilding of Stormwind City (and most importantly, its walls) to the House of Nobles.

Something he regretted when the Stonemasons began rioting in the streets as a response to the House of Nobles refusal to authorize any payment - not even a reduced amount - and then disbanded the entire guild. Such an act technically required Crown approval.

Varian didn't give it, but the House of Nobles - against Katrana's urgings - didn't care, and ordered the Stormwind Guard to disperse the Stonemasons.

Their response, was a riot.The largest in the last century, or more. The Stonemasons rallied all sorts of people to their side, and many others took advantage of the chaos.

Even despite that, Varian was sympathetic to their position. But he also couldn't just give them what they demanded while they rioted. Queen Tiffin, much beloved in the city, volunteered to go out and get them to calm down, to promise that they'd be heard, if only they calmed down.

Instead, Tiffin died. Edwin Van Cleef has consistently asserted in every pamphlet and broadsheet produced by the Brotherhood that neither he, nor his Stonemasons, killed the Queen. That the Queen's death was an accident of the chaos of the riots, that he bore her no specific ill will then, and that he and his people do not deserve the blame.

The truth or lack thereof of those claims aside, Tiffin's death shattered Varian. He ordered the soldiers of Stormwind into the capital to shut down the riots, enacting martial law. Any sympathy he might have had for the seemingly legitimate complaints were lost, and Edwin Van Cleef and his inner circle had to flee the city for their lives, wanted men. SI:7 was directed to hunt him down, by any means necessary, but Varian himself slipped into a depressive funk that lasted for years, into which the House of Nobles, tamed by Katrana, stepped in to help take up the vacuum of leadership.

Van Cleef, however, did not hide. He did not flee. Burning with indignant rage, Van Cleef and his compatriots, well-off artisans with a real sense of dignity and pride in their work, turned to darker pursuits. How and when it happened is unclear, but about a year after Tiffin's death, the Defias Brotherhood made it's first strike - two of the leading officers in the martial law enforcement that expelled the Stonemasons were found dead in the streets of the capital, the word 'Defias' painted in their blood next to the bodies.

Broadsheets and Pamphlets began to surface, signed by Van Cleef and the 'Defias Brotherhood' denouncing Varian, denouncing the House of Nobles. Van Cleef claimed that he and his inner circle had been offered repeated bribes before the riots, and he'd refused to let his workmen get the shaft. Van Cleef declared that Varian was an unjust king, and the nobles of the House of Nobles, corrupt and selfish bastards the lot of them, had no right to rule the Kingdom. That the First War had been lost by the nobles, not the people. That the nobles, the King, had mismanaged everything since the end of the Second War, and that in the end, if a government could not serve the needs of the people... that government must burn.

Preaching a radical doctrine of political and social leveling, the Defias Brotherhood began a campaign of sabotage, assassination, and terrorism across the Kingdom. Bandits, urban criminals, social malcontents, scholarly idealists and opportunistic men and women from across the Kingdom flocked to the Brotherhood. Many clearly believe in the ideals of the Brotherhood, but many too also seem to just like the opportunity to be a thug.

Because while the Defias Brotherhood targeted overreaching Royal officials and cruel, or oppressive nobles (most famously kidnapping and then 'putting on trial' the Countess of Stonefield who was quite guilty of raping several young peasant men, but had gotten off because SI:7 could not find proof) or military officers or formations, they've also targeted capable officials doing right by the common people, competent nobles who are even beloved by their peasants and merchants who's only crime was travelling along a route the Brotherhood decided to attack that day.

Entire villages have had their economies collapse under these indirect sieges as merchants travel to various remote places less often, and moving in caravans to protect themselves.

The Brotherhood has not been above financing their operations with theft, extortion, kidnapping and smuggling, even when it hurts the common people they claim to represent. They deny it, blame it on Stormwind, or say it's 'necessary for the cause', sometimes all in the same pamphlet.

The Brotherhood's endgame appears to be nothing less than the extermination of the House of Wrynn, and the dissolution of the House of Nobles, as well as the abolishment of the nobility as a class. The death of all 'oppressors' and the equal division of the properties of those the Defias deem worthy of death. The Defias have not, despite royal counter-propaganda, called for a complete equalization of all land and property (which would upset many peasants and urban middle classmen, to say the least).

The aftermath for the Brotherhood has been more nebulous. They have spoke of the notion of 'rule by the common people' but have been vague or contradictory or both as to what that means. Elections, of some sort, some sort of 'Grand Charter', perhaps, but what the terms and situations would be are unclear.

But regardless, all of the Brotherhood's activities, and the resurgent threat of the Gurubashi to the south (which has finally managed to rebuild it's military to pre-Jok'non's war levels, while Stormwind is nowhere near the position it was and lacks the overwhelming power of a Guardian anyway), and the Dark Horde, which only grew in menace, paralyzed Stormwind by the time reports of a plague came from the North. A dangerous, deadly plague. Varian sent priests and doctors, of course, but he had no money to spare, and soldiers would be of no help.

By the time that word reached Stormwind that the plague created the undead, that the undead were raving through the north of the Kingdom, word came right behind it of Arthas's cruel purge of Stratholme. Varian, a childhood friend of the prince, believed there had to be a logical explanation, but it seemed the problem was dealt with, no?

Varian did, over the objections of Katrana, who by now was his Chancellor and his mistress as well as leading the House of Nobles5​, send resources to aid Jaina in the relocation of and support of the Stratholme refugees, and volunteers did move north to aid them with manpower as well, but apart from that...

When word of Arthas's return, his undead status and his murder of his father reached Varian, he immediately ordered the marshalling of Stormwind's armies and fleets to move north, to come to Lordaeron's aid, to avenge Tereneas.

He was talked down from it by Katrana - but also by others. Even the officers in the army most opposed to Katrana's influence cautioned against such an extreme response. The Dark Horde was only growing more powerful, and the Defias Brotherhood was operating all but openly in southern Westfall.

Only Mathias Shaw, director of SI:7, supported such a radical action, but he was not a military man, and quickly shouted down. Varian was reduced to asking plans be drawn up to determine how much aid could be safely sent north, but Katrana soon convinced him to drawn on even those numbers.

Pointing how how thin the Crown's support in the House of Nobles could be, playing on Varian's hatred of Van Cleef and and arguing that the pace of events in the north was moving so fast no troops could reach in time, Katrana managed, intentionally or not, to convince Varian to dither long enough that word reached the Kingdom of the fall of Quel'Thalas and the march on Dalaran before action was taken.

In a way, Katrana was vidicated - the pace of events in the North had moved so fast that aid probably wouldn't have mattered. But Shaw was also vindicated, that the threat was severe enough to merit a radical response.

Torn between these two good points, Varian once more split the difference. With the collapse of Lordaeron, Stormwind was free - for the moment - of a massive portion of it's debt. While Varian did not repudiate the debt owed Lordaeron - that would come once Sylvanas declared herself Queen - he did suspend payments on those debts, and send a large portion of the freed up revenues to support Garithos. But he did not send many troops.

Instead, Stormwind started to make efforts to deal with the Dark Horde - or so Varian planned. As he tried to do that, he found the Defias Brotherhood suddenly focusing all it's efforts on the supply chain of the army, and when the Crown tried to accuse the Defias of aiding the orcs, it backfired to a great extent, as the Defias were able to instead claim that Varian was marshaling the army to enact Kingdom-wide martial law. Varian was forced to stand down his armies and even pull back on anti-Defias operations to avoid full-scale riots in the cities and rebellion in the countryside.

When word reached Stormwind about the chaotic events across the seat - the Invasion of Kalimdor, Mount Hyjal, the Kul Tiran attempt to assert control over Theramore and start a new war with the orcs... not to mention the situation with the orcs themselves - Varian was left feeling pulled in even more directions at once. Word of Sylvanas declaring herself Queen with the support of Calia, of the death (murder, he believed) of Garithos, the rise of the Ghostlands - Alterac reasserting itself in the mountains...

The result was that Varian checked out even more from actually running the Kingdom's affairs. The one initiative he did manage to bring himself to oversee was a renewing of the Alliance. He managed to convince Ironforge, Gnomegeran-in-Exile, Theramore and Kul Tiras to come together in Stormwind and for them all to reswear the oaths and resign the treaties that established the Alliance of old. Stromgarde and the Wildhammer would, in time, sign onto this renewed Alliance, bringing the number of members to where it is today.

Varian sees enemies everywhere, now - the Dark Horde to the North, the Ghostlands Pact even further north, the Gurubashi to the south, the Grand Confederation across the sea (and even closer, once the Dragonmaw in the Wild Highlands were noticed and joined the GC. The Defias Brotherhood lurks behind every corner, and he feels like he can rely on only a few people - Belvor, Shaw and Katrana chief among them.

Overstressed, short of confidence, distracted by anger at the Grand Confederation and the orcs, Varian has been unable to decide on a single course of action for Stormwind, and so, for the last few years, the Kingdom has been stuck in neutral, unable to take major action.

With the reports of Princess Moira's capture by the Dark Iron forcing Ironforge's hand, however, Stormwind has begun - slowly, sluggishly - to prepare to support their ally in an attack on Blackrock Mountain.

Stormwind may finally be ready to wake up.

---

1: The growth of these 'Eschatological' cults, obsessed with the idea that the world was going to end soon or already had in some form, played a huge role later in the theology of the Scarlet Crusade and that of several groups inspired by them in Stormwind (small though they are these days). The role bandits had in protecting scattered groups of refugees is also one of the things that gave many bandits good press in the most rural parts of the Kingdom, even today - something the Defias Brotherhood uses to great effect.

2: We'll explore it in more detail when we get to the Cartels, but in short, by the time the Second War rolled around, the hundred-year old Cartel System was basically on the verge of collapse. The many, many Cartels had slowly conglomerated to three - Steamwheedle, Bilgewater and Venture Co. Steemwheedle especially had absorbed so many smaller businesses that in many cases, there weren't enough customers to sell to - and they were regularly competing with themselves. The Second War provided a vital cash infusion to both the Steamwheedle and Bilgewater Cartels that allowed them to restructure their operations better. Still, if not for the Silent War creating a vital space for neutral middlemen (and the Steamwheedle being able to have a very potent not-quite captive marketplace in the form of the GC) they'd probably be busy collapsing right now.

3: There is something distinctly unclear as to when or why the orcs started suffering lethargy. I feel like it has to happen after or right at the end of the Second War, at least for those who were on Azeroth, because I find it hard to believe the demon-steroided up orcs could have been put into camps, but we know some orcs were put into camps by the time Ner'zhul starts doing his thing. Gul'dan's death seems to be as good a place as any to put it, IMO.

4: The Blasted Lands are so lifeless and dead that even now, over 15 years later, despite repeated efforts by mages and priests of the Light to renew the land, that nothing can grow there. Virtually all food consumed by the garrison at Nethergarde Keep and it's smaller outposts has to be imported, and it has been noted that food has a tendency to spoil faster in the region, again, despite magical preservation efforts. As a result, Nethergarde Keep only has about a month of food on hand at any given time, as storing up more would be useless.

5: The number of hats Katrana wears has absolutely led to jokes at Court about when she finds time to actually sleep.