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

[Kylia Quilor]

Since the end of the Second War of the Three Hammers, the politics of Ironforge have been centered around the Senate. With the King playing a role as broker, as much as anything else. On some issues, the contest may have been Senate versus King, but just as often, with the Dark Iron and Wildhammer aligned clans gone, the Senate would divide into groups based on interests, alignments, needs and values.

These disputes would often stall Senate business entirely, forcing the King to wade into the fray, cut deals, play broker, serve as middleman to make sure that what needed to be done, got done, and banged heads together to make it happen.

It was this sort of dispute that distracted Magni from sending aid to Stormwind during the First War, fights over mining rights and trade subsidies, tariffs and regulations. Someone wins, someone loses. Compromises need to be made, and promises need to be kept.

Today, however, that has fallen by the wayside. It is not to say that the Senate doesn't stll have divides, between various financial, business and political positions. But these days, it is King vs Senate that dominates the field.

Not that some Senator's aren't in the King's Camp, but most are outside it. The followers of the King, called a term that translates somewhat imprecisely as 'Eager Tunnelers' - implying people who tunnel too far, too fast, without providing support structures for the tunnel and then the tunnels collapse behind them - have clustered around Magni Bronzebeard. Magni wants the Kingdom to declare war on the Dark Iron as soon as possible, he wants the kingdom devoting all it's energies to that war, and then when his daughter is rescued, he wants to make sure the Dark Iron understand the cost of their actions.

But for all his thirst for war, Magni is not interested in blood for the sake of it. For those who want to destroy the Dark Iron once and for all, who want to see them defeated and forced back into the fold at the blade of an ax, they gather around General Vanndar Stormpike1​. Vanndar fought by Magni's side during the Second War, defending Ironforge from the Horde every day, and he lost many friends on that front line. The Horde would never have had such an easy time besieging Ironforge had the Dark Iron not acquiesced to their passage north, and now the Dark Iron did it again. Fool Vandar once, shame on you. Fool Vanndar twice?

You'll be too dead to do it a third time. Vanndar wants nothing less than the complete abolition of the Shadowforge state, the annexation of all Shadowforge land into Ironforge (less maybe some traded to Stormwind to keep them happy given their anticipated contribution) and finds himself much in agreement with people like Daelin and Varian about the 'Orc Problem', beyond just the Dark Horde.

On the opposite end of the scale from Vanndar is High Advisor Belgrum Deepaxe. The High Advisor has long served as the interface between King and Senate, and that remains true in this case. While loyal to Magni, and supportive of his military programs, he has consistently pushed for the eventual peace terms with the Shadowforge (not the Dark Horde, of course) to be as mild and non punitive as possible. With their losses in the coming war likely to be enough, Belgrum belives a more moderate peace will be more stable - he would like to see the Shadowforge brought into open trade with the rest of the world, forging better peace by turning the Shadowforge into productive members of Azerothian society. At the very least, it will do better than creating an excuse for another three hundred years of resentment.

But though there are divides within the Eager Tunnelers, the faction as a whole still puts declaring that war, defeating the Shadowforge, defeating the Dark Horde, and recovering Moira as the highest priority.

The primary opposition - if it can even be called that - to the Tunnelers and their 'mad rush to war' are the Senate Traditionalists, a coalition of Senators and their allies that would be at each others throats on matters of trade or law at any other time, but due to the need to hold the reins as the King barrels towards war without taking proper precautions, they have been forced together. The faction is led by two men - neither of them oppose the basic idea of war against the Shadowforge or the recovery of Moira, but they were simply of a mind that Magni is pushing for too far, too fast. As long as the Dark Horde continues to squat in Dun Algaz, and as long as the Loch Modan Coalition continues to hold most of the Loch in one form or another, it's perhaps not worth going quite so full hog. At least not until Stormwind is ready, not until more groundwork has been laid.

Senator Barin Redstone's position is that Ironforge needs to marshall it's forces more, raise more troops, and build more engines of war. While Magni presses for invasion of the Searing Gorge within three months, Redstone simply asks for nine, or perhaps six. He'd prefer a year, but he's willing to take less, if Magni will just give him more time. Magni's persistent habit of holding Senate business hostage to his war preparations, however, has increasingly alienated more and more of the Traditionalists, and Senator Mehr Stonehallow leads those of the faction that have found themselves inclined to stall more, as much out of polarizing opposition to Magni as a genuine desire for caution. Just as Magni holds Senate business hostage to get support for his war effort, Stonehallow has tried to hold war preparations hostage so Magni will do his actual job as King and sign the damn laws the Senate passes. This push-pull polarization has left Redstone and Stonehallow at such loggerheads they may have a formal break soon.

Within the armed forces of the Kingdom, several prominent figures are aligned with the Traditionalists, agreeing with the call for more time - most notably Thargas Anvilmar, who, as the commander at Thandol Span (and the one who held the Dark Horde Dragonmaw back from that critical bridge) who sees his men whittled away slowly, rather than being used for defense of Thandol Span, or the recovery of Dun Algaz, as well as August Foehammer, named an honorary Lordaeron Duke for saving the life of King Terenas from a Horde Assassin during the Second War (he'd been an Ironforge Ambassador in Lordaeron before even the First War started). Both men support the cause of war, and lean more towards Redstone, but they, like Redstone, simply want

More.

Time.

As a third faction within the government, and one with almost no Senate support, there are the self-styled Pragmatics. Once led by Moira Bronzebeard, she gathered together dissidents, philosophers and businessmen after her famous break with her father. Several of her closest allies were abducted alongside her, and the Pragmatics agree with Magni about the need for war sooner rather than later, but that is the only place the faction agrees with the King, and they have virtually no overlap with the Senate.

Put simply, the only thing that unites these so-called pragmatics is hatred of the Senate, and distaste for Magni's general moderation. More broadly, one could say that the Pragmatics include anyone who opposes the cultural orthodoxy of Ironforge. Included among their ranks are the mage Esmund Brightshield (who pushes for more dwarven mages and a brioader acceptance of dwarven mages as a concept socially), and the heterodox Light philosopher-priest Breanna Flintcrag (who has deployed the principles of the Light in argument of autocracy, most recently inspired by Galen Trollbane's centralization of real power in Stromgarde). Chief Engineer Hinderweir, in charge of Stonewrought Dam, has also drifted into Moira's orbit, as her program proposes vast infrastructure projects that she claims the Senate holds back through their short-sighted financial policies.

With Moira and her inner circle absent, the faction has been somewhat rudderless, but they continue to try to convince more dwarves that the solution to Ironforge's problems is to abolish the Senate, and allow the King do do his job unimpeded by anything other than the needs of Ironforge. Of course, their ideal solution, once Moira is found, is for Magni to be then forced to step down, as Moira clearly has the will to see this project through to the end.

Even to rescue his own daughter, the spineless Magni is unwilling to brush aside the Senate, the same Senate that led the people of Stormwind twist in the wind against the orcs, the same Senate that holds the Kingdom back, and has done so time again, in Ironforge's history. The Senate's weaknesses are, after all, the very reason that the Kingship exists at all.

So why should it continue to hold Ironforge back?

Outside of the halls of power proper, there are other influential groups in the Kingdom. Most notably, of course, are the Royal Stonecutter's Union led by Grand Mason Vardok Marblesten, and the Miner's League, led by Wilder Thistlenettle. Both dwarves are elected by their peers to lead their groups, and they are interest groups in the purest sense of the word. Individual members may have all sorts of political opinions, but the groups as a whole exist to promote the interests of their professions - stonecutting/masonry, and mining. They are unions of workers, representing the laborers in both financial and regulatory senses. They stand up to the wealthiest nobles of the clans, they work to ensure safety regulations that are both sensible and nonrestrictive, and represent the skilled craftsmen free of outside control. They push for more mining, ever more mining, and various subsidies for other members of the Alliance to avail themselves of the masonry skills of the Dwarves.

Of course, often opposing that subsidy approach is the Board of Bankers, a collection of the various banks and banking families of Ironforge. Led by Chairwoman Soleil Stonemantle, the Board is all for the Stonecutters continuing to do work for the rest of the Alliance, but they very much want to see it paid for by loans taken out from their banks, rather than subsidies from the government. The Bankers are not all greedy and rapacious dwarves, though there are some, but they are firm believers in greasing the wheels of the economy through the expansion of money through loans. They oppose most forms of regulation on labor, capital and business, including 'safety' regulations (which they claim are usually poorly implemented, and better left to the managers and laborers on-site) as well as high taxes. An expanding tunnel only finds more gold, after all, and the Bankers believe that growing the economy will increase tax receipts and thus raising taxes will be unnecessary.

They are, to be fair, also far from usurious in their lending rates. Indeed, Ironforge Banks have the most generous interest rates in the world, both for savings and for loans (with the sole exception of the Bank of Theramore's low interest rates for Theramore citizens). They believe in long-term business, and long-term value, collecting interest payments for years rather than asking for much work to be done on paying down the principal.

Of late, the Board has given out more and more loans to the rest of the Alliance - either the governments, or private entities therein, and some outside the Board worry that the Kingdom's banks are overextended. But given the fact that so much of the loaned money just ends up in the hands of the Stonecutter's Union, or some noble family or private company's accounts, the concerns are perhaps overblown. The Board certain insists they are, and while they are biased, they do have some of the best economic thinkers in the known world at their disposal, outside of a few professors at New Gearshaft University.

No discussion of factions in Ironforge would be complete without also discussing the Hidden Circle. Their leadership is unknown, though is believed to have fallen under the control of one dwarf as a master of all crime in Ironforge, or nearly so. The Hidden Circle's motives are simple, favoring stability and vice over chaos and overt crime. Gambling, protection rackets and a bit of light smuggling make up the bulk of their lucrative business, and they bribe officials up and down the government, across the Kingdom. Rumors persist at least one Senator is in their pocket, but they don't have much of a specific political agenda besides keeping them in power. They are, however, nearly at open war with the Pragmatics. The Pragmatics use the power and reach of the Hidden Circle as a textbook example of the weaknesses of Ironforge now. Crime runs rampant, and the Ironforge Guard refuse to do their jobs and purge these criminals from the city. The Pragmatics have organized their own investigations and attacks on the Circle and by all evidence, have never lynched the wrong target, but their lynch mobs are of course, just as made as the Hidden Circle, or worse, in the eyes of many.

In turn, of course, the Hidden Circle attacks the Pragmatics - businesses owned by members of allies of the group universally don't pay protection, and are thus free game and even especially targeted by the Hidden Circle, and there's the odd disappearance of mysterious death associated with the Pragmatics that is almost certainly the fault of the Hidden Circle.

More often, for both sides, it is ambushes in alleys leaving people beaten to a pulp, but alive, sabotage, leaked secrets, stolen resources...

Compared to the chaos of Stormwind, or even the terrorism launched against the leaders of Jintha'alor by Amani loyalists this little turf war is... nothing. Gang violence endemic to any city anywhere, really.

The conflict between the Tunnelers and the Traditionalists, the Pragmatics and the Hidden Circle (and the Traditionalists, and Magni specifically), and the Bankers against the Miner's League and the Stonecutter's Union are real, and they threaten to paralyze the Kingdom.

And yet... even with all that, compared to Stormwind, Ironforge does well.

So well, of course, that some have continued to argue that the Kingdom, that the Bronzebeard Dwarves - the true dwarves - are blessed, chosen by the Titans, or fate, or... something, to be the natural rulers.

Certainly, Azeroth belongs to them.

Many of these people find their homes in the Explorer's League. While the League, as founded by Brann Bronzebeard and his brother Muradin, is a reasonably noble pursuit of knowledge, especially of the origins of the Dwarven people, not all hold goals of pure knowledge. High Explorer Dellorah is one of Brann's closest allies here, an insatiably curious woman who has ambitions to know... everything that can be known and quantified.

Others have motives that are more mixed. Others such as Muninn Magellas are genuinely interested in seeking the truth of the Titans, and the dwarves' origins.

But Magellas is also interested in finding more evidence to support the natural superiority of the dwarves. He believes that the Dwarves were chosen by the Titans, and that there is proof of that in the ruins of the Titans. To that end, he has dispatched teams all over Azeroth looking for traces of the Titan Cities, which the scattered records they have found suggest exist. That proof could convince more dwarves to see things Magellas's way. Maybe even convince non-dwarves of the natural superiority of dwarves.

Or find ways to make their lack of acceptance of that fact moot.

But equally, some have even less noble motives. Magellas may have a political dimension to his goals, but people like Khazgorm Lonebrow and Henrig Lonebrow seek to uncover the secrets of the past for little more than profit, and a greedy to own and accumulate. For these men, and their allies and backers, the goal is to find artifacts, and sell them, or hoard them, put them on display, to say 'look at what I have'. Conversation pieces to brag over, trophies to have for their own sake.

Of course, any given expedition may have a mix of all three groups, and all three have found themselves in alignment that there should be central repositories for these items. Perhaps even a place where some of the choicer bits can be put on display for the paying public to see. In Ironforge of course. All belonging to the League.

Finder's Keepers, after all.

To this end, Explorer's Leagues teams can be found all over Alliance territory, negotiating with local government and landowners for permission to what they can find. They do the same with the Cartels, who have little interest in sentimentality. But of course, Cartel land wasn't always goblin.

But some places are far less interested in seeing dwarves dig up their lands. In Azshara, or parts of the Barrens, the Thousand Needles. They have tried to avoid creating international incidents, but within, or near Hyjal Covenant and Grand Confederation territory, dwarves (and sometimes gnomes) can often be found. Digging. The Explorer's League is virtually at war with the Farraki after they broke open a Farraki tomb holding the remains of those trolls who were too damaged at one point or another to be raised.

The Night Elves and Tauren especially have protested to Ironforge, and Brann at least has tried to reign the worst excesses of the League in, but... on some level.

Isn't it better that these items belong to dwarves? That they be studied, and understood, rather than buried in tombs forever? A place where all the world can see them is good, right? He can understand and respect the positions of those who disagree, and yet...

The Explorer's League is the best and worst impulses of the dwarves - industriousness, diligence, a thirst for excellence and perfection. It is greed, and arrogance and pride. It is a thirst for knowledge, and a thirst for order at all costs.

The Explorer's League takes no sides in the disputes of the rest of Ironforge, and yet, it could be a microcosm of all of Ironforge, all it's own.2​

---

1: Given the reactive dearth of named Ironforge clans in the game, I am keeping the Stormpike as canon, but they're obviously nowhere near Alterac Valley. Given that Vandar was apparently willing to start a war with the Horde to get at some Stormpike relics in Alterac Valley (instead of, I don't know, just asking the Frostwolves for permission to dig), and what little dialogue he has, it's easy to place him as the bleeding edge hard-militarist wing of Magni's faction.

2: This whole bit is inspired by @Embler and @Reese here on SV, while I was discussing the dearth of major sketchy/gray/etc elements to the Ironforge as a whole. They mentioned the idea of the Explorer's League as a possible analogue to the British Museum and the cultural imperialism inherent in yanking all these artifacts from all over the world under the cover of some noble pursuit of knowledge. The IRL British Museum, and the whole discussion around countries (mostly in the global northwest) having stuff from other, poorer countries they may have previously ruled over or invaded, etc, on display and refusing to give them back is complicated, messy and not worth going into here. My own feelings on the subject are equally complicated, messy and again, not worth going into here. Regardless, it is an easy thing to sketchy/gray/morally problematic plot point for the dwarves, especially in line with the 'chosen by the Titans' and 'Ironforge really does seem to have escaped all the problems everyone else had' issues that could reinforce that tendency.

Bael Modan does not exist as of yet in this 'verse, but the mindset behind Bael Modan which included driving Tauren off their land because they were 'interfering with our digging' is certainly present within the Explorer's League.

 

[Kylia Quilor]

Tinker of the Court Oglethorpe Obnoticus: Once more High Tinker, I must insist that you explain to the Tinker's Court why you did something so impressively foolish as unleashing a nearly uncontrollable force on the lower levels of the Gnomeregan!
High Tinker Gelbin Mekkatorque: I've already provided this court with all the experimental data that Mekgineer Thermaplugg provided. There was every reason to believe it would remain on the lower levels, dissipate in time, and drive out the Troggs. I challenge you to find any flaw in that data!
Oglethorpe Obnoticus: I think the flaw is manifest in the fact that we're having this meeting in a wooden building built above ground rather than in the Palace1​.
Gelbin Mekkatorque: Yes, it's clear that something went horribly wrong in the deployment of the weapon, but it -
Oglethorpe Obnoticus: And who gave the orders for the deployment? Who picked the people to oversee it? Who absolutely bungled all efforts to defend our home against the Troggs for years, to the point where such an extreme solution made sense!? That would be you, High Tinker! You have overseen the greatest disaster in the history of our people, and if you cared about something other than trying to fix your legacy for the history books and maintaining your own power you would admit your fault, call new elections and step down from politics for the rest of whatever remains of your miserable excuse for a life!2​

Compared to the other states of the Eastern Kingdoms, the Technocracy of Gnomeregan and the Kingdom before it has had a fairly simple and drama-free history.

That is not to say that the Gnomes have not had a rich and complicated history full of social movements and cultural developments, political wrangling and personal shenanigans. It absolutely has - indeed, with their robust and freewheeling politics, a very interesting story can be spun of their history, especially since the end of the Monarchy.

And yet... compared to the other realms of the Eastern Kingdoms, Gnomeregan has lacked the internice strife, the foreign wars, the assassinations, the political murders, the brutal repression or the legendary epics of their neighbors.

Regardless, Gnomeregan's recorded history starts several centuries after first contact with the Dwarves, shortly before the wars between Ironforge and the Gurubashi Empire began. It is unclear exactly why the Gomes took so long to start writing their own history down, especially since they did have writing at the time. Documents from that time - trial transcripts and research notes mostly - do survive.

Some human and dwarven scholars have claimed that the gnomish fetishization of moving forward, their obsession with progress was why they cared little interest for history, but any gnomish historian would disagree with that - gnomish historians know that without understanding where you've been, you can't understand where you're going. Gearshaft University had a robust history department, though in keeping with the gnomes interest in moving forward, the most celebrated historians used the models they created from their studies of history to try to predict the future.3​

Modern scholars have evidence of gnomes being part of Dalaran as soon as they made contact with the wider world beyond dwarves, and gnomes were part of the Council of Tirisfal from the start. The gnomes came to arcane magic all on their own, though they benefited greatly from their association with human and elven mages through Dalaran. In the early days, gnomes took to heart the elven warnings about the Fel - warnings that they very much stopped taking to heart over the course of centuries.

The early dwarven records don't shed too much light either, speaking mostly of Gnomish ingenuity and their relationship with the dwarves, rather than their internal politics or the like. As a result, it is unclear exactly why the Gnomes had a monarchy, how it emerged or how it originally governed. By the time the Gnomes started writing their history down, ~ 2,400 years before the Dark Portal opened, Gnomegeran was governed by a King, who ruled in concert with a semi-elective, semi-consultative, semi-legislative body called the Tinker's Court.

The power of the Court and the King would wax and wane over the years, back and forth, but the King generally was the dominant power in theory - but less so in practice. The gnomish royal family, the Mechagon Dynasty, was prone to obsessions, distractions and eccentricity. It was not that they were bad kings or queens, but they did tend to prefer their own matters rather than governing, in most cases.

As a result, real power tended to drift into the orbit of the Tinker's Court, and the elected leader of that body, the High Tinker. Under the leadership of the High Tinkers, the Gnomes continued to function as a junior partner to the dwarves, in matters of trade and foreign affairs. This state of affairs was indeed, so developed and complete, with the gnomes generally letting the dwarves speak for them on the world stage (or at least sharing embassy space with them), their military efforts largely consisting of designing various engines of war or other new tools for the Dwarves to use, rather than fighting their battles for themselves, and other things of that nature that many humans mistook Gnomeregan for a vassal of Ironforge.

And this general state of affairs was indeed, the state of affairs in general. It is a gross oversimplification, but a general pattern emerged - the gnomes would develop and refine an idea, a device, a technique, a machine, et cetera, and the dwarves would adapt it for mass production, mass implementation, or the like. This is not to say that the dwarves didn't invent things on their own (they did) or that gnomes didn't mass produce anything (they did) but a strong specialization emerged in gnomish society, oriented towards invention and innovation, pushing forward to the next new idea, rather than other achievements.

The Gnomes would pass through artistic eras at a pace dizzying compared to even humans, let alone elves and dwarves, abandoning and revisiting styles and techniques and methods quickly and in seemingly chaotic patterns.

This focus on the new and the bold and the innovative has sometimes been pointed to as a reason for the low gnomish birthrate, which has generally rested barely above replacement. The dwarven joke on the subject, put simply, is that gnomes are too busy with their inventions to actually get married and have children.

This is, of course, a gross oversimplification, but the truth remains that gnomes marry late and have few children, relatively speaking. That persisted across time, generation after generation. With their dwarven partners expanding outwards and upwards, the gnomes went downwards. Gnomeregan became a vast, multileveled city, with complex networks of elevators and lifts linking the levels, along with side branching tunnels, emergency access shafts and more. The gnomes and their small population all crammed into the city, along with foundries, research labs, alchemical workshops, special fungal and moss farms, firing ranges, explosive testing centers and more. The city was a bustling haze of work and development.

As generation after generation passed, with the Mechagon dynasty proving to be more and more eccentric. Sometimes, a given King or Queen would be involved, usually on some specific issue, something near and dear to whatever obsession or side project they had, but they continued to cede power in practice to their Tinker's Court, which continued to develop further from a semi-elective body to a fully elective one, representing the most learned and accomplished gnomes across the board in almost all fields. The High Tinker, with the confidence of the Court, had a relative impunity to direct the government within the laws of the realm, unless the monarch decided to rouse themselves.

432 years ago, King Thenry Mechagon II rose to the throne on the death of his mother. Thenry proved to be a surprisingly involved ruler, but also intensely eccentric - by tradition, gnomish kings issued five to ten decrees upon rising to the throne, and it was long understood that these decrees would be unchallenged by the Tinker's Court - but that they would also be... reasonable.

The first six issued by Thenry were reasonable enough. The seventh, decreeing that any animal smaller than a West Stromgarde Bloodhound was not allowed in Gnomegeran or the surface around the entrance to the city, unless made up of at least fifty percent mechanical parts, was not. Overnight, countless pet cats, bats, birds, even rabbits and squirrels in some cases, and certainly wild ones were to be hunted down.

A master of mechanistic principles and a skilled roboticist to boot, Thenry II would spend his reign preaching and promoting the art of clockwork machinery, the furtherance of robotics, and the construction of mechanical golems of all sorts. While robots fueled by the arcane were all that was possible at first, Thenry's vision of robots fueled only by science was seen as bold and visionary by many.

400 years ago, Thenry Mechagon II, King of the Gnomes, gathered his most fervent supporters on an experimental airship, centuries ahead of it's time even for the gnomes. He announced that he and his closest followers had discovered proof of the gnomes origins as machines - the (at the time) much derided and considered debunked 'Robotics Origin' theory of gnomish origination - and that he was going to a new land, a promised land, where in time, the gnomes could abandon flesh entirely, for the perfection of the machine.

He did all this without consulting the Tinker's Court, without the approval of the High Tinker, or really any of the other mechanisms of proper government. But before anyone could do anything about these constitutional irregularities, he and his followers had left, and with no forwarding address, there wasn't much anyone could do. Thenry had even gone so far as to destroy all his own notes and journals and those of his inner circle that couldn't be taken with him. So whatever it was that he was doing, wherever he was going...

Well, there was no King, and no way to get the King back.

This departure of Thenry sparked the first constitutional crisis in Gnomeregan's history. Thenry had no children, and the low birthrates of the gnomes in general extended to the Mechagon Dynasty especially. There were some distant cousins when one went back up and down the family tree enough, but after much consideration, the Tinker's Court made the decision to simply cast aside the Monarchy entirely.

The High Tinker ran things mostly anyway, after all, with the support of the Tinker's Court.

Why not just cut out the King entirely?

And so, they did.

The rest of the Eastern Kingdoms were aghast, outside of Dalaran, but the Gnomes were so weird anyway, that after a few years, it simply became yet another eccentricity. Rather than doing what normal people would do (so said the humans and dwarves anyway) and elect a new King from among the elite of their society, the gnomes just went and got rid of one.

"Ah well," nobles across Lordaeron might say. "That's gnomes for you,"

Thus ushered in a new phase of Gnomegeran's history. Though the monarchy was abolished in principle, no one really felt like re-writing all the laws, and as a result, the technical title of King was folded into that of the High Tinker - it was their position as High Tinker, elected by the Tinker's Court, that gave them their power, but if the laws said the King needed to this, or the King needed to do that... Well, now they had a means to do just that.

Gnomeregan's politics became even more dynamic, as voter participation increased, and factions began to coalesce in stronger, more lasting ways. Gnomish society continued to focus on innovation, inventions and the pursuit of the new, as did the government, but as politics became a new past time in Gnomeregan, complete with the rise of newspapers and public debates, the Tinker's Court soon became engrossed in all manner of debates about how to best further those efforts. Should the government sponsor projects more? Which ones? Should Gnomeregan expand in that direction as it dug, or that one?

And of course, all the usual questions of government: taxes, support for the poor, what to ban, what to allow. It was during this time, the first century after the loss of their Kings that the Gnomes, after centuries of growing increasingly lax about the Fel, quietly dropped their bans on the magic. The Fel was dangerous, it was well understood. Demons were liars, manipulators and monsters, in most cases. But equally...

Well, just about anything was dangerous if you used it wrong. Gnomes began to study the Fel, and the twisting nether. It would be a lie to say no Gnome ever made a mistake, and no demons ever got loose, or got their hooks too much into a foolish Warlock, but despite several efforts by ambitious demons (some which may or may not have been linked to the Burning Legion to varying extents) to do more than rampage a bit before being defeated or banished, no severe fallout.

Gnomeregan kept this quiet, knowing how Dalaran would react, and strong regulations were passed about who could learn Fel Magic, who could summon demons and how and for what purposes (usually requiring all sorts of paperwork approving the summoning), but Gnomeregan rapidly became the experts on Fel Magic in the Eastern Kingdoms.

Gnomeregan didn't neglect the arcane, but as their command of engineering became greater, robotics became less and less fueled by magic. In -178, the first entirely clockwork powered construct was created, and though there were many kinks to be worked out, the proof was finally there, that magic was not needed to make machinery go.

Gnomes and Dwarves have a friendly debate about who first invented Gunpowder, but it is agreed that in either case, it started as an aid to mining. But soon bombs and grenades gave way to cannon. Their size and bulk made them poor choices for the field, and even in fortress defense the utility was limited, but Kul Tiras soon began adopting them for their navy, Daelin's father proving to be a visionary and prevailing on his own mother that this new technology could be the wave of the future in naval warfare.

Of course, once Kul Tiran ships adopted them, so too did others, and the secret of gunpowder, and canons spread. Goblins loved it for it's explosive potential, while the Gnomes were happy to move on to new projects: Smaller, better cannons. In time, primitive firearms emerged, and it was these guns that were refined, and refined again. The dwarves and gnomes quickly realized just how deadly these guns could be in the hands of the humans, with their regular wars, and decided for now that it would be best to keep them back, to themselves.

That served them well, when the Horde came knocking before the formal inauguration of the Second War. Making the same mistake so many humans kept making, Doomhammer assumed the gnomes were subjects of the dwarves, and only sent his emissaries to Magni Bronzebeard, offering membership in the Horde for peace. Submission, for survival.

Magni spat in the leading emissary's face, and Gelbin Mekkatorque, High Tinker for twenty years by that point, agreed wholeheartedly. There was war - an unfortunate commonality among humans, something that even the dwarves were not free of, sadly. Even in their own distant past, the Gnomes had made war on the Gurubashi alongside the dwarves, but still. There was war.

And then there was the brutality of the Horde.

The Horde had encountered a few of the latest generation of cannons in the defense of a few fortresses and Stormwind the City itself, and they knew the gnomes and dwarves would have more. They'd thought they were prepared for them.

Unfortunately, they were not prepared for massed ranks of dwarven gunners. Less so the power of the guns, and smoke, the fire, the surprise. The gnomes had grenades and bombs a plenty, and began dropping them from airships and gyrocopters as the sieges of Ironforge and Gnomeregan continued. The orcs managed to stop from being pushed back, but they never got close to breaking into the cities, and when the war in the north finally turned, and the Alliance swept down, the orcs were pushed away from Dun Morogh.

And Gnomeregan, like Ironforge, joined the Alliance.

The greatest and most potent engines of war that the gnomes could conceive of were soon put into the field, and more were made for the final stages after the defeat of Ogrim. Steam Tanks, new generation gyrocopters, yet more guns and even better bombs. The gnomes shared many secrets with their human allies, and got more used to the idea of fighting on the front lines.

Gnomes had had warriors before, soldiers even, but never to the extent that they quickly did, in the last stages of the Second War. They proved their worth to the rest of the world as more than just inventors, but able to carry their weight in the field of battle.

After the Second War, Gelbin Mekkatorque was the first, alongside the leaders of Dalaran, to agree with Terenas that slaughtering the surrendered orcs was not acceptable, that some means of finding a way of turning these lethargic orcs who largely seemed unable to fight back must be found. Gnomeregan contributed resources, personnel and machines meant to improve security - specialized fencing that nonlethally shocked or subdued any orc that tried to leave, spotlight towers, patrolling golems and robots, and more.

Things looked up for the Gnomes. They had won respect from the human kingdoms, they had even more allies, they had won their first war in over a thousand years, they had new opportunities for economic growth thanks to all the new trade treaties that came with the signing of the Alliance.

Gelbin Mekkatorque, who had been on the verge of a vote of no confidence thanks to a political shift domestically before the sack of Stormwind, was now riding high as one of the most popular High Tinkers in Gnomish history.

And then came the Troggs.

None of the gnomes are quite clear on what it is they did that drew the troggs to them. Or where they came from, or why they attacked. The Troggs were capable of speech, but they had little interest in talk, beyond bellowing what were presumably threats and warcries as they attacked, their guttural tongue resisting translation. They aren't stupid, showing a cunning in their battle strategies, even if not perhaps as sophisticated as even those deployed by Kobolds and Gnolls.

But they were able to hijack some of the simpler gnomish machines, and showed a cunning in how they destroyed the others - not simply hitting them until they broke, but taking them apart, or smashing them in ways that made repair exceptionally difficult.

The troggs began by attacking the lowest levels of the city. Based on survivor accounts, they merely broke into the lower city in tunnels, and began attacking. The gnomes tried to fight back, but the troggs were bigger, stronger, and could locally outnumber the gnomes anywhere.

Because that was the greatest threat. Even more than the kobolds that the gnomes had fought when their mines and tunnels hit kobold warrens (rarer than not, but hardly unheard of), the troggs didn't flee at the first real challenge, and they could tunnel with speed that no one had ever matched before. They could literally use tunnels for hit and run operations, and began to bypass every defensive work the gnomes tried to set up.

Even if the gnomes had had a large military - they didn't - even if the gnomes had had a reserve of veteran soldiers with years and years of active service - they didn't - they would have had trouble.

At first, Gelbin and the Tinker's Court tried to keep this secret. They evacuated people from the lowest levels of the city, claiming toxic spills, pushing for gag orders and silence from all witnesses, and set out to deal with this nuisance without creating a panic. Sure, they were more capable and dangerous than kobolds, but these troggs were no match for the machines of war that the gnomes could muster.

After a few weeks of the troggs proving to be too difficult to stop, driving the gnomes out of the lowest level of the city, Gelbin knew that this was a challenge that merited asking the aid of the rest of the Alliance. Unfortunately, as he on his way to the embassy quarter of Gnomeregan, on the highest levels of the city, word hit the city of Prince Arthas's return to Lordaeron, and his slaughter of his father, and the undead rampage across the capital city of the greatest kingdom of humanity.

Gelbin, already having received word about the plague of undead, Arthas's mad purge of Stratholme - he'd even provided funds and some machines to Jaina Proudmoore to help with the relocation of the Stratholme refugees - knew that the Alliance would need all hands on deck for this problem. The troggs were an issue, but still.

They could be stopped. It would just take a redoubling of their efforts.

The gnomes politely asked all embassies to leave the city, citing dangerous chemical spills, and then cut off contact with the outside world, save for purchases of food and raw materials through dwarven middlemen - and even the dwarves were kept at arms length.

Of course, Gelbin thought that even though Terenas had fallen, Lordaeron, the Alliance... they could still win against the undead. He had no idea that the Scourge would make short work of Lordaeron, then Quel'Thalas, then Dalaran. He didn't realize that Daelin would spend more time tracking down his daughter and her errant fleet than aiding Lordaeron, that Stromgarde would just keep to itself rather than helping Lordaeron, that Stormwind wouldn't pull out all the stops to aid Lordaeron.

(He did assume that Gilneas would stay huddled behind their wall, because of course they would)

Gelbin and his experts ran the numbers and believed a fully mobilized Alliance would be able to defeat the Scourge within a year, perhaps a year and a half. The gnomes were having trouble with the Troggs, but they could, with carefully phased evacuations, clever tactics and their advanced machines of war, hold the Troggs back that long. Gnomeregan was by now, massive, whole sections of the city unused as new levels were dug out. Old foundries considered obsolete or surplus to requirements were fired up once more. Vaults of funds and stockpiled resources and weapons for emergencies were broken open and put to use. Emergency laws were passed giving the High Tinker a much, much freer hand to direct the resources of the city to their war effort.4​

Unfortunately, of course, their projections about the Scourge were wrong. Their projections about the Alliance and it's former members were wrong.

The projections the Gnomes had about their own ability to hold out, of course, proved to be entirely right, as they held out for years. The Troggs continued to tunnel around the gnomes defenses, but the gnomes were able to get better and better at predicting it. Authorizations for warlocks to summon demons were granted in larger batches, as long as they were summoned in the combat zones. Mages broke out their most destructive spells, engineers their most deadly machines. New generations of guns were developed at breakneck speed, even for gnomes.

It was a mass mobilization of the collective genius of an entire race for their survival, and though the troggs numbers, and persistent tunneling forced them to pull back from level after level, the gnomes held out longer each time. But casualties were mounting, and the people of Gnomeregan were losing hope.

The seniormost officer of the Gnomeregan Army that survived the Radiation Purge, then Colonel Kittlectrina Flamesprocket believes firmly that if they'd simply kept going for another year, perhaps two, they would have been able to fully stop the troggs, at roughly the halfway point in the city. The gnomes had begun to predict nearly 75% of trogg tunnel entries, and casualties were becoming even more weighted in favor of the gnomes.

But Gelbin Mekkatorque believed - with good reason - that the morale of his people could not hold out much longer. And so, when six months ago his closest friend, advisor and partner Sicco Thermaplugg came with a plan, backed by experimental data that seemed to hold up, showing that the radioactive gas he had developed would stay in the lower levels and could be neutralized given the proper components, and would indeed kill the troggs that were infesting the levels of the city lost...

Gelbin chose that strategy. As he has consistently argued, the data held up. It was a risk, yes, but Sicco Thermaplugg was an accomplished master engineer, and his scientific track record with radiation studies was sound. Yes, he had a tendency to be a bit reckless and half-cocked with his designs, but Gelbin had gone over the plans, gone over the machine himself, as had several of the most senior engineers of the city.

It should have worked.

And so, Sicco Thermaplugg and an elite team of the city's best soldiers and spies went into the levels of the city lost to the Troggs. They had determined the perfect place to plant the device, which would release the radioactive gas and kill the Troggs. They brought protective gear, but they all went in knowing this could be a suicide mission. Gelbin tried to convince Sicco that he didn't need to do this part - like him, Sicco was elderly, and hardly a soldier. But Sicco was a vigorous, physically fit old gnome, much like Gelbin himself, and insisted that he needed to be the one to see this through.

An emotional goodbye later, and the mission was on.

The gas was released. It spread through the lower levels.

And then it kept spreading.

Alerts came in over the city's internal communications machines and magics quickly, that the gas was spreading into the still populated levels of the city, that attempts to neutralize it with the chemicals Sicco had designed for just that were failing -

Panic spread, and with panic, came chaos. Lifts and tunnels and shafts were packed, as gnomes climbed over each other to escape, to get their families out, to save their children, to save themselves. Some insisted on bringing their life's work with them, which slowed them down, and the gas seemed to have a life of its own as it spread, faster than any worst-case projections could have guessed.

Gelbin tried to manage the chaos, holding out in the palace for as long as possible, and only moving to the next level up as the gas got close, and each time, he was one of the last to flee a level. Upper levels were evacuated to the surface, and as many gnomes as could be taken were taken.

But the casualties were massive. Post-evacuation counts show that approximately 80% of the gnomish population died or became leper gnomes in the war with the troggs, and the subsequent radiation purge.

But the evacuation did save the rest, and the city was sealed, preventing more gas from escaping to the surface, at least. The same defenses that had held back the orcs turned against the city, to keep the troggs in, and keep the gas in, until it could at least stop spreading on it's own.

All bets were off on when or if it would dissipate.

And so, the shattered remnant of the gnomes now sits in the ramshackle Tinker Town, the Technocracy of Gnomeregan a shell of itself. The radiation lingers in the city, and small teams with protective gear have managed to go in, to recover essential materials. The leper gnomes that were exposed to the gas and survived, driven mad and murderous, were at first a chaotic mess of destruction, fighting eachother and the troggs, but recent expeditions show that they have coalesced into an increasingly disciplined, if insane force, fighting both the troggs, and any non-leper gnomes they encounter. They speak of a King that now rules them, interrogations - when meaning can be extracted from their babbles.

But even if the Alliance could spare large armies for the reclamation efforts, the radiation remains, and it refuses to be dispersed or dissipated or removed at the pace needed.

And so, the homeland of the Gnomes, the city they built over the course of thousands of years, remains oh so close, and oh so far away.

---

1: The Tinker's Court, the legislature of Gnomeregan, met in a wing of the Royal Palace even during the days of the Gnomish Kings. Today the building, though not functioning as a Palace anymore, continues to be called a Palace.
2: After Obnoticus finished this miniature speech, the Tinker's Court broke out into shouts, screams and swearing, and it took nearly thirty minutes for order to be restored.
3: These predictions are of course, far from universally correct, but they have made some notable points - most recently, Professor Sporber Buzzcraft, one of the few members of Gearshaft University's top faculty to escape Gnomeregan alive, and one of the foremost Alliance experts on Troll History and Culture predicted, in the aftermath of the Second War, that Jintha'alor and Zul'aman would have some sort of break within 20 years that would create two distinct states. The tensions between the two disparate regions of the Amani Empire were long standing, and the losses sustained in the Second War and the stresses they had placed on Forest Troll society were evident to a well-informed scholar.
4: These emergency laws were designed to require reauthorization every six months, which the Tinker's Court provided without fail each time, until the disaster that forced them out of their city.

 

[Kylia Quilor]

Alamar Grimm: The Fel is merely one more source of power and magic, and no more inherently dangerous than the arcane, as long as practical precautions are taken.
Modera: How can you look at the history of Azeroth, going back more than ten thousand years and ignore the threat the Fel poses?
Evelyn Thorn: Ah yes, ever the righteous, Modera. Gnomeregan has been using the Fel for centuries without major incident, and as I recall, Dalaran had a breach of experimental containment every few months.
Modera: Few were any more significant than the errant loose demon you're pretending don't matter on your end, Thorn. The Fel is dangerous, and you're insistence on playing with forces you can't even begin to understand-
Alamar Grimm: But that's just it, Archmage. We do understand the Fel, or at least enough to do what we actually seek to do with it. And while Mekkatorque may be a world-class idiot, he has not been so stupid as to sign any sort of extradition treaty with Stormwind or the Kirin Tor on the 'crime' of use of the Fel. If Evelyn Thorn were probably guilty of any crime in Stormwind other than offending your tender sensibilities, I would be the first to support handing her over to you and those well-armed men behind you. But you haven't provided even a semi-credible accusation, let alone proof.
Evelyn Thorn: In other words, Modera, don't let the door hit your ass on the way out.

To speak of a modern Gnomeregan is not, strictly speaking, to speak of Gnomeregan at all. Or at least, not the city. Even more than the Big Five human kingdoms - Alterac, Gilneas, Lordaeron, Stormwind and Stromgarde - so identified with a single city they took their name from it, to speak of Gnomeregan the state was to speak of Gnomeregan the City. Because of the way the gnomes expanded downwards, rather than outwards, everything they ruled, their whole domain, was effectively the one city.

Technically, Tinker Town, the ramshackle collection of structures that serves as the home of most of the surviving gnomish population at this point, was once considered technically part of the city of Gnomeregan itself as well, merely the uppermost level, outside the gates to the city, but still... technically part of the city. The place where humans and even some elves might come to trade, rather than go down below for extended periods (for reasons that gnomes still don't entirely get, most humans and elves seem to be unhappy with living underground for months on end. During the old days, Ambassadors to Gnomeregan from other realms had to be very carefully chosen to ensure they wouldn't go mad from spending most of their time underground.

Of course, today, what was a handful of structures, mostly inns, guesthouses, marketplaces and things of that nature, is now a sprawling mass of now mostly wooden structures, built quickly to house the refugee gnomes against the horrors of winter in Dun Morogh. Saying perhaps as much about how many gnomes were dead as how quick the gnomes could work (with dwarven aid), the work was done quickly, housing all the gnomes. At first, that housing was large barracks-style bunkhouses in most cases, but once that basic need was met, slowly more houses were built to allow gnomish families more space. Most buildings are still many more families crammed into one space than was at all common in Gnomeregan of old, but it is at least allowing some degree of... well, not quite privacy, but as close as can be gotten.

The factories and laboratories of Gnomeregan are of course lost to the Gnomes right now, but new factories, new laboratories, new workshops have sprung up - the needs of the Alliance, and the need to one day reclaim their home demand it. But still, it is a tiny, tiny, tiny fraction of the industry and research that happened in Gnomeregan, and much more of the work of gnomish industry happens in Ironforge now, or in other predominantly dwarven settlements. It's far easier and faster to adapt existing machinery and workspaces, after all, than build entire infrastructures from scratch.

Daily life in Gnomeregan is quite detached from what it was once. Gnomes still get up, go to work and go home. They laugh, they love, they make music, they make art, they invent, design, study, prepare new ideas, and refine old ones. Scholars make theoretical advances, and scientists try to make new discoveries.

And yet.

The old structures of Gnomish society are gone. The master craftsmen or masters of whatever craft or skill they worked are different now. So many died or fell in the war, or the radiation purge, or the desperate mad rush to escape. So much expertise lost, so much knowledge lost. People who would have expected decades before becoming skilled enough to set up their own workshops, begin their own projects, now find themselves forced to manage apprentices and journeymen of their own despite barely being any more experienced than those beneath them.

As a result, there are many projects suffering from poor or at least insufficient leadership and oversight. Admirably, the people of Gnomeregan prioritized, as much as possible, getting their children out of the city first, and so, much unlike before, the population of Gnomeregan skews young. These children and young adults must be educated, corralled, trained, and eased into the workforce.

And...

Well, Gnomes always prized themselves on their freedoms. The fact that any Gnome was allowed to choose their own path in life, their own projects, and choose what skills they wanted to master. True, a gnome was often expected to inherit the workshop or factory or projects or fields of interest of their parents, but this was only true in a general sense. And true, society at large and the needs of money and social capital meant that people tended to be pushed in directions they were already good at. Someone with a natural eye for color and shape would find themselves encouraged towards art, while someone with a native skill for numbers would be directed into mathematics, theoretical or practical.

But... if someone with no native skill with a sword really wanted to go into developing that skill, becoming a master of it... well, he was allowed to, so long as he could support himself, find some work, with the blade or without it. Not that swordsmanship was ever a common interest among the gnomes, but the example stands.

Today... Gnomeregan lacks that luxury. The various emergency powers voted into the hands of the High Tinker have been understood to allow the government to direct the population in ways they were never allowed to before. It would be wrong to call it conscription, in the strictest sense, but with the manpower shortages that Gnomeregan-in-exile faces, the competing demands on the gnomish people...

Well, the process is in its infancy now, but gnomes are being directed by carrot and stick by the state to the fields and careers most useful to the needs of said state. And that primarily does mean the realm of the military or industry. Art and music are not neglected - the need to maintain morale exists, and propaganda1​ to motivate the gnomish people is of course essential at this point

But there's no room for allowing a certain degree of natural inefficiency - in the old days, if "too many" gnomes wanted to go into this or that field, or "not enough" into another one, it could be adapted, worked with. Things would work out. If innovations in the field of mining slowed down a little for a generation, so what?

Not so now.

And so, young gnomes who had expected, before it all went to hell, to have the chance to try things out, find for themselves just what it was they wanted to do with their lives, are finding themselves pushed and directed and guided into all manner of fields related to war, to the creation or development or repair of engines of war, or to anything related. Those with the talent for arcane magic no longer have the luxury to investigate theory, or peacetime applications.

No, they must refine their skills as battlemages if they have any, or enchanting weapons, armor, creating golems, scrying, alchemy...

Of course, the arcane is hardly the only magic that gnomes make use of. The Faith of the Light has found little purchase among the gnomes overall, unlike the dwarves of Ironforge, but there's a small presence among the gnomes, and so what priests exist work alongside doctors and alchemists to treat the sick and - most essentially in these times - look for ways to combat, heal and protect against the radiation gas, and perhaps even cure leper gnomes of their madness.

There's even a few gnomes who have adopted the shamanism of the Wildhammer dwarves, though mostly the magic rather than the mystical practices. To the untrained eye a gnomish shaman will seem like a slightly different mage, as they tend to approach their magic with the same scientific bent as the gnomish mages do.

But the real growth industry for the gnomes is the Fel.

Even before the Troggs, in the time after the Second War, Gnomeregan was a haven for (mostly human) warlocks. High Elf Warlocks were thin on the ground in those days, and hid. And dwarven warlocks are nearly unheard of. Nearly.

But humans? Well, if there was ever a magic - dangerous, powerful, seductive, forbidden - designed to attract the interest of humans, it was the Fel. Since the earliest days of Arathor, use of the Fel was banned in all human realms, and that continues to be the case. Dalaran and the Kirin Tor took priority in policing it, given wide latitude by various treaties to be allowed into the other nations of man to track down the use of the Fel, and punish its practitioners. From time to time, you might find a few warlocks protected by powerful patrons - nobles, even a monarch or two, usually - but it rarely lasted for long.

And so, warlocks among humans were a forbidden group. Which meant the practice attracted mostly the insane, the socially maladjusted, or the criminal. But there were still some who were rational, curious and merely interested in exploring the power of demons, studying demons, and understanding them. They were the minority, but they existed, chains of apprenticeship and mentorship in secret, hidden libraries, secret societies... human warlocks tried to police themselves as much as possible, to avoid drawing the eye of the Kirin Tor, the Church of the Light.

After the Second War, the long-quiet fact that the gnomes were perfectly happy to make use of the Fel, to study demons or the like, began to spread. And so, many warlocks made their way to Gnomeregan. They were subjected to the same sorts of tests and paperwork and precautions that gnomish warlocks were, and more than a few were turned away, or even handed over to the Kirin Tor - certainly any warlock who committed serious crimes beyond merely being a warlock was not welcome.

But others were allowed into the city, even made citizens. And so, even as Gnomeregan cut itself off from the outside world, the upper levels of the city were home to a small number of human warlocks and their friends and family that stayed with them. Those warlocks, like their gnomish associates, fought to defend the city against the Troggs.

And summoned demons, and the use of fel magic in battle proved to be quite effective. Felguards could match a Trogg strength for strength, and the charm of a Sayaad was quite effective at sowing confusion among Troggs. Pound for Pound, warlocks were able to contribute more to the defense of Gnomeregan than mages were.

Maybe.

Certainly, the warlocks of Gnomeregan say as much, and given how easily Fel magic is turned to destruction (and how much the gnomes need destructive magic on their side right now)...

Well, any gnome that has a bent for the Fel, and tests suitably mentally stable enough for it, often finds themselves directed into the field. The truth is, with the Ghostlands Pact and the Dark Horde brimming with warlocks, the Alliance as a whole needs a countermeasure. They need people who understand demons, who understand the green fire of the Fel, who understand how to control and combat it.

The rest of the Alliance, of course, continues to outlaw Fel magic, but that hasn't stopped gnomish (or human citizens of Gnomeregan) warlocks from being found on the skirmish lines in Stromgarde, or being part of the marshaled forces gathering to invade the Shadowforge. The Gnomeregan Covert Ops Division has certainly loaned a few warlocks to SI:7, and Gnomeregan warlocks are a common sight in joint operations between the two intelligence organizations.

And with the Kirin Tor in tatters, Gnomeregan Warlocks have picked up quite a bit of slack when it comes to tracking down and arresting (or killing) those mad, criminal or antisocial warlocks who either serve (or seek to serve) the Burning Legion, or at least don't care about the lives of innocents.

Rumors that Galen Trollbane has secretly contracted Evelyn Thorn, probably the most infamous Stormwindian Warlock in decades (most notably for her pamphlet: In Defense of the Demon and her other philosophical and political works defending the use and exploration of the Fel) to begin to develop a curriculum and system for Stromgarde to develop their own Fel Corps are probably just that.

Probably.

Of course, even with the Fel being openly accepted in Gnomeregan at this point, arcane magic continues to predominate, and gnomish mages and gnomish engineers work side by side to develop new golems, robots, engines of war, magically-improved bombs and weapons, and more. The Alliance has a technological edge over its rivals, save for arguably the Goblin Cartels, and Gnomeregan must do its part to maintain that.

And so, while the majority of the surviving gnomish population continues on in Tinker Town, more and more gnomes are spreading out - the secrets of gnomish designs, engineering practices, educational systems and more are being shared in Theramore, Stormwind and Kul Tiras, as gnomish advisors, contractors and consultants set to work improving the manufacturing processes, the research processes and the militaries of their fellow Alliance Members. And of course, gnomes continue to be common in Ironforge and the other dwarven settlements.

The most notable gnomish partnerships are with Kul Tiras, where efforts to build new generations of magic and steam driven warships, armored against attack, consume vast portions of the Kul Tiran budget - rumors that a few gnomes have even convinced the Admiralty Bureau of Design to finance an effort to create a vessel capable of operating under water have been all but confirmed by Alteraci spies, proving to be quite worrisome to the Pact's navies. (The pact's response has been manifold, but one has been to step up efforts to breed fel-infused sharks that can be enhanced and then weaponized against underwater ships - metal or not, if a shark's mouth is full of green fire...)

But most Gnomes remain home, insofar as Tinker Town is home.

And it is there that the future of the gnomish people will be decided.

And that future is in great dispute.

Gelbin Mekkatorque has been the leader of the Gnomish people for many years. Like all High Tinkers before him, he was first a master of his craft2​ - invention, mechanics, machinery, engineering, specializing in guns and other things that went boom. Canons, bombs, mining charges.

But it is not his Craft or Mastery that merits criticism now, but his leadership. Gelbin failed Gnomeregan, in ways that no High Tinker before him ever had, in ways not even the worst of the Mechagon kings ever did. He lost the city.

It was Gelbin and his supporters that decided not to ask for help from the Alliance. Sure, at first, there was the threat of the undead, but Stormwind and Ironforge didn't end up sending all their resources to aid Lordaeron (because Lordaeron became a nearly lost cause, outside of Hillsbrad), so Ironforge could have in the end, spared something, had Gelbin asked.

Besides, once the main bulk of the Scourge was defeated, they could have asked their allies by then, right? Once Garithos was defeated, and Stormwind and Ironforge had no major draw on their manpower beyond the Dark Horde, the Gnomes could have asked for help.

Gelbin didn't. And he then proceeded to fritter Gnomeregan away, level by level, and finally, he gambled it all on a single, mad stratagem. Radiation gas! If there's any force in the world as dangerous and even more uncontrollable than the Fel, it's radiation. And Gelbin unleashed it!

That his critics don't have great answers to the possible counterpoints one could make is not the point.

Even if asked, would Stormwind have helped? Even now, Stormwind can't get it's act together. It is a linchpin to the Alliance, like it or not, but it's greatest value is economic right now, rather than military. And Ironforge? Well, they could have sent soldiers, but how many? Enough? The Troggs were clever, and the dwarves would have suffered major losses all the same against the ambushes. Ground would still have had to have been given before them.

Against the release of the radiation purge... Gelbin has less to offer. He can show all the experimental data Thermaplugg provided that supported his claims. He can argue that Thermaplugg had an established history of reliable work. He can argue that for all that some may claim the tide was turning, that the existing strategy was working, that the Gnomes would have been able to go on the offensive soon, the morale of the Gnomish people was desperate for a win. They needed to turn the tide now, not in a year.

But... it's not a great argument. Especially given what happened. The experimental data looks reasonable, but smaller scale tests have failed to actually do what Thermaplugg's data says it should. Though it also doesn't do what actually happened, even on a smaller scale. What made the radiation gas go so out of control is unclear, but...

Thus far, Gelbin has not been hit with a vote of no confidence by the Tinker's Court, but fresh elections are due, and a powerful and coherent opposition, led by Oglethorpe Obnoticus and closely linked to the rising and increasingly influential warlocks.

These opponents want Gnomeregan to demand more from the Alliance in exchange for their continued expertise. As it stands, the gnomes are putting as much or more resources into improving the militaries of the allies, rather than devising new ways of containing the radiation, resisting it and removing it.

And, perhaps most importantly, perhaps the position of High Tinker itself needs to change. An option like that Radiation Purge should have required more consultation with the Court. More testing. One man, with the authority to make that choice? What were they, Stromgarde?

Gnomeregan had fallen. Perhaps it was time to start anew. Or at least, change something. When the monarchy ended, things continued as they had. But now? The High Tinkership had failed. The Tinker's Court had failed to restrain Mekkatorque, backing his emergency powers time and again, and then failing to assert any oversight over the war effort as they slowly lost ground.

Maybe no one else could have done better, but at the very least, maybe someone else wouldn't have released fucking radiation gas!

---

1: The term propaganda has very sinister connotations in English. I don't know if the term has that connotation in other languages. But what I mean here in Gnomeregan is propaganda on the scale of Uncle Sam posters going 'I Want YOU' and Rosie the Riveter saying 'We can do it!' and that sort of thing, rather than say, Triumph of the Will, or Birth of a Nation, or the kinds of much more advanced propaganda that exists in the far more authoritarian proto-fascist Lordaeron, Alterac and Quel'Thalas. It's still propaganda, but a lot less culty, a lot more about motivating people than controlling them. A fine line, certainly, but hopefully you get the idea.

2: The gnomes are a proto-capitalist society, though not to the extent of the Goblins or even Kul Tiras (Kul Tiras's economy resembles say, early 1700s England, at least as much as it can in a very different world). But wealth has never been what gets you respect in Gnomeregan, but Mastery. Gnomes never had Guilds in the sort of restrictive sense that we had IRL, or that the Dwarves or Humans of Azeroth had, but they did have an established system of apprentice, journeyman and master. Picking a craft, or a skill, or a field of endeavor and honing your ability in it, innovating in it, paving new ground, or simply becoming the best there was or even ever could be, is the goal. If a gnome decided they wanted to be a swordsman, that would be fine - weird, but fine - so long as they strove to be the best swordsman possible, to always pursue mastery and excellence. No one can actually run for High Tinker until they are an acknowledged master of whatever skill they set out to become a master of. This can, admittedly, become a bit difficult when it is a new skill or a rare one that no current masters exist for, but there are still ways that gnomes will test people to see if they seem to truly be a master even of this new field of endeavor.

 

[Kylia Quilor]

"...for all the reasons I have laid out before you, today and in the weeks past, stand by my record of actions during the Trogg Invasion, as the best outcome that anyone could have made given the circumstances, given the information we had at hand. I will not deny that I failed. I can't deny that, given where we are right now. But I have, and will continue to argue that anyone else in my position would have done the same, or worse, under the same circumstances! But, whether or not history will be kind to me, there is a more immediate question: Which way do we go, as a people? Is the path forward through closer ties to our allies, treating them as the friends and partners they are, or through the path my detractors propose, doubling down on dangerous techniques, treating our allies like clients and customers, demanding tit for tat, payment for services rendered. That is the question that our people will have to answer. It is with that in mind that I announce in four months time, the 691st General Election for the Tinker's Court will be held! May the people's will be heard!"
-High Tinker Gelbin Mekkatorque, concluding his speech announcing new Elections

"Well, obviously, I completely disagree with Mekkatorque's characterization of my position. I have no interest in rejecting our allies, or proposing some sort of 'what have you done for us lately' diplomatic stance. I simply think we should consider seeing to our own needs with the same dedication as those of our allies."
-Tinker of the Court, Oglethorpe Obnoticus to the Gnomeregan Daily Post & Times1​

As a people long used to elections, politics, debate and loyal opposition, factionalism is nothing new for Gnomeregan. As one might expect, given the nature of the Tinker's Court, those factions tend to revolve around that body. Either as factions within it, or factions lobbying it.

Unlike the human kingdoms, with their sometimes loose, color-based factions, defined by opposition and personality, very localized economic interest as much as ideology, Gnomeregan had actual institutionalized political organizations, with rules surrounding their conduct, behavior, actions, membership and more.

These political organizations were given a name in Gnomish that has no direct translation into Common, but they're usually just called 'Political Factions' by humans, lacking any other, better term.

These political factions are not static and unchanging, and factions rise and fall, reform and revive with regularity. But these factions are defined organizations, with internal elections, regulations, rules, leaderships and most importantly, defined lists of ideals.

Understandably, perhaps, the political scene in Gnomeregan has been shaken up of late, with many political factions dissolved by the simple fact that all their members and supporters died. most of them. And of course, a lot of things that once mattered a great deal to the voters no longer matter.

In practical terms, the two political factions actually holding real power in the TInker's Court at this point are the Coalition for Pragmatic Governance (CPG) and the Basic Task Completion League (BTCL).

The CPG is what's left of Gelbin Mekkatorque's support base. It was the CPG that got him elected originally, and kept him in power through several elections, able to form majority coalitions in the Tinker's Court with relative ease on the back of Mekkatorque's ability to govern well, or so it seemed at the time. And even still, despite the fall of Gnomeregan, Mekkatorque has managed to avoid a vote of no confidence, though his ability to actually win a VoNC if it actually happened is a matter of some debate. He certainly cannot always be assured of majority support for his policies anymore, and while Mekkatorque remains committed to staying in power and leading his people back to their city, there are many who think that the CPG is doomed whenever the next elections come, unless Mekkatorque can win some sort of major victory or find some other way to shore up his political position.

The CPG's ideological propositions used to be of simple, careful governance, a conservative aversion to significant change in government policy (but certainly, like most gnomes, a love of change more generally) and generally an emphasis of government funds on robots, engineering, golems, explosives, guns and other advanced mechanical and chemical projects. Not just weapons of war, but also weapons of industry. That said, this emphasis on these technologies and funding developments of them served Gnomeregan well during the Second War, and arguably is why Gnomeregan was able to hold off the Troggs as long as they did.

Today, the CPG stands mostly for keeping Mekkatorque in power, and more generally, keeping his principles of careful, conservative, engineering-focused governance. They favor focusing on helping the rest of the Alliance first - defeating the Shadowforge and Dark Horde, pushing back the Witherbark and Boulderfist and improving the Kul Tiran navy, most of all. However much they may want to take Gnomeregan back, until the radiation can be cleared, or resisted for large numbers of troops, a massed invasion of the city is not in the cards, so Gnomeregan should stand by their allies now, and then their help can be gained later.

The CPG also opposes anyone who suggests that the fall of Gnomeregan suggests that perhaps the very position of High Tinker itself could do with some changes, that the ability of the Tinker's Court to reign in the High Tinker could be expanded, or that the ad hoc system in place since the end of the Monarchy needs a top to bottom reform. This system has worked, and will continue to work - it is not the High Tinkership that was the problem. It was the Troggs!

Beyond Mekkatorque himself, one of the most prominent figures in the CPG is Tinkmaster Holbi Overspark. The title of Tinkmaster, a corruption of the older title 'Master Tinker', is traditionally given by the High Tinker to their designated successor, should they die in office - usually elections are called soon after a High Tinker's death, but in the interim, the Tinkmaster will usually be voted in temporarily to hold the position until the elections are held, and the completed. Overspark is a longtime friend, student and ally of Mekkatorque, and is an experienced roboticist and mechanic, a true master of his craft.

Overspark is a rather militant member of the CPG, supporting the superiority of mechanistic engineering over the magical arts especially, and rather smug about the idea that the CPG is the most 'logical' political faction, never acting on emotion. He takes great pride in his supposed 'logical decision making' and is known to carefully math out almost every decision he makes beyond the purely trivial ones.

Oddly enough, the math always supports the decision he wanted to make anyway, or nearly so.

Overspark's disdain for magic, especially battlemagic, puts him at odds with Bipsi Frostflinger, who is another key figure in the CPG, despite being a mage and now a battlemage. Trained in Dalaran and serving in the Second War as a battlemage, Bipsi spent the time after the Second War in Gnomeregan, mostly working on theoretical applications regarding mana transfer and storage, but the war against the Troggs forced him back into battlemagic. A conservative-minded man at heart, he generally voted for the CPG anyway, but the hard radicalization of Gnomeregan's warlocks has done much to keep Bipsi in the CPG, though Overspark tries his patience at every turn. Bipsi agrees that overall, Mekkatorque did the best he could under the circumstances, but he also tends to think (privately) that Mekkatorque should still probably step down from his position as High Tinker, and as leader of the CPG. Frostflinger generally believes that mechanical developments are still the best for the future of Gnomeregan overall (though of course Arcane magic has its place), though he has supported further integration of the arcane with engineering and robotics.

Opposing the CPG is a new faction, the BTCL drawn from basically anyone and everyone that opposes Mekkatorque. While a few of the other opposition parties from before the Trogg war still technically exist (the Union for Alchemy, the Progressive League and the Oddball Coalition), they have largely gone into remission or otherwise suspended operations - some few have rallied to the CPG and Mekkatorque, but most, even if they haven't joined the BTCL, are at least aligned with it.

The name of the BTCL came from a comment Obnoticus made in his first speech to the Tinker's Court after the evacuation from Gnomeregan - when he said that the Gnomish people needed new leadership, leadership capable of 'Basic Task Completion!'. And fundamentally, that is what unites the BTCL - they all think that ultimately, the fall of Gnomeregan is Mekkatorque's fault and failure, and that at the very least, their failure has lost them any mandate, and at worst proves their fundamental incompetence.

Ideologically, then, the BTCL is an unusual big-tent faction, holding people who want to emphasize magic (arcane and fel) further, at the expense of mechanical engineering (not that they necessarily want to abandon engineering, just, put public funds towards advancements in magic instead), people who want substantially reform the Technocracy's government in light of the failures, and people who want to see Gnomeregan play a little more hardball with the Alliance (true skepticism of or opposition to the Alliance or Gnomeregan's membership therein is effectively a political nonstarter in Gnomeregan right now). Or any number of other opposition opinions.

The leader of the BTCL is, oddly, though, a man who should normally find a home in the CPG - Oglethorpe Obnoticus. A master roboticist, probably more capable than even Overspark (not that Overspark would agree), Obnoticus is honestly not a radical, temperamentally. He does think that robotics and mechanical engineering are one of Gnomeregan's greatest fields (though he has significantly more sympathy for the uses of arcane magic and the fel, and his wife is a mage, his brother in law a warlock) but he is also a longtime enemy of Mekkatorque, Thermaplugg and Overspark - the reasons for their rivalry go back decades, with Overspark inheriting his enmity due to being Mekkatorque's student, and the exact story is unclear, as Thermaplugg, Mekkatoqrue and Obnoticus all tell slightly different versions, though they all share accusations of stolen designs and industrial sabotage.

As a result, Obnoticus consistently found himself serving in any opposition party that would have him during Mekkatorque's High Tinkership. Ideologically, he does think that the overemphasis on "Pragmatism" (as defined by Mekkatorque and the CPG) is a failure, and there is much lost by ignoring other fields of advancement to the degree the CPG sometimes proposes. But in all honesty, Obnoticus is in the BTCL most of all because he hates Mekkatoqrue - though he does genuinely believe that Mekkatorque's dangerous incompetence has been made plain. He has harped on the stupidity of the radiation purge plan in nearly every speech he's made on the floor of the Tinker's Court, and he has made good points about some of the other failures of Mekkatorque's strategy during the war.

Beyond Obnoticus, one of the more prominent figures inside the BTCL is Alamar Grimm. A master warlock, Grimm never had much interest in politics before the fall of Gnomeregan, and thus never ran for the Tinker's Court, despite his mastery qualifying him to run. That is of course no longer the case, and Grimm has become the de facto leader of most of Gnomeregan's warlocks, human and gnome alike, as much because of his skill in brokering peace between subfactions as anything else - Grimm is a no-nonsense, direct and unfriendly sort of man, and he quite frankly doesn't like most non-gnomes, in the abstract. He counts many human warlocks among his friends or at least close associates, and he isn't racist, but he does think humans, dwarves, elves are all ultimately a bit... odd in the head, certainly they just don't understand gnomes, and most of them don't even try to bother.

Skeptical of the Alliance's willingness to actually contribute enough to the reclamation of Gnomeregan when the time comes, Grimm is of course also a huge proponent of harnessing the fel for the effort, and for warfare in general. Working with reverse engineered Burning Legion technology salvaged from the battlefields in the last stages of the Third War, he has led efforts to develop new, fel-infused robots and fel golems, as well as imbuing tanks with the ability to fire fel fire, rather than mere artillery shells. The Fel is a powerful destructive force, and very little armor can resist it, so the logic is sound. Grimm is not a fan of summoning or binding demons, however, beyond what is necessary - the Fel is powerful, and potent, but demons are unpredictable, and untrustworthy. Summoning cannon fodder and the like is one thing, but even then, it should only be done near the battlefield, and never in too large numbers at once. Grimm's conservativeness on this front has made him enemies among his fellow warlocks, but it has also made him friends more generally, because it makes the warlocks seem far more politically palatable, and the warlocks of Gnomeregan and their supporters, friends, and allies make up a core part of the BTCL, along with more open-minded mages.

Another major pillar of the BTCL is General Kittlectrina Flamesprocket. The highest-ranked surviving officer of the Gnomeregan Army in the aftermath of the radiation purge, the then Colonel became a general by default. While, like any good soldier, she continues to follow the High Tinker's lawful orders, she is open about her opposition to Mekkatorque's continued leadership, and has been a strong proponent for the Gnomish people focusing more of their energies on counteracting the radiation gas, rather than spreading themselves thin helping the Alliance on every front.

Not that Flamesprocket opposes helping the Alliance, but the radiation gas clearly isn't dispersing itself, and that should be the gnomish people's first priority. She is also an opponent of robotics, generally, preferring mechanized warsuits, tanks, powerful explosives, and guns as the primary means of waging war, though during the war, the useful expendability of demons brought her around on the potential of the fel - a skilled tactician, Flamesprocket, during the first year of the Trogg War, saw many good strategies rejected or abandoned because the casualties were too high (which she does agree with, overall), but with the ability to summon mass numbers of felguards in short order (even robots take significant time and resources to build)

In general, then, the BTCL is a grab-bag of positions - but united in opposition to Mekkatorque. In the long run, it remains to be seen if the League can hold together once the goal of unseating Mekkatorque is achieved (if it is achieved) but there is one gnome trying very hard to make sure it does stay together. Misty Zapwing, was an understudy professor of Politics and Governance at Gearshaft University. Given her understudy status, she was forced into grading papers and overseeing exams, rather than getting to teach or getting to oversee interesting projects, but it also meant that she was at home, in the upper levels of the city, rather than at Gearshaft University when the radiation purge hit, allowing her to escape. She has since then become the leader (and only member of) the Politics and Governance department at New Gearshaft University, and finally has a chance to put some of her more radical ideas into practice.

Zapwing has long taken issue with the cumbersome Tinker's Court, and the confusing, ad hoc way that the Technocracy's government has worked. And while, like any gnome, she respects mastery, she's not entirely convinced that Mastery should be the key qualifier to serve in the Tinker's Court, especially given the casualties (it's not like the Gnomes have a surplus of masters lying around, anymore) of recent events. And the High Tinkership is too powerful, and frankly, it's too hard to remove a High Tinker, as the mechanics for a Vote of No Confidence are complex and messy in practice.

Zapwing, of late, has found herself influenced by Theramore - less the specifics, and more the basic fact of actually having a single, unified charter that laws all this out. She has spent much ink and spoken many words at BTCL meetings and in private discussions. She has many ideas, and while she prefers some over others, she considers most of her ideas more desirable than what Gnomeregan currently has, so if she can convince the BTCL, and then Gnomeregan at large to take them...

Now, if only that idiot Mekkatorque would just call for an election!

---

1: This announcement, and Oglethorpe's response, technically take place after the 'snapshot' of the main body of the post. That is, this post will be written from the perspective of right before Mekkatorque gives in to the demands and calls for new elections.

 

[Kylia Quilor]

Professor Sporper Buzzcraft: My specialty may be in Trollish History and Culture, but under the circumstances, I'm probably the closest thing New Gearshaft University has to an expert on Elven - excuse me, Thalassian History - Arathi History, and Stromic History. Any other field and I would only be able to provide a basic understanding.
High Tinker Gelbin Mekkatorque: Well, then, perhaps you can help me. Galen Trollbane.
Professor Buzzcraft: Yes. What about him?
High Tinker Mekkatorque: Well, that's just it. What about him? What is going on in Stromgarde right now? I grasp that the humans - at least until Theramore got started - don't believe in the notion of the consent of the governed at all the way we do, but... they all have consultative bodies with real power. Even the Arathi did, even if they were regional, if I remember my lessons decades ago-
Professor Buzzcraft: You do, though I'm quite surprised that's the case. I was the one who graded your Human History 219 Final Essay, you know.
High Tinker Mekkatorque: ...I still passed that class!
Professor Buzzcraft: True, but only just. Anyway, back on topic: I gather your question is ultimately how is it that Galen Trollbane has been able to enact all the rules that he has without consulting the Stromic Estates, and without giving any time frame as to when he'll summon them?
High Tinker Mekkatorque: Precisely, yes. Even my emergency powers during the Trogg War were voted in by a majority of the Tinker's Court, and what Trollbane has been doing seems well beyond that!
Professor Buzzcraft: It's a complicated question, but to start with, even among human realms, the Stromic Estates have always been the weakest among the six kingdoms. Explaining how Trollbane is able to act as he is requires quite a bit of context. I can either recommend some specific books or prepare a report on the matter for you? I can have it ready for you in about a week?
High Tinker Mekkatorque: Take two. My meeting with Trollbane isn't for another month, so there's time, but I do want to be able to prepare properly.
Professor Buzzcraft: Understood.

Like any society, Gnomeregan is more than politics. Certainly, politics are a major lifeblood of the gnomes, especially now and they have the most politically active per capita population in the world, not counting Theramore.

But beyond the confines of the BTCL and the CPG, there are sorts of organized groups that don't exist for politics - some members may be political, but they don't all march to the same political drum.

First and most famous among them, to outsiders, is New Gearshaft University. While Dalaran remained of course the foremost center of magical learning, Gearshaft University was the premiere educational institution on the continent in all non magical fields - engineering, political theory, history, biology, non magical medicine, philosophy, and more. Their history department was especially famous - at least among historians and those who paid attention to that sort of thing - with their every ten years Projections and Estimations Project Release (PEPR, usually pronounced as 'pepper'), where complex math and a study of the historical track record was used to make predictions about what major events were to happen over the next ten years, as well as analysis about what may have gone wrong with previous predictions. The PEPR had a general tendency to be, in the big picture at least, anywhere from 35% to 70% accurate, issue to issue. Of course, knowing what it will be each time is the trick.

In fairness, the PEPR always cautions about using it as anything other than a general set of guideposts, at most, but more than one business over the years has been ruined by relying too much on the PEPR's estimates, and this has been the cause of nearly a dozen lawsuits filed against the History Department at Gearshaft University. None have succeeded, because frankly, how can you sue someone for making predictions and you relying on them too much?

Especially with all the legal disclaimers slapped onto it these days.

Today, New Gearshaft university is a shadow of its predecessor - vast swaths of the professors died, many of the students, support staff, and more. And of course, with the situation as it is, the Gnomes have been forced to speed the education, discarding 'less relevant' matters or side-topics. No department has been dissolved, the gnomes are not so stupid as to think philosophy, or the arts are useless, but classes have to be streamlined, because there's no time for a student to take ten years to finish their degree at a standard, pleasant, normal pace. Not only are more professors needed, but the services of graduated journeymen, or at least people who know more than nothing, are needed across the board. Gnomeregan needs more people, doing more tasks, and it simply doesn't have them.

One of the ways the Gnomeregan is trying to manage that manpower and coordinate the resources of their society through non-governmental channels is the Gnomeregan Industrial Cooperative. Created by many of the surviving forges, robotics workshops, alchemist labs and anything else involved in the process of making stuff, the Cooperative is an effort to prevent resource and manpower waste by limiting economic competition - for now - through duplication of efforts, price wars, light industrial sabotage, or worse.

It's not that Gnomeregan had the kind of cutthroat capitalism more common in Ironforge, but if two workshops are competing for the same contract for say, cannon, then only one gets the gig, that's a lot of wasted effort on the part of the other workshop. And under normal circumstances, there'd be room for the workshop to go bankrupt if it had to, or time for it to find other things to do with the cannon, and so on. But now, with so few skilled, trained and experienced gnomish craftsmen - and just gnomes in general - left, there's no time to waste. Every expert needs to be put to use making everything.

And so, in an effort to stop the Tinker's Court from doing it for them, the Cooperative has set out to coordinate efforts, divvy up contracts for guns, airships, robots, golems, alchemical products, tanks, cannon, grenades, farming constructs, and more. There is often wrangling about who should get what contract, who gets first bid on this or that resources, and while some gnomes worry about this destroying the GIC before Gnomeregan the city can be reclaimed, before the present emergency ends, others take the wrangling, arguments and animosities as a good sign. After all, if the people running the GIC can only barely work together there's no risk of it becoming a Kul Tiran-style cartel or monopoly in the long run.

The GIC also works to try to triage needs for manpower between their members, skilled or unskilled. Because of the manpower shortage across the board, everyone needs more people working for them, and there's a risk of competition getting so fierce that the offered wages and signing bonuses could bankrupt every forge and lab.

Again, or so the GIC argues, this is not the time to let economics run wild on its own. The gnomes are, generally, in favor of letting good, well run businesses succeed, and ones that can't hire good people or sell good products fail, with their regulations about preventing unfair business practices, to keep a playing field defined by skill, by mastery, rather than chicanery or financial pressures.

But now...

Well, the GIC argues that this just can't be afforded. It's an extension of the logic of the High Tinker's emergency powers, after all.

But others point out that the sort of activities that the GIC are doing arguably count as exactly the sort of unfair trade practices that Gnomeregan has always hated. And yet... it is probably necessary, right now.

But, if those tensions don't destroy the GIC before things get more stabilized...

The Gnomeregan Covert Ops Division is the most terrifying organization almost no one in the Eastern Kingdoms has ever heard of. SI:7, or the Fists of Stromgarde, even Kul Tiras's 17th Fleet, are known, even famous, even if there's a lot of myths, falsehoods and misunderstandings about all of them.

The Gnomeregan Covert Ops Division, on the other hand, is one of the best kept secrets the gnomes ever had. It's not that people don't know that Gnomeregan has spies, everyone does, but the name of their organization, their expertise with gadgetry and stealth...

SI:7 may have the best skill at infiltrating their agents into places in the Alliance, and the Fists the best assassins. The 17th Fleet understands military logistics so well that a single page from a quartermaster's logbook can reveal things about a military campaign even the quartermaster would never dream of knowing.

But the Gnomeregan Covert Ops Division? They're the ones that the Alliance calls when you need to break and enter. When you need to get a spy inside and all your efforts at getting a man in there are impossible. They can break open any vault, any strongbox, they can slip a technomagical listening device into any office, hide a robot in your crawl space with a camera...

And they can't be stopped.

Of course, the number of people who actually know that the Gnomeregan Covert Ops Division exists and can do all this - or at least, is reputed to be able to do all this - is fairly small. And those who know don't generally see much point in spreading the word.

Certainly, leaders of all major nations, spymasters, very well-connected wealthy elites, et cetera, know about the Gnomeregan Covert Ops Division. But public awareness, even in Gnomeregan itself, is minimal, at best.

Publicly, Gnomeregan has no spies. Unofficially, most gnomes believe that the Cartographical Institute of Gnomeregan is the cover for the city-state's spies. And it is true that the Cartographical Institute does have some spies working for it, and the otherwise-uninvolved leaders of the Institute know that some of their members sometimes take strange trips after receiving mysterious messages without a return address.

It's just that those spies worked for the Gnomeregan Covert Ops Division first.

But despite its secrecy in the general populace, the Gnomeregan Covert Ops Division isn't actually infallible, despite the reputation it has from those in the know. It is true that they specialize in stealth, and in the use of machine-based espionage, camera robots, mechanical flies that have audio-recording magics built into them, and they are quite skilled at cracking vaults.

But it's not as if the Gnomeregan Covert Ops Division doesn't do infiltration, and doesn't ever try to suborn assets on the ground. They even assassinate, from time to time, though their body count is the smallest of any Alliance intelligence organization, when averaged out across the lifetime of the division.1​. And they aren't idiots on military matters either. Just as the Fists can steal and sneak in assets, the 17th Fleet has their own killers and thieves, and when SI:7 marks someone for death, you don't exactly have great odds of survival, in most cases.

The leader of the Gnomeregan Covert Ops Division is unknown, even to the High Tinker, and the organization, while taking orders from the High Tinker and the Tinker's Court, operates as an almost effectively independent entity in terms of directives and commands. Partly this is a function of the need to keep secrecy, and a desire for the High Tinker to be able to keep their hands clean, and partly this is because of a reputed insular culture within the Gnomeregan Covert Ops Division, that is no fan of outsiders. Some conspiracy theories - if a theory that only a few dozen people hold can be called that - wonder if the organization considers itself some sort of protectors of 'The Gnomish Way of Life'

The Gnomeregan Covert Ops Division got its start as an effort to protect gnomish inventions from theft, their inventors from kidnapping, and stop the most dangerous of gnomish devices from getting out to the human kingdoms. After all, a gnomish war machine can be one of the most deadly things invented in the Eastern Kingdoms, and they can also be made in large numbers by humans - maybe not of the finest quality, but still.

But what began as a copyright enforcement organization, in essence, has become so much more. It may not direct much of it's attentions at Gnomeregan itself - it is not a secret police, in the way the Watchers are for the Teldrassil Sanctity, or the way the Magisters enforce the new Blood Elf Orthodoxy on Quel'Thalas or the way Galen Trollbane's Oprikrhans2​ are ensuring no one questions the way he saves Stromgarde from Alterac.

But it will stop at nothing to protect Gnomeregan, the creations of gnomish genius and the gnomish way of life, and that includes protecting those things from Gnomeregan's allies, as much as it's enemies.

---

1: That is to say, while the Eyes of Theramore have killed less people than the Gnomeregan Covert Ops Division, the Eyes have only been around for a few years, the Gnomeregan Covert Ops Division has been a thing for about six hundred years. The deaths per annum, in toto, are higher for the Eyes.
2: We'll see in more detail what these are in the Stromgarde Posts, but anyone who knows their Russian History may guess at the inspirations I'm working with, at least in part.

 

[Kylia Quilor]

General Hanna Nials: Your Majesty, just give me the word, and I will ensure that Lord Falconcrest's1​ head hangs over the gates of Stromgarde Keep within the week.
King Galen Trollbane: Your enthusiasm does you credit, General Nials. But right now, we must focus our resources on the Witherbark and the Boulderfist. And on our enemies here at home. Which brings us to the primary reason I asked to speak with you now. Are you sure that you can trust your second in command?
General Nials: Commander Amaren? Your Majesty, I - she is nothing but loyal. To you, to Stromgarde! I would stake my life on that!
Galen: Please don't. Stromgarde has more need of your life, and your skills. The Oprikrhan have given me some fairly troubling reports about what Amaren has had to say about some of the measures that are necessary for the Defense of the Realm. The rationing, the emergency controls, the streamlined judicial process.
General Nials: I - I haven't heard her say anything of the sort, Your Majesty, but - if she was a traitor, she has had numerous opportunities to destroy large numbers of my soldiers - and they represent the only mobile force the Kingdom has right now! Surely she would have taken one!
Galen: Peace, General. It could be merely that Amaren is... misguided. The Oprikrhan have not reported her expressing anything that can truly be called treason, as of yet. I certainly hope that your confidence in her is well placed. But if we are ever to reclaim our homeland, we must remember that there are many ways to be a traitor, and we must purge all weakness from our realm, and from our people.

To tell the history of Stromgarde requires telling the history of Arathor. And the history of Arathor begins with humanity.

Of course, the history of humanity is full of legend and myth. Where humans even came from, is an open question. Some suggest they came from Northrend, others say they came from Kul Tiras originally, before being driven off by the Drust (who were later driven off when humans returned to the island). Some say Humans were simply always in the Arathi Highlands.

The Amani records on the subject are... unclear. The first mention of humans in the Amani histories mentions treaties forced onto several chieftains a century before the record was written, suggesting humans had been in the area for quite some time. It makes it clear that the Amani held the humans as subjects, much like the Gurubashi had the Gnolls. But to what extent they were subjects is... debatable.

Regardless, at some point, human tribes were present all over the regions that now make up the Arathi Highlands, the Alteraci Mountains, Silverpine Forest, the Hillsbrad Foothills and Gilneas. All these lands were nominally claimed by the Amani Empire, but as the Amani became more and more focused on the High Elves, they became less and less focused on the southern lands - they withdrew from what is now known as Loch Modan, from the Wetlands, and eventually only a handful of fortified cities remained in the south.

But those cities were more than able to rule over the humans. Whatever the original relationship between Humanity and the Amani, by 2,800 years before the Dark Portal opened, the relationship between the Amani and the Humans was one of tribute and suzerainty. The local human tribes would pay tribute to the nearest major Amani city in the area, some of which would then be sent on to Zul'Aman itself.

That tribute could come in the form of precious metals, usually gathered from selling goods to Amani traders (who were always happy to fleece the usually unsophisticated humans, though eventually humans began to catch onto most troll tricks), it could come in the form of hides from animals the Arathi hunted. It could come in the form of food gathered, or hunted, or farmed. It could come in the form of slaves, usually prisoners of war from inter-human warfare, handed over to the Amani for use as labor or sacrifices or possibly both, in time. It could come in the form of anything the local city's leadership was willing to accept as tribute, honestly. And anything Zul'Aman would in turn accept from them.

Regardless, the scattered human tribes were not politically unified or culturally unified. They did share a few common cultural touchstones, however, and one of the most important was the story of Tyr, a glorious warrior-king, or even god-king, who may or may not have led humanity from some distant homeland to the Eastern Kingdoms, who may or may not have lost his hand (which may or may not have been silver, or replaced with a silver hand) in a fight against some great monster or vile enemy, and who may or may not have been a martyr for his people, whoever they were.

Whatever the shape of the local legend, pretty much all humans revered him in some form. The Alteraci and Arathi tribes, and those tribes most influenced by then, considered him the epitome of the ultimate warrior king, while the Tyr's Hand Tribe of Silverpine Forest considered him a true servant of his people, focusing on his sacrifices and his martyrdom, rather than his glorious victory. Others saw him and revered him in other ways.

By -2,800, years and years of warfare between the human tribes had whittled down their number as some absorbed or exterminated others, or sometimes tribes merged peacefully. And yet, they were still divided, still weak. Partly this was due to Amani manipulations, always playing tribes against each other, or bribing elites in larger tribes to start civil wars and break things off, and partly this was just the remarkable ability of humans to find reasons to whack each other over the head with large sticks.

But even still, humanity had begun to consolidate its numbers. And by the time of Thoradin's rise to leadership of the Arathi Tribe, the Arathi had especially done well to build a powerful confederation in the northern part of the Highlands that now hold their name. Thoradin's father and grandfather had always been very careful to be obsequious to the trolls of the local city, Zul'Than, sitting where Thandol Span now meets the northern third of the Eastern Kingdoms.


The Lordaeron subcontinent on the eve of the Troll Wars

So successful had the Arathi been at this, that Thoradin inherited a vast, and powerful force of warriors, and a generations-long held dream of his forefathers to see the Amani power over humanity broken.

Thoradin was clever, and continued to build alliances. After Ignaeus of the Alteraci Tribe refused to give Currolioyu their tribute after a hard winter had killed much of his people's herds, and farms, Thoradin accepted the bounty placed on his head, and then proceeded to challenge Ignaeus to battle - but refused to kill him, instead, offering him a place at his side when he launched his war on the Trolls. Ignaeus faked his death, but continued to rule his tribe (which was 'cowed' into serving the 'very loyal to the Amani Empire' Arathi) from the shadows, for a time.

Thoradin made a deal with the Tyr's Hand Tribe, the third most powerful tribe, after his own Arathi and the Alteraci, and their leader, Lordain. Lordain had long believed that the tomb of Tyr was in the region north of Silverpine Forest, and that it should belong to Tyr's most devoted followers. Thoradin merely promised that when the Amani were overthrown, the Tirisfal, as Lordain called the region where his tribe believed Tyr had died following his last, legendary battle, would belong to them. He swore an oath on the symbol of the Silver Hand, and even seemed to convert - at least somewhat - to their way of seeing Tyr. The Warrior-King Tyr continued to be a powerful symbol for him, but he also is reported to have spoken of the man who gave his very life for his people.

With both the Alteraci and the Tyr's Hand on his side, getting the rest onboard would merely be a matter of proving that he could win. Through trickery and deceit, Thordain tricked the leaders of Zul'Than into letting him and his most elite warriors into the city. He claimed he wanted to offer the city's leaders gifts, and have his elite reswear their oaths of loyalty to the Amani Empire, in exchange for permission to force more of the human tribes under his leadership.

Had the constant wars with Quel'Thalas not forced the most and cunning capable forest trolls to points further north, and had generations of overconfidence not fooled the Amani, there's no way the leaders of Zul'Than would have agreed. But they did, and so, in a cunning blow, Thoradin used his elite to slaughter the unsuspecting leaders of Zul'Than, while the rest of his armies were let into the city. In a show of brutality designed to terrify his opposition, Thoradin ordered all Trolls in Zul'Than killed. Some did escape, of course, on ships, but only a few, and the city was put to the torch.

The Alteraci and the Tyr's Hand Tribes acted soon after, as planned, attacking troll forces on patrol, harrying the cities, and rallying other tribes to Thoradin's banner. The other three cities in the south of the subcontinent were soon besieged. But had it not been for the High Elves, it's plausible Thoradin's plan would have failed.

Thoradin knew the Amani fought an enemy to their north, that the battle lines ebbed and flowed. He knew that this enemy commanded powerful magics that even the trolls didn't command, or at least not to the same degree. But no human had ever met a High Elf before an emissary from Anasterian came to Thoradin as he met with his chieftains and inner circle in a secure fortress in the Alteraci mountains during the winter, as the sieges held, and the Amani gathered their forces.

The High Elves had been hard-pressed by the Amani of late, their enemies pressing ever closer to their walls, the current Emperor, Jintha, proving to be far too capable as a general and a politician. But Thoradin's success was distracting them... and the High Elves saw a chance. If they timed their offenses just right...

Well, together they could achieve far more than either could alone.

Thoradin was cunning, and demanded that the High Elves teach their magic to his people. The High Elves balked at that, but in the end, Thoradin held firm, and so a deal was struck.

To recount every battle of the Troll Wars would be pointless, the conflict dragging on for nearly ten years. For a time, the Thalassian-Arathi Alliance won ground across the board, sacking all the southern cities of the Amani (though none were subjected to quite as much brutality as Zul'Than, with many trolls taken prisoner or allowed to go flee north) and even penetrating into the Tirisfal. But then the war began to turn, as Jintha took command in the south... and the famous battle where Lordain laid down his life in the model of Tyr himself to save the forces of humanity, and especially their precious mages, which also saved the life of Lordain's sister, Mereldar, occurred. But Jintha would still besiege Thoradin's fortress in the Alterac Mountains. But this battle would be Jintha's high-water mark.

The human mages, with the aid of their elven teachers, would unleash their power in conjunction with Elven Farstriders (who had traveled far beyond the battle lines in Eversong Forest) and the human armies, within and without the fortress, fell on the trolls under Jintha, killing him and breaking the Amani forces.

The remainder of the war was wrap-up. The Hinterlands managed to hold out against the humans, and the city there renamed for Jintha, while the heartlands of the Empire, around Zul'Aman, held too, but the Amani were forced out of all else.

The Empire of Arathor was formed, and Thordain kept his promise to Lordain's heirs, grinding Tirisfal to them, while the forebears of the the Gilneans, the people of the Silverpine Forests, the Hillsbradi and the Alteraci got their lands. All swore allegiance to Thoradin and his heirs, and Thoradin chose a site to build his new capital, his new great city inspired the great cities of the trolls and the High Elves, but uniquely human. Strom.

For centuries after, the Arathi Empire stood tall. Tribal distinctions mattered less and less with every generation, people identifying more with their localities. The Trollbanes, descendants of Ignaeus, had long abandoned the Alterac mountains, and instead continued to be the second family of the Empire, elites in Strom. Nobility took form, descended from the great generals and warriors. Worship of Tyr began to mix with a new faith in the Holy Light, a teaching preached by Mereldar after visions of beings of pure light. The Light's teachings of sacrifice, charity protection, justice and compassion fit well with the reverence held for Tyr that Lordain's people especially held. The Light spread slowly beyond the Tirisfal, but it did...

Historians today still argue exactly why the Arathi Empire declined. The Holy Light gets blamed by some, but that is too simple. It wasn't until the centuries after the fall of the Arathi Empire that the actual formal Church of the Holy Light took shape, sweeping away, absorbing or eventually purging most of the heterodox sects2​. But the Holy Light may have been a factor. Increased localism, and the fact that by -1900 BDP after a few centuries of periodically trying to take back the lands they'd lost to Humanity, the Amani would enter into a long somnolent period that reduced the impetus for united action.

Another factor is simply that power, when lost, is hard to regain. Thoradin was clever, and kept real power over the Empire in his hands. He granted lands and local authority, yes, but all swore to him, all served him. But more and more, local elites would act on their own, and buck the central government. Or, in an effort to secure finances, or military resources, Emperors would grant a little privilege here, a little local autonomy there. They'd cede some authority over this, or that. And that added up, over time.

This would all be compounded by the normal stresses if Empire over the span of hundreds of years: A few wars of succession there, the occasional rebellion here, a couple of prolonged regencies with incompetent Regents ruling the roost...

Entire books could be written on the fall of the Arathi Empire, the way it died with a whimper, rather than a bang. Indeed entire books have been written. Short books, medium books, long books, books that break the table when they're opened too quickly, books as old as the Seven Kingdoms, books by Elves, Humans, Gnomes, Dwarves, and even the Trolls themselves have tried to understand it.

Every historian has a pet theory. And in the end, which theory is true is... not especially relevant. Because it happened. The Empire slowly devolved into irrelevance, and when the last Emperor died... nobody cared. Not really. Some thought there might be a civil war, some distant cousins of the main line could be brought in, but in the end, from the ashes of Stromgarde, emerged kingdoms. Lordaeron, Alterac, Stromgarde and Gilneas. Kul Tiras never was part of Arathor, and Dalaran wasn't a Kingdom.

Histories written centuries after the fact gloss over a great deal about how the Kingdoms took the borders they had on the eve of the First War. The Eastweald was not always Lordaerons. Hillsbrad was once independent. While only four kingdoms emerged from the ashes of Arathor, there were many small statelets that formed, or tried to form, or even existed for generations. Lordaeron would, in time, become the largest and the strongest, but that was the work of generations, and even their borders were not immutable.3​

In time, all the lands would belong to one kingdom or another. And yet, humans being humans, none could be content. Borders changed. Stromgarde and Alterac warred over their mountainous frontier. Alterac and Lordaeron warred over mountain passes and access to the sea, or just border lands in general. Stromgarde and Lordaeron fought over Hillsbrad. Gilneas and Lordaeron fought over Silverpine. Stromgarde and Kul Tiras and Gilneas fought over Tol Barad. Kul Tiras and Gilneas fought over sea lanes, Zul'dare, Crestfall... everyone fought, for reasons great and small.

Stromgarde, defended by rough mountainous terrain on many sides, and even the border with Alterac mountain valleys that were easy to defend, only had Thoradin's Gap to really focus on. They used this to hone themselves into some of the greatest soldiers in the Seven Kingdoms of Man.

When the Empire finally ended, the people that lived in Strom and the surrounding lands were both the first, and the last to admit that the Empire was done. The Trollbanes, long the second family of the Empire, didn't really try for the Imperial throne, but they did try to assert authority over the Empire. Thrond Trollbane, the preeminent member of the family at the time, tried to call nobles from all over the empire to Strom to discuss the future of the Empire. The Throne was empty, and no one really wanted, but that didn't mean they couldn't still be one.

Instead, local nobles gathered locally. It's not as if the Trollbanes gave the others the idea, but still.

In the end, with each piece of the Empire sloughing off from the central authority, Strom's nobles gathered together and picked the natural choice for their king. Thrond Trollbane, ushering in the Kingdom of Stromgarde and the Trollbane Dynasty.

From the start, Stromgarde always had a stronger Monarchy, and a weaker Estates-General. To begin with, the Arathi Emperors, generally, held back more prerogatives for the core areas around the capital, so except for some nobles in the northwest of the Arathi Highlands who had managed to wrangle certain exclusive taxation and legal enforcement privileges, most powers remained in the hands of the Throne.

And, further, when it came time to select a king for Stromgarde, there was no debate. In Stormwind, the Bladesingers had to convince the nobles and commoner elite of Stormwind to pick them. In Lordaeron, the dynasty before the Menethils had to cut deals, offer concessions and curry favor. In Alterac, the dynasty of which the Perenolde were just a cadet had to threaten, bully and coerce. In Gilneas, the dynasty that would later be overthrown by the Greymanes waged months of brutal political 'war' to scorch the earth of their opponents. Along the way, the power of the Monarchy was reduced, traded away and sliced off.

Not in Stromgarde. When it came to picking a new king, there was no debate, no alternate candidates. There were just the Trollbanes.

Now, in the over a thousand years of rule by the Trollbanes, power has been ceded, here and there. But the Trollbanes have also been exceptionally good at greedily grabbing back any power given by previous generations. Even the occasional civil war between brothers hasn't changed the balance of power between crown and nobles (or crown and commons) for more than a century, at the longest. Power always comes back to rest in the Trollbanes.

Because, power follows power. Power lost tends to stay lost. But when you have so much power to start with, when you lose a little, getting the rest back is a great deal easier.

But it wasn't just the stronger position that the Trollbanes found them in, that served the crown's power well.

In Lordaeron, in Gilneas, in Alterac and in Stormwind, professional armies took time really became a thing. For a long time, it was the levy and the retainers that made up the bulk of the forces of a Kingdom. But Stromgarde always had a professional, elite army, descended from the legions of Arathor.

And the relationship between the nobility of Stromgarde and the officer corps of that army has always been, at best, incestuous. To be a noble, is to be an officer. To be an officer, is to be a noble. In Stormwind, it was the size of your estate that determined your wealth and prestige. In Lordaeron, it was the amount of money you could ostentatiously supply to the Church that counted your status. In Alterac, which mines and which mountain passes you controlled fueled how large your manor in Alterac City was.

In Stromgarde, your military valor, and that of your ancestors, determines your status. And if the King or Queen doesn't like you, doesn't like your family... there goes your options for Valor. Unless you can convince the Crown that the person currently in charge of this regiment, or that division, or those companies is not the right one for the job.

The nobility of Stromgarde spends more time fighting each other... for the right to serve the Crown best in the army.

The system is far from foolproof - a regency, a civil war, a weak monarch, and power slacks. But because they started from that stronger position, recovery was always plausible.

But by hook, by crook and by chance, the Trollbanes have managed to wrest the power back, largely. And so, on the eve of the First War, Thoras Trollbane was, in terms of unquestioned, legal, domestic authority, the most powerful monarch in the Eastern Kingdoms.

And then Azeroth changed Forever.

---

1: Lord Falconcrest is the Governor of Occupied Stromgarde, governing from the town of Northfold. He is a staunch member of Beve's faction, and thinks Aliden is a fucking idiot. This has caused him problems with the actual military officers in the Alteraci military on the ground that are supposed to take orders from him. But he's also widely hated in Stromgarde for... well, obvious reasons.

2: And the modern Church of the Holy Light no longer reveres Tyr, at least as anything more than a legendary man. The early faith of the Light incorporated Tyr into the religion easily, but for a variety of reasons, Thoradin's embrace of Tyr actually ended up identifying Tyr with the Arathi Throne as much or more than anything else. And as a result, the Church as it slowly became a thing in Lordaeron, would excise Tyr, or otherwise reduce him from the position of God-king or hero-god or 'more than a man' into just one more legendary hero who had sacrificed for his community, to protect his people.

3: And boy howdy do I have thoughts about how goddamn annoying it is that somehow Lordaeron controlled so much territory that they did. Eastweald, Silverpine, Tirisfal and Hillsbrad in a big curvy arc. Even allowing that Gilneas actually ceded part of Silverpine when they bilt the wall...
I get that some of it is a result of all the constant map redesigns, which took things that made some sense and turned them into no sense, but there is this weird Lordaeron favoritism and focus in the backstory, it feels like, made worse by the way, as I've discussed, that Lordaeron is presented as basically the only human kingdom left in WCIII if you're only paying half attention.
Suffice to say, if I was ever to rebuild Azeroth from the ground up completely, there'd be some changes here (also, there'd be a fuckton more islands lying around and Northrend and Pandaria would be bigger because JESUS they're tiny)

 

[Kylia Quilor]

Archmage Tervosh: On a scale of Varian to your father, just how stupid is Galen, do you think?
Lady Freeholder Jaina Proudmoore: My life up until now would be very different if my father was stupid, and it certainly would be easier now if he was. Unfortunately, he's as clever as a man descended from pirates, swindling merchants and greedy bankers can be. As for Galen... I think he puts even Varian to shame.
Tervosh: Really? Galen is understandably concerned about the threat right on his border. Varian seems more concerned by Thrall than he does by Blackhand's children.
Jaina: While I have a great deal of respect for what trolls and ogres can do, when properly motivated, and I won't profess to being all that knowledgeable about war on land1​... there's no explanation for how badly the Witherbark and Boulderfist destroyed the Stromic army than Galen being a monumental idiot.2​

On the day the Dark Portal opened, Thoras Trollbane, King of Stromgarde, was planning for war.

Of course, one couldn't really be a monarch ruling Stromgarde and not plan for war. It came with the job, essentially. Not three years earlier, Stromgarde's latest war with Alterac had ended without much real conclusion, but Thoras believed that if he could have pushed a little harder, had just a little better luck, perhaps he could have won. So he just needed to do better next time.

Or maybe he'd invade Lordaeron. Hillsbrad remained a tempting target, and while Stromgarde had never been able to take control of the entire foothills, there had been plenty of times when large portions of the region had fallen under the rule of the true heirs of Arathor.

He was still debating his choices when emissaries from Llane Wrynn arrived, speaking of strange, green-skinned invaders from another world. They didn't beg for help, though they did ask. Thoras laughed in their faces, and quietly set to work with his spies - the Silent Fists - on finding out if Alterac or Lordaeron was stupid enough to send men south. If either was...

Well, that would be the perfect time to strike.

Of course, neither did, and after another year, the reports coming from Stormwind made it clear that Llane's emissaries hadn't been lying. That this threat was real. Still, Thoras could chalk those failures up to Llane's own poor choices, the classic inability of Stormwind to keep their nobles in line...

Stromgarde, on the other hand? They were the heirs of Arathor. Even now, their infantry served as impenetrable barriers to advance. Even if these greenskins could remotely be a threat, even if they could cross the distance to reach Stromgarde... his kingdom could hold them.

Still, his preparations for war against his neighbors turned to preparations for defense. Confident though he was, only a fool and an idiot assumed victory would come without effort, without preparation. War was as much logistics as it was valor and skill at arms, and in Stromgarde, that logistics was a science. Any Stromic officer worth his salt knew exactly, down to the pound, how much food how many men needed. How much fodder you needed to feed the oxen and horses in the baggage train. How many arrows you could expect to be expended in a given battle, against given numbers in given circumstances.

When Stormwind fell entirely, and Varian and Lothar arrived in Southshore, Thoras was disgusted by the destruction the orcs had wrought, the death they dealt. War was fine and just, and certainly when you lost, you died. He didn't begrudge the orcs the death of Llane, and even the use of Garona as an assassin, while deceptive, was well within the laws of war as Stromgarde saw it. But in the northern kingdoms - Gilneas, Kul Tiras, Lordaeron, Alterac and Stromgarde - war was still a thing of... civilized behavior. You didn't sack cities. Not like that. Sure, you extorted them. Sure you might have to kill a few people that resisted, take a few hostages... there would always be a few excesses, but you kept those to a minimum and held the worst offenders for punishment.

War was glorious. It was valorous. It was what separated the cowards and the useless from the brave and the productive members of Stromic society. It was what made youths into adults. Even conflicts with trolls hadn't been so brutal in centuries and more.3​ War wasn't... a dirty thing, with entire cities put to the touch. It wasn't a thing where merchants who tried to flee with their gold were choked on their own valuables, melted down and poured down their throat.4​

And so, when Terenas made the call to forge a united front against the orcs, who already seemed to be advancing north, Thoras was the first, after Dalaran, to sign onto the new Alliance. He certainly had his own ambitions against Lordaeron, but he was an honorable man, who kept his word. And he trusted Terenas to do the same.

The resulting Second War was not, despite Thoras's confidence, as clean a sweep as he expected. Though Stromgarde did have the art of war down to a science in many ways, and the Stromic Legions were never cracked or truly destroyed - merely defeated and able to retreat in good order - Stromgarde was invaded. Stormgarde was simply unprepared for the kind of war the Horde could wage. The whole of the Eastern Kingdoms were, really. The orcs crossed Thandol Span at the same time they broke past the Kul Tiran Navy and reached Southshore. Strom was never in any danger, its defenses the greatest in the Seven Kingdoms, but Stromgarde was occupied in place, and the critical mountain passes into the Hinterlands fell to Amani-Horde combined assault once the Horde made common cause with Zul'jin.

But Stromgarde's forces were able to win more battles than they lost, and as the Hillsbrad Campaign turned to the Thalassian Campaign, with the Horde passing through the Hinterlands to attack the Eastweald and push on through to Eversong Wood and besiege Silvermoon entirely, Thoras was at the forefront of the war effort, serving gladly alongside his old Alteraci nemesis, General Hath - two grizzled warhorses were enemies, but honorable ones, and continued to serve and serve well together. As Silvermoon was attacked, and the Alliance seemed stretched to the breaking point - they were winning battles, but the Horde still seemed to be dictating the war - General Hath died in the Eastweald, purportedly at the hand of Troll assassins.

At the time, that claim was accepted by everyone. But when Alterac's treachery was laid bare, Thoras especially was convinced Aiden had Hath killed because the general would not betray the Alliance, not while a greater threat still existed. This theory has found significant credence in Stromgarde in general, with Galen Trollbane's propaganda holding Hath up as 'the Good Alteraci', the last honorable soldier of that Kingdom had had left, and his murder proof of the perfidy and vileness of the Perenolde Dynasty.5​

Regardless, Thoras was the first man to be suspicious of Alterac when orcish forces, even after withdrawing from Silvermoon, suddenly showed up in the Tirisfal Glades, on the warpath to the city of Lordaeron. Because Thoras had fought to make it through Alteraci mountain passes dozens, maybe even hundreds of times in his life, as a young drummer boy whose balls had barely dropped to a general commanding that most recent war before the opening of the Dark Portal.

He knew how hard it was to force those passes. How hard it was to sneak through those mountains. Even allowing for the orcs' unpredictable nature, there was no way that they should have been able to get so many soldiers through those passes. Not without complicity.

Convincing the rest of the Alliance took some time, but the proof could be found, and so Stromgarde and Kul Tiras fell on Alterac from the south, while Lordaeronic forces hit them from the north. With elves and dwarves providing critical support, and Dalaran's mages brushing past Alterac's own magical forces, Alterac could not hold, and once the mountain passes were cut off behind him, Ogrim could not continue his siege of Lordaeron. He was forced to retreat, leaving far too many of his best men behind. The fall of Alterac and the treachery of Gul'dan broke the orcish war effort. Ogrim tried to hold the line, at Thandol Span, in Dun Morogh, and finally, at Blackrock Spire.

At each site, Thoras was at the front, waging war, fighting with his men, directing the legions of Stromgarde against the orcs.

And each time, the Alliance, invigorated where the orcs were faltering, won.

The final liberation of Stormwind did not see Thoras personally take part, though his nephew Danath would take part and even volunteer to serve at the defenses set up at the Dark Portal, even deactivated as it was. No one was foolish enough to think that Draenor might not dry again. And of course, they did, leading to the grand expedition by the Sons of Lothar to Draenor that saved Azeroth from the same devastation that would create Outland.

In the meantime, Thoras began lobbying for the division of Alterac between Stromgarde and Lordaeron - Aiden was a traitor, and his children, innocent of treachery they might be - he was never convinced fully - Alterac had proven that it had no right to continue to exist. They were traitors to humanity, to the entire world. Beve and Aliden would no doubt want revenge for the sacking of Alterac City, and so it would be best to give them no throne. No kingdom. And probably just imprison them both.

Terenas disagreed, and of course, Gilneas had their own vision for the future of Alterac - Genn thought that an ally on the throne of that Kingdom could serve Gilneas well next time a war over Tol Barad broke out. Daval Prestor soon dropped out of the running, and Gilneas walled themselves off, but Terenas still dithered. Delayed. He wouldn't take the Perenolde option, nor the plan proposed by Thoras. Thoras even went so far as to offer a second proposal, altering the proposed border lines even more in favor of Lordaeron, as long as he got the sections he really wanted.

Terenas dithered, and as the costs of the occupation of Alterac mounted, and the legal limbo the region remained in created nothing but headaches, Thoras grew more and more frustrated with a man he'd once respected, considered friend. He began to doubt if Terenas was as honorable as he'd thought - at least a little. Was Terenas wanting all of Alterac for himself?

Still, if not for the issue of the orcs taken prisoner, and the departure of Danath (the greatest partisan of the Alliance at court in Strom) to Draenor, Thoras may have stayed with the Alliance. But when Terenas and Dalaran, joined by Magni and Gelbin, supported interning the orcs over the proposal of killing them all, Thoras had had enough.

The orcs, in his mind, had proven they were little more than beasts. War was not a thing of slaughtering prisoners and civilians, yes, but what was waged against the Horde could hardly be called that. Killing of prisoners, especially ones as lethargic as the orcs were now, of civilians and noncombatants, was not something to be done lightly, but what else was there to do? Let them go? Absolutely not. Hold them forever? And pay the same crushing war taxes forever? Absolutely not.

Death was the only choice, and it was what the orcs deserved.

But Terenas refused. And Thoras's suspicions grew just a little more. Was Terenas hoping to keep the tax burden forever, to grow Lordaeron's power and wealth? As reports that Arthas Menethil and Jaina Proudmore might be betrothed, or at least, things were heading in that direction, Thoras grew even more suspicious. Varian was already ready to say 'how high' when Terenas said jump, so in awe of and respecting the man. Daelin was now apparently interested in tying his house directly to Terenas. Dalaran was happy to keep backing him.

From where Thoras stood, perhaps Lordaeron would one day turn the Alliance into an empire. That this was him echoing the exact same fears that had driven Aiden to treachery was of course, lost on Thoras. To his credit, Thoras at least waited until 16 ADP to withdraw from the Alliance - only when it was sure there would be no new attack from Draenor. When he was sure the Alliance seemed to have served its purpose.

Of course, the very next year, Thrall broke out of Durnholde Keep and began his effort to free his kin from captivity. Thoras said 'I told you so' and refused to send aid to Lordaeron. He would give them some time, let Terenas come to him and say 'you were right'. Thoras would be happy to help enact his final solution to the orc problem in exchange for his people's rightful share of Alterac.

Of course, Terenas did not come crawling back. And the new horde, led by Thrall and Doomhammer did not respect national lines. While as part of his withdrawal from the alliance, Thoras had relocated all the orcs from Stromic internment camps to ones in Lordaeron, it wasn't as if, between the Frostwolves and the Warong, no orcs had been present in the region since then. And Doomhammer was clever enough to grasp that he might have more success operating against just Stromgarde alone, rather than the whole Alliance.6​. Thrall and Doomhammer had no intentions, now, of destroying the Alliance, even destroying one human kingdom. They wanted a home, freedom and the right to exist. Well, Thrall did. Doomhammer just wanted the chance to make up for his sins.

As such, the conflict that would be fought in what Alterac would later call the Northfold Marches was nothing like the first or second wars. The new Horde kept prisoners well, let civilians leave the warzone, honored flags of temporary truce on the local level (to remove bodies, usually) and otherwise fought - as much as possible - like they were waging a proper, civilized war between human kingdoms.

Not everyone loved this idea, in the new Horde, and Thoras tried to refuse to allow his generals to give the orcs any of the proper respects of war, but many of his generals didn't want to be as bad as orcs. And they were still veterans who were used to returning honorable conduct in war with honorable conduct. And Thoras decided it wasn't worth sacking his entire command staff and starting over, not while a conflict was still being fought. Some suggest his hardened opinion against the orcs might even have relaxed, a little or at least was beginning to, in the process of the conflict.

Galen certainly accused his father of getting soft in his old age (he was only 53) - not just against the orcs, but against his generals disobeying him. Against Terenas. The Alliance as a whole.

Thoras, too proud to ask Lordaeron for aid, and frankly, rightly thinking he didn't need it, was content to grind the orcs down slowly, and then deal with them after. And that strategy seemed to work brilliantly when, at the site of a former internment camp, Stromic forces were able to kill Doomhammer once and for all.

He did not expect Thrall to take up the hammer and armor of his mentor, nor for him to be so capable of leading a retreat of the new Horde, back out of Stromgarde and back into the Hillsbrad Foothills.

Of course, by then, a plague had hit northern Lordaeron, and a new cult was rising in Stromgarde, one dedicated to death and rebirth. While waiting - once more - for Tereneas to come crawling back, Thoras business himself with rooting out the Cult of the Damned. He had no idea what they truly represented until word came from the north that the plague in the Eastweald created the undead and was spread by this Cult,, but they were a religious movement that was not loyal to the Crown, and that was enough to see them purged.

Of course, that news was quickly followed by word of Athras's crimes at Stratholme. His actions were little better than those of an orc, as far as Thoras was concerned, and he very nearly ordered the Silent Fists to kill Arthas. Even if it meant Lordaeron could declare war, it was better than even the chance a monster like that could claim any throne. Justice, if nothing else, demanded it.

Only the fact that Arthas vanished off to Northrend stopped him.

Things proceeded quickly from there. Jaina Proudmore, dedicating herself to the safety and relocation of the survivors of Stratholme and the rest of the Eastweald, began beseeching Thoras and Stromgarde in general for aid, prevailing on bonds of friendship forged with her family during the Second War, and the common humanity at work.

Thoras debated providing some aid, but in the end, was convinced by Galen that to do so would be giving too much to the Alliance. Stromgarde did still have needs at home, and honestly, wasn't it better to let Lordaeron pay for its own Crown Prince's sins? Thoras refused to provide aid, but when some of his nobles did on their own, and when some seven hundred veterans of the Stromic Legions, on mustering out, decided to volunteer their services to Jaina, he didn't come down like a ton of bricks on them, despite Galen's urgings.

Thoras was a proud man, but he had a sense of justice and charity, in most cases. Something Galen very much did not share.

There is no one in the world who knows that Galen killed his own father. Almost no one suspects - if Beve Perenolde had even the slightest inkling, she'd be screaming it from the rooftops. Mathias Shaw considered the idea briefly before rejecting it as absurd, and Calia Menethil, whose opinion of Galen is (if possible) worse than her opinion of Aliden, has never considered it.

But it happened.

Thoras lived to learn of Arthas's return, his kinslaying, the collapse of Lordaeron, even the death of Uther the Lightbringer. As the Scourge advanced into Quel'Thalas, the plan had called for the Cult of the Damned to rise up in Stromgarde and bring that Kingdom down, or at least weaken it substantially. A few small scattered necromancers survived Thoras's purgings, and they tried just that. Unfortunately, they thought there were more of their allies across the kingdom than there were, and each isolated attempt to raise an army from graveyards and tombs was put down. This prevented the planned second front against Dalaran - the undead from Stromgarde were supposed to have advanced across Hillsbrad and aided in the assault on the city of magi.

But it was in the aftermath of this final defeat of the Cult that Thoras Trollbane died, a mysterious and rapid death - he fell sick and died within days, feverish and pale.

Galen Trollbane poisoned his father. And he did it personally. No cutouts, no assassins, no patsies. He took no risks of leaving a trail. And he blamed it on surviving members of the Cult of the Damned, taking their last act of revenge.

To root them out from the Kingdom, in revenge for the murder of his father, to make sure that none of these vile servants of death, and all other internal enemies of the Kingdom could be purged, Galen announced the creation of the Knights of the Royal Order of Justice and Peace. Also called the Oprikrhan7​ - a portmanteau of two ancient Arathi words meaning 'Order' and 'Peace'.

Authorized to investigate anyone in the Kingdom, to root out traitors and enemies of the Realm, and answering only to the King in ways even the Army didn't, the Oprikrhan are the guardians of Stromgarde's true character, the purity of the Arathi Highlands.

And the Oprikrhan immediately set to work rooting out the Cult of the Damned, their sympathizers, and a number of others who were ruled to be 'in the service of enemies of the Realm'. Those enemies quickly multiplied - the Cult of the Damned, the Amani Empire, the Syndicate, even the Alliance itself was considered an Enemy of the Realm, even as Lordaeron burned next door. (Though mentioning that now is itself a punishable offense).

Interestingly enough, the Oprikrhan found a number of people who had opposed Galen at court guilty of treason. And not one of his supporters at court was ever found guilty of treason. Which, perhaps it makes sense, but interesting so many people who had ever counseled Thoras in ways that ran counter to Galen's hardline found themselves tried for treason. Because at this point, Galen still operated mostly within the existing laws, including trials. After all, he had more than enough evidence. It was all perfectly legitimate.

To strengthen his hold even more, Galen had the Oprikrhan encourage an atmosphere of paranoia, suspicion and informing in his kingdom. Among the nobility and officer corps of the Legions, a degree of that was already familiar - undercutting other nobles to improve your own position had long been a game among the nobility, and encouraged by the Trollbanes to keep power centralized.

Galen merely extended that up and down the kingdom. Peasants spied on peasants, merchants on merchants. While it would be treasonous to suggest any loyal son of Stromgarde would ever inform on someone merely out of personal grievance or greed... it happened. Of course, when it happened, it was because the one doing the accusing was themselves an enemy of Stromgarde, trying to undermine the people's confidence in the Oprikrhan.

Obviously.

Galen spent the next few years securing control of Stromgarde through the Oprikrhan. Legally, the Crown's authority remained exactly what it had been - significant, but hardly total. In practice, up and down the kingdom, from village headmen on up, Galen's handpicked people ran the show.

Galen's aim was always the achievement of that greatest of dreams of Stromgarde, for centuries. Complete and total annexation of the Hillsbrad Foothills, and Alterac. Even Thoras had dreamed of that, when he left the Alliance. He'd held back first out of practicality (not wanting to be at war with Ironforge, Kul Tiras, Dalaran, Stormwind and Lordaeron all at once) and then the simple fact that with the undead on the rampage... Well, this was no time to invade your neighbors.

But by the time Garithos was being killed in the Tirisfal Glades, Galen was already readying plans to invade the Hillsbrad Foothills. All he needed was an opportunity to do so when he was sure that Ironforge and Stormwind and Kul Tiras would not object - while the Foothills and Southshore were still effectively independent, Kul Tiran ships were regular visitors to Southshore, and Varian Wrynn, when he wasn't being distracted by matters closer to home, tried to support the region as best he could.

When Sylvannas declared herself Queen of Lordaeron, Galen nearly invaded, but he held back when she didn't actually do what he expected (invade the Hillsbrad Foothills). Galen had the Silent Fists prime the pump a little, spreading anti-Sylvanas propaganda, and as Alterac reformed, he did the same targeting them, but even still, he waited.

When he received word that Alterac and Sylvanas's blasphemous regime would make common cause, he knew he had the perfect opening. He'd let them conquer Hillsbrad, and then his legions would fall upon the foothills, defeat the Lordaeron and Alteraci forces, and then march north into the Mountains. Alterac could hardly stand against him, and with her forces in the Foothills repelled, Sylvannas wouldn't be able to spare the men to stop him. Not with the Scourge still in the Eastweald.

Of course, what actually happened is that Galen was so focused on Alterac that he completely missed the threat posed by the Boulderfist and Witherbark. And his efforts to staff the army with yes men as likely to be looking over their shoulder as leading the armies of Stromgarde effectively only undermined the army's capability more.

Still, even still, the Witherbark - one tribe of Trolls, and the Boulderfist, one tribe of Ogres, should not have been enough. And perhaps, it wouldn't have been, if not for the sheer dumb luck of the placement of an army camp, a few troll scouts coming to the right place at the right time, and the fact that Alterac was waiting in the wings.

The Witherback/Boulderfist surprise assault on the awaiting armies of Stromgarde, all about to cross the border into the Hillsbrad Foothills, was devastating. Soldiers were killed in their tents, the baggage train was burned, and the entire army was out of formation. Still, the Legions of Stromgarde were still the Legions of Stromgarde. They were able to gather in good order and make an effort of fighting back, but the Witherbark and Boulderfist had done enough damage to make defeating them a matter of weeks and months, not days.
Galen was already marshaling more soldiers, even opening the treasury to start offering a bounty of gold to mercenaries from across the Eastern Kingdoms, but he needed time.

Time he didn't have once Alterac attacked.

With the Legions of Stromgarde fighting on two fronts, weakened by the surprise assaults, Galen's mismanagement and an order to never retreat, on pain of death for the general or even his family if he did so, the Legions were, in short order, repelled, destroyed or captured. The Witherbark and Boulderfist quickly managed to push into the southeast of the Kingdom, and the Alteraci captured the north, and Galen was forced into a quarter of the Kingdom's old territory, the land around Strom itself.

Galen, of course, blamed Alteraci spies and saboteurs (which were present in Stromgarde), or even 'race traitors' who sympathized with trolls, but he could only do so much. With Alterac and their allies in the Ghostlands Pact now poised to capture Strom itself, Galen had no choice.

He petitioned the Alliance for membership. He personally traveled to Tol Barad, where he met with Magni and Daelin as well as representatives from Theramore and Stormwind, and according to eyewitness reports (all rumor and hearsay, since the official record is highly classified) Galen all but got on his knees and begged.

And lied his head off. Lied about his prior ambitions. Lied about his opposition to the Alliance, to helping the Stratholme refugees. Lied about declaring the Alliance enemies of the realm. Lied about the nature of his purges. Lied, lied, lied and lied some more.

And frankly, no one believed him. Every leader in the Alliance looks at Galen with distaste, at best. But they all need him. Because as long as Galen still holds Strom, the Alliance has a foothold close to the Ghostlands Pact.

And so, any plans by the Ghostlands Pact to advance all the way to Thandol Span were cut short.

Galen returned to Stromgarde, buoyed by Alliance financial support and dwarven engineers, and began fortifying the territory left to him. Small towers turned into fortresses, outposts rose where none had stood, and Strom, the great heart of the Kingdom, the most fortified city in the world, was only fortified even more. A whole new extra layer of walls was added, and the other walls were improved.

And Galen, knowing that the Alliance needed to keep him on the throne, and couldn't care too much how he did it, announced new Emergency Measures. Trials were now a speedy thing, all previous notions of due process abandoned. Rationing, press controls, curfews. Guilds and many businesses were absorbed into the crown - still technically private institutions, but operating at the direction of agents of the Crown.

A New Order has come to Stromgarde, directed by the Knights of the Royal Order of Justice and Peace. Stromgarde is beset with enemies without - perfidious Alterac and their monstrous and vile allies to the north, and the savage, inhuman beasts of the Witherbark and Boulderfist to the East. Stromgarde is beset with enemies within - traitors, the soft-hearted, the weak-willed, the race traitor.

And there is only one man who can save Stromgarde, restore the Stromic People to their proper place and glory.

Galen Trollbane, heir to a dynasty that has ruled Stromgarde for over a thousand years. Galen Trollbane, the man who saved Stromgarde from the Cult of the Damned, the man who was able to hold the line against Alterac and the Witherbark/Boulderfist alliance, when all else failed. Galen Trollbane, whose iron will, sheer brutal stubbornness and vision for peace and justice are all that stands between Stromgarde and absolute destruction.

At least, that's what the Chancellery of Truth's officials shout from every street corner. And you'd best not question that Truth, else the Oprikrhan may just come knocking down your door.

---

1: Like any child of Kul Tiran Nobility, Jaina received an extensive education on naval warfare. While she's hardly on the level of a professional admiral, or anything like that, if put in charge of a large fleet, even today, years out of practice, she'd do far better than most.

2: Galen isn't actually an idiot, but let's actually look at the man's canon record. He kills his father, which is always a classy move, then proceeds to somehow lose his entire kingdom to the Syndicate (which is a remnant of a kingdom Stromgarde presumably handled just fine many times) and one tribe of trolls and one tribe of ogres. One has to assume that Stromgarde beat trolls a lot, historically, and while ogres are dangerous, one would think Stromgarde knew how to beat them from their experience in the Second War. And again, one tribe. One tribe that had previously been mind-control-led by Sylvanas and used as canon fodder, so there couldn't have been infinite gobs of them.

Then, Galen, brilliant mind that he is, proceeds to just defend his dad's tomb rather than try to lead his people at Refuge Pointe. When he's brought back as undead, he proceeds to be loyal enough to Sylvanas, which makes sense, but then, has the breathtakingly stupid brainwave to prevent the Death Knights from getting his father's corpse, not by saying 'no, you can't have my dad's body for your super secret boyband' (which, really, reasonable) but by attacking the Death Knights, which include heroes who have faced the Lich King, Deathwing, Garrosh Hellscream and fucking Archimonde while Azeroth is in the middle of being invaded by the Legion. All to hide the fact that he killed his dad.

Like, yes, this is the result of Blizzard's truly, deeply, atrocious writing, but that is the canon, and the canon picture we get is of a man who is, at the very least, astoundingly incompetent and vile enough to kill his father just to get the throne a little faster.

TSW is founded on the principle of no Idiot Balls and no Villain Balls, and that is the case here, I promise (or at least, that's my contention) but Galen is probably the closest to having either one of anyone I've written for TSW. Because, frankly, it's really hard to construct a version of him that hews to canon that doesn't at least playact an idiot really well.

3: Thoras is... a little disingenuous here, as it were. But it is true that even fights Lordaeron or Stromgarde had with the forest trolls, by now, while nothing as civilized and polite as the 'conflicts' in the Gnoll Marches, were still much less brutal or total than the tactics that both Blackhand, and later Ogrim used.

4: This is a reference to, in the Stormwind First War History post, the rumors and reports (most of which are unverified, to say the least) that Ogrim, during the march from the Dark Portal to Stormwind in the aftermath of Llane's death, engaged in all sorts of 'poetic' murders. While Ogrim was perfectly willing to kill anyone left in his path as he marched, though he gave as many as possible the chance to run, there's no evidence of this sort of brutality for the sake of it, or anything like that. But Thoras believed them, and many humans in the Eastern Kingdoms still do.

5: General Hath and Thoras were, supposedly, friendly enemies in the canon. In this verse, that continues to be true, though Hath was not actually killed by Aiden, and he was entirely in on the plan to betray the Alliance. He was not happy with it, but he was loyal to King and Country.

6: As with many things in the lore, there's a lot of incoherence. We're supposed to believe that Stromgarde leaves the Alliance, in large part over the Internment issue, and yet, there were still internment camps in Stromgarde? If I'm Thoras, and I'm all for the Genocide Option, then I should be killing everyone in my camps. In TSW, Thoras would have preferred that, but figured it might burn his bridges with soft-hearted Terenas too much, so he had the orcs relocated to Lordaeronic internment camps instead. And also Ogrim dies in Stromgarde, at the place later called Hammerfall? But why would it even be there? Now, there are some other ways to reconstruct and make sense of the scattered information we're provided, but this is the one I went with.

7: The name Oprikrhan is a portmanteau of Oprichnaki and Okhrana, two different organizations used in Russian history by the Tsar to purge political enemies.In TSW-verse, the Oprikrhan have more in common with the Okhrana, but are really just more of a standard Secret Police/StateSec sort of organization.

 

[Kylia Quilor]

So when I started this project, my first two goals were: make it political and rescue the Blood Elves and the Forsaken (and by extension, Kael and Sylvannas) from the bad writing they've been given over the years. Before anything else, those two goals were the heart of it. Everything else came later.

So, when I settled on the idea of doing a four-faction approach, I started with looking for allies for Quel'Thalas and Lordaeron. I settled on Alterac fairly quickly, because I had been interested in the under-used Syndicate already. Change a few things around, let the Syndicate retake their home, and boom, Kingdom of Alterac. Jintha'alor was a late addition, but they did come.

With the Alliance, I knew I wanted multiple human Kingdoms, because after all, there always had been and I wanted to uncouple 'Human' and 'Stormwindian'. So Kul Tiras and Theramore had to be in as distinct entities. I didn't want to rebuild Dalaran, so they were out, Gilneas was going to start trapped behind a wall until I figured out what to do with them (which I figured out very late in the development cycle), Lordaeron and Alterac where part of the 'Untitled Edgy Faction' (that is what I called them in my notes, originally 😅 )

And that left Stromgarde. What happened to them in canon was, frankly, lame. Whole kingdom gets sacked by some bandits, a rando grab bag of trolls and ogres and that's it? Strom, that mighty fortified keep falls, and all you get is a bunch of refugees in one town? Like, even if the Kingdom was invaded and fell, there should be more of it than that. Hell, Lordaeron managed to have more of it survive in even the Tirisfal Glades, it seems like, than Stromgarde did.

What they did with Galen seemed especially annoying to me. Why is he just camped out in front of his dad's tomb? Why isn't he trying to rebuild his kingdom? Seriously, wtf? This makes no sense. At least Lordaeron collapsing so quickly was against a veritable apocalypse level threat, or nearly so.

Maybe I'm not giving Ogres, the Syndicate and the Witherbark enough credit, but... I never liked it. And I certainly figured more nations surviving makes for more interesting geopolitics. So I decided fairly early on in working on the Alliance that I wanted part of Stromgarde to survive. I did like the idea of them having lost ground, and I wanted to have Alterac claim part of the Kingdom, mostly because I wanted to put the Ghostlands Pact in a better initial position because yeah, they're still the weakest of the four, in pure population/material resources (their magical and alchemical resources on the other hand, do help weigh the scales, as does the sheer brutality they can work with).

So then I had to figure out why part of Stromgarde survived, and of course, how the bloody hell it fell at all. With the revelation in Legion that Thoras was killed by Galen (which makes the defense of his tomb in Vanilla even less comprehensible) and my initial desire to keep with a fairly close to canon divergence story (barring ignoring Shadowlands) I decided to keep that.

And so Galen kind of throwing the Kingdom away because he's so focused on the old enemy of Alterac that he misses the Boulderfist and Witherbark emerged from that. I figured that with their new, Lordaeronic-Thalassian Alliance, Alterac is less eager to work with Ogres and trolls, but the same impetus for the Witherbark and Boulderfist to invade Stromgarde would still exist (the idea that Vilebranch pressure is what prompted the Witherbark invasion/migration was a late development as well). Thus, emerged the idea that Alterac and Stromgarde are both squaring up for war, when suddenly, down come the Ogres and Trolls as the unexpected green pieces invading the familiar chessboard. Stromgarde's armies are shattered, and Alterac takes advantage of their unexpected good fortune to attack and some would say dangerously overextend themselves by taking the northern third of Stromgarde.

That then left me trying to work with What Galen does with Stromgarde. I realized pretty quickly that arguably, Stromgarde is in a similar sort of place to Alterac, to Quel'Thalas, to Lordaeron. It too is an example of a people brought low, pushed to the bring. Now, I would say that Stromgarde has it better than Quel'thalas, Alterac or Lordaeron ever did, with more surviving population under their authority (even if stuffed into a smaller space) than Lordaeron or Quel'thalas and retaining at least some of their actual state apparatus, etc. (which Alterac did not, after their fall), but still.

Stromgarde was pushed to the brink. But what to do with that?

The thing is, for all that the Ghostlands Pact does explore how when pushed to the brink, people as individuals and societies as a whole are often willing to cross all sorts of lines in the name of survival (and yet, they do still draw some lines) and embrace dangerous ideas and devices and techniques to make sure those that hurt them never can again, etc -

That's not the only thing people can do. Post-Apocalyptic fiction is full of the idea that in the wasteland that emerges, dog eat dog brutality and nastiness, everyman for himself, etc, will become the norm, at least at first. Very Hobbesian. And that does happen, and has happened and will happen, to varying extents.

But that's not always what happens. Sometimes humans rise to the adversity of the occasion, and rather than falling prey to their baser natures, rise to their better natures. They work with people that may have once been enemies, to pool resources for common survival. They give of their own surplus to help others because they share a common humanity. They risk their lives to save others. They just be good people. Sometimes good people exist. I'd say very often anyway.

And I could have done that. I could have had Stromgarde be an exploration of the angels of our better natures rising up, that Stromgarde, even when pushed to the brink, refused to go the same sorts of dark places that Alterac, and Lordaeron and Quel'Thalas and even Jintha'alor went to. That they didn't embrace tyranny and oppression and rigid controls in the face of the Alteraci and Ogre/Troll threat.

I didn't do it though. And I didn't do it for four reasons.

1. Galen himself. Bad writing or not (and I do vote bad) the picture the canon gives of us Galen is... not great. He's a kinslayer (which is historically one of the worst things you can be, in many cultures, a crime above and beyond anything else) and he really did fritter away Stromgarde. I could, however, have killed him off and let someone more competent or decent run Stromgarde, or changed the kinslaying (but at the time of planning, and still mostly, I wanted and want still to hew as much to canon as I can, just to keep the story grounded or I'll just rewrite everything and then if I do that as much as I'd want it stops being a fan project and becomes its own original thing at some point, or at least, a Fic In Name Only)

2. I kind of already did that with Theramore. Under Jaina's leadership, after all, Theramore, founded by refugees desperately fleeing past the edge of the world for their life, ends up becoming a bastion of freedom, democracy, and even charity for society's poorest members, relatively speaking. Don't necessarily want to rehash that again, because while the Alliance has a lot of good and well intentioned people, part of what I wanted to explore was having an Alliance isn't actually "The GOOD GUYS™" the way WoW has made them (by demonizing the Horde so much) but rather the faction that says "we're the good guys, so if we do it, it must be good!™" or "we are the good guys? Right" (often both, albeit from different people). I didn't want to have a second Alliance member that was defined by 'embracing the better angels of our nature'

3. I didn't want to create some sort of good victim/bad victim parallel between Alterac and Stromgarde, which is a very toxic thing that makes it into way too much fiction and the popular perceptions of how people view the way people respond to abuse and trauma.

4. Honestly, a fucked up country doing fucked up things is just more fun to read and write about for me, in a political story, than a country led wisely and good by wise and good people doing wise and good things.

So, given all those things, when it came time to start fixing on details about what was going on in Stromgarde (which began as I posted the Alterac posts, but really didn't get going until partway through working on Stormwind), I had to look at all the information I had, all the stuff I settled on and wanted to do, and go "well, what does Stromgarde actually look like?"

And that's where I settled on the idea that Galen is a proto-totalitarian, with a StateSec organization, paranoid and jealous of his power and prerogatives, justifying it because of the emergency, murdering his own father as 'not hard enough', as he believed the times demanded.

I'm not specifically modeling Galen on any one historical figure, but it isn't hard to see parallels to Josef Stalin - from the way he changed sides on a fucking dime and pretended his previous propaganda wasn't a thing, to the way his purge of the officer corps while trying to preserve his power ended up nearly fatally undermining his nation's ability to survive an unexpected attack.

The Oprikhran do certainly have a lot in common with the NKVD/KGB/Etc, but that's more because the StateSec/Secret Police trope in fiction is itself based on them as much as on the SS and other historical examples. Stromgarde is more fascist than communist, of course, and we see that specifically in the part where Galen is keeping all sorts of guilds and private companies privately owned, but under royal direction, much like the corporatist elements of fascism. Ish. As with most things regarding the finer points of IRL ideologies, fiction is never gonna be a perfect representation, even when it tries to be.

So that's why Stromgarde is the way that it is - from a writing standpoint. And in so many ways, Stromgarde does have more thematically in common with the Ghostlands Pact, but geopolitically of course, it can't join them (because TSW is about political alignments based on geopolitical need as much or more than thematic factioning). Plus, Galen does very much insist He Is The Good Guy of the story and thus What I Do Is Good, and he even genuinely believes it, or mostly so.

Which of course, brings us to Galen and Aliden. Aliden and Galen. Two sides of the same coin - heads, and different heads.

Now, of course, there are differences. Galen started out as a hard person, who believed that harsh, strict, hard rule was necessary. But he was radicalized by events, by the horrors of the second war, even by what happened in the Third. And of course, the near collapse of his kingdom. But Galen has always believed that harsh, strict and rapid justice is the only way to truly have an ordered, peaceful and prosperous society. He has advanced from there to a proto-fascist/proto-totalitarian ideological position, but the core was there.

Aliden, on the other hand, was once a fairly standard royal. Elitist, sure, and an Alteraci Nationalist, of course, and a warrior prince who had no issue with violence in war or violence in the service of the state directed against its enemies (of course, at first that was like, brigands and enemies in wars, and stuff). He became radicalized by the experiences of having his kingdom's independence seized, by fighting that guerilla war. He didn't start out targeting civilians, even collaborating ones. But with each battle, each lost soldier and each time he saw the occupying forces benefit from collaborators materially or through intelligence, he expanded his definition of 'Enemy of Alterac' just a little more.

In Galen's Stromgarde, the dissidents are disappeared. Vanishing in the night. There's strict controls on all sorts of aspects of daily life, for everyone. Any kind of disagreement or complaint is treason, and treason has only one punishment. Rationing, curfews, censorship. Guilds and companies and even independent shops all operate under the direction of the Crown.

In Aliden's Alterac, those dissidents that actually break the law (which does fall short of outlawing grumbling and minor complaints) are... butchered. Their heads stuck on pikes, their bodies left to decay in gibbets at the end of town. Hands are cut off, and in general, if the Alteraci state kills you, they want everyone to know you died, and that you suffered in the process. And frankly, at least in Alterac proper and the Hillsbrad Foothills, if you keep your head down and don't make noise, you probably have a pretty decent amount of freedom, in the context of a post-feudal absolutist monarchy, anyway. Alterac may have high taxes, but they don't put your shop, your guild, your company under state direction. Alterac may say you can't do business with certain people, but it doesn't say who you have to do business with beyond that. Or how you do business.

Both states absolutely love torture, as a punishment and as a way of getting information. Both states rule by fear. But in Stromgarde, the fear is alloyed with ignorance and rumor. In Alterac, it's all about rubbing exactly what you have to be afraid of in your face.

Stromgarde is developing a cult of personality around Galen. In Alterac, Aliden certainly promotes celebration of himself as the Leader Alterac Needs, and so forth, but not to the extent of a cult of personality (No, that's more Beve's territory, more on her in a bit).

Alterac and Stromgarde are both pretty awful, at least in terms of their governments. They're both proto-fascist, they're both brutal, oppressive, paranoid, monstrous, and ultimately, they're both fundamentally unsustainable.

That said, I am more partial to Alterac. Alterac has a better excuse - they suffered more, they arguably suffered worse, and they took time, slowly falling more and more into the War By Bloody Terror approach. On the other hand, Galen started tyrannical and only got worse, but it's not like he wasn't a product of his times and his history either, and Stromgarde has always leaned a bit tyrannical anyway, relatively.

Alterac's leadership is mostly made up of people who are in the same vein of monstrousness as Aliden and even Beve. The leadership of the Kingdom is made up of Syndicate leadership and every leader of the Syndicate that survived the Alteraci War of Independence is a hardened, cruel person who embraces the modern Alterac and what it has had to do, what it will have to do.

By contrast, outside of the Oprikhran and other core allies of Galen, the monstrousness hasn't yet found root widespread in Stromgarde. Privately, General Hanna, the top military commander left in Stromgarde, is horrified at Galen's actions, but too loyal to king and country to balk openly (and also too afraid, admittedly). Rather than the entire nation's leadership (and a lot of it's middle tier as well) being inured to awfulness and embracing it as they slide down that slippery staircase to damnation1​, Galen has simply gone out of his way to find the most loyal and the most 'evil' (he doesn't see them as evil, after all) people in his kingdom and promoted them.

The Syndicate started as a noble intentions "we want our freedom" cause, started being unwilling to hurt civilians. Ultimately it ended up selecting for brutality overtime as the war ground down any sympathy the leadership would have had for collaborators, or even neutrals. It made them harder. Those who had qualms about ambush simply couldn't survive. Those who balked at trying to scare the shit out of the enemy with brutality found themselves, and their cells being less successful - to an extent. As the top tier embraced it, they of course promoted those who did as well.

By contrast, the Oprikhran and Galen's new regime in general has selected for brutality and willingness to torture, disappear and oppress the 'enemies of the state' right from the start. They're not finding normal, patriotic people and encouraging them to be monsters (well, they are, but that's the lower ranks), they're finding monsters and teaching them to be patriotic, or at least teaching them that the mask of patriotism is a great way to indulge in their violent urges.

Now, it would be unfair to say that's 100% true across the board, with either kingdom. Of course some people become radicalized and embrace violence over time as a result of the new order in Stromgarde, taking each step of the way. And of course, there are people in the Alteraci Army that absolutely are in it for the socially approved brutality. They may have been believers once, but got so caught up in the violence they became full on Blood Knights, or they may just have always been asocial bags of violent trash and now merely have a safe outlet for cruelty.

But Stromgarde does lean one way (monstrousness embraced up front) and Alterac the other way (mostrousness learned and earned).

On the other hand, even though I say - and I think is supportable by the 'facts' on the ground, in-universe - that Alterac suffered more, oppression olympics is not that productive. Alterac has a better 'excuse' as do Alterac's leaders but... on the other hand, Stromgarde got the rug pulled out from under them too. Really badly.

Plus, to borrow a line from the MCU, The first country Galen ended up invading was his own. Alterac, on the other hand, subjects others to their brutality. In Hillsbrad. In the Northfold Marches. Partly that's just a function of opportunity - Galen absolutely would be putting the Oprikhran to work keeping the people of Hillsbrad in line under his definition of 'in line', and gods tremble at the sort of vengeance he'd want to wreak on Alterac if he had free reign.

Is Alterac better? I don't know about that. In-universe, it's too soon to say. Will Galen really succeed in changing Stromgarde? How long will he reign? Will someone assassinate him, or will it take decades for him to die in his sleep? Maybe Strom falls, to Alterac, to the Boulderfist/Witherbark...

Equally, what happens to Alterac? Something has to give. Sooner or later, the Hillsbradi will either largely assimilate to their new reality - for the medium term at least - or throw off the yolk. The current state of affairs in the Northfold Marches is unsustainable - Alterac simply lacks the manpower to hold the Northfold Marches down and hold against Stromgarde and hold everything else. And, and, and. It's a cruel word for Alterac.

But Aliden doesn't really have it in him to change.

Where does that leave Beve? Is she a better alternative? Certainly, in some ways. She's not as brutal as Aliden, preferring the iron fist in the velvet glove approach. She certainly has no patience for treason or resistance to Alterac's rule, and she burns with a desire for revenge on Stromgarde and the Stromic people too, but she's more... coolly pragmatic in her hatred, and she's less racist than Aliden, in general, and less interested in oppressing Stromics for being Stromic. Aladdin wants a semi-permanent Stromic underclass. Beve wants to eliminate a sense of Stromic identity all together, at least in the Northfold Marches.

She supports what could only be called cultural genocide, on the Stromic reisdents. Ban the cultural practices, the traditions, the history. I'd say ban the language but apparently all humans speak one language because reasons. So maybe she'd at least ban a Stromic accent. She wants to make good little Alteraci citizens out of all the Stromic boys and girls in the Marches.

But doesn't want to kill them, or enslave them. Unless they're traitors.

She's less fond of Aliden's sense of bloody terror, at least to his degree, but she is actually taking notes at the way people can just 'disappear' in Stromgarde. There's something useful there.

Beve is certainly all for having a society where people are looking over their shoulder to see if they're alone, and never quite being sure they are. Where everyone knows her agents are everywhere. She and Galen have that in common. Beve is paranoid. But, to her credit, her paranoia is much better aimed and directed - right now, anyway, Beve's counterespionage and internal security people are better at their job than the Oprikhran.

Of course, with the Oprikhran, both it and Galen are convinced that internal enemies (traitors, spies, saboteurs or people who just don't have enough 'Stromic Steel' in their spine) are everywhere. Truth is, real, genuine enemies of the state are thin on the ground in Stromgarde. They were at the start, and they haven't really gotten more numerous.

Oh, there are people in Stromgarde who hate and fear Galen and would love to kill him, but they're not enemies of the state... unless you define Galen as the Senate State. Which of course, the Oprikhran and Galen do, but... they're no friends of Alterac. They just think Galen is wrong for Stromgarde. Or, you know, figure Galen will disappear them anyway, sooner or later.

So is Beve better than Galen or Aliden?

Maybe? Maybe now? She's more pragmatic in general, but she's also inculcating a cult of personality among her followers, much as Galen has, albeit with a different look. She's certainly fully invested in absolute monarchical power - for herself. She's not a good person. She's a killer, a tyrant, fully willing to use torture if the situation seems to call for it. She would certainly never make burning an innocent village down to the ground her first, second or even third choice, but it would be an option on the table for her. Mostly.

Beve, like Aliden, wouldn't punish complaints or grumbling with disappearance. Nor would she try to control literally every aspect of her people's lives, like Galen is trying to do, in some ways.

But to call her better is to say that it's better to be poisoned than stabbed. It's subjective and a question of degrees, not kind.

Ultimately, the best outcome for the people of Stromgarde and the people of the Hillsbrad foothills would be the deaths of Galen, Beve and Aliden. Alterac proper is doing damn well right now, at least, but...

How does it end? These regimes can't last. The borders in the Arathi Highlands are unsustainable - they're fluid, shifting, unclear. Lines on a map, in a post-Medieval setting that can't really make those all that meaningful. You need some natural borders, at some point. There's no way this turns into a permanent DMZ like in between North and South Korea, is there? But equally, Stromgarde can't accept the current borders, and Alterac really really really would prefer to keep their foothold in the Arathi Highlands.

Does Alerac get forced to abandon the Northfold Marches? Do the Witherbark and Boulderfist hold out against the GP and the Alliance wanting them gone? Can the two tribes even sustain their shaky relationship? Does Alterac lose the Hillsbrad foothills? Does Stromgarde implode as Galen's Ego expands too much? Can he disappear enough people to actually, successfully hold onto his realm, or will he fatally undermine it? Stalin managed to eventually found some generals who could do their job well enough, but he also benefited from help from the western allies, and of course, from really stupid fucking decisions by Hitler and the Nazis.

Alterac isn't quite Hitler level stupid, no matter which leader we're talking about.

I don't know how it ends. Maybe the end is beyond the scope of this project. At some point, I'm stopping. At some point, the Lich King is beaten, and the Burning Legion, even if not destroyed, is at least beaten back another time and unable to force the issue anytime soon. At some point, the Silent War ends.

Hopefully not with a Loud War.

Now, I admit, I have considered as a plot point, Stromgarde (or at least Galen) doing something that alienates the rest of the Alliance and gets them kicked out, and that results in Alterac and the GP being able to take the rest of the Arathi Highlands. It would help the Ghostlands Pact, which I like, and It would make for some nice, neat borders...mostly. It would mostly get rid of the Alliance in the northern third of the EK...

Except for the Wildhammer, and god knows I have no idea what's gonna happen there. The Wildhammer state being split between the two regions is another one of those A+ moves by Blizzard that the rest of us are left trying to make sense of. I'll let you know when I figure it out.

Regardless, I'm not gonna go with that idea. Because the thing is, short of...actually starting a war himself, I'm not sure what Galen could do that would make the Alliance ditch him? They need him. They need that foothold. If Jintha'alor goes after Aerie Peak, then yeah, they need Strom. If open war breaks out, yeah, they need Strom.

And they don't really want to throw all the people of Stromgarde under the bus either.

So I don't see it happening.

While the current state of affairs is unsustainable, there's no reason it has to be resolved onscreen. The Pact and the Alliance as they stand aren't going to last forever. (The Hyjal Covenant and the Grand Confederation, arguably, have more chance to survive long term, in theory)

Bringing it all back around to the start - Galen is the way he is because of what Canon gives us, because a more interesting political narrative exists if he's an oppressive pos, and he is, ultimately, a lot like Aliden. Like Beve.

Stromgarde is more interesting to me as a writer, and a reader, if it's fucked up. Sooner or later, that's gotta get resolved. It all does. I like the process of the resolution, so there does need to be a resolution. Even Stalinism got turned away from, in the USSR. So too might happen for Galenism.

Or maybe Stromgarde goes the route of North Korea, an increasingly isolated, malfunctioning personality cult of a state that still keeps its dead founder as the nominal head of state, only continuing to survive because larger powers find it too geopolitically useful to let die. Maybe they develop the Azeroth version of Nukes to keep Alterac at bay.

Maybe Alterac liberalizes, overtime. Or at least lets off the pressure. Maybe A combination.

Or maybe it goes the other way. Maybe the Alliance realizes they need to lose Galen while keeping Stromgarde, and SI:7 silently kills him and pins it on Alterac or something. Maybe Alterac can't keep up the oppression, or becomes too much trouble for the Ghostlands Pact and collapses or at least is forced back to just the core territories, losing even Hillsbrad. Maybe the Alteraci monarch after Aliden withdraws from the Northfold Marches in exchange for some obscene sum of money from the Alliance.

Or maybe Beve's son and one of Galen's many illegitimate children get married and form the ultra-cursed United Kingdom of Alterac and Stromgarde. And then their kid marries one of Calia's kids and then things get even more cursed.

Probably not that last one though.

---

1. Apropos of nothing, I despise the term 'slippery slope' because it implies one can't halt their progress down it at all. I don't think that's true. I think that there absolutely are paths societies, people, etc, can take that are easy to go down, and hard to come back from, but arresting that process is doable, even if sometimes difficult. Slope implies the inevitability of gravity. Staircase? Well, you can certainly slip and fall, but you can also just... stand still.

 

[Kylia Quilor]

This was originally posted on the SB version of this thread on 10/10/22, but for some reason, never got crossposted here. Fixing that now.

---

This is gonna be a bit rambling, because I have a lot to say to get to the point of Troggs. What I have to say about Troggs themselves is not actually all that innovative, but what I have to say about the broader subject... honestly it probably isn't that unique either. To be fair. I'm posting this because while trying to think about the next installment my brain decided to go down the rabbit hole on the Troggs and everything else wrong with the way Blizzard manages the godforesaken insane number of races in their setting. I need to get this all out of my head, and this thread is as good a place as any to put it

Regardless-

Let's imagine for a second that in ten to twenty years, Blizzard goes bankrupt. Let's say WoW collapses under it's own weight as newer, better games enter the marketplace more and more, and WoW itself alienates its players more and more and eventually it's no longer economical to run. Diablo IV is a bomb, Overwatch implodes, etc. This is not particularly likely, but bear with me. So the rights to the Warcraft universe float around for a while, maybe a book or a comic or a even a movie gets authorized, but no new video games for several decades.

Until some bright spark decides to reboot Warcraft, with a rebuild from the ground up. Now obviously, they could just recreate Orcs vs Humans, but let's assume they decide to do something like one of those periodic reboots that Comics do, where they keep some essential details, but rewrite a whole bunch of other stuff, delete entire portions of the universe (or at least quietly ignore them) and add new elements. (See the rotating various backstories of what happened to Krypton, what Krypton was like, etc. But the core elements of Superman's personal story remains).

There's so many things I would do if I was given this task, but I have no idea where I'd start. Plus there's the gulf between what I like, and what would have mass market appeal. In all fairness, whatever I made, the lore of the setting would probably be in line with Warcraft III: Frozen Throne. Later material would and might be used, and material before FT would need fixing, but the final product would most resemble what I personally felt was the Peak of the Warcraft Universe from a storytelling and (critically) narrative coherence standpoint. WC3: RoC and FT have storytelling problems, but they are dwarfed by the flaws in WC2 and WC1, and by WoW and it's myriad expansions. IMO.

That I like FT the most is not surprising. I played it as a teen, it has great nostalgia value for me, and if I hadn't liked FT as much in the first place, I would never have gotten into Warcraft in general as a lore concept. There are other games I played, settings I played around in at the same time as playing WC3: RoC and FT, and none have stuck with me the same, especially as Warcraft has stuck with me as a setting against my will these days. It's far, far from my sole obsession (see my Ao3 account for an incomplete accounting of other obsessions I have ) but it is something I'm invested in.

Other people may think Warcraft peaked with Beyond the Dark Portal, or with Vanilla or even Shadowlands (I'm sure one exists).

The point here is not to wax poetic about the hypothetical reboot in particular, but to get to one thing that any hypothetical reboot will have to do: Take a massive axe to the number of sentient races in the Warcraft Universe.

Depending on how you count, and I'm sure I'm missing some if not more (and this is not counting that I have counted Dragonspawn and Dragons as one race each, when really they could count as one race for each color type) (This also doesn't count races that exist in the abstract or in very minor lore entries, like the Aldrachi or the First Ones, but which have no actual presence in the lore meaningfully) there are upwards of 83 sentient races crowding Azeroth and connected realms (the Shadowlands, Outland, Alternate Draenor). And many of them exist in one place, for no good reason other than to... have a new race.

Like, take the Sethrak. There is no reason that the Sethrak had to be a whole new race of snake people, rather than just a different group of trolls. That would have worked just as well. The story works if they're all local Vol'Dun trolls rather than a bunch of snakes who barely have any presence in their own region (I stg, more than half the hubs in Vol'dun are just exiled trolls or Vulpera). Every time a new expansion comes out, rather than just have an existing race just... be there, in the new space, they need to make new races. Like, you can just pull a Highmountain Tauren, and have local versions of the same race rather than having Taunka and Yaungol. You could have local murlocs in Pandaria rather than have Jinyu. Why the heck do we even need sentient monkeys in the from of Hozen? What value added to Tortollans actually bring to Battle for Azeroth?

Why, when looking for new races to give players for the new expansions, did they make new races like the Vulpera or the Dracthyr rather than use existing ones?

Some of this is this weird belief that new zones need new races, that the demand for enemy diversity (it would get boring slaying one kind of enemy over and over, to be fair) merits new races. But you can just have visually distinct and even combat enemies of the same race (look at the distinct fashion, combat and architectural styles of human civilization, after all). But that takes more work than just creating a new anthropomorphic race, slapping a Latin-derived name on it and then inserting them into the world without any accounting for their wider impact on the history and setting. Especially when you can illogically confine them to one zone!

In some cases there's at least a bit of an excuse - Pandaria being the best example for a place you can get away with just dropping a new race into without accounting for it in the wider setting because after all, Pandaria was cut off from most of the world for ten thousand years, so the Jinyu and Hozen, etc, wouldn't have had much impact on the rest of the world just yet. But in many cases, there's no real excuse. It's just... let's add in a new race. Its an easier, simpler, lazier solution. And that is Blizzard's hallmark these days.

And it is into this mess that we finally get to the Troggs. Having decided for reasons that escape me (appeal to D&D players, perhaps?) that Gnomes needed to be part of the Alliance from word 1 in WoW, Blizzard had to answer the critical question of 'where the hell have they been?' Claims that the gnomes were around in Wc2 notwithstanding, the Gnomes are just sort of dropped into the story with WoW. Where were they in WC3? Now, to Blizzard's credit, at least they decided to provide an answer with the gnomes, which they haven't always done when they insert some new sentient race.

Where were the gnomes during the Third War? Why, they were fighting the Troggs! Who are the Troggs? Well, I'm glad you asked:

They're stupid little monster brutes that even more than most of our mook races exists purely as a hollow antagonist to be killed to help us fill a plot hole we created. They have no culture or inner life, there's no deeper purpose in their inclusion, and they don't really add much to the broader universe!

Now, creating new worldbuilding elements and pieces of backstory as you write a story is not new. Famously, Saruman exists to explain where the hell Gandalf was for the pre-Rivendell part of Fellowship. Tolkein, being Tolkein, then integrated Saruman and what he represented very very well into the rest of the wider setting. And of course, LOTR isn't the same thing as Warcraft, which has been around for 30+ years and had a zillion and a half cooks in the kitchen, many with very incompatible design goals, and an ever-shifting set of motives for just about everything. So I do have to manage my expectations, but seriously, the Troggs are one of the most emblematic examples of 'let's just drop a race in' in all of Warcraft.

Like, if they desperately needed the Gnomes to have been fighting an enemy, why not an unusually militant group of Kobolds? Gnomes versus Kobolds is a classic, and let's not pretend Blizzard actually wants to be original here.

But the Troggs are also just a wildly unnecessary answer to a question that could be solved far simpler: Where have the gnomes been? At home, making machines like the steam tanks and gyrocopters the alliance used in WC3. Why were there no gnomish units? Because gnomes are small and short not particularly strong so why would they be on the front lines? It's one thing to be a halfling adventurer, or a gnome adventurer, sure. But a soldier? Why be a soldier when you're that short if you have someone else that fights better you can be the technicians for? Like, yes, logically there'd be some gnomes that might want to be soldiers, but the question of 'where have the gnomes been' doesn't need the Troggs.

But, having made the Troggs, this bestial savage race with no reason for doing things other than 'TROGG SMASH', Blizzard simply continues it's long history of introducing meaningless mooks as hordes of alien locusts. I don't mind the existence of creep races in games, that exist to be killed. But if you're going to have lore, it's all gotta have lore, and you should at least try to keep from having 83+ goddamn races when only a fraction of them have any meaningful... meaning.

And Troggs, in particular, despite being apparently mindless are supposed to have been such an existential threat that using radiation gas made sense. There's a reason why humans rule the earth and apes or wolves or elephants or tigers don't, despite being stronger than us. We got brains, and they don't. There was a time when animals that could fucking end us outnumbered us. Not so much anymore. Because again, brains.

So no matter how much stronger or more numerous they are, the Troggs shouldn't have been able overrun the gnomes to the degree where the radiation gas seemed a reasonable strategy, if they were as mindless as we're led to believe. They need some capacity for strategy, abstract thinking, tactics, an ability to think around gnomish innovations and war machines...

And if Troggs can do that, then they have brains. They have language. They have some sort of culture. There's got to be at least some sort of depth to them. And that means they need to have motivations more complicated than 'Trogg Smash!' or at least, some reason why 'Trogg Smash!' is the only thing they're doing.

If the Silent War was a complete rebuild of the setting, but I wanted to keep the Gnomes being driven out of their homes story element, I would have either ditched the Troggs (and replaced them with either a civil war, some sort of old god minion invasion, or kobolds) or changed the nature of them entirely by having them be some longstanding civilization deeper under the earth that invaded the Gnomes either because Gnomes struck first (accidentally or intentionally) or out of the same motivations that encourage imperialism and conquest anywhere: jingoism and a desire for more resources, subject labor and living space.

But I can't do something quite that drastic for TSW, because, though the project has somewhat drifted from the initial parameters (because of how incoherent some elements of Stormwind's history is), this is still meant to be an expansion on canon, not a rebuild. If I was gonna rebuild, I'd be changing a lot more.

So I'm stuck trying to come up with coherent explanations for why the Troggs do what they do while also having minds and some degree of a culture, and I have a reasonablish answer, but it's an answer I only have to have because it seems that Blizzard's favorite answer to 'why' for just about anything is 'make a brand new thing and drop it in without context or development'.

And I'm really, really annoyed about that.

/rant.

 

[Kylia Quilor]

"My people! Gather and hear me!
Word has come to me today that the fortifications surrounding the lands of our kingdom left free of foreign invasion and despoilment are now complete. Under my vision and leadership, your labor and sacrifice and the assistance of my allies, has allowed us to complete these defenses well ahead of all expectations!
With these defenses built, free Stromgarde will be secure against invasion from without, and from these new, secure defenses, we will be able to gather our forces, rebuild, and prepare for the reclamation of all that we lost, for the punishment of the perfidious Alteraci and the monstrous beasts that squat on our lands, plunder the tombs of our fallen heroes and desecrate the very name of the Arathi Highlands! And if, when that day comes, the foul undead and demon-loving elves that ally with the Alteraci come to their defense, we will defeat them too! For you are the sons and daughters of Stromgarde, the true heirs of Arathor, and as long as we stand together, united, there is nothing we cannot do!
And though the threat from within remains, the weak, the treacherous and the soft, and we must be vigilant against them, I am aware of all that you, my people, have sacrificed in recent times to secure our freedom. And it is for that reason, and in celebration of the completed fortifications, that I am announcing that for the next week, the curfew will be expected for two hours, and all people of our fair kingdom will be receiving double rationing tokens for the next week. You have given much, and no doubt, you will have to give much again, but for tonight, for this week, revel in what you, my people, have accomplished, with this gift I give to you!"
-A speech given by Galen Trollbane from the balcony of the Palace to the city of Stromgarde. Thanks to various magical and technological innovations (and not insignificant sums of money put forward to develop them) Galen's speech and indeed his very image as he gave the speech, was projected all over the city, allowing every resident to hear it.

Galen Trollbane's face is everywhere, in Stromgarde.

Since the great disaster that nearly destroyed the Kingdom, Galen has had his propagandists in the new Chancellery of Truth working overtime to 'reassure' his people that he in indeed watching over them. As a result, posters and statues of Galen are everywhere in the territory that remains under his control, and it is known that at least some of those statues are animated golems, ready to wake and join in the defense of the city or the kingdom, or in the punishment of traitors and lawbreakers.

Which ones are golems, of course, remains unknown.

Strom is a city that is packed full, crammed to the gills with refugees who fled the Witherbark, Boulderfist or Alteraci invaders during that time, and though some have since been resettled in the remaining parts of the kingdom still under Galen's control, and some departed the Kingdom (usually for Stormwind, where there is still much need for manpower and still land unclaimed and jobs unfilled) until Galen set new rules to prevent excessive emigration from robbing Stromgarde of the manpower it will need to survive.

As a result, the city requires strict controls to prevent disease outbreaks, feed everyone, and ensure proper order. In addition to the extensive work on the city's fortifications, Galen has put dwarven contractors to work digging out and building extensive living spaces under the city's streets, complete with very carefully place air shafts and chimneys, to house the city's increasingly large underclass.

That underclass is itself ample recruiting ground for all the construction, and for staffing the oversized Stromic Army. Understandably, given the state the Kingdom finds itself in, vast sums of money have been poured into rebuilding the army that was shattered by the twin invasions. Recruits are put through a truly brutal crash training course, and the number of those who wash out, become seriously injured or even die during the training is significant, but with the Kingdom as hungry for soldiers as it is, even more are forced to the breaking point to make it through, giving Stromgarde the largest ratio of standing army to total population of any of the nations of Azeroth at this time.

That army is of course focused on the defenses of the Kingdom, and the constant skirmishes with Alteraci, Boulderfist and Witherbark in the confused, unclear borderlands between the territories of the four entities. Though more and more of late, the Witherbark have been pulling further back from the frontier with Stromgarde and Alterac, focusing in on their lands in the southeast, leaving the Boulderfist with less support.

The Stromic Army always had first claim on resources, funding, talent and manpower, and has since the earliest days of the Kingdom as a distinct entity. But today, that's even more true, and the primary purpose of the rationing that the ordinary citizens of the Kingdom face is to provide increased rations to the soldiers to maintain morale, to reward their sacrifices and stockpile supplies for extended campaigns when war inevitably breaks out, and it is for that war that the Royal Army readies constantly.

The Stromic Army's long tradition of martial discipline and success, though marred by recent events, is one to be wary of, and though many officers were purged before the invasions and many more since, the new class of officers rising through the ranks, loyal to the new order, are slowly cutting their teeth on the battles bloodying them in the no-mans land. They will reclaim their record of success, the record they had when they were the Legions of Arathor.

The Stromic Royal Army traces itself back to those legions, and even today, it still retains many of the techniques and traditions of Arathor, and their heavy infantry remain formidable, but even with crash training, making a proper Legionary is the work of years, so more and more archers, light cavalry and medium infantry - mostly pikemen - have been taking shape in the Kingdom's armies, in addition to the already existing formations of light skirmishers.

Of course, the diversion of so many resources to the army, and a way from other things, and especially the rationing, is not popular, especially since so much of Stromgarde's food must be imported now - and an increasingly large share comes from Mulgore and Durotar, as Galen, his distaste for orcs aside, has no room in his heart to spare hate for them. He has eyes only to the north, rather than across the sea.

But despite the rationing's unpopularity, food riots, or indeed, riots of any kind have not been seen in the capital city since the first one, the chaotic days after the city first got flooded with refugees. Order was restored with Galen's favorite tactics for maintaining order - iron and blood. Iron in the steel of the spines and weapons of his Oprikhran and the blood of all those who refused orders to disperse.

The streets of Strom are now patrolled by soldiers, by the Oprikhran, and by the city guard in force, with gnomish contraptions and arcane scrying crystals set up to ensure that every inch of the city, or as close as can be done, is under watch.

The people of the city go to work, or line up looking for work, or otherwise go about their business during the day, but as night falls, everyone must return to their homes, often crowded tenement buildings or homes with extra residents renting space to make up for the housing shortages and to cover the rising costs of food in the rationed environment.

At night, when the curfew falls, no one but officials of the crown, authorized and credential merchants making deliveries, and anyone else with a proper pass for moving around after dark, should be outside of their house. Curfew violations are penalized quite harshly, because there is no justification for breaking the law in these dangerous time. Even if one isn't a spy or saboteur working directly against the kingdom, by being out and about, by breaking the law, you spread weakness, lawlessness and disorder through the people of Stromgarde.

It would be wrong to say that every single Stromgardian is perpetually afraid, living in terror and only acting to avoid penalty. Fear of the Oprikhran is indeed nearly universal, and the draconian new laws are not beloved, but the patriotic feelings of the Stromic people run high now, and nothing serves as a rallying point than a convenient other to hate, and the Alteraci, the Witherbark and the Boulderfist serve as excellent other.

To ensure that the people of the overcrowded capital especially remember who the enemy is, criers from the Chancellery of Truth routinely shout from street corners with the latest news of Alteraci brutality in their occupied territories, or the myriad of sins enacted by the Witherbark and Boulderfist in portions of Stromgarde they control. Victories are reported with breathless eagerness, and even defeats - always suffered due to trickery, superior numbers or weakness on the part of commanders who lacked proper steel in their spine -

Sometimes these stories - of the enemy's defeat, of Stomic glory, of defeat due to weakness and the vileness of their foes - are even unambiguously true. The Chancellery of Truth of course, never lies, but the truth must be understood properly before delivered to the people of Stromgarde, and only those who are truly trusted by Galen can decide what truths the people of Stromgarde are ready for unvarnished.

Morale must be maintained, in these trying times.

It is for this reason that one can make the strong case that the Chancellery of Truth and their propagandists, writers, criers and technicians (spreading the reach of Galen's voice across the Kingdom by means of magical sound and image capturing devices aided by gnomish contraptions, and even some genuine Stromic ingenuity) and other dedicated servants of the New Order are the true strength to Galen's rule.

Fear can keep people in line, it can make them work, it can keep them silent, it can make them walk into hell, this is true.

But only loyalty, love of country, hate of the enemy can drive people to charge into hell, make them work long, desperate hours at low wages building fortresses, working at the forges, make them silent even in their own minds. And it is for that the Chancellery exists - it is Galen's belief that with the proper motivations, anyone can be driven to seemingly impossible heights, and with his vision, he will lead his people to perfection.

He will make them love him as they fear him, he will make them obey not just because they fear, because they love. He dreams of a day when everyone in Stromgarde truly lives, breathes and dies the new order. When, cradle to grave, no thought but one that serves the needs of Stromgarde passed through the minds of it's people. When treason and weakness are first things of the past, and then things truly unimaginable.

It is a distant dream, perhaps even a pipe dream, but it is one that Galen works towards with nearly as much energy as his feverish preparations for war.

Of course, until that time, fear remains a powerful motivator, and the Oprikhran, be they the enforcers clad in armor painted Stromic Red, the silent spies, unseen throughout the kingdom or the interrogators in the darkest and most hidden dungeons in the realm, are the source of that fear.

To dissent in Stromgarde is to be a traitor. Even if you are not working for one of Stromgarde's many enemies - real and imagined - by spreading dissent, by publicly criticizing the policies of the King, of the one man who can lead Stromgarde out of the darkness and into its rightful and glorious destiny, a citizen is undermining the Kingdom, spreading weakness, and aiding the enemies of the realm.

The Oprikhran acts openly and secretly - their red-clad enforcers will march down the streets and seize those whom it serves them, but all too often, those who who whisper dissent, or express even the slightest of contrary opinions merely vanish in the night. Torn from their beds without even waking anyone else in the house or apartment sometimes. Vanishing on the way home from or to work, or on their way to market to use their ration tokens to obtain food.

Those who vanish sometimes return, silent about their experiences, quiet and intensely loyal to the new order, but it is rare. Most who vanish never return, and talking about them, asking about them - it is a way to make the Oprikhran turn their eyes on you, and no one, even the most loyal, wants that.

To be vanished, is to not exist. You do not talk about the vanished.

You do NOT talk about the vanished.

The Oprikhran's inner workings are obscure even to many in Stromgarde's government, as they report only to Galen, and allow none inside their forbidding black stone headquarters. It it is whispered that dozens of levels of cells and torture chambers, records rooms with the deepest, darkest secrets of everyone in Stromgarde, ready to be deployed against anyone with suspect loyalties.

In those chambers, it is said, in quiet, desperate, terrified whispers, tortures unheard of, unimagined by human minds before, are worked. Alongside all the usual favorites - fire, whips, racks, gibbets, hot pokers, brands, impalement and more. Every awful thing a living being can do to another, it is said, is inflicted on enemies of the crown, there, in those endless, infinite dungeons.

Of course, officially enemies of the realm are merely imprisoned, or executed. And yet... the whisper campaign continues. And oddly enough people who spread those whispers, never do find the Oprikhran knocking at their door.

Of course, despite their terrifying reputation, and the actual record - which comes close to their reputation, at times - does not stop dissent from existing. Or crime in general. But it does keep it fragmented and disjointed, organized resistance to the New Order virtually unheard of.

And besides, even if one hates Galen's regime, the Alteraci are still hated more.

But beside that fragmentary dissent, which may one day serve to rot the foundations of the New Order, or may not, there is still crime. A lively black market in food, and in ration tokens does exist - or at least, it is lively in a relative sense - and thieves still ply their trade, and even smugglers move illicit goods, forbidden books and the like, especially into the small town of Fadir's Cove. Even in Stromgarde, you can find a customs official ready to take a bribe to look the other way, if you're careful.

Stromgarde is, for now, a kingdom in a perpetual 'siege' mentality, paranoid, and in the eyes of other members of the Alliance, jumping at shadows.

But there are enemies of Stromgarde without. And there are enemies within.

How else could Stromgarde, the glorious heir of Arathor, be defeated so utterly by trolls, and ogres, and race-traitors?