More Articles in the Beyond the Basics Series:
- Beyond Basics: Loaded Lore – The Horde Part 1
- Beyond Basics: Loaded Lore – The Horde Part 2
- BeyondBasics: Roleplaying Bar Staff
- Beyond Basics: Balancing IC and OOC
- Beyond Basics: All Kinds of Canon
- BeyondBasics: Six Good Roleplay Habits
So, picking up from Part One; the Horde lost the Second War. Ner’zhul , the Old Horde’s Warchief, was captured by Kil’jaeden for his failure. (Kil’jaeden being one of the Big Bads that messed with their water in the first place and engineered all this mess for his own ends.) These guys can pretty much rip their way through reality itself, so really, I don’t fancy being in Ner’zhul’s shoes about this time – even if he was a douchebag.
As punishment, Kil’jaeden the Deceiver destroyed Ner’zhul’s body, torturing his spirit until he agreed to serve the Legion once again. Which is pretty hardcore, really. His soul was encased in a suit of armor, which was then bound forever to the Frozen Throne. Kil’jaeden hurled his creation towards Azeroth, where it smashed into Icecrown Glacier. Thus the first major player of the Third War, the Lich King, was born. These demons? Don’t fuck with them.
The Cold North To The Sunny Slightly-Less-North
Once on Azeroth, the Lich King took control of Northrend pretty easily. (Let’s be honest folks, it’s a frozen wasteland. I’m not sure there was all that much there, to begin with. But hey, you… you kill those penguins. Yeah.) He had the necromancer Kel’Thuzad take the Plague of Undeath to Lordaeron. Perhaps he held a grudge, who knows.
However, before the start of the Third War that this guy is trying to ignore (and doing a pretty good job of it); the prophet Medivh came to Thrall in a dream (yes, I know, just go with it). He told Thrall he ought to collect up his new shamanistic Horde and cross the sea to Kalimdor to escape the shadow that was coming to consume the land. Most cowardly prophecy ever, amirite? So they upped and left, settling in the land they called Durotar after Thrall’s old man – Durotan. Because that is what you do.
While the plague seeped its way through Lordaeron, Thrall and the orcs over in Durotar were safe enough and they busied themselves making friends. Most notable was the Tauren chieftain Cairne Bloodhoof, after the orcs helped him defend and save his people from a vicious war with the Centaur. In return, the Tauren helped the orcs establish their foothold and a city in Durotar before moving on to establish their own in Mulgore.
Allies and Armies
Eventually, they would build atop the cliffs and create Thunderbluff, which is really not as old as you’d think. Thrall also got chummy with Vol’jin (*swoon*), one of the Darkspear trolls that had settled on Echo Isles after their jaunt across the sea. Together, these three races founded the building blocks of what would be The New Horde.
Meanwhile, the plague was sacking Lordaeron. After the Culling of Stratholme, Arthas pledged to venture to Northrend itself and seek out the Lich King that caused this trouble. Which he did, even though literally –everyone- told him not to. Literally. Everyone. It went well for him. Not. Sigh. Months later he returned and we’ll go into details of that in the next Alliance-themed episode because it gets all Soap Opera style juicy.
All in all, Arthas, now a Death Knight and as bat-shit crazy as they come, marched north on Quel’thalas with his army of the scourge. This was to seek a place of magical power with which he could bring Kel’Thuzad back to life. Life-ish-ness. Half life? Unlife? Undeath? Second deat-TO GET HIM BACK IN THE FIGHT. He was seeking out the Sunwell of the elves deep inside Silvermoon, because, with the Well of Eternity gone, it was the most potent magic source on Azeroth.
The Horde Roll Northwards
They rolled through Eversong, Silvermoon and on to Quel’thalas, destroying utterly everything in their wake and wiping out about 90% of the local elven population. Arthas raised Kel’Thuzad as a lich, and in doing so destroyed the Sunwell and the elves’ source of magic, which was something close to taking away a human’s water source. Dickhead. Think of the children, man. What remained of the high elves were divided: most, furious at the betrayal of the humans forces that opted not to send men north to help (which was a suicide mission), renamed themselves the sin’dorei – children of blood – and broke away from the Alliance with the humans.
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A few souls stayed the course and left the lands of Quel’thalas to stay with the human allies and remain high elves. For those that stayed in the homeland the suffering was not over (queue the tragic backing music please). Without a magic source – exposed, vulnerable and huddled in the smoking ruins of their once beautiful city – they needed aid. It was around this time that Sylvanas Windrunner lifted the curse on the undead. Some of them started to once more regain the power to resist the Lich King’s will. It was with these free-willed undead that Sylvanas created the Forsaken, retaking the city of Lordaeron as their capital. The elves, finding themselves n a similarly weak position, banded together with the Forsaken out of need and desperation.
A notable sign of this pairing is the Orb of Translocation found in the ruins of Lordaeron. You can use it to travel from one city to the other, and the forsaken forces noted in the Ghostlands are helping the elves rebuild and defend. All this was about eight to ten years previous to current game-time, as far as I am aware. It was this same desperation that saw the alliance of the blood elves and Forsaken, the eastern horde, ally themselves with the orcs, trolls and Tauren of the western horde. That is how it was for about a decade. I imagine some of that original animosity wore off over the course of the wars in Northrend and the Cataclysm, and no doubt in the more recent wars in Pandaria. But we’ll talk about racial animosity again at a later time, because oh boy will that be a rant.
And Then After The World Exploded…
At the end of the Cataclysm, Thrall left to get married, have kids, and retire to the south of France – or, you know, fuck around with dragons or some shit. Anyway, it was a year or two ago in game time and the mantle of Warchief was taken up by Garrosh Hellscream, who is almost, -almost- Joffrey levels of asshole. He’s a blind, red-visioned, bad-tempered, warmongering moron with utterly terrible tag-lines. ‘’We’ll paint it red.’’ How crass, Hellscream, really now.
It was Hellscream that led the Horde into a madman’s violent conquest war over Pandaria. Destroying massive chunks of the incredibly beautiful natural landscape at a time and on a whim. It was Hellscream that stole a magical bell from Dalaran and wound up getting us Hordies kicked out of the city, and one of the game’s best RP hubs. /sigh. He is an asshole. Oh, and he broke the bearmen’s pretty well by dropping the heart of a dead Old God in there and corrupting it. DÉJÀ VU. Come on, Hellscream, get your own gig.
Eventually, the rest of the Horde got real tired of his shit and there was a rebellion and civil war between the Darkspear Rebellion led by Vol’jin and the Garrosh Loyalists. With the help of the allies, the rebels eventually overthrew Hellscream. He was arrested and taken to stand trial in Pandaria. Vol’jin took up the mantle of Warchief, aided once more by Thrall who returned from fucking around with the dragons to help clean up his mess. And here we are.
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