|
The Battle of Grim Batol
Kil'jaeden cast Ner'zhul's icy cask back into the
world of Azeroth. The hardened crystal streaked
across the night sky and smashed into the desolate
arctic continent of Northrend, burying itself deep
within the Icecrown glacier. The frozen crystal,
warped and scarred by its violent descent, came to
resemble a throne, and Ner'zhul's vengeful spirit
soon stirred within it.
From the confines of the Frozen Throne, Ner'zhul
began to reach out his vast consciousness and touch
the minds of Northrend's native inhabitants. With
little effort, he enslaved the minds of many
indigenous creatures, including ice trolls and
fierce wendigo, and he drew their evil brethren into
his growing shadow. His psychic powers proved to be
almost limitless, and he used them to create a small
army that he housed within Icecrown's twisting
labyrinths. As the Lich King mastered his growing
abilities under the dreadlords' persistent vigil, he
discovered a remote human settlement on the fringe
of the vast Dragonblight. On a whim, Ner'zhul
decided to test his powers on the unsuspecting
humans.
Ner'zhul cast a plague of undeath - which had
originated from deep within the Frozen Throne, out
into the arctic wasteland. Controlling the plague
with his will alone, he drove it straight into the
Human village. Within three days, everyone in the
settlement was dead, but shortly thereafter, the
dead villagers began to rise as zombified corpses.
Ner'zhul could feel their individual spirits and
thoughts as if they were his own. The raging
cacophony in his mind caused Ner'zhul to grow even
more powerful, as if their spirits provided him with
much-needed nourishment. He found it was child's
play to control the zombies' actions and steer them
to whatever end he wished.
Over the following months, Ner'zhul continued to
experiment with his plague of undeath by subjugating
every human inhabitant of Northrend. With his army
of Undead growing daily, he knew that the time for
his true test was nearing.
The Battle of Grim Batol)
Meanwhile, in the war-torn lands of the south, the
scattered remnants of the Horde fought for their
very survival. Though Grom Hellscream and his
Warsong clan managed to evade capture, Deadeye and
his Bleeding Hollow clan were rounded up and placed
in the internment camps in Lordaeron.
Notwithstanding these costly uprisings, the camps'
wardens soon re-established control over their
brutish charges.
However, unknown to the Alliance, a large force of
Orcs still roamed free in the northern wastes of
Khaz Modan. The Dragonmaw clan, led by the infamous
warlock Nekros, was using an ancient artifact known
as the Demon Soul to control the Dragonqueen,
Alexstrasza, and her dragonflight. With the
Dragonqueen as his hostage, Nekros built up a secret
army within the abandoned -- some say cursed
--Wildhammer stronghold of Grim Batol. Planning to
unleash his forces and the mighty red dragons on the
Alliance, Nekros hoped to reunite the Horde and
continue its conquest of Azeroth. His vision did not
come to pass: a small group of resistance fighters,
led by the mage Rhonin, managed to destroy the Demon
Soul and free the Dragonqueen from Nekros' command.
In their fury, Alexstrasza's dragons tore Grim Batol
apart and incinerated the greater bulk of the
Dragonmaw clan. Nekros' grand schemes of
reunification came crashing down as the Alliance
troops rounded up the remaining Orc survivors and
threw them into the waiting internment camps. The
Dragonmaw clan's defeat signaled the end of the
Horde, and the end of the Orcs' furious bloodlust.
Lethargy of the Orcs
Months passed, and more Orc prisoners were rounded
up and placed within the internment camps. As the
camps began to overflow, the Alliance was forced to
construct new camps in the plains south of the
Alterac Mountains. To properly maintain and supply
the growing number of camps, King Terenas levied a
new tax on the Alliance nations. This tax, along
with increased political tensions over border
disputes, created widespread unrest. It seemed that
the fragile pact that had forged the Human nations
together in their darkest hour would break at any
given moment.
Amidst the political turmoil, many of the camp
wardens began to notice an unsettling change come
over their Orc captives. The Orcs' efforts to escape
from the camps or even fight amongst themselves had
greatly decreased in frequency over time. The Orcs
were becoming increasingly aloof and lethargic.
Though it was difficult to believe, the Orcs -- once
held as the most aggressive race ever seen on
Azeroth -- had completely lost their will to fight.
The strange lethargy confounded the Alliance leaders
and continued to take its toll on the rapidly
weakening Orcs.
Some speculated that some strange disease,
contractible only by Orcs, brought about the
baffling lethargy. But Archmage Antonidas of Dalaran
posed a different hypothesis. Researching what
little he could find of orcish history, Antonidas
learned that the Orcs had been under the crippling
influence of demonic power for generations. He
speculated that the Orcs had been corrupted by these
powers even before their first invasion of Azeroth.
Clearly, demons had spiked the Orcs' blood, and in
turn the brutes had been granted unnaturally
heightened strength, endurance, and aggression.
Antonidas theorized that the Orcs' communal lethargy
was not actually a disease, but a consequence of
racial withdrawal from the volatile warlock magics
that had made them fearsome, bloodlusted warriors.
Though the symptoms were clear, Antonidas was unable
to find a cure for the Orcs' present condition. Then
too, many of his fellow mages, as well as a few
notable Alliance leaders, argued that finding a cure
for the Orcs would be an imprudent venture. Left to
ponder the Orcs' mysterious condition, Antonidas'
conclusion was that the Orcs' cure would have to be
a spiritual one. . .
|