World of Warcraft: Chronicle Volume 1 (23 page)

A
s battles raged across central Kalimdor, one group of
Azshara’s servants grew increasingly concerned for their own future. This small sect of Highborne sorcerers acted as an extension of the queen’s will. From their headquarters in
Suramar, they engaged in covert activities aimed at securing Azshara’s rule and strengthening the empire.

Of the many duties that these Highborne performed, they excelled at hunting down and acquiring artifacts of great power. Most of these relics were stored in the
Vault of Antiquities, a vast repository located in Suramar. Among the greatest archaeological discoveries made by this group of Highborne were the long-lost
Pillars of Creation, an extraordinary set of relics that the ancient keepers had used to shape and order Azeroth in ages past.

Though Suramar’s elite Highborne had pledged their undying loyalty to Azshara, their views on the queen began to shift as the war dragged on. The group’s leader, Grand Magistrix
Elisande, feared that the Legion did not have the Highborne’s best interests in mind. The monstrous demons had already destroyed much of the night elves’ glorious empire and poisoned the surrounding land with their fel magics.

Elisande’s distrust of the Legion only deepened when she discovered that demons were planning to transform Suramar into a new staging ground for the war. Legion agents had begun forming a gateway to the
Twisting Nether within the city’s most prominent structure, the
Temple of Elune. Once open, this portal would allow the Legion’s reinforcements to storm into Azeroth and crush the night elf resistance on a second front.

Yet Elisande thought that such a portal would likely destroy Suramar and everyone who dwelled within. Thus the grand magistrix and her followers formed a plan to sabotage the Legion’s efforts. They severed their ties with the other Highborne and moved to seal the demons’ new portal. To do so, Elisande and her allies sought out the potent artifacts they had gathered over the years. In particular, they knew that the Pillars of Creation possessed the raw power that they would need to neutralize the Legion’s portal.

With these artifacts in hand, Elisande and her Highborne led an assault against the demons in Suramar. Just as the Legion’s new portal began roaring to life, the sorcerers channeled their magic through the Pillars of Creation. They wove a great spell that closed the howling gateway and locked it with a set of unbreakable seals.

Though they had thwarted the attempt to create a new portal, the rebellious Highborne had no plans to join the night elf resistance and continue fighting the Legion. Fearing calamity, Elisande and her followers worked to fortify their holdings in Suramar. They harnessed the Eye of
Aman’Thul, one of the Pillars of Creation, to create an immense fount of arcane magic. Known as the
Nightwell, this source of power would nourish the sorcerers and protect them from future threats. In the millennia to come, the fount would also change Elisande and her allies, transforming them into a new race called the
nightborne.

D
espite a series of crushing defeats, hope yet lingered among the night elf resistance. A brave new leader,
Jarod Shadowsong, had assumed the mantle of command. Unlike his predecessors, he was not born of noble blood. A fierce combatant and a brilliant strategist, Jarod went to great lengths to strengthen the resistance. He stripped away the night elves’ inherent xenophobia and invited many of Azeroth’s other races—such as the
earthen,
tauren, and mighty
furbolgs—into the night elf army.

The resistance also found allies among their Highborne enemies. A group of the sorcerers, led by
Dath’Remar Sunstrider, had come to realize that their allegiance to demons would bring ruin to Azeroth. These Highborne abandoned Azshara and pledged their lives to the resistance.

Even the
Wild Gods finally emerged from the forests at
Cenarius’s goading, prepared to fight tooth and claw for the resistance. The forests trembled as these gargantuan beings marched down from the slopes of
Hyjal. Each of the Wild Gods possessed strength and power unlike anything the demons had yet faced. Some, such as the white wolf
Goldrinn, dwarfed even the largest demons in size.

With the Wild Gods came a host of other fay creatures, including the woodland
dryads and the many-headed chimaeras. Even the elusive treants, mighty tree-folk imbued with great wisdom and strength, emerged to fight the demons.

Under Shadowsong, the combined army launched a desperate assault against
Zin-Azshari itself. The resistance stormed the broken capital and clashed with the Legion’s seemingly numberless ranks. The cost was horrific. Thousands upon thousands of demons fell, but so, too, did many of Azeroth’s mighty defenders. The Legion’s bloodletting warriors even overwhelmed a number of the Wild Gods. One by one, these primordial creatures succumbed to the poisoned black blades and fel powers wielded by the demons. With each death, the forests atop Hyjal shivered, and the winds howled in sorrow.

As the battle continued, Malfurion and
Tyrande journeyed to the Well of Eternity’s shores with a small, elite force. They hoped to reclaim the
Dragon Soul and prevent the Legion from using its powers. Malfurion and his allies were soon joined by Illidan, who claimed his previous allegiance to the Highborne and the Legion had merely been a ruse to learn of their ways.

Although Malfurion remained deeply suspicious of his brother, a much greater threat consumed his attention. He discovered that the Well of Eternity had become a colossal portal—a direct gateway for Sargeras himself to enter Azeroth.

Malfurion then realized that no standing army, no matter how vast, could withstand the terrible might of Sargeras. Victory, he determined, could only be achieved by destroying the Well of Eternity itself. While such an act was unthinkable, the Well of Eternity was the Legion’s umbilical link to the physical world. Malfurion knew that destroying the fount of power would spell the end of night elf civilization as he knew it, but it was the only chance of saving the world.

After reclaiming the Dragon Soul, Malfurion and his companions infiltrated Azshara’s palace. They discovered that many of the Highborne were in the midst of weaving a spell to strengthen the portal within the Well of Eternity. In a desperate attempt to throw their magic out of alignment, Malfurion drew on the potent energies of the Dragon Soul and lashed out at his enemies. The great druid conjured a colossal thunderstorm that devoured the skies over the broken palace. The tempest battered Zin-Azshari with ferocious winds and a barrage of lightning strikes, decimating the demons and Highborne within the city.

Just as Malfurion had hoped, his efforts to disrupt the Highborne and their enormous gateway worked. As Sargeras prepared to emerge from the portal, the Highborne’s spellwork unraveled and an unstable vortex of arcane energies ignited within the Well of Eternity. The fount buckled in upon itself. In that moment, Sargeras was ripped back into the
Twisting Nether. Volatile energies whipped out from the collapsing Well of Eternity, hurling most of the Legion’s ranks into the Nether as well. As their roars of fury echoed across the Nether, massive earthquakes began rupturing the crust of Azeroth.

Malfurion and the night elf resistance had won, but they had no time to savor victory. The world itself was coming apart beneath their feet.

En masse, the night elves scrambled to put distance between themselves and the crumbling Well of Eternity. The fount completed its collapse, igniting a cataclysmic explosion that blotted out the skies. The howling ocean surged in to fill the void left by the explosion, devouring the ruins of Zin-Azshari.

When the apocalyptic earthquakes finally ceased, the surviving night elves saw that their world had been torn asunder. The Well of Eternity’s destruction had shattered nearly eighty percent of Kalimdor’s landmass, leaving only a handful of separate continents and small archipelagoes. A tumultuous storm of energies—known as the
Maelstrom—had engulfed the Well of Eternity itself. Ever after, the constantly spinning vortex would stand as a reminder of the terrible cost of the war.

For the night elves and all other living creatures on Azeroth, the world had changed forever.

T
HE
F
ATE OF
A
ZSHARA AND
H
ER
H
IGHBORNE

Queen Azshara and many of her loyal Highborne survived the Sundering, but not without consequences. The imploding Well of Eternity sucked them into the fathomless depths of the Maelstrom. Some were cursed and irrevocably warped into a new and hateful serpentine race called the
naga. One of the most powerful among these twisted abominations was the queen’s former handmaiden, Lady
Vashj. Hidden from the world, she and Azshara would quietly build the naga capital of
Nazjatar in the cold darkness at the bottom of the sea
.

T
he Sundering decimated life across the face of Azeroth, but one secluded region of southern Kalimdor miraculously escaped destruction: Pandaria. For centuries, a succession of peaceful emperors had ruled over the mysterious land. Prior to the
Burning Legion’s invasion, a new
pandaren ruler had taken the throne, brimming with confidence and hope about his future.

His name was
Shaohao, and although he did not know it at the time, his reign would mark the beginning of a new chapter in Pandaria’s history.

As was tradition among new emperors, Shaohao consulted a mystic
jinyu waterspeaker to glean knowledge of what the future held. The news he heard was dire: the jinyu foresaw a horrific invasion of ravenous demons, kingdoms engulfed in sickly green fire, and the land itself howling in pain and torment.

Plagued with uncertainty, Shaohao went to see the legendary
August Celestials and his great friend the
Monkey King in order to make sense of the terrible vision. With their help, the emperor expelled the dark emotions that troubled his heart: his doubt, despair, fear, anger, hatred, and violence. As he did so, these negative traits took on physical form. They manifested into powerful spiritual entities known as the sha.

One by one, Shaohao used his wisdom to battle these sha and lock them away deep beneath Pandaria. There they would remain, festering beneath the earth. To stand watch over these imprisoned sha, Shaohao also founded the
Shado-pan—an elite order of highly trained pandaren soldiers.