World of Warcraft: Chronicle Volume 1 (32 page)

   
From their tenuous encounters with the naaru, the priests learned to harness the extraordinary healing effects of the Light. They also formed a religious movement founded on the tenets of justice, peace, and altruistic works. Popular among common folk, this movement flourished
.

Lordaeron was also home to deeply religious ascetics who believed in the Light, a cosmic power they claimed infused every living thing in existence. Many sick and elderly people traveled to religious communes in Lordaeron, hoping to find a cure for their ailments. Others made pilgrimages to the city-state in search of wisdom and enlightenment. Lordaeron’s borders quickly expanded, and it matured into a proper kingdom. The noble families eventually renamed the heart of their flourishing nation
Capital City.

Not long after the lords of Strom went north, the last living descendants of King
Thoradin also left Arathor. Led by a member of Thoradin’s line named
Faldir, they set off by sea and ventured far to the south, enticed by rumors of a lush, unplumbed land where they could make a new beginning.

The stories proved true. Thoradin’s descendants settled the land and founded the kingdom of
Stormwind. Nestled among cliffs and boasting a natural protected harbor, this city-state established itself as a major power in the region.

Strom was left in the hands of a few ruling families too stubborn to abandon the old capital. Among them were the descendants of
Ignaeus Trollbane, a general who had become a legend during the Troll Wars. Over the years, these families rebuilt Strom’s crumbling infrastructure and renamed their capital
Stromgarde. The city, however, would never regain its former glory.

Indeed, Thoradin’s dream of a unified people was dying. Over generations, the various city-states became increasingly distant and insular. Rivalries emerged as these nations turned inward, concerned with their own well-being and less inclined to offer aid to each other.

MAP OF HUMAN TERRITORIES IN THE EASTERN KINGDOMS

F
or thousands of years, the nomadic
tauren wandered Kalimdor’s lush forests, living in harmony with nature and the elements. Of the many lands the tribes roamed, one in particular became sacred ground for all tauren shaman. It was called
Mashan’she
, or “the Loom of the
Earth Mother,” named in honor of the mythical deity who they believed had created the world. This verdant grassland sat along Kalimdor’s western coast, wedged between the jungles of Feralas and the Stonetalon Mountains.

Drawn by faint elemental whisperings, the tauren shaman grew convinced that the Earth Mother herself dwelled somewhere beneath the meadows. They spent decades attempting to wake her by communing with the region’s elementals and conducting celebratory rituals.

The shaman eventually succeeded, but they soon discovered that the whispers they had heard did not come from a benevolent Earth Mother. They were echoes of something far darker—something from Azeroth’s violent elemental past. From the depths of a massive cavern below the grasslands emerged a colossal earth elemental: Princess
Theradras, a descendant of the elemental ruler
Therazane.

In ages past, the keepers had imprisoned most of the elementals in another plane of existence. Yet some, like Theradras, had eluded this banishment. She had hidden beneath the earth, eventually falling into a deep slumber. The millennia of sleep had slowly weakened Theradras’s mighty form.

The newly awakened Theradras reached out to the verdant surroundings and consumed their energies. Invigorating power flooded through the elemental, regenerating her craggy form. Theradras’s siphoning left enormous tracts of land desiccated. Plant life across Mashan’she withered and died. The horrified tauren, now forced to scavenge for sustenance, would later rename the barren plains Desolace.

The sudden and violent death of such vast intertwined ecosystems sent ripples throughout Azeroth and beyond. Many of the mortal druids and spirits in the
Emerald Dream reeled from the staggering loss of life. One of
Cenarius’s woodland sons,
Zaetar, emerged from the Dream to investigate.

Much like his father, Zaetar walked the physical world in the form of a majestic half-stag. Supple vines and verdant leaves circled his limbs and great antlers. Wherever his hooves touched the soil, dozens of saplings would sprout. In time, they would bloom into lush forest groves.

Zaetar’s investigation led him into the damp caverns beneath Desolace, where he discovered Theradras. Though he set his mind to imprisoning the strange creature, he soon grew enchanted with the princess. The stolen life energies that radiated from Theradras enticed Zaetar, and he became enthralled by her beauty.

Theradras also found Zaetar beautiful, and she resolved to do whatever she could to win his undying love. The elemental princess was keenly aware of the influence she held over Zaetar, and she used this to her advantage. Theradras claimed that she had meant no harm to the land and that she was seeking ways to restore the region to its former beauty. Together, she urged, perhaps they could succeed.

Zaetar abandoned his earlier quest and became Theradras’s mate. He knew it was against nature, but he could not deny the love that bloomed in his heart. From this forbidden union, an aberrant race was born. They were called the centaur, and their barbarism would come to terrorize the lands of Kalimdor.

What the centaur lacked in elegance and beauty, they made up for in strength. Their horse-like lower bodies afforded them great speed, while their burly humanoid torsos gave them incredible physical power. Yet the centaur’s penchant for brutality overshadowed all of their other traits.

Upon seeing the centaur, Zaetar immediately recognized the depths of his sin. Though he tried to connect with his offspring, he could not bear their presence. The centaur recognized the loathing in their father’s eyes, and it drove them into a blind rage. The savage horse-men lashed out, striking Zaetar down.

Zaetar’s death shattered Theradras’s heart. The elemental princess chastised the centaur for the senseless murder, and they grew forlorn at realizing they had hurt their beloved mother. They begged her forgiveness and promised that from that day forward, they would honor and revere their late father. Theradras later entombed Zaetar’s spirit in the great cavern where she had once slumbered. The centaur would name this site Maraudon, and ever after they would treat it as holy ground.

The centaur quickly proliferated, and they fanned out across Desolace. They unleashed their wrath on the hapless tauren who inhabited the area, forcing them to abandon their homes. Yet Theradras’s barbarous children did not stop in Desolace. In the centuries that followed, marauding bands of centaur would hunt down Kalimdor’s tauren, igniting a long and dark period of war between the two races.

S
ince the last war against the troll empire, the descendants of the
aqir had stayed hidden in their subterranean domains. Only the
mantid of Pandaria remained an active threat. Nearly all of Azeroth’s races had forgotten the ruthless potential of the insectoid colonies that lurked beneath the earth.

One of these colonies, the
qiraji, had taken root in the ancient fortress of
Ahn’Qiraj. The keepers had originally built the enormous stronghold to imprison the Old God
C’Thun. There, within Ahn’Qiraj’s lifeless sandstone corridors, the insectoids had lain dormant.

Though
Azshara and her night elf empire had once known of the fortress, its existence had become lost to time. Few living creatures dwelled near Ahn’Qiraj. This was due in part to the vast and inhospitable desert of Silithus, which stretched out from the stronghold’s towering obelisks.

Ahn’Qiraj wasn’t rediscovered by the elves until Archdruid
Fandral Staghelm initiated a quest to regrow the land of Silithus. He dispatched his warrior son,
Valstann, and a group of his most
trusted druids to perform this task. They trudged across the scalding dunes, searching for hidden water reservoirs that they could use to transform the region into a lush forest. Valstann and his comrades eventually stumbled across Ahn’Qiraj. Although some of the druids cautioned against entering the fortress, Fandral’s son forged ahead. His presence in the cold, dead halls inadvertently roused the dormant qiraji back to life.

From its prison beneath Ahn’Qiraj, C’Thun also became aware of the awakened qiraji. The Old God drove the insectoids into a murderous frenzy. The highest castes of qiraji society began organizing their lesser minions, the most numerous of which were known as the
silithid. These vicious insectoids came in many forms, and all obeyed the will of their qiraji overlords.

The discovery of the qiraji shocked Valstann and his druid companions. Upon retreating from Ahn’Qiraj, they established a small outpost in Silithus to keep watch over the insectoids. Before their eyes, the fortress swelled with greater and greater numbers of qiraji.

Then, without warning, a massive army spilled forth from the tunnels beneath Ahn’Qiraj. At the head of this swarming host were the qiraji. They directed their silithid minions to engulf the surrounding deserts and spread into other regions as well.

By this time, Valstann had called for help from his father. Fandral rallied a force of druids,
Sentinels, priestesses, and keepers of the grove to deal with the qiraji threat. In the southern reaches of Kalimdor, the night elf host clashed with their vicious foes. At times they managed to drive the qiraji back toward the dunes of Silithus, only for the insectoids to mount a counterattack and regain the advantage. This ebb and flow continued for many months, leaving in its wake the broken corpses of elves and insectoids alike.