PART VII - ICE ICE ARTHAS, or; CHECK OUT MY PLAGUE WHILE K’T EVOLVES IT
During the Second War the human kingdoms united with dwarves and elves for the first time to create the Alliance. The kingdom included the humans of Lordaeron, Gilneas, Alterac, and Stromgarde, the dwarves of Ironforge, and the elves of Quel’Thalas, as well as the mages of Dalaran, the armies of Lothar, and Archbishop Faol of the Church of the Light. And they had the gnomes too, so.. yeah.
So right now if you roll a new human character you start out in Elwynn Forest and you run to Goldshire (and try to avoid the people ERPing upstairs in the inn) and bam, right there is Stormwind at the heart of the human empire. Well, back at the end of the Second War if you’d have rolled a human you’d have spawned in the Tirisfal area because Lordaeron wasn’t Undercity yet, it was the thriving human capital of the Alliance.
The head of the Alliance was the King of Lordaeron, King Terenas. He had a son named Arthas who was a pasty, blond waifish kid. He wasn’t really the athletic type and didn’t have any physical skill. When the Alliance was formed to defend against the Horde invasion, Lordaeron took in many people fleeing the invasion, and that included a young Varian, son of King Wrynn of Stormwind. Varian was a strong kid, so he and Muradin Bronzebeard taught Arthas to fight and toughened him up a little.
After the Second War was over (score so far, Horde: 1, Alliance: 1) the Burning Crusade wasn’t happy. Even though it was Gul’dan’s fault for running away and trying to find Sargeras’ Tomb, Sargeras’ recruitment officer Kil’jaeden blamed his puppet, the former orc warchief Ner’zhul. Kil’jaeden captured Ner’zhul and destroyed his body and tortured his soul until he agreed to serve the Burning Legion again. Then he encased Ner’zhul’s spirit in a suit of armor and trapped him in an icy prison in Icecrown and set him to work on developing chemical weapons.
Meanwhile, young Arthas grew up and joined the Knights of the Silver Hand and learned the ways of being a paladin from Uther the Lightbringer (a paladin is brave, courageous, and knows his place in a raid – it’s at the back, healing!) Around this time Arthas met a young magician from Theramore named Jaina, and the two of them were sorta almost romantic, but Arthas kept getting cold feet (FORESHADOWING) and all Jaina really wanted to do was study anyway. But they were very close. Mostly it was one of those things where they considered each other their romantic interest, but only insomuch as it was an excuse to not be distracted while they pursued their career goals. Being a long distance relationship made it even easier for them to find reasons to put off getting serious.
Around this time the young Warchief thrall was visited by a magic bird (Medivh) who told him that serious shit was about to go down and they should avoid it by sailing west to the continent of Kalimdor. Thrall believed him, so all the orcs fought their way through the Lordaeron forces to the coast and went west to Durotar and founded Orgrimmar. The humans were like ‘good riddance’ and were happy the orcs were gone.
Back in his cave in Icecrown, Ner’zhul had developed a super awesome badass chemical weapon called the Plague of Undeath. It was so nasty that he could manipulate it to kill people and animals and shit and use his mental powers to make slaves out of them. One of these slaves was a mage that Ner’zhul mentally lured to Northred named Kel’Thuzad. Kel’Thuzad took the plague with his demon assistant Mal’Ganis to the kingdom of Lordaeron and started poisoning people. Kel’Thuzad manipulated it into nasty, nasty shit. It was like Agent Orange crossed with bath salts. It killed vegetation and scorched the ground, and turned all the humans into undead zombies under Ner’zhul’s control. These zombies and undead things became known as the Scourge.
This time the magic bird flew to Lordaeron and turned into the wizard Medivh, and he warned King Terenas that they needed to leave too or they were doomed. There were rumors that a plague was spreading in the north, and it might be related. But where the orcs listened, the humans didn’t. The humans were all like ‘but this is my home and I can’t leave it’ and figured that if they could fight off the orcs and Burning Legion, they weren’t afraid of anything. Instead, the king decided to send Uther, Arthas, and the visiting scholar Jaina to investigate.
They only got as far as Brill (I know, right?) when they discovered poisoned grain from Andorhol, a major grain distribution point. They rushed to Andorhol to find it devastated, and they blamed Kel’Thuzad for the carnage. But the sly dog said “hey, I’m just doing what Mal’Ganis made me do” and he got away and they went off in pursuit of Mal’Ganis at the city of Stratholme.
When they got there the discovered that the people of Stratholme had already started using the grain and were already poisoned. So instead of USING HIS FREAKING CLEANSE SPELL, Arthas decided that everyone who had eaten grain had to die before they would turn into zombies, and thus the Paladin Ret Spec was born. Arthas ordered Uther and his paladins to burn the town and kill everyone, but Uther refused, so Arthas disbanded the Knights of the Silver Hand. Jaina was horrified (although even though he was murdering thousands of people she didn’t officially break up with him) and ran away with Uther, while Arthas stayed to slaughter the town.
Arthas raced from one end of the town to the other killing everyone, while at the other end Mal’Ganis corrupted people with the plague and turned them into zombies – the scourge – for his army. Finally when there was no town left to destroy Arthas demanded a duel with Mal’Ganis, but the demon said “suck it” and used a portal to escape to Northrend, inviting Arthas to come visit him some time.
He did. He grabbed a bunch of troops and sailed to Northrend in pursuit of Mal’Ganis. When they landed Arthas met up with Muradin Bronzebeard, a dwarf explorer who was looking for a sword he had heard of named Frostmourne. They had just established a beachhead and had a couple of skirmishes with the scourge when an elf arrived and said “lulz, your girlfriend went to the king and had him order your troops to come home.” Naturally, Arthas burned the ships they arrived in so they couldn’t go anywhere.
So they stumbled around Northrend for a while and at one point Mal’Ganis even appeared to them long enough to tell Arthas he was going to die. Then they found a portal that led them to the cave where Frostmourne was kept. Despite ancient elemental spirits warning him about the nature of the sword, and the big writing on a sign that said “WARNING - EVIL SHIT” Arthas took the sword anyway and chased after Mal’Ganis.
He ended up destroying Mal’Ganis’ castle and confronting him, but at that point his soul had been drained away by the sword. He was now a death knight of the scourge. So he went completely bad and killed all his troops and turned them into zombies and sailed back to Lordaeron (presumably on new ships they built) and he marched into the throne room and stabbed his father/the king in the chest and let loose his scourge army on the city, and Jaina was really, really happy that she hadn’t married him.
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