Human

About 2,800 years before the Dark Portal, Thoradin, chieftain of the Arathi, gathered the human tribes under one banner. He built the city of Strom in the Arathi Highlands and declared the first human nation: Arathor.

Thoradin was in a hurry: in the north the Amani trolls were raising a great army. Their real target was the high elves of Quel’Thalas. Besieged, the elves came to Strom to ask for help.

Thoradin set one condition: the elves would teach humans magic. The elves agreed. In the Troll Wars the human and elven armies met the trolls at the foot of the Alterac Mountains; the fire the magi called down broke the trolls, and the Amani empire never regained its old strength.

After the victory the elves swore to aid the bloodline of Arathor forever. That oath would come up again thousands of years later, when Anduin Lothar, the last of the Arathi line, asked for their help.

Magic made humans strong, but it had a price: careless use of it drew the demons of the Burning Legion to Azeroth. Human magi and elves secretly founded the Council of Tirisfal and entrusted great power to a single protector, the Guardian of Tirisfal. The last to hold that title would be Medivh.

As Arathor grew, it drifted apart. The magi founded their own city, Dalaran, in the north, and new cities spread north and west. Some of Strom’s noble families moved south and founded the kingdom of Azeroth and its capital, Stormwind; Strom itself lived on as Stromgarde. In the end the one nation split into seven kingdoms.

When the Dark Portal opened, the quiet age of kingdoms that had kept apart for centuries came to an end. As you scroll, the map shows the two great wars step by step.

Years after the Second War a plague broke out in the north. Kel’Thuzad’s Cult of the Damned handed out tainted grain in the villages of Lordaeron; those who ate it died and rose again as undead soldiers of the Scourge.

Crown Prince Arthas Menethil and the young sorceress Jaina Proudmoore tracked the plague from Andorhal to Stratholme. Realising that the people of Stratholme were already poisoned, Arthas decided to purge the city; Uther and Jaina turned their backs on him.

Arthas went to Northrend to destroy the source of the plague. There he took up the cursed blade Frostmourne and entered the Lich King’s service. When he came home he killed his father, King Terenas, in the throne room, and the greatest human kingdom fell to the Scourge.

Then it was Dalaran’s turn: Archimonde, the Burning Legion commander summoned by the Scourge, levelled the city of magi. Heeding the warning of a mysterious prophet, Jaina led the survivors west across the sea to Kalimdor.

In Kalimdor humans stood shoulder to shoulder with their old enemies, the orcs, and with the night elves to stop the Burning Legion at Mount Hyjal. After the war Jaina founded Theramore on the coast of Dustwallow Marsh. Where Lordaeron stood there are now the Plaguelands.