Undead

The story of the Forsaken, the undead people of the Horde, does not begin in a graveyard on Azeroth, but beyond a shattering Draenor. When the old orc shaman Ner’zhul tried to flee his dying world through portals, he fell into the hands of Kil’jaeden, one of the lords of the Burning Legion.

Kil’jaeden tore Ner’zhul’s body apart, yet bound his spirit without letting it die to a suit of armour and the runeblade Frostmourne. He locked him inside a block of diamond-hard ice, the Frozen Throne, and cast it down onto the glaciers of Icecrown in Northrend. He was now the Lich King, tasked with raising an army of the undead to rot the world from within before the Legion’s coming.

From his prison of ice the Lich King reached out with his mind and drew to himself Kel’Thuzad, an ambitious mage of Dalaran. Kel’Thuzad founded a secret order that promised immortality to the poor and weary people of Lordaeron: the Cult of the Damned.

The cult’s true weapon was not the sword, but a magical sickness called the Plague of Undeath. Spread to the villages in tainted grain from the granaries of Andorhal, it killed the living within days; those who died rose again with their own will wiped away, soldiers of the Scourge who heard only the Lich King’s voice.

Once the Burning Legion was beaten at Mount Hyjal, the Lich King turned his back on his masters. Kil’jaeden then sent Illidan Stormrage to destroy him.

In the ruins of Dalaran Illidan used an ancient relic, the Eye of Sargeras, to cast a spell that would shatter the glaciers of Icecrown from afar. His brother Malfurion stopped him before the spell was done, yet the tremor was enough to split a deep crack in the Frozen Throne in Northrend.

As the crack widened, the Lich King’s power bled out, and his iron grip over the undead in Lordaeron slackened. Sylvanas Windrunner was among the first to wake: she won back her will, reclaimed her own body in secret and gathered the other undead whose minds had cleared.

A dreadful silence met those who woke. Their minds had come back, yet their bodies were rotting, and they remembered one by one what they had done to those they loved while they were puppets of the Scourge.

Being free was not enough: Lordaeron was still in the hands of the Scourge and three dreadlords left behind by the Burning Legion. As you scroll, the map follows Sylvanas as she takes the ruins step by step.

They had won the civil war, yet enemies surrounded them: to the east lay Kel’Thuzad’s Scourge, and to the west and north stood the fanatical Scarlet Crusade, which saw no difference between a free Forsaken and a mindless zombie. Envoys sent to Stormwind did not even make it back from the gates.

Sylvanas then sent her envoys across the ocean. In Thunder Bluff the tauren archdruid Hamuul Runetotem and Cairne Bloodhoof believed the Forsaken deserved a second chance and persuaded Thrall. For the Horde, Undercity became a priceless stronghold in the Eastern Kingdoms; for the Forsaken, the Horde became a guarantee of survival.

In the deepest halls of Undercity, meanwhile, the alchemists of the Royal Apothecary Society keep their cauldrons boiling day and night, working on a new plague meant to wipe out both the Scourge and the living who stand in their way.