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Broken Shadows
PREFACE
The orcs once cultivated a shamanistic society upon the world of
Draenor. They communed with the spirits of the elements and
their ancestors, and were at peace with the land. However they
eventually caught the attention of the demonlord Kil'jaeden and
the Burning Legion. Kil'jaeden struck a deal with a politically
powerful shaman Gul'dan, who then revolutionized the orcs into a
frenzied whirlwind of bloodlust and destruction - the Horde.
Gul'dan gathered a number of followers and founded the Shadow Council.
This Council was comprised of like-minded ambitious warlocks like him,
and they were the true masters of the Horde, scheming through their
puppet, the Warchief Blackhand. After a devastating war with the draenei
on Draenor, the land was empty and the clans turned to infighting,
unable to sate their bloodlust. Gul'dan was contacted by the wizard
Medivh, who showed him visions of his own world, Azeroth, and offered
Gul'dan the location of the Tomb of Sargeras, a site of powerful magics
that, Gul'dan believed, could make him a god.
Gul'dan and the Shadow Council opened the Dark Portal to Azeroth and led
the orcs through it. The Horde laid waste to the human kingdom of
Stormwind on the other side. However during the war, Medivh came under
attack, and Gul'dan, sensing the wizard's impending doom, attempted to
reach across the astral plane into his mind to decipher the location of
the Tomb of Sargeras, but while inside his mind, Medivh was killed. The
psychic trauma locked Gul'dan in a coma for weeks.
Without Gul'dan's guidance, Blackhand was open to attack, and was
assassinated by Orgrim Doomhammer, one of his top generals. Doomhammer
immediately consolidated control of the Horde, rallying the other
chieftains to his side, and eventually discerned the location of the
Shadow Council's hideout: the Temple of the Damned. Doomhammer raided
the Temple and killed nearly every warlock in the Council. Afterward,
Gul'dan awoke and bargained with Doomhammer for his life.
The
Second War between Man and Orc took the orcs across the sea, but at the
war reached its pinnacle, Gul'dan withdrew his forces from the
battlefield and took to the seas to find the Tomb of Sargeras. Though he
found it, the forces within destroyed him. Doomhammer was forced to turn
his attention to this betrayal, and though he routed Gul'dan's clans,
the delay gave the humans time to regroup and strike back at the orcs.
The Horde ultimately lost the war.
Years later, Thrall, son of the Frostwolf Clan's chieftain Durotan,
would arise to reclaim his people's shamanistic legacy. He and
Doomhammer freed the interred orcs, but Doomhammer died in the process,
and Thrall became the new Warchief. Thrall took his freed comrades
across the sea where they would found the kingdom of Durotar - named for
Thrall's father - and its capital city Orgrimmar - named for Thrall's
mentor and predecessor.
Broken Shadows
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