Recaps

Loken’s assault on Dalaran gave way to disastrous wars as Thrall and Varian were manipulated into costly campaigns. After Varian woke in a parallel world and the Argent Tournament began, a soul formation beneath Icecrown exposed a deeper threat and the Black Knight was dragged underground.

• Loken attacked Dalaran, but Rhonin resisted his illusion, and Thorim summoned Hodir, Freya, and Mimiron to fight him.
• Yogg-Saron bound the Keepers and placed their fate before Thrall, who later ordered a campaign against the Scourge and Fordragon Legion.
• Garrosh’s Orc forces were destroyed at the Wrathgate, and Varimathras’s plague then devastated the Horde and led to Dranosh’s capture.
• Sylvanas manipulated Varian into raising a hundred thousand troops to invade Undercity, where Varimathras’s plague disabled the army and Varian was sent back to Stormwind.
• Starving people attacked Varian, and after he escaped them, Stormwind guards captured and tortured him before an unfamiliar figure sent him to a parallel world.
• In the parallel world, Varian became King Llane’s son and married Sylvanas, while Elune warned that the Scourge was attacking parallel worlds.
• Robbie and Kel'Thuzad tested Medivh’s soul-gathering formation and discovered it contained a fragment of Y'Shaarj that could destabilize Azeroth’s elements.
• During the Argent Tournament, the Black Knight attacked Tirion and transformed four challengers into Ghouls before a human Veteran’s soul array seized him and declared Arthas captured.

Thrall and his allies maneuvered the Horde and Alliance toward Icecrown, while Robbie uncovered the Scourge’s links to Elune and Y'Shaarj. After Taelan became the Lich King, the Argent Crusade’s assault exposed the Scourge’s weakness and ended with Elune confronting the Emissary.

• A plague from Icecrown killed five thousand Orcs, and Thrall blamed Tirion Fordring before the Emissary intervened and Robbie sought answers from Y'Shaarj.
• Robbie discovered that the Human Veteran was an Orc and learned that Elune had used the Orcs and Y'Shaarj’s flesh in her plans, while Thrall arranged for Jaina and Sylvanas to lead a rescue mission.
• Jaina and Sylvanas infiltrated the Forge of Souls, learned that Arthas was weakening, and escaped Icecrown after discovering that Robbie had impersonated him.
• Thrall and Tirion forced Varian to impose the Flesh Tax, but Garrick Padfoot rallied Stormwind’s defenders and Medivh rescued Thrall before the city’s commanders were transformed by poisoned wine.
• Varian chose not to kill Thrall, and Robbie and Kel'Thuzad learned from Lisa about the Hunters’ history before Robbie went to Icecrown and asked Taelan to become the new Lich King.
• Taelan accepted Frostmourne and the Helm of Domination, and Tirion’s Trial of the Crusader ended in a Scourge attack that killed the competing teams and drew Varian, Thrall, Jaina, and Tirion into flight.
• As the Argent Crusade fought Taelan’s Scourge, Taelan aged and weakened, but Orc Soul Essence restored his strength before he merged the dead into a tentacled monster and collapsed the coliseum.
• The Emissary saw Y'Shaarj’s flesh and blood disappear, and Elune appeared behind him, vowing to destroy the Scourge.

Varian’s disappearance and the Emissary’s schemes fractured the alliance against the Scourge, while Garrosh rose to power and spent his army attacking Icecrown Citadel. The arc ended with Tirion refusing to force the exhausted Orc survivors into battle and suggesting that Thrall bring them away from the Scourge.

• The Argent Tournament collapsed, Garrosh seized surviving Crusaders as food, and Varian wandered into a recruit camp where he was mistaken for a newcomer and sent to mine as a spider.
• Aegwynn’s attempt to restore Varian instead transformed a replacement spider named Daolin Gelaisi, whom the mages pressured into taking Varian’s identity and leading the army against Tirion.
• The Emissary sent Alexstrasza and the Fel Demon Dragons to attack the Wrathgate, where Bolvar’s forces were destroyed, while the Scourge’s attempt to resurrect Taelan failed for lack of willing sacrifices.
• Jaina and the allied forces fought Dranosh at Icecrown Citadel, and Jaina’s ten-thousand-soul ritual restored Dranosh before Garrosh ambushed the camp, killed him, and captured Tirion.
• Antonidas resurrected Varian as a Forsaken, and Thrall forced him to raise an army before Varian’s conscripts clashed with Tirion’s Argent Crusade and Thrall escaped to his hidden palace.
• The Emissary ordered Garrosh to attack Icecrown Citadel, where he led repeated assaults that cost more than a hundred thousand Orcs before Gorehowl’s backlash forced him to flee the first expedition.
• Garrosh renewed the assault under the Emissary’s pressure, but “Arthas” and the Scourge crushed his army, leaving Garrosh to teleport away as Tirion’s soldiers refused to attack the surviving Orcs.
• Garrosh escaped to Ratchet, while Tirion kept the allied army outside Icecrown Citadel and suggested bringing Thrall back to persuade the Orcs to abandon the Scourge.

Thrall manipulated the Alliance and Horde into a disastrous assault on Icecrown, while the leaders fought over the Scourge and its relics. The discovery of a multiplying Kobold weapon transformed the crisis into a threat to all of Azeroth.

• Tirion Fordring’s hunger strike failed to stop desertions, and Thrall returned to Northrend before luring Orc deserters to their deaths and organizing a coalition assault on Icecrown Citadel.
• The Alliance and Horde assembled armies, but starvation, infighting, and Sylvanas’s brutal efforts to impose order weakened them before the leaders reached the Frozen Throne.
• Thrall revealed that he had drawn the leaders to Icecrown so the Burning Legion could destroy them, then joined Magtheridon in attacking the Scourge.
• Arthas froze the Burning Legion and the Emissary freed the leaders, who agreed to make Tirion Fordring the public hero of the Scourge’s defeat.
• Tirion’s staged assault on Icecrown killed the noble heirs he had recruited, and Thrall and Vol'jin used the deaths to secure his cooperation and control the story of the campaign.
• At the Frozen Throne, Tirion discovered that Taelan had become the Lich King, killed him, and took the Helm of Domination before Thrall demanded that the leaders surrender people as food and slaves.
• Sylvanas, Magni, Jaina, and Tirion challenged Thrall for power, but Varimathras seized the Helm and revealed the Primordial Emissary within it.
• Varian unleashed a world-destroying Kobold that multiplied despite the leaders’ magic, plague, and weapons, until Elune transformed the creatures into plants that produced more Kobolds.
• Robbie moved the Kobolds and the original Icecrown Citadel into a sealed space, while Varian warned that the Kobolds could spread across the world within three months and Thrall attacked Rhonin.