Chapter Summaries

Garrick Padfoot used King Varian’s edict to rally more than five thousand soldiers, while the royal call met resistance and divided loyalties across the kingdom. In Westfall, Grayson set out for Stormwind City with his fleet, and in Lakeshire, Fangore gathered an independent force and marched toward Elwynn Forest.

• Garrick Padfoot had deserted King Varian’s northern expedition, later led Northshire Abbey’s defenders against the Kobolds, and built a stable settlement in Elwynn Forest.
• After receiving King Varian’s edict, Garrick copied it and sent it throughout the kingdom, drawing enough followers to raise his army above five thousand.
• Captain Grayson urged Gryan Stoutmantle to answer the royal command, but Gryan refused to involve Westfall in Stormwind City’s politics.
• Grayson resolved to sail to Stormwind City with his pirates, and Gryan supplied his fleet while warning him not to accept political power.
• Mayor Solomon refused to let Lieutenant Fangore use Lakeshire’s soldiers, so Fangore assembled two thousand men from adventurers and Morgan’s Vigil troops and marched toward Elwynn Forest.

Captain Bellygrub abandoned the Night Watch to seek advancement in the campaign to retake Stormwind City, where the vast allied army found the city empty and rescued Varian. Thrall was captured after his escape portal failed, but Medivh intervened, drove the soldiers from Stormwind Keep, and left Varian to announce a banquet and rewards for the army’s commanders.

• Captain Bellygrub quit the Night Watch, recruited a force of three thousand, and marched toward Elwynn Forest as the king’s defenders gathered in numbers exceeding a hundred thousand.
• Grand Marshal Garrick Padfoot led the allied forces into Stormwind City, where they found no enemies and crowded into Stormwind Keep.
• Thrall taunted the soldiers, but his Portal malfunctioned; as they attacked him, a black feather shielded him and blasted hundreds of soldiers away.
• Guardian Medivh arrived, demanded Varian, and forced the soldiers to withdraw from Stormwind Keep after rescuing the barely breathing Thrall.
• Varian issued a royal decree crediting the defenders with saving Stormwind City and inviting the commanders to a banquet where they would receive rewards.

At a banquet, Varian planned to eliminate the allied commanders after Medivh and Thrall taught him to see powerful subordinates as threats. Garrick escaped after learning of the plot, but the commanders who drank the poisoned wine began transforming.

• Varian offered Garrick a reward, but Garrick asked to retire, and Captain Grayson refused an admiralship to return to Westfall.
• Medivh warned Varian that powerful commanders could threaten his rule, while Thrall described killing strong Orcs to secure his position.
• Medivh gave Varian a Chaos Potion to put in the commanders' wine, and a guard overheard the plan and alerted Garrick.
• Garrick fled Stormwind Keep and became a wanted man again, while Varian returned to the banquet and promised the commanders rewards.
• Bellygrub became a marshal, and the commanders drank the poisoned wine; Captain Grayson became a Restless Soul, while Bellygrub transformed into a giant wild boar.

After Thrall forced Varian to help the Orcs, Robbie offered him Scourge protection in exchange for killing Thrall. Varian hesitated, and Thrall tried to persuade him that betraying humanity was the clever way to survive.

• Thrall mocked the transformed Stormwind commanders, and Varian ordered the guards to release them from captivity.
• Thrall urged Varian to take command of the now-leaderless troops and join the Orcs against the Scourge, and Varian reluctantly agreed.
• Varian prayed to Fela, then heard a mysterious voice offer him a choice that would decide the fates of Stormwind and its people.
• Varian witnessed Kel'Thuzad defeat Medivh, after which Robbie offered to protect the kingdom if Varian killed Thrall.
• Varian could not bring himself to strike Thrall, who argued that House Wrynn could survive only by siding with the Scourge and abandoning humanity.

Thrall persuaded Varian to abandon his threat of killing him by tempting him with the possibility of immortality as an Emissary of Elune. In Stormwind City, Robbie and Kel'Thuzad found a mysteriously open tavern whose proprietress, Lisa, revealed she remembered events from ten thousand years ago.

• Thrall warned Varian that defying Elune could bring eternal torment and suggested Emperor Thoradin had become her immortal Emissary.
• Thrall promised Varian that serving Elune might grant him immortality, and Varian dropped his sword.
• Robbie and Kel'Thuzad walked through a nearly deserted Stormwind City and worried over whether they would have to fight the Alliance's hundred thousand troops and the Argent Crusade.
• Robbie sensed powerful magic around a tavern and met its proprietress, Lisa, while Kel'Thuzad reacted strongly to her name and face.
• Lisa said she had opened her first shop after the Sundering and recalled the Tauren who had once lived in the area.

The innkeeper told Robbie that the Hunters had manipulated the Eastern Kingdoms’ history for ten thousand years, driving races to extinction and clearing the way for humanity. As chaos spread through Stormwind, Robbie decided the Scourge must investigate Azeroth’s rejection of them and use a new Lich King to bear its effects; he offered that role to Taelan Fordring.

• The innkeeper recounted how the Hunters exterminated the Marsh Tauren, engineered the rise and fall of other races, and arranged the Trolls’ replacement by humans.
• She explained that Sindragosa’s death weakened the Hunters’ control, allowing humans to rise through their discovery of magic and the Holy Light.
• Robbie realized how little the kingdom’s current crisis mattered against the scale of the Eastern Kingdoms’ history, and resolved to become more decisive.
• After seeing hungry soldiers terrorize Stormwind’s streets, Robbie told Kel’Thuzad he would seek to reproduce Tirion Fordring’s resurrection and study the force that caused the Scourge to age and withdraw.
• At Icecrown Citadel, Taelan mistook Robbie for Arthas and denied knowing Tirion Fordring; Robbie then asked whether Taelan would become the new Lich King.

Taelan Fordring was made the new Lich King under Robbie and Kel'Thuzad's control, while they investigated why he had not aged. After they suspected combat was the trigger, the Scourge prepared to attack as the Argent Tournament reached its final round against the Val'kyr Twins.

• Taelan Fordring accepted the Helm of Domination and Frostmourne, but the Helm trapped his consciousness while Robbie and Kel'Thuzad controlled his body.
• Robbie ordered Kel'Thuzad to create a Scourge army for Taelan, and they produced two hundred thousand weakened soldiers in three days.
• Robbie and Kel'Thuzad found no sign that Taelan was aging, then suspected that combat had triggered the Scourge's earlier aging and considered taking the offensive.
• Tirion Fordring returned to Northrend, oversaw the Trial of the Crusader, and used the bodies of failed challengers as stored military rations.
• Tirion announced the Val'kyr Twins as the final opponents, and the enormous light- and shadow-wreathed creatures entered the arena as the challengers watched in alarm.

The Trial of the Crusader finals began with the Val'kyr twins annihilating fourteen teams, leaving the two preselected champions to face them. Magni Bronzebeard’s beautiful Blood Elf goddaughter killed Lightbane Fiora with a single distant sword strike, and Tirion Fordring announced that she had inherited the Godslaying Void Slash.

• Varian learned that the Horde’s champion was a Troll recognized by Thrall as his younger brother, and that the Alliance’s champion was Magni Bronzebeard’s Blood Elf goddaughter.
• After Tirion Fordring opened the finals, Lightbane Fiora challenged the contestants to attack the Val'kyr twins together.
• The Val'kyr twins drew in and tore out the souls of all fourteen competing teams, killing them instantly.
• The Troll and the Blood Elf champion exchanged words and agreed that she would face the Val'kyr twins first.
• The Blood Elf champion struck Lightbane Fiora from a distance and split her apart with one sword swing.
• Tirion Fordring identified the technique as the long-lost Godslaying Void Slash and declared that the Lich King was doomed.

The Lich King Arthas exposed the Argent Crusade’s arena trials as a scheme to harvest souls, then raised the fallen contestants to attack the leaders and champion teams. As the massacre spread, Argent Crusade soldiers flooded the arena, and at Icecrown Citadel Robbie and Kel'Thuzad observed Taelan Fordring begin to age.

• The Blood Elf woman killed Edith with her Godslaying Void Slash, and the Troll man killed another Darkbane with his Death Curse Art.
• Taelan Fordring arrived as the Lich King, raised the fallen contestants with Frostmourne, and unleashed them on the arena.
• The resurrected Undead slaughtered both champion teams and attacked the leaders in the stands, while Varian, Thrall, Jaina, and Tirion escaped by portal or teleportation scroll.
• Argent Crusade soldiers charged into the arena in waves, and Frostmourne kept raising the fallen to swell the Undead army.
• After more than thirty thousand Argent Crusade soldiers had died, Robbie and Kel'Thuzad saw Taelan Fordring begin to show signs of aging.

Robbie and Kel'Thuzad discovered that killing Azeroth's people caused the Scourge to age, while Orcs Soul Essence temporarily restored Taelan's strength. Taelan brought down the Crusaders' Coliseum and exposed that the Scourge had removed Y'Shaarj's flesh, as Elune vowed to destroy it.

• As the Argent Crusade charged the Scourge, Taelan aged, weakened, and stopped raising the dead; Orc-resurrected Undead showed no signs of aging.
• The Emissary attacked Taelan, then revealed that the Scourge would weaken further as Azeroth's people died; Robbie and Kel'Thuzad inferred that Azeroth was rejecting the Scourge.
• Robbie had Taelan claim he had found a solution and swallow an Soul Orb of Orcs Soul Essence, which restored much of his strength.
• Taelan threatened to wipe out the Orcs and drove Frostmourne into the corpse mound, merging the Argent Crusade's remains into a tentacled monster that collapsed the coliseum into an abyss.
• The Emissary saw that Y'Shaarj's flesh and blood had vanished, and Elune appeared behind him, vowing that the Scourge would be destroyed.

The Argent Tournament collapsed, and Garrosh’s Orcs exploited the survivors for food while Thrall pressed Dalaran to commit to an assault on Icecrown Citadel. Varian, lost after a teleportation mishap, reached an Argent Crusade candidate camp and learned that recruits could bribe their way in.

• The Argent Tournament collapsed into an abyss, and an Argent Crusade commander rallied the surviving soldiers with a false account of the battle.
• Garrosh arrived, ate the young commander, and had his guards butcher Argent Crusade soldiers before taking several thousand aboard his airship as food reserves.
• Rhonin promised Dalaran’s cooperation, and Thrall asked him to pilot Dalaran into the Frozen Throne alongside the approaching armies.
• Jaina noticed that Varian was missing while Varian wandered through the snow after his teleportation scroll sent him to an unfamiliar region.
• Varian reached an Argent Crusade candidate camp, where a Dwarf told him recruits could join by paying the commander ten gold coins.

Varian tried to join the Argent Crusade but was mistaken for a wealthy noble whom its officers could exploit. After they dismissed his claim to be King of Stormwind, he woke in an overcrowded recruit barracks and was ordered to work in a mine.

• Varian gave a Dwarf a gold-and-emerald button as payment to join the Argent Crusade.
• The Dwarf showed the button to a Gnome officer, who ordered him to earn Varian’s trust and discover how much money he could extract from him.
• The Dwarf got Varian drunk, learned that he claimed to be King of Stormwind, and reported it to the Gnome officer.
• The Gnome officer called Varian an impostor and sent him to the candidates’ recruit barracks.
• Varian woke in a crowded, freezing tent and followed the recruits to the camp’s gathering place.
• A Worgen welcomed the candidates and ordered them to mine ore at Sapphiron's Fel Iron Mine.

Varian was tricked into forced labor at Sapphiron's Fel Iron Mine and became dependent on Zombie Potions, while Thrall and Dalaran searched for him to lead the Alliance army. Aegwynn tracked Varian with his blood and discovered he had been transformed into a spider mining ore.

• Varian was mistaken for a newcomer, beaten by Orc overseers, and forced to work at Sapphiron's Fel Iron Mine.
• The overseers gave exhausted miners Zombie Potions, and Varian recalled approving their use in Jasperlode Mine before taking one himself.
• Varian worked day and night under the potion's influence, gradually forgetting his identity as ore was shipped across Azeroth.
• Thrall worried that Varian's disappearance left the Alliance army leaderless, while Duke Bolvar's spies encouraged desertions.
• Jaina asked Aegwynn to find Varian, and Aegwynn used his blood in a tracking spell that revealed a green spider mining in a dim mine.

Aegwynn gave Rhonin formulas to restore Varian after he became a mining spider, while Thrall and Vol'jin secretly used the spider to make a potion for Thrall's ailment. The restoration potion turned a different mining spider into Daolin Gelaisi, leaving Rhonin and Jaina to insist that he was Varian.

• Varian remained a mining spider after Aegwynn brought him to Dalaran, and neither Rhonin nor Jaina knew how to reverse the transformation.
• Aegwynn gave Rhonin two formulas to restore Varian, and Rhonin began gathering ingredients and brewing the potions.
• Vol'jin suggested that Varian was the King's Spider named in an old recipe, and Thrall agreed to secretly use him as an ingredient for a potion.
• Thrall's confidants replaced Varian with another mining spider, and Vol'jin cut off the captive's legs and boiled his body to extract its essence.
• Rhonin prepared Aegwynn's restoration potions and administered them to the replacement spider, which transformed into a young man.
• The young man identified himself as Daolin Gelaisi, but Jaina insisted that he was King Varian Wrynn.

Daolin Gelaisi was forced by Dalaran’s mages to accept that he was King Varian, while the Red Dragon Queen was compelled to obey Elune’s order to attack the Wrathgate. At the army’s rally, Daolin began exposing Thrall and Tirion Fordring as liars.

• Daolin Gelaisi rejected Rhonin, Jaina, and Thrall’s claims that he was King Varian, but Dalaran’s mages transformed his face and pressured him into accepting the role.
• The Emissary ordered Alexstrasza to send the Red Dragonflight to attack the Wrathgate and revealed thirty Fel Demon Dragons that would fight under its banner.
• Thrall prepared a rally for one hundred thousand soldiers after Daolin accepted that he was King Varian.
• Daolin addressed the army and declared that Thrall and Tirion Fordring had deceived them about the Scourge’s threat.

Daolin tried to expose Thrall and Jaina before the Stormwind soldiers, but their established reputations overwhelmed his warning and his speech still prompted some troops to desert. Thrall launched an attack on Icecrown Citadel, where the Scourge prepared a controlled battle to draw the Alliance and Horde into a trap.

• Tirion Fordring attacked Daolin, who dodged him, denounced him, and tried to kill him with Ashbringer before Jaina froze Daolin and stopped him.
• Jaina defended trading ordinary people’s lives for immortality, while Thrall dismissed the soldiers as mindless tools and delivered a speech that made them cheer for him.
• Thrall threatened to let Daolin witness Stormwind’s destruction, but Daolin’s words had stirred doubts, and many soldiers deserted overnight for the Wrathgate or Icecrown Citadel.
• Thrall ordered an attack on Icecrown Citadel, and Tirion Fordring sent three thousand poorly equipped, hungry soldiers through its opened gates while he stayed back.
• Kel'Thuzad explained that the Scourge had partly eased Taelan Fordring’s aging by resurrecting Dranosh Saurfang, while Robbie ordered a one-to-one casualty ratio to lure Thrall and Garrosh into a trap.

Tirion mistook a costly assault on Icecrown Citadel for proof that the Scourge was weak, while the Emissary and Garrosh prepared an attack on the Wrathgate with Alexstrasza and the Fel Demon Dragons. The Red Dragon Queen followed the demons into the fortress and discovered Bolvar’s forces were Scourge soldiers, then heard Bolvar fighting deeper inside.

• A sentry reported that Tirion’s test force had killed about three thousand Scourge before being wiped out, convincing Tirion the enemy was weakened.
• Tirion launched a full assault on Icecrown Citadel; after losing ten thousand soldiers, his army killed Lord Marrowgar’s remains and took a foothold.
• Thrall celebrated Tirion’s apparent victory, mocked Daolin for supporting the wrong leader, and rewarded Tirion with a bone.
• At the Wrathgate, the Emissary urged Garrosh to wait for confirmation before replacing Thrall and Tirion, then summoned Alexstrasza to begin the attack.
• Alexstrasza and thirty Fel Demon Dragons scorched the Wrathgate, but Bolvar revealed his soldiers were hidden inside and retreated into a passage.
• The Fel Demon Dragons charged through the passage, and Alexstrasza discovered Bolvar’s soldiers were disguised Scourge before hearing him fighting ahead.

At the Wrathgate, Duke Bolvar trapped the Red Dragonflight and Fel Demon Dragons, but the Red Dragon Queen escaped by unleashing her Primordial Dragon Flame. At Icecrown Citadel, Kel'Thuzad and Robbie remained unable to resurrect Taelan Fordring because they could not reproduce the sacrifices’ willingness to die for him.

• Duke Bolvar froze the Fel Demon Dragons and used Chains of Order to bind the dragons and drain their flame, combining it with Frost to increase his power.
• The Red Dragon Queen destroyed the chains and incinerated the thirty Fel Demon Dragons and ten Adult Red Dragons with her Primordial Dragon Flame, then flew toward Wyrmrest Temple.
• The Emissary explained that the Red Dragon Queen had spent ten thousand years accumulating enough power for one breath, while Garrosh believed Bolvar had died.
• At Icecrown Citadel, Kel'Thuzad and Robbie reviewed their failed attempt to resurrect Taelan Fordring using ten thousand Alliance soldiers.
• Kel'Thuzad and the Scourge mages concluded that the ritual required willing sacrifices, but they could not find a reason for the Alliance soldiers to die for Taelan.

Robbie proposed using Dranosh Saurfang as the Scourge’s resurrection target, while Thrall and Vol'jin plotted to undermine Tirion Fordring. After the Scourge deployed Undead Orcs led by Deathbringer Saurfang, Taelan’s secret letter warned of their purpose, and Sylvanas began questioning Tirion about Taelan’s whereabouts.

• Robbie suggested that the Scourge mages make Dranosh Saurfang the target of their resurrection plan, and Kel'Thuzad agreed to develop it.
• Thrall and Vol'jin plotted to use Taelan and Sylvanas to discredit Tirion Fordring, then saw the Wrathgate burn and heard that the Red Dragonflight had destroyed Duke Bolvar's garrison.
• Tirion Fordring led an assault on Icecrown Citadel, but Deathbringer Saurfang's Undead Orcs killed three thousand allied soldiers and forced him to retreat.
• Sylvanas asked Tirion Fordring to confirm whether Deathbringer Saurfang was Dranosh, and Tirion sent a messenger to contact Taelan.
• Taelan's secret letter said the Scourge was creating Orc soldiers to slow its aging, with Dranosh's soul serving as their mainstay.
• After reading the letter, Sylvanas pressed Tirion Fordring to explain why his messenger had not seen Taelan.

Thrall stripped Tirion of command and pressured Saurfang the Great to deal with Dranosh, prompting Saurfang to seek Muradin Bronzebeard's help through Kalecgos. Kalecgos reached the Skybreaker and began a private appeal to Muradin.

• Thrall handed command of the Argent Crusade and Stormwind's royalist troops to Jaina, dismissed Tirion's defense of Taelan, and ordered Vol'jin to threaten Saurfang over Dranosh.
• Saurfang received Thrall's letter while hosting Kalecgos and worried that he could not risk his small force in a fight against Dranosh.
• Kalecgos offered to persuade Muradin to send troops against Icecrown Citadel, and Saurfang agreed to travel to Northrend with his elite subordinates aboard Orgrimmar's Hammer.
• Orgrimmar's Hammer approached Muradin's Skybreaker, and Kalecgos flew over to negotiate after Muradin recognized him.
• Kalecgos landed on the Skybreaker, asked to speak with Muradin privately about Azeroth's survival, and Muradin welcomed him over wine.