Hearthglen had once been a town in the northern Kingdom of Lordaeron, north of Andorhal, in what was now called the Western Plaguelands. Endless plains, flat and vast, had formed an enormous disk of deep green jade, an unbroken grassland stretching beneath the sky without a single hill, as calm as the sea on a windless day. That should have been Hearthglen's landscape. But after the undead had ravaged it, all that met the eye was barren, scorched earth. Every trace of green had vanished. The land beneath their feet had been contaminated, reduced to a lifeless wasteland.
A tall, slender figure stood on Hearthglen's soil, facing the wind, silent for a long time.
He was Tirion Fordring, the lord of Hearthglen. Yet Hearthglen now held nothing but desolation. There was nothing left, but he had nowhere else to go.
Tents had been erected across the barren land. At the edge of Hearthglen, however, there was still an uncontaminated patch of ground. It was Tirion Fordring's only way forward.
Tirion Fordring had chosen to remain in Hearthglen partly out of attachment to the past, and partly because he had nowhere else to go. There were plenty of unclaimed lands in the Eastern and Western Plaguelands, but they were all contaminated, barren places without any resources. Occupying them would mean waiting to die. Hearthglen, at least, had left him a little hope.
"Grandpa, you're here?" A delighted voice rang out as a youngster hurried toward Tirion Fordring. She was a girl of about fifteen, her face still full of childish innocence. She was simply dressed in linen cloth clothes washed nearly white, giving her an air of plain simplicity.
Her voice roused Tirion Fordring from his thoughts. He looked up and smiled when he saw her. Once she reached him, he