In the town hall of Goldshire, not far from Stormwind City, Orgrim pondered a strategy to break the stalemate.
If it had been up to the Orcs who had drunk demon blood, their strategy would have consisted of just one word.
Attack!
Why think so much? Just get on with it!
As for how many would die in the process, they would not care.
Those Orcs who had drunk demon blood thought like complete lunatics!
They relished hacking their enemies to pieces in battle, yet never considered that they might be hacked to pieces themselves.
After much deliberation, Orgrim decided to play one of his trump cards.
Garona, the female half-orc trained by the warlocks, had spent three years undercover in the Human Kingdom and earned the king's trust.
Now it was time to put that carefully cultivated poisonous fruit to use!
Controlled by secret magic, the assassin of another race deftly drew the enchanted dagger the king had rewarded her with and casually plunged it into King Llane's back, piercing his heart.
Until the moment he died, King Llane had never imagined that he would meet such an ignominious end.
Temporarily freed from the secret magic's control, Garona could only flee the scene in grief as she watched yet another friend die by her hand.
This was not the first time, nor would it be the last.
As long as that secret magic remained in place, she would always be a puppet!
News of King Llane's assassination soon spread throughout the city.
The wave of people fleeing grew ever more intense.
This was Orgrim's overt stratagem.
I won't clash with you directly, but I can strike at your morale through assassination.
If even the king can be assassinated, who is beyond reach?
No one knew who would be assassinated next.
As the city's population dwindled, its military strength would also be stretched thin.
Won't you have to get out all the same when that happens?
The Horde, which had already occupied most of their territory, had plenty of time to wear them down.
Faced with Orgrim's overt stratagem, the humans truly had no answer.
The Orcs held an overwhelming advantage in troop numbers.
Every day, they made a circuit outside the city gates, keeping the residents on edge and driving them to flee faster.
The merchant ships that had come from various countries to deliver supplies were forced to become passenger ships.
The Kingdom of Kul Tiras, which held undisputed supremacy at sea, urgently dispatched large numbers of warships, merchant ships, and passenger ships, doing everything it could to carry the refugees away.
As fewer and fewer people remained in the city, Orgrim, who monitored its situation daily, finally found the perfect opportunity to attack.
Orgrim was not so meek as to wait until the humans had completely evacuated.
There had to be one final, proper battle, with a Horde victory to bring things to a fitting close!
The Orcs chose a particularly cunning moment for their surprise attack.
During the day, they wandered around near the city gates, then went quiet as usual.
When the sun went down that evening, Orcs appeared on three sides of the city and charged inside by various means.
Mountains surrounded Stormwind City on three sides, leaving only a gap near the city gates through which large forces could pass.
The excessively rugged mountain paths elsewhere would stop most invaders.
But the Orcs had spent a great deal of time finding ways around this problem.
When they launched their siege, they suddenly appeared from three directions and scaled the walls with crude climbing tools.
Their assault erupted almost everywhere at once, and they soon seized every district except the harbor.
Even the relentless cannon fire from several ironclads could not stop them from taking the city.
Once the Orcs and humans became embroiled in close combat, the cannons became useless.
Against Orcs well versed in countering firearms and artillery, such weapons struggled to show their worth.
Dealt a vicious stab by the Orcs in the final stage of the evacuation, the fleet could only speed up its retreat.
After taking aboard the surviving soldiers and refugees, the fleet bombarded the Orcs in the city to vent its anger.
But the Orcs had already prepared and were not foolish enough to sit there and take the bombardment.
They either lay flat in shell craters or hid behind sturdy ruins.
After drinking demon blood, Orcs developed a resistance to concussive force.
Ordinary blows could hardly stun them.
This unusual constitution proved even more effective against firearms and artillery.
Explosions that could rupture an ordinary person's blood vessels from the shock alone merely tickled them.
Unless a shell exploded at very close range.
Otherwise, it was difficult to kill these wary, hardened veterans with their unusual constitutions through bombardment.
Carrying the last group of refugees from Stormwind City, the fleet sailed north through the night, joining this journey of exile etched into fate.
Though this group had held out until the very end before leaving, it traveled far faster than the others.
Ironclads were much faster than sailing ships to begin with, and they could follow their planned course regardless of which way the wind blew.
While the ships that had departed earlier were still drifting at sea, they had already reached Southshore on the northern continent of Lordaeron.
With a vast sea separating them from the Orcs, the people finally felt safe.
Although the subcontinent of Lordaeron was connected to the southern continent by a bridge.
North of that bridge lay the Arathi Highlands, home to the Kingdom of Stromgarde.
The kingdom's warriors would hold the northern end of the bridge.
At the southern end stood a fortress belonging to the Dwarf kingdom.
Those Dwarves would likewise not let the Orcs set foot on the bridge easily.
With two powerful kingdoms guarding the bridge, its security went without saying.
Even if the Orcs broke through the bridge's defenses, they would struggle to advance any farther.
The Arathi Highlands were ringed by mountains, and the road west to the other human kingdoms was blocked by Thoradin's Wall, which stood over a hundred meters tall.
No matter how formidable those Orcs were, they could never capture a wall of such epic proportions!
And events did indeed unfold as the people expected.
After taking Stormwind City and acquiring an entire kingdom's territory, Orgrim hesitated when his planned route of advance reached the bridge.
Though he did not yet know the strength of the garrison there, he was certain it would be difficult to deal with.
And was the cartographer serious about depicting such an enormous wall on the map?
Without seeing the wall with his own eyes, Orgrim simply could not believe it.
But his immediate troubles lay elsewhere.
Farther north of the human kingdom's territory he had seized lay a terrifying region covered in scorched earth and lava.
His Blackrock Clan was well suited to that extremely hot, arid environment.
The other clans of the Horde, however, could not endure it.
To pass safely through a region with such harsh conditions, they would need to prepare vast quantities of supplies.
And the local inhabitants, known as Dark Iron Dwarves, would have to be beaten until they no longer dared harass them.
The ambitious Orgrim immediately deployed the Blackrock Clan to the front.
They waged a bitter war against the Dark Iron Dwarves on that perpetually burning plain.
Accompanied by the Firegut Ogres, who were equally suited to the heat, the Blackrock Orcs swept through the Dark Iron Dwarves' outlying strongholds with unstoppable force, driving those tenacious foes back to their main base.
But once they reached the heart of the enemy's territory, the Blackrock Orcs struggled to make further gains.
Because their constitutions leaned toward fire, the Dark Iron Dwarves were slightly weaker physically than other Dwarves.
Nevertheless, they could still become powerful warriors.
Their fiery constitutions also granted them the ability to cast fire spells.
As a result, they could train some capable fire mages.
Once they concentrated their forces at their main base, the Blackrock Orcs no longer dared assault their defensive lines lightly.
The tightly packed Dark Iron Dwarf warriors were masses of black iron, armed to the teeth.
If anyone charged recklessly into their ranks, they might never come back out!