"No troops, but a large number of commanders..."
Varian looked at the letter that had mysteriously appeared on his desk, puzzled by its request. He had grown accustomed to the way Ulduar's messengers appeared and vanished without a trace, and the seal shimmering with starlight at the bottom could not be faked.
A request from Ulduar... Well, Varian preferred to regard it as an order. Although Dick always placed himself on equal footing with the rulers whenever he wrote, the terrifying power he controlled made Varian prefer to maintain a relatively distant, but safe, relationship with him.
A failing common to rulers...
Still, this request was indeed rather strange. In the previous major wars, every nation had sent its elite troops. Azeroth had never enjoyed lasting peace, especially the human kingdoms, where war and expansion were always the dominant themes.
After the Kingdom of Alterac fell, the six human kingdoms had feasted on its fallen corpse like vultures scenting blood. When the Kingdom of Stormwind had fallen, if not for the Orc invasion and Stormwind City's great distance from the principal territories, whether Varian could have become a king at all would have been an open question.
Well, that was getting a little off track. In short, political creatures were never as harmless as they appeared. Fortunately, Azeroth's current rulers were relatively wise and clearheaded. Among scholars, there was a saying that the twenty-odd years since the Orc invasion had been a period of tremendous peril for the human kingdoms, and those who had ultimately survived that peril were the most outstanding people in all of human civilization.
Great wars were inevitably followed by periods of great order. Whether Caliea, Varian, Liam, the aging Daelin, or Fina Goldensword, who had recently gained tremendous prestige in Kul Tiras, rulers like these