How powerful was the Burning Legion, exactly?
For Azeroth two thousand years ago, that question had been a mystery. Commanders and generals at the time could only guess at the numbers and origins of the demons who had organized the Burning Crusade under the Dark Titan's direction. They could not even accurately estimate the extent of the Burning Legion's territory.
Even the Argus War and the Argus space battle recorded in the history books had, at the time, been nothing more than a desperate counterattack launched with foreknowledge of the outcome. Azeroth had staked all its strength and hope on that battle. The four great fleets combined back then had not even been stronger than the fleet of a single major Star Sector today.
Yet they had accomplished a feat that today's fleets would not even dare imagine. Through tenacious will and unimaginable luck, they had destroyed a demonic stronghold spanning an entire major Star Sector despite being far weaker than their opponent!
It had been almost the most humiliating battle in the tens of thousands of years since the Burning Legion's founding. Argus had been utterly destroyed, and even the Dark Titan, supreme in the power of darkness, had lost an arm in that battle and suffered a crushing defeat.
For centuries afterward, people had called it Azeroth's great victory. But only when their world truly entered the interstellar stage did they realize how lucky they had been to win.
Two thousand years later, the Federation occupied 137 major Star Sectors, yet its territory amounted to only two-thirds of the demons' realm. In population, they were not even on the same scale as the demons. Had Sargeras brought his personal guard fleet, Darkfire, back then, Azeroth's fleets would not even have had any hope of escape.
That was why