Classic baseline · Forever beta stories
The northern kingdoms united against the advancing Horde. During the fighting at Blackrock Spire, Alexandros Mograine recovered a strange dark crystal. It was not yet a sword: the object that would become the heart of Ashbringer began its recorded story as a battlefield discovery.
Warcraft chronology — source comparison
Ashbringer — including comic history
Nobbel87 — Ashbringer, Part 1 (2:39)
Darion Mograine — including comic history
Nobbel87 — Ashbringer, Part 1 (6:33)
Nobbel87 — Ashbringer, Part 1 (9:39)
Nobbel87 — Ashbringer, Part 1 (10:45)
Nobbel87 — Ashbringer, Part 1 (13:24)
The northern kingdoms united against the advancing Horde. During the fighting at Blackrock Spire, Alexandros Mograine recovered a strange dark crystal. It was not yet a sword: the object that would become the heart of Ashbringer began its recorded story as a battlefield discovery.
The dark crystal recovered by Alexandros Mograine during the Second War remained dangerous long after the battlefield fell silent. As the plague spread through Lordaeron, he brought it before fellow paladins at Southshore. Their Light did not destroy it: the crystal absorbed that power and became radiant. What had injured Alexandros could now be used against the undead.
At Ironforge, Magni Bronzebeard forged the crystal into Ashbringer. He had received word that Muradin had died during Arthas’s expedition. Although that report was mistaken, his grief accompanied the making of the weapon. Alexandros returned to a kingdom falling before the Scourge, carrying a blade that reduced the undead to ash.
Alexandros Mograine became one of the Scourge’s most dangerous enemies. Yet the betrayal that ended his life came from within his own family. Under Balnazzar’s influence, Renault Mograine turned against his father and lured him into an ambush near Stratholme.
After Alexandros fought through the undead, Renault took his father’s sword and murdered him with it. The weapon became corrupted. Kel’Thuzad later raised Alexandros as a death knight in Naxxramas, placing a former enemy of the undead among the Four Horsemen. For Darion, the loss of his father was only the beginning: neither the man nor his blade had found peace.
Darion Mograine refused to abandon his father. With volunteers from the Argent Dawn, he entered Naxxramas and confronted Alexandros among the Four Horsemen. Defeating his undead body allowed Darion to recover Ashbringer, but his father’s spirit remained bound to the weapon.
Darion carried it to the Scarlet Monastery. There, Renault attacked his brother, only to face the spirit of the father he had murdered. Alexandros killed Renault. Darion had uncovered the betrayal and survived the confrontation, yet vengeance had not given his father peace.
Carrying the corrupted blade, Darion sought out Tirion Fordring, then living in exile. Tirion could sense Alexandros’s imprisoned soul. He offered no ritual or easy cure: undoing such an evil would require an act of love greater than the betrayal that had corrupted the sword.
Darion left with a possible answer rather than a restored weapon. Before returning to his allies, he urged Tirion to take up his former calling again. Their meeting connected the Mograine family’s struggle with the exiled paladin.
Darion returned to the defenders of Light’s Hope Chapel with the corrupted sword. The Scourge sought more than a military victory: the remains of Lordaeron’s fallen champions rested beneath the chapel, beyond its grasp. The defenders could not hold indefinitely against the approaching army.
Remembering Tirion’s counsel, Darion drove the blade into his own heart. His sacrifice freed his father’s soul and awakened a devastating response from the champions buried beneath the chapel. The defenders survived, but Kel’Thuzad recovered Darion and the still-corrupted weapon. Darion was raised as a death knight.
Above the Plaguelands, Naxxramas brought the surviving kingdom’s enemy into a single fortress. Kel’Thuzad commanded the necropolis, while its four quarters trained soldiers, maintained monstrous constructs and turned disease into a weapon. The Cult of the Damned helped sustain the power that had already ruined Lordaeron.
The assault passed through the Military Quarter and its Four Horsemen. The original roster included Alexandros Mograine and Sir Zeliek, whose forced service showed what the Scourge could make of its former enemies. Beyond the wings stood Sapphiron, guarding the route to the lich.
The attackers defeated Kel’Thuzad, but his body was not the whole of his existence. A surviving phylactery left the apparent victory dependent on what happened to the object carried out of the fortress.