Artwork © Blizzard EntertainmentClassic baseline · Forever beta stories
Timeline
Before the plague devastates LordaeronAn Estate Given to Death
The Cult of the Damned needed places where its work could proceed unseen. The Barov family’s bargain with Kel’Thuzad supplied one beneath their home at Caer Darrow. The promise of immortality opened the estate to a power its owners would not control.
The underground chambers became Scholomance. What had belonged to a noble household now served the training of necromancers. Alexei Barov himself became an undead servant rather than an independent beneficiary of the bargain.
The academy tied private ambition to the approaching public catastrophe. The plague was not simply a force arriving from outside the kingdom: its servants had already gained shelter within Lordaeron’s own institutions and estates.
Sources (2)
Victory Without an Ending
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.
Sources (2)
