Artwork © Blizzard EntertainmentClassic baseline · Forever beta stories
Timeline
c. 20 ADPThe Fall of Quel’Thalas
Sylvanas Windrunner met the Scourge as Ranger-General of Quel’Thalas. Each defensive line bought time, but the enemy could turn the fallen into more soldiers. Barriers that had protected the kingdom before could not stop Arthas’s advance.
He killed Sylvanas and denied her the release of death, raising her as a banshee under his command. The defender of the kingdom was forced into the army destroying it. Her awareness of that destruction made the captivity part of the punishment.
At the Sunwell, Arthas used the elves’ sacred power to raise Kel’Thuzad. The invasion’s immediate objective was fulfilled, but its consequences were only beginning: a ruined kingdom, a corrupted font and a former ranger whose eventual freedom would be inseparable from the desire for revenge.
Sources (4)
The Prince and the Empty Well
Kael’thas returned to a homeland that needed a leader while he was still grieving his father. Arthas had destroyed its defenses and used the Sunwell to restore Kel’Thuzad. The sacred source that had sustained the elves was now a danger to them.
The prince chose to destroy the corrupted font. It was an act of preservation that looked like another loss: the survivors would no longer be poisoned through it, but they had also lost the magic on which generations had depended.
They called themselves blood elves in remembrance of the fallen. The name gathered their grief into a shared identity, while the emptiness left by the well created a need Kael’thas would spend the rest of his life trying to answer.
Sources (1)
