Edial Redblade

**Edial Redblade** is a rogue death knight. His current whereabouts are unknown, but he has indicated that he plans to carry out some wider evil scheme.

## History

*See The Three Virtues.*

In life, Edial Stewart was a fairly typical strongman warrior.  Blunt, powerful, relying on brute force rather than cunning, he fought valiantly for the Alliance for years, and came to be regarded by others of the same mindset as something of a leader.  He came to believe he was almost invincible, and in his last battle in life, refused an order to withdraw from combat.  He was slain, and was taken by Arthas to become one of the third-generation death knights.

Upon being released from Arthas’ control, Edial’s old arrogance began to assert itself again, and he often tried to fight his fellow death knights for command.  When he was soundly trounced by Thassarian, he began to seek out those who might be able to increase his power--and undergo unheard-of procedures.  One of those procedures resulted in the runes of his blade burning red instead of blue, and another resulted in his brain becoming contaminated and maddened.

When he began to press for the Ebon Blade to “conscript” from graveyards and even the population of the living so as to prepare for future threats, he was disavowed by the order.  Believing himself to be right, he gathered a following and traveled to Lakeshire, where he robbed graves and terrorized the population.  He was defeated there by Jeremaias Auromere in single combat, and driven back into hiding.

During this period of hiding, he located a necromancer who specialized in saronite implants, and in the seclusion of the Beggar’s Haunt in Duskwood, had some of his bones either plated or replaced.  The procedure increased his power, resilience, and insanity exponentially, and on the strength of that, Redblade began to recruit lieutenants to aid him in his mission.

## Henchmen

### **Harold Nelson**

Harold Nelson was a skilled huntsman in life.  He enjoyed the hunt and the kill, but primarily for the sheer joy of having the power of life and death over his prey.  He devised many traps and snares that would take his prey alive, so he could relish their final moments.

Unlike many, Nelson became a death knight of his own volition, pledging himself to Arthas while still alive.  When he was slain by the Argent Crusade, he was raised into service.  His obsessions with ending life took an even more vicious turn, and he began to exploit his powers to create cruel magical traps that would trigger without warning and kill slowly.

Until recently, Nelson was one of the collective of rogue death knights the Order of Ashfall was hunting. Now, however, he appears to be under Redblade's thrall.

### **Sesshen Stalewater**

Sesshen Brightwater, a jinyu, was not among the death knights created by Arthas or any Scourge faction.  Instead, he was taken by the Horde during the War for Pandaria, and brought back to be experimented upon by the Forsaken.  When he died, he was raised into undeath himself, meant to serve Sylvanas Windrunner.

However, the appointment of Vol’jin as warchief, and the Alliance’s increased scrutiny, meant that Sylvanas was walking on thin ice; the Forsaken attempted to dispose of Sesshen so as to cover up their own war crimes.  Sesshen escaped, and wandered aimlessly until he was found by Redblade’s loyal.

Sesshen Stalewater still makes use of water magics, but in form of cursed ice rather than natural shamanistic water spells.  His servants are mur’ghouls, and his domain is Kolramas.

### **Erthan the Rejected**

Erthan was born the bastard child of a high elf man and a human woman, in the northeastern reaches of Lordaeron.  Throughout his life, he was subject to the usual racism of his neighbors, and as a result, developed a thin skin and a fragile ego, conceited out of a need to feel valued rather than any actual sense of it.

When the Order of the Silver Hand formed, he attempted to join, but his capacity for the Holy Light was very small.  The negativity in his heart was too great--though he did have a tremendous capacity for dark magics.  When he was rejected yet again, he cursed everyone around him, saying that the day would come that he would spit on their graves.

Ironically, he was one of the few who survived the Third War, sheltering in place with his mother until she finally succumbed to madness and undeath.  He spent the next ten years capturing Scourge and analyzing the magics that animated them--and finding new applications and new approaches.  He came to believe that it was weakness that led to defeat, and that the weak should be purged and replaced.

When he heard of Redblade’s activity, Erthan left the Plaguelands to seek him out.  He eagerly took up a runeblade and swore himself to Redblade’s service, and began applying his studies and his dark magics to the purpose of making a powerful army that would no longer suffer from the weaknesses of the living.

### **Tora Rothoof**

A druid forcibly raised as a death knight by Arthas before the Battle of Light’s Hope Chapel, Tora Rothoof only vaguely remembers what she was.  Her name long since forgotten, she clings to the knowledge that once she was in communion with nature as her only tie to an identity.

After the final death of Arthas, Tora returned to the Horde and Thunder Bluff.  However, she was not accepted among her birth people, due to her undeath; Orgrimmar’s Cleft of Shadows became her home, until the city was purged of all but Garrosh’s loyal.

Homeless after the war in Pandaria, she wandered, and attempted to reconnect with Nature--but Nature rejected her, as it does all undead.  Her resentment finally overtook her in that moment, and she began to create new sorts of undead things: constructs of bone and rotting sinew and organs designed to mock the creatures of Nature.  One of her proudest achievements was a gutlasher, a creature made of intestine and bone shards.

Her experiments finally went too far, when she began to seek fresh materials for her constructs, and killed and butchered a group of druids who had come to the Western Plaguelands to help cleanse the land.  Now a fugitive as well as a vagabond, she was quickly found by Edial Redblade and brought into his fold.