Storyline

After having failed to destroy the Frozen Throne, Illidan Stormrage was in a perilous situation. Quickly identifying that Kil’jaeden would be very mad at his failure to kill the Lich King, he made a quick escape to a faraway land to avoid divine punishment.

The Lich King’s reign did not last long however, as after a few years, the Human Alliance had a fresh resolve to retake their homeground. Much like Garithos, the humans were racist and intended to break the alliance with the other races to achieve racial purity upon victory.

The Human Alliance was set on conquering more than what had originally belonged to them, so they devised a plan. The Night Elves were very strong during the Third War, likely due to massive empowerment from being close to the World Tree itself, and thus would be an unwise target to aim in the early stages of conquest. Identifying the Orcish Horde were not on good terms with the Elves, the Human Alliance revealed their plan to a select few Elven leaders to conquer the Orcs. The discussion went smoothly as the Elves agreed to not intervene the Human invasion, unbeknownst to the Orcs.

The Human Alliance made short work of the Orcs and were soon due to mount an attack on the Undead Scourge and the Lich King residing in Northrend. Again with assistance from the Night Elves, they slowly pushed their ranks forward, and ultimately crushed the Undead Scourge, killing Arthas in the process. However, the battle was extremely hard fought as they were attacking into Undead territory, which gave the Undead a stronger defender's advantage owing to geographical and tactical reasons. As a result, not all of the Undead Scourge was killed off; some of the Undead Scourge managed to escape. In particular, was the Lich King, whose spirit form continued to live on even though his physical body, Arthas, had been slain.

The Human Alliance and the Elves suffered huge losses, and needed a longer time to recover before establishing their settlements at Northrend. The battle against the Undead was won, marking the end of a successful conquest for the Elves. However, little did the Elves know, the battle was only halfway over for the Human Alliance. They needed to take the final step; to betray the Elves and take over the world for themselves.

Around the same time as when Arthas was slain, Illidan began getting haunted by visions asking him to avenge himself, and a source of green, eerie light appeared constantly. He also kept getting nightmares of him failing to rescue Tyrande Whisperwind after she had supposedly fallen into a river and died. After long sleepless nights of mental torture, he began to be aware of a magical presence which seemed far, but strong. Letting his instincts guide him, he followed the magical identity until it was stronger than ever before, and only then he realised he reached Azshara itself, where the whole thing began.

After exhausting himself  from a futile search in the vicinity, Illidan finally discovered that the power was underwater after lying down on the ground. He dived into the sea and found the remains of the Eye of Sargeras which was long believed to be destroyed along with his tomb. It was in fact the weakening of the Lich King which caused the Eye of Sargeras to regain some of its power. Seeing that Kil’jaeden could not kill him for rediscovering his mentor’s powers, he returned to his Naga warriors who had been dormant for the whole time waiting for their master to return.

The Eye of Sargeras had been underwater for so long that it had corrupted the entire sea where it had been, morphing countless of fish into Watery Minions who served under Illidan. With new forces, came a new name. Illidan only had duty in mind, and with the Defiled Swarm under his command, wanted to complete the job he was given: to kill the Lich King once and for all.

The Elves had believed the war to be over, but when there were increasing witnesses of Humans developing stronger armies and weapons, the Elves began to doubt if the war was over for the Humans. The Humans briefly mentioned to the Elves of their next target, which was the Draenei residing in Outland, but Outland was a place which can only be reached via Shimmering Portals, and would be unviable to transport mass numbers of troops across. In addition, the air in Outland is unfit for human civilisation, so the Elves grew suspiscious.

The Humans continued developing their army, but it had to be half done in secret lest the Elves find out that they were the target and not the Draenei. The Humans poured countless resources into the army, heavily taxing the community and recruiting Human forces from all over the nation. In doing so, however, the Government had gained the hatred of villagers, who were too poor to afford taxes and were living in poverty, as well as mages who had learnt elven magic from their alliance in the battle of Mount Hyjal. They were outcast from the the Human army as ‘being useless for having no combat ability, and for using an impure magic form’.

During this time, more and more elves realised that the Human Alliance was set on conquering the Elves next, and thus began discussing strategies on how to resolve the situation. Peace treaties were the first solution, but after many meetings with some of the Human leaders, the Elves were convinced that peace was no longer an option. War was impending, and the Elves as they were did not fare good chances against an all out Human assault.

The tension only grew, as within the Elven nations they could not come to an agreement on how to empower themselves. Initial suggestions included seeking the Orcs for help, but that was not an option as their strength was limited. It was a matter of time before the Night Elves’ last resort was put into discussion. It was a highly ancient magic called the Forest Form.

It was a solution which guaranteed sufficient strength to fight against the Humans, but it came at a huge cost. The Forest Form is a pure magic, which means that all other magical traces and sources of the user had to be eliminated. In addition, since the Night Elves had never resorted to using this technique before, controlling their Forest Forms may prove difficult as an unpracticed user may go unconscious, faint or even die as a drawback. Nevertheless, honing their primal and celestial magics via the Forest Form was a solution a majority of the Elves agreed on.

Regardless of the prospects, it was a solution the High Elves could not come to agree on as they held great pride in their own brand of magic which they spent hundreds of years developing. The Night Elves and the High Elves thus parted ways, without a war, but not at peace either.

The Night Elves got to work, and began meditating beside the World Tree as well as migrating to forests to practice and refine their usage of the Forest Form. The World Tree lent the Night Elves aid, allowing them to master the Forest Form as fast as they could. Once the Night Elves mastered the Forest Form, their bodies were willed by the World Tree to devolve into their animalistic forms permanently.

However, no Night Elf knew about an unrecorded symptom of Forest Form. Its user would have all violent and evil thoughts pacified. Such was the ideal world the World Tree envisioned, an era of peace, and not bloodshed. Thus was the essence and value of the Curator Force, who had a new mission to achieve in the impending war.

The High Elves’ relied on their own magics, but focused on refining them to a higher level. In addition, Kael’thas was an intelligent tactician who managed to gain information by sneaking spies into the Human factories in Lordaeron. The High Elves gained valuable knowledge of what was in the Human arsenal of weapons. Sending their best engineers to the Human base themselves, the High Elves managed to understand in detail the machines and contraptions the Humans would use, and devised machines of their own to counter those.

As the High Elves’ magical contraptions flourished, a few Elven mages residing in Lordaeron soon noticed the magical energies emanating from Quel’thalas. The mages, who hated the Human Government, saw an opportunity for revenge. They sneaked off to Quel’thalas for a chance to fight for them, and after some deliberation, the High Elves welcomed back their countrymen. The implication of the decision to withdraw all emigrants was that an iron curtain was being lifted. As the Exalted Order became ever more so ready for a magical warfare, tension increased even more as the Humans were no longer able to sell the idea of invading Outland to the Elves.

The Human villagers soon found their own way to take revenge against the Human Government. The villagers, who also outcasts, turned to religion as a way to survive in poverty and harsh conditions, convincing themselves that there was a greater being watching over them, and that justice would eventually be served to the cruel Government. The Lich King, who had been wandering around in its spirit form, saw an opportunity for revenge and seized it. Appearing before the villagers as the greater being they thought they had been praying to, the Lich King promised them unthinkable power if they did his bidding.

The desperate souls of the villagers were weak and easy to consume, and in a flash, the Lich King converted the entire town’s villagers into his servants who retained their human bodies, but were corrupted in every way in the mind. They started carrying out dark rituals at their local churches to amplify the Lich King’s powers, to ultimately prepare for the summoning of the Lich King’s ultimate monstrosity. More and more ghosts and demons were summoned from the Further. During the day, the ghosts would lay dormant inside Haunted Cathedrals, thus not drawing the suspicion of the guards in the area. The Fallen Conspiracy was a highly devastating army under the cover of human appearances, waiting for an opportune moment to overwhelm the Humans from inside out.

With all four factions ready for war, the Elves were almost questioning why the Human Alliance had waited so long before declaring war on them. Alas, their doubts were answered, as the Humans had been developing a weapon of mass destruction in a top secret facility, which the High Elves failed to scout. It was dubbed the Oblivion Cannon, an extremely devastating weapon capable of wiping out even Heroes. The reason the Human Alliance took all this time was because they were developing a shield so that the Oblivion Cannon would not wipe out themselves.

The Oblivion Cannon came as a huge surprise for the Elves, so they had no countermeasures ready. On what would have normally been a peaceful night with a full moon, the Oblivion Cannon fired a massive pulse of electric energy. The electric pulse functioned by inducing chaos in the flow of magical essence in one’s body, and too many rogue streams of magical essence in a body would rupture the body magically. As per the Human Alliance’s calculations, the Pulse instantaneously reduced all Elven Heroes to ashes. The Heroes from the Defiled as well as the Fallen were in the area of impact, and thus had their Heroes vaporised as well.

The Exalted Order lost all of its mages in a single night, and while they did not die, they suffered from magic deficiency which rendered them useless for the time being. The Curators suffered minimal losses as their Celestial Magic had resistance to chaos. The Defiled and Fallen took moderate losses as their armies did not particularly rely on magic to function. However, the message was sent. An official declaration of war from the Human Alliance was issued to the Elves.

The Exalted, severely weakened, had to come up with a quick solution. They quickly analysed the ashes of their former Heroes, and came up with a conclusion soon after: as the Oblivion Pulse functioned by making streams of magic essence go awry, it lacked the ability to completely wipe out magical traces of Heroes. As such, when the remains of the Exalted Heroes were gathered, a magical singularity formed, henceforth known as the Core. The Core possessed a mere fraction of magic to that of their Heroes, but it was still a significant amount. The Exalted Order treasured its Core very much, placing it in a revered monument. Other factions soon learned of this, and activated their own Cores, effectively declaring war against the Human Alliance. The existence of  Core structures marked not only the passing of their Heroes, but also the dawn of a new war.

Such was the story of the Night of Oblivion.