Red Priests

"It is not only our duty to usher in our saviour and spread his reach across the land. It is our pleasure".

-Archdruid Elonsius

## The Red Priests

Cloaked in black and red, agents of the nascent god.

## Influence and Relations

### Allies and Associates

 The King Beneath the Mountain The Flying Gang

### Rivals and Enemies

All AzerothJohn Mead

**The Red Priests** were a coven of Old God worshippers and one of the secondary antagonists of The Hellrock Campaign. Bound together in service to spread the malignant grasp of the cursed metal known as Hellrock and usher in the ascendance of their hidden master; The King Beneath the Mountain, the Red Priests were a plague upon the Eastern Kingdoms throughout the time of the Iron Horde's emergence.

The Priests were initially a group of disparate Warlock covens and members of the Twilight's Hammer abandoned and despondent after the defeat of Deathwing. These groups were bound together and given new purpose when Duncan Brightfist and the Flying Gang found them in Northrend's wastes. They aided the young Dwarf in a complex ritual to create a suit of armour fashioned from fallen fragments of their draconic master that had been altered by Fel powers, but their ritual proved far more successful than any of them had anticipated. Duncan was subsumed by the material and his mind moulded with the corruptive powers latent within the newly crafted substance which would become known as Hellrock. This changed the Dwarven Warlock into an abomination, and his comatose body was transported by the Warlocks to Blackrock Mountain as was planned before the rite commenced, while the Flying Gang fled the ritual site and disappeared.

Duncan awoke from his comatose state with access to unfathomable power, and the Warlocks began to refer to the creature he had become as The King Beneath the Mountain. Close to his newfound mountain home, the King's followers contacted a radical Druidic circle in the area which sought to heal after the emergence of Ragnaros. They were seduced by the dark power of Hellrock after it was demonstrated that the substance could regrow flora at a rapid rate from seemingly nothing, and its leader, the Archdruid Elonsius, was inducted as the head of the Red Priests.

Throughout the Iron Horde's invasion, the Red Priests worked throughout the Eastern Kingdoms, infected immediate threats with Hellrock to grow their King's army of mind-controlled Golems, while working to keep his presence a guarded secret. The Archdruid began using the life energies of those trapped within the Golems to grow a new World Tree within the heart of the Searing Gorge, and upon its full blooming, would grant the King access into the Emerald Nightmare itself.

The Red Priests were defeated at the Battle of Blackrock Mountain, when the assembled army surrounded the Mountain and attacked the nascent World Tree in the Gorge. The Archdruid and many of his followers were killed during the World Tree's collapse, severing the potential link that The King Beneath had to assault the Dream. Though several members of the Priesthood reportedly survived the encounter, the ensuing events which caused The King Beneath to be scoured from Azeroth also affected these members as well, leading them to abandon any of their previous affiliations and go their separate ways.