Varenastus

**Locations**
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 **Age**
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Varenastus is a Dreadlord and was part of the Burning Legion force occupying Suramar City. Active among the city's nobility, he was known to work with the felborne Ruben Stelleris.

## Suramar Rebellion

Varenastus has always been ambitious, viewing the spread of the nascent rebellion as an opportunity, an opportunity to end it all himself and gain the prestige his vile demon heart felt should have been his long ago.

Having long manipulated the Shal'dorei felmancer Ruben Stelleris, a minor noble of the powerful Court of Stars family, Varenastus found Ruben trivial to manipulate, his hunger for power and to outdo his kin one the Dreadlord could easily sate now that Ruben no longer need conceal his identity, bringing the elf further under his sway with a series of pacts and teaching him to call upon voidspawn and other creatures of the void, further destabilizing his mental state.

Ruben's heart burned with hatred for the rebels, and as their numbers grew the Shal'dorei began speaking of their need for arcwine to stave off withering. Varenastus and he discussed poisoning a batch intended for the rebels, knowing that all would consume it and eliminating most if not all of them in short order, if they could develop a toxin that would not be detected and find a way to add it to arcwine destined for the rebellion.

Varenastus found Ruben to be surprisingly knowledgeable with alchemy and toxic agents, and together with the Dreadlord synthesized a tasteless agent binding the dark essence of a voidspawn. Testing early variants on beggars desperate for arcwine, Varenastus found the agent killed but did so slowly, the life draining from them as if mummification. Inhibited slightly by arcane, he worried fully healthy Nightborne might be able to devise a means of reversal, and sought to amplify the agent.

The Dreadlord held contacts among the more ambitious naga servants of Queen Azshara filling the waters of Sashj'tar just beyond Suramar. From such naga he procured the Vash'jir Blackstone, a murky void foci spewing the whispers of the Old God N'zoth. Amplified through the Blackstone, the toxin was amplified several times and impurities removed, resulting in a tasteless black powder that was invisible dissolved in red arcwines. The upgraded toxin drained the life and seemingly the moisture, from beggars nearly instantly upon drinking, far too quickly to reverse. The custom of toasting would ensure the wine widely shared before the danger realized if it could be selectively placed among the rebels.

The selective shortage of the wine within Suramar brought the haughty elves impressively in line, but such a large city held much of it, and as rebel tendencies grew more common, with them grew networks of arcwine being smuggled to them. If the networks could be infiltrated...a selective shortage within a selective shortage ensuring the rebels running out and the madness of addiction clouding their minds before the timely arrival of the poisoned batch, a great number of them would consume it with haste, quite possibly a death blow to the meddlesome elves.

Varenastus set to work, watching a vineyard attendant for a time, then slaying the elf and taking his guise, learning the couriers and routes of the many shipments still being produced each day. The rebel couriers were painfully obvious, elves whom had never been in a simple battle opposing armed guards flanked by the infinite legion. They knew their folly yet embarked upon it anyway, playing innocent and learning, watching.

He diverted a cask of wine to Ruben's estate; the Nightborne claimed the ability to replace the arcane seals on the wine after the agent was added. After a night preparing the tainted arcwine, he entered his guise and went to work at the vineyards, feigning outrage at the near-daily occurrence of a civilian being harassed, in the presence of a courier he was certain had been working for the rebels.

The nervous courier, a young elf named Gaetan, was hesitant, though unable to ignore Varenastus' offer of a full two cask of arcwine for his rebel network, a death sentence for a Shal'dorei and one that would effectively prove his treacherous intent. Felguard serving the Dreadlord created a nearby diversion, and Varenastus delivered the casks to Gaetan in a small room overlooking the vineyards.

He smiled inside as Gaetan hugged him, wept of saving the city and how many lives the wine would save. He told Varenastus of three Nightborne visiting that day under the auspices of a pleasurable outing, elves that were to direct arcwine to the rebellion and their allies in southern Suramar. Tempted to slay the fool, he stayed his hand and instead played his part, using portals and concealment to help them smuggle the wine out of the heavily guarded vineyards.

He monitored where all of them traveled, at times using the guise of civilians he'd killed previously to move unseen about southern Suramar. All three elves, and bottles from two of the three shipments turned up around the Waning Crescent in southern Suramar, a hub for illicit delivery in the city, and from the amount diverted likely a transit point to the rebel's outside Suramar as well. He was unable to figure out where they hid, though neither had Gul'dan, and Varenastus re-centered himself on the plot.

The next day there were shipments for two elves besides Gaetan, and after Varenastus learned the lapel pin and cap each was to don, revealed himself and put a dagger in the elf, and used his courier guise to deliver the shipment to Ruben in the Court of Stars. He slew the other two elves that day, and observed the growing panic in the South as the Crescent began strict rationing the following day.

A day later, the Crescent was boarded up, elves withering in the streets, and he had Ruben prepare the tainted batch for their targets. The desperate elves were at each other's throats for Arcwine, and offered information freely for a sip. Offering untainted wine, he learned of a large delivery on the pleasure boats at Astravaar harbor. The nobles on and around the boat were intoxicated and lax, and with Succubi allies he quickly overcame them, the lesser demons taking on the believable guise of scantily-clad female Shal'dorei.

He used the soul of a dead elf to open a portal to Ruben, bringing the tainted wine through and exchanging it for the stores on the boat. On the partyboat he saw something odd, a group of elves seemingly lost, their language oddly accented. His skills in the arcane were far too paltry to reveal them, but he was confident the elves were not Shal'dorei, one of them held a bow, a weapon he'd not seen among the Nightborne save for on statues. A wymtongue commented that the weapon and the woman wielding it were cursed among demons, speaking of it as Thalassian.

They lingered a time around the harbor, and he crept closer to listen, his vineyard attendant guise providing ample cover, bending the void to amplify his hearing, spying their Thalassian conversation and learning the elf with the bow to be Sabariel Dawnbreaker, and noted the elf giving orders, a mage called Entilzha Firesong.