Aldrachi

Aldrachi
Faction/Affiliation	Independent
Character classes	Warrior
Racial capital	Unnamed war-torn capital
Racial leader(s)	Toranaar
Homeworld	Unnamed homeworld

The aldrachi (/ˈɑ:ldrɑ.ki/ AHL-drah-kee) were an ancient race of warriors, known for their incredible might and resilience, native to an unnamed planet in the Great Dark Beyond. Their culture was entirely devoted to combat, and their greatest warriors wielded warblades that could grow more powerful by absorbing the souls of their victims. They were one of the few to resist corruption by the Burning Legion: when Sargeras invaded their home planet to offer them a place in his army, the proud aldrachi refused and killed millions of demons before they were wiped out and their planet destroyed; it took Sargeras himself to kill their leader, Toranaar. Sargeras' lieutenant, Kil'jaeden, distributed the destroyed race's remaining weapons among the Burning Legion and gave the most powerful, Toranaar's Aldrachi Warblades, to the traitor demon hunter Caria Felsoul. These warblades were in turn later seized by the Illidari. The aldrachi's soul-rending combat techniques live on with some demon hunters, known as aldrachi reavers.

Society

Toranaar's Aldrachi Warblades, the most powerful arms taken from the aldrachi by the Burning Legion.

The scattered legends that remain of the aldrachi speak of their unsurpassed skill as warriors. They were bred from birth for combat, and their entire culture revolved around it. Military service was mandatory for all aldrachi and began as soon as a child could walk. Training consisted of years of brutal and painful tests meant to cull the weak from the strong. An initiate's final and greatest test was to face an elder warrior, selected at random by the military high command, in a duel to the death in a ritual fighting pit.

More than titles of wealth, the aldrachi coveted weapons as prizes, possessions, and symbols of status. The most prestigious of all were warblades, a type of glaives crafted from rare subterranean crystals which had the unique property of being able to absorb the souls of the dead. Blacksmiths employed closely guarded techniques to enchant these crystals and forge them into warblades that could consume their victims' souls. Each spirit devoured imbued the weapons with greater power. The most ancient warblades contained thousands of souls and were revered just as much—if not more than—their wielders. The ultimate glaivemasters, the aldrachi warriors wielded their soul-eating weapons with deadly grace.

War with the Burning Legion

Stories of the aldrachi reached the Burning Legion and its ruler, the Dark Titan Sargeras, who was always eager to find powerful new races to corrupt and recruit for the Burning Crusade. Rather than outright destroy the aldrachi's planet, Sargeras ordered the Legion to invade it and wear the warriors thin until they were ripe for demonic conversion, even if it meant that the Legion would suffer heavy losses. The Legion stormed the planet with overwhelming force, but the inhabitants proved more resilient than the demons had anticipated. The aldrachi killed millions of demons, with hundreds of demons falling to claim a single one of their warriors. The most ferocious of all was the race's champion, Toranaar the Indomitable. However, while the aldrachi held off each attack, the Legion's never-ending numbers slowly whittled away their resistance until only Toranaar and a handful of champions remained and were pushed back to the towering stronghold in the heart of their war-torn capital. Each of their warblades was by then filled with thousands of demon souls, and the earth was covered in so many aldrachi and demon corpses that it is said that not a bare patch of ground could be seen for leagues.

At that point, the demons halted their advance and Sargeras himself (in the form of an avatar, according to some nathrezim records) emerged to invite Toranaar and his allies to join the Legion in exchange for untold power. They would serve as his personal guards and command thousands of demons in war, an offer he believed would be irresistible to the battle-loving race. Toranaar refused and vowed to destroy the Legion for all of the aldrachi they had killed, before engaging Sargeras in a duel. The two battled for days, with Sargeras intending to wear down the aldrachi until he was weak enough to corrupt. In an act of final defiance, Toranaar instead tricked Sargeras into lowering his guard and then inflicted a minor injury on his body. Infuriated, Sargeras immediately obliterated Toranaar and the remaining aldrachi, leaving nothing of their bodies but dust. He then ordered his armies to bathe the aldrachi world in "an inferno that would smolder for eternity".

Legacy

An aldrachi reaver demon hunter.

Though Sargeras had failed to corrupt the aldrachi, their warblades remained intact. Sargeras had his lieutenant, Kil'jaeden, distribute the blades to the Legion's greatest warriors, who went on to use them to massacre entire races and consume the souls of "a hundred thousand dead". Kil'jaeden held on to the most powerful set, Toranaar's own Aldrachi Warblades, for millennia. He ultimately gave them to Caria Felsoul, a Felsworn demon hunter, so that she might wield a portion of the aldrachi's bygone might to devastate the mortals of Azeroth. During the Burning Legion's third invasion of Azeroth, a demon hunter adventurer defeated Caria on the Broken Shore and took the warblades for themselves. During the battle, Caria used the blades to summon remnants of aldrachi spirits in the form of soulwraiths and soul fragments, and transformed one of her own legionnaires into an aldrachi revenant.

The aldrachi's combat techniques live on with aldrachi reaver demon hunters, who like their extinct namesakes use advanced glaivework and consume enemy souls to empower themselves in battle.

Notes

• The Iron Warden, a Burning Legion construct, fell during the invasion of the aldrachi homeworld.
• The Aldrachi Blasphemer's Flames and Aldrachi Blasphemer's Glaives sets (recolors of the Nathreza Blasphemer's Flames and Glaives respectively) are named after the race.