Death knight (Old Horde)

This article is about the original death knights of the Horde. For the corresponding Warcraft II unit, see Death Knight (Warcraft II). For other uses, see death knight (disambiguation).

Teron Gorefiend, the first death knight, as depicted in the Trading Card Game.

The death knights were powerful undead necromancers that served the Old Horde during the Second War and the Invasion of Draenor. Gul'dan created them by placing the souls of dead orc warlocks from the Shadow Council inside the corpses of human knights. Riding skeletal horses and wielding jeweled truncheons empowered with the magic of sacrificed necrolytes, as well as their own arsenals of necromantic and elemental spells, these soldiers of darkness sowed chaos and fear throughout Azeroth. Although they outwardly claimed allegiance to the Horde, the death knights cared little for both the Horde and Gul'dan and were ultimately loyal only to themselves. Teron Gorefiend was the first death knight and their de facto leader.

These death knights share their name and some superficial similarities with the death knights of the Scourge that were later created by the Lich King, but the two are otherwise unrelated.

History

Creation

“I will create a host of creatures such as you have never seen before, mighty Doomhammer—warriors who will serve you alone. With their might and our magic we will crush this world's magi even as the Horde tramples its warriors into the dust.”

— Gul'dan's promise to Doomhammer

Creation of the first death knight: the soul of Teron'gor being instilled in a fallen knight of Stormwind, as depicted in Hearthstone.

During the First War, warlocks and necrolytes composed the magic users of the Horde, until Orgrim Doomhammer seized the position of warchief and outlawed the use of fel magic. In 4 ADP, immediately after the war's end, Orgrim and his soldiers stormed the Shadow Council's secret headquarters in Blackrock Spire and killed the majority of its members. At the time, the council's leader Gul'dan was in a coma as a result of having been searching inside Medivh's mind for the location of the Tomb of Sargeras at the moment of Medivh's death. When he awoke, Gul'dan convinced Orgrim to spare him by pointing out that with most of the warlocks dead and fel magic banned, the Horde no longer had a counter to the magic of the human clerics and magi. Gul'dan promised to create new warriors that could combat humanity's spellcasters and would be loyal exclusively to Orgrim.

Gul'dan wanted his creations to be secretly loyal to him and therefore turned to the Shadow Council. Although its members were dead, their souls were intact and still lingered on the mortal plane. Gul'dan and Cho'gall gathered the spirits and looked for a way to instill them into physical shells. Gul'dan considered using orc or ogre bodies, but knew that the Horde would not tolerate such desecration of its dead. He instead decided to fuse the souls with the corpses of the greatest knights of Stormwind, slain in the last battles of the First War. Gul'dan's surviving necrolytes experimented with simply reanimating the human corpses, but were unable to give them consciousness in this way and could only direct them as puppets. Gul'dan and Cho'gall sacrificed the necrolytes and magically preserved their hearts and souls as jewels, which they affixed into truncheons. They then instilled the souls of the Shadow Council warlocks into the human bodies and placed the truncheons in their hands, using the sacrificed necrolytes' necromantic energies to raise the bodies into undeath and give them magical power. Teron'gor, known thereafter as Teron Gorefiend, was the first to be raised in this way.

The death knights pledged their allegiance to Orgrim and the Horde. Orgrim found the creatures disgusting, but saw their potential and assigned them to act as the Horde's cavalry and vanguard. He publicly presented them to the rest of the Horde during an assembly at Blackrock Spire a week later. At Gorefiend's request, Orgrim did not reveal the death knights' nature to the other orcs since many might have been displeased to learn that they were warlock souls inhabiting human corpses. Orgrim ordered members of the Blackrock clan to keep a close watch on the death knights. He secretly planned to destroy both them and Gul'dan after the Horde had defeated humanity. The death knights, in turn, cared little for the warchief and his army, nor were they as subservient and grateful to Gul'dan as he had hoped—they were loyal only to themselves, and acted solely to preserve their own existence.

Second War

The death knights during the Battle of Hillsbrad Foothills (detail of Chronicle Volume 2 artwork).

The death knights made their first appearance in battle at the beginning of the Second War, at the Battle of Hillsbrad Foothills in 6 ADP. Their use of necromancy horrified and demoralized the Alliance forces until the Alliance's own new force of magic-wielding warriors, the paladins of the Silver Hand, used their holy abilities to counter the death knights and reinvigorate their allies. The death knights and paladins proved to be evenly matched, neither able to gain an advantage over the other, and they kept each other occupied for the duration of the battle.

During the Second War, Gul'dan told the death knights about powerful Azerothian artifacts he'd learned about from Medivh's memories, but not their exact locations. The death knights participated in the invasion of Quel'Thalas. When Orgrim split the Horde's forces, the knights did not stay in Quel'Thalas with Gul'dan but accompanied Orgrim's main force west to the Siege of Capital City. Upon learning that Gul'dan and his followers had abandoned the Horde to seek out the Tomb of Sargeras, Orgrim asked Teron Gorefiend if he and the death knights also intended to go to their former master. Gorefiend replied that they did not and that they'd remain loyal to the Horde, and to Orgrim as long as he was its leader. Orgrim ordered them to protect the Horde's forces as they retreated from Capital City. Following the defeat at Blackrock Spire, the death knights led some of the Horde to the Black Morass in order to escape through the Dark Portal back to the safety of Draenor. In the ensuing battle, they used their necromantic abilities to stall Turalyon's Alliance forces long enough for the Horde to slip through the portal before the Alliance destroyed it.

Beyond the Dark Portal

Gorefiend and his death knights did not intend to remain stranded on the dying Draenor. They planned to use some of the artifacts Gul'dan had told them of—the Book of Medivh, the Eye of Dalaran, and the Scepter of Sargeras—to open dimensional gateways to other planets. Their motive was selfish: they cared only about themselves and wanted to claim a world they could rule as their own. They would need the Horde's help to find and retrieve the artifacts from Azeroth, but the surviving orcs distrusted Gul'dan's former allies in general and the death knights in particular. In 8 ADP, Gorefiend therefore convinced the shaman Ner'zhul to reassume leadership and reunite the remaining clans into the Horde of Draenor. Ner'zhul appointed Gorefiend and Grommash Hellscream his seconds, with Gorefiend overseeing the Horde's death knights and ogres.

The death knights aided Ner'zhul in the ritual to reopen the Dark Portal with the Skull of Gul'dan. A handful of knights led by Gaz Soulripper then accompanied the orc forces through the portal and killed the Alliance defenders on the other side after summoning a magical darkness to conceal themselves. The orcs rebuilt the portal's physical frame, and the death knights used their magics to stabilize the rift. The death knights also sent dreams and visions to the clans still on Azeroth to rally them to their cause, but only the Bleeding Hollow clan answered the summons. While Grommash's forces distracted the Sons of Lothar with attacks on Nethergarde Keep, Gorefiend led a hunting party to find the artifacts.

Initially consisting of only Gorefiend, Ragnok Bloodreaver, two other death knights, and the orc Pargath Throatsplitter, the group infiltrated Stormwind Keep for the Book of Medivh only to find it stolen by the Alteraci. Gaz Soulripper sent Fenris Wolfbrother, Tagar Spinebreaker, and some of their clan members to join the hunters. After failing to gain the support of the Dark Horde in Blackrock Spire, Gorefiend's party was approached by Deathwing, who offered the Horde the aid of his black dragons in exchange for being allowed to bring his brood to Draenor. Gorefiend split up his forces: Ragnok accompanied Fenris and Tagar to the Tomb of Sargeras to retrieve the scepter, while Gorefiend and the rest of the knights went first to Alterac to obtain the Book of Medivh from King Perenolde, then to Dalaran for the Eye. While the dragons attacked the city's outer defenses, Gorefiend and the other death knights broke into the Arcane Vault, which tripped the Kirin Tor's alarm. Archmage Antonidas and a handful of magi dueled the death knights inside the vault, killing four of them; the knights killed one of the magi in return. Gorefiend and the few remaining knights then teleported out and escaped on dragonback with the Eye. Witnessing the death knights' abilities firsthand left a lasting impression on the Kirin Tor mage Kel'Thuzad and fueled his own interest in studying necromancy.

Ragnok Bloodreaver, as depicted on the cover of Nexus Point.

With the artifacts collected, Gorefiend led the death knights back to Draenor with most of the rest of the Horde. An exception was Gaz Soulripper, who was captured, interrogated, and killed by the Sons of Lothar for information on the Horde's plans. The Sons of Lothar subsequently invaded Draenor. Near the end of the conflict, a number of death knights and orcs attacked the Sons' Expedition Armory in Hellfire Peninsula. The knights cursed the armory's defenders, trapping their souls between the realms of the living and the dead as ghosts called the Unyielding.

The death knights accompanied Ner'zhul on the march from Hellfire Citadel to the Black Temple, where he'd use the artifacts to open the portals to other worlds. Several death knights joined Ner'zhul, alongside warlocks and Shadowmoon orcs, atop the Temple Summit to aid the shaman in the ritual to tap Draenor's ley lines and perform the Spell of Conjuration. Other knights, including Gorefiend himself, fought at the base of the temple to hold off the Sons of Lothar when they besieged the structure. Gorefiend was killed in battle against Turalyon. When Ner'zhul completed his spell, the death knights who'd aided him escaped with him through a portal into the Twisting Nether before Draenor tore apart into Outland.

Later activities

Most of the death knights disappeared after Draenor's destruction. Those who escaped into the Nether with Ner'zhul were captured by the Burning Legion alongside the shaman. After the Legion transformed Ner'zhul into the Lich King, they likewise ripped apart his death knights and other followers and transformed them into liches. Years later, the Lich King created a new breed of death knights in the form of rune-wielding warriors of the Scourge. Although these modern death knights shared the same name as Gul'dan's first generation and had much in common with them (such as necromantic abilities), they had a far different origin in that they consisted mainly of corrupted paladins.

During the war in Outland, Teron Gorefiend's soul, which had become imprisoned in Shadowmoon Valley, tricked adventurers into freeing him by telling them a fabricated account of history and having them collect his former belongings. One of these was his truncheon, held by the Ghostriders of Karabor, whom he claimed were the remnants of Gorefiend's death knights that he had executed before his death. The resurrected Gorefiend joined the Illidari in the Black Temple for a time before being killed again by adventurers.

Ragnok Bloodreaver survived Draenor's destruction. During the war in Outland, he attempted to conquer the realm with a private army of fel orcs and enslaved nether dragons, but was defeated by Jorad Mace and his allies.

It's not known whether any other of the original death knights have survived into the present day.

Characteristics

A death knight during the Second War, riding an undead steed and wielding a jeweled truncheon, as depicted in the Warcraft II manual.

Variously described as "dark riders", "knights of death", "soldiers of darkness", "unholy warriors", "vile horsemen", or "vile shades", the death knights were the ultimate successors to the warlocks they were created to replace. As they had been reanimated using the energies of sacrificed necrolytes, their very bodies were imbued with sorcery, making them more powerful than they had been as living warlocks. Each death knight wielded a jeweled truncheon, powered by the soul of a slain necrolyte, through which they could focus their powers. They rode heavily barded skeletal horses and wielded an arsenal of necromantic and elemental spells in battle.

One attack spell involved enveloping their truncheons with energy to deplete the life from their enemies, sending tendrils of darkness to constrict their lungs, stop their heart, and—with enough pressure—collapse their chest and crush their bones. Other powers included draining the life from enemies to replenish themselves, increasing the speed of other beings, converting life force into spectral armor to absorb attacks, and summoning destructive whirlwinds and clouds of decomposing vapor. Their paramount power was to raise the dead as reinforcements in battle, a spell they inherited from the necrolytes. In close quarters, they favored a spell that caused blood to burst from their victim's eyes, mouth, ears, and nose.

The death knights had no need of food or rest. They could laugh and sigh by inhaling and expelling air from their dead lungs. They had access to their host bodies' memories and skills, such as knowledge of human heraldry and the ability to (with some concentration) read Common without having to learn it. Like other undead, they were vulnerable to holy magic, which was agonizing to them.

They normally wore heavy hooded cloaks and masked their faces with cloth wraps in order to conceal their hideous features, leaving only their glowing red eyes visible. They also wore wrappings around their limbs and torsos. When not in battle, the death knights dwelled in the subterranean, fetid halls of the Grombolar (Temples of the Damned), where they studied their necromancy on corpses reaped from the battlefields above.

Known death knights

• Teron Gorefiend (Teron'gor) — The first death knight. At the end of the Second War, he led the knights back to Draenor, where he devised the plan to open portals to other worlds and convinced Ner'zhul to form the Horde of Draenor. Commanded his fellow death knights as Ner'zhul's lieutenant and led the mission to obtain the necessary artifacts from Azeroth. Was slain by Turalyon at the Black Temple at the end of the Invasion of Draenor. During the war in Outland, he tricked adventurers into resurrecting him and allied himself with the Illidari before being slain again by adventurers in the Black Temple.
• Gaz Soulripper — Oversaw the Azerothian side of the Dark Portal prior to the Invasion of Draenor. Was captured and interrogated by the Sons of Lothar before being killed by Turalyon.
• Ragnok Bloodreaver — One of the knights who accompanied Gorefiend on the quest to recover artifacts from Azeroth. Survived Draenor's destruction and later assembled an army to try to make himself the new Lord of Outland, but was slain by Jorad Mace.
• Ghostriders of Karabor — Ghosts that roam Shadowmoon Valley. According to the Ancient Shadowmoon Spirit (Teron Gorefiend in disguise), they are the spirits of death knights who allowed themselves to be executed by Gorefiend and await their master's return.

Warcraft Adventures: Lord of the Clans

This section concerns content related to the canceled game Warcraft Adventures: Lord of the Clans and is therefore non-canon.

A death knight in a Temple of the Damned in Warcraft Adventures.

Thrall encountered a death knight resting in a coffin in a Temple of the Damned at Grim Batol. When he tried to steal one of the death knight's scrolls containing the Decay spell, the knight woke up and cast him out, though one of his rotting hands fell off in the process. Thrall sneaked back inside, stole the dropped hand, and used it as the reagent of a Summon scroll to summon the death knight to a swamp where a tentacled monster pulled him into the water and ate him. This allowed Thrall to return to the temple and steal the Decay scroll, which he later used to access the gates of Blackrock Spire.

In the RPG

This section contains information from the Warcraft RPG which is considered non-canon.

During the Second War, Kil'jaeden taught Gul'dan how to command the dead and stretch his consciousness into the Great Dark Beyond, where he found the souls of the slain Shadow Council eagerly awaiting a new host. Gul'dan's first attempts at raising the dead met with failure, as the bodies of his necrolytes and apprentices proved too weak to house the souls of the ancient warlocks.

Later in the war, after creating the Altars of Storms and the ogre magi, Gul'dan convinced Orgrim Doomhammer that Rend and Maim Blackhand were plotting against him, which prompted Doomhammer to disband the Blackhands' raider legions. This weakened the Horde's mounted cavalry, which Gul'dan offered to solve by creating an army of undead riders loyal only to Orgrim. The warchief approved—buying Gul'dan time during which he and Cho'gall formed the Stormreaver and Twilight's Hammer clans—but soon demanded results. Gul'dan desperately searched for a solution and realized that he'd been working only with the bodies of his own ground troops and that he needed bodies trained for mounted combat. In "a stroke of insane genius", he placed Teron Gorefiend's soul into the corpse of a human knight. Gorefiend not only took control of the body but proved able to channel dark magic while encased in the skeletal shell. Thus the first death knight was born.

Notes

• In order to allow an adventurer to infiltrate the fel orcs of Netherwing Ledge, Mordenaku forged a recommendation letter from Teron Gorefiend which mentioned in passing that the adventurer had "no future as a death knight". Upon reading the letter, Overlord Mor'ghor agreed (saying: "A death knight? You couldn't shine the boots of a death knight, maggot") but did not question the idea of new death knights as such. This implies that Gorefiend created or planned to create new death knights from fel orcs during his time in the Illidari, or at least that a high-ranking Illidari like Mor'ghor could buy the idea that he was planning to do so.
• Some in-universe sources claim that the dark jewel that the Scarlet Crusade found in the Plaguelands and used to create Light's Wrath was originally part of a truncheon carried by one of the first death knights, while others claim that the jewel was created by Kel'Thuzad.
• Warcraft II: Beyond the Dark Portal portrays the death knights as having had a more secondary role in the leadup to the Invasion of Draenor than in later lore. Namely, Ner'zhul—who was already warchief of the clans of Draenor—independently decided to reopen the Dark Portal and create dimensional gateways to other worlds, and had to destroy a specific order of death knights who had fallen under the control of Mogor and the Laughing Skull clan in order to obtain knowledge they'd acquired on how to rebuild the Dark Portal. Teron Gorefiend later offered Ner'zhul his influence over Draenor's death knights (who had been left clanless after Gul'dan's death) in exchange for a world the death knights could claim as their own. Ner'zhul then used the death knights' necromantic powers and the knowledge gained from Mogor's defeat to reopen the Dark Portal. The novel Beyond the Dark Portal retconned Gorefiend and the death knights into being the initial driving force behind the formation of the Horde of Draenor, Ner'zhul's appointment as warchief, and the plan to open new portals.
• In the Warcraft III alpha, the death knights who escaped Draenor with Ner'zhul were planned to have a different fate. Rather than being transformed into liches like Ner'zhul's other followers, the ever-insubordinate death knights would've been stripped of most of their power and transformed into floating, spectral warriors by the Burning Legion as punishment for refusing to give homage to Ner'zhul after he was transformed into the Lich King. They would consequently have appeared in-game as a Scourge unit also called "death knights". Later in development, this death knight unit was scrapped and their model was reused for revenant creeps. The name "death knight" was reapplied to a different Scourge unit, the anti-paladin, which became the modern death knights seen in Warcraft III and World of Warcraft. This was because Blizzard deemed that the original death knight and the anti-paladin were too similar and that it didn't make sense to have both. Finally, to account for the fate of Ner'zhul's death knights, they were incorporated into the backstory of the lich unit instead.
• The modern death knight class introduced in Wrath of the Lich King was designed to take inspiration from both the Old Horde's death knights and the Scourge death knights of the Third War by combining melee attacks with spellcasting.

Gallery

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  A death knight summoning skeletons to attack a hapless human (Warcraft II manual).
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  A death knight casting Death and Decay (Warcraft II manual).
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  Death knight portrait (Warcraft II).
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  Death knight sprite (Warcraft II).
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  Teron Gorefiend portrait (Warcraft II).
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  Death knight artwork from Warcraft Adventures pre-release material.
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  Teron Gorefiend in World of Warcraft.
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  A Ghostrider of Karabor, the remnant of one of Gorefiend's death knights.
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  Teron Gorefiend during the Invasion of Draenor, as depicted in the Trading Card Game.
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  Ragnok Bloodreaver in The Dragons of Outland.
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  Line art of a death knight battling a paladin in Chronicle Volume 2.
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  Unused alternate version of Chronicle Volume 2 artwork, featuring a more warrior-like design for the central death knight.
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  Render of the original death knight unit in Warcraft III, whose model was reused for revenants.
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  Concept art of the original death knight unit in Warcraft III.