Azjol-Nerub (kingdom)
- This article is about the history of the nerubian nation. For the underground region it controlled, see Azjol-Nerub.
 Empire of Azjol-Nerub | |
|---|---|
 Nerubian racial icon, as depicted in the archaeology interface. | |
| Main leader |
 Seer Ixit[1] |
| Formerly |
 Anub'arak † |
| Secondary leaders |
 Reclaimer A'zak Kilix the Unraveler |
| Formerly |
Elder Nadox † Anub'Rekhan † Queen Nezar'Azret † |
| Race(s) |
    Nerubian Obsidian destroyer (enslaved) |
| Theater of operations | Azjol-Nerub, Northrend |
| Government | Monarchy |
| Language(s) | Nerubian |
| Affiliation | Independent, Azjol-anak |
| Formerly | Old Gods' forces |
| Status | Active; rebuilding |
“Our enemies believe us vanquished from the frozen wastes. We will show them the consequence of their ignorance.”
The Empire of Azjol-Nerub[1][2][3][4] (also known as the Kingdom of Azjol-Nerub,[5] the spider kingdom of Azjol-Nerub,[6][7][8] the Nerubian Empire,[9] the Old Nerubian Empire,[10] the Azjol Empire,[11][12] Nerub,[13][14] or the hidden empire)[15] is a nerubian city-state[16] found in Azjol-Nerub, a vast underground region in Northrend. The dark empire[17] once stretched nearly half the breadth of Northrend,[18][19] at least as far southwest as the Borean Tundra[20] and as far northeast as the Icy Depths in Icecrown.[21] The seat of the kingdom was located beneath the Dragonblight.[22][23]
The empire was crushed by the Scourge during the War of the Spider and the majority of its population turned undead, including the kingdom's then-ruler, Anub'arak. During the war against the Lich King, still-living nerubian rebels (the Azjol-anak) worked with adventurers to liberate Azjol-Nerub from the Scourge and begin to rebuild the empire.
Azjol-Nerub is one of two nerubian empires on Azeroth; the other is Azj-Kahet in Khaz Algar.
History
Foundation
Azjol-Nerub was founded as an aqiri city-state[24][25] during the war between Azj'Aqir and the Empire of Zul, circa 16,000 BDP. During the war, an aqiri colony traveled to Kalimdor's northern wastes (modern-day Northrend), where they discovered a small society of titan-forged tol'vir dwelling outside Ulduar. The aqir overthrew the tol'vir, enslaved them and turned them into obsidian destroyers, and adopted their architecture for their own purposes. Shortly after, the Drakkari troll tribe traveled north to hunt the aqir. The Drakkari were nearly overpowered by the obsidian destroyers, before devising ways to topple and destroy them.[26][27]
The Empire of Zul eventually destroyed Azj'Aqir and contained the aqir in separate colonies in the far north and far south of Kalimdor.[24][25][27] The ones in the north gathered near the underground prison of the Old God Yogg-Saron. Their proximity to the Old God caused them to gradually evolve into a new race, the nerubians, and their kingdom became known as Azjol-Nerub,[27] a sister kingdom to Ahn'Qiraj and Manti'vess in the south.[28] The heart of the old nerubian empire is Ahn'kahet, the Old Kingdom,[29] which Kilix the Unraveler calls "Ahn'kahet, from whence we came"[30] and "the city of our ancestors".[31]
For some length of time, Azjol-Nerub served Yogg-Saron. The Archives of Eternity in Uldir can replicate the minions of individual Old Gods; Yogg-Saron's take the form of voidweavers from Azjol-Nerub.[32] However, at an unknown point in time, the nerubians rejected their Old God masters.[33][34] By the time of the Third War, the nerubians had come to believe that the faceless ones—another race of Old God servants—were only legends.[35]
Early history
The vrykul Magnar Icebreaker earned his surname from his battles against nerubians in Northrend. While hunting nests of the insectoids, Magnar discovered that cracks in glacier walls could be turned into tunnels that allowed him to dig deep into enemy strongholds and launch surprise assaults on them from within. Years later, remnants of the nerubian armies once again began emerging from their caves, seeking to seize Ulduar and the titan machinery within it. Magnar, now a king wielding the Scale of the Earth-Warder, led his people against the insectoids, pushed them back to the entrance of Azjol-Nerub itself, and defeated them so thoroughly that they ceased all aggression for millennia.[36]
When Northrend split off from Kalimdor during the Great Sundering, the nerubian empire became isolated from the rest of Azeroth but continued to thrive.[37] The nerubians kept to themselves in the darkness of their homeland, being mostly uninterested in the affairs of surface dwellers.[38] They kept their empire hidden using ward devices.[39]
War of the Spider
- Main article: War of the Spider
By the time of the Lich King's arrival in Northrend, Azjol-Nerub was an empire of great strength,[38] ruled by their king, Anub'arak. When the Lich King began enslaving Northrend's inhabitants to create the Undead Scourge, the nerubian empire stood against his power and used their vast forces and underground network to launch hit-and-run attacks on his strongholds, igniting the War of the Spider. After a years-long war of attrition, the Scourge invaded Azjol-Nerub, slaughtered the nerubians, raised them as undead (mainly as crypt fiends and crypt lords), and forced them to serve the Lich King.[18][19][38][40] The Lich King raised Anub'arak himself as a crypt lord and forced him to help kill his own people and conquer their strongholds (such as Naxxramas) for the Scourge. For this, the living nerubians began to refer to Anub'arak as the "Traitor King" and blame him for the destruction of their kingdom.[41][42]
Many nerubians tried to escape the Scourge's invasion by tunneling underground, but some of them dug too deep and inadvertently exposed tendrils of Yogg-Saron. The Old God sent its faceless ones against the spider-men, who were unable to fight on two fronts and consequently lost both the war and their home.[31][43][44]
As a testament to their resistance, the Lich King adopted the nerubian architectural style as his own and repurposed their ziggurats as flying necropoli.[18][19][40] Most nerubians were killed in the War of the Spider, but small groups of survivors managed to flee deep underground[38] or into the wastes of Northrend, where they continued to fight to reclaim their kingdom from the Scourge.[17] During Arthas Menethil and Anub'arak's passage through Azjol-Nerub years later, they encountered and killed several pockets of living nerubian rebels (including the queen Nezar'Azret) who were still fighting to liberate their kingdom.[29][35]
Wrath of the Lich King
- See also: Azjol-anak
“I envy you in a way, little <race>. You are so fortunate as to bear witness to the first steps of the rebirth of the mighty Empire of Azjol-Nerub.”
During the war against the Lich King, a civil war raged in the ruins of Azjol-Nerub, as the Lich King, through his servant Anub'arak and the undead Anub'ar, sought to rule the kingdom while its last living inhabitants, the Azjol-anak, tried to defend themselves from annihilation.[11] In the Dragonblight's Pit of Narjun, Kilix the Unraveler extended the Azjol Empire's assistance to the Warsong Offensive by providing them strategic information about their mutual Anub'ar enemies.[12] Adventurers entered Azjol-Nerub itself to deal a blow to the Scourge and help the nerubians set about restoring their empire and exacting revenge on the Lich King.[38] In the Upper Kingdom, they helped Reclaimer A'zak destroy eggs that had been tainted by the Scourge[45] and killed Anub'arak himself.[5] In Ahn'kahet, they helped Seer Ixit's forces reclaim the area from both the invading Scourge[39] and the faceless one servants of Yogg-Saron.[46] Ixit stated that he intended to take his late teacher Elder Nadox's place as a leader of their people.[1] With the success of these efforts, both A'zak and Ixit declared that the time had come for the rebirth of the Empire of Azjol-Nerub and for the nerubians to reclaim their home.[2][4] The eggs the Scourge had found and corrupted were only a fraction of the living nerubians' hidden stores, which would allow them to repopulate their race.[45] Meanwhile, the Kirin Tor acquired Anub'arak's crown and set it aside for whenever the nerubians decided to coronate a new king.[47]
As of the end of the war against the Jailer, Muradin Bronzebeard wrote that he had heard that Azjol-Nerub was still in full-on ruins and a state of steady disintegration, but he and his brothers did not enter the place to see for themselves.[42]
References
- ^ a b c
[15-30D] Pupil No More
- ^ a b Reclaimer A'zak quotes
- ^
[The Gatewatcher's Talisman]: "Key to the hidden Empire of Azjol-Nerub."
- ^ a b Seer Ixit quotes
- ^ a b [15-30D] Death to the Traitor King
- ^ Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos Game Manual, Undead Units, Crypt Fiend: "The cunning crypt fiends were once the lords of the ancient spider kingdom of Azjol-Nerub that ruled over the arctic land of Northrend in ancient times."
- ^ Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos Game Manual, Undead Structures, Ziggurat: "These towers of the ancient spider kingdom of Azjol-Nerub ..."
- ^ Quotes of Warcraft III: Crypt Fiend: "For the spider kingdom."
- ^
[Cuffs of the Nerubian Empire]
- ^ Exploring Azeroth: Northrend, pg. 108
- ^ a b
[15-30] An Enemy in Arthas
- ^ a b [15-30] The Lost Empire
- ^ Quotes of Warcraft III: Crypt Fiend and Crypt Lord: "By Nerub" and "Feel the venom of Nerub!"
- ^ Into the Shadow Web Caverns: "These warriors, however, never died. Foolishly, they still fight to liberate Nerub from the Scourge."
- ^ [15-30D] The Gatewatcher's Talisman
- ^ Nerubian archaeology interface description
- ^ a b Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos Game Manual, Creatures of Lordaeron & Northrend, Nerubians
- ^ a b c Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos Game Manual, Undead History, War of the Spider
- ^ a b c
[War of the Spider]
- ^ Heart of War
- ^ Anub'arak (Trial of the Crusader tactics)#Quotes
- ^ The Art of World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King, pg. 82: "Within the Dragonblight, the one-time seat of the nerubian empire, dense forests surround an arctic wasteland ..."
- ^ Exploring Azeroth: Northrend, pg. 70: "The seat of the old nerubian kingdom of Azjol-Nerub, long since fallen, sits in the roots of the land [Dragonblight]."
- ^ a b
[The Twin Empires]
- ^ a b The Troll Compendium: Early Troll Civilization - The Rise of Troll Civilization
- ^ Ask CDev Answers - Round 1
- ^ a b c World of Warcraft: Chronicle Volume 1, pg. 73 - 74
- ^ [30-35] Shadow of the Empire
- ^ a b Into the Shadow Web Caverns
- ^ [80H] All Things in Good Time
- ^ a b [76D] The Faceless Ones
- ^ Zek'voz - Stage Two: Deception
- ^ World of Warcraft 2023-11-03. BlizzCon | The War Within: What's Next Panel | World of Warcraft. YouTube. Retrieved on 2024-03-11.
- ^ Blizzard Entertainment 2023-11-03. World of Warcraft®: What’s Next Panel Recap. Archived from the original on 2023-11-04.
- ^ a b The Forgotten Ones
- ^ Saga of the Valarjar: Scale of the Earth-Warder
- ^ Wrath of the Lich King: The Story So Far
- ^ a b c d e Wrath of the Lich King World Dungeons - Azjol-Nerub
- ^ a b [15-30D] Reclaiming Ahn'Kahet
- ^ a b World of Warcraft: Chronicle Volume 3, pg. 29
- ^ Vaeflare 2014-09-30. Anub'arak Hero Week - Heroes of the Storm. Archived from the original on 2020-10-24.
- ^ a b Exploring Azeroth: Northrend, pg. 75
- ^ [80H] Proof of Demise: Herald Volazj
- ^ Herald Volazj#Adventure Guide
- ^ a b [15-30D] Don't Forget the Eggs!
- ^ [15-30D] The Faceless Ones
- ^ [80H] Proof of Demise: Anub'arak
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