User:GoldenYak/Chronicle/Prologue: The Ages of War
Related to Worlds of Warcraft - Chronicle of the Titan Worlds
Prologue - The Ages of War
Since the dawn of its existence, Azeroth has been a world of war. From the great battles of the elementals during the world's first age, to the coming of the Old Gods and their voidborn terrors, to the great campaigns of mogu and kaldorei. So it is with irony that the era of the First War is named, for countless wars had been waged for many millennia before the time of that conflict. But the First War is, in some ways, the most significant, for it marked the beginning of the last of Azeroth's Great Ages of War.
It was the First War that saw the orcish Horde come to Azeroth from long-lost Draenor. Traveling through the Dark Portal, this alien army had come to ravage and despoil the lands of Azeroth. Unwittingly carrying out the plans of hidden demon masters, the orcs slaughtered the humans that they found and tore down their kingdoms. But mankind reached out to others who called Azeroth home - dwarf, elf, and gnome - uniting the disparate races together into a powerful Alliance that turned the tides against the orcs in the Second War. With the orcs defeated, their demonic puppet-masters withdrew their support, leaving the orcs at the mercy of the Alliance.
Years passed before Azeroth would again suffer from demonic incursion, but when the demons returned they did so in force. The demons unleashed the undead Scourge upon Azeroth, scything away entire civilizations with plague and necromantic sorcery, before the demons themselves took to the field, revealing to Azeroth the true threat that had motivated the Horde - the Burning Legion. 10,000 years ago the Legion had fought to claim Azeroth for their dread master, the fallen Titan Sargeras, but the demons had failed then, defeated by the kaldorei and their allies. This second invasion came to be called the Third War, but it marked the first time when Alliance and Horde fought as allies. The Horde overcame their demonic corruption and fought alongside Alliance and kaldorei to destroy the Legion and drive them from Azeroth.
The end of the Third War marked the beginning of a new age of war - Alliance and Horde carved out their places in the world, and held them against all-comers. Time and again these factions would take to the field of battle, against one-another as often as alongside one-another. For every blood-soaked battlefield the Horde and the Alliance clashed over, there was another where the two fought side-by-side against an enemy that threatened to consume them both. Undead armies, ancient horrors from the days of the Black Empire, and corrupted agents of the fallen Titan Pantheon - all those who sought to destroy Azeroth would fall before the combined might of two worlds, Alliance and Horde united. And inevitably, when the greater danger passed, Alliance and Horde would turn their weapons upon each-other. The cycle never ceased its turning. It was an endless age of war.
Then the day came when the sky turned black, and fire rained from the heavens. The mortal races of Azeroth looked to the horizon where a new army of demons appeared - the Burning Legion had returned. Swarming out of the chaotic realm of the Twisting Nether, the demons were seemingly without limit. For every incursion that was crushed, another would follow. Horde and Alliance fought ceaselessly, driven by desperate need to survive. Though the demons died in droves, they each screeched out the same dire threat with their final breath.
"Sargeras is coming! The Lord of the Legion is here!"
Additional Information and Sidebars - The Ages of War
Sidebar - The First Age - The Age of the Elements
At Azeroth's birth, the world teemed with the energies of creation, overflowing with elemental power. The element of spirit, the balancing force that governed the other elements, was drawn into the worldsoul that slept within Azeroth, leaving the remaining elements to descend into chaos. Fire, earth, air, and water all manifested elementals, beings composed of pure elemental energy, who immediately fell to war amongst themselves. This was the dawn of Azeroth's first Great Age of War. No elemental faction could ever truly defeat another, and in truth none really desired victory. For victory would mean an end to the great war they waged, and all the elementals desired was for their war to be fought for all time. Their battles were fought for innumerable millennia, but at last they would come to an end with the arrival of the Old Gods, and the beginning of the Second Age.
Sidebar - The Second Age - The Age of the Old Gods
The Old Gods fell from the darkness between the stars eons ago, crashing into Azeroth's surface like burning meteors. The voidborn fiends burrowed deep into the planet's surface like parasites, their questing tendrils digging down towards the slumbering worldsoul in Azeroth's core, hungering to consume and corrupt the vast energies of the nascent Titan. The elementals foresaw that the Old Gods would be the end of their world, and rallied together to fight against the invaders. But the Old Gods were monsters born of the Void, and commanded powers great and terrible beyond the elementals. Legions of monsters burst forth from the flesh of the Old Gods, armies of skittering insectile horrors and squamous tentacled abominations. With the baleful power of the Old Gods poisoning their world, the elementals could not match the horrors unleashed against them. Soon the elementals were utterly defeated, and themselves enslaved and corrupted into servants of the Old Gods. With no other enemy left to fight, each Old God turned their forces upon their fellows - did the chaotic beings truly loathe one-another, or did their armies fight simply to amuse their dark masters? None can say. But this was the time of the Black Empire. An endless nightmare world of monsters at war. This was the Age of the Old Gods.
Sidebar - The Third Age - The Age of the Ordering
Azeroth withered under the reign of the Black Empire. Over the millennia the Old Gods burrowed deeper, devouring more of the world's life force, slowly weakening the nascent Titan within Azeroth, preparing it for ultimate corruption. But the Old Gods dark designs would not come to pass. For though the Titan within Azeroth still slept, others of its kind already walked the stars, a great Pantheon of the most powerful beings in the universe. They found Azeroth languishing in the grip of the Old Gods, and would not allow their sleeping sibling to be defiled. The Titans reached out their power and sent their armies down to Azeroth - the Titanborn, creatures of living stone and metal with the power to crush the monstrous hordes of the Old Gods. Though the Old Gods themselves were too deeply embedded within Azeroth to be safely expunged, the Titans resolved the dilemma by entombing the malefic beings with arcane prisons designed to halt their growth and prevent further corruption. The Titans re-shaped Azeroth with magic and machine, repairing the damage wrought by the Old Gods and helping the world to heal. Satisfied that the world had a chance to awaken as a pure and noble Titan, the Pantheon departed to seek out other worlds. Little could they know the fate that awaited them, and that the Titan they left behind in Azeroth would be their last hope to preserve the very universe...
Sidebar - The Fourth Age - The Age of the Ancients
For millennia, the worldsoul of Azeroth continued to grow, the nascent Titan within developing towards its awakening. Mortal life, born from the workings of the Titans, emerged and spread across Azeroth's surface, raising up great civilizations. One emerged as the mightiest - the kaldorei, the night elves, who learned to tap the arcane energies of the slumbering worldsoul within Azeroth and work miraculous feats of magic with its power. The night elves' reckless use of magic was the undoing of their reign over the world - the fires of magic drew the demons of the Burning Legion towards Azeroth. Sargeras, lord of the Burning Legion, had learned of Azeroth's existence from the Pantheon, shortly before he and his demon army had destroyed them. Sargeras sent his demons to invade Azeroth, sparking the greatest conflict the world had ever seen, as mortal fought demon for the very survival of the world. In the end the Legion was thwarted - Azeroth had survived. The mortal races had caught a glimpse of the true scale of war in the cosmos, and they knew the Legion would one day return...
Sidebar - The Last Age
Millennia passed, and the Burning Legion plotted and schemed how to bring about Azeroth's destruction. Sargeras knew that if the Titan within Azeroth awoke, his dream of remaking the universe in his own image would be in jeopardy. The Legion sought to weaken Azeroth's defenders, and engineered the invasion of an army from another world - the orcish hordes of Draenor. Demon magic linked the world of Draenor with Azeroth, the demons manipulating the orcs into invading and spreading destruction. When the people of Azeroth joined together in a great Alliance of races to thwart the Horde, the demons unleashed a new army of undead, a Scourge upon the living, to prepare the way for their second invasion. Ultimately, the Alliance stood together with the Horde, now freed from demonic manipulation, and together they struck down the demon invaders and spared the world from destruction yet again. But no sooner had the demons fallen, then the Alliance and the Horde fell to warring amongst themselves. Whenever a new threat would rear its head - be it the ancient malediction of the Old Gods, a new offensive by the demons, or some other world-shattering evil, the Alliance and Horde would unite to destroy it, only to fall back into their eternal cycle of battle and bloodshed once the threat had passed. This was the final Great Age of War - the age of the Alliance and the Horde, an age of endless battle, that would come to an end when the Burning Legion returned, one final time...