A War Craft 3 fanfic: Under the azure skies

Written by Spiritblade

Disclaimer: I do not own War Craft 3. If I did, I'd be very rich. Alas, I'm not. This story works well with my first WC3 (and first story on ): Under Wintry Skies. I've altered the storyline somewhat, but I believe that this should fill up well, in any case.

Prologue: Part 1

My name is Asalla Lightbringer. I have been a wandering minstrel for as long as I could remember. My calling was one that my mother had followed even after my birth, and my father and I had watched enraptured as her songs held entire crowds in thrall. Whether they be elf, dwarf or human, her voice held the magic that gave life to song and story. It is my most cherished dream to be like her.

My father had chuckled, and told me that my mother was a tough woman beneath that beautiful, gentle exterior. I looked like her physically, with my shimmering silver-gold mane, pert nose and large green eyes that a man could get lost in, but I lacked the abilities that had made her survive a harsh, hostile world. My father faithfully gave me those skills.

Being a ranger, he taught me how to use a longbow and a longsword, so as to allow me to defend myself. But, it was my mother that taught me the most important lesson. Being a minstrel is not an easy task, particularly when you dedicate yourself to finding the truth behind every story told. It is a quest not for the weak of heart, nor for those lacking strength and will. My mother taught me that the monsters she faced – and that I would in the future – were not necessarily those that were monstrous in countenance, or were of the non-human races. In fact, some of the worst monsters she had had to face had been human.

But, even so, despite the dangers, I accepted the challenge. My mother had been part of an Azerothian bardic circle called the Celestial Chorus and her recommendation for me to be part of her group had been well received. As an initiate, I had first travelled in the company of senior bards and dancers in their travels.

I learnt a lot from them in the four years I travelled with them.

Then, came the final test of whether I could become a fully-fledged bard. As is the tradition of the Celestial Chorus, I had to submit a story or a song of my own creation, and by the Holy Light, the acquisition of one was by no ways easy.

One could sooner convince the legendary Black Dragon Deathwing to masquerade as a mouse than win the approval of the Celestial Chorus's upper echelons.

I've submitted close to a dozen stories and songs, and the fate of most of them was either to be used as toilet paper or as kindling. I've handled rejection pretty well, but the contempt of the Celestial Chorus's echelons have had me pondering on whether I should just run that old donkey through.

When Lordaeron came under attack by a mysterious enemy, I found the stirrings of an epic story. There was the danger, the intrigue and the mystery – every ingredient that was essential to an epic story was there. In the company of an Inquisitor, Lady Ramia Schtauffen, an old friend of mine, we followed the Crown Prince Arthas through his quest to purge the land of the growing evil that had insinuated itself within the populace.

At first, the enemy was one without a face, but whose dark and terrible purpose had me trembling. Prince Arthas was a good man.

Note that I said that in past tense, because what he is now had me questioning if the man he had been ever existed.

He fought to defend Lordaeron, and Lady Ramia and I bore witness to the hard decisions that became harder. The decision to purge the city of Stratholme had been the most horrifying thing I was to ever bear witness to. I watched as the Crown Prince was abandoned by both his mentor, Uther Lightbringer – a man he had respected and whom he considered family – and by his lover – Princess Jaina Proudmoore, daughter of Daelin Proudmoore of Kul Tiras. There was a pain on his features that reminded me of men who had no one else to turn to.

I followed the Prince, albeit foolishly, to the frozen lands of Northrend. I still believed in him then, when he chose to pursue the demonic Dreadlord known as Mal'Ganis. I had been part of the massive army that he led to that frozen land. My book was heavy, then, with the weight of stories my fellow warriors told me, their experiences and fears, their battles and their trials. One thing my mother had been right about was that that the men and women of the steel blade were bad liars. Few of them had the aptitude, and it was easy to tell when they were exaggerating their exploits or pretending that they were not afraid.

Their stories were compelling. If no one recorded their stories, no one would remember them. That was why a group of my fellow bards followed me to Northrend. Someone had to remember these heroes who were about to challenge Evil right on its own home ground.

I barely escaped Northrend.

Barely.

Prince Arthas sank our ships, eliminating any hope of us ever returning to Lordaeron. Nothing short of victory over the undead legions of the Scourge, he told us,would give us that chance. In the warmth of frozen taverns that the army constructed, I sang as joyous a song as I could, and the camp followers danced, hoping to take away the fear that the soldiers had in their eyes. I knew that fear all too well, having seen it so many times. It is the fear that an animal has when it sees the butcher. It is a fear that that animal has when he sees that gleaming knife in the butcher's hand and knows what it is used for.

Many a soldier had tried to bed me, hoping to burn away the terror in an inferno of passion. I refused to give myself that easily. If I gave myself to someone, it would be because that man is someone I loved above all else.

Prince Arthas came close to being that man. Noble, warm, kind, he was the epitome of what a man should be.

But, I realised that – like every man – he, too, was all too fallible.

My friend, Ramia, began to see that Arthas was slowly losing his humanity as he pursued his quest to kill Mal'Ganis for desecrating Lordaeron and killing thousands with the Plague. It is because of Ramia that I am still alive today. Had she not made arrangements with a goblin merchant for the use of their blimps, I would have been transformed into one of the Damned. Even before he returned from the quest to claim Frostmourne from the crypt in which it had been sealed, Ramia knew thatthe Prince was long lost to the Light.

His heart had been blackened, slowly but surely, by the Darkness that had laid waiting for him. Like a patient hunter, it had set traps to weaken its formidable prey before swooping in for the kill. Arthas's unseen adversary had set traps in his way, knowing that the Prince's sense of righteousness and duty would see to it that he blundered into them. And blundered into them he did. The first step had been to change Arthas's anger to hatred; then, his duty to merciless zealotry; then, those he loved and respected leaving him because they trusted him no longer; and the final stroke was when they made his desire for vengeance so all-consuming that he no longer cared what he would have to sacrifice in order to achieve it. Ramia had seen it, had tried to advice Arthas, but the Prince was all but blind to her words. If Uther could not convince him, if Jaina could tell sway him, what could she, Ramia Schtauffen, do?

Nothing.

Absolutely nothing.

Oh, Arthas won his battle. He managed to kill Mal'Ganis as the Scourge fortress fell to the fury and the blades of the warriors of Lordaeron. I saw him strike the Dreadlord down with the runeblade he had acquired several days prior to the final assault that crushed the undead stronghold. I saw it. The Dreadlord crumbled to dust.

And then, several days after the victory, as we prepared to build ships to return to Lordaeron, the Prince disappeared into Northrend's icy wastelands. Search parties were sent out. Those few that returned told the remaining captains of Arthas's army of the vast strongholds of the Undead that dotted Northrend. Many of these unholy citadels were mobilising. There was no question as to their intended target. The artisans working on the ships soon redoubled their efforts. The first ships that were completed were used to transport the severely injured and non-combatants from Northrend, escorted by dwarven gyrocopters and dwaven griffon riders.

Weeks later, the undead host attacked the citadels and camps of Arthas's army. Careful preparation by Arthas's remaining commanders brought them some time, but defeat had been inevitable. Northrend was a stronghold of the undead legions. A mere 7,000 men and women will find it impossible to defeat the lurking evil that had claimed this frozen land as its own. Not even at its full strength of 30,000 warriors that Arthas led into Northrend would have been able to accomplish this feat.

Ramia had tossed me into one of the many goblin blimps that the Alliance had managed to hire from the goblin merchants in Northrend minutes before thefortress fell. I bore witness to the final trap Ramia had laid for her enemies. The entire fortress, rigged every inch by dwarven explosives, blew a smoking crater in the frozen ground and started avalanches for miles around, the sounds of the explosion like the roar of an angry God.

It would take over two months before the blimps finally brought us back to Lordaeron – and to the scene of a nightmare made real. The Kingdom of Lordaeron had lost its king – and its Prince – in one fell swoop, casting the entire realm into chaos. Prince Arthas had returned to Lordaeron before we did, a corrupted, soulless Death Knight. A mockery of everything he had once believed in and fought for. A black image of the paladin he had once been.

He murdered his own father.

Murdered him in his Throne Room, minutes after he strode towards it with the adulation of the crowd ringing in his ears. He had been accompanied by a group of elite Death Guard, human and elven warriors corrupted to the side of the Scourge. These Dusk Caste Blackguards were soon, I later learnt, the bodyguard of the Death Knight generals that led the Scourge's undead hosts.

Arthas escaped. He escaped the vengeance of the paladins whose Order he had once been part of. He had been aided by the multitude of cultists who had been waiting for that very moment. They had infiltrated every level of society – from the nobility, to the army, down to the peasantry – and when Arthas struck, they, too, reacted.

What had once been a victory celebration became an outright massacre.

We, the survivors of Arthas's army, were brought before the Tribunal of the Holy Light, the inner circle of the Paladins, to give our testimonies of what had happened in Northrend. Paladins are stout, firm and courageous warriors. It is hard to scare these men and women of cloth and steel. What I told them made them blanch. I had doubled as Chaplain and Confessor in Arthas's army, and the stories and fears I have written in my book is heavy with the weight of lives lost.

The Paladins rushed across Lordaeron to mobilise its armies. From elven Quel'Thalas all the way to Azeroth, the word was spread of the terrible events that had happened. Even those not of the Alliance soon realised that a new enemy, one more fearsome and more potent than the Orcish Horde, had come to challenge them.

Entire nations - save arrogant Quel'Thalas-mobilised to meet this new threat, believing themselves able to prevail as they had over the Orcish Horde. The problem was that this was not the Orcish Horde. Orcs knew fear, knew pain, and knew when to give up a fight when it looked hopeless. The undead have no such weaknesses. They were an implacable foe that could give even the staunchestwarrior a stern reminder of his – or her – mortality and their eventual fate.

Arthas had been Lordaeron's Crown Prince. That meant that he knew more of his kingdom's military strength better than most of its generals. And he hadn't been the only one. His master, the Lich King, knew as well, and had prepared long in advance. The plague that had so weakened Lordaeron soon swept through the lands again with renewed ferocity. Those that had died from the Plague soon rose again as the Scourge's undead servants.

The loyalist armies and garrisons soon found themselves fighting against those newly-dead, and those that had raised themselves from their decades – or centuries – old slumber. My songs, once used to soothe fears and give hope, soon became songs of Fury. My voice would echo above the clash of steel and screams, singing a paean of defiance against this undying evil.

It's surprising that the soldiers soon started echoing it. Against horrors like this, they needed every advantage they could get.

But, I was a bard first and foremost.

As was my profession, I started writing stories again. With the money I had earned, I purchased a magical book that would allow me to fill it with as many pages as I wished. It had been expensive, but it was worth the investment. I was 24 winters old when I first heard of the Vermilion Legion, an Azerothian legion that had been sent into Lordaeron to combat the Scourge. Known derisively as the Red-Piss legion, they were a motley band of mercenaries, thugs, disobedient noble children, assassins and thieves.

The Vermilion Legion was the creation of General Eisengard in the reformation days of Azeroth. He drew into its ranks the dregs of society and taught them the advantages of military discipline. The noble houses across the continents finally found a place where they could toss their rebellious and hot headed children, if only to save them from further disgrace with a swift and 'honourable' death. It was also a dumping ground for the outcasts. There are criminals in the Vermilions that are wanted by the law of the lands. If they leave, if they desert, if they break the rules, the captains of the legion would not hesitate to carry out the execution themselves. Being part of the legion and following its rules to the letter is by far the better fate.

Those nobles who are part of the Vermilion Legion are often scoffed and mocked in social gatherings. For as long as they live, the stigma would forever remain. Thus, it is in the best interests of every aspiring noble not to get tossed into the Red-Piss legion. Those that are, however, I find better than their 'noble' counterparts. They have little use for the subterfuge and wordplay that their courtly brethren favour.

Discipline was always a problem with the Vermilion legion. They would get into brawls and fights almost every other time and get tossed in the stockade by the local constabulary. But, when it came down to the crunch, the Red-Piss Legion's true colours show. These men and women are family to each other. Children have been born in the Vermilion Legion, and take their place in the rank and file when they come of age.

Where you come from doesn't matter.

What your past was doesn't matter.

What your race is does not matter. I have seen a Forest Troll teach squires how to use throwing axes alongside a High Elf that taught the archers. I have watched an Orc teach swordies the finer points of a battleaxe and a greatsword.

There is one motto in the Red-Piss Legion: Vermilion blood washes your past away.

The Red-Piss legion was sent in first, ahead of all the rest. It was said that King Varien Wrynn of Azeroth wanted to get rid of this embarrassing excuse of an army. At the same time, the Red-Piss Legion was the only legion he could trust to hold the line while the rest of theAlliance mobilised their forces. They fought in bloody battles across Lordaeron, challenging Arthas's armies even as the Burning Legion incinerated the lands.

Despite their victories, the Vermilion legion never won the acclaim that was bestowed upon most others. The rank and file of the Red-Piss legion merely shrug and say, "So what? WE walked away. The undead bastards didn't. End of story."

The Red-Piss Legion is a close-knit family. I have said that before. Piss one off, and you piss the whole lot off. They have no one in the world save each other. There was no greater demonstration than that when they clashed with the soldiers of the Silver Legion of Lordaeron to avenge an insult over a comrade they had lost because some Alliancejack-ass decided that he had been expendable. They virtually gave him away to the Scourge just because of their damn self-righteous pride and their petty notions of honour and justice.

And when he came back swinging a blade at them in retaliation, they blame him for being a traitor? Who betrayed whom first? He fought hard, from what I heard of the survivors. He was loyal. He needed help to hold a front that was swiftly destabilising due to the Burning Legion pouring their unholy hosts to aid the undead crush his army.

He got none.

And when a grand majority of the force got massacred, the Alliance command just went ahead and disgraced him further. They stripped him of his knighthood. They humiliated him. For a Knight to be assigned to the Red-Piss Legion after his initiation was already an insult of colossal proportions – and he smiled even as he joined them.

That man was Shateiel Iceblade, the one who became the Death Knight that the Alliance forces called the Angel of Silence.

I spoke to the Vermilion Legion dancer, Marina, a survivor of Shateiel's defeated army. She was beautiful, and her seductive, playful air hid the fact that she was a trained fighter. She could dance as well as any of the Celestial Chorus, but the whips she carried were as deadly as the blades the swordies of the legion carried. Even the most lecherous fool in the Vermilion legion watched their steps around the most beautiful members of their group. As went the wise saying, the more beautiful the woman, the deadlier. And in the Red-Piss legion, it was all too true.

Marina told me about her lost commander, before a swordie and 3 Crusaders from the same armysat down andgave me their accounts of the events that had happened then. They helped me put a face to a man the Alliance had deemed a traitor the moment they realised he came from Alterac, the treacherous nation that betrayed the Alliance during the 2nd Orc-Human War. The stigma had stayed with Shateiel throughout his life, and the hardship that he had had to endure had won him respect in the Red-Piss Legion long before he joined them.

As a commander, he had been inspiring. As a brother, he had been unswerving. And to some of the female members of the group who, blushing, told me that as a lover, he had been passionate. And together, as a man, they admitted that he was as fallible as they were. But, none of them had expected that the blow that brought him low had been one delivered by two women he loved the most. Alyss Woodfern of the High Elves and Raina Bladeblow of Stromgarde, both commanders of the Silver Legion of Lordaeron and Shateiel's immediate superiors. They had been childhood friends, bound by oaths and promises to watch over each other.

Always, they would watch each other's back.

But, when the two women strode too far ahead, they realised too late that their companion had been left far behind and overwhelmed by the wolves he had striven to guard them against. And, blindly, uncaringly, they cast him aside at the behest of the Alliance's High Command for a crime he did not commit.

Asundra Gladebow, a high elf sorceress of the Vermilion Legion, told me that Shateiel had many enemies. Many wanted him dead. Just as many wanted him shamed. And that night, those that wanted him brought low had had their wish granted. He left the Alliance encampment hours after his two childhood friends had stripped him of his rank, of his pride, and of his dignity. Even the survivors of the Vermilion Guards got no thanks from the Silver Legion whose flanks they had guarded tenaciously.

He could not go back home to the warm embrace of his parents because Alterac was nothing more than ghost-haunted ruins, destroyed in the furious advance of the Burning Legion. He had no army; a grand majority of his brothers and sisters of the Vermilion Guards were slain because he did not want to give way and expose Alyss's army to a flanking attack. He dared not face the rest of the Legion for what he had done.

Everything I've heard and compiled about the Angel of Silence, who is said to be the lieutenant of a mighty female Deathlord that rules over a region of Lordaeron known as the Shadowlands, tells me a story of betrayal, of love surrendered and of unspeakable hardship. The Vermilion Legion's soldiers are said to be liars and uncouth thugs by a majority of the Alliance hosts; I think not. For once, these rugged men and women may well be telling the truth that the Alliance had given over one of their own champions to the Darkness.

It is a mistake, I fear, that they will pay for dearly.

My mother used to tell me that there are two sides of every story told, and my curiosity has been piqued. The best way to ascertain the truth is to enter the lion's den and speak to the lion itself. I'm not stupid. If I were, I would have died in Northrend long ago. I know the risks, but I'm going to take them all the same. The Shadowlands – comprising of what used to be the cities of Alterac and the Violet Citadel of Dalaran – are now grim fortresses under the control of the Deathlord Seraphim of the Scarlet Dawn. The surrounding territories are watched over by both the living and the undead servants of the Seraphim of the Scarlet Dawn.

And if I do come out of this quest alive, I would have in my possession a story that would have make my parents proud. That is…if I come out alive.

Next Chapter: Prologue: Part 2: The Shadowlands.

Afterword: This story, telling a slightly altered variation of Under the Wintry Skies, holds in its contents the elements of Ragnarok Online as well as White Wolf's Exalted: The Abyssals. The latter depicts the Champions of the armies of the Dead, and thus, I believe they would do wonderfully for this tale. The creation of the Abyssals will be explained further on in the story and will not follow the one told in the said book.