User:Minionman/First Undercity Siege

The first undercity siege occurred about 3 months after the merger of Arthas and the Lich King. Kel'thuzad sent about 5,000 undead fighters of various types to attack the undercity, which Sylvanas, Varimathras, and a few hundred forsaken had made their home. At the end of the siege, the scourge lost all of their fighters, around 3,000 of which were captured by the forsaken and freed from the scourge.

Before the Battle
As the scourge reorganized themselves in the plaguelands after Arthas merged with the Lich King, they faced three main threats. Sylvanas and Varimathras controlled the undercity and a number of undead forces, several living Paladins had organized themselves into the group that would become the Scarlet Crusade, and the human nations to the south (Dalaran mainly, but also Stromgarde and the Hillsbrad towns.) continued to fight the scourge to the south of the plaguelands. There were also a large number of villages in the plaguelands, but these were not powerful enough to attack the scourge. Kel'thuzad decided to attack the undercity first, after conquering the city, he would go south, capture the human nations in the region, and plague the people living in them to further increase the size of his army. Kel'thuzad and the Lich King has also wanted revenge on Sylvanas for her betrayal, and attempted assasination of Arthas.

When the merged Lich King regained his power, Sylvanas and Varimathras learned almost immediately. Realizing that they would likely be attacked, and would be outnumbered, they quickly built up the defenses of the former Lordaeran capital, and built up the number of followers. Kel'thuzad also increased the number of undead under his control, buy attacking some of the plaguelands villages, capturing the village dwellers, and creating new fighters from their bodies. Kel'thuzad sent 5,000 fighters to attack the undercity, and kept another 5,000 in the plaguelands to defend himself against possible human attacks. He sent about 40 necromancers, and the experienced Death Knight Geston Parrine to control the undead.

Beginning of the Battle
As perparation for the coming attack, the forsaken constantly scouted the countryside. As the scourge forces approached through Tirisfal, Sylvanas was warned of the coming attack. Deathguards were placed throughout the city, all workers except alchemists stopped what they were doing and entered the central palace, the alchemists themselves switched fully to preparing weapon potions. Scouts continued to watch the scourge approach.

Sylvanas's plan for battle had the deathguards hide in the abandoned capital city, killing scourge commanders at any opportunity, while the other forsaken forces defended the palace in the center. As a former undead commander herself Sylvanas knew how much less effective the mindless undead fighters would be when fighting on their own. The palace itself was stocked with corrosive, paralyzing, and other dangerous potions to the scourge, which would be thrown down on the attacking scourge. The few forsaken mages, as well as a skilled bowman Nathanos Blightcaller, also would be inside the palace. a few deathguards, with supplies of weapons and shields, were kept in the palace as well if the scourge managed ot break through.

Parrine's original plan to conquer the city is not known, but in general he planned to attack the city from all sides, using abomninations to break down doors, and using webbing from Nerubians to allow the ghouls to climb the walls and swarm the fighters inside.

When the scourge reached the outskirts of the Lordaeran capital, Parrine himself and three of his necromancers approached the city walls to examine and adjust their plans for attacking the city. When Parrine paused to explain his plan to the necromancers, he was hit by three blowgun darts from forsaken scouts and deathguards along the wall. These darts contained the Sylvanas Concoction, and paralyzed Parrine for most of the rest of the battle. The necromancers quickly ran away from the wall, quickly split the scourge fighters into three groups, and took them to the three main entrances of the city. Abominations broke through the doors, and scourge attackers quickly moved into the mostly empty city.

As the scourge moved through the city, Deathguards hiding in buildings killed the main necromancer coming from the north, and five more mid-level necromancers on all sides. Forsaken mages began casting spells on the approaching scourge as they approached the palace, and as abominations and nerubians approached the walls to break and web them, corrosive forsaken potions were dropped on these fighters. For the first hour or so of the battle, the scourge continuously sent fighters towards the palace walls, which were killed quickly by forsaken potions and magic, and Deathguards slowly killed about 20 scourge necromancers. However, the nerubians were slowly building up webbing on the palace walls, and soon the forsaken began pouring corrisive potion directly down the walls to destroy the webbing.

Palace Breach
An hour into the fighting, the scourge to the north reached the top of the palace walls with webbing. about 4 ghouls quickly climbed the webbing, and attacked the forsaken at the top. 2 deathguards at the top quickly picked up their weapons and attacked the ghouls, but were quickly swatted to the side by the much stronger ghouls, who ran to attack some potions throwers. More ghouls continued to climb the wall. forsaken potion throwers surrounding the webbing attacked the ghouls at the top, and potion throwers ran from other sides of the palace to stop more ghouls from flooding in. On the weakened western side, abominations broke into the main door, while webbing almost reached the top on the eastern side before potion throwers killed the attacking nerubians and destroyed it.

For about 15 minutes, the ghouls to the north caused havoc among the forsaken, around 10 of them reached the top and killed a number of potion throwers. Finally, the palace deathguards, Reinforcements from the other sides, and Sylvanas herself, subdued the ghouls and destroyed the webbing.

Fortunately for the defenders, the deathguards had continued to kill scourge necromancers very effectively. Necromancers were now close enough to be attacked by mages and Nathanos on the walls. Necromancers stayed away from buildings were quickly spotted by mages and Nathanos and killed, those who stayed nearer to buildings, or in alleys for cover, were easy targets for deathguards moving through and hiding in those same buildings and alleys. While the ghouls were being fought on the northern wall, another 12 necromancers were killed, and the remaining necromancers often were unable to fully see the battle as they hid from the mages. As morenecromancers were killed, the scourge attempts to break the walls became less and less effective, often, ghouls were beating on the walls ineffectively, rather than allowing nerubians to move close and web the walls.

End of the battle
Only 10 necromancers remained when the ghouls were cleared from the wall. As potion throwers moved back to their normal positions, they aggressively attacked nerubians to avoid similar break ins. Potion throwers found their jobs much simpler with the ineffectiveness of undead attacks.

A second break in occured on the west side, where a scourge army that had broken through an outer door, broke through an inner door to the palace. 4 of Sylvanas's remaining banshees possessed the abominations in the attack, and held off the ghouls for 30 minutes while forsaken workers moved west and reinforced doors to brevent further breakins.

An hour and thirty minutes into the battle, Parrine overcame his Paralysis and entered the city. On seeing the ineffectiveness of the scourge attack, Parrine attempted to organize his necromancers and strengthen the attack. While talking to a necromancer, however, the necromancer was shot by Nathanos Blightcaller, and Parrine himself was attacked from behind and killed by two deathguards using large kitchen knives found in the city.

After Parrine's death, the Sylvanas's necromancers called her to the palace center, and proposed to free the attacking scourge ghouls and convert them to forsaken, rather the killing them. Sylvanas agreed to this plan, and while forsaken defenders continued to kill any remaining nerubians, abominations, and necromancers, forsaken workers reinforced doors on the North and East sides of the palace, and further built up the defenses on the west side. When all the nerubians, necromancers, and abominations appeared to be killed, the forsaken opened the outer doors, allowed the ghouls to mindlessly swarm in, and trapped those ghouls inside the outer palace halls. For the next several weeks, so called "ghouls wranglers" would one by one remove ghouls from these halls, and forsaken necromancers would attempt to free them from the scourge. At first, most of these attempts either failed completely or left the ghouls as mindless, feral creatures, but after some time around half the successful ghouls were successfully converted.

Aftermath
About 1,500 of the 3,000 remaining ghouls were freed and turned into forsaken, about quadrupling the forsaken population. The remaining ghouls were simply saved for food and alchemy ingredients. News of this victory helped impress potential allies of the forsaken, helping them ally with the Blood Elves and Kalimdor Horde.

Kel'thuzad did not know for several days that his forces had lost the battle. The Lich King had sensed the undead fighters being killed, but because so many ghouls were still left alive for so long after the siege, the Lich King was unable to guess until the next day whether the battle had been lost or was continuing. Gargoyles were sent to the undercity two days after the siege, and saw that no scourge fighters remained in the city, and Kel'thuzad finally learned of the loss.

Kel'thuzad abandoned plans to attack the humans Kingdoms to the south. While kel'thuzad had been preparing to attack the undercity, Silvermoon had been reconquered by the Blood Elves as well. Without enough fighters to attack the enemies surrounding him, and control the plaguelands at the same time, Kel'thuzad moved most of the scourge back to small areas like Stratholme and Andorhal. The undead would raid villages enough to slowly build his forces back up, but mostly he would allow humans to enter and resettle the plaguelands, while developing a new method of spreading the scourge's plague.