User:Xavius/The Memoirs of the Hero of Stormwind

It was a beautiful day. Edwin VanCleef sat in a simple wooden chair with a feather-pen and an inkwell on an equally simple wooden table in front of him on the balcony of his anything but simple residence overlooking Stormwind City. He was an old man, his skin wrinkled and his balding hair gray with age. He wore an elegant black tuxedo, with a piece of red mageweave in his chest pocket. He took a sip from the coffee his wife had brought him, placed the emblazoned cup on the table, lifted his pen, and sptarted to write on a sheet of paper:

The Memoirs of the Hero of Stormwind

I am Edwin VanCleef. I was raised to be a Stonemason, like my father. While I was fairly good at that, my real talent laid in tinkering with machines. I used to sneak into certain engineering stores to steal parts to build machinery with, I confess to that, and to the fact that I usually got away with it. One day, however, I was caught trying to steal items from an operative of Stormwind Intelligence. I expected to get in real trouble because of this, but instead SI:7 noticed my talents in subtely and engineering, and offered to train me as a roofwalker, an agent focused on disabling machinery. However, this is of no particular interest compared to what happened later.

After Stormwind was razed by the orcs after the First War, I was contracted to assist in the rebuilding of the city. Me and my fellow artisans succeeded in the task, but then came a huge blow: the nobility refused to pay us! Sensing a riot in the making, I volunteered for talking with the nobles. After several long days of discussion, we finally came to an agreement: the artisans of Stormwind would be given a position of power following the creation of the Artisan Guild of Stormwind, which the craftsmen later chose me to lead. In addition, as Stormwind regained it's power, money would begin seeping into the coffers of the Guild. At last, all were content.

Stormwind was flourishing, and I was one day sent to deal with an orcish warlock who hat gotten his vile hands of a magical machine of Dalarani origin. I infiltrated the camp and reprogrammed the machine in such fashion that it turned against the warlock and destroyed him. It was when I handed over the machine to the Kirin Tor that I met the woman who would become my wife: Jaina Proudmoore, daughter of Admiral Daelin Proudmoore of Kul Tiras. It was love at first sight. We started dating for a while, before I finally proposed to her. She said yes, and we were married in the Cathedral of Light, a building which I was largely responsible of constructing.

TBC (and I don't mean The Burning Crusade)