User:Joshmaul/Taeril'hane Ketiron/The Changing World



Visibly aged by the war against the Scourge, his hair as white as the name of his House, Master Taeril'hane Ketiron retired to his beloved Silvermoon to teach new Blood Knights the mastery of the Light, using his Liadrinist training as a basis. Three years have passed since the fall of the Lich King - but Ketiron was still a servant of the Horde, and soon, the Horde called him back into service...

Zalazane's Demise: The Liberation of the Echo Isles


While in Silvermoon, Ketiron (and many other champions of the Horde) received a letter from the shaman Vanira, an advisor to Chieftain Vol'jin of the Darkspear tribe. Having fought alongside the Darkspear trolls - and accepted at least one into the House Guard under his command - Ketiron greatly admired the jungle trolls' tenacity and bravery, and with his wife Areinnye supporting him, Ketiron rallied fifty of his best House Guards and set out by zeppelin for Durotar.

The Echo Isles had been under the control of the deranged Hexmaster Zalazane for years, ever since he had turned on his fellows, hexed many trolls and raised many more from the dead, and held the Isles in his iron grip. Thousands of soldiers of the Horde, including Ketiron and other members of the Whitehair House Guard, had gone to the Echo Isles to slay Zalazane and bring back his head, only to find that they had been deceived by his black magic - the "heads" proved to be things like painted rocks, coconuts, and the heads of his hexed trolls. Finally, Vol'jin had had enough - gathering allies, Vol'jin rallied an army along the Darkspear Strand outside Sen'jin Village. Ketiron was sent with the other scouts to seed the Echo Isles with frogs imbued with shamanistic sight by Vanira.

To his astonishment, Ketiron discovered that the frogs had discovered a "tiger matriarch" that was in fact a hidden troll druid - a path that he had not known the trolls to follow. She identified herself as Zen'tabra, and pledged her aid to Vol'jin if he retook the Echo Isles. With his people rallied to his banner, Vanira bringing the elements, and Zen'tabra pledging the power of Durotar's beasts, Vol'jin at last gave the order to advance on the Echo Isles. To ensure their ultimate success, Vol'jin first had to appease the great Loa Bwonsamdi, guardian of the Darkspear dead, who had been long neglected ever since the Darkspear fled the Echo Isles. Bwonsamdi was amused by Vol'jin's impetuousness and challenged his army to prove that they had the "mojo" to earn his aid. After fighting off his cursed dead, the army fought against the Loa himself. Impressed, Bwonsamdi pledged that he would aid the Darkspear if they retook the abandoned burnt village on the largest of the Isles. Destroying the traitors on those isles, led by the foul Jun'do, Bwonsamdi blessed the long-immobile tiki warriors and commanded them to obey Vol'jin's orders. At last, the army came to confront Zalazane himself.

With his hexed dire trolls and his foul magics, Zalazane proved both his cleverness and his cowardice, as he fled to a westerly isle. Upon confronting him there, the army found that they could not penetrate the shield that protected the Hexmaster. Zalazane again proved his power by turning Vol'jin's Darkspear guard against their allies. But the Darkspear "traitors" were outnumbered nearly thirty to one, and Zalazane was cornered. Boasting of his invincibility and that his shield was impenetrable, Zalazane was greeted by the evilly mocking laughter of Bwonsamdi...

The Loa condemned Zalazane for trying to usurp his control over the dead, and declared that the traitor would soon join them. Screaming in denial, Zalazane suddenly exploded, the Loa's rage at his betrayal made manifest. His reign over the Echo Isles was over, and the Darkspear tribe could at last return to the lands that Thrall had promised them. Bidding Vol'jin farewell and good luck, Ketiron set out once more for Silvermoon. But he would not be allowed to rest for very long...

Passing the Torch: The Ascension of Warchief Garrosh Hellscream


Following the liberation of the Echo Isles and his return to Silvermoon, Ketiron felt a powerful earthquake rattle the entire land of Quel'Thalas. Upon making contact with his allies in Kalimdor and in the southern kingdoms, he learned that the tectonic activity was widespread. Then a message came from Master Pyreanor in Orgrimmar, requesting that Ketiron come immediately on the next zeppelin. Concerned by the urgency in Pyreanor's missive, he set out for Lordaeron to book passage on the Thundercaller.

Upon arriving in Orgrimmar, Ketiron was escorted by Pyreanor's honor guards to Grommash Hold, where he saw a powerful, muscular looking orc bearing stone axes, wearing light armor with what looked like a pit lord's tusks on his shoulders. To his horrified surprise, he realized that this strange figure was Garrosh Hellscream, who had commanded Horde forces in Northrend, right up to the final victory over the Lich King himself - but looking nothing like Ketiron remembered. He was disturbingly reminded of the fel orcs in Outland, and hoped that Garrosh had not made a pact with a demon as his father, Grom, had many years before.

Also present were Eitrigg, Thrall's advisor and an ally of Highlord Fordring, and Vol'jin, fresh from his victory over Zalazane. Once all were assembled, Thrall began to speak, remarking that while a great victory had been won in Northrend, the very earth itself was beginning to cry out in agony. Ketiron knew that the Warchief meant the earthquakes, but was surprised when he also mentioned elemental attacks in the countryside, and utterly shocked when Thrall declared he was leaving for Nagrand to meet with the Earthen Ring. Ketiron, utterly astonished, suddenly realized that Thrall was stepping down...and had named Garrosh to be Warchief in his absence.

Ketiron's mind was racing - Garrosh was popular among the orcs for his brazen leadership in Northrend, but he had made it clear that he favored war with the Alliance...and with Arthas dead, the Master suddenly saw that nothing was holding him back. With the formalities addressed, Ketiron left to return to Quel'Thalas. With Garrosh leading the Horde, he feared that things would turn down a particularly dark road...

The Sundered Elements: Thwarting the Doomsayers' Plot
As time went on, things became far worse. Ketiron led his students in their training for knighthood, and upon their success, he sent his apprentices to Orgrimmar, Thunder Bluff, and even to the Alliance cities to offer their services as needed. Some were also inducted into his House Guard, including his favored apprentice, Nor'taeron.

The earthquakes soon grew in such intensity that Ketiron decided to leave Quel'Thalas to escape them. He journeyed to the Grizzly Hills, his favorite "thinking place" outside of his homeland, where he met with Ambassador Jaeden'laek, the draenei shaman who had fought alongside Ketiron in Icecrown. Jaeden'laek informed Ketiron, one of few servants of the Horde the farseer deemed trustworthy, of a conclave that had taken place in Stormwind with all of the Alliance leaders present; Jaeden'laek had accompanied his leader, the Prophet Velen, from Azuremyst as an emissary of the shamanistic order within the Alliance. Much like Ketiron had heard during the meeting in Orgrimmar, the Alliance leaders had discussed rogue elementals in the countryside and in some cities.

As the two veterans chatted, a mage portal opened, and Ketiron's chief advisor, Lord Kel'theris, stepped out, informing him of a "great inferno" that had hit Orgrimmar. As they materialized in the Drag, "Kel'theris" ambushed him, and revealed that he was an impostor sent to lure Ketiron into a trap, all the while babbling about the world being remade in fire. Using both his martial skill and his engineering devices to give him a speedier edge, Ketiron ran the traitor through with his jeweled sword. Two Orgrimmar grunts, hearing the sounds of the confrontation, came to Ketiron's assistance, and informed him that the real Kel'theris had been attacked, but was expected to live. Several of his House Guards were also on standby to assist him.

Brought before the grunts' commander, Blood Guard Torek, Ketiron learned that the doomsday cult mentioned in passing by Vol'jin had come out into the open, promising protection from the coming apocalypse. Ketiron disguised himself as a visiting Thalassian nobleman (which, in fact, he was) and joined the crowds, learning more of the cult's message. Keeping down his disgust, Ketiron carried on his investigation by posting notices throughout Orgrimmar denouncing the cult as dangerous.

Seeking to learn more about the cult's workings, Ketiron disguised himself as a cultist recruit and travelling to their base of operations, at Jaggedswine Farm outside Orgrimmar. There, he was sent to spread the message of the cult, but was laughed at by most of the stout-hearted soldiers of the Horde. He also tried to convince members of the cult, whose concerned families had come to the Orgrimmar guards to find them, to return to their lives in Orgrimmar, but - caught up in their new masters' apocalyptic ramblings - they refused. Finally, the cult members were assembled at an altar to hear from their leader, and the silently-horrified Ketiron relied on sheer willpower to avoid becoming physically sick as he recognized the symbols that adorned it - the Twilight's Hammer...

Appearing before his followers, the ogre-mage Cho'gall - his body warped by the powers of his former master, the Old God C'Thun - directed his followers to use strange devices they had been crafting at their base to unleash a tide of elementals on the city of Orgrimmar. Ketiron, as the "newest recruit", was given the duty of distributing them by the camp leader, Overseer Jintak. Instead, Ketiron brought them back to Blood Guard Torek, who instructed him to destroy the devices already set up in the city. With their plan (temporarily) thwarted, Torek sent Ketiron to Grommash Hold, to report on the situation in person to the newly-appointed Warchief, Garrosh Hellscream...

The Corruptor Returns: Twilight's Hammer Falls Upon Orgrimmar
Remaining in Orgrimmar while the civil unrest went on, Ketiron was called on by Garrosh to assist Blood Guard Torek in dealing with a growing problem with the Twilight's Hammer. Outside the main gates, citizens of Orgrimmar and visitors from outlying settlements assembled to try and return to their homes, but by Garrosh's order were subject to searches by the city's grunts and by other soldiers of the Horde given special dispensation to act in the new Warchief's name, so that the Twilight's Hammer did not carry out their plans to destroy Orgrimmar from within.

Deploying his apprentices, who had accompanied him to learn their duties to the Horde, Ketiron ordered the search and seizure of any cultists outside the city gates trying to get in, and to bring the evidence to him, where he stood with Torek. Sure enough, his chief apprentice Nor'taeron Sunblade discovered suspicious literature and a note detailing select locations inside Orgrimmar - which indicated that the Twilight's Hammer already had agents in Orgrimmar. Prior to that, however, Ketiron received unwelcome news - from Nor'taeron's elder brother Ivaris, the lieutenant to Areinnye, general of the Whitehair House Guard. Through his investigations of the cultist activity in Orgrimmar, Ivaris had discovered that Joshmaul the Corruptor, killed three years earlier, had returned and was now working for the cult. With Joshmaul back in Orgrimmar, Garrosh in his corner, and Thrall gone in Outland, things had suddenly become a lot worse for the House of Whitehair that day. Ketiron privately believed as Ivaris had claimed - the House was cursed...

With the information in hand from the cultists, Ketiron and his apprentices spread out in search of cult infiltrators already in Orgrimmar, arresting them and rounding them up to be used in the Ring of Valor. From one of the cultists, he learned that they planned on opening portals in the city and unleash elementals of earth and fire to burn the city to the ground. Once again donning his cultist disguise - and apparently, the cult had not discovered that he was acting to sabotage them - he returned to Jaggedswine Farm, where Overseer Jintak gave him a copy of the Book of Incantations, which detailed the cult's rituals. Recognizing the coup and practicing the incantation for the benefit of the cultists around him, Ketiron took the book back to Torek, and was instructed to find the ritual sites and intentionally misspeak the incantations so that they would backfire.

To Outland in Search of Answers
As the strange quakes began and rogue elementals were reported in greater numbers, Warchief Thrall stepped down and left for Outland, seeking to prevent a sundering on Azeroth by visiting the sundered homeworld of the orcs, to learn more of the art of shamanism from his grandmother, Geyah. The Wildhammer clan had also sent a representative, to ensure that the Alliance too would learn of what was necessary to combat the increasing unrest on Azeroth.

An emissary of the Earthen Ring in Orgrimmar informed Ketiron of a meeting of the shamans, and dispatched him to journey to Outland and place himself at Thrall's bidding. The troll mages of Orgrimmar kept a portal open to the great crater in the Blasted Lands where the Dark Portal stood, and Ketiron immediately departed, riding through the Portal and then summoning a Cenarion hippogryph to fly him the rest of the way - to Nagrand, the ancestral grounds of the orcish clans before the formation of the Old Horde. North of the village of Garadar, where the uncorrupted orcs made their home, was the Throne of Elements, where resided the Furies - the four great elemental avatars of sundered Draenor...

Everything That Is Will Be No More: The Elemental Invasion
While staying in Orgrimmar to keep tabs on current events, he was alerted to a great commotion outside the inn along the Valley of Strength. The sky had darkened, and elementals were running rampant. Horde troops were setting barricades all over the city. Ketiron immediately deployed his House Guard troops and his Blood Knight contingent to assist the city guards, while he rode to the Valley of Honor to help set the barricades there around the prisoners, so that they did not escape and contribute to the havoc. Mages all over the city opened portals to the outskirts so that they could escape the coming chaos.

Once the barricades were in place, alarm horns sounded all over the city. The elemental invasion that the Twilight's Hammer had warned of had at last begun. An army of supporters from all over the Horde - orc, troll, tauren, undead and blood elf alike - stood side by side to fight off the elemental attack. In the Valley of Honor, Ketiron and his guards fought at the side of Rexxar, Champion of the Horde and friend of Warchief Thrall, who had returned from Outland to assist the Horde in its darkest hour. As the fighting continued, Ketiron took a totem of unbinding from an Earthen Ring shaman and went into every building in the valley to find those who had been trapped by elemental prisons, and set them free so that they could take the portals out of the city until the attack had subsided. The forces of the Horde went district by district, with Garrosh and Rexxar leading the way. After what felt like an eternity, their efforts were successful; the rifts were sealed, and the attacks thwarted. But Orgrimmar was left in ruins, and it was now left to Garrosh to carry out its reconstruction.



No sooner had Ketiron caught his breath when he was greeted by Kel'theris - the real Kel'theris this time, who had managed to recover from his ambush days before - who informed him that another elemental attack was underway, this time in Thunder Bluff. Cairne Bloodhoof had called on any troops available to come to the aid of his city, and Ketiron rallied those of his troops who were still combat-ready to join with him. Kel'theris opened a portal to move into the Pools of Vision beneath Thunder Bluff's Spirit Rise, where the rifts were already open and causing chaos in the enclosed space, and more Horde soldiers from all around were fighting to bring them down. Above them, Baine, son of Cairne and heir to the chieftaincy of the tauren, had his hands full with his own rifts. Once Ketiron and his followers emerged from the Pools of Vision, they immediately went to the aid of the defenders on the surface.

With Spirit Rise secure, Ketiron and his forces divided, some going to the Hunter and Elder Rise to aid Archdruid Runetotem, and Ketiron himself went to the center rise to assist Cairne and his guards. As before, the battle seemed to go on for some time before, at last, it was over. With Thunder Bluff secure, Ketiron focused his attention on strange portals he had seen earlier in Orgrimmar. The portals in Thunder Bluff, according to scouts who went through them, led to Zul'Farrak in Tanaris and Ahn'Qiraj in Silithus. He also heard that the portals in Orgrimmar went to two more sites - the inner halls of Maraudon in the Desolace, and the depths of Blackrock Mountain in Khaz Modan.

Ketiron, accompanied by Ambassador Jaeden'laek, journeyed to each of them - and learned that forces of the Twilight's Hammer were hard at work. In Blackrock Depths, Grand Ambassador Flamelash, a servant of Ragnaros, rallied surviving Dark Iron troops to his banner. In Ahn'Qiraj, Prince Sarsarun, the herald of Al'akir, held court, which revealed that the Twilight's Hammer also served the Windlord. In Zul'Farrak, Gahz'rilla - now far more powerful, and known as "Kai'ju Gahz'rilla" - was waiting to be unleashed on Thunder Bluff and Stormwind by Kulratha, the sister of the late Hydromancer Velratha, who had been killed at Gahz'rilla's first defeat many years before.

The most damning revelations came in Maraudon, where Theradras, daughter of Therazane, was approached by Cho'gall to "free herself" from the "Titan prison" of Terramok deep in the centaur temple. Theradras refused, calling Terramok home and preferring to stay at the side of "her beloved" Zaetar, son of Cenarius and progenitor of the centaur clans of Desolace, who was slain by his own children and buried within Terramok; his body nourished the caverns of Inner Maraudon, making it a beautiful sanctuary for the grotesque daughter of the Earthmother. Upon blasting Cho'gall for suggesting she leave, Therazane referred to the warped ogre-mage as a "servant of Deathwing". Ketiron was stunned, as he suddenly realized that this was the "death coming on black wings" that had been prophecied by Jaeden'laek and other shaman over the last three years...

A Frightening Future: Aftermath of the Shattering
Ketiron was in Orgrimmar when the predicted sundering finally came. Putting his accounts in order at the bank, Ketiron was pinned by a collapsing beam. Several hours later, while his apprentices searched for survivors, they found Ketiron in the ruins of the bank, his legs shattered. Aided (surprisingly) by General Varan Metheius, a servant of Sylvanas, and by his own apprentices, Ketiron managed to survive, and was brought back to health in a makeshift hospital in the Valley of Strength. Orgrimmar was almost totally ruined, the wood-and-stone buildings devastated by the elemental fires, and Garrosh ordered the reconstruction of Orgrimmar with metal fortresses and barricades to prevent a similar disaster from ever happening again.

As he recovered from his wounds, Ketiron was greatly disturbed by the changes to the orcish capital; though this building style had been used in Northrend for the Horde outposts in the war against the Lich King, he was also reminded of Hellfire Citadel in Outland, the greatest edifice of the Old Horde - a Horde ruled by demon-charged lunatics. He also privately questioned the placement of the new Grommash Hold so close to the main gates, easily accessable by Alliance raiders or potential assassins, and the mistreatment of the Darkspear trolls. He was surprised by the arrival of the goblins of the Bilgewater Cartel, who had begun to reshape nearby Azshara in the image of the Horde; one such goblin, Kitrik, had been in the House of Whitehair's service before, and had now returned with his people after his harrowing experiences on Kezan.

After recovering fully from his injuries, Ketiron departed Orgrimmar for Dalaran one last time, to put his affairs there in order before bidding a final farewell to Northrend.

Funeral for a Hero: Saavedro Returns to Lordaeron
Four days later, before moving out of Dalaran for good, there was one solemn duty left to perform. Ketiron had promised that, if efforts were made in his lifetime to restore the Plaguelands, he would bring the body of Saavedro of Stratholme, dead for the last three years, back to Lordaeron. The Cenarion Circle and the Earthen Ring had joined with the Argent Crusade to work on restoration efforts following the death of the Lich King. Their work had paid off by the time of the Shattering; the Western Plaguelands had been transformed, life finally returning to this shattered region of Lordaeron. With the aid of Kel'theris, Ketiron teleported Saavedro's coffin to Silvermoon, where a cart is waiting to transport him to Sorrow Hill.

The funeral procession left Silvermoon and journeyed across Quel'Thalas and the Eastern Plaguelands, crossing the Thondroril River, and taking the road through Andorhal (surprisingly silent, the battle for the ruined city not yet having begun) to the cemetery. There, Saavedro of Stratholme was laid to rest in the soil of his homeland as he had requested, a silent guardian of the now-peaceful dead. After the procession dispersed and returned home, Ketiron swore a pact with his three fellow veterans of Icecrown Citadel - Baron Artimus Devaneaux, Farseer Jaeden'laek, and General Oren Tanis - to maintain the links of comradeship forged in the battlefields of Northrend, in the wake of the coming war between the Alliance and the Horde. The four men vowed that though they may end up fighting on opposite sides, they would conduct themselves with honor, and in battle against the Twilight's Hammer and other evils, they would be examples to their leaders that Alliance and Horde could work together to save their planet.