User:Joshmaul/Hands of Joshmaul



The Hands of Joshmaul are the servitors of Joshmaul the Corruptor, the powerful orcish warlock who has made himself an enemy of both the Alliance and many "puritanical" elements within the Horde. These casters openly practice the arts of the warlock and the necromancer, or ally with those who do. Each one of the many beings who serve Joshmaul obey his commands without question, leading the way for the warlock to achieve his ultimate goal: The destruction of his nemesis, Saavedro of Stratholme.

The Hands of Joshmaul were largely destroyed by Saavedro's allies at the Battle of the Court of Bones.

Divisions

 * Will of the Corruptor (Forsaken): A group of mercenary sorcerers, apothecaries and warriors under Joshmaul's command. Originally led by General Settra, their commander was the mysterious Shankolin Blightpath until his death.
 * The Corruptor's Swordguard (Death knights): Renegade Knights of the Ebon Blade recruited by Shankolin Blightpath to serve as elite praetorians to the Corruptor, many of these death knights are at odds with Darion Mograine's apparent subservience to Tirion Fordring. They consider Artimus Devaneaux - once Joshmaul's ally - as a traitor to all free death knights because of his off-and-on alliance with Saavedro of Stratholme, who they perceive as being cut from the same cloth as the Scarlet Crusade. Among these dark warriors is the Avatar of Joshmaul, a mysterious orc death knight molded in Joshmaul's image and granted powers over the dead. The Swordguard was wiped out almost to a man following the Battle of the Court of Bones.
 * The True Hands (Warlocks): Joshmaul and Linavil's acolytes, many of them blood elves that are either connected to the renegade House of Shadowsun or not bound to any house at all. After his recent censure by the Horde, Joshmaul discreetly called in some old debts from the heads of other noble houses in Silvermoon, calling on any blood elf exiled from their house to be given the option of joining Joshmaul and the House of Shadowsun in exile. Many promising acolytes were added in this mix, and master and apprentice combined their knowledge to train these new warlocks. Linavil's gnome apprentice, Rakeri the Feltouched, is considered part of this group. The vast majority of these warlocks either fled with Linavil or were captured.
 * The Vengeful Spirit (Pirates): As an Admiral in the Bloodsail Buccaneers, Joshmaul has gained the loyalty of his own crew of pirates. From onboard his flagship, the Vengeful Spirit, Joshmaul plundered the southern coasts for weeks prior to the mass exodus to Northrend. These pirates, once flying under the flag of the Bloodsail, swore their allegiance to Joshmaul alone over time. After the destruction of the Vengeful Spirit that killed Joshmaul's flag captain and most of his officers, Linavil Shadowsun and the surviving crew were taken in by the Forsaken of Vengeance Landing, and allowed to serve onboard the Forsaken warship Dark Defiance. Eventually, they took control of an airship from the Isle of Conquest, also called the Vengeful Spirit; the vessel was destroyed trying to flee from the Court of Bones, killing much of the remainder of the original crew of his sailing vessel.
 * Ghostwyrm Clan, aka Helbrand's Ghosts (Vrykul): After the deaths of Ingvar the Plunderer in Utgarde's lower halls and King Ymiron in Utgarde Pinnacle, the Dragonflayer clan was left leaderless. Helbrand the Wanderer, Joshmaul's vrykul apprentice, journeyed through the Howling Fjord and the Grizzly Hills and rallied his disheartened clansmen into joining with him. Helbrand, now undead, had also learned the art of illusion - both in changing his form to one more palatable to "mortal" company (though Joshmaul, through his long association with the Forsaken, is not as bothered by his skeletal form as others would be) and in the deadly ability to hide himself from enemies. He taught this powerful illusion to his new followers, earning them the nickname "Helbrand's Ghosts". After their defeat in battle at the Court of Bones, Helbrand and the survivors fled, disappearing from the field.
 * The Awakened (Many races): Joshmaul has managed to rally many promising warriors from both Alliance and Horde to flock to his banner, promising battle and plunder in exchange for their aid in his gaining supremacy.
 * Order of the Blood Ruby (Blood elves): An order of Blood Knights led by Zaelan Bloodhammer, an insane elf who more often then not abuses his power over the Light in sickening fashions, the Knights of the Blood Ruby hold true to the original Blood Knight ideal; that the power of the Light was ment to serve them. After both the disastrous defeat at the Court of Bones, and Zaelan's humiliating attempt to remove Lor'themar Theron from power and have himself crowned King of Silvermoon, the Order's numbers are few and far between.

Former Members

 * House of Whitehair (Blood elves): Led by the cunning mage Lord Kel'theris Decibelius, the House of Whitehair was the source of the majority of Joshmaul's support. However, Ordevaas Portalseeker - Joshmaul's lieutenant - discovered the true depths of the Corruptor's treachery. Joshmaul had enticed the House of Whitehair by claiming he was a servant of Prince Kael'thas, only for the Blood Knight Master to discover that Kael'thas was in fact a traitor to all who lived. Angered by the Corruptor's duplicity, Kel'theris rescinded his alliance with Joshmaul and officially declared his allegiance to the Horde.
 * House of Shadowsun (Blood elves): A former indentured family to the House of Whitehair, the House of Shadowsun broke away from them due to their actions against their former patriarch, Lord Tor'kaeris, who died a coward's death on the battlefields of Northrend. His daughters, Erennia and Linavil, rose to prominence under the Corruptor's tutelage. After Erennia's death and Joshmaul's defeat, Linavil took what remained of her house and fled.

Powers Utilized
The Hands of Joshmaul utilize various types of power in their master's quest for dominance.

Necromancy
Black magic is a strong focus in the Hands of Joshmaul, as evidenced by both Joshmaul himself and by the death knights coming out of the woodwork. The first of Joshmaul's death knights was General Settra, a former warrior of Lordaeron who was killed by Baron Rivendare and raised as an undead to be trained in Naxxramas. When he joined the Forsaken, Settra went into hiding in the Alterac Mountains - near the Western Plaguelands - to remain on call in the event of his Dark Lady's call. Joshmaul - having given his service to the Forsaken himself - met with Settra at the behest of Varimathras, and the two became allies. Settra eventually saw that he was being used in efforts against the Forsaken rather than for them, and swore his sole allegiance to his Queen.

With Settra under his banner, Joshmaul set about creating more warriors like the undead General. With Settra's aid, Joshmaul lured Noggra - the son of his host-body, Urgan - into a trap in Lordaeron and killed him, then imbued a portion of his own essence into the corpse. Settra then trained him in the ways of the death knight. The process was repeated not long afterwards with Velenkayn, a draenei paladin trained in the ways of the Light by Saavedro of Stratholme, Joshmaul's mortal enemy. Ordevaas Portalseeker suggested that Velenkayn be captured and corrupted, an ultimate irony - one who served the Light becoming a powerful warrior of darkness, as well as a potential way to rid themselves of Saavedro's influence. Joshmaul readily agreed with this plan, which brought Velenkayn into Joshmaul's fold.

Joshmaul's scheming goes even beyond the pale of his usual crimes; seeking a way to avoid the baleful gaze of the Scourge, he offered Velenkayn as something of a peace offering to Baron Artimus Devaneaux, the leader of the Scourge-affiliated Council of Deathlords - a group of death knights who ruled various locales on Azeroth and in Outland. He did so without any consultation with Settra or any other Forsaken. Today, Shankolin Blightpath is his chief death knight, though there is much about this dark warrior that even Joshmaul does not know.

The Light
During his long conflict with Saavedro, Joshmaul has earned himself the undying emnity of the Church of Light, an organization that Joshmaul scorns as weak and feeble, and the primary reason why the Alliance is ultimately weaker than the Horde. However, with Silvermoon becoming the fifth member of the Horde, the Corruptor found that perhaps the power of the Light could be a useful tool - provided it was used in the "correct" fashion. To that end, he travelled to Silvermoon himself and met with Lady Liadrin, the leader of the Blood Knight Order - Silvermoon's dark equivalent of the Silver Hand. It was then that he met Ordevaas Portalseeker, at that time a newly-minted Adept in the Order - having recently defeated Dar'Khan Drathir, the Scourge overlord in Quel'Thalas, and undergone the trials to create a weapon suited to his rank.

Joshmaul was particularly intrigued by the fact that the Blood Knights didn't seem to do the typical bow-and-scrape routine that normal paladins seemed to favor; rather than serve the Light, they chose to dominate it. Joshmaul took to this concept at once, and made Ordevaas his second-in-command. When Ordevaas began training to become a Blood Knight Master, Joshmaul - who by that time had trained two Masters himself - aided him. Ordevaas was becoming far stronger than his former friend Saavedro with each passing day, and Joshmaul believed that soon he would have a weapon capable of beating Saavedro at his own game. This proved to be wrong, as Ordevaas found that Joshmaul had lied to him to secure his allegiance - and both he and his father, Kel'theris, declared Joshmaul an enemy of the House of Whitehair.

In addition to the Blood Knights he had trained, Joshmaul - when he was beginning his rise to power - met the Forsaken priest Sekhesmet. In life, Sekhesmet had been Saavedro and Ordevaas' master, teaching them the ways of the priesthood and also how to defend themselves in a tight spot. While Saavedro had chosen to be altruistic and heal others, Ordevaas had become a fighter - which made his decision to train in the Blood Knight arts far easier. Though greatly weakened by the long sleep of death, Sekhesmet was beginning to regain his mastery of the powers of the Light he wielded. He eventually turned and joined the House of Whitehair himself.

An insane paladin named Zaelan Bloodhammer, a possible (difficult to say for certain, as his insane babble leaves his listener wondering what he's going on about) former member of the Shadowsun House Guard - and constant irritant to the Corruptor's apprentice - met Joshmaul in the Underbelly of Dalaran. Joshmaul made him his Hammer, the Light-wielding warrior serving the Corruptor's ends to create chaos and discord amongst all of his enemies - including members of the Horde itself.

The Shadow
However, in addition to the Light-given energies that all priests wielded, Sekhesmet also practiced the darker side of priest magic, as a priest of the Forgotten Shadow - the official "state religion" of the Forsaken. The most deadly weapon in Sekhesmet's magical arsenal was the Devouring Plague, a powerful incantation taught to all Forsaken priests. Its energies sapped the life from the victim and gave it to the caster; the plague was carefully tested in the high-security laboratories of the Apothecarium in the Undercity (Sekhesmet is a junior apothecary, apprenticed to Master Apothecary Faranell himself) before being granted for use by the priests.

Of course, the shadow magic that dominates the Hands of Joshmaul is that of the warlock. Joshmaul himself is a master warlock who has practiced all of the trees of warlock magic - Demonology, Destruction and Affliction - at some point or another. Only recently, however, has he deigned to take an apprentice, in the form of Linavil Shadowsun - a blood elf formerly indentured to service in Ordevaas' family. When she grows enough in strength, Linavil has decided to practice the form that her master followed when he was apprenticed to Kaal Soulreaper - the path of the master demonologist.

Mage Powers
In addition to securing the allegiance of Ordevaas, Joshmaul had also gained a powerful patron in Silvermoon, in the form of Ordevaas' father, Lord Kel'theris Decibelius - patriarch of the House of Whitehair, one of the houses that was part of the original Convocation of Silvermoon at the founding of Quel'Thalas. Kel'theris began his studies in Dalaran shortly before the Third War, but only began seriously training in magic when Quel'Thalas joined the Horde. Kel'theris is a frost mage, using the icy magics to slow his opponents before eventually killing them.

After the discovery of Joshmaul's treachery, Kel'theris pulled the House of Whitehair away from Joshmaul and into the greater Horde, where they would be protected by Warchief Thrall - a sworn enemy of the Corruptor himself.