User:Minionman/Forsaken history

(This version of forsaken history starts after the battle against Balnazzar).

After Sylvanas and Varimathras defeated Balnazzar and took control of the capital city, they were the most powerful force in the plaguelands. The two leaders took over the remaining undead in the capital city, and began to slowly take over the undead once controlled by Detheroc and Balnazzar.

However, within a few days, the Lich King and Arthas merged, reestablishing the being's power over the scourge. The Lich King soon regained control over the masterless undead in the plaguelands, as well as a few forces controlled by Sylvanas and Varimathras.

The new forsaken easily destroyed the scourge controlled creatures in the capital city, but Sylvanas and Varimathras quickly realized that, if the Lich King had similarly taken control of other undead, that the new forsaken would be outnumbered and would likely be attacked sometime soon. The two leaders discussed several posibilities for gaining new undead forces, and defending themselves. Varimathras at first wanted to kill several bandit groups in the area, and use the corpses to build up their army, but turning the corpses until useful corpses would take a long time. Sylvanas at first wanted to use banshees to take control of several bandit leaders, ogres, and other such groups in the area, similar to how shehad defeated Varimathras and Detheroc at first. However, she had few banshees left to do so, and the story of her first victory over Varimathras had spread through the plaguelands, making such a strategy harder. Sylvanas and Varimathras finally decided, after asking advice from their necromancers, to travel to graveyards, dig up the corpses, and reanimate them to make new followers. Because the corpses would be physically weak, they would be given their minds back, and taught to fight.

Sylvanas and Varimathras used their remaining undead to raid graveyards, raise the corpses, and bring them back to the capital city to be reanimated. The the forsaken nercomancers had trouble at first, they soon were successfully reanimating almost every corpse discovered. Over a period 2 months, Sylvanas had raised about 500 new followers. Many of these had lived in the city, and many had useful skills remembered from life. Reanimated blacksmiths began producing weapons, builders began imrpving the capital city's defenses, alchemists explored records left behind from Lordaeran and began making new potions. Most reanimated forsaken had served in militias, several in the Lordaeran army, and the strongest of these started training again, and became the first deathguards.

Sylvanas had too few followers to fight at the outer city walls, so the palace in the middle of the city was built into a more powerful fortress. They also expanded the old catacombs and sewers, at firt to allow faster movement through the capital city, but later as a living and working space for the new forsaken followers. The forsaken leaders did not know if or when the scourge would attack them, so kept their followers working full time on nothing but defenses, wepons, and raising new followers.

First Undercity Siege
It took around two months after the Arthas/Lich King merger for the scourge to realize what was happening in Lordaeran and organize their recaptured forces. At this point, Kel'thuzad had around 7,000 undead under his control. In addition to the forsaken, he also had the scarlet crusade to fight, and fighters from Dalaran were attacking as well. Before attacking these enemies, Kel'thuzad decided to get some more undead forces, so attacked many of the remaining villages in the plaguelands to gain more corpses for ghouls. These new ghouls took a further month to produce, and at the end, Kel'thuzad had about 10,000 undead under his control. He sent about half of these to attack the undercity, controlled by one of his more skilled Death Knights.

User:Minionman/First Undercity Siege

The scourge attempted to break into the central palace and swarm the forsaken, while the forsaken attempted to kill undead commanders and use potions and mages to kill the remaining unorganized and mindless undead. The forsaken strategy worked. Towards the end of the battle, the forsaken necromancers convinced Sylvanas to try freeing the ghouls, rather than simply killing them. The forsaken managed to free around half of the 3,000 remaining ghouls, quadrupling the number of forsaken.

Soldiers from Garithos's forces had already brought news of the free undead's existence to the outside world, but many Scarlet crusaders and fighters from Dalaran had noticed the scourge's movements, and soon learned of the siege and brought more news of the forsaken to the outside world.

New Alliances
Most human groups directly to the south had hard about Sylvanas's killing of Garithos, and viewed the forsaken as being as much an enemy as the scourge had been. The scarlet crusade had a similar opinion of the forsaken, at this point they were being taken over by the more violent, intolerant faction. Sylvanas wanted to find allies to fight these enemies, and first went to the blood elves for an alliance.

The Blood Elves had recently recaptured most of Quel'thalas, and had a strong hatred of Garithos from his treatment of his blood elf fighters, and Sylvanas had once been one of them, so were more receptive to the forsaken, but were still too suspicious to enter into a full alliance. The blood Elves were willing to work somewhat with the forsaken, through trade and information sharing against the forsaken. This alliance did alienate the blood elves somewhat from the human nations to the south, but the blood elves were not in enough danger for this to matter.

Within a few months, increased contact between Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms brought the orcs and Night Elves into regular contact with the Eastern Kingdoms nations. At first, the Forsaken and Blood Elves were under suspicion by all Kalimdor nations, but as Orcs relations with the Night Elves and Humans decayed, Sylvanas pressed for an alliance with the Horde. After some time, alliance with the forsaken was accepted. While the orcs did not accept such an alliance with the blood elves, trade between the blood Elves and Orcs became more and more common. This trade, and military concerns, encouraged the Blood Elves to build a teleporter between Silvermoon and Undercity.

Second Siege of Undercity
The first major test of the forsaken/Blood Elf alliance occured when Kel'thuzad attempted to again conquer the undercity. Kel'thuzad sent a stronger group of forces this time, and the scourge, and the scourge commanders had heard about the battle and had changed their fighting style somewhat. The larger number of forsaken, however, more effectively fought the scourge this time, and the blood elves sent a large number of mages and archers.

User:Minionman/Second Undercity Siege

The battle went even worse for the scourge than the first one. The forsaken freed around 2,500 ghouls, and no forsaken or blood elves were killed.

Expansion South
The forsaken at first focused on capturing and controlling the Tirisfal Glades. Soon, humans and dwarves from the south began sneaking into forsaken territory. Some were joining the scarlet crusade, some were attempting to resettle farms, others were looking for revenge for Garithos's killing. With the new forsaken added after the second siege, Sylvanas decided to move south and attack some human nations to the south in response. Sylvanas first tried to move through Silverpine forest, but the large amounts of worgen and scourge slowed her forces down before they could reach too far. Sylvanas soon moved most of her fighters out of Silverpine, leaving just enough to defend the Sepulcher and occasionally fight and free scourge, and sent the rest south again over Lake Lordmere.

The Alterac coast was mostly either deserted or used by Syndicate, but further south were the towns of Hillsbrad, Southshore, and Tarren Mill. Much scarlet crusade recruitment occurred here, and many of the spies for other human nations came from these towns as well. Sylvanas wanted these towns captured, if possible, and the citizens driven out or killed.

The forsaken attack on Terran Mill went very successfully. Several small attacks were made throught the day, than at night the forsaken attacked the town full force, and killed around 1/4 of the wtown people before the militia woke up, organized, and fought the forsaken until the rest of the townspeople could leave. The forsaken quickly took the town as their own, and prepared to attack Hillsbrad in the same way.

The militia commanders and mayors of Hillsbrad and Southshore were woken up by the refugees entering from Tarren Mill. They met the forsaken during the day, and after a short fight, the forsaken moved back to the mountains. The militia commander wanted to chase them, but a spy familiar with forsaken fighting methods argued against this. Instead, the militia attacked Terran mill while the deathguards were away, recapturing a large part of the town and killing many forsaken before leaving at nightfall. Over then next few days, the forsaken tried to attack Hillsbrad several times in a similar way, bur the Hillsbrad militias fought these attacks off. The forsaken also built up Tarren Mills' defenses, and attacks against it by the militias failed.

After a month or so of these attacks, the forsaken and Hillsbrad militia largely stopped fighting each other, apart from occasional small encounters. The forsaken did not have enough fighters to fight the Hillsbrad and Southshore militias in the open, while the militias would not fight in forests or in Tarren Mill.

The Forsaken Today
Against the scarlet crusade and scourge, the forsaken have fought successfully. The scourge never attacked undercity after the failed second attack, and several attempts to capture territory in Tirisfal failed as the forsaken assassinated scourge leaders and defeated and capture any spread out ghouls. Today the scourge do "control" certain parts of Tirsfal, but mostly with weak zombies and ghosts that are used as training fodder by the forsaken.

Forsaken attacks drove the scarlet crusade out of farms and smaller outposts in the Tirisfal Glades. Most recently, the forsaken with Blood Elf help have recaptured the Scarlet Monastery, leaving only crusade outposts in scourge controlled areas.

Silverpine forest has mostly been ignored by the forsaken, as no particularly organized enemies are there. The forsaken use silverpine mainly for some training, for freeing some scourge ghouls, and as a place to spy in Dalaran's activities.

The fighting in Hillsbrad has largely petered out in a stalemate. The Hillsbrad and Southshore militias have been very effective and fighting the forsaken, and most other members of the horde see the war as immoral. The other horde members will send advisors and help defend Tarren Mill, but only a few adventurers wish to support the conquering of Hillsbrad or Southshore.