User:Joshmaul/Joshmaul the Warlock/In-Game Accomplishments/Zul'Aman PTR

Joshmaul the Warlock, in his "service" to Quel'Thalas, had heard much of their ancient hatreds for the Amani forest trolls. His interest piqued by the sudden resurgence of Amani activity, Joshmaul journeyed to the Ghostlands as part of an initial Horde expedition to explore their home territory...

Expedition Into Zul'Aman
When word reached him in Netherstorm from Lord Kel'theris' assassin, Euphrati, that the Amani were beginning to resurface, Joshmaul immediately travelled to Shattrath and travelled through the portal to Silvermoon, riding to the bat handler to take him to Tranquillien. Once there, he rode from the town and travelled into the Amani Pass west of the city of Zul'Aman, the capital of the fallen Amani Empire and stronghold of the Amani tribe, the most powerful of forest trolls. The Hatchet Hills around the walls of Zul'Aman were bustling with activity; a neutral encampment with a flight master leading in and out of Quel'Thalas for the Horde and Alliance had been set up, and they were being dispatched into the city.

Joshmaul learned that Zul'jin - the former ally of the Horde who aided Orgrim Doomhammer in the invasion of Quel'Thalas two decades earlier - was now Warlord of Zul'Aman and intended to make himself the next ruler of a restored Amani Empire...and empowered himself with the spirits of the animals that lived in Zul'Aman: the bear, the eagle, the dragonhawk, and the lynx. Intrigued, Joshmaul joined a band of adventurers - including at least two Champions of the Naaru - and made his way through the gates of Zul'Aman and into the long-isolated city.



There, he and the party battled the Amani'shi, the elite soldiers of the Amani tribe, as well as strangely-adorned grizzly bears - dressed up as mounts of war, Joshmaul guessed. He found this to be true later, upon confronting their first challenge - the powerful Loa Nalorakk, the avatar of the bear. Surrounded by Amani'shi axe throwers and medicine men, Nalorakk kept the war party occupied with trying to kill his guards, even sending warbringers - powerful trolls riding the bears, as Joshmaul had surmised - to combat them. Eventually, the party killed the last of the bear avatar's guards and came face to face with Nalorakk himself...who had more than a few surprises in store.

As the avatar of the Amani bear god, Nalorakk fought with incredible strength and power, even transforming into a bear several times during the battle. Many fell in the combat, and Joshmaul himself was grievously wounded by the power of the bear god. But Joshmaul had faced down great threats before, and like then he remained resolute and steadfast in his mission. With the shadows as his ally and his comrades fighting with all of their strength in a battle that lasted for nearly two days, Joshmaul and his war party defeated Nalorakk, and took the spoils due to them from his lifeless corpse.

With Nalorakk defeated, the war party continued on into Zul'Aman and saw their next opponents for themselves. One of them was the avatar of the dragonhawk Loa, a troll named Jan'alai. The stairway to reach him was broken, however, and thus they found they had to go around to confront him - on the way to the avatar of the eagle Loa, Akil'zon. On the way, however, they were ambushed by Amani'shi reinforcements called by a scout who sounded the alarm, and Joshmaul barely managed to escape with his life...

The Corruptor's Fury: Return to Zul'Aman
Several months later, Joshmaul returned to Zul'Aman much stronger than he had been before and - with an elite troop of warriors behind him - laid into his enemies with a vengeance. With Nalorakk long dead, it was a simple matter of manuevering through the ranks of trolls to reach Akil'zon. At the same time, he collected troll tusks and investigated the inner chambers of Zul'Aman for the Budd Nedreck expedition set outside the city. Having claimed the map to Zul'Aman from Nalorakk's platform, Budd sent him back to scout out the other three platforms - Akil'zon's, Jan'alai's, and the lynx avatar Halazzi's.

Setting to his task for the egotistical "adventurer", the Corruptor and his allies slaughtered legions of trolls who came to face them and freed the prisoners of the Loas, who were to be sacrificed at the behest of their lord, Hex Lord Malacrass. The electrical storms of Akil'zon, combined with the swarms of eagles, were not enough to save the Loa. Jan'alai fell next, despite his pleas for the hatchers to unleash his dragonhawks upon them, and despite all the fire he brought down upon them. Even the bestial ferocity of Halazzi was no match for the power of the Corruptor and his band.

The Hex Lord


Throughout Zul'Aman as they faced the Loas, Joshmaul heard the taunting cries of the Hex Lord throughout the city. Upon returning to Budd after destroying the Loas and scouting out their regions, he sent Joshmaul in next to defeat Malacrass, the last obstacle to his "grand entrance" into Zul'Aman. Privately, however, Joshmaul thought Budd was a fraud...much like the late Harrison Jones, who had helped them enter the city (spouting things about placing the artifacts into museums).

As he re-entered the city, Joshmaul rode straight ahead to a chamber leading into inner Zul'Aman - the domain of Zul'jin. Waiting for him there was Malacrass and his minions: A mind-controlled blood elf priestess, a dragon warrior, a fungal monster and an undead shade. Destroying the minions one-by-one, Joshmaul and his party withstood the assault of Malacrass' "spirit bolts", huge waves of shadow energy that did incredible damage. But even that was not enough to save him, and the Hex Lord was defeated.

Taking the news to Budd, Joshmaul was outraged (but not altogether surprised) that Budd decided to "let him go", fearing that Joshmaul would move in on his fame. Shrugging it off, Joshmaul returned to Zul'Aman and to the last obstacle: The Warlord of the Amani, Zul'jin.

Judgment of the Horde: The Fall of Zul'jin


Twenty years earlier, Zul'jin and Doomhammer had made a pact against the elves and their soon-to-be-allies in the Alliance during the Second War. Zul'jin, the first to unite the warring Amani tribes since the Troll Wars three millennia before, saw the Horde as his opportunity for revenge. When the Horde was defeated, Zul'jin endured the pain of incarceration at the hands of the elves, even cutting off his own limb to escape them. Upon his return to Zul'Aman, Zul'jin was outraged to discover that those same elves - now called blood elves - had allied with the Horde. Declaring vengeance on all the races of Azeroth, Zul'jin built up his power base in Zul'Aman. Now, it was to be for naught.

The spirits of the four Loas had settled on a platform accessed from Malacrass' chamber. As the party charged in to face the Warlord, Zul'jin absorbed those essences - the bear and its ferocity first, then the eagle and its winds of fury, so powerful that it made magic almost impossible. Lastly, he absorbed the essence of the dragonhawk and unleashed fiery death upon his attackers. But it was not to be. Zul'jin, Warlord of Zul'Aman, lord of the Amani and one-time friend of the Horde, fell dead before the onslaught. His screaming soul was trapped within one of the Corruptor's soul shards. With the Amani's power forever broken, Joshmaul could now look forward to his sojourn in Northrend.

Joshmaul had long been declared outcast by his fellow orcs; in fact, Warchief Thrall had put a death sentence on his head. The warlock cared little for the petty politics of Orgrimmar, but he was intrigued to imagine their reaction to Zul'jin being put down by an enemy of the Warchief...