What in the na of all that is holy, unholy, and slightly singed just happened!?
The entire known universe, and probably a few unknown ones, collectively choked on its morning coffee. Countless eyeballs, from the lowliest goblin peon to the loftiest dragon aspect, were glued to this colossal cosmic oopsie!
Such an astonishing explosion couldn't possibly be chalked up to your run-of-the-mill skirmish, let alone a wizard's experint gone spectacularly wrong (though, let's be honest, that was always a strong contender), or even the simultaneous, spontaneous combustion of every single goblin in existence. This was art. This was a statent. This was a problem.
After Lothar, bless his battle-hardened heart, led his n into the spectral depths of Karazhan, King Llane, who must have been practically mainlining magic ssages, erupted from his throne like a cork from a champagne bottle. His eyes, now resembling two bloodshot cherries, latched onto the spell image – a shimring, oversized mirror that usually showed scenes of fierce, glorious combat. But now? Now there was only the inky blackness of the void, punctuated by the occasional phantom echo of a very confused pigeon.
"WHO. CAN. TELL. . WHAT. IN. THE. SEVEN. HELLS. JUST. HAPPENED. IN. KARAZHAN!?" Llane roared, each word a hamr blow, his voice a strained whisper of suppressed panic and a desperate need for answers. He practically vibrated with barely contained regal fury as he interrogated the court mages, who collectively looked like they'd just witnessed a unicorn tap-dancing on the moon.
Several ancient wizards exchanged nervous glances, their beards practically vibrating with unspoken "not it!" Finally, the oldest one, whose wrinkles had wrinkles, shuffled forward.
"Your Majesty," he began, his voice a delicate tightrope walk between professional decorum and sheer terror, "there appears to have been a... significant energetic discharge within Karazhan. Judging by the auditory anomalies and the subsequent, rather enthusiastic impact, our most educated guess is that Lord Edmund Duke, in a fit of heroic brilliance, dispatched the demon king Sargeras. Following this, it seems Lord Guardian divh, perhaps having finally rembered where he left his sanity, utilized the artifact staff, ?Atiesh?, and every last ounce of Karazhan's magical oomph to give Sargeras a rather forceful shove into... well, away."
The old wizard, clearly sweating through his robes, tried his absolute best to spin this tale without sending Llane into a full-blown royal conniption. He conveniently omitted the 'and then everyone probably exploded' part, because, frankly, that was implied by the giant hole in reality.
As for divh's characterization, it was the kingdom's biggest, most awkward elephant in the royal chambers. Many a noble, with all the subtlety of a charging kodo, had suggested branding him a traitor and nailing him to the pillar of sha. But Llane, with a thundering glare that could curdle milk, had squashed every single one of those proposals. In fact, it was precisely because King Llane stubbornly refused to label divh a turncoat that a surprising number of blissfully ignorant nobles had actually fled to Karazhan for refuge. Oh, the irony.
Llane, still fuming, punched the communication mirror, eliciting a muffled thwack. "Restore communication yesterday! I don't care if it's a carrier pigeon with a note tied to its leg, I need to know first what's going on in Karazhan! Now, if you'll excuse , I'm going to hold a military eting that will make the last one look like a tea party!"
The aftershocks of the Karazhan explosion rippled far and wide, affecting everyone from the highest human king to the lowest orc grunt, often in hilariously inconvenient ways.
Especially the orcs.
In the southern reaches of what humans now so charmingly called the "Cursed Land" (forrly the "Swamp of Sorrows," because who needs optimism?), the tribal camp was still a bustling hive of activity. A sprawling, hundred-kiloter-diater sprawl of green-skinned chaos that expanded daily, like a particularly aggressive fungal infection.
And nestled within a small, practically anonymous clan, was the secret, highly exclusive, and surprisingly cramped headquarters of Gul'dan's Shadow Council.
This was Gul'dan's personal panic room, a secret lair designed for maximum self-preservation and minimum social interaction.
And today, sothing truly monuntal had gone wrong here.
While divh, possessed by the cosmic equivalent of a really bad roommate nad Sargeras, was busy wrestling Lothar's commandos and a few bewildered dragons, the real power behind the Horde, Gul'dan, was elbow-deep in the delicate art of beefing up the Dark Portal.
Gul'dan, bless his paranoid heart, never truly trusted divh. He had no idea that divh was essentially a at puppet for his boss Kil'jaeden's boss, Sargeras. The cosmic hierarchy was just too much for his tiny, scheming brain.
Plus, let's be real, the language barrier between orcs and humans was less of a barrier and more of an impenetrable wall of grunts and guttural roars. And the size difference? Forget about it. The Horde's "intelligence" on Stormwind Kingdom amounted to whatever their wolf-riding scouts could squint at from a distance before getting chased by a particularly grumpy sheep.
In Gul'dan's twisted little mind, divh was a powerful wizard with more ulterior motives than a goblin salesman, a master conspirator, and about as reliable as a chocolate teapot.
So, from the mont the orcs crash-landed on Azeroth, Gul'dan had been tirelessly trying to siphon off divh's power, not to ntion using said power to pinpoint Azeroth's interstellar coordinates and reinforce that perpetually wobbly portal.
Even with tribal warriors practically working themselves into a green-skinned paste day and night, only Gul'dan, the grand master of Dark Portal teleportation, knew the truly horrifying truth: at least 20% of their glorious warriors were being unceremoniously splattered across the void due to the portal's chronic instability. Poof! Gone. Just like that.
Of course, a few brave (or perhaps just dim-witted) orcs had dared to ask Gul'dan, "Uh, boss? Where'd Grunk go? He was right behind !"
Gul'dan, ever the master of propaganda, had a ready-made answer.
"Only the strongest orcs," he'd bellowed, puffing out his chest, "can pass through this portal safely and fight for the Horde! The weak? They perish during transmission! The weak are not worthy of being warriors of the Horde! The weak have no right to exist!"
And indeed, during the teleportation, there was a brief, disorienting stretch where the poor orcs were exposed to the raw, suffocating vacuum of space. It was only a few tens of seconds of terrifying, existential dread, but it was enough to completely mislead the tribal warriors: "Oh, so that's what happened to Grunk! What a pathetic weakling! Couldn't even hold his breath for thirty seconds!"
The weak have no rights. This had been the unwavering consensus of orc clans for millennia.
After a few timid inquiries, the questions ceased. Nobody wanted to be the next "weakling" to vanish into thin air.
In reality, those poor sods were less "weak" and more "cosmic fly swatter victims." They were instantly vaporized by Azeroth's space barrier, turning into fine, green ash that drifted off to who-knows-where with the interstellar breeze.
But at this very mont, the Dark Portal's continued operation still hinged on the delicate, symbiotic relationship between divh and Gul'dan.
And then, almost precisely at the mont Sargeras was unceremoniously yeeted into the abyss by divh, Gul'dan, who was practically a conjoined twin in terms of spiritual connection, found himself in a world of hurt.
Sargeras, the cosmic overlord, had abruptly yanked his spiritual power from the Dark Portal, dumping the entire burden squarely onto Gul'dan's scrawny shoulders. You see, divh and Gul'dan, the original co-pilots, had been contributing a rather lopsided 70% and 30% of their spiritual juice, respectively!
This ti, the ntal shock that slamd into Gul'dan's mind was a million tis more terrifying than an ancient tsunami made of pure existential dread. It was like his brain decided to spontaneously combust, then re-form, then combust again, just for kicks.
"Aaaah--!" Gul'dan let out a shriek so shrill it could shatter glass, clutching his head as if trying to keep his brains from escaping. He crumpled to the ground like a discarded shrimp, convulsing for a mont before falling into a blissful, drooling unconsciousness.
The grand architect of the orcish invasion, the supre puppet master, had just face-planted into a coma for absolutely no discernible reason. The entire Shadow Council, a collection of highly strung warlocks, imdiately devolved into a panicked, squawking ss.
The behind-the-scenes chaos of the orcs, however, had precisely zero impact on their surface-level operations. In the eyes of the great chieftain Blackhand, a slight hiccup in reinforcents was hardly a cause for concern. According to the highly scientific (and entirely biased) casualty ratios of previous battles, one orc fighting ten humans was just a Tuesday.
The hundreds of thousands of orcs currently rampaging across the land were, in his humble opinion, more than enough to wipe humanity off the map.
Duke, anwhile, had no clue about the royal headaches or the orcish brain ltdowns. After an indeterminate amount of ti that felt like a particularly aggressive nap, he slowly, painfully, creaked back to consciousness.
"Ahem! Hey! Uncle Lothar, are you dead? Because if you are, could you at least have the decency to let know? I need to update my 'people I owe a beer' list."
Smoke and dust clung to the air like a particularly stubborn blanket, rubble littered the ground like a giant's ssy toy box, and the escaping arcane energy, mixed with a faint whiff of demonic bad breath, made the top floor workshop of Karazhan as dark as a goblin's soul.
"Hmph!" Lothar's voice, sounding remarkably intact for soone who'd just been in a cosmic explosion, rumbled from nearby. "Stinky boy, I'll outlive your grandchildren. And for the record, I'd appreciate it if my fellow survivors of certain death would use my first na from now on. We've been through too much for formalities."
"Hey, Anduin, I just told you to hum, not to deliver a monologue. But judging by the sound, you're definitely too stubborn to die." Duke was, in fact, aching everywhere. Not from physical wounds, mind you, but because the explosion had apparently rewired his arcane circuits into a knot resembling a particularly complex pretzel.
"Well, where's Garona? Garona!?" Lothar called out a few tis, his voice echoing in the gloom. No response. He then tried a more tentative approach: "Do you... do you know what happened to divh?"
A weak, raspy voice drifted through the dust. "Oh, old man, I'm just crushed that I wasn't your first thought after the apocalypse."
Huh!?
"divh!?" Lothar's voice shot up an octave, practically a squeak of pure, unadulterated excitent. "divh, is that really you, or is Sargeras still doing his ventriloquist act? Okay, the code is – when you were fifteen, you snuck into Marquis Beranis's house to 'observe' his eldest daughter bathing. How exactly did the Marquis punish you after you were caught?"
Duke: "..." (ntally adding "Lothar's questionable past" to his list of shocking revelations.)
divh: "..." (A pause pregnant with ancient, scandalous mories.)
After two seconds of silence, so profound that even Lothar started to fidget, divh coughed, a faint, rattling sound, and then cursed with a voice that was barely a whisper: "You absolute scoundrel! It was clearly you who went peeking! If it wasn't for Llane, the late king would have forced you to beco the Marquis's son-in-law as punishnt!"
"Ahem! Ah! Such a thing actually happened? No, no, no, you must have rembered it wrong! It was obviously Llane who was peeping!" Lothar, caught red-handed in a decades-old scandal, imdiately launched into a frantic, utterly unconvincing bla-shifting routine. But a second later, a genuine, booming laugh escaped him.
"divh," he said, his voice thick with emotion, "welco back."
While the dark history of these two legendary figures was certainly entertaining, Duke had no intention of lingering for a chat. He'd just checked divh's status through his system, and the prognosis was... grim.
"Well, I'm back... and I might have to leave again soon."
"Oh! No – wait! DAMN IT! Duke's sword...!" Lothar, whose mood had just lifted, let out a shriek that sounded like an animal realizing it was next on the butcher's block. He practically dragged his wounded body across the rubble, scrambling towards the faint sound of divh's voice.
As the smoke and dust reluctantly began to clear, Lothar saw divh, sprawled on the ground, his hair a wild, dusty ss.
His old friend, known since childhood, was clearly on his last legs. Bloody bubbles frothed at the corners of his mouth, and the chest that should have been impaled by the King's blade was now sealed by a massive chunk of ice. Without that impromptu freezer pack, divh would have bled out even faster.
divh was indeed the strongest wizard of his ti, having inherited Aegwynn's Guardian power, he might have lived for centuries, even millennia, like his mother. But most people conveniently forgot one crucial detail: he was still, fundantally, a mortal.
Being injured hurts. Being this injured, however, tends to be fatal.
"Oh, no, I brought a priest this ti – I'll go find him right away!" Despite knowing the odds were stacked against them like a tower of Jenga blocks, Lothar refused to give up.
Beyond his legendary sense of duty, Lothar was a man who valued friendship above almost all else. Once he'd confird that divh wasn't just another evil demon having a bad hair day, he'd instantly re-categorized him as his closest, most infuriating companion.
Lothar, in his boundless loyalty, had conveniently forgotten every single evil deed divh had committed while possessed.
"No need!" divh suddenly rasped, his left hand shooting out to grab Lothar's arm with surprising strength. "My biggest injury is the complete and utter collapse of my magic circuits. At this point, even a Creation Titan with a full dical kit couldn't patch up."
The air around them suddenly beca as silent and heavy as a tomb.
divh continued, his voice barely a whisper: "Anduin... rember to thank Duke. Without his fatal blow, I would never have found a chance to reclaim my body... If Duke hadn't stopped at the critical mont, I wouldn't even be able to protect you after pushing Sargeras into the Abyss... let alone have this precious, fleeting mont to reminisce about your questionable bathing habits..."
Lothar choked up, a quiet sob escaping him. He clutched divh's thin, cold hands tightly. In that mont, there was no Lion of Azeroth, no Commander of Stormwind, no Guardian of the World. Only two old friends, about to part ways, one of whom was still slightly embarrassed about the bathwater incident.
"Stupid, am I the kind of person who is irrational and emotional?" divh rasped, a ghost of a smile playing on his lips.
"Well, I'll make so arrangents first." divh weakly waved his relatively intact right hand towards the void, as if shooing away an annoying fly. "Duke, co here."
Stepping carefully over the debris, Duke appeared before divh and Lothar, his mind a whirlwind of conflicting emotions.
For a player, this was the ultimate boss fight loot drop. The mont you've been grinding for.
But as a ti traveler, a cold dread coiled in his gut. There was a very high probability that divh, the most powerful wizard of his age, had seen right through his little "immortality" trick. Resurrecting directly behind a Sargeras-possessed divh? The corpse disappearing, the mysterious, non-magical light, the sudden appearance of a perfectly healthy body... if divh still had any mories, there was no way he hadn't noticed.
What if divh decided to spill the beans? Or worse, bite him back?
He'd be branded an alien, a mysterious life form akin to a demon! His days of blending in, of charming his way through the human world of Azeroth, would be over.
Duke's stomach churned with unease. The problem was, he didn't even have the option of turning the tables and silencing divh. He'd just skimd the battle logs, and Aegwynn's na had popped up.
Now, the last Guardian, Aegwynn, plus the Red Dragon Queen Alexstrasza, and the High Priestess who was basically the Night Elves' head honcho, Tyrande Whisperwind – that's a whole lot of angry, powerful people waiting outside Karazhan. He wasn't overturning any tables today. Not even a small, wobbly one.
Duke was officially uneasy.
Seeing through Duke's thinly veiled panic, divh offered a gentle smile, the kind an ancient, wise elder might give a particularly clumsy puppy. "Don't fret, my child. Everyone has their little secrets. You managed to gain the approval of ancient kings like Thoradin and stab to death with that sword when I was possessed by Sargeras. That alone proves your heart. Believe , Lothar and I will take this little secret of yours to our graves, and even soul-torture won't pry a single detail from us. If anyone ever finds out in the future, just tell them it's a clever little parlor trick I taught you."
At divh's words, Lothar, surprisingly, looked up and gave Duke a firm, reassuring nod.
Duke secretly let out a breath he didn't realize he'd been holding.
divh's smile remained bright, though no one would ever guess that this was a man whose very core had been shattered, now clinging to life by a few frayed magical threads. "From the first mont I laid eyes on you, I knew you weren't from Stormwind. I originally thought if I didn't have you, I'd still have Khadgar... Unfortunately, Khadgar has beco... rather spherical."
divh then handed Duke a glowing white bead.
Duke: "This is...?"
"Sargeras killed Khadgar. This is his soul..." divh coughed, a harsh, wet sound that brought forth a fresh gush of blood. Lothar, wordlessly, pulled off his gauntlet and gently wiped the blood from divh's chin with his sleeve.
divh continued, "Resurrection of the dead is a forbidden area. But here, in Karazhan, Khadgar's spirit should be able to... assist you."
"Well..." Duke stamred, still processing the "spherical Khadgar" comnt.
"What I an is," divh pressed on, "if you promise to protect the humans of Azeroth for , I will give you Karazhan. The entire Karazhan. And in addition to Karazhan, there is also this..."
Duke's pupils abruptly shrank to pinpricks as he stared at the piece of broken wood, inexplicably carved into the shape of a chicken leg – the shattered head of the super magic weapon, the ?Legendary Staff of the Guardian of Atiesh?.
"Haha, of course, I have selfish motives," divh chuckled, a faint, dying sound. "Karazhan is a place of boundless opportunity, but also imnse danger. There are rifts everywhere here, and I fear the Burning Legion will use this place to invade Azeroth. So, as the price for owning Karazhan's 1.28 million magic books and this express lane to becoming the strongest mage, your soul will be linked to Karazhan forever."
"Will you accept Karazhan? Karazhan!
Just hearing that ridiculously grand na was enough to send Duke's heart into a frantic drum solo!
Not just because Karazhan was the most popular, most distinctive, and most beloved dungeon in the ga before Duke's unscheduled vacation to Azeroth, but because of the sheer, unadulterated value and status of Karazhan itself.
Over a million magic books? That was a staggering fortune, enough to make any continental power drool. Forget a million; even a hundred books would cause a bloody, magical free-for-all.
With these books and the ever-so-helpful system, Duke realized the biggest roadblock on his path to becoming the Supre God of Magic had just been vaporized.
And Karazhan's status? Transcendent. Legendary. Practically mythical.
There was Dalaran in the north, and Karazhan in the south. That was the magical balance of power on the entire continent.
A divh-controlled Karazhan could go toe-to-toe with Dalaran, a city teeming with thousands of mages. This wasn't just about the books or the bizarre experintal conditions within; it was about Karazhan's utterly insane, ridiculously overpowered magical defense capabilities.
Duke wasn't exaggerating. The Mage Tower's automated magical defense system alone could have reduced the world's red dragon population by at least a third.
And that was the optimistic estimate!
If Duke had been in control from the start and truly unleashed its full fury, not a single red dragon, save for the Queen herself, Alexstrasza, would have made it out alive.
But the real kicker, the absolute cherry on top of this magical sundae, was Karazhan's astral rifts.
No one knew better than Duke how history was about to unfold.
Draenor, or "Outland" as the Azerothians so quaintly called it, or "our world" to the orcs. This planet, ho to both orcs and draenei, was an unavoidable, future headache.
Thinking about the inevitable war, Duke definitely didn't want to rely solely on that pathetic, hole-in-the-ground "Dark Portal" as his only lifeline to the future.
There was no reason to refuse. Publicly, privately, magically, strategically – it was a no-brainer.
The only thing that made Duke hesitate was divh's ominous pronouncent: "Your soul will be forever bound to Karazhan." It sounded less like a gift and more like a magical life sentence.
However, Duke's brief mont of existential dread was swiftly (and rather dryly) alleviated by a series of pop-up explanations from his ever-present system AI.
"Congratulations on successfully assisting divh in banishing the soul of Sargeras, the Lord of the Burning Legion, the Fallen Titan, and the Demon King, into the Endless Abyss. You've earned a gold star, atbag."
"Your personal reputation with divh, Lothar, and Aegwynn is: Worship? (They practically want to build a statue of you, but mostly for the 'stabbed Sargeras' part)."
"Your reputation in the Red Dragonflight is: ?Worship? (They're still a bit sore about the 'almost wiped us out' part, but they'll get over it)."
"divh wishes to give you the entire Karazhan. In exchange, you will be bound to the highest level of soul with the Karazhan Mage Tower. You will no longer be able to own any other mage tower (because, honestly, why would you need another?). You will no longer be accepted by any mage organization (they're a bit stuffy anyway)."
"Highest Level Soul Binding: If you unfortunately lose your life forever (again), unless your soul is bound by a supre power that exceeds the entire Karazhan magic pool (good luck with that), your lost soul will be automatically absorbed back into Karazhan and continue to dominate Karazhan in so form (possibly as a very grumpy ghost)."
"Karazan: A demigod-level wizard tower. It has the best magic defense capability in the entire Azeroth world, second only to the wizard city Dalaran (they're still arguing about who's better). It has low-level cross-dinsional attack capabilities (for annoying interdinsional squirrels), controls twelve astral rifts leading to an unknown world (adventure awaits!), and has its own demigod-level magic pool (currently on the fritz)."
"Karazhan Library: Contains 1.28 million magic books. Although most of them are information books about magical creatures, magical phenona, unknown creatures, and the environnt (prepare for so truly dull reading), one thing is certain: all the magic books you have practiced until you beco a Sunshine Mage are here (and then so)."
"More details about Karazhan are unknown and are waiting for you to discover on your own (or for you to accidentally blow sothing up)."
"divh's Legacy: divh knows he will die (he's not subtle), and he hopes to pass on his legacy to you. Only by accepting his legacy can you fully own Karazhan. In addition to the Karazhan Mage Tower, you must also accept the following: ?divh's Morality (Humanity)?, ?divh's Seed of Prayer?, and ?The Head of the Legendary Staff of Atiesh*Guardian?."
"divh's Morality: Without the interference of Sargeras' will, divh is an out-and-out saint (it's true, we checked). He possesses a compassion and rcy beyond that of ordinary people (gross, right?). Inheriting his morality will allow your humanity to exceed your original limit (prepare for spontaneous acts of kindness). You may do many saintly actions from ti to ti (like helping old ladies cross the street). But you can suppress them with your will (thankfully). Or you can deliberately lose your soul to bring your humanity back to the range you think is reasonable (recomnded for maintaining your edge)."
"divh's Seed of Wishes: divh has loved the world of Azeroth and Stormwind all his life (a bit clingy, if you ask us). He doesn't want to see you harm Stormwind, so when you inherit his legacy, a spiritual seed will be planted in you (don't worry, it's not itchy). As long as you don't beco an unforgivable villain (like, say, joining the Burning Legion), the seed will do you no harm. Once you choose to join an evil organization like the Burning Legion (seriously, don't), the seed will backfire on your soul (it's like a magical conscience, but with more pain). Please figure it out for yourself (we're not holding your hand)."
"The epic remake quest of ? Legendary Staff of the Guardian of Atiesh? has been released: This artifact staff has imnse power, and its power has not disappeared (it's just really, really broken). Because divh used its power to force Sargeras into the abyss, the artifact was shattered into more than forty pieces (good luck finding them all, chump). If you can successfully collect all the fragnts of the staff, you will have the opportunity to own this unique artifact staff in all of Azeroth (and bragging rights for life)."
After devouring all the requirents and prohibitions in one frantic gulp, Duke felt a wave of profound relief wash over him.
divh hadn't betrayed him! He was actually... nice!
As long as Duke didn't go rogue and join the Burning Legion or the Scourge, and refrained from initiating massacres within the Stormwind Kingdom, divh wouldn't impose any restrictions on him. It was practically a blank check for chaos, with a few minor "don't be evil" clauses.
At that mont, the greatest wizard of his ti, now a re whisper away from oblivion, managed a faint, almost beatific smile on his withered face. Two thin lines of tears traced paths through the dust on his cheeks.
"Duke..." divh rasped, his voice barely audible. "From the mont I first saw you, I knew you would be an unrestrained strong man, soaring through the skies and reigning over the earth. I never thought of using morality or power to restrain you. Even when Sargeras secretly influenced my soul, I never had such an idea. But, Duke, have you ever thought about it? The greater the ability, the greater the responsibility. It seems that if talented and capable people like you don't stand up, Azeroth will surely perish."
When Duke heard this, his heart suddenly sank, and for so inexplicable reason, a wave of pain surged up his nose, threatening to make him cry. Great, now I'm getting emotional. Is this the 'divh's Morality' kicking in already?
divh continued, his voice growing fainter, "Even if you are not from Stormwind, I hope you will rember that there was a Stormwind City that provided soil for you to grow. Rember that there were countless brave people who fought alongside you... They all hope that the kingdom will last forever... They hope that this beautiful and fertile land will no longer be ravaged by evil –"
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