The Tale of Nicrodh

Okay, this piece is very interesting in my opinion; when I was in 3rd Grade, I was obsessed with WarCraft II, and made a custom campaign (or rather, series of individual maps, since you couldn't exactly do a campaign back then) called The Hard Lands. This was essentially a fanfiction (I know, don't judge me) of the lore of WarCraft as I could understand it at age eight; mostly, though, I just looked at the different units available on the map editor and made up my own lore about each one.

The following is a story that takes place in the Hard Lands, but as far as I can tell, it's completely irrelevant to the campaign's storyline. Judging by the name "Aegryn," as well as the overall style of this story, it's clear I got the idea for this out of the Alliance backstory in the WarCraft II manual. It's got some really weird story elements in it that I can't even figure out now (see "abomination of the castle of Alterac," "33,000-year-old Greek urn," "jeweled skillet," and "four Dolaemons"), but I remember being very proud of it, I'm glad I discovered it. It's very interesting to see how my imagination worked back then. 

If all goes well, I'm going to try and remake the old Hard Lands campaign on WarCraft III this year.
So sit back, relax, and enjoy the irrelevant Tale of Nicrodh.

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The Tale of Nicrodh

M

y name is Aegryn. I’ll tell you about my son, Lordaeron, and a few other things about the Hard Lands. When I came to Lordaeron, about forty years before the great abomination of the castle of Alterac, I married a young maiden named Christina. We gave birth to a baby boy and named him Nicrodh. He grew up to be a very strong man. He was as strong as two of the ogres at the Death Wasteland.

On the night of his seventeenth birthday, we were holding a celebration for him becoming a paladin, when suddenly, Branata, the king’s evil wizard, slammed open the door. He had killed King Aglis. He suddenly started polymorphing all of the soldiers and friends of Nicrodh. Nicrodh ducked and Branata polymorphed one of Nicrodh’s most valuable antiques: a 33,000-year-old Greek urn. Me and Nicrodh escaped just a hair away from being polymorphed. We were sad to destroy our own tower, but we had to slay Branata, so we destroyed the tower with fire. Now, Branata was blind and didn’t know that we had escaped, so he was destroyed. Lothar, who was the new king, was pleased with us, and gave us medals. He also gave us our own runestones.

The next night, Nicrodh was looking at his runestone out his window, when suddenly, he had a vision. He was walking in the Stromgarde forest, when skeletons began to come from all directions. Then, Dolaemon himself came flying up above him. Nicrodh pulled out his humongous sling. Dolaemon threw a burning blade at Nicrodh, but it hit his sling. The rock caught on fire, and Nicrodh fired so hard that Dolaemon didn’t even know what hit him. Then, the vision stopped.

He went and told me about it. I asked my butler about the vision, and he said that it was true. It was. About six weeks later, we went to Stromgarde to get another urn for Nicrodh, when the exact same thing happened that was in Nicrodh’s vision! The first Dolaemon was destroyed, but there were four more Dolaemons to kill. The first one was usually brought back to life by Gul’dan and healed by his ally, Turalyon.

Me and Nicrodh got his urn and went back to Lordaeron. When we got home, Christina was gone. Only blood was left on the floor and her jeweled skillet was dented into the picture of Aglis on the wall. It was quite a sight, and so we went to search for Christina. At first, we thought one of Bozo’s servants attacked my wife; but on the way to Gilneas, which was my first choice for suspects, I found a sword soaking with blood in a little grove of trees. The sword looked like Lothar’s, but when I looked closer, it looked exactly like Turalyon’s sword! Turalyon! That’s who it was! I knew where his castle was, so I set off.

When I reached the castle, it was nearly dusk. I knew a shortcut to the dungeon. We went there. I saw Christina locked to the wall. I pulled out Turalyon’s sword and with one quick hack, the lock broke. I took Christina and went through the secret passageway. It took all night, but when Nicrodh, Christina, and I got home, there was great rejoicing in the land. Nicrodh was back, and was now a paladin! But his next adventure was just around the corner…