Hello everyone!
The Burning Legion has invaded azeroth once again and warriors are able to pick up 3 different
artifacts to empower them in this war.
For arms warriors it’s Stromkar, the Warbreaker, previously owned by Thoradin of Arathor.
Odyn sends us to Tyr’s Tomb at Tyr’s Fall in Tirisfal Glades so while we travel there,
let’s talk about the history of the weapon and how it ended up in this tomb.
The early human tribes had many legends about giants who had once walked among them.
These mighty beings had many names, but the most common attributed to them was ""vrykul.""
The folktales said that the giants watched over humans as parents would watch over sons
and daughters.
The vrykul taught their primitive children the ways of foraging, of masonry and smithing,
and of making war.
It’s not surprising that legends speak of the vrykul as parents since it was the vrykul
of the dragonflayers clan that traveled south with their malformed children, born weak and
frayel because of the curse of flesh.
Their king ymiron had ordered them too dispose of these mutated children and while some followed
his orders, others could not and left what would be known today as humans in the care
of the vrykul stationed within Tirisfal.
By the time of Warlord Thoradin, the vrykul of the human lands had long since died out.
What little remained of their presence included weapons they had left behind.
The humans treated these arms as sacred heirlooms and symbols of their tribes.
But the blade later known as Strom'kar would become much more than that.
In Thoradin's hands, it would become a symbol of all humanity.
Even as the brutish Amani trolls raided and pillaged, the human tribes bickered and squabbled
with each other.
Only Warlord Thoradin and his Arathi tribe recognized the folly of their ways.
If they did not unite, the moss-skinned trolls would crush humankind and desecrate its ancestral
lands.
So it was that Thoradin declared himself king and set out to bring the tribes to heel.
Many he won to his side through the marriages of his sons and daughters.
Others, through promises of wealth and land.
But some closed their ears to words of diplomacy.
They spoke only the language of violence.
Fortunately, Thoradin knew that language well.
For weeks, Thoradin and his warriors struggled to conquer the rugged mountain people known
as the Alteraci.
Though the upstart king was confident he could subdue the tribe if given enough time, he
knew the cost would be very high.
To prevent unnecessary bloodshed, he changed his tactics.
Thoradin shed his battle armor and painted his chest with Arathi tribal symbols.
With only Strom'kar in hand, he marched up the mountain and challenged the Alteraci leader,
Ignaeus, to a duel.
Before long, Ignaeus emerged from the forest, skin dyed red with his own tribal marks, blade
sharpened and hungry for death.
He dwarfed Thoradin in size and strength, but the Arathi leader had other advantages.
He had chosen the duel on a day when thick fog enveloped the mountains.
Using the weather to his advantage, Thoradin eluded Ignaeus's wild swings and disarmed
his bigger foe.
Ignaeus was at Thoradin's mercy, but the Arathi leader did not strike.
He plunged Strom'kar into the damp earth and extended the hand of peace.
On that day, he won the Alteraci to his side.
The only human tribe powerful enough to end King Thoradin's dream of unity dwelled in
Tirisfal Glades.
A great warrior named Lordain led the region's noble people.
They would not submit to shows of force like the Alteraci.
To win their loyalty, Thoradin needed to appeal to their religious beliefs.
Thus Thoradin and his personal guards made a pilgrimage to the region's shrines and sacred
groves.
At each site, the king performed rituals as was the custom of Lordain and his kin.
Thoradin even wore a pendant of the silver hand, an image held sacred by Tirisfal's humans.
At the end of the pilgrimage, Thoradin met with Lordain.
The king pledged that if the tribe joined him, he would adopt their mystic ways and
spread them among the Arathi.
To seal his promise, Thoradin ran his palm along Strom'kar's edge and mixed his blood
with the earth of Tirisfal.
The histories record Thoradin as saying, ""Between our people, let this be the only blood we
spill.""
And so it was.
Lordain and his people bent the knee to King Thoradin.
I think it’s really cool that they added a note as to how the humans mythology, religion
was spread amongst their society.
Thoradin and other early human warlords held their swords and axes sacred.
Many believed that the spirits of their ancestors lived on in their weapons.
With this in mind, it's quite extraordinary that Thoradin convinced all of the human tribal
leaders to lend him their personal blades.
Arathi blacksmiths took shards of metal from each of these weapons and added them to Thoradin's
greatsword.
It was an act of brilliance, for it secured the eternal loyalty of the tribes.
Who would ever rise up against Thoradin and risk striking the sword that contained their
own ancestors?
When the work was done, Thoradin renamed his sword Strom'kar, the Warbreaker.""
With the human tribes united, King Thoradin set out to found a new capital.
According to one legend, he discovered his answer in a dream.
In it, he saw his father wearing the pelt of a black wolf.
He told Thoradin of an arid land southeast of Tirisfal Glades.
If the king built his capital there, his people would prosper.
Thoradin sought out the land from his dream, a region known today as the Arathi Highlands.
As the story goes, the king spied a black wolf roaming the barren terrain.
On that spot, Thoradin used Strom'kar to carve out the boundaries of his city in the dirt.
Then he set his masons to work.
So arose Strom, mighty capital of the first human kingdom.
Thoradin was not a king to sit idle on his throne, just as Strom'kar was not a sword
to sit idle in its sheath.
The Arathi military patrolled the far-flung borders of the human territories, repelling
Amani troll incursions.
King Thoradin took part in many of these skirmishes, often at great risk to his own life.
One account tells of a brutal Amani ambush that struck Thoradin's forces.
The trolls routed the humans, separating the king from his warriors.
Though he was outnumbered ten to one, Thoradin did not flee.
He did not beg.
He did not cower.
No true Arathi would stain his honor with such craven acts.
Thoradin sharpened Strom'kar's edge on the skulls of his enemies and painted its steel
with their blood.
When the guards finally reached him, they found their king standing over ten broken
Amani corpses.
To defeat the Amani, Arathor and the high elves of Quel'Thalas forged an alliance.
King Thoradin marshaled over twenty thousand human soldiers and launched his armies at
the trolls.
The decisive battle unfolded at Alterac Fortress.
The Amani host besieged the stronghold.
While the humans defended the fortress from the onslaught, the high elves smashed into
the troll rearguard.
Thoradin waded through the Amani warbands with the rest of his soldiers, Strom'kar hacking
down troll after troll.
Once the king knew his forces had worn the enemy thin, he revealed his secret weapon.
One hundred human magi emerged from Alterac Fortress.
Alongside elven sorcerers, they pooled their power and unleashed a single terrible spell
on the Amani.
A column of fire ripped down from the heavens and blasted through the trolls.
The howling torrent of flame burned the Amani to ash.
Thus the Troll Wars ended, with human and elf triumphant and the trolls would never
truly recover.""
After the Troll Wars, Thoradin embarked on a diplomatic mission to Quel'Thalas and secured
humanity's bond of loyalty with the high elves.
The king created a military pact so that each side would help the other if the Amani ever
threatened their lands again.
He also carved out new territorial borders with the elves and drew up trade agreements
to foster the prosperity of Arathor for generations to come.
Before Thoradin left Quel'Thalas, the elves gave him a gift.
Their greatest blacksmiths and enchanters toiled over Strom'kar and imbued it with extraordinary
power.
Thoradin marveled at the masterwork of the elves.
The new Strom'kar gleamed with an otherworldly beauty.
It weighed almost nothing in Thoradin's hands, and no matter how often he used it, the edge
never seemed to dull.
As his years wore on, a grizzled Thoradin abdicated his throne in peace.
He broke tradition and kept Strom'kar as his own.
Though some bristled at what they considered an act of greed, Thoradin retained the blade
for practical reasons.
Strom'kar had become a symbol of kingship.
Thoradin wanted Arathor's citizenry to see his bloodline as the legitimate rulers, not
simply whoever wielded the sword.
Free from the burden of leadership, Thoradin spent much of his time studying ancient ruins
in Tirisfal Glades.
He became obsessed with the origins of humankind and with the tales of giants who once walked
the land.
Thoradin learned to use Strom'kar's enchantments to locate hidden places of power.
During one of his journeys in Tirisfal, Thoradin and a retinue of his followers entered mysterious
catacombs buried beneath the earth.
According to the legends, none of them were ever seen again.
Many strange tales exist about what befell Thoradin, but the truth is the strangest of
them all.
In Tirisfal Glades, he discovered two long-lost subterranean chambers.
One belonged to the noble keeper Tyr.
The other, to a monstrosity known as Zakajz, a bloodthirsty servant of the malevolent Old
Gods.
Before written history, Tyr had sacrificed himself to defeat Zakajz in a battle that
shook the heart of Azeroth.
The keeper's allies buried both combatants at the site of their mythic confrontation,
and they sealed the tomb with magical wards to prevent anyone from disturbing what lay
inside.
Unaware of the great darkness locked beneath the earth, Thoradin instructed the magi in
his retinue to break the seals.
They succeeded... and, in so doing, their arcane spellwork inadvertently resurrected
Zakajz.
As the lumbering creature tore through Thoradin's followers, the former king did not flee.
He did not beg.
He did not cower.
No true Arathi would stain his honor with such craven acts.
Thoradin sharpened Strom'kar's edge one last time, burying the sword into Zakajz's skull.
The blade's elven enchantments forced the horror into a deep slumber and prevented it
from regenerating.
It was Thoradin's last great act.
At the moment of his strike, he suffered a mortal wound from Zakajz.
The warrior who united humankind died that day, Strom'kar stained with the blood of one
final enemy.
And there the blade has kept the monstrosity under control, but time does not stand stall
and as we arive at our destination, we find cultists torturing the spirit of Thoradin.
Twilight Ritualist: “What transpired down there?
Tell us, spirit!”
Thoradin: “I will tell you...nothing!
What lies beneath will be the end of you!”
“My....thanks.
Though we have never met before, I sense great courage in your heart.
Yes...you are the hero I need!”
“Long ago, my yearning for knowledge led me here, to a tomb that lies beneath the lake.
Within its cold stone walls, I found something long buried...a terrible darkness, an ancient
evil.”
“My men begged me to walk away.
I refused.
My pride would be my downfall....and theirs.
The evil stirred, unleashing death upon us.
With my last breath, I drove my blade, Strom’kar, into the beast’s skull.”
“For many ages, the sword has kept the beast from rising again.
But now it stirs once more, so I must ask you to delve into the depths of the tomb and
finish what I started.
I will go with you, to offer what aid I can.”
“Even in death, the monster is restless.
Its corruption has spread throughout the tomb.
You will have to fight your way through!”
“When I saw this antechamber, I knew we had found something...momentous.
Here was a door so oddly familiar, like a long-forgotten memory.
We broke the first seal.”
“As I feared, one of the monster’s minions has returned.
Its presence is corrupting the wards of the tomb and blocking the path.
You must destroy the tendrils to draw it out!”
“Those tendrils are using dark magic to become immune to attack.
Interrupt their casting so you can strike!”
“There it is, atop the crypt.
Prepare yourself.”
Defeat Soth’ozz the Guardian, teleports away to cast Atrophy, summons flesh spawn
The way below is uncovered, make your way to the prison of Zakajz.
More flesh spawn and faceless oppressors & faceless illusionist
Cinematic: “Behold the site of my final battle...and there lies my foe.
Even now, Zakajz struggles for consciousness.
You must hurry!”
Zakajz is struggling to defend itself.
Draw out the sword and perform the final blow!
Take the blade: “No!
We are too late!
Zakajz has awakened!”
“The beast seems slow...confused.
The sword wounds it still!
Quickly, strike it down before it recovered completely!”
Zakajz is awake but neither fully healed or fully in control of its mind.
Fight it back into unconsciousness!
“Beware!
Zakajz grows desperate.
He may change his tactics!”
“You have done what I could not.
You defeated Zakajz and lived.
You know what needs to be done.
Take up the Warbreaker and end the threat of Zakajz once and for all!”
Zakazj has been defeated again, but it is not permanent.
Take up Strom’kar and deal the final true blow.
Pick up sword, I have the powerrrrrrrr, deal final death blow
“At last the nightmare is over!
I can finally leave this place and be at peace.
I leave my blade to you.
Strom’kar deserved to be wielded in battle, not locked away in a tomb.
It was forged by a master swordsmith and imbued with elven magics.
I know not whether being buried in that beast for centuries has affected it, but I trust
that it will serve you well.
“
This legendary sword has seen many battles, united a kingdom and has been infused with
many different sources of magic.
Even the trolls remember the mighty blade forged by the son of vrykul, enchanted by
elven sorcery and quenched in the blood of a C’thraxxi.
It will serve warriors well as we use it in the war against the legion and our adventures
through the broken isles.
However, that’s a story for another day so for now thank you very much for watching
everyone!
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