The Great Thief

Baron Rivendare was enraged; he must have thought that fighting was a very noble matter. Even after turning into an Undead Paladin, he had still retained his pride.

He didn’t expect someone to be so shameless.

Not only had Lu Li interrupted a civilized conversation, he had also appeared behind him and used Cheap Shot.

Despite the courage that Lu Li had shown, he wasn’t the kind of person to lower himself just because he was angry.

Before the dagger could cut him, the Baron teleported behind Azure Sea Breeze, which gave him a bit of a scare.

The battle had officially begun!

Baron Rivendare was a Death Knight, and players rarely came into contact with this profession. Although many Paladin players could trigger the Death Knight quest early on, most of them didn’t fully complete the chain of quests to become one.

According to the official definitions, a Death Knight was just a human Warrior, Paladin or Orc that admired the Shamanism of the ancient Draenor World.

They either accepted the call of darkness and gave up their glorious past to sell their souls, or were helplessly resurrected and enslaved after being killed by the Lich King. In short, they were all given eternal strength.

In the same way that there were rare races like the Pandaren, Worgen and Goblins, the Death Knights and Monks were popular professions in the west, but only a small number of players managed to become them.

Hundreds of years ago, the simple and harmonious Draenor World was inhabited by a group of Orcs who admired simple Shamanism.

Before the darkness fell, the Demon Deceiver Kil’Jaeden lured the old Shadowmoon tribe to sacrifice Ner’zhul and abandon Shamanism, which advocated for the use of natural elements. This created the first Warlock that used chaotic arcane power.

After his subordinates were given dark power and eternal life, he became a wicked creature that lived on in the Blood Shadow Valley with a bloodthirst known as Gorefiend.

This dark Strength continued to spread among the Orc tribes, and the Shamans eventually accepted the new doctrines. The simple Orc race gradually became more corrupted and their society which was once driven by heroic warriors and wise shamans collapsed.

The Orcs began to drink the blood of the demons and started killing the innocent Draenei.

Although Ner’zhul became the leader of the Horde after forming various tribal alliances, he found that the bloodthirsty way of the demons was ineffective and refused to work with them.

The demons then found a young apprentice, Gul’dan, to create a Shadow Council and replace Ner’zhul as leader of the Horde.

Gul’dan led the Orc army through the Dark Portal to launch an attack on Azeroth and its World Alliance.

After their defeat, Ner’zhul returned to save his Orc compatriots who were enslaved in Azeroth. He led the Blackwater Marsh army through the Dark Portal to wage war on the Alliance Army, but was eventually defeated.

Once again, he used the power of darkness to open a number of doors that led into the Twisting Nether. He led his subordinates to flee into them, hoping that they could escape into a new world.

In the Twisting Nether, the Demon Legion was waiting for him. As punishment was acting against the will of the demons, he and his subordinates were stripped of their flesh, but their souls were persevered and tortured. Under the torture, Ner’zhul was once again corrupted. He was given a new strength and was frozen before the throne at the top of Northrend, becoming the Lich King.

His trusted subordinates, the Gorefiends, became Death Knights and the Lich.

These were the first generation of Death Knights.

The second generation was actually made up of humans, who were led by Prince Arthas.

A number of adventurous humans who lived in the mainland of Lordaeron used part of the fleet to explore the northern part of Northend, establishing towns in the area. The Lich King Ner’zhul quietly chose to kidnap some of these humans and conducted experiments on them. Eventually, he managed to establish a skeleton regiment of a reasonable size.

They ran into the Arachnid Kingdom that lived deep underground for tens of thousands of years. The brave Arachnid army attacked the earliest Scourge regiment that had just been established.

Because the Arachnids were immune to the mind control of Ner’zhul, this battle almost caused himto mobilize all the Lichs and Death Knights that were still loyal to him. In the battle, there were a great number of Arachnids died, and their bodies were manipulated by his Gorefiends. As they continued to fall, the number of Scourge increased. With this tactic, Ner’zhul finally won the war and achieved dominance of Northrend.

He deceived the Mage Kel’Thuzad, who had similar ambitions, and created a cult sect in the country of Lordaeron which continually grew in believers and spread various plagues.

Word of this eventually reached the Lordaeron government at the time. The Paladin Arthas and his mentor, Uther, were ordered to find out what was happening.

The young prince fell into one trap after another, which grew his hatred of the Scourge and finally led him to embark on a journey to the Northrend. There was no turning back from this journey, as he pulled out the cursed Frostmourne and sacrificed his subordinates to defeat the fearsome Demon Mal’Ganis of the Scourge. With his mission completed, he was left alone and wandered around aimlessly in the cold.

After a few months without any news, Arthas returned triumphantly and the plagues receded. In the celebrations, he met up with his father and personally killed him. This disrupted the local politics, and heralded the start of the second generation of Dark Knights.

This was the origin of the second generation of Dark Knights and also the height of their power. During this period, Arthas defeated Uther, the invincible leader of the Silver Hand.

However, there was an important point to be made here. A pure Paladin could not be summoned by a Necromancer, even after death.

The Strength of a Paladin came from their soul, but Uther’s defeat made his Paladins lose their loyalty to the faith. All the converted Paladins had actually changed their minds before dying.

Many of the Paladins died in anger, despair and fear. This meant that they could be summoned to join the ranks of the second generation of Death Knights.

The remaining Silver Hand members then either established or joined the Scarlet Crusade.

The Scarlet Crusade was splendid for a while and blossomed like a flower. Its leader, Mograine, forged the Ashbringer from the Shadow Crystals of the Draenei people who had been captured during the Orc invasion. Later, he was sold out by his son when he raided the city of Stratholme and was slain, filled with anger, sorrow and vengeance. He joined the Death Knights, and from that point onwards, the main force of the Scarlet Crusade was devastated as they were controlled by the Scourage and the Dreadlord.

All this had happened prior to the emergence of the sad character of Illidan.