Plaguelands remain contested

Full History

Lordaeron had once been the greatest refuge for survivors of the First War and a cornerstone of the Alliance that resisted the Horde in the Second. Its downfall came from within as the Cult of the Damned spread infected grain and the Scourge raised the dead to serve Ner'zhul's designs. Arthas's murder of King Terenas ended the old royal order, and the campaigns that followed devastated cities, villages, and farmlands alike.

The conquest did not produce one settled successor. Sylvanas Windrunner won freedom from the Lich King's domination and gathered a population of undead who called themselves the Forsaken. They established a new base beneath the former capital and confronted both Scourge forces and other contenders for the region. Their independence did not restore the old human kingdom, nor did it mean all undead in the north had escaped the Lich King's control.

Two human-led movements took sharply different approaches to the catastrophe. The Scarlet Crusade fought the undead with uncompromising zeal and entrenched itself in strongholds such as Scarlet Monastery. The Argent Dawn sought allies willing to oppose the Scourge regardless of factional ancestry and maintained positions along the Plaguelands. Both operated in a landscape where the old political borders offered little protection.

At the start of World of Warcraft, the Plaguelands remained dangerous territory marked by abandoned settlements, undead forces, and rival organizations. None of these factions had secured a final peace or exterminated its opponents. The state of the north preserved the far-reaching human cost of the plague and the unresolved consequences of Lordaeron's collapse.