High elves establish Quel’Thalas

Full History

The founders of Quel'Thalas were descendants of the Highborne who refused to abandon arcane practice after the Sundering. Driven from Kalimdor, they sailed east and searched for a place where they could create a home without the restrictions imposed by their night-elven kin. An earlier settlement in Tirisfal Glades failed, and the migrants continued north until they reached forests where Dath'Remar Sunstrider and his followers established their enduring kingdom.

Their new society depended upon magic. The Sunwell became a source of great arcane power, and the high elves cultivated arts and institutions that distinguished them from the druids and Sentinels of Kalimdor. Silvermoon rose as a center of their civilization. Their attempt to establish security was complicated, however, by the presence of another people with a much older claim to the land: the Amani forest trolls.

The struggle between Quel'Thalas and the Amani became one of the defining conflicts of the northern Eastern Kingdoms. The troll powers did not accept the elven occupation and fought to recover territory. At a moment of great danger, the high elves sought help from human Arathor, teaching selected humans to wield arcane magic in exchange for military aid. That alliance weakened the Amani and altered the history of human spellcasting as well as elven politics.

For thousands of years the kingdom survived, but the Third War brought a catastrophe unlike its earlier struggles. Arthas's Scourge broke through its defenses and devastated the Sunwell, and many surviving high elves adopted the name blood elves in memory of those killed. Quel'Thalas remained a place of extraordinary historical weight in the original-era world. Its foundation was the beginning of a distinct people whose greatest triumphs and deepest losses were bound to the same source of magical power.