The Silver Hand emerges

Full History

The Horde's conquest of Stormwind exposed the difficulty of defending human kingdoms through ordinary soldiers and spellcasters alone. The northern Alliance was gathering strength for a second war, and religious leaders sought ways to make the Light a more direct force in the struggle. Archbishop Alonsus Faol helped establish an order of warriors devoted to holy service. These paladins would be able to stand beside armies while bringing divine power against enemies who threatened the living.

Uther became among the most famous of the new knights. The Silver Hand offered a model of service in which spiritual conviction and battlefield duty were joined. Its members were not supposed to be conquerors seeking a kingdom of their own; they were sworn defenders of people and principles they regarded as sacred. During the Second War, such warriors added a new element to the Alliance's resistance to the Horde.

The order's fame continued after victory, but the next great danger came from within Lordaeron. Prince Arthas Menethil was trained as a paladin under Uther's guidance. When the plague of undeath spread and Arthas pursued the necromancer Kel'Thuzad, the young prince's determination became increasingly ruthless. At Stratholme he ordered the slaughter of residents he believed would become undead. Uther refused to obey, a moment that exposed a catastrophic difference between the order's obligations and the prince's methods.

Arthas later returned from Northrend as a death knight and destroyed the kingdom he was born to defend. The Silver Hand's history became inseparable from the loss of Lordaeron and the sacrifices made against the Scourge. Its founding during the Second War had been an answer to invasion; its later trials asked whether duty to the Light could survive a betrayal by one of its own most promising warriors.