Aedelas Blackmoore

Full History

After the Second War, Aedelas Blackmoore held power over orcs who had survived the defeat of the Horde. As the officer commanding Durnholde, he controlled prisoners whose armies had terrified human kingdoms only a short time before. When he discovered an orc infant left helpless after the murder of its parents, he did not see a child in need of protection. He saw the makings of a weapon that might one day give him power beyond the keep's walls.

He named the child Thrall and raised him in captivity. Human tutors taught the young orc language, reading, military discipline and tactics. Arena fighting taught him to survive beneath the gaze of people who regarded his suffering as entertainment. Blackmoore intended that such training would create an orc powerful enough to command other orcs but dependent on the human officer who claimed to have made him.

Blackmoore could not command every influence around Thrall. Taretha Foxton, a young human woman at Durnholde, became the prisoner's confidante. Her sympathy let Thrall imagine a life beyond the role his captor had chosen. When the orc escaped, he learned from other clans and from the Frostwolf shaman Drek'Thar about a heritage of freedom and spiritual responsibility unknown in Blackmoore's arena. The officer's careful design was beginning to come apart.

Thrall then acted on what he had learned, bringing together orcs who had lived in defeat and confinement. He sought to free the camps rather than become Blackmoore's instrument of conquest. The officer refused to recognize that his captive had become a leader in his own right. Even when faced with a force able to threaten Durnholde, he remained fixed on the belief that Thrall owed him obedience and gratitude.

As the orc army approached the fortress, Blackmoore murdered Taretha and displayed her severed head before Thrall. The cruelty extinguished the last possibility of negotiation. In the fighting that followed, Thrall entered Durnholde and confronted the man who had trained and brutalized him. Blackmoore died in their duel. After the survivors were allowed out, Thrall summoned the earth itself to bring down the stronghold that had held him captive.

Blackmoore's defeat was more than one prisoner's revenge. He had sought to turn the remnants of an enemy nation into a private army and had mistaken coercion for lasting loyalty. The orc he raised used the knowledge acquired under captivity to liberate others from it. The fall of Durnholde marked a break with the system of camps and domination that had followed the Alliance's victory in the Second War.