C'Thun

Full History

Long before the human kingdoms, the Horde, or the night elves' great empire, Azeroth was beset by powers now remembered as the Old Gods. The ancient histories describe hostile elemental beings that served these incomprehensible masters and resisted the titans who came to order the world. The titans broke the hold of those powers, but the Old Gods were not simply forgotten enemies. Their influence endured beneath the lands that younger peoples would later settle. C'Thun, hidden beneath the deserts of southern Kalimdor, belongs to that older and more terrible history.

Its most visible servants were the qiraji, an insectoid people whose fortress-city of Ahn'Qiraj stood in the wasteland of Silithus. They commanded swarms of silithid and warlike guardians capable of overwhelming armies. For ages, the southern desert concealed their strength. Then night-elven explorers encountered Ahn'Qiraj, and the power waiting there stirred the insectoid hosts into action. What first seemed a menace confined to a distant ruin became an invasion that endangered much of Kalimdor.

The night elves resisted under the leadership of Fandral Staghelm, but their early campaigns ended in terrible losses. His son Valstann died in the fighting, a wound from which Fandral never fully recovered. Qiraji and silithid advanced beyond Silithus, threatening the lands near Un'Goro and Tanaris. The war was not merely a contest against soldiers emerging from a desert stronghold. Their numbers seemed inexhaustible, and something of immense power radiated from the temple behind their armies.

Desperate for allies, the night elves turned to the bronze dragonflight. Anachronos at first refused to involve his kin, but when the qiraji threatened the Caverns of Time the dragons could no longer remain apart. The bronze, red, green, and blue dragonflights helped drive the insectoid armies back toward Ahn'Qiraj. Even their combined might, however, could not promise a final victory inside the city. The defenders chose containment over a conquest that might devour them all.

Together, the night elves and dragons raised the Scarab Wall, imprisoning the qiraji within their own fortress. Anachronos fashioned a scepter through which the barrier might one day be opened. Fandral, overwhelmed by grief and anger at the price of the war, shattered it. The wall saved the rest of Kalimdor for generations, but it sealed an enemy rather than ending its existence. The desert grew quiet enough that other wars and kingdoms could turn attention elsewhere.

In the years after the Third War, Silithus remained a place of swarming insects, ancient ruins, and watchful defenders. The Cenarion Circle investigated threats that most travelers scarcely understood. Beneath Ahn'Qiraj's walls, C'Thun's presence gave those dangers a meaning far older than any quarrel between Alliance and Horde. The War of the Shifting Sands had bought the world time; whether that time would suffice was still an unanswered question.