Daelin Proudmoore

Full History

Kul Tiras was a maritime kingdom whose fleet gave the human Alliance power far beyond the reach of its armies. Daelin Proudmoore, its lord admiral, belonged to the generation that faced the Old Horde when the orcs swept through the Eastern Kingdoms. He committed ships and sailors to the Alliance's struggle and emerged with little reason to trust promises made by orcish leaders. The destruction that the Horde had brought upon human lands became the measure by which he judged every orc he would encounter afterward.

Daelin's daughter Jaina took a different path. Trained as a mage in Dalaran, she witnessed the plague that destroyed Lordaeron and followed the warning that led survivors west across the Great Sea. On Kalimdor, she joined Thrall's orcs and the night elves in resisting the Burning Legion at Mount Hyjal. When the survivors established the port of Theramore, Jaina preserved an uneasy understanding with the new Horde in nearby Durotar. Daelin knew the Old Horde's conquests; Jaina had seen the New Horde help save the world. Their experiences left them with irreconcilable views of the same people.

The admiral sailed to Kalimdor in search of survivors from the ruined human kingdoms, including his daughter. His fleet reached a land where orc settlements stood beside the human foothold at Theramore. Rather than accepting Jaina's truce with Thrall, Daelin treated the new nation as a threat to be destroyed before it could grow stronger. Kul Tiran marines struck at Horde positions along the coast and on the mainland. To the orcs, these attacks seemed to prove that humans would never allow them to build a lasting home.

Rexxar, serving Thrall, carried the matter to Jaina. She denied ordering the raids and helped investigate the mysterious human forces. The discovery of Kul Tiran marines brought father and daughter face to face. Daelin saw Rexxar and the others not as envoys but as enemies; Jaina refused to let him seize them, and Rexxar escaped to warn Thrall. Daelin's arrival thus shattered the possibility of quiet diplomacy before the two leaders could speak on equal terms.

Thrall gathered his allies, while Rexxar helped draw the Darkspear trolls, tauren and Stonemaul ogres into the defense of Durotar. The Horde drove Daelin's troops from their mainland positions, but the admiral withdrew behind the warships guarding Theramore. Jaina, unwilling to take up arms for her father's campaign, offered the Horde a way past that blockade and pleaded that her own people be spared. The ensuing assault reached the admiral in his stronghold. Daelin would not accept Thrall's argument that the Horde was no longer the conquering army he remembered, and he died in the final battle.

Jaina mourned a father she could not persuade. Thrall withdrew his warriors rather than occupy Theramore, and the two settlements survived with their fragile peace restored at a terrible personal cost. Daelin's defeat was more than the end of an invasion: it exposed the distance between the Alliance veterans of the Second War and those who had fought alongside the orcs against the Legion. The bitterness of one generation nearly destroyed the future that the next had struggled to make possible.