Detheroc

Full History

The Scourge conquered Lordaeron in the name of the Lich King, but the Burning Legion's commanders expected to profit from that conquest. Detheroc was one of the dreadlords left to supervise the undead after the demonic invasion spread across the northern kingdoms. His power depended on a divided allegiance: the Scourge obeyed the Lich King, while the dreadlords pursued the designs of the Legion. When Archimonde fell at Mount Hyjal and the Legion's immediate assault failed, that uneasy arrangement began to collapse.

Arthas returned to the ruined capital and declared himself king, treating the dreadlords who had overseen the land as obstacles rather than masters. The Lich King's strength was failing, however, and Arthas found his own power weakening. Detheroc joined Balnazzar and Varimathras in a bid to seize the kingdom from the death knight. Their rebellion helped force Arthas to abandon Lordaeron and hurry north, leaving rival powers to fight over the undead and the living survivors trapped between them.

Detheroc relied on abilities more subtle than an army of demons. In the Western Plaguelands he used mental domination to enslave Garithos, the human commander whose remnant soldiers had survived Lordaeron's destruction. Instead of scattering the remaining human resistance, the dreadlord turned its officers and warriors into guardians of his own stronghold. Their banners might still have been human, but the decisions behind them were no longer their own.

Another revolt threatened Detheroc's hold. Sylvanas Windrunner, freed from the Lich King's domination, rejected the dreadlords' offer to share authority over the Plaguelands. She gathered free-willed undead and defeated Varimathras, then forced that dreadlord to guide her against his brother. The confrontation was more than a struggle for territory. Sylvanas intended to demonstrate that the undead who had escaped the Scourge would not submit to a different set of masters.

Detheroc believed the human troops guarding his fortress made it secure. Sylvanas and Varimathras exploited the defenders' vulnerability by striking while much of the garrison slept, using possession and surprise to open the way inward. When the battle was finished Detheroc was dead, and his influence over Garithos and the human soldiers broke with him. The freed commander was hardly a friend of Sylvanas, but he could now choose to bargain with her rather than obey a demon's will.

Garithos's temporary alliance with Sylvanas helped clear the path to Balnazzar and the struggle for the old capital. Detheroc left no enduring kingdom of his own. His importance lies in the way he transformed survivors of Lordaeron into an unwilling shield for demonic rule, and in how his defeat exposed the weakness of the dreadlords' claim to command the ruins. The Forsaken rose amid those collapsing powers, determined to keep their freedom from both the Scourge and the Legion.