Teron Gorefiend

Full History

Teron Gorefiend emerged from the Shadow Council's determination to preserve its power even after its warlocks suffered defeat. The first orcish death knights were unlike the human paladins whose name they seemed to mock. Orc warlock spirits had been placed into the bodies of fallen human knights, joining necromancy and martial strength in servants of the Horde's hidden masters. Teron stood among the most cunning of these unnatural riders.

The destruction of Gul'dan's power did not end the death knights' ambitions. When the Second War closed with the Old Horde's armies broken, the remaining riders had little reason to bind themselves to any ordinary clan. Across the Dark Portal, the shaman Ner'zhul began seeking an escape from a ravaged Draenor through portals to other worlds. Gorefiend recognized that such plans could serve the death knights as well as the chieftains who followed the shaman.

He offered Ner'zhul the service of the death knights in exchange for a world they could claim for themselves. Their agreement made sorcery central to the renewed invasion. The magical rift leading into Azeroth could be reopened, but Ner'zhul required powerful relics to create the many passages he imagined. Gorefiend and his riders became instruments of the campaign to take those relics from the Alliance's hands.

The expedition into Azeroth drove through defenses raised after the first wars. The Book of Medivh and the Jeweled Scepter of Sargeras were among the treasures Ner'zhul sought. Gorefiend also led the attack against Dalaran's defenses to seize the Eye of Dalaran, a device whose magical force could help concentrate the power needed for the shaman's portals. Once again human cities were exposed to the schemes of the warlocks who had helped bring the Horde through the Dark Portal.

The plan demanded more than the death knights could control. Ner'zhul opened gateways with energies that tore at Draenor itself. The Alliance Expedition pursued the invading forces through the Dark Portal in an effort to end the danger, and the world beyond began to shatter. Gorefiend's hoped-for realm was part of a bargain that instead unleashed devastation upon the land he and the other death knights inhabited.

Teron Gorefiend represents a dark continuity between the old Shadow Council and Ner'zhul's last great campaign. The orcs' visible armies could be defeated, but their surviving sorcerers searched for new means of conquest and escape. His choices helped turn the aftermath of the Second War into another struggle over the Dark Portal, with consequences that neither ordinary commanders nor necromancers could contain.