The unpaid builders and the rise of the Defias

Full History

Stormwind's towers were rebuilt, but the struggle over who would be paid for raising them planted a danger that outlasted the work itself. After the orc wars had devastated the kingdom, the city became a symbol of recovery. Stonecutters, masons, laborers and master builders helped give it walls and streets once more. Their achievement is visible in the city that greets travelers at the opening of World of Warcraft. Less visible is the unpaid bill at the center of one of the kingdom's most bitter rebellions.

The Stonemasons' Guild expected compensation for the reconstruction. Its guildmaster, Edwin VanCleef, pressed the House of Nobles to honor what had been promised. Instead of resolving the dispute, the authorities rejected the demands and ordered the guild disbanded. Anger grew. The crisis became a riot, then a fracture that divided former colleagues. Some followed VanCleef out of the city and toward the violence that would mark the Defias Brotherhood. Others, including Baros Alexston, remained and entered the city's official institutions.

That division is essential to the story. The Stonemasons' grievance could be legitimate while the later Defias campaign against farmers, travelers and distant settlements was cruel. The two truths are not incompatible. Baros's surviving report on the Brotherhood, written from the perspective of a former guild member, makes this tension especially clear. He knew the masons' work and the injustice they believed had been done; he also saw the threat growing out of the rebellion. Stormwind's failure to pay its builders became the Defias's justification for a wider campaign of vengeance.

The consequences were borne most heavily beyond the capital. In Westfall, farms declined and residents faced raids, intimidation and displacement. The Brotherhood established bases in the countryside, using the abandoned and overrun landscape to strengthen its reach. At Sentinel Hill, Gryan Stoutmantle organized the People's Militia when help from Stormwind was insufficient. His volunteers and recruited adventurers confronted bandits who believed themselves enemies of the kingdom, but whose violence fell upon ordinary people who had never made decisions in the House of Nobles.

The struggle drew toward Moonbrook and the Deadmines, where VanCleef's organization concealed its leadership and resources. By the time adventurers sought to confront the Brotherhood there, the original wage dispute had become only one part of the conflict. The Defias were now a militant force capable of challenging an entire province. The uprising stands as a warning about a state that restored its magnificent capital without settling the debts incurred in that restoration. Stone by stone, the new city rose; grievance by grievance, its enemy grew alongside it.