Quick Overview
The Royal Apothecary Society serves Sylvanas Windrunner by developing a new plague against the Scourge. Its researchers gather biological samples and test substances across the territories reached by the Forsaken. Some apothecaries describe ambitions that extend far beyond defeating Arthas, making their work a threat to the living as well as the undead.
Full History
The Forsaken emerged from the Scourge carrying memories of enslavement and a determination to destroy the power that had ruled them. Sylvanas gave the Royal Apothecary Society a place within that struggle. Apothecary Johaan explains its charge as the creation of a new plague, more lethal than the disease that had devastated Lordaeron. The weapon was intended to turn destruction back upon Arthas and his armies. Research thus became an instrument of revenge and a means by which a vulnerable new faction hoped to challenge a far greater enemy.
Johaan's work begins with the creatures and inhabitants close at hand. He requests blood for experimentation and later seeks murloc scales as another ingredient. To him, the landscape around the Forsaken settlements is a supply of materials whose properties can be tested and combined. His own description of the future is broader than a campaign against the Scourge: he imagines spreading the resulting plague widely. That ambition exposes the danger within the Society's founding purpose. A weapon conceived against one undead ruler can become a program that threatens anyone outside the faction developing it.
Research also accompanies territorial expansion. In Hillsbrad, Darthalia describes a campaign against human settlements while the apothecaries continue their efforts to perfect the plague. Soldiers attack the infrastructure and population of an enemy region as researchers pursue another way to break resistance. The two activities belong to the same growing Forsaken presence south of Tirisfal. Farms, towns, and transport routes are strategic objectives, while the apothecaries promise a weapon capable of changing the terms of the conflict.
The Society's interests reach into Kalimdor as well. Zinge directs an inquiry through Helbrim at the Crossroads, seeking access to wolf specimens for Renferrel's work on toxins. Such exchanges connect distant field collectors with researchers in the Forsaken network. The Society consequently depends on messengers and intermediaries as well as laboratories. Its history at this stage is an unfinished project: samples are still being gathered, experiments remain in progress, and the promised plague has not yet delivered the victory its patrons seek.
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