Upper Blackrock Spire

Full History

Blackrock Mountain is a monument to unfinished wars. The old Horde made its strongholds there during the campaigns that shattered Stormwind and challenged the northern Alliance. After the orcish armies were defeated, the mountain did not become peaceful territory. Dark Iron dwarves still held the volcanic depths, and bands of orcs and their allies continued to defend the upper fortifications.

Rend Blackhand, son of the original warchief, gathered those who remained faithful to the ambitions of the old Horde. He claimed the title of warchief for himself, although Thrall was building a new Horde across the sea. The distinction was not merely a contest between rival commanders. Thrall sought to leave the corruption and endless conquest of the earlier wars behind him. Rend’s supporters refused to accept that the defeated Horde had lost its right to dominate Azeroth.

Within the Spire, orcish soldiers fought alongside ogres and forest trolls whose alliances survived the defeat of their larger armies. Rend’s hold on the fortress, however, did not rest on these forces alone. Nefarian, son of Deathwing, was establishing his own dominion above Blackrock Mountain. He armed the renegades with protection while turning the fortress toward the purposes of the black dragonflight. The arrangement made Rend more dangerous than his diminished army alone would have been.

General Drakkisath commanded Nefarian’s dragonspawn and held the strongpoints approaching the Spire’s highest reaches. The black dragonflight’s strength was needed in the contest with the Dark Iron dwarves below. Between the dwarves’ domain and the dragons’ fortress stretched passages whose possession could change the balance of the mountain. The Spire had become the meeting place of two dangerous powers: orcs who believed they could recover the old Horde and dragons who sought to use them.

For travelers climbing through Blackrock Spire, the upper fortress tells the story of a war that officially ended but never ended for those who remained inside it. Rend is not the heir to Thrall’s reforms. Drakkisath does not answer to any mortal kingdom. The higher one ascends, the clearer it becomes that the greatest power in the fortress is neither orc nor dwarf, but the black dragon behind its throne.