Quick Overview
Caer Darrow's wealthy Barov family chose to support Kel'Thuzad's Cult of the Damned. Their island estates offered secrecy and shelter for the new order's necromantic work. Beneath the old keep, the cult developed Scholomance, a school devoted to the arts of death. Caer Darrow became a place where Lordaeron's own ruling families helped prepare the kingdom's destruction.
Full History
Caer Darrow was a fortified island settlement in Darrowmere Lake, associated with the Barov family's wealth and estates. Its isolation offered security, and the family's standing in Lordaeron gave it influence beyond the lake. When Kel'Thuzad began recruiting powerful supporters for the Cult of the Damned, he found in the Barovs people willing to place private ambition above the safety of their kingdom.
Promises of immortality and continuing power persuaded the family to help his followers. Beneath the keep, the cult developed Scholomance, where necromancers studied the craft that would soon help fill Lordaeron with undead. The site made it possible to work in secrecy while the wider kingdom was still beginning to understand the spreading plague. Caer Darrow thus became more than a noble refuge: it was one of the places where the catastrophe was deliberately prepared.
The bargain did not save the Barovs from the forces they had supported. As undeath consumed the northern kingdoms, their estates became bound to the Scourge's dark work. Caer Darrow's story is especially bitter because its downfall cannot be laid entirely at the feet of foreign enemies. People with rank, property, and every reason to defend Lordaeron opened their own halls to those who intended to destroy it.
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