Nordrassil

Full History

The first Well of Eternity was destroyed at the end of the War of the Ancients, tearing apart ancient Kalimdor and ending the invasion of the Burning Legion. Yet the temptation of its power survived. Illidan Stormrage carried enchanted waters from the original Well and used them to create a new fount atop Mount Hyjal. The surviving night elves feared that another unguarded source of magic could invite the same catastrophe.

A different answer took root above the waters. Alexstrasza planted an enchanted acorn in the new Well, and from it grew Nordrassil, the great World Tree. Ysera linked the tree and the night elven druids to the Emerald Dream, while Nozdormu's blessing shielded the kaldorei from the ordinary passage of age. The tree guarded the renewed Well while shaping the long life of the society that arose after the Sundering.

For generations, the night elves tended their forests under that protection. The balance was broken when the Third War carried the Burning Legion back to Kalimdor. Archimonde pressed toward Hyjal to seize the power of the Well. Human, orcish and night elven forces joined to delay him, buying time for Malfurion to prepare an answer beyond the strength of any conventional army.

When Archimonde reached Nordrassil, Malfurion summoned the ancestral spirits of the forest against him. Their fury destroyed the demon and ended the Legion's immediate invasion, but the World Tree was gravely damaged and its blessings were lost. Victory saved Azeroth while ending an era of night elven immortality. Nordrassil remained a symbol of both the guardianship the kaldorei had chosen and the price they paid to defend the world.