Quick Overview
Silverpine Forest lies between ruined Lordaeron and the lands nearer Gilneas, contested by the Forsaken, surviving humans, and other forces. The Sepulcher anchors Sylvanas's southern frontier while Shadowfang Keep shelters Arugal and his worgen. Its abandoned farms and divided communities demonstrate how the Third War transformed a once-protected human woodland.
Full History
The western forests of Lordaeron once connected farms, villages, and roads beneath pale-barked pines. Their proximity to Gilneas and Dalaran made Silverpine part of the inhabited human north. The Third War ended that ordinary geography. The plague of undeath and the fall of Lordaeron broke local administration, emptied farmsteads, and turned old roads into passages between hostile enclaves. Even the trees seemed to shelter a different country when the surviving inhabitants emerged into the aftermath.
Sylvanas Windrunner's Forsaken claimed much of northern Silverpine as part of their new domain. From the Sepulcher, the undead defended roads leading south from Tirisfal and struggled to consolidate a territory scattered with other powers. Their presence did not erase the claims of surviving humans. Villages in the south still resisted the transformation of Lordaeron, while agents associated with Dalaran investigated plague, magic, and the strange worgen affliction. Rothide gnolls made parts of the region dangerous to every faction. The old kingdom had fragmented into overlapping zones of fear and expediency.
One of the most disturbing centers of power stood over Pyrewood Village. Archmage Arugal brought worgen into the world around Shadowfang Keep and came to regard the creatures as his own. The inhabitants of Pyrewood suffered under this curse, and the keep became a threat far beyond a local lord's ambitions. Travelers also encountered the ruins of abandoned mines, isolated farms, and Fenris Isle, where gnoll bands made passage hazardous. None of these dangers could be answered by a single campaign of reconquest.
Silverpine is therefore a frontier of competing memories. To the Forsaken, it is the difficult southern boundary of a homeland they have only recently won from the Scourge and surviving enemies. To the living communities, it is evidence of a kingdom stolen by plague and the chaos that followed. And to those entering Shadowfang, it exposes another kind of tragedy: magic used to answer one threat has created horrors of its own. The original world preserves all of these conflicts in progress rather than resolving their rival claims.
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