Westfall

Full History

Westfall's empty fields tell the story of a kingdom unable to protect the ground that feeds it. The region once supplied Stormwind with grain and produce, its harvests carried east along roads linking farmsteads to the capital. The First and Second Wars shattered that comfortable arrangement. Farms were damaged, families displaced, and the restored kingdom's attention diverted toward dangers far beyond its borders. As the years passed, abandoned machinery and barren land became familiar sights where cultivated fields should have stood.

The most immediate enemy was born not among the orcs, but among Stormwind's own workers. After the city was rebuilt, the Stonemasons Guild sought the wages its members believed they were owed. The dispute ended in the guild's disbandment and Edwin VanCleef's emergence as leader of the Defias Brotherhood. Once unable to win redress by lawful means, he gathered rebels and thieves under a new banner. After failing to take lasting control in Elwynn, the Brotherhood moved west into country the authorities no longer had the strength to defend.

Westfall became the refuge and workshop of this rebellion. Moonbrook, an old mining community, hid the entrance to the Deadmines, where VanCleef established his headquarters. His men and their allies occupied farms, harassed travelers, and entrenched themselves in a neglected region. Their underground operations hinted at a threat larger than ordinary robbery: the Defias intended to strike at Stormwind itself. The region's frightened farmers, meanwhile, faced marauding gnolls, dangerous harvest golems, and the daily difficulty of survival without reliable protection.

At Sentinel Hill, Gryan Stoutmantle organized the People's Militia to resist the Brotherhood and preserve a foothold for lawful government. The hilltop garrison could not simply march into every occupied field; it depended on allies willing to investigate the scattered farmsteads, Moonbrook, and the Deadmines. This made Westfall a bitter inversion of Stormwind's glorious reconstruction. The people who had rebuilt the kingdom were now among those tearing at its foundations. VanCleef still commands his rebels, and the struggle for the kingdom's breadbasket is still being fought.