Night elves / kaldorei

Full History

The night elves’ ancient civilization flourished around the Well of Eternity, a source of extraordinary magical power in Kalimdor. Their society became divided in its relationship to that power. Queen Azshara and the Highborne court pursued arcane splendor and influence, while others increasingly feared what such indulgence might bring. The Well’s magic drew Sargeras’s attention, and the Highborne’s efforts to admit him offered the Burning Legion a way into the world. The danger was not an abstract warning: armies of demons invaded as the ancient kingdom came under attack.

Malfurion Stormrage, Tyrande Whisperwind, and their allies helped organize resistance. The fighting culminated in the collapse of the Well and the Sundering, which shattered the old geography of Kalimdor. The survivors inherited a world profoundly changed by the same magic that had once elevated their civilization. Illidan Stormrage created another Well with preserved waters, an act that created fresh conflict over whether such power should be kept. At Mount Hyjal, Nordrassil eventually became the focus of a new order, and druidic stewardship of nature displaced the Highborne’s former authority among the kaldorei.

For thousands of years, the night elves guarded forests and sacred places while their druids took part in long cycles of communion with the Emerald Dream. Their isolation did not mean the rest of the world had ceased to change. Humans and orcs eventually arrived in Kalimdor during the Third War, bringing new conflicts into the night elves’ homeland. The clash in Ashenvale, including the death of Cenarius at the hands of corrupted Warsong orcs, made cooperation difficult. Yet the returning Legion threatened the land and all peoples upon it, forcing old hostility to yield to a common defense.

At Mount Hyjal, the kaldorei fought alongside Thrall’s Horde and Jaina Proudmoore’s humans. Malfurion’s summoning of the wisps destroyed Archimonde but changed Nordrassil’s protection and ended the night elves’ former immortality. The original World of Warcraft night elves thus stand at the end of a very long history, not outside it. They are heirs to an arcane empire destroyed, a guardian culture painstakingly rebuilt, and an alliance formed in desperate circumstances. Their relation to ancient trolls remains a separately qualified historical question rather than a certain origin to be inserted into this account.