If Gul'dan could be described as any one thing, it would be 'doom writ large.' He was a towering figure within the Horde, notorious for both his strategic ambition and his terrifying necromantic powers. He exists in the halls that are now lined with all of fiction's great destructive sorcerers – from Morgan le Fay to Sauron the Great. Within Warcraft lore, he is remembered as the progenitor of the Death Knights, and he is revered by some of the most fanatical and warped devotees as a fallen herald of the apocalypse. Both the Orcish Horde and the Shadow Council can credit him for their creation, and at least two clans of the Horde venerated him. He was called the Darkness Incarnate and the Destroyer of Dreams, and, while these nomenclatures may sound kitschy, there were many within the Horde who quaked at his whisper. He was the most powerful mortal warlock to have ever lived, and the near-destruction of two worlds is a sin that can be laid directly on his shoulders.

Before I get too in depth into Gul'dan's psychology, it's important to paint a broader picture of the actions he took later in life. His story is complex, involving many characters, two worlds and immense powers of mind-bending significance. However, the man at the center of that story has a fairly simple psychological model: he wanted the powers of godhood, and he was willing to risk anything, anything at all, to acquire it.

Imagine that the Gulf of Mexico catastrophe had really developed into the extinction level event that had been proposed by some, or imagine the destruction that would be caused if a great asteroid took an up close and personal interest in our planet. Our entire world, the great expanse of human history, would have be smote out like so much dust in the wind. What those accidents might have wrought upon our planet was what Gul'dan did to Draenor out of ambition, negligence and venomous spite. He energized it with so much black, chaotic magic that the planet couldn't hold it's pieces together, and he would have done the same thing to Azeroth if he could have managed it.

Gul'dan's story really begins in his adulthood. There is little in the way of information about his childhood, but people don't grow to adore power with such a sociopathic determination in the way he did without some kind of trauma. Deep in his bones, he craved power, both the political power that came from the domination of his rivals and the elemental powers that came from his studies with the elder shaman Ner'zhul. It was his relationship with the elder shaman that began Gul'dan's ascendancy into the terrifying darkness he would become.

Ner'zhul had been contacted by what he thought was the spirit of one of his great ancestors, a being called The Beautiful One. But ghosts can only carry words; the reality of this spirit was much, much worse. The Beautiful One was merely a disguise, meant to confuse Ner'zhul; in reality, it was a demon of incredible powers called Kil'Jaeden, a lieutenant to the Dark Titan Sargeras. Years before, the corporeal form of Sargeras had been ruined and buried by Aegwynn, the Guardian of Tirisfal. Kil'Jaeden was determined to return the body of his lord to it's rightful master, and the plan he hatched to complete this task would prove to be disastrous for the Orcs.

Kil'Jaeden saw much destructive potential in the Orcs, but it was a power that needed to be refined and honed. He was determined to be the hammer that sharpened their warblade, and he found an acceptable anvil in the form of the Dranei. It was the presence of the Dranei that had brought Kil'Jaeden to the homeworld of the Orcs, as they were his ancient enemies. So, for him, it was a 'two birds, one stone' kind of situation. Under the guise of the Beautiful One, he instructed Ner'zhul to gather the scattered Orc clans into a massive army and wage a war against the Dranei.

Yet, this is the way of things with Faustian bargains. They give you a little bit of what you want, but they never tell you the consequences. Ner'zhul wanted the power that came with leading the massed Orc tribes, but he didn't count on his real ancestors deserting him. Kil’Jaeden had cut off these ancient spirits from communicating with Ner’zhul, and they chose not to grant their elemental powers to the shaman in his misguided war against the dranei. Ner'zhul found himself unable to summon his powers, cut off from any of the other spirits to which he whispered and beginning to wage a war against an entire race. In an effort to reestablish communications with the elements, he appealed to the spirits at Oshu'gun, a site that had long been a place of worship for the Orcs. His appeals did not fall on deaf ears; an ancient spirit called Rulkan greeted Ner'zhul with the truth that he was being manipulated into a war by a demon with pitch-black intentions for the orcs. However, Ner'zhul was not the only being to listen to Rulkan's grim tale; Gul'dan himself had snuck into Oshu'gun behind Ner'zhul, and he fled back to Kil'jaeden before Ner'zhul could do the same.



One powerful man can make all the difference in the world. One man can lead a nation into peace or manipulate them into war. Kennedy stopped the nukes from being launched. Bush used the threat of terrorism to wreck two nations. It's all about the choices those men had available to them at the moment great things were asked of them by circumstance. Standing before Kil'jaeden's undisguised might, Gul'dan met circumstance head-on and was given two choices: defy the manipulations of the elder demon and use his powers in the hope of fighting off that hideous strength, or give in to Kil'jaeden's bargain and lead the Orcs into war and doom in exchange for black magical powers. He chose the latter, willfully walking into eschaton.

Kil'jaeden transferred all of his affections to Gul'dan, imbuing him with vast new demonic and necromantic powers. The eredar demon stripped any powers from Ner'zhul, keeping him as leader of the Horde only ceremonially. Gul'dan was allowed to make all of the major decisions for the war effort, and he followed the demon's advice carefully. Gul'dan began teaching a few chosen orcs the art of demonic magic, and those that excelled were accepted into his newly formed Shadow Council to infiltrate and manipulate the Horde from within. Gul'dan and Kil'jaeden had a planning horizon that extended well beyond the destruction of the dranei.

It did not take Gul'dan's Horde long before they had nearly wiped out the dranei. The last strongholds of the dranei people were well-defended settlements, protected by mighty holy beings called the naaru, but they were few and far between. The Horde swept from the plains of Nagrand east to Shadowmoon Valley, where the Temple of Karabor was located. This was a holy site for the dranei, but the Horde had stripped the Temple from their control.

There, Gul'dan conducted a vile ceremony: the united Horde divided themselves into clans, and the chieftains were given the Blood of Mannoroth, a demonic concoction that twisted the orcs into twisted, bloodthirsty creatures. All but one of the Orc chieftains drank from Mannoroth's cup, and thusly all but one of the Orc clans were utterly corrupted. Gul'dan even installed himself as the leader of the Stormreaver clan, and he created a clan for his apprentice, the Ogre-mage Cho'gall.

The creation of the Horde was complete, and, even though the dranei were not completely wiped out, they had at least been effectively subjugated. Kil'jaeden believed that, should he be able to revive his master Sargeras, he would be able to present his lord with the prize of being able to exterminate the dranei himself. Ultimately, the resurrection of Sargeras was the goal of both Kil'jaeden and Gul'dan. Kil'jaeden wanted the prestige and codependency of a restored Sargeras, and Gul'dan wanted the godhood that the elder demon had promised. All was going according to plan.

Indwelling is a common theme in the Warcraft universe. Arthas was indwelt by Ner'zhul to create the Lich King. Other characters have been possessed by demons. The archmage Medivh was indwelt by Sargeras himself, who had laid dormant within the sorcerer's psyche for decades before taking control of his mind. After doing so, Medivh created and opened the Dark Portal; waiting on the other side was Draenor and a Horde so violent and bloodthirsty that they could barely be controlled. The Orcs were ravenous for war. Having been driven to the brink of sanity by the Blood of Mannoroth, they needed war to sustain themselves. They had, in short, been indwelt by the demon's bloodthirst.

To say that the Horde made quick work of the unprepared kingdom of men that lay in their path would be to put too fine a point on it. The Orcs enjoyed the slaughter of the citizens of Stormwind and Elwynn forest. They quickly learned to love conquest and destruction, and the humans that stood in their way were viewed as little more than fodder for the ever-growing Horde war machine. Through all of the conquest and slaughter, Gul'dan stood by in the ever-growing darkness, leading the Horde and waiting for the right information to come his way.

Kil'jaeden's instructions were clear. Gul'dan's greatest purpose was to find the Tomb of Sargeras and restore the Dark Titan to life. Any conquest and plunder that was necessary to that cause was allowed, but the Tomb was the prize. Gul'dan, who had by now clearly become the most powerful Orc in that race's history, spent a considerable amount of time searching for the Tomb, but it was a lost cause. He was a strategist and a mage, not a cave-crawler. He needed to find someone who would know the location of the Tomb, and so he struck out to find Medivh. The archmage had gone utterly mad with Sargeras clogging up portions of his mind, and Gul'dan knew that Medivh would never willingly give up the location of the Tomb. Instead, he projected himself into the archmage's mind, searching the pathways of Medivh's memories for the location of the Tomb.

And then, it all went black. Agents of Stormwind murdered Medivh while Gul'dan was still inside the mage's psyche, and he thusly fell into a deep coma from which he would not emerge for months. During that time, the Horde would claim victory over the southernmost kingdom of men but at great cost. Blackhand, the Orc who had become the Gul'dans enthroned puppet, was struck down by one of the few Orcs who had never partaken of the Blood of Mannoroth: Orgrim Doomhammer.

Doomhammer was terrified of Gul'dan's powers and rightly so. As an orc gifted with intellect and cunning, he knew that the spirits in which Gul'dan trafficked were not those of his ancestors, and Doomhammer was wary of the warlocks' schemes. Though the rest of his clan drank from Mannoroth's cup, he refused, claiming to be unworthy to sip from the same cup which had touched the lips of his warchief, the Blackhand. Gul'dan was not fooled by this charade and kept a close eye on Doomhammer, even while both Orcs were embroiled in the war against the dranei and the humans. With Gul'dan comatose, Doomhammer took the opportunity that had been presented to him; he made the symbolic gesture of separating Blackhand's head from his shoulders and then led the Horde to victory over Stormwind.

His dominance over the Horde did not end there. He had contacted Durotan, the leader of the exiled Frostwolf clan and the only chieftain who had not led his people to drink Mannoroth's blood. Durotan relayed to Doomhammer the knowledge that Gul'dan had joined forces with demonic entities and betrayed the virtue of the Orcish race for raw, naked power. Doomhammer was incensed and he vowed to remove Gul'dan's influence from the Horde altogether. He gathered up all the members of the Shadow Council that he could find and executed them as traitors. Though the Stormreavers were kept intact, Doomhammer kept them on a short leash. For the time being, at least, it seemed as if Gul'dan had failed.

Next week, we discuss the fallout of Gul'dan's treachery, his return to power within the Horde and the resumption of his quest to find the Tomb of Sargeras.

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