In all seriousness, I am writing this today after having peaked some kind of nerdy critical mass. Not the San Francisco bikers that enjoy causing traffic disruptions. I mean the kind of critical mass that results in nuclear meltdowns. Right now, at this very second, I'm listening to the chiptune soundtrack to Dragon Quest 4, an RPG that was released on the Famicom back in 1990. This music is twenty years old, and I still think it rates near the top of all the video game soundtracks I've ever heard.

War often provides an excuse for old enemies to reignite their hatreds for each other, and there are often generals or politicians who find these old hatreds useful for their own plans. Doomhammer had no sense of vengeance invested into the trolls' battle against the elves, but he knew how to manipulate the trolls into doing what he wanted. He knew how to use his resources to get the best result he could, and the Amani empire was a very valuable weapon. By ordering them to attack their ancient enemy, the elves in Quel'Thelas, Doomhammer had positioned the trolls to exact a revenge that the trolls felt had been overdue for ten thousand years.

They instigated a diversion at Aerie Peak, the stronghold and home of the Wildhammer dwarves, that allowed the vast majority of the massive troll army to sneak through the Hinterlands unknown, and they were able to move through the far eastern region of Tirisfal Glades without much trouble at all. The elves were putting up resistance along the way, but the full strength of the Elven kingdom was not yet in display.

The trolls were a highly destructive force, fueled by a deep rage against the elves, and they razed large portions of the countryside, along with any elven settlement they could find. However, Doomhammer had also sent along some of his own Orcish forces. He had ordered Urok the Scratcher, the orc responsible for leading the invasion of Khaz Modan and Tol Barad, to lead the army, and he also sent two Orcish clans. The Stormreaver Clan, under the control of the warlock Gul'Dan, and the Twilight's Hammer clan, which was led by Gul'Dan's half-ogre apprentice, had not been on good terms with Doomhammer or the rest of the Horde since the First War, and it's likely that Doomhammer sent those two specific clans in order to remove their wildly destructive influence from the other clans. Instead, the decision to send those two clans would have dire consequences for Doomhammer.

The trolls stood on Silvermoon's doorstep, having invaded the elven domain up to Eversong Woods. The Woods housed the Trolls ancient capital of Zul'Aman, but the Amani had not staffed that city with a proper army in thousands of years. Instead, the trolls had essentially disenfranchised, spread themselves out over the entire southeastern area of Lordaeron away from the terrifying magics of the elves. Now, they had amassed again, and their terror had softened into something much more profound: hate. A long-repressed frustration had built to a head, and now the trolls clamored for revenge against the ancient enemies that had ruined the homeland of their ancestors.

In their hate, they were reckless. They destroyed everything in their path, but the skirmishes they waged against the defenders ofsmall elven settlements in Quel'Thelas allowed elven messengers to send warnings back to Silvermoon. The closer to Silvermoon that the Trolls got, the less important the need for stealth seemed. Indeed, the Elves pretty much knew the trolls were coming, and the trolls stopped trying to hide their approach, assuming that their overwhelming numbers and strength would be enough of a counter to the Elven magic. They were mistaken.

Earlier in the war, the leaders of Silvermoon dispatched a single regiment to aid in the human war effort. The elves of Quel'thelas, who had been wrong about almost every major event in their history, considered the war against the Horde to be a largely human and dwarven affair. They did not consider the primitive and brutish aliens to be much of a threat against their powerful magics. They were content to provide the struggling Alliance with supplies and a few mages, but nothing that would impact the war effort in any significant way. Participating in such a dirty affair was beneath them, but they had to at least appear as if they were contributing to the Alliance. So, in order to fulfill their obligation to the Alliance, they sent a single regiment of archers to reinforce the Alliance.



If the council of Quel'Thelas did not expect the regiment to see much action, they grossly misjudged the character of the captain they'd sent to lead those archers. Her name was Alleria Windrunner, and she would end up as one of the most important leaders in the effort to defend Lordaeron from the Horde. On her own orders, she moved her regiment to reinforce the Stromgarde armies in Hillsbrad, and her people were instrumental in keeping the battles in Hillsbrad from becoming a total route. She worked closely with High General Turalyon and the archmage Khadgar to rebut the Horde's advances around Southshore. When the call came that the trolls were advancing on Aerie Peak, she gathered up the troops under her command – a much larger army than that with which she'd left Silvermoon – and headed for the Wildhammer Dwarves stronghold.

The Horde thrust into Aerie Peak was a diversion, and the Alliance unwittingly allowed the greater portion of the Horde army to sneak up through the Hinterlands into Quel'Thelas. However, the diversion also drew out half of the Grand Alliance's army. When messengers from Silvermoon arrived asking for help, the Alliance was ready to spring into action. While they were gearing up, though, the Horde was carving their destructive legacy into the foundations of Tirisfal Glades and Quel'Thalas.

Gul'Dan was on the hunt for an artifact with which he could use to empower the Ogres with some kind of arcane power. The ogres' primary use had been as grunts, front-line meatheads. Gul'Dan saw a greater potential in them, though, and he sought a powerful artifact to prove it. While rifling through the histories of humanity during his stay at Stormwind, he found out about an ancient artifact called the Runestone of Caer Darrow. Housed at the island fortress of Caer Darrow, it was possibly built by night elves, which would make it the oldest standing structure in Lordaeron. Gul'dan coveted it immensely, and the incursion into Quel'Thalas allowed him the opportunity to take it. He broke off a few legions from the Horde invasion force and proceeded to lay waste to Caer Darrow, gaining the runestone in the process. He used pieces of the Runestone to build vile altars to the black demons he worshiped, and those hateful entities imbued the ogres with vast new and evil powers. In short, he'd just countered the best weapon the elves possessed, their own arcane magics.

He used his new weapons immediately, ordering the Horde to destroy Stratholme. At the time, Stratholme was located on the northern shore of Darrowmere Lake and was being used as an oil-refining city. It served as a central city for all of the Alliance races in Lordaeron: the Wildhammer dwarves, the elves of Quel'Thalas and the humans of theArathi bloodline. As such, it was also the second-largest city in Lordaeron, a jewel that Urok the Scratcher could not bear to leave undefiled. He, Gul'dan and Cho'gall realized the potential benefit that such large refining capacities could have for the Alliance, andso they enacted a plan to reduce that benefit to zero. Also, to reduce the city's population to zero. Really, it was their favorite number that day or something.

What happened was merely a repetition of so many other battles in the war with only a few minor differences. The Horde commanders brought to bear all of their weapons – the Orcs and their demonic rages, the trolls with their ancient fury, the enslaved red dragons and the newly-minted ogre-magi – and essentially steamrolled the city. Although the spare Alliance forces in the city fought as well as they could, they were no match for the Horde. Alliance foot soldiers fell to Orcish grunts; the elven sorcerers were outmatched by the demonic energies of the ogre-magi; the dwarven gryphon riders were burnt out of the sky by the red dragons; the brutal catapults pounded elven archers to giblets.

The cat was out of the bag. It was obvious to all of the Alliance commanders that the Horde had made a make-or-break strike. It is unclear whether or not Doomhammer intended the incursion into Quel'Thalas to be the crux on which the war turned, but that is whatit became. The war, and maybe the entire history of Azeroth, lay in the outcome of the battle of Silvermoon.

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