I love the days where I get my first hunger pang for lunch right as I'm sitting down to eat. It is blue moon rare, a function of unpredictable perfect timing. I'm traveling through a town in Indiana that doesn't really have a name you can search for on your GPS, but it's the kind of place where even the cats have beer guts. The sun has been heating up my car to boiler levels, so I stopped at a Chinese restaurant for some lo mein.

The whole thing's got me longing for the ocean, for a seaside vacation where the white sands sink in between your toes. I spent a considerable amount of time on a beach when I was a child, and I still sometimes get that ocean salt scent in my nose. When I turn on the television, though, and see the inexorable advance of a sea of oil torrenting towards my boyhood vacation spot, I can't help but feel a sense of inevitability, that I'll never see that beach again. There's a certain degree of helplessness, and I wonder if it's analogous to the sense of desperation that anyone would feel after having been beaten by an unknowable force, much like being a combatant against the Orcs in the First War.

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The First War ended with the wind blowing Stormwind's ashes into the sea and the Horde having established a kind of chaotic dominion from the Burning Steppes to the Black Morass. They hadn't stopped there, either. Orgrim Doomhammer, the scarred Warchief of the Orcs, had engaged in some astute politics, allying the Horde at least one Goblin cartel. In doing so, Doomhammer had gained information about the continent, enough to know where to establish further fortresses along the coasts. It was clear that he had a planning horizon that extended well beyond merely crushing the men and women of Elwynn Forest.

Those men and women had sailed north after the War, crossing the sea between Elwynn and Khaz Modan. There, they were taken in by the human kingdom of Lordaeron, who had formal relations with Khaz Modan, Gilneas and, most importantly, Kul Tiras – the greatest of the kingdoms of men. In the six years that passed after the fall of Stormwind, the battle-hardened leaders of that kingdom were able to convince all the other great powers of the threat the Horde posed. They created a Grand Alliance, a coalition of human, gnome and dwarven armies to fight back against the Horde.

The closest equivalent to Kul Tiras is likely 18-th century Britain or the ancient Phoenician empire that nearly conquered the Mediterranean. They are seafarers with natural gifts in navigation and boat-building. In many ways, they were the most important players in the Second War, and they were the human kingdom that suffered greatest under the newly-minted naval might of the Horde.

The Horde was not content to rest on the ashes of Stormwind. They had come to conquer the entire world, and Doomhammer was preparing to do exactly that. Yet, he and his advisers knew that a land war wasn't really the best way to go about that. They needed to own the sea, and so he enlisted the engineering might of the Goblins, who helped him build a navy. In the land east of Grim Batol – an area we now call the Twilight Highlands - the Horde erected massive naval shipyards and constructed all the ships they would need to conquer Khaz Modan and Lordaeron.

When the Horde was ready to move against the Alliance, they did so with a lightning fury. Their plan was calculated to exact the most damage. They would reach out from their naval fortresses and establish footholds in Zul'Dare, an island fastness directly between Kul'Tiras and Gilneas. They would cut Kul'Tiras off from the continental kingdoms and crush it before any resistance could mount. It was a good plan, only helped by the addition of the Forest Trolls. The leader of the Forest Trolls, a wild-eyed shaman called Zul'Jin, had been captured in Hillsbrad, and Doomhammer decided to free the troll in order to cement relations between their peoples. This was easily accomplished, and with both Hillsbrad and Zul'Dare fully under Horde control, Doomhammer decided to strike.

Tol Barad was the target. Technically under the control of Stromgarde, one of the minor human kingdoms, it was an island located centrally between Kul'Tiras, Gilneas and Khaz Modan. The Horde had been raiding coastal settlements along Khaz Modan, and Tol Barad was being used by the Alliance to strike back against these incursions. This greatly displeased the Horde leadership, who by this point felt that their control of the area was nearly complete. They wanted to turn that 'nearly' into an 'eternally.'

Doomhammer sent his finest commander to ensure victory. Urok the Scratcher, so named due to his penchant for writing rather than mindlessly waving sabres in the front lines, was dispatched to destroy the island. The Scratcher's plan was simple – surround the island with destroyers and carry enough troops over the sea to flood the island with grunts. So, he sent his navies – destroyers from Hillsbrad and transport ships from Dun Modr.

It was a fast and brutal strike; the Horde moved too quickly and with too much precision for the Alliance navy – already taxed by the initial surge into the area – to reinforce the island before the Horde arrived. There were a few ships there, transports that evacuated the women and children back to Kul Tiras. All that was left on the island were the soldiers of the Alliance – human warriors, elven mages, hardened dwarven soldiers and the paladins of the Knights of the Silver Hand.

The Scratcher's writings make note of the battle positions of the Alliance that he viewed from his capital ship in the sea. His battle commanders sent him notes of their progress across the island, but he wrote of tearing those notes up before he ever read them. He didn't need them. He could see the Horde's progress by the fires that leapt up into the sky.

For all of his intelligence and strategic wisdom, Urok the Scratcher was still an orc, and he still carried within him the madness and bloodlust that contaminated every member of his race. He had given only one concrete order to his warriors – burn everything. Leave no wooden structure standing, no stone left unscorched. Leave no bones left to bury. What he saw from his vessel was the great conflagration as it slowly spread from one end of the island to the other, a great fiery demarcation line of Horde dominance.

Alliance vessels from Kul Tiras sailed as fast as they could when they learned that the island was under attack. They were too late and too few to make any difference. There was no way to break through the blockade, and all they could do was watch the island burn.

The Scratcher did not keep his forces on the island for long. After the human settlements were immolated, there was no reason to stay, but what the Alliance found was tragic and terrifying – dead silence. The island's keeps had been burned from the inside out, the buildings razed and the soldiers slaughtered. Hastily written messages were sent back to all of the Alliance strongholds – Tol Barad has burned.

In many ways, the sack of Tol Barad was a turning point in the war. Before this battle, only the kingdom of Stormwind had suffered the kind of apocalyptic damage that was the Horde's preferred way of warfare. Now, as the columns of ash drifted across the ocean, all the kingdoms of the Alliance were able to see first-hand what the Horde represented: destruction and doom. Their goal was not merely to conquer Azeroth but to stomp it under their boots until there was nothing left alive. This was a war of annihilation, a war in which one side was going to utterly destroy the other, and the only hope of victory that the Alliance had was to destroy every Horde warrior that chose to pick up a sword.

The Grand Alliance had been pushed against the wall, and the time had come to fight back. Join me next week as we continue to discuss the history of the Second War.

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