World of Warcraft
With every great story, comes an even greater villain. The one that hacks and slashes through the greatest heroes and the innocent, razing villages and imbuing despair upon whoever dares cross their path. And the one point in their story, being how they became the way they are, is in my opinion the most intriguing. Because it explains why they chose such a path of evil and shows us (if) they had a human side to them before their corruption.
Before Arthas took up the mantle of The Lich King, there was another that was first seated in that role. Manipulating events on top of their icy throne, we will now see how the first Lich King, Ner’zhul moved through the story, and paved the way to one of the most famous villains of gaming.
The Making of The Lich King
In the shadowed corners of creation, long before Azeroth felt the tremor of his presence, forces unseen prepared the vessel through which a terror would one day speak. At the behest of the Jailer, the Runecarver shaped two artifacts of chilling intent: the Helm of Domination and the runeblade Frostmourne. Wrought for dominion, they would ultimately fall into the hands of the Burning Legion, and with them, chart the destiny of a world.
It was in this same era that Ner’zhul, once a venerable shaman of Draenor, sought to escape his dying world, but fell to the grasp of the demon lord Kil’jaeden. The demon lord tore apart Ner’zhul’s body yet preserved his spirit in cruel clarity. The orc’s pleas for release went unanswered. Instead, Kil’jaeden granted him a final bargain: serve or suffer eternally. In a moment born of desperation, Ner’zhul agreed. His spirit was sealed within a diamond-hard block of ice drawn from the distant Twisting Nether, and in that prison, his consciousness spread like cracks in a cold sheet of glass, expanding until he became something far beyond mortal shape. What remained of the shaman dissolved into the unfathomable presence that would be known as the Lich King. With Helm and blade fused to his icy cask, the new being was cast through the Great Dark Beyond to the world he was meant to break.
Rise of the Scourge in Northrend
When the frozen mass fell upon Northrend, its shape warped into a throne of jagged ice. From this desolate seat, the Lich King began his first work: the forging of the Scourge. Local creatures, small, forgotten things that prowled the tundra, were seized by his immense psychic reach, their wills folded like paper under his own. A plague seeped outward, claiming all who touched it, bringing them under his growing dominion. Dreadlords, led by the cunning Tichondrius, circled the throne at Kil’jaeden’s order, watching both his growth and the dark nourishment he took from every soul. With each new servant raised, the Lich King’s power multiplied, his influence crawling across Northrend like encroaching frost.
Only one force there resisted him: the kingdom of Azjol-Nerub. Immune to the plague in life, its people nevertheless fell after death, their bodies rendered into weapons for the very foe they challenged. Ten years the War of the Spider raged beneath the ice. Ten years until the spider-lords fell, leaving behind ruins the Lich King admired enough to shape his own strongholds after theirs. With Northrend firmly under his rule, the dreadlords urged him onward. The time had come to prepare the world for the Legion’s return.
The Lich King stretched his mind southward, letting his whisper drift through the arcane currents of Azeroth until it brushed against the soul of Kel’Thuzad, a mage of the Kirin Tor. Drawn by obsession and ambition, Kel’Thuzad answered eagerly. He became the first mortal disciple of a rising Cult of the Damned, followers who revered the Lich King as a god and embraced necromancy in his name. Under his direction and that of the dreadlord Mal’Ganis, they set into motion the first fractures that would splinter the kingdom of Lordaeron. Yet even as he obeyed Kil’jaeden’s design, Ner’zhul quietly searched for some escape from the prison encasing him.
The Fall of Lordaeron
The first blow came as the plague swept across Lordaeron’s northern settlements. Prince Arthas Menethil, alongside Jaina Proudmoore and the stalwart captain Falric, sought answers, but the plague spread too quickly. Undeath rolled over the land, each fallen defender rising to swell the enemy’s ranks. As foreseen, Arthas eventually confronted and slew Kel’Thuzad, but the victory was hollow. The Scourge surged, indifferent to mortal valor. In desperation, the prince took measures that stripped him of the peace he once cherished. Stratholme burned by his command, its doomed people condemned to prevent them from bolstering Mal’Ganis’s armies.
Haunted and fraying, Arthas pursued the dreadlord to Northrend. There, guided by Muradin Bronzebeard, he sought a weapon to turn the tide. Fate delivered Frostmourne into his hands. In taking it, he lost Muradin, or so he believed, and lost far more of himself. The sword granted him terrible strength, but devoured his soul in return. Thus did Arthas become the first and most formidable death knight, and with Mal’Ganis slain, he returned home, not as a prince, but as the Lich King’s chosen champion.
Lordaeron fell beneath his shadow. He struck down his father, King Terenas, and crushed what remained of the realm. The Order of the Silver Hand resisted, but its greatest paladin, Uther the Lightbringer, died upon Frostmourne. At Tichondrius’s urging, Arthas marched north to Quel’Thalas to restore Kel’Thuzad to life. Silvermoon could not withstand the onslaught. The Sunwell, sacred source of elven strength, was twisted to bring the necromancer back as a lich. With the spellbook of Medivh seized from fallen Dalaran, Kel’Thuzad summoned Archimonde into the world, and with his arrival, control of the Scourge passed from Ner’zhul to the dreadlords. But the Lich King had anticipated this shift, and his designs continued in secret.
Illidan, Archimonde, and the Shattering of Icecrown
The Legion’s wrath surged across Kalimdor, where Illidan Stormrage was freed from his ten-thousand-year imprisonment. The Lich King sensed the demon hunter’s hunger for power and fed it subtly, guiding Arthas to reveal the Skull of Gul’dan’s presence. Illidan claimed it, and altered by its corruption, he slew Tichondrius. Without the dreadlord’s stabilizing influence, Archimonde’s assault on Mount Hyjal proved reckless, and the Legion’s general fell. When Kil’jaeden reached out for Ner’zhul afterward, the Lich King refused him.
In the wake of Hyjal, Illidan, newly empowered yet uncertain of his place, was confronted by Kil’jaeden and given a grim purpose: destroy the Frozen Throne and end the Lich King. Enticed by promises of power, Illidan agreed. To accomplish the task, he sought the Eye of Sargeras. Lady Vashj and her naga helped him reach the Broken Isles and the ancient Tomb of Sargeras, where he claimed the relic.
Through the Scourge, the Lich King sensed Illidan’s movements. When the demon hunter used the Eye to shatter Icecrown’s defenses and rupture the world’s roof, the Lich King recognized the truth, Kil’jaeden had sent his broken warden to finish what he feared to do himself. Only the intervention of Malfurion Stormrage halted the spell before it destroyed Icecrown entirely.
Yet the damage was done. The Frozen Throne had cracked. Ner’zhul’s power bled away, and through Frostmourne, Arthas felt his own strength fading. Worse still, the freed undead led by Sylvanas Windrunner and the dreadlords Varimathras, Detheroc, and Balnazzar tore apart the Plaguelands in a bitter civil war. Arthas left Kel’Thuzad to manage the chaos while he answered the Lich King’s summons. In the end, Sylvanas claimed the ruined capital of Lordaeron, founding the Forsaken while Ner’zhul watched, unable to intervene.
The Union of Arthas and Ner’zhul
Diminished but resolute, Arthas reached Northrend, only to find Illidan’s naga and blood elves already advancing. With aid from Anub’arak and his nerubian crypt fiends, Arthas fought his way across the glacier. He defeated Prince Kael’thas, activated the Icecrown obelisks, and approached the now opened path to the Frozen Throne. On the precipice, Illidan barred his way. Their battle was brief yet fierce; Arthas struck a decisive blow, leaving Illidan bleeding on the ice, and continued.
Within the hollow glacier, memories tormented him, Uther’s warnings, Muradin’s reproaches, echoes of what he once was. But atop the pinnacle waited the icy cask, and within it, the armor and helm that held Ner’zhul. Frostmourne shattered the prison in a single thunderous stroke. As the shards fell, the Helm of Domination gleamed among them. Arthas set it upon his head.
Two voices spoke at once:
“Now we are one.”
Thus the souls of shaman and prince fused into a single sovereign, a being destined to become one of Azeroth’s greatest threats.
Years followed in silent dreaming as Icecrown Citadel rose around him. Within that inner realm, Arthas, Ner’zhul, and the last remnant of his humanity, Matthias Lehner (an anagram for Arthas Menethil), contended for dominance. Arthas silenced Matthias, and when Ner’zhul invited him to unify their will, the death knight rejected him. Frostmourne pierced the orc’s spectral form, leaving Arthas the sole master of the Lich King’s power. Only then did he sense a presence frozen deep within the ice, ancient and sorrowful, carrying the name Sindragosa.
