Craftwar 2: Darkness of Tides
The refugees of Blackrock flee across the sea to the northern shores of Frostfire, where they petition for aid amongst the many other orcish nations and warn of the approaching atrocities committed by the human armies.
Unbeknownst to them, those armies are under new leadership: the puppet-leader King Llane Wrynn has been overthrown by his most trusted lieutenant, Anduin Lothar, who now rules over the kingdom of Azeroth. Distrusting the secretive mages of the Kirin Tor, Lothar had them purged from the Alliance, leaving only their ringleader alive: Khadgar, the final living member of the Kirin Tor’s council of six. He swears obedience to Lothar, yet covets a hidden power known to him through a psychic invasion of the mind of the twisted and maddened Elder Shaman of Blackrock, the one who summoned the humans to Blackrock’s lands: Ner’zhul. To swindle his way into the good graces of the supreme commander of the Human Alliance, Khadgar provides Lothar with many gifts, starting with the creation of a cadre of wicked spellcasters – the paladins, blessed with the smouldering and burned bones of the orcish wolf riders that had defended Blackrock Spire so nobly. Khadgar also tips off Lothar as to how to ensnare the gronn king of Blackrock, Gruul, and the gronn now fight for the Alliance.
Thus, bolstered with magic and having recruited the brute strength of the draenei and the reckless electrical greed of the gnomes into the Alliance, the crude human fleet lands upon the shores of destiny in… the Darkness of Tides.
In preparation for the coming onslaught, the orcish clans unite in a grand Horde under the command of a warchief without a nation: Orgrim Doomhammer. The goblins of Kezan – whose lands have already suffered the incursion of the Alliance – pledge the aid of their strange and wondrous technologies, as do the indomitable tauren of Mulgore and their wild Highmountain dragon-riding kin. Finally, having noticed the difficulties faced by the untrained and peaceful shaman of Blackrock during the First War, a noble order of death knights is created: shaman-warriors who channel the power of the ancestors through themselves as easily as they swing their weapons.
War rages across the orcish lands through land, sea, and air. The reclusive trolls of Zul’aman are initially unwilling to help, but are infuriated when the humans act against them – and, worse yet, recruit the aid of their most cruel enemies: the savage and dispossessed elves of northern Frostfire, led by the notorious King Anasterian. Warlord Zul’jin dispatches volunteer forces of powerful axe-throwers to aid the Horde.
Initially, the bloodthirsty and unending troops of the Alliance seem to hold the advantage, but the tide turns when, at the precipice of Lothar’s victory and the massacre of the last bastion of orcish hope, he is betrayed by the machinations of Khadgar. The scheming mage abandons him on the eve of the sieging of the Frostwolves’ capitol along with both his kingdom of Dalaran and the fanatical kingdom of Lordaeron, led by his most trusted apprentice: the mad draenei known as Velen. Enraged, Lothar orders pursuit of the renegade mage by Varian ‘Ian’ Wrynn, son of Llane Wrynn, but Khadgar seals his own fate: upon opening the tomb of Sargeras, he only finds crazy demons that remove his skull.
Lothar, finding his armies depleted and outflanked, is forced to fight a running battle all the way back to Blackrock, where he holes up in the human mountainside stronghold of Stormwind Keep. Doomhammer leads a peace embassy where he is viciously backstabbed killed in a duel by Lothar. Death Knight Grom Hellscream realizes that humans aren’t really people and have no place in this world and beats up Lothar and like a hundred humans with his spirit powers. The furious Horde rallies and kicks Alliance @$$ until the humans flee back through the portal to their homeworld of Ogreor. Gul’dan blows up the portal, and the lands of Blackrock belong to their native sons and daughters once again.