I was three drinks into a bottle of arcwine and halfway through a dream where Anduin punched a banker when I found myself in the bushes within the Keep, staring at a legion of armored idiots. Steel boots, vacant eyes, and egos like dirigibles. This wasn’t a patrol. It wasn’t even a ceremony. It was an orgy of self-congratulation.
The 24th Regiment. The pride of Stormwind. The blunt instrument of Lady Rose’s paranoid fever dream.
They call it a “guard guild,” but it’s a cult of law fetishists, jacked up on righteousness and imperial nostalgia. I watched as medals were handed out like candy at a cult gathering—awards for “valor,” for “civic duty,” for “protecting the peace.” Kodo-Feces. You don’t get a medal for roughing up teenagers caught with peacebloom or for tossing void elf mages into holding cells because they “looked unstable.” You get a citation. A summons. A visit from an ethics board.
But Stormwind doesn’t do ethics.
Stormwind does armor.
At the helm? Lady Rose—noble-blooded, coin-soaked, teeth like daggers and a smile like a dagger sheath. She doesn’t command the Guard, she owns it. Every boot that stomps, every baton that swings, every teenager face-down in cobblestone is part of her opera. And the 24th plays it note for note, smiling through their visors, too dumb to see the strings on their wrists.
And here I am. A gnome in black. Hunched in the hedges. Writing down names, twitching with caffeine and moral clarity, chased by the hounds of nationalism and indigestion. I’ve seen what the Stormwind Guard does behind closed gates. I’ve smelled the sweat of backroom interrogations and heard the bored sighs of guards waiting for a “reason” to draw steel.
This city doesn’t need guards.
It needs a reckoning.
These aren’t defenders of the peace. They’re cosplayers with power complexes, hammering down on the very citizens they claim to serve. You don’t keep a kingdom safe by criminalizing dissent. You don’t preserve the peace by smothering the voices that call out injustice.
Stormwind is rotting from the inside, and the Guard are maggots in blue and gold.
So here’s my advice:
Next time a constable tells you they’re “just doing their job,” look them in the eyes and say:
“So was Edwin VanCleef.”