In the shadowed lands of Tirisfal Glades, where the wind whispers through skeletal trees and the earth hums with the restless dead, Kreaky’s story began—not with life, but with its end. Once a rugged hunter named Kaelric, he roamed the wilds of Lordaeron, tracking game with a steady hand and a keen eye. His life was simple, solitary, and tethered to the rhythms of the forest—until the Scourge swept through, leaving nothing but ruin in its wake. Kaelric fell, his bowstring snapping under the weight of claw and fang, and his body was claimed by the plague that turned men into monsters.
But death was not the end. The necromantic energies of the Lich King tore him from the grave, remaking him as one of the Forsaken. His flesh rotted, his bones creaked, and his once-sharp mind flickered with fragments of who he’d been. Yet, unlike many of his kin, Kreaky—as he came to call himself in his broken, guttural new voice—clung to a shred of his old self. He remembered the hunt, the quiet of the woods, and the freedom of a life unburdened by the living’s judgment. He had no desire to skulk in the Undercity’s damp halls or wage war against the world that had cast him out. Instead, he yearned for something stranger: a place among the humans he’d once walked beside.
Kreaky knew the living would never accept him as he was. His hollow eyes, his jagged grin, the stench of decay that clung to him—they’d scream, they’d flee, they’d drive him off with pitchforks and torches. So, in the ruins of a forgotten farmstead, he hatched a plan. He gathered straw and burlap, scavenged a tattered cloak, and stitched together a disguise: a scarecrow, weathered and unassuming, the kind of thing no one would look at twice. With a wide-brimmed hat pulled low over his skull and his bony limbs wrapped in rags, he propped himself in fields near human villages, standing motionless as the wind tugged at his makeshift form. To any passerby, he was just another guardian of the crops, a silent sentinel against the crows.
And yet, he wasn’t alone. Two buzzards—gaunt, scrappy creatures with beady eyes and tattered feathers—took a liking to him. Perhaps they sensed the death in his bones, or perhaps they simply appreciated a perch that didn’t shoo them away. They’d circle overhead during his hunts, then land on his outstretched arms when he stood still, their weight a strange comfort. He named them Grit and Grime, and in their raspy caws, he found a companionship he hadn’t known since his heart stopped beating.
By day, Kreaky played his part, watching farmers toil and children dart through the fields, his bow hidden beneath the straw, his undead stillness blending into the landscape. By night, he slipped into the woods, hunting beasts that prowled too close to the villages—wolves, boars, even the occasional ghoul that strayed from the plaguelands. He’d leave his kills at the edge of the fields, a quiet offering to the humans who unknowingly sheltered him. They’d whisper of a “lucky scarecrow,” a charm that kept the monsters at bay, never suspecting the truth.
Kreaky’s existence was a delicate balance, a masquerade of straw and shadow. He couldn’t speak to the living, couldn’t reveal the hunter beneath the disguise, but in the buzzards’ company and the rhythm of the hunt, he carved out a purpose. An undead guardian, unseen and unsung, he stood watch over a world that would never know his name—Kreaky, the scarecrow of the forsaken wilds.