Blackrock Spire

The broken sword

At the siege of Blackrock Spire, Orgrim Doomhammer struck Anduin Lothar down. The greatest human commander of that age died on the mountain. What happened next is the scene every later retelling keeps, because it is the reason Turalyon is not a footnote to Lothar. He picked up the shattered sword and Lothar’s standard. He rallied an army that had just watched its lion die. The Light was on him in a way the witnesses describe as visible. Doomhammer was beaten and taken alive, to be judged, not finished on the slope.

Then he pointed the broken blade at what remained of the Horde and ordered the attack. The Alliance carried the field and drove the orcs back toward the Dark Portal. The monarchs of the Seven Kingdoms named Lothar’s lieutenant as his successor, Supreme Commander of the Alliance of Lordaeron. A priest who had not felt the Light in his childhood had become, for the end of the war, the man holding it in front of an army.

The guilt did not stay on the mountain. Later portraits of him return to the same bruise: that Lothar’s death was his failure to prevent, and that no victory afterward quite paid the bill. He kept the work anyway. After the war he organized the rebuilding of Stormwind and stood behind the boy Varian Wrynn while that kingdom was put back on its feet. Ministers, advisors, citizens going home, the Deeprun Tram going in between Stormwind and Ironforge with Mekkatorque’s reports coming back to him. Administration is a dull chapter unless you remember that the man doing it had just been handed a dead mentor’s sword.

Metzen’s drawing is the bruise after the battle: Lothar’s stone, and the lieutenant on his knees. The event itself is an order of actions. The lion falls, the lieutenant lifts what is left, the Horde’s warchief is captured, and the war ends with Turalyon in the commander’s place.

Stormwind after the victory is the unglamorous proof that the appointment was real. He did not ride off into a private legend. He found ministers for a boy king, brought citizens back into a gutted city, and kept correspondence with Ironforge about a tram. People who only know the High Exarch miss this stretch and then misunderstand the regency. He had already been the adult in Stormwind once, while a Wrynn grew into the chair. When Anduin disappears into the Maw, the nobles are not inventing a caretaker. They are asking the same man to do the job a second time, with a holier rank and a worse cosmos.

Previous: The lion’s second · Next: Through the portal