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Prologue: A Legacy of Darkness

In ages past, before Azeroth, before the Burning Legion, when the world itself was young, the Titans were the masters of the world. Sculpting the earth to their wishes, they created the forests, rivers, mountains, and finally the races of Azeroth. They made mistakes, to be sure, but they knew they had an eternity to correct them. They had also peace, for there was nothing so powerful as to be able to challenge the Titans...until the Old Gods.

The Old Gods were powerful entities that reigned over the Elementals; beings of pure malice and hate. For thousands of years the Old Gods had drawn their power from the constant worship and adulation of their followers, and as their followers grew, so did the Old Gods grow more bloated with power. With their many numbers, this mighty engine of destruction was able to challenge the might of the Titans themselves, who had threatened the Old God's carefully built sanctum of chaos. What followed was a great war between the first great powers of the Multiverse. In the end, the Old Gods were defeated, their Elemental servitors banished, and the Titans, in their victory, chained the Old Gods beneath the cold earth.

For many millennia the Old Gods remained. Isolated from their followers, their powers waned during their long imprisonment. And so they were left to watch the conflicts of the lesser races that came and went throughout history in contempt. As the millennia passed, the Old Gods banished beneath the earth, and slowly slipped out of all memory and legend. Soon, they were forgotten there, forgotten by all the world. Still they longed to escape the confines of their prison, and created a race of mindless servitors, the Faceless Ones in an attempt to reach the outside. Try as their creatures might, they could not free their masters, and so it was that the ancient evils remained banished.

But then one day a race of spiders delved deep beneath the earth. They forged a mighty kingdom that they stylized Azjol-Nerub. The Old Gods desperately tried to reach out to these creatures, but the Nerubians, sensing their sinister nature, stayed away in fear. The Old Gods became feared demons of Nerubian legend, known only as the Forgotten Ones. And so the forgotten gods did not even care when the Nerubians were nearly wiped out by a new power that new nothing of the evils sealed beneath the crypts of Azjol-Nerub.

The Forgotten Ones were left again to wait for a chance to escape their long imprisonment, and one day, unexpectedly, it came. Racing to reach his master, a Death Knight that named Arthas ventured into the kingdom of Azjol-Nerub. Finding his choices limited, he decided to enter the crypts where it was known that more sinister things than spiders dwelled. He encountered and slew a number of Faceless Ones, though not without difficulty, for many of his own followers were slain as well. As the Death Knight raced through the halls, escape in sight, he encountered one of the Forgotten Ones, an Old God. Even with its powers greatly diminished, the Old God was not easily defeated. In the end however, the Death Knight, not knowing the consequences of his actions, slew the Forgotten One and fled.

His actions had grave consequences indeed; the crypts began to collapse. Eager to escape, the Death Knight and his followers fled, but as always, the Old Gods remained. They watched, overjoyed, as the caverns collapsed and a new passage was formed. It was not large, but it was big enough to serve the Old Gods' purposes. Their servants, the Faceless, spilled through the passage, and prepared for their master's arrival...

For the Old Gods would rise again.