User:Joshmaul/Ord'taeril Ketiron

"'Oblivion sends its regards.'"
 * - Ord'taeril Ketiron

Ord'taeril Ketiron has had a painful journey in his relatively short years. Disappearing into the Nether with his family's archivist when his father, General Taeril'hane Ketiron, was killed on Draenor, he returned to Azeroth as a grown man only a few short weeks later and served as a Knight of the Silver Hand during the war against the Legion. During the battle for Argus, Ord'taeril was kidnapped by the mad Forsaken shadow priest Sekhesmet of Stratholme and experimented on using Void energies harvested from the former eredar capital of Mac'Aree, transforming him into a void elf. Unable to call the Light or return to Silvermoon, Ord'taeril joined others of his kind under the banner of the Alliance, and decided to take up the fighting arts of the monks of Pandaria.

Biography
Ord'taeril was born shortly after the war against the Lich King, the son of Blood Knight Master Taeril'hane Ketiron and his wife, General Areinnye Scourgebane, herself the daughter of Blood Knight Master Ordevaas Portalseeker and granddaughter of Lord Kel'theris Whitehair. He was named for both his father and his grandfather. Taeril'hane and Areinnye had just assumed leadership of the House of Whitehair (now House of Ketiron) after Ordevaas' death in Northrend, and Areinnye made efforts to look to the home front while raising Ord'taeril, allowing Taeril'hane to serve at the front. They "switched positions", as they jokingly put it, during the Pandaria war, with Taeril'hane looking after his son at their estate in Silvermoon while Areinnye fought in Pandaria.

During the conflict on Draenor, with garrisoning becoming prevalent, House Ketiron uprooted and moved its resources to the new fortress of Saavedar, built to orcish standards in the frozen desolation of Frostfire Ridge, and it would be there that Ord'taeril would live with his parents. Yet tragedy seemed to sink its claws into the household, and would not let go; Areinnye was murdered by the psychotic gnome warlock Rakeri Sputterspark during the conflict; upon the conflict's end, they returned to Silvermoon. During the war for the Broken Isles, House Ketiron was threatened by the criminal organization known as the Modas il Toralar, or "Order of Shadows"; seeking a means to protect his son, Taeril'hane brought Ord'taeril and his household back to Saavedar, the connections to the place still strong despite the apparent closing of the dimensional connection between Azeroth and the alternate Draenor. It was not enough; the Modas followed them there and burned Saavedar to the ground, killing Taeril'hane and most of his guard. Just before meeting his end, Taeril'hane instructed his archivist, the Forsaken archmage Gehn, to take his son away from Draenor and return him to Azeroth, and hide somewhere the Modas would not likely reach them.

Reluctant to leave his lord to die at the hands of madmen, Gehn nonetheless recognized that the future of House Ketiron would rest with Ord'taeril - and so, he obeyed. Yet the magic that had made the connection between Azeroth and this alternate Draenor would have unforeseen consequences. The last thing Taeril'hane heard from his son was a pleading, anguished "Ann'da!" (Thalassian for "Papa!") as Gehn's teleportation spell took them away.

Divergent Paths
Gehn had intended to take himself and Ord'taeril to Thunder Bluff, capital of the tauren, considered a safe harbor from the foul Modas. Yet when the teleportation spell cleared, the archmage realized that something was wrong. He had not emerged within the Cave of Visions as intended, or anywhere on Azeroth... or Draenor. They were somewhere else entirely, somewhere dangerous. And that would have been the end of them, had the first people they encountered not been the great draenei champions fighting the long war against the Burning Legion - the Army of the Light.

Though his undeath made him an instant target for the pious draenei, Gehn was spared annihilation at the hands of the draenei by the intervention of the naaru, who recognized that he was a soul devoted to the Light and to defending his charge, the now-orphaned Ord'taeril. Thus, Gehn was able to remain with Ord'taeril as his guardian, travelling with the Army aboard the Xenedar as its warriors battled the Legion for the next one hundred years, allowing Ord'taeril to grow into adulthood; like his father, he had become something of a paladin, though more of the "vindicator" type due to the influences of the draenei. Yet the naaru recognized that it was not their destiny to remain, and that they would have to return to Azeroth - and that they would guide Gehn's magic to take them back.

Gehn and Ord'taeril arrived in the city of Dalaran, finding that only a few weeks had passed since their flight from Saavedar. The champions of Azeroth had just liberated the city of Suramar and its Nightborne citizens from the Legion's grasp and sealed the fel portal within the Tomb of Sargeras, defeating Kil'jaeden aboard his command ship in orbit of Argus - which, through the use of the Sargerite Keystone by Illidan Stormrage, now hung in the skies over Azeroth. Realizing that this was why the naaru had returned them here and now, Gehn and Ord'taeril prepared themselves for the final push they knew would come. Inside the ransacked estate of House Ketiron, Gehn accessed the secret chambers where he found a pair of items that had once belonged to a friend and ally of the family, the human paladin Saavedro of Stratholme - a great warhammer known as the Hand of the Crossing, and a libram marked with the sigil of the Silver Hand. Taking up the holy weapon and book of scripture, Ord'taeril travelled to Argus aboard the draenei vessel Vindicaar, rejoining the Army of the Light on the field. It would be at around the same time that Kitrik the Assassin, a goblin privateer and friend of House Ketiron, would recruit Ord'taeril and Gehn into "Da Doctas", a school of medicine that operated out of Sun Rock Retreat in Kalimdor's Stonetalon Mountains, and ran a free clinic in the city of Orgrimmar.

During his years with the Army of the Light before returning to Azeroth, Ord'taeril had developed a particular skill for calling upon the Light to heal the wounded, and used it with far greater effect than he did the hammer - for although he was strong in the Light, he was inexperienced in battle, and it would be a weakness used against him...

Shadows of Mac'Aree
The seeds of Ord'taeril's eventual fall were sown in the ruined temple-city of Mac'Aree, the former capital of the eredar civilization. The Void had permeated the air and soil of the city, even pooling in liquid form in various places around the Seat of the Triumvirate. This was due to the influence of the fallen naaru L'ura, who had stayed behind when the draenei escaped from Argus twenty-five millennia earlier, and had descended into shadow. It was here that Alleria Windrunner, under the guidance of the mysterious Ethereal known as "Locus-Walker", was ultimately transformed into the first void elf, absorbing the essence of the dark naaru. Although he could not know it at the time, Ord'taeril's fate would also be shaped by L'ura, albeit far more indirectly than Alleria had been...and with far more sinister motives.

Sekhesmet of Stratholme, a powerful Forsaken shadow priest and ally of the Modas, had been drawn to Mac'Aree by the potent void energies, and had collected samples of the liquified shadow and the corrupted flesh of the local wildlife (including those Broken who had succumbed to its whispers). He hoped that, like Alleria, he would be able to use the energy to increase his power. But he wanted to test it first, and knew he would need a living subject - believing that if a living being could survive the process, an undead like himself would have no trouble. Immediately, his eye fixed on Ord'taeril; in addition to using him as a guinea pig, Sekhesmet would have the pleasure of corrupting such a pious follower of the Light and avenging himself upon the son of a hated rival. His bodyguards - servants of the Modas - kidnapped Ord'taeril in Mac'Aree just before the death of the corrupted Titan that had been the core of Argus. Ord'taeril's comrades, Kitrik chief among them, frantically tried to find him in Mac'Aree before they were instructed by Vindicator Jeniraan, one of the Army's soldiers, to evacuate back to the Vindicaar to return to Azeroth. The Vindicaar fled from the dying world, witnessing the last act of spite by the Legion's master, the Dark Titan Sargeras, plunging his blade deep into Azeroth's surface... just as the rift opened by Illidan sealed behind them. Argus was closed forever... leading Kitrik and his comrades to believe Ord'taeril was one of the campaign's last casualties.

Kitrik, however, had his doubts. An orc shaman named Kodrak Riverfire, who had crafted lightning-charged blades for the goblin to use on Argus, had been found dead during the campaign, intended to look like he'd fallen to the Legion...but his corpse showed traces of fel-fire, and he had been killed in Mac'Aree, where the fel was not as prevalent. Suspicious, Kitrik and pandaren huntress Lazhna Trueflight had tracked down an ally of Sekhesmet, a former Stormwind mage-turned-Forsaken warlock named Alieth Taldir, and coerced her into revealing Sekhesmet's location before killing her. Sekhesmet had been spotted taking a magically-sealed crate from Tarren Mill to the zeppelin landing outside Brill, and took the zeppelin out to the Howling Fjord in Northrend. Kitrik then brought the information to someone who would be most interested - Ord'taeril's father Taeril'hane, who had been reanimated by the Knights of the Ebon Blade, and was now known as the Crimson King. With the aid of friends on "both sides" - Gehn, Lazhna, Jeniraan, and the draenei priest Po'gaenus, to name a few - Kitrik was able to lead a party to New Agamand, where Taeril'hane was imprisoned by Sekhesmet. Also there was a hated enemy of House Ketiron believed to be long dead...the orc warlock Urgan, better known as the Corruptor.

Voidwalker - In So Many Ways
Sekhesmet opened the sealed container, within which was Ord'taeril - altered by the void residue Sekhesmet had collected from Mac'Aree. The Dark Father commanded Ord'taeril to kill Taeril'hane for good. Instead, Ord'taeril severed his father's bonds, allowing him to join the fight against Sekhesmet's forces. By the time it was over, the Forsaken guard was all dead, and Sekhesmet buried in the rubble of the laboratory. The Corruptor, seeing the balance turning against Sekhesmet, left him to his fate until after they left. Fainting after the sudden release of power, Ord'taeril begged his father for death rather than be cut off from the Light. Po'gaenus was able to convince Taeril'hane to let him take the boy with him to Stormwind. Alleria had recruited a number of other elves, led by Magister Umbric, who had been transformed by an explosion of void energies within the Telogrus Rift, and with void elves banished from Quel'Thalas (and the Horde as a result) by Grand Magister Rommath, it was the safest place for him to start again.

As he tried to settle into his new life as a void elf, Ord'taeril decided that if he could no longer call upon the Light, he would need a way to avoid being bushwhacked like he had been in Mac'Aree. To that end, he turned to the pandaren, electing to train in the ways of the monk. Po'gaenus secured the services of Zhangren Puretide, a Lorewalker who had elected to maintain his neutrality even as Alliance and Horde were increasingly at each other's throats. Zhangren initially brought Ord'taeril out to the island in Stone Cairn Lake outside Stormwind, but found the proximity to Stormwind - and to a number of distractions within the city - difficult when it came to maintaining Ord'taeril's focus. To that end, Zhangren brought Ord'taeril with him to Pandaria, to enroll him in the monk school at Tian Monastery in the Jade Forest. The isolation would serve to allow Ord'taeril to hone his body as well as his mind.

After completing the training course at Tian, there was a clear change in Ord'taeril - he seemed more in control in himself, more adjusted to the change that had come over him. Zhangren gave him a pair of lightning steel handblades that had belonged to his father, Master Zhenren Puretide, who had been allowed to rest in the sacred Wood of Staves on the Wandering Isle upon his death. Ord'taeril would travel to the Wandering Isle himself on a regular basis, working on his training with Zhangren in the courtyard of the Temple of Five Dawns. Yet as his strength and skill increased, so too did his worries; there would most certainly be a war between the Alliance and the Horde, with no "greater threat" to contend with, and he would find himself facing old friends on the other side...though he mused that this would have been true regardless of what side he was on.