User:Joshmaul/Torghn Skulltaker

"'You could say that I've returned from 'ogar' to achieve 'lok'tar', heh heh...'"
 * - Torghn Skulltaker

Torghn was a former Burning Blade clansman and veteran of the Old Horde who became a blademaster under the rule of Warchief Thrall, serving from the Third War until his demise at the gates of Orgrimmar during the second Scourge invasion, just prior to the war for Northrend. Raised as a death knight and trained at the Ebon Hold, he took the name Torghn Skulltaker and became a feared warrior of the Lich King until he was returned to his free will after the Battle of Light's Hope Chapel, whereupon he returned to the Horde and swore his allegiance once more before going to fight against the enemies of the Horde, from Northrend and beyond.

Biography
Torghn does not remember his original clan, but remembers that he was born in the shadow of Oshu'gun in Nagrand during an autumn Kosh'harg festival, some two decades prior to the rise of the Horde. When the clans were united, Torghn served in the ranks of the Burning Blade, a group of borderline psychotics driven mad by demon blood and kept in check by ogre enforcers, and fought in the First and Second Wars. But when the Horde was defeated at Blackrock Spire by the human Alliance, and the clans were imprisoned in the internment camps, he was filled with regret, his dreams often haunted by dead children - first the draenei back on his homeworld, and then the humans of Azeroth. In time, he began to suffer the racial withdrawal from the demon-charged bloodlust that had cursed his race.

Languishing at the Lordamere Internment Camp near Dalaran, Torghn contemplated suicide as the only option of escaping his guilt and torment. That changed when Thrall rallied alongside Warchief Orgrim Doomhammer to liberate the camps; Torghn witnessed first hand the powers of the spirits that he had nearly forgotten from the past, and believed Thrall to be the way to redemption. He followed the young warrior-shaman as he became Warchief following Doomhammer's death, and fought against the garrison under General Aedelas Blackmoore at Durnholde, which forever ended the orcish internment. With freedom again in his people's grasp, Torghn joined with what few remained of the Burning Blade in the ranks of the blademasters, the veteran warriors who became the elite guard of the Horde under Thrall's command. He served throughout the campaign that followed, including the exodus to Kalimdor and the Battle of Mount Hyjal that defeated an invasion by the Burning Legion, the defeat of Admiral Proudmoore during the founding of Durotar, and the various campaigns against the black dragonflight, Hakkar the Soulflayer, the forces of Ragnaros, the Qiraji, and - most prominently - the Scourge in northern Lordaeron.

After the Dark Portal reopened, he returned to the shattered remnants of Draenor, now called Outland, to fight against the onslaught of the Burning Legion and the forces of Illidan Stormrage. In particular, he offered his blade to the few surviving mag'har who lived in his homeland of Nagrand, one of the few places in Outland not despoiled by the planet's destruction two decades before, and watched with pride as the past and future of their race met for the first time.

Downfall and Dark Rebirth
Following the death of Illidan and the defeat of Kil'jaeden the Deceiver, the demon lord who had corrupted the original Horde, Torghn decided to eke out a living wandering the roads of Nagrand until called for by the Horde back on Azeroth. It was during one of his trips into Garadar for food that he was greeted by a messenger sent from Orgrimmar, who informed him that the Scourge had unleashed its fury upon the world again, just as it had when Naxxramas had been unleashed shortly before the Outland war. Riding his wyvern back to Shattrath City, he took a mage-provided portal back to Orgrimmar to answer the Warchief's call for reinforcements. Leading a battalion of Kor'kron, Orgrimmar's elite guards, Torghn met the Scourge invaders right outside the city gates without fear, cutting swathes through the ranks of the undead with his huge warblade. But he would soon meet his match against the death knight Eliphas Aximand, a Forsaken sailor and former soldier of Lordaeron, who managed to pierce Torghn's heart with his cutlass. His last act before he died was to spit blood in the death knight's face.

Taken with the Scourge forces after the necropolis at the gates retreated, Torghn was resurrected by the Lich King as one of the death knights of Acherus, under the command of Highlord Darion Mograine. Along with his brethren, of races that had belonged to both Alliance and Horde alike, Torghn was unleashed against the Scarlet Crusade in their enclave east of Tyr's Hand, where he took great pleasure in broad strokes that decapitated his opponents. He began to be known among the other death knights as "Torghn Skulltaker", and he slaughtered his way through the ranks of the Crusade before being sent to Light's Hope Chapel, where the power of the Light overwhelmed the Scourge army. Betrayed and abandoned by the Lich King, thus began the formation of the Knights of the Ebon Blade, and Torghn gladly offered his strength to the cause of bringing down the monster who had corrupted him.

Taking up his old warblade, recovered from the field and given to him by Highlord Mograine, Torghn joined the Horde forces during the war for Northrend, applying his Scourge-granted nom de guerre against the Scourge themselves in the Howling Fjord as he took the heads of vrykul and other Scourge forces with as much pleasure as he had while fighting the Scarlet Crusade. Following the death of the Lich King, Torghn returned to Nagrand and wandered alone, just as he had after the fall of Kil'jaeden, but remained at the Horde's call whenever it arose in the years that followed. During the Cataclysm War, he was called to serve under Legionnaire Nazgrim, who had been a sergeant at Conquest Hold during the Northrend campaign, in the effort to take Vashj'ir - a new landmass off the coast of the Eastern Kingdoms - in the name of the Horde, and again in Pandaria when Nazgrim was promoted to General; however, he broke from his former commander when he chose to follow Garrosh Hellscream's "True Horde".

The Tide of Iron


After remaining for a time in Nagrand following the downfall of Hellscream, Torghn returned to Orgrimmar after learning from a shaman of an "iron tide" coming from the Dark Portal, which had been disconnected from Outland and was now producing legions of strange orc warriors that began attacking Alliance and Horde alike. In Orgrimmar, he met Warmaster Korigal Windaxe, leader of a group calling itself the "Legacy of the Warsong", which had sworn to uphold the sacrifice made by Grom Hellscream to redeem himself and their race from the Blood Curse. Korigal, whom Torghn had briefly seen in life at Mount Hyjal and at the gates of Orgrimmar, had also broken with Garrosh and sided with Vol'jin, who was now Warchief of the Horde, the first non-orc to rise to that rank. Offering his services to another man of honor, Torghn joined with the Legacy as they turned to face the Iron Horde that now marched on Azeroth.

During lulls in the fighting, Torghn often met at a "lounge night" held by the Anytime, Anywhere Messenger Service (AAMS) at Hardwrench Hideaway in the Cape of Stranglethorn, not far from the warzone. In a discussion days after the Iron Horde invasion, there was speculation that Garrosh - who had escaped from Pandaria sometime before - was the architect of this new threat, as some of the Iron Horde forces included former Dragonmaw and Kor'kron loyalists under the command of Warlord Zaela, who was believed to have fallen during the siege of Orgrimmar when her giant proto-drake, Galakras, was killed outside the gates. Members of the Blackfuse Company, the engineers who built Garrosh's war machines, were also believed to be in the ranks, this being the only reasonable explanation as to why the Iron Horde was able to use the same weapons they had used against the combined forces during the siege.

Whatever the source of this new threat, Torghn believed the choice was clear: The Alliance and the Horde alike would have to go through the Dark Portal to wherever their enemy came from, and defeat them there...