I have always believed that the lives of mortals is driven primarily by three positive forces. The first of these is warmth, the second is life, and the third is light. If you take away any one of these things you lose something of what makes existence more tangible: without warmth there is cold, without life there is death, without light there is darkness.
Granted, not all of these things are required to exist, as our Forsaken allies have proven time and again. I look at Sylvanus and her followers and I do see, however, that they have come to hold a bit more warmth, liveliness, and illumination than the members of the Scourge. For this I at least recognize them as a people, and not just simple abominations that others would see them as.
To walk where mortal beings truly have no business being though is quite the experience. At least the cold, harsh heights of the Storm Peaks had life and light to them, and those rocky, snow ridden places had more warmth than what I am feeling now. Icecrown literally is a land of nothingness. It has no warmth, it has no life, it has no life. It is a place of perpetual death.
No wonder this is the bastian of the Lich King and the Scourge. No where else on Azeroth or Draenor can you find a place like this. I doubt you could find a place like Icecrown on many other worlds. There is nothing natural about it, not anymore. The ice is devoid of anything resembling life. If anything were living beneath it...well, one can hope.
Everyone once in a while though, a spark will emerge and give a dead land a flicker of life, light, and hope. I saw one such spark after we took Crusader's Pinnacle from the Scourge, making a new base of operations for the Argent Crusade. Highlord Fordring asked me to search in the northern parts of the glacier for one of his missing crusaders, named Bridenbrad. It took some time for me to find his tiny encampment tucked away into the hills, but eventually I found the human named Bridenbrad.
I often have to remind myself that when dealing with humans, dwarves, and draenei that not all of them are my enemies, members of the Alliance. Instead, the are part of the Argent, so I look upon them as allies, and thus I approached this lone human as such. He bid me keep away from his camp at first, and there I learned that he had been afflicted by the undead plague.
Such a terrible fate to befall a grand crusader against the Scourge, and a sign that the world does not know justice by letting him be turned to undeath. Not if I had a say in the matter. Luckily, Fordring was not about to let this go either.
The powers of renewal, life, and light, as he put it, would help to save Crusader Bridenbrand. We tried the warming powers of renewal first, and I ventured to the sacred groves of Moonglade. There I spoke to Keeper Romulos, who, after a favor was done for him in the dangerous nethers of the Emerald Dream, granted his boon for Bridenbrand. I took it back to the crusader and laid it upon him, and though he was renewed in strength, the plague still gripped him.
Next we tried my beloved Alexstraza, the Life Binder, to grant her boon, which she gladly gave, again after services rendered which I in turn were glad to give. Her boon was her own fiery breath, and with hope the burning essence of the Red Queen could purify Bridenbrand of his affliction. Sadly, it was not to be. The Scourge Plague is a stubborn contagion, I will give it that at least, unwilling to let go of its victims, even in the face of such power.
There was one final hope, and now I was travelling back to my old home of Outland to see the greatest bastion of light that could be had: A'dal of the Naaru.
He granted his boon, and I travelled back to Icecrown to give this final gift to the fallen crusader, only to find that I was too late. Bridenbrand gave his last breath to thank me for all I have done as I laid the given powers of light on him, and though the light entered his body it could not spare his life. As saddened as I might be by this outcome, my heart was lifted as A'dal himself appeared there in Northrend, and suddenly the surrounding dead, cold, and dark of Icecrown seemed brighter and more alive. I watched as he took up the spirit of Bridenbrand and kept him from turning into the undead, thus, even though he died, he was still saved.
I cannot feel remorse about what transpired here. Not now. I am grateful that there is still positive power to contend forces like the Scourge or the Burning Legion, paragons of nothingness. These negative influences still have force though and the world can still be covered by them.
We must stand strong against the night.
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