Since Ji and I got back from Winterspring, I’ve had a lot on my mind. Everyone could tell we’d been injured – nothing major, but enough to catch people’s attention, especially considering how concerned everyone has been about me the last few weeks. I hadn’t really planned to talk to anyone about what happened while we were up there. I still prefer not to. But after Krog had another run-in with an attacker the other day, people are going to keep asking more and more questions. So I think it’s time for me to start filling in some blanks.

The blanks start long before Winterspring.

Years ago, before I’d come to Orgrimmar, I was part of a mercenary group called the Veiled Blade. On one of our jobs, we had been hired to acquire the spellbook of a dragonkin in Blackrock Spire named Lord Valthalak, one of Nefarian’s lieutenants in those days. As often happens with these kinds of things, that involved killing him. Mostly, anyway. Trouble is, though, between Nefarian’s forces and his alliance at the time with Rend Blackhand’s Blackrock orcs, getting to Valthalak and killing him wasn’t going to be an easy task.

That’s where we cut a deal. As it turns out, not all the Blackrock orcs where exactly thrilled with Rend putting them in Nefarian’s service…and, long story short, we managed to come to an arrangement with Rend’s head of security – an orc named Malkorok. He would deliberately leave prearranged gaps in the guard patrols leading to Valthalak. We would slip in, kill him, collect what we came for, and get out. We get in and out with a minimum of fuss. Malkorok gets a pocket full of gold and the satisfaction of knowing the dragons had been weakened, for whenever Rend finally turned on them like Malkorok assumed he eventually would.

That was the plan. And it mostly worked. We went in, we killed Valthalak, we got the spellbook. But we also collected an enchanted amulet from him, and after no small amount of infighting, we divided it into pieces and split it among some members of the group. Don’t ask me what the appeal would be of getting a piece of an amulet; I wasn’t one of the ones fighting over it. And the ones who did… Well, Valthalak wasn’t quite as dead as we’d assumed. His spirit lived on, and it sent spectral assassins after those of us who’d been involved in stealing the amulet. Again, I’m not sure why the big to-do about the amulet; in his shoes, I probably would have been angrier at us for killing him than for taking his favorite piece of jewelry. Maybe it’s a dragon thing.

One by one, the members of the Veiled Blade started to be picked off by the spectral assassins. Soon enough, there were only three of us left: me, a dwarf named Theldren, and a human named Deliana. We all went into hiding – me in Orgrimmar, Theldren in Blackrock Depths, Deliana in Ironforge. Separately, and quietly, Deliana and I started to recruit Horde and Alliance adventurers to gather the pieces of the amulet and put Valthalak’s spirit to rest. It took some time, but it worked. For a while.

That changed a couple weeks ago when I was walking through the Drag with Ji, and a new batch of spectral assassins came out of nowhere and killed me.

From the look of things on the blog after Garrosh reported the attack, some people were pretty quick to put two and two together and figure that Malkorok had been behind it. Truth be told, I was only too happy to let him take the blame. And for those of you who’ve wondered, now you can see a little better why he and I have bad blood between us. Now maybe you have a notion of why I don’t trust him. I know he can be bought. Because I was one of the ones who bought him.

As for why I wouldn’t have told anyone any of this until now…well, that’s where things start to get complicated. TL;DR alert in advance: This may be a long story.

Mokvar