Gabryell returned to Stormwind, went to keep, found Bolvar, and accepted The First and the Last.
There was no way he could skip such a classic questline. For Stormrager alone, he absolutely had to do it.
"Nathanos Marris was the first and last human ranger lord in history," Bolvar said. "He was a student of Sylvanas Windrunner."
"We always believed Nathanos died five years ago during the defense of Lordaeron. His body was never found, but no one thought he could have escaped the Eastern Plaguelands alive."
"Mathias Shaw has been investigating the disappearance and may have found something. Report to him immediately. You'll find Mathias in the barracks in Old Town."
Bolvar sent Gabryell to Stormwind's Old Town to find Mathias Shaw.
Gabryell left Stormwind Keep and rushed straight to the Old Town barracks, where he found Master Mathias Shaw.
After hearing why Gabryell had come, Mathias said, "I sent five of my best agents to investigate the Nathanos Marris matter. Only one returned. Three days later, he died in his sleep."
"His muttering was too confused and indistinct to give us much useful intelligence. We could only make out two words: Nathanos and Blightcaller."
Mathias gave Gabryell a new task.
"If you are willing to serve the Alliance, go to Chillwind Camp in the Western Plaguelands and meet with Flint Shadowmore of SI:7."
Gabryell immediately took a gryphon to the Western Plaguelands.
Blizzard loved stuffing the game with errand quests and acting as if players would love them. In their minds, these quests probably felt immersive, meaningful, and destined to become classics.
Most players did not have that much patience.
Lore players might enjoy running from one NPC to another, piecing together the story. Everyone else would rather kill mobs. Errand quests gave little experience, wasted time, and always felt suspiciously good at burning through paid subscription time.
"One NPC could clearly handle this whole thing," Gabryell muttered, "but Blizzard insists on splitting it across half the continent."
On the flight to Chillwind Camp, he thought of every player who had gone into Karazhan expecting an epic adventure, only to be worn down by pointless errands. Even Rogues had complained about it: Blizzard loved making systems they thought were brilliant, when in practice they were just meaningless busywork.
When Gabryell arrived at Chillwind Camp, the place was livelier than before. More and more players had reached level 50 and above, and the Plaguelands were slowly filling up.
He found Flint and passed along Mathias's message.
Flint gave him another quest: go to the Eastern Plaguelands, search for the three SI:7 agents who had disappeared while investigating the Blightcaller, and retrieve the SI:7 Insignias from their bodies.
The three agents were Rutger, Fredo, and Turyen.
"Great. Another quest designed to bait new players into dying."
Without an addon to track quest objectives, this quest was a pit.
It did not tell players where the three agents were. It simply told them to search the Eastern Plaguelands.
The Eastern Plaguelands were huge. Searching the entire zone on foot would run your legs off.
Worse, players with poor eyesight or bad observation skills might circle the area once and still miss them.
Most importantly, first-time players had no idea the three agents were already dead. They were not looking for three living NPCs. They were looking for three corpses.
"There goes my subscription time."
Gabryell decided that once he finished this quest, he would add quest tracking to the addon.
He was not giving Blizzard another chance to waste everyone's paid playtime.
In later WoW Classic, Gabryell had done this quest several times on different characters for Stormrager, so he remembered it clearly. Naturally, he knew where the three agents' corpses were.
In fact, the corpses were not far apart. They were all near the area in front of the Blightcaller's spawn point. As long as you searched carefully, they were easy to find.
Of course, current players had no idea where the Blightcaller was. Finding the three corpses would still mean running themselves half to death across the Eastern Plaguelands.
Gabryell arrived in the Eastern Plaguelands, found Rutger, Fredo, and Turyen's corpses, and collected the three SI:7 Insignias left on them.
Then he returned to Chillwind Camp and handed the insignias to Flint.
Flint took them with trembling hands. From the information left within them, he learned the Blightcaller's secret.
"Nathanos did this?" Flint said in disbelief. "Nathanos is the Blightcaller? Why? He was so noble. A respected ranger lord. The only human ever trained by the high elves. How could he become one of the undead?"
Flint could not accept it.
This intelligence was far too important. It had to be reported to Bolvar immediately.
Another errand quest.
Flint sent Gabryell back to Stormwind to find Bolvar and report what they had discovered.
As a Mage, Gabryell did not need to take the long way back. He simply opened a portal to Stormwind.
After leaving the Mage Tower, he went straight to Stormwind Keep, found Bolvar, and explained the situation in detail.
Bolvar was deeply shaken.
He had never expected the investigation to end like this.
"Do you know how many ranger lords have ever existed in this world?" Bolvar said. "Do you know how many of them were human? Nathanos's achievements were unprecedented. He was a tactical genius who brought the Alliance victory in countless battles."
A former hero of the Alliance had become undead.
Bolvar found that reality difficult to accept.
"It cannot be allowed to stand. Order must be restored. Gather a force, return to the Plaguelands, and kill the Blightcaller."
For the sake of the Alliance, Bolvar had to cut off this danger before it grew.
As Regent of Stormwind, he could not allow Nathanos to strengthen the Horde from the shadows.
Some threats had to be dealt with cleanly. Leave them alone, and they would only turn into bigger disasters later.
Bolvar gave Gabryell the quest Order Must Be Restored, asking him to gather a force, kill Nathanos, now known as the Blightcaller, and purge this fallen Alliance hero.
Gathering a force meant this was a raid quest.
The Blightcaller was a level 62 elite boss. A solo player had no chance of killing him, and even a five-player party would struggle badly.
But the biggest obstacle to killing the Blightcaller was not the NPC himself.
It was players.
Horde players.
The Horde also had quests involving the Blightcaller. To the Alliance, he was a hostile NPC. To the Horde, he was friendly.
The Alliance wanted to kill him.
The Horde wanted to protect him.
If the Blightcaller died, Horde players could not continue their quests until he respawned. Naturally, they would not stand by and watch the Alliance murder him.
"There should already be quite a few Horde players working through the Blightcaller quests," Gabryell thought. "If we go kill him, they'll definitely try to stop us."
When he had gone to find the SI:7 agents' corpses, he had already seen several Horde players near the Blightcaller.
If the Alliance organized a force to kill Nathanos, Horde players from both Plaguelands would surely rush over once they heard the news.
They would protect the Blightcaller and fight the Alliance directly.
"So the real enemies in this quest are opposing-faction players."
The Blightcaller's strongest minions were not undead.
They were Horde players.
A level 62 elite boss comparable to General Drakkisath, backed by Horde players, would put the Alliance at a serious disadvantage unless they brought enough numbers.
Even so, Gabryell had to do it.
Stormrager was too good to skip.
"Has anyone in the guild accepted The First and the Last questline?" Gabryell asked in guild chat. "Type 1 if you have. Your Guild Leader will carry you through it."
Gabryell was not alone.
He was the guild leader of the number one Alliance guild on Tichondrius.
Fearless now had nearly a thousand members, with seven or eight hundred online. If he made a casual callout, forming one or two raids would be easy.
The quest could be accepted at level 56.
The guild had two or three hundred players above level 56. As long as half of them had picked up the chain, Gabryell was confident they could punch through the Horde obstruction and kill the Blightcaller.