MAKE LORDAERON GREAT AGAIN
Claude version
MAKE LORDAERON GREAT AGAIN
A Satirical Chronicle of the First Free Election of the Kingdom of Lordaeron
Being the Unofficial, Unauthorized, and Regrettably Accurate Transcript of the Most Divisive Political Season in Azerothian History
It was the year 21, by the King’s Calendar — though there was, of course, no longer a King, which was rather the point.
The Scourge had been beaten back. The Burning Legion’s portal had collapsed. The rubble of Capital City had been swept into moderately organized piles. And in the great democratic tradition of civilizations that have recently survived apocalypse, someone had suggested holding an election.
“We need strong leadership,” said Othmar Garithos, Grand Marshal of what remained of the Alliance forces in Lordaeron, to a crowd of roughly forty humans, two confused sheep, and a gnome who had taken a wrong turn at Ironforge. “Not some — and I want to be very careful with my words here — not some dead elf who consorts with demons.”
He was not, it should be noted, very careful with his words.
I. THE CANDIDATES
The race for the newly invented office of President of Lordaeron had, against all odds and reason, come down to two candidates.
On one side stood Grand Marshal Othmar Garithos: war hero, human supremacist, and owner of what his campaign described as “the most magnificent mustache in the Eastern Kingdoms.” His platform was simple, memorable, and could fit on a hat: MAKE LORDAERON GREAT AGAIN. When pressed on when, precisely, Lordaeron had last been “great,” his campaign pointed to “before the elves started ruining everything,” a period historians struggled to identify on any known timeline.
On the other side stood Lady Sylvanas Windrunner, formerly Ranger-General of Silvermoon, currently undead, and leader of the renegade faction she had branded the Forsaken. Her platform was more nuanced, focusing on “inclusive reanimation,” infrastructure rebuilding, and a twelve-point economic plan that no one read because the pamphlets smelled faintly of embalming fluid.
She was also, and this was the problem, still technically dead.
“I prefer the term differently alive,” Sylvanas told the Lordaeron Town Crier in her only sit-down interview, her glowing red eyes narrowing. “And I’d like to remind the voters that my opponent’s most notable military achievement was losing Dalaran to the Scourge and then blaming it on the Blood Elves.”
Garithos’s response was swift and characteristically unsubtle.
“SHE LIVED WITH A DEMON!” he bellowed at his next rally, held in a repurposed barn outside Andorhal. “Varimathras! A Dreadlord! They were political partners! You know what that means! I know what that means! Everybody knows what that means!”
What it meant, precisely, nobody was quite sure. But it certainly sounded bad.
II. THE VARIMATHRAS SCANDAL
The Varimathras affair was, by any measure, an extraordinary piece of political baggage.
Varimathras — eight feet tall, bat-winged, and possessing the general demeanor of a tax auditor from the Twisting Nether — had served as Sylvanas’s chief political lieutenant during the reclamation of the Undercity. Together, they had overthrown his brother dreadlords in what Sylvanas’s campaign retroactively called “a bipartisan liberation effort.”
The trouble was that Varimathras had, at a particularly inopportune moment, attempted to murder Sylvanas and seize the Undercity for the Burning Legion.
“It was a policy disagreement,” Sylvanas’s campaign manager, a skeletal gentleman named Nathanos Blightcaller, said tightly at a press conference. “The Lady Sylvanas terminated the partnership immediately.”
“SHE GOT BETRAYED BY A DEMON!” Garithos roared, with the satisfied air of a man who has never once been betrayed by anyone, despite having been betrayed by roughly everyone. “Terrible judgment! The worst judgment! I would never work with a Dreadlord. I don’t even know what a Dreadlord is. Big demon? Never met one.”
This was, in the strictest factual sense, untrue. Garithos had, during the fall of Lordaeron, taken orders from the Dreadlord Detheroc for several weeks while under magical mind control — a fact his campaign dismissed as “fake arcane news.”
“The Grand Marshal was briefly enchanted,” said his spokesperson, a ruddy-faced man named Stephen of Millston. “It could happen to anyone. The important thing is that he never chose to work with demons, unlike Crooked Sylvanas, who actively recruited one.”
The distinction, while technically valid, did not hold up especially well under scrutiny. Fortunately for Garithos, scrutiny was in short supply.
III. THE WALL
The centerpiece of Garithos’s campaign, the policy proposal that filled town halls and drew standing ovations from crowds of displaced farmers and unemployed footmen, was the Wall.
“We’re going to build a wall,” Garithos declared at the great rally in Hearthglen, standing on a stage constructed from reclaimed Scourge lumber. “A big, beautiful wall. Across the entire border with Quel’Thalas. And the elves are going to pay for it!”
The crowd erupted. Someone threw a shoe in the air. A child waved a small flag bearing Garithos’s face and mustache, the latter of which took up roughly sixty percent of the flag.
The logistics of the wall were, to put it charitably, underdeveloped. Quel’Thalas lay to the north, separated from Lordaeron by the Ghostlands — a blighted, corpse-riddled wasteland teeming with undead abominations, feral ghouls, and at least three raid bosses.
“Who’s going to build it?” asked a reporter from the Stormwind Herald.
“Human workers. Lordaeron workers. Not elves. Elves are — and I say this with tremendous respect — they’re not sending their best. They’re sending their mana addicts, their Arcane junkies, their — some, I assume, are good people.”
“Sir, the Blood Elves are currently suffering from severe magical withdrawal after the destruction of the Sunwell and are in a state of civilizational collapse—”
“Not our problem! Wall!”
The crowd roared again.
Prince Kael’thas Sunstrider, reached for comment in distant Outland where he was busy making a series of increasingly questionable life decisions, sent a brief magical communiqué: “We are not paying for a wall. We are dealing with an existential fel addiction crisis. Also, I have found new allies who are definitely trustworthy, so please stop writing to me.”
Garithos held up the communiqué at his next rally.
“He says they’re not paying! That means they’re paying! When an elf says no, it means yes! That’s just how they negotiate! I know elves! I’ve dealt with elves! Tremendous negotiator, everyone says so!”
No one had said so.
IV. THE DEBATE
The first and only presidential debate was held in the shattered courtyard of the former Lordaeron Royal Palace, which someone had optimistically decorated with bunting.
The moderator was Chromie, a bronze dragon in gnomish form, selected for her perceived neutrality and ability to rewind time if either candidate physically attacked the other, which bookmakers in Booty Bay rated as a near-certainty.
CHROMIE: Welcome to the first Presidential Debate of Lordaeron. Lady Sylvanas, we’ll begin with you. How do you respond to allegations that your partnership with the Dreadlord Varimathras demonstrates a fundamental lack of judgment?
SYLVANAS: Thank you, Chromie. I’d like to address this directly. Varimathras was a strategic alliance born of necessity in wartime conditions. When he revealed his true loyalties, I personally put three arrows through his chest and banished him to the Twisting Nether. I’d like to see my opponent handle betrayal with that kind of efficiency.
GARITHOS: She admits it! She admits she worked with a demon! You heard it! Everyone heard it! This is what’s wrong with Lordaeron — demons, undead, elves, more elves, different kinds of elves—
CHROMIE: Grand Marshal, the question was directed at Lady Sylvanas—
GARITHOS: And another thing! She’s dead! Has anyone noticed? She is a dead person! I’m alive! I have a pulse! Check my pulse! [extends wrist toward moderator] Feel that? That’s a pulse! She doesn’t have one! Is that what we want leading Lordaeron? No pulse? No thank you!
SYLVANAS: I was murdered defending my homeland from the Scourge while the Grand Marshal was losing every strategic position south of Dalaran.
GARITHOS: I didn’t lose them! They were strategically repositioned! And at least I wasn’t working with—
SYLVANAS: If you say “demon” one more time—
GARITHOS: DEMON! Demon demon demon! Varimathras! Big demon boyfriend! Terrible! Sad!
CHROMIE: [quietly activating a temporal shield around herself]
SYLVANAS: This man imprisoned Prince Kael’thas and his people, sent them on suicide missions, and then accused them of treachery when they accepted help to survive.
GARITHOS: They consorted with naga! Snake people! You can’t trust snake people! It’s right there in the name — snake people!
CHROMIE: Grand Marshal, can you outline your economic plan for rebuilding Lordaeron?
GARITHOS: Wall.
CHROMIE: …Could you elaborate?
GARITHOS: Big wall. Jobs building the wall. Economy from the wall. Tariffs on elf goods coming over the wall. It’s beautiful. It’s a beautiful plan. Many people are saying it’s the best economic plan they’ve ever heard.
CHROMIE: Lady Sylvanas, your rebuttal?
SYLVANAS: My rebuttal is that there are no elf goods coming over any border because Quel’Thalas was destroyed, its people are starving, and the only thing that would come over a wall is Scourge remnants, which a wall would not stop because many of them can fly.
GARITHOS: We’ll make the wall taller.
SYLVANAS: They’re incorporeal.
GARITHOS: Magic wall.
SYLVANAS: You just said you don’t trust magic.
GARITHOS: Human magic. Good, clean, Lordaeron magic. Not that elfy stuff. Totally different.
At this point, Chromie called a recess. During the break, Garithos’s campaign distributed small meat pies to the audience, each wrapped in paper reading “PAID FOR BY THE COMMITTEE TO MAKE LORDAERON GREAT AGAIN — NOT PAID FOR BY ELVES.” Sylvanas’s campaign distributed informational pamphlets about undead civil rights, which no one took because, again, the smell.
V. THE ENDORSEMENTS
As the election neared, endorsements rolled in with the predictability of plague in a grain shipment.
Garithos secured the backing of the Scarlet Crusade, whose leadership praised his “commitment to human purity and really excellent facial hair.” Grand Crusader Saidan Dathrohan — who was, unbeknownst to everyone, actually the Dreadlord Balnazzar wearing a human suit — called Garithos “exactly the kind of leader Lordaeron needs,” adding, “and I am definitely a human man and not a demon, so you can trust my endorsement.”
Sylvanas received a tepid endorsement from the Argent Dawn, whose commander, Lord Maxwell Tyrosus, released a statement reading: “Lady Sylvanas is… a candidate. In this election. We acknowledge this. May the Light guide us all, because clearly nothing else will.”
The Kirin Tor declared official neutrality but leaked, through anonymous sources, that they considered both candidates “catastrophic” and were “seriously considering relocating Dalaran to another continent, possibly another planet.”
King Varian Wrynn of Stormwind, reached for comment, said, “We have no official position on Lordaeron’s internal politics,” then muttered something about “the entire Eastern Kingdoms losing its collective mind” before his handlers ended the interview.
Thrall, Warchief of the Horde, expressed bewilderment that Lordaeron was holding an election at all. “Is that an Alliance thing?” he asked. “Voting? We just challenge each other to single combat. Much more efficient. Fewer yard signs.”
VI. THE CLOSING ARGUMENTS
On the eve of the election, both candidates made their final appeals.
Garithos held a torchlit rally outside the ruins of Stratholme — a questionable venue choice, given that the city had been purged of its entire population by Prince Arthas before the war, but the campaign insisted the “energy” was right.
“Tomorrow,” Garithos thundered, his mustache rippling in the firelight, “tomorrow you choose. You choose between a real, living, human man with a pulse and a plan — and a dead elf who dated a demon!”
“I’m a Banshee, not an elf—” Sylvanas’s voice echoed from somewhere in the darkness. Her campaign had set up a counter-rally across the road.
“SEE? She’s eavesdropping! No respect for boundaries! This is why we need the wall!”
Sylvanas, for her part, delivered her closing remarks from the steps of the Undercity, flanked by Forsaken honor guards and a banner reading “STRONGER TOGETHER (EVEN IN UNDEATH).”
“My opponent,” she said, her voice carrying the cold, resonant clarity of someone who had been professionally dead for over a year, “offers you a wall against an enemy that does not exist, endorsed by allies who are secretly demons, funded by an economy that has collapsed, and built on a platform of blaming elves for problems caused by a human prince who murdered his own father and destroyed this kingdom. I offer you competence, infrastructure, and a twelve-point economic plan.”
She paused.
“Also, I have literally conquered death itself, which I feel demonstrates a certain resilience in the face of adversity.”
From across the road: “DEMON GIRLFRIEND!”
Sylvanas closed her eyes — a gesture of exasperation that, in her particular condition, was deeply unsettling to watch.
VII. ELECTION DAY
The election was held on a brisk autumn morning. Polling stations were set up in every surviving settlement in Lordaeron, which numbered eleven. Voter turnout was estimated at approximately forty-three percent of the living population and, controversially, twelve percent of the non-living population, whose eligibility remained a matter of heated dispute.
Garithos’s campaign challenged every undead ballot. Sylvanas’s campaign challenged every ballot from regions under Scarlet Crusade control, on the grounds that they were “governed by a demon in a people suit,” which, while true, was difficult to prove in court.
By sundown, the results were in.
They were very close.
They were, in fact, so close that a recount was ordered, then another recount, then a third recount after the first recount’s ballots were accidentally incinerated by a Forsaken poll worker who sneezed fel-fire, which she insisted was “a medical condition, not voter fraud.”
The final, certified, absolutely-definitely-final results were announced three weeks later by a very tired-looking magistrate.
But that, dear reader, is a story for another chronicle.
Some say Garithos won and immediately began construction on a wall that fell over twice. Some say Sylvanas won and governed with icy competence while Garithos started a podcast called “The Real Lordaeron” from a barn in Hillsbrad. Some say the Bronze Dragonflight looked at the whole mess, sighed, and quietly adjusted the timeline so that none of it ever happened.
What is known is this: in every timeline, in every reality, across every strand of the infinite possibilities of the Great Dark Beyond, Othmar Garithos’s mustache remained absolutely magnificent.
This chronicle was compiled by the Dalaran Historical Society, which would like to remind readers that it bears no responsibility for the political situation in Lordaeron and has, in fact, relocated to Northrend, where the politics, while involving an all-powerful Lich King, are at least refreshingly straightforward.
“Make Lordaeron Great Again” hats are available at all surviving vendors. One size fits most humans. Elves need not apply.
Gemini version
The podium at the Capital City Plaza was constructed entirely from reclaimed, ethically sourced oak, though Grand Marshal Garithos insisted on calling it “The Great Timber of Sovereign Supremacy.” A cluster of heavily armored footmen flanked the stage, sweating profusely under their plate mail while struggling to hold aloft cardboard signs reading GARITHOS: PURE BLOOD, TRUE BORDER.
Garithos adjusted his heavy steel pauldrons, cleared his throat into a magical amplification stone that squealed like a dying ghoul, and leaned into the microphone.
“Thank you, thank you, my fellow pure-blooded citizens of Lordaeron,” Garithos boomed, his voice dripping with righteous indignation. “Look at what they’ve done to our glorious kingdom. We used to be a nation of proud, hardworking human farmers and respectable blacksmiths. Now? Look at the polls. Look at what the radical left-wing ghouls are trying to do to our traditional values!”
A roar of approval went up from the crowd, largely comprised of disgruntled militiamen and guild leaders wearing red cloth sashes.
“They’re laughing at us, folks,” Garithos continued, pacing the stage and wagging a meaty finger. “Stormwind is laughing at us. Ironforge is laughing at us. Even the murlocs are getting better trade deals than we are! But under my administration, those days are over. We are going to Make Lordaeron Great Again.”
The crowd erupted into thunderous chants of “M.L.G.A.! M.L.G.A.!”
Garithos raised a gauntleted hand, soaking in the applause. “And how are we going to do it? By fixing our borders. Right now, folks, people are pouring across our northern frontier from Quel’Thalas. Unvetted. Unfiltered. They bring magic, they bring bad hair, and frankly, some assume, are good people—though I’ve checked the census reports, and frankly, I haven’t seen ‘em!”
He pointed dramatically toward the north.
“That is why, on day one, we are going to build a wall. And let me tell you, it’s going to be a beautiful wall. A high wall. A wall made of impenetrable marble and blessed paladin light so bright it gives the undead a sunburn. And who is going to pay for it? Quel’Thalas! We’ll send the invoice straight to Silvermoon, and if they don’t pay, we’ll shut down their mana wells!”
The applause nearly shattered the surrounding stained-glass windows depicting Terenas Menethil.
Transitioning smoothly, Garithos leaned in closer to the mic, lowering his voice to a conspiratorial rumble. “And speaking of our northern neighbors… let’s talk about my opponent, Lady Sylvanas Windrunner.”
Groans and boos cascaded across the plaza.
“Look, I’ve been very nice about Sylvanas,” Garithos said, rolling his eyes. “Very nice. But the mainstream plagued-media won’t report the truth. Sylvanas is a disaster. Absolute disaster. And she is completely compromised by her past political associations.”
He slammed a fist onto the lectern.
“Let’s talk about Varimathras. Remember Varimathras? Her former campaign manager, her shadow-cabinet advisor, her right-hand dreadlord! They were inseparable, folks. Long walks through the plague lands, late-night council meetings plotting the downfall of the living. And what does she say now? ‘Oh, I didn’t know he was a multi-eyed demon plotting a coup!’ Give me a break.”
Garithos held up his hands in a gesture of utter disbelief.
“Can you imagine? If I had a dreadlord running my super PAC, the Alliance Ethics Board would have my head on a spike by sundown! But Sylvanas gets a free pass from the liberal media because she wears a hood and sings sad songs about the fall of her homeland. Well, I’ll tell you something—her emails are on a server in Undercity, and if the Royal Apothecary Society won’t release them, maybe our brave Gryphon Riders will go down there and find them!”
Wild cheering drowned out the distant cawing of plague crows overhead.
“She wants open borders for banshees,” Garithos shouted over the din. “She wants to replace our honest, law-abiding footmen with mindless shambling corpses who don’t even pay property taxes! Well, I say no. Lordaeron belongs to the living, it belongs to the humans, and frankly, it belongs to me!”
He pointed a gauntlet straight at a reporter from the Tirisfal Times.
“We are going to win so much, you’re going to get tired of winning. You might say, ‘Grand Marshal, please, we can’t take all this winning, we have too much grain and our economy is too stable!’ And I’ll say, ‘Too bad, we’re going to win more!’ God bless you, and God bless Lordaeron!”
As confetti made of shredded tax documents rained down from the sky, Garithos raised both fists in triumph, already imagining the gold-plated plaque he would place on the resolute desk of the throne room.