Stormwind City

Stormwind is the greatest city of the humans and the capital of the Alliance in the south, a city of white stone, blue roofs and canals at the north-western edge of Elwynn Forest. It is old, founded some twelve centuries before the Dark Portal by descendants of the ancient empire of Arathor, and it has been destroyed once already: in the First War the orcish Horde burned it to the ground and murdered King Llane. After the Second War it was raised again, stone by stone, more splendid than before.

That rebuilding still haunts it. The nobles never paid the Stonemasons' Guild who did the work, and when the masons protested, the House of Nobles disbanded them. In the riots that followed, Queen Tiffin was killed, and the masons, led by Edwin VanCleef, turned outlaw as the Defias Brotherhood. Now King Varian Wrynn has vanished on a diplomatic voyage, and his young son Anduin sits on the throne. Highlord Bolvar Fordragon rules as regent, advised by the noblewoman Lady Katrana Prestor, whose counsel seems to steer the kingdom in strange directions, and whose true face some in the Alliance have begun to suspect is not her own.

The city's districts are joined by bridges over its canals: the Trade District at its heart, the Cathedral of Light in its square to the north, the Mage Quarter in the west, the Dwarven District and the entrance to the Deeprun Tram to Ironforge in the north-east, and the older streets of Old Town in the east, below Stormwind Keep.

Written for this site from the game's lore. Further reading: Stormwind City on Warcraft Wiki.