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This article or section contains lore taken from the Warcraft RPG books.

Dark Knight was a term, later transformed into a title, given to the lowest ranks of Knights of Lordaeron in the human Alliance before and during the Third War. Lords and war generals without any proper paladin training as well as those who did not descend from a pure bloodline of royal knights were called dark knights, with an emphasis on their poor education in terms of enlightenment (which often led them to be very narrow-minded, egoist or simply racist). Grand Marshal Garithos was known as the last dark knight having survived the Scourge invasion of Lordaeron before the Paladin Order of Stormwind was created.

Dark knights were also a branch of the Cult of the Forgotten Shadow, led by a former soldier. He trained dark knights calling them lightslayers to combat Scarlet Crusade raids directly. The dark knights rode into battle against the agents of the Holy Light. However to the cult's dismay, the Crusade's organized tactics ran roughshod over the newly trained dark knights. The failure of the dark knights, inspired another branch of the Forsaken to create a new kind of lightslayers. Ilius inspired by his years as a scout, burglar and sneak thief was inspired to create a new kind of lightslayer, ones that shared more rogue-like qualities, rather than fighting directly.^{HPG 47}

Famous/Named

Garithos - held the dark knight class in The Frozen Throne. Strangely he has a generic mix of abillities from the paladin, tauren chieftain, and mountain king hero units. The use of a paladin spell perhaps suggests the traditional and DnD, background for a dark knight, of being a fallen paladin.