User:Joshmaul/Hands of Joshmaul
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| This article is fan fiction The contents herein are entirely player made and in no way represent official World of Warcraft lore or history. The characters and events listed are of an independent nature and are applied for roleplaying purposes only. |
 Hands of Joshmaul
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| Main leader | Joshmaul the Corruptor |
| Secondary leaders | Settra the Imperishable |
| Race(s) | Orcs, Blood Elves, Forsaken and others |
| Capital | The Undercity |
| Other major cities | Silvermoon City, Shattrath City |
| Main language | Orcish |
| Secondary languages | Thalassian, Gutterspeak, Eredun |
| Theater of operations | Azeroth, Outland |
The Hands of Joshmaul are the servitors of Joshmaul the Corruptor, the powerful orcish warlock who has made himself an enemy of both the Alliance and many "puritanical" elements within the Horde. These casters openly practice the arts of the warlock and the necromancer, or ally with those who do.
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Divisions
The Hands of Joshmaul are divided along racial lines.
- Will of the Corruptor (Forsaken): A battalion of Deathstalkers commanded by General Settra, a death knight in the service of the Dark Lady.
- The Awakened (Orcs and others): Even in this age of reverence for Warchief Thrall, there are orcs who acknowledge the power of warlock magic and necromancy and believe it is the path to true power, and have flocked to Joshmaul's banner. There are also those of other races - even those from the Alliance - who acknowledge Joshmaul's power.
Former Members
- House of Whitehair (Blood Elves): Led by the cunning mage Lord Kel'theris Decibelius, the House of Whitehair was the source of the majority of Joshmaul's support. However, Ordevaas Portalseeker - Joshmaul's lieutenant - discovered the true depths of the Corruptor's treachery. Joshmaul had enticed the House of Whitehair by claiming he was a servant of Prince Kael'thas, only for the Blood Knight Master to discover that Kael'thas was in fact a traitor to all who lived. Angered by the Corruptor's duplicity, Kel'theris rescinded his alliance with Joshmaul and officially declared his allegiance to the Horde.
Powers Utilized
The Hands of Joshmaul utilize various types of power in their master's quest for dominance.
Necromancy
Black magic is a strong focus in the Hands of Joshmaul, as evidenced by both Joshmaul himself and by the death knights coming out of the woodwork. The first of Joshmaul's death knights is General Settra, a former warrior of Lordaeron who was killed by Baron Rivendare and raised as an undead to be trained in the Deathknight Wing of Naxxramas. When he joined the Forsaken, Settra went into hiding in the Alterac Mountains - near the Western Plaguelands - to remain on call in the event of his Dark Lady's call. Joshmaul - having given his service to the Forsaken himself - met with Settra at the behest of Varimathras, and the two became allies.
With Settra under his banner, Joshmaul set about creating more warriors like the undead General. With Settra's aid, Joshmaul lured Noggra - the son of his host-body, Urgan - into a trap in Lordaeron and killed him, then imbued a portion of his own essence into the corpse. Settra then trained him in the ways of the death knight. The process was repeated not long afterwards with Velenkayn, a draenei paladin trained in the ways of the Light by Saavedro of Stratholme, Joshmaul's mortal enemy. Ordevaas Portalseeker suggested that Velenkayn be captured and corrupted, an ultimate irony - one who served the Light becoming a powerful warrior of darkness, as well as a potential way to rid themselves of Saavedro's influence. Joshmaul readily agreed with this plan, which brought Velenkayn into Joshmaul's fold.
Joshmaul's scheming goes even beyond the pale of his usual crimes; seeking a way to avoid the baleful gaze of the Scourge, he offered Velenkayn as something of a peace offering to Baron Artimus Devaneaux, the leader of the Scourge-affiliated Council of Deathlords - a group of death knights who ruled various locales on Azeroth and in Outland. He did so without any consultation with Settra or any other Forsaken.
The Light
During his long conflict with Saavedro, Joshmaul has earned himself the undying emnity of the Church of Light, an organization that Joshmaul scorns as weak and feeble, and the primary reason why the Alliance is ultimately weaker than the Horde. However, with Silvermoon becoming the fifth member of the Horde, the Corruptor found that perhaps the power of the Light could be a useful tool - provided it was used in the "correct" fashion. To that end, he travelled to Silvermoon himself and met with Lady Liadrin, the leader of the Blood Knight Order - Silvermoon's dark equivalent of the Silver Hand. It was then that he met Ordevaas Portalseeker, at that time a newly-minted Adept in the Order - having recently defeated Dar'Khan Drathir, the Scourge overlord in Quel'Thalas, and undergone the trials to create a weapon suited to his rank.
Joshmaul was particularly intrigued by the fact that the Blood Knights didn't seem to do the typical bow-and-scrape routine that normal paladins seemed to favor; rather than serve the Light, they chose to dominate it. Joshmaul took to this concept at once, and made Ordevaas his second-in-command. When Ordevaas began training to become a Blood Knight Master, Joshmaul - who by that time had trained two Masters himself - aided him. Ordevaas was becoming far stronger than his former friend Saavedro with each passing day, and Joshmaul believed that soon he would have a weapon capable of beating Saavedro at his own game. This proved to be wrong, as Ordevaas found that Joshmaul had lied to him to secure his allegiance - and both he and his father, Kel'theris, declared Joshmaul an enemy of the House of Whitehair.
In addition to the Blood Knights he had trained, Joshmaul - when he was beginning his rise to power - met the Forsaken priest Sekhesmet. In life, Sekhesmet had been Saavedro and Ordevaas' master, teaching them the ways of the priesthood and also how to defend themselves in a tight spot. While Saavedro had chosen to be altruistic and heal others, Ordevaas had become a fighter - which made his decision to train in the Blood Knight arts far easier. Though greatly weakened by the long sleep of death, Sekhesmet is beginning to regain his mastery of the powers of the Light he wielded.
The Shadow
However, in addition to the Light-given energies that all priests wielded, Sekhesmet also practiced the darker side of priest magic, as a priest of the Forgotten Shadow - the official "state religion" of the Forsaken. The most deadly weapon in Sekhesmet's magical arsenal was the Devouring Plague, a powerful incantation taught to all Forsaken priests. Its energies sapped the life from the victim and gave it to the caster; the plague was carefully tested in the high-security laboratories of the Apothecarium in the Undercity (Sekhesmet is a junior apothecary, apprenticed to Master Apothecary Faranell himself) before being granted for use by the priests.
Of course, the shadow magic that dominates the Hands of Joshmaul is that of the warlock. Joshmaul himself is a master warlock who has practiced all of the trees of warlock magic - Demonology, Destruction and Affliction - at some point or another. Only recently, however, has he deigned to take an apprentice, in the form of Linavil Shadowsun - a blood elf formerly indentured to service in Ordevaas' family. When she grows enough in strength, Linavil has decided to practice the form that her master followed when he was apprenticed to Kaal Soulreaper - the path of the master demonologist.
Mage Powers
In addition to securing the allegiance of Ordevaas, Joshmaul had also gained a powerful patron in Silvermoon, in the form of Ordevaas' father, Lord Kel'theris Decibelius - patriarch of the House of Whitehair, one of the houses that was part of the original Convocation of Silvermoon at the founding of Quel'Thalas. Kel'theris began his studies in Dalaran shortly before the Third War, but only began seriously training in magic when Quel'Thalas joined the Horde. Kel'theris is a frost mage, using the icy magics to slow his opponents before eventually killing them.
After the discovery of Joshmaul's treachery, Kel'theris pulled the House of Whitehair away from Joshmaul and into the greater Horde, where they would be protected by Warchief Thrall - a sworn enemy of the Corruptor himself.
Notable Members
| Name | Title | Role | Location |
|---|---|---|---|
  Joshmaul
| The Corruptor | Supreme Leader and Grand Warlock of the Hands of Joshmaul | Shattrath City |
  General Settra
| The Imperishable | Joshmaul's chief lieutenant | Alterac Mountains |
 Linavil Shadowsun
| Joshmaul's apprentice | Eversong Woods | |
 Velenkayn
| The Fallen | Draenei vindicator corrupted by Joshmaul | Stratholme |
| The Avatar of Joshmaul
| Reanimated body of Noggra imbued with essence of Joshmaul | Undercity |
