Razorfen Downs

Razorfen Downs lies at the southern edge of the Barrens, east of the Gold Road, and was grown from the same giant vines as Razorfen Kraul. It is the quilboar's traditional capital and the seat of the Death's Head, the quilboar high priesthood. Its entrance is a cave shaped like a giant boar's mouth, and the quilboar say it is the maw of Agamaggan himself, which swallows anyone disloyal to him.

The quilboar of the Downs struck a pact with the Scourge. The lich Amnennar the Coldbringer and his agents now control them and have turned the thorn maze into an undead stronghold. Some quilboar here have become far stronger and now carry signs of the plague. Ambassador Malcin, an undead envoy who once served the kingdom of Lordaeron as a diplomat, waits in the huts outside and seems to grant undeath to followers seeking power.

Amnennar rules from the Spiral of Thorns and names himself the Lich King's hand. Death's Head necromancers, cultists and geomancers lead withered undead quilboar, while Scourge creatures hold the deeper halls. These include the crypt fiend Tuten'kash, who emerges when a gong in the Caller's Chamber is rung, the abomination Glutton and the skeletal Mordresh Fire Eye. Mordresh tells his skeletons that the Scourge will enslave the quilboar and spread across the Barrens.

Archbishop Benedictus in Stormwind's Cathedral of Light and Andrew Brownell in the Undercity both want Amnennar destroyed, and Brownell says the lich shares a direct mental link with Ner'zhul. Horde adventurers who bring Charlga Razorflank's letter from Razorfen Kraul to Varimathras are sent back to kill Ambassador Malcin. Near the entrance, the night elf Myriam Moonsinger scouts the quilboar for her people and asks for help thinning the ranks that gather around Malcin.

Among the prisoners in the Murder Pens is Belnistrasz, who looks human and says he is not from these parts. He says the quilboar use an idol near the entrance as an oven to cook the captives they take in the Barrens. After his rescuers swear on an oathstone, he asks them to guard him while his ritual puts out the idol's fires for good. The undead quilboar Plaguemaw the Rotting attacks during the ritual, and when it ends Belnistrasz vanishes, leaving a brazier whose flames reveal him as a red dragon.