Stratholme

Stratholme is a burning ruin in the north of the Eastern Plaguelands. Before its fall it was the northernmost city in Lordaeron and the kingdom's second largest, home to some of the oldest temples of the Church of the Holy Light. At the start of the Second War, Archbishop Alonsus Faol founded the Knights of the Silver Hand in its Alonsus Chapel, and his first paladins included Uther the Lightbringer and Saidan Dathrohan.

On the eve of the Third War, the Cult of the Damned brought the plague of undeath to Stratholme in tainted grain from Andorhal, and the citizens ate it unaware. Prince Arthas arrived with Uther and Jaina Proudmoore, found the city already infected, and ordered a purge that Uther and Jaina refused to join. Arthas and his soldiers killed hundreds of citizens thought to carry the plague and left the city in flames, and his surrender to the Lich King soon followed. The Scourge then claimed the ruins, and the lich Kel'Thuzad now leads the undead there.

Two enemies now split the city and fight without pause. The Scourge holds the eastern districts under Baron Rivendare, a nobleman who became a death knight and now rules Stratholme for Kel'Thuzad from the Slaughter House. The Scarlet Crusade holds the western districts from the Scarlet Bastion, where Grand Crusader Dathrohan leads zealots who see every outsider as corrupted by the undead. The Grand Crusader is secretly the dreadlord Balnazzar, brother of Varimathras of the Undercity.

At Light's Hope Chapel, Duke Nicholas Zverenhoff of the Argent Dawn sends adventurers to kill Archivist Galford and burn the Scarlet archives, accepts Balnazzar's head as proof of the demon's disguise, and then asks for Baron Rivendare's head. Leonid Barthalomew the Revered, also of the Argent Dawn, wants the holy water still stored in the city's supply crates, and Betina Bigglezink wants plagued flesh samples and Scourge data from the ziggurats. Nathanos Blightcaller sends Horde adventurers after Ramstein the Gorger, the abomination that killed him at Marris Stead. Outside the gates, the ghost of Anthion Harmon asks for the rescue of his wife Ysida, whom Rivendare's undead took prisoner.

After Tirion Fordring's trial, Artist Renfray hid his portrait of the Fordring family behind a painting of the twin moons in what is now the Scarlet Bastion, and adventurers recover it for Tirion. In the Slaughter House lies Menethil's Gift, ground the Lich King made holy for the Scourge, where the mage Ras Frostwhisper cut his own throat and rose as the lich who now rules Scholomance.