Wailing Caverns

The Wailing Caverns are natural caves beneath the heart of the Barrens. Steam venting through cracks in the rock makes long, mournful wails, which gave the caves their name. Their underground rivers flow for miles under the savannah. Naralex, a night elf druid, discovered them.

Naralex hoped to use the caverns' springs to make the Barrens lush and fertile again, which meant drawing on the energy of the Emerald Dream. With his disciples, he brought up enough water from below to create a few small oases. Once he linked himself to the Dream, his vision turned into a nightmare: the waters went foul, and the peaceful creatures of the caves became vicious predators. Naralex still sleeps somewhere deep in the caverns, trapped beyond the edge of the Dream.

Most of his disciples lost their minds and turned into the Druids of the Fang. Their four leaders, Lady Anacondra, Lord Cobrahn, Lord Pythas and Lord Serpentis, each carry a dream gem, and the order now seeks to remake the Barrens to fit its own twisted dreams. Deviate beasts fill the tunnels around them.

The Disciple of Naralex, a tauren still loyal to his master, waits just inside the entrance. He asks adventurers to kill the four leaders, then leads them to Naralex and starts a ritual to wake him while they stand guard. In Thunder Bluff, Nara Wildmane wants the four dream gems because the leaders' faces haunt her. Two other disciples, Ebru and Nalpak, want the deviate beasts killed; Apothecary Zamah wants serpentbloom, which grows only deep in the caves; and Crane Operator Bigglefuzz in Ratchet wants back a bottle of port that Mad Magglish stole.

During the ritual, waves of creatures attack, the last of them Mutanus the Devourer, a huge albino murloc born of Naralex's nightmare; once he falls, Naralex wakes. Mutanus leaves behind a glowing green shard. The goblin Sputtervalve in Ratchet sends its finder to Falla Sagewind at the caverns, who sees a nightmare inside it and has it taken to Mathrengyl Bearwalker in Darnassus or Hamuul Runetotem in Thunder Bluff. The druid who receives it hints that all is not well in the Emerald Dream.