Galen didn't know why he had come to meet Arthas, and then even made two deals with him on the side.
Did Galen need his help?
He didn't.
Galen had already planned things out with the high elves. The destruction of the Silvermoon Council was a certainty.
As for the safety of the Sunwell, even if the Lich King's undead army was twice as large, even if a traitor appeared again and destroyed Silvermoon City's magical barrier from within, the Sunwell would still be impregnable.
If it really came down to it, Galen would just teleport a dozen legions over and forcibly crush the Lich King's strategic plans ahead of time with the Crusader's iron torrent!
He was determined to protect the high elves, even if the undead Scourge came!
Once Silvermoon City couldn't be taken after a long siege, and the Burning Legion urged them on, Galen would find an opportunity to spread the news of Suramar and the Darkmoon Faire, and Ner'zhul would naturally go and pick a soft persimmon to squeeze.
Galen also felt somewhat complicated.
Perhaps it was out of sympathy for Arthas, the tragic prince.
Perhaps it was because he saw a shadow of his former self in him, always hoping to encounter a "Frostmourne" when he was unable to do something.
In short, all sorts of complex emotions led Galen to decide to meet Arthas, just to fulfill a sentimental wish of his own.
Lordaeron City.
After Arthas stabbed his old father, he handed over the task of slaughtering Lordaeron City to the death knights, Falric and Marwyn.
Ner'zhul used the knowledge he had obtained from the Helm of Domination to improve the way death knights were created, making the second generation of death knights even more powerful.
As for the first generation of death knights, those were dead knights with orc warlock souls stuffed inside…
Gul'dan's simple and crude methods were scorned by Ner'zhul, who was a refined person!
However, Galen still preferred Gul'dan a little more. After all, same sexes repel each other, and Azeroth didn't need two old geezers!
The slaughter went very smoothly. With Arthas's understanding of the city's defenses, the city guard's garrison was attacked first, making them unable to rescue the inner city. In the royal palace, the royal guards were personally wiped out by Arthas, cutting off the last hope for the Menethil family to turn the tables.
The characteristics of the undead Scourge lay in the undead soldiers' corpses and the infectiousness of the Scourge's plague.
In order to take advantage of this, the Lich King Ner'zhul directly dispatched a group of Cult of the Damned members who had been lurking for a long time to set up plague cauldrons in the city and release green plague gas.
In addition, Terenas, in order to build momentum for his son, had mobilized all the residents of the city to gather in several large squares in the city to participate in the celebration.
The gathered crowds became a breeding ground for the spread of the plague, saving the undead the trouble of breaking into houses one by one. They only needed to wait slowly, and the situation would snowball later on.
With blood and airborne transmission working together, the 400,000 soldiers and civilians seemed to be in Ner'zhul's pocket.
Unfortunately, the ideal was beautiful, but the reality was cruel. Humans were not the qiraji kingdom under Northrend, single-mindedly fighting the Lich King head-on.
"Everyone, run to the south of the city, there's a way out there!"
"Run! You'll be safe once you get on the boat!"
In an instant, a large number of civilians who had just been fleeing in panic with the crowd tore off the bulky Lordaeron-style robes on their bodies, revealing the close-fitting chain mail underneath, and then drew their short axes and turned around to chop down the pursuing undead.
"There's a way out on the lakeside south of the city, hurry! Hurry!"
As soon as these words came out, there were chainmail guards behind them protecting them again. The people who had been terrified just now seemed to have found a backbone. Under the guidance of this group of chainmail guards, they changed their previous pushing, trampling, and chaos, and orderly evacuated towards the south.
The undead left by Arthas surrounded them from the east, north, and south of the city, and the inner city's royal palace was attacked from the inside. Now, the only place without undead was the south city wall near Lake Lordamere!
Lake Lordamere was the largest lake in the Eastern Kingdoms. Even Lake Darrowmere in the east and Stillwater Lake in the south could not compare to it.
The lake had a large number of islands in the middle of the lake, and the fishing industry was developed. Moreover, its geographical location was very superior, connecting Lordaeron City to the north, Silverpine Forest to the west, and the fertile Hillsbrad Foothills to the south, which could directly connect to Southshore.
With Terenas's shrewdness, how could he not develop this God-given lake?
Outside the south gate of the city was a freight terminal. Ever since the orcs besieged Lordaeron City more than ten years ago, Terenas had built a commercial terminal here. Goods from all over northern Lordaeron gathered here and were transported by water to the south bank, and then sold to various countries in the south through Southshore.
At this time, Gandalf was waiting on the north shore of Lake Lordamere with thousands of mages from Dalaran. They were only separated from Lordaeron City by a city wall.
The lakeside originally only had a freight terminal, but now, under the ice magic of the Dalaran mages, dense ice crystal terminals were all over the lakeside.
Those ice crystal terminals were quite simple, with channels only half a meter wide. In addition to a channel, there were also high ice fences, which looked very much like the queue channels in amusement parks.
The fishing boats and cargo ships from Valgan's Farm in Silverpine Forest on the west bank of the lake, Ambermill Town, Braden's Farm on the south bank of the lake, and Darrowshire Farm on the northeast bank of the lake were all docked next to these ice crystal terminals, waiting to rescue the people of Lordaeron City.
The 400,000 soldiers and civilians of Lordaeron City were not enough to rely on these fishing boats alone.
Fortunately, Galen had prepared for Arthas's return. The misty shore on the east side of Lake Lordamere belonged to the Kingdom of Alterac. Nefarian's persona, King Daval Prestor, mobilized tens of thousands of people to build thousands of rafts, which were now on their way.
Varian appeared in the southern area of the city. He waved the Shalamayne in his hand, killing an undead with each strike. He had already killed thousands.
Behind him were more than 5,000 militiamen. They were originally Galen's base farmers, who had infiltrated the Hillsbrad area and the Stormwind Kingdom among the refugees ten years ago, and had been living in Lordaeron for more than ten years.
Terenas's screening of refugees was quite strict. Fortunately, the orcs had destroyed the Hillsbrad area, and the household registration system was not perfect. Galen's farmers often formed groups of hundreds or thousands of people to replace the refugees in a village, and even several groups disguised themselves as neighboring villages, providing false testimony to each other and constructing a false kinship network.
Even so, out of the 300,000 farmers, only more than 20,000 were able to enter the Tirisfal region, the core of Lordaeron's rule.
With Varian taking the lead in blocking the undead, the first batch of citizens of the royal city quickly rushed out of the south gate. The desire to survive gave them great strength. At this time, they wished their parents had given them two more legs.
When they saw the large number of ships docked on the lakeside, they knew that it was the hope of escape. They rushed towards the single-person channel ice crystal terminals.
The terminals were like assembly lines, leaving as soon as the ships were full, without any delay. Those people who were squeezed could only grab onto the sides of the ships and swim along, or swim back to the shore and queue up again!
The Lordaeron exodus begins…