Stormwind City

Faction: Alliance · Ruler: King Anduin Wrynn, regent Bolvar Fordragon

The Alliance's greatest city, rebuilt from rubble after The First War by stonemasons who were never paid.

What It Feels Like

Grand, and slightly threadbare. The masonry is magnificent and the maintenance budget is not. Scaffolding stands on the Cathedral's north face and has for two years. The canals are clean in the Trade District and less so behind the Dwarven District.

Crowded with people who arrived recently. Half the city is refugees — Lordaeron families four years on, Westfall farmers who gave up, Dalaran survivors who teach in back rooms. Accents from four dead kingdoms. Everyone is polite about it and nobody is comfortable.

Loud in the morning, tense in the evening. The guard presence in the Trade District is heavy and visibly thinner everywhere else.

The Political Situation

• King Anduin Wrynn is about ten and frightened
• His father Varian Wrynn is missing, and nobody in the palace will say more than that
• Bolvar Fordragon governs honestly and is being managed
• The nobility are contemptuous of the outer provinces and the outer provinces have noticed
• Westfall, Duskwood, and Redridge Mountains have all been effectively abandoned

Districts and Sites

Walking It

From the front gate the road runs through Valley of Heroes — statues of the Second War's dead, and the only place in the city where humans, dwarves and elves stand as equals in stone. It puts visitors in the right frame of mind, which is the point.

The Trade District is the loudest square in the Eastern Kingdoms. The Canals ring everything and every district touches one, which is how goods actually move; the bridges are where you meet people.

Old Town is the oldest surviving stonework and knows it. Narrow, dark by four in the afternoon, and the guard patrols are noticeably lighter.

The Mage Quarter smells faintly of ozone. The Park is the quietest place in the city — the kaldorei quarter, a handful of residents, moonlight-coloured stone, and a small shrine nobody else visits.

Who You Meet

• Guards in blue tabards, underpaid and mostly decent. Nine copper a day, and they will mention it.
• Refugees, everywhere, doing work below what they trained for. A Lordaeron surgeon runs a fish stall on the canal.
• Clergy in white and gold, more visible than the crown. The Church feeds people the crown does not.
• Petitioners on the Keep steps, queuing to be told the treasury is empty
• Dwarven engineers from the Tram works, permanently covered in grease and permanently pleased with themselves
• Nobles' retainers running errands nobody explains

Customs and Manners

• The Light is public. Strangers say "Light be with you" on parting. Refusing to answer it is not rude exactly, but it is noticed.
• Rank is spoken. Address a knight as ser, a priest as father or sister. Getting it wrong marks you as provincial.
• Do not discuss Lordaeron carelessly. Half the room lost somebody. "That's a Lordaeron problem" used to be a shrug and now it starts fights.
• Fel magic is a crime. Warlocks exist in the Slaughtered Lamb's cellar and everyone pretends otherwise. Casting it openly means the Stockade.
• Tipping is not a custom. Paying a craftsman late is the deepest possible insult here, for reasons the whole city understands.

Food and Drink

Human cooking is hearty and unambitious. Bread, stew, river fish, root vegetables, mutton on a good day.

• Canal pike and eel, sold fried from carts. Cheap, decent, universal.
• Westfall bread — the loaf everyone grew up on. Getting scarce and expensive, because Westfall is not shipping grain. This is the single most common conversation in the city.
• Elwynn cider and ale, ordinary and everywhere
• Dwarven stout, imported through the Tram, expensive, and a status drink
• Ironforge cheese and smoked boar, likewise imported

Taverns. The Pig and Whistle in Old Town — where SI:7 people drink and nobody says so. The Blue Recluse in the Mage Quarter, quiet, tolerant of odd conversation. The Gilded Rose in the Trade District, for people with money.

What You Can Buy

The best general market in the Alliance, and the widest selection of trainers anywhere.

See Professions and Crafting for how trades work here.

Groups Worth Knowing

• The Church of the Holy Light — runs the Cathedral, the orphanage, and most of the actual charity. More trusted than the crown.
• Order of the Silver Hand — headquartered at the Cathedral, leaderless since Uther, and arguing with itself
• SI:7 — Old Town. Officially does not exist. Hires quietly.
• The trade guilds — furriers, smiths, brewers. Real political weight, and they remember what happened to the masons.
• The Kirin Tor in exile — a handful of Dalaran survivors teaching in the Mage Quarter without any authority to certify anyone

Downtime Here

Stormwind is the best training and research city in the Alliance. See Travel and Downtime.

Things To Do In A Session

• Attend a service at the Cathedral and watch who is present and who is conspicuously not
• Queue at the Keep with the petitioners and hear six real grievances in an hour
• Take the Deeprun Tram to Ironforge — two hours under the sea, and a genuinely good conversation scene
• Visit the Park and find the one night elf who will talk to you
• Ask about the Stockade riot and notice how quickly people change the subject

Connected to

Varian WrynnCharacterElwynn ForestZoneStormwind CathedralPlaceHumansLoreThe AllianceFactionTTravel and DowntimeRules