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| - A human paladin in the service of the kingdom of Stormwind in Azeroth, Dallahath Halosword is a man whose past is mostly a mystery. He was raised by the clerics at Northshire Abbey, who told him that he was left there as a day-old infant in the year 586, just a few years before the coronation of King Llane Wrynn III. Even they could not tell him who his true parents were. The clerics saw to his academic education, but it was Sir Caderis, a semi-retired warrior of minor nobility and cousin of the Abbot of Northshire, whom Dallahath considered to be his surrogate father. Caderis would test the boy on his lessons, and also provided him with moral and logical instruction based on what he had learned from the clerics. The middle-aged warrior-scholar also took up the task of managing Dallahath’s physical conditioning, as well as training him in the arts of war and combat. Dallahath was barely seven years old when the ravages of the First War reached the secluded Northshire Valley. In a savage tide that could not be checked by the armies of Stormwind, the ferocious Orcs swarmed into northern Stormwind and laid waste to the ancient Abbey. Sir Caderis and Lord Anduin Lothar were barely able to get the defenseless clerics out in time, fleeing to the relative safety of Stormwind Keep. When even this stronghold was overrun and destroyed, and Lord Lothar rallied the survivors and fled to Lordaeron, Caderis and thirteen year-old Dallahath were among the refugees. Due to Caderis’ relation to the Abbot of Northshire, master and pupil were de facto members of the archbishop’s entourage, and Lord Lothar viewed their experience and perspective as valuable. Seeing the versatility that they might provide as people who were exposed to all three ideals – war, learning, and religion – rather than being limited to just one, Caderis and Dallahath both proved useful in the diplomatic struggle that Lothar was forced to wage in order to receive acceptance for the Stormwind refugees within Lordaeron. Six years later, when Archbishop Alonsus Faol proposed the formation of a new order of holy knights, Dallahath and Caderis were amongst those who volunteered to join it. The two of them, along with many other warriors and clerics, stood alongside Sir Uther Lightbringer at the formation of the Knights of the Silver Hand. When the expanded Orcish Horde under Orgrim Doomhammer appeared on the shores of Lordaeron, Dallahath, now eighteen and a paladin initiate under his new lord and master, Sir Caderis, was among the young warriors who opposed them. Having reached his Age of Ascension just two years before, Dallahath was knighted by his liege lord and had earned the right to stand in the line of battle; furthermore, as an orphan, he had the additional duty of choosing a suitable surname for himself. While many of the new paladins were clerics who had more experience or comfort with wielding blunt instruments, Dallahath and Caderis were among those paladins who, as former warriors, had trained with swords, and both were masters of the blade. While Dallahath could not surpass his master in mere sword technique, his ability to channel the powers of the Holy Light were markedly superior, allowing him to devise magical techniques that few other paladins could duplicate. Foremost of these was Dallahath’s ability to channel Light energy directly through the blade of his sword, a fearsome power that made his blade nigh unstoppable. Thus Dallahath of Northshire became Sir Dallahath Halosword, and every soldier under his command would come to recognize him by the glowing aura that enveloped his blade during battle. The two men, along with the rest of the battle-hardened Stormwind veterans, fought valiantly alongside the troops of King Terenas to repel the Orcs from the Southshore region, but despite assistance from the High Elves of Quel’thelas, they were ultimately unable to stem the savage tide. As the Alliance lost battle after battle, Sir Caderis and Dallahath were selected by their friend and commander, Lord Lothar, to command the force that was sent to support Sir Uther Lightbringer against the uprising at Tyr’s Hand. After putting down the uprising and helping secure the city, both Caderis and Dallahath, as well as several other paladins and all their soldiers, battled ferociously against overwhelming odds to utterly rout three separate Orcish warbands that had enveloped Tyr’s Hand. Caderis and Dallahath both had a hand in the discovery of the treachery of Alterac and the destruction of the renegade kingdom as well, for they were permanently integrated into Sir Uther’s army at that point, and fought alongside him for the duration of the war. By the end of the Second War, Dallahath, still only twenty years old, was a close friend of Uther Lightbringer and a captain in his personal force of knights. Although Uther soon received the higher priority of training young Prince Arthas as a Knight of the Silver Hand, Dallahath remained one of his most trusted lieutenants. In 610, he rode with Uther and Prince Arthas against the Forest Trolls of Zul’Aman. Following this victory, however, Dallahath was recalled to Azeroth by his aged mentor, Sir Caderis, who needed his protégé’s help in the rebuilding of Northshire Abbey. While Dallahath was overjoyed at the prospect of finally returning to the place he considered to be his home, his entire life had been dominated by war, and despite his love of peace, he found it difficult to readjust to the duties of a paladin in peacetime. Sir Caderis, having been appointed to the rank of Temple Master by his cousin the High Abbbot, understood that his student required work of an orderly and military fashion to occupy his mind properly and help him adjust. Thus Caderis appointed Dallahath head instructor of the next generation of paladin initiates at Northshire Abbey. Dallahath took to these duties well and enjoyed them immensely – he was responsible for the development of scores of well-trained and talented young paladins. For many years after the defeat and internment of the Orcs, Dallahath lived rather quietly within the walls of Northshire, with a few exceptions. Perhaps the most dramatic disturbance occurred two years after the end of the war, when Orcs from beyond the Dark Portal raided the still-ruined Kingdom of Stormwind. While Dallahath and a number of his trainees were responsible for rallying local troops and leading several patrols that repulsed a number of Orcish war parties, they were not among those soldiers who were part of the Alliance Expedition to Draenor, and Dallahath was deeply dismayed at the news that Turalyon, Danath, and Khadgar, heroes whom he had fought alongside during the war, were lost, seemingly forever. Several years later, Dallahath responded to the alarm following a raid on the lightly-defended village of Goldshire, only a few miles away. In a tragic and totally unexpected move, a dangerously large swarm of ferocious gnolls descended upon the hamlet without warning, killing and burning everything in their path. Troops from Stormwind and paladins under Dallahath’s command from Northshire succeeded in slaying or routing the beasts, and the injured were taken by cart to the Abbey for medical treatment. Among them was a young warrior named Valcorus Stormblade, a former militia soldier and freelance mercenary who had been at home visiting his mother when the attack took place. Although Valcorus recovered within a few days, his mother, for reasons that could not be explained by any of the clerics, remained in a coma. Determined to help the young man through this difficult time, Dallahath took Valcorus under his wing. He and Caderis both recognized the incredible level of raw fighting potential that Valcorus possessed, and over the course of several months they honed the warrior’s skill into a fine razor’s edge. Grateful for the older paladin’s assistance and companionship, yet eager to find a cure for his mother’s ailment, Valcorus declared himself Dallahath’s personal squire, pledging to aid and protect the paladin wherever he might go. Within a year, however, unrest and death had returned to the human lands, in the form of the Undead Scourge. Desperate for assistance, Sir Uther Lightbringer dispatched a messenger to Stormwind, asking Dallahath to lead a detachment of paladins, footmen, and knights to the relief of Lordaeron. With his renowned reputation and excellent leadership ability, Dallahath was able to muster a force of nearly two-thousand Elwynn militiamen. Before Dallahath and his troops could reach the Capitol City, however, both King Terenas and Uther Lightbringer were slain by Arthas, now a Death Knight and a tool of the Burning Legion. Stranded in the Hillsbrad Foothills and surrounded by the newly spawned swarm of undead, Dallahath once again found himself outnumbered and outflanked. As he and his troops fought to escape, a hulking Dreadlord advanced through the seething mass of Undead. Unleashing all his power in a single desperate, selfless act, Dallahath managed to eradicate the demon and most of its minions, allowing his troops to escape back across the Thandol Span. Their leader, however, lay near death, drained of life. Battling his way through the slavering horde of undead to his master’s fallen form, Valcorus lifted up Dallahath’s unconscious body and led the Stormwind detachment back home. Fleeing back to Stormwind, Dallahath’s men placed their commander under the care of his mentor, Sir Caderis, now an old man. After many months, his apprentice regained consciousness; however, all of his skills and abilities as a paladin had been lost. The confrontation with the Dreadlord had drained him completely, and Dallahath could now only lie weakly in bed, listening in frustration as the reports of Lordaeron’s devastation filtered into Stormwind. He was wracked by grief at the news that Sir Uther Lightbringer, as well as many of the paladins that he himself had trained, had been slain at the hands of the Scourge. By the time the once battle-hardened paladin had recovered, the Third War was over, and of all the human lands, only Stormwind was left unscathed. For the next five years after the fall of Lordaeron, Dallahath spent all of his time and energy in a frenzy of training and learning, determined to regain his lost power, restore his lost skills, and learn all that he could about what had transpired in the forgotten lands of Kalimdor. Having been tied to his master’s side for the whole of the Third War, Valcorus now went so far as to eschew service in the Stormwind Army, traveling instead to distant Theramore to bring back knowledge of the new Alliance, the Horde, and the Kal’dorei for Dallahath to study. He eagerly devoured every rare tome that could be delivered to the remote Abbey from Theramore Isle, learning all he could about what had transpired during the war that he had been forced to miss. While he was deeply interested in the newly-encountered Night Elves and their druidic culture, he was more focused on studying the ascendance of Thrall and the transformation of the Orcish Horde. He had never been able to truly respect the Orcs because of the brutality they had wrought in their wars, but he was inspired by the noble example set by their new Warchief. Knowing that his oldest foes had been freed from the domination of the Burning Legion gave Dallahath some hope that reconciliation, or at least, peaceful coexistence with the Orcs, might one day be possible. Dallahath traveled to Theramore at the earliest opportunity, where he spent many months assisting Lady Jaina Proudmoore, whom he had met during his service to then-Prince Arthas. He then journeyed to the new Kal'dorei lands, eager to learn all he could about them. During this time he met and befriended a Night Elven druid named Sinolily Swiftleaf, one of a new generation of Kal'dorei females who had broken from the old ways in response to the new reality faced by the prideful Night Elves and their place in the Alliance. While in Kalimdor, Dallahath encountered a young female Night Elf warrior named Ralleia Moonblaze, a Kal'dorei who didn't exactly talk, think, or act in quite the same way as the other Night Elves that Dallahath had met up to that point. Opinionated, xenophilic, and flirtatious, she seemed unusually interested in him, given that he was a human - a situation further complicated by the fact that she saved his life during a Naga attack in the Ashenvale forest. They became friends, although the slightly stodgy paladin was unsure quite what to make of her. He ran into her again during his return trip to Stormwind - apparently she had taken a fancy to the idea of travel and had decided to see the Dwarven lands. This time it was Dallahath's turn to save her life - from a dangerous band of Dark Iron saboteurs in the Wetlands - and the eccentric Night Elf became even more interested in him; however, after giving her a tour of Ironforge, he was able to convince her to return to Theramore, and they still remained friends. Returning to Stormwind, Dallahath then encountered Diallia Taslios, a fellow paladin and one of his surviving students, who was among the adventurers recruited by the Stormwind City Guard to restore order after a violent jailbreak in the Stockades. It turned out that Diallia had inherited a tavern from her parents, who had been killed during the war, and that she was attempting to refurbish it to provide a safe haven for her fellow adventurers. Discoveries of dangerous arcane power on the tavern grounds brought the plans of a dangerous and ambitious warlock to Dallahath's attention. This rogue warlock, Shardaan, was determined to seize the negative energy to supplement his own and launched an attack on the tavern, but his forces were beaten back by the adventurers staying there. Dallahath and Valcorus were charged by the Church with tracking down Shardaan and his bodyguard, a dangerous shadow warrior named Galnoth, and bringing them to justice. With the help of Lord Grayson Shadowbreaker, the two men followed Shardaan and Galnoth to Tirisfal Glades, where the warlock planned to siphon a thousand years' worth of residual arcane power from the meeting place of the Order of Tirisfal. Without reinforcements and deep in Forsaken territory, the three men succeeded in killing Galnoth and disabling Shardaan, then escaped back to Stormwind where the warlock was taken and interrogated by the Church. Dallahath and Valcorus, however, were not allowed to participate in the completion of their mission, as word had reached Stormwind from Theramore of the arrival of a mysterious new race. With Lady Jaina Proudmoore pleading for diplomatic aid from the human homeland, Dallahath and Valcorus were dispatched to stop the fracturing of the Alliance and discover the identity of these strange newcomers...
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