The Lich King

The Lich King is the lord of the undead Scourge. He rules over the vast majority of undead beings on the planet Azeroth.

Creation
The first Lich King was Ner'zhul, an orc shaman from the planet Draenor. Ner'zhul was widely respected and was very in tune with the ancestral spirits of the planet. He was the closest thing the orcs had to a leader before the forming of the Horde. When the demon lord Sargeras's lieutenant, Kil'jaeden, arrived on Draenor, he briefly fooled Ner'zhul into working for him. However, when Ner'zhul learned from his deceased wife's spirit what Kil'jaeden was really up to, he turned on the demon. Unfortunately, Ner'zhul's pupil, Gul'dan, did not feel the same way. Gul'dan, seeking his own power, betrayed his mentor for the demonic power offered by Kil'jaeden. It was at this point that Gul'dan established the Shadow Council, the orcish worshippers of the demons.

Due to Ner'zhul turning against him, Kil'jaeden kept the shaman under close watch and ordered him to create portals to the planet Azeroth. Meanwhile, Gul'dan offered cursed demon blood to the orcs to drink, claiming it would grant them great strength. In truth, it did, but also placed them under the demons' control. Thus, the demons sent the orcs into Azeroth to clear out any opposition. After two great wars fought between the Alliance (the coalition of the humans, dwarves, and gnomes) and the Horde (the coalition of the orcs, trolls, and goblins), the Alliance was finally able to push the orcs back through the Dark Portal and seal it. While back on Draenor, Teron Gorefiend, a member of the Shadow Council, was able to convince Ner'zhul to begin opening portals to more worlds. He did so, and in the process, abandoned his fellow orcs to the demons in an attempt to escape from Kil'jaeden.

However, Kil'jaeden caught Ner'zhul in the act and killed him. The demon placed Ner'zhul's soul in the Twisting Nether, a chaotic dimensional plane, where the soul lay in a state of perpetual agony for years, until he finally submitted. It was at this point that Kil'jaeden commanded his greater servants, the Nathrezim, to prepare a suit of armor that would act as a vessel for Ner'zhul's soul and give him the power to animate corpses. This, in essence, would give Ner'zhul, now the Lich King, the ability to raise the dead to work as soldiers for the Burning Legion and assist in wiping out any resistance. His first destination: back to Azeroth.

Empowerment
The suit of armor that now served as the vessel for Ner'zhul's soul was encased in magical ice and hurled through outer space to Azeroth, where it landed on the frozen, barren northern continent of Northrend. Here, the Lich King began testing his powers on the sparse indigenous people, mainly the arachnid race called the Nerubians who inhabited the underground areas near where the Lich King had landed. He was able to successfully enslave the Nerubians by using their own dead relatives' reanimated corpses. This gave the Lich King confidence; he adopted the Nerubians as his Crypt Lords, the architects of the Scourge, and began to spread his powers out further. He noticed that he was able to telepathically contact sapient beings on the planet much further than his necromantic powers could reach. At this point, the Lich King began to convince select people in high places, such as the mage Kel'Thuzad, that he was a god and that he would reward those who followed him. Thus the Cult of the Damned was formed.

[To be continued]