Warlords of Draenor came out in 2014. While there were many, many questions about its alternate timeline (was it, for example, a branching universe or a parallel one, for example?) one unresolved issue is that of Ephial.
Given the same Commander status as the player character, Admiral Taylor established his own garrison in the Spires of Arak, not far from the Horde's Axefall outpost. Yet when we went there (the Alliance to check in on him and the Horde to see if they could loot the place,) we discovered that Taylor's garrison had been totally wiped out - its inhabitants were all ghosts. It seems that one of Taylor's chief lieutenants, a human man named Ephial, had turned his people on each other and then used necromancy to take the rest of the garrison leadership and morph them into a Marrowrend-like bone construct.
We of course find Ephial and slay him, but not before he reveals himself to be a necromancer (he uses the same model as Gothik the Harvester and Heigan the Unclean, based on the WCIII Scourge unit.)
Ephial does not appear to be a lone wolf, though, referring to a powerful an unseen master.
In four years we have not had any hint as to who that master might be. So let's consider the possibilities:
Alt-Ner'zhul: Draenor of course had its own version of Ner'zhul, who had turned to Void magic in service to the Iron Horde. In his Shadowmoon Burial Grounds dungeon, we saw him using Void magic to raise the dead, not unlike necromancy. Given the main universe's Ner'zhul's fate, it made a certain thematic sense that this one would be raising the dead. Might Ephial have been an old-school member of the Cult of the Damned, who saw in Ner'zhul the original Lich King? Was he eager to serve this Ner'zhul?
I'm not really convinced of that. At no point was there ever any acknowledgement of the Iron Horde's recruitment of Azerothians. Ner'zhul does not seem as if he would have any reason to trust a Scourge necromancer. Unless he was essentially a misaimed fan, I don't think this could have been who Ephial was talking about.
Bolvar: Bolvar has been interesting as the Lich King. While he's not sending the Scourge to turn Azeroth into an undead wasteland like Ner'zhul and Arthas did, he's also clearly not particularly interested in being "good." The Death Knight class campaign put us back in touch with the Lich King and led to such heinous actions as attacking the Paladin class hall and massacring many Red dragons, all at Bolvar's behest.
Yet in these cases, there was a clear purpose - recruiting powerful individuals. One could maybe imagine Bolvar sending Ephial to "recruit" Admiral Taylor, but he's hardly as powerful a figure as Tirion Fordring. And Taylor was simply used by Ephial as the centerpiece of his odd bone construct. So other than subversion of the Alliance efforts in Draenor, which the Lich King seems unlikely to really care about (and may have been more eager to support,) this move wouldn't have an obvious strategy behind it - and Bolvar is big on long-term strategy (see how he more or less got the Ebon Blade to voluntarily put them back under his control.)
Original Flavor Ner'zhul: In the quest chain to get the Blades of the Fallen Prince - two swords forged from the shards of Frostmourne - Frost DKs are forced to enter the blades, where they find echoes of Ner'zhul and Arthas. It's unclear if these are truly their souls (my understanding is that "echoes" are separate ghostly copies of existing people, hence how you could see echoes of Velen in Mac'aree.) Still, even if it's only a remnant of Ner'zhul, the echo clearly has plans of its own, and tries to trap the Death Knight in the blades for its own purposes.
Is it possible that this echo was reaching out to Ephial? That's debatable, but I kind of doubt it.
Kel'thuzad:
Yes, we've killed him twice as a raid boss. But hear me out: the second appearance of Naxxramas opened up a dangling plot thread that the original had not. In Naxx-40 (Naxx-60? Are we going by level or number of people?) players who defeated Kel'thuzad (who, remember, was the final boss of vanilla WoW,) would get the Lich's phylactery - an item that started a quest. Players would then take the phylactery to an Argent Dawn priest named Inigo Montoy, who promised to then destroy it.
However, there was no follow-up until Wrath, when we found out that Montoy had betrayed the Dawn and returned the phylactery to the Scourge, allowing Kel'thuzad to resurrect. He was made a Lich himself in payment.
Now generally, Liches (at least in D&D, which is where they were invented, though one could certainly argue Sauron from Lord of the Rings or Koschei the Deathless from slavic folklore really originated the trope) usually don't hang out with their phylacteries. They tend to keep them somewhere very secret and safe so that if they are slain, they will pop up somewhere far from whatever it was that killed them.
Kel'thuzad very nearly was destroyed after our first attack on Naxx, and so he's probably learned his lesson, keeping his phylactery somewhere very far away.
And we sure as hell did not find it when we killed him a second time.
This means, then, that there is absolutely no reason for us to believe Kel'thuzad is no more. Unless his phylactery was destroyed "off screen" at some point, we should actually expect that he's still kicking around.
Kel'thuzad was deeply loyal to Ner'zhul and to Arthas, but we really don't know his attitude toward Bolvar. It's possible he serves anyone who wears the crown of domination, but I also wouldn't be shocked if he doesn't like the fact that Bolvar hasn't been pushing for that whole "convert the planet into undeath" plan. Sylvanas is doing a better job of that than the Lich King these days.
So I had to guess, I think Ephial was working for Kel'thuzad, and that we can expect him to pop up again one of these days. Liches are the ultimate recurring villain, and Kel'thuzad, aside from the Lich King himself, is WoW's ultimate example. Don't count this one out.
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