Vedaine Dulosse

Among the forgotten tomes of a Dalaran library, in a musty pile somewhere in the back, there exists a very old journal written by a very old man. If you were to find this journal, though no one is saying you did, it might read something like this: "Stop reading immediately". If you kept reading, the book would explode and you would be feeling very sorry for yourself. That doesn't make a very good story, however, so let us assume you opened to page 68; one of the more interesting pages, to be sure.

It details the third, eighth, tenth and thirteenth days of the fifth month of the third year of the research of a specific project of a Dalaran mage, and it reads as follows:

"-is unresponsive. I must find a more durable test subject; thus far all experiments have resulted in an unusable sample. Every single one. Perhaps I should present the project, but... no. The consequences would be dire. All I need is more test subjects, but that worthless Garod keeps bringing me unusable corpses. I need undeath, not death!"

"This subject is different. Much stronger than the others, more twisted, more bestial. I can't risk destroying this one; it resembles a traditional ghoul. A slow dilution process seems the best choice, but it will be difficult to restrain the subject without any magical tampering... I'll just chain it to the wall, lock the door, and hope for the best. This is my promise not to interfere with the process for at least two days."

"Success! As is usually the case, the answer was as simple as it could be. I was thinking of it as a disease, but such was not the case; a simple necromantic contingency, self-perpetuating, is the source of the plague. Yet, this does not explain how the zombies can be organized... by all logic they should wander aimlessly, killing at random. The plague's zombies, however, seem to act as a hive mind. This will be a cause for concern."

"As I suspected, the plague does unify its victims under a common goal. It is not, however, a hive mind; they are being controlled, as they would be by a necromancer. Something has created them, and now commands them, but to maintain that many simultaneously... regardless, it should be a simple matter to ward myself against such a low level of manipulation. The only issue will be to prevent mnemonic destruction, which I believe can be done with-"

That would be where the page ends. Of course, reading any odd-numbered page will cause the explosion, so it is doubtful that anyone but the author could know the end to that sentence. You would be incredibly lucky to open to page 68 in the first place, of course, since most later pages were destroyed from water damage and earlier pages deal with more common problems such as fireballs that won't burn the caster and polymorph spells that affect the victim's mind as well as body. That simply wouldn't be interesting to read about at all, now would it?

Personality
Anyone who's had the pleasure of speaking with Vedaine knows he's extremely proper. The extent of his politeness is, in fact, only matched by his general unpleasantness; he's famously grim, dark, morbid and unhappy with the world at large. To make matters worse, he regularly presents himself as a warped kind of optimist and is extremely interested in other people. He's the sort that would ask you about your family being killed by centaurs only to chuckle insincerely about it as though to humor you. He is apparently incapable of any mood other than melancholy or outraged, but is effectively emotionless the majority of the time which clashes with a lot of what he says.

Another well-known facet of the warlock is his cloistered behavior; unlike most of his peers, he disdains adventure. The only things he enjoys doing with all the arcane knowledge he's built up over the years are flaunting it and using it to slaughter anyone he can get away with. He visits the battlegrounds often, and is an almost frighteningly good soldier in spite of having effectively no magical equipment to back him up as a direct result of not exploring the world.

History
For nearly his entire uninteresting life, Vedaine was nothing but a scholar; it was inevitable, growing up in Dalaran, that he would ultimately end up as a Mage of the Kirin Tor. In other words, he was almost the most unremarkable person possible in Dalaran.

The only thing that set him aside was his personal research.

Vedaine was one of the first to notice Dalaran was attracting demons, but said nothing about it. He wanted to study them. This would ultimately consume his passion for magic as a whole, leading into the darkest secrets of warlocks. However, such would not be his defining moment: Vedaine truly came into his own when the Plague of Undeath was released on Andorhal. He had already been interested in eternal unlife, as by this point his hair was almost gone, but progress had been negligible. Requiring test subjects for his research, he was forced to kidnap and slay innocents; whether this was the cause or effect of his addiction to murder today can't be said for sure.

As the plague swept across Lordaeron, Dulosse made some friends in the military to get his hands on a sample. Garod Lancier, a footman with no moral compass, was easy to bribe. He became so fascinated with the plague that he fell behind on his assigned research, which now seemed mundane in comparison. For several years, he was listed as the least productive of the least prestigious caste of Kirin Tor, but in fact he was working himself sick. It wouldn't have taken long at all for him to complete his pet project if he had the support of Kirin Tor, of course, but with such a controversial (read: blatantly illegal) topic he had to rely on his own very limited resources. After three years of independent research kept quiet, the last one being when the plague struck, Vedaine was ready to test his theory.

On himself.

Already on thin ice with the Kirin Tor, the new and improved Vedaine decided it was time to retire. The obvious route was to stage his own death, requesting that his corpse be sent off to sea; his will was very explicit in noting his remains were not to be cremated. Ironically, the very next year after his supposed demise, hundreds of strong-willed plague victims gained sentience anyway. As he was living a lonely traveler's life up to this point, he decided it would be best to pretend he was one of these new undead when Sylvanas rallied them under her rule. For many years he worked in the background of the new Undercity, going back to his studies of demonology for a time before looking into other insidious magical diseases more controllable than the plague. Eventually he would become bored with this, and struck out on his own once more.

For years more he traveled the world, now a fully-fledged warlock having had the aid of a more freethinking society. He met and befriended a tauren warrior and troll priest, Carnox and Oibix, along the way. Latching on to the ambitious Carnox as he formed the Weeping Oak clan, he became an advisor to what would become a considerable power at the time. However, when Carnox fell ill, the Weeping Oak dissolved and soon reformed into the Talonguard under new leadership. Vedaine was swept along for the ride, getting no position of power to secure his place this time around; he was soon kicked out, as he was and is intolerable to many sane minds.

Thus he wandered once more with Carnox and Oibix, until they came across a promising new clan: the Tears of Draenor.

The Twisting Nether
Continuing to practice demonology as a Tear, Dulosse searched for the answer to a very specific question: "How can I summon an infernal?". He was obsessed with this spell, so much so that when he was eventually able to perfect it he tested it recklessly on Carnox. It was successful. However, as an unforeseen side effect, it ripped a tiny pinhole into the Twisting Nether. Vedaine would have to fix it, and due to the nature of the planar anomaly, it couldn't be rectified by this side alone.

He would have to go to the other.

Departing the Tears to fix the problem he caused, Vedaine magically forced himself across worlds to locate his mistake. It took months to find. Carnox and Oibix, worried for their adopted old codger, followed after a month or two to help; this would lead to a horrible tragedy. After more months of planning, the denizens of that plane had enough time to find out about the pinhole themselves. A Pit Lord, like Mannoroth of old, greedily guarded it from all others. The group would have to get past before the pinhole could be utilized, and so they made an assault.

They failed.

The Pit Lord almost immediately caught on that Oibix was healing Carnox, and impaled him without a second thought. Vedaine realized equally fast that this battle couldn't be won, and told Carnox to flee while he himself made a dangerous impromptu spell using a soulstone. Instead of simply resurrecting Dulosse, it made a clone of him back in the Undercity with no memories of the Nether. Disoriented by multiple months passing in the blink of an eye, the clone immediately sought answers. Eventually, he was able to recall the battle with the Pit Lord, and returned to the Twisting Nether to finish what he started.

The original, however, was not dead.

It wouldn't take long for the clone to find his better half, as Vedaine had incited a small rebellion of demons and become rather infamous in the vicinity. When the two met, the original didn't hesitate in doing what he thought needed to be done: he ordered the demons to kill his clone, and devoured the remains as a reagent for a ritual to absorb the new memories. Waste not, want not.

A few months later, the rebellion had grown large enough for its true purpose. Dulosse had never mentioned the pinhole to any of them, knowing their own greed would lead them to betray him, and presented this rebellion as a more generic fight for power. The lower demons are surprisingly gullible. Telling them they would kill a Pit Lord today to prove their worth and mark them as a force to be reckoned with, Vedaine slipped through the ensuing bloodbath with his officer - a Felguard called Tokumn Haaghun - and through the pinhole, obliterating it as they went. One can only assume the Pit Lord made short work of the upstart demons, but Vedaine had done what he came to do and more: there would be no back door for demons into Azeroth, and he had acquired a powerful new ally.

Now Vedaine has returned to the Tears once more. The future is, obviously, unknown.