Chapter Text
The parties at Moonblade estate used to be the stuff of legends. By invitation only, of course – and Lord Moonblade was rather picky with his acquaintances. There was the inner circle of his closest friends, then a slightly larger group consisting of scholars, artists, politicians and mutually profitable and influential contacts, and beyond that, no one else. While some of his closest friends might have been of questionable reputation (such as the notoriously ruthless, ill-tempered, power-hungry Illidan Stormrage, or the pragmatic Captain of the Gate Guard Toruviel Thornvale, who famously slept her way to the top), they truly were the young, brilliant elite of Suramar at the time.
Moonblade’s parties, however infrequent, were planned weeks in advance down to the tiniest details – opulent menu, finest wines, seating arranged with precision and diplomacy better suited to warfare. There was a wide array of entertainment; there was music and dance, and poetry readings, and hunting outings, stars were charted for divination, both local and exotic artisans offered their wares, and there always was charity involvement – everything was perfect and no one ever left unsatisfied; for days, wine was flowing, music played and business as well as pleasure was conducted in secret or out in the open on the estate grounds, just out of the gleam and opulence of the beautiful city of Suramar.
Lord Aethril Moonblade himself was a product of pure bloodlines and old money, a magister of the arcane, avid collector of historical artefacts, jeweller with an eye for the finest detail, as proficient with a scribe’s quill as he was with a blade, and after the unfortunate magical experiment that ended both his parents’ lives, the sole heir to the estate. And if that wasn’t enough, he was tall and well built and very easy on the eye, which all made him a rather eligible bachelor. Much to the outrage of all the available ladies of appropriate upbringing, he didn’t seem to be looking to settle down anytime soon. Instead of court politics and romance, he busied himself with endless hours in libraries, travelling for months on end in search of random relics and curiosities, and intricate spellwork, earning a reputation of a peculiar hermit at best (from those ladies who were still trying to pin him down), or a certified crackpot at the worst (no fury like a woman scorned, indeed).
This was all, of course, before the endless Legion invasions, before the fall of Zin-Azshari, before discoveries of other continents, back when the world was still young and mostly unscarred. After the Sundering, Moonblade estate was left empty and eventually fell into disrepair and looters’ hands, and its elusive owner was gone from public eye. Most assumed he died during the many battles that the Kaldorei resistance waged on the Burning Legion (or anytime after, Azeroth wasn’t short on conflict), as did the majority of his inner circle – either dead, imprisoned for eternity, or scattered across the continents, their whereabouts unknown. Years later, not many remembered, and eventually no one wondered any more, and all that was left of the once vibrant and beautiful Moonblade estate was overgrown ruins, dull in the gentle moonlight of Suramar, hidden for millennia under its glittering arcane shield, and ivy covering a peculiar rectangle of churned earth, right where the hunting lodge used to stand.