After disrupting Shadowguard researchers from recreating the Plague of Corrupted Blood back in Stranglethorn, the Irregulars jested between themselves that anybody serious about inducing apocalypse on Azeroth ought to have started with the Plague of Undeath. Unfortunately, General Zha’hed’s rogue agents would soon reach the same conclusion.
The Shadowguard’s latest allies of convenience were found in the Scourge and the Cult of the Damned. In the Eastern Plaguelands, a dangerous coalition had formed between three disparate warlords: self-styled ‘Revenant Priestess’ Sallow, crypt lord Anub’khavat, and twisted ethereal flesh-crafter Savash. Having lived so long without a body of his own after the destruction of his home planet, this mad K’areshi scientist had developed a morbid obsession with ‘reconfiguring’ corporeal beings - and by extension, the art of necromancy.
After receiving notice from other agents of the Assembly of Dusk, the Irregulars joined forces with some familiar faces to relieve the Argent Crusade - and on the road there, they befriended an enraged banshee whose corpse had been stolen by the Scourge, offering to aid her in her quest for vengeance. The Cursekeeper Association has recovered its ranks after a disaster on Tol Barad, with most of its present scholars and operatives meeting the unit for the first time. And despite that they allegedly stole a dangerous artifact they agreed to see destroyed the last time they were in the company of the Starfallen, the Irregulars’ precarious relationship with the Hat Man and his consociates is apparently still battleworthy.
The three warlords, on the other hand, could not operate so harmoniously. Well aware of his secrets’ value, Savash knew the Scourge forces needed him more than he needed them. And the proud Anub’khavat, believing that the dead should be commanded by one of their own, quietly chafed against the leadership of the mortal Sallow. Whilst their good company handled the other two figureheads, the Irregulars were assigned to monitor and sabotage the crypt lord’s activities by agitating this resentment, a job for which they had the perfect contact: the undead nerubian spy Azret, free of will and an established ally of the unit.
In perhaps their dirtiest performance of skullduggery yet, the Irregulars gained Anub’khavat’s ear and dispatched his treacherous vizier in order to earn his trust, working to turn him against Savash and the Revenant-Priestess. In the process Corporal Hearthgate was able to steal a dangerous instrument for communing with the Void: the Scepter of Anub’atun, once used to divine revelations from the cosmos in an age before the nerubians broke from their Old God masters.
When at last Anub’khavat had been compelled to sabotage Savash’s operations and claim his secrets by force, the Irregulars confronted him in his sprawling underground lair. Presented with evidence of the ethereal’s demise, they turned on the King of Dust and his minions where they had nowhere to hide, using the scepter to create an all-consuming Void rift in the heat of battle. When the portal tore open the crypt lord was ruthlessly banished, and the unit had to outrun the collapse of the burrows as they were torn from reality.
By a (banshee’s) hair, they were even able to reunite the Lady Nightsinger with her corporeal body (after she had fought in the puppeteered corpse of one of the crypt lord’s servants). And so, the Irregulars welcomed a new enlistee into the fold - her vengeance quest complete, and something of her sanity restored.
Hopefully not all of it. They fit in best that way.
