Players who created a blood elf paladin in the original release of The Burning Crusade quickly discovered something unusual: the Light was regarded very differently in Silvermoon City than it was in Stormwind.
Beneath the Blood Knights' headquarters stood M'uru, a naaru brought to the city after Kael'thas returned from Outland. The magisters learned to draw holy energy from their captive, and the new order of paladins based its powers on that stolen Light.
For a people who had just survived the destruction of the Sunwell and a devastating magical addiction, the method fit the spirit of the time. They no longer waited for the power they needed. They took it.
Key Events
The Naaru Beneath Silvermoon
Lady Liadrin led the Blood Knights. Their difference from traditional paladins was made clear in the class quests themselves: aspiring knights were taught to treat the Light as an energy that could be bent to their will.
M'uru was perfectly suited to that purpose. He stood at the center of the entire system while doing almost nothing of his own accord.
This is an important detail about the early blood elves. After the fall of Quel'Thalas, they reacted painfully to any reminder of their weakness. Even their paladin order was born through control over someone else's power rather than through the restoration of an old religious tradition.
Kael'thas Takes M'uru
By patch 2.4, M'uru's chamber beneath Silvermoon stood empty.
Kael'thas's followers abducted the naaru and carried him to the Isle of Quel'Danas. The magisters who had once drained Light from their captive lost their familiar source of power, while Liadrin had already begun to reconsider the Blood Knights' treatment of the naaru.
The next encounter took place in Sunwell Plateau.
There, M'uru was almost completely drained and was being used by Kael'thas's forces near the final passage to Kil'jaeden. During the second phase of the encounter, the naaru collapsed into a darkened state and became Entropius.
Raiders remember this boss in his own right: before the nerfs, M'uru was considered one of the hardest tests in all of The Burning Crusade. Amid the mechanics, it was easy to forget that the raid was fighting the very same prisoner once held beneath Silvermoon.
What Remained After M'uru
After Kil'jaeden's defeat, Velen and Liadrin came to the Sunwell.
Liadrin openly acknowledged the Blood Knights' guilt for what they had done to the naaru. Velen used M'uru's surviving heart to purify the font.
From that point onward, the Sunwell contained both arcane and holy energy. The Blood Knights could now draw upon the Light through it.
Why Players Remember It
M'uru's story ran through several very different parts of the game. At first, he was almost scenery in Silvermoon—a visual explanation for how the blood elves had gained paladins. Then he disappeared. Months later, raiders found him near the end of the expansion's hardest raid.
After Kil'jaeden's defeat, M'uru's heart became part of the restored Sunwell.
That gives the early story of the Blood Knights a fitting conclusion. The order began with a captive from whom they forcibly drained the Light, and ended with that same naaru becoming part of a font the blood elves approached in an entirely different way.
If you experience The Burning Crusade only through its raids, it is easy to miss half of this story. It began much earlier, beneath the streets of Silvermoon.