The Great Eastern War is the oldest known conflict in recorded history. It took place thousands of years ago in the first era. The conflict was between the humans and non-humans. The non-humans; mostly elves, dwarves, gnomes, and giants, controlled the Eastern Continent. Eventually the humans, who resided in the southernmost region of the continent, where the Godscar is and the Dunelands, decided they wanted to control the continent and rose up against the non-humans.
The war was mostly led by four houses, House Vallos, House Falcon, House Fowler, House Manter, and House Salethar.
House Salethar stayed back and defended Serpents Rest, just in case the war went bad so the humans had a defended area to retreat to. House Falcon went off on their own, conquering the northern region of the continent, working separately from the other humans. The north was far less defended as it was much less populated. House Falcon was working to make their own kingdom.
House Fowler led the efforts to conquer the forested region occupied by the dwarves, learning to fight and track in the forest. The gnomes fought by ambushes instead of direct conflict since they were weaker, and the humans lead by House Fowler had to adapt. The history books describe the war in the forests as "nightmarish", you never knew when the gnomes would attack and where they were, and you could never tell what was real, as the gnomes were adept at illusion magic.
House Vallos and House Manter led the efforts to take the rest of the country, a seemingly impossible task. For almost two centuries the war waged on, with the humans not coming any closer to conquering the continent. The leader of House Vallos at the time, Victor Vallos, sent his trusted friend Hunter Haddock to explore the Western Continent for anything that might give them an advantage over the non-humans. The Western Continent had never been explored at this point, so Victor was hoping maybe there could be anything useful there. Hunter found eggs in the Golden Wilds, which hatched into fearsome beasts known as dragons. These dragons were nothing more than animals in intelligence, but extremely smart for animals. They were able to be trained to do complex tasks, and bonded fiercely with their owner. To Victor’s surprise, the dragons grew extremely large extremely quickly. Victor distributed dragons to any house willing to fight in order to win the war once and for all.
While Victor Vallos put all his eggs in one basket with his plan of sending Hunter Haddock to the Western Continent, Maverick Manter, the leader of House Manter, held the front lines of the war. Many respected Maverick's dedication and fierce bravery that he displayed, and recognized the fact that he lost no ground despite House Vallos pulling resources from the front lines to fund the expedition to the Western Continent. Luckily, the expedition panned out, and with the dragons, the humans quickly conquered the continent.
The Elves, with their population decimated, all retreated to Stormwind. The dwarves quickly made peace with the humans, vowing to stay inside their mountain. The giants retreated to the Deep North, and the gnomes seemingly all but disappeared. Right after the Great Eastern War ended, many houses fought over who should rule the continent, which became known as the War of the Kings.