A Blade Fit For A Champion

Quest Giver: Varies by faction and rank. Aspirant versions are given by your faction tent NPC. Valiant versions are given by your city’s grand champion delegate.

Objective: Retrieve the Ashwood Brand from the Maiden of Ashwood Lake in Grizzly Hills and bring it to your quest giver at the Argent Tournament Grounds.

Quick Facts

• Type: Daily (rotating, one of three weapon quests)
• Location: Ashwood Lake, Grizzly Hills (east of Ashwood Post, southwest of Camp Oneqwah)
• Rewards: 2 Aspirant’s Seals (Aspirant version) or 2 Valiant’s Seals (Valiant version), plus gold and XP
• Rotates With: A Worthy Weapon and The Edge of Winter

Walkthrough

• Fly to Ashwood Lake in south-central Grizzly Hills, east of Ashwood Post. The lake is at approximately [60, 52].
• Apply Warts-B-Gone Lip Balm from your inventory. The balm is consumed on each /kiss, so you must reapply it before every attempt. If you /kiss without the balm active, you receive the “Warts!” debuff (cosmetic only, no gameplay effect).
• Target a friendly Lake Frog near the lakeshore and use the /kiss emote.
• If the frog doesn’t transform, reapply the balm, target another frog, and /kiss again. The transformation is random and may take anywhere from 1 to 20+ attempts.
• When you find the right frog, the Maiden of Ashwood Lake appears and says, “Can it really be? Free after all these years?” Speak with her to receive the Ashwood Brand.
• The Maiden despawns after 15-30 seconds, saying “And now, I must return to the waters of the lake.”
• Fly back to the Argent Tournament Grounds and turn in.

Efficiency Tips

• Make a macro. Since you need to reapply the balm before every kiss, this macro handles both actions in one click: /use Warts-B-Gone Lip Balm and /kiss
• You can talk to another player’s Maiden. If someone else triggers the transformation while you’re nearby, you can speak with the Maiden and get the sword without kissing any more frogs yourself. She’s available to any player on the quest.
• The Warts! debuff is purely cosmetic. It makes your character look warty for a short time. Immunities like Ice Block or Divine Shield can remove it, but there’s no gameplay reason to bother.

Lore & Secrets

Arthurian Legend Reference

This quest is a layered fairy tale mashup. The core mechanics combine two classic stories:

• The Frog Prince (Brothers Grimm): A maiden cursed into a frog’s form, freed by a kiss. The quest text explicitly describes her as “a maiden cursed with a frog’s form.”
• The Lady of the Lake (Arthurian legend): A supernatural woman who guards a sacred sword beneath a body of water and bestows it upon a worthy hero. The player’s own line to her (“I’m told you were once the guardian of a fabled sword”) and her parting line (“And now, I must return to the waters of the lake”) are direct references.

The sword itself, the Ashwood Brand, fills the Excalibur role. The entire Argent Tournament is built on medieval jousting tradition, and these weapon dailies extend the Arthurian framework by requiring aspiring champions to prove their worthiness through quests for legendary blades, just as knights of the Round Table sought holy relics.

The quest giver’s turn-in text plays along: “So there is some truth to those old tales?”

Explore Icecrown’s hidden easter eggs, lore mysteries, and connections across Warcraft history in Vikstone’s Icecrown Chronicles, along with the complete quest storyline.