Three groups, two of them playable
Zephras Isle is held up by pylons, and the pylons are failing. The wind spirits who anchored the island in Skywall vanished centuries ago and left no instructions. Parts of the island are falling into ruin.
Three groups are named as contesting it:
| Group | What they are | Where they end up |
|---|---|---|
| Windshapers | Shamanistic spiritual leaders who honour the elements | Horde, through the Earthen Ring |
| High Order | Descendants of the Highborne magisters, after the old arcane knowledge | Alliance, through the Kirin Tor |
| Al'Aketh | A cult of Al'Akir the Windlord | Not a choice |
Two of those decide which faction your Skyborne joins and which class opens - Shaman for Windshapers, Mage for the High Order. The third one you fight.
What the Al'Aketh want
They worship Al'Akir the Windlord, the elemental lord of air, and they want the pylons destroyed so that he arrives.
Read that again with the geography in mind. The pylons are the only reason the island is not currently falling. A cult on a failing island has concluded that the correct response to the failure is to finish it, because the thing on the other side of the collapse is a god worth meeting.
Their leader is named as High Priestess Lorthuna.
Where a cult like this comes from
This is the part that makes them more than a monster type.
As the Skyborne islands broke apart, refugees came to Zephras Isle, and many of them arrived with nothing. The accounts describe people turning to banditry or joining the Al'Aketh to survive.
The cult is not recruiting from nowhere. It is recruiting from the people the island's collapse has already cost everything - the ones with the least reason to want the current arrangement preserved. A faith that promises the Windlord's return is a very good offer if the alternative is another year of watching the pylons dim.
The name
Al'Aketh and Al'Akir share a root, which is not subtle and is not meant to be. Whether the name means anything beyond "the ones who follow Al'Akir" has not been stated.
Worth keeping in mind: Skywall was built by the titan-forged to imprison most of Azeroth's air elementals, and Al'Akir ruled it. The Skyborne's ancestors struck their pact with the spirits of a realm that is, structurally, a prison. A cult arguing that the Windlord should be let out is making an argument about the terms of that pact, not just about the weather.
What is actually confirmed
Little, and it is worth being plain about it. Blizzard named the three groups. Beyond that, the detail that exists about the Windshaper and High Order split does not exist for the Al'Aketh.
Guides circulate with complete Al'Aketh questlines, named chains and a step-by-step climax at a shrine. Treat those carefully: they read the beta, not an announcement, and the beta level cap sits at 20 while the zone runs to 12 - so parts of it are testable and parts of the reporting around it is not.
What we carry as solid: the three groups by name, the cult's object of worship, the goal of destroying the pylons, and the fact that the Al'Aketh are not a choice at character creation.
The practical side of Zephras Isle - classes, faction split, the beta findings - is on the Zephras Isle page.