Who Changed Your Life: First, Finest and Last?
By Bricu | September 13, 2011
A few weeks ago, the GM of our guild posted a story of Tarquin entitled First, Finest and Last (FFL). This brilliant piece summarizes and presents the history of Tarq in a new, vibrant way: Discussing Tarq’s first, finest and last bosses, loves and kills. It inspired dozens of similar posts. The format changes slightly for each character, but the major points remain: Who, or what, was the first, finest and last? How was this character shaped by other people?
Bricu’s isn’t finished yet. Normally this would just be an example of my slacking; however, my slacking can be your gain. If you want to write up your own FFL, you can my processes for writing Bricu’s story and apply it to your own.
I started by listing names of persons and places that matter to Bricu:
Then I looked for natural groups. For instance, Teigue, Threnn and Soli have all been romantically involved with Bricu. Aelflaed, Tundale and Uthas have managed to give Bricu some sort of a beat-down. Arthas is a particular example of where this can get sticky. Arthas was Bricu’s prince and commander, but he also put a beat down on Bricu (as well as everyone else alive in Azeroth). With a few additional names: Tarquin, Ulthanon, The Roses, the Maunts, Bricu’s groups start to firm up.
Once the name and the groups are structured, it’s easier to assign the First, Finest and Last. Aelflaed delivered a mighty fine (and well deserved) punch to the face, but was it the Finest or the Last? Looking at the other names in that group, it is clear that Aely is most recent, so for now, she’s clearly the Last.
FFL can be considered an epilogue. It might be the highlights of the RP and a way to say goodbye. I, personally, think its just a way to take stock of the character. It’s a chance to revisit what has been done and see how the RP has shaped your character. That may be what you need to get the RP flowing once more.
Share you FFLs with us. What are you going to write about? Loves, losses, fights, deaths? Something else? Share the works in progress and the completed story with us!
1 Comment
Mommacow on September 15, 2011 at 11:57 am.
((I am drabbletastic. Kills first, loves second, except they kind of overlap. Also, I appear to be incapable of using Rashona’s name IC while she’s crazy.))
1) Her first kill had been in calfhood – an old gazelle, the dart tumbling awry as the creature broke cover and bolted for the plains. Her weapon only wounded the prey, while the little bull beside her brought it down with his calf-sized spear. But she’d shared in the kill, and shared in the ritual with the others: touch the blood, thank the prey, leave a strand from your mane in token of your own final sacrifice to the Mother. Then they clumsily but carefully butchered the carcass under the gaze of the apprentice hunter assigned to guide them, while the adolescent stood warily with her nose to the wind for danger. Quillboar were everywhere these days, and the calves would be easy prey to their ancient enemies.
2) Her last kill…blurred, lost as so much had been in the red haze of pain and anger that came the day the world broke. Maybe a hare, disemboweled with a casual paw; maybe a human soldier, stalked through the Stonetalon hills until he made the mistake that allowed her to break his neck or bleed his life away. The line between woman and beast was faint now, but the same impulse drove both: my home, my territory, drive them OUT! But the thought that stirred when she caught the occasional glimpse of black-furred tauren was older, colder, and belonged only to the woman: Traitors. Kill them all.
3) Her finest kill is yet to come; she’ll know what it is when the Mother calls her to it. She hopes, when the red haze recedes and she is capable of hoping (though not of leaving cat-shape behind; she is safe as a cat) that it will be Magatha Grimtotem.
She’s traveled to Outland and fought the horrors there, she’s prowled the halls of Icecrown Citadel, and she knows that the corrupted Aspect of Earth has been seen in the skiles. She knows evil; evil exists in blind rapacity or cool greed or thwarted rage. But treason is a violation that somehow goes much deeper, and if she could pray, she would pray to one day rake her claws through the Elder Crone’s black hide.
4) Her first love is actually her second – a young bull in Moonglade, her attention caught by the gleam of light on his horns at the nightly campfire, and the gleam of humor in his eyes at some quirk of their Kal’dorei hosts. When the time comes, she is not afraid, and what follows is an unexpected sweetness. But it pales in comparison to what she’s known, in breath and blood, since the day she laid a palm on sun-warmed ground and felt Something reaching back to her.
5) Her last was a farewell to the same druid in Moonglade; there’s been nothing since. She never chose to set it aside, but there has never been time, not with study and battle and the constant shifting of her body to meet the moment’s demands.
But her heart has not gone hungry. She fights for those who share her banner; she’d sworn the oath expecting to give and get support, and found friends instead. Unlikely friends – she’d snorted with laughter just to imagine what the shaman of her childhood clan would have said about a good Tauren girl’s bond with a pair of undead arcanists – but friends nonetheless. Even now, with the world broken and her soul broken with it, she takes what comfort she can there.