In the next xpac, we’re headed towards not just towards Pandas, but an elevated level of conflict between the Alliance and the Horde. On a more depressing level, we also need to realize we are going to loose people as WoW hits 7 and other games launch. During these next few months, before we run out of Cata Steam,long for Mop or say goodbye, we should lay the ground work for the next chapter of our game.

Right now, we can begin to think of how our toons can fit into the Horde-Alliance conflict. Granted, some of us will avoid all the spoilers we can while MoP is building; however, it is not a huge stretch of the imagination to begin to think of how our toons will react as the war heats up. Now is the time to approach players about building rivalries and future Rp events. For instance, I may have talked to someone else about setting up future issues.

IF you are saying good bye, think about how you are leaving the game. Are you killing off your toon? Is your toon riding off into the sunset? Is your toon just going to retire? Keep in mind that as circumstances in real life change, your decisions to leave WoW may change. In short, keep the door open if there is the slightest possibility that you may want to return.

We have said it many times before. RPing is collaborative story telling. OVer the next few months, either a chapter–or a story–are going to end. Give this ending the same care as you did your “golden age” of RP.

A character who is either stupid or willfully obtuse. Dealing with a lurch is no different than dealing with any other difficult character. Some might scream at a lurch, some may ignore a lurch while others just love their lurch. Today’s filler open thread: who is your lurch and how do you rp with them?

She got what she wanted.  The original contract for protection came and went, and then they were both hired by the Riders–and once nearly fired for damn near starting a war with some trolls–and they both made filled their niches.  The husband did magical things, while the wife was simply magical.   She made RP happen with her every day troubles and issues:  When the Riders went to the Outlands, she built a house in the Highlands.   While Riders were storming Ice Crown Citadel, she was trying to have babies.  Her stories were just as important as the content Blizzard made.

She was there for weddings, births, deaths and celebrations.  She was really the only choice for Threnn’s maid of honor and Naiara’s godmother.   Every event she attended was an RP event.  Even a Battleground became an affair for RP.

She made everything fun.

Fells said her goodbyes to Feathermoon yesterday.  I know a lot of people weren’t too keen on the way she said them, but I am going to miss her and her stories.  On a realm full of RPers, in a group full of people who constantly amaze and challenge me, she is the one who always made me bring my A-game even when I had nothing left.

I’m going to miss you Fells.

Fells, just Fells, has a fantastic story to tell. Sadly, she won’t tell you any of this story, even if you were in the Black and Red.

Eyan Woolery could have been her first, the son of an Eastvale logger who came by when his family needed produce and hers needed firewood. A yank on her braid had sent her chasing him into the forest, his quick wit had made her forget her anger, and for three weeks in the sweltering summer they’d been inseparable. Sneaking out had seemed fun and daring. She’d focused on tipping over sleeping cows and wading in the creek and making sure to ignore his attentions. It’d been easy enough to fend him off with a dismissive “‘trothed, Eyan” until he’d hovered too close and she’d realized that she was wetting her lips and watching his own all too intently. Their midnight misadventures ceased, Eyan Woolery took up with Jenna, the tanners’ girl, and Fells was free to wait for the betrothed she’d never met but was certain would come.

Her first was none of anyone’s business – an unnecessary cleanup job done in a fit of blind, stupid panic. At sixteen she should have been retrieved from the Brackwell farm years prior, or if not that, married off to a Light-fearing Elwynn boy and well on her way to giving him a family full of fat, happy babies. She’d helped slaughter and butcher meat for years; it’d been poor practice for taking a human life, crouched over the body in a slurry of dirt and blood that she still had nightmares of trying to wash off. It had been her sharp paring knife, snatched from the floor where it’d been scattered in the raid, that had done her first in. When she’d fled into the forest for safety afterwards, she’d flung it downstream into the creek. Besides needing it gone, she’d simply been trembling too badly to trust herself to run with a blade.

The farm had been her first. Her life was bordered to the east by the creek and the south by the river, with the road to the rest of the world out of shouting distance through the woods to the north. She could have followed it to the tiny schoolhouse twice a week and learned how to read. She could have cast her lot at the garrison once she turned thirteen, or found an apprenticeship in Goldshire at any place but the Lion’s Pride. Instead she’d contented herself with stealing away at odd hours to watch the comings and goings at Stormwind’s great gates. Whole nights had been lost imagining the lives of those who passed through and wondering if one of them might be her intended, finally coming to take her away. She had always ended up rushing back, had always been relieved and disappointed to find the farm still asleep.

One Lord Laurus Drachmas, third son of Heth Drachmas, noble of Lordaeron and self-proclaimed unrepentant freethinker had been her finest, and she would be damned if she’d admit it aloud anymore. Yes, he’d left her holding onto patience by her fingernails more often than not, and the rest of the world had asked her on more than one occasion: “Why him?” She couldn’t have explained their shared, base language of touch and pressure, and wouldn’t have even if her limited vocabulary had allowed it. When night had fallen on the bit of earth they’d carved from the world and claimed for their own, they could be together for a spell and she could believe that they loved each other, even if she had more and more difficulty with liking. Her devotion had been reckless, fervent, stubborn, and in the end, simply not enough.

Rengault Haneaux had been her finest. He was an agent of the Kirin Tor whose murder she’d never been charged with but had ended up sentenced to hang for all the same. It was debatable if the kill had even been hers at all. No, she hadn’t wielded the claws that raked his throat open; she’d only given the word. But the assault she’d rained on the body in a pique of rage might have been what technically did him in anyway. If nothing else, it’d certainly helped him shuffle off the mortal coil more swiftly, and had given her cause enough to claim the kill when she presented it to the man she came all too close to selling out instead of protecting. Haneaux’s had been the first murder she’d anticipated having to commit. It was also the only one she didn’t regret.

Stormwind was her finest; it had offered neither counsel nor compassion, but assigned its tasks just the same: find shelter, find a way to feed herself, find out how long she could manage without one or the other or both. She only had to hold out until her betrothed or her parents came for her, anyway. Like so many abandoned wretches she’d eked out comfort where she could find it, huddled on the front steps of its closed shops or the cramped crevices beneath its bridges where the rain didn’t reach. What coin she needed could be had from the pockets of its unsuspecting citizens. The city had never rewarded her for lessons learned other than the fact that she got to enjoy the benefits of her new-found skills. When she’d done well, it meant a room with a real bed and the luxury of getting to wonder how she would work through tomorrow.

Going by semantics, her last was a bit of a toss-up. With the lamp snuffed, the faint glow of elven eyes was hardly enough to go by, though she didn’t need sight to tell who was who. And in the end, the distinction mattered little. When dawn had burned away the night’s fog, the tangled pile of sheets and limbs separated easily enough into people who roused one at a time to go about their daily chores just the same. The first set to breakfast, the second set to children, and the third slept in far too late to catch the others at either until the sun had climbed well into the sky. Later that night, after the children were down, it’d more than likely start up again. Maybe it’d become routine, but who could ever hope for a more wonderful rut?

Her last was a real tenacious bastard. She knew when to expect him: when Felicia got that certain snotty grin and almost seemed to channel her father directly, that should have been the worst. But she expected the fight then, and it didn’t come, each time leaving her smugly thinking maybe she’d bested him for good. Then the want of him would sneak up on her and strike home without warning, making the back of her mind itch like an ant bite. She could have cut down an opponent of flesh and blood and been done with it, or set poisons to it and let them do the dirty work. Memories and mourning? She had to put those down as soon as they tried to take root, cutting them down with Better Off and Wonderful Home and No Longer Babysitting The Spouse. It was an unending task, but became easier by the day, and eventually she wouldn’t have to think about it at all.

Her last was a rough mishmash of things: children to wrangle and raise, a household to rebuild, a fallen country to help fleece and the spoils of which to see funneled into the right hands. More noteworthy was what it was not: for the very first time in her life she wasn’t mastered by the man she was promised to, hobbled by waiting or duty or playing mediator. Maybe a storm of circumstance tossed her about, but she was the one holding the rudder instead of trusting a Him to hold it for her and letting the rest fall to chance. It only took her twenty-two years to get it right.

Zeve and Taeli are two of the newest RPers to join the WFR crew.  Zeve’s a pirate and he has still managed to stick it out with the likes of Bricu, Tarquin and Ulthanon.  He also hates dog jokesa

Lidia Carraway had been his first and was the only one to surprise him. She hadn’t smiled when she’d singled him out for a dance, and she hadn’t smiled when she’d lured him into a stockroom and laid him on a bed of treated lumber. She’d undressed him just enough, herself barely at all, and had looked as proper when she left as when she’d entered ten minutes before. The memory was as much of splinters in his back and the smell of processed wood as it was of the pleasure she’d drawn out of him. When he’d next seen Lidia at a dinner party and his fellows had seen her look away from him as though he was a disliked acquaintance, they’d exchanged the shit-eating smirks they’d seen from their older peers on so many occasions. It well masked the lying, unsteady confidence of a boy who’d been thrust into manhood too soon.

A Bloodsail bastard had been his first, nameless and not likely to be missed by anyone. The man had been condemned by a gunshot to the stomach and offered as part of an ultimatum: “If you let him die, I will kill you.” Had their positions been reversed, the pirate would have gladly cut him down without a thought, but Zeve’s hands had shaken as he delivered mercy to the dying man. He’d wondered what made him more of a coward: being afraid of killing or being afraid of dying. Weeks had passed before he’d stopped apologizing to the pirate’s pale, dirty face in his dreams. Years had passed before the face and the question had become equally blurred and meaningless.

His father had been his first; Dourian Bosch had wanted to make a son in his own image. Zevedron had been a protege first, a representative of the family second, and a valued son only when he’d merited acclaim for his house. The standard of all things had been propriety. The goal had always been quantifiable success, and to that end Zevedron had been afforded the education and experience to realize his father’s expectations. Unfortunately, he’d discovered that the world outside the manor contained booze, barn dances, and pretty things in petticoats. The only time the Lord Bosch had deigned to touch the boy had been when he had cut his losses and discarded his failed creation with a slap that drew blood and a literal kick to the gutters. The thought always brought a humorless smile to Zeve’s face: so much for proper.

Fells had been his finest. How could she not be? She’d picked him up from the floor of the Pig, held his head over the canals while he retched up three nights’ worth of drink, and had done him the kindness of not pushing him in afterward. That kindness had drawn him to her, compelled him to become better for her, even if at the time it had seemed like part of an effort to win a simple bet. His upbringing had dictated that he seek out certain traits in a woman: culture, propriety, and sensibility. Fells was none of those things, yet that was precisely why he wanted her. When they had first been together, the world could have slipped into the Maelstrom for all he’d cared. After, when she slept and he’d traced out words on her shoulder, he’d marvelled at how quickly she and the family she’d given him had become the center of his life.

A bandit named Jack Slade had been his finest. There had been nothing particularly fine about Jack Slade, or even outstanding–he’d merely chosen the wrong mark at the wrong time. The signet ring Zeve wore was like a beacon to Slade, drawing him to the Gilnean in the hopes of easy riches. What Slade didn’t know was that his mark had only recently been cursed–that his mark was unable to control the transformation from man to monster. Zeve couldn’t remember if the bandit had screamed. When he came back to himself in the small, gore-covered Old Town alleyway, he was gripped by a wicked realization: he was satiated.

Edward Vane had been his finest, if not his worst. Gilneas had given Zeve to the sea, and the sea had given him to Vane, captain of the Black Card. Vane commanded with dispassionate pragmatism: learn or be killed, work or be killed, kill or be killed. Zeve might have boarded as an arrogant noble’s son but the impudence of youth, like the flesh of crewman in need of ‘discipline’, was an unnecessary nuisance to be stripped away. It was Vane who had shown Zeve the weight of taking a life and taught him the meaning of death. When pushed to a breaking point, Zeve respectfully resigned by way of crippling the Card and stealing a longboat’s haul of plunder. At least this time he’d left home of his own volition.

Shad was his last. Shad who had been “Ears,” and became “Haemon,” and was now “mate.” Shad who, when Zeve first asked him to kiss him like he really meant it, had done so gently and with hesitation only to make sure that Zeve was as comfortable as he could be. Zeve didn’t consider himself sly–if asked, he could explain in great detail the things he appreciated about the fairer sex. Still, he could say that he loved Shad and mean it. In order to make sure that their family–their ‘us’–was happy, they had needed to bond with each other. At some point the need had become a want without either of them realizing it.

Someone who had deserved to die was his last. A cultist of some sort meaning to end the world or some such nonsense. Zeve was at peace with the idea that killing was a part of the world–being human had taught him that. Becoming a worgen simply allowed him to kill more efficiently. His last had been preceded very shortly by three or four others just as insane and in need of putting down; there was no shortage of lunatics in the world, but at least a few of them had been dispatched. If Zeve had any say in it, his last would not be the last.

The Riders were his last. Perhaps Tarquin, the master puppeteer or Bricu, the foul-mouthed heart were his superiors, but the Riders were truly his last: men and women from the highest to lowest circles who came together in an equal mixture of Improper and Right. They had accepted him for who and what he was long before he himself had. It’d made settling into their ranks easy, if not natural. The purpose they offered him made the Riders friends and comrades. The freedom they offered him made them family.

This week, we get the real deal on Shad, the official midwife of Feathermoon.

Celesse was his first. He never counted Eurydice, because no matter how she plead, promised, or punished, he always refused her that final step. No, it was the woman he chose to be his wife with whom he finally joined under the shade of a great oak on the shores of Lake Elune’ara. She was beautiful, graceful, so much the ideal woman that he’d been sure that it was love. That it was forever. He didn’t regret those six months, two of whirlwind courtship and four of everything men bemoaned when they shunned marriage. Was it any surprise that he also didn’t regret the kiss that had ruined it all?

In an occupation where these things should have been months preplanned, his first was a surprise. He’d offered some help at the start, but to be there for the terrifying, bloody end of it hadn’t been on the menu. To this day, he’d still never had one that bled as much as that first one. It had taken all his training not to run, but in the end, it was worth it. Most Riders made their way in the world by killing. He considered it a blessing that he’d found another path to take. Nerida O’Connaugh was a most satisfying first child to have to his midwifing credit.

Like most boys, he could count his father as his first. And like so many boys he was so certain that No Really, His Father Hated Him. Why else had he been such a draconian instructor? He’d once made his son sit for three days and nights in the freezing cold of Winterspring, refusing him shelter until he’d felt the pulse of a pine. Even then, he’d never been satisfied. Never once praised him. But he’d show the Dreaming bastard. He’d be twice the druid his father ever was.

There was no question that Fells was his finest. Though his mother had taught him about love, it had been Fells who taught him how, and in the flickering shadows of the waterfall that blurred the bliss of fireworks into a shimmering glow, he’d thanked her for her patience in spades. She wasn’t everything he’d ever dreamed of, but it turned out everything he’d ever dreamed of was pretty stupid, and he never could have fathomed what it was like to actually be happy with someone. She didn’t try to make him into someone he wasn’t; she transformed him effortlessly into who he was supposed to be. Even if she’d only live sixty years more, he knew they’d be the best he’d ever see.

If he had to pick just one, it would have to be Felicia that was his finest, as she demanded that she be born all of fifteen minutes before her twin. Regardless of who’d come forth first, they’d both been his greatest triumph: twins gotten on a once-barren woman thanks to his magics, and a difficult delivery for which he didn’t have to call in more competent help. She–they–were proof that he wasn’t a failure, and the best gift he could offer to the woman he loved. And during the long nights full of screaming infants, that was the thought that kept him sane.

Era was definitely his finest. After the months they’d struggled for control of the plague-ravaged body they shared, the panther would surely have felt fully justified simply slaying his captor and/or taking over entirely. Instead, he’d taught the lonely child what it meant to be a cat, and gradually helped shape him into a man. That they’d grown into equal brothers only made Shad all the more grateful that Era had endured his years of obnoxious condescension. How had he failed to see then that he’d never really been in charge at all?

His last was something of an awkward topic, at least outside of their little family. Sure, he’d been the one to propose the arrangement and insisted that all things had to be equal, but that didn’t make it any less strange to be pulling Zeve down to the mattress with him. But oh, he’d moved as slowly and gently as he would have while treating a wounded tiger, forestalling both flight and fight from both sides of the dance. Of course it wasn’t perfect; he’d have been concerned if it was. But in the end, Zeve’s words always put it best: it was Right.

Technically, his last wasn’t finished yet, but it was his most recent. Baby Boy Windwhisper (as he was presently known) would not come into the world for months yet, but he’d already made his mark. Shad didn’t get many kaldorei clients for obvious biological reasons, and those he did had always been, if not ready, then grateful for the blessing. But in so many ways, his last was also his first. Corrienda was the first to complain of being too young. She was the first for whom he’d researched the remedies taught by whores who’d disposed of unwanted baggage. And even though he hadn’t had to put them into practice for her, she was the first he had to struggle not to despise.

Tarquin was his last. The Riders pledged allegiance to the black and red, not directly to him, but all jobs and orders ultimately filtered through the Boss’s nimble fingers and trickled off his wicked tongue. Shad didn’t know him very well, but did anyone, really? He knew enough; he’d put his life in the man’s hands as both ally and adversary over the years, and his heart still beat, and that was all he needed. Really, if anything made Tarquin special, it was that: Shad didn’t need a damned thing from him other than trust.

The Rider’s resident Midwife and all-around stand up cat, Haemon Shadowind, was the second to write up First, Finest and Last. Here is another brilliant sample for your own FFL.

This is Era. There are many cat spirits, but this one is a favorite. Enjoy!

Any one of them could have been his first; they died and were born so often, who could even tell? And who cared? It had been millennia ago, before there were even trolls to pay their Mother worship, that the fire of instinct first seared his loins and forced him to chase down a mate, dig teeth into her scruff, and make her the unwilling bearer of his first cubs. No, it wasn’t good for him, and less so for her. It was merely the means to a necessary end: brutal, quick, repeated several times, and just like every subsequent encounter for thousands of years in thousands of lives. He couldn’t remember a single one.

His intelligent mind couldn’t remember his first, hidden away in the depths of time and feline memory, but it had been a troll only for lack of any other upright creatures to encounter first. There’d been no malice, of course. Only tame cats had the luxury of expending energy on hunting for sport. It was hunger that brought his weight down on the unsuspecting scout and shoved his fangs through bone and into brain. Remarkably merciful, really; a lesser cat would have taken whole minutes to kill by asphyxiation. He’d devoured the man’s heart (among other viscera), and months later when the man’s brother brought him down in a flurry of arrows, the honor was returned.

Mother had been his first, and should have been his only. She whom the trolls knew as Bethekk had given him life after life as well as death in between, and in return had asked nothing but eternal servitude. None of her children had ever had a choice, but neither had they any understanding to resent the lack of it. In recent years, with sentience as his sharpest weapon, he’d often wondered whether his new place was her choice, and if so, why. More seldom, and only in the quiet darkness when sleep and Shad had both abandoned him, did he ever think to wonder if she’d actually relinquished her control.

There was no question that Fells was his finest. His first too, in many ways, though thanks to Shad’s memories he was no stranger to the mechanics nor the sensations that awaited him in her arms. But flesh was one thing and love quite another, and not a damned thing could have prepared him for the rapture that took them both. It’d taken him three years to realize he loved her, another two to admit it, and six months more to get it right. It was all fucking wasted time, and with the first beatific smile she’d granted him in the darkness he vowed not to waste a second more of what little time the loas might leave them.

Laurus was his finest, a beast of a man who deserved nothing more or less than the most gloriously gruesome death he could deliver. As the slights both large and small piled one atop the other, Era spent his days groveling and his nights imagining the unending pain he’d inflict someday. Someday. But his revenge came unintentionally in the form of a thousand days of strained kindness that had only riled the mage further and chipped slowly away at the patience of his wife. For all he’d tried to steal her, it was none of Era’s doing when Laurus’s life finally walked out the door, leaving him with the empty silence of a house that was no home. Restraint proved to be the sharpest weapon the panther had ever wielded, and the only one that could salvage for himself the benefits of a life worth saving.

Shad was definitely his finest. When the priestess finally fell after months of battle against panthers both physical and spiritual, the elf should have used that staff to force him into absolute submission. Instead, the Will of Arlokk had been laid at his paws. Funny, how the offer of freedom had been the one thing that could have tamed him. He’d been appropriated to teach the elf the ways of the cat, but in the end he’d learned far more from the calm, patient kaldorei on whom he patterned his sentience. Even once they’d become equals, he’d learned the hard way that he couldn’t do it alone. For all his bluster, Era needed his elf like smoke needed flame.

Fells was his last. She was! No, he hadn’t come out for that. He was asleep. No part in it at all. Fuck you.

His last had been a hell of a fight, a fire-wreathed druid with more fury than skill, not that the latter was lacking. They’d circled one another, snarling, after Era’s pounce had been skillfully dodged and elven flesh had melted into fiery fur. The spirit he faced was a magnificent, beautiful beast, and he could see a bit of himself in it. Had things been different, he might have been on their side, serving Ragnaros for the lack of Hakkar. As things were not different, he felt absolutely no remorse for the dive nor the rake of claws that had blessed the charred dirt of the Firelands with a rain of blood and a bit of intestine to boot. He’d taken no specific joy in the kill, but eating the heart always did bring a smile to his red-stained maw. It was nice, sometimes, to be reminded where he came from.

His last was a council of three. Shad may have been employed by the Riders, but Era’d never taken one order from the man he called “Boss” purely in jest. He answered only to the three sets of all-too-observant eyes and ears that learned to echo his every sin, and to the three mouths that declared without words when he would eat, sleep, and have even an instant of privacy. They could be excruciatingly cruel masters, driving him like a mule for days on end, but the reward they granted him was beyond compare. He’d wouldn’t trade their smiles, their hugs, or their shrieky cries of “Dada!” for anything in all the universe.

This is the post that started it all. Very much a brilliant piece of work and a fantastic introduction to Tarquin.

Em had been his first, though even then he’d not known if she was Emily, or Emma, or something stranger. She’d been at least twenty, with a brittle smile and fine dark hair and legs nearly as long and rawboned as his; he was a bundle of knees and elbows and ill-considered intentions at fifteen, but even dogs and idiots could figure it out and so had he. They’d done it in Sickie Croy’s garret, which he rented out for any purpose for a handful of coppers at a time. Tarq, thinking himself clever, had learned a time when it was standing empty and talked Em up there, glib even then. In the course of an hour he learned the mysteries of the universe, and skated up against its limits as well. But someone grassed to Sickie Croy, and he’d found Em and taken a knife to her cheeks, and told her to pass along to the northern boy his lesson. Someone always pays.

Gunnar Glasper had been his first, a Tiresian captain who’d run blockades in the war and was now running harbors in the rebuilding. Evading the King’s tax was one thing, but when he’d taken van Cleef’s bloody coin, Reznik the Shiv had put his name on the Tally. Jasper had found them the ship, and Clobber had stood watch, but it was Tarquin and Loche who’d slipped aboard. They flipped for it, and Tarquin won, or lost. It was strange that he couldn’t remember if they’d flipped to do the deed or avoid doing it; in any case, it was moot to Gunnar Glasper. The knife had gone in under his ear, by his jaw, clean and perfect, but it had come out with a sloppy rip and he’d had to dash out of the harbor red and dripping. Jasper had laughed. The rest of them hadn’t. It took at least another four or five before he could start laughing about a murder.

Orwend had been his first, an old tyrant even when he was young, more master than father – they were much the same in his mind, in his spirit, in his iron bones. The girls had been luckier, Tarquin thought as a boy, left to their own devices; it was only when they went south that he realized how battened-down they were, how bereft of opportunity. The old man had seen opportunity for his sons, so he curbed and bent and hammered them into the shape of those chances. Gyles had broken, and Orvain had bent, but somewhere along the line Tarquin had slipped loose of the frame. He regretted only that he hadn’t taken any more of the old bastard’s chattel with him.

Ceil had been his finest, that storm in the form of a girl, from shy dreamer to scarred sleek killer, madly and inhumanly beautiful all the way along. Their bed had been a haven even when things were bad with them, maybe especially when they were bad; when it was no bed at all and their fingers had clutched at wood or grass or marble, nails digging for the threads of hope and hurt that bound them. They’d pulled each other laughing and calling out through that sweet, aching madness, and attacked life the same way, and there’d never been a thought in Tarquin’s head that it was too good to last. Even now, he wouldn’t fill that hollow place with trite thoughts of inevitability or some such shit. They’d fucked it up, that was all.

The grinning man had been his finest, the slick soiled monster that had stalked his godsdaughter to the end of the world. There was, Tarquin prided himself on knowing, a long list to choose from – the mad Scarlet archmage on whom he’d made his name, Hinote Kirase (shameful or not, it was a hell of a fight), the slickear lord he’d opened from gullet to crotch on the day the Bloody Prince fell, and of course the Butcher. Maybe it should have been the Butcher; after all, he’d never fought like that in his life, before or again. It had been a duel, and the grinning man had been a mad rattling brawl. He’d beaten the man to death with a fireplace poker; what kind of professionalism was that? It was amusing that someone else had finished the job for him in both cases, and when you threw in that Uthas had killed the grinning man for him, well, the pattern spun out of control entirely. In the end, he had to choose the grinning man, because he’d been fighting and bleeding for the wee hen and her mother and father and for everything she represented; for the idea that what he’d built could make things right.

Nikolai had been his finest, of that there was no doubt, that great wind-carved glacier of a man. Osborne had trained him, and Shaw had shaped him over those long years, but in the year he’d worn the Diaconescu raven he learned more about being a man than those esteemed cutthroats had ever managed to teach him in ten. Even now, should the Unfeeling trod through the door of the Pig with a thin tired smile on his battered face, demanding to know what his halfwit lad of a right hand was about, there was a chance that Tarquin would answer him avidly and eagerly, whiskey at the ready. Though he’d more than likely knife the old monster first.

Annalea had been his last, two nights ago, both of them drunk on old John Bell’s good brandy. They’d meant to go over the books, but somewhere during that ever-continuing poker game it had become clear that that certainly wasn’t happening, and when they extricated themselves from the table it suddenly seemed that they couldn’t get to her little room above the street fast enough. Tucked into each other like shells, fingertips to knuckles, here and there a muttered instruction or a bad joke. Annie was nearly thirty, and he could see the crow’s feet starting to gather by her eyes, knew that her breasts would sag and her hips would broaden (just as his hair would go gray and slough out, and his clever fingers would knob and bend). She did not try to fill his hollow places, and he did not try to soothe her scars, and together they were happier than they believed they’d any right to be.

Some mad bugger in the Highlands had been his last, a Tauren in an ill-fitting robe singing down fire from the skies and horror from the deeps. It’d felt good to do field work again, the magic crackling over his skin and Annie’s potions coursing in his veins, keeping him as swift and strong as he’d been fifteen years ago, but ten times the bastard. Big Feliche held the front, arrows and sorcery whipping back and forth, making it easy for him to duck from doorway to alcove to the cultist’s own shadow. The silly fuck had never even seen him, only felt one knife in the back his knee and then, if he was unlucky, the other one going up into his throat as he buckled. It had gone in just as smooth as if he were Gunnar Glasper, and just like Glasper, it had been a mess, the Tauren writhing and bellowing in his death throes. By the time Tarquin had gotten the knife out, the rest of his lot were broken. No matter how many times he’d done this, it still got messy.

He was his last, finally; maybe thirty-four was young yet compared to most masterless men, but Tarquin had done far more living in those years than they, and what the fuck did they know of him anyway? He’d served kings and warlords and preachers and lunatics, schemed and cajoled and snuck and killed, danced for them like the song was ending and the Spring Maiden was just bare yards away. But now he had the fiddle, and when he didn’t know the tune, he’d learned to fake it. Sometimes he shuddered at the things he’d given up, or at the things he’d taken that weren’t precisely his by right. But that was the world. Tarquin was just trying to live in it, without any other bastard telling him what it was he had to do; the money, the lady, the pub and the Riders and the dim hope that he might leave something worth having after he was done, those were all just the benefits of living a masterless life. It wasn’t in him to be content, likely for the same reasons that had driven him to this stage. But he could look at the tally sheet he carried in some glutted red place, see his own name on the header, and decide that he was still winning.

And that would just have to be good enough.

Day drinkers in the Pig and Whistle are not a raucous bunch. Their conversations are a consistent, if dull, hum in the drinking establishment. The more daring, or desperate, typically try to sell a bit of information for a pint or some coin to Bricu. He enforces the more subdued atmosphere with strict control of the taps. Today isn’t much different, except for the hatchet faced dwarf on the loft. He’s dressed far better than most of the other day drinkers, but his eyes are wild and his beard looks more like a bird’s nest than a point of dwarven pride. The dwarf stares at the entrance to the Pig. Bricu and the day drinks doesn’t seem to care.

The dull hum stops completely. From your–and Bricu’s–vantage, you can see who stopped the conversations. She’s a Draenei, dressed more for a street fight than a day of drinking. Her eyes have the glow common to so many of the Ebon Knights who sided against their former King. She gives you, and Bricu, a curt nod and heads upstairs to speak with the wild eyed dwarf. One of the day drinkers starts to follow, but Bricu’s clipped, “Sit.” makes him stop….

“Leave that one alone. Her name’s Sed…short fer Sedrai. She doesn’t deal with Sevens, Costra’s or even Roses. She deals with the kinda bastards that’d make our esteemed professor get all chivalrous ’bout: Demons. She doesn’t study them. She doesn’t consult them. She doesn’t make ‘em pets. She puts the fuckers down.”

Bricu lights another cigarette.

“Now I’ve heard a few things ’bout her crew, an I can’t tell yeh what’s true an’ what’s ballacks. I can tell yeh that she learned some o’her tricks the ol’fashioned way. Yeh ken the kind. Blind, mysterious bastards that’ll see fell taint an’ cut it out quicker than yeh can swallow yer fear. I saw a few o’their kind at the Black Temple… Right, those wankers worked with Malfurion’s bigger-winged brother, but yeh get the idea. Demonhunters. I’ve heard tell o’these folk doin’ things that most others wouldn’t dream o’, an’ that includes our esteemed arcanists’s an’ demonologists. I’ve heard that they bind demons ta themselves ta contain their essence. I’ve heard they’ve gathered blood–aye, blood–ta power rituals ta trick the most powerful o’demonkind. An’ I’ve heard that one upstairs is one o’their enforces. Think ’bout that fer a second, mate. She’s their enforcer. She keeps the ones who bind demons an’ blood gatherin’ ritualists safe. She sound like the kind o’person yeh want ta annoy or pester?

“Me? I’m gonna enjoy me nervous cigarette an’ let her borrow the loft fer a wee bit. It’s a lot fuckin’ better than the alternative.”

Art by Kost

The Night Elf sitting on the bar doesn’t turn her pretty head to you when you enter. She’s too busy starring daggers at the ‘arcanist’ in the corner: The blonde one with a pony tail and the spectacles. Her good side to you, you can tell she’s young and pretty–at least she would be if she wasn’t sneering–but the ease in which she hoists the giant blade propped up next to her makes it clear that she’s familiar with battle.

The arcanist makes apologies, and the pretty elf huffs a few words in Darnassian. With her free hand, she reaches for her over-sized mug of gutrot, and that’s when you can see the scars. The left side of the elf’s face is a tangled mass of healed scars. Are they burns or battle scars?

“Squire, yeh want ta die, I can think o’a thousand more preferable ways than bein’ skinned alive by Illi. Siddown an close yer gob, or she’ll spit yeh like a pig.”

“Yeh won’t find anyone angrier than Illithias. Sure, she’s calmed down a wee bit since she joined the Black n’Red, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t full o’piss an’ vinegar. An’ ale. Someone should probably tell her ta cool it–someone other than Fells–but no one does. Personally, if she’s ol’ enough ta fight, she’s old enough ta drink her self sick.

“What, how old is she? Maybe sixty five winters? Aye, she’s young fer an Elf. She’s an orphan ta, losin’ her family why Hyjal burned the first time. That’s why she’s so bloody pissed an’ why she drinks so bloody much. How the hell is she supposed ta cope? Other than babysit fer the missus an’ me…

“Aye she watches Naiara. She’s good at it ta. The bloodthirsty bit isn’t an act, mind yeh. She’s not some hard-bitten warrior on the outside an’ some sort a simperin’ elf on the inside. She’s angry through-an-through, but she’s not a monster. She just looks–an’ acts–like one. Figure by the time Naiara’s old enough ta swing an axe proper, Illi’ll be calm enough ta be a good trainer. Hell, she’s alread started teachin’ some o’the street kids how ta wield a knife properly. She’s more complicated than folk’ll give her credit fer. The again, how complicated do yeh have ta be ta bury an axe inta a tossers skull?”