The story itself is one of desperation as the Scourge closed in, in those first days of the plague’s spread through Lordaeron.  What I noticed as my little deader shambled his way through the area, though, was how gorgeous it was.

Yes, it’s gloomy and dark and overrun by ghouls and skeletons, but the mills themselves, especially backlit by moonlight (as you can see in this flickr photoset), have an eerie kind of beauty about them.  The windmills stretch up into the night, the fields between them lie fallow.  While I think Elwynn Forest is one of the best put-together starting zones quest-wise, and while Azuremyst and Eversong are gorgeous in their own rights, I find Tirisfal to be the most visually stunning of the starter zones.

It might be that I’m slightly morbid; I’ll grant you that.

But here you are, looking on a countryside that’s been ravaged by plague. You’re travelling through a dead kingdom, and through the place where the brightest hope for humanity became its worst nightmare.  An immense sadness permeates the zone, but at the same time — especially when you reach Brill — there’s a stony defiance, too, a sense that its inhabitants will not only rebuild, but thrive.

Comparing Brill to Goldshire (and yes, leaving out the catgirl factor), I can’t help but feel that more care was put into Brill.  Goldshire is comprised of a handful of buildings right on top of one another.  Brill has its own main thoroughfare, including stables and a town hall.  Even its cemetery is impressive.

This evening I’ll get some screenshots up for you, but for now, I’m going to recommend you experience it for yourself, especially if you’ve never played a Forsaken.  Go take a ride through Tirisfal, or even better, a stroll.  Range northwest of Brill, to the Agamand Mills.  Go due north, to the coast and look out over the sea.  To the east, pause at the forgotten grave of Archbishop Alonsus Faol.

One caveat, of course. Brill looks amazing all decorated for the holiday, but since Hallow’s End is going on, you’re going to hear the Headless Horseman’s shouts all the time.  If that’s going to drive you crazy, I’d suggest either turning off in-game sounds or waiting until after the pumpkins and wickermen are packed away for another year.

I am hesitant to say that one particular faction won or lost a particular event. The brief Forsaken Civil war was ended in no small part by the Alliance’s invasion and subsequent killing of Putress. The Horde did get to put down Varimathras and eliminated a significant chunk of the traitors members of the Royal Apothecary. On the Alliance side, we get to how blood thirsty Wrynn is after his stint as a slave-gladiator; Horde wise we see how an insurgency grew underneath Thrall’s nose. This is not an ideal situation for a warchief. But did the Horde really emerge stronger?

I don’t think they did. True, the Alliance lost Bolvar and according to my horde sources, the Forsaken were not blamed for Putress’ insurgency; however, the horde has taken a hit in terms of their Apothecary and it has show how Thrall and Sylvannus were duped. This event provides more evidence for Garrosh’s rise to power within the Horde–an event that may end up fracturing the horde if certain rumors are true. While the Horde reclaimed the Undercity, it was the Alliance who got to kill Putress. And the Horde have to address the fact that one of their capitals was retaken due to Alliance “help.”

I would say the event was a wash. Neither side won or lost. In fact, what we witnessed was some fracturing among the horde races. This fracturing may continue in Cataclysm. Please share your opinions with us! Who “won” Wrathgate/Undercity?

Dead mage, floppy hat

There is more to Davien Stonemantle than her iconic floppy hat. While she is the Loremistress of Noxilite and she has connections to the Riders stemming from other major RP events, she is also the de facto caretaker of her (still breathing) niece and nephew.

Long before Yva Darrows associated (willingly) with the Riders, she was a close confident of Davien. Being incredibly adept at Arcane magic, Davien makes up the Trifecta of magi who were supposed to deliver a massive blow to the Lich King…

Auntie Davien, where are you going?” The little girl perched on the edge of the bed, watching her aunt twist her long black hair into a bun. Implements of the dead woman’s trade were laid out in neat rows on the bedspread — books, crystals, a finely wrought dagger, vials of moonwell water, a pouch filled with runestones, another filled with sand, rings, trinkets and scrolls — all waiting to be tucked into a saddlebag for the journey. Kyree Stonemantle sat amongst them all, tracing a silver rune embossed onto the cover of a musty-smelling book.

Davien placed the last of the pins and glanced at her niece in the mirror. “Away, sweetling, just for a few days.”

“To the north?” The girl’s voice faded out a bit, her eyes going slightly unfocused as she ran her finger along the symbol’s path once more.

The mage turned slowly, frown-lines creasing her forehead as she bent to see what had Kyree so captivated. Magic had always fascinated her niece: Kyree spent hours peering over her shoulder at books she’d brought home from Silvermoon. She’d asked for the meanings of words and symbols so often, Davien had started reading to her from them — so much so that she’d joked once to Pill that the girl could hold her own in a conversation spoken in Thalassian… provided, of course, that the person with whom she was speaking could suss out the archaic verb forms.

But this was different than her regular curiosity. The air thrummed with the familiar feel of the arcane. It was everywhere, always, even when Davien wasn’t channelling it herself, but it was never this… assertive… when it was unwielded. She reached out to touch Kyree’s shoulder.

The thrum grew louder, now a nearly palpable vibration in the otherwise silent room. On the other side of the house, Thrall let out an uneasy bark.

It is bein’ wielded. Clumsily, aye, but it’s respondin’ t’her. She kept her voice pitched low, not wanting to startle Kyree out of her trance. “Aye, t’the north.”

When the girl spoke again, her voice was hollow, expressionless. “It’s dangerous up there. There’s a bad man, and–” The rune flared, turning from silver to bright blue before it subsided. Her eyes went wide and she jerked her hand away from the book. The arcane fled, reverting back to its normal background hum.

Davien gathered her niece into her arms, holding her the way one might cradle a frightened bird. “Shh, love, I know. I’m goin’ t’help make the bad man go away. I’ll be home before y’know it.”

After a moment, Kyree’s frightened breathing slowed. Davien held up her hand and uttered an incantation; her silver hairbrush floated from the desk to her palm, and she began brushing out the girl’s fine black hair and weaving it into a braid. When it was done, they stood before the mirror, examining their reflections.

Davien leaned down to kiss the crown of Kyree’s head. She’s shot up at least two inches since last I noticed. She’s goin’ t’be as tall as me when she’s full-grown. The thought came with a pang of its own: If the world survives the Lich King, that is. She kept her voice from trembling as she straightened. “Now, be good for Lady Nane, an’ take care o’ y’r brother, aye?”

The girl held her eyes in the mirror for a moment, then twisted around to peer up at her for true. “But… who will take care of you?”

Davien smiled and squeezed her shoulder. “Old friends, Kyree-love.”

Two sets of eyes, one golden, one green, fell upon the folded parchment that sat on a silver tray atop the nightstand. It leaned against a glass of water Davien had taken to bed the night before.

Tendrils of frost crept up towards the rim of the glass. A film of ice covered the water’s surface.

“Old friends.”

*****

Death in large numbers. My specialty.

She drew another line in the circle, connecting the glyphs with red chalk and music. No, not music, humming. A song. The song, her song.

“Great magic is needed. Greater still if I can . . . “

She thrust the chalk away and stretched. It was growing hot in here, it always grew hot in her ritual rooms, and the office which had once been fine carpets, a finer desk, and shelves of books had been stripped for her work. The rugs were rolled, the desk was now in the master bedroom, placed in front of the cathedral windows to overlook Dalaran. The books were on other shelves in other rooms. She’d made this place a sanctum. The walls were covered in runes and wards, each meticulously placed to optimize the flow of her magics and to keep her safe. Relics and oddities occupied the rest of the space. She peered at a Faceless One’s tentacle, a bone from a frost wyrm, the tusk of a troll shaman, the pendant of a Winterfall High Chief.

“No, no, no, and no.” It needed to be something else, something greater than small trinkets and old, tired foci. She reached instead for her ritual dagger, one she’d taken from a vrykul witch. Its ruby hilt gleamed in the gaslight. She peered at her reflection in the steel – all of her reflections actually. The way the blade was cut, she could see three of her own self in its gleam.

“Jak, darling?”

She lodged the dagger into the wall at eye height and walked into the living room, sweeping her heavy hair to the side. “Would you help me undo this?”

“Hmmm?” He looked up at her from the chair by the fireplace. His feet were propped on an ottoman. His chest was bare, his legs were covered in comfortable pajama bottoms almost the same blue hue as his eyes. A snoring felhound was wedged in the space between chair and footrest, beneath his knees, though he didn’t seem to pay it much mind.

“This bloody dress. Would you free me, please?”

“I suppose.” He put his book aside and padded across the room, taking his time with the intricate laces. His fingers brushed over every patch of exposed skin. “Whenever you wear this I have to help you out of it. Such a chore, really.”

“Laborious, I know. But there’s work to do, so you’ll just have to suffer.”

“Oh? What have you wrought his time?” He let go of the robe, pressing his lips to her bare shoulder. It fell to the floor and she kicked it aside, now wearing nothing save for a black slip that flitted around her knees.

She led him into the room to show him the new circle on the floor, with its red and purple and white lines. There were tiny glyphs in each segment, drawn and colored with painstaking care. She stepped across the outer band and into the center of it. Her fingers flitted and a soulstone appeared, the cold glass a solid weight in her palm. She placed it in the middle.

“Hand me the dagger, would you love?”

He nodded, jerking it from the wall and handing it to her hilt first. As she turned it over in her hands, the blade aimed towards her palm, he frowned.

“Have a care, would you?”

“Of course. It’s just a little blood, Jak. Honestly.”

“Mmm.” He eyed the runework, his mouth forming the old, arcane names of the shapes he recognized. Some he’d helped her craft during Jolstraer’s ritual, and he smiled at the artful weaving of his ways and hers. “All frost work this time?”

“Yes. Looking for a maelstrom, a storm. A witch storm for the Wrathgate.” She pulled the blade over her palm, watching it flay her skin open, all pink and red and white on the inside. Blood filled the wound and then trickled down, slithering over her fingers to drip onto the steel.

One drop became three in the reflection.

Witch storm of ice, three fold the power of a blizzard. Imagine what you could do with fire and arcane. A storm of that proportion would be beautiful, nigh unstoppable.

“Possible,” she rasped, watching the blood on the blade. “So very possible.”

“What is?”

She dropped to her knees, an enormous grin splitting her face. One bloody palm touched the trigger sigil, and the circle began to glow as she fed power into it. She amassed her magic, and with a few carefully uttered words of an incantation, it flared to life, so bright it was hard to look upon.

“Imagine,” she licked her lips, beginning to laugh. Magic flowed up her arms and over her chest, casting dancing lights against the pale porcelain of her flesh. Her back arched as it sizzled along her spine. “This circle integrated with one of fire and one of arcane. Imagine it, the storm and what it could do. Imagine that magic.” The feedback from the circle surged into her, and she collapsed forward, now on her hands and knees, her breathing ragged.

“I imagine that would be impressive, but how?” She swung her eyes up at him, and they were glazed and unfocused. The purple haze swathing her body became blue and white swirls as the shadows gave way to frost and winter.

“Stonemantle and Crownsilver,” she managed, crawling across the circle to him, her bloody palm leaving smears on the wooden floor. “We could do it, we could . . . it’d be . . . “ He helped her stand, and when her knees began to quake from the magic drowning her, he swung an arm around her waist and held her upright against him.

“It’d be what,” he said, sweeping a lock of hair from her forehead.

She pressed her hands to his cheeks, forgetting her bloody palm, forgetting everything but the magic and the possibilities and the man standing in front of her. “Amazing,” she said against his mouth a moment later. “Bloody amazing.”

This maybe an artifact of the people I game with, but there seems to be a common thread of sadness in all characters who come from “the North.” In fact Yeats said it best (with one small tweak), “Being a Northman, he had an abiding sense of tragedy, which sustained him through temporary periods of joy.”

For our RP, it comes up regularly in the Wrath Expansion. Arthas. The Culling of Stratholme. Wrathgate. The lore and setting of Wrath remind Alliance and Forsaken characters of what they have suffered through and lost. This loss–at least for our realm– has begun affect the identity of characters who come from Lordaeron–Northmen and Forsaken alike.

Grouping people together by ethnicity, even a virtual ethnicity like “Northman” or “Forsaken” is a risky proposition. Just as there is no reason to expect that everyone who was raised in a certain neighborhood/culture/ethnic identity to be alike, there is no reason to expect every character who grew up in Old Town, Senjin Village or as a dwarf in Ironforge to be a carbon copy of WoW’s races. That being said, there are certain historical and cultural concerns that these players will be exposed to.

For example if we continue to look at the North, we see a group of people who were not just devastated by war. We see a landscape decimated by plague. While the living survivors of Lordaeron can mourn their country, there are Forsaken survivors who lost more than just their country but their entire identity. Granted, through Sylvannus and other strong willed Forsaken, they have reforged a new racial identity, but as a culture the Forsaken are not even ten years old. While the living mourn the passing of their home and aspects of their culture, the Forsaken are forced to create something new.

Both provide a certain sense of melancholy. The Northmen miss their home and the Forsaken’s home is damn creepy. Members of both groups are angry at their situation but individually powerless to change it. Granted, we are limited by the mechanics of WoW itself–no matter how many times you clear Stratholme or raid Undercity, they wll always be there–but the logistics of healing the Plaguelands or warring with the Undercity are mind boggling. So we are locked in the same pattern of anger and melancholy that defines Northmen and Forsaken.

Of course there are exceptions; however, even exceptions would be exposed to these aspects of the culture. While the exceptions may not be particularly moved by the loss of their ancestral lands or disturbed by their rotting flesh, they will be aware of these ideas.

I wonder, however, if this Northmen Melancholy–or other cultural tropes–is limited to Feathermoon. I’d ask that other computer-desk-social-scientists give me their impressions of their servers. How do cultural and racial identities play out in the RP on your server?

Accents are a fantastic way of communicating a character’s history and personality without telegraphing this information. They are by no means the only way of doing this; however, they are a popular method of RP on the server. Hell, there are even mods that will change your speech patterns in certain channels.

A couple of pointers on accents:

1) Stay consistent.
Remember Kevin Costner in Robin Hood? He could not maintain his English accent scene to scene. Try to stay consistent with your character’s accent when you RP. You may make changes to the accent–for instance, Bricu’s “You” turned into “Yeh”–and this is acceptable as long as it fits the characters overall voice.

2) Research
Anna researched Aely’s accent before RPing with her. I know of one character/Guild Leader who watches Trainspotting on a semi-regular basis to keep his accent fresh (I suspect he also reads some Irvine Welsh too).

One should also research what is the common accent within the context of ones regular RPers. Of course accents can vary between regions (Bricu, Aely and Tarq, while similar, have major differences in their speaking patters), there should be some consistency between all of them.

3) Be prepared to say it OOCly
Be ready to translate what you wrote in an OOC Channels. Reading all of your apostrophes and creatively spelled words does help develop your character’s voice; however, just as in real life, sometimes an accent makes communication difficult. Just accept the fact that some folks will not be able to read what you’re writing as easily as others.

Those are my Three Rules. I’m always looking for more ideas for improving accents–so share your ideas!

If you have any stories under 1,024 characters, please share them!

A Month Ago

Technically, this was treason. A quick letter to a Forsaken, even to coordinate the capture of the most dangerous creature since the Bloody Prince ascended his frozen throne, was punishable by death. Bricu chuckled at the thought. Just another obstacle as he worked to keep his friends and family safe from a former life.

Stonemantle: We’ve found him. He’s hired us to clear his name. He’s talked to a number of us–except me–and even Darrows has evidence of him. You will know more when I know more.

Cheers, BB

ps. Her name is Naiara.

Bricu sealed his letter with wax, and enclosed it with his rent to the Legerdemain Lounge. If the Crown wanted to charge him with treason, then the Crown could go after Uthas by itself.