Mor'Ladim will eat your face

(picture courtesy of WoWWiki)

That’s right. As if hundreds of angry ghouls and a horde of poison-spitting spiders weren’t enough to worry about, there’s also this elite skeletal horror who must be part Devilsaur, with the way he comes out of nowhere and beats you into a pulp.  Nowhere in the cemetery is truly safe, and if you’re running around on its western side especially, you learn the fine art of looking over your shoulder and running like hell at the first sign of him.

But then, you learn the story.

In a lonely corner of the cemetery, there sits a weathered grave whose earth has been disturbed.  Asking around in Darkshire yields you the tale of one Morgan Ladimore, a soldier of the Alliance who was called away to fight at Uther’s side in Lordaeron.  He left his wife and three children behind, and as the war and the years dragged on, he clung to the hope that he’d return home to them someday.

Only, when he did get home, everything had changed.  He found his home in ruins, no sign of his wife and children.  Raven Hill Cemetery stretched on and on, filled with the graves of those who had succumbed to the plague.  The town he’d once known as Grand Hamlet had been renamed Darkshire, reflecting the gloom that had spread over all of the once-lush forest.  A priest suggested he search for the graves of his loved ones, but for a long time he refused.

Until.

When his search of Duskwood had been exhausted, he intended to go to Lakeshire, to continue it there.  Only he went to Raven Hill instead, and wandered amongst the graves.  An overgrown plot caught his eye, and, with dread creeping ever higher in his throat, he uncovered the largest of the three stones:

Lys Ladimore

Beloved Wife and Mother

Grief turned to madness, and he shattered the stones with his sword.  The graveyard attendants who tried to stop him fell beneath his blade.  When clarity returned, he saw the crimes he’d committed.  He drew his belt knife and drove it into his heart.  Morgan Ladimore was buried hastily and without ceremony, but even in death, his grief and guilt would not let him rest.

Days later, he rose once more, rage winning out over sorrow.  He began roaming the final resting place of his family, killing any unfortunate souls who might cross his path.

Once you put him to rest, Commander Ebonlocke of the Night’s Watch has you deliver the heavy news to another Watcher — a woman named Sarah Ladimore.  She gives you her ring to place upon her father’s grave so he’ll know he has her love.  This, truly, is what lets him pass on, and his final act is to bequeath his sword to you.

The Mor’Ladim chain is one of the saddest quest chains in WoW — even moreso, I think, than the Mathias Lerner ones out in Icecrown.  You see the effects of the plague and the war on a man who was simply an average soldier, and the grief and loss he’s gone through.

Archeus is, of course, right next to Verigan’s Fist in Threnn’s bank.  As it was with Verigan’s Fist, I was still fleshing her out when the time came to run through the Duskwood quests.  I know it made her immensely sad — she was new enough to soldiering at that point, and though she’d seen what the plague could do, this was the first place she’d been where its effects were everywhere, the  Scourge running rampant so close to her home city.  There were other horrors there, too, in the form of the worgen and the darkness that had taken hold, but this one struck her the hardest.

She wonders what might have happened if someone had overheard Morgan looking for his family and told him Sarah still lived.  She wonders what kind of guilt and loss Sarah must feel, having been absent when he came looking.  I suppose it’s a bit of a plothole — with Sarah being a member of the Night’s Watch in Darkshire, how could he have missed her? — but it’s easy enough to assume that the priest he asked hadn’t heard of her.  Maybe she was off on patrol, or out in Lakeshire, where he would have gone if he hadn’t found the graves.

Revisiting it makes me want to dig deeper into Sarah’s story.  I feel the itchings of a ficlet, but I’ve never really written from a Lore NPC’s point of view before.  I’m skittish about it.  And yet I can’t get what I suspect would be the opening line out of my mind:  They brought my father’s head to Ebonlocke.

So, it seems only fitting to take a stroll down Festival Lane and talk about quests and items whose completion/acquisition were not only satisfying for the XP and the loot, but for the tale that went along with getting there.  Darrowshire will come later.  For now, we’re going to go even farther back.

To a little farm on the southern coast of Westfall.

When your Alliance paladin reaches his or her 20s, Duthorian Rall in Stormwind’s Cathedral sends you on a quest to test your valor:

Bravery, regardless of the situation, is as much a part of paladinhood as the Light, your armor, and your weapon. Protecting the weak, and not losing faith are two more lessons you must master while you study in the Cathedral of Light.

The one in need of protection, in this case, is Daphne Stilwell, whose farm is threatened by Defias bandits.  You arrive just in time –the bandits are on their way.  Daphne’s no coward; she goes and fetches her gun.  The two of you have to hold off the waves of Defias that are intent on taking the farm.

Once you do, her husband (the blacksmith Jordan Stilwell, who is detained up north in Ironforge) repays his debt to you the best way he can: by forging you a new mace.  Jordan wanted to be a paladin himself, once upon a time, but life took him in another direction.  He does, however, still hold to the faith.  He sends you around the world and into ever more danger (Shadowfang Keep, Blackfathom Deeps) to collect the pieces he needs.

It’s an easy quest chain, and one that yields a weapon you can use well into the 30s at least:  Verigan’s Fist.  That mace will always hold the first slot in Threnn’s bank, as a reminder of where she’s been.  I don’t recall winding the protection of the Stilwell farm into her RP when I first completed the quest; she was still shaping up as a character at that point in time.  But now, it’s part of her backstory — the apprehension as those first red masks crested the hill, consciously pushing it away to concentrate on the fight, the smell of dust in the air and the breeze from the sea lifting sweat-soaked hair from her neck once the battle was done.

Swords are her weapon of choice,* both on the field and at the forge, but when this was gifted to her, she watched its crafting with fascination and carried the finished product with pride for a long time.

*even though, sadly, in-game loot makes holy-specced paladins carry maces. (Boooo.)