Long ago a necromancer named Tep unraveled the mystery of life and death. He learned of the existance of living body sparks that leave the body after death. He spent many years trying to catch them before he finally succeeded. He captured the soul of a living being.

He did it because he wanted immortailty to himself. The people of ZEM (The Arisen) learned about the acts done by him; they gathered and attacked Tep. The battle killed many great Arisen, but the necromancer was defeated and killed. After a great magician died in a great battle with astral demons, the great magician gave all the people of the League the oppurtunity to resurrect after his death.

Myrrh can let to you leave instantly by bribing the Dead Goblin (League) or Demonic Goblin (Empire). Longer ceremony stay, more it costs. One drop is a bribe per one second. So if you have a 93 second stay, you’d need 93 drops.

Here are the prices of buying myrrh from a Servant of the Light by each death spawn point.
10 drops = 1s 13c
50 drops = 5s 63c
100 drops = 11s 25c
500 drops = 56s 25c
1,000 drops = 1g 12s 50c

After the ceremony or bribe is complete, you will be given an invisibility buff that lasts fifteen seconds. You’re character will become partly transparent and will not be able to right click to fight or be attacked. However, casting interrupts the invisibility.

When you die you’d be sent to a Servant of Tensess ceremony resurrection line place. Looks like:

The League spawn point after the purgatory ceremony of death look:

Empire spawn point look:

Reference: Thanks to Аллоды Онлайн for lore information. I make no promise on how correct it currently is.

This year has just flown by, and I’ve not managed everything I hoped to.  There are a half dozen blog posts whirling in my head, but there is only time for this.

The last few weeks have been a pre-season blur and the next few days are sure to be hectic, the trials and tribulations of an extensive  family.

Please take care and drive safe, and we’ll see you next year.

All the best,
Laurie

Now home to the elves, Tenebra is a rich and gorgeous land filled with vampires, spiders, and your occasional snake-lady.  Recently there has been an appearance of a new creature, the vampire, which is traced back to the original carrier, and elf by the name of Vamp de Desirae.  Home to the Darkblood Citadel, a giant floating palace, the elves remain both beautiful and mysterious.

Summer Manor

Lamia Chief

Elven Statue in Summer Manor

From the Allods Online News Feed.

Reclaiming the Winter Solstice
by Melanie Fire Salamander - Widdershins

I’m know I’m not the only person, pagan or otherwise, who approaches the winter holiday season gingerly. To begin with, Americans generally consider Christmas a time to gather with their families. Even for those who get along with their relations, the togetherness (and the cleanup afterward) can be stressful. Further, as a non-Christian, I find it somewhat alienating how Christmas permeates our culture. It’s hard for any non-Christian to ignore – witness the Jewish households with Christmas trees.

Specifically, as a pagan, I find Christmas the height of the borrowed holiday double-bind. The holidays of the winter solstice are the pagan holidays most thieved from and later overlaid by Christianity. Granted anything appropriated by Christians from pagans can be appropriated right back, but the holiday feels somewhat marred in the process. I think this feeling arises partly because the forced marriage of pagan and Christian traditions I grew up with doesn’t entirely work. The symbolism of giving gifts seems flawed, unless you see the receivers as avatars of the infant Christ gifted by Magi(cians), which philosophy I haven’t seen promulgated. In Christmas gift-giving, the traditional pagan solstice gifts have lost their former meanings of luck and fertility and the propitiation of the dead. Because the symbolism no longer works, greed and guilt are often the main components that remain.

Thus, when I was a child trying to be Christian, I found Christmas the holiday that required the most hypocrisy. You knew if you were told to write an essay about the true meaning of Christmas you weren’t supposed to lust for presents, but rather to harp on peace on earth and the blessings of the Christ child. Peace on earth is a fine hope, but I only wrote about it as a child because I knew I was supposed to. But I’ve always loved the Christmas traditions of my childhood. The Christmas tree spangled with tinsel and glowing with colored lights, Christmas feasts, the house warm and scented with baking, snow on the hills, a holly wreath with blood-red berries – because these symbols were Christianized, they remained to color my childhood, and they speak as deeply to me as anything Halloween does.

More than any other Sabbat, the winter solstice I think requires a conscious act of reclaiming. We have many solstice traditions to choose from, more than meet an initial glance. It’s a glorious time, a deep symbol, the return of the sun and the many myths that stem from it. I think the time and symbol are worth reclaiming. I think we owe it to ourselves to meditate, dig deep and choose and practice the solstice traditions that most speak to us.

The Pagan Roots of Christmas

The early Christians quite consciously chose the pagan sun holiday for the celebration of their Son-god’s birth. Christmas falls during the Roman Saturnalia and at the birth of the Mithraic sun god. According to A Witches Bible Compleat, by Janet and Stewart Farrar, the Archbishop of Constantinople wrote that church fathers fixed the Nativity during the pagan holidays because "while the heathen were busied with their profane rites, the Christians might perform their holy ones without disturbance." Other Christians accused those who kept Christmas at the solstice of performing sun worship. Armenians, who celebrate Christmas on January 6, elsewhere Epiphany, called Roman Christians idolaters, according to Funk and Wagnall’s Standard Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology and Legend. Similarly, under the Puritans in 1644, the English Parliament expressly forbade observing Christmas. Augustine admitted that putting Christmas at the winter solstice was a conscious identification of the Son with the sun but defended the symbolism. The Christmas most Americans know as children mixes a celebration of the birth of Christ with traditions from the Roman Saturnalia, the Northern European Yule, and the Celtic solstice.

Saturnalia, The Great Leveler

Saturnalia, a string of related festivals beginning December 17 and lasting a week in its final incarnation, celebrated the Golden Age of the Roman god Saturn. Its roots lay in a solstice ceremony designed to protect winter-sown crops. One of its signal customs was a leveling of rank and age; during Saturnalia, courts passed down no punishments, schools closed, wars ceased, gambling was encouraged, and social distinctions were leveled or reversed. The slave was equal to the freeman, and the master served the servant. All took bawdy liberty in speech and action. Christmas inherited this turnabout of power. Early Europeans’ Christmastime saw the reign of the Lord of Misrule, called in Scotland the Abbot of Unreason. The Lord of Misrule ran the revels from All Hallows until Twelfth Night, arranging parties and theatricals and inflicting penalties for any misdeeds he saw fit. A related custom survived in York till the eighteenth century, as Doreen Valiente writes in An ABC of Witchcraft; there the people carried mistletoe to the high church altar and proclaimed (in the words of a contemporary) "`a public and universal liberty, pardon and freedom to all sorts of inferior and even wicked people at the gates of the city, towards the four quarters of heaven.’"

Saturnalia may have given us our tradition of decking interiors with evergreen boughs, and may be the source of Christmas gift-giving. In the latter days of festival week, Romans exchanged gifts of wax fruit, candles and dolls. Funk and Wagnall’s identifies the fruit as symbolizing fertility, the candles as echoing the customary new fires of solstice, and the dolls as a remnant of human sacrifice. Reports from a Roman outpost reflect the sacrificial aspect of Saturnalia, Funk and Wagnall’s notes; inhabitants there elected a King Saturn and gave him great freedom, only to ritually murder him at feast’s end.

Yule: Fertility And Ghosts

At the winter solstice, Scandinavians worshipped Frey, god of fertility; further south, the Angli celebrated December 24 as New Year’s Eve, called modranecht (mother night), a vigil also connected with fertility rites. In general, the traditional Yule (from the Norse Iul, meaning wheel) was a feast devoted to fertility and the ancestors, which passed on to Christmas fecund and ghostly traditions. The Christmas roast pig is kissing cousin to julgalti, the pig offered to Frey for fertility in the coming year, according to Funk and Wagnall’s. Hence the apple in its mouth. Similarly, Yule was a time to charm grain and fruit to grow thick. Traditional Scots kept the Corn Maiden from harvest till Yule and then distributed her to the cattle, according to the Farrars. The Germans scattered the ashes of the Yule log on the fields for fertility, or kept its last charred pieces to bind in the last sheaf of the coming harvest. The French retained a piece of Yule log through the year to protect the house against fire and lightning, to ensure bountiful crops and the easy birth of calves.

The solstice was also a weather predictor, according to Funk and Wagnall’s. In more recent tradition, a white Christmas is said to mean a prosperous New Year, while a green, cloudy or hot Christmas fills the churchyard. Yule is a time for spirits. European tradition, transferred to the Christian holiday, held that each house should be clean and prepared for Christmas before the household went to church, so the spirits could inspect it. Spirits likewise stayed for Christmas dinner. In Sweden, householders set a special table for them. European folk beliefs say that someone who sits under a pine tree on Christmas Eve can hear the sound of angels – but death will soon follow. Death also awaits one who hears farm animals converse in the barn that night. A person born on Christmas can see spirits. Dreams on the Northern modranecht were believed to foretell the coming year, according to Nigel Pennick in The Pagan Book of Days.

We Three Kings

In the British Isles, Celtic Yule traditions survive with amazing resilience. The fight of the Oak and Holly Kings, representatives of the waxing and waning year, is recalled in the still-current hunting of the wren – a custom also found in ancient Greece and Rome. In the myth behind the practice, the robin redbreast, identified with the Oak King, caught and killed the wren, representative of the waning year and the Holly King. The robin traditionally trapped the wren in an ivy bush, in Ireland a holly bush, the Farrars write. The robin’s tree was the birch, the tree associated with the after-solstice period in the Celtic tree calendar. In the wren hunt, according to Pennick, a group of droluns (Wren Boys) captured the wren, which during the rest of the year was sacrosanct. The droluns ensconced the bird in a lantern and trooped it around the village on a holly branch on its way to death. Alternatively, men with birch rods chased the wren and killed it. Wren Boys still tour County Clare in west Ireland on December 26, now a group of adult musicians who go door to door with a wren effigy on a holly branch. In County Mayo, Wren Boys are holly-bearing children, including girls, who knock on doors repeating a traditional verse that asks for money to bury the wren. In Scotland and the North of England, in a possibly related custom, masked and caroling children formerly celebrated Hogmany on New Year’s Eve, traveling the neighborhood soliciting oat cakes.

The wren’s rival, the robin of the waxing year, was linked to Robin Hood, according to Robert Graves in The White Goddess. Robin was a god of the witches; Graves writes that a London tract of 1693 named Robin Goodfellow an ithyphallic witch-god. In Cornwall, he notes, "robin" means phallus. Robin "Hood," or "Hod," was thought to exist in the hod, the log at the back of the fire, in other words the Yule log. Woodlice who ran from the burning Yule log were called "Robin Hood’s steeds," and Robin was said to escape up the chimney as a robin. The Yule log is traditionally of oak, again connecting it with the Oak King; in some places it’s burnt bit by bit through the twelve days of Christmas, but elsewhere celebrants retain a chunk to light the next Yule log.

Another British Christmas custom recalling the kings’ fight was traditional mummery, in which the brilliantly armored St. George fought and defeated a dark Turkish knight. But, as Valiente notes, the victorious St. George immediately cried out he had killed his brother, showing that "darkness and light, winter and summer, are complementary." A mysterious doctor revived the Turk, and all rejoiced. Too often, as the Farrars write, this understanding of light and dark’s balance turns to a contest of good vs. evil. In Dewsbury, Yorkshire, for nearly seven centuries, church bells knelled "the Old Lad’s Passing" or "the Devil’s Knell" at Christmas Eve’s eleventh hour, warning the Devil that Christ was coming. Other connections link the Holly King and the Devil. The Farrars tie the Devil’s nickname, Old Nick, to Nik, a name for Woden, "very much a Holly King." Santa Claus – St. Nicholas – is likewise a disguised Holly King. Not only do households put up holly garlands in his honor, in early tales he rode a horse, as Woden does, rather than driving reindeer.

More Solstice Tree Traditions

Another Celtic Yuletide custom was wassailing, in which a group of people carried a bowl of wassail (cider) into an orchard. The celebrants chose one tree to represent the whole grove and dipped its branch tips in wassail, stuck bits of wassail-soaked cake among its twigs and sprinkled wassail on its roots, according to Pauline Campanelli in Wheel of the Year. Morris dancers might mime the abundant harvests they hoped the orchard would produce in the following year. Similarly, traditional British believed that Christmas sun shining through fruit trees foretold a big harvest, according to Funk and Wagnall’s. It’s not surprising a culture that named its letters and months for trees had many tree customs. Only one day of the Celtic calendar lacks a ruling tree and ogham letter. The Celts called this day, December 23, the Secret of the Unhewn Stone.

Like apples, evergreens also connect with the solstice, as a symbol of eternal life. Christmas Eve mystery plays of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries combined evergreens and apples, the fruit tied to the trees’ branches. Seasonal celebrants decked interiors with holly, fir, pine, bayberry, rosemary, branches of the evergreen box shrub and also ivy and mistletoe. Ivy is sacred both to Osiris, the Egyptian god of death and rebirth, and to the Greek wine-god Dionysos – both gods traditionally resurrected at this time of year. In the England of previous centuries, Campanelli writes, harvesters bound the last sheaf of grain with ivy and called it the Ivy Girl, a figure considered to combat the Holly Boy. This combat marks an older competition between Goddess and God, from before the Oak King’s entrance on the scene. Such a scenario also appears in the traditional carol The Holly and the Ivy."

Mistletoe, in contrast, connects with the Oak King, found suspended as it is on the Celtic magick oak. The Druids collected mistletoe at the winter solstice, their ritual Alban Arthuan, as well as at the summer solstice; in winter, the mistletoe has white berries, representing the semen of the God and bringing fertility. Traditionally, a girl who stands under mistletoe tacked up indoors may be kissed by any boy who comes up. Traditions of tree trimming and evergreen decoration may have combined to engender the Christmas tree. Campanelli writes that the first Christmas tree was decorated in Riga in Latvia, in 1510, when a local merchants’ guild carried an evergreen festooned with fake flowers to market and burned it there, a sort of combination Christmas tree and Yule log.

The Christmas tree has become popular only in the last 150 years, migrating to the United States from Germany. However, its German name, Tannenbaum, may reflect older roots; Campanelli relates the word to tinne or glastin, the sacred trees of the ancient Celts. More distantly, Funk and Wagnall’s connects the Christmas tree to flower-decorated May trees and May poles. Campanelli draws in the cult of Cybele and Attis, in which ritualists dragged a fir tree into the temple and adorned with it violets, mourning the dead Attis, soon miraculously to rise. A fir cone tips Dionysos’s thrysus, and the pine is sacred to Pan and Sylvanus. Whatever their provenance and meaning, seasonal evergreens shouldn’t hang too long. Funk and Wagnall’s says you must throw them out of doors by Epiphany; Valiente gives you till Candlemas but says if you’ve not done it then, hobgoblins will haunt you.

The Yule’s For You

Given that the Christmas we know comes from the Celtic and Northern Yules and from Saturnalia, using parts of one, several or all of these rites in your rite is only appropriate. Create a Yule of the spirits, or a ritual for garden or personal fertility. Choose a Lord or Lady of Misrule, Holly and Oak Kings or an Ivy Girl and Holly Boy. Or turn to other traditions. Ancient Athenians at the winter solstice held the Lenaea, the Feast of Wild Women. The nine Wild Women of the ritual reenacted the death and rebirth of Dionysos. Once probably a human sacrifice, the god’s representative by classical times had become a goat kid, which the Wild Women killed, then mourned. Then Dionysos was reborn in ritual, and the Wild Women rejoiced. The winter solstice similarly commemorated the rebirth of Egyptian Osiris, who after a mummification beginning November 3 was buried on the solstice. Two days later, his sister and wife Isis gave birth to his son and second self, the sun-god Horus – the return of light to the world. In this hemisphere, the Hopi and Pueblo Indians of the American Southwest hold solstice rituals over several days, including kachina dances, corn and meal rites and war society ceremonies. The Hopi also perform phallic rites and hawk dances. Their neighbors the Zuni relight their sacred fire for the solstice.

You can look for inspiration to non-pagan religions. Though Judaism is a monotheistic tradition, it has roots in an ancient pagan past. Hanukkah, the Feast of Lights, most recently celebrates the dedication of a new altar in the Temple after the old had been destroyed, but the feast falls during a much more ancient Jewish solstice observance. The lighting of the lamps parallels the celebrations worldwide in which a lit fire hails the returning sun. Work with any of these traditions, or find one of your own, perhaps connected with your heritage or travels. The solstice holiday comes woven of many strands; choose one that feels right, learn all you can about it and do what speaks to you, honoring the places and peoples your ritual comes from. Reclaim this Sabbat, and let the reborn sun fill your life with light.

Disclaimer: No one involved in this blog or its contents may be held responsible for any adverse reactions arising from following any of the instructions/recipes on this list. It is the reader’s personal responsibility to exercise all precautions and use his or her own discretion if following any instructions or advice from this blog.

Fair Use Notice: This page may contain copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. This website distributes this material without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. We believe this constitutes a fair use of any such copyrighted material as provided for in 17 U.S.C § 107.

Homeland to the orcs, Wild Isles is a vast and dry savannah filled with lions, rhinos, and minotaurs. Home to many different orc tribes, Wild Isles is a land filled with conflict and anarchy. Yet, despite all the difficulties the natives have encountered, and hoping to bring more visitors to their land, the orcs are now preparing for their first annual Goblinball Tournament.

Goblinball Arena

Orc Village

Wild Isles Savannah

From the Allods Online News Feed.

Am fost o lenesa si nu am postat la timp, apoi mi s-a dus timpul. Dar niciodata nu-i prea tarziu pentru speranta, mai ales cand are vestitori atat de draguti si de de treaba precum Lore si colaboratorii sai. M-a invitat mai demult la Radio Vocea Sperantei pentru o emisiune despre abuz si am facut si spotul pentru “Eu sper” (si am vazut cum arata un studio de radio si unul TV, cool si cum se taie sunetele si se lipesc unde trebuie – destul sa fericesc inginerul din mine).

Plec azi si nu am cum ajunge la eveniment, dar sper sa vina cat mai multi oameni

WordPress nu ma lasa sa atasez direct .mp3, so this RapidShare file will do for the moment  (i see you have to wait 60 sec…).

Ihope

Pe langa “eu sper”-urile din audio, mai am cateva:

Sper ca 2010 sa fie un an mai bun, pentru toata lumea, decat il anunta sfarsitul lui 2009.

Sper ca schimbarile ce vor veni, indiferent cat de “grave” vor fi,  sa faca tuturora viata mai frumoasa si mai worth living.

Sper ca povestile “triste si cu speranta” pe care le stiu sa devina mai putin triste si mai pline de speranta.

In orice caz, viitorul se anunta interesant, si nu zic asta doar pentru ca plec spre Viena.

Craciun fericit si nu uitati sa sperati!

There are some spoilers here for the Alliance run of the Frozen Halls instance, but very minor ones if you know how the instance plays out overall.  You have been warned.

Over the weekend, Bricu of WTT: [RP] got to see the new Frozen Halls instance, and stated “I was more than underwhelmed.  I was disappointed.”  We learn why shortly after, due primarily to how Jaina Proudmoore is portrayed during the course of the instance, fawning over memories of Arthas even until the very last second in the Halls of Reflection.  Originally, this was going to be left as a comment in the original post.  However, it got a little long, and I figured giving it its own post couldn’t hurt.

Now, I’d like to preface this by saying that I am not an Alliance player by any means.  While I dabble in Alliance RP, my heart is Horde.  I don’t have an intimate working knowledge of how things go down in the Frozen Halls on the Alliance side of things (though I’d like to at some point, providing my baby human paladin ever gets to 80).  I have read transcripts, of course, but that’s about as far as my knowledge extends.  Please keep this in mind as we continue.

When the Lich King was still Arthas Menethil, he and Jaina shared a very strong friendship (as seen and somewhat explored in Arthas: Rise of the Lich King; review coming later when I can actually bring myself to finish it) that, eventually, turned to love.  However, their duties to Dalaran and Lordaeron came first, and they had to put things on hold.  Then, you know, the Scourge invasion got in the way, Arthas went to destroy the citizens of Stratholme (which she never agreed with in the first place), and then Arthas eventually became the Lich King.

Jaina feels responsible for this.  Part of her genuinely feels that Arthas’ transformation was her fault.  Add to this that she’s still in love with him, and her actions somewhat make sense.  She still wants to save him.  She feels that Arthas can be redeemed, and, perhaps, this is why she chases after him.  Now, admittedly, she does follow him and pretty much gets beaten within an inch of her life.  Thus, she now knows that the Arthas she loved is gone and there’s no way to bring him back.

Now, what bothered me at first is that there’s little to no doubt in my mind that, if Jaina’s kicking around the Frozen Halls, she’s talked to Tirion Fordring fairly recently.  Did he not tell her about what happened during the Tirion’s Gambit questline?  During that, we learned that, really, there’s nothing left of Arthas Menethil in the Lich King.  Arthas as we may have known him in Lordaeron is dead.  If Tirion did tell her what happened, wasn’t that good enough for her?

Apparently not for she went and chased after the Lich King, anyway, in spite of what Uther (and maybe Tirion) told her.  She even says the following at the very end of the instance: “I… I just had to see for myself.  I had to look into his eyes one last time.”  With this, we have to realize that, as people have pointed out in the comments of Bricu’s post, love makes people do very stupid things.  When you’re in love with someone, you say things like “oh, my girlfriend/boyfriend isn’t immature or a selfish idiot! S/he’s just misunderstood!”  You ignore all their faults because you love them.  Even once you break up, even if circumstances keep you apart, part of you might still love that person.  If they’ve changed, sometimes, you really do need to see it for yourself.

Admittedly, I really do think that Blizzard could have handled the whole thing much better than they did.  Jaina sacrificed many Alliance soldiers just to have her “last look”, after all, and, in the end, pretty much all she takes away from it is that she screwed up royally.  What does that really say about Jaina as a character?  That she’s willing to sacrifice hundreds of people to just get something she wanted or thought she needed for closure?  I’m so used to thinking of her as being one of the stronger women on the Alliance side of things, and to have things turn out like that?

Well, I can see where people would be getting disappointed.

Some cool moments in this skirmish, this is just the final battle – I’m just going to post the link and not the embedded video such that I don’t spoil things for those who don’t want it spoiled.

Book 9 Skirmish

Russian Divinations for the Solstice
from 1001 Christmas Facts and Fancies, by Alfred Carl Hottes

Five piles of grain are placed on the kitchen floor. Each pile is given a name, such as Hope, Ring, Money, Charcoal, and Thread. We girls went to the henhouse and roused a drowsy hen. She is allowed to walk around the kitchen and choose a pile of grain. If she chooses Hope it means a long journey or the fulfillment of a great wish. The Ring, of course, means marriage; Money is wealth; Charcoal portends death in the family; and Thread means a life of toil. How the conversation flows when these divinations are made. Old songs were sung, and the old women and country girls could devise entire stories from the action of the hen.

Sooner or later one of the girls would slip outdoors, and standing just inside the gate, but with her back to it, she would kick her slipper high over her head into the road behind her. Then she would run to see in which direction it pointed, for that is the way from which a lover will come or the way she will go to be married. And, alas, if the slipper points towards the gate she will not be married this year.

Some girls sit in a room alone with the doors closed. Two candles are lighted and two mirrors are used so that one reflects the candlelight into the other. The point is to find the seventh reflection and look until one’s future is seen.

Disclaimer: No one involved in this blog or its contents may be held responsible for any adverse reactions arising from following any of the instructions/recipes on this list. It is the reader’s personal responsibility to exercise all precautions and use his or her own discretion if following any instructions or advice from this blog.

Fair Use Notice: This page may contain copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. This website distributes this material without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. We believe this constitutes a fair use of any such copyrighted material as provided for in 17 U.S.C § 107.

Entirely unrelated picture

An interesting question was posed to me by a guildie the other day: What’s my favourite WoW lore character?

After thinking for a few minutes I realised that, actually, this was a really tough cookie. I mean there’s a few of the more obvious and popular candidates – I’ve always been a Bolvar fan, and actually Kil’jaeden is pretty awesome – but I wouldn’t say they were my favourites. They’re certainly not the kind of folks I’d deliberately go and see for a little bit of RP if I was nearby.

So then I started thinking about the story arcs I like the most, because maybe my favourite character would be featured in my favourite plot, right? Well, there’s the Ahn’Qiraj story which I’ve always liked despite my deep seated hatred of Silithid quests (especially those ones in Un’Goro, although I think questing in Silithus for Loremaster softened me up a bit), and I also like the whole Ragnaros / Black Dragonflight war which is going on in the Blackrock Mountain. Alternatively we have the Arthas storyline, which is probably one of the most detailed and promoted stories in WoW, and it’s a fantastic example of how even the best heroes can turn to evil. Maybe even the Ashbringer tale. But I don’t think any of these would be my favourite ever.

Next I tried thinking along themes. For example, you could probably assume my favourite character would be a Warlock, but after thinking through all the notable ones, I don’t think so. Nor can I think of any other classes who have well-known heroes that I really like – Tirion Fordring frankly lost my respect after the Crusader’s Coliseum, Uther has never meant a great deal to me, the Windrunner sisters don’t appeal (although Sylvanas is pretty cool) and Medivh was a candidate, but just doesn’t quite hit the spot.

Then I went through various bosses of raids and instances, considering their stories and backgrounds. One which stood out was the Hydraxian Waterlords and their battle with the Firelord. Additionally we have Hakkar and the trolls, C’thun (and Old Gods in general), Moroes (I do love that guy), VanCleef and the Masons, or even Kel’thuzad… But I just don’t think of them as awesome lore characters.

Finally, I had to give up. The answer is that I just don’t know who my favourite lore character is! There are so many fantastic plots, intricacies, twists and facets to WoW lore that nobody, for me right now at least, can truly be considered number one.

What about you, dear reader? Do you have a favourite character, and if so, why? Or if not, why not?

Vel.

I’m not very keen on the term UPG, which means Unverified (or Unconfirmed) Personal Gnosis. It’s widely used on Asatru Lore and on other pagan forums and I wanted to explore my difficulties with the term. I do find it useful, so I’ll start by saying what I think is right about it, but will then move onto what I dislike about the term and the way it’s used.

When you say something along the lines of ‘I have had UPG that god X likes Y offerings’ the use of the term UPG indicates some things. Such as that you recognise that your own visions and whatnot are not necessarily reliable evidence. It allows you to express the fact that you are not making any claims for some historical basis for what you say – you are being honest about the origin of your information and people can take it or leave it as they see fit. There is also an implicit acknowledgement that other people’s UPG might differ or even disagree and that that’s OK. Particularly for recons the use of the term UPG allows them to easily flag up the difference between historical or lore based information and UPG, giving the info different credence depending on how much value they personally place on UPG. In all those ways it’s a useful term.

But here’s why I don’t like it.

Mainly because it’s a euphemism. It’s a way of avoiding talking about visions, dreams, meditation, trance, divination and feelings because talking about those things makes us feel mad as a box of frogs. Or that someone might think we’re mad as a box of frogs.

It’s also used as an us/them divider. Us recons and serious minded pagans have UPG. Those fluffy neo-Wiccish types have visions and dreams and ‘feelings’. Never mind the fact that we get to UPG by exactly the same methods. I think it also stigmatises itself in a strange way – because we obscure the fact we have  visions etc by using this term, visions etc must be bad, but UPG is visions etc, ergo UPG is bad. But it’s not. True we need to be sceptical, even of our own experiences, let alone those of others. But that doesn’t mean we should discard them entirely. One can cast an analytical eye over one’s visions, without calling them UPG. Hell, it’s easier to cast an analytical eye if we’re upfront about what we’re talking about.

It also means we don’t know whether our fellow pagans are doing guided meditation or divination or whether they use entheogens to stimulate their visions, or whatever. (Of course, sometimes people might wish to keep the sources of their UPG private which is up to them.) So it actually reduces our information sharing.

Too often UPG comes with a little sneer, which means we sneer at our own experience. How insane is that? Madder than a box of frogs if you ask me.

It is quite possible for us to be open and honest about the fact that one’s own visions are most important to oneself, and one can’t really expect anyone else to give them any weight at all, without hiding them behind the term UPG. We can be plain about the fact that the lore is more important to us than other people’s dreams, without sneering at those dreams. We can acknowledge that sometimes these things are indicative of mental health issues, and I’m sure we’ve all met someone who probably ought to see a doctor about them there voices in their head, without suggesting that these things are always a case for the men in white coats. We can compare these experiences with the information in the lore and from archaeology to ‘verify’ the information. Calling a vision a vision doesn’t mean we have to believe it, or even be polite about it if we don’t want to.

It seems to me that UPG is only really useful as a collective term for these experiences. It could have saved me writing ‘visions etc’ several times in the text above for example. Otherwise it makes more sense to me to call a spade a spade, and a dream a dream.

The Eye of Wisdom is a group dedicated to gathering wisdom about magic and artifacts from the Old Times.

On the old continent “Kolydia” they were on good terms with the emperor’s domicile and other political factions, which brought them significant influence.
When the Time of Discoveries about 100 years ago began, the Grandmaster decided to move the whole organization to the continent of Candara and focus their exploration on the relics of ancient times.

This time is also referred to as “Withdrawal of the Eye of Wisdom” since they broke most of their contacts with Kolydia back then. They gathered many magical artifacts, which helped them to develop powerful spells since the creation of Varanas. The meaning of “Withdrawal” may refer less to the withdrawal from political involvement but rather the establishment of an independent power. In the beginning everything seemed to progress nicely, until 20 years ago when the Grandmaster Ancalon and his elite of their organization disappeared without a trace. For a couple of years the Eye of Wisdom was nearly rendered incapable of acting. Only with the assumption of the post as Grandmaster by Yarandor, the leader of Rune Magic, they returned to activity.

But the influence within the city of Varanas had already been cut radically by the Council and their power and influence in the world was no longer as strong as previously.

The Eye of Wisdom has now overcome the alienation of the world and is anxious to help the people of Varanas. In addition they resurrected multiple research projects and recruit mages from all over the world to push their academic position back to the top.

So I was reading about Tam’s case of syphilis (ewww, right?) and he kindly decided to share the bug =/  My assignment

I shall not let you escape me with a mere cow montage. So, given how much I enjoy the random adventures of your alts (even if they do involve condoning cow-slavery) – what’s your favourite zone to quest in, and why, and which zone(s) would you rather produce a cow montage than visit, and why?

And I thought–oh right… alts.  Ya, I used to write about those!

Let’s go to….

I first ventured into Dragonblight as a young paladin, following the directions of my Tankua guide, I fought against the corruption that had overtaken a small village, and gradually worked my way to Wyrmrest Temple.  What can I say, I love dragons, and Dragonblight is all about it.  The Wrathgate cinematic had my jaw dropping and my little heart fluttering with nerdy excitement.  If you can’t find something you like–killing scourge, insane villagers, diseased animals, the Scarlet Onslaught or fishing up tasty dragonfish–I don’t even know where to tell you to go from here.

The Blood Elf starting area is just… perfect.  Before you travel to the Ghostlands or the Undercity, young adventurers have a firm grasp of their people’s struggle and purpose in the the world.  The Dead Scar is visible daily outside the still ravishingly beautiful home of Silvermoon, a portent reminder of the power of the Scourge.  The starter quests here are really exceptional, and the resources are plentiful for all those burgeoning traders to be!

All that I love is not beautiful, and the plaguelands is a perfect example.  Overrun, and dominated by the scourge, small resistance forces, most notably the Argent Dawn, can be found trying valiantly to reclaim the land.  Stratholme and Scholomance, one-time 10-man raids, can be found here, and for your book-readers, many of them are to be found in the massive library of Scholomance.  While the plaguelands can easily be a grind, it’s a satisfying one–killing undead in droves can be a fun and profitable experience–and wandering the destroyed city of Andor’hal is a flashback for older Warcraft fans.

At one time, Un’Goro was an important part of the post-60 gaming scene.  Devilsaur leather was a profitable business for a leatherworker, and all those crystal buffs were desirable for raid nights.  I spent many a night roaming the crater with my faithful lion Dusk talking to friends, and duoing the elites for valuable cash turning items.  Despite the many trips to and from Winterspring, not to mention a unfavorable death drinking a potion, the Linken quest was a great find for a major fan-girl of Zelda.

Magical domes of awesome!  Seeing the land being gradually retaken and returned to a lush and vibrant world was just a remarkable feast for the eyes.  The fight to shut down the Manaforges, and the rank animosity to be found among the Scryers and Aldors was a wonderful interjection of the story into the daily grind of life.  Not to mention Tempest Keep, the best of the heroic dungeons in Northrend (at least I thought so )

I don’t have to go there do I?

STV instantly brings to mind death–lots, and lots of death.  My very first character was rolled on a PvP server, and the constant ganking of Paks, my 36 paladin, caused me to abandon both her, and PvP servers forever.  When next I traveled to Stranglethorn, all I can remember is the constant running back and forth between the northern human base and the port of Booty Bay… on foot… past mobs 5 levels above me as I got closer to my destination.  Not to mention the unremitable grind of finding the last page of The Green Hills of Stranglethorn.  Drudgery from start to finish this zone.

It’s desolate!  Quest poor, mob heavy, Desolace is a large zone map that requires more time than it deserves.  Another pre-mount area which I hated to step my little toe into, other than to get the flightpoint perhaps.  Maradoun does not improve the equation, being one of the most involved and complicated of the 5-man dungeons.  Oh, and did I mention the centaur grind?????

I had high hopes for Silithus.  This is not a detractor for the opening of the AQ gates, which was just an awesome, awesome WoW moment.  It is about the zone itself–which is nothing but a desert with no quests, no purpose, and lots of poisonious mobs.  While the quest repertoire has improved, upon opening, Silithus had less than five quests, and was just another reputation grind.  For many, the only reason to even venture to this zone was for the infamous Sand Worm cooking recipe so they could reach 300 cooking skill and skedaddle to more beneficial and fun zones.  Not in my travel plans anytime soon.

Better known as Na-grind.  The only purpose of this zone seems to be to kill as many fuzzy animals as possible–oh, and some ogres too.  We need you to kill lots of ogres.  The chipper, healthy forest look of this zone is so incogruous with the rest of the Outlands, I felt like I had been dropped into a warp dimension.  Perhaps the floating islands were supposed to alleviate me of that fear?

Oh look!  More fuzzy animal killing!  It seems the farther you travel, the more insane Nesingwary and his troop of animal killing enthusiasts become, with the Great Hunter’s Challenge being at least blatantly obvious that, why yes, we want you to grind fuzzy animals.  While the Oracle and Frenzyheart questlines are amusing to some, I found them tedious and annoying.  Gorlocs?  Seriously?

The Wide, Wide World

Now that I’ve gotten started, it’s actually hard to cut myself off.  Some zones I go to because I love a certain questline, and will put up with all kinds of hassle to be involved in it.  Others, despite one fatal flaw, are otherwise an enjoyable area.  I’m sure in my haste to have some kind of concrete, definitive answer I’ve forgotten some lovely or despised zone from the list.

And because I understand Tam’s righteous indignation over cow slavery–the dangers for those poor cow lasses….

Winter has taken on visible form and is sitting outside my window staring at me.  The guise it has taken is of a thick blanket of sleepy-eyed mist which is laying over the whole area, and even near distance is fading quickly into impenetrable whiteness.  It’s definitely weather for staying inside and finding something warm to do!  I’m not sure it makes sense, but that distraction is being provided by a wintry virtual continent and a place called “Icecrown”!  Lots of happy posts about patch 3.3 crowding the WoW blogosphere at the moment.  Actually the first negative-sounding post I’ve read was just this afternoon after it was linked from WoW.com.

Personally I’m really enjoying 3.3 so far.  I wouldn’t say it’s re-ignited my interest in the game or anything dramatic, but it’s certainly made playing more enjoyable.  Here are some of the things which stand out.

Gating and difficulty in Icecrown

I’m sure a lot of folks will disagree with me on this one, but I am really enjoying the fact that the new raid has only four bosses available, and no hard modes.  My guild went there on Wednesday after waiting around half an hour for additional instances to be launched.  First impressions were that it was all Black Temply – it reminded me of the Ashtongue Deathsworn bit you can teleport to after killing Supremus.  We spent a while exploring the vendors and watching NPCs fight waves of those skeleton things from Scholomance’s basement (helping out now and then when one got through – that felt suitably heroic).  There was a good atmosphere of foreboding and feeling like we were really the first wave of reinforcements setting foot into the villain’s creepy castle.

But returning to the heading topic, the holidays are coming up and life is busy.  Trial of the Crusader and heroic Anub’arak have been a draining mix of dull and hard with the requirement not to wipe for the best shinies making even dull farming fights punishingly high-concentration – and no trash or pretty scenery to break up the relentless march from boss to boss.  Coming from that environment and with the gear to prove it, Icecrown’s bosses are refreshingly painless.  Fun, interesting and new – and we managed to wipe once on the gunship battle due to a bit of a misunderstanding – but above all energising rather than draining.

And there aren’t any world firsts to hear about or guys toting around their shiny frostwyrms or hard-earned exclusive titles.  And there aren’t any hard modes to throw ourselves against and worry about group balance and how much time we have to raid this evening.  There’s just an inviting new place to explore with friends and have fun doing it.

Oh, and our weekly raid quest on Shadowsong was for Malygos.  My druid went with an alts run to do rusty and undergeared (but still impressive, thankyouverymuch) kitty DPS, and I ended up flying around on a hover disk yelling ‘Hoverkitty goes “WHRRR”‘ and feeling generally very pleased with myself.

Emblem farming

In a similar vein to the above, I don’t feel that there’s any rush to farm the new emblem items.  We did all four bosses and the daily raid quest in about two hours for our maximum weekly haul of Emblems of Frost from raids; the Icecrown 5-mans were an enjoyable adventure that only have to be done once for the Frosty-flavoured emblems; and the new LFG tool and random dungeon rewards makes getting your final two emblems per day a breeze.  Farming emblems in 3.2 felt really seriously punishing as you had to do ToC, ToGC, VoA, Onyxia, and the daily heroic to pull in the maximum amount!  With the gated content and no new boss in VoA until the new Arena season starts, we can rest easy knowing we’ve got as many emblems as we can without having to sacrifice our enjoyment.

Tier 10 and other items

Despite its lacklustre set bonuses for elemental, tier 10’s looks and distinctive three-tiered colour scheme – and that shoulder animation – make it feel like something to look forward to in the fairly distant future.  Conversely, I always felt tier 9 was a depressing and urgent necessity.  And there’s elemental badge gear for the first time since The Burning Crusade, including the first mail belt with elemental stats accessible to 10-man raiders since patch 2.4.  And did I mention elemental craftables? – which by the way I probably won’t use, but it’s good to feel that there are these options around at last.  I’m also reasonably hopeful that the still incomplete Icecrown loot tables will furnish more elementally-inclined items for the 10-man raider.

Oh, and the very first day of 3.3, I got some shiny new boots and a great new ring!

Icecrown 5-mans

I was wondering why I was excited by the prospect of the Icecrown 5-man dungeons dropping such high ilevel loot when the same prospect for Trial of the Champion just depressed me.  Then I realised it: I actually enjoyed doing the Icecrown instances!  My first trip through was with a guild group – some alts, some mains and two of us in off-spec.  I was healing.  And let me tell you, that is some massively enjoyable content to heal.  I had a total blast, an excellent time, even though some of it was very challenging even in my ilevel 245 stuff.  I was able to use all my utility totems and all my healing spells, and even had some fun with the new Fire Nova.

The first bosses of Halls of Reflection felt pretty brutal, but we may just have been doing it wrong.  I went in the following day on my feral druid and we tried to be more intelligent and careful, but it was still a nightmare.  I suspect it’ll be nerfed, as if it was difficult for my guild (we made it OK, but it felt hard), I can’t imagine how painful it could be in a PUG.

Finding for group

On which topic, all my experiences with the LFG tool have been very positive.  I had some grim, business-like groups that just pushed through the instance, said “thx” and left, and I’ve had some chatty, friendly groups that also just pushed through the instance, said “thx “, and left.  Everyone I’ve grouped with has been in really high ilevel gear, but I though that was because my characters were also in very high ilevel gear.

Confident in this assumption and comforted by the knowledge that I wasn’t even attuned to two of the three Icecrown 5-mans, I innocently tried the tool on my rarely played and somewhat undergeared discipline priest.

I couldn’t freakin’ believe it when the loading screen was Forge of Souls.

My group was some other server’s guild premade, all in ToC gear.  Nobody said anything except the mage when I asked him for some conjured water (being horribly aware of how much I was going to have to drink).  I felt awkward and silly; I had had no idea that my priest’s gear (it’s mostly ilevel 200 epics) was going to put me at risk of getting thrown into Forge of Souls with a group of people who obviously did not think I should have been there yet were apparently unwilling to do anything about it.

We toiled through, me drinking the moment combat ended and trying desperately to catch up to the group before the MT killed himself on the next pull.  We got through with no casualties despite my sissy 16k health pool, until the final boss.  And sweet chilly adventure surfing penguins that group took a lot of damage.  My little dwarf was mashing buttons like a trooper, but I hardly play the poor chap and don’t have the fluidity and grace on him that I do with my shaman.  At 20% a void zone thingy spawned on me while I was desperately flash healing the two hunters and I got hit by some nasty random-target nuke thing at the same time.  The combined damage was more than my fragile, GCD-locked priest could take and I was pretty much one-shot (well, there were 3 shots, but it took barely longer than a global cooldown).  The group finished the boss OK – suddenly they seemed to learn how to stop taking damage – but I was left lying in an embarrassing heap on the floor with nobody able to rez me.  They all said “thx” and left, and I ran back through the whole instance to talk to Jaina and hand in my quest… after which I depressingly realised that this made me eligible to be tossed into Pit of Saron by the dungeon tool in future.

But despite this, the tool makes getting a group fast and easy and generally fairly painless.  And the fact that you can end up in any random dungeon means that you can do the daily on many alts in the same day and have a different instance each time – which is just fantastic.  Combined with the generous Emblem of Triumph and gold rewards from selecting repeated random dungeons, it’s possible to enjoyably gear up an alt without feeling pressured into content you didn’t want to do, and – thanks to the fact that this is the final content patch before the expansion – without feeling like it’s all a waste of time “because that new patch is going to be released in a couple of months anyway”.

I feel motivated to play my alts for the first time in months!

And heirlooms can be sent across factions now.  That’s pretty gnarly.  I’m almost tempted to start playing on my old horde characters again.

Timesinking

There aren’t any new dailies or anything, right?  Well I hope not, because I’m quite enjoying not having to worry about trying them out!  I don’t want the game to demand more of my time; I want it to offer me more ways to spend my time enjoyably if I want to.  And so far 3.3 seems to be doing that nicely.

I’ve heard a few comparisons between 3.3 and other patches, most of them extolling 3.3 as the best thing evar.  I dunno though.  I still think patch 3.1 was pretty hard to beat, but it had issues of its own which I think 3.3 has largely avoided so far.  So it’s really too early to say.

Story

The story of patch 3.3 is also pretty impressive.  Patch 3.2, let’s face it, was horrible from a story point of view.  How many argent crusaders and horde heroes did I ruthlessly put to death in that Light-forsaken coliseum anyway?  It was just a disaster.  And why was the Lich King so happy to let all this haberdashery happen on his front lawn anyway?

That’s the problem I’ve always had with Icecrown, actually – the sense that it doesn’t make sense for the scourge just to be milling about down there and not blowing up the airships above or flowing over into the adjoining areas.  Sure, the Wrathgate was a bit of a set back for the Scourge as much as for the Horde and Alliance, but it didn’t seem enough to justify the Lich King staying holed up in his basement watching reruns of Dallas for the next year, and only occasionally popping up in odd places to say “Raar I’m big and bad and will send my minions to kill you one by one then feel silly as they inevitably fail!”

* Be aware that the next paragraph contains some spoilers for Icecrown quests and five-mans. *

Now the combination of that 3.3 trailer, revelations from the Icecrown 5-mans, the Christie Golden book and the Mathias Lehner quest chain really seem to be fit together neatly.  I could be wrong here, but my understanding is that the frighteningly devious and cunning monstrosity that was Ner’zhul-the-Lich-King is basically kablammo, gone, annihilated by the fusion between him and Arthas into what is essentially a third entity, or perhaps just Arthas’ victorious nutso dark side.  The upshot is that (a) this new Lich King isn’t quite the evil genius that the old one was and (b) he’s been irritatingly held back from exercising his vast and horrible power by his own schizophrenic personality, possibly the “Mathias Lehner” character (though it’s implied both in-game and in the book that Lehner’s gone now).  The reason the Undead haven’t rolled over Northrend in an unrelenting wave is as much because of the Lich King’s mental health issues as the heroism and sacrifice of players and their factions.

So yeah, all in all there seems a lot to enjoy in this patch – and all the more so because of the patch that preceded it.  It’s restoring some of my joie de jouer in WoW.  I wonder though, is that a feeling generally shared by you folks or are there big downers that I’m missing?

Gisli trudged through crispy grass. He pulled his thick wool coat tighter around him shivering and exhaling ghost breath. This is a good thing. This is a good thing. He couldn’t see the house anymore and he was tired. A mental exhaustion overcame him and he sat on a brown moss covered stone. His wife was pregnant. He had always wanted a child. Been one of those people that just needed to raise someone else. Be for that kid what his wandering father never was for him. But it was so much too quickly.

Startled, he stood at a strange noise. A hiss that sounded like daggers in the thick of his marrow. He circled around hands out defensively but could see nothing. It sounded closer like a starved child it hissed and hissed crying out to him. He started to back up, thinking of his dear Satu sitting at home. He had only said he would be gone for a moment. Gisli started to run, but the sounds still grew louder till his ears bulged to heavily leaden with sound.

Mrena listened for a moment, set down her bowl of soup and with feeling

hands snuck out the back door. A sharp wind bit at her fingertips as she felt her way into the back yard one hand on the wood panels of the house. Her other hand clutched a handkerchief wrapped around her head. She walked on round pebbles and could feel as they grew in size to mark were the path ended and were the flower beds started. Her feet hit ice cold water. Her dark stalking stained black, laden with water and powdered ice. Her teeth chattered but she still walked her thick skirts belling out around her. The water raged. She felt a strange thing brush against her leg. She stayed motionless arms out searchingly.

The moisture in the air froze leaving a lipstick of ice and a rouge on her

porcelain cheeks. For five minuets, the kind that feel like forever, she stood

motionless and listened to maddened water and the slosh of something at her feet. Suddenly she was jerked down a cold hand pulled her under. Icy water enveloped her head and her red scarf was sweped away.

Gisli had said he would just be gone for a moment butt Satu waited all night. Long floral dresses and petticoats became wrinkled as she sat on the front porch. The next day she went looking for him. She searched the neighboring lake shores but he was gone. Her willowy sister braided butter colored hair and told her it would be all right. Reminded her that everyone loved the widow who lived by Forty Mile Creek. She didn’t want to be a lonely widow nor did she except that her lover was dead. He just wasn’t with her right now.

 Their home was by a very small lake that had a swift river flowing through it. Satu had a round face and wispy long hair. In the summer, three days before her baby was do she sat on the sunny porch braiding grass and thistles for her sisters children. An old lady walked up to her and snatched the thistles away. Satu raised her large eyes to the the old women. She had a face so wrinkled it looked as though she had lived her whole life in the sun. The old women didn’t seen to notice Satu as she unraveled the bradework Satu had spent the day working on.

“That girl will be Mrena until her father comes home. Your husbands sleeps but he still watches over you with borrowed eye” The old women then gasp and drooped the thistles like they had stung her. She looked up at Satu with a truly terrified face and then slunk away.

Mrena took in a mouth full of water as she was tugged under. like a fish girl she felt as though she had been left in a bath tub till she pruned. The hand held tight to her ankle and she couldn’t breath. She could feel herself being pulled by under towing currents down the river, further and further from a home she wouldn’t be able to find again.

Mrena opened her light grey eyes. She lay on dry, cold grass. She felt alone. Who ever had brought her there was gone. No sound but the light rustle of grass on the moor. she sat up running her hands along her body trying to make sure she was all still there. Her ankle felt small and worm and fine. Her dress was drying despite the thick layers. She uneasily helped herself up. Her arms searching around her found nothing immediate except a bolder. She sat. A light crunch of grass around her made her hold very still, her heart pounding.

“Here, a berry to ease the troubles?” A sweet sound like wind spinners pointing north and chimes when its breezy.

He watched as a strange creature moved toward Mrena. Sow its giraffe neck, skeleton bones connected to wooden stilts it walked on. It would take a few ungainly steps in a jerky way on uneven legs. It peered at her through one button and one glass eye. It blinked, cooked its head to the side and used one hand to reach into a vest pocket. It pulled out a bundle of wild berries. They smelled like cinnamon and dreams and the air around them looked like heat waves. He couldn’t hear what it said but saw it place them into Mrena’s small shaky hands. A nymph like young madden warring only a thin blackened dress leapt of the creatures back and crept tentatively to her.

“My name is Loviatar and If you wish to help your father you must give him

these.” Loviatar closed Mrena’s fingers delicately around the berries so as not to hurt them.

“I can not find him. I am blind and I don’t now where I am.”

“I gave my site to the north wind when I was young and full of love. You, Mrena are not blind.”

Mrena stood unsure of what to do she called out to Loviatar but nothing replied. There was a rumble and the ground under her shook. She drooped to one knee and put a palm to the ground. It was opening and there seemed to be something growing out of it. She felt it as it grew and when the rumbling stopped there was a face below her hand. she uncurled her fingers revealing the berries. Mindlessly she placed one after the other on cold lips. A snake hissed.

Satu gasp and sat up clutching his throat. On his chest lay an enormous snake and above him was a strange girl with wispy butter colored hair. She looked at her long lost father with big unbelieving eyes. He was so clear to her in such detail. It was so strange she had no way to react to something she had never been able to fathom. Satu jumped up tossing the snake to the side. The snake reared its glittering fangs threatening to send him back into his long slumber. He grabbed his small ax that had been used for wood cutting and beheaded the creature with one blow from his sore arm.

Turning back to Mrena he looked at her with dark tear filled eyes. She returned his stare saying “I wish I could have come sooner. I wish you could have been there as I grew.”

“But I was, never was there a moment I wasn’t watching over you.”

- Sophia Alexanda

My creative writing class is putting together our class compalation and im soooooo excited! This story and my last post are the ones im submiting. Im going to fully ilustrate them for the compalation and when I do that Ill upload thim so you guys can see!

This is a sketchbook page from a while ago that has nothing to do with this story but I thought I would share it anywho!

Oh and dont forget to check out my other short stories and poems by clicking on the short stories tab or right hear http://maroonsparrow.wordpress.com/category/short-stories/

okay love love love bye!

Many thanks to Joe @ Way of the Totem for this post

I feel like I should explain myself a little better about Quel’Delar and Quel’Serrar. I made it sound like the latter just dropped from Onyxia…which the new version does…but the older, better sword of Quel’Serrar looked exactly the same as the new sword but with a really long quest chain.

And you find the battered hilt in Icecrown Citadel. Aren’t you lucky?

WARNING!  WARNING!  SPOILERS WILL ABOUND IN THIS POST.  IF YOU DON’T WANT TO BE SPOILED, FEEL FREE TO SKIP THIS.

Since 3.3 was released on Tuesday, many people have been experimenting with the new dungeoneering tool.  A guildie had been interested in hitting up random heroics for badges, so I volunteered my assistance as a shadow priest.  Once we had assembled our party, we were teleported to several random dungeons; the first of which was the Occulus, which is, by far, the most frustrating instance I have ever been in and I refuse to willingly go in there again.  After a few more runs and some rotation of party members, we decided to do one more random run (which turned out to be the Violet Hold), and then we would head for the new 5-man, the Frozen Halls. 

I was insanely excited, for it was new content, something exciting that I hadn’t seen before, but, more important than that, I was excited because, as a Horde player, it meant we got to run around with one of my favorite characters in lore ever: Sylvanas Windrunner.  In addition to being one of my favorites, she was also my racial leader (my main is undead, after all), so I was having a bit of a fangasm the entire time.

It was rather amusing doing everything the “old-fashioned way” after being sent to new instances through magical means.  Finding the instance was an experience in and of itself, at least for me, as I wasn’t quite sure where it was.  A few minutes of exploring led to me being the first member of the party there by the meeting stone.  Once another party member showed up, we summoned the rest of the group, set the instance to normal mode (as we didn’t feel that we were properly geared for the heroic), and ran in.

Once inside, we met up with Lady Sylvanas Windrunner herself (I promptly squeed loudly enough to startle my cats, I’m sure), she gave her dramatic speech, and we turned to stare at a pair of 9-foot tall skeletal guards flanking the doorway.  We made short work of them (which was both confusing and hilarious to me; you’d think that, as guards, they’d put up more of a fight), and we ventured onward.

After a few more pulls, we found ourselves at the first boss (Bronjahm), which was exciting.  This guy has the best music playing when you fight him (you can hear it for yourself here), and it made the fight incredibly entertaining.

In spite of the quick overview we had of the fight, I realized how dependant I am on Deadly Boss Mods; the version I was using had yet to be updated to accomodate for the new instance, so it wasn’t really working.  I’m used to the sounds, to the warnings and countdowns scrolling across my screen, so not having it was a bit of a shock at first.  However, I learned very quickly to pick up on the cues from other members of the party and the cast bar I had set up beneath the enemy nameplates, which made the whole thing go very quickly.

We continued onward to the Devourer of Souls.  Upon reaching him—her—it—whatever it is, I realized none of my guildmates warnings of how bizarre it was had really prepared me for actually seeing it.  I’m pretty sure I actually typed “wtf is that thing” in party chat, which is unusual for me; I actually had nightmares about it when I slept.  To borrow Illidan’s trademark phrase from the days of Burning Crusade: “You are not prepared.”

I didn’t realize how accurate that was until the fight actually started.  In spite of having a vague idea of how the fight would go down, I was the first of the party to fall to a beam that it put out.  One by one, the remainder of the party began to fall until only our mage was left standing.  We rezzed, rebuffed, and looted the heads.  I even got a new staff to replace my old one (as it was one of the few blues I still had)!

We met up with Lady Sylvanas once again, who instructed us to move on to the Pit of Saron.  She stood with the champions of the Horde, who, I assume, had been sent from the Ashen Verdict, and we pressed on.  We were immediately confronted with Scourgelord Tyrannus on his frostwyrm, Rimefang.  Though the soldiers charged, they were immediately seized and turned to Scourge before our eyes.

I sat there staring at the screen in shock.  Why were they taken and not us?  However, we weren’t given much time to ponder this as they immediately turned around and started attacking us.  We got them down, and, the introduction to the new wing taken care of, we continued onwards into the pit, rescuing Horde slaves as we went.

As we continued onwards, one of the party members couldn’t help but point out the name of this particular wing (the Pit of Saron) and the eye in the center of what looked like a tower in the center of the pit.  Being the Lord of the Rings fan that I am, my brain immediately went to Sauron and had to shudder a bit as we continued.

We, eventually, wound up in front of Forgemaster Garfrost, who changes weaponry more often than someone changes hats.  Not only does he throw saronite boulders, but he immediately forges new weaponry as the fight progresses.  I forgot how quickly you could forge weaponry in this game until I saw him.  Anyhow, he went down fairly easily (and he has the best death line ever), and the slaves we had rescued poured onto the platform, forging new weaponry almost immediately, lead by Gorkun Ironskull, an orc we had rescued earlier.

We, however, continued on (where I was significantly disturbed by Plagueborn Horrors), and wound up facing Krick and Ick (a leper gnome on top of a named plageborn horror).  Honestly, I really don’t like this fight all that much.  However, we all swiftly determined that we wished that arcane mages got his Explosive Barrage.  This fight was fairly simple, as well, once you got the rhythm down, and, in the end, Krick hopped off his construct before we could kill him.  This turned out to be very good indeed, for he told us (and Sylvanas) that Frostmourne was in the Halls of Reflection.  If it was truly there, then, maybe, we could bring him down!

Unfortunately, Tyrannus wasn’t having any of this, especially since, you know, Krick pretty much sold out their master, and Tyrannus saw fit to wipe the floor with him.  Knowing that, to get to the Halls of Reflection, we would need to pursue and kill Tyrannus, we pressed on, slaughtering the vrykul army that he raised in an attempt to hold us off.

We then found ourselves at the ice tunnel that would become the gauntlet.  We knew we would need to get through it before we could face Tyrannus, though I didn’t realize what exactly this would entail before we set foot inside.  As soon as we set foot inside, he shouted to his frostwyrm to bring down the tunnel.  I soon learned that you need to move quickly, stop and kill things when you can, and avoid the blue-white circles on the floor as that indicated ice was falling.  If you didn’t, you’d get knocked back a ways and you’d need to run to catch up.

Fortunately, we cleared the tunnel fairly quickly (we are an awesome bunch) and we were faced with Tyrannus.  Fortunately, “reinforcements” popped up in the tunnel behind us.  Said “reinforcements” mostly consisted of the slaves we had freed and, really, they weren’t very helpful at all during the actual fight.  Gorkun said they were there to hold off the rest of the undead while we handled the Scourgelord, but I really don’t think there were other undead coming up the tunnel after us.

Anyway, it took me a moment or two to actually get oriented during the fight, as there’s quite a bit you need to pay attention to, nor did I really know the audio cues for when I needed to move away from the group and when I didn’t, yet we got him down very nicely, and we settled down to revel in our victory.

Or not, because, you know, Gorkun and the rest of his reinforcements ran out to celebrate and Gorkun needed to give an impassioned speech.  While I sat there shaking my head, one of my guildies said: “Hey, Ada, watch this!”  Honestly, I had no idea what exactly it was that I needed to pay attention to, because, all of a sudden, I heard Sylvanas shouting something and we had all been pulled back to the cave.  I turned and got myself oriented just in time to see Sindragosa kill the majority of the people we had rescued (including Gorkun), though it was only when we could move again that I realized that, if Sylvanas hadn’t magically pulled us back to the cave, we would have been dead, too.  Now, I’m really not sure why she saved us, but I was very glad she did.

Unfortunately, at that point, we had to call it for the night as we were losing party members and such, but we vowed to come back the next day and finish up.  That night, we brought in some new people, and an original party member switched to an alt, so we ran through the first two wings over again.  I didn’t mind, of course, for I loved it so.

This time, however, things were different.  This time, we didn’t almost wipe on the Devourer.  This time, we owned it in one go.  This time, we spent a good chunk of the run flailing over how awesome it was and how badly we all wanted to come back and RP our way through the instance, because, damn it, it was just that amazing.

This time, I knew what was going on and actually turned just in time to see Sindragosa slowly rise into the air behind Gorkun as he gave his speech (which, in turn, activated my “oh shit” button) and all but bolted back towards the cave so Sylvanas wouldn’t have to pull me back there, herself.  This time, I actually saw Sindragosa kill them all (save for the few mages who managed to ice block themselves), and I chuckled a bit to myself when I realized Sylvanas didn’t really care.

But, we had to move onward to the Halls of Reflection.  Now, this is probably the most amazing thing that I’ve seen in awhile.  Lo and behold, Frostmourne was indeed there, suspended in the air above an altar of sorts.  We didn’t quite realize at the time that talking to Sylvanas trigged the event to start (and we needed a quick break), so we ran out to reset it and then ran back in again.  While we waited, we had a brief conversation about what might happen if someone were to disenchant Frostmourne (ultimately, we determined probably a crystal or a shard of some sort and some souls).

Once everybody had returned, we had a brief conversation of what the fight would be like, and, once everybody was ready, we restarted the event.  There was an incredible amount of dialogue between Sylvanas and Uther (when did Arthas trap his soul in Frostmourne, anyway?), and the conversation revealed several very interesting things that I’m not going to spoil for people, because, really, it’s just one of those conversations you actually have to hear.

Then, suddenly, Arthas was there (I hadn’t recalled seeing him enter at all), and he sent his two captains at us: Falric and Marwyn.  What followed involved them summoning large groups of ghostly soldiers (their armies come back from the dead, I assume), standing still around the room until they “awakened” and came to attack us; honestly, I’d compare this to how the Violet Hold works.  At this point, it was wave after wave after wave, and somehow, we lost control of the situation and we died.

So we rezzed and decided to take refuge in one of the alcoves the captains hid in, knowing they wouldn’t move or attack until we defeated the appropriate number of waves.  This strategy worked very well, indeed, for we got the waves down in record time and faced Falric first.  (As a side note, I really do think there’s something wrong with Falric in death as he kept going on about how delicious despair was and that, apparently, fear was exhilarating.)  Once we got him down, we had just enough time to get health and mana bars back up to full before the waves started up again (we used the same trick to take the waves down here as we did the first time), followed by Marwyn.  He seemed slightly more sane than his companion, for the things he said made a lot more sense.  He, however, was convinced we’d fall to Arthas when we came upon him later.

Upon his death, the door that Arthas had come through opened once again, and we found ourselves face to face with a giant skeletal Frostsworn General and Spiritual Reflections of the party.  A quick overview told us that we had to take them down one at a time (though it was really weird attacking our own people, I must say).  When they were down, we continued up the rest of the way.

Earlier, during this run, our healer had expressed an interest in seeing Sylvanas and the Lich King fighting each other (just in a sort of “wouldn’t it be cool if…?” kind of way).  Little did we know that this was actually what we would see once we got into the room.  However, Sylvanas wasn’t doing so well against him.  Once we got into the room and moved to the appropriate place to trigger the start of this event, I found myself already in an RP mindset, where all I could think of was “Oh  man.  Oh man.  Need to run.  Need to get the hell out of here now,” because, I mean, if we couldn’t kill the Lich King during the Tirion’s Gambit questline, what honestly made us think we stood a chance against him here?

So Sylvanas laid down a frost trap or something, holding him in place long enough for us to make our way into a passageway and get the hell out of here.  The Lich King, however, really had no interest in letting us go, so he, of course, followed us as soon as he could.  During the course of our escape, he raised four individual walls of ice.  Our job was to keep the undead he raised and sent at us off of Sylvanas while she contended with the wall.  However, the Lich King slowly advanced all the while, and it wasn’t until we got the undead down that she’d break down the wall.  This continued for a good few minutes; all I could think about was running, all I really wanted to do was put as much distance between us and him as we could.

It wasn’t until we hit Wall #4 that I thought we might have a problem.  Our tank had taken to meeting the undead about half-way between the wall and the Lich King (which worked as it was still within range for me), but, the waves of undead increase in number as you go, and the Lich King was ever advancing down the passage.  I actually went and quickly warned the group to get away as best they could, for I honestly didn’t know what was going to happen if they got too close to him (though I doubt I was clear enough on the warning).

Wall #4 went down, we made our way onto a platform and… there was nowhere else to run.  We were trapped, and, though I knew Blizzard had probably engineered this so we wouldn’t die, I was still petrified that we were going to, anyway.  I also knew that Blizzard couldn’t let us kill him here, for we had to face him in Icecrown Citadel proper, but fighting him honestly seemed to be the only way we were going to walk out of there alive (if at all).

Then, all of a sudden, I heard a voice shouting: “FIRE!”, and, before I knew it, the tunnel collapsed in front of Arthas, blocking him off from us.  I twisted the camera around to see Orgrim’s Hammer hovering behind us and I breathed out a sigh of relief at that point.  We were safe (for now), and we had a clear way out of there.  In fact, on the ship is a chest with your rewards for the encounter and a portal out to Dalaran!

We spent a good few minutes afterwards flailing about the instance and how badly we want to run it IC.  It’s a shame that it’s just a 5-man, though.  I’d love to get a whole group of people in there and RP our way through it.