Raelia’s Penance

It was an early evening on the Lehba Island. Sun has already set thanks to Anzulekk’s twin world, hanging in the sky right on the horizon. Despite that, it still wasn’t too dark. With his office awash in the twilight, Menrim was preparing to leave for his quarters when the doors opened. It was Raelia Sunspear, his felblood elf assistant. She was still calm and somewhat happy, not knowing what Verroak would soon want of her.

“Raelia,” Menrim said to welcome her, “I see you’re back from the mainland.” She spent most of the day commanding the Ivarindian peasants who were building the village where they would live together with the refugees Anzulekk would invite to flee from Azeroth’s certain and urgent doom.

“Yes. If you do not mind, I will just leave the documents and go back to my quarters.” She calmly walked to her desk, but before she could do what she planned, Menrim interrupted her.

“Actually,” he said, “boss wanted to talk to you.”

She sneered snidely. “What does the old coot want this time? Ran out of bird seed?”

Menrim wasn’t laughing at her jokes. He does not often joke, and he got tired of the bird jokes as well. “You’ll have to talk to him.”

“Fine,” she said putting down her paper stack, “I’ll go to his study right away.”

“Not his study,” Menrim said, pointing through the window. “He’s waiting for you at the world tree. Come.” He came out from behind the desk and grabbed his bag, putting it across his shoulder.

She chuckled. “You’ll be escorting me? My knight in shining armor. Only without the armor…” She looked across Menrim’s leonine centauric lower body. “But you got the horse parts alright.” They exchanged concerned looks after that last remark. “Not what I meant.”

“I know,” the tol’vir responded and came over to the door, waving to the felblood. “Come.”

Map of the Warcraft Galaxy – Update (NGC 6384)

Map of the Warcraft Galaxy (NGC 6384)

A Titanic Task

Who says only Titans can move and shape lands? Well, people who don’t know much, or who are dogmatically following some silly beliefs. For your information, ethereals can move lands. As I learned some time ago, they sometimes locate worlds shattered by the Burning Legion (or Old Gods, or other nasties – yes, there are more) and take whole chunks of those worlds, snap some magic technology to them and relocate those chunks elsewhere for easy harvest by their ethereal and grav crews. A lot of the minerals or items you may have purchased or otherwise acquired from ethereals come from these. So when I learned about an ethereal in deep debt who was willing to part with his land-moving devices, I was quick to jump on the occasion.

Infinite Azeroths 2: Home

The outskirts of Stormwind were filled with rickety, provisional homes, draped in multi-colored cloths and filled with ringing and clanking bells and windchimes. Despite what someone from Azeroth Prime would say, it was not a goblin camp. It was a shanty-town built by the vishkanyas when they arrived on Azeroth in this timeline. Azeroth-7, or as some know it, the Illidari timeline. Maiev failed to stop Illidan from cracking Northrend apart. The Lich King died, and the Scourge was wiped out. While some would feel that was a positive change, no one expected what followed. Not only the tidal waves from the melting glaciers destroyed numerous cities and broke ancient dams, Illidan went on to become an unchallenged Lord of Outland. And with this power, he took fight to the Legion and fought them across the stars. Numerous innocent worlds found themselves in the crossfire, including the vishkanya world. A small percentage of their people successfully escaped to Azeroth through one of Illidan’s portals.

Now, they live here, in the outskirts of Azerothian civilization. Cast out, abandoned, unwanted. Although King Varian accepted them and let them stay, most of the humans feel they have enough problems with orcs and draenei “squatting” on Azeroth, some feel the vishkanya are the final nail in the coffin of humanity’s power.

Agam was careful to cover her face when she was crossing the streets of Stormwind. For about ten years she lived in this city and knew what the people on both sides were capable of. Does the perception filter even work when she’s in her own timeline? It does, after all, filter out only the extraordinary and on Azeroth-7 her eyes are not something completely out of place. No, they are just something that could get you in trouble. Luckily, Llore was at her side, showing his face without a care in the world, drawing attention away from her hooded face. Together, they walked right out of the Dwarven District and continued down the path to the outskirts.

Once there, she could finally take off the hood and look at all the lights and bells, and take in the smells of the familiar cuisine. She could finally once again hear the familiar noise of her native language, even if it was the crooked merchants hawking their wares and old women yelling at disobedient brats. For all its issues, this was home.

“Agam,” she heard from behind. She quickly turned around and saw what appeared to be a large, muscular human with a bronzed skin… but with eyes just as serpentine as hers. Llore looked up at the man who was showing a rather forbidding visage.

“Is he trouble?” Llore asked her.

“No,” Agam responded, smiling. Suddenly, the mustachioed man smiled back. “He’s my brother.”

Meanwhile, a human guard was leaning on the walls of one of the houses and looking at the two vishkanyas, and then frowning at the sight of Llore – a human, unusual in this district. He snarled and looked back to another guard, sitting nearby and sipping wine someone left over at his porch.

“You seen him?” The first guard asked.

“Whom?” The second answered, for a moment getting the bottle out of his face.

“That one,” The first guard continued, pointing at Llore. “Looks like we got ourselves a snake-fucker.”

Character Profiles: Aeresham

Name: Aeresham Alkar
Race: Botani
Gender: hermaphrodite
Age: 100
Class: Not applicable
Professions: herbalism
Religion: Genesaur worship
Alignment (per D&D): True Neutral
Traits (per CK2): quick, gardener, patient, cruel, diligent, temperate

GDE: Dream of Creation, Arakkoa starting experience

Call it build 7.0.0.21600

Welcome back to Game Design Exercise. The first thing you might notice is I decided to shorten the title. “Game Design Exercise” was taking up a lot of precious character space, so I decided to shorten it in case I ever need a particularly long title for one of the sections. The second thing you might notice is that the map posted this time is different from the previous one. I continue working on it and although most of the additions are things I hid from public view (because they spoil future content before it’s ready) there are some zone shape and size changes. They stem from me noticing that Ravenwood and Thornbranch are definitely too small. Most starting zones aren’t much smaller than regular end-game zones, so I thought I wouldn’t be able to realistically squish in a full 1-13 experience in those areas. They are now bigger, partially at the cost of the oversized Verdant Plains.

Another thing I wanted to talk about before the break is a concern that was raised on Twitter recently. Dream of Creation is adopting several fey creatures from Dungeons & Dragons and other fantasy sources and one of those creatures is called a hag. They’re ugly troll-like creatures that undeniably bear some resemblance to a caricature of an old woman, and the term likely comes from there. To me, a person with a certain fantasy gaming experience, hags were just a normal thing that didn’t raise any red light. I was however told that the term is considered offensive. I mean, it’s obvious calling a real person “hag” is an offense, but a person was concerned that using it as a name of a fantasy creature is offensive as well, regardless of the term’s past in the genre. Personally, I don’t see it, but if enough people see it as a valid concern, I will adopt it. So, what do you think? Let me know on Twitter or in the comments below.

So, I invite you to read my take on arakkoa starting experience for Dream of Creation, an Emerald Dream expansion. They are arakkoa from the main timeline, so they continue storylines from the Burning Crusade and only influences from Warlords of Draenor are clarifications about the common past of both timelines and references – such as WoD characters showing up here in their main timeline incarnations. Enjoy!

A peek at the Dream

Not many people get to see the Emerald Dream. Or at least, not with their waking eyes or with a capacity to truly remember it. I remember reading that a few adventurers were briefly sent into it to retrieve some items for powerful entities like Keeper Remulos but most of us, underpowered mortals can only dream of seeing it, no pun intended. So when I got the chance to take a peek at its true form I jumped at the occasion, even though I knew I was getting into a combat situation. The fabled Emerald Dream is one of the legendary places that you hear stories about. There are even various theories about its true purpose. Some say it’s a Titanic blueprint, and even that one causes certain confusion. Is it a blueprint to be used in case of reorigination, or is it just an old plan that is no longer relevant with the world’s original ordering completed?

Character Profiles: Sednaq Mikiruq

Art by enipnion

Name: Sednaq of Mikiruq
Race: Tuskarr
Gender: female
Age: 29
Class: Expert (non-combatant)
Professions: Skinning, leatherworking, fishing, cooking, first aid
Religion: Traditional tuskarr shamanism
Alignment (per D&D): True Neutral
Traits (per CK2): gregarious, gluttonous, kind, diligent, brave, lustful

Character Profiles: Lunk

Art by Ron Spears for WoW TCG

Name: Lunk, of Dustbelcher Clan
Race: Ogre
Gender: male
Age: about 30
Class: insists it’s Culinarian
Professions: cooking, archaeology, keeps randomly dropping and reacquiring various other professions
Religion: Lunk will pray to the closest available god because he’s not sure they’re always in range.
Alignment (per D&D): Chaotic Good
Traits (per CK2): genius, slow, kind, charitable, content, arbitrary, humble, gregarious