Genavie's Theme Song

I was given a theme song for Genavie as a Christmas gift this year by my good friend Taylor Goodson. He's previously been featured on WoW Insider for his Warcraft music, so I'm totally blown away by his generosity. I'm a bit of a music noob so I don't have anything interesting to say about it other than I love it; fortunately Taylor is a lot more articulate than I. Read what he had to say about the piece after the break.

Book that I write in: The Reverend

Book that I write in,

I was in the Sepulchre, walking towards a Forsaken in a wheelchair last I left you. He looked approachable and contemplative, and I had not seen one of my kind wear such an expression before. I was to learn later his name was Gottleib, and I'm positive now I could not have kept away from him if I had tried.  Forsaken are perpetually angry, even those of us that view undeath as a gift or blessed second chance are often vile and bitter for reasons I don't quite understand. There are exceptions, particularity among those of us that make our way through Azeroth as aspiring heroes, but that doesn't change the fact that the most commonly used phrase to describe the Forsaken is (I suspect) “Dead and pissed off about it.”

While we're on the subject of phrases, the first words I uttered to Gottleib were: “That's quite the chair you have...” Which is likely one of the most useless remarks I have ever made.

Forsaken Roleplay Pitfalls: The Forlorn Spirit

Recruitment for the my guild is going to re-open after the holidays, and I'm scrambling to update the lore on our Forsaken roleplay guide with the Shattering and Cataclysm. Our original Forsaken roleplay guide is great, and even got posted on the Horde roleplay guide sticky on our realm forums. However, it wasn't written by me (but rather, one of my guildmates) and I don't feel comfortable just going and editing it as I see fit.

One of things I decided to include in my guide was a list of common Forsaken archetypes that are pitfalls. I kept it to the three most common ones I see when rejecting applications; there aren't many more than that, thankfully, and I maintain my stance that Forsaken roleplay is pretty hard to screw up. Here's the first one: the spirit!

The Forlorn Spirit

The Forlorn Spirit is roleplayed as just that, -a spirit- rather than as a rotting corpse which is what the Forsaken actually are. Usually these types of characters are portrayed as beautiful dead women who still have a strong connection to something from their former life. Nine times out of ten this connection involves a romance; for example, she was killed on her honey moon - murdered by a jealous / rejected suitor, ect. The forlorn spirit lingers in Azeroth, with all her ethereal, haunting beauty, waiting for whatever went wrong with her life to reveal and then correct itself. Up until the moment they are forced to confront their life issues, these forlorn spirits are typically roleplayed as a distant, out of touch character with no ability to fight or defend herself – fitting into the the story and feel of the Forsaken about as well as a swarthy, Turkish transvestite in a bikini contest.

Book that I Write in: Learning to Eat

Book that I write in,

I was riding with Vaalis's along the Northern coast of Stranglethron Vale; the sea turned to ice in front of his charger's hooves and enabled us to travel on the ocean. Vaalis said he was going to teach me how to eat, and the more I thought about it the more I convinced myself I must have misheard him. It just didn't make any sense. I knew I didn't need to eat as Forsaken; in fact, this marked the first time I'd thought about food since coming out of the grave. More so, there was just no good reason for him to make me take such a long journey by zeppelin and then horseback simply to eat. There were bats in Trisifall with perfectly good meat on them. Bats were such a staple in Forsaken society anyways; we ride them to flight masters, sow cloaks from their hides and even keep them as pets. I thought if we needed to eat, bats would be a common part of the Forsaken diet.

I was so lost in my thoughts I didn't notice the landscape change gradually from lush jungle to dry wheat field. I had exhausted my capacity to amuse myself by fiddling with the horn on the saddle and watching the water frost over and was just starting to work up the courage to ask Vaalis what he had really said before we left when he pulled on the reigns and his mount slowed to a trot. He looked down at me and announced we were here. I looked around, torn from my thoughts.

Shadow Sermon Event

This was our second Shadow sermon hosted by the guild, and our first one months ago had a massive turn out so we had big shoes to fill. The sermons have always been open to Forsaken outside of our guild, since it's a great way to get our name out there and let potential recruits see what our roleplay is like. Our last one was just a simple explanation on the major and optional tenets of the Forgotten Shadow (Power, Tenacity, Respect, Compassion and Death) and it worked well because we had five priests speaking. This sermon had a more complicated theme: thoughts on why the Light has abandoned the Forsaken.

All in all I'd say it was a success. We had a great location in the Undercity sewers, nestled in between two hulking abominations and speaking in a large, hollow sewer pipe; we roleplayed the echo making our characters sound louder. The roleplay went on for hours afterwards, and the response from our guests was very positive. We had about thirty Forsaken and no griefers or uninvited living characters, much the same as our last sermon. Everyone worked hard on their sermons and got very creative with them, I'm glad all our attendants were very respectful out of character. I think the trick is not posting the location of the event publicly, I always post about the event, and then offer calendar invitations with the details to people who message or mail me in-game saying they're interested.

I logged the sermons our characters gave to the crowd, they're posted after the break. We had a lot of crowd responses and our buddy Lorco hosted the event in-character, but it's all edited out just because it'd be so damn long otherwise.

Book that I write in: of Jaws and Such

Last I left you, I was disappointed that my first hard-earned revelation about my life was that I was a florist. I had begun working on engineering a prosthetic jaw for my benefactor in unlife: Vaalis – who urged me to go to the Sepulchre in Silverpine Forest and aid the Forsaken I found there. I know I should have just gone there and found work to do right away, and that was my intention, but it turns out a jaw is a complicated thing to recreate, so my travel plans were delayed. Think about it, if you're reading this then you probably have a jaw, run your hand along the underside of it and feel with your fingers as you open and close it. See? Not so simple to make from raw non-organic materials.

Want to know something interesting? There are only two bones in the jaw (not counting the teeth). I learned those bones were called the Maxilla and the Mandible, which doesn't relate to my story, I just like how they sound. You don't expect bones to have pleasant sounding names, or interesting ones, but I'm very interested in them now that I can see my own bones regularly.

Out of Character Event

To celebrate our last day in Azeroth before it was changed forever I led and planed an event for my super serious heavy roleplay guild that was entirely out of character. I know dedicating a night to specifically not roleplaying in an roleplay guild sounds ridiculous; but I wanted to do something really flashy and out of the ordinary which has two problems if attempted in character:

1. The Forsaken aren't really outrageous and flashy.
2. Our characters didn't know shattering was happening tomorrow, so the justification for doing something out of the ordinary just wasn't there. I mean, yeah, we could have had a normal event like a training drill or something, but that's hardly memorable on the scale that I was looking for.

So I bit the bullet and scheduled our first and last entirely out of character event, and in the end I'm glad I did it. I kept the details entirely secret and told my members only to meet at the Undercity bank at seven server time with some empty bag space.

Book that I Write in: Meditation is for Chumps

Book that I write in,

It's worth noting that, for all my criticisms of the elevators and aesthetics, the actual layout of the Undercity makes a lot of sense. A near-perfect circle divided into quarters; if you can count to four, you can find your way around. This suited me just fine, as I'm pretty sure that, given the choice between getting a lobotomy done with a mining pick or asking or asking a guard for directions, I would chose the former. Inbetween tasks I set for myself  I started to explore the city, hoping to catch a glimpse of the Banshee Queen. When I did finally see her (guarded by Forsaken, I noted with relief) it was at a distance. I poked my head out from the end of the hallway that led into her royal quarter and very quietly observed her for a moment. She looked very strong, and a little pissed off too so I decided not to approach her. Silently, I thanked her for freeing us and nodded my head in her direction. I knew the gesture was pointless as she was as unaware of it as she was of my own existence; but I enjoyed thinking I at least did something to express my gratitude.

Character Planning for my Forsaken Hunter

I've never actually created a pair of roleplay characters with someone else, even though it's quite common. I've had offers before, but I always held back because I worried about the other person going inactive and then having that characters story go unfinished and unplayed. So when another officer in my guild and I started talking about rolling characters for Cataclysm that are siblings I had some reservations. The idea wouldn't seem to leave either of us alone though, I mean, how awesome would a Forsaken brother and sister duo be? It's uncommon for Forsaken to honour ties to family they had in life, so we thought we'd take it a step further and have them hate each other. Having a constant nemesis and rival sounds like a lot of fun to roleplay, and spits in the face of the typical family roleplay style I've seen around. We're going to have their interaction feel a lot like childish sibling augments ('my [blank] is better than your [blank]!') only due to setting and circumstance their goals and bragging are going to involve massive diseased bears turning red and enraging, plague tipped arrows, murder, mayhem and sacks of gold that are awarded for aforementioned murder.

Book that I Write in: Off to Undercity

Book that I write in:

Eventually I exhausted all the work there was for me in Brill. I kept expecting to see Vaalis again, and I would anxiously look around Gallow's End (that's the name of the inn in Brill) whenever I came back to town to repair my armour or read in my rented room. I was proud of the progress I'd made with my fighting and Orcish and kind of wanted him to see what I could do. Also, after talking to the other Forsaken in Brill I was burning with questions; mostly about why he acted like a benefactor to me when he didn't need to. I waited around for a few days in Brill tapping my feet and twiddling my decaying thumbs before I packed up and left for Undercity.

As an aside, I physically reeled when I discovered the Undercity Forsaken spoke of was actually -the- Undercity of Lordaeron. I had not remembered names like Trisfall Glades or Brill when I came out of my gave and assumed I was in some new, foreign part of Azeroth rather than the backyard of Lordaeron; where I am confident I spent my time alive. I suspect geography was not a pressing concern for me then. It's a source of endless frustration how even small memories of my time spent living are remembered painstakingly slowly for me; but more on that later.

OOC: A Realm of Possiblies

I constantly see threads on my realm forums from people looking to potentially transfer that want information on the server that's easily obtainable via google. Their frequency is alarming, as is the fact that people would rather make an entire thread and wait on replies that are subject to opinion and trolling rather than just getting the hard facts right away. Now, don't get me wrong. Forums are all about discussion, and if you have a question about the server that promotes it like: "Is there a lot of Dwarf roleplay here? What kind Dwarf characters do you see being roleplayed and what do you think of them?" Then all the power to you.

If you want to find out more about the roleplay on a roleplay server your best bet is always just roll a character on that realm, run to a major city with any roleplay mods you use enabled and have a look around. You want the make the most of your investment, so finding out for yourself is guaranteed to be better than just waiting on people to tell you if they think a server is worth the twenty five bucks or not. Sadly, most of the posts I see are like the example I posted after the break.

Book that I Write in: Waking Up Sucks II

Book that I write in,

Vaalis was very patient, but I guess he wanted to get back to somewhere since he started pointing over towards some grey buildings in the distance. It wasn't until he started motioning for me to get out of the dirt that I realized he was expecting me to go with him. I looked down and noticed my clothes were pretty much forfeit from my time sleeping, so when we got closer to the town I would later learn was called Brill I grabbed a bit of cloth than had blown into a nearby tree and wrapped it around myself. It must've been a torn bed sheet or something. I wasn't sure if Forsaken were modest, but I didn't want to look like a fool when meeting others like me for the first time.

So that's why I was a little angry when I heard someone snickering at me when we approached the inn. I turned to see who it was, and it was this stupid merchant in front of a cart. When I turned to glare at her she just laughed harder, holding her sides. I was dealing with a lot, so naturally I jumped at the chance distract myself by running over to that bitch and giving her a piece of my mind. Vaalis was quick to stop me however, and led me away by my wrist. He must have known what I was going to ask, since he looked at me and said “sheeeet isss piiink” as he half-dragged me away.

I started to protest, it wasn't pink...! I looked down to make sure, it was grey! Just like my hands, and the cobblestones, and the buildings and the... grass. I looked up in a panic, my head darting around like some of mad woman as I took visual inventory. There wasn't any colour to anything. I remember vaguely thinking that something was strange with my sight when I got out of my grave but it was quickly forgotten in light of everything else; I thought I might have had dirt in my eyes or something.

Book that I Write in: Waking Up Sucks

Dear Diary,

No, that sounds too whimsical. Little girls keep diaries under their beds and leave teddy bears to guard them.

Dear journal,

Better, but still stupid. Why am I addressing it so kindly? It's my parchment, I'm calling the shots here.

Journal:

Boring. I can do better than that.

Book that I write in,

That's the ticket, you're a genius Geneive. You thought this writing things down idea was good and you've impressed yourself after only a few lines. Anyways...

Book that I write in,

I've been thinking about a lot of stuff, and it's getting to the point where if I don't try and keep track of my thoughts somehow I'm going to go completely nuts and join that Forsaken under the ramp in Undercity selling cockroaches with a pair of stolen pantaloons on my head. Don't ask whose pantaloons they will be, you're better off not knowing. What are you doing sidetracking me anyways? Shut up, I have a lot to pen. I guess I should start at the beginning. Or maybe the end? It's hard for Forsaken, the beginning is the end for us, sort of.

My entrance into the ranks of the Forsaken was not good. I imagine others of my kind emerged from their graves triumphantly, one fist breaking through the soil as a bolt of lighting lit up the sky. They emerge with purpose, their first footsteps out of the grave measured and precise. They walk towards some unknown goal, pausing only to snatch up some unfortunate baby bunny, who foolishly ran by, and then biting it's head off. I'd give my teeth to have awoken like that. But alas, such was not the case.