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.