How our Death Knight Story Played out as an Event:

I know it's pretty abrupt to switch to an out of character entry when previously I was speaking about our Death Knight story arc in-character, but we punctuated the story with an incredible guild event and I just had to share. For those of you who were wondering what happened after my last in-character post: I did what is commonly referred to in fiction as 'babysitting' my character, Genavie was okay since reinforcements arrived. The Scythe confronted the Death Knights, but they were able to spirit themselves away to Acherus while twirling their mustaches. It was good-times.

That's where our guild event picked up. Our two Death Knights had gone rogue and were spotted heading North from Acherus into the Ghost Lands - they were on the run and without a plan, so the Scythe gathered in Brill and rode out to confront them. It was a great way to get our guild name out there since a lot of leveling deaders saw us all in-character and preparing to ride out. We had a few spectators follow us down through the Plaguelands too. The ride there felt very epic; there was something awesome about seeing so many Forsaken riding together on their dreadsteeds.

Once we got the Ghostlands there was a slight hiccup, one of our newer members didn't have the Burning Crusade expansion! I've been playing for so long I didn't even consider that as possibility when I was planning everything. I felt like a huge jerk, but our event location in the Ghostlands had been picked  ahead of time out of character and the plans for the evening had been developed around that specific location. When I explained this to our new player they were very understanding and asked to stick around in the raid and maybe get a play by play of the event. We said our goodbyes and continued on.

Our characters guessed that their Ebon foes were hiding either in the vicinity of Deathholme or in Windrunner Spire, with Deathholme seeming the better guess we rode there first. For those of you who have never been to Deatholme or are unfamiliar with it, it's a big Scourge outpost that was used when Arathas made his assault on Quel'Thalas. It's full of slaughterhouses and ziggurats spread out in a circle. The Scythe hunted through each building looking for their wayward Death Knights.

Suddenly, out of character, one of my officers asked us to hold up for a second and put up a summoning stone which threw a lot of us for a loop. We had everyone in the raid with us. But we did, and he summoned our new player that didn't have the expansion! Turns out he bought it for them, just because he's just that nice of a guy. Everyone was totally floored, I've never seen that kind of generosity in-game before. Our new member was beside themself and admitted they were tearing up a bit in real life.

We resumed the hunt through Deathlome. It was great, our characters were very paranoid; they were expecting danger in each building, because, out of character, no one knew which building the Death Knights were in. Everyone thought they would be in the big tower in the center so we wouldn't find them until we searched there last, but they actually holed up in the one building without a quest mob spawn in it. That way we wouldn't disturb anyone leveling in the area.

The dramatic dialog was kept brief - both groups of Forsaken explained their motives, flaunted their superiority, and then fought. This is one of the great things about playing Forsaken, a lot of the time it's either very deep conversation roleplay with philosophical themes like life and death, or it's all action. We also didn't have to deal with any bleeding heart type characters that protested the fighting, since things like that are pretty cut and dry.

Organizing a large scale pure roleplay battle with all the people we had would have been an absolute disaster; and I spent a lot of time considering the best way to let everyone fight without total chaos ensuing. Whenever it comes to events with my guild I always try and make sure everyone gets a chance to roleplay; especially since I remember the disappointment and frustration at being in other guilds and having "storyline events" that were pretty much the guild watching as the officers had a big showdown scene or something. In those cases there were never opportunities provided for the other members to roleplay too, and it sucked.

So what we did was split the raid into groups (out of character) and each group took on one Death Knight with a duel in-game. It was all in roleplay gear and in good fun, the duels were basically auto attack and some banter. Our villains were very sporting, they won some and they lost some. While it wasn't as true to what we would have done in-character, which is mob them, I consider it a small price to pay for having roleplay combat go quickly and painlessly for everyone.

Our in-character guild leader (my expansion-buying officer) and Genavie went last, with Genavie fighting Vaalis. The Death Knights went down, and they were brought back to the Undercity for a public execution, the date yet to be announced. We reasoned in-character that it would be better for morale. What was cool about this is that we roleplayed the Death Knights being in cells for a while after (both of them have alts in the guild so they could still get their roleplay fixes in other places). We had lots of people roleplay scenes with them where Scythe members would guard their cells. It went on for days. I thought this was an awesome way to get everyone involved in the storyline even if they missed the event.