Guild Plot Starter Story: Korresh's Memoirs

This is the story I wrote to kick off our next guild-wide plot, enjoy.

Genavie groaned into her rotten palms, then rubbed her empty eye sockets with her fists. Finding a stray peppermint candy stuck behind where her tear ducts used to be, she plucked it out and flicked it across the wooden table in front of her irritably. The wax candle in front of her flickered, the melted wax oozing down its outside making her think of sand falling slowly through an hourglass.

After watching the candy skitter off the edge of the table Genavie levelled her gaze the small, leather-bound notebook resting on the table in front of her and heaved her chest in her best undead imitation of an exasperated sigh. Until recently the notebook had belonged to Korresh, her former Lieutenant in the Scythe, upon his execution for treason Genavie had taken possession of the book in the hopes it would contain vital intelligence about the schemes Korresh was most certainly involved in.

Reaching forward, Genavie began flipping through the pages. The small size of the notebook belied the volume of its contents; however, since even after several minutes of just glancing over pages Genavie had yet to reach the back cover. Geavie marvelled at the seemingly unlimited insight the book offered into the entirety of Korresh's unlife; all his research, thoughts, desires and secrets were laid bare before her.

The start of it all...

This is the start of our latest guild plot in the Scythe, enjoy.

Her daggers, two silver arcs in her skeletal hands met his axe in a shower of sparks. Genavie's weapons crossed together in a parry mere inches above her exposed collarbones, causing her to lean back. If she wanted, she could have spat on the axe bearing down on her, it was that close. She was rapidly losing ground, literally as her feet slid back in the dirt, and figuratively as her daggers started to shake and rattle in her hands. If she didn't do something quickly her parry would fail and the axe would be able to cleave into the base of her neck unhindered.

With a grunt, she pushed her locked daggers and her opponent's axe as far away from herself as she could. She was able to move the weapons away from her by precious inches. Then she let go of her weapons and dropped to the ground, the axe narrowly missing it's mark as it fell. Though Genavie couldn't feel it, she was sure it nicked off a small piece of the shell of her ear.

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.

Death Knight Story Arc: Part II

You can find part one here.

“What is this? Are you lost Vice-Executor?” Rasmorden tilted his helmet covered head as I glanced past him at the abominations lumbering in the distance. “Are you alone?” He asked, looking over my shoulder.

“I came for you Rasmorden; I'm not lost. And yes, I am alone.” I looked him over, raising an eyebrow under my cowl.

“I never know what tricks you Deathstalkers are up to.” He growled.

“I'm not here to trick you, Rasmorden. And technically I'm not a Deathstalker, I just trained with them.” His eyebrows flattened and he gave me a dry, uncaring expression. “Although to a Death Knight like you that may seem like a somewhat unimportant nuance.” I added quickly.

Driving his runeblade into the ground, Rasmorden adjusted the straps on his gauntlets. For a moment I watched his blade carefully while trying not to look like I was watching it carefully; I had seen what a Death Knight's blade could do even when not directly wielded by its master and knew well enough not to turn my back on such a blade carelessly.  Pulling my eyesockets away from the blade's flickering runes, I took another small step towards Rasmorden.

“Do you know why I sought you tonight, Rasmorden?” I spoke quietly, mostly because I wanted him to strain to hear me, but also because he had picked up his runeblade again and raising my voice seemed like a very bad idea. I went to rest the tips of my rotten fingers against the edge of his blade, I had no fear of cutting myself. I needed to get the weapon in position, I had to know exactly where it was. “Why is your weapon drawn?”

Death Knight Story Arc: Part I

Timeline note: This entry is Genavie's point of view in a storyline that's taken off with my guild this week. Originally it was just a personal story, but it's expanded so that we can now involve the whole guild. This story does not continue off of the 'Book that I Write in' entries, as those are about Genavie's past. This entry pertains to current roleplay that took place with the character just a few days ago.

I slowly wrapped the tattered remains of my hand around the tree trunk, peering out from behind it and eyeing my target across the field in the distance. I was in deep in Silverpine; so deep you're not sure whether Silverpine has ended and Gilneas has begun and you long to see the map lines painted across the terrain in front of you; just to offer you some sense of direction and certainty.

As I continued to watch my target I couldn't help but reflect on how The Deathstalkers are easily the most feared assassins guild in Azeroth. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure SI:7 and Ravenholt have some charming training programs where you can feel the wind and sun on your face while you practice your shadow stepping and take deep breaths of fresh spring air with your functioning lungs. I'm just saying they don't have anything on a band of animated corpses that can watch you for days without the need to eat, sleep or rustle in the bushes while they relieve their bowels.

My First Shadow Sermon

I've been in a massive creative drought lately, so as much as I would like to post original content hot off the press, I'm stuck with digging up something old of mine and posting it.

After the break is the log of the first public Forsaken only event I ever hosted. It was Shadow sermon and I consider it to have been very successful. We had some great speakers (some of which regretfully aren't around anymore) and everyone who came was very respectful. We wound up with a crowd of about thirty deaders, and they gave us some beautiful reactions, however I've had to cut them out to keep the size of the log reasonable.

[My character] Darila: Greetings, brothers and sisters of the Forsaken. The Scythe of Sylvanas is pleased to be speaking to you all on the tenants of the Forgotten Shadow, this evening. Bear in mind we are offering only our interpretations of the various tenets.

We have many speakers and little time, so we ask that you be silent and respectful during the sermon. After we are finished speaking, the speakers will break off and you may come to us with your questions. Please do not call them out during the sermon.

First we have Sister Bileheart, speaking on tenacity. I look forward to your words.

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.

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.