Tag: draenei x 93

A collaboration with the player and writer of Eredis Orill.

((We wrote this piece collaboratively over two years, e-mailing it back and forth. Coincidentally, this work formed the beginning of our relationship in person.))


      Golden dawn light limned the sails and almost lent beauty to the war-torn, ice-battered boat docked at the harbor at Valiance Keep. The dawn light struggled in vain against the puffs of sooty steam from the ship’s main power source, the coal fires banked while the ship sat at anchor. On the wooden docks, activity bustled as quickly as if it were well after noon. Pairs of deckhands carried large wooden crates between them from the ship’s hold to the land end of the docks while a leather-skinned man with a...

((Saving a piece from forum creep. The prompt was to write about our mounts.))

    As the cursed thing he was, the mysterious adjunct weaponsmith for the Light's Blade remained so far removed from his own people that he did not even know they had stables - and even if he had known, he had long since sworn off most visits to the Aldor tier after High Priestess Ishanah had declared him unworthy of even a simple traveler's blessing. Hadeon did not want what stained his soul to touch those exiles who remained in the Light, so he kept to himself until the loneliness and solitude grew so overbearing that he terrified himself by seeking a few hours among the Light's Blade. Given the images which regularly assailed his mind whenever he was...

    Driven to the extremity of loneliness, the decayed, angry adjunct smith for the Light's Blade left his elekk Thubaab with a bucket of glowcaps to keep him happy and braved a forty-minute walk to Shattrath City. He hated it there - all those memories and ghosts haunting the place - but he needed the company in ways he had not comprehended when he was living. Never again would he be the gregarious, social creature of his last twenty-seven thousand years... Yet he found his grip on himself faltered if he spent more than a few months in isolation.

    A rock jamming into the crevice of a permanently-cracked left hoof forced him to stop just shy of the northern bridge into the city. He cursed as he bent to dig it out, and...

Prompt: If a picture is crooked, you might adjust it on the wall. If your clothes don't fit, you might adjust a button or a hem. But sometimes we have to make major adjustments in our lives. Have you ever faced a difficult situation that required making adjustments? What adjustments did you make and what was the outcome? Describe to us the good and the bad as needed from the(se) adjustment(s).

Rectifiable Flaws and the Stubborn Dead

    A cold wind danced up the raw skin on her back. She would have rolled over to protect the wounds, but that would put her left shoulder – which of all the damage was in far worse shape – on the ground. She would have edged just under the shelter of the tent – or as far as her tether would...

Prompt: June 9, 2012 - Describe the greatest gift given to your character.

    Click. Click. Click! Three separate deadbolts engaged, shutting the room off from all but the most determined of invaders. Two chains - one high, one low - slid into catches across the jamb. Thump! A wooden bar as thick as a human male's arm fell into holders on either side of the heavy oak door. Physical securities in place, Valdiis allowed herself a moment to sag back against the door's support and pinch the bridge of her nose between two gloved fingers. Years of innate paranoia allowed her only a moment though, and she dropped her hand to turn and trace the intricate series of runes around the jamb, imbuing them with runic power to activate the...

Prompt: June 8, 2012 - Describe something your character does impulsively.

    Five months had passed, and she was well aware that she'd been naught but trial and trouble for her doctor. The kaldorei druid was quite good at concealing the distaste in his gaze when he looked at her, but the Canal Street Baker himself had been teaching her to read faces for almost two years. Xeremuriis had never dared ask the source of it, but she sensed it wasn't personal - that is, that the druid's distaste was not for herself alone but something of her type. She had no real idea which type of hers was the problem - baker's girl, draenei, youth, shaman, patient, or crazy - but she knew it lurked behind the clinical detachment with which Doctor...

Prompt: June 7, 2012 - Today's topic is open. Whatever you want to write about, go for it.

    Quite a large stack of paperwork had been awaiting her at the small desk she maintained in Acherus when she finally felt like herself enough to deal with some of the day-to-day background business of the 1113th. Ever since the tragic and unexpectedly sudden demise of their auditor, Commander Glou, the amount of paperwork in the unit had decreased dramatically, but there was still correspondence to go through and requisitions to handle.

    Adroitly, she slid a hand under the stack and flipped it over, going through the papers from oldest to newest in her usual fashion. As she was entirely alone in her office, she didn't bother...

Prompt: June 2, 2012 - While in Stormwind, your character is stalked by a homeless fellow. He doesn't say a word to you and won't let you outrun him. There is nothing pleasant about him, so much to your character's annoyance, you're forced to interact with him. What happens? Ultimately, the beggar just wants a slice of cheese you may or may not have.

    His was the dirt of a thousand nights spent in alleys, and the stench of those nights spent wallowing in the trash bins for scraps. He was ragged and torn, matted with gummy substances she had no desire to identify. What might well have been blood crusted on one ear and he limped in a manner which suggested the leg had been broken and healed back funny. But most annoyingly of...

Prompt: June 1, 2012 - What's an unusual/weird item/person/place that your character finds beauty in?

    "It just falls so wonderfully off the tongue!"

    "It's too short."

    "But that's what makes it wonderful!"

    Athos crossed his arms and scowled across the little wooden table dinner had been set upon on the ship they were taking down the Kalimdor coast. "What's wrong with Djemiiliak?" Of course, that came out sounding - to a Draenei speaker - more like "What is wrong with Green-Beast-Lumbers-With-Grace?"

    "It's unwieldy." Diyos picked up a long loaf of bread from the plate between them and waved one end of it at his brother. "It's unnecessarily long and lacks the elegant grace of a shorter...

Prompt: May 31, 2012 - Succulent http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/succulent?s=t

    "Hoi, brother!" The shout traveled easily over the sun-baked sands. "Come take a look at this!"

    Diyos turned away from his forlorn search of the sandy horizon for a glimmer of water and headed for the source of the call, his twin, Athos. His younger brother (by a only a few minutes, he would not hesitate to remind!) was standing before quite the oddest looking tree Diyos had ever seen. His brother's braid fell off his left shoulder as he tilted his head that direction, clearly giving this strange thing his best curious regard.

    "Can I drink it?" Diyos whined as he approached.

    "Well, maybe. You see, it looks thick and...

Prompt: May 30, 2012 - Future http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/future?s=t

    Among those exiled from their home planet, only one holds the gift of true prophecy, an ineffable knowledge of the paths ahead and how to sort them. True prophets are a rare thing, for so much knowledge and so little ability to change it drives one mad. The Prophet Velen is the only one for whom the Sight is strong, definable, and frankly useful in any real way.

    The Seers and Farseers, so new to the voices of the ancestors and the wisdom of the elements do not so much see the future as a woven mesh of threads of fate as they occasionally get a second's glimpse of one inch of one thread of a hundred thousand pieces which make up fate's...

Prompt: May 29, 2012 - By chance, your character happens to stumble across an enemy. This enemy can be personal, from the other faction or an acquaintance. The two of you are caught on neutral ground, so no fighting is to happen there. So what happens, if anything at all?

    The battle had been horrendous - a gory, brutal affair in which innards spilled and blood spattered and limbs were torn free. It was - as so many of such things seemed - a near pointless capture of a forward point in Silverpine, long before the Wall came down. The Alliance wanted a place to set up a forward base in hopes of encroaching on Tirisfal, and so AEGIS went to set up a forward base. It was only natural that word got out - it always did; so few ops...

Prompt: May 29, 2012 - Junkie http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/junkie?s=t

    When one lived - by choice - very much alone for long stretches of time, necessity demanded that one acquire skill in feeding the body to keep it going. Skill, however, was not the same thing as art. Every cook of skill has some dish or another (or several) of which they can create art.

    Rosoe touched a hand to one of the stone-formed totems on a leather cord around her neck, calling upon her connection to the spirits of water as she rubbed the small bit of resin packed into a recess on the totem. The warmth of her fingers warmed the resin enough to release some of its sweet, seaweed-like scent - an offering, however small, in return for...