trans_9 | Hey, it's that void between worlds again [Open]

She snorted both in the memory and physically as the Draenei women popped into the environment. A smile marked her lips as she circled them and an eyebrow quirked when she reached their backside.

"That certainly clarifies things a lot; I can hardly blame you. Arthas and those Scourge, though," she said, tapping her chin with a well-maintained nail. "Were those some of the other undead-ish, horrible things you were fighting before? (I may have gotten a teeny, tiny sneak peek at some of the more action-y parts in your active cognisphere.)

“Clearly, I need to give you a crash course in the Scourge,” Mar said, pushing the memory of Silvermoon out of his mind for the moment. Eyes shut, he took a couple of deep breaths to prepare himself.

“This is going to be a bumpy ride, so hold on tight. It all started…”

In Stratholme, of course. A middle-aged human paladin, dark of skin and bald, but in armor unmistakably similar to what Mar currently wore, stood outside the city gates of the Stratholme, watching the small army gathered there. No – the paladin WAS Mar, under the effects of a powerful illusion. The memory’s context flashed quickly past – he had traveled back in time, to stop the Infinite Dragonflight from altering the past on this day. But the memory’s attention was fixed not on this quest, but on the figure who stood apart from the gathered men, peering darkly at the city from atop a rock.

Prince Arthas Menethil looked every bit his heritage and his role of paladin; the noble features, strong jaw, broad chest and shoulders from wielding his greathammer in the service of Lordaeron and Light. Looking at him superficially, one could easily imagine him leading a nation from a proud throne, or a righteous war from the front lines. But examined closer, the stress began to show in the lines around his eyes and the haunted look in them.

The Scourge plague, the devastating contagion that turned all those it infected into undead slaved to the will of the Burning Legion, stalked the lands. It seemed to have no cure, no treatment, no prevention.

Mar watched the foregone conclusion in grim silence – how Uther the Lightbringer and Jaina Proudmoore arrived just as the grieving prince discovered that Stratholme had already been affected. How, in desperation and determination, Arthas proposed to slaughter every inhabitant of the city before they could add to the Legion’s numbers; how Uther protested, only for Arthas to pull rank and strip him of his title; how his two comrades left him in horror and fury, leaving him to do this miserable task alone.

Then, Mar hefted his shield, drew his mace, and at Arthas’s side stalked into the city.

He did not kill the unfortunate, infected innocents. Arthas’s men handled that. Perhaps he shared some guilt in allowing it to happen, but the truth was simply that it had already done so. To prevent it would be to damage the timestream irrevocably. And so Mar threw himself against the hordes of undead, smashing through them to reach their demonic master, the dreadlord Mal’ganis.

Did they defeat Mal’ganis, or did he allow himself to be defeated? His taunting challenge to Arthas, practically begging the prince to come to Northrend for vengeance – and the paladin’s screamed vow to hunt Mal’ganis to the ends of the earth – spoke strongly of the latter. Certainly they had triumphed… but standing in the center of the burning city, bodies of Scourge and unchanged humans scattered about them in lifeless piles, showed how very hollow that victory was.

Arthas went north, Mar interjected as the memory faded. He took up the blade Frostmourne and became a slave to the Lich King’s will, then returned home to Lordaeron and slew his father. The next we knew –

Silvermoon was under attack.

The greater outer walls shuddered one last time, then collapsed in a shower of brick, arcane-charged dust, and corpses – for those were the missiles the Scourge siege engines hurled. Screams burst out across the plaza; many fell silent as the rubble fell and another onslaught of bodies flew through the breach to smash into the bricks of the pavement or the buildings surrounding it.

On the steps of the library, a younger, weaker, terrified Maridian – who thought of himself not as a paladin or warrior, but a historian, trembled, clutching the thick book in his arms to his chest as if it could give him comfort. He could not move, could barely think, even as the first of the ghouls shambled over the rubble to begin clawing apart the guards and warriors who had rushed to the fight.

Over the breach, mounted on a skeletal steed – over the elves who fought and the ghouls who clawed gobbets of flesh from them to stuff in their mouths – rode Arthas Menethil. The Mar-of-this-memory had never seen him before, but in hindsight the wasting was obvious. Once-lustrous blonde hair hung in limp strands around a cadaverous face, skin sallow and blue-tinged with no hunt of true life in it. Behind him, slaved to his will, floated the disembodied spirit of Ranger-General Sylvanas Windrunner. He had ripped her soul from her body and bound it to serve him.

I have no real idea how I survived. Nine-tenths of the high elven people died that day—

A funeral. In memory it was surely greyer and darker than reality had presented it. For the most part, there were no bodies, no graves. Merely a list of names read out through clenched teeth, as the priest grappled with the same wracking pains that Mar himself felt in this memory.

“Rimethiel Gladespring,” the priest said somberly.

The Sunwell was corrupted forever, its powers used to resurrect the necromancer Kel’thuzad as a lich. Without its energies, the elves addicted to its magic were dying.

Kel’thuzad summoned Archimonde, one of the most powerful beings in existence, to Azeroth. He sought to gain the powers of the Well of Eternity in Mount Hyjal, but was defeated. The Lich King broke free of the Burning Legion, then. Kil’jaeden sent Illidan Stormrage to kill the Lich King. He failed twice. The first time it freed Sylvanas and enough of the Scourge from his control that they formed their own faction of free-willed undead. The second…

Demon Hunter Illidan Stormrage, looking more like a demon than a night elf after his many bids for power and control, glared at Mar as he lifted his two hands. The weapons he gripped in them, the Warglaives of Azzinoth, shone with a sickly-green light emanating from each of their twin blades. In response, Mar lifted Frostmourne – for in this memory, he was the death knight prince – as he stalked forward.

He struck with his strength and the might of his corrupted body. Illidan raised a warglaive to block, but the strength behind Mar/Arthas’s stroke drove him to a knee. Growling, the corded muscles of his demonic body flexing, Illidan mustered the strength to push the blade bace, then hewed with his other weapon at Arthas. Frostmourne and warglaives clashed once, then twice, neither weapon able to overcome the other.

Dodging a vicious thrust of the runeblade, Illidan sought to buy himself a moment by taking to the skies, massive wings flapping to put space between the two combatants. But he had misjudged. In one swift, powerful motion Arthas swung, and struck.

As the Demon Hunter’s body dropped to the ground, too battered to carry on the fight, Arthas turned away from it to mount the stairs to the Frozen Throne.

Arthas merged with Ner’zhul to be the Lich King in full truth, that day. But the effort was costly, or something else went wrong; he went into a long stasis, though his minions continued to reshape Northrend to serve his will. Meanwhile…

Maridian – now a Sin’dorei, now a Blood Knight, and now no longer afraid, looked at the Dead Scar – the same place he had just been remembering, in fact, where it led up to the walls of Silvermoon. In this memory, though, the blackened, dead strip of earth crawled with undeath. Skeletons and zombies lurched about it, unable to leave its confines, but nevertheless as much a blight upon the landscape as the Dead Scar itself. Without hesitation – training, purpose, and dedication had chiseled all fear from him – he drew his warhammer and waded into the fray.

Mar-that-is-now couldn’t help but chuckle fondly at how very weak and green he’d been, and at how the fearsome enemies he fought were truly pathetic beyond measure. But even now he felt an echo of the pride Mar-that-was felt as he smashed through the ribs of the final skeleton, returning its corpse to inanimate death where it belonged.

He felt nothing of vengeance satisfied, nor of bloodthirst or a burning desire to destroy these enemies, though he thought he should have. Instead, he was only satisfied that he had done a job that needed to be done, and done it well. And that no one else would be harmed by the Scourge he had dispatched.

Skipping ahead a bit… I won’t remember all of Ghostlands for you. It’s kind of a blur anyway for the most part. But Dealtholme…

Deatholme, the walled-off citadel of the Scourge. It marked the beginning of the Dead Scar, for opposite it the Plaguelands began. Stepping through the massive walls at the head of a group of elves and one massive Tauren, Mar resolutely walled off the stench that pervaded the air from his mind.

Death. Decay. Rot. Despair. Temples, ziggurats and slaughterhouse packed together tighter than a human city’s slums, each crawling with the undead and their victims. And at the center, the Tower of the Damned, spewing rot and ichor into large pools littering the landscape.

Mar led the group in pitched combat from the gates of the citadel, through the massed hordes of Scourge, to the entrance to the Tower. No sooner did they step into it than skeletons burst from between its stones, raised by the necromancers of the Tower to try and stop their onslaught. In vain. The group brushed aside these assaults as nothing, plunging through the twisting corridors into the depths of the tower, where already they could hear the mocking laughter of Dar’Khan Drathir, its master, challenging them.

Dar’Khan the traitor; a magister who sold out Silvermoon for dreams of power under the Lich King. It seemed he had gotten what he asked for. The smug grin on his face as he cast a shadow bolt at Mar said it all. The death magic slammed into the young paladin’s chest like a golem’s fist, wracking his body with pain until one of his companions lifted her hands and called out a benediction to the Light that shone healing energy down upon him.

Mar sneered, and with a cry to the glory of Quel’thalas, they cast their spells and struck with their weapons to wipe the smile off the traitor’s face.

A lot happened after that… and I mean a LOT, I was all over Azeroth and Outland for the longest time! But then –

Orgrimmar was under attack. No, not just Orgrimmar – all of Azeroth.

The stream of memories broke abruptly as Mar opened his eyes and pushed them aside. He was starting to get worked up, more worked up than the past deserved. “Sorry,” he said, putting a hand to his temple. “Give me a moment, it’s kind of weird purposely remembering all of this.”

She watched from the sidelines this time as actually being in his memory might cause the others there to react oddly to a strange Human girl suddenly appearing.

The city, the people, those speaking, all Humans. With the level of in-fighting he mentioned, she shouldn't have expected much more but the fact that it all started in Human lands certainly bode badly. If those Humans were anything like Earth's Humans...well, then she was in for an interesting turn-out.

Already her mouth was twisting into a frown once they entered into Stratholme. Since when does 'kill them all just in case' seem like a good idea? Or anything 'good' at all? She could swear that in his slaughter he was killing more innocents than Death Monger did on an intentional basis. But, as he mentioned, it was the past. A past that he and his companions were sent to 'save' and make sure everything went off without a hitch. The psychological ramifications of seeing and assisting with that alone, were staggering.

And then everything changed, to the city, the screaming. She was suddenly very glad that she couldn't feel or hear the cognisphere of those writhing in pain and dying in the streets. Raw agony and fear must have been swelling inside them and on such a scale. A death? Two? Having to see, hear and feel one or two people dying was enough to throw her emotions in a tizzy. The magnitude of this was...

Mindfuck physically turned her visored gaze towards the man who stood beside her and she simply stared. Just how was he dealing with all these things so well? Normal people...well Azeroth wasn't normal, was it? Like the Half-orc girl had mentioned, things like this were the bread and butter of everyday life on that planet.
An audible sigh escaped her lips at the visions of the funeral, of a people torn and splintered. Of their miserable looks and the aching that washed over their beings as they struggled to deal with the consuming addiction they weren't even aware they had until tragedy was wrought. Her problems, most problems seemed so miniscule and childish set beside such world-consuming things.

The twisted, corrupt forest of the Ghostlands caught her attention again; so different from the perpetual spring and bright, glowing colors of Eversong nearby. The Scourge set their hands here, too. It made her wonder just how far their reach went. She was almost glad to see Mar in the middle of it all, staring down both the memories of the past and paving a way for the future.
She was suddenly stricken with even more thoughts of a city in dire trouble, the world being ripped and torn apart. Just as quickly as they began they stopped and the images faded away to nothingness.
There was a moment where she took a slow breath, lips parted with questions upon questions lingering to them. Her emotions shifted as she struggled to summon up an appropriate reaction to all that she had seen. It was far more than she was expecting and went much deeper than most people gave even their friends permission to know.

Finally, a whisper of a smile rose on her face and she tilted her head to the side. "And you say you're not a superhero, Crusader Do-Good. You were being (terribly, horribly, admireably) modest. You're more of a good man than most of the people were in the business...combined."

He looked down, smiling with a little embarrasment. "Don't think I'm too great. I've killed Alliance members for no greater reason than the glory of the Horde, made some mistakes, a lot of things. In the end maybe I'm just trying to beat my past down instead of accept it, you know?"

But the moment of introspection passed as he looked up with a broader grin. "But I did some EPIC beating down, too! I haven't even gotten to the best part, yet!"

"(Oh, so modest Mr. Do-good!) People might expect heroes to be without flaws but they certainly don't think less of them for admitting to them. It makes you more relate-able but not any less heroic (or in other words, take the damn compliment!)."

She crossed her arms beneath her chest and turned to fully face the elf before her. "Really now? I certainly was rewarded with far, far more than I originally thought when I set off for a walk." She paused, a flaxen eyebrow raising a notch. "The 'best part' making up exactly how many years of your fabled, long life?"

It really amused her to no end that a living, breathing elf was much like many of the depictions in both literature and art, not to mention a few very wide-spread tabletop pencil and paper games that she may or may not have played extensively when she was younger.

"Yes, ma'am, compliment taken," he said, saluting.

"Actually, it hasn't been all that long. Time seems to speed up just a little when you get out of Silvermoon and start living with orcs and trolls and Tauren. Not that we're immortal any more, but we can still put in a few years more than the average gnome." He grinned, then turned to think deliberately about her question. "The razing of Orgrimmar was a year and a half, two years ago? Barring what I spent in the pods, of course."

"Immortal? That is a little bit longer than your average everything, (thinking in purely RPG terms, here) though it really does beat attaining that lifespan by being one of the superdead. The 'razing of Orgrimmar' and well, all of Azeroth begs the question, though."

Her head tilted slightly to the side as if she was already preparing to be skeptical about whatever answer he was going to give. "Between the wars, antediluvian creatures of horror, altruistic space demon/goat creatures, legion of undead and (veritable) insane rulers, just when do the denizens of your planet ever get a chance to live?"

Granted, she couldn't talk much. Most people wouldn't consider spending a singular existence aboard a space station much 'living' either.

"Most of the denizens aren't out fighting on the front lines, of course! But Azeroth has a pretty busy holiday season. Children's Week, Midsummer Fire Festivals, Brewfest, Noblegarden, the Lunar Festival..." He waved a hand to indicate that it kept going. "Fighting was never so busy that we couldn't find some time to spend relaxing. Actually, the Dragon Queen Alexstraza mailed me a red drake to ride as a reward for enjoying the hell out of myself during them!"

Mailed...? Red drake? She could figure out most of the 'holidays' by name alone and wasn't surprised at all that even in another world it was customary to devote a festival to the act of drinking heavily.

"So what you're saying is that a Dragon Queen sends you one of her kin? as a gift for partying." She wasn't going to bother dissecting that thought further than the 'Dragon Queen' delegating her brethren as party favors. "That sounds like a stoner's dream."

Of course, at the mention of 'stoner' he found himself picturing the Earthen, dwarves that looked to be made entirely out of stone or metal. "Well, really it was a violet protodrake, so the relationship there... who knows? But yes, there was a big speech-in-a-letter about how important it is to find happiness and celebrate our history and heritage even in these dark times of war. It was a very fast mount, too."

The thought made her laugh and she shook her head slowly. "If only. More like...this."

The image that materialized in his head was one of a 20-something man in a tee-shirt and shorts, sitting around with a bunch of other similarly dressed men in a room full of smoke. They all had red, hazy eyes and looked overly tired as if they weren't going to bother moving from the spot. One of them blew up a balloon and popped it and they all began howling with laughter.

"That's the general stereotype for you, anyways. It would be a lot funnier (and bearable) if they were, in actuality, made of stone. In any case, I can agree with your Dragon Queen there. Living for the sake of being alive just plain sucks." She would know that far more than she was willing to admit to.

"Yeah, those really aren't Earthen," he said, though a brief comparison to trolls surfaced before he banished it as unfair. Trolls could throw a mean axe.

"In some ways -- some ways, mind you," he said, lifting a cautionary finger, "I'm almost glad this all happened. If Silvermoon had never fallen, I'd be some scholar in the back of a library, or maybe a tutor to some noble brat. I'd never have gotten to fly over the whole of Northrend on a dragon, or cross swords with the greatest evil bred on Azeroth and lived to tell the tale. Even if I did die during that fight. It still counts."

"I think you have a point there, in the way that things tend to happen. While I'm a staunch disbeliever in 'fate', I'm (absolutely) sure that if my brother hadn't attacked me with those rusty shears, I would be as much of a (batshit crazy) psychopath as he is." There was a pause before she spoke again.

"A scholar wouldn't be so bad but knowing what I do now, it would be hard to imagine you as a timid, (probably) soft-spoken scholar. It would be kind of cute in a literary, geeky sense."

"You're pretty used to relying on yourself, aren't you?" He smiled a little to take any potential sting out of the question, and for good measure remembered himself as he used to be -- not quite timid, but certainly a soft-spoken historian, lacking his current muscles or even his goatee, and garbed in (fancy-schmancy) scholarly robes instead of armor.

"I've only spent the last few years of my life as the singular inhabitant on a space-station orbiting Earth. So yes, you could certainly say that." Her 'voice' definitely had a bitter tone to it, though it wasn't directed at him. More at the idea and her existence there, itself.

"Given the relations with others I've had up to this point? Most times it was easier on me if I was."

"Hopefully that can change soon," he said, lifting a triumphant fist. "And if it does, and you can find somewhere safe to live that doesn't headache you into unconsciousness from extra minds, then I will come visit you, and maybe you can relax enough to count on me every once in a while!"

Because nobody should hurt. Not if he could help it. Especially not Mindfuck, who he quite liked by this point (and whose abilities he frankly found pretty neat, and it was a damn shame they caused her so much trouble).

She couldn't help but smile a little. His enthusiastic attitude could inspire cheeriness in anyone, it seemed.

"Luckily the ship is only so big so I don't have to deal with a fraction of the minds that Earth possessed (only a small town's worth). So I think I'll take you up on that offer. What say next time we share a few drinks over at the tavern and swap stories of idiocy? (Have more than I know what to do with)."

"Sounds like a date," he said with a wink -- entirely pleased that he'd managed to turn it that direction. "I still need a bit to get used to the ship anyway."

"You assume much, hm? We probably all do, though. I think that my favorite spot will soon become what they labeled as 'Hydroponics'. Since I have no choice but to deal with the babbleroar on the ship, (much to my eternal displeasure) spending a bit of time around 'nature' is long overdue."

"Faint heart never won fair lady," he quoted with a grin. "Me, I like the sound of the sensoriums, myself. I can't get rusty, even if there's not too much for me to do on the ship. The time will come and I want to be in peak condition then as now."

You might just be right as long as it isn't accompanied by a truly asshole (Thugboy) attitude. I think I spend enough time tapping into own sensorium and possibly those of others (how I miss having taste buds) to actually enjoy the Sensoriums. But then again,"

She tugged at the plant suit that covered her form then shrugged a shoulder. "I'm always fighting from the sidelines, anyways. Too short and lacking any real physical skills to bother actually fighting." One of her small, pale hands rose to pat the elf beside her on the shoulder.

"You'll have to do most (slash, all) of the physical fighting yourself, I'm afraid!"

"I don't think I've hit that level quite yet," he said, wondering who on earth would actually consider 'Thugboy' a quality moniker.

"But fighting at the front line is my job, of course. I take the hits so the people who can give them better than they take them can do their jobs, by sword or spell or mind scrambling." He knew perfectly well that short and not particularly physically-strong women could be every bit as lethal in a fight as an orc duel-wielding swords longer than he was tall.

"Most supranyms are just as silly (Wet Blanket, Maidman), I assure you. I'm no exception to that rule as I embrace it wholeheartedly!

I tend to stray away from the whole 'mind scrambling' thing, though. It's incredibly hard to fix that sort of damage! But I digress. As truly enlightening (and endlessly entertaining) as it's all been I should probably try and get something that resembles sleep, giving my (oh so taxed) mind a rest from the babbleroar of the ship."

She stuck her hand out towards him, motioning for a handshake despite how likely (or unlikely) he would be to simply return the gesture.

Hey, it's that void between worlds again [Open]

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(1/3?) HOGOD I am sorry this took so long!

(2/3?) I hope it is worth the wait!

(3/3) Didn't even touch the entire expansion yet...

YES. YES IT WAS. I was moved by greatness!

Now I need to do more for Naxx through ICC!

That would pretty much be a novel in its own right.

Naw, Ulduar is very Scourge free...

Yeah, there's only the insane level of Old God mindfuckery to worry about, then. Only.

And that's more Ronnae's thing than Mar's.

Re: And that's more Ronnae's thing than Mar's.

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Two months to the day! ...it'll be weird not having this log....

Ha! That's true, but that just means there'll be room for a new thread! \o/

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