Oh, hello, again!
It's been a while. Two or so months, now? I had a lazy summer, but I still managed to complete and publish a small anthology
of stories with some friends, and that was a very gratifying process,
we're going to continue and do a much bigger book in the spring. You can
read about it here on my writing (and general interest) blog (where I
will probably be writing more often, if you're especially hungry to read
my stuff.)
Unable to help myself, I tipped my toes back into raiding as well, with some friends, or tried to, but it didn't work out very well. My dear, long-suffering friend Thistleberry and I were aching to do some heroic raiding and when our old group of friends splintered (it never really jelled in the first place), we decided to shop around. Finding space for a Protection Paladin and a Discipline Priest isn't easy, let me tell you.
But we lucked out and Nephilim of Hyjal was rebuilding their team and we happened to fit into their gap. Two weeks of rather intense catching-up to heroic-raiding later, we find ourselves ready to enter Orgrimmar with a new team.
I don't know how motivated I was to start writing again, until I found out last night that one of the new healers who joined about the same time we did was none other than Kare of Ysera's Daughter, and after a few whispers about blogging and bloggers (yes, we might have talked about you) mid-pull, I found the itch for the old Warcraft blogging community returning.
Raiding with Ophelie back at the start of the expansion was a lot of fun, and I liked that feeling of reading her posts and seeing the raid through her eyes, getting her impressions and chatting in vent (which we didn't get to do as much as I'd have liked!) And while I was raiding with Aliena, it was again, really fun to be part of her videos and contributing to the community in some way. It's a fun feedback loop, to raid with other members of the Warcraft creative community at large that motivates one to enter the fray again.
Thus, the title, blame Kare for motivating me to write again.
Tonight, we'll be going into the massive, the daunting, Siege of Orgrimmar for the first time, and while I'm quite excited to wreck Garrosh's house, I'm sorely disappointed that I won't get to do it under a blue banner, because Nephilim is a Horde guild. Alas, my beloved Lion of Stormwind won't be cresting my armor as we cleave through rows of Orcs but I suppose I have my warlock and flex raiding over on Proudmoore Alliance, and that will give me a chance to plunge my sword into that narcissistic bastard's throat.
Symbolically, of course.
Showing posts with label writing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label writing. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 10, 2013
Tuesday, June 12, 2012
Demoted
Two weeks ago, after raid, I finally asked the officers to demote me. It took a bit of doing, some hemming, some hawing, a lot of asking, "Are you sure?" and when I demoted my alts from Officer-alt to Member-alt, Thistle finally knocked me down a peg and there I was, for the first time since the summer of 2009 without an officer title in a guild.
It feels strange - liberating in one sense, disenfranchising in another.
Asking one of the officers to withdraw materials from the bank so I could cut gems and enchant the latest drops was strange and confusing when I've been used to having open access for such a long time. Not having to log in until 5 minutes to raid, not having to worry about signups and more-or-less just showing up to play was... refreshing.
It will take me a bit of getting used to as I can't help wanting to contribute my ideas because, at the end of the day, I am a loud-mouth. I can't help it, I just have to talk and say something - I'm one of those people with an opinion on everything, for the better or worse. As a member, I have taken to couching my statements with, "If I might suggest," and "Perhaps we could," instead of, "Here's what we need to do."
That, along with a role-switch has made raiding somewhat new. Pushing numbers, collecting gear (for the third time), and just plain working at the game is a nice break from the usual routine. I think tonight we might finally begin on the dreaded Heroic Spine encounter. When Dragon Soul came out, I still wore a shield on my back. I remember watching the Korean world first kill, and staring at the ocean of Blood chasing the pro-tank as he kited them all over Deathwing non-stop throughout the third plate. It reminded me of Nefarian, and I thought to myself, that's the kind of pain I'm up for. That's my job, right there. And here we are at last, at least two to three months too late, but here never-the-less, and my job is not to kite adds all over Deathwing, after all, it is, instead, to bring the fire and the fury of the Heavens down onto his body and rend it into pieces. We'll see how it goes. I'm prepared for many nights of pain.
But I was talking about being demoted.
I've talked enough about the why and the how and the what if and all that. I also wonder if this is my first, shuffling, slow step towards quitting WoW but I doubt it. I really do love the game, Azeroth is so familiar to me that I would miss it greatly and I still haven't found anything quite as engaging on a regular, weekly basis as raiding is for me. It's 6 hours a week of focused attention and creative problem solving - nothing comes close to beating that in terms of regular activity that keeps me hooked weeks on end.
But perhaps it is a way for me to ease back on the level of control I feel like I need to have in most situations. This releases me from control, it allows me to sit back and let someone else steer the ship without me on the shoulder tapping and pointing out that I would be driving in third gear not second, and maybe they should ease off the curb-hugging. I'm sure that was annoying as hell while I was doing it for the last few months, and now that I'm out of the Officer chat completely, I'm not even capable of that.
What this has opened up to me, are the quiet, secret little conversations that the DPS have, to implement the plan handed down. For example, my rogue friend and I were in charge of kiting lightning on Heroic Hagara for one of the sides, and she whispered me to coordinate our movement and we practiced it and I realized it was something that happened completely away from the eyes of the officers. Same thing on Heroic Warmaster, where we coordinated where and how to soak the Barrages together and when to take them alone. It's the nitty-gritty plan-meets-dirt kind of coordination that I was completely blind to until the last two weeks.
Sometimes, I feel like there are so many undercurrents, conversations, and crosscurrents in any given raid that there would be a network, a tangled web of lines of communications between the different chat channels, the public channels, the actual live audio channel (barring any custom chat channels there) and any number of individual whispers between members. All in the space of a few hours while playing video-games. It's almost enough to make me want to write a book about it.
But I've rambled on long enough, and long past any edge of reason. And my writing is... well, I don't know.
That's a different topic entirely, one of great consternation, frustration and anxiety. I feel little and less confidence in my writing, as if all sense of meter and verse has evaporated. I feel as one might on the far side of grace, downhill momentum growing as gravity takes hold. I don't know. Even this feels dull and monotonous, leaden and heavy with ill-intent. As if what I'm writing is just blunt commentary, deaf to any sort of poetry or insight, mute in any significant, or even insignificant matter. Mechanized metronomic words.
We'll see. We'll see. We'll see.
It feels strange - liberating in one sense, disenfranchising in another.
Asking one of the officers to withdraw materials from the bank so I could cut gems and enchant the latest drops was strange and confusing when I've been used to having open access for such a long time. Not having to log in until 5 minutes to raid, not having to worry about signups and more-or-less just showing up to play was... refreshing.
It will take me a bit of getting used to as I can't help wanting to contribute my ideas because, at the end of the day, I am a loud-mouth. I can't help it, I just have to talk and say something - I'm one of those people with an opinion on everything, for the better or worse. As a member, I have taken to couching my statements with, "If I might suggest," and "Perhaps we could," instead of, "Here's what we need to do."
That, along with a role-switch has made raiding somewhat new. Pushing numbers, collecting gear (for the third time), and just plain working at the game is a nice break from the usual routine. I think tonight we might finally begin on the dreaded Heroic Spine encounter. When Dragon Soul came out, I still wore a shield on my back. I remember watching the Korean world first kill, and staring at the ocean of Blood chasing the pro-tank as he kited them all over Deathwing non-stop throughout the third plate. It reminded me of Nefarian, and I thought to myself, that's the kind of pain I'm up for. That's my job, right there. And here we are at last, at least two to three months too late, but here never-the-less, and my job is not to kite adds all over Deathwing, after all, it is, instead, to bring the fire and the fury of the Heavens down onto his body and rend it into pieces. We'll see how it goes. I'm prepared for many nights of pain.
But I was talking about being demoted.
I've talked enough about the why and the how and the what if and all that. I also wonder if this is my first, shuffling, slow step towards quitting WoW but I doubt it. I really do love the game, Azeroth is so familiar to me that I would miss it greatly and I still haven't found anything quite as engaging on a regular, weekly basis as raiding is for me. It's 6 hours a week of focused attention and creative problem solving - nothing comes close to beating that in terms of regular activity that keeps me hooked weeks on end.
But perhaps it is a way for me to ease back on the level of control I feel like I need to have in most situations. This releases me from control, it allows me to sit back and let someone else steer the ship without me on the shoulder tapping and pointing out that I would be driving in third gear not second, and maybe they should ease off the curb-hugging. I'm sure that was annoying as hell while I was doing it for the last few months, and now that I'm out of the Officer chat completely, I'm not even capable of that.
What this has opened up to me, are the quiet, secret little conversations that the DPS have, to implement the plan handed down. For example, my rogue friend and I were in charge of kiting lightning on Heroic Hagara for one of the sides, and she whispered me to coordinate our movement and we practiced it and I realized it was something that happened completely away from the eyes of the officers. Same thing on Heroic Warmaster, where we coordinated where and how to soak the Barrages together and when to take them alone. It's the nitty-gritty plan-meets-dirt kind of coordination that I was completely blind to until the last two weeks.
Sometimes, I feel like there are so many undercurrents, conversations, and crosscurrents in any given raid that there would be a network, a tangled web of lines of communications between the different chat channels, the public channels, the actual live audio channel (barring any custom chat channels there) and any number of individual whispers between members. All in the space of a few hours while playing video-games. It's almost enough to make me want to write a book about it.
But I've rambled on long enough, and long past any edge of reason. And my writing is... well, I don't know.
That's a different topic entirely, one of great consternation, frustration and anxiety. I feel little and less confidence in my writing, as if all sense of meter and verse has evaporated. I feel as one might on the far side of grace, downhill momentum growing as gravity takes hold. I don't know. Even this feels dull and monotonous, leaden and heavy with ill-intent. As if what I'm writing is just blunt commentary, deaf to any sort of poetry or insight, mute in any significant, or even insignificant matter. Mechanized metronomic words.
We'll see. We'll see. We'll see.
Thursday, February 23, 2012
Two Years
Warning!
This post will be a bit sentimental and melodramatic, so you have full rights to skip this - it might even get sappy and mopey in places.
I've been writing this blog for two years as of today.
155 posts, 192 comments, 31k page-views and about half of those from non-US sources, including Brazil, Denmark, the Netherlands, Russia, Sweden...
The bulk of my traffic has come from a very small subset of posts - the story got a lot of attention, another entry picked up WoWInsider got some eyeballs, and my transmog posts seem popular, as do a couple of guides in particular, but the rest of my entries are not particular standouts. Some posts that I put a lot of thought and effort and emotion into just kind of slipped into oblivion and I find that sad, but such is the way of things in the frequent writing market - you produce a bunch of stuff and throw it up on the wall and some of it will stick and most of it will just kind of melt into the plaster becoming the background for the standouts.
It's kind of crazy (and somewhat depressing) when I think about the number of number who've read this blog is bigger than the number of people who've seen my plays or read my fiction. But it's a privilege to have people read and take an interest in anything one writes, and I do appreciate the people who've followed me for this long, or have even taken an occasional gander at a Google-result that plopped them here. I appreciate every one of you who has taken a few minutes to read what I had to say, and if it helped you in any way, I'm twice as glad.
155 posts in 2 years is almost 1.5 posts a week. That's not a terrible average, though I've had more productive months than others. Especially in the end-tier of the expansion, when MoP is bringing so many changes, a lot of what there is to say seems somehow irrelevant or too-late or after-the-fact so I find myself starting topics or looking at old drafts and slowly deleting them one line at a time, as I realize they're well past their best-use date.
I've also been thinking of stopping completely, but I don't think that'll happen. Even if my readership dropped back to the dozen or two views a month I used to get when I started, I think I'd just keep writing to catalog my thoughts.
Often, I find myself wanting to blog about topics that aren't relevant here - my issues with politic and economics, my struggle with atheism while trying to bond with a religious family whose culture is tied into faith, I could write all day about my son who's nearly a year and a half, and I want to write about the last year of depression treatment that I went into... but none of that is relevant here, none of these are things I want to tie into Warcraft, even if all of these are entangled with my Warcraft experience in deep, intractable ways.
My guild that I play with, my friends that I play with, are all carefully chosen people who reflect my political and non-religious ideals. Not only their tolerance, but their acceptance and involvement with me and my family keeps me engaged. My wife doesn't play, but some members of my guild are friends with her on Facebook, they ask me about my son, I share videos with them over YouTube. I bond with some of them about my treatment, and... it's all tied up.
Two years ago was also, more or less, when we started this guild, when the six or so of us decided we would play the game on our terms, and wouldn't be held to crappy standards of play, nor would we be exposed to homophobia or sexism just to be able to progress as raiders or have strong PvP teams. And we've succeeded in almost every way imaginable.
And through it all, I kept writing, about my frustrations, about my triumphs, about my concerns, during that time I went from co-GM and Raid-Lead to Raid-Lad to merely an officer and attended nearly 95% of the raids that happened during this time. I did Arena in three seasons reaching ~1600 rating every time on two classes.
All of that to wind up exactly where I started two years ago. The end of an expansion, goals in hand, hope and excitement for the future, surrounded by friends... but there are two fundamental differences from the way things were two years ago.
1. I'm a dad.
2. I'm not depressed.
The dad thing and its constraints on time is obvious, but the depression thing is a bit more complicated. At some point in 2009/2010 I slipped into a major depression, and it sapped me of all ambition and creativity. I couldn't write or play music, couldn't follow through on projects, or do much of anything really, and the last year of medication and therapy have slowly brought me back to life and a lot of that creative energy that I was missing has started seeping back into my life.
And with it come the constraints on time.
There is the small game-development company I'm working with as a designer and programmer. There are the numerous publishing projects I'm working on with my wife and a friend. There is my own writing to pursue, my first major play that I'm trying to finalize and find a company to read, my book that I want to draft and send to an agent, the songs I want to record...
Do I have time to raid? Do I have time to write about Warcraft?
I don't know. Not yet. I'm trying to do everything, and a lot of it is suffering from a lack of attention - but my philosophy about creative projects has always been to enjoy the process and not worry about the product, and that's what I'm doing right now. After two years of gray, dull depression, just being involved with these collaborative projects is enough to fill my life with color.
As my son gets older, that time squeeze will get tighter and tighter, and at some point I will have to do something to curtail my Warcraft time-slot. But that's still some time away, even though time seems to be accelerating. When I think of my son being a year and a half old, it seems crazy, how could so much time have passed by already?
But it has. And more will be gone soon. The patches keep on coming, the dungeons and raids get cleared, dragons die, gold is collected from sold auctions, we run our dailies, log in and out, make alts, laugh over vent on Tuesday and Wednesday nights, and after enchanting the loots and cuts some gems to fill empty slots, we say good-night and turn off the monitor plunging the room into darkness.
And, as well all know, it doesn't end there, completely, does it? In the secret moment, in the instant of vulnerability when the day's exhaustion catches up, we sometimes experience an out of body moment of connection.
In the darkness, motes of light dance on the screen, illuminating the outline of my avatar, Innana, my identity present in Azeroth, Innana, a stronger, braver version of me with the strength to protect her friends from harm, with all of her issues, her stories, her nightmares and dreams, she looks back at me, waves, wondering who I might be, and I wave back, knowing exactly who she is, before she fades into the matte, shadow shimmer of the black screen and I turn slowly to climb into bed, well past midnight, and close my eyes, caught between her and me for an instant, between dream and reality, before sleep takes over.
I don't know if I'll still be here in 2 more years, but I know I'll be here 2 days, 2 weeks, and 2 months from now, and more than that, I'll just have to wait and see.
Thank you for sticking with me for so long.
This post will be a bit sentimental and melodramatic, so you have full rights to skip this - it might even get sappy and mopey in places.
I've been writing this blog for two years as of today.
155 posts, 192 comments, 31k page-views and about half of those from non-US sources, including Brazil, Denmark, the Netherlands, Russia, Sweden...
The bulk of my traffic has come from a very small subset of posts - the story got a lot of attention, another entry picked up WoWInsider got some eyeballs, and my transmog posts seem popular, as do a couple of guides in particular, but the rest of my entries are not particular standouts. Some posts that I put a lot of thought and effort and emotion into just kind of slipped into oblivion and I find that sad, but such is the way of things in the frequent writing market - you produce a bunch of stuff and throw it up on the wall and some of it will stick and most of it will just kind of melt into the plaster becoming the background for the standouts.
It's kind of crazy (and somewhat depressing) when I think about the number of number who've read this blog is bigger than the number of people who've seen my plays or read my fiction. But it's a privilege to have people read and take an interest in anything one writes, and I do appreciate the people who've followed me for this long, or have even taken an occasional gander at a Google-result that plopped them here. I appreciate every one of you who has taken a few minutes to read what I had to say, and if it helped you in any way, I'm twice as glad.
155 posts in 2 years is almost 1.5 posts a week. That's not a terrible average, though I've had more productive months than others. Especially in the end-tier of the expansion, when MoP is bringing so many changes, a lot of what there is to say seems somehow irrelevant or too-late or after-the-fact so I find myself starting topics or looking at old drafts and slowly deleting them one line at a time, as I realize they're well past their best-use date.
I've also been thinking of stopping completely, but I don't think that'll happen. Even if my readership dropped back to the dozen or two views a month I used to get when I started, I think I'd just keep writing to catalog my thoughts.
Often, I find myself wanting to blog about topics that aren't relevant here - my issues with politic and economics, my struggle with atheism while trying to bond with a religious family whose culture is tied into faith, I could write all day about my son who's nearly a year and a half, and I want to write about the last year of depression treatment that I went into... but none of that is relevant here, none of these are things I want to tie into Warcraft, even if all of these are entangled with my Warcraft experience in deep, intractable ways.
My guild that I play with, my friends that I play with, are all carefully chosen people who reflect my political and non-religious ideals. Not only their tolerance, but their acceptance and involvement with me and my family keeps me engaged. My wife doesn't play, but some members of my guild are friends with her on Facebook, they ask me about my son, I share videos with them over YouTube. I bond with some of them about my treatment, and... it's all tied up.
Two years ago was also, more or less, when we started this guild, when the six or so of us decided we would play the game on our terms, and wouldn't be held to crappy standards of play, nor would we be exposed to homophobia or sexism just to be able to progress as raiders or have strong PvP teams. And we've succeeded in almost every way imaginable.
And through it all, I kept writing, about my frustrations, about my triumphs, about my concerns, during that time I went from co-GM and Raid-Lead to Raid-Lad to merely an officer and attended nearly 95% of the raids that happened during this time. I did Arena in three seasons reaching ~1600 rating every time on two classes.
All of that to wind up exactly where I started two years ago. The end of an expansion, goals in hand, hope and excitement for the future, surrounded by friends... but there are two fundamental differences from the way things were two years ago.
1. I'm a dad.
2. I'm not depressed.
The dad thing and its constraints on time is obvious, but the depression thing is a bit more complicated. At some point in 2009/2010 I slipped into a major depression, and it sapped me of all ambition and creativity. I couldn't write or play music, couldn't follow through on projects, or do much of anything really, and the last year of medication and therapy have slowly brought me back to life and a lot of that creative energy that I was missing has started seeping back into my life.
And with it come the constraints on time.
There is the small game-development company I'm working with as a designer and programmer. There are the numerous publishing projects I'm working on with my wife and a friend. There is my own writing to pursue, my first major play that I'm trying to finalize and find a company to read, my book that I want to draft and send to an agent, the songs I want to record...
Do I have time to raid? Do I have time to write about Warcraft?
I don't know. Not yet. I'm trying to do everything, and a lot of it is suffering from a lack of attention - but my philosophy about creative projects has always been to enjoy the process and not worry about the product, and that's what I'm doing right now. After two years of gray, dull depression, just being involved with these collaborative projects is enough to fill my life with color.
As my son gets older, that time squeeze will get tighter and tighter, and at some point I will have to do something to curtail my Warcraft time-slot. But that's still some time away, even though time seems to be accelerating. When I think of my son being a year and a half old, it seems crazy, how could so much time have passed by already?
But it has. And more will be gone soon. The patches keep on coming, the dungeons and raids get cleared, dragons die, gold is collected from sold auctions, we run our dailies, log in and out, make alts, laugh over vent on Tuesday and Wednesday nights, and after enchanting the loots and cuts some gems to fill empty slots, we say good-night and turn off the monitor plunging the room into darkness.
And, as well all know, it doesn't end there, completely, does it? In the secret moment, in the instant of vulnerability when the day's exhaustion catches up, we sometimes experience an out of body moment of connection.
In the darkness, motes of light dance on the screen, illuminating the outline of my avatar, Innana, my identity present in Azeroth, Innana, a stronger, braver version of me with the strength to protect her friends from harm, with all of her issues, her stories, her nightmares and dreams, she looks back at me, waves, wondering who I might be, and I wave back, knowing exactly who she is, before she fades into the matte, shadow shimmer of the black screen and I turn slowly to climb into bed, well past midnight, and close my eyes, caught between her and me for an instant, between dream and reality, before sleep takes over.
I don't know if I'll still be here in 2 more years, but I know I'll be here 2 days, 2 weeks, and 2 months from now, and more than that, I'll just have to wait and see.
Thank you for sticking with me for so long.
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Innana: Discovery (Fiction)
I mentioned long ago about how much I enjoy getting into the heads of characters and when I race-changed into a Draenei, I had a lot of difficulty trying to get into the head of an immortal space-goat warrior that channeled energy from a talking and sentient crystal on a crusade for righteousness. So I swapped back to a human, and starting thinking about who she was and where she was in her life, what her day to day work was like, and what might make life interesting for her.
This is the start of what I came up with, I'll likely write this very slowly, and I wish I was an illustrator of any worth as I think this would make a fun, ongoing comic, but ah, well. Besides, non-funny Warcraft comics don't do well anyway, and this is far from funny. Anyway. I haven't drafted this as much as I wanted to but I'm trying to churn out more material more quickly and this was keeping me from other material that's a bit more urgent.
Read at your peril!
INNANA: DISCOVERY
There was once a girl who knew her place in the world. She would wake in the mornings and know the day ahead of her, and the day after that. Weeks and months unfurled like a written scroll, inscribed with foretelling and prophecy until the day someone set fire to her future.
Fire fell from the sky and reached out from the earth, horror consumed all of her tomorrows and when she woke up, her future was a wet clump of ashes in her hands. Her father's gardens were gone, her mother's maids were haunted and desperate women, shocked into senselessness. The men who served her father looted the house as it burned, and ran into the night, some into fire, others into axes and swords. Gold and silver scattered, the butchers uninterested in their gleam.
The girl, however, was too small to be noticed, too unimportant to matter, and when the butchering finished and the fire died, when the sound of horror faded, and she had slept and wept and slept again in the small hollow beneath the burned down house, she was illuminated.
A mailed hand reached down from the blinding light and she was lifted up from the ruins of her life into the comfort of a white tabard, staining it with her ashen hands.
Innana closed her eyes and sat in bed, the nightmares once forgotten were recurring more and more often. Outside her window, Stormwind bustled and there was life waiting for her to join, but she was far from it. Her maid, Alie, knocked and then entered, with a basin of water, and clothing for the day, and Innana put on her smile and attended to her bath.
There was always paperwork to be done. Documents to read, petitions to judge, treaties to be ratified, licences to be granted, wax seals dripping red on her untidy desk to press against one more parchment, and by the time she finished the last of it, the sun was in the west, and there was the Seminary lecture yet to give, a recounting of the Cathedral armaments to see if she could find the source of thieving and a personal consultation with a petitioner.
She had become another cog in the great machinery of the Cathedral of Stormwind, an instrument of the Light. From her window, across the plaza, she could see the holy edifice rising into the sky, the peaks of its steeples lost beyond the rim of her view. Priests, pages, knights, beggars, petitioners and the devout were always on the broad steps, flowing in and out of the Cathedral.
The girl from long ago had once walked similar steps in another land, in another time, in another place, with her mother, hand in hand, attended by servants, they had come bearing flowers and gifts, and standing in the pews while the church rang with the hymns, she felt the awe of divinity. Her mother leaned down to whisper in her ear, "You will wed here, one day as I did."
Her mother was wrong.
She was wed, but not in that church, which was burned and trampled beneath the war machine. It was here, in the Cathedral, that she was wed. Many years ago, and not to a man, no. For the second time in her life, she was illuminated by the Light - it descended from the great stained glass behind the Bishop. It was a small ceremony attended by the family of her brothers and sisters who stood with her, and a handful of petitioners who happened to be there - all strangers with only a mild interest in observing the ceremony, not the church bursting with guests for a great wedding as her mother had thought. The girl had knelt next to the other boys and girls, and then stood as a Knight of the Silver Hand.
She remembered the weight of the sword on her shoulder, the steel gleaming, "You are a weapon. A vessel for the Light. Woman no longer, you are an instrument of justice and righteousness."
And then the sword was in her hand, sword and shield, mace and censor, hands full of power, and there were wars, and terrors to overcome.
Innana closed her eyes, pinched the bridge of her nose. Where was this reminiscing coming from? This day was no more or less important than any other, no anniversaries to spark these distant nightmares and memories. She stood up, calloused, rough hands against the wooden desk, her left hand specked with red wax, and absently picked up her sword-belt. Even in Stormwind, without the armor, dressed only in her plain gray shirt and loose black trousers tucked into polished leather boots, she still felt the need to carry her sword. It was an extra limb, an extension of her will, and she buckled it, unable to withstand the rush of memory.
The girl from long ago had hated swords. She had hated weapons or violence of any kind, she loved the stories best where knights befriended the monsters and turned them into companions. Stories when love and friendship conquered what violence could not. Songs where queens and kings ruled in benevolence over civilized and chivalrous lands, and even the monsters were civilized, brought into the cities, discarding their bones and furs and taking the cotton and leather. She believed this was possible.
That was until the violence found her, turned her life around and left her to face a different world where violence was not just something meted out of anger but it had to become a shield to keep civilization from being washed away in the tides of barbarism and chaos.
Outside her door, in the hallway, there were other doors, some open, others closed, all filled with other cogs in the machinery working on their own paperwork. She set about her business. Visiting the Seminary did nothing to keep her from falling deeper into nostalgia. Her first weeks there as an orphan, getting used to sharing a large dormitory, no maids to help with her everyday processes, the two robes, one of which she was to wash herself every night to have it clean for the next day, the daily lessons in history, numbers, and the holy reed.
When she proved exceptional in her classes, she was moved into the more rigorous training - the deep mysteries of the Light, yes, but also rhetoric, logic, politics, trade, philosophy, music, arithmetic - the kind of education her brothers might have received had her mother born sons. Five years later, she was offered a seat into the priesthood, but she shook her head no, and undertook a new journey, even as her tutors of seven years stood gaping in shock, all of their attention and training wasted on a girl who would become a foot-soldier.
Here, now, she looked at the girls and boys who sat in a row of benches looking up at her, their faces open, and she remembered the woman who changed her life.
A woman with a hard face, short cropped hair with a shock of white running through it, her chin tilted from a blow making her too ugly for anyone to ever kiss, but who spoke with a grace that moved Innana to join her instead of the priesthood.
Today, would Innana speak with enough conviction to change the minds of one of these children?
The lesson ended, she blessed the class, her hand tight around the pommel of her sword, and rushed through her meeting with the Bishops, relenting to their wisdom in the matter of pilfered armaments, with little motivation to become involved in the matter. It was likely to be some poor footman or squire trying to feed his mother or pay his sister's dowry and the Cathedral could afford to part with some of its wealth.
The sun was low over the western hills above Stormwind proper by the time she rushed back to her office for the petitioner. Her stomach growled and she could not remember if she had eaten since leaving her quarters in the morning. Sometimes it seemed her entire life was spent trapped in this square, from quarters to office, office to seminary, seminary to cathedral, cathedral to quarters. Around the square, a team of men went about, lighting the lamps one at a time.
Her hand flexed. The hilt of the sword felt warm, the weight on her hip, the jingle of the chin holding the sword to her belt, and suddenly, she could have been in Northrend... there had been a life beyond this once. But there were worse memories to dwell on than her childhood and she returned to that confused stream gladly rather than her years in the field. She shut her eyes, willing them away, only to feel the horror and agony of all those years in an instant.
The frozen winds of Northrend blasted her, the hopeless chill of the Lich King was there, alive, in her head and the faces of the dead, her brothers, her sisters, the dead, the dead, the dead, the dead who came back, her friends who came back from the grave and the Light was in her hands, burning them as they screamed and they screamed... and she was screaming with them, until they sent her back and...
She opened her eyes. Something was wrong. This kind of melancholy and introspection was not unusual for her, but not this complete preoccupation to the point of paralysis. Perhaps some time with Mother Amina would clear her mind. She would write a note to her and have it delivered in the morning, petitioning for some time with her.
But there was one more task left for her to do before the day was over and she hurried up the steps into the administrative offices. Erik, the middle-aged clerk with infinite patience if not stamina sat at the desk on the first floor and looked up from the line of small text he was following with a finger, exhaustion evident on his face.
"Your petition is waiting in your office," he said. Innana glanced up the stairs were only two lamps flickered and all the other doors were likely closed and locked for the night. The office had no windows facing the west and it seemed all the more gloomy for it.
"Why don't you go ahead," she said, "I'll lock up."
"Thank you," Erik did not argue, gathering his cloak from the peg behind him, "I'll be good to eat dinner with the family for once."
Innana smiled at him and went up to her office as the clerk shut the heavy door behind her, eliminating what little sunlight remained in the office. She walked up stairs and into her room, unbuckling her sword belt and carrying it in her hand. A figure sat in a chair in front of her desk, cloaked and hooded, turned into a silhouette by the flickering candle on her desk that Erik must have left.
"Excuse me for being late," Innana moved around the desk to her chair, "It has been a long day and I appreciate your patience. I'm Innana, and I was given your..."
The figure lifted its head - her head, Innana saw the woman, a girl, really, a pale, sickly, thin girl with sunken, haunted eyes as if from nights of sleeplessness and the caved-in cheeks of a starving child. Innana slowly lowered herself into her chair, laying her sword belt on the desk, staring into this cadaverous face.
"... your petition to handle." She finished quietly.
"You're the wrong one," the girl hissed as if to foil eavesdroppers. There was something in the way she spoke that sent a chill up Innana's spine. The light in the room faded, dulled, the candle flame blinked, tilting to one side as if in a draft though the room was still, and then it was still again.
"What manner of help, sister?" Innana asked gently. Something was very wrong here. The cloak was far too bulky for a woman so frail. Something about her seemed very familiar. Outside her office, the hallway creaked, just an old building making noises in the dark, but Innana felt her hand reaching for the sword before stopping herself.
The girl whimpered, turned to look over her shoulder, and then leaned forward, "It wasn't supposed to be you," her face shuddered with terror, "No, no, no. They said it would be someone else who is not you."
Innana felt goosebumps running up her forearms, there was a feeling of dread building in her that warned of danger, close by, part of her felt flush with heat, another part shivered, thee smell of charred flesh wafted through the room then it was gone. The girl put her hands up to her head, holding it, and whined in a high-pitched tone that set her teeth on edge.
"Who are you?" Innana stood up, the sword lay on the desk between them. She couldn't remember the last time she drew her weapon in combat, a year ago, maybe? Two?
Something flickered around the woman, like an invisible barrier that enveloped her and then it was gone. The sword appeared in Innana's hand, she didn't remember drawing it, as she backed away from the desk, "What are you?" She hissed.
There, again, the flickering, and then it was gone for good replaced with the odor of rotting flesh laced with the sharp chemical smell of an apothecary. The thin face melted, and a cadaver stood in its place, the bulky robe hanging limp off of the frame of bones. Sunken eyes and cheeks vanished replaced by a mad flickering in hollow sockets and tattered skin stretched over pale bone.
"A mother," the creature said, her voice no longer that sharp tone but a guttural, wet sound, "A mother in search of her daughter."
This is the start of what I came up with, I'll likely write this very slowly, and I wish I was an illustrator of any worth as I think this would make a fun, ongoing comic, but ah, well. Besides, non-funny Warcraft comics don't do well anyway, and this is far from funny. Anyway. I haven't drafted this as much as I wanted to but I'm trying to churn out more material more quickly and this was keeping me from other material that's a bit more urgent.
Read at your peril!
INNANA: DISCOVERY
There was once a girl who knew her place in the world. She would wake in the mornings and know the day ahead of her, and the day after that. Weeks and months unfurled like a written scroll, inscribed with foretelling and prophecy until the day someone set fire to her future.
Fire fell from the sky and reached out from the earth, horror consumed all of her tomorrows and when she woke up, her future was a wet clump of ashes in her hands. Her father's gardens were gone, her mother's maids were haunted and desperate women, shocked into senselessness. The men who served her father looted the house as it burned, and ran into the night, some into fire, others into axes and swords. Gold and silver scattered, the butchers uninterested in their gleam.
The girl, however, was too small to be noticed, too unimportant to matter, and when the butchering finished and the fire died, when the sound of horror faded, and she had slept and wept and slept again in the small hollow beneath the burned down house, she was illuminated.
A mailed hand reached down from the blinding light and she was lifted up from the ruins of her life into the comfort of a white tabard, staining it with her ashen hands.
Innana closed her eyes and sat in bed, the nightmares once forgotten were recurring more and more often. Outside her window, Stormwind bustled and there was life waiting for her to join, but she was far from it. Her maid, Alie, knocked and then entered, with a basin of water, and clothing for the day, and Innana put on her smile and attended to her bath.
There was always paperwork to be done. Documents to read, petitions to judge, treaties to be ratified, licences to be granted, wax seals dripping red on her untidy desk to press against one more parchment, and by the time she finished the last of it, the sun was in the west, and there was the Seminary lecture yet to give, a recounting of the Cathedral armaments to see if she could find the source of thieving and a personal consultation with a petitioner.
She had become another cog in the great machinery of the Cathedral of Stormwind, an instrument of the Light. From her window, across the plaza, she could see the holy edifice rising into the sky, the peaks of its steeples lost beyond the rim of her view. Priests, pages, knights, beggars, petitioners and the devout were always on the broad steps, flowing in and out of the Cathedral.
The girl from long ago had once walked similar steps in another land, in another time, in another place, with her mother, hand in hand, attended by servants, they had come bearing flowers and gifts, and standing in the pews while the church rang with the hymns, she felt the awe of divinity. Her mother leaned down to whisper in her ear, "You will wed here, one day as I did."
Her mother was wrong.
She was wed, but not in that church, which was burned and trampled beneath the war machine. It was here, in the Cathedral, that she was wed. Many years ago, and not to a man, no. For the second time in her life, she was illuminated by the Light - it descended from the great stained glass behind the Bishop. It was a small ceremony attended by the family of her brothers and sisters who stood with her, and a handful of petitioners who happened to be there - all strangers with only a mild interest in observing the ceremony, not the church bursting with guests for a great wedding as her mother had thought. The girl had knelt next to the other boys and girls, and then stood as a Knight of the Silver Hand.
She remembered the weight of the sword on her shoulder, the steel gleaming, "You are a weapon. A vessel for the Light. Woman no longer, you are an instrument of justice and righteousness."
And then the sword was in her hand, sword and shield, mace and censor, hands full of power, and there were wars, and terrors to overcome.
Innana closed her eyes, pinched the bridge of her nose. Where was this reminiscing coming from? This day was no more or less important than any other, no anniversaries to spark these distant nightmares and memories. She stood up, calloused, rough hands against the wooden desk, her left hand specked with red wax, and absently picked up her sword-belt. Even in Stormwind, without the armor, dressed only in her plain gray shirt and loose black trousers tucked into polished leather boots, she still felt the need to carry her sword. It was an extra limb, an extension of her will, and she buckled it, unable to withstand the rush of memory.
The girl from long ago had hated swords. She had hated weapons or violence of any kind, she loved the stories best where knights befriended the monsters and turned them into companions. Stories when love and friendship conquered what violence could not. Songs where queens and kings ruled in benevolence over civilized and chivalrous lands, and even the monsters were civilized, brought into the cities, discarding their bones and furs and taking the cotton and leather. She believed this was possible.
That was until the violence found her, turned her life around and left her to face a different world where violence was not just something meted out of anger but it had to become a shield to keep civilization from being washed away in the tides of barbarism and chaos.
Outside her door, in the hallway, there were other doors, some open, others closed, all filled with other cogs in the machinery working on their own paperwork. She set about her business. Visiting the Seminary did nothing to keep her from falling deeper into nostalgia. Her first weeks there as an orphan, getting used to sharing a large dormitory, no maids to help with her everyday processes, the two robes, one of which she was to wash herself every night to have it clean for the next day, the daily lessons in history, numbers, and the holy reed.
When she proved exceptional in her classes, she was moved into the more rigorous training - the deep mysteries of the Light, yes, but also rhetoric, logic, politics, trade, philosophy, music, arithmetic - the kind of education her brothers might have received had her mother born sons. Five years later, she was offered a seat into the priesthood, but she shook her head no, and undertook a new journey, even as her tutors of seven years stood gaping in shock, all of their attention and training wasted on a girl who would become a foot-soldier.
Here, now, she looked at the girls and boys who sat in a row of benches looking up at her, their faces open, and she remembered the woman who changed her life.
A woman with a hard face, short cropped hair with a shock of white running through it, her chin tilted from a blow making her too ugly for anyone to ever kiss, but who spoke with a grace that moved Innana to join her instead of the priesthood.
Today, would Innana speak with enough conviction to change the minds of one of these children?
The lesson ended, she blessed the class, her hand tight around the pommel of her sword, and rushed through her meeting with the Bishops, relenting to their wisdom in the matter of pilfered armaments, with little motivation to become involved in the matter. It was likely to be some poor footman or squire trying to feed his mother or pay his sister's dowry and the Cathedral could afford to part with some of its wealth.
The sun was low over the western hills above Stormwind proper by the time she rushed back to her office for the petitioner. Her stomach growled and she could not remember if she had eaten since leaving her quarters in the morning. Sometimes it seemed her entire life was spent trapped in this square, from quarters to office, office to seminary, seminary to cathedral, cathedral to quarters. Around the square, a team of men went about, lighting the lamps one at a time.
Her hand flexed. The hilt of the sword felt warm, the weight on her hip, the jingle of the chin holding the sword to her belt, and suddenly, she could have been in Northrend... there had been a life beyond this once. But there were worse memories to dwell on than her childhood and she returned to that confused stream gladly rather than her years in the field. She shut her eyes, willing them away, only to feel the horror and agony of all those years in an instant.
The frozen winds of Northrend blasted her, the hopeless chill of the Lich King was there, alive, in her head and the faces of the dead, her brothers, her sisters, the dead, the dead, the dead, the dead who came back, her friends who came back from the grave and the Light was in her hands, burning them as they screamed and they screamed... and she was screaming with them, until they sent her back and...
She opened her eyes. Something was wrong. This kind of melancholy and introspection was not unusual for her, but not this complete preoccupation to the point of paralysis. Perhaps some time with Mother Amina would clear her mind. She would write a note to her and have it delivered in the morning, petitioning for some time with her.
But there was one more task left for her to do before the day was over and she hurried up the steps into the administrative offices. Erik, the middle-aged clerk with infinite patience if not stamina sat at the desk on the first floor and looked up from the line of small text he was following with a finger, exhaustion evident on his face.
"Your petition is waiting in your office," he said. Innana glanced up the stairs were only two lamps flickered and all the other doors were likely closed and locked for the night. The office had no windows facing the west and it seemed all the more gloomy for it.
"Why don't you go ahead," she said, "I'll lock up."
"Thank you," Erik did not argue, gathering his cloak from the peg behind him, "I'll be good to eat dinner with the family for once."
Innana smiled at him and went up to her office as the clerk shut the heavy door behind her, eliminating what little sunlight remained in the office. She walked up stairs and into her room, unbuckling her sword belt and carrying it in her hand. A figure sat in a chair in front of her desk, cloaked and hooded, turned into a silhouette by the flickering candle on her desk that Erik must have left.
"Excuse me for being late," Innana moved around the desk to her chair, "It has been a long day and I appreciate your patience. I'm Innana, and I was given your..."
The figure lifted its head - her head, Innana saw the woman, a girl, really, a pale, sickly, thin girl with sunken, haunted eyes as if from nights of sleeplessness and the caved-in cheeks of a starving child. Innana slowly lowered herself into her chair, laying her sword belt on the desk, staring into this cadaverous face.
"... your petition to handle." She finished quietly.
"You're the wrong one," the girl hissed as if to foil eavesdroppers. There was something in the way she spoke that sent a chill up Innana's spine. The light in the room faded, dulled, the candle flame blinked, tilting to one side as if in a draft though the room was still, and then it was still again.
"What manner of help, sister?" Innana asked gently. Something was very wrong here. The cloak was far too bulky for a woman so frail. Something about her seemed very familiar. Outside her office, the hallway creaked, just an old building making noises in the dark, but Innana felt her hand reaching for the sword before stopping herself.
The girl whimpered, turned to look over her shoulder, and then leaned forward, "It wasn't supposed to be you," her face shuddered with terror, "No, no, no. They said it would be someone else who is not you."
Innana felt goosebumps running up her forearms, there was a feeling of dread building in her that warned of danger, close by, part of her felt flush with heat, another part shivered, thee smell of charred flesh wafted through the room then it was gone. The girl put her hands up to her head, holding it, and whined in a high-pitched tone that set her teeth on edge.
"Who are you?" Innana stood up, the sword lay on the desk between them. She couldn't remember the last time she drew her weapon in combat, a year ago, maybe? Two?
Something flickered around the woman, like an invisible barrier that enveloped her and then it was gone. The sword appeared in Innana's hand, she didn't remember drawing it, as she backed away from the desk, "What are you?" She hissed.
There, again, the flickering, and then it was gone for good replaced with the odor of rotting flesh laced with the sharp chemical smell of an apothecary. The thin face melted, and a cadaver stood in its place, the bulky robe hanging limp off of the frame of bones. Sunken eyes and cheeks vanished replaced by a mad flickering in hollow sockets and tattered skin stretched over pale bone.
"A mother," the creature said, her voice no longer that sharp tone but a guttural, wet sound, "A mother in search of her daughter."
Friday, February 18, 2011
Why do I blog? (Day 2)
Continuing on the track of 20 (non-consecutive) days of posting...
I talked about this earlier, but initially, I started writing in a blog mostly to catalog my raiding experiences so I could review them over time and see how I had been progressing. It's kind of funny to think that I've been blogging for nearly a year now about Warcraft, but have more-or-less completely stopped blogging on my old Livejournal. But that's a pretty boring answer. Let's see if I can dive a bit deeper and find some other, more meaningful reason...
February of last year was an odd time in my WoW career. After six months of hard-core raiding, I was getting a bit burned out on guild management as an officer, raid management and dealing with the stress of being part of a 50-plus member guild and managing two different raid groups on four different raid nights. I finally quit, moved Horde-side to play with the guild of an old friend and immediately found myself isolated.
I talked about this earlier, but initially, I started writing in a blog mostly to catalog my raiding experiences so I could review them over time and see how I had been progressing. It's kind of funny to think that I've been blogging for nearly a year now about Warcraft, but have more-or-less completely stopped blogging on my old Livejournal. But that's a pretty boring answer. Let's see if I can dive a bit deeper and find some other, more meaningful reason...
February of last year was an odd time in my WoW career. After six months of hard-core raiding, I was getting a bit burned out on guild management as an officer, raid management and dealing with the stress of being part of a 50-plus member guild and managing two different raid groups on four different raid nights. I finally quit, moved Horde-side to play with the guild of an old friend and immediately found myself isolated.
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Rewarded (and not)
My prize books arrived from Blizzard today from the writing contest and it was pretty neat to see all the names signed on it so I wanted to share them:
Don't mind my messy work desk.
This has been motivating me to write more of my fiction stuff so my time in game is diminishing a bit - and our current roster problems and having to PUG constantly isn't helping matters. Wiping for 2 hours of Maloriak sub 10% on Tuesday due to lag and then just being unable to juggle the mechanics last night so we gave up and wiped on Atramedes instead.
The last two nights of raids were no picnic. These fights are fun, and relatively simple, and the patch left everyone's DPS in the 20k+ range on certain fights so I have no idea what the problem is.
Does anyone playing Alliance side on Moon Guard want to raid with me?
Anyway. While that weighs on my mind, I'm not too worried about it. Today, I have a prize I won out of thousands of entries and I'm feeling pretty good about it. :-)
Don't mind my messy work desk.
This has been motivating me to write more of my fiction stuff so my time in game is diminishing a bit - and our current roster problems and having to PUG constantly isn't helping matters. Wiping for 2 hours of Maloriak sub 10% on Tuesday due to lag and then just being unable to juggle the mechanics last night so we gave up and wiped on Atramedes instead.
The last two nights of raids were no picnic. These fights are fun, and relatively simple, and the patch left everyone's DPS in the 20k+ range on certain fights so I have no idea what the problem is.
Does anyone playing Alliance side on Moon Guard want to raid with me?
Anyway. While that weighs on my mind, I'm not too worried about it. Today, I have a prize I won out of thousands of entries and I'm feeling pretty good about it. :-)
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Woah!
So, I was going to write about how awesome it is to raid right now in the buffed post-patch period and how much I'm enjoying raid-tanking as a Paladin right now, but, then, I saw this...
O_o
I was a finalist in the Blizzard 2010 Global Writing Contest!
I came this close to winning the contest! So exciting! Eeeek! I wish I could go to BlizzCon to meet the other writers and staff and stuff. But still - wow, this is the highest scale recognition of my writing so far.
I think it's a sign of some sort... but regardless, I'm so giddy and excited right now.
O_o
I was a finalist in the Blizzard 2010 Global Writing Contest!
I came this close to winning the contest! So exciting! Eeeek! I wish I could go to BlizzCon to meet the other writers and staff and stuff. But still - wow, this is the highest scale recognition of my writing so far.
I think it's a sign of some sort... but regardless, I'm so giddy and excited right now.
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Writing in a hurry
As some of you might know, Blizzard's annual writing contest was running for the last few weeks/months and as the last couple of years, I planned to submit but this time, I actually made a run of it. I had an idea in mind, and I worked out the general arc and characters, and wrote about 2000 words - roughly the first third of it - a couple of weeks ago and kept mulling the rest of it over and over, thinking I had until the end of the month to wrap it up.
Some providence inspired me to check on the date yesterday morning and I realized with a shock that the submission deadline was in fact last night at midnight.
I spent my lunch break at work desperately churning out another 2000 words to get two-thirds of the way and then work and an after-work engagement kept me busy. I got home around nine, logged into game, ran into Halls of Reflection for inspiration and with the music of that dungeon over my headphones, wrote the rest of it (with some encouragement from a couple of guildies) and then gave it a quick draft and posted it off just before midnight.
I'm pretty pleased with the story, and if I might take a segue from Warcraft for a second, it is the first new short story that I've started and finished in some time. Writing has been a hobby of mine for a while and I've had some minor success with it (a couple of short plays I wrote wound up in a tiny off-broadway production, and a couple of short-stories I wrote wound up in some small-time press magazines) but I've been going through some serious writers block for a bit over a year now and this was a very gratifying way to break through that wall.
After submitting the story and getting a confirmation letter back from Blizzard, I sent the story out to a few friends and it seems to be doing well with them, so I have my fingers crossed.
I'm feeling pretty pumped to continue working on some of my own material and if anything should come of this Blizzard submission, well, I certainly wouldn't mind writing for my favorite game, as you might imagine. :-)
Some providence inspired me to check on the date yesterday morning and I realized with a shock that the submission deadline was in fact last night at midnight.
I spent my lunch break at work desperately churning out another 2000 words to get two-thirds of the way and then work and an after-work engagement kept me busy. I got home around nine, logged into game, ran into Halls of Reflection for inspiration and with the music of that dungeon over my headphones, wrote the rest of it (with some encouragement from a couple of guildies) and then gave it a quick draft and posted it off just before midnight.
I'm pretty pleased with the story, and if I might take a segue from Warcraft for a second, it is the first new short story that I've started and finished in some time. Writing has been a hobby of mine for a while and I've had some minor success with it (a couple of short plays I wrote wound up in a tiny off-broadway production, and a couple of short-stories I wrote wound up in some small-time press magazines) but I've been going through some serious writers block for a bit over a year now and this was a very gratifying way to break through that wall.
After submitting the story and getting a confirmation letter back from Blizzard, I sent the story out to a few friends and it seems to be doing well with them, so I have my fingers crossed.
I'm feeling pretty pumped to continue working on some of my own material and if anything should come of this Blizzard submission, well, I certainly wouldn't mind writing for my favorite game, as you might imagine. :-)
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