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requiem-wra · 4 years

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Conscience

One of the dawn’s newest recruits tries to put his head straight and winds up talking to the past.

CW: Hallucinations or ghosts, vague references to self-destructive tendencies, antagonistic friendship

Whatever D’lta’s projections, when it came down to it, he shook the eyes of his watchers easily. The surviving Pandaren villagers do their unwitting part to distract the Dawn, and he steps into the shadows and up. Not that his companions in arms seemed too interested in keeping track. He doesn’t think Basteala and Barnabas have let the majority of them in on his dirty laundry yet, though he still hasn’t determined why. Are they trying to limit the possibility Stormwind might find out they’re harboring a deserter, or do they mean to give him a fair chance? Jury’s still out on that one. He doesn’t know them well enough yet to be able to tell.

He lets his knees bend, bare wrists resting against them as he perches on the temple eaves. His gaze catches on the way skin seared by void magic shines dully in the moonlight. Looks a lot better than it felt when the rays of darkness plowed right through him. He thinks maybe he’s got the tall Draenei to thank for that, but the remainder still stings. A pile of bandages sits pooled over his lap, waiting for him to get his shit together and finish wrapping the minor wounds. He’ll get to it eventually. Just needs his head to stop racing first.

“Th’ fuck am I doing here?” He mumbles to himself, words jumbled in an exhale. Sure, they’ve got blackmail on him. Sure, they’ll alert Rena to his position if they make a fuss about his whereabouts, and yeah things would get a whole lot easier if he could get one of his names cleared, but…

But they’re a goddamn mess. Commanders running suicide marches as atonement, almost no tactics to speak of, low battlefield cohesion and a whole lot of people who fancy themselves heroes running at wild odds head first with their eyes to the ground—they’re a disaster zone waiting to happen and suddenly he understands how Raelenin fits right in. He doesn’t know why he stuck around after he left the damn boat. He should have turned right around the minute someone mentioned void tears in the Jade Forest and the whole thing be damned, but...

“You going back to your marsh, golden boy?” He hears that long-gone voice tease, and doesn’t turn to look. Bad enough to hallucinate his voice without the image to back it up—too many memories and his head already hurts enough.

“Nah,” he grouches back, “I’ve got too much to do.”

“Hmm…. and you’re still sticking around this place?” The hallucination settles in his awareness, kneeling on the eaves to rest at his side. “I’d have thought you’d leave before next sunrise. There’s nothing they can really offer you, is there?”

“Yeah, well…” He waives a hand through the air. His voice rings out to no one, and he knows it. He rants to a ghost only he can hear, but there’s no one else up here to see him now. He might as well. “Maybe that’s it. Maybe it’s not just about me.” However scrambled the Dawn might have shown itself, the Pandaren civilians don’t deserve to face the void alone. Maybe he just doesn’t want to be complicit in leaving them to a terrible fate.

His apparition fakes a gasp. He feels the memory of those hands pushing playfully against his shoulder.

“Aurelian Mistfury recognizes there’s something bigger than himself!? Truly we have reached the end of days.”

“Yeah, yeah. Laugh it up, asshole. My conscience might be more recent than yours, but it’s been stringing me along since you died. Not my fault you’ve missed out on all that.”

A beat of blessed silence follows. He tears his gaze away from damaged skin and presses his fingers to his eyes instead. The exhaustion must finally have caught up with him, to ring that damn voice so clearly through his head. “Not my fault either.” The illusion adds, quiet beneath the rushing in his ears.

He starts to wonder then… whether that voice only exists in his head, or whether Elune’s light has drawn something real of his squadmate from the afterlife to speak. He’s hallucinated before, but those phantoms never sound so—

His hands don’t shake as he lets them fall back down to his knees. He’s worked too hard to control himself for that, but Elune above do they want to. His head turns slowly, eyes widening as his gaze catches the hazy form of a shadow on the roof beside him.

“Quinn, if that’s really you and not just—” “Come on, dumbass. You know that’s not how this works.” He doesn’t know—never managed to figure out—how a man can sound so derisive and so damn fond at the same time. He doesn’t think his daydreams ever captured the effect so well… He has to swallow before he can speak again. His throat fights the motion, dry as the desert.

“I don’t know that, actually. Are there rules to being a ghost and or figment of my imagination?” The formless shadow of what might be a remnant of his friend, might not, just laughs. As he watches, shadowy substance fades and re-solidifies like a heartbeat. Golden eyes flick back to his knees. If this is a daydream, it’s a fucked up one, and if not—

Well. maybe he doesn’t want to see Quinn go.

“More rules than you’d ever follow.” He doesn’t actually feel the gentle smack on the back of his head, but he knows where it would have happened—a ghost of sensation that has his heart racing and his hair standing on end.

If this is real, and not some trick of the void and moonlight…

“There were a lot of things I never got to say to you.”

“You’ll have plenty of time to tell me later, golden boy. Not much left now though. Don’t get distracted.”

“Right, sorry.” His voice doesn’t waver, but something sharp scrapes up against his ribs when he exhales, buried feelings jagged enough to slice him up inside. “Please continue with your much more urgent message.”

“Did you already forget why you came up here? Didn’t realize your hard head was empty too.” He hates the nostalgia that threatens to choke him as much as he can’t stop the smile that forces its way onto his face.

“Asshole. Alright. Fine. Great and wise imaginary friend, what do you think? Would you split and leave these sanctimonius do-gooders to themselves as I plot ecoterrorism against the forces of the void?” He expects Quinn to say something about obligation or duty, or the need to protect those people in the Dawn who just want to do good in the world. He doesn’t expect—

“Take them up on their offer. Take them seriously, and get your stupid name cleared. You can do what you want after that.”

He blinks. He can’t help looking Quinn’s way, hair swinging in its braid with the speed at which he turns.

“The hell…? Not gonna lecture me about being in it for others?” Somehow, he gets the impression of familiar concern from that formless face.

“’Lian, you keep trying to do things the way I would want. You ever think maybe what I want is for you to do something that makes you happy?” Shadow pulses, fades pulses…. And blinks out. The sharp-edged knot in his chest digs deeper. He releases a wet exhale to the night sky, fingers clenching around the twisted mess of bandages in his lap.

Fucking hallucinations.

He should tear off this roof and run. He should leave this offer in the dust. He should—he should—

He should sit here and wrap his damn arm, and he should wait for the self-sacrificial commander to march back through the gate. And if the commander comes back mind-controlled he should get help. And when his self-imposed shift ends, he’ll haul off and find a hole to collapse into and sleep before he asks the boss lady for more orders.

He never had been good at denying Quinn anything.

“I’m doin’ it, but it’s not gonna make me happy, asshole!” He shouts to the moon, because Elune’s the best proxy he can think of to reach his dumbass squadmate. He feels the weight of someone’s gaze and looks down to find a temple initiate staring up. “Ah, sorry—" He calls down, waving with a grin until the confused initiate moves along.

Great. Now the Dawnsmen will think he’s mad AND a vicious murdering thief.

He smooths the bandages over his lap, finds an edge to start wrapping with and wonders whether the assumption doesn’t fit.

#quinn #roleplay #world of warcraft #firefly #writing

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requiem-wra · 4 years

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Unstuck in Time - Part 2

This is an event summary write up for RP partners and guildies to look back on if needed. Short Summary: Basteala, Mielle and Irothel are swept up in a time-traveling adventure to capture or kill an alternate reality version of their good friend Raelenin. Many paradoxical shenanigans and moral deliberations ensued

(Part 1) - (Part 2)

The Precipice of Disaster

For their own reasons, all three were hit hard by the sight of the fallen city, renewed and bustling. The temple grounds buzzed with all the trappings of a festival, only slowly winding down at the end of the night. Night elven children ran hither and yon, delivering messages for candy payments or small amounts of coin. Priestesses chattered outside, braiding bracelets to give away for protection and gossiping about the war.

Iro told Mielle and Bast to sort this out on their own, desperate to meet with someone lost to the fire. She bolted for the market stalls despite Bast's carful warnings. She rushed through the diminishing crowd and spotted her father, back at his stall selling his hand-made wares.

Iro's conversation with her father gutted her emotions and seemed to make time itself uneasy. Still, she managed to still her heart's urges and obey the whims of fate. She was able to have a conversation with him and purchase one of his moonkin carvings without raising his suspicious or saying too much for time to allow. However, the interaction took much of her energy and left her wilted.

Meanwhile, Bast and Mielle began to understand that this version of Darnassus was just on the eve of its end, before the fall of the whisp wall. Basteala decided to focus on her amulet and try to use her newly awakened awareness of time to search for any strange signals. She found three where she expected only two. Bewildered, she convinced Mielle to split up and help search for them.

Bast's wandering search took her to the North, toward the bank at the center of the city. She followed the signal and just managed to catch sight of a Raelenin escorting two unknown women into a portal. Bast watched, mind racing as this version of Rael stepped through alongside the unknown ladies and left a horrible wound in time behind. She considered chasing after him, but correctly concluded any Rael stepping out of the timeline must not be the alternate.

Mielle found a version of Rael, exhausted and drifting off to sleep where he stood, tucked into a an alcove formed by the temple's exterior wall. She decided this must be the past Raelenin and decided to leave him be. Unable to watch the tragedy of Iro's interaction with her father or Rael's clear exhaustion any longer, she began to wander away, only to realize that one of the messenger children was headed straight for the younger Rael…

Suspicious, Mielle tripped the child and intercepted the message. The message read only, ominously, "Fix the first mistake. Give me the name of the branch." Mielle correctly assumed that the alternate Rael must be attempting to find his double and set out to hunt him down.

She turned toward the Illidari team camping by the lake on the eve of battle. Through a series of deceptions and her innate understanding of the Illidari organization, she convinced Vitaria and her squad to help her hunt down a "dangerous arcane fugitive." Wary of a sudden burst of arcane magic, Vitaria split her team and sent Mielle ahead with fellhunter and observer-bound teammates to sniff out the arcane scent.

While moving to intercept the final anomaly, Bast found a completely new timewalker. She introduced herself to the dragon Cherinormi, quickly learning that the bronze dragon in Dwarf form had a serious bone to pick with Raelenin. Cheri explained that the timeline had suddenly sprouted a new branch here, an event that shouldn't have been possible without a chronomage there to stabilize it. Bast mentioned Rael's name, and Cheri leapt at the sound, automatically assuming the new branch must somehow be his fault. She conscripted Bast to help her arrest him.

Irothel fled the emotional upheaval of interacting with her father, only to run right into the Rael of the past. She caught Zan's eye, hidden in Raelenin's bag. Recognizing that she hadn't caused any paradoxes yet, she called out to him in draconic. "It's Cake-Bearer!" she hissed, and time clicked into place as Iro accidentally created her own draconic nickname.

She shook off the discomfort of time threatening to reset or loop into paradox and did her best to distract Rael with small talk and rest. Irothel managed to keep him ignorant of the situation and halt the delivery of yet another note, much to the alternate Rael's chagrin.

Though Bast couldn't conscience Cheri's constant insults and the level of mistrust aimed at her friend, she begrudgingly recognized the dragon's use as an ally. She and Cheri both caught sight of the final, alternate Rael mid-argument, both dropping the subject to rush to his side. Bast used her necklace's power to blink to his side, Cheri rushing on foot behind her. She caught him by the throat, flooding him with enough Light to paralyze him.

Mielle fell into an easy comradery with the Illidari squad, arising zero suspicion as they guided her to the suspicious arcane source. They found it quickly, and Mielle stepped through time to reach the very place where some version of Rael broke reality and created a new branch. From there, she was finally able to see the alternate Raelenin she had meant to target all along. Instead of rushing to him immediately she trusted in her teammates and took the moment to try to heal the temporal damage her friend had wrought, successfully easing it with her deputized abilities.

Bast and Mielle converged on the trapped Raelenin as he began to chafe under the sealing. A sense of impending doom gripped them all, and Iro had to double down to keep the Rael of the past from interfering. Stymied at every turn and swiftly losing his mind and his patience both, the alternate Rael decided to abandon this timeline utterly. He threw himself into the infinite, corrosive temporal magic eating at Bast's light. Only Bast's anchor and a last minute effort from Cherinormi kept alternate Rael from stepping sideways into a new timeline. Still, his attempt to leave tore a portal in the center of the lake, and the trio's necklaces warmed with enough magic for one more jump to follow.

The Caverns of the End

The deputy time-walkers stepped through time in a way that had started to become familiar. They blinked, and opened their eyes to a sand-strewn cavern littered with debris reminiscent of Darnassus.

"You're his friends, aren't you?" The alternate Rael spat, his form twisted through with infinite energy. Darkness poured off him, eyes lit with a blazing electric blue that seemed to crack through his very skin. "Why are you stopping me? I've been looking for a timeline stable enough to make this work for So. Long. and you've made it utterly pointless!"

Iro reached out for Mielle, already crying. She'd put the pieces together. She understood what he wanted to do. Eyes puffy, she called, "She's gone, Raelenin! Let her rest!"

In the Caverns of Time, as the alternate Rael slowly unravels in mind and body, the truth of what the alternate tried to do slowly makes itself clear. That first mistake, the death of his twin, had haunted the alternate and driven him to madness. He'd wanted to reach Rael's original timeline and change it--exchange Rael for his twin sister, fix the mistake. "What does it matter if just one version of Raelenin has to disappear?" He begged them, eyes wild, but to no avail. The Dawn trio tried to understand--tried to find a peaceful way forward, but the path was closed. Blinded by his tainted magic, the alternate Rael became an Infinite beast and attacked those who should have been his friends.

The approach of the bronze flight from elsewhere in the cavern wore at the Dawn's newfound sense for all things temporal as they sought to restrain their alternate reality friend. Bast threw herself into combat with the beast, bringing the full fury of her light to bear. Mielle matched the metamorphosis with her own half-state, leaping into battle. While the alternate was able to score a few heavy blows, the tag-teaming duo kept him too distracted and pinned down to truly deal damage. Irothel's light protected her teammates from the harshest of blows, lessening the scorch of unstable magic and shadowed claws.

Even as they battled, the team tried to remind Raelenin of his better senses. However, their battle prowess won out before their logical arguments. Rael was knocked unconscious and bound by vines sent by Elune, helpless on the ground as the wave of bronze flight members slowly grew ever closer.

Sensing that these flight members would see the alternate Rael meet a fate they didn't intend, the trio takes their captive and activates their necklaces for the final burst of magic they need to return to their proper, linear time. As they slid into the all-too familiar embrace of infinite time, they saw Cheri's angry visage whip into the corridor in their wake. The last thing they saw before blinking back to their own present was her transformation to an enraged, enormous adult dragon…

On the other side of time, the trio found themselves once again upon the sands of Uldum, sun setting, glinting wounded red on the horizon. As they corporealized, they glimpsed their own backs disappearing into the first portal, those versions of them beginning the journey in Theramore. The bronze mask turned away from where he'd seen them off and met them arriving with a knowing smile.

"Okay, I have terms," Mielle called, and the Bronze Mask encouraged the trio to start their negotiations for the fate of their selves and both versions of Rael. Immediately they made demands for Rael's sentence the Mask couldn’t conscience, but he assured them that they'd done well enough to merit an appearance at the next council meeting.

Agreeing that the Dawn should keep their memories, the Mask suggested they would have to remain as deputies in his command if they wished to keep the amulets. He asked the trio to consider staying on as timewalkers, in whatever limited capacity that might require of them. Bast refused, citing her duty to the Dawn over her duty to time. Mielle and Irothel had a harder time finding an answer, and asked for more time to decide.

The alternate Rael was restored to his usual form, and the Bronze Mask asked the Dawnsmen what they thought should be done with him. Unanimously, the trio decided he should be magically bound and sent to another timeline--one where the original didn't survive, that he might have some solace and a chance at finding his own way apart from grief. Perhaps he might even find some version of his companion Zan there.

With little fanfare, the Mask agreed to this plan, explaining that he was happy to hear the Dawnsmen come to such a merciful decision. He sent the alternate away, and his immense temporal magic lit up the timestream like a beacon… He moved to release the original Rael from his frozen state, only to pause himself. His magic had done what he thought it might, and Cheridormi had found them.

The Mask laughed, and quickly explained how the Dawnsmen might free their friend and flee the dragon's wrath. They sprung into motion, uniting their amulets in purpose to un-pause Rael in time as if they had always known how. Mielle took flight toward Ratchet with a very confused but un-frozen Rael in tow as Bast and Iro raced behind on foot.

Event success!

Major NPCs to remember:

Bronze Mask (Barros)

Recruited the Dawnsmen for help, seems to be in a semi-antagonistic relationship with other Bronze flight members

Cherinormi

Bronze Flight member in charge of monitoring timeline branching activity. Has a serious vendetta against Rael.

Commander Vitaria and squad

Illidari squad stationed on Darnassus at the eve of its burning. Are they still alive?

Outstanding Issues:

The wrath of Cherinormi

The Council Meeting

"One week Later" Recruitment drive

#roleplay #rp summary #timeboi

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requiem-wra · 4 years

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Unstuck In Time - Part 1

(Part 1) - (Part 2)

A Small Celebration

After all that has happened, between collapsing dimensions in Old God strongholds and malfunctioning ancient Titan Artifacts, time in Uldum is finally, *finally* more or less stable. Realizing this, and thinking that the restoration of time might lead to an end to Rael's rather linear existence here, Raelenin called his tiny group of close friends to a makeshift picnic.

At a picturesque riverbank Northwest of Ramkahen, Basteala, Mielle and Irothel met, bringing homemade dishes. They caught the tail end of a conversation as they arrived--Rael passing Zan off to an apparent friend and babysitter named Quinn. The trio were highly suspicious of this unknown Night Elf who looked little better than an outlaw, but they took his warning to keep a weather eye to heart and let him leave with Zan in tow.

With the strange visitor gone, Rael and his friends were able to relax. They chated for a time, assuring each other that whatever the state of Rael's time travel moving forward, they will remain friends.

Unfortunately, the calm couldn't last. Bast noticed first--the feeling of being watched, the sense of something not quite right. The gang investigated their surroundings, eventually revealing a second version of Rael blinking into view. Mielle took quick action, smearing hot sauce on her Rael's face so she could smell the difference without confusion later.

At first, it seemed like this might simply have been a past or future version of the Rael the Dawn had come to know, but the newcomer quickly revealed the truth with a simple question. "Did you really think you were the only one who could step sideways?" He was instead, a Raelenin from some alternate dimension. He told the team plainly that he needed their Raelenin to help him fix something.

Quickly recognizing that Rael's double intended to do some kind of harm, the team intervened to keep him away. Iro bubbled her Rael in a shield of moonlight as Mielle and Bast focused on pinning and shutting down the enemy. He proved a wily foe, rewinding time or blinking out of their grasp every time they managed to hold him.

Though they couldn't apprehend this other, shadow-wreathed Raelenin, they successfully fended him off long enough for backup to arrive in the form of a Bronze-Masked stranger. Other Raelenin fled, blinking away as the stranger shimmered into view behind Bast, Mielle and Iro like a mirage on desert sand.

The Bronze Mask explained that he needed to put their friend Raelenin in stasis for now, just until the double can be caught. Though the group protested, but they eventually stepped aside and allowed the Bronze Masked man to freeze Rael in place. They demanded answers, only to stop short as the Bronze Mask delivered a simple suggestion. With the air of a smile he chimed only, " I'd like to make you Time Walkers, if you like."

Adventures in Time

Iro, Bast and Mielle had reservations about working with the Bronze Mask (and the flight he so clearly represented.) They asked why he couldn't just do it himself, why it had to be them, what happened if they refused… The Mask responded that he had far too strong a touch for a mission like this, and that a timeline only delicately recovered would need a much lighter impact. Hence, the need for Time Walking agents. And if they refused? Well…. He couldn't allow two Raelenins in this timeline, whatever that might mean.

Angered by the veiled threat, the trio agreed to help, but only for a price. They demanded looser restrictions on Rael's forced movement through time and a lifting on his inability to talk about certain aspects of his curse. The Mask could make no promises, but suggested he might be able to put in a good word and even allow the team in to the next Council if they performed well enough. Reluctantly, the group agreed to these terms.

The Bronze Mask gifted each new agent with an amulet to serve as both a marker of their time-walking deputy status, and a mechanism by which they might control time. Each amulet had limited temporal capabilities. An amulet could, while charged, rewind or fast forward time by about five minutes, give a limited "stasis" or "pause" ability, and allow the user to blink in a limited capacity from one location to another known location. However, the Mask warned, they would only be able to maintain their charge through a few blinks. The trio would only have a limited number of chances to pin the other Rael down, one way or another.

After their first use of the amulet to track the alternate Raelenin down, the group emerged in a sleepy but whole vision of none other than Theramore. The team immediately came to recognize the potential for temporal disaster that their trip here might represent.

Bast spotted a younger version of Raelenin trapped in a conversation with a hapless Theramore guard, who insisted he was a blood elf with "the wrong colors" on. She tried to talk to this young Rael, only to blink as the timeline reset, and she, Iro, and Mielle found themselves back atop the hill where they'd started. They would have to be very careful to avoid paradoxes if they wanted to avoid restarting endlessly, it seemed.

Mielle and Iro rushed forward towards a young meat seller, and Mielle spotted the alternate Rael hiding nearby. She began to corner him, only for him to use his own powers to turn back time. They needed to use the powers in their necklaces to counteract the moves alternate Rael attempted.

Bast successfully distracted the guard trying to arrest younger Rael, and Mielle manipulated time to achieve ill-gotten food gains from the poor young meat seller as Iro scrambled to keep up, her head reeling. They cornered the Alternate Rael in a pincer attack but a misstep from the stubborn guard set the world skipping backwards in yet another reset--only for alternate Rael to freeze it in place. The alternate cursed at them, chiding the group for making this timeline unstable with their meddling before blinking away to the next location.

When they opened their eyes next, slowly recognizing their increasing awareness of the amulet and its magic, the team found themselves in the Golden Vale. Not a single scar of the Sha's rampage, nor a hint of N'zoth's power scoured the land. It was as beautiful as it had ever been. Once again, they recognized the potential for paradoxical disaster.

Mielle recognized an older version of Raelenin at the bar--one with a familiar scar across his face. She and Iro stepped over instantly to speak with him (and order noodles). They discovered that they could talk to him without causing a paradox, and that he had a vague notion of what might be going on. He warned Iro not to let the Alternate meet any younger versions of himself.

Meanwhile, Bast searched the room. She heard a worrying call from up the winding staircase outdoors. Master Hui, a stately monk, mumbled to herself as she made her way down to the open market, her eyes sweeping the crowd. She sensed something strange--something like a demon… Bast recognized the danger of the situation and used her five-minute rewind, stepping the team backward to the start. She explained the issue to Mielle and they concocted a plot to fake an arrest, explaining Mielle's state as a demonic possession to avoid causing a paradox. While they play acted the arrest with the whole market watching in confusion, Mielle activated her demonic sight to find the alternate amidst the market-goers.

Iro decided to bolt straight back to the other Rael and get as much information out of him as possible instead. She re-explained her presence, warning him that his "evil" alternate self intended to do something to him. In return, he explained that his other self wasn't really evil, not exactly, only… trying to bring someone back who had died. Iro understood what he meant and found herself struck with sorrow.

Mielle and Bast's show worked a little too well. They gathered the full attention of the bustling Pandaren rotunda and Master Hui. Bast Launched Mielle in the direction of the Alternate Rael and Mielle froze him in place with a momentary stasis. The eyes of so many Pandaren, so confused by this fricassee and powers they had not yet seen, began to wear at time. Each teammate could feel it heaving, uncomfortable against their skin, a buzzing in their bones. The alternate Rael cursed, imploring the trio to let him "fix this." Before running once again.

Annoyed, disheartened, and determined in turns, Bast, Iro and Mielle followed suit. They stepped once again into the infinite reach of time, only to open their eyes to the shaded and forever lost boughs of the Kal'dorei capital itself…

Darnassus.

(To Be Continued...) >> (Part 2)

#roleplay #RP summary #timeboi

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requiem-wra · 4 years

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Out of context

Minor spoilers for Timeboi, I suppose. Can characters have spoilers?

–

In the absence of battle, he slips enough to glimpse her. He’s used too much and too quickly again and he knows it. In the sparks of reality among the infinite weave where she still exists, she knows it too.

She’s better than him-smarter and faster and has an easier time saying no to a bad idea. Harder. He doesn’t think she would have put as much on the line to keep the Dawn safe. Maybe a few more injured would join ranks at the healers but she wouldn’t have been rattled like this.

He misses her so badly that his bones ache, a throb with every breath

“You push things too closely to the limit, brother mine. What will you do when the Bronze flight takes notice?” He doesn’t know. But he knows enough to know she isn’t here, not for him. Not for this thread in the weave.

“Stupid Rael, landed us in the middle of a war and didn’t bother to blink away immediately. If you get stuck in your head again I am going to eat you. I am going to go forwards in time, find a version of myself who is big and strong and naturally much larger than your puny form and ask me to eat you” Zan squirms in his lap, and doesn’t. Too many tiny claws hook in his clothes as the whelp fumbles in his own furious worry. Rael thinks he can feel them tugging at him, but then the warmth of Leinna’s hand pulses at his shoulder and he is not so certain.

Those shuddering seconds of guilty hope are brief.

“Ugh. You stupid jerk face! You are stuck in the weaving, aren’t you?” Zan grouches, and doesn’t.

Somewhere, in a distant echo of abandoned threads, she sighs and presses her forehead to his. “Come back to me,” she murmurs, but the words aren’t meant for him.

“I’m not stuck. I know where I am.” He tries to insist, feels himself say it across every thread of the weave. An instant of artificial constancy-a glitch in the pattern.

“What?” He hears Leinna sigh, “you’re talking nonsense.” But the iterations of Zan all chirp in skeptic relief.

“Oh yeah? Then where am I right now?” Zan presses into his hand and claws at his neckline and hangs from his bag and does none of these things. Rael knows better than to try and answer. “Stupid,” the whelpling hisses, each version of him stilling and climbing and coming to rest in Rael’s lap. “When you even out this time I am going to bite you so hard”

“Come back to me,” Leinna breathes again, a siren song that tugs old grief free from its prison. Rael bites his tongue and bottles his hurt and tries to focus on his own damn thread. He can’t.

His heart beats. His bones ache. She is still dead, and he is very, very tired.

#rael #timeboi #writing #role play

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requiem-wra · 5 years

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First two pieces of Inktober! (Ring, and Mindless) Bear with me as I figure out what grey-scale tone I want haha. I’m probably going with a WoW OC theme this year. Ring is Mavra, my darling Illidari, proposing to her long term girlfriend, like we all know will happen eventually. Mindless is my poor, poor Chronomage/Void Elf Rael dealing with some… consequences of fiddling with the timestream.

#self reblog #rael #art #Monster Girlfriends #mavrardrana #Timeboi

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requiem-wra · 5 years

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Mavra’s pouting about not being able to do something. maybe eat an old bat corpse? Probably.

Today’s doodle; the best monster girlfirends around

#Mavrardrana #self reblog #doodle #maeve #Monster Girlfriends

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requiem-wra · 5 years

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A quick portrait for Mavra to use as an Icon -*minor edits

#mavrardrana #illidari #world of warcraft #roleplay #local derp gremlin #How do elf ears fit into hoods #we may never know

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requiem-wra · 5 years

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Blog Link Updated

Hello all! Blog link has been updated to *correctly* spell Requiem. OTL Please excuse my terrible difficulty with letters being in order. New link is https://requiem-wra.tumblr.com/

#ooc post #update

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requiem-wra · 5 years

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My Darling Illidari child in her Lunar New Year Finest. I finished with enough time to slip in one more commission before the WrA festival event this weekend too! Check out my commissions if you’d like to see your character kitted out for the celebration! *Edit: 2/8/2019 Sadly, it’s too late to get your commission finished before tomorrow unless you ask for a sketch commission. However I’m still happy to accept Lunar New Year themed requests after the Festival!

#my art #world of warcraft #Lunar Festival 2019 #Illidari #Roleplay character #Mavrardrana

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requiem-wra · 5 years

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Posting the linework version of Mavra’s lunar new year clothes just in case I don’t have enough time to color it before event next week.

(Mavra is the awkwardest child in a Hanbok you’ve ever seen)

#lunar new year #World of Warcraft #Illidari #roleplay #mavrardrana

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requiem-wra · 5 years

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Just some inktober Mavra doodles I never realized I hadn’t ported over yet.

#mavrardrana #world of warcraft #roleplay #demon hunter #illidari

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requiem-wra · 5 years

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It’s Raelenin! (Happy Rael vs. Very unhappy future Rael)

#timeboi #speedpaint #world of warcraft #RP

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requiem-wra · 6 years

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a Draenya in inkktober style. been fightin’ with this; i just want one good picture of Drae haha. I have none T_T

#draenei #world of warcraft #inktober #rp #draedle #Draenya

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requiem-wra · 6 years

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Just a Dream (Draenya)

Not a nightmare, but, well-- A followup on some RP with a friend. Warnings for low-level suicidal ideation and weird dream logic.

She didn't wait long enough.

Maeve pushed her too early, she gave in too soon, because the dreams are there, scattered between waves of unconsciousness. She can tell--can taste it in the false air and in the way her limbs don't move quite right--in the way her Chi won't respond as it should. The realm of dreams has found her again, and the very thought pulses anxiety through every nerve of her being. Fear usually works as a weapon to free her from sleep, but-- Not so this time. Something blocks her path to awareness... she grits her teeth and watches the dream tick on.

At first, she can bear it easily. She has a few recurring dreams she can stand--those fantasies where nothing fantastic happens at all. Where she does nothing but sit at her desk, alphabetizing an endless stack of files while the room shifts and changes around her. The work never ends, the context is meaningless, and she wakes from those dreams feeling empty and quiet. Maybe she should take them as a comment on her ultimately useless existence, but she's never thought of them that way. They are... pleasant noise. Busy work for the sleeping mind.

It's only too bad the scene can't last. She falls to the sub-conscious shift between one imagined breath and the next--blinks and finds herself aware again in the humming engine room of the Exodar.

There's a hammer in her hand where she expects to see paper, fingers folded over an old handle she hasn't seen since the thing crashed years ago, but she knows its heft. The engine hums in the silent vacuum of space and she knows instinctively that they haven't reached Azeroth yet, even though in the dream she still wears her Kul-Tiran clothes.

There's someone nearby—a pair of hooves just visible in her periphery somewhere near the entrance... She doesn't look up. She knows well enough what face she'll find.

"Again, Draenya?" he calls, voice dripping with disapproval. She pries at the loose panel over the engine's electrical interface and doesn't answer. "I know you're smarter than this. Who do you think you're helping, carrying on like you do? You only make more work for the healers." "Yes, well... make more work for them either way, I assume. 'Least this way someone on the ship gets some sleep." The panel falls away and disappears before it hits the ground—lost in the logic of the dream. Draenya doesn't notice. She reaches forward and starts changing the blown fuse.

"..It's the fuse for a display screen." He drawls, voice drier than the desert. "By no means is this any kind of urgent."

"How would you know?" She finds herself mumbling back to the apparition despite her better instincts. "You never used to watch dad work." Her hands move in ways she scarcely remembers—still feels somehow in the way her arms ache.

"Draenya," he harps again—so damn familiar. "You need sleep."

"Sleep when I'm dead," she grouches. She can feel his exasperation like a physical force.

"Avoiding the former only hastens the latter—"

"Perhaps that's the point, The'uul." The room freezes. All sound stops. The engine melts away beneath her finger tips and all she can do is watch it go—dripping down between through the grate that makes up the floor. The'uul’s image floods her vision, inescapable.

"I did not save you only to watch you die to your own stupidity." He's taller than he should be, she thinks. He takes up too much space in the strangely silent room. Draenya tries to stand and meet him, only to find that her limbs don't remember how. She's left scattered on the floor, staring up into his face.

"Then perhaps you should leave me to my useless tasks, or watch death find me all the faster."

"Draenya—"

"You're not here, The’uul." He frowns thunderously, but—he isn't. He's nowhere, gone even in the dream. Draenya is left behind, staring up at the inky black sky of Nazmir. The loamy earth of the swamp cradles her form with damp, and she is alone.

Alone. It’s easier that way, isn’t it? Quieter. Less painful. More painful? She doesn’t know—

She fights to get upright against the pull of the swamp. The blood troll’s knife from last week sits at home in her side, though she finds no blood. And she is... tired. Too tired to last through more dreaming. Her fingers find the knife. She twists—pulls—

She wakes up.

#writing #world of warcraft #role play #tombreader #monk #alliance #draenei #Draenya

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requiem-wra · 6 years

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Vault Night: an Evil Tome

Hello Vault members! Just in case anyone missed the event and was curious, or simply wanted to find out what happened when they ran to grab a snack that one time, I have compiled my flavor text as well as a few blurbs noting the most relevant actions taken by vault members during the event. Please excuse my memory as I have done this without logs, so I hope you will forgive me if I forget something!

Before meeting together, the Vault members all received the following letter: Dear friends, I am contacting you today in a matter of some strange occurrences in and around the vault’s Ironforge library locale. Several employees have reported strange visual phenomena and indoor weather. I have not noticed such things myself and was inclined to write these happenings off as mere visual tricks, until a guard’s hip flask spontaneously transmuted itself into sea-water mid-shift.

I cannot tell whether whatever causes these things is malicious or simply neutral in nature, and have made no progress in attempting to discern the source.

If you could somehow find the time to drop by the library on the morrow and lend an extra pair of eyes and or hands, I should be most grateful.

Thank you for your time, Draenya, Archivist Ironforge Vault Library; Wandering Isle Library

Stage 1: Investigate

The Vault entered the section of the Explorers’ League rented and maintained by Vault Staff. Suvie, Sin, Maeve, Simon, Dela and Elias walked down a long hallway branching off from the Explorers’ central chamber, and entered a single domed room, several stories high. Bookshelves and desks lined every inch of the room’s octagonal walls, leaving little space for the few curios lingering here and there in the corners.

Draenya thanked the group for coming and explained the situation a second time, asking for help discovering who or what might be causing the mist visible only to some. Simon, Sin, and Maeve stumbled through the thick white mist blocking their vision in their quest to help, while the rest of the vault looked about at the seemingly empty air in confusion.

Two familiar dolls sat nestled on a table nearby. Elias wandered over to investigate, but found himself unnerved. They have been redressed in more modern, daring styles, possibly inspired by Draenic fashion. A small, crudely drawn sign that looks something like a dwarven woman’s face with an “X” over it beside them.

Closer to the entrance, a lone dwarven attendant squinted at the Vault members behind bushy brows. His mouth pressed itself to a flat line, masked by his voluminous braided beard. “Hello?” he called out, as if he couldn’t be certain anyone were there at all. But none of the vault members answered his call. Instead, the bulk of the vault decided to investigate the area around the archivist’s desk. Opposite the vault’s newest “assistants,” Dela and Drae’s workstation splayed across a fold-out-desk. Stacks of books and reams of notes littered the area, spilling out onto the two chairs settled nearest. A coffee mug or two crowned the sparse clearings of surface amidst the mounds of written word.

The fog and occasional hallucinations of water got Maeve, Simon and Suvie thinking of the Kvaldir in Northrend, especially when Maeve revealed that the air had an undead feel to it. Sin reminded Draenya of their time in Northrend, asking whether the books they’d brought from the sunken temple in the Borean Tundra might still be in the library. Draenya agreed and the crew began tearing books off the wall.

Draenya somehow fell asleep in the middle of this process, much to the crew’s distress, but before they could discern the reason, Elias opened a book that tossed the vault into a separate dimension.

Stage 2: Skill Use

All around the vault members, the room transformed itself into a hellish, misty tomb. The towering stacks of books began to dim with mildew as the stone shelves transformed to wet granite. The entrance clogged with mist and vanished. If any had remained unaware of the strange white coating the room, they saw it now. It filled every nostril with the rank, sour stench of the low tide. At the Vault Team’s feet, briny water, dark and opaque, began to pool.

A dais took the place of the archivist’s desk, wreathed in rime. On it lay a thick, heavy tome, foul mist billowing from its very pages. Very clearly, it had been blocked from the group by a barrier of energy, glowing a faint, sickly sea-green.

Behind the Dias loomed an empty tomb, its lid tilted to one side. Both Dias and tomb rose from an elevated platform. The crumbled remains of stairs littering the flooding ground to either side.

The Vault members quickly realized they would need to find a way to escape the rising water, shatter the barrier to reach the book, and find some way out of this dimensional pocket. Suvie, Elias, Dela, Sin and Simon focused on taking the barrier down, trying their best to find a way past it before the water rose too high. Maeve used her powers to create platforms of ice for the crew’s most cold-sensitive and aquatically challenged members. Suvie’s chi helped buoy the rest of the Vault and allowed Dela the time and concentration she needed to create a portal in the floor, sucking the water down like a drain out into Stormwind.

Elias punctured the heavily destabilized barrier, only to find Drae on the other side, book in hand. The Draenei could not respond to the vault members’ calls.

Stage 3: Fight

The real world filtered back in around like a powerpoint fade transition, sliding uncomfortably from one image to the next. The frigid tomb simply ceased to exist in the places where the library suddenly was. The book in Drae’s hands, however, did not disappear.

The book opened with the sound of a crashing wave, scrolling past pages and pages written in an ancient researcher's hand, too fast to read. Glimpses of words and the curves of letters-- curse, corruption, degradation, titan, all flittered by at high speed, but none of it resolved into any kind of sense. Finally, the book lay flat on a single page. It alone appeared written in a different hand. A different language.

The book dwarfs Drae ‘s form as she begins to read, "I know now what they found, when they reached out into the mists. I know now what they called. It is the unruly, pitiless mistress, she who sits below in judgement of the unworthy dead.

Helya" At the sound of that final name, the chamber echoed with the deafening sound of a fog horn. The thick mist blanketing everything thinned and coalesced into the towering, stinking forms of Kvaldir, the air ringing with laughter. Draenya’s dazed gaze vanished in a wash of swirling white as something Other took her place.

Sin, Simon and Maeve quickly dashed to eliminate the creature’s Kvaldir friends. A mist trap swirled up around Elias, shrouding him from view. Perhaps he’d fallen back to that other place? The sight reached icy tendrils of fear into Simon’s mind.

Throughout the long battle, the creature scored deep wounds on Dela and Maeve with whirling, bladed chains, and attempted to choke the crew with her lung-paralyzing mist.

As the gang scored hit after hit, they began to realize that Draenya might still lay somewhere within the creature’s form. Worried, Maeve attempted to death-grip Draenya from the creature, pulling it forward and unbalancing it long enough for someone to score the finishing blow. Harried and frightened, Sin lobbed her sword across the room, landing the kill and nearly injuring Suvie and Maeve in the process.

Stage 4: Resolution

Draenya and the book lay battered on the floor after the battle, and Elias reappeared in the room as the fight ended. Heavily wounded by the damage the Vault members had dealt to the mist creature, Drae lay bleeding out on the floor. Luckily, Maeve managed to clot the flowing blood with some success.

The majority of the Vault members left to hand the highly dangerous literature off to their artifact handling crew. Meanwhile, Dela transported Drae to the infirmary with urgency. Later that night, Simon and Maeve were distressed to learn that Draenya had fallen victim to some form of memory damage.

#vault #world of warcraft #rp #guild things #alliance

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requiem-wra · 6 years

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On Homes (Draenya)

It’s surreal, walking through Stormwind these days. The streets are full to bursting with concerned citizens ready to aid the war effort. Droves of Priests and Paladins run a tireless, rotating shift of healers out of the Cathedral. The Farms just outside the city house refugees from Darnassus, and people everywhere are commiserating and demonstrating compassion and searching for hope….

“It’s so terrible to think of all these people driven from their homes,” She overhears a pair of mages gossiping in the library by the Stockades, one human to another, and the phrase echoes in her mind all day.

Driven from their homes, she thinks, and tries to remember what that feels like, exactly. She should know. She’s lost a few.

The house she shared with her father went first. Small, and filled with the whirring of tiny gears and crystalline mechanisms. The Workshop ate up more space than the kitchen and bedroom combined, but she hadn’t known anything else. Besides, the forest outside was wide enough to run in, and she didn’t need much space to sit beside her father and watch him work.

All of it fell to the wayside and she never really learned why. She remembers those days like distant reflections of sunlight on water—warm, too blinding and too frenetic to discern, flashes of something that leave nothing but dancing blots of darkness in their wake. It all ends with loneliness and terror—the dark of the woods encroaching through the windows and suffocating her as she hides beneath her father’s workbench. The’uul’s face so unfamiliar when he’d come for her that she’d screamed at the sight of him.

…The’uul… Her brother is… not someone she knows how to think about. But he took her to Auchindoun.

Auchindoun was home too, for a time. Until it became apparent as she got older that she’d never be able to wield or properly serve the light, and after that—

If she’s honest with herself, the great temple that housed the Draenei dead had been lost to her before it was ever destroyed. Nothing there ever felt right or true. She hadn’t belonged. Not really. Maybe she could have eventually, but… now she’d never get the chance to know. The lost potential hurts more than the lost reality, she thinks. Maybe.

Or maybe she’s full of shit and just trying to lessen the hurt she feels inside by cheapening the past.

After that, It was… She doesn’t even know. Camp after camp. Settlement after settlement. None of that ever felt sedentary enough to be “home.”

There were a scarce few moments, between violence and flight, when she thought maybe she’d found it; in the smile of a stranger offering comfort, in the warmth of a new friend, huddled close in the cold of night under the bleak sky…. But none of these homes ever lasted. Smiles grew thin and faded, people died. In the end, they all ran from any chance of home, tried to make the Exodar their new ark and left Draenor burning behind. How strange it was to realize she could be homesick for a planet… She’d started to understand why all the elders spun never ending tales of their own Argus.

By the Naaru it had never ended, had it? Place to place-- the Exodar, Pandaria, the fall of the Peak of Serenity when the Legion came, her frantic scramble to save what she could of the library— home was a book that burned, a friend that died, a memory lost, over and over again until nothing and no one felt safe.

Maybe Draenya doesn’t know what home is any more. Maybe she needs to get over herself and get back to work. Losing homes might not make sense, but loss does. Grief does. There are a camps’ worth of refugees left in Stormwind tonight, all that’s left of a whole city. She can’t heal and she can’t bring back the dead, but she can write and she knows how bureaucracy works. She hides in the library and joins the grim faced-few checking their lists of refugees against any records of Darnassus’s citizenry.

#World of Warcraft #rp #draenei #Monk #tombreader #draenya

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