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rawliverandgoronspice · 6 months

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Hello!! I'm back for: more whining about TotK Quest Design Philosophy

I can't reblog a really great post I just saw for some reason (tumblrrrr *shakes my fist*), but hmmmm yeah not only do I completely agree, but I think I might expand on why I feel so much annoyance towards TotK's quest design philosophy at some point, because it does extend past the fundamentally broken setup of trying to punch a pseudo-mystery game on top of BotW's bones, where the core objective was always explicit and centered and stapled the entire world together; or the convoluted and inefficient way it tells its story through the Tears, the somehow single linear exploration-driven quest in the entire game.

Basically: I'm talking about the pointless back-and-forths. There were a lot of them, a lot that acted against the open world philosophy, and almost none of them ever recontextualized the environment through neither gameplay abilities nor worldbuilding nor character work.

I'll take two examples: the initial run to Hyrule Castle (before you get your paraglider), and then the billion back-and-forths in the Zora questline.

I think?? the goal of that initial quest to Hyrule Castle is to familiarize you with the landmark, introduce the notion that weapons rot, tell you about the gloom pits, and also tell you that Zelda sightings are a thing? But to force any of these ideas on you before giving you a paraglider is, in my opinion, pretty unnecessary. I think the reason it happens in that order is to prevent Link from simply pummeling down to the gloom pit under Hyrule Castle and fight Ganondorf immediately while still introducing ideas surrounding the location; but genuinely, the Zelda sighting makes the next events even more confusing? Why wouldn't you focus all your priorities in reaching the castle if you just saw her there? Why lose time investigating anything else? Genuinely: what is stopping you from getting your paraglider and immediately getting yourself back there, plunging into the depths to try and get to the literal bottom of this? (beyond player literacy assuming this is where the final boss would be, and so not to immediately spoil yourself --which, in an open world game, you should never be able to spoil yourself by engaging with the mechanics normally, and if you can that's a genuine failure of design)

I think, personally, that you should not have been pointed to go there at all. That anything it brings to the table, you could have learned more organically by investigating yourself, or by exploring in that direction on your own accord --or, maybe you think Zelda is up there in the castle, and then the region objectives become explicitely about helping you reaching that castle (maybe by building up troops to help you in a big assault, or through the Sages granting you abilities to move past level-design oriented hurdles in your way, etc). Either way: no need to actually make you walk the distance and back, because the tediousness doesn't teach you anything you haven't already learned about traversal in the (extremely long, btw, needlessly so I would say) tutorial area.

But to take another example, I'll nitpick at a very specific moment in the Zora Questline, that is honestly full of these back-and-forth paddings that recontextualize absolutely nothing and teach you nothing you didn't already know. The most egregious example, in my opinion, is the moment where you are trying to find the king, and you have to learn by listening in to the zora children who do not let you listening in.

So okay. I think Zelda is great when it does whimsy, and children doing children things guiding you is a staple of the series, and a great one at that. But here? It does not work for me on any level. Any tension that could arise from the situation flattens because nobody seems to care enough about their king disappearing in the middle of a major ecological crisis, except for children who are conveniently dumb enough not to graps the severity of the situation, but not stressed out enough that it could be construed as a way for them to cope about it and make anything feel more serious or pressing. It feels like a completely arbitrary blocker that isn't informed by the state of the world, doesn't do anything interesting gameplay-wise with this idea, doesn't build up the mood, and genuinely feels like busywork for its own sake.

This is especially tragic when the inherent concept of "the zora king has been wounded by what most zoras would believe to be Zelda and is hiding from his own people so the two factions do not go to war over it" has such tension and interest and spark that the game absolutely refuse to explore --instead having you collect carved stones who do not tell you anything new, splatter water in a floating island, thrud through mud who feel more like an inconvenience than a threat or, hey, listen to children playing about their missing king less than a couple of years after being freed from Calamity Ganon's menace. It feels like level designers/system designers having vague technical systems that are hard-coded in the game now, and we need to put them to use even if it's not that interesting, not that fun or not that compelling. It's the sort of attitude that a lot of western RPGs get eviscerated for; but here, for some reason, it's just a case of "gameplay before story", instead of, quite simply, a case of poorly thought-out gameplay.

Not every quest in the game is like this! I think the tone worked much better in the sidequests overall, that are self-contained and disconnected from the extremely messy main storyline, and so can tell a compelling little tale from start to finish without the budget to make you waddle in a puddle of nothing for hours at a time. It's the only place where you actually get character arcs that are allowed to feel anything that isn't a variation on "very determined" or "curious about the zonai/ruins", and where you get to feel life as it tries to blossom back into a new tomorrow for Hyrule.

But if I'm this harsh about the main storyline, it really is because I find it hard to accept that we do not criticize a structure that is at times so half-assed that you can almost taste employees' burnout seeping through the cracks --the lack of thematic ambition and self-reflection and ingeniosity outside of system design and, arguably at times, level design-- simply because it's Hyrule and we're happy to be there.

There's something in the industry that is called the "wow effect", which is their way to say "cool" without saying "cool". It's basically the money shots, but for games: it's what makes you go "ohhhh" when you play. And it's great! The ascension to the top of the Ark was one of them --breathtaking, just an absolute high point of systems working together to weave an epic tale. You plummeting from the skies to the absolute depths of hell is another one; most of the dungeons rely on that factor to keep your attention; the entire Zelda is a dragon storyline is nothing but "wow effect" (and yeah, the moment where you do remove the Master Sword did give me shivers, I'll admit to this willingly) and so is Ganondorf's presence and presentation in the game --he's here to be cool, non-specifically mean, hateable in a non-threatening way and to give us a good sexy time, do not think about it too hard. What bothers me is that TotK's world has basically nothing to offer but "wow effect"; that if you bother to dig at anything it presents you for more than a second, everything crumbles into incoherence --not only in story, but in mood, in themes, in identity. This is a wonderfully fun game with absolutely nothing to say, relying on the cultural osmosis and aura of excellency surrounding Zelda to pass itself off as meatier than it really is. This is what I say when I criticize it as self-referential to a fault; half of the story makes no sense if this is your first Zelda game, and what little of that world there is tends to be deeply unconcerned and uncurious about itself.

And no, Breath of the Wild wasn't like this. Breath of the Wild was deeply curious about itself; the entire game was built off curiosity and discovery, experimentation and challenge (and I say this while fully admitting I had more fun with the loop of TotK, which I found more forgiving overall). The traversal in Tears of the Kingdom is centered around: how do I skip those large expanses of land in the most efficient and fun way possible. How do I automate these fights. How do I find resources to automate both traversal and fights better. It's a game that asks questions (who are the zonais, who is Rauru and what is his deal, what is the Imprisoning War about, where is Zelda), and then kind of doesn't really care about the answers (yeah the zonais are like... guys, they did a cool kingdom, Rauru used to run it, the Imprisoning War is literally whatever all you have to care about is who to feel sad for and who to kill about it and you don't get a choice and certainly cannot feel any ambiguous feelings about any of that, and Zelda is a dragon but we will never expand on how it felt for her to make such a drastic and violent choice and also nobody cares that's a plot point you could *remove* from the game without changing the golden path at all).

I'm so aggravated by the argument "in Zelda, it's gameplay before story" because gameplay is story. That's the literal point of my work as a narrative designer: trying to breach the impossibly large gap between what the game designers want to do, and what the writers are thinking the game will be about (it's never the same game). And in TotK, the game systems are all about automation and fusion. It's about practicality and efficiency. It's also about disconnecting stuff from their original purpose as you optimize yourself out of danger, fear, or curiosity --except for the way you can become even more efficient. And sure, BotW was about this too; but you were rewarded because you had explored the world in the first place, experimented enough, put yourself in danger, went to find out the story of who you used to be and why you should care about Hyrule. I'm not here to argue BotW was a well-written game; I think it was pretty tropey at large to be honest, safe for a couple of moments of brilliance, but it had a coherent design vision that rewarded your curiosity while never getting in the way of the clarity of your objective. There is a convolutedness to TotK that, to me, reveals some extremely deep-seated issues with the direction the series is heading towards; one that, at its core, cares more about looking the part of a Zelda game than having any deeper conversation about what a Zelda game should be.

#thoughts #tloz #totk #totk critical #when will my brain return from the imprisoning war...#quest design #game design #level design #game criticisim #I think the more time goes on and the more uncomfortable I am with “if the game is fun it's good”#sometimes the game is fun and the game is empty #fun games can be addictive and predatory on purpose #(not saying totk is but it is well known that fun is not a neutral feeling)#fun can also reinforce questionable ideas of what “fun” should even look like #*side-eying CoD and co*#and fun =/= coherent always #if we're talking about games like artpieces #then you don't get to pick and choose which parts matter and which parts don't #you can absolutely say “I resonated with it for X and Y” but to make an argument that people who feel uncomfortable by content #that is in the game!! put in the game!! on purpose!!#is not a very productive attitude let's say

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ganondoodle · 11 months

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the worst part about finding more and more about totk that i dont like is that ... it seems like one of my biggest fears is going to become true; all of my previous hyperfixations died because a new thing of the franchise came out and i didnt like it, turned that strange, perhaps unhealthy, love and attachment into disappointment and sadness and im afraid thats happening to zelda right now, the one hyperfixation i hoped could last or at the very least i would just grow slowly away from in a good way if it was just totk that i didnt like, tho its hard to see all the love people have for it and just ... feel the opposite about it, it would be fine (heck i really disliked links awakening but ultimately i just regret spending so much money on it, it didnt impact my feelings about the rest of the franchise) but because it diminishes everything about botw too .. a game that i still love deeply, its not fine aside from me not liking anything they did with the zonau, it basically steamrolled botw too, damn near ignoring it ever happened, cramming in zonau stuff where it wasnt before just so its literally everywhere, taking its mysterious and answerign them in boring ways, implying that stuff i loved so much about botw was yet just another zonau thing (the three dragons possibly having been zonau ..........the ancient hero mystery being .. that.......) people basically claiming as fact that its somehow slammed into the old timeline despite it making no sense nor has any evidence aside from some names that happened to be used once before or them saying whats the point of ever looking at botw again bc totk does everything "better" ...

you cant ignore it really, even if i try to ignore what i dont like, i know whats revealed in totk, and others know it too.

and in turn it all makes me go back to that strange self hatred i thought i had finally left behind, the why do i care so much, its stupid to care so much about a piece of media i have no control about anyway, whats the point of caring so much, you have wasted so much time and effort and thought and tears about something like this, why are you so weird, why cant you just be like everyone else and love it all, why are you like this, stop being like this.

knowing i cant stop being like this, fearing from the start it might happen just like it has so many times, that i fall in love with a piece of media so much that when it gets a new thing that i dont like but affects every aspect of it it all flips into anger first, then disappointment and sadness and in end into wishing i wasnt weird like this, knowing i cant change it ... and it turning out true

#ganondoodles talks #i dont know how to feel #i dont want to lose interest i really dont #but im seeing it happen just like it has all these times before #on top of feeling bad for beign so negative #also feeling like the villain here bc so few people have the same criticisim as me #the only people that dont like it are those posting rants on youtube complaining about enemy variety or whatever #the game wasnt what i expceted nor what i hoped but weird thrid worse thing #that i dont know how to feel about #.... not to mention being afraid of making myself hated for being the way i am #probably the reason why so many popular zelda artists i liked and even talked to suddendly completely shadowbanned me #im afraid of losing everyone i got to know in this fandom #for being over emotional and annoying i guess #or maybe i am just a bitch #maybe they are right #maybe theres a good reason i never joined the ranks of cool and relatable popular artists #and maybe its better for me to stay in my weird lil bubble

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ikram1909 · 10 days

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What baffles me is Araujo's attitude, he still thinks he made the right decision against Bacrola and decided to do the same against Valencia. If Xavi was a proper coach he would bench him next game and do sone self criticisim, his season has been disastrous and he has to be concious about it.

I don't think that he thinks it was the right decision but it's just that he panics when he's left as the last defender and he clearly doesn't trust Marc much on 1v1s. I think he should just improve in that aspect and stop getting carried away by his emotions

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silentstaresfanficandfanart · 27 days

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pls go find out if my game is hot trash its for a friends only gamejam it doesnt need to be GOOD it just has to be done i dont care if its entertaining anymore just see if its like, not spawning lizards in the kings pajamas or something pls

its obvoiusly free im just sending a link to it from my google docs thing i made it in renpy

IF YOU ARE IN M DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS GROUP DO NOT LOOK AT THIS POST GO AWAY GO SHOO Link under cut as well as some art from the game(?).

sincerely i have no ida what im doing i had 2 weeks and i am panicing at hte end because i barely got any of the art done. we are CUTTING every corner this is PURE clownshoes absolute nonsense theres several endings most suck and some are possibly comple tely inacessable and if so thats fine as long as it looks coherent criticisim reccomended, except on the art unless its showing up places it doesnt belong because the art is just NOt trying my dudes

comes with such great characters as!

tearful farmboy child!

CUTE GAURD

and of course

prince sewy snips the third !

enjoy such sceneic routes like wet damp nasty tunnel! and MISerable JAIL

and MORE

EnJOY

#game jam #fantasy #indie game #trash game #silly game #tunnels #its like #rpg but not #visual novel #renpy #chose your own adventure #king #royalty #prince #i have no idea what im doing #im justjust trying my best bro

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pinercat · 2 years

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Dragonfall slapdash cost

#Dragonfall slapdash cost mod#

#Dragonfall slapdash cost archive#

#Dragonfall slapdash cost Patch#

However, meanwhile, there are a number of file hosting solutions that doesn't include supporting one of the worst warez/porn hosters. I am trying to find a solution that works for all parties not flame you or anyone else in the DH team. This is why I wrote their main support about this. Like you wrote, they are the ones responsible for anything sold under their name and published on their sites. MartinBG, I hope you realise that my writing isn't a criticisim against the developers(as you wrote) but in fact the distributor Paradox (and then GG). It worked AC, thank you sir, it is appreciated If for example, I had a work project on this computer and it was compromised by malware from your published links, I could with 100% chance of winning, sue the publisher and developer for all losses. The same way paradox could seek renumeration against illegal users, published content and updates are the legal responsibility of the company.

#Dragonfall slapdash cost mod#

This isnt some free mod from the community that you use at your own risk. whoever it is needs to deliver patches and updates in a professional manor. I honestly dont care who is responsible under the publishing agreement. DH is a fun game, as a WWI buff i love the time period, but these slapdash business practices need to be handled competently and professionally or as a consumer, I will once again leave paradox behind. I bought the original HOI and had some fun with it, but the shoddy support of it drove me from paradox and their supported/distributed games. Ok MartinBG, the simple fact is that paying customers should not have to deal with malware to get the latest version of the game. The password can be found at the attached at the end of this post text file.

#Dragonfall slapdash cost archive#

The simplest and still the most reliable solution in this case is to use a password protected archive and that is what we did.

#Dragonfall slapdash cost Patch#

This solution has the shortcoming that everyone - including people that do not own the game in a legal way, can download the patch and this is unfair to all of you that bought the game and supported us.

Leak of the patch to pirate sites before or very shortly after the releaseĪs we're not allowed to host the patch here for some reasons and because of the big patch size (~100MB) we decided to use free and independent hosts that should provide you with the best bandwidth and reliability at the same time.

The relatively long (at least to our taste) official patch release procedure.

Unknown game version (?.?) reported by the Launcher (Steam/Impulse).

Patching of games bought from places that do not provide patch support (Amazon).

Patching of the German only boxed version of the game.

Issues with patch installation by some resellers like left obsolete files that should be deleted (Steam).

Patch availability for all of you at the same time.

With this release we try to address the most annoying issues we and many of you had with the release of 1.01: This should help both you and us in tracking down any encountered issues in the future. The patch installer is compatible with ALL distributions and versions of Darkest Hour and once applied all of them will be absolutely identical. This is a commutative patch that will not be released by any reseller and is supported only by us (The Darkest Hour Team).

#Dragonfall slapdash cost

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quaxslay · 4 years

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I’m still really excited for SwSh, call me a shill or a bootlicker all you want, I’m just excited to go camping with my Scorbunny and Wooloo

#pokemon #pokemon sword and shield #pokemon swsh #kyle.txt #im just tired yall #a lot of the criticisim is valid #and you have every right not to buy the game #but like...... don’t be awful to those still excited for it

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scifiphan · 7 years

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Have you posted and phanfic before? I stalked you a little (not in a creepy way, I was just curious about what you write) but didn't find anything :(

I haven’t posted any dnp fic yet mostly because my lazy ass struggles to finish anything these days (I’m actually working on a fic right now but heck, I get distracted after like 200 words). I have several WIP's so eventually I’ll post them! Until then y’all have to suffer with my cringe wattpad fics I try to ignore.

#i'm such a perfectionist with my writing i need to stop #i miss the times when i used to write and not care about criticisim #go look at my wattpad if u like doctor who or the hunger games lmao i used to be a featured fanfic writer on that gross site #anon #answered

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purified-zone · 7 years

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zenosanalytic replied to your post: seeing ADHD discussion posts about how it affects...

you dont have to “justify” anything. Whether a symptom is taken seriously by others or not depends on their mood at that particular moment, and how strongly they feel like clinging to the idea of what they want you to be in the face of who you actually are. Those are the symptoms and if you experience them, you have ADHD. Working through that taught impulse to deny the reality of what you’re going through is really tough though <:T

my point is that where does one draw the line between what is and isn't voluntary laziness? where does one draw the line of character flaw?

#these are very japanese thought processes. this is deliberate. i am fully willing to be auseless piece of shit all day playing video games #but i gotta acknowledge... criticisim #especially because i do not take being wasteful in stride. I am not Happy #especially considering my time wasting my parents' time and money is limited #I don't Know if You've Noticed But Unlike MBL Who Is Obviously Happy And Has No ISsues Whatsoever (Impissible) Lol I am Not Happy

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mandaloriangf · 4 years

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Im so glad i found your blog. I find tlou2's story to be pretty :/ at times but whenever i try to find actual criticisim of the game, most of what i find is just gamerbros mad at lesbians existing, or the one trans dude existing. So thanks for being critical of the game instead of an ass like so many others are

no problem! it’s frustrating how many people just wanna whine about abby’s physique instead of like. actually making real criticisms.

#ask amanda #anonymous #tlou2 spoilers

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the-wolfs-raven · 5 years

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An Explanation

So I thought I might finally kinda outline how and why I made Tara the way I did with the background I chose for her. I know a lot of people don’t like pairing OCs with canon characters, and I knew, even while I was researching, that I wasn’t just going to be able to put it out there without a lot of criticisim.

See, Tarvasha started out as a Warhammer 40k character. She was a touch-averting, bitchy, angry void-master who slowly crept into being a Tech Heritic with a hard-on for the ship engineer who was basically just a brain in a metal body.

Her last name was Winterscale and, those of you familiar with the lore, would recognize it not only from Winterscale’s Realm, but also the current Rogue Trader of the Winterscale dynasty, Calligos.

I had made her one of his bastard children who resented him for not acknowledging her. She set out to prove herself by trying to find the lost Baleful Eye (think bionic eye with a laser. pew pew) of Sebastian Winterscale. In her mind, if she could find it, perhaps she could prove her worth as a decendant of Winterscale.

Fast forward to getting back into WoW.

Originally, I had wanted to make her Varian’s daughter. Why, you ask? Because this is Calligos:

Big, hulking man in a position of power. And dat chin.

However, once I started looking in the timelines, I realized it would not only be impossible, but also that it wasn’t what I wanted for her.

I did however, want a Varian-baby.

I also wanted Tarvasha to have blue hair initially, like her 40k counterpart.

So Tara became a half-elf. God only knows how many hours of research I put into all of this. What it came down to was this:

Her mother is Shalandrala Winterscale, a Highborne elf (like, student/council of Queen Azshara Highborne) who left Zin-Azshari before the sundering of the world. She brought not only a fair handful of followers with her, but she also managed to sneak a vial of water from the Well of Eternity with her.

After some hundred years, the Highborne elves began secretly crafting halls of learning deep beneath the Tranquil Glades (present day Felwood). The vial was used to create a new font of power which they hid from the druids of the Glades and used to continue their study.

This hidden sanctuary became known as Cartouche (named after a song by Blackmore’s Night which fits its ambience perfectly). and was hidden away from the watchful eyes of the forest’s druids.

Fast forward to a few decades prior to present time.

In small groups, the elves had been visiting the Kirin Tor, learning and sharing their magics and getting to know the strange beings (humans) from the other side of the water.

Humans seemed to have a natural affinity for magic, and did not need to rely on things such as the moonwells or the Well of Eternity to replentish their magic.

Shalandrala had the idea to breed with the humans to bare children who would be as powerful as the elves and as hardy as the humans. Children who would not need to rely on the waning magic beneath the earth as they did.

It was a disaster.

While human/elf hybrids aren’t unusual, the rituals they used to ensure strong children backfired and caused a slew of miscarriages and stillborn offspring.

After several years of trial and pain, Shalandrala herself attempted the ritual with the help of a young man from Dalaran who was particularly gifted in the arcane. It was a success, though it drained a great deal of the elf’s own power to bring her child into the world unharmed.

Tarvasha bears her mother’s mark upon her palm and with it, the untapped power within her.

Good, okay, got ourselves a half-elf baby. As it turned out, however, I ended up giving her burgundy hair instead, so it was sort of pointless in the long run. lol

It did open up an opportunity, though. An opportunity to put her in the one place she could possibly have met and had some sort of relations with Varian Wrynn.

When the Burning Legion came to Kalimdor, they decimated the Tranquil Glades, turning them into the Felwood. It made sense, in my mind, that the font of power beneath the forest would be an obvious attractant to them.

Now, Tarvasha had been pretty much ridiculed and spat on her whole life by the elves who hadn’t agreed with Shalandrala’s methods or who had lost their own children from it all.

That constant hatred came to a head the night Tara docked her own ears in a desperate effort to seperate herself from her mother’s kin. With rounded ears, she looked human. But her mother had caught her right afterwards and it drove her mind to despair, allowing the Legion to infultrate her conciousness. When the Legion came upon the Glade, Shalandrala helped lead the way through.

She became known as a great traitor amongst the druids there and much of the rest of the Kaldorei.

Tarvasha fled the forest, originally running south into Ashenvale before turning east, desperate to get away from any elves she might’ve come across.

She ended up in Durotar, or the land it was before the name was given to it.

Along the coasts, there were fires.

And there were orcs.

Orcs who would have killed her for being a human were it not for a single savior among them.

Or so she thought. The orc turned out to be a greasy slavemaster named Oog’tar.

Tarvasha was enslaved for years. She bore and lost multiple children during that time and finally lost it when one of them was killed in front of her for being born without arms.

Her mental state landed her into the fighting arena with a pack of boars. The deal was as such, if she lived, she could leave. She would be let loose into Durotar to make her way somewhere else.

If she died, she would die with honor.

A final game played but her cruel slave master.

By some miracle, she made it through, though she wasn’t capable of standing by the end of it. Instead of honoring the arrangement, Oog’tar sent in more boars.

Luckily for her, Rehgar and his gladiators were close by. Varian, unaware of his past, called the detestable slavemaster on his bullshit. When he refused to send the boars back, the warrior said he would fight in her place. Oog’tar didn’t want to honor such an agreement, but Rehgar pushed the issue. It would be good training, after all.

Needless to say, he took down every single boar in that arena.

When she was told she could leave, she begged the human to let her stay with him instead. She would rather have been a slave with company than be turned loose into the unforgiving lands of Durotar.

Rehgar allowed it, for a time.

During her stay with them, she found herself enamored with the amnesiatic man. Eventually they would lie together, though much of their time together was out of companionship of their humanity and desperation out of loneliness.

They did care for each other, though it was far from anything lovey-dovey.

She had been so excited when they traveled to Dire Maul. Watching him fight... He was even finally given a name that wasn’t something she felt uncomfortable calling him.

Lo’Gosh.

Finally, her life seemed to be looking up. In love with a Crimson Ring champion. Away from the harsh climates of Durotar.

It all changed when they traveled to Thunder Bluffs, however.

Once Lo’Gosh retrieved pieces of his memories from the pools, she was all but forgotten. Cast aside for his desperate race to return to his wife and child.

She tagged along for a time, but her gladiator was no longer warmed to her as he once was.

Tarvasha realized that she was baring his child, terrified to let him know.

She stayed behind in Theramore when they journeyed there.

And she found herself in shock when she learned of his true identity.

For some time, she had studied the royal family of Stormwind from books or from conversation. When her daughter was born, she gave her the name of Varian’s mother.

Taria.

Now, when I created Taria, I got my timelines messed up bad. I thought Anduin was older than he was, and I originally had Taria pegged as a teenager.

I was so fucking wrong.

So, enter Pandaria.

Tarvasha traveled there with her daughter. At the time, she was a pretty reputable merchant and this was a great opportunity.

Beneath that, she did some scouting work for both the Alliance and Vol’jin’s rebellion against Garrosh.

During their time there, she left Taria with various innkeepers as she worked, eventually leaving her with Tong in the Tavern in the Mists. Taria, at the time, was four years old and loved to hunt with her crossbow.

She hunted various beasts around the tavern, her favorite hunts being tigers. The little girl managed to catch the eye of Wrathion, if only for a moment.

Tarvasha, during this time, had been captured by Oog’tar who was now a quartermaster under Garrosh’s Horde. After being tortured and branded, she was freed when an Alliance squad took down the encampment. Oog’tar escaped, but Tara was called upon as a minor witness during Garrosh’s trial to describe her ordeal under a man Garrosh had personally appointed.

She had written to Tong to bring her daughter to the Temple of the White Tiger where the trial was being held. In the middle of their journey, a massive tiger came upon their cart and attacked them, wounding Tong and slashing the characteristic scars that now sit across Taria’s face. The beast fell when it lunged for the little girl. Taria held out a sharpened pole and the beast impaled itself upon it, much the same way Lo’Gosh felled the gator that earned him the name Crocbait.

Taria was crushed beneath the cat and near death as Tong carried her the rest of the way to the temple. They were met near the steps by a hysterical Tarvasha, screaming and crying as she laid eyes on her dying child.

There was no one close by to heal her, most of them were up at the trial.

However, out of the shadows stepped Wrathion with a deal to be made.

He would make certain she didn’t die, in exchange for Tarvasha handing her over to him. He had seen the potential she carried while staying at the Tavern. If he was going to help, he was going to get something out of it.

She regretfully agreed to his terms and didn’t see her daughter against for over two years.

Meanwhile (mostly because I needed a way for her to exist as something other than a child since I’d already leveled the toon) Taria was aged using a combination of chronomancy and mental manipulation. She was educated and became a fully fledged adult.

I don’t do that child trapped in an adult body crap. That’s just weird.

I wanted her to be a fully grown warrior and that’s what she became.

In the time before they were reunited, Taria asked to spend her off-time in Durotar. She had been told many stories about her father, Lo’Gosh, champion of the Crimson Ring, and was convinced he had been an orc. With her size, it was a reasonable mistake. Despite not having green skin or tusks, she was certainly as large as a female orc.

After some time, she gained the interest and tolerance of some of the orcs in outlying villages, many of which were too old to care about one human or too young to do anything about her. Some fought her, some taught her. But she gained a fascination and appreciation for the race which her father, unknown to her, was once enslaved by.

Eventually, Taria learned of her father’s identity and struggles everytime she passes by Stormwind Keep, aching to know her brother, but knowing better than to reveal herself to the world.

It is a secret that very few know. Valeera, Wrathion, and Tarvasha’s first husband being about half of them.

Well, this outline turned into a history lesson. Hope you guys enjoyed reading it as much as I did writing it, and thanks so much for reading!

Oh, and here’s Taria’s Tumblr for anyone interested in my angry Lo’Gosh-baby: @thepalewolfhowls

#past musings #character history #Tara x Lo'Gosh #Varian Wrynn #oc x npc #oc x canon

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