The Adventures of an Annoying Mage and a Dirty Warlock

Sometime last year I learned how to take screenshots without the UI (I know, I know, slow on the uptake here) and began to occasionally take shots when RPing in pretty locations, or when the scenario was a memorable one. Some of my favourites have concerned Vale and Garthen, who have travelled across the world(s) and been in a lot of scrapes together. So, while this is neither a story nor merely screenshots, it's some sort of... in-brief chronicle of some of their adventures. An experiment!

In chronological order, as best as I can recall. All quotations are paraphrased: that is to say, I'm veeeery vaguely basing them on my memories of RP, so consider it fiction based on events, I s'pose.

==

The Crystal Forest

"You said you wanted to see the forest up close, and so here we are, Vale. They call it the unbound thicket... an outpouring of magic began to turn the woods to glass."



"Do you hear that sound, like distant chimes? It's the wind, swaying the branches."

"We shouldn't even be here, in this place untouched by time or man."

"But maybe in a place so far away from the sounds of the city, a place that's not your twisted forest or my burned-out ashes, we can have a few moments of peace."



"These are the places, and the nights, that remind us that there is something greater than ourselves. In the face of the vast mountains, of ancient protectors and inscrutable magics, we are so small."

"And must that be a bad thing?"

"No... no. Not at all."

Encased in Ice

The pair of travellers trekked upward, following the frozen paths long since abandoned by the feet of men, and came at last to the walls of a city. As the mage led her beneath the towering stones, even Vale, who had known accursed places, felt the chill that lingered in this place.

Night was falling, and around them lay the charred wood and stone foundations that had once been the thriving houses of commerce, law, and hearth. They picked their way among the debris, the remnants of habitation strewn here and there among the blackened beams, and it seemed to Vale for a moment as if the spirits of their inhabitants hovered among their smashed pots and burned shop-fronts, lingering eternally despite the bitter cold.

And then at last, as darkness drifted over the two of them like a shroud, threatening to bind them eternally to the ruined city, Garthen brought her to a house. Although blackened by the ravages of fire, the roofless walls still stood against the twilit sky, and the gaping doorway seemed to Vale a vast maw waiting to swallow them: a gateway to the end of all things.

'This,' Garthen said as he turned toward the woman, 'was my home.'



Vale bowed her head, for what else might one do in the presence of the echoes of the past? She had shown him her own accursed ground, had led him into the ash and hatred of the destroyed village where the Caans had bred and plotted. Here in the snows of Alterac, he was giving her something in exchange.

He took her arm, pointing some paces away toward what had once been a square. There in the half-light, human remains dangled from weathered gibbets. As Vale looked up at Alterac's ghosts, an icy wind swept in from the hills and caught at the skeletons as though they were marionettes, twisting them this way and that with a rattle of long forgotten bones. She looked up at Garthen, and he wore a grim smile.

'You see, Vale. We were traitors, all of us, because of the work of the proud, arrogant nobles of Alterac. This is the inheritance I have left.'



They remained there a long time, amidst the looming shadows, and for awhile Vale half-understood this place that had once been a city. These belonged to Garthen as the twisted reaches of Duskwood belonged to her; and when at last they departed, it was with the echos of hanged men scraping in her ears.

Welcome to Hell

As they stepped through the other side of the vast portal, Vale's eyes blinked open to the sight of swirling violet and gold, of planets painted across the sky, and thousands of stars behind them. As she turned to Garthen, his face wore a strange look.

Then, as he looked toward her, his expression became dry.

'Well, Vale. Welcome to hell.'



At last they came to a dry patch of land near the edge of the broken world.

One could fall off into nothingness, become nothingness.

Garthen crossed the ground - the dry cracked red land, across which the red dust blew without ceasing - and stood before the ruins of a wooden shack.

Vale understood, for he had told her how those of Alterac's traitor houses who were not hanged or killed in the city's sacking had been sent here with Stromgarde's first expedition. From the ice of Alterac to the fires of this strange wasteland. This was the second of his inheritances.

They stood there for what seemed an eternity, with the alien dust sweeping raw across their skin and hair and clothes.

(to be continued)

(come back to Alterac again!)