Once Upon a Time: Mornara

 

Follow on to Shadow's Edge
 

~~~***~~~

The sun was just peeking above the horizon as Mornara made her way to the Trade District of Dalaran. Most of the streets were still in shadow, but various merchants were opening their doors or pulling back shutters.  She got a dark look from someone sweeping off his doorstep, but other than that most people are still too sleepy to pay much attention to her.  

"You stumble about in darkness. There is no light here. No mercy! Icecrown has claimed the souls of better heroes that you."

Mornara trips over the edge of a cobblestone that was hidden by a building's shadow.  She almost falls, but manages to catch herself on a nearby wall.

Mornara pivots so her back is pressed against the cool stone wall. She isn't sure where the voice in her head came from, which worries her. Oh, she knows whose voice it is. The Lich King has a very memorable voice. She just doesn't know why it was in her head right then. 

It wouldn't have been a surprise if she were still in Icecrown Citadel. She would actually expect it there. Ever since the forging of Shadow's Edge she's been hearing his whispers while in the citadel. And if she were still asleep it could quite easily be a nightmare. But hearing voices while you're awake? That's either crazy or about to get enslaved by the Lich King.

Again. 

After a while her breathing levels out and she continues on to the Jewelry shop. They always have extra work, even for Death Knights. Mornara picks up a work order for the day. Some of the parts she needs are not in stock so she heads out of Dalaran to get them. At Krasus' Landing Mornara mounts her drake. The drake surges in to the air with several strong wing beats and Mornara directs him towards the mountains to the north. 

One of the components she needs is a Vrykul Amulet.  However the Vrykul aren't exactly friendly with either the Horde or the Alliance, so their amulets aren't easy to come by.  The closest place to find Vrykul will be in Ymrheim, where the strongest of the Lich King's Vrykul warriors train and live. 
 

~*~

 
Mornara uses the ever present snow to wipe the blood off of Shadow's Edge and then slings the axe onto her back.  Weapon properly cared for, she pulls on one of the runes to heal herself slightly.  Only then does she inspect the bodies in front of her.  The third one has an amulet, which she roughly pulls off his neck and stuffs into her pack.  She still checks the fourth corpse, and grabs several silver from the caster's pockets. 
 

"Never have I had cause to regret sparing your life, mortal. Always, you continue to amuse me."

For a moment the face of the last Vrykul she had killed shimmers. It solidifies as a familiar troll shape. Mornara gasps and starts to reach for her axe. Before she finishes the motion the Vrykul's face is back to it's original shape. Mornara watches the Vrykul corpse closely for another minute.

She shakes her head and then lets out an ear-splitting whistle. Her drake dives down through the clouds and then backwings to a gentle landing. Gentle for a drake, but the breeze blows flurries of snow in her face and tosses her pigtails around. Mornara shields her eyes and then mounts up to head back to Dalaran. 
 

~~~***~~~

At the head of the group Mornara hacked and slashed. Shadow's edge cut a swathe through abominations, geists, and plague doctors. Behind and beside her the rest of the group fought with their own weapons and spells. 

Poison gas and toxic slime had been defeated.  The horrific giant abominations Rotface and Festergut lay dead in their respective chambers. The Professor was still to be fought, and who knew what foul concoctions he had brewed in his laboratory.

The group gathered and then charged up the ramp to the lab.  As the last tauren thundered into the hallway the doors behind them snapped shut.  Mornara and the other tank, another orc, rammed into the doors ahead of them. However, those doors stayed firmly shut. 

"You can't come in here all dirty like that! You need that nasty flesh scrubbed off first!"  The voice came from above and ahead of them, from in the laboratory.

The hallway started to fill with giant beetles. 

 

~*~

The bloated and plague-ridden body of Professor Putricide lay dead in front of the group. 

Underneath the gore and slime that coated Shadow's Edge Mornara could feel a change in the axe she held.  It pulsed with an feel similar to the unholy runes already etched on it. As Mornara watched, the unholy plague slime that coated it was pulled into the blade and only the gore was left on the blade.

~*~

Darion Mograine had inspected the axe after it was infused with the unholy slime of Putricide's death.  He told her that the axe would next need to be fed on blood.  His glowing blue eyes met and held Mornara's own as he informed her that it would require her own blood and her companions' blood.

The way to correctly feed the blade involved being bitten by Blood Queen Lanathel, and then biting the rest of the group. Mornara wasn't too keen on this idea. Lanathel's bites tended to turn you into a ravening vampire.

~*~

The final infusion required for the axe was frost.  Even better than the Lich King was the frost wyrm Sindragosa.  Her frozen breath on the axe and then her death would infuse the final magic into the blade. 

~*~

The axe was infused with unholy, blood, and frost.  The runes etched upon it glowed with the magics contained within.  They pulsed and flared at random. The axe was strong, but needed a way to store the power that the infusions had created.  Thus Darion Mograine sent Mornara back into Ice Crown Citadel to gather crystals from the various leaders that Arthas had favored. 

Love is in the Air

Love is in the air and I want to barf. I have said it before, but I really hate the Fistful of Love achieve and this WoW Holiday in general.

I logged in this evening and before the world had fully rendered around Mornara she had rose petals falling on her. It wasn't even five seconds before Morn was coated in rose petals. Rose petals! Argh!

What if I don't want to avoid cities for the next two weeks? And even if I try to avoid cities I can't avoid my raid; members of whom were already snickering at me for being covered in pink petals...

That Sinking Feeling

 

When I picked up the quest from Wrathion to bring him the Thunder King's heart I had a bit of a bad feeling about it.  That feeling did not decrease in the slightest when he ate the heart and then had some sort of vision. 

Best case with that vision is that he is seeing a Titan influenced danger directed at Azeroth.

Far more likely in my opinion is that the players have once again unleashed Bad Shit (tm) upon the world. 

Remember back in Vanilla, there was that nice troll at the harbor in Tanaris?  We helped him, and he gave us loot and then Hakkar was alive again. So sorry, Troll Priests in Zul'Gurub, you got corrupted by Hakkar and then got executed.

Oh oh, and remember that nice human at Light's Hope Chapel? He promised to get rid of that pesky phylactery from Naxx. Yeah, Father Inigo Montoy, who helped Kel'thuzad come back to life, and then eventually ended up turning into a lich himself.

And don't forget that time that we helped that crazy gnome Millhouse Manastorm get out of prison and then he helped the Twilight's Hammer destroy stuff in Deepholm.

My favorite of course is when players helped Drakuru kill all the trolls in Drak'theron Keep so that he could become a Death Knight.  He then repaid the players by trying to coerce us into slavery for the Lich King (again for Morn) as well as slaughtering a large portion of the Drakkari Trolls, and leading to them killing off their own Loas. Oops.

But the thing that really tickles my memory is when we helped Loken trap Thorim. It was good that we got Thorim back on friendly terms with the Sons of Hodir. But all our actions doing that that just resulted in Thorim getting tentacle raped by Yogg-Saron. We ended up having to fight both Thorim and Loken. Thorim at least we could beat back into his right state of mind. Sadly we killed Loken which brought Algalon to Azeroth and almost led to the destruction of the entire planet. 

Loken/Thunder King is the parallel I'm really seeing here.  We killed someone and brought his body part back to prove death for a quest giver. But that someone, while now bad, wasn't necessarily bad to start with. Both Loken and the Mogu were servants of the Titans. They both seemed to get corrupted, but that point I suspect will be lost upon the Titans who will descend upon Azeroth with re-origination in their overly orderly hearts...

Darkmoon Eye!

This past week the Darkmoon Faire was in town. Well, their portal was in town. The island I assume doesn't actually move, but is closed to the public for 3/4 of the time. Anyway, I parked my little monk, Sucan, at the faire for the week and faithfully logged him in to battle Jeremy Feasel every day.

I had almost given up for another month yesterday, but the fight is a tidy chunk of XP for Sucan so I logged him in to send the pets forth to battle Saturday morning. The last day of the faire, and I get the eye in the Darkmoon Pet Supplies. I am not embarrassed to admit that I did a small dance when I saw the eye in the bag.

Why, yes, I did name my Darkmoon Eye Sauron. Really, what else could I have possibly named it?

DraNgNon saw and heard my Dance of Joy, and remembered to log in her own parked Faire alt. Thranba, the little troll hunter soundly trounced Mr Jeremy Feasel, so much so that he gave out a second Eye.

Mornara Profile

Full Name: Mornara
Race: Orc
Homeland: Durotar, maybe? Acherus in memory.
Age:  Physicaly she is a young adult. However, she doesn't seem to age since she was turned into a DK, and she isn't sure how long she was under the LK's control.
Height: Average female orc height. Slightly over 6ft.
Build: Stocky and muscular.
Hair: Black, slightly longer than shoulder length, but always up in two pigtails.
Eyes: Glowing blue.

Philosophy: "If honor and wisdom and happiness are not for me, let them be for others. Let heaven exist, though my place be in hell."

Personality: Calm, cool, and patient, with a hatred of the Lich King that underlies everything she does. 

Job: Getting hit in the face professionally.  Mornara is a heavily armored adventurer and uses her Blood Death Knight abilities and skills to lead groups that plunder and defeat the enemies of the Horde and Azeroth.

Hobbies: Making beautiful jewelry. Capturing and fighting her battle pets.

Bio: Mornara has been able to piece together bits of her life. She has vague memories of controlling demons before she was captured by the Lich King's forces. After that she's tried to forget what she remembers of days of torture in the cells of the Lich King. She only barely remembers becoming a Death Knight, but after that everything is all too clear.  She vividly remembers slaughtering the Scarlet Crusade and villagers while under the command of the Lich King. Since breaking free of the Lich King Mornara has participated in campaigns in Northrend in Ulduar and Icecrown Citadel, against the Twilight Hammer cultists, elementals and Deathwing himself, and in Pandaria against the Mogu, Mantid, and Zandalari Trolls.

Currently Resides:
Summer's Rest Inn in Shrine of the Two Moons in the Vale of Eternal Blossoms.

 

Death Knight Love Story

I was looking at WoW Insider a couple of days ago and saw an article about Death Knight Love Story. Seeing as I am a big fan of DKs I took a look. As the title suggests this machinanima is a love story with Death Knights. It was only part 1, but was 15 minutes long. Sadly there is no real ETA on part 2, other than roughly six months and no guarantee there.

I was pretty impressed with DKLS. I'm biased because I just adore the DK lore and story, as you can tell from my main and my own fan fics. DKLS had an excellent story and the filming/acting was done with a combo of motion capture and a variety of expensive animation software.

I honestly could have been more impressed with the animation. I can see where they started from the WoW models and tried to upgrade them with more polygons and motion capture. However, for a number of the spell animations and fighting moves I think the film would have been better served by actually using WoW's animations. In particular the animation for Death Grip was kinda jarring. It took me a couple of times seeing it to actually figure out that it was supposed to be Death Grip. Possibly my gripes with the animation are due to the Vimeo playback being abysmal; it was both slow and choppy. I frequently had to pause and wait for the stream to catch up, even when it appeared to have buffer available.

The story, however, was quite intriguing. I am very much looking forward to the second part. It shines an interesting spotlight on Sir Zeliek from Naxxramas. And its yet another take on the process of becoming a Death Knight, and the effect of the Lich King's mind control on those he enslaves.

I strongly recommend everyone watch DKLS. It's got a good story and some decent animation. It makes me want to play through the DK starter area again.

Timeless Isle Explorations

 

DraNgNon and I have been exploring the Timeless Isle.  It kind of reminds me of Vanilla.  There are wandering elites, and mobs can really hurt you if you're not careful.  And by not careful I mean the Ordos Yaungol are brutal, if you so much as take your eyes off their ground effects for a second you're going to be dead. Anyway, we have romped over the island with all of our level 90s, exploring cool stuff and hopping here there and everywhere. 

I also took some time while running around to tame a few pets.  I have three new moths, and hopefully can get more new pets from the rares. It's quite a pain in the ass to get in on a rare kill though.  I'm not really interested in tracking spawn timers or waiting around for a spawn.  So I generally just run over when I see a skull on the minimap.  Most of the time I can get a hit on the mob and get credit for the kill, but sometimes I ride up just as the rare dies.  Annoying, but not unexpected with such a large population on the island slaughtering things.

Timeless Isle also restricts flying. This is super annoying, but does give you a more present feeling of danger.  You can't just hop on your Cloud Serpent and fly up a bit to be safe while you afk for a bit. It also has several areas that you can't get to unless you can fly.  There are a couple of mechanics to get around this restriction. One of them is the gleaming crane statue which tosses you up and gives you a slow fall.  Another is the Legendary Cloak, which takes you (and your alts) across the broken bridge to the Ordon Sanctuary. Note that the Cloak ONLY takes you TOWARD the sanctuary.  If you want to get back, you need to do something so you don't hit the ground at terminal velocity. The third mechanic is the Highwind Albatross. These giant seagulls fly loops around the island. If you hit one it will swoop down and pick you up. Let it carry you around and when you're over where you want, hit it again.  That will stop it, and then you have to kill it to get it to drop you.  You can visit the two mountain tops near the Horde and Alliance flight points this way to get the Sturdy Chests you are missing. You can also hold on for a long ride and be taken up to the Ordon Sanctuary high high up where Garnia spawns. In fact the area where Garnia is can only be reached via Albatross, even if you have a cloak you can't get up that last sheer cliff with out the birdy ride.