Orcish Mullet Hawk

DARK

She wakes, and in the darkness she cannot remember where she is. This scares her.

She calls the name of a lover long gone, the sound of it swallowed up by the vacant tangle of cold linens around her. The darkness presses in against her mouth, threatening to suffocate her in her fear and confusion.

She presses her hands to her damp face, and it is then that she remembers. Skin that was once taught has now been creased by the gentle touch of age. The scents she remembers from so long ago have faded, only an autumn memory of a distant spring. The multitude of years that have brought her here remain a blur, a tangled knotting of thread that was once a tapestry. It is only her age that that has returned to her.

She is old. In the darkness and the vacancy of memory this terrifies her.

She does not sleep, but struggles instead to remember.

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GREEN

The smell of burning leaves was thick in the small room, the pungent scent of them soaking into her clothing and hair. She knows she will smell of this place for days and she does not care.

Warm skin presses against her bare shoulder, and as she pulls her lover against her she takes the cool metal tube that is handed to her and presses her lips around it. The smoke is pleasantly warm, and it smooths away the sharp edges she does not yet have the strength to face.

A part of her, even here, even now, is appalled by her own complacency, in the surrender to the despair, of this communal worship of a fragile god of glass and water and smoke. One day this will matter. One day the weight of it will drive away the woman who so eagerly seeks her hands, her mouth, her touch. She knows these things, though she hides them from herself.

Strong hands, hands she has held a thousand times, take the mouthpiece from her. She feels its loss more keenly than she will admit, and she seeks out comfort in her companion’s face.

She does not find it. All that is left has been tinted in green.

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STABLE

They had ridden through the evening, and now dawn had burnished the edge of the world with a pale fire. It was a land she did not recognize, as far from her sheltered homelands as the world would allow.

The beasts they rode had not the elegant gait of her hawkstrider, but their wide feet and bandy legs gave them stable purchase on the ever shifting ground. Her own animal bore her burden and that of her equipment without signs of strain or complaint, and if their swaying shuffle took some acclimation then it was a price she was willing to pay.

As the sun rose towards its zenith it revealed distant, unnatural peaks and long rows of columns. A small part of her thrilled at the view, at the potential for discovery. The greater part of her watched the peaks draw closer and wished for the stability of her mount, for the chance to ride the changing tide of events without losing her footing.

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SPRING

She lays among the cool grass, her head swimming in a sea of green blades that move with the wind, their verdant waves breaking against her bent knees. She is young here, knowing only the endless, tame spring of Eversong.

She thinks herself wild and free and reckless, knowing nothing of the world outside her homeland.

In the grass she lays and dreams, filling the clear sky with a future she cannot know. A future she will never have, though to tell her this now would be folly.

  16.) Are there any blood relatives that your character is particularly close with, besides the immediate ones? Cousins, Uncles, Grandfathers, Aunts, et cetera. Are there any others that your character practically considers a blood relative?

Freshly split wood burned in the hut’s central hearth, filing the small room with heat and a warm aroma. Harzog watched his aunt tend to it for a moment, then turned back to mending the vest he wore as one of the logging camp’s gruntlings. Despite the fire, the hut was dark, and it wasn’t long before he’d stuck himself with the long bone needle. Harzog was too old now to cry out, or to flinch, but he did stick the wounded thumb into his mouth, the thin taste of blood lingering in his mouth even after he went back to work.

“Where will you and Kuyia go?” Harzog’s voice cracked around the edges of his question and for a moment he thought that his aunt would not reply.

“We will go to the city. It’s the only place she and I have left once your job here is done.” There was more defeat in her voice than Harzog had heard before. He hung his head, pinning the needle safely in the vest’s red fabric.

“I could stay with the lumber camp.”

“No,” if his aunt had sounded defeated before none of it remained. When she looked at him now Harzog remembered her own tales of the battles she and his mother had seen together - long before he’d been born. If the years since then had turned her into more of a mother and craftswoman then she had forgotten it for the moment. “You have the same heart as your mother. I have known this for a very long time, and now Commander Zolag has recognized it too. It will carry you far in the Horde. I will not stand in the way of that.”

Something in her eyes softened, and she cuffed him on the chin, “Don’t worry for us. Kuyia and I will be fine in the city. Though if you do not write your cousin then I don’t think anywhere will be safe for you.”

They both laughed then and turned back to their work, the tension of the moment diffused for now. Bezu put the fire between them as she continued with her work, so Harzog did not see the tears she shed for him. A mother’s tears were more hurtful than daggers - her own mother had taught her that.

The boy she’d raised as a son would soon be gone, off to fight for the same Horde that had taken his mother, and her friend. Tears of shame mingled with grief, and Bezu vowed once more that she would not make the same mistake with the son that she’d made with the mother. He would go of his own choice, and maybe he’d return to her, as Akrah never had.

17.) What’s your character’s desk/workspace look like? Are they neat or messy?

The tabletop was littered with the remnants of Akrah’s dinner, pieces of bread and bone mingling with scraps of parchment and ceramics. Akrah was beginning to suspect that this archaeology thing was tougher than it looked, and she prodded at one of the larger shards as if it were a derelict peon.

“I don’t understand why these won’t fit,” it wasn’t clear who she was talking to, if anyone, and the Pandaren on the far side of the table chimed in with a comfortable ease, as if he had simply been waiting for such an invitation.

“One of those is a Mogu burial urn, one is a piece of someone’s roof, and I am fairly convinced, but not certain, that the other one is part of a Hozen dookin’ pot.” He stroked the long braid on his chin in a patronizing sort of way and shrugged.

“But don’t take my word for it.”

14.) How does your character react to temperature changes such as extreme heat and cold?

The Durotar heat closed in on Akrah the moment her boots hit the hard packed earth. Beneath her thick furs she immediately began to sweat, and she set to peeling aside the layers of Northrend garb with unflinching enthusiasm. It was good to be home.

As soon as she’d stripped off the burdensome weight of arctic gear Akrah turned her attention back to the task at hand - resupplying. The Grimfangs had drawn straws, and luck had delivered Akrah here by way of Bror’jin’s portals. Now she had a handful of hours to soak up the heat and make a talisman of it against the moment when she’d feel the inarguable tug of the summons back to the icy front.

More than half naked she trudged off to the Valley of Spirits, savoring the burning heat beneath her bare toes, drinking in the sun’s welcome touch on her shoulders. This heat was where she belonged, and the sooner she returned to it for good, the better.

15.) Is your character an early morning bird or a night owl?

Ahead of her the Hozen babbled to itself, yammering on about some spirit forsaken thing. Akrah couldn’t muster the energy to care what it was.

From the few scant glimpses of the sky that trickled through the trees Akrah guessed it to be close to midnight. The Blue Child was waning, but still mostly full, its pale light gibing the forest a muted tinge. It made Akrah even more tired than usual, and she yawned expansively.

“What that, wikket?” the Hozen’s voice was right on top of her, a fact that startled Akrah back to some semblance of wakefulness.

“How much further?” she’d asked this before, but been unable to get the Hozen’s attention.

“Not long now,” the Hozen stretched out a long and gnarled finger, pointing out a steep and narrow path up the side of a nearby cliff.

Akrah groaned in dismay. The Hozen might have no trouble clambering up the side of that ridge in under an hour, but Akrah, in full armor and with a pack laden with supplies, was another story.

By the time she was done muttering a string of irritated curses the Hozen was gone. Exhausted and uncaring Akrah simply sank to the ground and gave the idea of pitching camp right there some very serious thought. After a few moments she pushed herself to her feet again, and plodded towards the side of the cliff. It was harder to find her second wind now, but dammit, she wasn’t going to admit she was that old just yet.

Gray light was filtering in through the narrow seams in the tent’s walls, too little to see by, but just enough to let Akrah know that dawn was on the way. The stiff ache in her joints kept her still for a little while longer as she eased herself awake. Her old blanket, veteran of nearly as many campaigns as herself, was wadded up underneath her bad leg, lifting it slightly so that she could sleep more soundly. She was grateful for the mild temperatures here in the Jade Forest, if for nothing else than so she could spare the blanket.

  11.) Is there an animal you equate with your character?

  Akrah had never much cared for fishing, or for fish in general, but now that she was older she could appreciate the pace of the activity. Perhaps she’d simply needed the years to show her how to be patient enough to wait for her prey to come to her instead of the other way around. If the satisfaction she took from actually catching one of the things was less fulfilling than bringing down an antelope or talbuk, well that was just life.

Other creatures along the river bank seemed to have adopted the same attitude, although Akrah made sure to keep a close eye on the crocolisks basking on the far bank. For all their menacing appearance they seemed lethargic, soaking up the sun for hours at a time, then swimming lazily in the calm corner of the river before returning to the sandy beach to bask some more. If she had been less experienced perhaps Akrah would have dismissed them as little threat to her, but she’d seen too many unwary zhevra taken in a sudden spray of water and blood to risk getting too close to the beast’s territory.

As she waited for the tell tale tug on her line Akrah realized that at her age she felt more like a crocolisk than the wolf she’d previously identified with. This expedition to Pandaria was no pack, and her solitary and patient style of hunting was far removed from the old days of the hunt and the chase. Now she was all too happy to let trouble find her on her own terms, where she could remind any enemy that she still had an admirable capacity for violence.

  12.) How is your character with technology? Super savvy, or way behind the times? Letters or email?

  Something about the way that the mechanical cloud serpent moved made Akrah uncomfortable, and she groaned as she saw it heading her way. Its serpentine body looped through the air, whirring far more quietly than it ought to have done. In Akrah’s opinion any mechanical device that didn’t have an engine you could easily see was already suspicious, and RUNE’s habit of quietly sneaking up on her had not endeared the little construct to her at all.

When it arrived at her side it gave a mechanical series of chimes, whirred a bit louder, and then opened its hinged jaw to reveal a dotted punch card which Akrah took with more than a little skepticism. She didn’t like getting orders in writing, much less in a writing that she had to painstakingly decode, but the elf’s money was good and the job was unusually easy.

  9.) Who does your character trust?

  The question nagged at Akrah, pecking at her mind as a tallstrider might peck at an overconfident gnoll. Something about the way the other shaman talked bothered her, set her on edge, and left her feeling like a soldier waiting for a hopeless battle to begin. The nagging and the pecking and the feeling irritated her, and so she spent her idle time carving a crude picture into the wood of the flight master’s post.

He wasn’t amused.

The flight back to the city, and the short jaunt down to catch a scheduled portal was filled with more thinking, but it wasn’t until she passed by a mage toting a complacent water elemental that the source her frustration finally became clear.

Trust. The other shaman at the gathering were always going on about it. Trust in the spirits, trust in the elements, let them guide you – and so on and so forth. It made her molars ache just thinking about it. Time and again her experiences in the Cataclysm had proved that more often than not it was the elements and the spirits that needed guiding, not her.

  6.) Describe your character’s happiest memory.

  Early evening in the Barrens brought with it the low sounds of spring awakening in the dry landscape. Although that afternoon’s rain had burned away before ever reaching the parched soil of the grasslands Akrah enjoyed the remnants of its passing, a cool breeze that carried with it the smell of moisture and renewal.

In front of her a child played in the dirt, his small arms tugging at a clot of grass that clung to the hot earth. She was pleased to see how fat those small arms were, and how strong he had grown even in these few short months. By summer he would be running on strong legs, terrorizing the sows with a toddler’s enthusiasm.

The smell of smoke and of sizzling meat reached her nostrils, and all Akrah thought of was dinner and of singing her son to sleep.

7.) Is there one event or happening your character would like to erase from their past? Why?

  A dark line was torn in the ice, no wider than Akrah’s finger, but fathoms deep. From it came a sound like a generation of bones snapping, raw and filled with pain. The groaning crack of overwhelmed Akrah’s senses as the crack yawned into an all consuming maw. All around her the rest of the Grimfangs struggled upward as the ice tilted, a terrible race that none of them thought to win.

Her axe bit into solid stone as the ice beneath her iron shod boots collapsed, and a rough hand hauled her up over the edge, fingers tangled in her hair. The roar of collapsing ice was joined by a terrible scream, filled with malice and a thousand years of torment beneath the ice. The time to run was now, but all Akrah could do was watch helplessly as her family was swallowed by the collapsing glacier.

  8.) Day of Favorites! What’s your character’s favorite ice cream flavor? Color? Song? Flower?

  A midsummer sun burned high in the sky, watching the revelers beneath it as they moved between the great bonfires erected near the base of Thunder Bluff. A stomping, thundering song had begun, filling the air with strong tauren voices and the hissing sound of flames.

1.) Describe your character’s relationship with their mother or their father, or both. Was it good? Bad? Were they spoiled rotten, ignored? Do they still get along now, or no?

A fresh crop of bruises was swelling beneath the patina of dried mud and dust that covered Akrah’s small body. Although she wished desperately to cry out for comfort or justice she’d learned long ago not to disturb the human guards with her noise, and so the tears silently muddying her dirty face were the only indication of her pain and distress.

In later years Akrah would wish that she could remember which of the camp’s elders had come to her then, but the memory was too hazy to recall more than the comfort of strong arms and a soothing voice. He was simply one of the gathering of elders that acted as parent and guardian to unwashed mass of younglings that had been claimed by no one else, the orphaned or abandoned children of the camp. Even as she’d grown older Akrah had only known them as greatfather or greatmother, as if the lethargy had swallowed the names they had been born with.

On that day the old orc had told her stories of a time he hardly remembered as he’d brushed the worst of the mud from her hair, dried her tears with the edge of his shirt, and held her until she’d fallen asleep. It was the last time Akrah could remember feeling truly safe in the world, and that had evaporated when she’d woken in the communal creche with the younglings so small they’d not yet grown their tusks in. After that she stopped wishing to be claimed, to belong to any one parent. The bitterness was easier to carry than the disappointment.

2.) What are your characters most prominent physical features?

The crowd waiting to board the Zepplin simmered with impatience, packed so tightly together on the tower’s landing that the constant clatter of armor scraping against armor filled the cold morning with an odd music. Brorjin counted off the Grimfangs amongst the group awaiting deployment, familiar enough with his brother’s pack to name them all at a glance. The tauren with the painted horns was Tahaowri, the troll with the clipped ears and the broken tusk was Obiji, and between them was an orc short enough that only her wild purple crest of hair kept her from blending into their shadows - Akrah.

  3.) Name one scar your character has, and tell us where it came from. If they don’t have any, is there a reason?

Midnight approached, and as the gourds of alcohol were passed around the long table conversation turned to one of the Grimfang’s favorite games to play around new recruits, a habit so frequent that it was practically tradition by this point. Akrah grinned into her drink, soaking in the stories she’d heard so many times she felt her lips mouthing their words and the stories so fresh that the scars they described were not yet healed.

When it came her turn to speak Akrah rose, her left eye still swollen shut as she eagerly displayed the raggedly stitched cut beneath it. Her voice filled with pride as she pounded her chest with a fist, “Ruvokk will tell it different, but you all should know the truth of how I saved his mangy hide from a whole herd of those crazed shoveltusks, and how our esteemed pack leader nearly had his tail handed to him by tonight’s dinner. Now, listen up you pups...”

4.) How vain is your character? Do they find themselves attractive?

“If you buy five bottles of my Burlywisk’s Best Blemish Buffer Cream I’ll throw in a free moisturizing towelette!” The goblin’s voice was already grating on Akrah’s nerves and she wasn’t even at the front of the line yet. As the pair of elves in front of her tittered over this new deal Akrah rolled her eyes, all she wanted was to get another jar of the little squab’s joint poultice and retreat to her bunk to enjoy it in peace. Her left knee throbbed painfully as the goblin launched into another pitch and his assistant swapped gold for jars. The orc was about to mutter response when a word in the stream of freeflowing advertisement caught her attention, her anger melting away into keen interest.