I AM FORSAKEN

          META / STUBBORN CHILD

it can come across very easily that malkhaz doesn’t learn his lesson.  he’ll be threatened by an enemy vastly more powerful than him, but regardless of what happens, he will bite back in the moment and he’ll bite back again if he lives to tell the tale.  it might’ve been said that killing him might teach him, but no–  he fought back the same way against stillwater in the final days of his life, too.

the primary reason why he’s like this stems from his attitude towards life.  malkhaz has a certain idealism to him, originally of a more childish and optimistic nature from a time so far away malkhaz has to work to remember it.  he learned it from his parents, both optimistic people, but he always did take more after his mother;  annemarie, a very stubborn woman herself, always said  “if things aren’t right, i’ll MAKE THEM right.”

malkhaz has learned this philosophy for himself, taken to the grave and beyond.  the more he bears witness to, the more he experiences and the more he sees wrong with the world, the more tightly he grips at the world he wants to see.  in this, his idealism has taken on two, somewhat disharmonious tones:  one, honest, heroic will for better;  two, spite.

the heroic side comes from being able to not only imagine the next step forward, but to feel as if he knows how to take it.  driven by impulse, he claims some rough semblance of a plan and considers it close enough to one that he believes it to be doable.  he might not even be necessarily wrong, though it might be more easily said than done.  that’s where the spite comes in, aside from the antagonism of whatever forces may be in place throwing shit at the fan.

to the enemy, the spite is what comes out most often.  he’ll fight back just to say fuck you in more words.  he’ll take up arms against something five thousand times his better because the alternative–  to sit back like a whimpering animal–  revolts him.  no, it’s usually not a good idea.  but to him, that’s not the point.

          META / REFERRING TO OTHER UNDEAD / HORDE

mal is a friendly kid, and since he grew up in the likes of deathknell / brill surrounded by grumpy, pessimistic forsaken, the ill attitude of others doesn’t bother him when he’s confronted with it.  however, there are certain ways in which he refers to others:

-   other undead roughly his equal in class / power are called brother / sister / sibling:  unspokenly,  “of the grave”.  this will include forsaken soldiers, civilians, and dark rangers.  because he does genuinely see his fellow dead as family, he is comfortable doing this.  this also applies to any death knights he befriends  (see the bullet on other horde members below).

-   other undead above his station are given their proper titles, if applicable.  if he has a personal friendship with them, they will gain either a familial title, a nickname, or something else depending on the relationship itself.  (also, in crack, he calls sylvanas “mom” and nathanos “dad”, but he doesn’t have a death wish and will absolutely not call them these in canon.  at least not unless otherwise plotted, which i think is unlikely.)

-   other, living horde members roughly his equal in class / power  (which he’s also befriended)  are called brother / sister / sibling,  “in arms”.  though, “befriend” is a loose term here–  if the other person is open to him, he’ll start with it off the bat.  otherwise, for the horde members who are squinty at undead, he’ll work his way up there.

-   other living horde members above his station are given their proper titles, once again if applicable.  he’s much more strict with himself about this than with other undead, for the same reason that he doesn’t immediately just call everyone he meets under the red banner his family.  he likes to know that they feel the same way first.

of course, if the use of brother / sister / sibling is protested, he will not use it, or only in tense moments.

lilies as a symbol have a different connotation for the undead than they do for the living.  the difference is subtle, but substantial.

for the living, of course, they are a bittersweet symbol of lost loved ones and remembrance.  they demonstrate mourning, grief, and prayer for the peace of the soul of the one lost.

for the undead, however, it a very meaningful thing, for someone to give them lilies – especially if the giver is living.  the tragedy of leaving lilies at a grave, of course, is that you cannot give them to the person directly, and the person cannot take them.  but when that person still walks among the living, in spite of death, you absolutely can.

to give an undead person lilies, it means you are thinking of them.  it means that you care about them, in spite of what they are, while simultaneously acknowledging it.  what’s more, because you are both showing your consideration and your understanding of their state of being, it calls back to how most living immediately and vehemently turned away their undead loved ones when they came back from the scourge, in a good way.  effectively, the gesture counteracts that abandonment:  you are not mourning them as a person, you appreciate who they are, and that is exceptionally meaningful to a race who has long been shunned for exactly that.

of course, if the undead person has a grave and you leave lilies there instead of giving the bouquet to them personally, it tells them that they are dead to you and you cannot love who they are now.  it’s a very cruel thing to do.

IF I CAN'T MAKE IT RIGHT ; THEN I WON'T MAKE IT WORSE -- Indie + semi-sel rp blog for Miriam Jewel, a undead human Lich (Mage DK) OC for WORLD OF WARCRAFT.

it never got easier for lor’themar to see children who had been raised for war. they were the reason that the horde fought; to maintain a future for each other. but the forsaken...

no matter which way one looked at it, the champion standing before lor’themar had died long before he had truly even gotten to live. he supposed it was fitting, in a sense, that they should be meeting here, in maldraxxus, the brutal battlegrounds of the dead.

news of the maw walker’s success had reached lor’themar’s ears soon enough, and even though calia had already set out to oribos herself, lor’themar had succumbed to his own desires and made haste for maldraxxus, leaving poor rokhan and the rest of the council behind.

the lord regent had wasted no time in setting up a portal to and from silvermoon. if the sin’dorei would ever have closure, they would need to have their souls put at ease. and if lor’themar happened to stumble upon any former comrades along the way, well...

but this? he hadn’t quite expected this. maldraxxus was a realm in disorder, plagued by a civil war and a power vaccuum, only kept from falling apart by the efforts of the maw walker before him.

then again, the image of foul green smoke spreading over the burning ruins of lordaeron remains fresh in his mind.  he hasn’t forgotten why he came here, stealthing between the heavily-armed ranks of the ebon blade to breach the maw and escape with his unlife.  though three of the four leaders demoned away to this place are safe, sylvanas has yet to be slain.  the jailer is seemingly inches from his freedom.  there’s work to do yet.

and he knows to report as much, when the regent lord steps through onto maldraxxus ground.  the guards at the mouth of the seat of the primus straighten their backs, but malkhaz gestures for them to relax.  he salutes to lor’themar, in the manner accepted in silvermoon.

“welcome to maldraxxus, regent lord,”  malkhaz says.  “so far, so...  expected.  sh— ...”  he remembers himself, corrects his language and amends what he was about to say.  “things weren’t going so well even before sylvanas shattered the veil.  half my time here has been spent cleaning up that mess.  beyond that, there’s more to do still.”

looking up at lor’themar, mal finds himself very aware of the difference in standing, the difference in presence.  the regent lord’s presence asserts his authority in a way that even other horde leaders’ didn’t.  the consequence of being older, wiser, well-versed in exactly this type of crap, malkhaz supposed.

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