I find character personality “breaks” are some of the most fun times with a character.
Jenit “growing up” and stopping being so self absorbed was a great process to RP through as was Paia’s journey from self assured jerk to self-loathing mess.
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Oh definitely. I like when my characters struggle with themselves and are forced to choose a new direction to go in or to continue along the same path.
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It’s an interesting question with the way the Light puts emphasis on service unto others, lifting up the greater whole. Some interpretations like the Aldor priesthood of Shattrath run on explicitly deontological, kantian self evident obligation to do what is right in an act of unambiguous duty. The Lightforged and Lightbound seem outright authoritarian for a greater good.
Most of this seems to nudge your soul to Bastion unless your Service becomes a tool or excuse for tyranny, the measure of which seems up to the Arbiter. The inherent hubris of the extremes also raises questions in an intent vs action kind of way.
It would make great worldbuilding and plot but I doubt from experience that blizzard wants to explore these complexities except for maybe an inner monologue on one page in a pre-expansion novel down the line.
Logically, reformations and cultism would break out immediately with so much proven outright false and established dogmas fraying in the wind of change. The matter of Elune especially given her continued mysterious nature, kaldorei mythology largely a farce and the cost of their hubris evident.
Which is another problem. People who are actually wrong and villainous rarely think that they are and won’t be humbled by the notion that their excesses will be punished in purgatory. That sort of pain is reserved for their foolish opponents who do harm standing in the way of a better world!
Meanwhile, regular people might start living in terror of the metaphysical, knowing their minor infractions will be punished as soul-staining Sins. Resolving this via the old Church of the Light isn’t a very flexible approach beyond laying a list of tangible sins into an established canon and urging people to be Good in service as your afterlife is more aspirational than a certainty.
As was mentioned, knowledge is the death of faith and what once fuelled sincerity becomes a cold calculation. Your life is a measurable tally of transgressions and your response to this demonstrably leads you to different, infinite afterlives. Life is just a place to wipe your feet before stepping into eternity.
On the flipside, such absolute certainty and cynicism toward life itself exists in the shape of fundamentalist textural literalist religion so the church of light, rites of Elune and others may just grow more intense, insular and assertive. After all, everyone else is wrong. And there’s your hubris that’ll net you punishment.
On a personal level, my pious characters are a little rattled for varying reasons and Marinya in particular feels rather ill at the thought that the horrors she’s been weilding for “good” have irrevocably damned her. She expected her soul to have been sundered by all her vile magics and void corruption but is now certain that only torment awaits. Either in the Maw or having all her poor decisions wringed from her body over an eternity in count Orlock’s wine press.
The collective stress and anxieties of the mortal world following these revelations would be staggering and people do stupid things when they’re scared.
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Farewell everyone! 'Tis been a blast. Keep being the most wholesome part of the forums. 
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Wait, you’re leaving? This early into the expansion?
Alas, real life can be cruel. Perhaps one day I’ll return. Ye lads and lasses keep this place going! Hopefully yer efforts will revitalize this forum, as it should be.
Happy New Year! 
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You’ll be missed, but real life always comes first. Good luck, and here’s to hoping you sort things out well enough to jump back on some time in the future.
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Dream Diary numero 80:
Meat
We live in a changed world. Some time ago a strange fungus of some sort took root and started consuming vast swaths of our planet. Leaving only wastes resembling a giant scab on the land, these eventually bloomed and grew lumps.
These lumps multiplied and formed colonies on fungal stalks of what looked like something between a raw christmas ham and a maggot, connected to each other with tendrils almost like umbilical cords as they grew.
Once large enough, about the size of a large dog or small sheep, these ham-maggots would detach into single individuals with one slim tail end and one raw red eye and mouth end, wriggling around their scab colonies. At first we feared them and set out to kill every maggot thinking they were a prelude to hatch into some huge deadly carnivorous moths but it soon became clear that the maggots were harmless.
Docile and gentle creatures, they only ever displayed social behaviour to each other, wriggling this way and that as the scabs grew to accomodate more maggots., sprouting more stalks from which their fleshy garlands of young might hang on their cords.
Humanity adapted, containing the infestation and cultivating it where possible and soon fields were given over to deliberate cultivation of these creatures as we soon learned that they were edible.
Such is the shape of our strange new world, in the process of adoping a new vaugely defined religious holiday, the Feast of the Disciples where we harvest the maggots on their umbilical vines while they’re still the size of an armful to boil and eat in slices, thanking whoever gifted us this strange bounty.
Happy new year?
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Happy new year indeed!
I wonder if any old timers remember me.
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Your name doesn’t ring a bell, but that’s all the more reason to stick around this forum and remind everyone.
You have an example above…I don’t think I’ll every forget Marinya after reading that (literal) nightmare fuel.
I wouldn’t share these if they weren’t appreciated. This one was probably a byproduct of poor sleep for over 20 hours. I’m currently nodding off to half remembered dreamscapes so we’ll see what hatches by tomorrow.
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I do hope you can get some rest soon, and I don’t want to be irresponsible in encouraging bad habits, but that was one heck of a good byproduct. Disturbing but in a good way. Here’s to hoping you get more flashes of light doing something.
Dream Diary Chapter 81:
A story constructed as a plotline in our WoW world: More than Stone.
Setting the scene we have a kaldorei rogue prowling Ashenvale. This one is no fighter using the night to strike but a common thief! Working with/for an ambitious superior; a corrupt priestess in a very bad power dynamic, she is constantly pushed and used to nick trinkets and coin from various places in return for more or less useful lessons and rewards. She is essentially a low level character being sent on quests.
Between thieveries, our rogue meets an older (though young-ish?) priestess who is friendly and kind. This troubles our rogue at first because her life in the other priestess’ shadow has taught her not to trust others but this priestess is unfailingly good to her, sympathetic and helpful in a way one probably should expect of a teacher and friend. The rogue is very unfamiliar with this but it feels right.
Things come to a head as the corrupt priestess sends our rogue on one more quest: she needs a big red gemstone for some purpose and it is owned by the good priestess! Apprehensive and uncomfortable, our rogue still agrees with the weight of authority and implied danger the corrupt employer poses so she slips off into the night to do her job.
Arriving at the good priestess’ home she hesitates. It’s not right but she has to do it and if she’s just quick enough she doesn’t have to think about it and then it’s done and won’t matter. Things can just go on as they were. Yeah. She’s young, afraid and not too wise. Her skulking about the good priestess’ familiar home is noticed immediately. Her footsteps are after all easy to recognise however light they are.
Happy to see our rogue, the good priestess asks the nervous would-be thief what’s wrong but she remains evasive, troubled by her task but she can’t back out now! “It’s complicated”, is all she says. Sensing something is up, the priestesses’ pet cat gives the rogue an agitated nibble, drawing blood. While the priestess goes to fetch a balm and ointment for the rogue’s hand, she sees the red stone in an out of the way spot, practically glowing. She swipes it fast, hiding it in her backpack oblivious to her trickling blood trail.
Our rogue’s hand is tended and she leaves quickly, “always welcome” but for how much longer? Delivering the stone to her gleeful superior, she spends the rest of the night in shame. Later, the forest is abuzz with news; the ancient heart-stone has been stolen and can only really serve one purpose outside the Sisterhood; evil. The hunt is on to find the stone and only two people know where it is by now. The rogue has been used!
Miserable for her acts, the rogue is in tears. She abused the trust of her only friend and has to set things right! Rushing to the priestess’ home, she pours out her truth through remorseful sobs. She was afraid. Afraid of consequence. Of the her employer’s wrath, of her losing her friend’s trust. Of being alone without either of them! The priestess for her part is indeed upset but not for the theft. She is, as ever, sympathetic and kind in all the ways the rogue, the thief, should have expected and only really upset for the danger the rogue put herself through. She knew who took the heart-stone by the blood trail. Our rogue is easily forgiven and joins her real friend in tracking down the corrupt priestess.
Accompanied by a handful of sentinels, they find the corrupt in an old barrow den; conducting a strange and obviously profane ritual of power with the heart-stone as its centrepiece. No longer a priestess, she lashes out mockingly with newfound dark powers that shake the cave. For all her strengths, it’s all new and heady and the corrupt is eventually overwhelmed. Depowered and bound, she is escorted away for punishment.
The rogue remains at the good priestess’ side, fiercely loyal in her gratitude but oddly unpunished. Perhaps, she muses, she is still a long way from redemption and being supervised but it doesn’t matter. If that’s what it takes to atone and have a real friend…
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I remember you from WoD times though I don’t post so often any more. I mostly lurk
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A lot of the old regulars seem to have disappeared sadly. Used to be one myself, quit the game for most of BfA and now that I resubbed the old gang is all gone.
Haven’t been posting as much because of it tbh, even though I still lurk and check if there’s been activity every few days.
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We just need more, new threads. Stories and writing prompts, interactive threads and questions. Roleplayers do love talking about characters.
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Swaggity swooty, I’m coming for that… thread… resurrection? Either way, now that we’re settled firmly in the reality of Shadowlands… A handful of thoughts, scattered in a random order:
As I secretly predicted, the new expansion content feels staggeringly uninteresting to me from the RP point of view. However, it’s important to mention that this is still a big positive leap from the dreadful era of BFA–which was just painful and easily the worst experience of my WoW career. The afterlife simply ain’t my jam when it comes to RP. A tad too big for my liking.
RP outside of SL zones, though? Now that stuff is just A+. While SL definitely doesn’t allow us Azeroth-loyal folks the same degree of freedom as WoD did due to its being far less self-contained with its universe-wide consequences, the general idea is similar enough. The post-BFA rush is real, too–being able to focus on different storylines without the Horde and the Alliance polluting everything with their faction nonsense is amazing.
So, folks… how’s your RP going? 
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I sadly must agree with that; during BfA, I reverted to just writing fanfics alone because there was so little that could be done. That’s especially true coming off of Legion, which was one of the funnest expansions in recent memory.
For SL? I actually found a little niche of non-epic RP within the SL themselves which involves the theme of lost adventurers who weren’t really supposed to be there and have to find a way out. The idea is that none of us are maw walkers, so we need to find one. It’s been fun so far. I’m wondering how other people reconcile the snowflakery of the main questline with grounded RP too.
I have been away from the game (and only have an active sub because I kind of forgot about auto-renewal)
I played Shadowlands for 2 weeks. Got to max level prety quickly and then realized that pretty much almost everything is timegated and grindy. I actually wanted to all the covenant campaigns but the thought of having to get grind renown just to see them immediatly puts me off.
Juuust fine. It’s hard to squeeze it in between chores, though. I really want to roleplay Marinya more since these are interesting times.
Staying out of it, mostly. Be it selling dumplings or machiavellian plotting, none of my characters are setting foot in the afterlife anytime soon barring a spectacularly dramatic cooking accident.
Rakgar was an honest orc, working hard the warchief’s kitchen. Tripped and felt his breathing hitching; met his end by fondue fork.
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