Hopefully you’ll get a blue post or similar for this, love the ideas in there.
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Dream Diary 86:
Monster Hunters!
It’s a strange new age and the world has changed. Everyone knows it; all we know is different now that the Monsters have come. They were always there in our stories and folklore, pushed to the absolute margins of possibility in an age of reason but the Awakening saw them emerge from the darkest forests, highest mountains and deepest ocean.
Humanity was not ready to face the reality of trolls, witches, giants and sea dragons and fought each other while the Monsters reclaimed old hunting grounds. Forced to cede cities, coastlines and more, a much diminished mankind survives in fortified towns somewhere in the middle of the food chain, organized nation states being a quaint historical novelty of the past.
This is where we find our hero, Raymond. Once a lapsed priest in a tiny English parish, there’s not much of a holy church anymore following the madness of the Awakening. Instead, a second reformation saw the veneration of St. Abaddon the Destroyer; a new saviour figure of mankind promised to sweep away the Evil Monsters and give dominion of Earth back to God’s children.
This is Raymonds new faith. It is harsh to the sensibilities of our time but a torch to carry through a dark age. Determined to keep the land he knows safe, he gathers a handful of willing followers and they build a small church atop a seaside cliff. It’s not perfect and no one present is an architect but there are walls and what passes for a church tower, filled with weapons new and old.
Together they set out along the coast, taking out lesser creatures that crawled from the waves but are soon alerted to what the locals call a mermaid. Closer to a classical greek siren that feasts on humans, it lures them with supernatural songs and then paralyzes them to feed using barbs not unlike a red lionfish.
Setting off with what they have and can make; spears, clubs and crosbows, the Monster Hunters of the Society of St. Abaddon scour the beaches until they find a tidal cave. The creature itself is dangerous, especially when cornered but ultimately no match for a group of five.
Its remains are brought to the townsfolk, payment to fund futher hunts (tithing if you’re that specific) is given and the Hunters return to their rickety church to recover. Feasting, drinking and prayer follows as Raymond reminds his flock that Monsters there may be but 'tis not for us to judge. That is all in the hands of the Almighty and the duty of the faithful is but to clear the way for a new age of humanity.
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Good stuff, let’s make some noise and hope for the best ^^
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How do you plan on dealing with the new lore developments in your roleplay going forward? It kind of uproots a lot of old ideas and facts taken for granted. I’m not saying that every character is aware of the nature of their reality but it’s certainly a factor in some writing.
This especially applies to matters of religion given the way the afterlife operates and cosmic powers treated as divine turn out to be less so.
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OOCly I am going to accomodate whatever new lore is thrown at us, even if it’s awful–that’s just a most requirement for WoW RP in general, as far as I’m concerned. When it comes to IC, I think I have a pretty wide array of reactions between specific characters.
Some alts of mine are not taking the news very well. Take my shaman: everything she believed in regarding the afterlife turned out to be wrong, so now she’s paranoid about many other aspects of her worldview. She knows she’s being irrational, but she can’t help but feel betrayed by her own culture and elders. You could say the poor girl is having a major crisis of faith here.
My mage, who is not a good person, is not too thrilled either–she’s self-aware enough to realize that at some point her soul will almost certainly end up in Revendreth, which scares the crap out of her. The one good thing about this whole Shadowlands mess is that now she has a very strong motivator to become a better person and (hopefully) redeem herself in life, so that in death she may avoid the ordeal of having sins wrung out of her soul by fashionable vamps. She’s an elf, so she’s on a pretty lax time limit. She’s determined and optimistic about her chances.
Some of my other alts are completely in denial about the nature of the afterlife. My priestess for example is absolutely convinced that her soul will be claimed by her beloved Light so she can finally become one with it and get her eternal rest. She will not even entertain the idea that this might not be the case, and even feels pity for all the unfortunate souls that end up in the lamer afterlives. (Do not talk to her about Uther.)
Some are fine with the outcome, even if it’s not exactly what they expected–my druid always believed she would be returning to the Emerald Dream after she dies, but all things considered Ardenweald is not a bad alternative. It’s like… eeh, close enough.
My undead hunter is actually pretty relieved; she always believed her soul doomed by default on account of being undead, but now she sort of hopes that maybe she will actually end up somewhere except the Maw. For her, the new information is a very welcome thing. My rogue is pretty happy about the outcome too; a lot of anxiety she used to have up and vanished now that she no longer has to deal with the fear of the unknown.
My trolls either don’t care (because their afterlife is exactly what they thought), or are extremely smug and obnoxious about being protected by their cool Loa.
That said, currently pretty much all my characters are deeply freaked out by the Maw and either try to do something to help fix it, or wait for someone else to fix it.
That’s it regarding the afterlife in general. For now the insider info regarding cosmic forces is well and truly out of reach of even my best-informed alts, so I will see how the new lore pans out before making any decisions.
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Coldshade was never the religious type in the first place, so “oh no the afterlife I was promised isn’t real” sorts of shock are not something she’d experience upon the realisation of the Shadowlands plot. For the time being, she remains unaware. Laurenn’s heard a rumour here and there, knows a plenty of important figures are gone, but it is not something she’s ventured to figure out just yet. Not being one of the heroic/adventurer types, she’s instead been doing her own Void research thing and taking advantage of the temporary peace on Azeroth. No one she talks to has mentioned the Shadowlands or told her they’ve been there either, so she remains in the dark for the time being.
That isn’t to say that the reveal won’t in any way affect her. For the time being, she’s come to the conclusion that it’s more likely than not that the Void will claim her after she dies. However, a part of her still thinks there’s a chance she’ll be alright. Not too large, but a chance nonetheless. If she figures out that the different afterlives are a thing? She’ll know that the chances of ending up somewhere safe are slim. Even if the Void doesn’t take her? Revendreth seems like just the sort of place she’d end up in, and that’s not a fate she wants.
Knowing that the afterlife has nothing good in store for her, Coldshade might become even more cautious in her steps. Try to preserve her life using any means necessary, moral or not. Could potentially look into things like phylacteries or soul shards, should her situation become worse and her passing become more inevitable. So, essentially, survival will become her number one priority.
The Maw and all that comes with it will lead to her having… mixed feeling. While she felt justified in most of her kill over the years and will believe that those she condemned to such a fate fully deserved it. But, without spoiling some fairly specific IC story details, there are exceptions to that. Those exceptions, she’ll feel horribly guilty about. Might give her a bit of “…am I actually the evil one?” sort of thoughts.
Of course, if 9.2 ends up with Jailor actually rewriting reality in some way and we return to a wholly different Azeroth, I’ll be retconning accordingly if I’m still playing the character at that point. That’s something I cannot really plan about, and will have to improvise on!
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A good point given cultural conditioning; learning the nature of the afterlife doesn’t just shake up what you’ve known but also the foundation of what you’ve been taught. It’s not just personal but extends to those you’ve trusted, people and institutions.
I think it’s important to consider how not long ago, we were introduced to the Lightforged and their purging of flaws and doubts. A certain angle of belief in the Light in particular extols the virture of absoute certainty and the flawless big T Truth so faced with this iteration of the shadowlands suggests that it’s not the Light that’s wrong; it’s the people being sent places that aren’t The Light’s eternal embrace.
Something especially reasonable given how we saw druidic and nature spirits strolling around the Dream in Legion, implying that’s where the sufficiently nature-y creatures end up. But that wasn’t the case!
There we have another assumption shaken loose. The idea that the undead soul is damned or eternally mutilated, unable to pass on properly can be safely discarded. The fact that they’re, metaphysically speaking, just people like everyone else might not sit right with the holy rollers either who insist that the undead are soulless abominations without agency.
Yes, it’s mostly a question of how your characters react to the information drip debunking fundamental beliefs. They may never learn until it’s too late!
That’s the case with this one, too. Thinking the Void infusion more or less hollowed her out, the dark arts probably did the rest of the job. As expressed in verse, she assumes that whatever passes for her soul will be consumed by the Void and that her mortal form is just a figurative egg for some malicious entity that won’t be her after she dies.
Likewise and undoubtedly, but of a similarly fatalistic mindset; too much has happened and she can’t just become a better person and get out of trouble after all that she’s engaged in to fight the undead and demonic legion. If reassured that she won’t just hatch into something monstrous, only a cage in a baroque castle awaits.
Completely reasonable and I’d expect it to be the agenda of quite a few people looking to escape a bad fate or just the arbitrary unfairness of a system that’s nothing like what they’ve been told.
Of course. Knowingly engaging in something wrong as means to an end, plain spite or vengeance clearly has consequences. It’s an important question for characters of classes with explicitly evil powers given how relatively petty “sins” can lead to punishment. Of course, some might just push for the unapologetically relentless route and anticipate that eternal battlefield that actually rewards the ambitious.
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Happy holidays to all.
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Turns out that the whole SL was soft retconned with the option for new players to just skip the whole xpac while leveling. Can we just pretend that it never happened? That’s honestly what I do for Darbakh’s story.
Entry #87
In the years following an otherworldly incursion, a brilliant university student is doing field research on the fauna left behind in the blighted territories in the wake of this ungodly event.
Going against convention and established rules for safety, she dredges the beaches by night, the land now reeking with rot and tainted, viscous waters to discover anything novel and finds it in the crags of a seaside cliff; a strange lump almost like a mussel without its shell.
It unfurls when threatened, some strangeness of its innards touching the student’s index finger close to the palm and she recoils in disgust. Recovering quickly as a woman of science must, she seals the mollusc in a specimen jar.
After some more searching, she also finds a creature in a nest made of what mostly looks to be dry seaweed and the bones of gulls, however this creature ever got to them! It resembles marine life as we once knew it, as do most of the creatures in the incursion’s wake; the size of a dinner plate, resembling a horseshoe crab crossed with a stingray, leathery all over and lethargic enough to be handled with ease.
After a few days of studying these creatures in the university lab, surrounded by apparatuses whilst idly scratching the spot on her hand where the mollusc touched her. The unauthorised experiments continue and notes pile high until her mentor finds her.
An older, distinguished scholar he may be but he knows the value of novel ideas and experiments in this day and age where the classical works will not suffice. Even so, he’s upset with his student and shows that anger that only comes of great concern for her. Tearfully, she admits everything, of having avoided the constabulary to enter the cordoned off dark scar along the coast to get samples all for the good of man.
Once settled, the mentor urges her to show her samples. The crab-thing is dying, having turned reddish in places when deprived of its unnatural habitat but the mollusc has become bioluminscent with a green glow and will not respond to usual methods of disposal. Supernaturally resilient, the mentor seals it in an old family locket and urges the student to keep it until she’s graduated and away from the confines of a university that will never allow its study. Touched by the concern and his gift, she agrees.
The crab-thing is to be destroyed as incriminating evidence but the mentor is convinced to dissect it beforehand to complete the study. Its membranes exposed, it’s put in a secure container and the mentor excuses himself to go and see it dissolved in acid.
In truth, they’ve both kept secrets; the mentor has a mentor of his own with vast knowledge of the occult nature of the incursion who will surely appreciate this offering of unearthly flesh. The student, meanwhile, inspects her infected hand previously hidden by a protective leather lab glove. The skin around the joint is hardened and scaly, a twisted transformation progressing up her index finger. It must be studied!