Redemption (Beltar’s backstory)

Linedan is my main–he always has been and barring catastrophe, he always will be.  But my “Alliance main,” the dwarf hunter Beltar Forgebreaker, is probably my most fun character to roleplay.

On the surface, he looks like your typical fantasy dwarf…irascible, sarcastic, a bit on the greedy side, inordinately in love with his guns.  But dig deeper and you’ll find that Beltar’s not exactly a stout-hearted dwarven hero in the Gimli mode.  For over a hundred years, he’s wandered the Eastern Kingdoms as a gun for hire, on both sides of the law (sometimes simultaneously), not settling in any one place for long.  He’s been a mercenary, an assassin, a guard, a hitman, a bodyguard, and more.  His idea of a fair fight has always been one where he shoots his opponent in the head without ever being seen.  And now, late in his life, he’s found his calling as an adventurer and general ne’er-do-well with the Wildfire Riders.

But even anti-heroes have to start somewhere.  And in a fashion typical of the accidental nature of his wanderings, Beltar’s first steps on his wandering path didn’t happen the way you’d envision they might.

“Redemption” was a story that I wrote in late 2005, a few months after Beltar’s creation in August.  I don’t remember how this backstory came to me, really  It just popped into my head and I had to take some time out and write it right now dammit…so I did.  I always knew Beltar was oldish, and a wanderer, but until this story body-checked me out of nowhere, I had no clue as to what started him on his lifelong odyssey of the gun.

It’s below a cut, because it’s hella long–4400 words.  In case you haven’t noticed, I do tend to run on a bit.

I hope you enjoy it.

 

Alone (Linedan RP circa 2005)

This is a story that I wrote in August of 2005, back when Linedan had not quite reached level 60 yet and was still struggling along as an arms warrior.  I had originally given him the last name “Granitehoof,” because the original Linedan, my warrior in Everquest, had taken the last name “Granite.”  And, y’know, Lin’s a Tauren, so, yeah, “Granite…hoof.”  Get it?

Yeah, I hated it too after a while.  So I decided to ditch the last name…and this story was what I came up with to do it.  The story of the “curse” and the slow decline of the Granitehoof clan had been part of Lin’s background since I created him, this was just the culmination of it.  To this day, four years later, Linedan has no last name.  I wanted to get Exalted with all of the other Horde factions before getting it with Thunder Bluff, but things didn’t work out that way; nevertheless, Lin doesn’t use his “of Thunder Bluff” title and I pretend like it doesn’t exist.  He is, in my mind, still “one-named,” somewhat dishonored before Tauren society, and will remain so until something happens that would allow him to join another clan, or even (should he marry) found one.

I put the story below a cut because it’s long, about 2600 words.  So without any further exposition, here it is…”Alone.”  I hope you like it.

But I don’t want to go in the cart!

Hello, little blog.  My, you’re looking a bit dusty.

So yeah.  One of the “rules of blogging” is that you’re never supposed to make a post about why you haven’t been blogging when you drop off the face of the Earth for a few weeks.  I guess you’re just supposed to pick up and move on and hope nobody noticed that you’ve been gone.  Well, that’s not how I roll.  I figure if you’re interested, or bored, or crazy enough to read this here blog thang, you deserve an explanation of why things have been very quiet in the Panzercow Bunker since mid-August.

First of all, there’s the work stuff.  I probably shouldn’t admit this, but I do most of my blogging at work when things are slow; when I’m at home in front of the computer, generally, I’m either gaming or performing other activities that don’t require a brain, since a full day of work plus a couple hours of my daughter destroys any brain I’ve got.  Let’s just say that things have not been slow at my job over the past month.  They have, in fact, been pretty damn crazy.  Logged on from home at 1:30 in the morning crazy.  Working Saturdays crazy.  No time for me to write posts crazy.

Then, there is the Great Circle of Gaming Life.  I don’t know if anybody else works like this, but my interest in any recrecational activity, especially a computer game, is very cyclical.  I’ll get something and hit it hard for a period of time–a couple of weeks, maybe a month, even longer if it really grabs me.  But sooner or later, I’ll get tired of it and move on to something else.  Eventually, if I like it, I may come back to it.

I’m split several different ways on my game interest.  There’s WoW, of course, which has been the Big Kahuna since February 2005.  There’s EVE Online, my other MMO.  But the Second Biggest Kahuna, for almost six years now, is flight simulation–Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004, and a couple weeks back, I bought and installed Flight Simulator X (the latest and greatest).  From the time I was but a wee little armored car, I’ve been a frustrated fantasy pilot.  Airplanes and aviation have always fascinated me.  I know way more about them than I should considering I’ve been off the ground maybe eight times in my 43 years on the planet  I have 71 gigabytes of addons installed for FS2004.  Yeah, I’m an addict.  I haven’t been doing much with it this year, but lately, the jones has come back.

Tack on to this the fact that my adorable wife bought me Bioshock for our 8th anniversary a couple months ago.  Normally I’m not much on shooters, but that game really hooked me in.  The artwork, the graphics, the voice acting, the story, all of them are great.  Then she bugged me to try out her copy of Mass Effect…and there went more late nights.  Again, stunning visuals, great dialogue and voice acting, and a killer story.  And honestly, saving the galaxy surrounded by hot babes didn’t hurt.  (Get over here, Ashley.  Booyah.)

Third, there’s WoW itself.  I wouldn’t call what I’m feeling “burnout.”  That’s too strong a word.  It’s not even really “boredom.”  I still raid with The Anvil and have fun doing it, and we’ve recently shifted to a four-tank rotation system that means some weeks I’ll be MT, some weeks I’ll be OT, some weeks I’ll be laughably attempting to DPS.  We haven’t headed into the Coliseum yet, but we will starting next week, and I’m looking forward to it.  No, call what I’m feeling “pre-burnout” if you will; that feeling that yeah, I really should be grinding Hodir faction on Beltar or working on getting Linedan his third faction Champion title or leveling Latisha past 51, but…meh.  I can’t work up the enthusiasm to see the same content again for the umptysquillionth time.

And finally, there’s the personal stuff.  I can’t and won’t go too deep into it because, well, it’s personal.  But I can say that the Panzercow family has been dealing with some issues.  Nothing earth-shattering–no divorce, no health problems, nothing like that.  We’re worn down from the little day-to-day shit that’ll pile up and bury you, really.  Money issues, raising a kid issues, the “fun” of being in a town where you don’t know very many people and trying to do everything with no family and almost no backup.  Some days it feels like the two of us are trying to two-man raid content and we’re wiping repeatedly.  Deal with that for a couple years and it’ll mess up anybody, and that’s where we are now.  It’s not a state of mind that’s particularly conducive to creativity.  My writing’s suffered, my roleplaying’s suffered, and my creative output in general has suffered.  It’s hard for me to bring USDA Grade A Choice snark when I’m so mentally bludgeoned down that I can’t even think straight, y’know?

So that’s why things have been quiet.  And no, you don’t get a TL;DR version.  You knew going in that I ramble, deal with it.

My promise to you, the folks who read Achtung Panzercow, is that I’ll do my best to keep good, useful, funny content coming out, even if it’s at a somewhat reduced pace for a while.  I’m not leaving blogging, and I’m not leaving WoW.  I have a lot still to do here–more So You Want to Be a Prot Warrior, more on the Latisha Experiment, more on everything.  I might even broaden my horizons and do a few posts on other things, who knows.

Thanks for bearing with me, and please don’t leave.  Because I’m not.

Inspiration

I’ve been writing Achtung Panzercow for about seven months now.  I started it just for fun, and honestly, that’s why I still do it.  I’ve done paid freelance writing in the past, years ago, in the flight simulation area; I wrote some stuff for Happy Puppy’s website in its infancy, and for an aborted start-up online flight sim magazine back around 2000.  But this, nah, no pay here.  This is just a labor of love, just me writing for the heck of it and hoping that I get an occasional ego massage or head pat, that people find my spewings entertaining, educational, or both.  I talk about prot warrior things, I talk about my raid, I post silly cheesecake pictures of my female alts, I just let fly with whatever enters my head.  It’s not always easy for me to grind out content; as you may have noticed, things have been a bit thinner of late because real life is curbstomping me pretty hard right now.  But I do try.

I don’t know whether I’m doing it “right” or not, but looking at the built-in stats on WordPress tell me that something seems to be happening.  I’ve had about 21,000 pageviews since last December, and tend to average around 200 a day.  That’s small potatoes when you compare it to the real heavy hitters of the WoW blog world, but that’s not the circle I’m trying to run in.  I’ll probably never be a Big Red Kitty or a Matticus, and that’s fine with me.

Still…I can’t be the only blogger who looks at his hit counter and wonders if people are actually reading the blog.  Commenters are a very small percentage of readers, that’s a given.  I see hits flow in constantly on things like So You Want to Be a Prot Warrior and occasionally ponder if people actually read and use what I’ve written.  Is Achtung Panzercow just a random link somebody clicks on page 4 of a Google search for “hot Tauren action,” or did somebody actually find what they were looking for here, whatever that may be?

Hit counters and stats pages tell you numbers, but they don’t tell you the stories behind the numbers, as it were.  There’s ways I could jack up my pageviews, I’m quite sure…hell, I don’t know, maybe stick meta tags for “naked lesbian draenei” all over the place, that should do it.  But what’s the point, if the people just look at the page for two seconds, say “oh, a game blog, that’s not what I wanted, and where’s the naked lesbian draenei anyway?”, and then hit “back”?

Sometimes, even with the reinforcement of “hey, you get 300 pageviews on a good day!”, it can feel like shouting into the void.  Is anybody reading?  Does anybody care?  Why am I putting forth all this effort on my (or my employer’s) time if it’s just flying off into the depths of the intertubes?

And then you get an email in your inbox that answers all those questions and more.  This showed up in my gmail a couple days ago, and it’s reprinted here with permission:

Hopefully the title didnt make you think that this mail was spam *smiles*. I just wanted to drop you a quic [sic] line and say thank you for writing your blob [sic], im sure you get messages like this all the time (silly fan boys). The reason for my thanks is because i started one of these myself a long time ago, and it got very neglected. Then one evening while randomly searching the interwebs I came across yours. Its made me go back to mine and actually give it some love that was long overdue.

Thanks again and I love your style of writing, never change.
If you ever get the the time its http://ujarak.wordpress.com/

Ujarak Ragetotem.

Holy.  Shit.  (That is, by the way, the first “fan” letter I’ve ever gotten.)

I sat and read that email over a couple of times and it kind of stunned me.  Somebody does read this thing, and not only that, it’s inspired them to pick up their own blog and get it going again.  Wow.  And he’s doing a very good job at it, may I add–go check it out and give him some love.

I’ve also gotten a couple of comments on SYWTBAPW, about how people have actually followed it and are having fun leveling up their Prot warriors and learning to tank, and that floors me too.  In case you haven’t figured it out, I’m a little passionate about Linedan and warriors and tanking.  I’ve played a warrior in WoW more than all other classes combined.  I’ve played a Prot warrior in vanilla, in BC, and in Lich King, and I absolutely adore playing Linedan nowadays, even with all the problems that Prot warriors still have.  I like seeing people become interested in playing the class and spec, and more importantly, learning to play it well.  It’s not a faceroll-easy class to learn, and I’m very happy that people are finding my guides useful (and that I’m not totally full of shit on some of the things I suggest!).

So if you have blogs or authors that you find inspiring, that make you think or laugh or even get you mad, tell them.  Knowing that what we’re doing is actually reaching and connecting with readers gives us the inspiration to keep going and produce more and better content.  And when that happens, everybody wins.

Dramatis Personae: Illithanis

It’s time for another installment of “Dramatis Personae,” where I introduce my various characters that I occasionally mention here on Panzercow.  Today, meet my blood elf hunter Illithanis.

• Full name:  Illithanis Jadehawk
• Created:  November 2007
• Level/race/class:  Level 76 blood elf hunter
• Spec:  Beastmastery (currently 53/14/0)
• Age:  119 (human equivalent 20)

“Illy,” as I call her (and she does not call herself), grew up in Quel’thalas, where her family, the Jadehawks, had considerable land and holdings south of Silvermoon in what is currently the central portion of Eversong Woods, on the western edge of the Dead Scar.  Many generations of Jadehawks before Illithanis served proudly as Farstriders, the ranger corps of the quel’dorei, dating back three thousand years to the Troll Wars.  Skill with bow and sword, and a great affinity with taming and training winged animals such as dragonhawks, ran in the family.

All that changed when Arthas showed up seven years ago and led his assault on the Sunwell.  Illithanis and her fraternal-twin brother Althoris were sent to Sunstrider Isle in a last-ditch effort to preserve the family line–both were very indignant at this fact, as they wished to fight the Scourge.  In the end, they were two of the few survivors of the quel’dorei, renamed the sin’dorei–blood elves.  (Miraculously, both Illithanis’ parents also survived, though their landholdings were all but destroyed and the elder Jadehawks were forced to abandon the rest, and now live inside the rebuilt city of Silvermoon in moderate circumstances.)

Illithanis attempted to follow in her family tradition and join the Farstriders.  But with the ascension of the Blood Knights and the Magisters, the Farstriders found themselves greatly diminished in power, prestige, and size.  In addition, Illithanis’ rather negative opinions of Lor’themar Theron and the post-Kael’thas administration of Quel’thalas rendered her politically “unfit” for service.  She became the first Jadehawk in three thousand years not to serve Silvermoon as a Farstrider, and made her own way out into the world as a free agent.  Her brother Althoris, on the other hand, became an eager young Blood Knight.

Physically, Illy is fairly unexceptional; attractive, but not memorably beautiful, with regular features, something of a long face, pointy chin, and thinner lips than she’d like.  She’s of a normal blood elven build and height, perhaps a bit more athletic than a caster-type but by no means muscular (“wiry” would be a good word).  She has jet-black hair of just over shoulder-length, held back of her ears with a jade-encrusted clasp.  She’s got the complexion of someone who spends a lot of time outdoors.  She hardly ever wears makeup, and her only jewelry besides her hairband, rings, and trinkets is a small jade hawk earring in her right ear.  That doesn’t mean she’s slovenly; far from it, she bathes as regularly as she can, and her clothing and equipment are always repaired and as neat as she can possibly keep them.

I’m still working on Illy’s personality.  Some things I know about her, and some things she’s steadfastly refused to reveal.  I know she’s a generally decent sort, especially for a blood elf (which fits in with what lore says about Farstriders in general).  She can be arrogant and doesn’t suffer fools well.  She despises what she sees as the lazy, indolent, corrupt culture of the “elite” in Silvermoon and fumes at what’s been done to her beloved Farstriders, especially by the Blood Knights–and yet, up until patch 2.4, she was an unrepentant Kael’thas fangirl.  We’re talking poster-on-the-ceiling levels of squee here.  She saw him as the savior of Quel’thalas in the Third War (such as was saved), and constantly wished he would return from Outland, sweep aside Theron and the Blood Knights, and reset the sin’dorei on the path toward greatness yet again.

Then came patch 2.4.  Whoopsie.  Come to find out that Kael really is a bastard who stole his own people’s naaru and left them starving for magic.  Illy’s still getting over the betrayal.  It’s left her with a huge distrust of kings and magisters in general, and deepened her hatred for her native Silvermoon even more.  She only comes there now to occasionally visit her parents and sometimes to train with the Farstriders.

I do know that Illy has taken to the Horde more than a lot of blood elves.  She respects the warrior tradition of orcs even as she’s repulsed by some of their bloodier aspects.  Tauren culture fascinates her, but it’s in sort of a patronizing Jane-Goodall-and-her-chimps kind of way.  She stays well away from trolls–hey, 3000 years of conditioning is hard to break–and Forsaken squick her, even though her #2 idol, Ranger-General Sylvanas Windrunner, is one.  She’s neutral on dwarves, gnomes, and Draenei.  Humans infuriate her for what she sees as Garithos’ betrayal, and she really looks down her nose at night elves, thinking them stupid redneck country-bumpkin tree-humping idiots.  If she calls you a night elf, she just insulted the hell out of you.

The other hook I’m trying to hang onto with her (but may not be able to) is that she only tames and works with flying animals.  She started with a dragonhawk, then switched to a Thousand Needles venomous cloud serpent at level 28.  At level 44, I found her a beautiful red Feralas rogue vale screecher, named it Bloodwing, and she’s used it until now.  (And yes, I admit it, I tamed it because at the time, her armor was all red, and they matched.)  Bloodwing may get honorable retirement, though.  Yesterday I tamed an Emerald Skytalon from the Emerald Dragonshrine and named it…Emerald.  C’mon, her last name’s Jadehawk, how could I not tame a bright green bird of prey?

And for slogging through this wall of text, you get a bonus…my tribute to one of the greatest scenes in movie history, Ursula Andress’ famous entrance as Honey Rider in the first James Bond movie, Dr. No, done WoW style:

Anna’s RP Friday Five: What Dreams May Come

In response to this Friday Five post over at Too Many Annas, here’s my answers:

1.  Describe your character’s sleep habits.  Do they eat breakfast or have other routines?

Linedan is very disciplined, so he will get up, eat a light breakfast of whatever’s handy, and spend some time communing with the spirits and preparing his gear (sharpening weapons, cleaning armor, etc.) before his day’s travels.  Beltar will typically fall out of whatever he’s sleeping on or in, stagger around, try to find some food, and stagger around some more.  At some point he’ll wake up enough to fix his gear and get going.

2.  What do they dream about at night, if anything?

I’ve never really thought about this.  Linedan dreams of various things…sometimes reliving past travels and victories, sometimes of his childhood in Mulgore.  Not all of these dreams are pleasant at all.  Beltar dreams very little, because half the time he’s plowed when he goes to sleep.  He’s a dwarf, it’s how they roll.

3.  Is your character a night owl or a morning songbird?

Linedan wakes early.  Beltar sleeps till the hangover wakes him up.

4.  What do they wear to sleep?

Hmm.  Lin will wear some leather or linen clothing, full coverage, and he will always sleep with one or more weapons within easy reach.  Beltar often sleeps in his clothes, and looks like it.

5.  Is your character ticklish?

Both are.  But nobody is going to tickle either a giant plate-clad mountain of a Tauren, or a middle-aged scruffy dwarf, to find out.

The Warrior

OK, the story behind this little blurb:  I originally wrote this circa 1999, when I was playing Everquest I.  My main there was a warrior named Linedan (big surprise!).  One day, as she is wont to do, my muse bitchslapped me on the back of the head and I wrote “The Warrior” during downtime at work, put it on our guild forums, and then promptly forgot about it.

Fast forward to WoW, 2005, and I’m having a difficult time grinding this iteration of Linedan up through the levels.  While rooting around on my hard drive for something totally unrelated, I tripped over the original text file of “The Warrior.”  Figuring that it was still as appropriate for World of Warcraft as it was for Everquest, I cleaned it up slightly and posted it on the official Blizzard WoW warrior forums, fully expecting to be mocked and ridiculed, as roleplay/storytelling is in most places over there.

To my surprise, it got a positive response–the “wow awesome” posts outnumbered the “lol rp” posts.  To my bigger surprise, it’s gotten reposted in the warrior forum at least twice in the ensuing years, usually with another piece of text that I didn’t write added onto the bottom…and each time, it’s gotten a positive response.  So maybe I did something right.

In any case, here it is under the cut.  “The Warrior.”  Enjoy.