What is one of the most courageous things your character has ever done for a loved one?
{ Circa Battle for Azeroth }
It had been an ingenious coup, yet damnable. The Dark Lady baited the Young Lion and his forces into the throne room, and destroyed the whole of Lordaeron in an instant for the chance to stop their crusade. Sylvanas had never intended a fair fight, and all would be sacrificed for her intention.
One moment a war cry was bellowed to unite her people, and in the next moment the walls of the Undercity imploded and collapsed upon themselves, sentencing many the Gravekeeper had known to a final, unsung death. The rest Sylvanas had abandoned to the fury of the Alliance and the vengeful hatred of the Night Elves, while she escaped, unscarred.
Some of her own did not understand that they had been thrown as fodder to the field. "FOR THE DARK LADY!" the most devoted of her Forsaken screamed, leaping into the fray, eager to cut into flesh before they were cut down themselves. Their ignorant devotion was their choice, the Gravekeeper decided, and she raised their broken bodies again to fight mindlessly in defense of those that could not defend themselves.
Not all of those in the Undercity's walls rose to fight, let alone understand what had just transpired. Merchants, scholars, mentors, trainers, and some unliving names that tried to eke out what existence they could. And now the living had come, and the Gravekeeper knew there would be no prisoners taken among the Forsaken, no mercy shown to those that rarely knew mercy. Even Horde soldiers fled with their compatriots, deciding that life was for the living.
The Gravekeeper would not abandon her own.
"Run!" she uttered with urgency, a command echoed through a dozen of her ghostlings, infusing the shattered parapet that sheltered a pocket of defenseless Forsaken with her echoed command. They would be lead to freedom - she would see to it. She stood grounded before the encroaching Alliance, like a cemetery statue bolted before the shattered parapet, a dozen risen bodies and bones to block their path to the helpless graveborn. A thousand vengeful eyes stared her and her undead menagerie down with hatred, seeing only a tool of the Dark Lady that wronged them.
As they trampled her risen and tore the Gravekeeper apart, she hoped only that one would give her scattered remains a named grave. This was a respect the living only gave their own at the Ruins of Lordaeron, however: her head was mounted to a post outside of the Undercity's fallen walls to serve as a reminder of what the Forsaken had become: a broken arsenal with no purpose.
Daily Writing Challenge (February 2025)
Day 7: Rage/Loyalty
@daily-writing-challenge
The new skull was offered from the Sayaad's talons, a majestic head piece tinged a remarkable red hue, strong horns protruding from its crown.
"A demon skull?" the Gravekeeper questioned. She would be no less impressed if it had not been Elernia's usual quarry.
"Eredar," the succubus answered, grinning at the Gravekeeper's curious glance. "Or the "Man'ari" as they are known in our 'blasphemous' tongue, hah. They were often some of the most powerful figureheads of the Burning Legion. Felweavers and Lieutenants. Immensely skilled in building translocation gates and the most understanding of vessel navigation through the stars. With Sargaras now banished of course, you'll find some of them trying to swear their loyalties to the Alliance, beg for forgiveness from their own 'purer' kin. Spacegoat central, you know."
"Space goats..." the Lady Handhour made some sound of wry amusement, "you mean the draenei."
"Naturally. I found that pitiful one that would call themself a warlock slumped at a bar. Made things easier...and oh so fun. Just about offered himself on your altar himself when I was done."
"Typical cultist behavior. I'm sure he made quite the meal for you," the Gravekeeper replied as she gently repositioned a collection of skulls in her catacomb to make room for the new upon its pedestal. "Doesn't quite sound like he fell too far from his burning tree. I doubt he expected to be gracing my little ossuary though."
"Actually, I gave the soul to our pretty little Betrayer to lance out the need for any questions. Fed her what she needed to know of this one to kill the thought of what she doesn't know. The 'Harvester' is fairly easy to appease as long as you keep her fed. Much like her little void-twisted dog now."
"And what else of our Betrayer? You seemed to indicate she was quite addled by this...Harbinger?" The Gravekeeper chuckled with disdain. "Is it time to finally see the pretender buried?"
"She has her anchors to ground her anytime she might try to push her little body and mind to the brink," Elernia shrugged. "Her 'soulsinger'." Elernia rolled her eyes at that. "The Dawnsinger sister." The succubus eyed the spectral woman very intently as she spoke again. "The daughter."
As Elernia suspected, the lady haunt stilled at the last word. New information. The Keeper's eyes fixated on her in return to confirm in disdainful silence.
"Oh, and there is a son, too," Elernia added. "But it is the girl that sought her mother out. And she lives with our pretty Pretender now, you know? Pretty, young elven noble runaway, taking sanctum there from her own House in Silvermoon. Strikingly in the image of the mother too."
"You are telling me this girl now lives with HER?" the Gravekeeper muttered. "Like some sick little reunion?"
"Oh, absolutely. And the former Lady Dawnsinger is starting to take to her estranged young. She protects the girl, haha. Can you believe it? A little family for the damned anomaly. A sickeningly sweet little farce."
The Gravekeeper glowered at the succubus as the elements of her rage began to flower in supernatural fashion, bone and stone and candle flickering, trembling. "How long have you known about the daughter?"
"It hurts you, doesnt it? Knowing what she took from you and what she has taken from so, so many others. The things she served, the lives sacrificed so she could exist, the sins she wrought for her power to ruin. And she has now life, love, influence AND the potential of a renewed legacy in this world? And you have--"
"QUIET!" At the Gravekeeper's shriek, the Man'ari skull came barreling from its pedestal and smashed into the succubus with enough force to blow her back across the catacomb's hall. A spectral storm of ire now glided to the waylaid Sayaadi as Elernia pulled herself from the toppled collections of bone decorating the Keeper's home. "Why do you tell me this?" It was a question that echoed with anger, yet vocally fried with Anna's well of pain.
The Sayaadi let her leathery wings buffet herself back to her own hooves, staring down the Gravekeeper with full admiration, and wicked calculation. "Because I need to know how you want me to hurt the Betrayer. Let me ruin her, as she ruined you. Serenas, is the girl's name. And if you wish her dead too to kill the hope in her 'mother', then only say the word, my Anna."
The Gravekeeper paused, a whirlwind of bone and anguish slowing in its otherwordly circle as she absorbed the demon's own dedication. The succubus extended her black taloned fingers, as if awaiting a hand to fill them.
"You don't remember, do you? Those bastards took so much from you in the fall out. You may have lost what you have, but a soul's a marvelous, twisted little conduit, my Anna. I will always be at your side, as was promised. Your desire, your pain, your pleasure. I will show you everything, so vividly, if you only ask. I am the true disciple when all the flesh dissolves. And you?"
A red grin of knowing stretched across the Elder Sayaadi's face, temptation incarnate. "I know you will not deny me."
💤 What was your OC like as a baby, a child and as a teen? (if your OC is a teen or a child, what will they be like as an adult?). How have they changed since then? What lessons have they learned and what things about their youth do they miss the most? Do they have any general regrets?
Anna was likely a very fussy infant, a very intense cryer - the sort of baby that would frighten her mother in the way she'd seem to stop breathing during intense fits. For that reason Anna was often held to prevent that intense crying, and was rather spoiled by being held until she'd be weaned from the breast. As an infant, she was also introduced to the piano, the vibrations and melodies played soothing her from crying fits, as her mother would learn and fully take advantage of. She was loved and coddled very much as a baby being the first born, and with her biological father having being killed when she was barely 6 months old, Matron Handhour became painfully protective of her baby. It was probably the most loving she would be to her own daughter, these early years when Anna seemed so little and defenseless.
Going into the toddler age and for much of her early youth, Anna was left more to her own devices and in the care of hired help, her mother's infantile coddling coming to its end shortly after she learned to walk. Still, she was a polite and quiet child, homeschooled and very sheltered from general society, and did not connect well with children her own age. At about 5 years old, Anna was fully invested in playing the piano herself, wanting to impress the adults in her life like her mother, and took it upon herself to be unproblematic as she could. She had a vivid imagination and a creative spark that would really make itself known from 8 to 10 years old, and despite her mother remarrying to a good man that did try to treat Anna as his own, and seeing the birth of a baby sister, Matron Handhour would take Anna alone from Gilneas in her 10th year, refusing to be trapped behind the erected Greymane Wall.
As puberty would take hold, a quiet resentment would grow in Annaliese for her mother's inattention, but her mother was an intimidating woman on her own merit and was driven to support them with the establishment of an elite Inn and serving house, in the Hillsbrad Foothills. While her mother would seem to spread attention to anyone that would supply patronage to support a continously lavish lifestyle, Annaliese was critiqued and harried at over appearance and etiquette in an effort by her mother to prepare her for adulthood.
The artistry of her painting and piano no longer pleased her mother, and were considered childish things that would not secure her future in her mother's eyes. This would become a quiet conflict between mother and daughter, though Anna as a teen did have a large respect for her mother for all she had done for them, her own needs were not being met in the space of her mother's ambitions. Anna did have minor incidents of rebellion, such as sabotaging the grand piano that dominated the dining room so she wouldn't have to play for guests anymore, and escaping to Dalaran one or two nights to try and sell her paintings. This was however where Anna's interest in magic would be discovered, sparked with quick understanding for the arcane. As her mother enrolled her as an apprenticing mage in Dalaran's prestigious academy, she would finally earn a respect and acknowledgement as a grown woman, and more a woman of worth.
Anna would eventually be married to an Alterac horsemaster named Aiden, and lived very happily as she continued her study as a mage. The infamous event of Dalaran's first destruction would take hold however, and later the release of the Scourge and the torments of the Cult of the Damned that would make Anna a target in some years after her first child was born. She suffered great travesties and torments in adulthood, the advent of undeath seeming to be a long in coming transition...Anna's tragedies occurred from an early pace long before the turning.
Lady Handhour in this life bears more resentment about her life than she does regrets, all the prestigious struggle her mother had built towards lost forever, rendered pointless. Perhaps her regrets stem the most for not demanding more autonomy in her youth, or standing up for herself as she became her own person. If she has learned anything in her life of betrayal and being used in other's machinations, Annaliese has learned not to invest her trust in others so easily. This especially is true for her heart when it comes to the living. The living, to Anna, are more prone to the fever of change and betrayal than the dead. Only their bones, so much like piano keys, can be depended on as the final, morose truth, which is why she covets bones the most.
Daily Writing Challenge 2024
November, Day 3 Words: Morose/Strength
@daily-writing-challenge
For the rest of the world, the Day of the Dead jubilations lasted over the course of a few days, La Catrina’s rattling maracas fading into obscurity from Tirasfal’s dreary glades. Yet in the Gravekeeper’s haunted thicket, that deathly celebration was carried on for those ghostly wards that had earned a form.
Bone had been sculpted cleanly into magnificence, a fortified skeletal construct that was a bone-shaped horror to the living, but a macabre sculpture to her. And atop its armored spinal column the shape was graced with the centerpiece: an intricately carved skull to crown achievement, as she presented to all her skeletal companions.
“Here we are,” the Gravekeeper gestured for her phantom ward, funerary lace flowing with her own movements as she extended her arm for him. “You’ve done quite well to move the physical, as I taught you. Focusing your will, your thoughts, giving yourself over to the memory of force. But now, you’ll have to merge with the entire skeleton here without knocking it over, or plainly shattering it. It’s more than the burst of focus, now you’ll have to maintain it. Possessions’ just the first step, I think we can begin there…I won’t expect movement just yet, but…let’s just give it a try.”
“Remember: it’s an extension of you, not just a thing to move about.”
A wispy form.
Pushing things.
Pulling on itself.
[Coming together.]
Coming undone.
The Doctor had yet to master corporeal manipulation, but his eagerness to try propelled him steadily onward. [Never give up.]
Hollow pools where eyes would have been narrowed into slits and he studied the skeleton. He buzzed and zoomed around the skull manipulating his own shape until he appeared as a hat on top of its head. [It needs a hat.]
The Gravekeeper chuckled at the focused addition. "A gentleman through and through. Now, how about the rest?"
With his suggestion taken under advisement, the Doctor looked at the skeleton. Then himself. [Too small.] He felt he needed to be bigger to overtake the bones, so he stretched himself. [Stand up straight.]
For the briefest moment, the aspect of a man took shape. He looked the skeleton in the eye before stepping through and into the bones.
[Backwards.]
He stepped out.
Then he backed in.
[Forward.]
The skeleton wore a triumphant grin and clacked its jaw victoriously. [Hahahaha!] He wiggled his metacarpals and tarsals. Bent hinges and twisted pivots. Then rolled balls and sockets. [Sloppy. Unrefined. Inadequate.]
The Gravekeeper’s delight at the clacking jaw of victory seemed to drain fully as the Doctor’s words seemed to criticize her work. “Why, I suppose it isn’t perfect by any means, but I did craft it bone by bone. Each whole, and cleanly bound.” The judgment had been internalized, cut to the bone of her own being. The grounds began to rumble with raging necromantic power as her words continued to fly with increasing indignation. “And the skull alone I’ve spent days on, chipping away with the chisel! If this is not adequate for you, Doctor, maybe you ought to–”
With a sudden step forward all of his own, the newly constructed arm of the skeleton moved toward the incensed Gravekeeper to hush her with a single, upright bony finger, pressed with gentle control at her lips. [No, no no. Hush now, Dove. It is perfect.]
A calm once more settled over the thicket as the Gravekeeper’s rage was quelled, soon bubbling back up to prideful excitement in the consideration of his willful movement. “Oh, you moved an entire arm! A hand! Marvelous! Already you’re getting so strong!”
The lantern eyes flowed down the entire frame of the possessed skeleton once more, in thought. “Come,” the Gravekeeper commanded, touching the raised bony fingers with her alabaster digits. The touch seemed to propel him forward to follow, half-floating, assuring that he would not have to struggle along on his new feet.
As she swept to the entrance of her mausoleum, her arm flowed down to snatch from a rosebush nearby, snapping one of its full blossoms from the leaf. White, Gilnean roses, the edge of each petal aglow with a strange, amber luminescence.
Into the bowels of her mausoleum she lead the newly formed Doctor, her black train of funerary cloth and chain scraping the stone floor, drifting past perfectly stored bones and skulls fit like miniature ossuaries. Relinquishing her skeletal ward, she focused now on lifting several fabrics and discarded clothing with the necromantic focus of her haunt, slinging them away with a sigh of disappointment until she found what she had meant. Tugging it free from a pile of bones and ignoring the rattling collapse of its organization, she turned to present a top hat. Scuffed up minutely, but whole in presentation.
“A fine hat for a gentleman?” she offered in tone, but proceeded in stepping near to place it atop his bare skull. “And a final touch?” The odd rose bloom was tucked into the band of the hat. The smallest spider seemed to dislike this new arrangement, and fled where it had made a home, skittering from its fabric, and scurrying across the entire skull for an escape. In the end, the tiny glassweb scurried into the skull’s left eye hole for sanctum.
“Ohhhhh.” The Gravekeeper chuckled. “You have a new friend, I do think.”
{ Written in collaboration with @the-plagued-d0ctor . Highly recommended follow! }
Gravekeeper Anna: "I've heard you have a fondness for jewelry. Is this why you were so fond of my little orb in the beginning?"
The art of jewelcrafting was a common practice among elves, however if one sought to achieve a level of mastery on par with the Sorceress, it would take the course of a lifetime to perfect. The profession was not for the weak-willed, nor would it abide an unsteady hand. It was the truest of all artforms in her lightless eyes and blackened heart.
In life and onward into undeath, Malakortana retained an eye for beauty.
Materials were rare… and mistakes were costly. A jeweler only had one opportunity to achieve perfection, so one mustn’t squander it in haste. She would examine a stone for weeks, months-- even years before deciding on a design rather than make a careless mistake. Mortal minds were easily swayed by the passing of time and the exchange of coin when hers was not. The eternally shifting sands had no bearing on her.
Only a trained eye could ascertain which stones were primed for faceting, for setting, and for smashing into a fine dust. It required a great deal of confidence, a hint of imagination, and a measure of patience to ensure each piece achieved its full potential.
After all… the D-e-v-i-l was always in the details.
Each commissioned piece was crafted exclusively with the wearer in mind. No two designs were ever alike, and the maker’s identity was always shrouded in an air of mystery. Many of the aristocracy were in coveted possession of a stunning piece made by the hands of this 'Dark Deity,' and each housed a deadly secret within the glittering gemstones resting in their ‘claws.’
You have been marked…
“Yes,” she confirmed, though the Sorceress would offer no further insight on the subject matter.
