#thinariel

[pyrosophist]

Day 6: Tarot

[rishnea]

Thina for @pyrologic-archer 

[caelindadewfall]

Gifts in the Door

The packages arrive via a hooded courier sporting the most familiar orange colored hair. There are no discernible features to her, but a mischievous laugh can be heard as they dance away into the night. Each package delivered right to the door, or other suitable entrance to a home, as promptly as possible.

The package left on Thinariel’s doorstep is wrapped in a green paper, and tied off with a silver bow. Inside there is a jade necklace shined to a point that one could see their own reflection in it. The pendant is shaped much like a tear drop, though it curves a bit to the left, and the hole through which the string passes is about the size of a cherry. 

My dear,

I have very little to offer in this world to you that is truly mine. I cannot put into words how much our time together has changed my life, and I do hope I can hold onto it for much longer. 

I’m not always sure if any of the things I pick up on my travels really work, but I certainly hope this one does. This necklace is supposed to bring its wearer good luck, and to always bring them home safely when they travel. Hopefully, it will bring you home in one piece.

@pyrosophist

The package left on Aestus’ stoop is wrapped in a simple white paper, and held by a red ribbon. Inside there is a top hat that seems rather unremarkable. It’s been gently used, and a few repair patches line the inside of the hat to remember its old owners by.

Tabard Boy,

You are a down to earth kind of friend, and I’m so glad to be able to call you that. I remember when we first met, and by all the heavens you seemed like such a little priss back then. I thought your whole attitude was just that good boy act shining through, but it really grew on me. 

This hat isn’t really anything special. I mean, if you wear it it can change the way your beard looks. Who knows, maybe you’d look good with a change of facial hair. Up to you, but make sure you wear it; I bet you’ll look great.

@shampoocommercialelves

The last package is left in the doorstep of one Aenys Darklyn. It’s wrapped in a golden foil, and clearly meant to represent something. Inside, a set of ten pens and inks of varying colors, each labeled for a specific type of document from Contracts to Work Orders. 

Aenys,

Though we haven’t known each other very long, I do consider you a good friend. You’ve been willing to put your faith in me and my abilities, and for that you have my respect. I promise you, your faith will bear you fruit, and I do hope it will lead us into a great future together.

These pens passed to me, but their uses are so widely varied that I have too few documents to actually use them on. Perhaps with your wider set of duties, you may find use for all ten of them. I wish you all the luck in the world, and I look forward to our business together.

@darklyn

Very cheekily, a package is left on Esme’s doorstep. It’s wrapped only in brown paper. Inside, a finely crafted dagger spirited away from the finest smiths in Stormwind by a very brave little thief. The steel is honed to a fine point, and Caelinda had taken the time to get it all gussied up for its recipient. The note that follows is very cryptic, and there’s hardly an indication of who it’s from.

Boss,

Do not open until Winter’s Veil!

@jessipalooza

Finally, a package is delivered to Vaelrin himself in the deepest time of night. The mysterious courier is very careful to not be spotted, and leaves behind a similar package wrapped in brown paper. Inside, a bottle of the finest rum from Booty Bay. How it was acquired is not really clear, but a single speck of blood is on the neck of the bottle. Similar to Esme’s package, there is barely an indication of who sent it.

Big Boss,

Drink softly, and carry a big stick. Do not open until Winter’s Veil!

@forever-afk

[thinariel-farmight]

An outfit design/reference that I had a bunch of fun coming up with!

[thanidiel]

3, 11, 26

3: Does your OC behave differently around different people, if so with whom and how? 

We’ve seen an accurate range of the way Thanidiel codeswitches during my time in the Sunguard, I think. 

She can be very gallant and jock-like with other soldier-like people she interacts with like @thepilgrimofwar or people who feed into the stoic knight/soldier trope like @azriah ‘s Veya or in general during battle/objectives, Sunguard she isn’t familiar with, etc..

She can be cheeky and ribbing, generous (or way over presumptuous on the other end) and the level of her vocabulary lessens quite a bit with people she considers herself to be on more friendly terms with like @captainswingbeard and @thinariel-farmight

She can brown-nose and play social games mildly with nobility and people she wants information from like she has done to Azriah or @retributionpriest regarding the Dawnmenders, the Cabal, etc..

Then, of course, she’s a lot different with Bricini. The cheekiness and constant ribbing/bickering is there, but she’s pretty aggressive and trying to one-up or maneuver around Bricini with, often, little avail. She’s less dignified and turn-the-other-cheek - a lot more bratty and not as composed. On the surface, anyway.

We’ve also seen with Bri that she has an excessive, subtle, amount of patience and regard of attention. And she has an endless curiousity that is uncharacteristic of someone who is normally so done-and-done in how much she wants to just touch or look at her whenever they’re together. And she gets pretty dorky in little ways w/ corny things tossed in or little affectionate gestures like a nose butt or kiss on the palm.

All in all, my most stoic character has just as complex of a social-brain as Xerevies would.

11: How would your OC react to hearing they’re adopted?

She already knows she’s not actually her dad’s kid which pisses her off because of the disrespect she feels was dealt to someone who was her lifelong idol. If it turned out she was just full-on adopted, she might actually calm down quite a bit.

Because then she wouldn’t have to deal with her mother. And that would remove the deep sense of filial obligation that Thanidiel feels concerning giving her mother a happy, contented life and providing everything for the woman in spite of her quite negative personal feelings.

Like, right now, Thanidiel built a fucking house for the woman in the country-side so close to SMC that she can travel there at any time. And has a couple servants. And a guard. And provides an allowance for luxury. She’d be super happy to not have to continue with all of the associated maintenance. 

26: What is the most intense thing your OC has been battling with?

I want to say PTSD as of right now. Thanidiel has seen fucked-up shit, done fucked up shit, on a super regular basis for so fucking long. She committed a massacre when she was nineteen. 

Everything else that’s happened so far since the traumatic incident that led to her reenlistment (Raze of Emberbreeze Village) - All of the deaths, losing her eye, the constant warfare and incredible situations she’s been put through from the insanity of Azeroth’s modern-day affairs is literally just a cherry-on-top from a lifetime of stress and death. 

She has nightmares all of the goddamned time. She’s constantly on edge in some way. Memories and flashbulb episodes harry her and have notable effect on her behavior often. She is a mess.

@jessipalooza

[pyrosophist]

Day 3: Hex

[pyrosophist]

I: Hope

It is all very nearly too good to be true, when the Children of the Blood overcome their scourge-traitor, earn new allies, and set their sights on the promises of their Prince handed down by the Grand Magister.

Thinariel does not dwell earnestly upon much of the politics at play, here; she is a scholar turned fighter, brilliant chemist turned magical pioneer and combatant and impromptu medic, out on the rotted fields of the Ghostlands. The proud house she’d inherited once is in an abandoned district of Tranquillien, too prone to infestation to be safe. She misses it.

She pushes it from her mind, and applies herself here, there; Magister Lathar’s lessons are harsh and brutal, and leisure is spent reading, or soothing her fellow trainees with ointment and bandage for their burns while others sulk. Dame Auriferous allows the lessons, because Hellfire is a potent weapon against the Scourge. Lathar’s cohort of pyromancers endure for the good of their people.

Still, what glory when they at last manage to sack Deatholme; what glory when they rebuke the Scourge, and for a time earn a few motes of peace. Peace is a currency they spend, to revisit Silvermoon, purchase one of a dozen vintages that traded hands from dead vintner houses to caravaneers and opportunists. Thinariel is tipsy and laughing when the news comes: we go to Outland. To a promised land of plenty, a paradise for the people, a safe-haven and refuge where they will again be above reproach — where they will again be beyond the base craving of addiction.

She is one pilgrim of many, and they are hopeful. She brews plenty of decoctions to prepare, packs her whole life into a pack she can comfortably settle on her back. They set off through salvaged and re-purposed portal networks, built by the Magisters to take the aspiring few to the Blasted Lands, where they travel through the Dark Portal when fighting ceases long enough to be safe.

Of course it is strange, to be on another world. It is not the one promised. They are reassured of this, when they land in Thrallmar and given rest and provisions by Tor’seldori and the sentinels of Falcon’s Watch. The road ahead is long and perilous, but worth it. The promised land’s bounty is so plentiful that one may breathe mana from the very air, siphon tendrils of it from glorious bands of color in the sky.

Later, when they camp off the traveled path on their way to the outpost, Thinariel lays awake to stare up at the sky. It is the black of night, the sun’s light constant but distant, the space dominated by Outland’s sister planets amid a backdrop of so many stars. Coruscating streams of energy paint the sky like an artist’s abstraction, and she imagines herself reaching up, dipping her hands through it and drinking from it like a stream.

It keeps her mind from the barren wasteland of Hellfire Peninsula, where the earth is cracked rock prone to fissuring and volcanism and every creature seems designed for bloody contest. She fares better at least than the mother and her two children, or the lean-wasting brothers, who feel the magic of this place and feel fever instead of power, the crawling itch of the fel curdling in one’s stomach. Thinariel feels power. It is the same that Lathar taught them to reach for, to burn for, and in the moments she is not occupied she revels in possibility.

They subsist off of hope, as well as the rations they’d packed, the meager hunting that yields small insects and lizards and on one occasion the meat of a felled hellboar, which they boil and cook and feast upon. One of the mother’s boys grows sick and poisoned from it, until he can no longer walk and must stay in the wagon. He lasts a day.

The event makes them grim, and part of Thinariel aches in sympathy at the loss of a son. She does not speak to the mother.

Days drag on, their pace hard and uncompromising because Falcon’s Watch is a week’s travel away, and they must not delay. Fel Orcs roam the wastes, as do Alliance scouts. They encounter neither, but the anxiety haunts them doggedly.

One hunt brings back some kind of foraged herb, and they are given to Thinariel because she is the alchemist, and she marvels at them with something like wonder. She does what tests she can, with the meager tools in her alchemy box. When they are in the promised land, she will assert herself as an authority on the chemistry of their new home, she decides. Rebuild her practice, create wonders of magic, learn all she can of the fel and how best to help her people with it.

She confides this in Cahlen, who is another pilgrim in their party. He is weary as her and all the rest, but he is charming, and does not ask her what caused the burns that has her rubbing ointment into her hands and bandaging them every night. He’s sweet, tentatively and haltingly for fear of rebuke. She is made to feel young and girlish again, even though she is neither.

He wants to become a ranger, he tells her; he has his father’s bow but had never considered earning the skill to use it, until he was.. well. They’ve all lost people. He’s considered asking their lone protector, the Falcon’s Watch sentinel charting their path and seeing to their protection, and eagerly she encourages him. He is rebuffed, but gently. Perhaps he can learn when they are at the outpost, and can rest safely. It is alright.

The days go by a little easier.

Cahlen becomes sick, when he catches the sting of some shale-backed scorpion, too camouflaged to see. The fever has him sweating and vomiting up all his fluids, which will be lethal before they can make the two days’ rush to Falcon’s Watch.

She is the chemist, and his friend, so she devotes herself to this as fiercely as she can. She has learned of the fel already for months, and has a stock of local herbs — something she can transmute, or mix, something to negate the venom wreaking havoc in his body. The scorpion’s little corpse. Antivenom, she can make antivenom; take of her own, and teach Cahlen’s body how to resist it. She can resist the fel herself, and she can fix this; she can fix him. She has been an alchemist for two hundred years. She can make it better.

He can get better. They’ll get to Falcon’s Watch together.

She is hopeful, when she pours the elixir down his throat and he does not throw it up.

It kills him.

[pyrosophist]

II: Light

Shattrath City becomes a home, soon after Thinariel is waylaid from the pilgrim’s path by Scryers who say it is a doomed lie.

She laughs, then, and it is something brittle and just faintly bitter — not fully so, because Outland has simply been harsh and not determinedly, malevolently so. Not yet.

It does not take much for her to believe them anyhow, because her faith in the Prince was the shield she used to endure this place, and it was the first thing to erode and crack. It weighs heavy on her, and she is not sad to relinquish it and be shepherded to the City of Light, where she will earnestly, truly be safe.

She and her other pilgrims — who had stuck to her, fiercely, after their sentinel had died to ravagers and she had protected them with fire — are taught about the city and its brief history, and where they may stay. The Lower City is not any kind of grandeur, and parts of it languish just above-but-not-quite poverty and squalor, but they are welcomed by an old Broken they learn to call Kahesta, and given space to set up their tents in the overhang of a massive bridge.

Here, every manner of folk lives in company because they were all made refugees by Outland and its wars, and so Thinariel is surprised to make a living alongside humans and orcs and krokuul and an ogre. Some cling to wounds of the past, and on the occasion that she brushes coldly past a High Elf in ruined leathers, she knows that war seeps into this refuge all the same.

It seems petty and small and far-away to her, though. So, she rebuilds. Kahesta teaches her the basics of herbs in this world, and she spends a time learning the rest before she makes a name for herself mixing potions and chemicals for the people of the Lower City — tanning compounds or smithing flux, pigment for paint and dye. Useful things, but simple things. She never thought that Outland would make a simple tradeswoman of her, but she’s too pragmatic now for it to hurt her pride.

It’s a haggard man, scarred and grey-haired, who eventually suggests she see A’dal.

She puts it from her mind, because it is unnecessary. Everybody can see the colossal pillar of Light rooted in the heart of the city, and everybody’s heard the stories about how the Sha’tar reclaimed this city for all mortal peoples. That’s enough, for her.

With the newfound safety, her curiosity turns again towards magic and lore.

The Ethereals are a curiosity, and she barters with them when Veira’s child falls ill for lack of mana (she has since learned their names, the mother and child who lost family to Hellfire. Ceryn was his name. They build a grave for him, finally, and the Lower City mourns with her). She provokes some interest from them, though blood elves are not new to them — but she is a curiosity all the same, for even if the craft is subtle in her, she is a warlock. Outland floats on colossal currents and eddies of magic and energy and Nether, and she finds ways to extract tiny motes of that from herbs and metals. It funds her magic in no small part, and she trades it for pieces of lore and rumor, maps and books that she stows away for a day when she is braver and more daring.

She makes friends with an Arakkoa named Ressca, when the mottle-plumed birdwoman asks after a chemist who can help prepare an incense for burning, when none of Rilak’s flock remember the mixture. The process provokes conversation, and she learns of Skettis, and the lost memories of Arak, and the incomparable delight of Skethyl berrywine, which they both get very, very drunk on. Ressca tells stories and shares what lore she may. She was a historian, once; a keeper of culture, cast down into the pits of cursed Sethe for protest. Thinariel thinks of her as brave, and grows to admire her deeply.

She learns of loss, too. So much loss have the Arakkoa endured, outcast twice over. History is a cruel thing, says Ressca, and Thinariel agrees. We’ve got a new start here, though, don’t we? Thinariel remembers that her homeland was not cast into the shredding chaos of the Nether, before she asks as much. The outcasts of Skettis treat this place as a temporary refuge with the potential for embassy, because their home festers with madmen.

There is some common ground they find, because the Scryers’ campaign against the Mad Prince is well-known. It makes her wonder about how much she cares. She’s long-since dismissed the promise of paradise, when she made some effort to learn Outland’s geography; not even Nagrand is a stable place, as lush as it is. There is a life here in Shattrath for her, but she’s grown restless. Does she intend to leave, to be killed by hostile monsters and wildlife? No. But..

She has maps, and rumors. She has spells that have fought and defended her in the past. Oh, Outland is a terrible place to catch wanderlust.

She goes to the Scryers, and they meet her amicably and excitedly; kinship is a rare thing, here. Truly, she is an alchemist with some skill? She should’ve come sooner, and they would’ve instated her as chemist and retainer in no time. No, Thinariel says. No, I’m a warlock, and I wish to travel and learn by your blessing.

That changes things too, though it is not an awfully strange thing, either. Most Scryers charged with traveling outside the city were military, or military staff, and so a pilgrim is dubious. She insists nonetheless, and once she assures them that she does indeed have experience fighting, they acquiesce.

She is given access to a handful of items and spells, to ease her journey. She gains a bag that is larger on the inside than out, a short focusing stave of hewn black wood, and the recipes to a few potions that are useful for traversing and enduring the hostile elements of Outland. Summoner Durael spends a week with her to gauge her skill in spells and casting, and judges her worthy of a summoning ritual and a counterspell schema, which she adds to her weathered pittance of a grimoire.

She will leave Shattrath, on agreement that she return intermittently with her findings (she won’t, when it matters).

Veira and Ressca and Kahesta and the others are sad to see her go, but not surprised. Thinariel makes no secret of her restlessness, and she would never have been satisfied mixing potions beneath a bridge (she will never be satisfied).