#nighthold

[wowscenery]

[shadez-art]

Inktober: Day 13-The Demon Within. This one may have been easy, but I'm really happy with how it turned out! Those might be the best Illidan tattoos I've every drawn!

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[kazhul]

scribbly sketchbook kes

[basileef-sketches]

Shelenya of the Nightfall, my Warcraft main

I drew in a set I still don’t have fully with a bow I don’t even think exists but know what? Who cares really

[wwo0w]

[sullustangin]

(And now for something completely different)/Fic:  Stolen

A/N:  Ok, this is one from the crypt.  This is something that is done... part of a larger whole that will never be done.  This was written during the World of Warcraft Legion expansion over five years ago now.  The trajectory is definitely AU now.  I found this in my wip folder awhile ago and have waffled about doing anything with it.  This would have been written just after the successful Nighthold Raid.  Spoilers for that, five years later, I suppose, prior to the events that lead to Void Elves and stuff.

I noticed that this harps on similar themes as the thing I plan on posting tomorrow.  Totally different fandoms, but still -- paths unwalked.  5 years ago, I got a permanent gig and got ‘grounded’ -- no more jetset.  More recently, I’ve made decisions (kiddo, housing, career, etc) that really closes doors, but opens others.  So I guess this is the week of “Variations on a Theme:  Wondering About Alternative Universes.” 

POV Khadgar, thinking of things stolen

~~

Khadgar had thought Turalyon weak when he fell for Alleria.

Here they were, on a mission, and yet there they were, enamored, distracted, and embroiled in their own world.  When he personally had brought the world crashing down on them all, he realized the sorrowful virtue of it.  

Looking back, Khadgar wondered whether his feelings were prompted by jealousy.  He was the odd-man-out, after all.  Despite a young man’s heart and mind, he’d been cast into the role of the elder.  He never had a chance with her, not even in the consideration that she was far older than anyone else on their mission.  

The Archmage idly sat in some noble’s back garden in Suramar, the water gently lapping at the sides of its well-constructed, calculated-to-be-aesthetically-pleasing stone pool.  The wind – no longer artificial! – stirred the trees, the tips of the iridescent branches drifting in and out of the water.  All this the Archmage heard, his eyes closed to the world as he attempted to meditate and regenerate his magic supply.  

He was exhausted, and the stillness only accelerated his mental acrobatics as to what to do next. Illidan, incarnate.  Guldan, dead in all worlds.  Sargeras, from all worlds coming and going --- even the one that Turalyon may have made his last stand on.  

 An old tattered image of her cradling him – not a true memory, a composition of several scattered fragments.  Khadgar winced as he shifted his weight to fully lean on a deceptively strong tree. 

Somewhere, a throaty laugh rattled through the city and rebounded down the walls.  It was so silent in the city, after the battle, that every noise echoed clearly.  Khadgar knew that voice.  

 It greatly bemused him when his head had been turned by Tyrande Windrunner.  She had burst through the Dark Portal and arrived urgently in Shattrath upon hearing news of her brother-in-law.  A child of the stars, a priestess of the moon, she had completely undermined Khadgar’s cool and confident exterior.  These things he had worked on for 20 years in near isolation – gone. Her intensity, her concern – her guilt over what had happened to her husband’s brother.    Like everything she did, she was decisive, unwavering, forceful yet utterly placid in the same moment.  Frankly, it was embarrassing how lonely he was.  

And yet, he found himself watching her as one would an exotic, rare bird, determined to preserve but not interfere. He didn’t even follow his first impulse to make himself presentable – that would come in his own time, when he was ready to shed Outland and the last vestige of the curse.  Khadgar had cured himself, but his old robes, his beard, everything he had been: it was armor against the world, but also something that managed to keep his anxieties and internal churning contained.

When Malfurion returned to Tyrande, Khadgar felt no jealousy.  But there was something there that tugged him downward as he watched the two of them serve their gods.  She was a priestess, dedicated to her temples and her Light.  He was a druid, dedicated to Cenarius and the forces of nature. They were far more devoted to their masters than to each other ---

 And they worked perfectly together. Love never trumped devotion but – it was a conundrum, that relationship, and it made his head spin.  Khadgar could not think of a better love story, but he could not reconcile it to any motif.  Love conquered all in those legends, but Tyrande was never one to be conquered or taken away from her duties, nor was Malfurion ever cowed by his wife into abandoning his dreamer’s world.  There was an old human phrase about a servant with two masters, but he could not recall it, nor did it appear to work in this case. The exception that tested the rule, and had done so for more than 10,000 years.  

 It wasn’t until Cordana Felsong that Khadgar concluded he clearly had a thing for elves and for things that would inevitably end terribly, badly, for all parties.  He smirked.  There was the rub, the newest ache and pain.

 After such close contact – not intimate but constant – for months on end in Draenor, the betrayal upended him.  He had shut out all champions, the rest of the Council, even Varian Wrynn.  There was a deep, gaping hole in his inner serenity, his defenses against hopeless and despair.

 Because in all honesty, there was no world that had not fallen to the Legion.  There were other Khadgars.  There were other First Arcanists.  There were millions of champions, entering pockets of disparate universes to arm themselves.  There were thousands of Cordana Felsongs, by name or by disposition, that gave in to hopelessness.  Khadgar wondered if he had frayed her last nerve, shaking her, by being as reckless as he was.

 It wasn’t until she left that he realized how difficult he had made her job of protecting him.  Khadgar’s shock emanated from the realization that his unwillingness to be protected and complete undermining of her ability to protect him made her question her own abilities, her own capacity to resist the Legion.

 Somewhere in his academic mind, Khadgar knew that the Legion would have stopped at nothing to corrupt her to get to him.  But another part of his mind was wracked by all the things he thought he should have said or done or ---- anything.  If he could have saved her.  

 When he had heard of her death, at the hand of his champions, the urge to get away from the Guardian’s Tower was insurmountable.  In a puff of stardust and feathers, his raven form escaped.  Fly, far away.  Flap wings, and soar so quickly that his thoughts could not catch up with him.  If he stopped for a second, it would consume him.  All the things he should be feeling, but could not afford to feel for this pawn of the Legion.  

 It was not love.  But whatever it was, Khadgar could not stomach it and fled from all things.  At last, as he thought his tiny bird heart would burst from his chest, he permitted his wings to cease their motion, tucking them close to his body and he rolled a feathered shoulder toward the green earth.  

 He’d landed at the border of Val-Sharah, his human form emerging just in time to cast a slowing spell and guide him to earth.  As if nothing had happened, he marched to the edge of Suramar city to meet with the elven leaders.

 That meeting had led him to where was today – in some noble’s back garden, exhausted from the final battle against Guldan. His magic had finally fizzled.  He’d allowed himself to be helped down from the Nightspire the normal way – stairs, not a portal.  He didn’t trust himself not to zap himself accidentally to Netherstorm or some far-flung, very inconvenient location.  

 Fordragon had been wrong, in the final speech the Stormwind scribes had recorded.  There was no way a Guldan or a Lich King or any other corrupted creature could pay for the lives they’d stolen. Death was the escape hatch.  Any punishment, even a willingly self-imposed penance, could not resurrect the dead, could not instill the security of a beloved parent, could not possibly compensate for the inner well-being that had been ripped away.

 Had Khadgar stolen lives?  Had he permitted others to be stolen out from under his watch, if only for his own convenience?  Garona’s screams ricocheted through his mind, then the Warden’s voice. Had that done it?  

 Then another voice.  “Make haste for Suramar.  You may be our last hope.”  

 That had done it for him.  That invocation.  It wasn’t a courtesy request to assuage a delicate male ego, nor did it come from someone who was constantly imperiled.  And it was the voice.  The withered appearance of the owner stirred pity, but the voice was another thing entirely. She had never wavered, even as her health took twists and turns during this adventure.   And when she was restored --

 In all frankness, Khadgar probably could have left the Suramar matter to the elves and his champions.  It was their blood business and bad life choices, not his.  And yet, there he had been, to the bitter end.  Was he trying to impress her?  Honestly, now?    At his age?  At her age?  

Khadgar wondered at times whether he could convince Jaina to calculate how many years had been stolen from him, and how long he had left.  A morbid task. 

And it was bitter – no matter how many times Guldan fell or could fall, in other universes, nothing came back. Not a single sacrifice in Tanaan, not Maraad, not Varian, not Cordana came back.  And Guldan was naught but the puppet, whether he realized it or not. They would all still have to fight Sargeras and a potentially infinite Legion, and Khadgar’s time may well run out before the task was complete.  He kicked hornets’ nests that would kill any normal man and did. 

Khadgar knew he wasn’t normal. Had not been since the curse.  Would never be after he received Atiesh, whether or not he ever accepted the titles affiliated with its possession.  Could never be…

His armor was as much to keep people out was it was to keep all of him in.  He never experienced his prime, bounding between child and old man.  He had learned from his master’s mistakes, not from a master.  Khadgar knew there were things he could never ….  

 He did not want someone to miss him as desperately as he missed his old friends.  He never wanted someone to miss him as much as ….. the lucky ones did.  He saw Vereesa, Varian, even Moira cast wistful glances at pictures carefully concealed, children that grew to resemble their missing parent every second of every day.  

 No.  He couldn’t put someone through it.  And most truthfully, he did not want to go through it; the odds were fair that one half of a union would prematurely decease the other.  Yet, here he was, missing the dead, thinking of missed connections, and contemplating a missed life.  

Maybe Fordragon was right.  Lives were stolen – the more correct and true path of life had been stolen, not just by death.  Life went on.  Stubbornly. But how different would his fate have been if Guldan had not opened the Dark Portal, if Medivh hadn’t fallen prey to the Legion.  These adventurers – they had thrown their lot in with him, because their “normal” lives had been stolen, just like his own.  

Khadgar opened his eyes, a dim blue glow emanating.  He’d never considered himself one of the fallen.  Nor had he ever considered those living to be among that unfortunate retinue. But, even as the curse deteriorated through the years, he had missed many lovely intangibles, beautiful things unsaid, and happy visions of what could be.  

 Now Khadgar was considering it. But he soon realized, as he dug his hand into the ground to push himself up to his feet, that such revelations were circuitous and irrelevant.  He had no outlet to unburden himself, and doing so would not change his mission.  Medivh may have stolen his youth, the Dark Portal -- his home world, his coping mechanisms – closeness to others.  But when Khadgar freely gave his remaining years to save Azeroth, his life was no longer something to be stolen from him. 

[freejamtime]

champions at the nighthold year 32 adp

[enddaysengine]

Yamaraj (Psychopomp, Paths Beyond)

Paizo loves to draw on real-world myth and religion to flesh out the Age of Lost Omens and these psychopomps are no exception. Yamaraj is one of the names of the Hindu God of Death, who also shows up in many, many other Asian religions and mythologies. While Yamarajes are largely created whole-cloth for Pathfinder as best as I can tell, they share their role as the afterlife's supreme judges with their namesake. 

When dealing with psychopomps in general, and yamarajes specifically, it’s critical to remember that, while they have hierarchies, these are not devils. The bureaucracy of the Boneyard is considerably more laissez-faire than that of Hell. Psychopomps follow their hierarchy because if they don’t someone further up, the chain of command might bury them under so much busy work they’d wish they could die. A psychopomp may all be the spirit of the law one day, then the letter of the law of the next, simply because it is convenient. If it gets them the results they believed to be correct, they may not have any qualms about breaking the law entirely.  

All this means the yamarajes get a high degree of latitude to deal with problems as they see fit. They are the penultimate step on the org chart, second only to the Ushers and the gods themselves. They are smart, cunning, corvid-dragons of death who heal from lightning and have the scarab swarms from The Mummy ‘99 as their breath attack. You try telling them they’re doing their job wrong. It can be tough to find inspiration for outsiders acting this way, but luckily one series does exist. Daily Bestiary recommended Garth Nix’s Keys to the Kingdom to me a while back and while it’s not a perfect fit for psychopomps (he suggested it re: rilmani), the denizens of the House are a good starting point for getting in the mindset of neutral outsiders.  

Rajit the Wayward stubbornly insists that he is not, although the nickname has stuck amongst mortals and his erstwhile colleagues. The yamaraj hasn’t set foot in the Boneyard for nearly 3000 years, proclaiming to anyone who will listen that she has merely taken a short sabbatical and will return to his courtroom soon enough. Even his fellow immortals are skeptical, but Pharasma has made no move to censure him, so the other Yamarajes put up with his truancy. Meanwhile, Rajit serves as one of the few points of stability within the First World realm of Nighthold, dispensing legal advice to those in need. Rajit is just as curious about the fey as they are about the psychopomp, which helps him endure both their shenanigans and treachery. He is one of the easier psychopomps for mortals to approach — if they can make it through the remnants of Count Ranalc’s kingdom.  

Like any body of water in the Universe, the River of Souls has its own weather. Shah Jamshid rules over the largest of these storms, riding it up and down the River as he incinerates soul thieves with lightning bolts. The yamaraj's storm doesn't usually disturb the departed, but every few years he must recruit adventurous to track down souls who get blown stray. While irritating, Jamshid justifies these minor interruptions to the River's flow as the price for ensuring daemons and powerful undead don't do worse damage. 

Lucius Census-Taker has always been fascinated by swarms. He revels in his breath attack and spends his downtime as an amateur entomologist. Not that he has much downtime - Lucius has taken it upon himself to process the souls slain in the final battles with the closure of the Worldwound. His fascination with all things swarm extends to the dead demon lord Deskari. Lucius is an invaluable resource for parties seeking information on the fallen demigod, but between the bureaucracy of the Boneyard and his dangerous sojourns into the Outer Rifts, he is hard to track down.

[albumarchives]

Vargrav | The Nighthold (2023)

[wowscenery]

[shadez-art]

Illidan Month: Day 14- So dead... This is a redraw of a drawing I did in 2019. I love the new version! This might be my best redraw ever! I love the way Illidan's flaming eyes turned out!

(The old version is too big for Tumblr, though! I used to make my drawings HUGE!)

[wallsofwarcraft]

(download - 1920*1080)

[illidan]

truly, nothing gets me to log in like the promise of running nighthold

[dailycharacteroption]

Planar Tour Guide: The First World part 2

(art by davvworlds on DeviantArt)

Geography

Like I said yesterday, The First World is ever-changing, with only the will of especially powerful fey keeping any area stable in a decently permanent fashion. While it is true that a particular biome could last decades on it’s own, every part of the plane is subject to the potential of great waves of change rushing over everything, turning forests to deserts, mountains to oceans, and the familiar into the utterly unfamiliar. Remember that this plane contains every concept dreamed up by the gods before the final creation was made, so impossible physics, magical laws, and the like are all possible. You might see floating islands, or colossal trees with continent-spanning branches, strange places where all that is naturally tiny is massive, and so on. You might even see strange playtime lands where massive cards and dice are overgrown with plant life like the stones of a long-dead city, and the like.

So with all these constant changes, it can be difficult to try and make broad statements about this vast realm. As such, instead we’ll focus on listing the semi-permenant realms ruled over by Eldest and other powerful fey with the wills to keep their personal domains stable.

One of the biggest cities on the plane is Anophaeus, the so-called First City on account of having existed supposedly even before Axis. The city is the divine domain of Imbrex, the fey eldest resembling colossal twin statues, while the city sprouts up around, over, and even up the feet and legs of the immobile divinity. There, First World gnomes and other fey trade in many wondrous things and try to interpret the telepathic dreams of their patron.

As the name suggests, the Crumbling Tower is a partially ruined edifice that serves as the home of the Lost Prince, the Eldest of melancholy and lonliness. It is inhabited by him and his followers, who work constantly to shore up the construction of the tower even as it’s top floors continue to crumble and fall. Though hardly an appealing place for most, the Lost Prince’s library, the Helix, is one of the best in the First World.

Meanwhile, in a misty forest where mirror-like pools abound, the Forest Pools is the realm of Magdh and her norns, all of which quietly watch the future and see all possibilities for both the First World and the entirety of the cosmos.

Cast in perpetual twilight by the canopy of the Silkwood and suspended on cords of spider silk, the Hanging Bower is the home of the Green Mother, the eldest of the predatory allure of nature. It is a place of sensual revelry where companionship and intoxicants are at their most varied. It is also, however, a place of politics and intrigue, with many a deal conducted in a seedy pleasure den. Just be careful if you catch the attention of the Green Mother herself. While she has her own desires and intrigues, not all survive her attention.

Rising high atop a mountain and constantly shifting between different eras of it’s own construction, the House of Eternity is home to Shyka the Many, the eldest of time. Shyka’s library the most comprehensive that most beings could ever hope to find, supposedly having a copy of every book that has or ever will be written. Of course, Shyka is likely to demand a price, usually some unique artifact, in exchange to taking a peek.

Ruined and sunk to the bottom of the deepest trench of the Cerulean Sea, Karaphas the Drowned is home to the father of linnorms, the eldest Ragadahn. Few are allowed to enter, but ramshackle cities spring up along the outskirts populated by those seeking the favor of their ruler.

Count Ranalc is long gone, but his domain Nighthold remains, though not unchanged, with the Bleeding Mount volcano raining ash and fire on the ruins of his acropolis. Shadows and wicked fey rule, held back by a fence of magical lanterns. According to legend, if someone can make it to and sit on the throne of the realm, they will become it’s ruler, though no one has survived the attempt thus far.

An onion-domed compound with inward-curved walls, the Palace of Seasons lies in the middle of a desert, and is watched over by the eldest Ng. Within it’s empty halls one can find many secrets, including specimens of exotic seasons that were tested, but never implemented on any world of the Material Plane. Though regarded by most as his home, Ng claims that he is actually watching over the realm for another eldest.

Finally, the Witchmarket, is an oddity among permanent fey realms in that it is much more mobile than they are, a roving caravan of fey merchants that travel not just around the First World, but also onto the Material Plane, though it is clear to those who enter that they are not quite within the familiar world while among it’s wagons and tents. It is said anything can be found there, but the merchants do not truck in coin, instead accepting payment in often-dangerous services, new magic, and seemingly impossible and ephemeral things.

Additionally, there are a few things one must also note about the First World beyond the tricks of fey and the ever-shifting landscape. The first is that magic is wild and unstable. In many places, it is traditionally wild, but in others, it simply becomes unpredictable, forcing casters to focus their will to make sure the spell happens as intended, though some of these effects are beneficial.

The other thing to remember is that just as parts of the First World are stabilized by the will of the Eldest, so too is the rest of the plane affected by the will of those within. Though difficult, it is possible to create temporary changes to the environment by focusing on it, though exactly the extent of how much can be changed depends on the power of the one doing the altering. These can range from reshaping a wood thicket to allow a path through to cleaving out a temporary demiplane from the First World, which appears to outsiders to be a fenced-off realm within the plane that none without strong magic can penetrate or peer into.

That will do for today, but as we can see, the First World is capable of cities and structure, but the fact it is made up of everything that is or might have been part of the Material Plane makes it a place of abundance and wild chaos, of infinite generation and renewal as all ideas are constantly changed and remixed with each other. Look forward to tomorrow when we talk about the creatures that live there!

[itsradiogoblin]

i think us gen z world of warcraft players turned out incredibly funny. where was this for lonely little 13 year old me who was raiding antorus and nighthold