zilcar

[zilcar]

Gift Art of Chibi Zilcar!

[zilcar]

The Fearful Reminder

Zilcar managed to escape the tree during it’s downfall, though not without a fair of bit pain. He had made it to the cabin of a ship. His clothes were tattered, heavy with ash and soot. He was leaned back in a chair, two silently resting children against his chest, one on each leg, a son and a daughter. Their cheeks stained in the tears shed from the pain they felt, severe burns that painted their backs now covered in bandages. Zilcar looked down to them both with tired eyes, clutching them gently. You won’t be taken from me... You’re all I have left... He let his eyes slowly slide shut, hands sliding up to comb their hair. Fingers ran through the messy blue strands, cradling the heads against his chest while he held back the genuine fear and the tears that threatened to escape him. I won’t let this happen again... Even if it costs me my life. He slowly opened his eyes, feeling numbness instead of pain as he looked down to his wounded children. His voice rang in his head, but it wasn’t his thought. It -will- cost me my life... He shuddered, casting the thought from his mind. Now was not the time for weakness. Now was not the time to give in to the whispers. Now was the time for blood.

[zilcar]

I walk with the shadows, because I am forced to. Try my hand, and you will regret it.

[zilcar]

RPing Shadow Abilities

Hello friend! Are you a Shadow Priest in game? Or Shadow Adept/Shadow Fiend/Actual Shadow? I have been RPing my Shadow Priest for roughly three years now and I have had my share of experiences with her talents and abilities in RP situations. I thought I could share what I know, and maybe give you ideas you can use with your RP too!

This is by no means the only way to RP Shadow, Void, or Shadow Priest. What makes RP so amazing is that everyone can come to their own conclusions on how they RP anything, especially when it comes to magic and other ambiguous stuff. But I also know I’ve had a few folks ask me how best to RP Shadow for their new priest so I want to share my take!

-General-

First thing to know about Shadow? It’s -not- kinetic. Unlike Arcane which is energy transferred, or fel which is chaotic or destructive energies, Shadow is entirely based upon the nature of existence. This is partly why I adore it so much. All other magics exist, and can be quantified based upon power. But Shadow is entirely metaphysical in that it is, in essence, the nature of nonexistence. This is what makes it so potent, because we as living things exist. And we can not comprehend what it is to not exist as hard as we may try. So imposing the Void upon the mind is often what breaks it. And it is that very madness that many Shadow users eventually succumb to.

To put it simply, when an arcane wielder kills, you might see burns or broken bones upon the victim. If a fel user kills, expect to see decay or burns as well from the raw destructive and chaotic energies. Shadow will leave the person’s body entirely intact, but the mind will be in various states of discord or perhaps even total nervous system shutdown. That is how you know a Shadow user struck. You see bodies with no apparent injuries.

So we touched on the overall. What about abilities in specifics? I’ll offer you some of the in game abilities and how I have RPed them. I encourage you to explore though! Feel free to use the way that I RP them, but also search for your own methods as well. That’s part of the fun, Shadow lets you put your own twisted flair onto your character’s talents.

Mind Blast

Have to begin with a personal favorite. Mind Blast is a very potent ability but also one of the more ICly devastating ones. Mind Blast is exactly as it sounds. You, the Shadow user, are taking a person and collecting their worst moments. Their horrid memories, their worst pains ever experienced, their deepest fears and their biggest failures. You are taking everything they hold as negative and harmful, hence the ‘cast time’, and then you unleash it upon their mind..all at once. This is more stress then even the strongest individual can withstand, and most people will either mentally shut down or go into a cardiac arrest from the sheer weight of the overload. Mind Blast is a -lot- of fun, and though I have only ever used it on two player characters, both times it was the death of the other character.

Shadow Word: Pain

Another personal favorite. This staple in any Shadow Priest’s arsenal is both fun to use and, depending on your RP partner, fun to react to. Most people I have seen RP it as attacking the nerves. As if you are causing them to send pain signals. This is one way to do it, and as always I encourage everyone to find what they most enjoy, but this is not how I have been doing it. Shadow, like most things, attacks the mind. The nerves themselves are left entirely out of the equation, but you as the Shadow user are in fact causing a massive mental hallucination. You are going for the mind itself, and feeding it sensations of pain from being skinned alive or being burned. The reason I choose this method is it is far more focused and simple. Why attack every nerve in a person’s body when you can instead just trick the brain into false pain signals? This gives you one target, and allows you as the user to titrate how severe or mild the person’s pain is. I have done everything from paper cut levels of pain to full skin-on-fire agony. Play around with it!

Dispersion

Some Priests swear by this ICly, like myself, others choose not to touch it. I adore it because it allows my character to move around with ease and be anywhere despite magical barriers. The essence of Dispersion is to separate it from Blink or other teleportation talents. When a mage blinks, they are fading to energy, and that energy is tunneled forward before being reconstituted. Even teleportation is similar in that you ‘tunnel’ by connecting two points through a tear is space-time. Fel gates work the same, a point A to point B tunnel. But Dispersion in my opinion is a -lot- more fun. You are not ‘teleporting’. You are in fact ceasing to exist. You draw the Shadow up to consume you, and as we talked about, Shadow and Void is the essence of nonexistence. Thus you are swallowed up and entirely stop existing. The key is, when you ‘emerge’, you are beginning existence again. You did not ‘tunnel’ or create a tear. You just stopped being, and started being somewhere else. This is also how Shadow users can replicate their form into mirrors. Because they can not only disperse themselves into nonexistence, but they can draw many ‘thems’ from that same ether into existence. Fun times!

Mind Flay

A real crowd pleaser, this one. I’ve used it IC on a number of occasions and it always gets great reactions. Mind Flay is, again, a lot like it sounds in terms of RP. To flay is to peel away, so now apply that definition to mentality. Boom, you have Mind Flay. With this talent, you are invading another’s thoughts but not directly assaulting them. Instead, you are ‘peeling away’ at their thoughts. I usually RP it that as the victim thinks of anything, my character ‘steals’ it. As memories come up, she claims them. Friends? Gone. Face of wife/husband? Erased. Children? You can’t remember them. Essentially you are ‘peeling away’ at what makes them a person. Their talents, their memories, their knowledge, you are flaying it all away layer by layer. In the end, you leave a husk. Alive in body, but dead of mind. What’s brilliant is that you as the user can choose when it ends. If you want to just erase their knowledge of their kids, you can, and leave them with no memory of the people they once loved but otherwise they are fine. Experiment here, it’s a blast.

Shadow Mend

Another fun one. Other talents like Druidic magic or Light mends wounds by knitting flesh or even accelerating healing. Shadow Mend is strangely different. You are not ‘healing’, you are simply making the wound not exist. This replaces the wounded area with a broken replacement as reality tries to ‘fix’ what is now no more. The issue is that while the wound is gone, it leaves behind the painful memory of that injury that can not be taken away. And because it was never healed properly, the wounded area can remain in pain for months before Light or other treatments can true mend the area. This is why Shadow Mending should be used as a last resort ICly.

Conclusion

These are just some of the more common talents, and ones that I have used often to great RP success and fantastic reactions. Some of the others like Mind Control or Void Eruption are a bit easier to RP and pretty much do what they say in the name. Still, explore your own way to RP it!

In the end, have fun! Shadow is a fantastic canvas to really add some personal flair, and while one user may interact with Void in one way, another user may have a totally different experience. With madness, there is no ‘set way’ to go about it. So I hope you at least enjoyed reading, and have fun!

Shadow keep you.

[zilcar]

Zilcar, by LittleMoose/Wisp!

[zilcar]

Reblog if it's okay for people to come into your askbox and ask about your OCs

Even if I’ve never spoken to them, even if I don’t know them from a hole in the wall, even if they’re on anon, people asking questions about my OCs make my day.

[zilcar]

Chibi Zilcar, drawn by Vanillacirque.

[zilcar]

Finished piece by Justin Mayhew.

[zilcar]

Peace Will Come...

Bandu’da zin’so shalla, ashisora’sha’rish Sing the glory of the Dark, son of sorrow,

Anu’talah’misah; tir’talah rista’landa sin’nodan You are Death’s messenger: watch over the dying and tear their throat and let them bleed,

Anu’shalla, anu’amon, anu’rin sha’balanah, so diel’shalla’dor Be chaos, be silence, be the chilled touch of power, and walk in the shadowy places.

Sin’albanar astfar’shalla’hinar anu’mirin’dola And may the blood on your hands remind us of the dark secrets your smile can hide.

Sidha’tol’bellah, anat’al’anu Peace will come one day, but not for you. Written by the fantastic Surala -) https://courtofsouls.tumblr.com/ (-

[zilcar]

Drawn by Kyphaz, May 2018

[zilcar]

The first real piece of art I ever got of Zilcar. Drawn by Ynorka, Early 2017.

[zilcar]

Child of the Stars, drawn by Ynorka - November 2017

[zilcar]

Drawn by Garth, December of 2017.

[zilcar]

A Torn and Battered Journal

((This is a tome recovered during Zilcar's time as a prisoner of the Sin'dorei guild Fireborne. Hope you enjoy the read.)) <The pages are extremely old, and the original ink in the book is faded, and illegible with the new ink written over. Most of the beginning Darnassian and Common look very jagged towards the end of the book, as if the writer was trembling heavily. > Zilcar Montesa, Day 9; 1st Entry I found this old destroyed tome in one of the abandoned rooms that we passed when we first got here, and I finally have something to write with. I can’t lose this book or let them find it; I figure putting my thoughts down on paper will help delay the time it will take me to lose my mind in this place. My thoughts are still racing from that day. How many times has that scenario played out in my head? How could I have done better? I still have her look in my head when they took me. I wonder how she’d react knowing I kept fighting once I was across that portal? Maybe a smile. Though I forget why, I blacked out during the struggle and awoke in a cell… with almost nothing on my person. My cellmate was this wild-eyed, bearded cultist who looked like he hadn’t seen the sun in too damn long. He kept mumbling about how ‘the cell is the haven in this hell’. I figure he means how harsh these torture methods are, and how they don’t come down here to torture us unless they want something from us specifically. I’ve been here little over a week, and I’ve yet to see anything too harsh. Perhaps they don’t know what they have yet. ---- Zilcar Montesa, Day 11; 2nd Entry <The ‘ink’ is now red, changing from the faded black from the last entry> My cellmate bled out from the last torture a few hours ago, and I was out of ink. Whoever finds this, don’t think too much into the change in ink. They’re more vigorous with how they’re doing things. They want something, and they’re working to get it out of someone. They just lacerated my crazed cellmate once they figured he’d give them nothing they needed. It’s hard to get sleep here. Harder than normal, that is… they never stop; someone is always screaming, either it’s down the hall or floors away. There’s always some kind of noise. Though I can still sleep comfortably for now, they haven’t done anything worse than whips and beatings yet. Though it’s strange; I remember them willing to lose personal to capture me, so then why are they going so easy lately? This worries me. ---- Zilcar Montesa, Day 12; 3rd Entry I was right, they didn’t know what they had. I was about to get a new cellmate. A fighter, he knocked one of the guards with his elbow straight in the groin. First time I’ve smiled in days. Though… they beat him for a moment and threw him in here, they were about to leave. Then one of them saw me. He seemed to recognize me from somewhere, but he immediately took the other prisoner and put him somewhere else. Then… that warlock, or mage… whatever she was. She told the guards what I was… I laughed. I got a small beating from laughing at her, but… I found it funny that she had me put here without telling anyone what I had. Nevertheless, I assume my leisurely stay here is about to be a bit more serious now… ---- Zilcar, Day 19; 4th Entry <Small impact drops of blood stain the top of the page, over where ‘Montesa’ would normally be> A week. I haven’t been in this cell for a week. There’s someone else here now… another with this same connection to darkness as me, a human. He says they attacked him in Northrend, same as me… After I laughed at her, they picked me up and… it’s been a blur of pain and questions since. The only way I know it’s been a week is how many times I’ve seen the moon out the one window they have. I’m sure I’ve fractured or broken a fraction of my bones, this gash on my forehead won’t stop bleeding, and I’m missing a wisdom tooth. That one hurt a bit more than it should have. Though hey… on the bright side, I know the Order works fast. I’ll be out soon. Even if not by them, I will escape before they do anything big to me, or get anything out of me. I won’t let them. They could have me in there for a decade… I won’t break. ---- Zilcar Montesa, Day 24; 5th Entry <The writing is extremely sloppy, as if someone still learning their alphabet was writing> They cut off my left hand, so now I get to write with my right… joy. No better reason to become more ambidextrous. Also, the other prisoner was taken away from here. So much for having a close ally. They’re good at making their prisoners feel weak, both in spirit and physically. Though that’s mostly from blood-loss and belittling tactics… Oddly, simple shit. It’s just what they do here. Some of these tactics… they’re all on the fly. One man seemed to care for half a second. He asked one of the prisoners if he needed anything. He told him that he was hungry… poor bastard. He took the prisoners hand and cut off a finger, and shoved it into his mouth, which he taped shut. He took off the tape the next day to do something else, but the finger was gone… I don’t know how long that man had been here… but how desperate do you have to be... ---- Zilcar, Day 30(?); 6th Entry They put me in solitary confinement awhile ago. I don’t know the day count anymore, but I’m pretty sure it’s been about a week… maybe not as long yet. At least I was able to catch up on sleep… though I started running out of things to think about those last few hours. I’m glad they pulled me out to punish someone else who fucked up. When I asked one of the others about what’s happened since I was put away like that, and he ignored me. Figures. I can’t get a straight answer from anyone anymore, they beat and punish anyone who talks to me… to anyone, really… but they focus on me. They’re trying to isolate me, and its fucking working. I need to find an ally in here. Anyone. ---- Zilcar; 7th Entry <There seemed to be an original entry here, though it’s now covered in a splatter of dried blood and written over> It feels like it’s been weeks since my last entry. I have no idea what time it is, and all the days just blur together. Wake up, pain, questions, an hour for their lunch or whatever they stop in the middle of the day for, more pain, thrown back in the cell for an attempt at sleep, and it feels they come get me for more pain an hour later. It never ends, and I finally had a chance here. Idiots caught me writing, and beat me for it… but forgot to take the tome. Or maybe he didn't think it really mattered, he just wanted a reason… who knows. I need to start looking at ways out. Or some kind of ally here, I need help. I can’t keep going at this alone. The cell is haven in this hell… I see what that human was talking about. ---- Zilc-… ; -8th Entry <It’s obvious there was space here for an entry, but it looks smeared in dried blood, the name starting the entry blotched out by what looks like large drops of blood. All that’s legible are a few words here and there.> …They cut it out, my f-… alking to other prisoners, and he came up to me with sciss-… -od won’t stop pouring out, I feel like I’m g-… -ightheaded, doing what I can to stop the bleeding. My sight is getting blurry, I ca-… <The next letter was in the middle of being written, but trails off and the ink runs off the page> …I passed out. I’m being a bit more careful and less panicky while I write this time… they cut out my fucking tongue for talking about escaping. They caught me and pulled out scissors. I can’t think of what the others were doing, but now it’s going to be all on my own. I just pray I make it out soon. There has to be something here they missed. There always is, there’s always a weak point in defense. ---- Zilcar; 9th Entry They know what I’m trying to do now, so guard around me has been increased. They’re allowed to do whatever they feel is necessary whenever they feel I get out of line. It’s not like I have anything to say to them, anyways… heh. Accidental Pun. The guards switch out at midnight and noon, 12 hour shifts. They’re gone for about 2-3 minutes when they leave, and the lock on the door is a brand new padlock, but it looks generic. It shouldn’t be hard to pick even with makeshift tools. This missing hand is a pain in the ass, though… really, everything hurting right now is a pain in the ass. I’ll find something, though. I won’t die here, not in this hole. ---- Zilcar; 10th Entry I took a beating for it, but I got what I needed to get out of this cell when I get the chance. And best of all, they can hide in plain sight. They were dragging a dead prisoner past this cell, and he had a limb hanging by a scrape of skin… I managed to pull it off, claiming I need something to beat the rats away. Not sure if it worked, considering they kicked me a few times, but they left the arm. I’ll have to dig the bones out from their place and whittle them down to something I can use as a lockpick when I get the chance. I can taste freedom. <It looks like there may have been a few more entries, though the rest of the tome is torn off, the spine of the book being all that’s keeping it from falling apart.>

[zilcar]

The Original Sin - Part I

Zilcar began to open his eyes, his vision beyond blurry. He found himself staring into the dirt beneath him, his ears ringing. He couldn't get a clear thought across, everything was racing and his head was pounding. He felt himself groan, but didn't hear it. He started to drag his hands through the sand, attempting to push himself up off the ground before he heard a muffled scream. He got to his hands and knees, noticing his sleeves were missing. "Wh... What happened? The last thing I remember was..." He thought to himself. An image flashed across his mind of the deserts of Sithilus, and he heard another scream. He could hear the fear in it's voice. Zilcar came to his senses, staring clearly into bloodied sand and rags littered across the ground. He pushed himself up to his feet, looking over his skin. The sight caught him very off guard, but he wasn't scared. His skin was no longer that blue tone akin to Kaldorei, and instead was dripping in what looked like black tar, shadows screaming and swirling along his body. He reached up to drag his palm across his face, and came back with more of that inky shadow. Though again, he wasn't scared. Who did this to me...? How did this happen?! He thought again. He looked up at his surroundings now, a sudden but calm anger running through him. Cultists adorned with purple and black robes surrounded him, carrying daggers and most of them with a look of absolute horror, others with absolute glee. Zilcar saw them, recognized them... and saw them in his way. He spoke, quiet but low with a shaking rage guiding his words. "Get out of my way." He demanded, his body moving in accordance on it's own. His hands lifted, and pointed towards two of the more terrified cultists. From his palms at a speed too quick to comprehend, shot three little tendrils from each. They pierced each man in the head and shoulders, impaling the both of them and began coiling around their joints, ripping the body apart as each tentacle tore and pulled away from the torso. Zilcar watched the blood stain the sand, and stared at it for a moment. He felt something in his chest, something start up. Like there was a pile of tinder and wood sitting there, and someone just threw a match into it. He grinned, ignoring the men and women either running away or running towards him, knives or other weaponry drawn. Ignoring their words, their threats, and cries of fear. He grinned. And started to giggle, which grew to chuckling. He grabbed two of the cultists that charged him by their faces, thumbs digging into their temples and nails clawing into their scalps. He didn't mind the daggers and serrated edges being shoved into his arms, he didn't feel them. It didn't hurt, and he saw no blood. Only more black ooze pour from his body. He stared at one of those he grabbed, his eyes soulless. They weren't those bright, sky blue eyes he had before all this. They weren't off, or dilated, or even black. They were gone. His eyes were husks, a transparent void of what should be. "Oh, would you look at that." He squeezed the heads tighter, pressing forward into them slowly, "You've gone and made a mess." He would continue pressing forward, sickening snaps and shrieks of pain erupting from the two men. Their necks being snapped slowly, painfully, and with content, psychotic laughter erupting from Zilcar, the other's surrounding him now backing away. They couldn't believe what they'd done. They were shocked, frozen in fear. They couldn't run, only stay and watch in onlooking horror. The necks of the two men finally gave, and they went limp, Zilcar releasing them as they dropped to the ground like rag dolls, blood trickling down their faces from the grip. Zilcar wasted no time in regaining that needy, addictive feeling in the pit of his stomach. He straightened his hand out to shove his fingers through a woman's neck, impaling her with his hand and gripping her jaw from within, dragging her along and throwing her into another robed man, blood spraying along his frame. He saw the woman fly off, but a jaw was still in his grip. He grinned, dropping the wet and fleshy jaw into the dirt. Yes. Zilcar grabbed another and shoved his hand into the mans chest, noting how easy it felt to do so... his movements ran through these men and women like their skin was the sand they stood on. He felt the man's lungs, shoving his nails into one of them and letting it fill with blood, yanking his hand back out and shoving him to the ground, watching him cough and choke in pain and agony, crimson painting his face and robes. Yes. Zilcar saw one of the women running for her life now, shooting a tendril out to her and catching her in the neck, lifting her into the air by it and watching her flail. It constricted around her neck tighter, trailing down to the womans ankles and wrapping around them as well. Then the tendril tensed, stretching her out more and more, the woman crying and screaming in pain as her joints began to dislocate and her skin began to tear. She finally gave, organs and blood dumping buckets of contrasting red all over the ground, the tendrils of black releasing the woman and letting the two halves of her fall to the ground. YES. Zilcar felt it in his core. Something he'd never felt before, an urge. He needed to kill. He needed to see that beautiful inner color splay across the sky and the ground, he needed to feel this lack of control, the utter glee in his heart on watching a life be lost so easily. And so he did. He fed into that feeling. By the end of the hour, the entire camp was razed to the ground by what they had created. Fire mixed with bone and blood. The black, liquid shadow that dripped off Zilcar staining the area. And he would move on to do the same to people less deserving of such brutal punishment. Though in the end, it would seem they would have won in creating chaos in the world.