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The following is reposted here from the forums of the Scions of Darkness, a Steamwheedle Cartel (US) Alliance-side guild made entirely of bastards. By which I mean warlocks. I have a gnome in with them, and this is her story.
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I was told I should come to this place and set my past in writing, that all may see what gutter I crawled out from. I suppose this is your collective right, then, to see me for who I am and where I am from. Therefore I will not stall any longer.
My name is Arixie Lorana Vilebrass. The first two were given by parents now deceased. The last is new; a recent addition and a rebirth of sorts, given by the man who raised me. A man who, as it turns out, is not a man in the least, but something far greater and more beautious.
I was born the only child of a pair of typical gnomes - an engineer for a father and a mage for a mother. Due to her working with unstable energies during pregnancy, my mother granted me an early head start along the route of the arcane in the form of a connection to the Art - literally. An explosion of brilliant arcane energy and the resulting backlash of Netherese shadow energies innundated her swollen belly - and my fortunate self - with a flood of power, some of which I can still tap into today. This is the first and only gift she gave me. For the little time that I knew her, a scant few years, she did nothing else for me aside from changing my nappy. I do not think I was a wanted child.
Perhaps due to my exposure to the energies of the Nether, I was an unnaturally curious child when it came to things others referred to as 'evil beings'. I was - and still am - utterly facinated with the very makeup and life cycles of the beings commonly referred to as demons. Needless to say, this facination did not go over well with my mother, who tried to steal my books from me at every possible opportunity. My father, however, was my grace in this case - when my mother had stomped off to do whatever it is that mages do, my father would secretly bring the books back to me.
I still have a soft spot for him, but he did have to die.
When the troggs invaded Gnomeregan, I did what any child with knowledge of the demonic presences would do - I used the rituals I had learned by memory and called one to help get me to safety. Of course, to do so, I required a bold sacrifice. I pretended to be weak and fearful of the troggs, a premise easily played out by a small girl in the wake of an invasion. I lured my father to a specially prepared ritual space - he took my runes of power for child's doodles - and slit his throat from my place on his back.
He looked very confused, laying in the middle of my summoning circle, bleeding to death. I almost felt bad.
But the ritual worked. The shadows under me churned and roiled until a form stepped from them. A horse, with a blazing mane. I grabbed a satchel of my favourite books, climbed onto his back, and he ran. I awoke some time later - the horse was gone, the books were strewn on the ground in front of me, and what appeared to be a human male with eyes like pitch was regarding me.
I spent the rest of my formative years under that man's - being's - tutelage, never able to replicate, but always longing for, that horse with the mane of fire.
As for who he really was, that man, that is another story for another time.
~Arixie Vilebrass,
Apprentice Demonologist
Initiate of the Scions of Darkness.
A little ways down the page, another narrative starts, written in a totally different hand from the first. It appears to have been partly crossed out, as if another writer had tried to blot it out of the tome entirely, but most of it is still legible.
Hah. That's funny. Real funny. As per usual, the 'mistress' is lying through her rotten gnomish teeth. Everything about that story, save three facts, is completely false. I suppose I get to set the record right, then.
Name's Quznip. I'm an imp. Yeah, I know, imps are vile little liars and not to be trusted. Shut it. Seriously, I'm tellin' the truth here, mainly 'cause that little wench has already lied enough for three of me. The true facts in that story Arixie told are these:
1) Her name is Arixie Lorana Vilebrass, and she's a gnome.
2) Her father was a tinker and her mother was a mage.
3) She escaped from Gnomeregan with a few tomes on demons when the whole thing blew up.
Other than that, it's a stupid and badly told pack of lies.
Here's what really happened.
Arixie wasn't a child when Gnomeregan blew - she was an average, angsty little trollop who was in the process of hitting puberty like a ton of copper bricks. She was all bad eyeliner and white powder make-up back then. She even dyed that hideous neon green hair of hers tar black. It was great. I wish I'd gotten pictures.
She wasn't some badass necromancer, either - she was just trying to do something different from her mother, who was trying really hard to push the kid into what she thought was legitimate magic. Of course, being a puberty-riddled little thing, the kid rebelled and started hangin' out with the bad crowd - wannabe warlocks and demonettes. Somehow the little coven they formed got their grubby paws on a legit source of demonic rituals, and decided their newest member - Arixie - got first dibs at trying to really summon something from it.
She tried to summon the nightmare - the horse she mentioned, with the flaming mane - but botched the ritual and got me instead. She's still pissed about that one, and she's still taking it out on me. Like it's my fault she didn't read the runic configuration correctly.
b***h.
Anyway, she calls me up, I appear, she throws a temper tantrum of epic proportion. Just then, some alarms go off.
The Gnomeregan incident started.
Little miss warlock grabs for the tomes, greedy as all get-out, stuffs 'em in her pack and runs for the exit, leaving her coven mates wondering what's goin' on. Of course, I follow her - she summoned me, it's my job to let her know she's being an idiot.
She has no idea what happened to her father. She didn't kill him at all. And her mother, as far as I know, is alive and well in Ironforge's magic quarters.
We managed to clear Gnomeregan and get to Ironforge fairly safely, but beings of my unique background aren't too welcome in a city of dwarves, and since they have mallets bigger than my whole body, I managed to talk the kid into leaving.
We holed up in a cave near Coldridge Valley, and I taught her everything I could about my kind, summoning, and proper magic. There was no 'mysterious human male', it was all my handiwork. She was, I admit, a pretty quick study. But she's still a bad liar and a worse person to work for.
We decided to leave the cave an-
At this point the text stops abruptly, ending in a large blotch of ink and what looks like the impression of an imp head, which seems to have been slammed in the book.
 Cranium Squirrel · Fri Oct 13, 2006 @ 04:17am · 0 Comments |
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