How often do you get impatient for something big to happen for your character? Whether it's a wedding, a breakup, a character revamp, or just having the opportunity to RP with a well-loved but rarely-seen character, there are often circumstances that prevent us from being able to snap our fingers and declare "boom! done!" about something.

When it's a matter of lining schedules up, that can be frustrating. When it's a matter of many plots weaving together properly, that can be challenging.

When you are waiting for Cataclysm to come out so you can race-change your most-logged-in character and have her take over the mantle of the character you still consider your main, it can drive you UP THE DAMN WALL.

In a way, I kind of wonder if the impatience I'm feeling toward getting to play Ovistine full-time again is rubbing off on poor Teuthida. Teuthida's major plotline, I felt, had a lot to do with Kael'Thas -- she and Valyrie originally set off on the mission to retake Tempest Keep, ended up on the Exodar, and after many adventures, took the bastard down. Her real goal at this point has always been to help rebuild Shattrath City and try to help out at the orphanage. But off she trots into Naxxramas... Ulduar... Trial of the Crusader... Icecrown Citadel... not because she wants to, but because I love playing a shaman.

How's she doing now? Well, she's not really enjoying herself in ICC; she comes home smelling terrible, she's not entirely convinced Arthas can be beaten, and she simply doesn't have the same kind of background with the heroes of Azeroth that other people do. (She barely blinks an eyelash at Muradin Bronzebeard, and has yet to figure out why Muradin calling out "By me own beard!" makes several members of her adventuring party raise their boomsticks or steins in a loud /cheer.) Arthas, ultimately, worries her a lot, and she's not so sure her time is best-spent there in ICC, as opposed to being home with Valyrie or going back to Shattrath and trying to make sure a few orphaned Draenei have a really great next few years (even if the next few years are all that's left).

I, on the other hand, pretty much love ICC. The fights are challenging but not impossible, the plot is great, and I'm really excited to see how it all works out for us (PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD NO SPOILERS). I'm really having a good time there, and it's nice to know that there's still so much new content ahead of us.

Mind you, there's an RP reason for Ovistine not to be in Icecrown Citadel right now -- with her memory and abilities as fractured as they are, she knows she can't be trusted to go into the front lines. She doesn't know when her healing abilities will be cut off again -- it could happen at any moment. She doesn't know whether she'll always be able to harness chaos and walk in shadows, or if that's at some risk of going away with the light as well. ICC is really dangerous, and Ovistine's not about to put her friends at risk by asking them to bring along a priest who may or may not be reliable, albeit through no fault of her own.

There's still Ovi's memory to sort out before she can really tackle the other alternative, the one she hasn't even thought about yet -- harnessing healing energies the way the Wildhammers do it. I have a character in play who's intended to be a possible pathway to that end, but I'm leaving my options open -- I don't want to lock myself into one true storyline, since I think improvising Ovi's story has been an awful lot of fun over the past several months. But at some point, I should probably write up a quick bit on Varrim Featherstoneshire (Fanshaw), a former gryphon rider who took a very bad fall and is not even a little bit happy about being grounded for the foreseeable future.

So at the moment I feel like I've got two choices:

* Retcon, retcon, retcon: Write out the Wrathgate story as I've always wanted to have it happen, and accept the fact that it fails several continuity checks. Rework anything I've written that contradicts it, and start RPing the Lighthammers as they'd be after the Wrathgate right now.

* Move the timeline: Wrathgate has happened, the Lighthammers made it through okay, and shift the Lighthammer events from Wrathgate to the opening of Icecrown Citadel.

Much as I loved the idea of setting it at Wrathgate, I think the continuity problems are going to bother me too much to do it there and then, and I think the major events of the Lighthammer storyline can be picked up and moved. Which means I should probably go ahead and let them both get their Wrathgate achievement, and this time around, stop dragging my heels.

When Lich King was on its way, I was really determined not to play my alts. I wanted One True Character, and I'd decided that, because I liked the shaman class so much, it was going to be Teuthida. I was tired of gearing up alts, I was tired of chasing down rep for multiple classes -- I was really very, very ready to just have one character I played and not have to worry about the leveling, the gearing, the instancing, the rep grinding, and so on.

It hadn't occurred to me, really, because rep grinding is still such a pain, but the major objections I had to alting are now gone. If I want to be exalted with all the factions, it doesn't take instancing -- it just takes doing dailies, so all it really takes is time. I'm not terribly interested in raiding with anybody but Teu and, you know, Ovi, because I just want to be playing Ovi, period. I just want Nancie geared up well enough to handle heroics, and crafting handles the bulk of that. I really don't care about gear for most of the rest of my alts -- Agness and Lyja and Lil' Teu are more there to enjoy the leveling experience and do some crafting work for me than anything else. (Lyja is 71 and a 450 elixir master alchemist; Lil' Teu is 68 and a 405 transmute master alchemist. Agness is my scribe. I spend a lot of time on my alts herbing!)

So while I do have a list of things I'd like to do for each character, none of them have much urgency or require a big time commitment -- something that really felt different back in BC.

As for RP, due to both time commitment issues and my skittishness doing major RP in-game, the RP is usually either off-the-cuff, mainly with Valinar's alts, or written -- which means there's time for everybody, and certainly time for everyone to have an active life in my head. ^_^ Some alts will always get more RP time than others, but I'm amused to note that an alt who probably won't see much play time at 80 (Agness) is turning out to be one of my more active RP muses. I suspect it's the interaction between Agness and Vaelen, which amuses me to no end. (I think I also like having a drama-free couple to play with. They don't fight, they don't have angst, they aren't going to split up, and Vaelen will probably never figure out what's going on with that imp.) But beyond that, there's a bit of a parallel going on between Agness and Ovi that I had completely failed to notice before: they're both former Light-users who are both going through an uncomfortable time as they adjust to living without the Light.

I need to make more time for writing!

Ovistine Lighthammer in full 8/8 Virtuous, wielding Benediction.

I had a definite "WHOA" moment on seeing that. I'm so glad I kept that armor and that weapon! Talk about your blast from the past...

Teuthida: Unchanged, IC and OOC.

Agness: IC, still struggling with what to say about her shadow powers, and still avoiding thinking about the fact that she isn't as strong in the holy arts as she used to be. OOC, 76 and momentarily on hold as the Boomstick RP picks up.

Nancie: IC, still in flux as I work on the Wrathgate story. OOC, dinged 80, has an epic flappy, maxed out her mining and jewelcrafting, working on her Argent Dawn/Crusade rep (well over halfway through revered with both), and is collecting RP gear like crazy. She's got a set of "Wrynnforge" (it's Lightforge recolored in blue and gold), and I've got an eye out for a set of Moutaineer's Garb (you have to assemble it in pieces, mostly from AH drops), as well as giving a look around for the kind of armor she wears in her nightmares. Working on it! I really like the idea of being able to have visuals for the Nancie biography. (Yes, I'm working on that. No, I'm not on schedule. No, I don't care.)

Ovistine: IC and OOC: SHE'S BACK! \o/ The main of my heart has returned (and made me wish I'd registered twirlybraids.com instead, or in addition). IC, Ovistine has gotten her arse out of the library and taken on a role in the search for her good friend Homrend, recently killed by a mysterious group of Dark Irons and unable to resurrect because his spirit's been trapped by Hakkar (who always did bear a grudge). She knows there's a bargain that's going to have to be made to save him, and she knows what she's going to have to give up, but it's not going to stop her.

OOC, Ovistine is out of her rut, having pushed past 73 as well as getting one of those nice Cold Weather Flying Tomes. She's now 75 and I'm able to be very choosy with her quests, avoiding awful things with pitiful drop rates in favor of quests that are of more interest, both to me and to her.

I had actually been pondering the things brought up by this post on WTT:RP: what quests would Ovi do for real, and which am I doing because she's 75 and Disc/Holy and boy howdy I do not want to have to kill 93 bears for their asses, I'd rather just take a necklace to the dudes on the hill?

Ovistine is actually the first character in a while who's had an opinion about quests, and I think that's got a lot to do with how she got where she is. The short version: because Teu was my raiding main, she got pushed to 80 first, and that left Ovi constantly having to explain her absences. Eventually, I decided she'd taken up a research position at the Cathedral of Light and has been working on the Scourge problem as well as looking into these Ebon Blade death knights Varian Wrynn seems so determined to support. That left me with a much more thoughtful, much more curious dwarf than I'd started with -- so thoughtful and curious that she's beginning to think more seriously about archaeology and where the dwarves came from. The Explorers' League holds a lot more appeal for her now than it ever used to, and she's been distracted from her main goal (find Homrend. find him now) a couple of times by information about the Titans and an old battered journal of Brann Bronzebeard's that she found in Thor Modan. Where Nancie spent the last couple of levels in Icecrown fighting Scourge, Ovistine is likely to level up in Storm Peaks looking for evidence of the Titans.

(And at some point I really need to start writing and posting Wrathgate, and begging my RP crew's forgiveness for what will probably be an abrupt "WTF" moment for Ovistine; the main reason I'm not doing it right now is because the Search for Homrend/Dark Iron Chaos storyline is moving so fast that I'd really rather not put something else into the mix. Also I'm procrastinating. Again. >_>)

• Dwarf paladins. Okay, I understand that Uther was The First Paladin, and that in spite of the fact that, say, draenei clearly had paladins (Vindicators) long before they ran into the Alliance, it's generally accepted that dwarves did not.  Fine.  I'm working with that (and it's got some neat twists that will add to my story in the long run) -- but it's annoying that canon kind of shoehorns people into either having characters who were "battle clerics"/"battle medics"/"something that looks like a paladin and quacks like a paladin, but is not, in fact, a paladin" -- or having them forced into being relatively young characters.
   
• Dwarves and the Light in general. Canon differs on the Light and its relationship to paladins.  The RPG sourcebooks all treat WoW paladins as classic D&D paladins, who lose their powers if they do bad things.  This is more or less backed up by Of Blood and Honor, although it's made clear that the Light can be giveth, and the Light can be taketh away -- sort of, unless emergencies arise.  Frankly, dwarves in general are less "follow the Light blindly even though you can't see it, touch it, smell it, or swing a pickaxe at it", and I'm not at all sure how a dwarf paladin is going to react when she recognizes she's done something immoral.  (Well, I know how mine is going to react...)  Dwarves and religion are sort of hard to pin together at all, although I've seen some lovely things from dwarf RPers who touch on the connection to the Makers and Order for Holy powers/connection to Chaos for Shadow powers.  For younger dwarves, of course, this gets easier: a dwarf raised around humans is perfectly well likely to have some influence from her peers...
   
• Magni Bronzebeard and the War of the Three Hammers.  We have an approximate date for the War itself, but how long has Magni been king?  How old is Magni?  Dwarf lore, why are you so difficult to pin down?  (Actually, I suspect it really isn't dwarf lore in particular that's hard to pin down, it's just what I'm looking at right now.)  While I'm at it, I can't tell precisely how long the Explorer's League/Guild has been going, and what the hell happened to the rest of Muradin's expedition after Arthas grabbed Frostmourne?  Did they all end up with Baelgun, and did Arthas kill all of them?
   
• Dwarf ages.  I've seen some suggestions that dwarves reach adulthood at 40 and are more long-lived than humans.  Okay, I can't deal with the idea of an infancy that lasts four years at all (let alone the thousands of years it could conceivably last for elves), so I'm going with the ElfQuest school of thought here: they age to young adulthood rapidly and just stay there for a really, really long time.  I am more or less scuttling the "adulthood at 40" concept.  (Maybe that's when they start being able to vote.)
   
• Dwarves and written language. I took one look at this page on WoWWiki and more or less thought "Oh, screw that."  Look, I can put up with the idea that the humans introduced the dwarves to the Light -- maybe (although since it really does seem like different races have different relationships to the Light that lead to similar skills and abilities, I don't see why the dwarves can't just have had those different relationships from the beginning).  I can put up with the idea that, before there were humans and before there was the Alliance, there were no dwarf paladins.
   
  But the idea that the dwarves had no written language before the humans came around can bite me right in my dwarf-shaped rear end.  Excuse me, humans, but you do not get credit for everything in the damn world.  Let me guess: the dwarves didn't have fire before they met the humans, either.  Or wheels.  What's next, we find out humans introduced the dwarves to boomsticks?  And beer.  Humans definitely introduced the dwarves to beer.
   

  Obviously, everyone has their pet class/race/etc., and humans and orcs were certainly the focus of the Warcraft world for many, many years.  It makes sense that their history is richer and deeper than everyone else's.  But why make a race as unflaggingly cool as the dwarves and then say "Oh, hey, everything the dwarves did?  It's really just because humans did it for them."  And written language?  Come on.  How do you have a race as advanced as the various types of dwarves and still say they've got no written language?
   

When it comes to canon-compliancy, I really enjoy the mental exercise of figuring out how my character could have fit into times and places without breaking obvious canon.  On the other hand, Warcraft spans so many things -- the first three games, the novels, the comic books, the RPG books.  I'm sure the tabletop game adds things, and I shudder to think how much I'm missing by not playing the collectible card game (to say nothing of rocket chickens.  God, I want a rocket chicken).  But how much is definitive canon and how much is only sort of canon?  Is it like the Star Wars movies, where only what shows up on screen is really canon and the rest, while pretty neat, isn't confining on Lucas's need to make movies in the future?  Is it like Star Trek, where the show and movies are canon, and sometimes what happens in the books can influence and later affect canon -- but only sometimes?

I dunno.  I've seen people who go both ways on this.  I've seen people who think if you don't stick to every piece of canon, including in the RPG sourcebooks, you're basically playing a vampire catgirl in Goldshire.  I've also seen people who don't feel constrained by the limitations the game puts on them (not every draenei RP backstory puts the draenei in question on board the Exodar when it crashed).  There's also the fact that canon doesn't always comply with itself -- there are plenty of resources that say the Scarlet Crusade is a bunch of racist pricks who wouldn't piss on a non-human if they were on fire and they sure won't let 'em into their secret club (hint: We Like Red), but if that's the case, why do they have statues built to great Scarlet Crusade non-human heroes?  And how old is Anduinn Wrynn now?

I wish there were easier answers for all of this!  I would love a complete, detailed timeline marking down the birth and death of every major and minor character, plus when various things were built, when wars happened, and so on.  We'll probably never get that, because honestly, it's not easy for Blizzard to keep up with their own history.  Which probably says something about how hard it is for the rest of us.  It irks me to think I'm probably going to have to tack a note onto stories that says "By the way, I went with this canon, and not this canon, and also, dwarves are not in diapers for four years."  But I probably will.

Not so clear-cut these days! With new alts being rolled all the time, events that are brand-new to one character are things I did four or five years ago with one of mine. How do you deal with a character who's just found out that the Scarlet Crusade is being run by demons? "Oh, I've known that for years." "...*splutter* You could have told me before I went in there." Or is the news new to you again every time you hear it?

The more interesting question I'm thinking about right now is whether it's feasible to juggle a timeline somewhat -- could a character of mine level up to 60, 70, even 80, without ever tackling some of the quests that should come up at 30, 40, 50? In RP/IC, could I get a character out to the Argent Tournament before she finishes the Wrathgate storyline?

Even WoW itself does some bending, folding, spindling, and mutilating to give people the opportunity to do the same quests without necessarily being at the same point in the story. Take Drakuru -- if you've done his Grizzly Hills/Drak'Tharon Keep quests, you get one quest when you see him in Zul'Drak. If you haven't, you get a different one. Either way, though, you have the same goals, and people questing together can definitely work together on them.

As NaNo approaches and I hammer down some of the details in Nancie's life, I find myself pondering what order she might have taken things in. There are some quests she probably would have avoided at all costs when she was supposed to do them, but that would make perfect sense for her character now. But it's a pretty twisty timeline, the likes of which might get me a visit from the Office of Temporal Affairs, and I'm hesitant to go for it if it seems too jarring. The fact that my character could have skipped past things, that they'd make sense for her now in a way they wouldn't have then, doesn't necessarily mean it makes good game-and-RP sense to put the timeline in a weird and unexpected order.

(Leaving aside the obvious answer of "at the gryphon master, of course"...)

But seriously, now. Where do you stand on the use of Blizzard-created NPCs in a character's backstory?

This varies for me. It depends on a number of factors, mainly having to do with how important those NPCs are and how much use they get.  How am I expected to behave in-game around people with famous connections?

What I really love are characters who don't have famous connections -- characters who are related to the tiny throwaway NPCs we see every day in game and never think twice about.  (Quick!  Name your favorite trainer for your class!  Okay, now name three other trainers for that class.  Can you do it?*)

Part of what makes WoW feel so rich to me are the fact that so many of these characters have first and last names and specific occupations, even if the occupation is "pie vendor".  What does Bimble Longberry do on her days off?  Does Myra Tyrngaarde have a son who loves baking?  How many kids does Vindicator Kaalan have?  Was Harbinger Haronem maybe a little bit of a bully when he was a kid?

Connections to characters like these make me squee; they're like finding extra easter eggs in the game.  I have a friend who RPs his dwarf as a member of the Thunderbrew clan.  Nearly everyone who knows him always barks for the Thunderbrews at Brewfest, and we've been known to say some rather uncharitable things about Barleybrew ales.  (I once had a quest bug in Brewfest, I submitted an in-character ticket, and the GM answered in-character... and my character found out people had been taking bribes from the Barleybrews, hence the quest not working!  Sometimes GMs are awesome.)

Maybe some of this has to do with expectations.  If I have a tie to a specific tiny NPC, I don't expect people to know about that, any more than I would expect people to know that my father is a musician, say.  But it creates a potential bridge to open up connection or conversation -- if someone happens to pick up on the reference and wants to run with it.  (Man, now I really want to roll up Myra Tyrngaarde's son, who loves baking.)

How 'bout you?  What do you think of people who use Blizzard-created NPCs in their backstory/history/current events?

* I like to train with Sulaa at the Exodar.  There's also... um... Farseer Nobundo... and that woman down at the lake in front of Stormwind City... and that guy in Ironforge near the Hall of Mysteries...

So you know what's coming up next month? NaNoWriMo.

Now, Angrathar doesn't strike me as being a 50,000 word story. But if you were to go back across the whole of Nancie Lighthammer's life, starting from her days as a young battle cleric from Ironforge, back in the days when her name was still Ironhammer and she and her brother Brandur were on the front lines together, going through her war adventures, earning her name, getting married, having a daughter, going back to war, the near loss of her marriage and the compromises she and Geoffar made to make things work, and eventually, the trip to Northrend and the siege of Wintergarde...

Then you might have 50,000 words.

I'm going to be spending some time noodling over lore over the next couple of weeks before I get started, and I won't be surprised if I end up tearing my hair out a bit as I try to nail down the details. I'm also pretty sure that some things are going to end up retconned a bit -- over the last four years, I've written bits and pieces of Lighthammer history, and some of it probably won't end up being exactly how it happened -- but I think I'm going to give this a shot.

After all, the world needs more stories about female dwarves. A lot of them, dammit. If anyone can name me a book (better yet, a series) where the main character (main! not supporting!) is a heroic female dwarf, I'll buy it! If you can even name any books that showcase heroic female dwarves in supporting roles, I'll be pretty damn happy.

And with any luck, at the end of November, there'll be one more.

Social
Number of hugs: 29
Total facepalms: 8
Total times playing world's smallest violin: --
Total times LOL'd: 25
Total cheers: 331
Total waves: 18

What we can take away from this, and how it relates to Teu's personality:

• Though Teu likes people, she doesn't hug nearly as often as some of my characters would, if given half the chance. It's not that she's not touchy-feely -- she just only hugs her really close friends.
• Teu has very little shame and doesn't stay embarrassed for long.
• Teu is not the least bit sarcastic. I mean, not even a little. That's just not her!
• I take minor exception to "LOL'd" -- Teu is more likely to /giggle or /chuckle than to /laugh. She definitely has a sense of humor, though!
• Teu is really, really happy and positive, no matter what. Not much gets her down. She cheers at everything!
• I have no observations on waving. >_>