Furtive Father Winter: The Perfect Present

I returned home yesterday after a couple of internet-less days to discover this awaiting me in my inbox.

 

I’ll admit I was a bit stuck when I got your name. Which of your many toons was I going to draw?!  In the end I decided to try and make a night elf harpy holding Benedition since I remember reading somewhere that it was one of your favorite items. I hope you like it.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so I’ll keep this brief. A massive thanks to Tyledres from Frost and Claws for this amazing Furtive Father Winter gift. You basically nailed it as I love it to bits.

Solstice Challenge: Days 20 & 21

Twenty-One Days, starting today, December 1, of things in Azeroth of Light Screenshots, from now until December 21. This works for both sides of the equator, seeing how we’re getting darker days in the North, the South is getting lighter. The only hitch I will add is you have to add a caption or haiku to your screenshot.
The topic/theme is light, and all its incarnations.

Day 20

In that land where a princess sits under lock and key,
Pining behind massive walls.
There gardens surround a palace all of glass;
There Firebirds sing by night
And peck at golden fruit;

Yakov Polonsky

Day 21

“Hope’s fire grows when the flames come together.”

For some reason, this little shrine in amongst the farmlands struck a cord with me. Whilst I was flying around trying to make friends with everyone on the farm, I would often stop by and whisper a prayer or two of my own.

Thank you Matty for suggesting this because focusing on things light and airy in these long dark days has helped, not only to spark my imagination but to lift my emotions too.

Introducing Havisham

She’s the polar opposite of Tome’s Flaminga with a demeanor  as cold as the snow around her. Unlucky in love, she now freezes the hearts of others, just so she can shatter them with a well aimed ice lance.

“Look at me,” said Miss Havisham. “You are not afraid of a woman who has never seen the sun since you were born?”

I regret to state that I was not afraid of telling the enormous lie comprehended in the answer “No.”

“Do you know what I touch here?” she said, laying her hands, one upon the other, on her left side.

“Yes, ma’am.” (It made me think of the young man.)

“What do I touch?”

“Your heart.”

“Broken!”

She uttered the word with an eager look, and with strong emphasis, and with a weird smile that had a kind of boast in it. Afterwards, she kept her hands there for a little while, and slowly took them away as if they were heavy.

From Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

Naturally she will leveling as Frost and will be looking to bring brain freezes to battlegrounds across Azeroth, especially to anyone she perceives as living happily ever after because no one deserves a fairytale ending, just squished pumpkin stains on your dress, dead mice in your hair and bleeding feet from walking in broken glass slippers. Oh and anyone waving the “Love Fool” title in her face had better be prepared for an onslaught of Dwarfish fury. She might also dabble in pet battles because making cute critters fight for their supper amuses her and archaeology because if people wanted to keep their stuff, they shouldn’t have given up the ghost.

In fact, I don’t think Havisham is particularly nice and to be honest, she should probably be a Warlock but she’s not. She’s a nasty, bad tempered, jealous, happiness hating Mage instead.

Solstice Challenge: Days 18 & 19

Twenty-One Days, starting today, December 1, of things in Azeroth of Light Screenshots, from now until December 21. This works for both sides of the equator, seeing how we’re getting darker days in the North, the South is getting lighter. The only hitch I will add is you have to add a caption or haiku to your screenshot.
The topic/theme is light, and all its incarnations.

Day 18

Now, the tree is decorated with bright merriment, and song, and dance, and cheerfulness. And they are welcome. Innocent and welcome be they ever held, beneath the branches of the Christmas Tree, which cast no gloomy shadow! But, as it sinks into the ground, I hear a whisper going through the leaves. “This, in commemoration of the law of love and kindness, mercy and compassion. This, in remembrance of Me!”

From the Charles Dickens short story A Christmas Tree

Day 19

O Christmas Tree, O Christmas tree,
You are the tree most loved!
How often you give us delight
In brightly shining Christmas light!
O Christmas Tree, O Christmas tree,
You are the tree most loved!

One translation of O ‘Tannenbaum

Solstice Challenge: Days 13 through 17

Twenty-One Days, starting today, December 1, of things in Azeroth of Light Screenshots, from now until December 21. This works for both sides of the equator, seeing how we’re getting darker days in the North, the South is getting lighter. The only hitch I will add is you have to add a caption or haiku to your screenshot.
The topic/theme is light, and all its incarnations.

Day 13

In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,

earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;

snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,

in the bleak midwinter, long ago.

Christina Rosetti

Day 14

“It will not go out of my mind that if we pass this post and lantern, either we shall find strange adventures or else some great changes of our fortunes.“

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

Day 15

I was grounded
while you filled the skies
I was dumbfounded by truth
you cut through lies
I saw the rain-dirty valley
you saw Brigadoon
I saw the crescent
you saw the whole of the moon!

The Waterboys, “The Whole of the Moon”.

This song is forever associated in my mind with the only occasion in my teenage years when my Father lost his temper with me. We were in Malta visiting family and I was roughly 14 or 15, determined to have fun and not be shackled to my Mother. Somewhere on the backstreets of Valletta I met a boy named Tamlyn and driven by a love of fairy stories promptly fell into his arms. We were in a darkened alley, him singing along to this song, playing on a stereo drifting down from an open window, when they found us. My Father has cold blue eyes at the best times and on this particular night, they were enough to make my “hero” take a step back, let go of my arm and then scurry off to let me “face the music” alone.

Day 16

THE wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees,
The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,
The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,
And the highwayman came riding—
Riding—riding—
The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn-door.

Alfred Noyes

(Ok, ok, it’s a wall not a road but…….)

Day 17

My candle burns at both ends
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends –
It gives a lovely light.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

All I want for Winter’s Veil is….

This!

Please Blizzard let us have wind up toy Orcs next year. I’d settle for a version which doesn’t actually move, just sits where you place it like the rag dolls. They could even come in different models, perhaps a collect the Warlords of Draenor set to celebrate the next expansion.

MoP Bucket List

I like lists, they give purpose and clarity to my thinking. In fact the first thing I do every Monday morning at work is glance over last week’s list and then make a new shiny one for the week ahead.

I know that the next expansion isn’t even being beta tested yet but it’s time in my head at least to finalize what I want to achieve before we’re all heading off to a brave new world.

Non-character specific

• Reach 14000 achievement points. I’m currently at 13215 so that’s quite a bit to go but I have plenty of options to tick off.
• Get a Magical pet to 25
• Get an Elemental pet to 25
• Defeat Garrosh and my stupid lack of self confidence at the same time.
• Explore Vashj’ir properly. This is the only exploring achievement I still haven’t completed.

Dulcamara

• Make friends with everyone on the farm
• Get Cooking to 6oo, do the Master of the Ways and pick up the Cooking School Bell
• Farm the other 8000 Dinosaur Bones I require for the mount
• Complete rank 6 in the Brawler’s Guild as a Mistweaver
• Get Endless Healer on the Proving Grounds.
• Master of Alterac Valley, only 33 graveyards to go.

Snowflower

• 35 reputations ticked off
• Exalted with the Oracles
• Collect Oracle Eggs until one miraculously turns into a Dragon.
• Argent Tournament goodies. I need more tokens to be able to buy the mounts I still have outstanding.
• Finish up Frostbitten

Calantha

• Finish farming the Oshu’gun Crystal Powder I need (in the region of 300ish) to grab the two Halaa mounts. I already have the tokens you get from pvp, it’s just the grind I’ve been putting off.

Anann

• Level so that I can tame one of these beauties

This will definitely do as a starting point. I’d like to level a Horde Hunter for example, probably an Orc to tick the dual boxes of rescuing Spot from Theramore and also being able to explore Draenor at some point on a Orc. I’d also like to level a Dwarf Mage or Worgen Mage, I can’t decide which would fit the name of Havisham best but these can wait.

Solstice Challenge: Days 10, 11 & 12

Twenty-One Days, starting today, December 1, of things in Azeroth of Light Screenshots, from now until December 21. This works for both sides of the equator, seeing how we’re getting darker days in the North, the South is getting lighter. The only hitch I will add is you have to add a caption or haiku to your screenshot.
The topic/theme is light, and all its incarnations.

Day 10

The fire roared up in the grate and the candlewicks caught flame. The portraits blinked in weary surprise as a cold draft blew in. Shadows stirred, sliding across the walls, all for a closer look at the visitor.

Day 11

They are the last romantics, these candles:
Upside-down hearts of light tipping wax fingers,
And the fingers, taken in by their own haloes,
Grown milky, almost clear, like the bodies of saints.

Sylvia Plath

Gilneas pulls on my imagination more than most areas, I find myself drawn like a ghost to wander it’s empty moors and deserted towns. Perhaps not surprisingly, it’s the graveyard with it’s monuments and crimson roses, petals bleeding across the stones where I spend most of my time.

Day 12

In sea-cold Lyonesse,
When the Sabbath eve shafts down
On the roofs, walls, belfries
Of the foundered town,
The Nereids pluck their lyres
Where the green translucency beats,
And with motionless eyes at gaze
Make ministrely in the streets.

Walter de la Mare

Solstice Challenge: Days 8 and 9

Twenty-One Days, starting today, December 1, of things in Azeroth of Light Screenshots, from now until December 21. This works for both sides of the equator, seeing how we’re getting darker days in the North, the South is getting lighter. The only hitch I will add is you have to add a caption or haiku to your screenshot.
The topic/theme is light, and all its incarnations.

The ravens were ribbons of shadow, circling her head. Touch one and it melted into nothingness. Yet even now, with the harbingers of darkness embracing her, she could feel the light within, ready to flood out and drown the world in it’s blinding brightness.

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

Robert Frost

Stretching a point perhaps, but that golden glow in his eyes is definitely a light of sorts and given that he was once a paladin, it just seemed appropriate.

Home Sweet Home

Many moons ago, a Night Elf Priestess walked away from everything she valued, leaving broken friendships and the fragments of her faith behind. Tired from years of conflict, of campaigning against Old Gods and men warped by their desire for revenge, of seeing nothing but blood with only the background changing, blood against molten rock, blood against sand, blood against ice. That Tournament in Icecrown had been the final straw, jousting for position whilst Arthas carried on, his tyranny ignored. Slipping away had been easy, her mostly Human commanders trusted that like her sisters, she would be faithful until the end, her soothing magic blanketing them from danger and her whispered prayers bringing good fortune to the brave. It was easy too, to establish a routine which saw her needing to leave the safety of the camp at night, no one wanted to demonstrate their ignorance and question why Elune needed her Priestesses to climb mountains in the dark to pray.

Years passed and then, stopping one morning at market, she heard word of Theramore. Guilt and anger rose in equal measure, twisting around her heart. Memories of the walled city, fell jumbled and fragmented though her mind. That Human warrior’s fumbling attempts at kissing her in the Inn at Winter Veil, his mouth eager and tasting of hot spiced cider. Where had he been when his city burned? The nervous excitement in the days before the Onxyia campaign and the long nights she’d spent in the Mage Tower, talking to Pained about home. Those  lazy hours lounging on the docks, throwing sticks for Spot. Had the tall Night Elf with her wicked smile and the dog survived or were they nothing but dust on the marsh now?

Those twin blades of guilt and anger sliced through the last strands of her faith, leaving her an empty husk, wandering in self imposed darkness. Pandaria and it’s riches held no interest for her, instead her path took her to the marsh and the boneyard which was all that remained of Theramore. Laying flowers for the dead brought little succor to her soul but whilst shadowmelding to hide from soldiers come to pay their respects, she overheard talk of taking the war to Orgrimmar. Of a campaign to hunt down and drag Garrosh from his lair like the beast he was and the final piece of the puzzle fell into place. Coming back wouldn’t be easy, she knew that as she paid a passing Mage for a portal to Stormwind but then, one Priestess of Elune looks a lot like another to the untrained eye and should she be caught out, some prices even if extracted in blood and pain were well worth paying.

Yep, Erinys is back on the Alliance side! I’ve wanted it happen for a while now but couldn’t decide whether I was being sentimental or not. Unfortunately she’s not called Erinys any more but even so it’s good to be a Night Elf again.