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ask-silverfire · 7 years

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[OOC] The Truth About Rei'ann

I wrote a before a few years ago on Tumblr about what my main rp characters were ooc, what aspects of me that I have put into them. A few years later, I find myself here, wide awake, jet lagged, dealing with things that I should not be dealing with while on a supposed holiday, and suddenly, I’m looking for an outlet, a reason to distract myself.

I have not rped my first RP main for a long time now. By that I mean seriously, regularly RP. One offs don’t count. Background stories don’t count.

I can spell out the reasons if I want to, but I don’t want to. Not at this moment. At this moment I want to say the truth about what she represented, when I made her, when I kept her, and why she is the way she is/was.

I have never rped before I made Rei'ann. I mean, sure there was Nara'enil, my druid and original main, but she had always been more of a concept than an actual actively rped character. When I decided to give rp a serious try, I read the forums to find out about what was acceptable ic and ooc etiquette, where to go to look for rp, things to consider etc. I was also determined not to fall into the Mary Sue trap. Why I didn’t just end up rping Nara'enil was because at that time, on Horde on a particular server, there was a very prominent, highly recommended guild. I read the server forums for days before I finally made my decision.

I decided to make a sort of antithesis of my night elf balance druid - a blood elf mage, a race and class that I have never played before. In her, I ensured that she had flaws, and I took many things that I considered as my main personal flaws, overly exaggerated them, and inculcated them into this new character: arrogance, apparent over confidence, intense self-loathing, emotional flatness and immaturity, derisiveness, selfishness… I gave her a filthy habit of smoking, albeit with justified reasons; I knew that as a blood elf mage, it was easy to become overly powerful, so I gave her a handicap in the form of her facial scar. I knew that as a blood elf, she would be considered attractive enough - for that reason, I never called her beautiful or pretty. I referred to her as ‘striking’, in the sense that one may see her as unusual, or attractive, and it is up to the beholder whether she would be considered pretty or not, bearing in mind that she was disfigured.

As I rped, I remember the days when I used to write the little stories on another blog about what she did icly. It was my way of keeping track of her ic thoughts and emotions, and a way of developing her character and her background. I think it is something a number of new rpers tended to do, when they have their new characters. Though I cringe badly when I reread them all nowadays, it was all a new experience for me then. Slowly, she took on a more 3 dimensional form as I rped her. Her persona took on typical traits, which others that I rped with reflected to me afterwards, be it in ooc feedback, or when they refer to her icly in rp or their own stories. She developed too, and perhaps became too emo underneath all that facade of stoicness, for what I liked.

I shifted servers twice since I made Rei'ann, all for ooc reasons. My guild splintered in half, and I made another Rei'ann on the realm the departing half moved to. Because my original Rei'ann was made when I was new and fresh, I saw ways in which I could improve her, change her a bit, perhaps make her more typical as a blood elf, as the original version of her was not terribly typical, though it needed to be the case as I chose to join a Horde mixed race clan as a new rper. I made her cruel, callous, well and truly cold and calculating, and I really made her extremely emotionally distant, unlike the angsty version she ended up becoming originally. The remade guild on the new server was a Horde military type. I kept her as she was, even when I properly moved to my current server, with the only change being the tweak to her background.

What went on in my own RL background, in retrospect, did influence a lot of what was going on with Rei'ann’s development and change as a character during those years, from her conception to both her rerolled versions. Perhaps it was my own way of trying to deal with what went on IRL - Rei'ann became a character that I could pretend to be IRL to help me deal, help me cope. In her final conception, she was almost inhuman, which was the point: she was never a human, though she ended up being emotionally like a human even though she didn’t behave like one in her first version. In her second version she was just another soldier. In her third version, I merely took her out of that setting and placed her in her own habitat, and changed her background to rationalize why she was inhuman even to the point of being a crippled, stunted character as a blood elf.

But I kept her inhuman for ooc reasons. Even as I Tumblr-rped her during that time, I once said that Rei'ann was a person that I hoped to be more like. In retrospect, again, no, I don’t wish to be more like the way she was back then.

I used to say that it was very tiring to rp Rei'ann, and it was true: it was tiring to hold a face, while knowing and thinking/feeling something entirely different. It was tiring to rp her subtlety, her coldness, her distance, her cruelty. But at the same time, it was cathartic in the way that afterwards, though it was tiring, I felt better, for knowing that if I really wanted to, I could be like her any day of the week if I pretended hard enough. I could be just as cold, as distant, as untouchable, and still function, still remain strong, and still not allow myself to be broken despite all the odds against me.

But it came to a point, when I realized that Rei'ann needed to develop, because no character remained static for so long. That, perhaps, coincided with a time irl when I was in a better place than I used to be. That I decided Rei'ann needed to change was proof enough that I was ready for her to become more vulnerable too.

It started the ball rolling for many things ic on her. I took a break after a long time of her ongoing change and development, until a time when I was ready to put her on hold, and roll other characters to RP. Narindiel comes to mind - she is another one I can talk on and on about, but this isn’t about her.

A lot of things happened irl again since I stopped rping Rei'ann regularly. My ic times on her literally petered out - it wasn’t an abrupt overnight decision to stop rping her. It is how it is with rp and ic happenings. Other characters took precedence. Rei'ann has no reason to make any appearance. She isn’t active anywhere. She has become what she needed to develop into. She has become unbroken.

Other characters tried to replace Rei'ann, as my subconscious form of an outlet as rl took a spiral downwards. The most notable one was Lynaethia. I made my mistake when I conceived her, as someone who was not entirely whole, when she became a demon hunter. She was not Rei'ann. She could never be Rei'ann. I hated being ic on her. I learnt later that everyone who saw me ic on her could tell that I hated rping her. It didn’t matter how much others tried to fix her. It didn’t matter how much I tried myself to write stories about her and tried to get into her and enjoy her. She became a reflection of all the stress and upset I harboured that I didn’t show. I complained endlessly that I had zero in common with Lynaethia - it was both true and untrue. I hadn’t anything in common with her because I could never be so broken, yet she and I were similar because she was my sadness manifest. For some reason, no matter how hard I tried, I could not make her strong.

I killed her, because it was a way to kill that sadness, that stress. I killed her when I learnt, from all that was happening irl, that some things could not be unbroken. They just needed to be accepted as having existed, and then one moves on.

I cause an almost endless amount of upset with that action, but it was what it was.

I miss Rei'ann not because she was an awesome character that was amazing and powerful and whatever - she’s not awesome, she’s not that powerful compared to some other people ic nowadays, and she’s most definitely not nice or amazing. I miss Rei'ann because she was a crutch. I ended up disliking being on her ic not just because of unspecified ooc reasons, but also she wasn’t the same person she used to be. No longer could I pretend to be untouchable, unemotional, cold, distant, cruel.

But what I have to understand is that I still have to try to be like her: grow up, develop and move on.

She isn’t inhuman. She was never meant to be inhuman. Inhuman characters are not sustainable both ic and irl. Inhuman rp characters can help a person cope and deal with rl stress, but that is about all the use they can be.

The single trigger that brought Rei'ann back, was one sentence sent to me by my rp partner.

“Sylvarys knows, and he loves her for it.”

Because it is things like that that remind me of the good old days, when I rped her, and she actually meant something not just to me, but to other people, in active rp, not just in the background. It is things like that that remind me of how far she has come as a character, and that instead of being bitter about it, being bitter about her apparently not being welcome ic now that I’m on her again, I should just focus on her going forward as she is, as I have always done with her. Her presence gave others some meaning, just as the existence of others, like Sylvarys, gave her meaning too. Why should that change in any way?

Time to try again. No failing better, just without failing.

#ooc #personal

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ask-naraenil · 6 months

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A Garden of Winter - 17 Nov 23

There was an otherworldly aspect to the Dream that she had not experienced before.

Nara’enil did not have time to piece her thoughts together. Between the time her staff was burnt and slowly revived, the combined forces all over the Dragon Isles had gathered, and then collectively moved through the gate at the Ancient Bough. By the time she joined them, they had started to establish themselves under the very secret that was harboured within the Dream the entire time.

There was a lot to take in and process: how Amirdrassil came about, how long it was there, and the adversaries that all of the forces were now facing.

It took a while, but Nara’enil eventually found a quiet moment of respite, amidst the orders and briefings. While everything sank in, there was one significant aspect that stood out about their new home. It was under its immense roots: the same strange blue that threaded through its bark, visible across the entire region they were in. The same blue that faded the living beauty of the Dream into ethereal shades of twilight and indigo.

Nara’enil almost expected wisps to be present, but they weren’t. It felt as if they were woven into the very body of the World Tree itself. As if the large pond with its odd landscaped swirl, that was unlike any of the other intricate grassy patterns throughout the Dream, held its own secrets that only those who passed on knew of. In this garden of dusk under Amidrassil, this space of winter amidst the verdant summer of the Dream, she felt both safety as well as the notion that she did not belong. As if she was standing at a precipice, at the brink of a change in seasons, a step in the unending cycle of life and death. A cycle of balance.

She sank onto the azure grass by the edge of the water, next to the arrangement of druidic stones that decorated the circles of the pattern. Nara’enil could not help but feel the emptiness that she had tried her best to overcome over the millennia. It resurfaced every time someone she knew passed away, and gnawed at her chest like a hungry beast wanting to be fed.

It was quiet where she sat. All the activity fluttered above. Few druids came this way. Her staff, rejuvenated and no longer charred, was propped beside her. The smallest furls of leaves had started to sprout - a miracle wrought by “Elder Bearclaw”, a tauren from Hyjal who turned out to be an emerald dragon the whole time, and who told her that the staff was not of Azeroth, whatever that meant.

Amidst the encircled calm, the emptiness within her slowly faded into a familiar anaesthesia as she regarded the shimmering water. All she could think of were the faces that she once loved and still remembered. Were they part of the multitudes who gave up their existence for their new home and their people, or were they still on the other side, perhaps witnessing everything that was going on through their own similar patch of water and unusual swirls in the ground?

A memory came to her, random and unbidden, as she absently stared at the broken reflection of herself.

“I was Dreaming in the Barrow Dens north of Ashenvale when the satyrs attacked. All I knew was when I woke up, I was surrounded by the healers resuscitating me, with the branch already in my hand.”

It was another made-up story of the origin of Veldrinath’s staff. The very same she now carried. Nara’enil vaguely remembered the banter: how she joked that the healers gave it to him to hold as they expected him to violently lash out at them; how he laughed and retorted that he stole it from the Dream, or maybe beyond it.

The numbness turned to pain. Somewhere in her consciousness, she always knew that she missed him more than anyone else who passed on. Somehow, she hoped that she was sitting on a patch of water, earth and grass that was touched in some way by his soul, that maybe all of this could have been a way for her to see him again. Or hear him. Anything to know that he was still around.

But he was gone. He had been gone for almost a thousand years. Neither he, nor min’do Ilisana, nor so many other sisters and brothers whom Nara’enil lost over the years, would be coming back.

She had to move forward. She needed to move forward.

Like many times before, she brushed aside the unshed tears and steeled herself. After all, she would be dishonouring their deaths if she was to continue to mourn, and not live on for the sake of those who survived.

In the near distance, she heard her name being called. Fresh instructions were being issued, and she was needed elsewhere. Her staff touched the water lightly as she manoeuvred it to support her standing. Nara’enil reluctantly tore her lingering gaze from the pond, then turned and walked up the slope without looking back.

As she did so, a bud of dusky blue that matched the pallor of winter’s air began to sprout at the head of her staff.

#stories #ic #rp #off screen #nara'enil #about nara’enil #10.2 spoilers

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ask-naraenil · 6 months

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Unconditional Love - 25th Oct 23

Fatigue shot through her body, aching her muscles and burning her nerves. She felt heavy and worn in a way she never felt until a few decades ago.

Nara’enil grabbed the last handhold on the rise and pulled herself onto the ledge. Under the light of the two moons, she squinted at the Ohn’ahran Plains, its green vastness peppered with thickets of trees spread before her.

Once upon a time, a girl with hair as blue as the depths of the ocean winced as the mighty bear whose scalp she grazed with her arrow transformed before her eyes into a full grown druid. With blood streaming down his white hair, he shouted at her so loudly she swore his voice echoed through the woods and scared away any other predator within the next mile.

She followed his footsteps as they departed for Feralas the following day.

She remembered a pair of faces welcoming them when they arrived at his home after their lengthy journey. Both were similar in their dark hair and sculpted cheekbones; similar in their soft jawlines, and in the shapes and golden hues of their eyes. She remembered thinking that she had been adopted into a family of greatness, so the ancient stories went.

She remembered the formal yet gentle kindness of the woman - the druid’s wife. She remembered sleepless mornings when the elder priestess sat with her by the sea, and taught her about the Goddess in ways that the sisters in Hyjal who looked after the orphans did not.

She remembered the reticence of their son, who looked too much like his mother. A youth of her age who had yet to fully grow into himself. Who shied away when his father introduced her as his new sister. She remembered the realization that he - that they - were her family now, and for as long as she lived, she would protect them with her life.

Once upon a time, a young Sentinel with violet leaf markings destroyed a cursed totem atop a peak in a mountain range. She was descending a cliff when the skies erupted with torrential rain. Her grip slipped on a moss grown rock and she could not grab another in time before lightning struck the outcropping just beside her, and broke the rocky shelf she clung to.

As she plummeted, expecting to be welcome in the arms of the Mother Moon, the beat of wings reached her ears and the pain of sharp talons dug into her shoulders, trying to slow her free fall. It dragged her mid air towards the trees near the shrine of Aviana, that was the nearest place of refuge. Her leg broke, as did her arm as she crashed through several layers of canopy and landed in a heap on the ground. The owl that saved her life turned into the most beautiful man she ever saw. He brought help and rushed to her side.

A century later, they tied the knot under the roots of their home, in the presence of their handful of friends and family, and with the stars as their witnesses.

There was a tall tree nearby with branches low enough to climb onto. Nara’enil scaled its bole and found enough space on a particularly broad limb to lie down. It was something she had done all of her life: find a safe vantage point and seek refuge in the open. The sky was a roof more familiar to her than those indoors.

She could feel the leaks. The ‘surges’ of the Dream coming into the physical world, frontlines where the Circle’s archdruids went to contain them, while recruiting anyone willing to help not just with collecting the living energies, but to fight back the opportunistic incursions from the Firelands.

The burns on her torso and her arms still stung, even though they were healing. Nara’enil rested her weight against the trunk, carefully unholstering the staff on her back. She tried not to let the flashbacks to the fires and flames stop her from seeing to her comfort.

“It’s a twig of Shaladrassil, given to me by my Shan’do before he passed on.”

“It’s from Andrassil up in the north, before it had to be destroyed. My An’do declared me its heir when I chose the path of the Branch.”

“Legend has it that it was stolen from G’hanir by one of the first druids, and it has remained hidden through the generations.”

Perhaps he was beautiful because he saved her life, despite the near-impossible chance of success. Perhaps he was beautiful because he was the only one who could pull a full bellied laugh from her, no matter how dire the circumstances. He never gave a serious answer whenever she asked where his cyclically blossoming staff was from. Each explanation only grew more ludicrous than the previous. It became a private joke between them in the millennium and a half they were together.

When the Circle returned from the first Silithus war, his staff, withered and dormant, was all that they could find of his remains.

It took her another hundred years to learn to smile again.

It was a habit - a routine she had formed - ever since she started travelling alone. First, she removed her staff - the gnarled, dead stick, then her satchel and sickle, and finally her belt, onto which numerous pouches and containers were attached.

In the darkness of the shadows cast by the mountains and the forests, she learnt from her foster father the ways that were forbidden to her and all other women, during the few moments he found her alone on patrol and away from her various units over the years. He was already training her before she met her late husband; he continued to train her through her marriage, and he kept training her after she was widowed. Their lessons were kept away from prying eyes and ears, for nobody would ever approve.

In the rarer times she managed to bring herself to return to the home she built after they were married, she took out her husband’s books and scrolls, and tried to learn the other craft for which he was valued by their compatriots. But she was no alchemist, and without a teacher to guide her, she learnt as any commoner did: by recipe, and by memory.

His initials were sewn into the woven belt of ironbark. He wore it when he went to gather herbs. It hung from its hook on the wall near his laboratory table. “I won’t have the chance to forage in the desert,” he said before he left.

Paired with the knowledge imparted to her by both him as well as her foster father about medicinal flora, she refused to let her husband’s legacy die with him, as she did her utmost to apply what she learnt, and pick up anything new.

A white ohuna flew overhead, lightly rustling the leaves as it whistled. Perhaps one of the local wildlife, or a messenger for the centaur clans. Nara’enil watched it disappear into the horizon as she hung the herbalist’s belt onto the bend of her staff, the latter secured to the branch beside her. Finally, she folded her cloak and laid her head on it as a makeshift pillow.

The stars peeked through the canopy like moonlight caught on ripples of water.

In the years that followed Nordrassil’s fall, her hair had faded into a dull grey as the navy strands were gradually replaced by white. Injuries and ailments took longer to mend. Worry and fatigue have etched themselves into increasingly noticeable lines around her eyes.

After the orcs invaded their lands, min’do Ilisana no longer walked among them. Nara’enil’s heart broke at her failure to protect her. Shan’do Maldari wore his loss like thorns that pricked his son Meladriss so badly that he no longer spoke to his father.

Every ache of her chest for her broken family and broken home felt as amplified as the aftermath of Veldrinath’s death.

As she took up the mantle reluctantly given to her by the Circle, and threw herself into the frontlines of each conflict that affected their home, be it within their borders or away, Nara’enil learnt how to deal with the changes wrought from newfound mortality. Adapt or die: a lesson from ancient times. Change had become the new constant after thousands of years during the Vigil. Time had become a luxury they could no longer take for granted.

After decades of numbing herself both in yet more learning as well as a different duty, whilst trying at the same time to find a semblance of peace in fleeting but simple moments - like the beauty of the stars in a clear night sky, and the comfort of a strong supporting tree - Nara’enil, for the first time since she learnt to adapt, felt the burden of her age. Of the tumultuous unrelenting beating her home and her kin kept continuing to take with only a pitiful couple of years of respite at most; of the tenuous ties to the only two people she had left in the world that she called her family.

After all, she was a puzzle, made from the pieces of everyone she ever knew and loved. Regardless if it was as brief as her formative years, or for as long as her lifetime, she carried them with her. From near or far, she would protect them with her life.

“Within this space that we have made for each other, you can say anything and I will not abandon you. Show me the worst things you have done. I will hold them with both my hands and I won’t flinch.”

Through the night, she kept watch along the ridge to the Sanctuary. The Green Flight sentries normally stationed to do so were more urgently needed in the Dream just now. Nara’enil did not mind. She always preferred solitude, especially now with the gradually swelling numbers in the Gardens.

She remained until day broke, and those who were diurnal took over once more.

#nara'enil #stories #ic #rp #off screen #backstory #background #prelude to 10.2

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ask-naraenil · 3 months

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Slumber - 29.1.24

It was a good night to retire.

The austere ceremony and the preparations in the barrow dens were done. When all had quietened, she left her brother and his Thero’shan and headed to the den she was asked to share with the latter, to guide her when it is finally her time to Dream.

Nara’enil had not intended to fulfil her duty in Amirdrassil. Hyjal was and would always be home to her, but under the boughs of their new world tree, and with the request by her brother, she felt remiss to decline.

Furthermore, she had company now. Veldrinath came to her at the final tribute to Aessina, and stayed at her side as she led the congregation towards the barrow dens. Veldrinath helped make the space she chose comfortable enough for her indefinite hibernation.

Nara’enil did not like farewells. Perhaps it was again a habit of former immortality to take for granted that goodbyes were never permanent. Unlike the younger races, it used to be normal not to see a familiar face for decades. However that luxury had been gone for a while now.

Thus, she simply bade the equivalent of a casual ‘see you later’, burning the sight of them both into her memory, and then padded back to her corner of their den.

Sadness was an emotion Nara’enil did not like to show to other people. Those who mattered did not have a history of caring enough to even ask why she was sad nor try to make her feel better. It came to a point where she felt comforted only by those whose attention she would rather not garner, and when she attempted to give them the benefit of the doubt, they ended up not getting along anyway.

It was easier to pretend that all was well.

Perhaps time was the salve needed for the wounds that cut too deep that did not have the chance to heal.

It was simple but ritualistic. Her heavy armour was removed. Her satchel and staff were placed against the wall, the dreamcatcher of her staff’s head - newly restrung - directly over where she would lay down. Aessina’s blessings have allowed Veldrinath to turn her corner into a bed of moss and leaves. Vines grew from the wall and ceiling, becoming a makeshift curtain to screen her away from her brother’s student who would take the opposite side, and give her a semblance of privacy.

Finally, she removed the circlet around her head, with its crescent glowing with the Goddess’s love.

As Nara’enil closed her eyes, she wondered whether this would be the last duty she would do for the rest of her life, in this precious borrowed time.

And as she drifted off and entered the Emerald Dream, she thought, ‘So what if it is?’

The strings of the dreamcatcher of her staff shimmered a living green, and Veldrinath’s wisp floated away.

(Screenshots of event from here.)

#about nara'enil #ic #off screen #rp #goodbye for now

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ask-naraenil · 5 months

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[OOC]

At some point over the last 6 or so years, I have written some spiel or other about my main RP characters on their respective blogs. They were focused on answering the questions ‘How did this character come about?’ and ‘What was the inspiration behind them?’

I never went in depth about this one aside from a more self-indulgent than usual gush about her when I finally completed the druid class hall campaign during Legion. Back then, I said that she’d never become an RP main. She hadn’t been a content main since early MoP.

Like many players who are bringing their druid characters back for the 10.2 patch, I suppose I have resumed picking her up to play the game again. But since earlier this year, I have also started to take her IC again after many years, and give her another chance at actual RP.

I have been RPing for a solid 12+years at this point. I can count on one hand the number of times I have actually taken Nara out to interact with other player characters. This was always at the request of people I knew. My mage was the first character I RPed, but my druid was The Prime. Nara’enil was my character when I started playing WoW.

There are a few reasons I never focused on her for RP. One was that I loved my blood elves and I had a lot of meaningful RP on them. Time was a luxury that I did not have to focus on a totally different character in a different community. When I decided to explore a different avenue of RP with my RP friends, we turned to troll, and Nara became a Darkspear druid.

I didn’t commit to Alliance side RP until late Legion to BfA. The years preceding that were entirely spent on Horde, whichever characters I chose to RP, and I had (and still have, even if shelved) a plethora in my roster. The troll became a tauren, and finally in Legion, she returned to being a night elf once more.

I never felt I needed an RP community or other RPers to be able to tell Nara’enil’s story. The scant few times I’ve taken her IC have always been for other people. Each time I’ve changed her concept a little, just to make her more lore correct and to fit in with the other PCs’ stories. The sad thing was that they never progressed at all.

Though I’ve taken her IC more times this year than I did over the previous 12, I didn’t feel comfortable. It was, as I look back in retrospect, due to my changing a significant part of her personal backstory yet again to suit someone else’s character. After that character’s RPer decided to change that without consulting me - something that I was upset over - I surprisingly felt better reinstating that which I removed, and she felt whole again as a concept. It was as if this was what she was supposed to be, and not a someone that could be tweaked according to other people’s whims.

I went into detail before when I mused on the truth behind the characters I mained in my RP history, but they could all be summarised in this answer to a question in the guild I am in on another character:

‘What is your self analysis on why you RP what you RP?’

My answer:

I have a variety of chars over the years and are mostly a result, consciously or subconsciously, of:

1. Lack of bloody control of my real life things like WORK and STUPID PEOPLE (thanks NHS). So my first OC that I actually rped was a belf magistrix who TAKES ZERO SHITS and will tell it like it is. Like House MD.

2. My being chronically low key or at times high key unhappy IRL so I made characters who are easy going and live/let live. For eg, my orc warrior who is exactly like that. Simple life simple goals, like slaughtering quillboar and evil asshats, and then going home and looking after her wolf.

Most of my chars are some variation of these two for balance. Can’t rp a moody char all the time so I need to balance it out with a chill one.

3. Atypical paladin archetypes, born from a goddman desire to do some damn good for people, regardless of the circumstances and how goddamn HARD it is. (Thanks NHS). Also a way to explore the ways you can have a purpose in life that’s not associated with reverence or belief in anything “divine”.

RPing these archetypes came at a time when I needed to process my own healing journey from depression and all the Emotional Baggage that came with it. I think these have been my favourite chars looking at my record. There’s always some aspect or other creeping into non paladin chars of mine.

What is interesting is that over the years, the types of characters I played also slowly progressed in this manner, from the aloof and serious, to the more laid back, to attempts to find a light in the darkness and the hope to carry on through the worst moments of my life.

I play two characters concurrently now. My gnome mage does not have an RP blog but she is my go to for IC interactions as she belongs in a guild. She is also the chill character to balance out Nara’enil, whom I have had some RP only with people I know, because I still haven’t been comfortable interacting with the rest of the community.

As I quietly processed the aftermath of the latest retcon, I slowly understood why Nara’enil took shape the way she did, and settled into the character she is: I want to explore what it is like to sit with sadness. Without the stoic heroism of trying to battle it with staunch belief or principle or inner strength, like I did with my paladin characters.

ACT is something that has done more world of good for me than anything else in my healing journey. It’s not always possible to soldier on and force yourself to carry the beacon of hope. Because if you’re always trying not to feel the sadness, then the sadness will always be there chasing you. Sometimes you just need to stop running away and sit down with it. Feel it without indulging it - instead be curious about it.

And then you let it go.

Grief is an emotion that cannot be pushed away at will. It is something that needs to be felt in all of its stages. Whether they come in the classic textbook manner, or whether they come all at once or completely out of order. No two people grieve the same, but everyone needs to feel it and go through it in order to move on.

Ultimately, grief is a form of love. If there is no love lost, then grief would not exist in the first place. The analogy of it being a ball in a box is perfectly true in describing its imperfect nature. How the pain of it is triggered by that one button in the box whenever the ball strikes it, and the pain intensity doesn’t diminish - it’s the ball that grows smaller with time, support, and love both from other people as well as from yourself. It grows smaller with healing.

Sitting and feeling awful emotions. Acknowledging them. Understanding where they come from and why. These are things that are part of an ongoing journey of healing. Sometimes you end up pushing people away and choosing to be alone. Sometimes it’s learning that not everyone grows with you. Sometimes it’s learning that you are not alone and that there are people who do love you and are there for you. Sometimes it’s the process of learning all or one or some of these hard truths. Sometimes it’s learning that you’re not the person you used to be, and you have to discover who that is after a lifetime of being someone else.

At this stage, after so many years of RP, I have come full circle in realising that sometimes the best stories don’t always have to come in collaboration with others. Sometimes the best stories are the ones that you tell on your own, because they are just as precious and significant to you, even if they are not for anyone else including those whom you collaborated with. That’s important too, no?

#ooc #about nara'enil #rp things

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ask-naraenil · 7 months

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canvas: Does your OC have any scars, piercings, tattoos, or other markings? Do they display or cover them up at all?

Tattoos: leaf ones on her face as part of her rite of passage. Markings on her shoulders symbolising her connection with nature. The latter has been more recent.

Piercings: ears and nose.

Scars: multiple over the millennia as a Sentinel, and then Druid. Lacerations from both beast and weapon alike, old scorches from spells and fire. They are over her limbs and torso, but most prominently over her face, where her right jawline carries old claw marks, and her left temple and hairline the burns from Teldrassil.

She doesn’t bother hiding them, although her hair falls over her left temple so that burn scar is mostly obscured. That is the only scar that has not faded into silvery obscurity as it is the most recent.

Thanks @asharinhun

#about nara'enil #scars

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ask-naraenil · 3 months

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#about nara'enil #Instagram

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ask-naraenil · 3 months

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Farewell - 21.1.24

The worst part of Veldrinath’s passing was how she never had the chance to say goodbye. There was no body, and his spirit didn’t return as the wisps their people tended to do. After all, he passed away in the scarab, old god worshipping infested desert of Silithus.

——

A distance from the central hub of Bel’Ameth, Nara’enil wandered until she found the area where the barrow dens were going to be readied. People poured into the town every day, be they visitors or those who intended to settle at the kaldoreis’ new seat of power. The High Priestess declared all were welcome, including the now-former outcasts that were the Illidari and the undead, along with the sorcerers of the Shen’drelar who leaned towards more sinister magics than the arcane. Only two named defectors of Druids of the Flame were with them. As for the Horde, they were allowed to visit, albeit with the invisible watchful eyes of the Sentinels constantly trained on them.

Though it gladdened her heart to see the new town built from scratch and to witness the joy of her kin as they celebrated and started their lives anew, Nara’enil felt the same hollow that never left her since she could remember. The same hollow that yawned more painfully in the wake of the deaths of both friend and family. The same hollow at witnessing the estrangement between her foster father turned honoured teacher and his son, her brother and best friend once upon a time.

Don’t be ridiculous, her sisters in battle often chided her over the millennia about the latter. You can’t mourn those who are still alive, they said. Immortal then and with immortality taken for granted, the end of a life was the utmost incomprehension despite how many were lost in the war of the ancients, and were still lost in the war of the satyr and of course the shifting sands. How ironic, thought Nara’enil at the time, that the lives of the hated were taken so cheaply in the years after the exile of the Highborne when the strays were hunted down and slaughtered.

And immortality taken for granted meant that any rift, while seemingly permanent, had the chance to heal be it centuries or millennia later. A disowned son, a former friend, a divorced spouse - any of them may return and perhaps be forgiven eventually as the passage of time healed the wounds that caused the separation.

But it wasn’t the same any more.

Some felt their mortality more than others. Nara’enil’s own hair, a rich navy for her entire life, greyed after Nordrassil was attacked by Archimonde. Fatigue had set into her very bones, despite her being in the prime of her adulthood at a few centuries before her fourth millennium, and she suspected it was less physical than emotional.

It was astounding how the state of mind of a mortal being affected its body.

But perhaps her late sentinel compatriots were right in the end: here at a new beginning, feeling the consequences of borrowed time both bad and good, it was her late husband whom Nara’enil missed the most painfully.

——

Those who passed or looked towards the southeast of the isle would see a solitary druidess strolling near one of Amirdrassil’s mighty gnarled roots threaded with the unusual blue that pervaded its bark. They’d see a wisp appear, seemingly from thin air, and float towards her.

Minutes later, if they were still watching, they’d see the athletic form of the woman hunch, her shoulders sagging while the wisp circled her. It touched the staff on her back, a wooden branch of blossoming blue leaves curled around a dreamcatcher at its head, and turned the living green threads into a soft blue similar to the threads patterned throughout the world tree. The wisp then hovered by the tear stained face of the druidess as if to give her a kiss, and then it floated away, disappearing into the non existence from whence it came, leaving the elf sobbing and defeated as her fingers tried in vain to reach for the spirit of her lost love.

She crumpled to her knees on the grass in a perfect picture of utter grief.

——

#about nara'enil #stories #10.2.5 #veldrinath

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