Post by Alini on Nov 24, 2009 1:51:44 GMT -5
The Path of the Seeker
Little is known of the druid that simply calls herself the ‘seeker’ or the ‘traveler’, the two words seemingly interchangeable. Her real name is lost in time, though many have seen her, and many have called her many different things. If asked, she couldn’t begin to tell you the entirety of her lifetime – a lifetime that was largely spent living in the wilds of Kalimdor.
The druid known as ‘Alini’ was born approximately ten thousand years ago, give or take a year or two, prior to the Sundering of Azeroth caused by the Well of Eternity’s explosion, near the capital city of Zin-Azshari. Her childhood was a normal one, and she was in training to be a priestess of Elune when the events surrounding the Well of Eternity’s summary explosion and the rending of the world as it existed at that time.
After the sundering, Alini found herself lost and confused. The night elves had won the War of the Ancients, but at what cost? Was Elune guiding them, as the demons from the portal hidden in the spires of Azshara’s palace poured forth and slaughtered her people? Her parents had been among those people – they were not wrong, they were not bad, they simply did as anyone in the city had done – they worked towards making themselves better people, so that they might shine in the eyes of Elune, and bring glory to their dear Queen Azshara. Where was Elune’s gentle, guiding hand when Queen Azshara herself watched, cold, as her loyal followers were slain?
Why should anyone follow a goddess who turned a blind eye? And so, Alini left the priesthood, abruptly and without explanation. She followed the path of the Sentinel, the warriors that protected the rest of her people – for if Elune were to turn away from her people again; someone would have to stop the demonic menace. But something else called to Alini – something far greater than being a simple warrior.
For the males of her kind were training in the arts of the druid, the arts that Cenarius had passed to Malfurion Stormrage, their leader through all of this. And while these arts and mysteries were only being taught to the men, Alini crept to these lessons, unseen. And she listened, fascinated.
It is entirely likely some knew she was there. It is almost certain that Cenarius knew she was present, and said nothing. Why discourage one who is quiet, listening, and not disruptive? And so she learned – learned the ways of the Dream, learned the path of the bear, the crow, the cat. It was the cat that appealed to her most.
Alini spent little time in the Emerald Dream, the outside-ness of it all confusing and vague to her. She preferred instead to practice the arts of nature in a solitary fashion, away from the rest of the night elves and the remaining quel’dorei.
Years, decades, centuries passed in what to some would be an eternity, to the ageless elves, little time at all. When the quel’dorei revolted, resulting in their banishment to the Eastern Kingdoms, she merely looked on with the same disgust as her people. The arcane arts were a possible cause for Elune’s refusal to guide those quel’dorei that had warped and twisted the Well into a creation of destruction – she was glad to be rid of them.
And yet…
Years passed, yes, more and more, and as she practiced the ways of the druid, something called to her. It spoke of the earth, of the sky, of the wind that whispered between the two. Had she been formally trained, she might have met a different fate – but as a quiet observer, all she could see was her people deteriorating into petty squabbles over this and that, the priestesses of Elune trying to show them a ‘better path’. Better path, indeed.
And so, one night when the moon was clear and lit the way, Alini simply…vanished.
She had no family, and there was nobody to miss her. She followed the path of the cat - the wild, untamed path of the huntress, the predator. And she listened, that faint, persistent call far stronger to her heart than Elune had ever been. And she roamed, and she did as a cat would do. She watched.
She watched the world grow, and change. She watched the rainfall come down from the sky, soaking into the ground. She watched creatures die, their bones bleaching in the sun. She watched the wild creatures of the plains, the forests, being born. She watched them die. She watched the stars, and the moon – the moon with a far more critical eye than it probably deserved. And as she watched, somewhere in the seven thousand years between her leaving the great tree of Nordrassil and padding away on her own, she understood.
They were all tied together – the spirits, the plants, the trees, the water, the earth – and she could see, plain as day, the web on which all life had been placed. She could see the way the threads entwined, the way they broke, the way they parted. And it was magic, sheer magic to her.
Part of her broke away that day - the part that was tied to the kaldorei and their customs. For here was a much larger path, undiscovered. Here was something far greater than even Cenarius had shown them.
If they could only see it.
Others found her at times – trolls, tauren. To both, she was a mystery – the great white ghost, ever moving, eyes that watched with the stars of the spirits behind them. She unwittingly became an omen to many small tribes, who felt that the sight of the cat meant that the sight of the spirits was upon them, guiding their hands.
Language became less and less of a barrier as she observed – she understood these creature, their stories, watching them quietly as they told tales, legends around their primitive campfires. It was easy to understand when one had learned how to listen – and Alini had learned all their was of listening.
Or so she thought.
The trolls in particular were of interest to her – brutal and savage, they appeared driven by the lust for bloodshed. They saw her, on occasion, and watched her, the way she moved and the way she watched those that moved within the world, calling her A’lini – shaman, dreamer – for it was obvious this was a creature that followed the spirits call. The tales they spoke around their campfires were of a different sort – spirits and Aspects, Loas and song. It was the song that caught her, breathless and confused one night as she watched a tiny tribe dance and sing around the campfire. Their chanting was similar to the call she’d heard – could it be the web connected not only her, but these strange people as well?
Confused, Alini wandered, time and time again stopping by that tiny troll village, quiet and unseen. They spoke of life not as a web, but as a song – they had been sung into existence, and they would live on in that song far after they died. For as long as one is thought of, spoken of, one never truly ceases to exist.
The words beat a steady rhythm in her heart, one that grew each passing day, week, year, however long she spent traveling. And she listened for it, for the call, for the song, for the singers. It spoke to her, called to her, and urged her to listen closely, far more closely than she’d ever paid attention to anything in her life.
And she understood, finally. The song, the web – they were one and the same. The Singers, the Creators, the ones that spun the web into existence, the ones that sang the first words of the songs of life, these were what called to her. Not Elune, not the kaldorei, not Cenarius – all long forgotten, distant and faint memories by this point. It was the song that drove her over the plains, the song of the hunt that swelled with each kill, the song of joy in each dawning day, the song of quiet, of dusk. It connected her to the earth, far stronger than ever.
She wondered, idly sometimes, what became of the kaldorei. What her people had become, if they knew. If they listened.
The song was her joy, her life, her way of being - this was what druids were meant to be. Not practicing nature, being it. The perfection of it all was her joy. But one day, the song changed somehow - shrieking its chords in an agony of pain. The earth screamed, and fire rained from the sky, and the world – her world, changed, forever.
For that was the beginning of the Third War, when the Burning Legion once more threatened her world, and this time, she could hear it from every plant, every creature, from the earth itself. Terrified, she fled to the plains, where she waited out the war, the song bleeding in her ears. Horrified, she felt the explosion that sundered Nordrassil and killed the demon Archimonde, felt it to the very core of her being.
And then the world was silent, for a moment, two, three – and the song resumed as before, but…changed, somehow. It was the moment her immortality ended, but she was not cognizant of that anymore. Age was nothing to her – years were breaths in between melodies, gone in an instant in the larger picture of things. Added to this was a new, strange undercurrent – the addition of the orcs to her home, Kalimdor. She watched them, curious, watched them interact with the trolls, the tauren, and stayed far away. These things were not of the song – they were trying to force their way into it, but they were other, not of her time, and not of her world.
It fascinated her, but she kept away, choosing instead to find her people once more. The curiosity was overwhelming. She returned to Nordrassil only to find it gone, the great mountain of Hyjal half blown apart by the force of the explosion, and her people nowhere to be seen. The wildkin, Elune’s followers, had scattered across Winterspring, confused, lost. To her, this was nothing new – Elune had left her people once more, somewhere, some when as she traveled. In her mind, the goddess had left centuries before, in disgust. Why should she stay, when her people were so scattered amongst themselves, when they were unable to hear her or heed her pleas.
As far as Alini was concerned, Elune was gone. And would remain gone, until the day the night elves learned to listen once more.
If there was one thing she was good at, it was the hunt – and so she hunted, she searched, and she found the remaining kaldorei at last, the tree of Teldrassil apparently meant to take Nordrassil’s place. It was with great reservation she returned, and even greater reservation that she passed through the gates of Darnassus.
The tree, the great tree meant to take the place of their immortal home was…warped. It sang of sorrow, of pain. It sang of corruption, of greed, of selfishness, and it opened the way for darkness and chaos. This was not a healthy tree. And in the midst of this travesty, her ‘people’ had built a great city, each wall and structure meant to praise Elune, the goddess that had abandoned them.
How stupid. How arrogant. How unlike the kaldorei of old, the simple ones that watched the world, the ones that knew of the Dream, the ones that listened to Elune’s call and heeded her words. Each wall, each building was a distant reminder of that which she’d been long, long ago. And it disgusted her.
She left, following the trail and finding great boats which took her to another continent entirely, the odd humans allies of her people now, the strange dwarves, the little gnomes, all so very different. And yet the song embraced them, sang of them and about them, and they were woven into the same web as the rest of her world. So she accepted them, watched, listened, much as she’d listened to the trolls and the tauren ages ago.
It was here that she met one named Tamalrin, a rogue who’d realized the error of his ways and turned once more to the path of the druid. He’d only recently begun his training, so she tried to speak with him, determine if he was one who could listen – and perhaps he was, perhaps he wasn’t, but the song sang strongly of this one. He who walked two paths also walked many worlds, an odd concept that she could not wrap her by-now mostly feline brain around. He was connected, somehow, between them all, and the song was strong near him.
She followed him for a time, he and his friends, several humans, dwarves, other elves. But the song still called to her, urging her away – it was time again to hunt, to roam, to travel, and to seek. To listen, wholeheartedly and without reservation and lose herself in the song of the earth.
And so she did.
She felt the world rip and twist as the draenei – the ‘blue ones’ were thrown into it. She did not understand this, and the song of the draenei, much as the song of the orcs, did not fit into the world so much as try to overpower it. But there was a similarity in orc and draenei, one that she was unfamiliar with. It was…interesting.
The world sang to her as she ran the plains, the forest and the mountains. It lulled her to sleep, a lullaby of complexity. Not really kaldorei, not really cat – a creature of eternity, a watcher, a dreamer.
It was with some uneasiness that she heard it again – the strains of the song, the beginnings of the approach of something greater. Larger. The song was whirling once more into what could only be chaos, and it sang its confusion to her.
The earth screams, the song cried.
And no one could hear it save her.
But there was one who might, and one who could do something – one who had his foot firmly in both worlds. Tamalrin. And so she returned to the human city, to find the one the song had sought so strongly before.
But Tamalrin was gone. His friends were gone. Any that knew of him were gone.
And so Alini watches, and she waits. She seeks, and she wishes to tell him of the singers, of their words. The earth screams. She need only to tell him, and then she may return to her hunt.
Until then, she walks the world of man once more, attempting to make sense of it all.
And she’s largely irritated about it.
Little is known of the druid that simply calls herself the ‘seeker’ or the ‘traveler’, the two words seemingly interchangeable. Her real name is lost in time, though many have seen her, and many have called her many different things. If asked, she couldn’t begin to tell you the entirety of her lifetime – a lifetime that was largely spent living in the wilds of Kalimdor.
The druid known as ‘Alini’ was born approximately ten thousand years ago, give or take a year or two, prior to the Sundering of Azeroth caused by the Well of Eternity’s explosion, near the capital city of Zin-Azshari. Her childhood was a normal one, and she was in training to be a priestess of Elune when the events surrounding the Well of Eternity’s summary explosion and the rending of the world as it existed at that time.
After the sundering, Alini found herself lost and confused. The night elves had won the War of the Ancients, but at what cost? Was Elune guiding them, as the demons from the portal hidden in the spires of Azshara’s palace poured forth and slaughtered her people? Her parents had been among those people – they were not wrong, they were not bad, they simply did as anyone in the city had done – they worked towards making themselves better people, so that they might shine in the eyes of Elune, and bring glory to their dear Queen Azshara. Where was Elune’s gentle, guiding hand when Queen Azshara herself watched, cold, as her loyal followers were slain?
Why should anyone follow a goddess who turned a blind eye? And so, Alini left the priesthood, abruptly and without explanation. She followed the path of the Sentinel, the warriors that protected the rest of her people – for if Elune were to turn away from her people again; someone would have to stop the demonic menace. But something else called to Alini – something far greater than being a simple warrior.
For the males of her kind were training in the arts of the druid, the arts that Cenarius had passed to Malfurion Stormrage, their leader through all of this. And while these arts and mysteries were only being taught to the men, Alini crept to these lessons, unseen. And she listened, fascinated.
It is entirely likely some knew she was there. It is almost certain that Cenarius knew she was present, and said nothing. Why discourage one who is quiet, listening, and not disruptive? And so she learned – learned the ways of the Dream, learned the path of the bear, the crow, the cat. It was the cat that appealed to her most.
Alini spent little time in the Emerald Dream, the outside-ness of it all confusing and vague to her. She preferred instead to practice the arts of nature in a solitary fashion, away from the rest of the night elves and the remaining quel’dorei.
Years, decades, centuries passed in what to some would be an eternity, to the ageless elves, little time at all. When the quel’dorei revolted, resulting in their banishment to the Eastern Kingdoms, she merely looked on with the same disgust as her people. The arcane arts were a possible cause for Elune’s refusal to guide those quel’dorei that had warped and twisted the Well into a creation of destruction – she was glad to be rid of them.
And yet…
Years passed, yes, more and more, and as she practiced the ways of the druid, something called to her. It spoke of the earth, of the sky, of the wind that whispered between the two. Had she been formally trained, she might have met a different fate – but as a quiet observer, all she could see was her people deteriorating into petty squabbles over this and that, the priestesses of Elune trying to show them a ‘better path’. Better path, indeed.
And so, one night when the moon was clear and lit the way, Alini simply…vanished.
She had no family, and there was nobody to miss her. She followed the path of the cat - the wild, untamed path of the huntress, the predator. And she listened, that faint, persistent call far stronger to her heart than Elune had ever been. And she roamed, and she did as a cat would do. She watched.
She watched the world grow, and change. She watched the rainfall come down from the sky, soaking into the ground. She watched creatures die, their bones bleaching in the sun. She watched the wild creatures of the plains, the forests, being born. She watched them die. She watched the stars, and the moon – the moon with a far more critical eye than it probably deserved. And as she watched, somewhere in the seven thousand years between her leaving the great tree of Nordrassil and padding away on her own, she understood.
They were all tied together – the spirits, the plants, the trees, the water, the earth – and she could see, plain as day, the web on which all life had been placed. She could see the way the threads entwined, the way they broke, the way they parted. And it was magic, sheer magic to her.
Part of her broke away that day - the part that was tied to the kaldorei and their customs. For here was a much larger path, undiscovered. Here was something far greater than even Cenarius had shown them.
If they could only see it.
Others found her at times – trolls, tauren. To both, she was a mystery – the great white ghost, ever moving, eyes that watched with the stars of the spirits behind them. She unwittingly became an omen to many small tribes, who felt that the sight of the cat meant that the sight of the spirits was upon them, guiding their hands.
Language became less and less of a barrier as she observed – she understood these creature, their stories, watching them quietly as they told tales, legends around their primitive campfires. It was easy to understand when one had learned how to listen – and Alini had learned all their was of listening.
Or so she thought.
The trolls in particular were of interest to her – brutal and savage, they appeared driven by the lust for bloodshed. They saw her, on occasion, and watched her, the way she moved and the way she watched those that moved within the world, calling her A’lini – shaman, dreamer – for it was obvious this was a creature that followed the spirits call. The tales they spoke around their campfires were of a different sort – spirits and Aspects, Loas and song. It was the song that caught her, breathless and confused one night as she watched a tiny tribe dance and sing around the campfire. Their chanting was similar to the call she’d heard – could it be the web connected not only her, but these strange people as well?
Confused, Alini wandered, time and time again stopping by that tiny troll village, quiet and unseen. They spoke of life not as a web, but as a song – they had been sung into existence, and they would live on in that song far after they died. For as long as one is thought of, spoken of, one never truly ceases to exist.
The words beat a steady rhythm in her heart, one that grew each passing day, week, year, however long she spent traveling. And she listened for it, for the call, for the song, for the singers. It spoke to her, called to her, and urged her to listen closely, far more closely than she’d ever paid attention to anything in her life.
And she understood, finally. The song, the web – they were one and the same. The Singers, the Creators, the ones that spun the web into existence, the ones that sang the first words of the songs of life, these were what called to her. Not Elune, not the kaldorei, not Cenarius – all long forgotten, distant and faint memories by this point. It was the song that drove her over the plains, the song of the hunt that swelled with each kill, the song of joy in each dawning day, the song of quiet, of dusk. It connected her to the earth, far stronger than ever.
She wondered, idly sometimes, what became of the kaldorei. What her people had become, if they knew. If they listened.
The song was her joy, her life, her way of being - this was what druids were meant to be. Not practicing nature, being it. The perfection of it all was her joy. But one day, the song changed somehow - shrieking its chords in an agony of pain. The earth screamed, and fire rained from the sky, and the world – her world, changed, forever.
For that was the beginning of the Third War, when the Burning Legion once more threatened her world, and this time, she could hear it from every plant, every creature, from the earth itself. Terrified, she fled to the plains, where she waited out the war, the song bleeding in her ears. Horrified, she felt the explosion that sundered Nordrassil and killed the demon Archimonde, felt it to the very core of her being.
And then the world was silent, for a moment, two, three – and the song resumed as before, but…changed, somehow. It was the moment her immortality ended, but she was not cognizant of that anymore. Age was nothing to her – years were breaths in between melodies, gone in an instant in the larger picture of things. Added to this was a new, strange undercurrent – the addition of the orcs to her home, Kalimdor. She watched them, curious, watched them interact with the trolls, the tauren, and stayed far away. These things were not of the song – they were trying to force their way into it, but they were other, not of her time, and not of her world.
It fascinated her, but she kept away, choosing instead to find her people once more. The curiosity was overwhelming. She returned to Nordrassil only to find it gone, the great mountain of Hyjal half blown apart by the force of the explosion, and her people nowhere to be seen. The wildkin, Elune’s followers, had scattered across Winterspring, confused, lost. To her, this was nothing new – Elune had left her people once more, somewhere, some when as she traveled. In her mind, the goddess had left centuries before, in disgust. Why should she stay, when her people were so scattered amongst themselves, when they were unable to hear her or heed her pleas.
As far as Alini was concerned, Elune was gone. And would remain gone, until the day the night elves learned to listen once more.
If there was one thing she was good at, it was the hunt – and so she hunted, she searched, and she found the remaining kaldorei at last, the tree of Teldrassil apparently meant to take Nordrassil’s place. It was with great reservation she returned, and even greater reservation that she passed through the gates of Darnassus.
The tree, the great tree meant to take the place of their immortal home was…warped. It sang of sorrow, of pain. It sang of corruption, of greed, of selfishness, and it opened the way for darkness and chaos. This was not a healthy tree. And in the midst of this travesty, her ‘people’ had built a great city, each wall and structure meant to praise Elune, the goddess that had abandoned them.
How stupid. How arrogant. How unlike the kaldorei of old, the simple ones that watched the world, the ones that knew of the Dream, the ones that listened to Elune’s call and heeded her words. Each wall, each building was a distant reminder of that which she’d been long, long ago. And it disgusted her.
She left, following the trail and finding great boats which took her to another continent entirely, the odd humans allies of her people now, the strange dwarves, the little gnomes, all so very different. And yet the song embraced them, sang of them and about them, and they were woven into the same web as the rest of her world. So she accepted them, watched, listened, much as she’d listened to the trolls and the tauren ages ago.
It was here that she met one named Tamalrin, a rogue who’d realized the error of his ways and turned once more to the path of the druid. He’d only recently begun his training, so she tried to speak with him, determine if he was one who could listen – and perhaps he was, perhaps he wasn’t, but the song sang strongly of this one. He who walked two paths also walked many worlds, an odd concept that she could not wrap her by-now mostly feline brain around. He was connected, somehow, between them all, and the song was strong near him.
She followed him for a time, he and his friends, several humans, dwarves, other elves. But the song still called to her, urging her away – it was time again to hunt, to roam, to travel, and to seek. To listen, wholeheartedly and without reservation and lose herself in the song of the earth.
And so she did.
She felt the world rip and twist as the draenei – the ‘blue ones’ were thrown into it. She did not understand this, and the song of the draenei, much as the song of the orcs, did not fit into the world so much as try to overpower it. But there was a similarity in orc and draenei, one that she was unfamiliar with. It was…interesting.
The world sang to her as she ran the plains, the forest and the mountains. It lulled her to sleep, a lullaby of complexity. Not really kaldorei, not really cat – a creature of eternity, a watcher, a dreamer.
It was with some uneasiness that she heard it again – the strains of the song, the beginnings of the approach of something greater. Larger. The song was whirling once more into what could only be chaos, and it sang its confusion to her.
The earth screams, the song cried.
And no one could hear it save her.
But there was one who might, and one who could do something – one who had his foot firmly in both worlds. Tamalrin. And so she returned to the human city, to find the one the song had sought so strongly before.
But Tamalrin was gone. His friends were gone. Any that knew of him were gone.
And so Alini watches, and she waits. She seeks, and she wishes to tell him of the singers, of their words. The earth screams. She need only to tell him, and then she may return to her hunt.
Until then, she walks the world of man once more, attempting to make sense of it all.
And she’s largely irritated about it.
Founded April 26, 2005