A Rogue's New Home

Today's entry is both about roleplaying and about World of Warcraft. As such, I must start it by stating something interesting: Gefallen is no longer on Tichondrius.

Wat.





CURRENT MUSIC:
Russell Brower, Neal Acree, Sam Cardon, Edo Guidotti, and Jeremy Soule - "The Wandering Isle"
World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria Soundtrack

"The Wandering Isle" opens with a bit of the Mists of Pandaria theme, performed by a cello and an choir, About 23 seconds in, however, the piece takes a different tone as it plays a motif heard throughout the Wandering Isle. A lone erhu begins to play a melody as the traditional strings back the Chinese fiddle (with what I think is a dizi in the background). The strings then take the lead (but at the same time, they don't dominate over the erhu), harmoniously melding together to form this track.

This part really gets me - it's an amazing mix of a lone erhu with traditional orchestra strings, choir, and a pulsing percussive beat that just screams "adventure." When one thinks about it, it's quite fitting for the area the track is named after. Players' first pandaren experiences in World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria call our characters into a journey that will take them all across Azeroth. Thus, it falls upon the music to help set the stage for this fantastical trip.

"The Wandering Isle" (the whole album, really) certainly has a style that seems inspired and reminiscent of wuxia film. Whenever I listen to this track (which is quite often at this point in time) I can imagine my adventures in "Panda Land" - but at the same time, I can see quite a few other uses for this piece:

1. that moment where some pivotal character in the hero(ine)'s life has just died, and they (the hero(ine)) are being coerced to get out of dodge while they still can (just imagine them standing over the fallen's body, staring in grief and anguish)
2. an Asian (calvary) unit charging through the (grassy) plains towards their next objective (battlefield and cannon fire)
3. the moment where Character A finishes the closing of a rousing speech to Character B, who's just been defeated/rescued from captivity and is on the ground contemplating themselves... and then "A" offers their hand to "B", who takes it right at the music cue

And while all of these examples can be applied to wuxia fiction, I'm sure it can be applied in other situations and elsewhere.





I had an idea for another roleplaying character, but I never had the time to flesh him out. Now that I have a sufficient amount of time to do just that, I did. Gefallen is what resulted.

New home, new threads.

That's right, ladies and gents; he's now officially on Ravenholdt, the RP-PvP server I now call home. Now, why is that, you ask? I have my reasons, so let me boil them down.

1.) No one I know is on Tichondrius anymore. Or, at least anyone who plays constantly. Everyone's got their home servers, and Tich used to be mine. One by one all my friends (both online and offline) left the game or the server for their own reasons, leaving just... me. Boo. And since I'm a social person...

2.) I wanted to role-play with Gefallen. Badly. Judging by how many ridiculous things I did on him before transferring him to Ravenholdt, it's no surprise that I would be interested in making a story for him.

3.) I needed something to do whenever I'm not feeling like adventuring or farming. Believe me, this happens often. When I'm not leveling or doing other things, I need something to do in-game... and being in a roleplaying server helps pass the time (assuming you run into a fellow RPer who's in-character).

From this jumble of notes, I am able to breathe life into characters old and new.

So as such, I decided to work on a story for him... and I think I like what I have so far. It took a while, but I eventually came up with a name.

Introducing Calvington Erfried Fallbrooke, alchemist extraordinaire!

Initially I had him be the son of an alchemist who ended up creating his own elixir company, but that seemed to be a tad too boring. I then thought up of ideas, trying to make him a fun character that... well, would liven up roleplaying by allowing me to be... well, me - but without being me.

Confused, huh? Well, so am I. (Not really.)

This is what Gef looks like (sans the Blood Elf disguise).

It was then that I remembered an old silly macro I had on him. It transformed him into a "crime-fighter" I dubbed as "Tuxedo Chef." Armed with a slew of cooking utensils (especially his trademark flaming rolling pins) and a desire to stuff criminals' faces with the cuisine of JUSTICE!, he seeks out adventure and... yeah. Something like that.

Of course, I decided to base that with other things, and in the end, I guess you can say that I developed his character a bit. When a friend asked what I was aiming for, I told him that I wanted some kind of cross between Batman, Tony Stark, Jack Sparrow, and other characters. A vigilante armed with a vast array of resources, an arrogant and charismatic business playboy, an eccentric and flamboyant behavior that confuses both friend and foe... and other things.

I got a good portion of it fleshed out, but there's more for me to work on, so I'll get on that. Until the 'morrow!