The Cataclysm!

So... I was just trying to write up our new recruitment post for the new Realm Forums. I hit a brick wall with the IC part, managed around 1/3 of it. And then I had a wonderful brainwave. Last time, I used stories from one of the roleplaying topics on our forums and crafted some of them into a short IC introduction to the Guild.

So, quite simply, where was your character when the Cataclysm happened? Or what big events has your character particpated in since the Cataclysm happened (i.e. the assault on Gilneas)? Please share your stories, and I'll see if I can't weave them into something cohesive and appealing!

Write a short (or a long) story explaining the Cataclysmic experiences of your character!

Before the Cataclysm, The Spine fought in the defence of Thunder Bluff and proceeded to infiltrate the ranks of the Twilight's Hammer using Claudine Moore. When this failed, Father Dusksworn, Duskbringer Kreed and Shadow Marshal Kastner proceeded to rescue her from the maw of madness and witnessed the heroically hilarious self sacrifice of Hainricht Kastner in the process. Following his death, Geriand began to note how swiftly the world was crumbling. He positioned himself in the Ruins of Lordaeron, he could feel the shielding spell fading already. He closed his eyes, and he meditated. He witnessed the Forsaken blighting of Southshore at the hands of Felucia Black through his personal Deathguard Garland. Then... on that fateful hour, he watched as Capital Cityfell to pieces around him and the Undercity shook.

Following the Cataclysm, The Spine found itself in an awkward situation. The Council of the Damned who had precided over The Spine and held Dusksworn's puppet strings for so long were revealed as Twilight Cultists and swiftly executed for such behaviour. Grand Apothecary Felucia Black had already evacuated her Apothecaries due to the Apothecarium's storage collapsing and so Father Dusksworn saw fit for the rest of The Spine to leave the Undercity and take residence in Brill until the entire situation had been dealt with. Following from the expansion of several Forsaken towns and encampments, the invasion of Gilneas had finally begun. The Spine ventured into Gilneas alongside the rest of the Forsaken and fought as their own unit in the battles to come. Specifically The Spine were directly involved in that particular quest where you're stalking Sylvanas. All of those Forsaken outside of the Cathedral, those are The Spine. Despite the Forsaken's failure to conquer Gilneas, they still fought on this particular front, surging through Silverpine in an effort to push back the infiltrating Gilneas Liberation Front.

With the final battle, they fought as the final line of defence, prevent the Worgen from breaching the Forsaken Forward Command and listening as their glorious Banshee Queen was slain by the traitorous Lord Godfrey. At the culmination of this final battle, they were truly at their weakest, their numbers culled to below useful. Yet now The Spine seeks to regroup, they have bargained with filthy Goblins and coaxed them into their ranks, they have sanctioned the aid of the Val'kyr in assisting them in the reanimation of potential allies.
The time of the Forsaken is now. The time of The Spine, is forever.


~((Obviously this needs expanding and less of a focus on Geriand, but it's something to start from?))~

Teorius Darkcast looked up on the grand gate of the Greymane wall. He had came here to think, to think about the past. It was not more than a year since he had contacted Darsolenew Duskmantle, and joined the Apothecarium. Since then he had seen victories and failures. He had seen the fall of Duskmantle, and the rise of the Spine. Under the year much had happen, yet it was not until a few hours ago that they had a lasting victory. Southshore was destroyed, and it's people exterminated.

"Seems you missed the glorious day, eh?" Teorius muttered. As he looked around he remembered the time when the ashes of Duskmantle had been returned to these lands. It felt so long ago. Teorius turned one more time to the gate, one of the earthquakes struck, and the apothecary nearly felt to the ground. As he started to to dust his robe of yet a quake came, and this time more than tenfold in power. Teorius gasped in surprised as the gate in front of him slammed open and smashed into him...

The vision slowly came back to him. Teorius looked around as good as possible. He seemed to be lying in a pool of water, barely able to move at all. He slowly managed to create a death coil, starting the healing process. With anger in his eyes he muttered: "Someone is going to pay!"

There was hardly enough time for Kelmith to celebrate the fall of Southshore. Tarvog Grimtotem had contacted him with a spectral wolf, that he needed help in Thunder Bluff, where a civil war had begun. He portated into his circle hidden in Orgrimmar and took a zeppelin trip towards Thunder Bluff right away. He hoped that he wouldn't be too late to witness the final outcome. The Grimtotem's aid was essential to him.

While flying above the Barrens however, the quakes went on again, louder and more furious than ever before. Then suddenly... the earth didn't withstand it.

"Wa's happeneen'?!" shouted a troll from the zeppelin, when he looked at the ground, seeing it torn asunder. A large crack which quickly started spreading wider, and was finally an impassable gulch with the volcanic base revealed. The zeppelin passengers and the crew all looked to the ground in terror. Kelmith peered around. Mountains crumbling and waterlevels going up along with this huge crack were a sign of the new age finally beginning.

"If ALL my theories were correct, then this isn't over yet." he thought. He glanced next to him, seeing the goblin captain in utter panic screaming "What'll we do, what'll we do?!"

Kelmith grabbed the goblin's throat.

"Maintain the course captain." he said, "There's going to be more raining on our necks than this, so you'd best adjust to the mood in time. So go and see if Thunder Bluff is still holding."

He released the goblin, who nodded and went to calm down his crew. Kelmith gazed at the horizon warily. "Now then... could it really be you..?"

Tristan was sipping coffee, and finishing the reading of his Gadgetztan times..Now, however, he began to notice how everything began to shake in his house, first the glasses, then chairs, then tables..He taught it was normal, the quakes had been going on for months. This was, however, stronger than the last ones. Tristan rose up, pulled on his jacket and walked out. He examined the situation, and after few moments, the quake ended. Tristan nodded to himself, and walked back in. He had not slept for weeks, and so he taught it would be wise to do that after such time. he wanted to keep sane, eh?

Tristan woke up in screaming shouts of the Forsaken, and battle sounds from outside. He opened the window and saw how the Worgen were fighting the forsaken hand-to-hand. ''Greymane wall has fallen! Drive these fiends back to Gilneas!'' a random forsaken shouted. Tristan quickly ran downstairs, only to notice his door had been broken, and a worgen was sniffing around. It quickly noticed Tristan, and charged with it's claws towards him. Tristan didn't have time to pull out his revolver, and was pinned to ground. He rammed his skull against the creature's snout painfully, and it backed off, giving Tristan time to fire the entire magazine round to the monster, dropping it dead on the floor. ''Bastard'', he taught to himself. He quickly gathered his eguipment and coated up, walking outside to join the battle with his revolver, pistols, and rifle. He fought valiantly with the other forsaken, but apparently they weren't interested of saving Tristan's beloved stead. Tristan had to bunker in his very own house, to keep out the worgen..Who knows how much time will he have, untill the bullets run out?

(( I promised! ))

Once more, Anxx moved his head side to side, his delicately disheveled hair trickled over his right shoulder. Standing there for a moment, Anxx wondered what exactly was happening. I know what you're thinking, or I suppose I know what you're thinking, otherwise this wouldn't run as smoothly as Anxx hoped. Yes, well anyway his hair? A big part of Anxx was not his family, close friends or trying to valiantly avenge a childhood of growing up on the streets, having nothing to eat but apples with coats of mou-- I digress. His hair was one of THE most important things in Anxx's existence, now, he wasn't a fashionista, a cliché model or one of those pansy elves. He hated elves! And he, well he didn't think he did but he did... have horrible hair. Of course, how does this behoof Anxx's experience of the Cataclysm? Well, Mr. Reader. If 'one' was to see "between the lines" or split ends, as it were (hoho) 'one' would find that he or she is a very pretentious person, or maybe putting too much belief in Anxx to achieve some philosophical value in Anxx's hair.

It was when Anxx was waving his hair, that he turned to the hear shouts - the now monotonous shouts of Silverpine: "HELP! WORGEN!" -- or maybe "THE WALL! IT'S CRACKING! GREYMANE WALL!" -- Anxx yawned slightly -- "GREYMANE. WALL. ANXX."

Anxx was awoken from some kind of dream, or something, looking upwards. But his dreams were not interrupted by the shouts of his commander, no. It was the brusque earthquake, which made Anxx sway side to side and like a graminivorous quadruped Anxx's open jaw made contact with the grass below him. If you, my reader, knew anything about Silverpine grass it is very, very unaccomodating to the taste. Realising he was on the ground, mouth on grass, he resisted the nonsensical urge to take a chomp from the honestly rotten grass and stood up. Anxx would rather be seen giving birth than eating grass; it didn't look good for his image. Not saying that an undead giving birth would be a particularly splendid image, either, but,

Never mind.

Looking straight up, his eye-sockets twitching slightly. The sockets' dark holes were like a deep cellarage, obstinate from their vision. In life, they were the same. He was naturally stubborn, very stubborn indeed. Primarily substituting the efforts of the Forsaken forces for his own need; he checked his entry posture and magic show was ready, as well as making sure all his escape plans were ready.

Anxx burst in to Pyrewood, flanked by two grim and ugly looking deathguards. They complained about Anxx's entry, saying he was too dramatic; "were the fireworks needed?" No and yes, were the answers to that. Anxx loved an entry, and trying to invade Pyrewood was no different. By now, the war machine had been chundering out corpses, which usually means the war was in full swing of motion. Anxx had arrived fashionably late. In fact, our dearest Nathan had also adopted kicking in doors from his travels, along with becoming... a mage. A pugilistic mage, let's say. He prefered to "beat up" his enemies and then incinerate their bruised and battered bodies. Coughing directly in one of the deathguard's faces, and then giving him a contemptuous glance did mean to them "shh". Anxx was too cool for talking, apparently. It was never too hard for Anxx to go the distance in his insults, or go to town on annoying undead. Back to Pyrewood, right?

Yes, well after Anxx had his fun dramatically kicking doors in he looked around, and guess what! - hair still washing over his back in a tide of self-obsessed vanity - he had spotted an outline of something. Though the town was deserted, Anxx knew that no town is EVER deserted. Nathan detested the whole pseudo-assumption that everyone makes when they don't see anything that it was empty. There had to be a ghost or - like Nathan's former self - a rogue slash deadly lethal ninja assassin lingering around somewhere. Cracking his knuckles Anxx laughed hollowly "Here, piggy, piggy," he stepped closer to the figure. Lunging for it, his grasp was tricked and the macabre figure bursted into shadow.

A deathguard fell to the floor quickly, and the other was jumped on by something wolf-like and hairy... but it looked kind of like a hunched over man... hmm... a worgen! That's it! Anxx stopped as he turned; the deathguard, however, was having a very bad face-lift. Mottled and rotten flesh spattered across the floor as shouts of vain pleas went to nether as Anxx stood and watched. The other deathguard, who was recently sitting on the floor scrambled up in haste. He tried to pull the worgen off, but the beast's magnificence and utter pugnaciousness delivered a fatal blow to both grunts. -- Anxx coughed again, to draw the beast's attention. Nathan stood there proud, but in all his glory and skill he was also pushed to the floor. The beast's claw came upon not his head, not his nose, not even an ear, but Anxx's luscious hair. Ripped from its roots... clean off. Anxx's eyes shot up; similarly like a bullet his fist made commodious rest upon the beast's snout. It howled and clutched its now bleeding 'nose' with the same hand he held Anxx's hair in.

Then, as if it was like a child that had been taught a lesson in manners, it returned back to its human form. For the unfortunate man, his rage had turned into sobs and withdrawing agression. For Nathan, this wasn't the case; his aggressive rage reached new heights. Eyeing and summing up the man, Nathan grinned slightly. He was thin, with long, long, black streaks of natural hair. Chuckling to himself, Nathan's ghoulish and honestly disgusting humor was missed by the man who looked upwards. Kicking the man down and placing his foot on his chest, he caught the man's hair in his fetid grasp; in one fluid, freakish and honestly disturbing movement Anxx had wrapped the black streaks of hair thrice around the man's throat. Holding the knot at the man's jugular, he tighened. And in a rather matter of fact way, Anxx choked the life from the worgen-man. His grin of total malice was nothing to the man's foaming look of absolute terror; he writhed like a fish caught on its line as Nathan's eyes darkened to greet a vicious humor that met his throat. Laughing he released his grip from the man.

Anxx couldn't tell the difference between an honourable kill and one that shows a side of madness, or in this case... freakish lunacy. But that is all the Cataclysm will bring to Anxx... after all, Pyrewood wasn't even fully secured.