Aktarin's blog

Present day

The wind is whistling through my hair. Wisps have worked loose from the long braid hanging down my cloaked back, and flutter maddeningly around my face. I'm here alone. Wearing only my shift. Vulnerable.

Nine thousand years ago

The cold bites bone deep in the land we now called Winterspring. The whole continent's weather has shifted, and now what had been a pleasant place was locked in an eternal frozen snowfall. I am standing alone, waiting by a rock which is dark against blazing white snowdrifts. I'm not afraid. I tell myself this. I am not afraid. I would like to be. I would like to be a child again, and safe. But that child is dead. Gone. I don't think of her. Of love or happiness. I think of duty which I am now sworn to. And this is a duty I must obey. Alone in the snow, waiting for the cats.

Present day

A gentle rustling sound provided a steady accompaniment. Gray shifting shadows of green and violet shaped the trees into veiled dancers frozen in a graceful gesture.

Sketching led me yet again to the land of art thanks to stress, and I decided to tinker with some familiar characters in an overall page of facial expression work I was doing. I doodled Leshie, though without her cheek scar. I scribbled Aelberyn, and Silence also. I have to say that doing the glowey eyes in Photoshop on fun practice faces is stupidly enjoyable. <.< In all cases, I've only just lightly coloured them, cause my drawing of Isambard was that much fun to do. The Ta'Srith and Hugh the worgen, and maybe even the strange freaky ghoulish guy might be future artz things.

So here's the sketchdump, then the faces. =)

Tinkering and sketching this morning led to this. A rendition of the adoptive father and in many ways creator of Ta'Srith. A Highborne master magister named Ta'Rilsath. I was really pushing for the very simple colour schmes, and may go back and shade it more like my usual style. Dunno. Trying things out!

So I spend about 4 hours round trip every Monday and Tuesday driving to university. Loads of time to think, in other words. Usually I listen to CBC Radio 1, but sometimes I click it to a music station. This Monday, Steppenwolf was on as I pulled onto the highway, and I found myself imagining a re-interpretation of that wonderful biker hymn. I'd been involved in a compelling argument on the Story Forums (since deleted without explanation despite staying on topic and being constructive  /tinfoil hat!) concerning how the ingame represenation of the night elves frankly left a lot to be desired considering that Blizzard keeps telling us about the 'savage, feral night elves' and then giving us inanely jiggling models and largely inactive (or worse, neutral) racial leaders. So with that discussion in mind, I decided to sketch.

I'm intending a little wee art thingie. Last night, rather quickly, I sat down with some pencils and sketched ta'Srith, my mage character. I'm intending to turn it into digital artwork, but wanted to upload the bits as I do them. Suggestions for improvement are very welcome, though due to the mediums I used, a lot of improvement would of necessity be in photoshop. Notably, I need to digitally create Tas's false arcano-technological false eye, usually represented ingame with her goggle.

The Warden Aktarin regarded her gleaming office in her quarters in Feathermoon with some level of contentment. The dancing lights of fireflies coruscated along the burnished wood. It wasn't quite her quarters in the mountains at the stronghold, where lamplight would have painted the walls a deep auburn and gold, and brought the ancient carved figures in the wood to brief life with every gust of the night breeze.

So over the holidays, my 7 yr old niece was up visiting. Of course, fresh from Africa, I wasn't in my usual auntie mode, and uninclined to spend hours sitting drawing with Sarah, or reading to her. I played me some WoW cause I just needed to hit some clear button.

So this is out of character. And by request.

1. Air - Ashenvale courses under me. Bobbing branches and streaks of green and gold blur as the wind whips my eyes into tears. It's so beautiful. The hippogryph beneath me screams like a hawk's predatory cry, and my soul exults to see my home unveiled this way, and celebrated. Something inside feels healed for a short time. That was four thousand years ago now.

2. Apples - A gleaming soft lit round shape on the countertop. So serene. My knife flashes, catching the moonlight in a silvery gleaming light. A voice inside me whimpers, but I turn the blade and begin to plunge it toward the blithely ignorant fruit. Pause, the tip quivering just above the skin. Flick it, and deftly skin the apple in a few short strokes, ignoring that child's voice inside with habit borne of millenia. Three years ago.

Nightsabre Commander Soto regarded her empty cup and I my own, feeling a wry smile quirk my face. It held no humour. With the horrors our race had endured during the Sundering, what trauma had warped Aktarin... we could each guess, though neither truly knew. Even so, I could not fill in that aching gap between the moment my own consciousness faded to a greenskin's axe blow in a forest glade.. and the hard faced pale woman who now wore the title 'Warden'.

"I truly wish I knew, sister, what it was that changed her, for from all that she told me, few children of today would have such a happy life. But something did... I must assume that it happened when Suramar fell to the Legion."

((Because it made Veri sad not to see these, I'ma post them here <3 And put it as archive so it's unintrusive cause I can't shake the sense that it might be <.<  In late July, Aquanus, Amoona and I drove down to Washington D.C. to spend some time with our guildies. Blic, Belmilia/Theryl, Phiandria and Tierliel all live in that region, and Navires and Soto flew in from Colorado. A fantastic time was had by all, and while the temperature was brutal, Phi and Bel were wonderful hosts, and Blic's hot tub was a blast.

Beneath the break are photos taken using Aquanus's camera; annoyingly, we forgot to start taking shots until day 2, and Bel had to go to work, so until Amoona uploads his photos, we don't have pictures of the wonderful man! =(  ))

Nightsabre Commander Soto nodded, eyes intent. Softly murmuring that whatever secrets of her Warden and my old friend.. would be to aid her, and remain only between us two. I swallowed hard, wet my lips, and began to tell what I knew of the roots of Aktarin's pain.

I took a deep breath, stared into my tea, and as Nightsabre Commander Soto patiently listened with the stillness of millenia more than I had seen.. I began to speak for the first time since the day the iszera's blade had struck me.

It was a typical night in the hall. The mute priestess known only as Silence stood quiet vigil at the entrance to the Warden's quarters. Yet some sound, some gasp made long ears twitch, and, prepared for assassins or worse, the Sentinel whirled and crept, as soundless as her name, toward her commander's door.

I suppose I never expected her to return.

It's a chapter of my life that I thought was closed, locked with tears and grief and hatred so deep that it burns in my marrow.

Should I cast my mind back into those jagged memories? She cannot help that I do so. I have no solace now to ease them or distract me from contemplating that greatest failure. I have failed often in my life.. in my choices since then.

But it was the greatest and most painful.

I lost them all.

I had thought I'd lost her.

We went singing into battle. But the green-skins had become flushed and red, and with their axes they hewed the Forest Lord himself as if great Cenarius were a log they were tearing at. My sisters died screaming before the demonic energy of them. My sisters.

I decided to make a composite picture which could never ever happen as a screenshot - all of my characters in their ideal RP gear. Left to right is Gyrithrea, then ta'Srith, then Aktarin, then Silénce. Due to my obsessive nature, with the exception of Silénce, all actually have the gear they're pictured in.

Why did he have to yell? To block my path to my friend Eranna who has returned and try to force his presence upon me, hands like bars on either side of me, reeking of lust and anger and desire, like some overheated lion in a rut intent on forcing me to the floor so he could reclaim me with his body? I was so very wrong to have let him in.. he is too young. Too young by far, with a boy's impetuous demand that he get all he wishes now and no care for what cost may be had for others.

So in the spirit of Iloam's fun drink game, and many other similar fun games, I propose a Mixed-Tape post. For you young whippersnappers, a mixed-tape was something pre-iPod people would spend hours on, crafting an aural letter to people they cared for. Songs were chosen to follow songs based on the intros and endings, and the lyrics or the themes or melodies were all meaningful. People put ridiculous amounts of effort into these things, mixing as carefully as any professional, often with nothing more than a tape recorder. The whole point was to tell a story or express an emotion which was difficult to put into words.

So. Obviously we can't go into that kind of detail.

Aktarin Shadowsong eyed the closed door. The Sin'dorei had left to struggle through the snow likely to Everlook. One long white finger toyed with her earthenware mug as she stared at the inoffensive wood. Her thoughts raged behind her eyes like maddened birds, and with the reflexive discipline of ten thousand years, the warden coldly lined them into order and examined each.

The Sin'dorei Iloam Blacksong had acquired a saber and Kal'dorei gear enough to fool her into not killing him. Wise on his part, deeply unwise on the part of whomever gave him those things. The cat's harness where it lay dead in the snow would reveal the seller, and if not, its tattoo would reveal the breeder. She made a mental note to ensure the strictest punishment. She'd been lax, anu'dura, but someone had been a traitor. With a purely mental flag on that thought to attend to it, she turned to the next.

The streets of Dalaran were hot under the bright sunlight as Aktarin Shadowsong, Warden of the Nightsabres, navigated the crowds with casual ease. A song caught her attention, and her silvery unreadable eyes flicked to her left where a young human lad sprouting a downy beard on his upper lip was singing in a nasal tenor about charging bravely into battle, and somehow winning his lover, or a generic desireable mate.

She found herself listening to the lyrics, and did not smile as he sang about pennant bravely flapping and chargers cantering.

Staring past and through the boy, through time, space, and into her memories.

Ythgar set down the quill, smiling thinly. The message was written, and he felt it covered all he desired. Pheras, a lovely young girl, had unintentionally given him the information he needed, all without knowing he needed it.

Elf business, yet it had trespassed into his home. Elf business, and it had dared to try and forcibly remove one he'd claimed for a guest.

So it's that time again. The time when leaves turn orange, and little doctoral students think of things like how much they don't want to grind through a required book on labour unions and historical stuff like that. So. Over Thanksgiving, I experimented with a few artistic thingies. Typically, they're sketchwork.

Her mind was a tangled howling forest of crystalline trees each chiming discordantly, their edges slashing and cutting as she tried to find her way through.

The Lady cannot be wrong.. she cannot! One screamed in a voice like rushing water from a mountain creek six thousand, three hundred years ago, in the springtime, beside which she'd lain with her lover's moon-white hair splayed over one pale arm, teasing a pair of smiling violet lips with a ripe rich red berry plucked not an hour before.

So once again, I been sketching. I was experimenting with a couple of things in these two pieces - in the first, I was trying to get a feel for scars and how they look when old. In the second, I was playing with eyes and trying to capture a very intense look. Given 'intense', it seemed logical to try and catch some element of our favourite Scarlet crusader, so I roughed in some of the trappings. Olaff, let me know if you want me to change anything - your piece isn't fixatived yet ^^ or even finished yet <.< =)

So every Sunday and Tuesday evening I play D&D. And during those turns when the action's a bit slow, I get with the sketching. Now, I usually sketch my folks' new puppy or whatever, but sometimes I sketch my characters. So here are a couple.