An Analysis of the Azerothian Nether

Artisania Stillwater-Ell'Karan assembled her notes.

They had been recorded over a myriad of media throughout her journey to Draenor, from rough paper journals to scrolls of parchment to the thin crystalline films sold by arcanists in the Shattrath shops. Ink and pencil and glowing line met and mingled, marred by mud and wet, sometimes scorched, other times wholly disappearing. It had taken several weeks to organize the notes, glean off the necessary information, piece together a theory – at very least an idea – of what she had witnessed in the Nether.

Artisania had never written a formal thesis. She had read many, but never for their correct formatting or presentation of ideas; the content alone held her interest, and she had thrown aside many the scholarly publication without ever making note of authors or titles or bindings. Now she arranged a sheet of fine parchment before her, with a well of dark violet ink placed at one corner and a delicate quill in her hand, one made of hippogryph feather, the point quite sharp. Though she had never written anything of note, this, she felt, she had to write, as perhaps few others could.

Eberict Silverleaf had spoken of “threads” - he had been the first person she had met who had seen something similar to what she could see, though his perspective was most often malicious and usually quite mad. Those particular effects of such perception she tried not to think about, and simply apply her gift as usefully as possible. From a young age magic had been visible to her; not the flashes of the arcane or glimmer of ice or fire so often brought into the world by spellcasters, but rather the more subtle fabric of interwoven energies that brought all things into creation. She hadn't known she had been seeing the Nether until she had stepped into it beyond the material realm; leaving the physical world behind, the Nether appeared as a great swath of fine cloth, dyed in a million brilliant colors, ever-changing. Artisania had come from a long line of cloth-dyers. She understood the Nether almost as well as any colored threads beneath her fingers.

Now her fingers moved together thoughtfully, her bright blue-green gaze set upon the parchment before her. She twirled the pen in her hand, then set it to the page.