World of Warcraft®

There were, for those who knew where to find them, any number of cheap broadsheets, liberal-leftist pamphlets, and outright seditious rags fluttering around the print shops of the Horde. Someone always knew someone who had a cousin somewhere who was willing to slip something incendiary into an obscure journal, and it was through them that the poet Arjah published her newest essay:

On Leaving the Homeland and the Horde of Hellscream

How time changes us all.

When I founded the Homeland, I swore that I was done with wars. It was to be a home within the Horde for those wearied of endless campaigns. We were at the time preparing for the Northrend expedition, in the wake of an already-exhausting venture to the Outlands, and I was sick of one living in one armed camp after another.

For the Horde we lived in then -- the Horde of gentle Warchief Thrall and of sedentary old Vol'jin, with his stories and his pipe -- I could never have been bothered to take up arms again.

But now we are faced with two Hordes, and I do not think that one or the other can be tactfully ignored, as we did with Rend Blackhand and his grandiose but isolated "True Horde."

Garrosh Hellscream has fortified Orgrimmar and given it over to a Kor'kron Guard that I do not recognize from Thrall's days. Against this, sleepy-eyed old Vol'jin (sleepy no more!) has hurled the Darkspear tribe in open revolt.

The Homeland has nothing that the Kor'kron want. We were mothers and children; brothers and sisters -- a rough and rowdy bunch, perhaps, but domestic at heart, and given over more to crafts and charity than to sword and shield. Loyal its remnants may stay, but useful they shall never be.

And so my choice is made for me -- I must go to the Horde that will have me and mine.

I am a poor excuse for a tribeswoman, separated as I am from my Darkspear kin by place and custom, but Vol'jin calls to my blood. It is a better offer, a better belonging, than any from an Orgrimmar ruled by Hellscream.

And so let Matron Arjah of the Homeland rest, as too many other Arjahs rested to make way for her. Arjah the Darkspear Revolutionary must shift for herself, now, without hearth or home beyond the clan's circled pickets.

I pray -- as I have prayed every time -- that this campaign will finally be my last.

Arjah
Razor Hill, Durotar

((That mighta been a touch more meaningful if my guild tag had disappeared when I left the guild. >.> How long does it even take the forums to catch up with changes like that these days?!))

((Usually logging out of the forums and back in will clear it.))

((Just call it instanced.))

((Usually logging out of the forums and back in will clear it.))

((Not even a little bit. It's been like a week now. OH WELL! Arjah's gonna go kill herself some Kor'kron and the forums can just like that.))

Dese orcs wanna turn on ma bruddahs an' sistahs? Dey spillin' da blood o' Arjah's Tribe? I show dey why ya don' mess wit' da voodoo. Dey call us savages, well, I show 'em wha' savage be all about.

Gezelda thinks that ice cream would help all this!

Thaettir laid down the paper he had read, and sighed.

His Homeland, which had welcomed him in when so few would, was disappearing. One by one, as each of the family disappeared--whether for causes like Arjah's, or just fading into the obscurity of time--he couldn't help but wonder what would happen next. There were so few faces now, and none of them familiar; that was, of course, more his own doing, as he hadn't made attempts at introduction himself.

Despite the splintering of the world, of factions, of tribes and people, Thaettir still felt there was a place for the Homeland, and more, that the Homeland was still a place for anyone who would have it. The ideals of Arjah--the former Arjah--still held strongly with him. And though the greatmother's presence and influence would no longer be available, he still refused to let go of what might be one of the last refuges available in the war-torn world.

The question was: what *could* he do, now that Arjah was gone?

On the Cost of War

Family affords us remarkable perspective.

I write this from Ratchet, where I await a ship that will carry my children to Stranglethorn Vale. They will stay with relatives there until the rebellion is over, for good or ill, and that is a remarkable thing to consider.

It is, on the surface, a ridiculous notion. I am both wealthy and educated; my tribesmen are neither. I have power of my own and the protection of armed warriors; they guard their village with trenches and wooden spears. I can cross worlds in a step; they travel by foot for weeks to reach a different part of the jungle.

And yet, as I sit in Ratchet and listen to the fighting in the Barrens -- there is a Kor'kron digsite quite near us, and the sounds of combat are clear over the ridge -- I cannot doubt that I am sending my children to a safer, more civilized home.

Without looking, I know who is fighting beyond the crest of the hill. They are of a type: predominantly young, predominantly male; predominantly single.

On the docks, by contrast, the travelers waiting to flee are either older or still children, an even mixture of sexes, and nearly all accompanied by families.

These are the people who pay the true cost of war. Oh, we may sing of the gallant dead slain in battle, from time to time, but the reality of our modern warfare -- and of our healers, and our shamans, and our god-sworn who wait to pull soldiers back from the brink of death -- is that few, if any, of those brave, young, single men I hear fighting will pay the ultimate price. The odds are in their favor, at least in the short term.

It is the displaced and the dispossessed that suffer, more than the wounded. We who have more than ourselves to lose feel the fear of war more deeply than a soldier whose closest bonds are to his fellow armsmen.

The Horde pays for this rebellion in lost time, lost energy, and lost productivity as families flee or split. I am glad of organizations like the Royal Library, which rise above the fighting to serve a purpose beyond it -- but I wonder how many more Royal Libraries have gone unfounded, that might have risen to serve the Horde had their curators and archivists and writers not been driven into single-minded war.

We must give our young something beyond themselves to strive for. Until we can, it will be the families and the children that pay the ultimate cost of war -- unseen and unknown, as my children and I are on these docks.

Arjah,
Port of Ratchet,
Barrens

On Public Service

I suppose I am one of the few left who remember Grummak "Greatheart" -- a mocking sobriquet that I cannot quite regret giving him, though he was hurt by my cruelty at the time.

I was young, and youth is always cruel to old age.

But much has come to remind me of him, lately, and to make me admire his steady and ceaseless efforts for the public good.

The AAMS never grew rich under him, but it did stop feuds between guilds, regularly and well.

As a young and (if I may) beautiful woman, I had at the time far better things to occupy myself with than his notions of leaving something behind; of making a mark on the world by changing societies themselves.

Now I rather wish I had paid more attention, and begun to adopt his principles sooner.

The Horde must change, if it is to survive. We must rebuild the strong backbone that tied us together as a joined society in those days: the clinics, the summits, the debates; the balls and masquerades and sporting games and all the rest that kept us seeing one another day in and day out.

We were greater than ourselves, because we served each other.

Now, most serve themselves, alone and faceless in a teeming mass of irrelevant strivers seeking that next badge, that last trophy; that extra bit of strange currency in the coin purse. Even our military has done away with ranks, and simply hands out goodies to adventurers -- who take them with a smile, and then rush off to fight side-by-side with total strangers yet again.

Of course, as I learned in my time with Da Doctas (in the days when there were Doctas everywhere, and everyone knew to come to them with their hurts and ills), it is easier to identify a disease than to cure it. Both Grummak and his doctors learned that lesson painfully, in his last days (which I, young coward that I was, avoided until the final hours, hating to look on the inevitability that waits for us all).

I do not quite know how I, a single aging troll of checkered past, could serve the great populace of the Horde even on my own, much less inspire others to do the same.

Shall I put on white and join the AAMS, to bring back Grummak's guiding hand in our disputes? Write more plays that gently mock the status quo, to the amusement of the half-dozen that read them? Join the talented Archivist Benoite at her Royal Library, whose salons are holding together the tattered remnants of our social elite?

I can hardly say. But I must do something that makes me of use and interest to others in the Horde -- and so must we all, or we will fade into obscurity worse than death one by one, as we notch our ten thousandth chit of recognition from some meaningless faction or other.

Arjah,
Port of Booty Bay,
Stranglethorn Vale

((OK that was amazing, and beautifully meta! Bravo!))