Knights of the Old Republic- a game by BioWare, the geniuses behind Neverwinter Nights, Baldur’s Gate and Dragon Age: Origins- combines my love of Star Wars, my love of RPGs, and my love of swordfights in one glowing, fast-moving, lightning-chucking telekinetically-choking rumble.

I loved it, if you hadn’t gotten that impression.

Tonight, I was at The Heroes’ Lounge (my local comic shop) and I picked up the first couple issues of Dark Horse Comics’ treatment of Knights of the Old Republic. Will it follow the plot of the game? Will it dance around it, showing the story from secondary characters’ points of view?

I don’t know. But my inner ten-year-old is demanding I get off the internet, forget about being at work tomorrow, baking plans for the weekend, and just about everything else… curl up under the blankets, listen to the thunderstorm*, and read about the Knights of the Old Republic.

Should these comics be excellent, I will no doubt be raving about them soon. (Should they be terrible, the same raving will probably be occur, but it might be labelled more of a ‘rant’.)

*I have hooked up my iPod, with an ambient recording of a thunderstorm, on loop, to the sleep timer on my iPod alarm clock. I love thunderstorms, too.

* Is your character participating in the Tourney? (If no, are you doing it OOC?)

Llanion: I am participating in the tournament, yes. It is good to test lances against my fellow Horde, and it does my heart some good to know that not all of those Porahalo, those Alliance, are like their sechalo* of a king.

* If asked “What is your home city”, how would your character respond? If the answer is not their “Faction Capitol” – why not?

Llanion: A difficult question. Fleeing the Centaur and studying the wilds was my childhood, my adolescence, until the war. Since then, the Orcs have helped my people build our great city, our Thunder Bluff but this is my home no more than the Moonglade, where the Kaldorei have relented and allowed us to join the Circle. A home? I have none, really.

* There are rumors in Dalaran that a Dwarven Expedition has unearthed an Old God – how will your character react?

Llanion: Awak yakee a’hok!** They’ll doom us all- where’s my mace?

* Does your character side more with Varian/Garrosh, or with Thrall/Jaina?

Llanion: That impulsive fool Hellscream will lead us to ruin. I side with the Warchief of my people’s brothers, and with the golden-haired mage who helped us during the War.

* Meta Question: Are there things you do with your character that are OOC, but have IC rewards? (Reputation for a Faction Item, farming for a non-combat pet, or Dailies/Quests for a title like Loremaster, for example?) Do you have an IC explanation?

Llanion: Always and always, there is work to be done; there is the unnatural to root out and destroy; there is the Balance of the Wild to preserve and tend.

*Translation: This Is Not A Nice Word To Be Called.
**Translation: lit. “Damn those fools!”

As you’ve all probably figured out from ‘Heroes’, I don’t write bubbly faerie picnic stories. Read at your own risk.

He had always been proud of his skill. Llanion always knew- had always known- when trouble was imminent. He’d been infamous for it during the raids on Zul’Aman- as though he knew a troll ambush was coming before the trolls did. He would bellow warnings to someone who wasn’t under attack- mere moments before a troll axe cartwheeled through the air towards them.

He considered it Elune’s voice. He could hear the trouble coming before it arrived, forewarned by a delicate, comforting whisper at the edge of hearing.

Llanion awoke slowly, groaning. His head-! Had he been suckered into drinking in the Underbelly? No, he was still in the Plaguelands, next to the ashes of his dying campfire. He’d gone down to report his successes in Naxxramas to the Argent Dawn troops at Light’s Hope Chapel…

He tried to throw off the headache as he clambered to his feet. This proved unwise.

Llanion retched, vomited, as the world spun around him like a child’s top on greased marble. He collapsed to all fours… and then he heard the voice. Something wasn’t right here.

He centered himself, reached for the power granted him to alter his own shape. He needed to move quickly.

The power didn’t come. The voice was more insistent, nagging at him. Never mind ‘not right’- something here was radically wrong. He started marching down the path, trying, as he moved, to change his form.

Nothing.

The voice giggled and he glared at it. “Don’t… laugh at me…” His voice was husky. He felt almost feverish. Was he ill?

He broke into a jog.

It was perhaps four hundred yards further down the path when he noticed it. His armor, usually so comfortable, was itchy. Clearly he’d picked up some vile infestation in this forsaken land.

He shucked his gauntlets and his helm, tossed them into his pack, and sped up.

Another hundred yards and he noticed a painful feeling at his wrists, where the sleeves of his robe touched his fur. Was his armor chafing? It seemed fine where his shirt covered him… he poked one wrist with the opposite hand.

A moment later he was on his knees, his hand shaking as he gazed in shock at the burned patch on his finger.

His armor was somehow red-hot. There was a chuckle from the voice.

He stumbled to his feet, burst into a panicked run towards Light’s Hope, tearing his armor from his body as he ran and howling in pain every time he had to touch it. The last piece, his mantle, actually burst into flame as he shucked it. The cracked, burnt green-and-gold leather lay accusingly on the greasy earth as Llanion plunged onward wildly, almost completely naked.

The voice was laughing uproariously now. Llanion fell to his knees, a noise half a sob and half a roar bursting from him. “Why are you doing this to me? Who are you?!”

And the voice- his King’s voice- answered. “I am your new sovereign… Death Knight.”

The basic rundown is that Palehoof, over on the official forums, pondered the answer to the question: If you had a coin in the Dalaran fishing fountain, what would it say?

So far I’ve seen Palehoof Geargrinder’s (“I wish I knew how to make a Mechanostrider”); Bornakk’s (“There are so many cool coins and you got mine, poor you!”), Matticus’ (“I can’t heal damage of that magnitude! That’s inconceivable!”) and Zulfon’s (“I wish to hear the spirits again… and for them to hear me too.”).

So I thought about it for a moment. And, well…

He needed help. He knew that much. Silver Hand paladins had been seen outside the city, and they were known as gifted healers. The paladins would help him.

Joag kept that thought firmly fixed in his mind, stumbling forward. He’d take the back way, the cut through the Crusaders’ Square. The paladins would help him. The paladins had to help him.

He tripped as he reached the fountain, sprawling forward. He heard a crack as his knee hit the stone, but his head was pounding too hard, his fever raging too high, for him to feel the pain. He barely registered that he’d stopped himself from going in the fountain all the way. Cold water up to his elbows. So cold. His whole body was a fire, but so cold.

He stumbled to his feet and pressed on. The paladins would help him. They were just outside the city. Through this alley and then out the main gates.

Joag had almost cleared the alley when he met the other man. He was tall, unusually tall, a balding gray-haired man- a human, no elfling or dwarf- dressed in richly bejewelled purple-and-gold robes. The tell-tale scintillation of magic, powerful magic, glimmered at his shoulders and around his hands, flowing up even around his mace.

Paladins carried maces. Perhaps this man was a paladin- or a priest, priests wore robes. This man could help him. Tranquility, calm assurance, flowed from the man almost as obviously as his magic. Surely this was an agent of the divine.

“Sir, please,” Joag said humbly- or tried to say humbly. His tongue felt thick and swollen in his mouth. “Hurraghfl,” he heard, in his own weary voice.

The man drew back, his eyes cold, his mace lifting.

Joag fumbled for his coin-purse. “If it’s money you want…” he tried to proffer it to the man. “Iifrmneeaaa,” he heard himself say, his arms outstretched as he staggered forward.

The man stepped forward, swung once. Joag felt the sickening crunch of the mace impacting the side of his head, lurched, his vision spinning. He clutched at the man, his groan of agony making it out of him, for a miracle, ungarbled. The man brought his mace up and back, and Joag saw a flash of purple-white light, felt an impact, and saw no more.

The man wrinkled his nose, looking down at the burnt corpse of the plague victim. A moment later another man, this one clad in gleaming plate, jogged up. “That’ll teach you to get ahead of me, Llanion. These zombies are tenacious.”

The robed man nodded, strapping his mace to his belt. “Earth mother have mercy on Stratholme, past and present.”

This is my entry to Anna’s challenge over at Too Many Annas. Hope you like it! I changed things up a bit by making my own character the ‘mugger’, and I’m pretty sure this wasn’t on the original list of cities… but can you honestly see a mugging in Thunder Bluff?