Pay It Forward

I've lately been playing my hordie hunter Lunapike quite a bit. She resides on an RP-PvP server, as opposed to Tawyn who is on a regular RP server, so seeing the game from the PvP-server side of things has been a bit of an adventure. I've been ganked by the obligatory level ??s who have nothing better to do, and I've reciprocated by raiding Southshore. I've learned to be wary upon seeing corpses of mobs laying around-- might be the other faction, after all-- and I've learned to rely oh so heavily on Track Humanoids. (Hunters have it easy here, I think.)

I have had to put up with not being able to go to Halaa to buy my arrows because the other faction has it, and I've rejoiced when we've put together a raid to take it back. (By contrast, on Silver Hand, Alliance controls Halaa about 99% of the time... so I never had to worry about it. Though in all honesty, VeCo Horde has it a bit better than VeCo Alliance in World PvP I think. Us hordies probably have it about 75% of the time when I've been there.)

I read once on the WoW website that, lore and RP-wise, Blizzard considers PvE and PvP servers to sort of be differing dimensions of the same point in history: PvE servers are where Horde and Alliance have established an uneasy truce, and PvP servers are where they are still actively at war. This, I have found, brings some depth to roleplay (nothing like getting demolished by a night elf druid after you have just killed a beast that is important to night elf druid lore) and offers a fun twist on a world that you have perhaps already explored PvE-wise... and makes for some interesting stories.

This particular story takes place in Blade's Edge Mountains. I was doing a semi-long questline that involved putting on a gas mask, talking to a projection, killing some demons, gathering keys, and powering up some big obelisks. As I headed off to do the first step, an Alliance Shadow Priest, only one level lower than me, showed up at pretty much the same time.

She saw me and hesitated for a bit, trying to size up whether or not I would attack her, I imagine. I tend not to attack people first, though, unless they are being annoying in some way, so I went right past her and started attacking the mobs I needed. She did too. We stayed far clear of each other, each of us keeping a wary eye on the other as we turned in our first step in the quest chain.

Off we went to do the second step. About partway through, I noticed that one of my mobs had some DoTs on it... DoTs that weren't mine. Shadow Priest had opted to make the first move and establish herself as "friendly". So I reciprocated a few minutes later when she seemed to bite off more than she could chew and I helped whack the extra mobs off of her.

Still, we remained silent to each other. I have seen it happen in the past; people who do something to assert themselves as "friendly" and then conveniently change their mind shortly later. Despite that, I was getting good vibes from her, so we continued questing.

Then came the final part of the chain, where you used keys to activate five obelisks. Only one person can do this at a time and Shadow Priest got there first. One by one she activated them and I stood by and watched, waiting for my turn.

And what did activating those obelisks do? Summon a level 68 elite.

Shadow Priest was level 66. And alone. Well, alone except for...

She turned and saw that I was standing there watching. I like to think that we somehow communicated something there. Some sort of nonverbal and nonemote "nod". She charged in.

After she got in the first hit I sent in my pet and away the two of us went at the thing. It was a long and hard fight and by the end of it, Shadow Priest was literally down to 3% health, but we did it.

She turned to me and /bowed, our first real communication, and I /bowed back. Then she sat to eat and drink while I went off to activate the obelisks myself. And on cue, the level 68 elite showed up.

I sent in my pet and started my attack. Shadow Priest was right there, tossing DoTs on it after I'd tagged it. This particular elite hits hard and my Mend Pet really wasn't cutting it, but with aggro constantly bouncing back and forth between my pet and Shadow Priest, we somehow managed to do it. Like last time, it had been a close one, and my pet did die in the final few seconds. But, we'd done it.

Afterwards we /cheered at each other. Then she Mind Controlled me and gave me Power Word: Fortitude.

We went on our separate ways, having completed the quest.

Flash forward about an hour later and I was doing a different quest in a different part of the zone. Somehow I'd wound up with more mobs than I could take on top of me. I ran into a tunnel hoping to shake them off, only to unwittingly run into more. I was bracing myself for the final blows when suddenly the mobs were all feared. Feared?

I turned around. Shadow Priest to the rescue! It took a while but we managed to take down all the mobs. I /cheered at her again and she Mind Controlled me again and gave me Fort again before we parted ways.

Later I Armory'd her and found out that she has over twice as many honor kills as I do, and I have a lot-- clearly she's no "care bear". Clearly she likes her PvP, as do I. But while a wise man once said "It's easy to forget what a sin is in the middle of a battlefield", you also never know what sorts of crazy alliances with kindred spirits you'll make.



And I salute ya for that, Syphrilia of VeCo. /salute