Dorinthar - Inquisitor of the Horde

[Deleted]

Name: Dorinthar
Age: Middle aged, looks significantly older.
Race: Blood Elf.
Gender: Male
Class: Rogue (Spy)
Languages: Thalassian, Orcish, basic common.
Faction: Well and truly Horde.
Personality: Dorinthar is a humourless and dry elf in stark contrast to the Thalassian stereotype of flamboyance and beauty. The slender, mean and ugly elf is passionate only about one thing: the Horde. Thouh no longer suicidal, he is careless with his life, and sees himself very much as 'overdue' on death's log book, and thusly as a resource for the horde. to be used to it's maximum until depleted utterly.
Appearance: This spindly and withered elf has a matted slick of thin and wispy white hair, cropped short and pushed back. A long, high collared leather duster obscures his face and drapes low, wrapped all the way down to his knees. Buckles and clips claw their way up the trim and keep his emaciated form covered and for the most part obscured. His black leather jackboots and gloves are meticulously polished, as are the brass fastening dotted upon his greatcoat. A near permanent scowl is graven upon the wrinkled and thin-lipped elf, his darkened and flickering fel green eyes are sunken into his hardened face. As far as elves go, he is remarkably unattractive. Were it not for his stiff upright posture and deliberate and smooth movement, one might even mistake him as wretched. Though employing all manner of small arms, his undoubted weapons of choice are his searing pyrite tipped shivs; even if their white hot glow and dulled tips make them less than optimal implements of subtlety and death, they more than make up for this in pain and persuasiveness.
Strengths: Tenacious, fearless, uncompromising, incorruptible, fast, stealthy, eloquent.
Weaknesses: Cruel, merciless, fascistic, fanatical, weak, frail, irritable.
History: Dorinthar was once a Magister of some repute, known back then by his birth-name 'Therean Everflare'; deployed upon the isle of Quel'danas (a great honour). Such as it was for everyone, the coming of the scourge was unanticipated, and devastating. Responsible for a number of other Elves, Dorinthar hid and whimpered as the Scourge despoiled the sacred fount of power that fuelled the blood elf nation. Ashamed and distraught, he fled across the post-apocalyptic and shattered countryside of Quel'thalas only to find his family estate razed, his loved ones dead, and the blackened wood turned into despoiled 'ghostlands'. There were few questions as to the valour of his conduct; none of it mattered anymore, not even his new name (though he kept it nonetheless; what truly was left of Therean anymore?). The scale of death and destruction was unfathomable; almost everyone had died. Still the living dead shuffled about aimlessly, picking off the unlucky living few.

It wasn't long until the poisoned sunwell was powered down. The struggling survivors now found themselves set against a greater foe than even the traitor Dar'Khan's undead raiders; thirst. The frail, young, and old went first; wasting, then convulsing, then... the wretchedness. Husbands murdered their wives over a handful of arcane shards; provisions of fel crystals for sustenance provoked riots, to the point they were catastrophically temporarily discontinued. With no-one to provide for, Dorinthar outlasted many, clinging feverishly to his sanity as best he could. The transition was not as he expected; there was no clear threshold to becoming wretched- just a horrible pit of desperation one sank to ever more horrible lows. First stealing, then fighting, and later cold blooded murder; all for precious sustenance. It was looking in the mirror in a cottage he'd just murdered the inhabitants of on the futile off-chance there'd be some hidden stash of fel crystals or mana cores that he realised it. Blood streaked up his bare hands and spattered acrossed his concave chest he regarded himself, hunched and frothing at the mouth. Tears welled up in his eyes, and for the first time since the scourge struck, he cried. It was then, still sobbing, as he buried the family he'd murdered for mana that they shot him.

They looked positively wholesome compared to the harrowed sin'dorei of the ghostlands; their pallid, preserved skin unaccepting of hunger or illness. He had thought at first that they might be Farstriders from Quel'Lithien lodge, they were taking him southward after all; but as the journey progressed through what he would later know as 'the plaguelands' he saw for himself that the desolation of the scourge was boundless, and that these dark rangers were elves no more. His captors did speak Thalassian, however, though not to him. They were scouts, it seems, but not in the employ of Dar'Khan. Rather they spoke of a 'Dark Lady', who ruled from Lordaeron, where they were bound. Dorinthar was not alone, either. Several bound and gagged elves at different stages of wretchedness were hauled by atop spiders behind the restless undead farstriders.

Lordaeron was devoid of life too, though rich in undeath. Dorinthar came to understand that the Undead here had been freed from the grasp of the Scourge, and were being ruled by none other than the risen former Ranger General, Sylvannas Windrunner. Dorinthar was taken into the bowels of Lordaeron; 'the Undercity', as it were. There he languished as experiments and observations were taken by horrid rotting 'forsaken' apothecaries. Several of the wretched inmates died in vain, forcefed gurgling slop through a funnel to treat their mania. Regular exposure to intervals of arcane magic was the best treatment; called forth by decrepit undead mages from the ley lines, and concentrated upon the imprisoned elves. It wasn't reliable, however. For those too far gone, it was detrimental- it rapidly advanced their affliction and they were reduced to unspeaking rabid beasts. Fel was a little better, though still did not save the already wretched. Dorinthar, and several others less deteriorated than he, were mocking informed by the apothecaries that they would recover.

He was freed, a 'cured' elf, and encouraged to feed regularly on the essence of fel vermin. They offered to bring him back to the Ghostlands, to which by then they'd sent a full regiment to aid the desperate blood elves. He was brought up to speed; these forsaken had joined a reformed horde to protect their interests against a reformed alliance; Lor'themar ruled Quel'thalas, Kael'thas had himself gone mad. It was a great deal to digest. The Blood elves looked to be joining this Horde, or all things, which was based from 'Orgrimmar' in Kalimdor. The prospect of returning to the ghostlands sickened him, and such it was that he travelled to Orgrimmar- as far away from the dreadful horror of Quel'thalas as he could get.

In Orgrimmar, Dorinthar found no respite. The city was a stinking hot, dry dustbowl; a mixing pot of brutality and foreign monstrousities that looked at him with glowering eyes of distrust and disgust. What elves made their way to this place tended not to stay long; either way he avoided their company. Worse, his sickness of spirit and mind made him unable or latently unwilling to call forth from the ley lines and cast. He couldn't even disenchant trickets for food, or speak even basic Orcish; consequently he sank into poverty and desperation. Dorinthar alternated between begging, and theft- often alternating between the two in the same act, such was his pathetically malnourished state. He became a bit of a local joke in the drag, hulking Orcs warned each other to be wary of elves when walking there alone at night. Orcs had little patience for weakness and begging, though not all were cruel. Ogunaro Wolfrunner, the worg breeder in the Valley of Honor, used to quietly leave out 'spare' meat scraps for the homeless, which would all be gone in the morning- the process of cooking suck offcuts on a skewer over the Braziers lining the dusty causeways was dubbed an 'orgrimmar kebab', and was the staple that kept Dorinthar alive for years.

Living homeless in the valleys of Orgrimmar was a tough life; fighting was an every day affair. For three years Dorinthar did not know a day where his muscles were not sore from taking a beat from someone- even children from the orphanage were higher on the food chain than he. Such it was that Dorinthar learned to hide, to avoid notice even as a knife ear in Orgrimmar. As he improved his stealth, he improved his attire, his diet, and his lifestyle. When his stealth failed, he improved his fitness fleeing the heavily armoured and relatively slow grunts. He even picked up some paid work from the Shattered hand after they noticed him not being noticed surreptitiously siphoning fel energy from the Warlocks in the cleft of Shadow; low level stuff, but enought to scrape by.

His true turn around, though, was when he attempted to pick the pocket of the grizzled old shaman before the Dranosh'ar blockade. With ferocity and speed defying his age, the shaman engaged him; Dorinthar attempted to run, but the Shaman outmanuevered him and engaged him again. His might in combat was as irresistible as his command over the elements, and Dorinthar capitulated. At last the Shaman relented, lifting the elf off the ground he said "if you fought as well as you sneak, my purse would have been yours." Dorinthar spat a chain of insults in futile rage, mocking the orc for feeling superior for defeating a far weaker opponent, warning him of how things would've gone differently if he could still cast. The Shaman replied, "You should fight as you curse, elf; you have everything you need to defeat me, right here, right now. But you do not fight. You sneak, you steal, you run, but you do not fight. I pass here every day, my purse is full of gold. If you can fight as well as you sneak, it shall be yours." Dorinthar did so, and every day he failed- the orc was just too strong, his strikes were deflected hopelessly.

After a full month of daily attempts upon the elder shaman, Dorinthar at last succeeded; by 'stealing' strikes, and dodging counterstrikes, he could figght without a brute strength advantage. True to his word, the Shaman offered his purse, bursting with gold; but offered as well that instead the elf might have a tabard, and join his side as a warrior of the Horde, fill his own pouch. Dorinthar took tabard, but was forbidden to wear it until he performed three tasks- the first to fight upon all the fronts of war the Horde was engaged upon with the Alliance- to shed the blood of his enemies and understand what the Horde truly was. The second was to kill a great many enemies of the alliance upon their own soil, to learn the nature of the enemy. The last was to return to Quel'thalas. As he completed the first two tasks Dorinthar gained a great passion and admiration for the Horde, it's cause, and his place in it- but he balked at the last task- for years he had suffered a miserable life rather than return to face that place- his failure, his loss, his horror and regret. After fleeing to the wilds Dorinthar fasted from mana, and endured the excruciating pain of withdrawal with relative ease- it was in his sweating and tremoring state that he had a vision of himself remade, purged of guilt and sin, forged as a weapon of pure justice and immaculate purpose within the Horde. He had to go.

Returning to Quel'thalas was cathartic, to see Dar'Khan expunged, the Forsaken helping to rebuild and secure the Ghostlands, which were now if not untainted at least not the muderous anarchy he left. Eversone was breath-taking, if not for the dead scar, it was truly restored. Silvermoon still needed much work, but the bustle and life had returned to much of it- his people moved with renewed hope and purpose, instead of mourners shuffling in the streets, curious new 'blood knights', spell breakers, farstriders, and mages marched fiercely. Broken walls were being remade, repainted, and refinished. But all of this paled in comparison to the glory of the reignited, light infused, sunwell beaming with more furious hope and might than ever before. Losing himself in it's rays he collapsed and shed at last the burdensome remnants of Therean Everflare. At last the inner block was unstuck, and in being able to cast, in having regained his magic, he no longer needed or wanted it. Dorinthar was free, reforged, a weapon of truth and merciless justice for the Horde.

Since then he has participated in the Northrend campaign, the fight against the Twilight menace, and most recently the race to take Pandaria for the Horde. He fights with undiminished vindication to surgically strike down the disgusting alliance stain upon Azeroth, and assert glorious peace through endless and unrelenting war. When he does not fight, he listens, infiltrating cloistered places and snatching (or creatively 'extracting') filthy alliance secrets for cleansing; he preaches the mandate of total war to all who will hear or read it, shouting from corners, and publishing yellow journalism. Finally he gives, as his body is given to the Horde, his wealth goes to it's people- needing only the clothes upon his back and weapons in his hand, Dorinthar donates his total takings, booty, and incomes to infrastructure projects in Quel'thalas and all over the holdings of the Horde.

TL;Dr Elf struggles with addiction post sunwell; grazes the brink of wretchedness; lives a desperate life of vagrancy, homelessness, and crime running from his past; a rebirth in Horde fundamentalism brings him to confront his past fears and guilt and reforge himself as an instrument of Ggarroshian Horde totalitrianism.

[kinderfield]

I really like it alot, it's a breath of fresh air from the usual "I'm dark, beautiful and brooding" male Elfs

[Deleted]

I really like it alot, it's a breath of fresh air from the usual "I'm dark, beautiful and brooding" male Elfs

Well thank you. For me, I was a little tired of the prevalence of Horde skepticism amongst Belf RP, when really their fascistic society lends itself to the Horde, and the Horde is really what saves their homeland from annihilation. So Dorinthat was conceived as a pro-horde extremist. He's like rabidly pro-Garrosh.

Second, I wanted to explore addiction with this character- something I think is central to the Belf character but perhaps underdone, and consequently forms the basis of his backstory. Finally ugliness is just a little twist of aesthetic contrariness to stereotypes.

On a complete sidenote- fuck yeah Queensland. Born in Townsville, and lived in Ipswich, the Gold Coast (broady) and Brisbane (Milton)- been a while since I've been back, though, currently missing QLD weather immensely in Amsterdam.

[kinderfield]

I think you have done really well on it all and I would love to see how he reacts once Garrosh falls and what he thinks of the rebellion, I would love to pick your brain on roleplaying as well. I'm trying to make a background for my Blood Elf Death Knight and im really trying to stay away from all the stereotypes. She is not very pretty, has rot, grey skin, matted hair and I'm trying to figure out how to handle her addiction to violence and killing. I want her to be a Deathknight that was raised in Icecrown and with Arthas until his Death. The only reason she has sided with The Ebon Blade and the Horde is so she doesn't get killed.

I'm currently in Ipswich myself, have alot of friends in Europe who hate the weather up the way haha.

[Mengucekli]

That's one of the best characters i have read for some time, well done! I can not find proper words to praise your work here.