The dialogue for this page took surprisingly long to write – I had a rough idea, but the specific choice of lines and their interplay were somewhat more resistant, and it actually took me several hours trying to bounce various lines off of eachother before I had a result that I was happy enough with. Though in hindsight, having multiple conversations taking place at the same time might not have been the brightest of ideas. But oh well.

For awhile I considered coming up with some form of look eslewhere for this page, seeing its number, buuut… I couldn’t really come up with anything that felt like it made sense within the narrative context and still worked as a regularely numbered page. So instead you get random travel page.

It was actually a friend of mine that suggested I include a page of Areen and Dagri… talking. I liked the idea enough to make it happen.

It took me some time of thinking before I decided how exactly to handle introductions because let’s face it – we don’t need them, we already know who all of these characters are. The same isn’t necessarily the case about the characters themselves, though – while Raene and Te’len have met, they haven’t exactly spoken, and Areen haven’t been in Night elven lands ever, so she definitely doesn’t know anyone there outside of the group. At the same time, I couldn’t really put the introductions at the start because there was a much more important discussion that had to take precedent there.

At the end of the day, it struck me that it most likely would simply never occur to Hani that introductions would be necessary – since she clearly knows everyone present and they all know her, that’s all people accounted for. Besides, they have places to get to. Of course, once made to think about it, she’d also recognize who actually knows who and work from there.

Since I’m still trying to sort out how I might construct Story Arc Two, I’ll keep mentioning that I’ve put out a call for people to share their thoughts and experiences with the old pre-Cataclysm barrens (and surrounding areas) with me. So if you have any memorable experiences with NPCs, locations or quests within that area and time that help make it not sound like the most boring place on Azeroth ever, do feel free to share over on Thoughts for Food.

Once back on Kalimdor, one of the things I wanted was a return to Delgren. Not only because the group could use a greater sense of direction beyond Hani’s nebulous “I have to go there, I have to do something” feeling, but because it struck me that Hani would feel compelled to. She has to accept the call that she refused before – she may not know or understand why, but she knows she has to.

Alright, a few things first. One: As part of my trying to decide whether continuing Beyond the Tree into Story Arc Two is worthwhile or not, I’ve put out a call for people to tell me about interesting or memorable NPCs, quest lines or other incidental details they remember from around the Barrens, Durotar and Dustwallow Marsh before the Cataclysm hit. So if you feel you have any suggestions/experiences/insight to contribute in that regard, I’d love to hear of it over on my post at Thoughts for Food. Secondly, Tokkar of Tales from the Crossroads recently announced that after almost a year of “the very last page is coming soon!”, he’s going to try to make something out of it again. Seeing as how I’m still linking to it, I thought I’d point it out here too.

Now with that out of the way, this page was one I kind of wanted along for some time. Since Hani never really explained – either to us or the rest of the cast – what prompted her return to Kalimdor, I felt I kind of needed to have her actually say it. Of course, it would’ve been convenient to just have this page take up after she’d explained and then elaborate it on through the reactions to it, but I felt it was worthwhile to show Raene drawing pretty much the same conclusion when working from the same information – or Hani’s short summary of that information, anyway.

Oh and since people seemed to clamor for it in the comment thread of last page, this page has a non-canon alternate version of events.

So hey, a 2012 randomly appeared, how about that. Magic, surely! By what other means could a year so suddenly change into something that is completely different from what it used to be yet remain the same way in a different manner that is similar and related but also entirely disconnected from what was prior. What why how when and wherever.

Ftaghn. Also I’a.

With that out of the way, Raene returns, to the surprise of absolutely no one.

It struck me fairly early on that due to Hani’s character design very much being what it is in order to make her more visible and able to stand out in a crowd, the idea that she’d be able to walk around Kalimdor unnoticed as-is seemed just a tad far-fetched; enough so that it struck me that even she would have to realize that. So I needed to have an outfit variant for her that was very clearly her – and very clearly something she’d come up with on her own – but at the same time it had to be obscuring enough for it to make at least some sense how she’d be able to pass a casual glance without being noticed.

Of course, due to the nature of most equipment design in World of Warcraft, most hood designs tend to be either overdesigned or look instantly suspicious; especially in the case of characters that are wearing them for the very clear and specific reason of avoiding identification or notice.

Other than that, I’ll see you over in 2012.

Yes, I’m still alive. I’ve just found myself a wee bit distracted lately. It’s a bit of an annoyance as I’d seemingly just managed to get back to where my schedule should be, but yeah.

I typically tend to prefer not putting too many NPCs in a scene, especially not a scene that I won’t be lingering on. The reason is pretty simple – time. It might not sound like it’d be all that much work, but the time taken finding an NPC appearance, trying to mimic it in modelviewer, exporting it and importing it into 3ds can quickly mount the more characters are involved. As an example, just setting up this particular scene took well over four hours, and normally I wouldn’t have bothered spending nearly as much time on a single page because it typically isn’t worth it.

Auberdine, however, went up with the Cataclysm. I figured it might be worth doing at least something with it.

As much as I’d love to go “Hey look, it’s a few hours early!”… the fact that it’s more along the lines of several days late kind of throws a few furbolgs into that nutstore. Ahem. Anyway.

With this page I suddenly realized, much to my chagrin, that with Cataclysm not only am I limited to either archived screenshots or an old version of map viewer for backdrops but there’s also the problem that most of the surrounding NPCs are either relocated or dead, making it a bit of a bother to figure out who is supposed to be where and how exactly they looked again. Cheating with narrow angles work, but it isn’t exactly elegant, and makes the place look unfortunately empty. I’ll see if I can figure out some wider perspectives for the whole of Auberdine, even though I’ll probably have to rely a whole lot on random NPCs.