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Travels Through Azeroth and Outland: Difference between revisions
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{{work}}
In this [[World of Warcraft]] [[Fan Fiction]] epic, begun in March
It's a very lengthy work, but is constructed in such a way that you don't have to read the whole thing, or even read it in order. If you do decide to read it in order, take care to pace yourself.
'''''Travels Through Azeroth and Outland''''' is on our list of [[Warcraft/Fanfic Recs|fan fiction recommendations]]. But it's actually hosted [http://destron.blogspot.com here.] There's also a [http://s4.zetaboards.com/Destron/ discussion forum]
Here there be spoilers. While some of the bigger ones have been blanked out, keep in mind that
{{tropelist}}
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* [[A Form You Are Comfortable With]]: This is seen a great deal in-game, especially with the dragons who frequently take human, elven, or gnomish form. The travelogue takes it a step further with Monkormi, a bronze dragon who prefers her gnomish form to the point of using a flying machine instead of her own draconic wings. Merun'khet, the nerubian vizier in a Forsaken body, might also be an example of this, though he would have been much happier in his previous form.
* [[Alchemy Is Magic]]: The arakkoa claim to have been masters of this during their glory days.
* [[
** Positive examples of some mook races are never shown. Examples include troggs, harpies, and iron dwarves. But this doesn't necessarily preclude the existence of positive examples.
** Demons and qiraji are apparently all quite horrible.
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** {{spoiler|Another surprising aversion is seen in the Royal Apothecary Society. The apothecaries in the Ghostlands make some efforts to healing the forest, which the Cenarion Circle refuses to touch since it was initially grown with arcane energies. There are also apothecaries who are more interested in medicine than in creating new plagues.}}
* [[Ambadassador]]: Pazshe, an etheral diplomat, is the very picture of polite restraint who can even make a declaration of war sound gracious. He's also a badass who can wield weapons with his mind and teleport at will.
* [[Ancient Keeper]]: Arkkoroc, a lonely sea giant in Azshara, is an example. He appears in-game, but Travels offers its own spin, {{spoiler|in which Arkkoroc, who once controlled the tides but no longer does so, desperately wishes to be remembered by others, though he knows his time is long past. Destron agrees to tell others about him. One wonders what happened to Arkkoroc after Cataclysm…}}
** The Storm Peaks has plenty more examples.
* [[Animals Hate Him]]: Animals despise the Scourge, but are curiously indifferent to Forsaken. This is a convenient excuse that lets the writer take Destron into Alliance territory. Then again, the addition of Forsaken hunters in Cataclysm shows that there might be something to it...
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* [[Anyone Can Die]]: Aside from the narrator.
* [[Arcadia]]: Elwynn Forest and Loch Modan.
* [[Aristocrats Are Evil]]: Most of the human nations suffered from this at varying point, though Destron says that (in many nations) the nobility had lost much of its power by the time of the First War.
* [[Artificial Intelligence]]: Destron learns about this concept from a gnome in the Borean Tundra, though it’s called Created Intelligence. The gnome concludes that, if a free-willed created intelligence equal to a sapient mind were ever created, it would have to be considered a legal equal to its living peers.
* [[Artificial Limbs]]: {{spoiler|Destron loses a hand fighting a frostwyrm in Icecrown.}} As of the epilogue, he's had it replaced with a [[Magitek]] prosthetic. However, said prosthetic is itself a subversion, as it's explicitly stated to lack precision.
* [[Ascetic Aesthetic]]: Once you get beyond all the shiny crystals (which usually serve utilitarian functions), draenic cities are rather austere.
* [[Asexuality]]: Pretty much all Forsaken, including Destron. And thank goodness for that. Sporelings and ethereals may also count.
* [[The Atoner]]: In the Swamp of Sorrows, Destron meets an orcish shaman named Thok'dan, who tries to help the mutated draenei living in the north. Back in the day, Thok'dan had been one of the first orcs through the Dark Portal. He feels great shame for the genocide that the orcs inflicted on the draenei, and wonders if his own actions against humans and draenic slaves in the past have put him beyond redemption.
* [[Ax Crazy]]: The satyrs, centaurs, Drakkari, and Frenzyheart wolvar are notable examples. For individuals, there's Alen-of-the-Gun, a psychotic Forsaken rifleman who rides with the Magram centaurs.
* [[Awesome but Impractical]]: Both Orgrim’s Hammer and Skybreaker end up like this. {{spoiler|While powerful, they’re such huge investments for their respective owners that they are basically forbidden from engaging each other in combat.}}
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** Omokee are tauren who’ve been kicked out of the tribe. Getting expelled from one’s tribe is hard to do, but when it happens it’s pretty much a death sentence. Tauren will attack omokee on sight, and the outcasts almost invariably go insane.
** The draenic ashem are those who’ve suffered to the point that they can no longer participate in the communal happiness of their society. Ashem are encouraged to keep their distance so that their misery will not spread. However, the draenei do their best to rehabilitate them, and recognize that the ashem are not at fault for their state.
** Warlocks are treated as [[Black Sheep]] in orcish society, and are hated even by peons.
*** [[Even Evil Has Standards|Not even the warlocks]] like orcish magi.
* [[Blind Seer]]: Velni, the Ralmanni Seeress
* [[Bizarre Alien Biology]]: Frequently seen in Outland, especially with the sporelings and ethereals (to the extent that ethereals can be considered biological). While this is true in the baseline [[WoW]] setting as well, Travels goes into a lot more detail.
* [[Body Horror]]: Zandalari priests undergo extensive mutilation and scarification. Merun’khet, the nerubian forced into a Forsaken body, as an even more visceral example. Not to mention that poor orc kept by Lady Tsravash…
* [[Bolt of Divine Retribution]]: More like a giant tiger of divine retribution. {{spoiler|Surrounded by the god-killing priests of Zul’drak, the Zandalari priestess, Mumbwe, calls down an avatar of her god. In minutes, the sanctuary is drenched with the blood and shredded flesh of her enemies.}}
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* [[Creative Sterility]]: The travelogue version of the draenei (and to a lesser extent, the tauren) may have this.
* [[Creator Cameo]]: Felya, the undead priestess in Booty Bay, and Aurelan, a human warlock in Northshire Abbey, are the author's 'World of Warcraft' characters.
* [[Cultural Rebel]]: At one point, Destron meets a dwarf who chose to abstain from alcohol. {{spoiler|When he announced this to his family, they disowned him. Alcohol is [[Serious Business]] to the dwarves.}}
* [[Culture Clash]]: Happens a lot.
** Disagreements between orcs and tauren are difficult to resolve, since the two races use very different debating styles. Orcs are loud, brash, and even threatening, while tauren are self-effacing and polite. Basically, the orcs come across as fools to the tauren, and the tauren as timid to the orcs. In the end, neither side is convinced by the other.
** A surprising example occurs in the Grizzly Hills, when gnomes and dwarves argue about how to handle some unwelcome information about their racial origins. An iron dwarf prisoner says that the regular gnomes and dwarves suffer from the Curse of Flesh, and have gone astray from the Titans’ intent. The dwarves regard this as blasphemy, but the gnomes want to do more research to find out if this claim is true. They reach a sort of compromise, in which the gnomes will study iron dwarf “myths.”
* [[Cursed with Awesome]]: Arguably, Destron’s undeath. Travel is a lot easier when you don’t have to worry so much about exhaustion or finding clean food and water (in this interpretation, it seems like undead still need to eat, but only very little and the quality of the food doesn’t matter).
* [[Cute Monster Girl]]: Examined. The troll mage Daj'yah, while somewhat attractive by human standards, is considered quite ugly by her own race.
* [[The Dead Can Dance]]: Destron witnesses a macabre dance party in Undercity. It ends with the revelers tearing realistic dummies of Arthas, King Terenas, and Archbishop Alonsus Faol to pieces.
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* [[Deadpan Snarker]]: Daj’yah. Destron has his moments, though usually as asides to the reader and not in actual conversation.
* [[Death Seeker]]: The demon hunter encountered in the Blasted Lands is an example of this, {{spoiler|as is Vyldra}}. In both cases, Destron tries to talk them out of this course of action, citing it as selfish and useless. {{spoiler|He fails}}. Augra, an old orcish warlock, may be a more sedate example of this.
* [[Death World]]: The Plaguelands, Silithus, Hellfire Peninsula, the Netherstorm, and most of all, Shadowmoon Valley.
* [[Den of Iniquity]]: Lost Rigger Cove is one of these for pretty much all of Azeroth.
* [[Desperately Looking for a Purpose In Life]]: Arguably, Destron’s motivation.
* [[Desolation Shot]]: The writer of
* [[Dramatic Irony]]: Used a few times when Destron gets something wrong. Generally, these are things that someone in his position wouldn’t have any realistic way of knowing, but that the players know because they, well, played the game! Now for some (very minor) spoilers for [[WoW]] and WC3.
** He dismisses rumors of dragons being somehow responsible for the Defias.
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* [[Driven to Madness]]: The process of becoming undead did this to many Forsaken.
* [[Dying Town]]: The Alliance base of Honor Hold becomes one of these. Its defenders are aging and cut off from the rest of the Alliance in Outland, after failing to maintain control over the expeditionary force. While actually playing [[WoW]], players can see that the NPC guards in Honor Hold do look old.
* [[Dystopia Is Hard]]: Many of the nastiest societies have a tough time of it.
** The Defias are near starvation after burning most of the farms.
** The Illidari regime was basically broken from day one, and has no real hope of defying the Burning Legion or the armies of Azeroth.
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* [[Fantasy Counterpart Culture]]: [[World of Warcraft]] itself uses this trope a great deal, though Travels expands on the concept and sometimes invents its own;
** Several human ethnic groups are introduced to flesh out the setting. Kirovi have a distinct Slavic/Russian flavor, particularly in their naming conventions. The Ralmanni are Romany (Gypsy) in origin. There are also the Dromascoi, who were conquered by Lordaeron, and are loosely based off of Romania. However, very little information is given about the Dromascoi.
** Shadowprey Village has a Hawaiian feel, surfing and all.
** Tauren legends sound like they could have come straight out of Native American oral tradition.
** Stromgarde gets something of a German spin, while Dalaran is more French. The Tirasi names tend to sound Italian.
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* [[Glamour Failure]]: This happens in Silvermoon City. {{spoiler|Destron bumps into a bystander during a parade. Before he can apologize, he stumbles [i]through[/i] the bystander, revealing her to be an illusion. It turns out that the blood elves use illusory citizens to make their city seem less empty after the decimation of the Third War.}}
* [[Glory Seeker]]: Common enough in such a violent setting, but the partisans (independent warriors and mercenaries… in other words, the players’ in-game characters) of the Horde and Alliance are the worst examples.
* [[Glowing Eyelights of
* [[Go Mad From the Isolation]]: Emperor Dan’jo. Much like his RL inspiration, however, his madness may have kept him sane…
* [[Go Mad
* [[Good Shepherd]]: Several, who often overlap into [[Church Militant]].
** Torsen Velsemin is a courageous preacher helping the people of Westfall.
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* [[Honor Before Reason]]: Vyldra.
* [[Human Resources]]: {{spoiler|Iron dwarves are melted down upon death and recycled into new soldiers. The dead iron dwarf’s memories are scanned by their leaders, and those deemed useful are implanted into newly forged bodies.}}
* [[Humans Are
* {{spoiler|[[Humans Are Cthulhu]]: This is how the iron dwarves see regular dwarves, humans, and other living entities. The poor iron dwarf prisoner is positively horrified by his captors.}}
* [[Hyperspace Arsenal]]: Destron doesn’t usually carry weapons, but he never seems to have trouble storing his writing materials (which must be considerable). Likewise, his photo-recorder (camera) doesn’t get in the way or even suffer damage.
* [[I Am Legion]]: {{spoiler|Theka the Martyr, though he uses mummified corpses rather than living people.}}
* [[I Did What I Had to Do]]: Several examples. {{spoiler|A significant one occurs in the Badlands. Destron sees a group of Dark Iron refugees turned away from the Horde outpost of Kargath. Vaska, the soldier who turned them away, explains that if he sheltered them, the Dark Irons would wipe Kargath off the map, which is against the Horde’s strategic interests. Vaska is deeply conflicted about this, however, and wonders if he should disobey his orders and lead his warriors to an honorable death against the Dark Irons.}}
* [[In Harmony with Nature]]:
* [[Inherent in the System]]: Destron often frets about the orcish fondness for violence, which is supported by many cultural elements. Events in Northrend show he was right to be worried.
* [[Intelligence Equals Isolation]]: Daj’yah, sort of. {{spoiler|An as-of-yet unfinished short story with Daj’yah as the protagonist shows that her pride, itself a defense mechanism coming from the trope in question, plays a big role in her isolation, along with the fact that most trolls consider her ugly, and see her talents as being of questionable use.}}
* [[It's Always Spring]]: Lampshaded. The static nature of Azeroth’s seasons is explained by way of the planet having only a very slight axial tilt. Granted, this probably has some other implications as well…
* [[Jossed]]: Given the nature of the story, this was probably inevitable.
* [[Knight Errant]]: Lentz Averlome, a crusading Forsaken knight dreaming of a new Lordaeron in which the undead act as gallant protectors for the living. No one really takes him seriously, though he’s at least strong enough to survive on his own in the Western Plaguelands.
* [[La Résistance]]: The Returners, a militia in Lakeshire that took to the hills after the First War and waged a guerrilla campaign against the Horde until the end of the Second War.
* [[Large Ham]]: Destron, when he’s disguising himself as a lich.
* [[Agree to Disagree]]: Destron and an old tutor end up doing this after debating the merits of draconic elitism.
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* [[Mama Bear]]: Irianne Hollisworth is a peculiar, undead example. Don’t get between her and the sporeling infants she’s chosen to protect.
* [[Martyrdom Culture]]: The vrykul are this in spades.
* [[Masquerade Ball]]: Destron attends one of these in Silvermoon. In the past, masquerades acted as social levelers, a release valve for the highly stratified elven society. By the time of
* [[Master of Disguise]]: Destron is able to effectively disguise himself as a human named Talus Corestiam. The disguise was purchased from another Forsaken, known as The Masquerade, who makes a living selling human disguises.
* [[May Contain Evil]]: Anything involving Saronite.
* [[Mercy Kill]]: {{spoiler|Destron does this to Festul.}}
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* [[Mr. Exposition]]: Occasionally, one will show up to give the narrator the rundown.
* [[My Country, Right or Wrong]]: Plenty of people think this way. {{spoiler|A bit surprisingly, so does Destron. He states that he will take the Horde’s side in a war against the Alliance, even if the Horde is at fault. His reasoning is that the Horde was the only nation to give the Forsaken a chance. This does not extend to Sylvanas and the Forsaken, however; in a hypothetical war between Undercity and the rest of the Horde, Destron would side with the Warchief.}}
* [[My Master, Right or Wrong]]: The attitude blood elves often hold towards their lieges.
* [[Never Accepted in His Hometown]]: Destron is pretty much an unknown in Undercity. While he has connections to important people in Orgrimmar, he’s still pretty far from the limelight (and to some extent prefers it that way). But he’s considered a hero in Stormwind for the good deeds he did traveling through there, especially in Redridge where he helped save the town of Lakeshire. Of course, none of them know he’s actually undead…
* [[Nice Job Breaking It, Hero]]: As we all know from [[WoW]], Azeroth and Outland are both full of loot-crazed adventurers killing each other and stealing powerful magical items. This fanfic examines some of the (mostly negative) consequences of these actions.
* [[Noble Savage]]: Played partly straight with the tauren, though they are shown to be quite ruthless to their ancestral enemies. {{spoiler|For instance, one tauren is shown helping the centaurs fight each other to extinction}}. The tauren are also shown as being too conservative for their own good. Brutally averted in most other cases.
** The above centaurs aren't shown as having much in the way of noble traits, though they may have possessed them in the past.
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* [[Old Shame]]: The writer has expressed regret at writing a section involving pseudo-beatnik night elves in Stormwind City. That said, he doesn't consider it bad enough to warrant a retcon.
* [[Original Character]]: Destron himself, and most of the people he encounters. Very few important lore characters make actual appearances in the story. Sometimes minor NPCs (who are just shopkeepers or questgivers in the game itself) are encountered and fleshed out.
* [[Our Demons Are Different]]: The writer adds a lot of strange details to the [[Mooks]] of the Burning Legion, perhaps to make them stand out. To give some examples, felguards are described as being sown into their armor with threads of pure gold, and the one dreadlord encountered by the narrator speaks through mouths in his hands in a voice that sounds like a full angelic choir.
* [[Our Dragons Are Different]]: The Netherwing Flight.
* [[Patchwork Map]]: Attempts are made to explain Azeroth’s odd geographical arrangement. For instance, Un’goro Crater has ancient Titan machinery that attracts storms, explaining why a jungle lowland is surrounded by deserts. The Titans did this because they presumably wanted to study a jungle rather than a rocky waste.
* [[Perky Goth]]: Vasalyan, a draenei mage on Bloodmyst Isle, is a [[Stepford Smiler|typical]] ''Travels'' draenei in most regards...who just so happens to ''like'' it [[Dark Is Not Evil|dark and gloomy]]. [[Creator Cameo|Felya]] the cheery [[The Undead|Forsaken]] priestess may also qualify.
* [[Pirate]]: In
* [[Planet of Hats]]: Sometimes averted, as the races are presented as having far more variety than outsiders might initially notice.
** The tauren who live in the Barrens and Mulgore differ from the relatively individualistic and aggressive tauren of the Thousand Needles (who became that way by repeatedly besting their centaur enemies), and from the reclusive and ultraconservative tauren of Feralas (who also defeated the centaurs, but ended up as hunter-gatherers instead of pastoralists).
** Human and dwarven cultures vary from nation to nation, though this is true in-game as well.
** Regional differences also play a part. The blood elves in the Ghost Lands (more specifically, Tranquilien) tended to be more accepting of humans. Humans in Silverpine were more reclusive than other Lordaeronians.
** There are also substantial differences between the troll groups. Forest trolls are extremely violent, and lethal duels are considered an acceptable way of settling disputes. The jungle trolls look down on this behavior as savage, and instead solve interpersonal problems with insult contests. The desert trolls are a strange bunch who follow the decrees of a mummified heretic, and have little in common with other trolls.
* [[The Power of Blood]]: Trolls, especially the Zandali, love this trope.
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* [[Reformed Criminal]]: The biggest example is the {{spoiler|Westfall Brigade encountered in the Grizzly Hills. Most of them are former Defias (who very often served the Defias as child soldiers) who were unable to fit into Westfall’s post-rebellion society. As a result, Stormwind sent them north to die or at least stay out of the way.}}
* [[Religious Bruiser]]: Ileana, the Argent paladin encountered in the Eastern Plaguelands, is an early example. Really though, pretty much any veteran in the Argent Dawn and Crusade, as well as a substantial portion of the draenei, qualify as this.
* [[The Remnant]]: In addition to the dozens of remnants described from the source material, the orcish town of Stonard is shown as one of these. Orcish fugitives resettled the abandoned town (which the Alliance had originally intended to preserve as a sort of museum, but eventually forgot about) after the Second War. Much later, they joined Thrall’s Horde.
* [[Revenge]]: Destron encounters a lot of people, even entire societies, motivated by revenge. He generally looks down on revenge, and criticizes it every time he encounters it, in what might be an [[Author Filibuster]].
* [[The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized]]: When writing about the Defias, the author took inspiration from various Maoist insurgency groups and the French Jacobins. The results, (mass murder of villagers, societal collapse and total warfare) are not pretty.
* [[Romanticism Versus Enlightenment]]: Generally on the enlightenment side. While mages (like Destron) are typically on the “romantic” end of things in media,
* [[Saintly Church]]: The Church of the Light sometimes comes across like this, which feels a little out of place with the general tone of the story, through YMMV.
* [[Scary Dogmatic Aliens]]: The draenei come off as this (the [[Red Scare]] variety, specifically) ''and'' as [[Lawful Good]] [[Stepford Smiler
* [[Scavenger World]]: An interesting example appears early on in Tirisfal Glades. Here, daring Forsaken search abandoned towns for mementoes of past lives, which they then sell to their fellow undead. Destron encounters this again in Dragonblight.
* [[Science Fiction]]: The fanfic has [[Science Fiction]] as a literary genre invented by goblins that’s referred to as speculative fiction (which is what sci-fi in RL is sometimes called). Azerothian speculative fiction even inspires the development of in-world technological and arcane advances (much as sometimes happens in RL). Dwarves, gnomes, humans, and Forsaken also write in the genre.
* [[Schizo-Tech]]: A big part of the Warcraft universe, ''
* [[Seeker Archetype]]: Destron travels for the sake of learning. As a living student, he risked severe punishment by sneaking into the library's forbidden books section, simply to see what was there.
* [[Sense Loss Sadness]]: This afflicts all Forsaken to some degree, though some are more bothered by it than others (the level of sense loss may vary for the individual). There are times when Destron is actually thankful for this, since it keeps him from having to smell the world's nastier odors.
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* [[Wham! Episode]]: Dalaran, Part 2.
* [[What Measure Is a Non-Human?]]: For all of Destron’s curiosity and compassion, he doesn’t seem to care very much about mook races like the gnolls and murlocs. Granted, a few complex examples of the above do appear, but for the most part they come across as expendable.
* [[What Might Have Been]]: The writer very nearly had Daj’yah accompany Destron on his second trip to Northrend.
* [[Who Wants to Live Forever?]]: Destron's not worried about this, since he figures that his adventurous lifestyle will kill him before immortality gets too boring.
* [[Wretched Hive]]: Destron seems to run into a lot of these during his travels.
** Ratchet is a dangerous and seedy seaport where murder is commonplace.
** Lost Rigger Cove is a haven for pretty much every kind of pirate and criminal.
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{{reflist}}
[[Category:Troper Works]]
[[Category:
[[Category:Fanfic]]
[[Category:Warcraft/Fan Works]]
[[Category:Fan Works of the 2000s]]
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