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Lunette Has Reached Ghostlands from Darnassus!

LEFT: Lunette's map while she was "swimming" through Ghostlands;
note the map thinks she is still in Tirisfal Glades.
RIGHT: With Adon at Thalassian Pass.

With great difficulty, Lunette has reached Ghostlands, where she plans to work for peace between Blood Elves and Night Elves.  Because she is only at level 25, she doubted she could enter Ghostlands through the Thalassian Pass, because that would involve crossing the entire Eastern Plaguelands on foot, and it requires level 53.  So she decided to swim from the north coast of Tirisfal Glades to the west coast of Ghostlands.  This would be a very long journey.  First by teleport from The Temple of the Moon in Darnassus to Rut'theran Village and from there by boat to Auberdine in Darkshore, where she took ship for Menethil in the Wetlands, across the Great Sea.  She then walked half way across the zone, northward to Thandol Span and into the Arathi Highlands.  Moving cautiously, because this zone is recommended for those level 30 and above, she hiked westward into the Hillsbrad Foothills.  Crossing this zone, she entered Silverpine Forest. 

Although Silverpine is for levels 10 through 20, and she was 25, she was very careful.  This was her first experience crossing into undisputed Horde territory.  Now, we know that she is not in fact loyal to the Alliance, but as a Night Elf she is automatically assigned to the Alliance, so any high level Horde NPC might attack her without asking questions about her political or religious views.  Without incident, she entered Tirisfal Glades headed northward, passed safely between Brill and the ruins of Lordaeron, and reached the coast.  She dove into the water, and began to swim eastward.

This is when something exceedingly strange happened.  She swam, and she swam... and she swam.  At first she was optimistic, because the maps showed that she needed to traverse extensive uninhabited coastland where tall cliffs stood as a barrier to exploration, but Ghostlands would be accessible immediately after them.  She encountered no dangerous sea creatures, but she did soon learn she needed to stay right next to the shore to avoid potentially fatal fatigue.  So she swam, and she swam.  Then she noticed a discrepancy on her electronic map.  She seemed to be swimming into southern Ghostlands, but had not encountered its coast.  The location messages said she was in Quel'thalas.  Occasionally, she would come to a valley that seemed to lead into the heart of the territory, but when she explored it she always encountered cliffs too steep to climb.  After a long, exhausting swim, she arrived at what she thought was her destination, some ruins and a dock of Elven construction.  But she soon discovered there was no pass into the mainland, and more cliffs stretched as far as the eye could beyond this abandoned outpost.

The truth eventually dawned, as it has a habit of doing.  Ghostlands was not there!  The maps were wrong!  The northern coast of the Eastern Kingdoms is exactly the same as it was before the Burning Crusade expansion.  There are just two ways of entering and leaving the two Blood Elf starter zones, Eversong Woods and Ghostlands.  One may either take the teleporter from Silvermoon City to Undercity, or walk south through the Thalassian Pass.  Indeed, both the teleporter and the pass are portals, and in neither case does the traveler walk a continuous route.  Lunette's conclusion was inescapable.  The two Blood Elf zones are not where the governments claim they are, but somewhere else, even possibly on a distant planet as is the case for Outlands.

For a moment Lunette considered surrendering and using her Hearthstone to return home for a rest.  But she knew Catullus was waiting for her, and she felt an obligation to Elven Unification.  Therefore, she continued to swim, hoping to find an entrance to the Eastern Plaguelands.  On the map, her arrow icon said she was crossing Ghostlands, but it lied.  Eventually, she reached a shore, but it was the Hinterlands, south of Eastern Plaguelands.  This zone is suitable for people level 45 and above, so she had a terrible time crossing it.  With difficulty she found the path up from the beach and was immediately killed by a silvermane stalker.  She rezzed and headed for a road she saw, but the stalker followed her and killed her again.  This happened four more times, as she essentially dragged her corpse down the road.  After a series of other painful episodes, that totally destroyed her armor and weapons, she reached a place of safety.

Quel'Danil Lodge is one of two remaining High Elf outposts in the former territory of Lordaeron.  At first, Lunette was excited to see Elves that looked like Blood Elves yet were not hostile.  But soon she discovered that they were not helpful either.  They offered her neither food, nor drink, nor repair for her armor.  So she moved onward.  After additional effort she was able to reach the Dwarf outpost at Aerie Peak, where the good little men who operated the place sold her everything she needed.  From there, she found a quick but well-hidden route northward into Western Plaguelands, called Plaguemist Ravine.  To her pleasant surprise, she found a perfectly safe route from there into the western end of Eastern Plaguelands.

Then Lunette's ordeal became more severe.  Horrible creatures would attack her even before she saw them.  She found there was seldom any point even trying to avoid them. She ran eastward along the road and skirted south of Corin's Crossing, which was infested with level 55-58 undead horrors, at the cost of dying about a dozen times.  She then went north, dying only a few more times, until she encountered an Elf named Adon standing beside the road.  He looked like a Blood Elf, but was friendly and indicated that Quel'Lithien Lodge stood a short distance behind him.  Lunette's armor had been ruined again, and she needed rest, so she enthusiastically rushed to the Lodge, only to find that it lacked any facilities that might be helpful to her, and was the second High Elf refuge along with Quel'Danil.  Clearly, High Elves were not going to be much help in unifying Elvenkind.  She bid Adon farewell, and a short distance north of him entered southern Ghostlands.

She has three plans.  First, she longs to meet her friend Catullus, whom she has known only through psychic messages since they made contact months ago.  Second, she plans to visit all the Night Elf infiltration points, to see what she can learn about their purpose and perhaps persuade the Night Elves there to make peace.  Third, she hopes to talk with Blood Elves, recruiting them to the cause of Elven Unification.  She knows they will not be able to understand her Darnassian dialect, and she will not be able to understand their Thalassian.  Therefore, she has prepared a few "emotes" she hopes they will understand, and she will try to understand their gestures.

Welcome Lunette!  We hope your difficult journey proves to have been worthwhile.

Recruit New Members During the Fire Festival!

The Midsummer Fire Festival (June 21-July 5) is a good time for recruiting new members to the Blood Ravens! Please recruit guildless Blood Elves to our group and our cause of Unification of Elvenkind!

If you have ahd a good experience questing with a Blood Elf, or otherwise have a good impression of him or her, please invite him or her to join. It is best to talk with them first informally for a moment, then use the interface to make a formal invitation. All members of the Blood Ravens have the power to recruit new members. You click on the Social icon to the right of the bottom center of your screen, then select Guild. Click on the red button with the yellow text, "Add Member." A window will open where you write in the person's name. He or she then gets an invitation. The person must be online at the moment to be invited.

The Blood Raven guild aims to help members achieve their personal goals, with the added interest of Uniting Elvenkind. This means we temporarily cooperate with the Horde, but we are free to ignore its orders and those of the Blood Elf government if they contradict our own personal judgment. We are radicals seeking the truth, which is a great adventure in itself. You can tell prospective members that our Manifesto is on our website at http://mysite.verizon.net/wsbainbridge/elune.htm along with a growing set of Points of Contact between Elves and other useful information. You represent the Blood Ravens, so please do so with both excitement and dignity. Recruiting new members to the Blood Ravens is one of the most honorable quests.

The pair of pictures above illustrate two steps in the Midsummer Fire Festival. Catullus got the fire-related quests at the Court of the Sun in Silvermoon (69,43) from a Festival Talespinner and a Festival Flamekeeper. He also enjoyed seeing a fire-eater perform there. The picture on the left shows him at the site in Undercity, which can be reached via the Silvermoon teleporter. On the right, Catullus is having fun zooming around the ribbon pole at the Hillsbrad site. Be aware that some of the quests are only for high-level people, but others are not so difficult. You may want to visit as many of the fire sites as you can, even if you cannot complete all the lists.

You may want to try recruting people where the quests are given out, forming a small group of Blood Elves who can visit some of the sites together. This is especially useful for sites that are difficult to reach unless you have a high level and know the zone, such as Azshara (co-ords 41,42 on top of the cliff) or Winterspring (co-ords 30,42). Yes, the Blood Ravens will be sharing information about where to find the sites! The one in Hillsbrad Foothills is not far west of Tarren Mill, very near the tower at the crossroads.

Even if you are not doing the fire quests as a group, please offer information about them to any guildless Blood Elves you meet, as a courtesy and the first step in a conversation that may lead to inviting them to become members.

On June 17, 2007, the Blood Ravens have made a cooperation pact with Blades of Magic, a guild primarily of Blood Elves who share the same orientation toward Elven Reunification.  We are experimenting with a shared chat channel.  When you log on you could try entering "/join alliance" to see if it is in operation at that time.  (Of course, "alliance" here has nothing to do with the capital A "Alliance," because both guilds belong to the Horde!)

Here are the two WoW Armory lists for the two guilds:

Blood Ravens

Blades of Magic

Members of both guilds are encouraged to cooperate with each other, to help us all increase our knowledge of traditional Elf culture, and to contribute information to this website.

Lunette and Catullus have been doing censuses of both factions in Earthen Ring, and we will soon have a list of all active guildless characters.  This will be one of many tools we may use to recruit a larger membership.  It might be simplest if all Blood Elves joined the Blood Ravens, and please encourage good candidates you meet to contact Catullus about joining.  But a cooperation pact between like-minded guilds is a highly honorable and potentially successful way to build a wider movement.  Three cheers for the Blades of Magic!

Terick is the Guild Master for the Blades of Magic.

Feklin is the Ambassador from the Blood Ravens to the Blades of Magic.

An especially traumatic episode for me recently was when two Blood Elves, our kinsmen but enemies, killed me. I was trekking along the main north-south road in Ashenvale, when I received a message that the zone was under attack, but it did not say where. A few minutes later, when I was just north of Maestra's Post, word came that that was the exact point of attack. I rushed to the scene and found they had assaulted Lilandris Moonriver, level 42 from the Night Elf capital, Darnassus. The Blood Elves were two paladins, one level 26, and the other 28, so she was able to hold them off. But I was concerned for her safety, and immediately began applying my limited healing powers, hoping her two attackers would see the futility of what they were doing and desist. Because I had taken her side in the struggle, I was no longer protected by the truce between the Alliance and the Horde. I was only level 19 at the time, so when they attacked me, they easily killed me.

I regained consciousness at a graveyard, and my spirit ran back to my corpse. I found that Lilandris was perfectly alright, and her Blood Elf attackers had gone. I searched the campus and found that they had killed Delgren the Purifier, who, like me, had been only level 19 and thus easy prey for them. I did my best to resurrect him, but my powers were insufficient, so all I could do was weep over his body. Not seeing the two Blood Elf paladins around, I climbed the observation tower, and spotted them just at that moment returning, as if they intended to attack Lilandris again! I rushed over to the entrance of the main building and found them confronting her, but they had not yet actually begun their attack. As I reached the entrance, so did a level 24 Draenei paladin, a member of our alliance, so we had the Blood Elves outnumbered, and they slunk away. The Draenei commented, as if he knew the rage rising in my soul, "They're garbage."