The Epic Conclusion to a Story of Heroic Proportions

Csilla, Raiding

As I have mentioned before in the past, as a roleplayer I tend to maintain myself in character for the vast majority of my time within World of Warcraft.  My only clear cut exceptions are in raids, where the littlest bit of miscommunication can sometimes end with painful results — and neither of my raiding characters are suited to giving information during raids whether due to the manner of their speech or their lack of understanding.  As a result, the remainder of my characters’ actions could and should be considered their own.

That said, I have made a conscious effort not to adapt any of the major plots or storylines into my characters’ histories.  While suspension of belief can take a roleplayer very far¹, it can be difficult when that same roleplayer is defeating Defias Kingpin Edwin VanCleef on her tenth character.  As a result, while the efforts were performed in character and may be referenced by that same character in the future, they generally are not considered to be a significant portion of that character’s history.

I have, however, made one exception to this policy.

Nearly two years ago during the latter-fall, early-winter months in 2006, I had successfully managed to level my newly minted perky priestess Csilla Kovács to the then-level cap.  While I’d had fun playing the character and assisting my friends in the Shield of Dawn with completing their pre-The Burning Crusade objectives, I was definitely looking forward to raiding again after a yearlong absence.  My efforts in trying to obtain a raid for my Beast Mastery huntress — Eszti “Iron Legs” Nightwing, of course — had fallen through, mostly due to the fact that it appeared that every raid was chockfull of hunters and even if I were the epitome of huntery goodness it would be unlikely that any raid would have an opening for me.  On the other hand, raids left and right were clamoring for competent healers, specifically of the priestly variety.

In this vein, I managed to garner every piece of the Vestments of the Devout set² and had even managed to get into a Molten Core raid with The Exiled, led at the time by my friend Malichi.  While we made exhaustive effort to clear all of Molten Core prior to the expansion, a variety of factors prevented us from doing so.  Irregardless, the raid leadership planned forays into other dungeons, including the Ruins of Ahn’Qiraj and Onyxia’s Lair.

At the time that this announcement was made, Csilla was unfortunately not attuned for Onyxia’s Lair, sadly having never completed the chain.  While I had made more-than-frequent efforts to complete it, I always seemed to run into problems with Jail Break!, the leg of the quest that required players to rescue Marshal Reginald Windsor from his imprisonment in Blackrock Depths and then escort him to the exit.  One of two things would invariably happen: the group with which I had joined would rescind on their promise to do the escort quest or somehow I would encounter some sort of bug that would prevent me from completing the quest.  My penultimate heroic effort met with failure when Windsor somehow strayed too far from me less than perhaps ten yards from the exit, leaving me frothing at the mouth in disgust.

My pleas to my guild for assistance in completing the chain were mostly met with hostility or total disregard.  I was hesitant to bother my fellow raiders because I didn’t want to take from their time spent in the game, especially when many of them had familial obligations outside of World of Warcraft and their time in game served as an escape for their otherwise hectic lives.

Perhaps maddened by my inability to complete this quest — which I had tried perhaps four dozen times in the past to no avail — I came to a decision and stomped³ my way to the entrance of Blackrock Depths: I was going to go with my raid to Onyxia’s Lair even if I had to do the damned instance all by myself!  And, despite the fact that I was a lowly Holy priestess in only a handful of Tier 1 mixed with some pieces of the Vestments of the Virtuous, I somehow managed to complete the quest on my own.

To this date, I’m not quite sure how I managed to finish Jail Break!  I know that it took many, many hours and more than just a few repairs.  I relied heavily on Mind Control to take down an enemy or two, only to cowardly run out of the door as soon as things started to look far more painful than my perky priestess could handle.  Select a mob, watch it die, run out, repeat.  Over, and over, and over again.  The packs with dogs were particularly difficult due to the fact that they often had only a single humanoid in them; I would have to take a Dark Iron dwarf remaining from one group and use him to defeat the dogs.

Once I had cleared both the way to Windsor and the path to the exit, I then heroically strode forward with him and healed as he tanked the enemies that would appear along the path.  Since I had  more or less cleared the entire area, I was able to Psychic Scream with impunity and watch our enemies flee in terror.  And when the damned quest was done and I could finally, finally meet up with Marshal Reginald Windsor in Stormwind City, I leaned back in my seat, a foolish grin on my face, and thought, Wow, I wonder if that’s how Csilla would feel right about now!

And it clicked.  This momentous event — no matter how foolhardy or asinine — was something of which I was proud.  Furthermore, it was exactly something that Csilla would do; I could easily see my plucky, perky diminutive priestess getting it into her head to do something like this on her own and somehow being successful.  Not to mention the interesting dynamic that would occur when a teenage priestess of Light met up with a crotchety veteran of war who had spent quite a bit of time locked away in a dungeon. Marshal Reginald Windsor⁴ would be a wonderful foil to Csilla Kovács.

Unfortunately, that made the events that followed in Stormwind that much more traumatic to the poor girl, but that’s an aside.

I was reflecting on these past events when I found myself in Onyxia’s Lair last night after a series of fights with Coren Direbrew.  Friend Draccos got into a raid to down the dragon herself and I gleefully jumped at the chance to join him.  You see, despite the fact that Csilla bonded with Reginald Windsor and that I finally managed to get the character attuned, I never really had the opportunity to defeat Onyxia on this particular incarnation of my healing priestess.  Two years after that fateful evening, this was still something that lingered heavily on her mind.  Until last night, when Csilla Kovács — daughter of György Kovács, a plain man from Elwynn Forest who owned his own vineyard — assisted nine others in slaying the beast.

Then, and only then, did the young woman finally got her revenge by giving the fallen dragon a swift kick to the head with one dainty foot!

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