Disclaimer: Welcome, people of the internet! I don't own a single damn thing, since all credit goes to Blizzard. I simply hope this is a fitting tribute to the World of Warcraft. This is an AU and tentative Thrall/OC (female Draenei) pairing that steers clear from the official canon, starting at Wrath of the Lich King, from 27-ish ADP onwards, and where I've devised that the Horde and the Alliance both agree on a truce to fight the impending threat in Northrend. Please send any death threats and/or summons to court by PM. Enjoy!
PROLOGUE
The Draenei hated the sea. If anything, they were a grounded people, attuned to the earth like the roots of a tree. And of the myriad of roots plunging in the damp, cold ground; three of those were most precious: respect, tenacity and compassion, the three virtues of the Holy Light. Of the first two virtues she thought highly for she tried, for lack of a better word, to uphold those herself. Of the last, she thought nothing, as there was nothing left of the sort in her.
Where her people felt the Light within, wearing their unshakable faith like armor and wielding their righteous fury like they would a battle ax; the fickle Humans, the stout Dwarves and the quixotic Gnomes had made It into an institution. They built great shrines, which they called chapels and churches and cathedrals, and were told how to practice their faith and focus their fury by men no more enlightened than they were. More the fools, her uncle had said, for there is only one Light and Velen is its Prophet. Yet she lacked the necessary compassion to feel It's warmth, because she had renounced It as much as It had deserted her. If anything, the Light had been a mere accessory to carnage, because so many had died in It's name. Among them, Mother, or rather, the memory of Mother, who had willingly surrendered her life, putting her faith in that Light she so firmly believed in.
Discarding faith, except perhaps faith in herself, she vowed to live by fury, a fury burning like the sun, that only water could quell.
She had always loved the water; pooling in the curve of her palm, soothing; seeping in between her fingers and running down her knuckles and her forearms, cooling; thrashing against her battered skin, the glorious crown of white hair flailing wildly around her skull, storming. And much like the water, she was afflicted, or rather, blessed, with a mercurial temper. Whatever pain it felt the earth kept for itself, unmoving and steady and numbing, the familiar sting of an old scar. Pain rippled through water; it would ebb and flow and suddenly snap, the cold, sharp bite of a fresh wound.
Twenty of their years and more she had heeded the anguished whisper of the river and the dull pitter-patter of the rain and the chaotic swell of the rising storm, as blood of blue and blood of red twirled in its midst, never mingling, never to mingle.
Twenty of their years and more she had been a harbinger of the things she thought existed only in her mind, when they had been there all along.
Twenty of their years and more she had been the water.
Twenty-seven of their years she had walked the lonely path of the shaman.
Back in the home which wasn't a home, on the outskirts of the Exodar where she'd callously left her father to mourn, there was a wall.
At first, the wall had a purely practical function. She'd made a habit out of writing down everything her mind struggled to process or store, whether it be something she'd read in a book or a tricky word in Common she couldn't get her tongue around.
On the wall now, where she'd left it, in the home that still wasn't a home, was a sprawling myriad of sketches and letters and dried plants, recollections of the past two years and scraps of the joy this new world, this new life, had brought her. A reminder of what mattered, of what she had decided would matter. Neither Father, that grieving husk of a man, nor Mother, long raped and cut to pieces and dead and buried, were featured anywhere on the wall. It wasn't that they didn't matter, but simply that the memory of them was too painful to behold.
Her first impulse, upon discovering this strange new world, had been to put as great a distance as she possibly could between the wreckage of the Exodar, that unshakable sense of duty she so resented, the empty shell her father had become, and herself.
While she had been shackled by the restrictions of needs other than her own for most of her life; she had started to want, for herself. For there was no pleasing the Spirits if there was no pleasing oneself. Many a Draenei would say that Azeroth wasn't home, that it didn't feel like home, and indeed it wasn't. But such was the plight of her people, never to call a place home. Not having the privilege of familiarity, of warmth. Azeroth was merely the reality they had accidentally warped into. Correction: the word you're looking for is 'crashed', Poppy would often add. Yet for Thea it had been the closest she had called home in decades. It had a sense of intimacy that permeated all things. It was a world that had heart and brain and sense and that sure as fel wasn't perfect, but it was there. Which, in her Draenei mind, meant a great deal.
She embraced this reality and discarded her own.
Her first step had been to befriend the locals.
"Hmm." Thyra's eyes skimmed through the recommendation letter, that was anything but commendable, glancing every so often at the poor Draenei seated behind her desk. Funny how these aliens were easy to read. Tail flailing from side to side. Glowing eyes the color of shimmering snow nervously studying the surroundings. Intricate web of worry lines, etched on the forehead. Tapering fingers twisting silky fabric. "Well?" the Dwarf-woman barked. "Is it true?"
"What is?" the Draenei answered icily.
"Is it true that you called Chancellor Ironside an idiot?"
"Yes," she said.
"You slapped him in the face with a book?"
"Yes."
"With an original copy of 'The Principles of Agricultural Botany'?"
"Yes."
By the looks of it, the Draenei was expecting to be at the receiving end of a string of Dwarven expletives. A shadow of a smile crept across Thyra's face as she smoothened the letter on her desk. "Have a cup of tea, Thea."
Thea had a cup of tea, bitter and dark.
The next morning, Chancellor's Ironside restraining order still very much in effect and his nose still very much crooked, she was kicked out of the Archives department and her role as a menial cleric. She had, rather unexpectedly, secured a position on the science sloop HMS Pumice for an initial two-year rotation as a naturalist. While the Council, at Thyra's behest, had thought it a fit punishment for a wayward Draenei, Thyra, being Thyra, knew better, and made sure her sketching skills were put to good use, seeing something else in her drawings and her writings than the mere trifles of a creative mind.
Suddenly she found herself working on that grand encyclopedic project of the Stormwind Science Academy that was the Azeroth Compendium of Things Big and Small. Her art brought her places she'd only ever dreamed of. Winterspring. Arathi Highlands. Feralas. Tanaris Desert. Searing Gorge. The Hinterlands. Un'Goro Crater. Teldrassil. Silithus. Traveling, not wandering, she mused, brought her a sense of purpose, a sense of belonging.
The crew of the HMS Pumice was led by polar opposites; Dwarf geologist-in-chief Dr Thyra Stonemace, Ph.D, of course, and Gnome anthropologist Dr Poppy Fizzlewizz, Ph.D. Thyra was as stout and bitter as a pint o' lager. Poppy was crisp and flamboyant like a Darnassian wine, you know, the one they grow south of Dolanaar, over a dish of grilled boar and roasted taters with garlic butter, it is sublime! Thyra's favoured solution to a problem was tea. Poppy had a fascination for explosive devices. Thyra was a founding member of the Science Academy. Poppy was to her own admission the new kid on the block, whatever that meant. Thyra was married with two grown children. Poppy was happily single and deemed relationships a nuisance that interfered with her work, even if said work involved people in the first place.
Between them, they shared no less than five doctorates, two dozen notable scientific awards and Daisy, their pet baby raptor and de facto mascot of the team. And, last but not least, three overworked, underpaid and thoroughly homesick surveyors, each with their own field of expertise: Human astronomer Alphaeus "Alfie" Worthington, Night Elven botanist Oriel Mistrunner and naturalist Thea of the Draenei.
"No family name?" Poppy asked.
"No. There is no need for it as there are very few of us left."
The Gnome cooed. "You are like a queen of old, so grand that only a surname suffices."
"Yes," came the gentle afterthought in her broken Common, "A queen of nothing."
The first few months were difficult. While Poppy's reputation as a scientist preceded her, Thea had none whatsoever: her Common was shaky at best and she was unmistakably graced with the anatomical particularities of her Eredar forefathers. Her own cousins had wrecked havoc on this world like they had every single world that came within their grasp. Scorn and suspicion was to be expected from those begrudging allies who came in various shapes and sizes. And though they were short-lived and inherently flawed, she came to admire their resilience. It took Thyra's abrupt manner and Poppy's genuine interest to have them gradually warm to her, and sure, soon enough, she was included in their relentless bickering and verbal jousts. The professional dynamic she likened to that of an old married couple routine, flinging tough love at one another until something exploded, usually by the Gnome's hand. (Though why she'd delve into explosives as an anthropologist was utterly lost to her.)
The next three months were a little better, and by better, Thea meant that the pet baby raptor, which showed affection exclusively in the form of sharp love bites, snapped a little less often. And instead of being overworked and underpaid and thoroughly homesick, she was just overworked and underpaid, for a change. The usual squabbles became far more entertaining, akin to friendly rivalry more than outright dislike. What she lacked in formal education, being reminded all too often that she, woe betide her, did not have a doctorate, she more than made up for in common sense and practical knowledge.
By the end of the rotation, she'd proven herself a invaluable asset to the team, which was as good a surveying team as there was in the world.
After two years, their work completed, the crew disbanded, the HMS Pumice was decommissioned, and they went home.
Then, on the first day of the Feast of Winter Veil, came news of the truce.
On the up side (and Alphaeus' last letter was quite eloquent in that regard), it would usher both the Horde and the Alliance in a new golden age of trade. That meant, in his enlightened drunkard's mind, that the Orgrimmar markets would be selling imported rhubarb (which only grew in the Eastern Kingdoms), and that was a good thing because rhubarb was a civilised food staple because one could make rhubarb crumble out of rhubarb and she forgot the last because. Something about the awe-inspiring qualities of rhubarb crumble, no doubt.
Something ominous stirred up North. Horde and Alliance begrudgingly consented to lay down arms, if only to bide their time, sharpen their blades and axes for the upcoming war on the largely uncharted continent of Northrend.
And that, the Science Academy had decreed, was an opportunity.
She couldn't think of a place worse than the frozen wastes of the Borean Tundra.
She didn't think hard enough.