February 28th
Dear Journal,
I have survived the destruction of my home, the deaths of my entire family and the horrendous life changes that have occurred to me, so far. My name is Alexander Brandric, I am Gilnean and I am also a Worgen, through no choice of my own. Let me step back here a bit and I will tell you some of my story, dramatic, comical and sometimes rather boring.
I was the son to a minor noble family at home, which that name is not important to me now because the family as I knew it are all dead. I am the sole survivor of the slaughter because I was the one doing the slaughtering. We had endured the onslaught of the plague being cast into our midst by the Forsaken and Sylvannas – we considered ourselves fortunate, maybe we were just kidding ourselves and accepted the ugly death at the beginning. Little did we now that the forthcoming horror that would befall our land.
From what I recall of my family, I assume that we were happy, we had money and all of the creature comforts that we once enjoyed without much thought. There were parties, friends and lots of young woman to peek the fancy of a young man such as myself. I’ll admit that I was no respecter of women and their protected virginity and partook of anything that I so desired – money has its advantages.
One night after one of my parent’s balls that was held in our home, I found myself in bed with a sweet young thing, she couldn’t have been more than sixteen. We all had been drinking and dancing most of the night and it culminated with me escorting this sweet young thing to my bedroom for some more intimate discussions.
We had all seen and heard of the worgen running rampant though our lands and were aware of the consequences if you were ever bitten, you would join the ranks of the filthy beasts. The worgen were originally created by Archmage Arugal to fight the Scourge, however, these aggressive beats had decided to turn their interest on easier prey, the citizens of Gilneas. Woe be to anyone that was only bitten and not killed.
When I awakened the next morning this young woman was acting rather peculiar and she bit me as hard as I have ever been bitten by any creature. I cried out in anguish and looked at her to ask her why she had done such a horrible thing and notice her eyes had changed to a brilliant yellow and she was trying to attack me again. By The Light!! My bedmate was a worgen going through the transition to beast – that meant that I was going to have to face that Curse, there was nothing to prevent it or cure it. To be blunt, I killed her before she had a chance to kill me and removed her body from the house to the dense forest near there. I was hoping that I hadn’t been cursed and I was also hoping that no one would remember that I was the last one to see her alive, if they ever found the body, that is.
Apparently, this Curse starts to stream through your body rather rabidly and it’s only a matter of hours, not days, until you make the transition to Wolf. The inner turmoil and pain I can remember as freshly today and I did the day that it happened. I thought to lock myself away in my rooms and no one would be the wiser, I had heard that some worgen were capable of returning to their normal human form – I had planned on staying in my rooms until I could make that change.
In my bestial madness, I broke out of my supposedly secured rooms and went on a rampage throughout the house, killing anything in my path. I can vaguely remember some of the people that I killed however, I can remember killing my Mother and it causes me great anguish to my very soul. I can still see her shocked and pained face as I attacked her. Her only words were “Why Alex…why?” I will carry that picture in my mind until the day I die. From that point forward, my mind seems very unsure of the things that I was compelled to do as this beast.
The most horrible thing that happens with the Curse is that you are still inside this beast, you can see, hear and taste the things that it does, however, you have no control over it at all. You may be screaming for people to run inside the head of the beast, however, the beast still kills whatever it happens to be pursuing, you see it very graphically and can feel the pleasure that the kill often brings.
I don’t know how long I was like this, my human mind was so overridden by the beast’s mind that I think I lost consciousness. I do know that I was eventually captured and subdued in a cage, then later moved to chains. I was forced to drink a potion that was supposed to cure the Beast, however, that potion took its own sweet time taking affect. I was in the form of the Wolf for quite a while until something triggered the potion and I was able to return to my human form once again.
I remember fighting alongside my fellow Gilneans, some in human form, some with the Wolf. I can say that we fought bravely and it seemed as though we were all going to be exterminated by the Forsaken. The Forsaken were still lobbing their plague filled globes into the city, the stench overrode everything else and there was constant fighting for every single little foothold that we were able to gain. It was a horrific time to be alive, no matter what form you were in. To see your entire lifestyle being ripped away, people dying al around you, it was a war that I had never thought that I would be drawn into. What was once a very proud city was now in ruins, people lying dead all around, too many bodies to give a decent burial and so many worgen satisfying their hunger by eating them – these were the worgen that were not such as I.
Graymane led his men valiantly, losing his own son in the process, as we tried to take our city back from the Forsaken and the worgen beasts that killed whatever came in their path. It was a truly gut wrenching time. We finally had to forsake our beloved city and fought onward to the coast – killing pockets of worgen and Forsaken as we went. I don’t know how many people I saw die and at this point, I am numbed to the whole thing.
We lost our land, our people and the rights to truly claim that we were humans during that time. We finally made our final stand with the Night Elf race that came to our aide. Of all the races in this great world of Azeroth, they were the only ones that stood valiantly with us. We had to escape our land and took our refugees to Kalimdor. What few of us that survived the struggles now live in Darnassus. Most of us are Cursed, some are not, it was at the direction of the Fates as to whom was blessed with being normal human beings, displaced by a war that we never asked for or saw coming behind our wall to keep the world at bay.
I oftentimes hear people talking about a cure for the Curse and I have to laugh to myself. There is no cure, you fools, you just have to learn how to control this inner beast and carrying on with what kind of life that has been left to you. I have very little gold in my pouch and I will have earn my money by my own hard work – no family fortune here, all was lost the night I killed my family.
Luckily I had learned to hunt with my Father and his group of friends long before this transition, so, I do have a means to support myself here in this strange land that we will now call home. I do know that I almost get some kind sexual pleasure when the Wolf takes over and I am out in the field. I have never known such physical strength and prowess as a human – I relish the joys of hunting down my prey and killing it, sometimes rending it to something that is not even recognizable in my beast frenzy.
I am going to accept this Curse for what it is, sometimes a blessing and sometimes something that separates my people from the rest of humanity. I’ll keep searching for this so-called cure, however, I don’t think that it exists other than in some foolish man’s mind.
Alexander Brandric
