Badde Wolfe: The Story So Far

[Shoqwan]

Badde Wolfe: the girl and the beast

I used to spend my summers by the Wall. I would sit with my back against the cool gray brick and imagine myself melting into it, swimming through its width and emerging on the other side, ready to explore the world that had been kept from me. Greymane had built his wall when I was just a small child, so in my mind it had always existed. My mother used to tell me stories of the people and creatures that would sometimes pass through our land before it had been built, but they were just fairytales to me, and after her death they seemed foolish in comparison with the cold bleak world around me. The famine that killed her left my father sick and weak, and drink was his only comfort. He would spend hours ranting and raving about the brave and wise King Greymane, who had done so well to protect us with his great Wall, claiming the famine was the last vestiges of the poison brought from outsiders. But as I carried my frail drunken father to his bed I could see the truth. Like a piece of string tied too tightly and cutting off the circulation to a finger, the Wall was slowly killing Gilneas and rotting its people from the inside. This thing meant to protect us only brought us harm. So it was from the Wall that I learned that the only person I could trust to keep me safe was myself.

I was 18 when I finally got up the courage to leave my father, to strike out on my own. Before I left I visited the Wall one last time. Over the years I had grown to hate this symbol of arrogance and isolationism. Greymane’s hubris to think he could keep out the evils of the world with just a few lumps of stone infuriated me, and to think that he had the right to tell me where I could and could not go, well, not even my father had that right. It was as I rested my hand against the cool stone, indulging in my escapist fantasy one last time, that I noticed the graffiti scrawled high above my head. It scared and comforted me all at once. Its presence showed that someone else out there was willing to stand up to the tyranny that the Wall represented, dirtying its image with paint. The words themselves, Badde Wolfe, sent a shiver down my spine. Stories of wolves that walked as men and tore their victims limb from limb had been criss-crossing the countryside. Many dismissed them as tall tales, but I encountered one man whose eyes were so haunted that it was not easy to forget his harrowing tale of death and destruction at the hands of these monsters. I could not tell if the words left on the Wall were a warning or a prophecy, but whatever their meaning they seemed to speak to me directly.

And so when I reached the limits of the Gilnean capital city and thought it best to leave my old life behind it was these words that came back to me. A comfort to me but a warning to others seemed to be the perfect protection in such place, and so the Wall gave me my new name. I became Badde Wolfe, not a person but a thing to be feared and respected. The skills my childhood had taught me were extremely useful in my new home. How to fade into the background to avoid a beating from a drunken father, charm to sweet talk neighbours into giving food and firewood, and the swift movements and keen eyes required for hunting your own food when there was no other choice, these were all things a resident of the Merchant quarter slums would do well to know. I freely admit I was but an amateur until Loren spotted me and decided to take me under her wing. I knew her as the local fence to whom I brought items that I had “procured” during my daily routine, but we soon became friends of a sort, and it seemed only natural to combine our talents.

When the city was first invaded it was Loren I tried to find first. The monsters from whom I had taken my name had arrived, and I was furious. Greymane was riding around ordering people about and normally I would have used my knowledge of the city to get out of there as quickly as possible, but this was my territory. I was the only Badde Wolfe that belonged there not those savage interlopers. So I fought. I killed as many as I could, found Loren alive and well, and she helped me with tips on the best way to gut the animals. I thought I was doing well, but I knew the moment I was bitten that something was wrong. My anger kept me going, but when I woke up in the stocks with Lord Godfrey snarling at me and I snarled back, I truthfully wasn’t that surprised.

The fight against the Forsaken was for me nothing but an escape. I secretly relished my new from, the speed and savagery it afforded me. If I was territorial before, my transformation multiplied that ten-fold. That these undead abominations thought they could take what was mine was the only motivation I needed to continue killing.

But there was Loren, as human as ever, and the only real friend I’d ever known. Seeing her calmed me somehow, and I knew enough sense to listen to her and those she had decided to trust. I was glad I did, for otherwise I would never had met the Elves. These ethereal beings, stranger than anything I had ever seen showed me how to regain my human form, but even greater still they brought me to the coast and offered me a ship. The escape I longed for since I was but a child now lay before me, and I jumped at the chance.

So here I stand, on the docks of a strange new land, an ocean away from the small corner of Azeroth that was both my home and my prison. Other ships come and go bearing people unlike any I have seen before to more places than I have even dreamed of. And as I walk among the structures of the great Elven city of Darnassus, my mind keeps marveling at one fact. They have no Walls here.