Shande

Information

Player: dragonmad

Character Full Name: Shande Starthorn

Character In-Game Name: Shande

Nickname(s): "Little Hoofless"

Association(s): The Alliance, The Sentinels (Former)

Race: Kaldorei

Class: Runemaster

Age: 427

Sex: Female

Hair: White

Eyes: Silver

Weight: 233 lbs.

Height: 6' 5"

Appearance

Very little. At most, Shande will cover those areas that would be seen as "indecent" and forego any other clothing as to proudly show her numerous runic tattoos.

Personality

Shande's mindset is one of flux. She exists between two very different ways of thinking. As a Sentinel, she was never one for philosophical questions or viewpoints. She took her orders and her duties at base and didn't bother thinking too much on them. With a more questioning point of view pounded (literally, to some degree) into her, she's begun to seek the reason behind the actions. If the nature of the world follows patterns, then would that mean the people did as well?

Even with her torn viewpoint of questions versus obedience, Shande is extremely loyal to anyone she percieves as an "ally". This loyalty borders on the feral or even the fanatical, with any percieved immediate threat being dealt with extremely harshly. The only difference in her treatment of "threats" divides along factional lines. Alliance members are often merely beaten and subdued. Non-Tauren Horde members would be slain.

Shande does not hate the younger races. She once did, but now she questions them, pities them some, even. She sees their mistakes less as hubris and more as the mistakes of a young child first learning the governing laws of life. The difference being that the times now call for a stern hand to guide them, rather than the freedom to learn from mistakes.

History

Shande's childhood was one of little to no true import. She was born and raised in Nighthaven, the child of a druid and a normal woman. She grew up in relative normalcy and eventually joined the Sentinels after reaching adulthood.

It was in the military that Shande believed to have found her calling. She was one of the better trainees in her group, and she settled into the life of a Sentinel very nicely, taking some measure of enjoyment from their patrols and the routines that governed her life for the next century, eventually moving from a footsoldier to the position of a Hippogryph rider.

The sudden arrival of the Orcs was a jarring experience for her. Though stationed in Feralas at the time, her unit was pulled much closer to home in the wake of approaching Legion forces. She saw no true combat in the Third War aside from Hyjal, though that singular battle was enough to turn her stomach for years to come.

In the midst of the fighting, she and her mount were shot down. It was mere luck that she landed on the side of allied forces (specifically a group of Tauren) as opposed to the Legion's encroaching masses. The luck did not, however, allow her to assist in the rest of the Battle of Mount Hyjal, however.

She would awake some days later, in a tent along with the other wounded. The news that she had missed the climax of the fighting- that she had been incapacitated and unable to do her duty-simply devastated her. Her wounds were tended to, and Shande simply vanished in the wake of the battle, using the massive casualties to leave undisturbed.

She spent the next to years lost, wandering and simply trying to understand life (and her newfound mortality). She had no more desire for the life of a soldier, and no more faith in the order and monotony that had once dictated her life so completely. She survived during those next two years, but she did not live.

Chance, fate, or perhaps even Elune would have it be that a single night, camped on the borders of the Barrens, she would come across a Tauren who offered his fire to the former Sentinel, and a warm meal. They spoke that night of many more things than Shande had even thought of in a long time. They spoke of the world, and of death, and of flames and of family. They spoke of chaos and of order, and of the patterns of the world. The pair endeared to each other, becoming companions over that simple campfire.

Two weeks into their now-joint wanderings, Shande was made to be his apprentice, learning from her newfound friend and teacher. The next years would have the pair wandering to rune sites, speaking over fires and breathing new life into the once-stoic woman.

As years passed, the line between student and teacher blurred. Shande became adept in her own right, and her teacher eventually had nothing more to teach. Now, seven years after Hyjal, the pair finally split apart, with Shande deigning it time for her to re-enter society, with a drastically different viewpoint. But then, the world was a drastically different place than it was before Hyjal.