Alt Appreciation Week: Warlock

     It's Warlock Week! We're almost at the end of Lae's scheduled weeks of Alt Appreciation. And we're toward a tail end of the list where I don't have many characters. I've only got one Warlock, but I'm very fond of him and I've got big plans for him this week.
   
Tal: The Alchemist who is technically a Warlock.

Level 85 Demonology Warlock
     Tal is technically a warlock, that's his class and it's the thing that (mostly) keeps him alive when he's out wandering around, but in his head and in mine he's an Alchemist first. Not because I leveled him entirely for the profession but because Tal has a story of his own in my head and Alchemy is really at the root of it. I originally made Tal a few years ago. I was still newer to the game and a warlock sounded kind of interesting and I had a name I liked, so Tal. He leveled for a while with a friend's shaman, did some questing and worked on his alchemy.
    He capped his alchemy in Cata, and when Mists launched I eventually got around to leveling him up just enough to let him cap his skill in it again. He's never been at level cap. In fact until a week or so ago he was still level 82. But he lives on Seish's server and Seish and Rim picked up an entire set of cloth gear on the Timeless Isle. Here's the thing: apparently I don't like to play squishy characters. I looked at the cloth gear and realized I didn't have a single cloth wearing character on any server that's at level cap. In fact Tal at 82 was as close as it got. And I'd been meaning to level him up eventually. I just hadn't got around to it. He didn't really care. As long as he can do all the Alchemy he wants he's perfectly happy.
     When I realized Warlock week was coming up I spent a bit of time poking around on him here and there until he finally managed to get this done (very belatedly):

     And now he's got the quest to go to Pandaria sitting in his log ready to go, so this week I'm going to see just how close to 90 he can manage to get, so he can finally enjoy all the goodies Seish and Rim have been sending him and maybe even do an LFR or a dungeon or something. Because as little as I've played him I still feel much more confident of my ability to warlock than I do of my ability to rogue.

A bit about Tal's character (just for fun).

     Tal was a bit older than one would normally be when he set off adventuring. Not old really, not quite middle aged(though he's pushing it), but not a strapping, green, youth out to conquer the world. He never intended to go out and see the world. In fact if he'd been given his way he'd have been perfectly content to spend his entire life in Silvermoon doing alchemical research in his laboratory and reading ponderous old tomes on demons and their ways. But fate has ways of doing things that we don't plan and the bookish alchemist let his witty tongue get the better of his sense at the wrong time and within earshot of the wrong set of pointy elven ears and the next thing he knew he'd been sent out of Silvermoon on important 'field assignments' (otherwise known as revenge).

     So he's had to try to learn to adapt, to learn to do more with demons than read about them and try to keep himself alive out in the world. He's not really doing half badly for himself, and it has been interesting for him to see the herbs as they grow out in the wild rather than just having them delivered for his research. He's taken up the study of herbalism as well, though he is not yet as skilled with it as he is at alchemy. He's been dabbling a bit in archaeology as well, which mostly consists of him meandering through digsites and constantly shuffling through maps and papers and artifacts and mumbling to himself while his voidlord handles threats he only half notices.

     As warlocks go Tal really isn't particularly evil. He's more bookish and a little bit nerdy than anything else. His interest in demons was originally more academic curiosity than anything, though it has sense developed into something that's practical and useful for keeping himself alive. He still doesn't particularly want to conquer anything or be a hero. He really just wants to finish up his tasks and learn what he can learn and redeem himself with the powers that be enough that they'll let him go back home to his nice cozy lab to resume his research.

     The goal for Tal is to get him to 90 or close enough to it that I can easily finish the leveling before the next expansion. If I feel particularly bold afterwards I might make the attempt at getting him green fire, but I don't particularly hold out much hope for that. I don't know warlocks very well at all, and from the sounds of it the quest line tasks even some of the people who main warlocks. Still, I doubt I'll be able to resist giving it a shot. After all green is my favorite color.

     And Tal is on Seish's realm so that will give me an opportunity to have a real look at what the realm connection has done. So we'll see. There may be more Tal posts this week. There might even be some in character scribbles from his traveling journal (notes are important to any researcher, so Tal is a writer of copious notes and things) because I enjoy doing things like that. It should be fun.