Do your alts know each other?

I’d been thinking about writing this post for quite a while when it occurred to me that I was really quite curious about how other players approached the same concept — so I suggested it as a Blog Azeroth Shared Topic:

I’ve always considered that my various characters know each other. Each one of them may not personally know every single one of the others, but they are all connected in a web of family and friend relationships. I know that other bloggers, most famously Ratshag, and also Grimmtooth, write about their characters as being a “family of misfits” type of community. And so I’ve been wondering, how did your alts “become the Brady Bunch”?

Whether you have many alts or just a few, do they know each other? Do they have some sort of relationship as people living in Azeroth, or is sending materials and money between them just a game mechanic for you? If your characters do know each other, what kind of relationships do they have, and how did those relationships come into being? If they don’t, what functions do your different alts serve?

Because I treat my characters’ materials and money as a communal pool from a meta perspective, I feel like they have to have some kind of knowledge of each other within the game world, some in-character reason why they are willing to freely share their stuff with each other.

My Tauren characters have always been sisters. Kamalia is the eldest, followed by Kerisa, Ketura, and Keija. Tauren only have four faces to choose from, but when I first created Ketura, Keija, and Kerisa, I deliberately gave them all the same face and skin tone that I’d chosen for Kamalia. Only their hair and horn styles differentiated their appearances (later, after the Barbershop debuted, I tweaked their appearances to have a Tauren of each color).
Karelia and Kaohana are part of the family and have Kamalia’s face, too. Mirroring the late addition of the Paladin and Priest classes to the Tauren race, they were their parents’ “surprise” late middle-age children. They are also twins. I imagine that twins are probably rather rare among the Tauren, and that, combined with their mother’s age at the time, made the pregnancy and birth quite incapacitating. The difficult circumstances of their birth and infancy are what later led them to question the traditional paths of the Tauren and become attracted to the teachings of the disciples of An’She, the Sunwalkers and the Seers. Meanwhile, Keija, the youngest of the older daughters and the only one who had not yet left home, had to take over most of the management of the family’s financial affairs while their father devoted himself to caring for their mother and the babies — the RP explanation for why Warrior Keija was my primary banker on LH for a long time.
DK Kregga was always intended to be a banker, but it took her a long time to get there because she needed to be at or near the level cap herself to be able to disenchant everything Kamalia and Kerisa might throw at her. She was born Grimtotem, but has since renounced her affiliation with that clan. After she returned from Acherus, she was much troubled and sought counsel from the elders of Thunder Bluff, who assigned a trusted senior Shaman — Kamalia — to mentor her as she worked to regain a connection to the Earthmother. As part of her continuing self-inflicted penance for her acts in the service of the Lich King, Kregga has volunteered to help manage Kamalia’s family’s finances so that Keija can resume her training as a Warrior.
Feral Druid Kaiuna, with her green eyes, is one of Kamalia’s younger cousins and a particular favorite of the twins; she is only a year or two older than they are and the three of them were often together during their childhood.

I have a lot of alts, so this post is likely to be a wall-of-text crit — if you’re interested, follow the cut to read more.

I’ve written before (though I can’t remember in which post) about how one day after doing her dailies on the Isle of Quel’Danas, Kamalia was running errands in Silvermoon City when she met a Blood Elf Mage, Kaelinda, who had the same family name as her own clan name. Amused by this coincidence, the two talked for much of the rest of the day and parted as friends. Kiraleia and Kelisanna are Kaelinda’s sisters and Kalaneia is a cousin. Kamalia has probably met Kira once or twice, but she probably hasn’t met ‘Neia or Kelly.

Kay, or perhaps others of her family, first encountered Kivrinne at Tranquillen in the Ghostlands. Finding her somewhat more trustworthy than other Forsaken, they first patronized her Apothecary practice, then enlisted her assistance with other aspects of their business affairs.

Kay’s interaction with Kazuliza is likewise primarily professional; she was looking for a Wardrobe Mistress for herself and her family and the shrewd Goblin offered favorable terms. All of my Goblin characters were certainly at the big KTC party, so they’ve heard of each other at least enough for a business acquaintance.

Before Thrall’s departure, when the only Mage trainers to be found in Orgrimmar were in the Valley of Spirits, Kay necessarily, though not particularly happily, found herself among the Trolls. She crossed paths a handful of times with Kikimaia. One day when a group discussion of the finer points of Frost Magic wandered off into general life topics, Kay recommended her own financial agent, Kivrinne, J.A.-R.A.S., to the young Troll.

After the Orcs rescued the Trolls from the Sea Witch, Kiki and her only female cousin, Kilauea, became friends with some of the Orcish children. Kiki, Kilauea, and their new best friend Keshona all had an affinity for Frost and Fire magic, but Kiki was more sensitive to the Arcane and became a Mage, while Kilauea and Keshona were more sensitive to Nature and became Shaman.

Although Kamalia has not formally taken on a Padawan Apprentice, when she is in Thunder Bluff or the Valley of Honor for any extended period of time, she assists the elders there with instructing and mentoring younger and less experienced Shaman. She has probably taught Kilauea and Keshona at one time or another; if so, they undoubtably remember her better than she remembers them.

I’m fond of the idea of a middle-aged Orc Fire Mage who is a reformed Warlock. I’ve also toyed with the idea of having my Orc Mage be Keshona’s mother — and the very act of writing that thought increases my commitment to the character concept. My present incarnation of an Orc Mage, however, is likely to be summarily deleted and re-rolled with a different appearance on a different server because I’m not completely satisfied with it.

My Forsaken Mage, Kivrinne, and my Worgen Mage, Kymberlea, were sisters. Kimorene was a friend of their mother. Kinevra is a friend of Kimorene’s daughter-in-law, so she soon came to know Kymberlea, too. Kinevra, Kelilla, and Kaprikka have studied together at the Wizard’s Sanctum. Kjersti and Kelilla rubbed shoulders in Ironforge at some point — maybe Kjersti, whether as Hunter or as Shaman, hired Kelilla as a tailor to mend some of her clothing. Keriluna and Kaprikka became acquainted at Astranaar and worked together on the Raene’s Cleansing questline. I could potentially write Keriluna into Kymberlea’s story as one of the Night Elves who assisted with the evacuation of Gilneas, but I’m not sure that that’s a direction I want to go with Kerry‘s (more or less non-existent) storyline. Kelilla would be eager to help a Dwarf friend master magic, but a Night Elf Mage’s background is a tough nut to crack. I really like Saxsy’s story, but of course I don’t want to copy it, which gives me two options — either my NE Mage was a Priestess who suppressed her affinity for the Arcane for hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years, or she was born in Eldre’thalas. If the former, she could be one of Keriluna’s lifetime friends… maybe an ex-friend, now that she has openly declared her desire to practice magic. If the latter, which I rather prefer as an origin, I’m not quite sure how to fit her in with the rest of my characters.

This has been a good topic for me to write about, too, because some of these things about my characters I knew already, and some of them I hadn’t really thought about yet, beyond the nebulous concept of “yes, they all know each other somehow“.

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