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| Portrayed by Maimie McCoy |
| Artwork by Ozma |
| Name: | Aitne Windwright |
| (ITE-nee (rhymes with KITE-knee)) | |
| Gender: | Female |
| Race: | Dwarf |
| Class: | Shaman |
| Role: | Damage |
| Faction: | Wildhammer Clan, Earthen Ring, Explorers' League |
| Professions: | mining, engineering |
| Homeland: | Northeron |
| Player: | inkie |
RP Hooks
- Aitne is widely traveled as well as outgoing and engaged; in theory, anyone might have encountered her over the years.
- Members of the Explorers' League may know her as an archaeologist and scholar.
- Her fellow shamans, particularly those involved with the Earthen Ring, may know her.
- Wildhammer dwarves in particular may know her, especially those of Northeron, or of the Twilight Highlands more generally.
Appearance
Aitne is a compact, graceful dwarven woman with laughter lines etched around warm green eyes, and a vivid, ready smile. There is a gap between her front teeth. Her dark hair is frequently gathered in uneven braids or tails; the look of them suggests they were done in pragmatic haste to keep her hair out of her face rather than with any stylish intent. She tends to look breathlessly windblown in even the most sheltered or staid of surroundings.
She talks with her hands, as though conducting her speech or illustrating a story in the air. The gestures seem so necessary a part of her conversation as to give the impression that if her hands were constrained in some way, she would not be able to speak at all.
On a chain around her neck she wears a pendant consisting of a tiny ammonite fossil in a rough silver setting; she also wears a bracelet of moonstones strung together with what appear to be ancient elven coins.
Personality
Spirited ⬥ Engaged ⬥ Restless ⬥ Unflinching
Aitne's focus, whether on her work or her company, is intense and wholehearted. Her enthusiasms are many and varied, and tend to be infectious. Despite the plenitude and variety of her interests, she never gives the impression of a dilettante; whether it is engineering or natural history or ancient religions, she approaches every aspect of the world around her with both reverent wonder and a deep and scientific curiosity.
She rarely remains in one place for long; her existence seems almost entirely nomadic, but there is a centered self-possession to her that suggests she is at ease wherever she goes, whether it is among a crowd of strangers or at the bottom of a naga-filled ruin. She is unflappable in crisis — a tendency that can be as aggravating as it is admirable, when she may appear more curious than concerned about disaster.
History
Aitne's parents were the Wildhammer shaman Eilin Windwright and the Dark Iron smith Wulfgar Deepguard; the pair met and married years before the War of the Three Hammers shattered the already-strained bonds between the three dwarven clans. They were living among the Wildhammers in Grim Batol when Modgud’s army arrived, and fled that city together to join the Wildhammers’ Northeron exodus. Some twenty or thirty years later, their daughter Aitne was born.
Wulfgar was never quite at ease in their new, highland home under the open sky — nor with the angry stares and vicious whispers he continued to encounter among his wife’s people after the war, even after decades among them — and so he took to exploring. True to his roots, he ventured chiefly into the caves and deep places of the earth. He brought home to his wife and daughter many of the fruits of these excursions: little fossils and odd shards of history, which young Aitne found fascinating.
His wanderings began to take him farther and farther afield, and he was gone for longer and longer periods; each time the tales he brought back with him were stranger, the artifacts older and more alien. Rather than cave systems and abandoned mines, he began to describe ancient vaults and lost cities, vanished cultures and buried powers.
And then, finally, he did not come back at all.
Some people said he had fallen prey to his Dark Iron nature: he’d dug too deeply, reached for something he shouldn’t have. Others speculated that he’d simply had enough of life under the sky and abandoned his family to rejoin his kinsmen under the earth. Eilin told her daughter that neither rumor was true, that he must simply have been the victim of a terrible accident somewhere.
Meanwhile, Aitne was growing up under the tutelage of her mother and the Wildhammer elders, following a shaman’s path, learning in her own way to search out wonders and wisdom in the world. In her, Wulfgar’s restlessness and boundless curiosity were joined with Eilin’s sense of reverence and natural communion, to shape a footloose young woman fascinated by the world around her and at home in it wherever she went.
Only on her deathbed did Eilin confess to her daughter what she knew of Wulfgar’s final expedition; after her mother’s death, Aitne abandoned the highland wilds of home and set out in search of answers of her own.
Her wanderings and her studies brought her into fellowship with kindred spirits in both the Explorers’ League of Ironforge and, later, the Earthen Ring. When the Dark Portal re-opened two years ago and the Earthen Ring began to admit Broken and draenei to their ranks, Aitne was among those Wildhammer shamans who pressed eagerly for their own acceptance as well, to open that group fully to shamans of the Alliance as well as the Horde.
Relationships
Writings
- Writings feat. Aitne Windwright
- RP Logs feat. Aitne Windwright
- Journal of Aitne Windwright
- Mentions of Aitne Windwright
| Title | Summary |
|---|---|
| (2025-04-26) A Hurried Letter with an Explorers' League Seal | A letter arrives at Highbank addressed to both Bran and Dane. |
| (2024-11-16) A Scholar's Request | Aitne Windwright contacts Cobalt Company with an offer-slash-request. |