Death Knight Week

This is my Death Knight, Salay. She was my third character to reach 90 after my monk and my hunter, which must mean I like her.

I leveled Salay together with my good friend Terry last summer, while we were waiting for Mists of Pandaria to launch. Prior to this I had started several Death Knights over the years. All earlier renditions of Salay have been specced Unholy. As a hunter, I thought having a permanent pet would be nice. With Salay I finally realized "this is not a hunter! And that is not a cute and snuggly kitten following you around!", and specced Blood. I'm unsure if it was the company of Terry or the spec that did it, but this was my first Death Knight to reach max level, heck even the first one to reach level 70.

My very first Death Knight was started in the Wrath of the Lich King "friends and family alpha", where if you hit Space, half of the "Acherus Deathbringer" would move similar to what it does now, but you would still be stationary, so you would disappear into the body of the horse. :)

I leveled my second Death Knight together with Ponder on a live server. We had a lot of fun smashing our way through the starting zone and Hellfire Peninsula. We would Deathgrip mobs from eachother and giggle about it, like everyone that levels Death Knights together are bound to do. Around level 65, in Telredor, Zangarmarsh, we lost our drive. Months, maybe even years, passed, and I logged the Death Knight one last time, to send her valuables to my bank character before she was deleted. (Sob... I hate deleting characters.) And so I started a new one, and the same thing happened again, and then again and then again. Until Salay.

The Death Knight starting area is really well done, and I'm certain I will make more Death Knights eventually just to play through it again. The part of it where you're starting to "wake up", but you're still left with the task of killing an old friend from your home village... It makes me cry every time. And if there was a choice to not do that quest, I would never do it again. But in order to get out of the Death Knight starting area and join the Alliance again, it has to be done. Playing a Death Knight, you get a really strong roleplaying experience with plenty of feelings and sadness.

Among all my draenei characters, Salay is unique. She has the dark skin tone like all of them do (of course), but she has a face that I haven't used on any other character. I usually go for the "happy face", but it didn't really fit this time, so she ended up with the "strict with inner sadness"-face.

I am struggling with the "Death"-part of the Death Knight though. Is she dead or alive now? Did she get a ress, like all of us do, or is this deeper? Does she have blood flowing in her veins and is she breathing? I also don't like the nature of her abilities too much. Deathgrip is okay, but all the blood and diseases and death and decay feels a bit... Unsanitary?

What will my Death Knight get to do this week?

- World Bosses
- Raid Finder
- Heroic Scenarios
- Maybe possibly ICC. She's stuck at Blood Infusion for her Shadowmourne, but it's the part of the chain that requires cooperation from others.

She's starting out with an item level of 488.

I'll make a summary at the end of the week; showing what happened with Salay and how other bloggers and Twitter participated in #DeathKnightWeek. :) Goooo Death Knights!

/bow