... the smell of hops drifted through the little room, the sounds of mugs touching, the gentle conversation of a commons hall slips own the stairs from the rooms above. The small carven space is warmed, spare heat from the brewing vats providing a gentle protection against the drifting snows outside in the Kharanos night.

On the little bed the small gnome lass sat. Wrapped she was, in her tangle of blankets. For in her lap was her fine tunic, and she squinted, looking fiercesome, as she tasted the end of a length of silken thread and attempted to manuever it through a needle.

"You know Mezzy, this is always the hardest part."

She nodded to the voidwalker who protected her, even here, even in the safety of her adopted home.

"Those gnolls, they really did a job. Not that they were so fierce and all, bein' lil' nuisances, but they just came in herds like packs of green rats from Gnomeregan ..."

She took great care in her tailoring. No expert yet, but careful enough to restore her clothes to a presentable shape. Well that and to poke herself with the needle a couple of times.

"Ouch!"

She then held up her fancy tunic, looking at it contemplatively.

"You know Mezzy ...

"It's really easy to bust somethin. It's real easy to take somethin down an' tear it apart.

"I mean, any silly gnoll can do it ..."

She smooths out the cloth, her repairs almost invisible.

"It's a whole lot harder bein' constructive.

"Whether you be an orphan or a real live mother's child."

A handful of folks from another realm with a fairly juvenile and destructive nature took it on themselves to tear away at those of us on the Earthen Ring, through a series of posts disparing the fact that we roleplay above gameplay, we write meassages that attempt to look into the personalities of the people we have created to populate this image of Azeroth.

Several of us were a bit more imaginative in our responses.

And, needles to say ... we are still here, playing and enjoying ourselves and they are but a faded memory.