The Draconic Wizard Workshop

Welcome! We are the Draconic Wizard Workshop, an alterhuman system of over 60 members. Here, you can find our collective writings and introductions.

by Khadgar Chromatath

Originally written January 21, 2026.

I miss Dalaran like anyone misses the place they grew up. Worse, perhaps, in many ways, because the Dalaran of my youth is gone. It was destroyed while I was trapped on another broken planet, and rebuilt by the time I returned, but it was never the same. I love the Dalaran I know now, of course—and the floating city aspect is very novel and delightful—but it's not the one I grew up with. I don't think it's worse, it's just… different. While I was gone, someone made an imperfect copy of the place I grew up. Everything has been moved around—everything whose owners survived, at least. Everything else is gone.

Growing up wasn't easy for me. I was too different from my peers to really fit in (it turns out that I'm autistic and gay, and many of you just started nodding, knowing the experience firsthand), had an aspect of my appearance that made me easy to tease (a streak of white in my black hair—I've heard every skunk joke there is), and was too curious for my own good, so got in trouble with my teachers and superiors. I was often ostracized from my peers and spent a lot of time on my own—reading, studying, working on my spellwork, and exploring the city. I learned where most of the good hiding spots in Dalaran were—I had to avoid my bullies—and I also learned where had the best snacks that I could afford on my limited student budget.

I have vague memories of wandering the streets, climbing buildings, and sitting on rooftops. I have much better memories of the bakeries and coffee shops.

I didn't realize that I had such clear memories of these places at first—what prompted my remembering was something very small in the game that serves as my source, World of Warcraft. It was a sign—more of a blackboard, really, the kind that might sit outside of a coffee shop and have the day's specials scribbled on it.

It's just a sign. But when I first saw it, months ago, it stopped me dead in my tracks, because I felt like I knew it. I should be able to read this. I recognize the script(s) and used to know how to read this sign. But I can't now, and it bothers me. In particular, that symbol at the far right side of the second line—the one that looks like an O with two lines coming out of it—looks familiar. It's a symbol that also appears in my own name when written in the same script, I know it. Perhaps near the beginning—the K or Kh, perhaps.

It bothers me. I don't even know if this is read right-to-left or left-to-right. I couldn't even begin to tell you what any of this says. But I felt like I should know it. As a result, this sign has haunted me, as well as anything associated with it in this area of the in-game representation of Dalaran—but I moved on, as one does. I did all of the linguistic analysis I could when I first saw the sign, mostly pulled blanks because Blizzard isn't interested in fleshing out their in-game languages into full conlangs, and minded my own business.

Fast-forward a few months, and they add housing to the game, along with collectible "decor" items you can get and place around your house. There is a Dalaran sign available, but it isn't this one. I joke (not joke) about wanting it (I really want it) and get the other sign, reluctantly hopeful that one day they will add this sign.

And then, yesterday… they did.

To very much simplify the game systems, this sign is sold by a vendor who also sells a lot of coffee-themed items. Bags of coffee beans, mugs, coffee machines that fit into the magitech style of Warcraft, all sorts of things. Over a dozen different items, with this sign placed unassumingly right in the middle.

I looked at the vendor, at all of these items together, and it all came back to me at once—and I broke down and cried on call in front of a few of my friends (sorry!) because I wanted a little blackboard for my house so badly because it reminded me of a home that is gone and I couldn't ever quite go back to even if I was still back in my original universe. It's gone. It's gone and it's never coming back, and I'm out here anyways.

I'd hide out in the coffee shops when I was young, because I could buy myself a warm drink (Dalaran was often very cold in the winter), sit somewhere that my bullies couldn't get to me, get away from my instructors and be near mostly-strangers, have a little pastry of some kind as they often sold them, and get an hour or two of peace where I could just people-watch or read and let the chatter of the crowd wash over me. I loved my studies, I did, but my quarters and classrooms were not home to me. I'd been taken from my family at six and put into mage training; I'd never really had a home. The closest I got until I was sent to Karazhan to apprentice under Medivh at seventeen was these coffee shops, with their bags of beans, magitech coffee machines, and blackboards with the day's specials scribbled on them in text I no longer know how to read but screams its meaning at me. I can almost understand, but it's like grasping at smoke. It's knowledge that is totally gone, and I may never get it back without serious reconstructive work—and I don't even know what language it was in! I used to speak quite a few!

I think the proprieters of these shops probably got to know me. I was a very polite child and never caused them any problems. If I eavesdropped on their customers, well, their customers were saying whatever they were saying in a crowded coffee shop. Of course they were going to be overheard. I was quiet, I never practiced magic in their establishments, and I was a frequent customer. I'm sure I had a specific location I preferred, but I don't remember clearly enough to be sure. I remember wooden chairs and a couple of plush couches near the windows, small wooden tables and larger ones with glass tabletops. I remember bookshelves and newspapers. I remember the smell. And I remember the colored chalk, purple and magenta and pink, with a scrawled drawing of a sun and a little joke written underneath. Perhaps this is where my love of puns came from; it's hard to say.

You can't go back to the things that are past. But you can put a little sign in your digital house, and I am going to content myself with that.