Scouting reports have finally come in from around Kalimdor, after the business with the Old Gods’ spawn in Thal’darah Grove last week. The Twilight’s Hammer is definitely weakened and scattered in the aftermath of Deathwing’s defeat, but they’re still out there licking their wounds. As for the Old Gods and their minions themselves, that’s a little tricker. We don’t really know very much about the Old Gods proper – in the late stages of the war with Deathwing we kept hearing references to an Old God named N’Zoth, but we don’t have much idea where he’s hiding, or how many Old Gods are still out there, if any, or where they are.

That’s the thing about the Old Gods – however many of them are left, they’re hidden away somewhere, buried deep in the bowels of the earth or at the bottom of the sea. With the ones we’ve fought so far, C’thun and Yogg-Saron, we actually had a pretty easy time of it, since in both those cases they were contained in one location, and even then it’s hard to tell just how deeply and broadly they’d managed to take root in the surrounding area.

But for the ones still on the loose, it’s a whole other problem. All we really know is that there’s at least one more of them (strictly speaking, there’s probably at least TWO more of them, seeing as how the Twilights keep talking about the Old GODS rather than the Old GOD, or just plain That Dude N’Zoth), and that they’re located, well, DOWN THERE somewhere. Hell, one of them could be tucked away somewhere under Orgrimmar for all we know. I guess the Titans supposedly imprisoned them all underground, although, first of all, Titans, nice job letting the rest of us know where they ARE so we could maybe help keep an eye on them, or at least not go digging around too close and maybe accidentally let them loose delving too greedily and too deep, and second of all, bang-up job keeping the three we know about contained all air-tight like they have been. Hell, one of those three is STILL contained as far as we know, and it hasn’t stopped him (her? it? they? do we need to invent a whole new pronoun for these things?) from stirring up all kinds of trouble with Deathwing and Ragnaros and the Twilights.

And that’s not even getting into their fucking SPAWN, whatever the fuck that even means, like the faceless ones and the tendrils and whatever else. I mean, look at what happened in Dragonblight and you’ll see my point. Apparently these Old Gods have like a zillion of these creepy-ass offspring or minions or whatever the fuck, all burrowing around underground where they can just roll up on Wyrmrest Temple and pop out of the ground with those fucking gigantic living-mouths-with-tentacles, which by the way, what’s even the POINT of keeping the Old Gods “imprisoned” if they can apparently just shit out THOSE things at will and send them wherever they want?

So anyway, yeah. Old Gods suck.

Point being, the Old Gods are the real problem, but they’re also damn hard to pin down, so most of the time the best we can do is try to stay on top of the Twilight cult and hope that keeping them under wraps will help us put a damper on the Old Gods indirectly. Which brings us back to the scouting reports. We’re still seeing some pockets of Twilight activity in a few areas. In particular I’m getting some reports on a remaining enclave up in Mount Hyjal. I may make a trip up there to have a look myself. Not to mention it might be good to check in and get a little face time with Hamuul Runetotem, seeing as I never got around to sending him a “Get Well Soon” card after…well, you know. Although he’s seemed kind of uncomfortable around me ever since the first couple months I was Warchief. Not sure what’s up with that. Anyway, I’ll probably have a chance to talk to him soon.