Monthly Archives: July 2012
A sort of homecoming
It took some doing, but we managed to get Faranell somewhat calmed down. Since he woke up, Liadrin’s been the only one who’s been able to approach him with any success, so after we received the buried letters from Southshore, I had her go to deliver his. After that, we left him mostly to himself for a couple days, because seriously, the reality of the situation is more than anyone could be expected to digest. Last thing he needed was to have extra people coming at him while the whole world was going topsy-turvy. I can’t imagine what it must be like trying to come to terms with everything he’s just gotten dropped on him.
The only break in his seclusion came after the first day, when he asked Liadrin to let him see what had become of Lordaeron. She was smart enough to send word over to the Undercity to have them clear everyone out of the upper ruins – she figured the sight of what had become of the city would be enough for him to try to deal with, without undead Deathguards wandering around. When he finally went over, Liadrin tells me, he was viably shaken by the sight, and when they went into the throne room, he just knelt by that little blood stain on the floor – the one that nobody has ever bothered to clean up FOR WHAT REASON I CANNOT IMAGINE – and just stared off into space with his head tilted as if he was listening to something. He finally pulled himself together and asked to go back, in a voice that was barely audible. He hadn’t talked to anyone since then, until this morning.
While that was going on, I was working on what to do about his situation. He can’t stay in the Undercity – it would be cruel, for one thing, to try to make him live there, or in any of the towns held by the Forsaken now, considering what he remembers them being like, literally just a few days ago from his point of view. Plus, I don’t much like having him somewhere filled with Sylvanas’ people, considering her first reaction to learning about the new-old Faranell was to refurbish him to be closer to the other model.
Orgrimmar would be safer for sure, and I could personally make sure he was being watched out for, but that’s not such a hot option either. Considering his most recent associations with the orcs, I’m thinking he’s not going to get comfy living in an orc city anytime soon. And I mean, yeah, sure, I’m all about the orc pride, but not even I would expect him to be able to swallow, basically, “So, yeah, about all that shit we did? We were kind of going through a thing. We’re a lot cooler now, really.”
So, I finally came up with the best of a field of less-than-ideal options.
This morning, I picked up Faranell and Liadrin in Brill, and made the trip east to Hearthglen.
Between a good word from Eitrigg, and some paladin-speak from Liadrin, Tirion agreed to bring Faranell into the fold and help keep an eye on him early on. We’ve given Tirion the rundown on Faranell’s story – I swear, the part where I was explaining how future-Faranell rigged things might have been the only time I’ve ever seen Tirion go speechless – so he knows what’s going on and what’s at stake. Tirion and his Argent Crusade people still have plenty of work to do cleaning up the Plaguelands, so he’ll be able to put our boy to work helping with that. More importantly, Hearthglen is mostly a human town, he has family there, and it’s a pretty insular community, which should limit a lot of potential problems.
I had a short meeting with Tirion when we brought Faranell up there. He’s agreed to watch over him and keep us updated if he runs into any major wrinkles. Eventually, once Voice From the Past gets settled, we can see about taking him around a little so he can see more of the world as it is now. But that won’t come until he’s ready.
While I was there, I also had to give Tirion a little shit about his kid making life more difficult for us while we were in the past. Once we were finished talking about Faranell and I was getting ready to go, I was like, “Oh, by the way, your kid is a dickwad.” Tirion just kind of looked at me a minute, and then he pointed out that his son died a few years ago, killed by Isilien, in fact, after the kid came to his senses about the Scarlet Crusade. So I took that in for a minute, and then I corrected myself: “Your kid WAS a dickwad.” Fucking nit-picking Tirion.
I can’t really complain, though, since for once he didn’t seem all that ramped up to talk my ear off. Part of it was just the shock of hearing Faranell’s whole story and trying to absorb it, I’m sure, and part of it was the fact that we had business to go over that involved him getting information from us more than vice versa. Plus I think he had a meeting with Bolvar or something later today, so for once he was able to go about his business like people actually have things to do with their time.
Anyway, that’s done. I’m back in Orgrimmar now, and Faranell’s off in Hearthglen getting settled in. Hopefully he’ll be okay once he gets adjusted. In a way, you kind of have to be jealous of him – I mean, how many people basically get to skip over the part of their lives that sucks? At this point, like our old Faranell said himself, the future is wide open for him.
Good luck, Edwin.
[Header image provided by Angelya from Revive and Rejuvenate, used here with permission and many thanks.]
Special delivery from Southshore
I’ve got two pieces of news fresh from Cromush in Southshore, one on the state of the anti-plague and reliquary, and the other…well, it’s complicated.
The simple part first. Cromush reports that our people in Southshore have finished deploying our counter to the anti-plague magic…which is sort of a counter in itself…is there a special term for a counter-counter? I feel like there kinda should be. Anyway, from what they can tell, the effect has dissipated, and once they make one last sweep or two of the area to be safe, Helcular and his Forsaken peeps should be good to move back in from Tarren Mill.
Cromush also sent a few of his scouts to search the cellar of the Southshore inn, and they successfully recovered the reliquary that Isilien and Doan had planted there a decade ago. By all appearances, the holy magic that was bottled up inside has been dispelled, although the crystal fragment inside is still intact, and apparently not entirely spent. Like I think I mentioned before, I’ll probably let Liadrin hold it for safekeeping, once we get it safely out of Forsaken territory.
That’s not the complicated part, though. Cromush’s scouts returned with one other tidbit: while they were digging around in the cellar, they also found a small wooden box lodged into the stonework near the reliquary. Inside were three sealed letters – one addressed to me, one to Sylvanas, and one to Faranell. By all indications, the box had been there, undisturbed, for about as long as the reliquary, and the oddity of all this gets a little worse – or maybe better? – when you know who the three letters are from.
Faranell.
Here’s mine:
Hello Garrosh,
From my point of view, I only just saw you last a few hours ago, but by the time you see this note, I imagine quite a long time will have passed. As you no doubt already know, I’ve written similar letters to the Dark Lady and, well, to myself. Or rather, to the version of myself who is with you now.
So, about him.
I imagine you’ve probably already come to suspect this, but I’ll confirm it for you now: the version of me that you’ve brought with you to the future isn’t the one who traveled with you to the past. Who you have with you now is the past, younger me. The human me. This did not, however, happen as a result of any mistakes or carelessness. It was my doing. I orchestrated the events leading to your bringing him with you. I’d started planning to do so midway through our journey.
It really wasn’t difficult to manage. After finishing his work with Doan, my brother told me that with Kel’Thuzad hovering about, Doan had grown paranoid (even for Doan) about someone interfering with the reliquary; he’d placed a warding spell on the canister that would stun anyone who tampered with it, knocking them out for hours or even days. I realized that this could provide me the window I needed to do what I’d been contemplating for the previous few days.
When I left the inn the next morning, I found the child Herod playing with the frog he’d taken from Taelan. Which is to say, of course, my younger self, whom Mokvar had hexed. A quick polymorph spell took Herod out of the equation; at that point I needed only break the hex on my younger copy, pop invisibility quickly, and get away from the inn. From a distance I watched myself go back inside.
When the other me returned to his room (since, naturally, where else would he go?), he would find a letter I’d left for him, along with the chameleon shard. In the letter, I “explained” that I – that is, he – had learned that an inexplicably unhinged Kel’Thuzad, suddenly obsessed with Mograine and the rest, had planted a magic explosive in the inn’s cellar; that if detonated, it would kill anyone in the inn or nearby; that I had volunteered to have my most recent memories erased to prevent any mind-reading to reveal to Kel’Thuzad that I’d revealed his plans. That the crystal I’d left there for myself, used as directed, could deactivate the explosive before it was set off. There was more to it, further details to ensure the story would ring true, but I doubt I need to belabor it with you; if anything, I suspect the letters “TL” and “DR” are already dancing around the edges of your thoughts. Suffice to say, remembering that I had already begun to grow wary of Kel’Thuzad by this point in my life, I knew which buttons to press to convince myself.
And so I sent my past self on his way to the cellar to unknowingly attune the shard and be rendered unconscious by Doan’s warding spell. And before you ask why my younger self would trust this story left for him in a letter, much less follow its instructions, let me pose this to you: faced with gaps in your memory and uncertainty over whom to trust, how many sources would you trust above your own handwriting? I know myself, and I knew I would take the bait.
I can’t say I’ve never lied to myself, but I don’t think I’d ever done it quite so literally.
And here’s where you’re asking why I would go to all this trouble. Or, maybe you don’t need to. In the end, it’s really fairly simple. Since dying to the Scourge and reawakening in undeath, I had never given much thought to the life I had lost. I accepted my new existence fairly readily. I didn’t have particular occasion to look back at the old life I’d lost until we traveled to old Hillsbrad, and at that point, I wasn’t merely looking back on that life. I was actually living it again.
I never really missed being alive until I was reminded of what it’s like.
I want it back.
I’m far from greedy or ambitious, and my wants, in tangible terms, are simple ones. I want to look in the mirror and see my own face. I want to feel sunlight on my skin without it burning. I want to taste food again. I want to smell that food cooking and feel my mouth watering without my jaw hanging off one hinge. I want to smell baking bread and freshly cut grass.
I know that’s not in the cards for me, in the long run. I’m not naïve about the necessities of time, and I know I can’t cheat fate. My being here represents a reprieve, a brief window to literally smell roses I didn’t bother smelling while oblivious to time running out for me. Now I know I’m living on borrowed time, and I can soak it in while I can, but I understand that that’s all it is. I can’t live out my human life that might have been.
That is, this me can’t. But the one you brought with you to the future can.
And that was the real point of it all. To save myself, probably in the most indirect way imaginable.
I’ve thought through the logistics, and everything should line up. You and the others came to the past with a version of Edwin Faranell. You’ve brought one back with you. One was already here, and one continues to be here. The scales are still balanced. I still remember everything I was supposed to have done, all the events that need to happen, and I can make sure they still unfold the way they always did. I realize this raises all sort of questions along the lines of “How can I remember the events I did in the past, if my past self no longer did them?”, but from the conversations we’ve had with Nozdormu, I’m fairly sure that will simply be one of those oddities of time rewriting itself.
Meanwhile, I know that I can’t make major changes to history, or try to stop Arthas, or anything of the sort; while I won’t pretend it won’t pain me to watch some of those events happen again, I can at least take comfort in the knowledge, for instance, that the Lich King will be stopped, so history doesn’t need me to try to.
And then, soon enough, I’ll come to the end that was fated for me. History says that a human named Edwin Faranell died in Lordaeron and was risen into undeath; a human named Edwin Faranell will. As Liadrin pointed out, as long as I’m here, I literally am human again. I can die as I was meant to, continue playing my part among the Forsaken, and, when the time comes, be there again to travel back with you to Southshore.
I’ll become the closed loop, holding my own place in history, while the other, younger me will be free to live – live – his days in a wide-open future.
In the letter I will have written for him, I will explain all of this, and lay out the basic facts he will need to know about this new world. I’m sure he will be frightened by it, and rightly so. I would only ask, Garrosh, that you look out for him early on. While I have great admiration for Lady Sylvanas in a great many ways, I suspect she will be none too pleased with this turn of events, and she may not be above taking steps that would, let us say, undermine what I have sought to do here. I suspect, though, that you will understand why I’ve done this, and may even sympathize; I would only ask you not allow it to be for nothing.
I do not expect that I will see you again. Live well, Warchief. I hope I will do the same.
–Dr. Edwin Faranell
Once and future Master of the Royal Apothecary Society
Not going to lie. I don’t even really know how to respond to that.
I’m not exactly thrilled about this, for a whole bunch of reasons, but at the same time, Faranell got the job done, end to end, both when we were in Hillsbrad and before. And as twitchy as this whole switcheroo makes me, on all kinds of levels, as far as I can tell it’s not like he’s setting out to screw with the timeline or mess something up or whatever. And I have to give it to him, he’s one of the few people around this dump who’s got the brains to pull off something like this AND go forward with it without causing some kind of stupidity-fueled collateral damage. Plus, he’s just a good dude. Or was. Or, well…will be.
Faranell was right — Sylvanas was less than thrilled when she got her letter. She right off started talking about how it would be easy enough to “correct” Faranell’s condition. I didn’t like the sound of that at all, so I’ve charged Liadrin with guarding him, and had Bragor Bloodfist divert a few of his Kor’kron up to Brill to help make sure nothing fishy happens. Because here’s the thing. For all intents and purposes, for the Faranell we knew, this was a last request. And last requests that don’t bring harm to anyone, where the only thing at stake is the person making the request? They should be honored.
I think I have an idea of how. Stay tuned.
I see undead people
Faranell regained consciousness this morning.
That’s where the good news ended.
Apothecary Zinge – one of Faranell’s colleagues down at the Apothecarium – was trying some sort of salve that they thought might help him recover. Liadrin tells me all the Undercity apothecaries have been taking turns going up to Brill to tend to him, even beyond the rotation Sylvanas had set up to have him monitored. I suppose for all their shortcomings, you have to give it to the Forsaken for looking out for their own. Anyway, either the salve worked, or whatever was wrong with Faranell finally ran its course, because while Zinge was there, he came around.
And looked around.
And started screaming in terror.
Zinge tried to calm him down, and so did Nurse Neela and Dark Cleric Beryl, but he wouldn’t hear any of it. It was only when Liadrin came in that they were able to calm him down at all, and even then only after the others left him and Liadrin alone. He kept asking where he was, and no matter how many times she told him he was in Brill, his only response was that it couldn’t be.
Eventually, Liadrin got him calmed down enough to talk a little. She says she tried to be fairly selective about what she said to him, but from what she can gather…he doesn’t remember anything. At least, nothing about the here and now. Nothing about our mission in old Hillsbrad. Nothing about the anti-plague or the plague or even the Scourge. To listen to him, Brill is still part of the human kingdom of Lordaeron, and every attempt Liadrin made to gently reference anything that’s happened in the last several years has drawn nothing but blank looks.
Which is to say…the last thing he DOES seem to remember is being in Southshore with his brother. And that leaves us with two possibilities, neither of them good.
The first is that there’s something seriously, profoundly wrong with Faranell’s memory. Nozdormu said there was something going wonky with time somewhere around the point we were in Southshore, and Faranell WAS having some pretty conspicuous issues with forgetting things while we were there, despite him saying he’d always had some sort of super-memory. It’s not that great a stretch to think something went wrong in his head, maybe from coming too close to crossing his own timeline, maybe from something involving the holy-magic-splodey mojo. Maybe something else. I don’t know.
You’ve probably already done the math on what the other possibility is. And as much as I don’t relish the thought of one of our sharper people maybe taking a mind-wipe, I honestly think I might prefer that to option number two. Because if that’s the case…hoo boy. And you know what? I don’t even want to talk about that possibility. Not yet. Not until I can start wrapping my head around what the hell we’re going to do in that case.
Before I start in on that, though, if you’ll excuse me, I think I need a drink. Or ten.
Also: FUCKING TIME TRAVEL.
[Header image provided by Rioriel from Postcards From Azeroth, reproduced here with permission and many thanks. Click here to see the souped-up Postcard version!]
Monday mailbag
Okay, I haven’t tended to the mail in a little while since we were, you know, dislocated in the time-space continuum. But we’ve got a few letters that have come in lately, so before anything else happens that gets me all distracted, let’s see what we’ve got…
I would dearly love to find out what happened to Koltira Deathweaver. He died defending Silvermoon, you know. I enjoyed working with him in Agmar’s Hammer, and again on Ogrim’s Hammer. I heard that he disappeared under mysterious circumstances right after we ran the Alliance out of Andorhal. But that’s all I know. Something’s not quite right here, though. My sources here are usually pretty good, but when I bring up Koltira, they invariably change the subject.
The guy you want to talk to about Bowling for Wildhammer is Malkar over in Bloodgulch. It’s not actually bowling, though, it’s more like fishing. You toss a hook up in the air, snag a gryphon, and haul the rider down to you. Then, you wear him out. Lather, rinse, repeat. A fine way to while away a dull afternoon. But I’m not sure how closely Zaela looks into what goes on in Bloodgulch. She may well know nothing about this.
–A Concerned Citizen
Hey, ACC. Thanks for the explanation of the whole Bowling for Wildhammer thing. I’m definitely going to have to take a trip out there and check it out. Granted, yanking dwarves out of the sky and curbstomping them isn’t going to be quite as fun or satisfying as, say, humans or gnomes, but hey, it’s Alliance and it’s curbstomping. Can’t rightly complain about that.
As for Koltira…yeah, I’d like to know what the deal is with him, too. I’ve been trying to find out for a while now, in fact. Bragor Bloodfist down in the Undercity has been under orders to find out what happened to him, seeing as Sylvanas and her people were the last ones to see Koltira before he went off the grid. He hasn’t been able to get any answers, though, and considering he’s got his own whole set of issues down there, I’m not sure whether it’s a matter of there not being any answers to be had or of him just not having his head in the right place. I mean seriously, I ask him for a Koltira update, and he babbles on about Sylvanas going off to the little ghouls’ room and being gone for like an hour. Like I need to know the details of her bathroom breaks. Maybe she’s got an irritable colon or something, who knows. I know mine gets plenty irritable with some of the morons I have to deal with in this job.
We all know you’re a big fan of lemon squares (who isn’t, am I right?). Do you have any other favourite foods?
Your fan,
–Salaria
One word, Salaria: bacon. Everything goes good with bacon. Everything. There is not one single recipe out there – I DARE YOU TO PROVE ME WRONG – that isn’t improved by adding bacon. Need convincing? Name any kind of food you can think of, and tell me it wouldn’t sound even better if you stuck “bacon-wrapped” in front of it. SEE? Hell, if you offered to give me “bacon-wrapped cancer,” I’d have to at least think about it.
Of course, even granting that everything goes great with bacon, the thing that goes absolute BEST with bacon? More bacon.
Honorable mention: peanut butter. Most of the above applies, plus it’s really handy for when I have to give Mortimer a pill from the vet, and in general it’s just hilarious to watch a wyvern chawing away on it while it’s sticking to the roof of his mouth. Sometimes I’ll give him a big spoon of the stuff, and while he’s munching away, Gurtash will make up dialogue that Mortimer could be saying, since his mouth will be flapping open and closed almost like he’s talking. Good times.
I been doin’ dat regular errand for Marogg da infantry chef, where he be askin’ us ta steal Darkspear rice from da trolls in da Valley of Spirits. I been tinkin’ dis be a real smart move, mon, keepin’ da trolls underfed and hungry. All you I mean we orcs know da only way we be keepin’ da trolls down is if we keep dem weakened – we let ’em eat well and get strong an’ for sure dey be takin’ over da Horde! We all know dere be no way we be holdin’ dem down if dey at full strength! Good goin’ dere, mon!
–Bob, Echo Isles
Wait, wait, hold on a minute. You’re trying to tell me, you think the only reason the orcs are able to maintain our position of dominance within the Horde is because we use sketchy methods to keep any potential rivals weak? You’re saying we couldn’t stay in charge if the fucking TROLLS had three squares a day (along with whatever extra snacks they’re having because, you know, munchies)?
Well FUCK THAT SHIT.
I’ll SHOW you how fast we’d lose control if the trolls weren’t hungry all the time! Marogg was supposed to be gathering up that rice to make jambalaya, right? Well I’m issuing him orders RIGHT THIS MINUTE to have half that jambalaya delivered right over to the troll district. What’s more, I’m ordering Borstan the butcher to start scheduling regular deliveries of assorted meats to the Valley of Spirits, maybe let those scrawny fuckers get some protein for once, and then for good measure, I’m even having Shan’ti arrange to have some fruits and vegetables – why someone would want to eat those is beyond me, but whatever – sent over when there’s a decent crop.
You think the trolls would take over if we didn’t keep them weakened? BULLSHIT, the trolls don’t need our help to be weak, they came out of the box that way, so just you fucking watch and see what happens – or DOESN’T happen – when they can’t cry starvation anymore!
Go head, fatten ’em up, feed ’em all they can choke down, see how much good it does them! You hear me? That’s an order! Feed those trolls!
Attn: Garrosh Hellscream, Horde Warchief
c/o Orgrimmar, Durotar KLM
Pursuant to Stormwind Revenue Statute LC14-99A17, subsection A4:
This letter hereby notifies the above named GARROSH HELLSCREAM (hereafter “DEBTOR”) of funds owed to the Stormwind Treasury, as per investigations conducted under authority of this office:
- Debtor initially accrued debt under alias G. PATRICK SEITZ in the amount of 120 gold in unpaid charges at Kelly’s Inn and Tavern, Southshore, Hillsbrad Foothills EKD.
- Proprietor Herman Kelly, esq. (hereafter “PLAINTIFF”) filed legal claim against one G. PATRICK SEITZ in the amount of 144 gold in rental and late fees.
- Lordaeron Circuit Court 23 ruled in favor of plaintiff in amount of 144 gold; additionally 216 gold in legal fees, 150 gold fine for failure to appear at hearing and 50 gold in punitive damages. Total debt incurred 560 gold.
- Debtor failed to appear before court on three statutory appeal dates as per Lordaeron Small Claims Code 19C, classification 4 (Brill Act). Upon expiration of appeal period, debtor incurred mandatory penalties of 407 gold, 611 gold and 1215 gold for missed payment dates.
- Funds owed to plaintiff were reimbursed from Lordaeron Treasury under Small Business Shelter Provision 2219-A; debtor’s account was placed in collection. Mandatory fine of 117 gold incurred.
- Collection duties assumed by Stormwind Agency of Taxation and Recovery under Disaster Provision Act after unexpected decease and necrotic resuscitation of entire fiduciary authority of Lordaeron government.
- Debtor accrued additional debts in the mount of 117 gold monthly for failure to pay fines; additionally cumulative interest fees at rates of 14 to 23% per annum as dictated by Stormwind Variable Rate Index.
As of current date, debtor owes funds to RATR in amount of 49,758 gold.
Please remit funds to RATR, Stormwind, within 30 days of receipt of this notice. Additional penalties may apply upon failure to comply.
–Royal Agency of Taxation and Recovery, Stormwind City
(Routing path: Southshore; Tarren Mill; Lordaeron; Androhal; Stormwind; Theramore; Gadgetzan; Caverns of Time; Ratchet)
What.
The fuck.
Is THIS?
Okay, so hold up. You mean to tell me, when we high-tailed it out of Southshore – and yeah, we didn’t bother paying at the inn when we took off, because guess what, we had some other shit to do that was kind of important – Kelly (Herman? Seriously? Fucking HERMAN?) went to the trouble of filing a lawsuit and keeping after it to try to get back the fucking pocket change we owed him?
And okay, I know what you guys are probably thinking, how the hell did they even manage to trace this back to me in the first place, seeing as I was using an alias and a human face and WAS TRAVELING THROUGH FUCKING TIME. But you know what, really, you shouldn’t be surprised that they managed to find me, because TAX COLLECTORS. Those fuckers will see through time and space like it’s nothing and track you through the Twisted Nether and OMG maybe I should get some of THEM to try to find fucking Koltira!
Anyway, Stormwind tax dudes working under royal authority, I was going to send you an I.O.U. for the gold, but on second thought I figure it would be a lot better to take this occasion to publicly offer you an F.Y.V.
That’s right.
Everyone say it with me.
So far, so good
Quick update from Southshore – Helcular and his people at Tarren Mill have gotten the chameleon shard that we attuned in old Southshore, and after a couple days of experimenting, they think they’ve come up with a way to dispel the anti-plague effect. Not a moment too soon, too, since those purple ribbony haze lines were creeping further and further out from the town, and had almost reached the Forsaken operation over at the Sludge Fields.
Obviously, Helcular didn’t want to chance sending his own undead people down to Southshore to test out the final product, so Cromush had a small detachment of warlocks and mages from Orgrimmar head down to start applying the fix. I’m not too clear of the details of it, seeing as most of that hocus-pocus stuff is pretty much just gibberish to me.
Bottom line, though, is they started doing their thing yesterday, and the early reports are that it seems to be working. I’m told that the locks and mages are going to have to follow the haze lines out from the town and do some more casting in order to completely purge the anti-plague effect. But from the sound of it, the town itself is mostly secured now, so it looks like we’re on our way to getting everything back to normal. Or, you know, what passes for normal with those Forsaken.
While Cromush has his people in Southshore – and before Helcular gives the go-ahead for the Forsaken to head back in – I’m having him send one or two of his top people to scour the cellar of the old inn. One, to make sure they’ve completely locked this thing down at its source, but two, to locate and secure the reliquary buried there that started it all. I don’t want any extra surprises from that thing…not to mention, considering its likely source, I don’t want it floating around unaccounted for. Once we have the crystal fragment, I may have Liadrin take custody of it, seeing as she seems to know a lot about it, and has her head on straight, and, you know, actually has a brain INSIDE the head she has on straight. Unlike very many of my underlings (he said with a great sadness).
More soon.
Darkmoon day trip
So while we’re waiting on updates from Hillsbrad, I’m catching a little much-needed R&R time. Gurtash from the orphanage was taking care of Mortimer while I dealt with that whole to-do at the Caverns of Time, so after I got back, I got the idea that it might be nice to do something for Gurtash for all the time he’s spent wyvern-sitting. So, I checked him out of the orphanage for a little while, rounded up Mortimer, and brought him over to Mulgore. What better reward for the kid than a day at the Darkmoon Faire?
So we spent a while wandering around the faire, loading up on hot dogs and cotton candy and one of those giant orange slurpy drink thingies. I tried playing this Whack-a-Gnoll game they had – figured I could try to win Gurtash a toy or something – but Mola the carnie got all upset and said I had to leave the game area. And personally I don’t think it’s MY fault that she did not explain clearly enough that I had to use the stupid foam hammer they gave me, instead of Gorehowl. I just figured they provided the hammer for the people who didn’t think ahead to bring their own weapon. So yeah, she asked me to leave the area, after I filled out some form for where they can send the bill. Whatever. Fucking Hogger.
At least I only destroyed the fake wood-and-straw gnolls, though, rather than the LIVE one they had hanging around. They’ve got this gnoll named Sayge tucked away in a tent in one corner, giving out fortunes to people after they answer some “what would you do?” type questions. Gurtash got a fortune that said “Hopes are like wyverns: care for them and they will carry you when you’re too tired to go on.” Which, hey, good call on the wyvern thing, so you’d think Sayge knew his stuff, but then mine didn’t make a damn bit of sense – “From within it consumes,” like what the fuck? So I clocked him.
Then I had to sign some more forms.
Anyway, after that we found the petting zoo, and boy did the kid flip out at that point. I wasn’t so sure about the zoo at first, since the first pen had a bunch of gorlocs, which I had MORE than my fill of up in Northrend, because like I think I’ve mentioned, THOSE things are like what would happen if a murloc fucked a kangaroo. But then I heard them prattling on about wondering when the tour would start, and realized somebody had tricked the stupid bouncy fuckers into thinking they were VISITING the zoo and not IN it, and that’s actually hella funny awesome, so okay.
Anyway, they had a bunch of pretty jumbo-sized animals, like this gorilla Gargantua, and a basilisk named Krystal which for some reason had a carnie-shaped crystal in his pen with…oh WAIT a minute! HAH! Um, anyway. We looked around at some more of the animals, plus this big green slime thing that kept trying to spit at me through the bars of its cage. Between the spitting slime and the animal poop, I tell you, you don’t know where to step half the time in that place.
Across from the slime, they had another pen with a huge wooly rhino named Crush. We were looking at him, when all of a sudden I felt something clang off the back of my head – the shock of it knocked me forward, and made me fling my orange slurpy drink into the pen and all over the rhino. Which…yeah, another bill for animal shampoo if they notice that, too. When I looked to see what it was, though, it turned out I’d been hit by a Happy Fun Rock that some kids at the faire were tossing around – and by the time I looked, the kids had gotten their rock back, and Gurtash was making fast friends with them, and next thing you know he was racing off to run around the faire grounds with the bunch of them. And so I’m stuck sitting there between the rhino and the ooze yelling at him to come finish the tour of the petting zoo, but does he listen? No, of course not. Fine, be that way. Follow me, don’t follow me, whatever. I’ve got my slime, I’ve got my orange Crush.
So while Gurtash was running around with the other kids, I looked around the faire a little myself – and found the most awesome thing ever. The Darkmoon Deathmatch! Get this. They have this event where they put a prize in this chest in the middle of a big cage, right? And at a certain time every day, the chest unlocks so that the prize can be picked up by anyone in the cage, only the inside of the cage is a free-for-all combat zone – so in order to claim the prize, you have to fight off anyone else who happens to be in there!
Wait, did I say you HAVE to? Make that, you GET to.
I just happened to get there like ten minutes before the chest was going to unlock, and hey, look at all the humans and gnomes and draenei running around inside the cage. LOK’TAR, bitches, the DELI COUNTER OF PAIN IS OPEN FOR BUSINESS AND GIVING OUT NUMBERS. Hell yeah!
So, fast forward ten minutes for the fighting and two minutes for wading in and out through the heaps of mutilated bodies, and I’ve got my prize voucher.
The good: A quick trip to the prize-claim tent, and I had a great, big, hard-won goodie to hand off to Gurtash when he got back from running around with his new friends.
The bad: When he DID get back, turns out that two of his friends were a human kid named Michael and a draenei kid (LITERALLY) named Duquan…whose parents I, um, may or may not have just brutally slaughtered in the Deathmatch cage.
The worse: The goodie in question happened to be a giant pink teddy bear. Which I had to carry around the faire grounds until Gurtash turned up again. Which he didn’t do for like an hour and a half.
So, yeah.
Back to the future, part 2
Okay, looks like the blog is FINALLY caught up with the here and now, and, gotta say, it was fucking TORTURE watching those last few posts dribble on through. I would say that The Noz has to do something about the lag in his wireless network, but then again, considering I was able to get a why-fly connection from frigging ten years ago, I guess I really shouldn’t complain.
Also, watching the posts loading gradually like they were, and reading them myself, eventually I started getting this weird detachment, like I was reading something that someone ELSE had written, not events I had lived through myself. I was starting to get strangely invested – like when you re-read a book, and you find yourself rooting for things to happen one way or another even though you already KNOW what’s going to happen, you know? Which, by the way, is EXACTLY WHAT TIME TRAVEL IS LIKE.
So anyway, now I can finally start updating you guys, because hoo boy, have things been interesting since we’ve been back. Like, starting from the MINUTE we got back to our own time. Because check this out – when we took Erozion’s portal back to the Caverns of Time, we all reset back to our normal, non-human selves, right? Except…Faranell didn’t. We arrived back in our own time and place…and he still looked human.
Obviously, this was made that much more complicated by the fact that he was still unconscious – there’s a limit to how much poking and prodding anyone could do while he was out cold from a shock to the system that we still didn’t understand very well. What’s more…he’s STILL that way. Not just the human-looking thing, but the unconsciousness. He still hasn’t come around. We had him transported back to the Undercity, and Sylvanas has put her best people in charge of looking over him. After the first couple days passed with no sign of change, she moved him up to Brill, the idea being that maybe the atmosphere up above ground might be a little better for his human constitution. On top of Sylvanas’ people, Liadrin’s volunteered to stay on for a while to help take care of him. Right now, though, that’s mostly consisting of a whole lot of waiting.
Nobody really knows what to make of what’s happened. We’ve got lots of theories, but until he comes around, he’s not going to be in stable enough condition for us to do a lot of testing on him. The best we’ve come up with so far – this was Liadrin’s best guess – is that the holy magic from the bomb might have produced the anti-plague effect on Faranell and purged him of the necro-whatsis magic that’s the source of his undeath. The same as it had been doing to the Forsaken around Southshore, only in his case, since strictly speaking he was human at the time rather than undead, it didn’t kill him. At least that’s the working theory right now. We’ll see.
Meanwhile, we’ve sent the chameleon shard along to Helcular and Cromush in Tarren Mill. With any luck, they’ll be able to use it to work out a way to dispel the anti-plague effect and get things under control out there. They’ve been at it for a few days now, so one way or another I’m expecting some news soon. Updates as they come.
Set us up the bomb
So the good news is that we’re about to head home, and not a moment too soon. The bad news is we’re not all coming back on our feet.
Let me back up.
Like I said at the end of the last post, I could hear a commotion next door, so I went over to check on what was going on. Mokvar and Utvoch were in a low-grade panic. Liadrin had just joined them and was trying to calm them down, but she was pretty obviously worried too. Here’s the bottom line – at some point in the last hour or so, Mokvar found a note from Faranell slipped under the door:
Just came from talking to KT. Tried to play dumb about Doan et al, but he still seems suspicious. Too much at stake to leave to chance. Keeping shard with me for safekeeping and taking steps. Luck to all. –EF
I’d put Edwin in charge of holding the chameleon shard since we got it back, seeing as he was our main magic guy and a lot less likely to utvoch things up. I wasn’t expecting him to go all loose cannon on us, but I guess we weren’t there to hear what KT was going on about. Faranell must have figured he had to act fast.
In any case, that meant we had to get on the move pronto too. I had us split up – Mokvar and Liadrin searching in and around the inn, Utvoch getting our crap packed up in case we need to make a quick exit. As for me, I headed out to make a sweep around the rest of the town.
I ran out of the inn in a rush, and damn near broke my neck tripping over – of all things – a random sheep that was wandering around in the road right outside. Because on top of everything else I love about humans, they’re also frigging spectacular at keeping their damn livestock under control. I would have had half a mind to herd the little fucker into the inn just to freak Kelly out a little more, if I hadn’t been in such a hurry.
Anyway, after I finished my involuntary sheep-induced forward somersault, I made a quick lap around town. By this point, the Silver Hand people had already left Southshore – Tirion, predictably enough, being the last one to go, since he just couldn’t drag himself away before he’d yapped Kelly’s ear off one last time – and as I made my pat around, I spotted Kel’Thuzad lurking around on horseback near the edge of the woods to the north. Looked like he was just watching the road out of town…maybe looking to see if the Silver Hands were leaving, maybe on his way out himself…who knows. From what I could make out, he looked to be in a pretty sour mood, but then again, he’s Kel’Thuzad, so not exactly stop-the-presses news there. I finished circling the town – no sign of Faranell. I ran back to the inn to check on things.
Mokvar was waiting for me when I came back inside. He looked worried as hell, and all he said before rushing off to the back of the inn was to follow him and hurry. Always a good sign, right? We ran past the bar into the kitchen, and the thought had just crossed my mind that you wouldn’t think Kelly would let us just have the run of the place like this, when I noticed a frog hopping around on the counter. In times of crisis, Mokvar strikes.
Mokvar led the way into the kitchen, then to the stairs leading down to the cellar. Jessen the cook was there, and started making a stink of “what are you people doing” and “what’s the meaning of this” and blah blah blah, and you know what? Fuck it. Page out of the Thrall playbook: Hey, Jessen, what did the five fingers say to the face? SLAP, drop, that’s enough out of him. Moving on.
Liadrin was downstairs. She was kneeling over Faranell – who was sprawled out on the floor unconscious. She’d found him there a short time before, out cold, the chameleon shard on the ground by his hand, charged and attuned. Nearby, along the wall, a few large stone blocks had been pried out of place, and the a-p bomb thingy was lodged into the opening, pressed up into the exposed earth. Humming away with a dull yellow glow.
Damn stupid Faranell must have thought Kel’Thuzad was on the move and rushed down here to get read on the bomb before KT had a chance to screw with it, even knowing the damn thing was charged and primed to put him on his ass if he got close to it. Not to mention the fact that the shard takes a few minutes to attune itself – so the dude had to have stood there, eating the burn and hanging on somehow, just to make sure the mission got done. I’ve got to give these Forsaken credit. They may be missing some internal organs, but they sure as hell aren’t short on guts.
At this point, we’ve gotten what we came for, and with Faranell down for spirits-knows how long, I’m not inclined to hang around waiting for something ELSE to go wrong. We’re getting out of Southshore and making a bee line for our rendezvous point with Nozdormu’s boy Erozion so he can get us back home.
Liadrin and Mokvar have both tossed a few heals on Edwin to keep him stable for the trip, but they’re reluctant to do too much right now without knowing just how he’s been affected. Once we get back to our own time, we can get him patched up. I hope.
We’re about to head out now. Everything’s packed, Utvoch is set to carry our out-cold zombie friend for the trip, and we’ve covered our tracks at the inn as best we could. The next time I write here, it’ll be from the future. I mean the present. Whatever. FUCKING TIME TRAVEL.
Fingers crossed. I’ll see you in ten years.
Home stretch
So here we go. Edwin tells me Patrick didn’t get in until almost dawn. He’s sleeping in now, but he and Doan managed to finish their work on the bomb canister. I’m not sure if Doan’s set it up yet, but if he hasn’t, he’s sure to tend to it any time now, because by the looks of things downstairs, all the Silver Hand people are getting ready to leave. Tirion and Abbendis have been down at the main desk talking to Kelly for most of the morning, and Mograine’s been carrying stuff back and forth to his horse in the stables next door – not least of which being a bundle wrapped in a sheet that looks to be more or less the same size as the chest he had been using to transport the crystal.
Edwin took off a little while ago to track down Kel’Thuzad. He’s going to tell him he tried to snoop on the paladins, but it didn’t look like they were up to much of anything, and he couldn’t get anything out of Patrick that would suggest otherwise. Hopefully that’s going to send KT on his way and keep him from poking around any further. Says when he gets back he’s going to stick around the room until Patrick wakes up, and then maybe go to the shore with him and fish a little until we’re all ready to go.
After Edwin left, Mokvar mentioned he was a little concerned about all the time Faranell’s been spending hanging out with his brother the last couple days. Liadrin gave him sort of a half-hearted endorsement – her take was that the more time our boy spends hanging around with faces from the past, the more space there’s going to be for him to slip up continuity-wise. Although I get the sense Mokvar wasn’t so worried about the timeline as just where Edwin’s head is at right now. I can see where they’re both coming from, but I pretty much told them to give it a rest. The way I see it, Faranell’s been un-living with the memory of a dead brother for years, and right now he’s got that brother alive and well right in front of him. If he wants to soak up whatever time he can with him while he has the chance…well, I get it. Extra chances don’t come along very often.
One last thing – want to hear something awesome? I just looked out the window a few minutes ago to check on Edwin, and I saw maybe the greatest thing this side of Utvoch getting polymorphed. Tirion’s kid was running around in front of the inn, playing with his frog. Then along comes this other kid from the town – name of Herod, I think – and basically beats the snot out of Taelan, swipes the frog, and makes off with it! And I honestly don’t know what’s better – the fact that Taelan got his ass kicked and lost the frog, or the thought of what’s going to happen later on when Herod’s got the frog and it poofs back into Faranell v1.0. Just…win all over the place.
It sounds like there’s some kind of commotion going on next door, so I’m going to go check on that. I’ll update you once that’s cleared up or when we’re making our move on the anti-plague thingy. Whichever comes first. Stay tuned.
Good news, everyone
We’re in business. Things are in motion, and one way or another, either we pull this off pretty soon, or we’re going home to some big problems.
After we did the ol’ switcheroo with Faranell – I guess I should start getting into the habit of calling him Edwin, but it just feels weird – I tried to keep an eye out for Tirion’s kid, but no luck there. Since Mokvar wasn’t going to be coming to the meeting with Isilien and Doan, I put him on lookout, with some help from Utvoch…that is, lookout help that still keeps him out of a position where he could really fuck something up, because seriously, enough is enough with that shit.
Faranell stepped out for a little while this afternoon to go see Kel’Thuzad – KT on his own this time, without Helcular in tow. He came back with some less-than-great news: KT has been noticing the Silver Hand people hanging around town, and is starting to wonder what they’re up to. Considering KT’s interest in necromancy, you can see how a bunch of paladins might perk him up some, especially with rumors flying around about the undead. If only he knew, right? Well, that’s sort of the point – I mean, things going on that KT doesn’t know. He basically was trying to find out if Edwin knows anything, especially considering his brother’s been spending some time up close and personal with the paladins. Edwin downplayed knowing anything, but Kel’Thuzad pressed him to keep an eye out and see if he could find anything out from his brother.
Besides the fact that this gives us one more wrinkle to worry about – which we’re going to have to keep worrying about until the Silver Hands get out of town so KT won’t have them putting ideas in his head – it’s also bringing us back to the problem Faranell’s brought up already: the fact that he doesn’t remember this business with Kel’Thuzad at all. I was already kind of worried about the whole time-distortion thing with Mokvar’s plan to hex Faranell v1.0 – I mean, how is our Faranell supposed to remember what originally happened here, when we take his past self out of commission so he won’t have lived those events to remember them, right? And plus, wouldn’t he at least remember, you know, being turned into a damn frog? But Liadrin insisted that it should work what with the way revised time works, with ripples from the changes not reaching out to us until the events play themselves out, or some kind of shit like that, and she seems to know what she’s talking about with this time crap, which she actually seems really interested in for who knows what reason, so whatever, I figured I’d trust her on that much. But now we seem to be getting more and more little pieces not meshing with the way Edwin remembers things, and that’s got me majorly worried.
Witness the latest little piece that seems to be playing out differently: turns out, when they were talking at some point, Isilien invited Patrick to come to our little meeting of the minds as well. On the one hand because he figured he could use all the brain power on this project he could find, and plus, apparently dude likes lighting a fire under Doan by bringing in second opinions from other magic users. Because, you know, if there’s one thing that’s a formula for success with these future Scarlet Crusade people, it’s encouraging their insecurity and paranoia. Yeah.
Anyway, though, Patrick came with us to see Isilien. We just got back a short time ago – well, most of us did – and luckily, Edwin and his on-again off-again super-memory was able to help Liadrin get the record assembled fairly quickly:
Isilien greets Garrosh, Liadrin, Edwin, and Patrick through a half-opened door and ushers them into the room quickly.
ISILIEN: Hurry in. I don’t want anyone to notice us.
GARROSH: Check.
LIADRIN: Have you seen anything to make you think someone knows we’re doing something?
ISILIEN: I just don’t want to take any chances.
DOAN: Bad enough as it is that this many people are aware of our plans…
EDWIN: Nice to meet you, too.
LIADRIN: Gentlemen, this is Edwin Faranell; I believe you already know his brother Patrick…
ISILIEN: <nods> Edwin.
DOAN: Do any of you have any cousins you’d like to bring along while we’re at it?
ISILIEN: Doan, that’s enough.
GARROSH: Hey, you know, if you’d rather not have our help…
DOAN: As a matter of fact—
ISILIEN: Doan. Lia is a sister of the Light, and we will show her friends the same courtesy we would any ally. Or do you think a paladin of our own order would be turned against us in favor of the undead?
DOAN: Fine. Let’s just get this done.
LIADRIN: Have you had any progress in your study of the crystal?
ISILIEN: Yes and no. I’m still certain it could be harnessed to repel undead attackers, but it’s a matter of how.
DOAN: Especially without the crystal being available to us directly for long.
ISILIEN: <nods> Alexandros is right to want the crystal forged into a weapon – that singular object would be a devastating force on the front lines when the undead inevitably come. But it also limits our options here.
LIADRIN: Isilien, would it be possible for me to examine it more closely myself?
ISILIEN: <nods> Briefly.
Isilien sets Mograine’s chest out on the table and opens it. The light crystal floats up from the chest and hovers over it, rotating slowly. Liadrin steps up close, with Edwin and Patrick following close behind her.
PATRICK: Heavens…
ISILIEN: The crystal’s energy is…curious.
EDWIN: How so?
DOAN: For one, it doesn’t resemble any kind of enchantment I’ve ever seen. I haven’t an idea of how the crystal could have been imbued with this much power in the first place.
GARROSH: Didn’t you imbue it yourself? Pouring all your holy spells into it?
ISILIEN: That triggered its transformation from its dark form, but no, it’s not as simple as us filling it with our magic. The power contained in the crystal is far beyond what we cast on it.
EDWIN: You mean the shadow and light forms of the crystal are just different manifestations of the same energy, that it already had?
LIADRIN: More that the crystal absorbed and generated holy energy…whatever was cast on it was taken in and magnified.
ISILIEN: Exactly…it’s as if it were a generator of sorts for that energy.
Liadrin steps closer as they continue to talk, and holds her palm toward the crystal. The crystal glows a bit more brightly, floats toward her, and rests against her hand; she gingerly holds it as the light pulses softly.
PATRICK: So it’s a power amplifier, in a sense? Potentially unlimited? Is that the curious part?
ISILIEN: Partly.
DOAN: But it also…it still seems to be carrying traces of shadow magic in it.
EDWIN: <leaning in closer> Remnants of its dark state?
DOAN: Possibly. Or not even traces, per se, so much as…well…responsiveness to shadow magic. As if it recognizes its presence and is drawn to it.
LIADRIN: Just as it was drawn to the light when it was in its darkened state.
DOAN: If it were a living thing and not a crystal, I would be tempted to say the shadow traces were more traces of memory.
ISILIEN: Crystal or not, it seems to…like you, Lia…
The crystal continues pulsing and emitting a soft hum.
LIADRIN: It does seem to…
The crystal glows more brightly, flashing more rapidly, then emits a sudden bright flash. Liadrin, startled, recoils and drops the crystal, which falls against the edge of the table. A small fragment of the crystal breaks off and bounces against Edwin’s arm; he lets out a pained shout and collapses to the ground, unconscious.
PATRICK: Edwin!
Patrick kneels quickly to check on his brother while Liadrin rubs her head and steadies herself again. The crystal returns to its normal glow and resumes hovering over the table again.
GARROSH: Is he okay?
PATRICK: He’s unconscious, but breathing.
GARROSH: What happened, anyway?
DOAN: I haven’t a clue. The crystal hasn’t reacted to anything like that before.
LIADRIN: <still rubbing forehead> I think that was me.
GARROSH: Patrick, help me get him onto the bed till he comes to.
ISILIEN: What did you do, Lia?
Garrosh and Patrick pick Edwin up and stretch him out on the bed nearby. Garrosh returns to the others while Patrick sits on the bed.
LIADRIN: I thought I could use some holy magic to get a better read on it…sort of a poor man’s Mind Vision, I suppose. I must have…startled it, for lack of a better word.
ISILIEN: That would account for the light surge. I’m not sure why that fragment would have harmed your friend, though.
Doan carefully picks the fragment up from the floor. It gives off a dull glow in his hand.
DOAN: Either way, it may have given us a possible way around our limited access to the crystal…
ISILIEN: Assuming this one has the same properties.
LIADRIN: Only one way to find out.
Liadrin casts Flash of Light on the crystal, which pulses a bit more brightly. Isilien casts on it as well, causing another increase in its brightness. Doan stares curiously at the fragment shimmering in his hand.
ISILIEN: So far, so good.
DOAN: It’s…very soothing. How did it feel when you were holding the crystal, Lia?
LIADRIN: <hesitates> Much the same.
PATRICK: Good news, everyone. I think Edwin is coming to.
GARROSH: What happened to him?
DOAN: I don’t know why a surge of holy magic would have been harmful.
EDWIN: I think I… How long was I out?
PATRICK: Just a few minutes.
EDWIN: <sighs and rubs his head> Just a second…
GARROSH: Maybe, I don’t know, just a random blast from when it cracked…
DOAN: It only hurt him when the fragment actually touched him, though.
EDWIN: Okay, so…
PATRICK: Don’t strain yourself if you’re still groggy.
EDWIN: No, I’m fine. So…I think that surge might have gotten me because I’d been spending a lot of time around Kel’Thuzad the last few days…
ISILIEN: What would Kel’Thuzad have to do with it?
EDWIN: <rubbing his eyes> He’s been experimenting with necromancy.
DOAN: I’d heard humors about that. Very troubling…
EDWIN: He was showing me and Helcular some of the magics he’s been working with. I think it might have left some residual necrotic magic around me that the light there may have homed in on…
GARROSH: Seems like that would make sense.
EDWIN: Yeah, so… <tries to sit up, then groans>
PATRICK: Don’t, you’re still shaky. Just lay back and rest while we work.
ISILIEN: If that’s the case with the fragment, though, that could be our way to use it.
EDWIN: <aside to Patrick> I’m fine, I’ll stay and rest. You go help them.
LIADRIN: What do you have in mind?
ISILIEN: Considering what we saw happen with the dark and light forms of the crystal, it makes sense to suppose this object thrives on a sort of dark/light duality. When dark, it seeks and absorbs holy magic in order to assume its light form. And while light, it’s drawn to shadow magic, in this case to more harmful effect.
GARROSH: You know, I think I know where you’re going with this.
Patrick returns to the others.
ISILIEN: Released in the presence of a more potent – almost living, even – source of shadow magic, I think we could set it up to respond with much greater force. Destroying, or possibly purging the magic it finds.
LIADRIN: In other words…expose undead to this and the light will target them, then either destroy them outright or dispel the undeath that’s reanimated them?
ISILIEN: I think so, yes.
DOAN: It should be workable. We just need to charge it with more holy energy and come up with a way to keep it contained until we would need to deployed to repel the undead.
PATRICK: I think I can be of some help with that.
Patrick starts rifling through a box of assorted junk and magic items he’d brought with him.
GARROSH: I was wondering what all that crap was.
PATRICK: Oh, just some odds and ends I thought might be— Wait, what’s this? <looking over what looks like a crystalline turtle> Probably not important. It’ll come to me later. <tosses it aside> Where was I? Oh, that’s right. Some assorted things I though might come in handy. <pulls out an ornate rod> Huh…enchanting rod…funny I’d have that seeing as I’m not an enchanter.
GARROSH: So how much stuff do you have in there that you don’t actually know what it is?
PATRICK: Oh, who keeps track of these things. <brandishes the rod> Also good for channeling, I suppose. Which I also won’t be doing…
EDWIN: I think Helcular could use one of those.
PATRICK: <shrugs and tosses it onto the floor> Here, give it to him, we don’t need it for anything. Ah ha!
GARROSH: What ah ha?
DOAN: Isilien, I’m starting to think this friend of yours might be a little crazy.
PATRICK: Ah! Good news, everyone, I found it! Just what the doctor ordered!
Patrick pulls a polished bronze canister from the box – less than a foot on each side, runes engraved in a horizontal band, and a rounded lid on top.
ISILIEN: What is it?
PATRICK: Let’s see how crazy I am now, Doan. The correct answer is very.
DOAN: Fine, fine, but what is it?
PATRICK: <hands the canister to Doan> Oh, just an ordinary canister.
DOAN: I don’t really see how that’s usef—
PATRICK: That’s no ordinary canister!
ISILIEN: Didn’t you just…
EDWIN: Just let him. It goes faster.
PATRICK: This isn’t just your standard polished inscribed jewel-encrusted bronze box, oh no…
GARROSH: Actually, I don’t see any jewels…
PATRICK: Hey, those student loans aren’t going to pay themselves.
EDWIN: That’s fine. Don’t listen to the incapacitated guy.
PATRICK: What we have here is a mirrored reliquary. Its interior is enchanted to reflect magic back on itself and keep it contained within the canister indefinitely – basically takes a magical source and forces it to charge itself up even further. Sounds about right, doesn’t it?
DOAN: Damn near perfect.
ISILIEN: Indeed. I assume the fragment would have to stay sealed inside the reliquary at all times?
PATRICK: Until we need its energies unleashed, yes.
ISILIEN: In that case, the only thing left is to come up with a way to set it to release the energy in the presence of undead.
PATRICK: Well, it’s not even so much the undead themselves, as the presence of shadow magic? Or…whatever it’s called, necrotic something-or-other, the energy that reanimates them?
DOAN: Assuming we can put this together, by the way, where would you suggest using it, Isilien?
ISILIEN: For all intents and purposes, we’re creating a bomb that doesn’t detonate until its target is right on top of it. I’d suggest we plant it in one of our cities, such that, should the undead begin to invade, it will serve the ward off the first wave.
DOAN: Where would you suggest? Andorhal? Stratholme? Lordaeron proper?
ISILIEN: There’s no telling where the undead might move first. But Southshore is where we made our discovery. I think it’s as good a place as any to receive our first attempt at safeguarding.
DOAN: Here in Southshore it is, then.
PATRICK: As for releasing the energy… I’m fairly sure I could work up some sort of gadgetry that would react to exposure to necrotic energy, and unseal the reliquary.
DOAN: You know how to do that?
PATRICK: I’ll have you know I’ve had a fair bit of training in engineering.
EDWIN: Granted, when he builds something, a lot of the time he gets a little too creative for his own good.
PATRICK: Oh, people just like to complain.
EDWIN: He’s all about the coulda, not the shoulda.
PATRICK: Fine, fine. Everyone’s always in favor of cloning dinosaurs, but harness one to a shark equipped with a ray gun and rocket boosters and oooh, suddenly you’ve gone too far.
DOAN: Wait, you mean you…?
EDWIN: <sitting up on the bed and stretching> Don’t give him a chance to dig out the blueprints, really.
PATRICK: <chuckles> Anyway, though… The point is, I’m pretty sure that we can assemble some sort of trigger mechanism that will react to nearby shadow energies. Then, out comes the powerful, cleansing light.
Garrosh helps Edwin to his feet, then looks to Liadrin, who returns his nod.
GARROSH: I seems like you guys have this under control, so I think we’re going to help Edwin here back to his room and let you all get to work.
LIADRIN: As fascinating as this last part of the project is, I’m sure those of us not mechanically inclined would only be in the way.
ISILIEN: Understandable. Your friend could stand to get some rest, in a place that isn’t full of people chattering on.
EDWIN: You have no idea, my friend.
ISILIEN: Thank you all for your help with this.
GARROSH: No problem, Isilien.
LIADRIN: Our pleasure, Isilien. Also, if I might offer a word of advice for after you’re finished here?
ISILIEN: Yes?
LIADRIN: Everything that’s happened in this room…it should stay in this room. Don’t spread word of what you’ve done – or what happened with Mograine’s crystal – to anyone.
ISILIEN: I know how to be discreet, so no concerns there.
GARROSH: Yeah, but at the same time, you also seem to like to bring people in for help. You want to be careful even about your allies.
DOAN: See, I keep telling you you’re too trusting.
GARROSH: I’m just saying, you need to keep your guard up about this stuff. I mean, even if someone looks trustworthy, you can’t just take them at face value. I’ve had my own…dealings…with the undead. They’re not all slobbering zombies stumbling around groaning about brains. You never know who you’re really dealing with, no matter how things look on the surface.
ISILIEN: <eyes growing wide> You…you’re right. The undead could be anyone – we can’t trust anyone outside our own circle…
GARROSH: Anyway! Let’s get Edwin back to his room. Night, guys.
PATRICK: I’ll come check on you later, Edwin.
LIADRIN: Goodbye, all.
EDWIN: Thanks, Patrick. Night.
Garrosh, Edwin, and Liadrin leave the room, close the door behind them, and walk down the hall toward their rooms.
GARROSH: So what’s the verdict about the crystal?
LIADRIN: When I was holding it, it felt exactly the same as when I felt M’uru restoring the Sunwell. That confirms what I already suspected – I think Mograine’s crystal is the spark of a dying naaru.
GARROSH: So you mean the Ashbringer is actually made out of…naaru essence? Crap, no wonder the thing’s so powerful.
EDWIN: Why did it seem to gravitate toward you?
LIADRIN: I’m probably the only person it’s encountered who’s been touched by another of the naaru. M’uru, A’dal… It changes you. I imagine the spark could sense it, maybe even perceived it as kinship.
GARROSH: Well aren’t you special.
LIADRIN: I rather am, actually.
EDWIN: And so, given all of its naaru-driven holy energy, I imagine that fragment knocked me on my ass because I’m… <glancing around to either side as they near their own doors> Well, you know… <holds his arms in an exaggerated marching-zombie pose>
LIADRIN: You are and you aren’t.
EDWIN: How do you mean?
LIADRIN: I mean that yes, the energy rendered you unconscious because of your…normal state. But that’s more of a…it’s hard to explain. Hold on.
Liadrin opens the door to one of the rooms, leads them in, and closes the door behind them.
Look at it this way. When we came through the time portal, we all took on human appearances. But it wasn’t as simple as a glamour or illusion spell. If one of us were injured and went to a doctor, the doctor would be able to examine us, work on us the same as anyone else. They wouldn’t be reaching through some surface illusion and finding an elvish or orich or Forsaken body underneath. Likewise if one of us died, we wouldn’t just revert back to our normal appearances. As long as we’re here in this time, we literally are human.
GARROSH: You’re TRYING to make me sick, aren’t you?
EDWIN: Huh. Interesting. But if that’s the case, I don’t see why the crystal would affect me at all.
LIADRIN: That’s the tricky part. We’re all still carrying vestiges of our old selves, sort of a shadow or overlay of who we normally are. In a sense both our forms still exist, overlapping in the same space, with our current state toggled onto this one on a quantum level, and…
GARROSH: Okay, okay, let’s just say we’re human with a little drop of whatever else before you make my brain go on strike.
LIADRIN: You’re just lucky it was merely the smaller fragment. If you’d touched the main crystal itself it could very well have still killed you, even in this form.
EDWIN: Ouch.
GARROSH: That could have been awkward.
EDWIN: Yes, I would hate to have an awkward death.
GARROSH: I just mean explaining it. Like to your brother.
LIADRIN: I did the best I could just to cover for what did happen.
EDWIN: Okay, well, let’s just drop it. I’ve already had enough real deaths to dwell on, without obsessing on the near deaths too.
So while we’ve been back here in our rooms, Patrick has been staying with Isilien and Doan trying to get their gadget assembled. The good news is that once it’s done, we don’t have to worry too much about tracking it down – we pretty much know that they’re going to plant it somewhere under the inn, which means the cellar, so once Isilien has had time to set it up, we can just get down there, take our readings, and high-tail it out of here.
Which, by the way, we can DO now, because while we were in our meeting, Mokvar managed to catch Tirion’s kid up in the lounge, got him playing with the frog formerly known as Faranell, and got the kid to agree to a trade for the shard. Want to hear the funny part, by the way? I got a kick out of this. I guess when Mokvar first offered to trade with him for the frog, he started out by asking Taelan for the toy warhammer he’s always carrying around, and then let the kid talk him down to the shard. I guess Mokvar figured if he came right out of the gate asking for the shard, the little snot-nose would be less likely to give it up.
Ideally I would have rather had the shard while we were in Isilien’s room, of course, but at this point it’s not worth running back in there and getting everybody’s guard up. My guess is that they’re going to have the reliquary ready by the end of the night, tomorrow morning at the latest, and at that point we should be good to go.
