So Helcular wasn’t exactly the most help in the world. I’m not sure if he’s just been sort of batshit ever since he was raised as undead from the Southshore graveyard a few years back, or if he was always kind of unstable, or what, but dude could not stay on topic for all his flipping out and panicking about what had happened down at the ruins. To be fair, I suppose being at ground zero of some freakish anti-necromantic explosion that took out most of your team, and just barely escaping from having the unlife sucked clean out of you yourself, well, I guess I can see how that might freak you out. And Helcular being a mage, and kind of a bookish one at that, I can see how he might not exactly be the battle-tested kind of guy who deals with adversity well.

But DUDE, I can’t POSSIBLY overstate how much he was spazzing out over everything. Could not keep him on topic for more than thirty seconds at a time, so I spent practically the whole conversation having to slap him around to try to get him back on track. Now granted, I probably didn’t help matters when Kaal arrived with an update from Southshore, and I let him give his report in front of Helcular. Turns out, those shimmery purple lines are still expanding outward – slowly enough that you can’t notice it with the naked eye, but still moving and stretching little by little, apparently gravitating toward other centers of necromantic energy. As in, places where there are lots of undead. So eventually – slowly, but eventually – this thing is going to spread.

Which as you can imagine, is just what panicky jittery Captain Freak-Out Hercular needed to hear, and yeah, a few more beatings ensued to get him to stop fluttering about. Eventually, after enough enforced focus to make my frigging hands sore, I was able to drag this much out of him: Helcular used to live in Southshore, where he knew Kel’Thuzad back in his pre-lich days, and had studied necromancy under him. Because nothing could go wrong there, as we all know. But he couldn’t think of anything they could have done that could have had a hand in what’s happened – the training and practice he did in the vicinity of the town was all small-potatoes stuff, and from what he could remember, Kel’Thuzad kept his distance whenever he was doing anything major. He did remember one point some years back, though, when a bunch of people from the Knights of the Silver Hand were hanging around the town. They were being pretty hush-hush, but were still attracting enough attention that he could remember strangers turning up in the town and lurking around snooping on them…so there’s a fair chance they were up to something. And considering how those paladins wound up taking an interest in the Scourge, it sounds like there’s at least enough of a possible link to be worth following up on.

And again, let me just stress that pretty much every sentence of that was spread out over two of three smackings and a frustrated “Man, will you PLEASE try to pull yourself the fuck TOGETHER?”

Anyway, though, we’ve got another lead to follow, even though I’m not exactly thrilled where it’s leading. But, I’ve already had Eitrigg send a message up to Hearthglen in the Western Plaguelands, and I’m getting ready to head north. Not going to lie to you, I’m not looking forward to this at all, but it’s our best in with the Silver Hand, so I guess I’m going to need to go have a sit-down with Tirion Fordring.