So check this out! I’m writing to you FROM THE PAST! How freaky is that?

Okay, so, Mokvar just pointed out that ANY writing I’ve done would have to be from the past, seeing as I would have to write it, and then at some point AFTER that you would read it, and so I would ALWAYS be writing from the past, and yeah, thank you, Mokvar, way to piss on my excitement and muddy up what should have been a cool moment. Fuck.

Okay, I had to be smack him around a few times for a minute there. I’m back now.

Anyway, though, the point is, I’m not writing to you from the plain-ol’-regular past right now, where I write a blog post and a couple hours later you see it. No, no, I’m writing to you from TEN YEARS AGO. Because GUESS WHERE WE ARE, bitches! Um, I mean, WHEN we are. Although that doesn’t roll off the tongue quite as well. Anyhow.

That’s right, right this minute I’m writing to you from old Hillsbrad. Well, right this minute, to me. To you it’s still ten years ago…okay, you know what, you guys know what I mean, so I’m going to stop trying to keep my verb tenses straight, I’m just going to give myself a headache if I try to keep this shit up.

Anyway, I know what you’re wondering – how the hell can I be connecting to the internet and accessing the here-and-now blog from Hillsbrad ten years ago? I mean, hell, they were still using fucking dial-up back then, right? Well here’s the thing: I had the foresight to bring my laptop on this trip, complete with the why-fly doohickey Spazzle hooked me up with, and so I’m still able to get online using Nozdormu’s wireless network. And I know what you’re going to say next – “but, but, ten years ago!” Well here’s the thing, part two.  The Noz’s wireless network is fucking AMAZING. Everything he does is all time-warpy, and his network is no exception. Hell, ten years is nothing – you can connect to that thing from fucking CENTURIES ago. Not to mention, his built-in spam filter? Not only does it BLOCK all the spam and pop-ups and all that crap, but it locates their source and sends a fucking bronze dragon to roflstomp it and pretty much wipe it clean out of the timestream before it even has the chance to exist. I think he calls the feature iPwn.

So, let me catch you all up on the situation. I traveled through the portal to old Hillsbrad with the rest of my team: me, Mokvar, Faranell, Lady Liadrin, and Utvoch. Dontrag ended up staying out. The Noz made a fuss about six of us going on the trip…for some reason, sending five of us back was no problem, but six, oh boy, sending six was going to be all kinds of logistical headaches. Apparently the time portal takes a huge amount of power to maintain – 1.21 gigawatts, if I remember him right – and trying to squeeze an extra person in was just going to make them blow a fuse or something. At first I tried arguing with him, and made the case that really, Dontrag and Utvoch should only count as one person between them, because seriously, you’ve met them, right? But oh no, he wouldn’t budge, so I just had the two of them do their coin-toss game to see who got to go. Utvoch won – which broke Dontrag’s 89-toss win streak, by the way – and so here he is.

I got the last laugh on the Noz, by the way. Since he wasn’t going to let Dontrag come with us, I told Dontrag to wait for us with Nozdormu and keep him company. BET YOU DIDN’T SEE THAT ONE COMING, did you, Noz? HAH!

I was having a good chuckle over that while we took the portal, but apparently karma really is a bitch, because Utvoch didn’t waste much time making me think maybe I should have brought the other one. Or neither. Come to think of it, neither’s starting to sound pretty good.

So anyway…we go through the portal, and the bunch of us are getting ourselves situated and checking out each other’s new fugly human looks. Mine’s not a disaster, although I don’t know WHAT’S going on with this beard. Oh and Faranell, check this out, HIS human form? It’s not even a fake human form — he looks like his old self, like what he looked like as a human before he died and got turned undead. Crazy, huh?

Anyhow, we’re all checking this stuff out, when I look up and see Utvoch is already getting mixed up with something. He’s wandered a little ways off to the nearby hillside, and he’s managed to piss off some giant moth that’s buffeting him around with its wings. By the time I can yell “The hell are you doing, fuckwit?” he’s already got the moth dead, but still, we’re supposed to avoid messing around with anything that isn’t necessary while we’re back here. Still, I don’t think too much of it, because what are the odds of any kind of fallout from killing a moth, right?

Yeah. Hold that thought.

So, we take the scenic route so as not to be noticed, sneaking past the outskirts of Tarren Mill past the south road. We make our way south just past the watchtower, and we’re about to make the turn down to Southshore, when what do we spot in the field just off the road? A giant fucking yeti, totally owning a pack of five humans. And like, seriously, this wasn’t one of your garden variety yeti, this was the super-gigantic wendigo variety with the big curving horns and shit, the kind I thought you only saw up in Northrend. And this motherfucker is no joke, because he’s totally laying waste to these people even though they seem to be adventurer types, like with a healer and a volunteer meat shield (although seriously, who the fuck volunteers for that job?). Although by the time we see what’s going on, the meat shield guy is a lot less shield and a lot more meat, mostly of the dead variety, and so now the yeti is running around smacking the rest of them down, and within another minute or so they’re all dead.

At that point, Mr. No Fucking Around Giant Yeti Guy spots us and attacks. Naturally I charge in to intercept him before he starts eating someone squishy like Faranell, and I mostly manage to keep him focused on me while everyone else helps burn him down. Even though, come on, who do you think really did most of the work on that one? Anyway, we get the yeti dead without too much trouble, and we go to have a look at the pile of dead humans, when who should pop in on us but the Noz’s pipsqueak buddy Chromie, and…well, here:

Chromie teleports in amid the group.

FARANELL: <jumps> AAH!  Don’t…don’t do that!

CHROMIE: Hiya guys! How’s it—

She looks around at the pile of bodies.

Oh fudge crackers. No, no, no…

UTVOCH: That sounds kind of good, do you have s—

GARROSH: <smacks Utvoch> I’m expanding your ban to all words.

UTVOCH: Sorry, sir.

GARROSH: <pummel> Those were words.

Chromie rubs her forehead, then looks around again.

CHROMIE: Really, guys, you haven’t even been here an hour yet. Gramps is not gonna be happy about this…

LIADRIN: What’s wrong?

CHROMIE: <sigh> Remember how we’d sent some adventurers back here on a mission a few years ago?

LIADRIN: Oh no…

MOKVAR: Crap.

CHROMIE: Yeah. So… <looks around the bodies> That’s them.

FARANELL: I don’t get it, though – we haven’t done anything since we’ve been here, have…?

Faranell trails off as the rest of the group turns to look at Utvoch one by one.

GARROSH: You. Fucking. Idiot.

UTVOCH: Yes sir. <pause> Um, but why, sir?

GARROSH: <pummel>

UTVOCH: OWW! Sorry, sir…

MOKVAR: Not to be the secondary idiot here, but I’m a little confused, to be honest. I get that it has to have something to do with the moth, but how did that end up getting these people killed?

GARROSH: Please tell me they were Alliance, at least.

CHROMIE: Yup, they were.

GARROSH: Okay, silver lining, then.

CHROMIE: And as for the moth… <sighs and rubs her head again> The big guy here was a wendigo named Yettimus, and—

LIADRIN: Really? “Yettimus”? People call him that?

FARANELL: Not anymore.

MOKVAR: It is a little on the nose.

LIADRIN: Should I start calling Mokvar or Utvoch “Orcinator” or some such?

UTVOCH: Oh hey, that would be kinda coo—

GARROSH: <pummel>

UTVOCH: OWW!!

GARROSH: Word ban.

UTVOCH: <starts to open mouth, then nods>

CHROMIE: Sooooooo… Yettimus here used to stay pretty secluded up in the hills until fairly recently – by your time, that is – and he mostly kept himself entertained chasing butterflies.

FARANELL: Simple minds, I guess.

GARROSH: Maybe I need to get a butterfly net for you-know-who.

CHROMIE: But, when you guys arrived, Utvoch wound up killing that moth, and in the original timeline that was supposed to happen, that moth was the one that kept Yettimus occupied for most of the afternoon… And when it wasn’t there to keep him busy, he got bored and went wandering around the fields here, and, well… <sigh>

GARROSH: Ugh… Okay, so, what now? Can we maybe pop back out to our own time, and then come back a few minutes earlier and straighten this out?

LIADRIN: I would imagine not…

CHROMIE: Nope.

GARROSH: How come?

CHROMIE: You can’t double back on your own timeline. Once you get mixed up in a certain set of events, you commit to that timestream, and can’t interfere with your own past.

LIADRIN: Otherwise, you create paradoxes and other like anomalies, correct?

FARANELL: When did you become an expert on this?

CHROMIE: No, she’s dead-on right.

LIADRIN: I’m a student of the philosophies of the Light. I happen to enjoy theoretical discussions.

CHROMIE: And don’t even get me started on the beehive you can get into if you cross your own timeline and interact with yourself. Not even gramps can do that without causing all kinds of problems.

GARROSH: Okay, so we can’t get a do-over on the moth…and I’m guessing you can’t just yank these people back out to avoid getting curbstomped by the yeti…

CHROMIE: Nopers.

GARROSH: Okay, so…what do we do now?

CHROMIE: Well, the you part of the “we” just got a new job while you’re here. And while you do that, the me part of the “we” gets to go update Nozdormu on what’s happening here, which he’s not going to like at all…

MOKVAR: So now we need to go make sure Thrall escapes from Durnholde like he’s supposed to?

LIADRIN: It would make sense, to correct the disruption in the timeline…

CHROMIE: I like her! She’s smart.

GARROSH: Not something I get to hear about my minions often…

FARANELL: You know we’re all standing right here, right?

LIADRIN: Wait, “minion”?

MOKVAR: I’m really not liking this business of having to go into Durnholde…

CHROMIE: Well maybe you should have thought of that before you let your ADD squirrel-chasing puppy friend go running around without a leash! Jeepers!

GARROSH: Okay, okay, fine… We’ll go take care of Thrall, just have to juggle that with the original mission, and…ugh…do we at least have time to check on things in Southshore to make sure we’re not already screwed?

CHROMIE: You’ve got a little time before Thrall absolutely has to be in Tarren Mill, so yup. Just be sure to make good time getting in and out of Durnholde when you get there! I’ll check in again later — have fun!

Chromie teleports away again.

So, we’re at the inn in Southshore now. One stroke of luck – none of the Silver Hand people have gotten here. Liadrin talked to Kelly the innkeeper and made a little show of some of her paladinny holy crap to make it seem like she was one of Tirion’s people, and found out he’s not expecting his other paladin guests till tomorrow sometime. So we’ve got a little time to work with if we move fast.

While we were getting settled here at the inn, I sent Mokvar and Utvoch to round up the bodies and bury them somewhere. Faranell volunteered to go up with them, too, to help speed up the process. That left Liadrin and I to get us a couple rooms here at the inn, although Kelly gave us a look when I told him she and I each wanted a separate room. Like, dude, really, grow up. Then I mentioned how we had some other people who would be joining us, so we’d need space for more than one in each room, and OH BOY the look from the innkeeper got an upgrade. Like SERIOUSLY, dude, GROW the fuck UP. You run an inn, stop acting like a fourteen-year-old. Or who knows, maybe these humans are easily shocked or something. None of the innkeepers in Silvermoon would bat an eyelash at any of this shit.

Anyway…once the gravediggers’ commission get back, we’ll get rolling on the whole Durnholde thing. Hopefully we can make quick work of that, because the last thing we need is more complications.

[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!]