Tag Archives: clefthoof
Ancestral Grounds
Writing from Garadar. I’m going to stay in Outland another day or two, maybe pay a few visits to some familiar faces while I’m here. Today I mostly needed some time to myself.
I went to the Ancestral Grounds this morning. I flew around the western mountains for a while, and eventually, after some looking, I finally spotted a small cave with the remains of a makeshift hut just outside. When I went inside, I found a few dusty boxes of supplies, some cooking gear, a few other little odds and ends… To one side there was a fairly heavy chest that looked like it hadn’t been opened in years. Until today, anyway. Nothing shocking inside, just tidy folded stacks of clothes. They smelled like old parchment and dreaming glories.
Against the back wall of the cave, laid out on a sturdy but uneven table, there was the body of an orc woman. She was covered from head to foot in the ceremonial wrappings that are used in tauren custom. I guess even Magatha has a line or two she wouldn’t cross when it comes to respecting the remains of the dead.
And laying beside the table, discarded and inactive, I found a tauren totem. It had the same configuration, the same Grimtotem markings as the shadebind totem I’d found in Hyjal when I had my run-in with Krom’gar’s ghost. I’ll be keeping it with me this time. Not that there’s much left for anyone to do with it.
I carried Lakkara’s remains down to the Ancestral Grounds and buried her in a vacant spot, just across from where they’d buried Dranosh Saurfang. I think she would have liked it there. She always used to try to keep an eye on him. She probably would have been a little sad to see him there with her already, but not surprised. He was always showing up for things early.
After I’d finished, I sat near the grave and looked down from the hillside. I stayed there a while, looking out toward Oshu’gun, and watched Banthar – herd mother for half a lifetime now – wander with her pack across the Spirit Fields.
Because I’m a glutton for punishment
Yesterday mom & I stade over night at Son Spring Post last night. Mom said it was a long walk back home to the villag and it would be good to rest here first. I dont think I wood of got to tired but maby she just wanted to visit the other place. She was talking a lot to the other grown ups so I gess maby she nose some of them.
They hav a whole other villag here and they have a lake just lik ours ownly its not our lak its different. They gave us grild mud fish for dinner & it was good but not good like great mom Geyah makes but maby they don’t catch fish as good as ours cuz they don’t have our lake just another lake thats not ours.
I think when we get home I will go fishing with dranosh if he dosnt still have a cold
When we left we walked down from the road to look at the big white mountain. I heard people talk about it but I never saw it before they call it Osha Goon. It was really big & white like they said and there was grass all around it and lots & lots of clef hoofs walking around.
there was one big group of grown up clef hoofs with some babies following it. mom told me to look at them. There was one big grown up one with white fur & then some more brown ones they wernt as big as the white one but they were still grown ups. Mom sed the big white one was the pack mother. Mom sed the white one was very old & she will probally die soon and then one of the girl clef hoofs that are younger will become the new pack mother.
Mom says the people in Son Spring Post watched the clef hoof pack and gave the girl clef hoofs names, Osha & Banthar & Beru & Mumaki & Thromka. Mom want ed me too look at them & see if I can gess wich one will be the new pack mom so I picked one and mom sed that was the one they called Osha.
I asked her if I pikt the rite one & she sed she don’t know we’ll have to find out. I asked her witch one she thot wood be the new pack mom & she pointed to one & sed her name is Banthar. I asked her why Banthar & she said because the other clef hoofs acted mad when the babies were bad and when the eleks came close. She sed Banthar didn’t let small things bother her & she sed the ones who end up being the leader are the ones who can endure.
Maby mom is rite cuz she is smart & knows stuff like that but I still think its stoopid they have to have a new pack mom, I think the old pack mom should just stay cuz its dumb she’s going to go away and then they have a new pack mom when they already have a pack mom. I gess animals are not to smart.
So we walked more cuz mom sed it was going to get hot soon so we should get home. I asked her how she knew and she sed to lisen. there was a buzzing sound somewhere & mom sed there is a bug that makes that sound when its going to be hot. I wonder what kind of bug it is and why it only makes the buzzing noise when its going too be hot and how it knows its going to be hot in the first place
When we got home mom sed she was tired & I should go play & she is going to take a nap becuz she is tired. But I think she might be getting a cold cuz she was koffing a lot when we got close to Garradar. a lot of the kids at school wer sick this week so maybe there is a bug going around only not like the bug that makes the buzzing noise but maby it is if they have a fever and the bug knows they are getting hot. I hope they get better soon & also Dranosh so we can go fishing. And mom too cuz she’s cool even tho she is old.
Putting my old journal away now. If I get the bright idea to dig it back out again, somebody slap some sense into me. Without the slapping, though, since I’d probably end up breaking your jaw before I would think to appreciate the concern.
[Header image provided by Khizzara from Blog of the Treant, used here with permission and many thanks.]
Desolace postscript
Not too many letters this week, so I’m going to hold off on doing a mailbag. (Get with the program and get writing, people! Your Warchief commands it! garrosh1337@gmail.com)
Also, a quick note on my recent trip to Desolace. I think I mentioned at one point that I had a couple stops to make there, but I only ever really blogged about Shadowprey Village (annoying as that was). Before coming back to Orgrimmar, I also made a stop at Ghost Walker Post. I didn’t write anything about that at the time, partly because I was trying to save time for the trip back home, and partly because it was generally pretty uneventful. It was also a little depressing, so I really just didn’t want to dwell on it much, but it’s probably just as well for me to give it a quick write-up now. Better than dwelling on this Grimtotem business.
I’ve been out to Ghost Walker Post once before, and I have to admit, I always find the place pretty depressing in general. Not so much for the outpost itself, which is fine as far as outposts go, but because of the area right below it – the kodo graveyard. Go ahead and laugh if you want, but ever since I moved to Azeroth I’ve had kind of a soft spot for kodos (maybe they just remind me of my pet clefthoof from when I was a kid). So seeing the place where kodos go to die, with all the skeletons and corpses all around, that’s just a little more than I want to take most days.
At least the surrounding area is a little less depressing-looking these days. I know the Cataclysm brought water into the area to help feed the regrowth of vegetation, but even still, it’s pretty incredible to see the change. The whole area around the outpost has turned lush and green, and there’s even the beginnings of a forest starting up really quickly. The Cenarion people – hippie druids, yeah, but still less annoying than those DEHTA fuckers – have set up a base there at Karnum’s Glade, although I didn’t actually go over there, because, you know, druids. Still, I had to look around the new wildlands there, just because it really is a pretty amazing sight. Even when you figure in the new sources of water, it’s incredible that the place started recovering so quickly. It’s enough to make you wonder whether there’s something more going on there, beyond just the influx of water.
Which…yeah. Really have to wonder. I probably shouldn’t even mention this, because people are probably going to think I’m crazy, and it really honestly could be my imagination playing tricks on me. But at one point when I was looking around the wildlands, off in the distance, I could have sworn I could see the figure of a tauren – not fully solid, but partly transparent, even a little shimmery. Maybe it was just the light and the glare of the sun, I don’t know. But it’s not just that. If it were just a tauren it could have been anybody, and with all the druids around, not to mention Ghost Walker Post, there’s no shortage of tauren in the area. But I recognized him. I would know him anywhere. The stature, the totem always in hand…the steady gaze that always seemed to be sizing me up and coming away just disappointed enough.
It was Cairne. I swear on the spirits I thought I saw Cairne.
He looked at me, and he looked away, and just scanned around the wildlands like he was assessing his work. And then he was gone.
At least gone from view. I haven’t been able to get him out of my mind since.
It must be hard getting old…
Yesterday was Greatmother Geyah’s birthday, so I made a short trip back to Nagrand to go see her. The folks back in Garadar were giving her a birthday party, and it was good to see everybody, other than Greatmother feeling the need (yet again) to tell everyone the story about the time when I was a little kid when I was climbing a tree, and got up to one of the higher branches but slipped, but my pants got caught on the branch while I was starting to fall, and as I fell the pants got yanked down around my ankles, and so I was just hanging upside down there with my pants around my ankles and the branch hooked between my feet, and I was just stuck dangling there for a while, and, commando even then, so, you know. She always tells that story every chance she gets, because spirits forbid you let the fucking Warchief be taken seriously for a couple minutes. But she means well, and she’s getting up there and probably a little senile, so whatever.
Anyway, while I was out there, I decided to drop by a few of my old hunting spots for old time’s sake. I was going to bring Hemet Nesingwary along with me, but he was having a good old time messing with some random scrubs who were hanging around out there – people keep coming to him wanting to prove what great outdoorsmen they are, and so he just makes up random stuff to have them go kill and see how quick they eat up the chance to waste their time on pointless shit. Like seriously, you should see how many people just jump at the chance to burn up their whole day killing random animals that absolutely anyone with a sword could kill, because they actually believe that killing a bunch of talbuk that are standing around RIGHT THERE is the way to impress Hemet Fucking Nesingwary.
(That’s his real middle name, by the way. Man, his parents must have hated him. Can you imagine what middle school must have been like?)
At one point a couple years ago I think people started getting wise to the scam, so he had to dial it down a little and ask them to kill less stuff. Seriously, there was a point when he would send people all over the place killing 30 of like…everything out there. After a while he cut that down to like a dozen, just to make sure he didn’t totally lose his supply of takers. Still, it’s pretty funny to watch the fuckers eat it up even now.
So anyway, he was busy with that, so I just went out to Oshu’gun myself to see if Banthar was still wandering around. It didn’t take long to find her, but what the FUCK, man, I almost missed her what with the fucking DYE job she got apparently. Because like…okay, check it out. Back in the day, when I remember coming out here, this is what Banthar looked like:
And here’s what she looks like nowadays:
I mean, that’s just sad. It’s bad enough when an orc starts to go gray, and freaks out, and goes way overboard dyeing his hair that pitch pitch black, that shade of black that doesn’t even fucking exist in nature, and half the time they try to do the pathetic comb-over too, which let me tell you, looks sad enough on humans but is even less kind with orc hairlines. But seriously, now we’ve got a CLEFTHOOF going through midlife crisis and dyeing herself auburn? How fucking sad is that? What’s she going to do next, start riding around in a convertible wagon and hitting on clefthoofs half her age? Plus, how the fuck did she even manage to dye herself brown anyway?! If I go over to Sunspring Lake, are there going to be all these floating dye circles and stains around the shore? I can just imagine one of the ethereals over at Aeris Landing seeing this going down and being all, “Hey, Chip, check this out, you’re not going to believe this shit…”
Really, if a fucking clefthoof can’t age with dignity, what chance do the rest of us have?
[Header image provided by Angelya from Revive and Rejuvenate, used here with permission and many thanks.]
First journal
I mentioned my journal from back home in Nagrand a little while back. I thought it might be fun to take a look at what I used to write, so I dug it out of my old things. No small task, let me tell you, with all the junk I dragged over with me when I moved to Orgrimmar. You do NOT want to see the mess that’s gotten shoved into the attic in Grommash Hold.
Anyway, here’s my very first entry:
Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a talbuk coming down along the road and this talbuk that was coming down along the road met a nicens little orc named baby tuck.
Huh. I’ll be honest, I really don’t know what’s going on there.
How about we try something else…my first poetry! That’s it! Okay…so…here it is. One of the very first poems I ever wrote, about the pet clefthoof I had as a kid!
Pudgy little clefthoof
Eating some grass
Pudgy little clefthoof
Fat furry assPudgy little clefthoof
You’re so fun
Love to be petted
By everyonePudgy little clefthoof
Shaggy and brown
Pudgy little clefthoof
Follow me aroundPudgy little clefthoof
I love you
Taste so yummy
In a clefthoof stew
Okay…I didn’t remember the ending there. Gotta say, though, if you ever have a chance to have some authentic clefthoof stew, that’s damn good eatin’.
