Tag Archives: demon fall canyon
Ode to Gorehowl
Yeah, I know I’m getting this one in a little late, but I had a busy day today. Endless glorious requisition forms with Eitrigg, which again begs the questions, with all my underlings why do I not have one whose job it is to handle the paperwork?
Anyway, here’s today’s entry for Garrosh’s Poetry Challenge. Fill up those comments with ideas and themes and little nuggets of goodness to inspire me again, and we’ll have our next EPIC VERSE next Tuesday.
When I cast eyes upon the glinting steel
Of Gorehowl, gravest axe that e’er was made,
My thoughts return to Grommash’s ordeal
When Mannoroth fell to my father’s blade.
The greatest battle that the blade had known,
In Ashenvale where Demons Fall to fate:
Where Grom exchanged for all our lives, his own,
And plunged Gorehowl though thick infernal plate.
I wonder now if it is worthy held:
Since Grommash fell, the axe has many slain,
But greatest since that time Gorehowl has felled,
In place of bane of blood, ’tis sire of Baine.
I marvel it, and we, have come so far;
Yet fear it best had stayed with Malchezaar.
EPIC VERSE!
Monday mailbag
Before I get to the mail, I just wanted to mention the results are in for this latest round of You Choose the Next EPIC VERSE. I’m working on the latest masterpiece now and I’m going to try to have it posted this week, so stay tuned!
Now for the letters. Just a semi-quick mailbag this week, but a couple doozies…
About a month ago A Concerned Citizen wrote in to complain about the mistreatment of a Hippogryph he had received by post. Unfortunately, I don’t think this was an isolated incident — in fact, there may be a serious problem. Last week I received a similar crate in the mail. There were postmarks from at least 20 different places and it must have been in transit for weeks. The crate was emitting a terrible stench, but I braced myself and pryed it open anyway. As I feared, the poor wyvern was long deceased, its corpse in an advanced state of decay. It was the most appalling and enraging thing I have ever had the misfortune to see first hand. I cannot imagine the suffering of that poor creature as it was shunted from one place to another.
I stood stunned for a moment in shock and horror, (and was seriously considering joining DEHTA myself), when suddenly the most amazing thing happened — I felt something nuzzle my hand. I nearly jumped out of my skin! It was then that I realised there WAS something in that crate! A ghostly wyvern stood in the box, so translucent to be nearly invisible. Thing is, despite being incorporeal he can still interact with the physical world to some extent, so he can be petted, confined to a padlock, and even ridden just like a normal wyvern! I’m not sure how this is possible, but I think it might be because the poor beast doesn’t realise he’s dead. (For instance, he still likes me to feed him wyvern chow. He doesn’t actually consume it, but he makes eating motions around it and seems satisfied afterward. To save on gold I found a bunch of kibble-shaped rocks and put those in his dish and he doesn’t seem to have noticed the difference.) It’s taking a while to get used to flying around on a mount that is, for all practical intents and purposes, invisible. However, it sure is fun to watch all the jaws dropping as I fly by!
But the reason I write you, Warchief, is that I don’t think this is an isolated incident. Over the past week I’ve seen other people seemingly flying around without a mount. It’s hard to tell for sure, but I think people all over Azeroth are receiving deceased mounts in the mail. I even think I caught a glimpse of a spectral gryphon flying past me yesterday! I’m not sure what’s going on, but if members of both the Horde and the Alliance are getting dead mounts delivered to them, perhaps there has been a severe breakdown in our postal service worldwide! I know that wyverns have a place in your heart, so I thought you might want to look into this matter and perhaps prevent the further suffering of these noble creatures.
Respectfully yours,
–Kashina.
PS: I’m attaching a photo of my poor deceased wyvern. I hope he shows up well enough on that background.
This…just…wow. I mean I know I was never on particularly good terms with old Antlers McBeardyface, but even for him, this is just…yeah, that’s just sick.
What’s just as bad is that APPARENTLY our old friend Lather-on-us up in DEHTA-land couldn’t be bothered to do anything about this, even after ACC’s original letter last month, but spirits forbid I make a passing reference to browsing in a store for a leather jacket, cause then I get a dozen granola-crunchy druids picketing outside Grommash Hold and starting letter-writing campaigns and throwing buckets of fucking blood at me.
But yeah, enough is enough with this shit. I still can’t figure out how these people got it into their heads that sending mounts in the mail was any kind of good idea, but whatever. It’s time to start cracking down. So for starters, effective immediately, I’m going to start tightening up security in all our wyvern breeding grounds. Overlord Cliffwalker’s been doing a good job clamping down on the Grimtotem up in Stonetalon, so I’ll see about him assigning some more patrols for the wyverns nests there, and I’m pretty sure we can shift some troops over to Highperch in Thousand Needles now that the Twilight’s Hammer isn’t nearly so active down there.
Meanwhile, obviously if we mean business doing something about some brainstorm sending dead wyverns and gryphons C.O.D., I figure we’re going to need a point person to coordinate things. So, consider yourself volunteered, Kashina. I’m appointing you Commissioner of Stop Being a Complete Douche-Tard. Grats. And yes, Antlers, we’re talking to you.
Recently I was doing some errands for the Violet Eye – sweeping ghosts out of the ruins of Karazhan and suchlike – when I killed a big ol’ demon and discovered he had your axe in his pockets. Do you want it back? What’s Prince Malchezaar doing with Gorehowl anyway?
Regards,
–Elder Ciaroscuro (not a Lunar Festival Elder)
Hoo boy. Here we go again.
Yeah, if you could send that back here, Ciaroscuro (and by the way that was a BASTARD to type), that would be great. There’s been some really weird magical bullshit going on with that axe for a while. I’ll try to explain what I can.
So after my father Grom killed Mannoroth, and lost his own life in the process, the explosion that burst out of Mannoroth’s body sent the axe flying and embedded the blade into the nearby rocks. It got flung into the rocks with so much force that even Mr. OMG I’M SO AWESOME LOOK AT ME Thrall apparently couldn’t pull it out, either that or it didn’t even occur to him to look around for it, either then OR when he went back to put up Grom’s memorial, because I can’t think of a third option as to why Thrall would ever FUCKING EVER come back without Grom’s axe.
Some point later, Malchezaar came to Azeroth and turned up in Demon Fall Canyon. None of the other lesser demons there had ever been able to yank to axe out of the rocks, and they generally kept their distance, seeing as having the axe that killed their head honcho right there was probably kind of creepy. But, Malchezaar figured it would be a pretty good trophy for him to pick up for that very reason, and so after some doing he managed to yank it out of the stone. Apparently, by the way, he made a big deal about the fact that he was the one that managed to pull the axe out, and how that was an omen that he was destined for greatness and to be king of the demons and what-have-you, and by the way THAT’S when he started calling himself PRINCE Malchezaar, pretentious fucker.
So anyway, he heads off to Karazhan to take up shop. Only that top level of Karazhan where he hung out was in some weird kind of pocket dimension thingy, like the very top of the tower was poking into someplace called Netherspace, sort of dipping into the Twisted Nether but not quite, or some weird shit like that. I’m not too clear on the nuts and bolts of it. But, point is, it’s this strange little pocket of time and space where…well…time and space don’t quite work the normal way. And that’s where we get into the deal with Gorehowl.
So, Malchezaar had Gorehowl, right? And at some point some Horde adventurers went in there and handed him his ass, and got Gorehowl from his body, and somehow or other it found its way back to Thrall, who gave it to me. So far so good. But every so often, the freaky bizarro zone up there kicks in, and sets off some kind of a time loop. So all of a sudden, Mechazzar is up and kicking again, and he’s got Gorehowl back on him, and what do you know, poof, wherever Gorehowl WAS, it’s not there anymore. Because it got time-loop-reset back up to Prince Fancypants up there in Karazhan.
I once tried to ask Nozdormu how this whole time loopy thing could even be possible, and he rambled on at like 90 miles an hour, and just shrugged and said “wibbly wobbly, timey whimy” and looked at me like I just asked why water was wet. So no help there.
So anyway…yeah. Every so often, the axe goes poof on me, and I end up having to send a group up to Karazhan to get it back again. Which, let me tell you, is a huge pain in the ass. I’m just dreading the day when Malchezaar’s little time loop thingy resets while I’m actually in the MIDDLE of battle somewhere, and have my damn axe vanish on me mid-swing. I have to remember to start bringing a backup, actually.
On a completely separate note, I just got my first application for the new Earth Online guild, <Warchief>. Let’s have a look at our new aspiring member…
Character Name:
£õk†årøgâr
Class and Level:
Stock Broker
Talent Spec (please discuss any unusual talent choices):
0/0/41 Execution/Advisory/Discretionary Was execution but fuck that shit u gots no power and kill nothing. vry misleading name, discertionary do it all
What do you enjoy most about your class?
money money money buy the best toys and other class beg 4 help n buffs
Previous guilds and why you left:
Scum of the Earth, guild leader give his girl all the phat lootz n she like cant play so drama killed that one
Something Wicked, kicked from this one dunno why
High Finance, cant take a fkn joke. long story.
Previous raiding experience:
yes
Any time restrictions that might affect your raid availability:
i haveto be in bed by 11
Um…okay.
Actually, no, not okay.
First of all, I’m going to try not to dwell on the crazy letters in his name, but…yeah. Look, dude, you’re really overestimating how hard I’m willing to work to contact you in-game or send you a guild invite. If I can’t just fucking TYPE your name, then the odds of me sending you a whisper or an invite or whatever drops way, way down. I don’t speak alt-code.
Also…um…
You know what, I’m not even going to try to go through point for point and break down the problems with this guy. Not even the retard leet-speak. Reading it once had made my head hurt enough as it is. So I’m just going to make an executive decision and say, oops, sorry, turns out our raids all START at 11:00, so I guess that rules us out. Good luck in your search…um…Guy Whose Asshat Name I’m Not Even Going to Try to Transliterate.
Monday mailbag
So first of all, thanks to the people who showed their support over my trip to Grom’s monument in Demon Fall Canyon. Also Spazzle was helpful getting the pictures up on the blog, because for some reason he wasted all kinds of timing learning how to do dorky stuff like that while he was tinkering around with all the weird gadgets those goblins keep piling up in the Valley of Spirits.
As one last tribute to the whole experience, I decided to write something up to commemorate my father’s sacrifice and Thrall’s first trip to Nagrand, when he showed me what had really gone down with Mannoroth.
There once was an orc from Nagrand
Who by chance, luckily, was on hand
For the Warchief’s arrival,
With glamors archival,
Fuck you, Varian.
To reveal Grom’s last glorious stand.
EPIC VERSE!
On to this week’s mail.
I was just wondering if I’ve unintentionally done something to cause offense among the other Horde leaders. I’ve noticed that I don’t seem to be receiving summons to any of the summit meetings you hold with the other faction leaders, and for that matter, other than Sylvanas, none of the others have returned any of my messages.
–Lor’themar Theron, Silvermoon City
Wait, who are you again? Lor’themar? Isn’t that the dude Orgrim Doomhammer killed at Blackrock Mountain like forever ago? You’re still alive WTF? Oh wait a minute – Silvermoon, you must be that blood elf leader. Didn’t we kill you after you went all crazy and tried to summon Kil’jaeden and shit? OH HANG ON, you blood elves have a HISTORY of not staying dead, don’t you? Oh fuck, here we go again, we’ve got another blood elf zombie running around. Just what we need. Someone get Saurfang in on this shit before this one goes all Keleseth on us.
You know how much I can be sellin’ dese for? [Warglaive of Azzinoth] [Warglaive of Azzinoth]
–Bob, Echo Isles
Oh geez, here we go again. WELCOME TO FIVE YEARS AGO, idiot. You can’t sell those, moron, because IF you ever got them in the first place, they would have magically bound to you when you took them off Illidan’s corpse, LIKE YOU WERE ONE OF THE ONES WHO KILLED ILLIDAN in the first place! And who cares about those anyway, seeing as we’ve got bigger and better things to be thinking of at this point, because it’s not THREE YEARS AGO! AND BEFORE YOU E-MAIL ME AGAIN, no, you also can’t sell [Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker].
Um, dude, seriously? The poetry blogging thing is totally my deal. Find your own gimmick, will you?
–Sargeras, Twisting Nether
WHY DON’T YOU COME MAKE ME! You heard me! I’m right here, you want to make something of it, come get me!
Yeah, I bet we won’t be hearing from him again. Not for, like, a few years anyway.
Finally, this message arrived in the form of a comment on Spazzle’s post from a few days ago, but I thought it merited a response here:
Dear Warchief,
I am an 8 year old forsaken mage and I have a question for you. Is there honor left in the horde? My friends (also forsaken) all say that there is no honour, only plague, valkrys and undeath. Sylvanus says to believe what you see and she saw only darkness when the bad man godfrey killed her. Please tell me the truth, is there honour in the horde? (even for forsaken?)
–Pluton, undead mage
Honor, Pluton. No matter how dire the battle, never forsake it.
Varok Saurfang taught me that when we served together in Northrend. His words have never left my thoughts, and I think they’re especially fitting here. Your people may call themselves the Forsaken, but it’s not really so. You are not forsaken. Honor does not forsake us. We forsake it…and as long as we don’t, it won’t either.
I’ll be honest with you. I’ve always had my doubts about the undead, and about Sylvanas in particular. I worry that she has her own agenda. I wonder how loyal she truly is to the Horde. Ever since the siege of the Undercity, I’ve had nagging doubts about just how much of Putress’s plan was really going on without her knowing. There’s a reason why I’m keeping a Kor’kron detachment there. (And no, Bragor, I’m still not giving you a three-day pass. Seriously. You can stop with the damn e-mails.)
But I’ll tell you this, too: If you’re finding yourself worrying about whether there’s honor left for you as a Forsaken, then you already have your answer.
Men without honor do not agonize over losing it.
Sylvanas was right about one thing. You do have to trust what you see. I see a Horde made up of races – every one of them – who have endured unspeakable losses, suffered horrifying pain…and carry on, bending but not breaking, holding up their heads the best they can. I see Thrall and Cairne – every day as if they were still in front of my eyes – fighting through burning ruins to save the children of blood elves they’ll never know.
Yes, we Horde have had our share of dishonorable names. But for every Gul’dan, we have an Eitrigg. For every Magatha Grimtotem, there’s a Cairne. And then there’s my father, Grommash…the worst of us, and the greatest of us. He was the first to drink Mannoroth’s demon blood and doom the orcs to slavery…and the one to buy back our freedom with his own life. A reminder for all of us that honor never really leaves us. It only lays dormant until we reclaim what was always ours.
Even for Sylvanas. Somewhere inside that…unscrupulous shell, there’s a elven ranger general who stood alone between the Scourge and the fall of her people, and cut down legions of undead before laying down her life. A spirit so strong that not even the Lich King could break it, so strong that she willed her violated people to the closest semblance of freedom left for them. If that freedom is a pale imitation of living, then it’s also the last, best gift Windrunner had to give, however paltry it may have been. If what Sylvanas has become has cost her her soul – if darkness really is all the awaits her – then that should only magnify her sacrifice…because everything she’s become is the price she willingly paid for her people.
I hope someday she can find some piece of what made her one of the greatest of her kind. I’m just not holding my breath.
UGH…that was hard. HEAD HURTS. Remind me not to do that again. And dammit, did I actually just talk myself into respecting Sylvanas? Crap.
Anyway, I still have to talk about the rest of the Ashenvale stops, plus I’ve got to start getting ready for some more of these inspections. Dammit, I don’t know why I even bother unpacking. More soon.
Demon Fall Canyon
Three years on Azeroth. I’d never come here until today.
Thank you, father. Rest well.
Lok’tar.
