Citizens of the Horde,

I write to you today from our staging ground at the Twilight Citadel. As you are no doubt aware, as I write these words to you, we are about to launch our incursion into the Bastion of Twilight; once underway, my chirographically proficient aide Mokvar will continue to update this space to keep you all informed of our progress – a process I am told is generally referred to as “live blogging.” Before passing full control of our communication over to Mokvar, I am taking the liberty here of offering these opening remarks to set the stage, as it were.

I arrived at Twilight Highlands with several Kor’kron detachments late last night, and immediately prepared our forces to move on the Bastion of Twilight. Zaela offered Dragonmaw support for our operation, even volunteering to accompany us herself; I cordially declined the offer – I believe my exact words were “I think you’ve done enough already, thank you” – and suggested that Zaela and her troops instead stake out the Twilight Citadel perimeter, a baby-steps measure of safeguarding from which she might benefit from practice.

[Never send a Dragonmaw to do a Saurfang’s job. –Mkvr., ed.]

 

It’s over to me now, by the way, so I guess I don’t really need the usual brackets. Mokvar here. I’ll try to keep posting these quickly. It’s going to depend on what’s going on at the time, obviously, but I’ll try to stay on task. Hopefully this will go well.

Keep refreshing this page to update – I’ll be continually adding to the post as we go along.

 

8:02 PM – Zoning into the Bastion now. We’ll see how this goes…

 

8:05 PM – All troops are inside.  Already a bit peculiar — there are corpses of a couple of cultists here by the entrance. They don’t seem like they’ve been dead for very long. We’re moving in further into the major chamber.

8:08 PM – Well that explains that. In the big room just inside the Bastion, there were two more dead cultists, then on the far end of the room yet another one dead, along with one live Twilight cultist — in the middle of combat with Garona. She seemed like she was doing fine by herself, but Saurfang and the closest batch of Kor’kron jumped in to help finish the cultist off. It bears noting — he got the most hilarious look of “Oh, come ON” on his face just before they dropped him.

 

8:10 PM – Also, I just have to ask: don’t these guards look around at all? That is, sure, the cultists that Garona attacked before we got here were stationed in pairs, but they were also all within eyeshot of each other. Isn’t it kind of strange that each pair pretty much stood around keeping to themselves while Garona was killing their friends at the other end of the room? Just sayin’.

 

8:14 PM – Garona says she stealthed ahead to check out more of the Bastion before we got here. According to her, most of the cultists that are here seem to be clustered near Cho’gall’s old command room — the Throne of the Apocalypse. She says there were enough there packed close enough together that she didn’t want to risk stealthing in any further. There weren’t many Twilight’s Hammer people elsewhere in the place, other than these groups of guards near the entrance, so she decided to come back here first to make sure she’d cleared an escape path for herself just in case.

 

8:16 PM – Moving on further now with Garona on board.

 

8:17 PM – Hang on, AFK – combat!!

 

8:20 PM – Sorry, back.

We were about to head down the next hallway, but a portal opened up near the entrance, and about a dozen Twilight cultists came through and came running up on us from behind. Contrary to what you might think, crazed apocalyptic world-destroying lunatics don’t have the basic manners to lay off the guy in the back who’s just trying to mind his own business and write.

Anyway, Saurfang and the other made pretty short work of them just the same. I think we’re clear now.

 

8:21 PM – Spoke too soon. Another wave coming through the portal! Stand by.

 

8:22 PM – Seriously, why do these Twilight people always insist on coming at Saurfang in twos? After all this time, does the word “CLEAVE” really not ring any bells to these people?

 

8:25 PM – Give up your futile struggle, doomed fools! All is but chaos and darkness! The Hour of Twilight shall fall, and the sun shall set on your mortal realm! Accept the inevitable and embrace the end as we have!

 

8:27 PM – Yikes, sorry! One of those damn cultists freaking mind-controlled me for a minute there!

Funny he would make me write that, though, rather than, say, try to stab somebody. Then again, I guess even these cultists need an outlet sometimes. That and they’re insane.

 

8:29 PM – Cultists taken out. We’ve only lost two Kor’kron so far, so we’re handling them pretty well. Still, we’re going to hold position here and watch that portal. That’s two waves of cultists that have come through, so we don’t want to move on right off and be taken by surprise.

 

8:33 PM – Nothing coming from the portal so far. Saurfang has decided to leave a group here to stand guard while the rest of us use the portal and see what’s going on on the other end, wherever it is.

Saurfang’s also making a big point of us all going through together, and how he doesn’t want to go through, find himself in a room with a hundred cultists, look around, and see he’s all by himself.

I asked if he was worried he would be overwhelmed.

He said no, he just figures that that would give him a huge head start on the scoreboard and he wants to play fair by the rest of us.

Damn I love Saurfang.

 

8:41 PM – We’ve just gone through the portal, and this is a little eerie. The portal took us all the way to the heart of the Bastion — straight to Cho’gall’s old command room, the Throne of the Apocalypse. Based on the waves of cultists that were coming through the portal just a few minutes ago, I was expecting us to be swimming in them when we came out on this side, but strangely enough, the throne room is empty.

Empty, and a mess. The place is still in tatters from Cho’gall’s last battle here. The huge hole in the floor, leading down to Sinestra’s lair in the Twilight Caverns below, is still there and visible, but it’s been more or less covered by a series of wooden planks and platforms. All around the room there are different pieces of conjuring paraphenalia, much like the junk the Twilight’s Hammer had down in Ahn’Qiraj, only here it looks to be strewn all over the place, some of it broken. In the middle of the room there’s a heavy wooden prisoner’s scaffold — broken as well, nearly cracked into splinters in some spots. There look to be broken chains laying around it on the ground as well.

The biggest eye-catcher, though, is the fact that the room is littered with bodies — cultists of all races, several ettin, a handful of ogres. Most of the bodies look to be recently dead, many of them still seeping blood across the floor.

We’ve only just had enough time to take all this in, and now we’re hearing some commotion going on a ways down the hall, heading back out from the throne room. We’re on our way out now. Stand by.

 

8:44 PM – Just made our way through the Sanctum of the Ascended. Three more dead ettin here, and no shortage of blodd spattered all around. We’re still hearing noise from further out, but it sounds like we’re getting closer.

Saurfang and Garona are picking up the pace and growing visibly fired up by all this, and I can’t really blame them, considering the short list of candidates who could have a hand in this much damage…

 

8:46 PM – Heading down into the Twilight Enclave now — this is definitely where the noise is coming from.

 

8:50 PM – HOLY CRAP, they have a gronn!! (By the way, weren’t there only supposed to be a handful of gronn in existence? How do these Twilight Highlands cultists keep digging up extras?) Anyway, this one is pretty much as big as a gronn could get and still fit in here. It’s blocking the view of the far exit, and it’s got a gang of cultists swarming around it — not swarming like they’re attacking the gronn, but swarming like they’re all on the same side against a shared target, in the doorway.

 

8:53 PM – Okay, time to settle your bets on this one — it’s Garrosh!

Also worth noting that we were finally able to see him in the doorway because he just bladestormed down like half a dozen of the cultists.

And, with a patented “You answer to Saurfang now!” from the overlord, here we go!

 

8:56 PM – Well, here we were going to go. Just as we were starting to charge in, we suddenly found ourselves rooted in place by some kind of slowing field, then guess who comes swooping in on that freaky wind serpent of hers? Magatha Grimtotem herself! (Nerf earthbind totems!)

 

8:59 PM – A large chunk of the cultists broke off to attack our group. Including, you guessed it, two who ran right at Saurfang. Together. Why, seriously, why?

Meanwhile, Magatha’s landed and taken out a glowing, pulsating orb — is that the Doomstone? She’s chanting something and the orb is glowing brighter.

 

9:02 PM – …Only nobody really noticed that Garona was unaccounted for, and she just popped out of stealth behind Magatha! Stunlock! And pissed-off stunlock too, from the looks of it! Ha! (Nerf rogues!)

 

9:04 PM – Another bladestorm from Garrosh, and now it’s just down to him and the gronn. The only other cultists left are the ones busy fighting the Kor’kron…and they could probably be holding their own okay if it weren’t for the old guy cleaving his way through them.

 

9:05 PM – Crap. Saurfang managed to close in on the gronn to help Garrosh, but the gronn must have heard him coming because it just turned around and hit him with some kind of shockwave effect, which did a knockback on Saurfang and threw straight back into Garona.

 

9:09 PM – Okay, mixed bag here.

The good: Throwing down that shockwave distracted the gronn just enough that Garrosh was able to get a few good hits in on him, and by the time it got its bearing back, it was short…um…an arm.

Now — YEAH! — short a head!

The bad: Saurfang getting flung into Garona kept her from doing her stun-lock thing, so now Magatha is back up and remounted on her blasted wind serpent.

 

9:13 PM – With the gronn dead and the cultists pretty well under control, Magatha tried flying out the doorway away from us — as she swooped by, though, Garrosh managed to leap up and catch the wind serpent’s tail. Magath kept going and she’s carrying him with her away from the Enclave. Saurfang and Garona have collected themselves and the bunch of us who aren’t locked down the remaining cultists are heading up after them.

 

9:20 PM – We’ve made it back up to Wyrmbreaker’s Rookery. Magatha’s wind serpent is zig-zagging around, and it looks kind of shaky so maybe Garrosh has gotten in a few good swings on it while he’s been holding on. Still, though, between the wind serpent thrashing around and Magatha letting loose some lightning bolts, they just managed to shake Garrosh loose and dropped him on the rookery balcony, overlooking the Highlands.

Magatha pulled away with the wind serpent, but then she just stopped and pulled the Doomstone out again. I couldn’t hear from here, but she started saying something, maybe another one of her chants, and the stone started glowing insanely brightly in rapid pulses. Then she hit Garrosh with one more lightning bolt — looks like he just shook that one off mostly — and threw the Doomstone down on the balcony. It gave off an energy burst when it landed that pushed Garrosh back a few feet. It’s pulsing faster and brighter now, and giving out a humming that’s getting louder by the second.

 

9:24 PM – Crap, I think Magatha just overcharged the Doomstone! The pulsing is more like a strobe effect now, and the buzzing noise is going right through my ears. Magatha’s flown off from the overlook on her wind serpent, but right now I think we’ve got bigger things to worry about — Saurfang just grabbed Garona to pull her back and shoved everyone back from balcony.

 

9:25 PM – Yep, it’s gonna blow! If I’m still too close give my internet router to Spazzle…

 

9:26 PM – Garrosh jumped! He just jumped off the balcony to get clear of the blast!

 

9:30 PM – OW, my ears. And my eyes, too, for that matter. Wow that was explosion was sensory overload… Going to need a minute to steady myself here…

The explosion pretty much took out the entire balcony…there are chunks of the floor and walls still crumbling and breaking loose…cracks all around the room are going to make the place pretty unstable to move around in.

Saurfang just did a quick head count to make sure the bunch of us were okay. Garona’s already making her way over toward the ledge to see if there was anything down below for Garrosh to have grabbed on to…

 

9:34 PM – HA! The wyvern! Garrosh just came floating on up into view on his wyvern! It must have been flying around the Bastion and caught him when he jumped off! See, see, I told him it was a good-looking animal back in Ashenvale, but does anyone listen to me? Nooo.

Um, I mean, yeah! Garrosh is safe!

 

9:40 PM – Whew…. Okay, so we’ve gotten the cultists cleaned up, and Garrosh had landed and rejoined us (not too close to the cracked and unstable falling-apart room, mind you). Saurfang’s in the process of surveying the troops, but just eyeballing it I’d say our casualties were relatively light. Granted we lost Magatha, and there are still some gaps to fill in about what was going on here, but Garrosh and Saurfang and the rest can worry about that afterward. For now we’re just concentrating on gathering up and getting ready to bring everyone back home to Orgrimmar.

Stand by a minute, I think Saurfang’s going to want to wrap things up here before we head out.

Also I need to go find some aspirin.

Also Spazzle had better not have made off with my router.

 

Victory is ours, friends! And so, with Warchief Hellscream returned to us safely, the time has come for me to relinquish the mantle of leadership and return to my post in Northrend. I wish to thank you all for your support and your courage, and also for continuing to read this space which I have maintained for the Warchief as best I could. I trust Warchief Hellscream will resume his communication with you in short order, and I am sure he will look forward to hearing from you, his people, as much as you will no doubt look forward to once again benefiting from his sage words.

And with that, people of the Horde, I sign my final note to you. It has, as always, been an honor to serve with you.

Lok’tar ogar, friends. Honor go with you all.

 

-Saurfang