So while we’re waiting on updates from Hillsbrad, I’m catching a little much-needed R&R time. Gurtash from the orphanage was taking care of Mortimer while I dealt with that whole to-do at the Caverns of Time, so after I got back, I got the idea that it might be nice to do something for Gurtash for all the time he’s spent wyvern-sitting. So, I checked him out of the orphanage for a little while, rounded up Mortimer, and brought him over to Mulgore. What better reward for the kid than a day at the Darkmoon Faire?

So we spent a while wandering around the faire, loading up on hot dogs and cotton candy and one of those giant orange slurpy drink thingies. I tried playing this Whack-a-Gnoll game they had – figured I could try to win Gurtash a toy or something – but Mola the carnie got all upset and said I had to leave the game area. And personally I don’t think it’s MY fault that she did not explain clearly enough that I had to use the stupid foam hammer they gave me, instead of Gorehowl. I just figured they provided the hammer for the people who didn’t think ahead to bring their own weapon. So yeah, she asked me to leave the area, after I filled out some form for where they can send the bill. Whatever. Fucking Hogger.

At least I only destroyed the fake wood-and-straw gnolls, though, rather than the LIVE one they had hanging around. They’ve got this gnoll named Sayge tucked away in a tent in one corner, giving out fortunes to people after they answer some “what would you do?” type questions. Gurtash got a fortune that said “Hopes are like wyverns: care for them and they will carry you when you’re too tired to go on.” Which, hey, good call on the wyvern thing, so you’d think Sayge knew his stuff, but then mine didn’t make a damn bit of sense – “From within it consumes,” like what the fuck? So I clocked him.

Then I had to sign some more forms.

Anyway, after that we found the petting zoo, and boy did the kid flip out at that point. I wasn’t so sure about the zoo at first, since the first pen had a bunch of gorlocs, which I had MORE than my fill of up in Northrend, because like I think I’ve mentioned, THOSE things are like what would happen if a murloc fucked a kangaroo. But then I heard them prattling on about wondering when the tour would start, and realized somebody had tricked the stupid bouncy fuckers into thinking they were VISITING the zoo and not IN it, and that’s actually hella funny awesome, so okay.

Anyway, they had a bunch of pretty jumbo-sized animals, like this gorilla Gargantua, and a basilisk named Krystal which for some reason had a carnie-shaped crystal in his pen with…oh WAIT a minute! HAH!  Um, anyway. We looked around at some more of the animals, plus this big green slime thing that kept trying to spit at me through the bars of its cage. Between the spitting slime and the animal poop, I tell you, you don’t know where to step half the time in that place.

Across from the slime, they had another pen with a huge wooly rhino named Crush. We were looking at him, when all of a sudden I felt something clang off the back of my head – the shock of it knocked me forward, and made me fling my orange slurpy drink into the pen and all over the rhino. Which…yeah, another bill for animal shampoo if they notice that, too. When I looked to see what it was, though, it turned out I’d been hit by a Happy Fun Rock that some kids at the faire were tossing around – and by the time I looked, the kids had gotten their rock back, and Gurtash was making fast friends with them, and next thing you know he was racing off to run around the faire grounds with the bunch of them. And so I’m stuck sitting there between the rhino and the ooze yelling at him to come finish the tour of the petting zoo, but does he listen? No, of course not. Fine, be that way. Follow me, don’t follow me, whatever. I’ve got my slime, I’ve got my orange Crush.

So while Gurtash was running around with the other kids, I looked around the faire a little myself – and found the most awesome thing ever. The Darkmoon Deathmatch! Get this. They have this event where they put a prize in this chest in the middle of a big cage, right? And at a certain time every day, the chest unlocks so that the prize can be picked up by anyone in the cage, only the inside of the cage is a free-for-all combat zone – so in order to claim the prize, you have to fight off anyone else who happens to be in there!

Wait, did I say you HAVE to? Make that, you GET to.

I just happened to get there like ten minutes before the chest was going to unlock, and hey, look at all the humans and gnomes and draenei running around inside the cage. LOK’TAR, bitches, the DELI COUNTER OF PAIN IS OPEN FOR BUSINESS AND GIVING OUT NUMBERS. Hell yeah!

So, fast forward ten minutes for the fighting and two minutes for wading in and out through the heaps of mutilated bodies, and I’ve got my prize voucher.

The good: A quick trip to the prize-claim tent, and I had a great, big, hard-won goodie to hand off to Gurtash when he got back from running around with his new friends.

The bad: When he DID get back, turns out that two of his friends were a human kid named Michael and a draenei kid (LITERALLY) named Duquan…whose parents I, um, may or may not have just brutally slaughtered in the Deathmatch cage.

The worse: The goodie in question happened to be a giant pink teddy bear. Which I had to carry around the faire grounds until Gurtash turned up again. Which he didn’t do for like an hour and a half.

So, yeah.