Tag Archives: orphan
A problem like Shayari
So, Faranell was still working on his tests when I went to see him. I figured I’d leave him alone so he could concentrate on his work rather than, you know, concentrate on making smartass comments. Anyway.
In the meantime, I’ve been trying to finish up these meetings. I had a conference earlier today with Overseer Elaglo about his new duties “helping” Eitrigg with things. Eitrigg didn’t sound too thrilled about the new arrangements, but it’s not like he’s got much to say in the matter. Didn’t stop him from saying a few things on his way out, though. Anyhow, we also had Xorenth in to go over the details of another project I’ve got him and Elaglo collaborating on. Taktani sat in on the meeting – she managed to keep herself mostly reined in, by some miracle – but for the time being I’m going to hold off on posting those transcripts. Most of them, anyway. Some of the operations we were going over are fairly sensitive, so I don’t think I want to go announcing them on the blog.
As opposed to all the other highly sensitive, top secret stuff I casually write about here on practically a daily basis, right? Like, oh, I don’t know, evidently being the surprise dad of a half-draenei teenager, for instance. Pending confirmation, anyway. Oh well. It’s all among friends here, I guess. Anyway.
Speaking of the pending confirmation, though…over to the de-classified part of Tak’s handiwork…
(How about here, Mr. Warchief? Oh good! Now it’s okay to start copying the meeting. I like this part better anyway, there’s not as much talking about the angry fire cave. I don’t think I would like it there. It sounds scary! Oh okay, I guess I’m taking too long to get to the meeting.
I guess I’ll start with the part where Mr. Malkorok came in. Don’t worry, though, he doesn’t stay long!)
MALKOROK – Warchief, you have visitors waiting outside. The elf and the undead want to see you.
GARROSH – Ah. They’re a little early, but whatever. Let them in.
MALKOROK – Yes sir.
(Mr. Malkorok stepped outside, then came back in with Ms. Liadrin and Dr. Zombie.)
LIADRIN – Good morning, Warchief. I hope we’re not interrupting.
GARROSH – It’s fine. We’re close to done here. In fact, I think you guys are set with your orders.
ELAGLO – Yes, sir. I still need to check with the excavation crew.
XORENTH – And I’m fairly sure Kardris and Koranathal wanted to see me about something.
GARROSH – I’ll let you get to it, then. I’ll check in with you later.
(Mr. Elaglo and Mr. Xorenth got up and started to head toward the door.)
LIADRIN – I hope we’re not rushing you gentlemen off. I don’t believe we’ve met, actually. (extending her hand) I’m Lady Liadrin, of the Blood Knights of Silvermoon.
ELAGLO – So you are.
(Mr. Elaglo and Mr. Xorenth kept walking to the door and left. That didn’t seem very nice!)
LIADRIN – Well then.
(Mr. Warchief watched Mr. Elaglo and Mr. Xorenth, then kept watching the door for a minute before turning back to Ms. Liadrin.)
GARROSH – Okay. So, do we have news?
LIADRIN – Dr. Faranell has finished his tests, yes sir.
GARROSH – And?
FARANELL – Congratulations. It’s a girl. (holding out a cigar) Here, have a cigar.
(Mr. Warchief looked at Dr. Zombie kind of funny, then went back to talking. I guess Mr. Warchief doesn’t smoke. That’s good!)
GARROSH – You’re sure?
FARANELL – The results were pretty clear-cut. (shrugs) You’re sure you don’t want the cigar? Seems a shame to waste it, on top of all that perfectly good ichor from the test.
LIADRIN – I must admit, sir, I can’t say I’m terribly surprised.
GARROSH – You kind of had that vibe from Shayari from the start, huh?
LIADRIN – After a fashion, sir.
FARANELL – Good call. Cigar?
LIADRIN – (sighing) No, Doctor.
GARROSH – So that’s that… She’s settled in okay?
LIADRIN – More or less, sir. Though now I suppose we’re left with a few more questions to address about her situation.
GARROSH – Yeah.
LIADRIN – No doubt you’ll have security matters for you and…the overlord to consider.
GARROSH – For the time being, I want to stay pretty selective about who knows…well, who she really is.
LIADRIN – Fairly prudent, I suppose, sir. For now, at least. I would imagine there will be more than a few questions raised as she’s seen around Orgrimmar, of course.
GARROSH – I can deal with those. The questions… (nodding to Malkorok) …and anyone who starts getting too nosy.
MALKOROK – I have ears in many corners of the city, Warchief. I’ll be sure to find out if anyone is…unduly curious.
GARROSH – Good.
FARANELL – Good indeed. Here, have a cigar.
(Mr. Malkorok glared at Dr. Zombie and grumbled a little.)
FARANELL – Cigar? No? No one?
GARROSH – Will you knock if off with the damn cigar!
MALKOROK – If you’ll…excuse me, Warchief, I’ll be outside…
(Mr. Malkorok grumbled a little more and left. Yay!)
FARANELL – Oh well, fine. More for me, then.
TAKTANI – You really shouldn’t smoke, Dr. Zombie! It’s bad for you!
FARANELL – Hello? Already-dead guy.
GARROSH – Tak, just stick to copying down the conversation, not joining it.
(I was just trying to help! =( )
LIADRIN – If I might make a further suggestion, sir, I’ve been considering the matter of Shayari’s ongoing education. As you may recall, she was studying to be a mage in Dalaran when the purge took place.
GARROSH – Huh. Well, we have trainers here, and I could probably have Ureda get her in with the newest shadowmages, but to tell you the truth, I don’t know if I want her hanging around too much down in the Cleft of Shadow.
LIADRIN – It is, I’ve heard, something of an unsavory area, sir.
GARROSH – Among other things. So anyway, you had an idea?
LIADRIN – Yes, sir. I thought it might be preferable to entrust her training to someone more familiar to us. I’ve spoken to Dr. Faranell about the matter, and he’s expressed his willingness to take Shayari on as an apprentice.
FARANELL – You left out the part about my extortionate fee.
GARROSH – Huh. Are you sure you’d be up for a job like that, Doc? I mean, no offense, but you never really struck me as a particularly powerful mage.
FARANELL – I’m not, really. I’m not bad, mind you, but I’m nothing special. Still, for training purposes, especially for the early stage Shayari’s at, high-end power isn’t nearly as important as a good knowledge base.
LIADRIN – Which is an area in which we’re actually…particularly fortunate to have a resource as rare as the good doctor.
FARANELL – Fortunate for the rest of you, anyway.
GARROSH – Uh, why’s that? I mean I know you’re a smart guy and all, Doc, but what’s so rare about him?
LIADRIN – Well, Warchief, as you might recall, Dr. Faranell was blessed with an eidetic memory.
FARANELL – Oh yes. Blessed.
LIADRIN – As such, he has a near-perfect retention of virtually every magic sourcebook he’s read. And that particular capacity was… well… augmented by one of the peculiarities of Dr. Faranell’s personal history.
FARANELL – Is that what we’re calling it now? A peculiarity?
LIADRIN – There aren’t many terms that lend themselves readily.
GARROSH – Are you two going to finish explaining this, or do I have to start guessing what the hell you’re talking about?
FARANELL – The time loop.
GARROSH – I… Oh.
LIADRIN – Yes sir. I’m sure I needn’t remind you of the closed temporal loop Dr. Faranell sealed himself in last year.
GARROSH – Yeah, oddly enough, I remember, even without the doc’s super-memory. It was kind of a big deal.
LIADRIN – Indeed, sir. As it happens…well, Doctor, I imagine you can explain better than I could.
FARANELL – Yeah, so. You know that while I was in the time loop, I kept reliving the same 11-year period over and over. Only the thing is, each time around, I experienced that repetition individually. So if I went around five times, it wasn’t like I experienced it once and it kept repeating without my knowing – I was aware of each time through, and knew, okay, this is pass #5.
GARROSH – Yeah, I remember that part. And you ended up going around…crap, how many times was it?
FARANELL – 2,734. I was in the middle of number 2,735 when I got snapped out of it again.
GARROSH – Holy shit.
FARANELL – Holy shit indeed. Anyway, though, the point of all this is that every cycle through, I had to repeat all the things I’d originally done in that timeline, obviously, so as not to disrupt history—
GARROSH – Well, other than how you DID disrupt history, and, y’know, almost destroyed the world in the process.
FARANELL – Yes, there’s that, but nobody’s perfect. Even me. One thing that I realized fairly early on, though, was that even though I had to preserve all the things I was supposed to do in those years, there was also an awful lot of down time when it really didn’t matter what I was doing. Nights when I was alone by myself at home, for instance – it really didn’t matter if I spent the time, say, doing a crossword puzzle or playing solitaire, since it would literally affect no one other than me.
GARROSH – Dude, seriously? Crossword puzzles and solitaire? Please tell me that’s not what you really spent your nights doing.
FARANELL – No, but I didn’t think “designing more virulent strains of plague” rolled off the tongue as well. Shall we continue, or are you not yet finished noting how lame I was for not making varsity?
GARROSH – Yeah, fine, whatever.
FARANELL – At any rate… Well, let me put it this way. Have you ever thought, “Boy, there are all these books I’d like to read, if only I had the time to get around to them”?
(I think Mr. Warchief might have thought Dr. Zombie wasn’t finished yet, because he didn’t say anything. He just stood there looking at him for a minute. I hope Mr. Warchief’s ears are okay!)
FARANELL – Okay, silly question on my part. But you can grasp the concept of that, right?
GARROSH – Yeah, sure. World enough and time. Got it.
FARANELL – Well… Thanks to my…circumstances… I had over 30,000 years to get around to them.
GARROSH – Holy… Hang on. How many books did you end up “getting around to”?
FARANELL – Pretty much all of them.
LIADRIN – And again, sir, it bears noting: he made his way, in essence, through the entire repository of written knowledge…with a photographic memory.
GARROSH – (letting out a long, low whistle) Whew. So, yeah, you’re definitely the man for the job here, Doc. And hey, I guess this means you get to be a professor like your brother, huh?
FARANELL – Yes, well, hopefully not too much like him. He sort of jumped the rails there at the end.
GARROSH – Huh. Yeah. Actually, though, this works out pretty perfectly. Shayari can move on over to the Undercity, she can be a little more low-profile there, you can teach her the ins and outs of all that magic crap, everybody wins.
LIADRIN – Well, sir, I hadn’t really meant that Shay should—
GARROSH – We might as well get the ball rolling right away on this, in fact. MALKOROK!
(Mr. Malkorok leaned back in through the door.)
MALKOROK – Yes, sir?
GARROSH – Malk, Shayari is going to be going back to the Undercity with the doc here. I want you to go with him now and help make any arrangements he needs. Transport, storage, whatever he needs. You clear?
MALKOROK – (giving Faranell a disdainful glance) If you wish, Warchief.
LIADRIN – Warchief, might I suggest before we go ahead with this—
GARROSH – No sense wasting time when we’ve got a winner of a plan, Liadrin. Hop to it, Doc. Malkorok will make sure you get whatever you need.
(Mr. Malkorok stood in the doorway and looked to Dr. Zombie while gesturing out the door. He almost looked polite! I wonder why he looked like something hurt…)
MALKOROK – If you’ll…come this way…undead.
FARANELL – (walking to the door) Oh good. I was afraid my day couldn’t become any more delightful.
(Mr. Malkorok and Dr. Zombie left.)
GARROSH – Gotta hand it to you, Liadrin, that was a pretty clutch idea about the doc.
LIADRIN – Well…thank you, sir. Although I can’t say I’d expected you to want Shayari altogether relocated to the Undercity…
GARROSH – Hey, kids her age go away to school all the time.
LIADRIN – That’s true, sir, but most of them are coming from a home that’s fairly stable to begin with. Shayari, on the other hand, has already been uprooted once from a place she’d considered home.
GARROSH – She should be fine with Edwin looking after her. Plus she can always zip up to Brill if she needs some fresh air. Or fresher air. Or, well, somewhat-less-noxious air.
LIADRIN – Yes, sir. Although… If I might ask you something, sir? I don’t mean to intrude into your personal matters…
GARROSH – I think that train left the station when you showed up with a surprise daughter for me.
LIADRIN – Well, sir… Have you gone to see her at all, since the other day?
GARROSH – No. I haven’t. I’ve been busy enough trying to take care of business and tie up all the loose ends that have been coming loose since…I… haven’t been around to un-loose them…
LIADRIN – I understand that you’re a busy man, of course, Warchief. At the same time…she is your daughter.
GARROSH – I’m aware, yeah.
LIADRIN – Don’t you think you should?
GARROSH – When I get a chance to, Liadrin. Worst case scenario, I’ll be sure to see her off before she takes off with Edwin, and…
LIADRIN – I understand that this has been a lot to be added to an already full plate, sir. I’d like to reassure you, though, if you feel it would be helpful to have a sympathetic ear as a new parent — a sounding board, as it were — I would be more than happy to—
GARROSH – Not for anything, Liadrin, but what would you even know about it?
LIADRIN – More than you might suppose, Warchief. A few years ago, shortly after the Outland campaign, I adopted a young blood elf girl from the Shattrath orphanage. She’s fifteen years old now. So, you see, I’m not completely unfamiliar with having no children one day, then suddenly having a grown child the next.
GARROSH – Yeah, well, that’s nice and all, Liadrin, but I’m sure I can handle it.
LIADRIN – I’m sure you can, sir. So does that mean you’ll be going to see her? Well before any possible departures?
GARROSH – This really isn’t any of your business, Liadrin.
LIADRIN – All things being equal, sir, I would agree. Though given that the past several days I’ve been taking it upon myself to help her with her transition, I suppose you might say I’ve developed a bit of a vested interest.
GARROSH – Liadrin, I get what you’re trying to do, and yeah, fine, you’ve kind of got a point about me going to talk to her, but you know what? I don’t know this girl. She shows up out of nowhere, and I don’t know the first thing about her. I don’t know what the fuck I’m supposed to SAY to her.
LIADRIN – (smiling kindly before beginning matter-of-factly) She grew up in Nagrand, and as a child lost her mother to a pernicious disease. She never knew her father, only through stories, and everything she’s heard of him has told her that he’s a monster. (walks to the door, turning back briefly before exiting) I’m sure you’ll come up with something.
Cheat Sheet
As promised in my last post, here’s an overview of the state of the blog. I realize that after two years of accumulated in-jokes and storylines, the Command Board may be a bit disorienting to a newcomer (or, for that matter, to a long-time reader who blinked at the wrong time), so I’ve tried to break this down into a semi-sorta-kinda FAQ. Most of this will be familiar to long-time readers (though I’ve also included a few behind-the-scenes notes that some of you might find interesting), but I hope it’ll explain a few things for new arrivals.
I hate Garrosh! Why does Garrosh seem so sympathetic in this blog? Are you one of those Garrosh apologists/fanboys?
Comically enough, I originally started the blog because I really didn’t like Garrosh either, and saw the blog as a way to have a few chuckles mocking him. It wasn’t long, though, before I decided that I would get sick of the outright-mockery approach pretty quickly, so I started branching out. Part of the result was letting blog-Garrosh become (I hope) a bit more multifaceted, while still remaining true to his temperamental self. Including the LOLs.
Ultimately, I don’t set out to justify anything Garrosh does, just to present it in a way that makes sense in light of the character, and if that pushes a black-and-white scenario into some shade of gray, well, that makes for a more interesting story anyway. And, keep in mind, the story here is being told, generally, from Garrosh’s point of view, so I don’t know how that perspective wouldn’t be sympathetic. Everyone is the hero of their own story, after all, and nobody thinks they’re a bad person.
Why isn’t there anything here about the siege of Orgrimmar?
What are you talking about? There was a post titled “The siege of Orgrimmar” a good solid year ago – if anything, shouldn’t you be asking why Blizzard is coming so late to the party? (By the way, I didn’t realize until just now that patch 5.4 was released almost exactly on the one-year anniversary of the “Siege or Orgrimmar” post. How awesomely freaky is that?)
Anyway, to give a real answer: Time-wise, the blog has not yet reached the events of patch 5.4. The storyline is currently playing out the midst of 5.2; Lor’themar Theron and Jaina Proudmoore have recently set up shop on the Isle of Thunder, while Vol’jin is still recovering from his injuries at Shado-Pan Monastery.
This time lag between the game and the blog, by the way, is partly by design. I’d always intended the blog to run a bit behind the game; coming into MoP, I realized that if I tried to follow in-game events too closely, I wouldn’t have time to adapt my own ideas to fit Blizzard’s story. There have already been a few instances in which Blizzard’s story has taken a turn that’s forced me to change gears in a way that would have been disastrous if I didn’t have a month or two of lead time. Of course, I’m clearly more than a month or two behind – that’s been a result of various real-life circumstances slowing down my output over the last few months. I’m working on it!
So the blog basically retells in-game events, from Garrosh’s point of view?
Yes and no. The blog operates within Blizzard’s continuity (with the aforementioned time delay), but also weaves additional storylines in and around the canonical Blizzard plots. Anything that happens or is stated explicitly in-game is canon, obviously, and the blog is bound by it.* That said, I sometimes like to put other stories around Blizzard’s, to give them context that might change the way those events are perceived. (This was a large part of my motivation for the Timequake story leading into Theramore, or, more recently, the blog events surrounding the Divine Bell / Domination Offensive storyline.)
Also, while the point of view is mostly Garrosh’s, there are some posts that present events from other perspectives. Most notable are the “guest” posts by Spazzle (Garrosh’s tech goblin), which help fill in story details that Garrosh wouldn’t necessarily be privy to. You can always identify a post written by someone other than Garrosh by the color of the text – Spazzle’s posts, for instance, are always written in green text, and almost always include the phrase “Spazzle Speaks” in the title. Also, as a rule of thumb, when Spazzle et al post, Garrosh remains oblivious to anything that might be revealed; the conceit at work here is that Garrosh doesn’t really care what anyone else is writing, so he doesn’t bother reading it.
* The one instance that I’ve flat-out fudged in-game details is the way I’ve chosen to incorporate the events of “A Little Patience.” From the Alliance point of view, that scenario takes place almost immediately after Varian arrives in Pandaria; in the blog, I’ve pushed those events a bit later in the story. This was largely a matter of convenience: I knew that I wanted there to be a military operation in Krasarang in which Garrosh’s trainees went missing, and I realized fairly late in the going that “A Little Patience” lent itself to that story pretty readily. Hopefully those Alliance-side readers out there will be willing to turn a blind eye to my blatant and shameless revision. (Horde bias rears its ugly head again! GRR!)
Garrosh has trainees? When did that happen?
Right here! As part of the escalation of the war effort, the Kor’kron started a training program to prepare orc teenagers for eventual military service. When Garrosh learned that Gurtash – an orc boy from the Orgrimmar orphanage whom Garrosh had taken under his wing – had been conscripted, Garrosh volunteered to take Gurtash’s trainee group under his own supervision. (Side note: In my head-canon, Garrosh has a bit of a soft spot for the orphans, being as he is one himself.) The trainees, who have nicknamed themselves the Dead Peons Society (DPS for short) have accompanied Garrosh to Pandaria and joined him on a few adventures. Fairly recently, they went missing after the Horde loss in the “A Little Patience” scenario, and were eventually found by Garrosh, hiding away in an underground system of caves. That’s brought us up to the point where we are now, story-wise: Garrosh and the trainees underground, looking for a way out.
Is the entire supporting cast from within the game?
Mostly, but not entirely. I’ve invented a few characters for the blog – Spazzle being the highest-profile – but I’ve tried to keep it limited, and tried to restrict those characters to fairly peripheral positions in the lore. The one glaring exception was the storyline involving Garrosh’s mother, Lakkara, who isn’t mentioned anywhere in the actual lore. It just struck me as odd that there’s no record of who she was, or what happened to her, and besides, in a mythology packed to capacity with father/son relationships, I thought it was about time somebody’s mom got a little screen time.
Otherwise, when a character turns up who doesn’t exist in-game, that character was often inspired by a reader and/or based on someone’s game character. For instance, both Gurtash and Mortimer (Garrosh’s personal wyvern) became blog characters thanks to mailbag letters from Khizzara from Blog of the Treant; Khizzara’s own namesake has made a few appearances as Spazzle’s cousin; doodle-prone kitty druid Taktani became a full-fledged character (and boy, is she ever a character) after making several mailbag contributions; and many of the DPS trainees are modeled on the baby orc alts of friends.
In general, though, if you see a supporting character turn up whose name you don’t recognize, the smartest first guess is that he or she is based on a questgiver or other NPC somewhere in-game. (Wowpedia is your friend!) I deliberately picked a lot of relatively minor NPCs – people like Mokvar, Elder Cloudfall, and Dontrag and Utvoch – to use as supporting characters because I figured their relatively peripheral status gave me more latitude to work with them, give them backstories, etc. After all, what are the odds that Blizzard would actually do something with one of these people to contradict my own concoctions?
(Either way, if you’re not sure who someone is, I’ve also maintained a partial list of supporting players on the About the Blog page, including some of the more pertinent information about them.)
Speaking of which – in the SoO raid, Mokvar is a mini-boss! Isn’t he missing? How are you going to deal with that?
First… um, yeah, that whole “no way they’re gonna do something with this guy” really blew up in my face on this one, huh?
And second… So, everyone who thought I was going to lay out this big storyline for Mokvar, and make such a production out of his disappearance…and then have it turn out that he really is dead…step forward.
Didn’t think so.
For those of you unclear on Mokvar’s whole story, which has been unfolding gradually for quite a while, you can check here for a brief overview and links to the relevant posts. Very short version: After becoming the victim of a mysterious attack, Mokvar sets out to track down a powerful relic from his warlock days, with the aid of a human named Deliana (who was Mokvar’s Alliance equivalent in the old dungeon set quests); over the course of his quest, he starts to behave increasingly strangely, culminating in his eventual flight from arrest in Orgrimmar. His whereabouts are now unknown.
Stay tuned. You’ll see where this is going!
With Mokvar gone, how are you handling the transcripts?
Prelinimary: The blog contains several transcripts of conversations that Garrosh has engaged in. The premise from the outset has been that Mokvar is (or was) Garrosh’s personal scribe, and records all these conversations for posting. This explains, by the way, a number of occasions when Garrosh mentions summoning Mokvar to an event, or otherwise noting Mokvar’s presence, as a way of leading in to a transcript.
Since Mokvar is off the grid, Garrosh has passed transcription duties to two people: Gurtash, who records his transcripts in the form of comics; and Taktani, a friend of Dontrag and Utvoch and long-time mailbag contributor, who’s started to (and will continue to) write a few transcripts, laden with her own unassuming brand of commentary.
What are these guild chat logs that keep cropping up?
Garrosh and several of the supporting characters play an MMORPG called Earth Online – the basic premise being that, to these characters, Azeroth is reality, and our real world is actually the game world of the MMO. Garrosh started his own guild, called <Warchief>, and several familiar faces (including Spazzle, Sylvanas, Lor’themar, Faranell, Garona, and Dontrag and Utvoch) are members. Also worth noting is that Jaina Proudmoore is a member of the guild…although she doesn’t realize (yet?) who her guildmates are in “real life.”
The guild chat logs recreate some of the exchanges that the members of <Warchief> have within their game, usually including regular guild chat, officer chat, and, in some cases, whispers. I make no pretense about the fact that some aspects of these logs are based on my own guild-chat expeiences, especially officer chat. The transcripts are always presented from the point of view of whoever posted them – usually Garrosh, but occasionally Spazzle.
Where did this whole thing about lemon squares come from?
Garrosh loves lemon squares. Don’t you?
Real explanation: Very early in the blog, Edenvale of The Gamer’s Fridge posted a recipe for Garrosh Hellscream’s lemon squares, and pointed me to her post with a comment on the Command Board. Since then, it’s become a bit of a running gag – the recipe, according to Garrosh, was his greatmother’s secret family recipe, and he was most perturbed that this random night elf had apparently gotten ahold of it.
What does “FYV” mean?
An abbreviation of one of Garrosh’s favorite turns of phrase, of course: “Fuck you, Varian!” Among other things, Garrosh often finds a way to slip that phrase into his EPIC VERSE compositions.
Speaking of which, what’s this “EPIC VERSE”? Garrosh writes poetry?
You sound surprised. Garrosh is an orc of many interests. What, do you think he’s some kind of one-note caricature or something?
Okay, fine, game-Garrosh kind of is.
Honestly, I just got a kick out of the obvious dichotomy of Garrosh Hellscream, gruffest of the gruff, also writing poetry on the side. True to form, Garrosh doesn’t view his compositions as just any poetry, so he prefers to call them EPIC VERSE. In caps. Always. It’s sprinkled throughout the blog – almost always in purple text, to stress its epic-ness – and ranges from limericks, to parodies of other famous poems, to reader requests, to epic rap battles.
So, that’s as much as I can think to cover. Other gaps can probably be filled in through the Major Storylines page, but if there are questions that anyone still has, in terms of getting caught up or clarified, by all means toss them into a comment and I’ll make sure it’s answered. And so, on that note, I’ll sigh off with the promise – unconditional promise! – that before the week is out, you’ll have the continuation of the actual STORY part of the story! Which left off, as you might recall, right here:
Don’t blame the healer
It took a little doing, but eventually I got the DPS kids to fill in the rest of what had gone down after they’d sealed themselves in the cave. (I’m not going to stick Gurtash with having to do comic panels for every last word of it when we can just exposition our way over it, because seriously, that would burn through a TON of paper, and there’s only so much Ashenvale lumber on hand.) (For now.)
Like Gurtash and Giska were saying last time, they encountered saurok – multiple packs of them, actually – and did their best to fight them off while fleeing deeper into the caverns. By the time the saurok gave up pursuit, the kids were pretty far underground…and one fewer in number. Lok’osh – another orphan that Gurtash knew from Matron Battlewail’s place – got hacked up pretty badly in the fight, and while the rest of the kids managed to get him out of there with them, his injuries turned out to be too much for him.
He was a good kid. Quiet, but I guess that comes with being a rogue. I was maybe going to introduce him to Garona one day, except for the fact that, you know, who needs to be subjected to that, right? So maybe not. Anyway, moot point now. Unfortunately.
I decided to have the kids check our perimeter while I figured out our next move. There were two ways into the small chamber where they’d set up camp, and I’d just used one of them a short while before, so we knew that one was clear. So I had the batch of them chain their way down the other passageway to scout as far as they could. Standard procedure in unfamiliar territory, when you have limited numbers and want to play it conservative – one of them plants themselves in the passage, within sight of me, then the others spread out while going further. Each one in the chain goes as far as they can while still maintaining line of sight with the person before them. This way you cover the widest range, without anybody ever being in a position where the cavalry can’t be called in within ten seconds. Plus it would be giving them something to do to get their minds off Lok’osh and feel like they’re helping.
Korrina couldn’t get close enough to get a good look – I’m sure she would have tried, if they all weren’t under orders not to try to be a hero – but she was pretty sure she could see shadows moving further down the tunnel, and something seemed to be making some noise. I rounded the trainees up in the passageway and had them chain behind me while I went down to check it out – not even for the sake of them backing me up, really (spirits help me if I ever wind up needing the kids to save my ass), but mostly so they could call me back if something snuck up behind them. No surprise to anyone, Gurtash made a point of making himself the last link in the chain to me. As the passage started to widen into another room, I reminded him to keep me in sight, but also told him in no uncertain terms to stay back, no matter what. And down I went.
So…yeah, hold on to your hats for this one.
Being a role model is a full-time job
This week, Malkorok has been busy implementing his trainee program for teenage recruits from Orgrimmar. He’s sending out notices to anyone age fourteen on up to seventeen – assuming they’re fit and able, and don’t have some other issues like, I don’t know, just off the top of my head here, outstanding community service hours cleaning the swine pens at Jaggedswine Farm after getting caught toilet papering Grommash Hold. I’m speaking hypothetically here, of course. The recruits will all be grouped by age and ability and assigned to small training units under the supervision of an accomplished veteran. From there, they’ll start preparing to eventually fight for the glory of the Horde.
And now, before everyone starts QQ’ing, because I know there are a lot of people who read this blog who aren’t orcs (and speaking of which, fuck you, Varian), let me explain this so I don’t have to listen to a great wailing and gnashing of teeth from across the internet.
First of all, we’re not stealing anyone away from their families, if that’s what you’re thinking. The trainees do their activities for the day and then they go home, just the same as if they were at school. Which they pretty much ARE. Which brings me to the next point.
We’re not just rounding up these kids and running them straight out onto a battlefield. Yes, that would be stupid. Do you seriously think I would do something stupid? This is TRAINING we’re talking about here. They’re learning about combat and self-defense and working as a unit, to get them READY for down the line when they’ll be needed for the war effort. Nobody is getting sent into actual battle until they’re ready. That’s the point – to GET them ready, not just to treat perfectly good future warriors as disposable cannon fodder. (That’s what Dontrag and Utvoch are for.)
And, hell, before you all get in a tizzy over “But, but, they’re just kids!” – listen. Orcs are not as long-lived a race as a lot of the others here on Azeroth. People don’t seem to get this. Cairne Bloodhoof was over 100 years old and still kicking ass, most recently mine, before, well, you know. You’re not going to see me up and about at 100. I’m probably not going to make it to 70. That’s freaking OLD for an orc. I know that might be hard to grasp for some of you – especially you elves, what with how you live for like hundreds of years. Which means you’re probably considered a kid until you hit like 100 years old. (And by the way, speaking of which: does that mean you elves are adolescents for like 50 years or something? Because seriously, all you non-elves, can you imagine that? Puberty lasting for 50 years? I seriously would have killed myself.)
Anyway, point being, fourteen and fifteen are not as young for us as a lot of you seem to think. Hell, I’m 34, and people keep referring to me as “young,” but by orc standards that pretty much makes me a middle-aged man.
Hang on.
…
Spirits help me, where the fuck did my life go?
Anyway.
Point is, everyone needs to just calm the fuck down and put their panties back on over this.
One thing related to the training program, though. I was going over Malkorok’s rosters and happened to notice a few recruits from the Orgrimmar orphanage – including, you guessed it, Gurtash. I know the kid’s got a lot of potential, but I also got to thinking it might be good to keep an eye on him, so I told Malkorok I would take charge of that trainee unit personally. Malkorok wasn’t too happy about that, but then, he’s Malkorok – since when is he ever happy about anything, AMIRITE? I think he felt like it was a job beneath the station of the Warchief, or whatever, but as it turns out, Gurtash was being placed un a high-aptitude group – no surprise there – so I spun it as me personally supervising the training of the best. And also, as I succinctly put it to Malkorok, I’m doing it because I’m the WARCHIEF and I SAID SO.
So, I’ve got a new gig a few times a week. And really, I already play a teacher on Earth Online – how hard could it be in real life? I have my first meeting with the kids later today, to start laying some groundwork for their training. Should be simple enough. The group’s going to consist of Gurtash and about a dozen other kids around his age. How hard could a bunch of fourteen year olds be?
ADDENDUM, later: Holy fucking hell, what have I done to myself?
All that you can’t leave behind
I stopped at Silverwind Refuge after I left Demon Fall Canyon, and left orders for Captain Tarkan to blanket the zone with as many scouting teams as he could pull together. I’ll send word over to Hellscream’s Watch to send out air patrols as well to watch the borders, but I can’t imagine that last human could keep traveling at much of a pace. Not if he’s as injured as he had to be, and not if he’s weighed down by carrying…never mind. Point is, I’ll be surprised if he’s not still in Ashenvale somewhere.
Grebo’s a whole other matter. He could be anywhere. So next up is an alert to all the border patrols. Notices to all the outpost commanders. Who to look for, and where he was last seen, and setting a messenger network to warn all the nearby stations if he’s spotted anywhere, in case he gets away again.
See. I’m staying on top of this. Doing the job. Keeping my mind on the job. Checking off all the boxes, hitting all the right protocols. Textbook.
Not letting myself think about that sound, from Grebo’s axe. Or of Lakkara crying out. Or how 99 times out of 100 I would never, ever let my back get turned to an oncoming enemy like that. Not going to think about all the ways I would usually square my body and turn to meet him and not give anybody else a chance to get close.
And I’m not letting myself start thinking about what they want with her. Why they would take her. Or who they even are. Or the fact that the last dead body they took an interest in was Grebo himself.
And I’m not thinking about that damn Demon Fall Canyon, that spirits-forsaken place that’s orphaned me twice now, on the exact same spot. Or how beautiful it’ll all look covered in bright, cleansing flames.
I’m not thinking about any of that at all.
I have work to do.
[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!]
Children’s Week
Ever since I got that letter from my mother a couple weeks ago, I’ve been thinking a lot about the old days in Nagrand. Like I’ve mentioned a few times already, I used to keep a journal back then. About a week ago, before I left for Nagrand, I pulled it out again, and I’ve been paging through now and then.
I don’t know if any of you have had the experience, but it’s funny reading things you wrote so long ago that you don’t even remember writing them. It’s like this weird ping pong game between “Oh crap, I wrote that? Was I ever really that stupid?” and “Hey, that sounds really smart, who wrote that?” I know, I know, I shouldn’t be all that surprised by that second one. Modesty is the burden of the preternaturally awesome.
Anyhow, I’ve been reading through those very first entries in particular. It wasn’t even really a journal at that point so much as a notebook I used to fill up with all kinds of stuff – drawings, my early half-assed attempts at poems, stories about things that had happened to me or that I just plain invented… I guess Greatmother Geyah and my mother both thought I had this creative side, so they figured they’d give me some notebooks to try to encourage me.
(Side note, you should totally see some of these cartoony little-kid pictures I drew of Jorin Deadeye, with like “POOP HEAD” written in and arrows pointing to him.)
I’ve been coming back to a few passages I’d written about my mom. Reading me stories (thinking back, that’s probably what got me started writing in the first place, all the nights she read me to sleep), like that rhyming kids’ book Talbuk Luck, kind of an old standard for Draenor kids back then. She even did this goofy sing-song voice for Tahri the Talbuk – I’d forgotten all about that until I started reading back over this stuff. Or the time later on when she took me on that long trip on foot out by Oshu’gun, and sat on one of the bluffs to watch Bach’lor running around in the fields with his herd.
The little-kid entries come to a stop all of a sudden, and don’t pick up again until I started writing again in my teens. And, oh boy, here comes the emo. But, yeah, the gap. Kicked in right about the point when she died. “Died”? Should I put that in quotation marks now? Anyway. Disappeared. Any desire to look at those notebooks went with her, for a long time.
Yesterday afternoon, Lakkara went out to go exploring Orgrimmar. I’d been showing her around, but I’m sure a lot of it was just this big blur of information, and she seemed pretty blown away by the place in general. No surprise – the city is gigantic compared to villages like Garadar that she’s used to, and even Shattrath doesn’t come across quite so vast and, well, overwhelming. So she wanted to have a little time to just look around at her own pace. Reasonable enough.
After a while when she hadn’t come back, I figured I’d go have a look around. As big and sprawling as Orgrimmar is, it’s pretty easy to get turned around even if you know the place, much less if you’re still new to it all. It took a while, and no small amount of circling around, but I finally tracked her down. In retrospect, I should have known where she’d be right off, considering what week it is.
I found her in the Orgrimmar orphanage. It was starting to get dark, and she and Matron Battlewail had the kids gathered around…while she read to them. Talbuk Luck. Of course. She was even doing her goofy Tahri the Talbuk voice, which was cracking this little troll girl up especially. She read through to the end, this silly sing-song rhyming story, and when she finished, Gurtash hopped up and shouted “Epic verse!”
Nobody noticed me when I first got there, so I just hung back and watched in the doorway, then headed back to Grommash Hold.
Tomorrow I’m sending out new orders to some of our field commanders. We’ve lost a lot of soldiers over the last year or so – in Vashj’ir, in Twilight Highlands, in Deepholm… Most of the time we recover the bodies and bring them home, give the fallen the burial they deserve. Sometimes, though, there’s no body found. People just disappear. And after a while, they wind up on the rolls of the dead.
Since Deathwing was defeated, things have been relatively quiet on most fronts. So I think we can spare the personnel to take on a few extra missions. I’m having the field commanders send out some additional patrols, an extra scouting party here and there, to make another sweep or two in the areas where we’ve taken those losses. In particular, the places where we’ve had people disappear, presumed dead but never confirmed beyond a doubt. The ones, especially, who’d left children behind. Just in case.
I’m not going to advertise it, and I’m sure not going to let them know at the orphanage and risk getting the kids’ hopes up. Life is hard enough, and cruel enough, which the orphans know better than anyone, without me setting them up for more disappointment. But who knows. Maybe there’s still some good news for one or two of them, out there waiting to be brought home. Doesn’t hurt to have a look.
Every once in a while – not often, but sometimes – life decides to be generous.
More soon.
[Header image provided by Khizzara from Blog of the Treant, used here with permission and many thanks.]
Monday mailbag
Short break from the ongoing business in Silithus and Ferelas and Dustwallow and wherever the hell I’m going to end up getting stuck going to next, to answer some mail…
Dear Garrosh Hellscream, Warchief of the Horde;
I just wanted to thank you for kindly taking the time out of your busy schedule to spread some cheer at the orphanage this Winter’s Veil. The children were so thrilled to meet Greatfather Winter in person and to receive their new toys. There is so little excitement in their daily routine, and they have so very few possessions, that this event made a huge impression on them. Many are still talking about it to this day.
Of course, some of the older children realize that it was not really Greatfather Winter delivering their presents; however, they were quite touched to see that the Warchief himself has not forgotten them, the Horde’s smallest and most vulnerable citizens. I have informed these older children about the existence of your blog, so you may notice a slight increase in your readership.
Thank you once again, and may you have a very happy New Year.
–Orphan Matron Battlewail.
Some of you might have remembered last week that Eitrigg had gotten me to “volunteer” to play Greatfather Winter at the Orgrimmar orphanage (read: he went ahead and fucking told them I was going to do it without actually asking me, then played the honor-your-commitments and set-an-example-for-keeping-your-word-for-the-kids cards on me). A lot of you have probably seen this already, but @_Rades over at Orcish Army Knife somehow managed to get a picture of the spectacle too, so that might be worth a peek if you really don’t want to let me get away with any dignity.
Anyway, though… I guess it’s good that the kids felt like someone was looking out for them, even if a lot of them ARE a bunch of snot-nosed little brats. (And to think Thrall actually wants to be a dad, too… I’ll tell you right now, I am NOT looking forward to playing Uncle Garrosh at those get-togethers.)
My name is Gurtash, and I’m 13 years old. I live in Orgrimmar at the orphinage. My mom was sick and died after leaving the enterrnment camps. My dad died in battle in Northend fighting scorge. He was very brave and taght me to live with honor. I am going to be a warrior to like my dad and you.
Matron Battlewhale showwed me your blog it is very good. I love wyverns and Mortimer is the best! I seen you fly him before. My dad said I could have wyvern when I’m older but he died. Can i help you take care of Mortimer? I will feed him and brush him and clean his stall and talk to him. Maybe you could give me some sillver for helping or not that’s ok to. Let me know ok. Thanks.
Flying in the sky
Someday I’ll fly as high
Mortimer on the wing
Faster than anything
Loyal to the end
Protecting his friend
So dont start a fight
He will end it right.
EPIC VERSE!
–Gurtash
Uh oh, here we go. Well, I guess Battlewhale— erm, I mean, Battlewail did warn me.
Wait, this kid’s dad died fighting the Scourge in Northrend? But that would mean…oh crap.
So, Gurtash, I um…yeah, I’m sorry about your folks, but it’s good to hear you want to be a brave warrior of the Horde like your dad. Lucky for you we do have some really good trainers here in Orgrimmar, so make sure you listen to them once you’re a little older and you get to go down to the Valley of Trials. And make sure you eat lots of meat to build your strength. I know a lot of grownups are going to try pushing the vegetables on you, and they’re fine if you can choke them down, I guess, but trust me on this, you’re going to want a lot of protein for muscle. Pork, steak, bacon – dude, you cannot possibly get enough bacon – tastes great and great FOR you! Take it from your Warchief.
Also gotta say, you win points for the epic verse (no caps here because it’s kind of EPIC VERSE! junior edition in this case). Keep up the poetry, and just remember, don’t let anybody give you any crap about it. Somewhere along the line, some smartass is probably going to try to make some wisecracks about you writing poetry, but don’t listen to them. In fact, the best way to handle it is to just let them yammer on, let them take their best shot, and then take YOUR best shot back, ideally by beating the living shit out of them. I mean the living crap. I’m not supposed to say “shit” to you, am I, right? Fuck. DAMMIT, I did it again! Forget both of those. (AND DO NOT TRY ASKING MATRON BATTLEWAIL WHAT THE SECOND ONE MEANS. THAT IS AN ORDER!! Whew.)
Anyway, Gurtash, Mortimer DOES take a lot of time and attention, not that I really mind, but a little help on busy days or when I have to be away from Orgrimmar might be handy, come to think of it. I’ll see about bringing you over to Grommash Hold for a visit and see if we can set something up…just watch the talons until he gets used to you! Seriously. Wyverns are cool and all, but until they decide they can trust you, they don’t take any crap from anyone. If you do a good job with him, who knows, maybe next Winter’s Veil there might be a stray wyvern cub flapping around needing a home. Who knows?
That’s it for today. Tomorrow I’ll have a more newsy post up, since I know a lot of you are just waiting with bated breath to hear what my brilliant idea is about the Twilights.
Monday mailbag
Remind me not to do the Greatfather Winter thing for the orphanage again. First of all, nobody tells you how damn uncomfortable that getup is. Seriously, would it have killed them to find some material to make it from that DIDN’T feel like sandpaper? And meanwhile…okay, some of the kids were fine. A lot of them are pretty cute, and I suppose I should be generous what with it being the holidays, and their being orphans, and the fact that a pretty good chunk of them even got to be orphans in the first place because of battles I sent their parents off to fight in, but still! OMG the SCREAMING from some of these brats! On and on and on with the screaming and the screeching, and there were two of them who really took the cake, I don’t think they ever stopped going the whole time, till eventually I started calling them Dontrag and Utvoch Jrs. in my head.
Anyway, that’s done, so hopefully it will get Eitrigg off my back about his community service kick for a while.
Now for the mail. Just one letter this time, but it’s a doozy.
To Garrosh Hellscream, Warchief of the Horde:
I wish to congratulate you on behalf of everyone at D.E.H.T.A. on your recent embrace of a healthier – and far more ethical – lifestyle. I admit, I had nearly given you up as a lost cause, so imagine my surprise and delight upon being informed that you have seen the error of your ways and publicly committed to eliminating meat from your diet! We at D.E.H.T.A. are all very proud of you.
To show our support of your decision, we have compiled a care package (which you shall find on the kodo caravan accompanying this letter). It’s nothing too extravagant, just a selection of delicious fruits, vegetables, nuts and legumes from every region in Azeroth, a sampler of 25 different types of tofu, as well as several cases of exotic spices. To further assist you I have also enclosed a complimentary autographed copy of my (now sadly out of print) cookbook Sustenance Without Suffering – 519 Delectable Vegan Recipes Guaranteed to Tickle Your Tongue While Soothing Your Conscience, as well as my (likewise out of print) companion guide From the Field to Your Face – The Complete Buyer’s Guide to Azerothian Agriculture Including Detailed Information About What to Buy, When to Buy it, and From Whom. (Unfortunately I haven’t had a chance to update the second book post-Cataclysm, so be careful about ordering produce from non-existent locations.)
In addition, we would like to grudgingly commend you for your various initiatives to improve the lot of the poor enslaved Wyvern taxis in your service. Although true emancipation remains elusive, (and we will never be satisfied until it has been attained!), we have noticed that working conditions are better and rest breaks are more frequent. Most notably, Mortimer appears content to remain in your service and assures us that your treatment of him has vastly improved. (We remain skeptical on this point, but there is no arguing with him. Seriously. His claws are sharp!)
Finally, I would like to personally extend a metaphorical olive branch and issue an invitation for you to join D.E.H.T.A. for brunch in the Borean Tundra at your convenience. We have many other agenda items regarding the care of Azeroth’s most vulnerable citizens (the animals) which we would like to discuss with you. Also, certain rare edible lichens are just coming into season, but sadly they do not ship very well and we could not include them in your care package. I promise it will be a taste experience you will not soon forget.
Sincerely,
–Arch Druid Lathorius, D.E.H.T.A.
Hoo boy.
Okay, so first of all, let me tell you, when he says he’s sending a “care package” of fruits and vegetables and shit, he’s totally downplaying the fucking VOLUME of stuff. Notice how he slipped in that little mention of a kodo caravan in parentheses there, like it was just a side note? Yeah. You would not BELIEVE the size of this fucking caravan. They started marching on into Orgrimmar, and by the time the chain of them had gotten from the front gate up to Grommash Hold, and started circling around, they weren’t even halfway done. Eventually while I was watching them come in, I started looking around in the sky for fucking Nozdormu, because I thought there HAD to be some kind of time-loop gag going on. I swear, the last two kodos in the line probably met for the first time when they were first setting up the caravan, and in the time it took all of them to march into town, those last two kodos got married, had two kids, raised them, sent them to college, welcomed them back, and hooked them up in the family business of carrying fucking arugula to Garrosh, before retiring and wandering off to find the Kodo Graveyard. THAT FUCKING BIG OF A CARAVAN.
I seriously don’t know what I’m going to do with all this shit. I’m looking around the war room right now and it looks like a fucking farmer’s market. The only good thing to come out of this is that now, FINALLY, I have something new to keep Marogg busy with. I’m having him come in and just go to town, and with any luck he’ll be able to crank out a bunch of new recipes to put on sale, so maybe those Orgrimmar cooking awards might finally be worth something again. (And I’m going to be WATCHING your ass this time, stupid meddling recipe-stealing tree!)
Of course, none of this even TOUCHES the fact that Lather-on-us has some really…um…iffy reading skills. If you look back at the mailbag he’s apparently referring to, the letter from Jaina…um…yeah. Dude needs to train up [Sarcasm Detection], because…
Hold on. You know what, forget it. I’m not going to straighten him out. If he thinks I’ve gone all granola-crunchy, maybe he’ll be a little less of a headache. No more of the stupid protests and letter-writing campaigns (by the by, when he gets on one of those, let me tell you, that’s a whole OTHER kodo caravan delivering all the other latters…although it’s also kind of sad when you actually look at the letters and it only really looks like there are like four different people’s handwriting, so…). So yeah. Let me just let the baby have his bottle, maybe go up to Northrend some weekend and choke down a salad, and make my life a little easier, at least until he figures out what a fucking idiot he is.
So, one last mail-related note before we finish up here. A couple weeks ago I mentioned in a post about Magatha Grimtotem that I had once written to her and explained part of the reason I was (still am) so enraged over her meddling with my duel with Cairne. I’ve gotten a couple passing inquiries about that, so I thought people might want a peek at what I’d said. This was the letter I sent her shortly after the duel – she and her Grimtotem stooges were trying to stage a takeover in Thunder Bluff, and for some asinine reason she actually thought I would be GRATEFUL to her for robbing me of my honor, and wrote to me asking for help against Baine’s forces. And so:
Unto Elder Crone Magatha of the Grimtotem,
Acting Warchief of the Horde, Garrosh Hellscream,
Sends his most sincere wishes for a slow and painful death.It has come to my attention that you have deprived me of a rightful kill. Cairne Bloodhoof was a hero to the Horde and an honorable member of a usually honorable race. It is with disgust and anger that I discover you have caused me to bring about his death through accidental treachery.
Such tactics may work well for your renegade, honorless tribe and Alliance scum, but I despise them. It was my wish to fight Cairne fairly, and win or lose by my own skill or lack of it. Now I shall never know, and the cry of traitor will dog my steps until such time as I can sport your head on a pike and point to you as the real traitor.
So…no. I will not be sending any truehearted orcs to fight alongside your treacherous, belly-crawling tribe. Your victory or your defeat is in the hands of your Earth Mother now. Either way, I look forward to hearing of your demise.
You are on your own, Magatha, as friendless and disliked as you have ever been. Perhaps more. Enjoy your loneliness.
So there you have it.
Anyway, we’ll be getting back to business this week. Mokvar’s got the transcript from Skarr’s interrogation written up, so I’ll be posting that for you all tomorrow, and we’ll have plenty to do this week in the aftermath.
Meanwhile, Mortimer’s still nursing a few injuries from his fight with the Razza last week, so he’s resting upstairs in his pen, and if you’ll excuse me I’m going to go heat up some soup for the furball. More soon.
