So after King Chin made his exit, and I got my voice back after yelling for, oh, ten, maybe fifteen hours, we figured it was time to get the hell out of the caves before the saurok were able to follow through on their plan to collapse the place in on us. The caverns were mostly a big winding maze, but I figured backtracking the way those other humans had come would probably be our best bet to get closer to a way out.

There had been signs of life scattered all over the place in those caverns from the get-go – old torches and tools, extinguished campfires, all kinds of little odds and ends – but they were relatively scarce in the deeper parts of the caverns. For whatever reason, I guess the saurok weren’t too interested in venturing too far underground. As we made our way along, though, we started finding more and more random saurok junk. I took is as a good sign that we were headed in the right direction.

Another positive sign: actual saurok. Well, a positive sign in the sense that it probably meant we were getting closer to the surface. Not so positive in the sense that, you know, they wanted to kill us. Just because they were clearing out of the place doesn’t mean they didn’t have time to stop and pick a fight, because, hey, when you’re a stupid lizard man, any time is a good time to get your ass handed to you. Funny how the equation gets changed a little when you add yours truly to one side of it, huh? Then THEIR side of the equation gets straight-up flipped upside down. That’s right, bitches, YOU JUST GOT RECIPROCALED. Only then I guess that might make the equation into a proportion, and then we would have to cross-multiply our…melee attacks…and…carry the one…um…FUCKING MATH METAPHORS.

Although, credit where it’s due: some of the kids are getting to be totally not terrible in a fight.

Anyway, we chopped our way through a few more packs of saurok while we continued toward the surface, or at least our best guess at which direction that would be. Eventually, every so often, the ground started to shake with tremors. Hard to say for certain, but the smart money says that was the saurok shaman working their mojo to try to collapse the caves. The longer the quakes continued, the stronger they got. At one point we had to change direction after one passageway was blocked by falling rocks, and eventually the tremors became so strong that cracks would break open in the ground beneath our feet. And then I guess the quakes decided that even that wasn’t quite enough for them, because, well…

* Lok’osh, one of the DPS trainees who’d gone to the Temple of the Red Crane, was killed by the saurok before Garrosh arrived in the caves. Garrosh learned what happened to him here.

* * * * *

[Quick OOC notes:  Yes, as I’m sure many of you are ready to point out, Gurtash wasn’t actually present for the last page above, so you wouldn’t think there could have been comic panels drawn for those events. Just roll with it for now; it all gets accounted for eventually!

By the way, anyone needing a quick refresher on which trainee is who can find a visual cheat sheet at the end of this post.

Also, thanks to everyone who came for the “Meta” raid a couple weekends ago! It was a great time for me, and hopefully for everyone else involved. I’d like to see about making it a semi-regular event – maybe one weekend a month or so? Stay tuned for updates!]