[Running more than a bit behind on getting some Photoshop work done, and I can’t rightly leave everyone hanging for TOO long! So here, let’s let Garrosh dip back into the ol’ mailbag briefly… (And for any timeline/continuity sticklers out there — of which, admittedly, I’m one — let’s say he queued this up just before departing for his current excursion…)]

Okay, people, you know how this works, so let’s get right to it…

Dear Warchief,

I know I have not posted or commented much lately, but I have preferred to sit quietly in the background and focus on the tasks you have set, followed as always by my faithful bodyguard (long story short, my fiance demands I have a bodyguard after some incidents that happened during my pregnancy and the birth of my daughter).

However, Selarcis (of the Sunfires, in case you know of him), my bodyguard, left some… ah.. interesting paperwork lying around.

It appears as though he has been trying to calculate my protection as offered by the formula you provided.

I know the entire calculation was meant to show how the “lack” of armor on a female (or male, for that matter), calculates into nudity factor and to-hit ratio… but I am a Priestess, and therefore I tend to keep myself quite covered. It is rare that I show much more than my midriff and my arms, if that.

Is there some kind of separate calculation for cloth-wearers, or does this formula also work?

I’m sure Selarcis will wind up seeing this, and if he does, I’m sure I’m going to hear the lecture of a lifetime… He’s the engineer, not me (I’m just a simple seamstress and enchantress), but I’m wondering if he’s going about this all wrong.

The answer he came up with was:

∆h=140.1333/3.826 * (87*93)^2

… then there are notes saying Bo and e are “1-100”, and a lot of scribbles, and then, an answer, circled, of 2397732809.

Apart from the questions on how he got my measurements (other than the ones that I use to personally craft robes and dresses for myself), I don’t understand exactly what any of this means.

Again, I’m not an engineer of any kind, and well.. he is.
Again, is this just the calculation for plate-armor, or does this also apply to cloth, leather, and mail?

… What exactly do Bo and e stand for? Where did he get my Nudity Index? (I assume that’s what the St/Sc he has here are for, going back and reading your equation and notes again…) I mean, it’s not like he hasn’t seen me … I mean… as traveling partners and both of us healers, we have no secrets and no modesty around each other… but the numbers.. I just don’t understand where they came from…

Could you shed some light on any of this?

—Briyanna Solari Soleilin

I… oh great. See? See? This is what happens when I try laying some science on you people. I blog one simple little equation that quantifies how distracted a would-be attacker becomes due to leering at the skin you’re blood-elvishly showing off with your choice of non-armor, and somebody just had to go and make it weird. So, okay, here we go.

So, first, these calculations apply to any armor type. Plate, mail, whatever. I’m getting a clothie vibe from you, Briyanna, but I could be wrong. Either way, it doesn’t factor into the equation. The Focus Distortion Field doesn’t care what kind of armor you’re not-wearing so long as you’re, you know, not wearing it. Not wearing plate doesn’t protect you any better than not wearing cloth.

Next, as far as the actual numbers your bodyguard came up with… You’ve got me there. See, I know ABOUT this equation and I understand the basic premise, but I’ve never tried to sit down and crunch actual numbers. Seeing as, you know, I actually have a life and friends and shit. Luckily, though, I just so happen to have access to a dude who DOESN’T have those things so much, and is usually pretty good with this kind of dorky stuff. So let me kick it over to him for a minute. You might know him.

Hey, what’s up? Spazzle here! I wasn’t expecting to get back into a mailbag again so soon, but I guess Garrosh had a technical question from a letter, so…

Um…

Yipes. I’m looking it over now, and, um… this thing’s kind of all over the place. So I mean… Well, you take the Nudity Index part, and he has you down for (140.1333 / 3.826), which is supposed to be the ratio of total body surface area to surface area concealed, and… I mean, I’m not even sure how you could have landed a 3.826 for your coverage. That’s really low. Like low even for AQ trash drops kind of low. Are you really walking around wearing… um…? Yikes. Or… well, I guess it could be thrown off depending on what units of measurement he was using… see, the formula was originally designed to work with square inches, although there’s also a variation that adjusts for a base-10 system of measurements, but you can end up with a few wonky problems depending on how many decimal places of accuracy you want. But then if your guy there got a wild hair up his keister and decided to try doing this with the Zinkowski system, hoo boy, because now you’ve got to account for four-dimensional permutations over a continuum, which gives you a wider scope of coverage but introduces a whole quantum aspect to the whole thing. And so if he’s going that then I can see why your denominator is trending toward pi, because…

I’d just like to step in here and point out that, faced with an almost-naked blood elf, dude here is zeroed in on algebra or whatever.

Nerd.

Hey, you asked me to field this one!

Yeah, yeah, whatever.

Well, the point is that I’m not sure what’s going on with those first couple of figures… but the real mystery is the Bo2 and es values, because he has to be doing something wonky with those. There’s no way the BOOTEE-squared value should be that big. Like… the notes she mentioned about the Bo2 and es being based on a 1-100 range would give a result that’s orders of magnitude off from what it should be, seeing as those figures are supposed to be built on a limit of 10 with logarithmic curvature… So I don’t know, maybe he’s deliberately way way overshooting Eugene’s limit as a way to convey how exponentially gorgeous she is, even beyond computational laws? That’s the best I can do on that one…

Yeah, so, I guess this is the part where I answer that part of your question, Briyanna. Because, see, Bo2 — “body observational optimality” — and es — “exhibitional enticement” — are pretty much measures of, well, hotness. You know that old saying, “Flaunt it if you’ve got it?” Well, think of those two as a measure of how much you’ve got it and how well you flaunt it. So apparently your guy there has you rated as an 87 and 93 on those accounts. Which, like Pea Pod was saying, goes way beyond the normal values of Bo2 and es, so either you bodyguard has decided that on a scale of 1 to 10, you’re a fucking 87, or someone gave him some REALLY bad intel on how this calculation works. Either that, or he’s kind of not too bright. At all. Even remotely. Like we’d have to be talking Dontrag-and-Utvochically severe levels of not smart. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.

But that kind of brings us to your other question, about how he got your Nudity Index. Because like Spazzle was saying, he worked that out based on actual NUMBERS that measure your total “surface area” — translation: every last literal inch of your body — and how much of that surface area you actually keep covered up. Which apparently isn’t a whole lot. So, you know, go you. Point is, though, he had those figures down to a VERY high level of accuracy, which means he had to be making some VERY detailed measurements of your, um, measurements. And so when you combine the EXTREMELY close attention he’s been paying to your bod — unknown to you, apparently — with the crazy inflated hotness scores he’s been giving you for this thing, well, what I’m telling you, Briyanna, is it looks like your “bodyguard” wants to be doing more with your body than guarding.

So, maybe this is a surprise to you, since your letter kind of gives me the sense that he hasn’t done anything to let on that he’s been checking you out. Which, I mean, I don’t really know what to tell you about that, seeing as I don’t have a whole lot of experience with having my eyes on a woman but not being able to pull the trigger and DO something about it. Usually I barely need to do anything myself, because, you know, #TheLadiesLoveGarrosh. Luckily, though, I just so happen to have access to a dude who DOES probably have a fair amount of expertise in being all awkward and dateless and just hovering around in the background when there’s a girl he likes and whoa-is-me’ing about how she never picks up on any of the clear signals he’s not at all sending in lieu of coming right out and doing something, so let me kick it over to him for a minute.

…

Um. That means you’re up again, dude.

Wait, that was supposed to be me?

Who the hell else would I have been talking about?

Geez, boss, way to make me look good…

Hey, look, you are what you are.

True enough, Warchief, though I would hasten to point out that, in light of current events, you might do well not to alienate all of your remaining supporters.

Wait, what the hell? Oh, don’t fucking tell me…

Yes indeed, Warchief, it is I, Lady Sylvanas Windrunner. I try as best I can to keep an eye on the goings-on on your ever-entertaining and oft-illuminating blog, and in this instance I felt compelled to step in and offer constructive comment.

By hacking into the blog. Again.

Not something that should surprise you, given that, as you rightly point out, this is hardly my first virtual visit, as it were.

Even though my supposed tech expert said he’d changed the password and locked the site down.

Oh man, here we go again…

Oh, was I supposed to be maintaining the pretense that I’d been locked out? I must have lost track of that. Silly me.

You know, I really want to know how you became such an expert in hacking. The firewall I set up was no joke.

You would be amazed by the skills one acquires when one no longer needs to lose several hours daily to the need for sleep.

You mean like what happens with Rook when she’s had six or seven gallons of Starbulls in one sitting?

I’m not sure I know who that is, Warchief.

One of his trainees, I think.

Oh. Is that the orc boy you’ve mentioned? I do recall there being a protege of sorts of whom you appeared to have grown rather fond.

No, that’s Gurtash. I was talking about… you know what? Never mind.

If you wish, sir. In any case, in this particular instance, I can’t claim to have hacked into the blog quite the same way as I have in the past.

How the hell are you here, then?

There’s an app for it.

The what you say?

Oh man. I can already tell this is going to be bad…

An app. For my Eye Pad of Kilrogg. A handy little device, I must say. You might consider picking one up for yourself, Warchief, for those times when you’re not in your throne room.

Uh… yeah.

It really does come in handy, boss, I have to say.

Oh for fuck’s sake, ANOTHER one?

Oh, hey, is that you, Mokvar?

Yeah, it’s me. Hey Spaz.

Ah, a pleasure to see you, Mokvar, albeit digitally. I trust the Eye Pad is working well?

Yeah, it’s been great so far.

Holy crap, Mok, you’re actually stepping up your tech into the Third Age?

Don’t you start. But yeah, it’s turning out to be a lot handier than I would have figured.

So hang on, you mean Sylvanas hooked you up with one of these… whatever-the-fuck-they-are’s, and now I’ve got YOU sticking your nose into the blog editor with it TOO?

Well, to be fair, boss, I did already have access. Remember you had Spazzle set me up to post my own entries.

Oh, yeah, I forgot how you do that sometimes.

You’re still not reading what we write, huh?

You mean you write stuff, too?

Asked and answered, Spaz.

Your capacity to cultivate loyalty among your followers truly does inspire, Warchief. Little wonder you enjoy such unanimous support among the Horde leadership.

Said the woman who’s HACKING INTO MY BLOG with an APP that’s apparently ready-made to let her do that, and who the hell even puts something like that together, anyway?

I’m not sure who coded it, though it seems like something that would be a goblin endeavor.

Hey, racist much? Whose side are you on?!

What a curious question for you to pose, Spazzle, considering.

Oh felgercarb, ixnay on the onflicted-loyalty-cay!

Is that some kind of goblin lingo or something?

Still better than when he starts writing in binary.

Wow, he really does that? He needs to get out more.

Oh, geez, thanks.

UM.

Well, hey, Spaz, you… wait a minute.

Well this is curious.

WAIT A MINUTE INDEED.

Hey, Pops. Try not to blow a gasket or something.

Oh for fuck’s sake. YOU TOO?

Oh boy… this is just setting up more and more work for me…

Don’t act all weirded out, Pops. You’re the one who kept trying to get me to take an interest in your dorky blog.

Yeah well I didn’t think you were going to join the goddamn HACK PARADE.

Is that who I think it is?

WHAT DO YOU THINK

Shayari?

The one and only!

I don’t fucking believe this shit.

Oh, my, this is the daughter I’ve heard so much about? I haven’t had the pleasure.

Hey, nice to meet you. Who are you again?

Can we maybe focus a little less on social hour and a little more on HOW THE HELL EVERYONE IS GETTING INTO MY BLOG TODAY

Lady Sylvanas Windrunner, at your service. Shayari, isn’t it?

Yep, that’s me.

And you hush, Pops.

WHAT THE

…

Well well, she is a little firecracker, isn’t she?

And I had no idea you fancied such colorful terms of endearment, Warchief. “Pops” indeed!

Oh don’t YOU start too, Sylvanas.

Oh, hush now, Pops.

I mean Warchief.

…

*giggle*

^_^

I think I’m going to maybe log off and step a safe distance away from the pad.

Yeah, I might follow your lead there, Mok.

OH NO YOU DON’T, Pea Pod. You’re keeping your ass right here until you fix the damn blog so EVERY LAST MOTHERFUCKER UNDER THE SUN can’t just stick their nose in at will!

Right, boss. On it.

Strictly speaking, Garrosh, I’m more underground than under the sun.

YOU KNOW WHAT I FUCKING WELL MEAN, LIVING DEAD GIRL

At any rate, Shayari, I assume you’ve picked up the Crowbar app as well?

Yup, I downloaded it after Pops had me fielding his mail that time.

Wait, what the hell are you even USING it on?

An Eye Pad of Kilrogg, of course. Duh, Pops.

Yes, Garrosh, duh.

Oh, actually, Shay — may I call you Shay? — if you have one of our delightful little tablets, does that mean you’ve been to my humble Undercity?

Oh, yeah, I port over all the time for mage lessons with Eddie.

With whom?

Faranell.

Oh. My, you do have a way of referring to people, don’t you?

I’m quite surprised, though. I had no idea the good doctor had any such extracurricular activities.

Actually, our activities are very curricular. Like literally.

I’m kind of surprised he volunteered for that job.

I think Liadrin talked him into it.

That must be why he approaches the job with such effusive enthusiasm, yeah.

Well, I don’t know how well the good doctor has been teaching you magic, Shayari, but I dare say you appear to have picked up his distinctive sarcasm.

Yeah, well, he better be getting the job done for what I’m paying him.

Oh, no, I pretty much had that going all along. The sarcasm, I mean.

Wait, you’re paying Edwin for this?

Sounds like an abomination to you, too, huh?

Oh, no, Warchief, I can say with some authority that abominations sound a fair bit different.

Well, maybe not that bad, but I just figured you would have treated an assignment like this as just one more part of his regular job.

Well, yeah, he DOES pretty much work for me anyway.

Strictly speaking, dear Warchief, I must say I believe I have the more immediate claim to the good doctor’s work hours.

Other than the part where I outrank you.

Well, yes, for the time being. You never know, though — I’m quite ambitious, and politics can be such a fickle affair!

Yeah, well, I wouldn’t hold your breath waiting to be Warchief.

I can’t imagine why not. Being as I am undead, I can hold my breath for an extraordinarily long time. Say, another two or three years?

Can we get back to the small matter of fucking EVERYONE I KNOW HACKING INTO MY GODDAMN BLOG?

I know, I know, I’m working on it…

Really, Pops, the app’s right there for anyone to grab from the Sunfruit store. It’s not our fault you’re only finding out about this now. Don’t blame the messenger.

She clearly hasn’t noticed the pile of dead messengers out behind the hold…

Oh for frak’s sake!

What?

Oh geez, you’re not going to believe this.

Uh oh.

Can you wait just a moment before saying it, Spazzle? For some reason I feel an urge to heat up some popcorn.

Oh, hey, good call. One popcorn pyroblast incoming…

Yeah, so…

Will you just fucking SPIT IT OUT already?

Don’t let him rush you, Spazzle. Popcorn’s almost done.

And YOU stay out of this!

^_^

So, okay, I just did a little digging on that Crowbar app. And it turns out, well… “Published by Blackfuse Software Division.”

…

Hoo boy.

!!!

Was that supposed to mean something to us?

Shh. I want to see if he does question marks next.

WHAT

THE LITERAL

FUCK

Not for anything, chief, but I told you that guy was nothing but trouble.

Fucking hell, how many more supposed ALLIES am I going to have fucking SCREWING ME OVER behind my BACK?!

Would “five” be too suspiciously specific?

What’s going on?

Helix Blackfuse is a contractor Garrosh hired.

Oh. Okay, so this is one of those boring office things.

I think I can file a complaint with Sunfruit to get the app pulled down, chief. I’ll have to change all the security settings, but it should limit the damage.

Hopefully.

Yeah, you do that. In the meantime, Mokvar, get your shit together, we’re paying Blackfuse a little visit.

On it, boss.

And see if you can grab Gurtash on the way over. He should be running drills out by the west rampart with the other trainees.

Won’t that be a little overkill?

No, I think there’s going to be exactly the right amount of kill.

If you say so, boss. You really think you’re going to need a transcript and a comic done, though?

I’m not bringing Gurtash to do a comic. I just want someone there with some artistic ability to draw the chalk outline.

Hey, uh, Dark Lady, would you happen to have any of that popcorn left?

Got it, boss.

Okay. We’ve got some ANNOYING AS ALWAYS BECAUSE WELCOME TO MY LIFE work to do.

Have fun, Pops.

Yeah, well, that means you people all need to be logging off of here. Or wait for Pea Pod to lock you out again. Whichever.

It’s adorable that you think so, I must say, sir.

JUST GET OFF OF HERE, for fuck’s sake.

If you say so, Pops. I should go over a few incantations anyway.

Speaking of which, Shay, the next time you’re in the Undercity, you simply must drop by the Royal Quarter. It would be a great pleasure to meet our esteemed Warchief’s next of kin in person.

Heading out now, boss. I’ll meet you in the war room.

Sure, I guess. I’m there a bunch of times every week.

Splendid. Apropos of nothing, by the way, what are your feelings on eternal youth?

Okay, people, let’s move it.

Well, I feel like, seeing as I’m half draenei, I’ve pretty much already got that covered.

I see you’ve inherited your father’s charming naivete.

MOVE IT, I said.

Ugh. Dammit, Spazzle, just pull the plug on everyone.

On it, chief.

There, that should do it. All the guest logins should be terminated. Nobody left except the admin accounts.

Sorry about all of this, chief. I’ll get it all locked down for serious this afternoon.

Chief?

Anybody home?

Garrosh?

Oh geez. Did I just… Hang on…

Oh frak.

<sigh> I’m gonna pay for this one tomorrow morning, I just know it.

Oh well. I guess… um… bye, everyone. Talk to you all soon, I guess?

Indeed. Talk to you all soon. ~_^