Yesterday was Greatmother Geyah’s birthday, so I made a short trip back to Nagrand to go see her. The folks back in Garadar were giving her a birthday party, and it was good to see everybody, other than Greatmother feeling the need (yet again) to tell everyone the story about the time when I was a little kid when I was climbing a tree, and got up to one of the higher branches but slipped, but my pants got caught on the branch while I was starting to fall, and as I fell the pants got yanked down around my ankles, and so I was just hanging upside down there with my pants around my ankles and the branch hooked between my feet, and I was just stuck dangling there for a while, and, commando even then, so, you know. She always tells that story every chance she gets, because spirits forbid you let the fucking Warchief be taken seriously for a couple minutes. But she means well, and she’s getting up there and probably a little senile, so whatever.

Anyway, while I was out there, I decided to drop by a few of my old hunting spots for old time’s sake. I was going to bring Hemet Nesingwary along with me, but he was having a good old time messing with some random scrubs who were hanging around out there – people keep coming to him wanting to prove what great outdoorsmen they are, and so he just makes up random stuff to have them go kill and see how quick they eat up the chance to waste their time on pointless shit. Like seriously, you should see how many people just jump at the chance to burn up their whole day killing random animals that absolutely anyone with a sword could kill, because they actually believe that killing a bunch of talbuk that are standing around RIGHT THERE is the way to impress Hemet Fucking Nesingwary.

(That’s his real middle name, by the way. Man, his parents must have hated him. Can you imagine what middle school must have been like?)

At one point a couple years ago I think people started getting wise to the scam, so he had to dial it down a little and ask them to kill less stuff. Seriously, there was a point when he would send people all over the place killing 30 of like…everything out there. After a while he cut that down to like a dozen, just to make sure he didn’t totally lose his supply of takers. Still, it’s pretty funny to watch the fuckers eat it up even now.

So anyway, he was busy with that, so I just went out to Oshu’gun myself to see if Banthar was still wandering around. It didn’t take long to find her, but what the FUCK, man, I almost missed her what with the fucking DYE job she got apparently. Because like…okay, check it out. Back in the day, when I remember coming out here, this is what Banthar looked like:

And here’s what she looks like nowadays:

I mean, that’s just sad. It’s bad enough when an orc starts to go gray, and freaks out, and goes way overboard dyeing his hair that pitch pitch black, that shade of black that doesn’t even fucking exist in nature, and half the time they try to do the pathetic comb-over too, which let me tell you, looks sad enough on humans but is even less kind with orc hairlines. But seriously, now we’ve got a CLEFTHOOF going through midlife crisis and dyeing herself auburn? How fucking sad is that? What’s she going to do next, start riding around in a convertible wagon and hitting on clefthoofs half her age? Plus, how the fuck did she even manage to dye herself brown anyway?! If I go over to Sunspring Lake, are there going to be all these floating dye circles and stains around the shore? I can just imagine one of the ethereals over at Aeris Landing seeing this going down and being all, “Hey, Chip, check this out, you’re not going to believe this shit…”

Really, if a fucking clefthoof can’t age with dignity, what chance do the rest of us have?

[Header image provided by Angelya from Revive and Rejuvenate, used here with permission and many thanks.]