Tag Archives: korrina
Strange bedfellows
So I’m going to spare Gurtash having to draw like ten pages of action shots and bottom-line this for you: it took a little doing, but Varian and I were able to beat down that sha that sprung up out of where-the-fuck. Which shouldn’t come as much of a surprise – I mean, really, anyone who thought I would be writing this to inform you we’d been fucking KILLED, take a step forward. Then take another few steps toward the nearest steep ledge and just fucking kill yourself, because seriously, too stupid to live.
Anyway, once the sha was out of the way, we got back to the much more important matter of beating the shit out of each other. Check it out, though – we weren’t even five minutes into round two when ANOTHER sha popped up out of nowhere and had something to say. So we had to drop everything again and take care of the sha. Fucking rude, if you ask me.
Anyway, we polished off this one and got back to business. For a few minutes, anyway, until – can you believe this shit? – ANOTHER sha showed up. At which point it was way past rude getting to be just plain annoying.
Now, if it depended solely on pinhead Varian, we probably would have been going round and round like that for-fucking-EVER, but because your Warchief IS indeed the sharpest tool in the shed, after this pattern repeated itself another, like, eight or nine times, I realized that it was our fighting that was causing the sha to keep spawning. Feeding off of our anger and hate and…well, really, let’s just call it the whole damn sha cocktail.
So, on the up side: Now we knew how to keep the damn sha from rolling up on us over and over.
On the down side: I had to put a (temporary) stop to adding to the human’s scar collection.
Seriously, do you know how fucking DISTASTEFUL it is to be stuck in a room with Varian and not be able to punch him in the face? (Note to Genn Greymane: How the fuck do you DO it, man?)
Seriously. How, Genn, how?
Anyway, that went on for a little while. At least the trainees weren’t within earshot most of the time, so I could give Varian an earful. Otherwise I’m liable to GET an earful from Orphan Matron Battlewail whenever I get back to Orgrimmar, what with the giant bone she has to pick with me about swearing so much around the kids. Because, yeah, in situations like these, watching my language should TOTALLY be one of my priorities, right?
Anyhow. Whatever. After fuck only knows HOW long with Varian playing the role of “annoying little bird sitting on Garrosh’s head and pecking away verbally,” I finally managed to get him talking enough to find out how he ended up down there – after the battle at the temple, word got back to him that his soldiers had chased some orc trainees into the wilds, and he went out to join in the search. Something about making sure his people didn’t get “overzealous,” whatever the fuck that means. Anyway, while he was scoping out the area he managed to fall down one of those cracks in the ground, same as I did. Idiot. So here he was.
I’m not sure how long we were stuck there basking in the glow of each other’s delightful company, but eventually Giska came running in with a scouting report. Apparently there were noises coming our way, and so she snuck off to check on it all stealthy-monk style, and, come to find out, there was a handful of humans heading our way. Because hey, why not, right? Was there anybody NOT in these caves at this point? Who knew the fucking saurok caves were party central around these parts? Hey, maybe fucking Koltira Deathweaver was down here too – mystery solved at last!
So, fast forward to the humans arriving, the initial “Holy shit, it’s Garrosh!” moment (RECOGNIZE, BITCHES), and the clusterfuckery of getting them to cool it before we got an in-person reminder of what’s black and white and tendrilly all over. From that point, the humans huddled off to themselves, but I managed to listen in on bits and pieces.
I guess these newest arrivals had found the main entrance to these caves, up in the heart of Saurok Town, and had gone in searching for King Chin. From what I can gather, they had to make their way through a shitload of saurok activity. Seems over the last couple hours, the saurok had been spooked by the appearance of a bunch of creepy black monsters (GEE I WONDER WHERE THOSE COULD HAVE COME FROM), and now it looked like they were getting what passes for shaman in lizard-land to do some kind of rituals to close off these caves altogether with earthquakes and cave-ins and shit. So that spurred the humans to pick up the pace looking for Varian, and look at that, they found him safe and sound, because things always work out nicely that way so long as your name isn’t fucking ME.
Luckily, the humans had a mage with them. I say “luckily” there, because for some reason I thought, hey, cool, mage portal, we can all just pop the fuck out of here, only I didn’t realize that APPARENTLY mages can rig their portals so they can only be used by the people they WANT to use them, because I guess mages are FUCKERS like that. So I guess the “luckily” was, in fact, only “luckily” for them, as opposed to a big juicy serving of UP YOURS for me and the kids.
And of course, class act that he is, Varian couldn’t resist sticking it to me on his way out the door. Portal. Whatever.
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.
Reports of my demise (part 1)
So how about that, huh? The DPS kids were tucked away in the system of caves, making camp in a small chamber deep underground. We burned up a chunk of time talking over each other at first, with everybody wanting to know how everybody else had gotten there, but after I explained about how I’d found the caverns, I finally managed to get their side of the story from Gurtash.
So…let’s kick it over to the kid himself.
Buried treasure
A couple days ago, I finally took Elder Cloudfall’s advice and flew over to the Temple of the Red Crane to check on the aftermath of the Alliance offensive there. I’m back at Domination Point now.
So…this is probably going to be kind of a long story. Bear with me.
I got up extra early to make the trip over. I didn’t bring anyone else along – just Mortimer and me. I didn’t want any extra people making noise and drawing extra attention, and besides, depending on what I found there, I figured I might prefer to be by myself anyway.
I could see the remains of uniformed orc bodies scattered around the outskirts of the temple grounds, but I wasn’t able to get close enough for a better look right away. The place was crawling with Alliance patrols. Strange, seeing as the temple itself looked like it was back in the hands of the pandas, so it’s not like the humans were keeping watch over their own outpost.
I took a pass around to size up the deployment of patrols. They were circling around the temple, but also ranging to the north and east, where the temple grounds gave way to swampland. A little ways into the wilds there were some mogu ruins spread out over some hills. A pair of humans looked like they were standing guard outside what used to be the entrance to a cave in the hillside – used to be, until it had been sealed with rocks. Probably a cave-in. Not sure what the point would have been of posting guards, but who knows what these humans are thinking.
I flew further up into the surrounding hills. More patrols. Mostly circling around a handful of cracks in the ground and rock face. It took me a few minutes, but it finally hit me that the cracks would have led down into the same caverns as the cave entrance. Probably, anyway. I was never too great with spatial relations that didn’t involve swinging an axe. Anyway, whatever was in there, the Alliance were keeping all possible points of entry locked down. Maybe even sealed the cave themselves, who knows.
Whatever it was, if it was important enough for all this attention, I figured it was worth checking out. So I landed by one of the cracks. Now, granted, there were a bunch of Alliance soldiers patrolling around there, but, you know…to make a short story shorter, hi, how are ya, chop chop, dead dead, moving on.
I set a grappling hook in the rocks and lowered myself down into one of the cracks. The opening was narrower than I was expecting, and went down further – I think each of the cracks opened into a different point in a series of tunnels, as opposed to one big cave like I was thinking originally.
Now for the fun part. While I was still lowering myself down, guess what? My rope snapped. Maybe I really HAVE been putting on some weight lately. To be fair, the Shrine of Two Moons really does have some kickass food. So anyway, down I dropped. Don’t you worry, though, because my fall was cushioned by a big ol’ pile of ROCKS. Awesome, huh?
After I took a minute to thank life for chiming in with another installment of Hey Everybody, Let’s Piss Off Garrosh: The Home Game, I started exploring. At first, the caverns seemed to have been built by someone, with walls and floors made up of stonemasonry. Pretty soon, though, gaping holes in the walls gave way to a system of natural tunnels that wound around deeply and grew wider, mostly, the further they descended from the surface. Looked like side passages splintered off pretty regularly, but I tried to stay with the widest path. I figured that would make it easier to retrace my steps if I needed to.
Eventually, after I’d made my way deep underground, the jagged walls all started to blur together, and I started to worry that I was starting to travel in circles. I was about to try retracing my steps when I happened to look down a side passage, and saw flickering light in the distance. I made my way closer, turned a corner, and then…well…
Every once in a while – not often, but sometimes – life decides to be generous.
