Tag Archives: twilight’s hammer
#500 GIANT-SIZED (not really) ANNIVERSARY (kind of) SPECIAL
Okay, people, I know we’ve got a hell of a lot going on these days on a whole bunch of fronts, but let’s get our damn priorities straight and take a moment to APPRECIATE THE GODDAMN AWESOMENESS OF ME.
Why, you ask? AS IF YOU NEED A REASON. But okay, fine, be that way. Even though you should already be in a constant state of awe over your Warchief, today marks an EXTRA SPECIAL awesome, awe-inspiring, awful… wait. I think I just took a wrong turn there.
…
IT’S A SPECIAL GODDAMN OCCASION IS WHAT I’M SAYING.
Reason being, the post you see before you marks the 500th BLOG POST here on the Warchief’s Command Board. That’s right, bitches, 500 posts — that’s FIVE ZERO ZERO. Go ahead and count ’em. I KNOW YOU WON’T.
But that’s where we are, people — 500 installments of EVERYBODY’S FAVORITE BLOG EVER. And riddle me this: have you read them all?
Yeah, me neither.
I mean, there were a bunch in there by guest posters like Spazzle and Mokvar, and I like those guys and everything, but not enough to actually give a shit about what they have to say about… like… anything. But whatever — like trees falling in the forest with no one there to hear them, those guests posts still… um… make a… sound when they…crash the server and… um… that is…
OKAY, THAT ONE GOT AWAY FROM ME A LITTLE, TOO. I MAY OR MAY NOT BE WORKING ON A COUPLE DRINKS, OKAY, SO STFU.
Anyhow. I’d like to thank all my loyal readers, and say that I couldn’t have done it without you. I’d LIKE to say that, but I can’t, because I totally could have. Let’s be real, scrubs, I’m the awesome one here, not you. THERE’S A REASON WHY YOU’RE READING MY BLOG AND NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND, NOW ISN’T THERE?
But still, the occasion calls for something special, so in keeping with this month’s theme — I DO have a Poetry Challenge in progress, after all — I figured I’d take a look back at a 500-stack of EPIC the only proper way EPIC gets done:
That “LOK’TAR OGAR!” that I blogged for a starter;
I met D&U, but my wyvern’s way smarter;
Krom’gar dropped a bomb, but I dropped his ass harder;
EO gaming, “why fly” malaprop.
Twilights on a mission for that Cho’gall demon;
Ogres versus Grimtotem, and Magatha schemin’;
Johnny Awesome, beat it; Garona, keep dreamin’;
Saurfang took a turn watching the shop.
That time I went AWOL, then I was recovered;
Grabby Mylune hugged me till I damn near smothered;
Garadar reunion with my long-lost mother;
Year one challenge, rhymes of locks in socks.
Mom was just a cruel trick Magatha unraveled;
Trouble for Forsaken; Tirion’s endless babble;
Head to old Southshore thanks to FUCKING TIME TRAVEL;
Human Faranell’s a paradox.
Psycho!Mylune rampaged, eyes more wild than dewy;
Edwin fucked the past up; all the timelines went screwy;
We straightened them out; Theramore went kablooey;
Went to Karazhan to spin some tunes.
Pandas showed up teaching how anger is managed;
Got myself some trainees: DPS advantage;
Someone ganked Mokvar; he ankhed and wound up bandaged;
Rolled up on Pandaria with my goons.
Gurtash started drawing; Vol’jin stopped his breathing;
Cloudfall spoke of destiny and got me near believing;
Mokvar met Magatha, that one had me seething;
He went off the grid — he’d best run far.
Lor’the’whatsit’s bitching still; I got pounced by Tak;
Snagged the Divine Bell; that’s when Jaina blew her stack;
DPS got lost, but I (mostly) got them back;
Meet my daughter, Shay. (Have a cigar.)
Shay’s mage class was hard, her sucker punch was hardest;
Mokvar reappeared with green fire from the Black Harvest;
Gurtash got blindsided, we were down an artist;
Made an offer Blackfuse can’t refuse.
Green-eyed wolf named Golmash acting pretty fishy;
Gurtash still needs training not to be so squishy;
Utvoch got promoted, but I kinda wish he
And Dontrag weren’t always so confused.
EPIC VERSE and lemon squares, endless reader mail;
Ruekie getting ruekied; eternal minion fail;
Mortimer’s a badass; Shayari’s hunting sales;
Earth Online guild chat is always strange.
FYV; #LadiesLoveMe, ’cause they’re not slumming;
Trolls are always trolling, dumbasses are dumbing;
500 down so far, a thousand more coming!
Okay, maybe. Times could always change.
EPIC VERSE!
Keep checking in, people. The EPIC DROPS are only just warming up.
LOK’TAR!
Failed retraction
You know, they say you’re not supposed to kill the messenger, but in this case I just couldn’t help myself. So that was that for Grimtotem #1. As for Grimtotem #2, the one we found lurking around the Dranosh’ar Blockade, I still wanted some answers about what HIS deal was, so I handed him over to our old friend Draz’Zilb and told him to work his magic (literally). Here’s what he dug up.
Both of these Grimtotem were among a small portion of the tribe still loyal to Magatha. Ever since her business with the Twilights, most of her people got pretty chilly with her, at the least, but she still has a handful of supporters. These were two.
The original messenger was sent with Magatha’s letter several days ago. The whole point – obviously – was to give me a few days after…well, you know…to give me time to stew and suffer and really sit down for a big serving of my own liver, and then slap me with the truth to rub salt in the wound. Apparently, though, after the messenger was sent out, Magatha somehow caught wind of what we have brewing for the humans – Draz’Zilb’s uber-corruption and Sylvanas’ plague and the attack on Theramore and I’m thinking maybe I should stop announcing this stuff on the internet. Anyway. So she decided it would be better to hold off on telling me the truth until AFTER I’d opened all those cans of worms. Why not get me going taking my vengeance on the humans, THEN hit me with the revelation that I was avenging myself on the wrong people? In Magatha-World, that’s just getting the best return on your investment.
So, that’s when she sent Grimtotem #2 to try to intercept Grimtotem #1, to try to prevent that letter from being delivered just yet. It was just pure dumb luck that we got it before that could happen.
That’s us. Just swimming in good luck.
Not quite Monday, not quite mailbag
(Or, for the math nerds out there, NotQuite(Monday + Mailbag). I don’t really understand what that means. Spazzle said it would go over like gangbusters, though.)
The Grimtotem warrior that Nazgrim was holding in Brackenwall Village was delivered to Orgrimmar. As it turns out, she was a messenger. She had wanted to be brought to Orgrimmar in order to deliver a letter – to me personally.
On a side note, just before she arrived here, some of our soldiers captured a SECOND Grimtotem sneaking around the Dranosh’ar Blockade. This one’s being pretty tight-lipped about what he was doing there, so I’m guessing that one wasn’t another messenger. So I’m not sure what to make of that.
For now, though, it’s that first one that’s the bigger deal, because the message she was delivering…well, here, see for yourself.
Dearest Warchief Hellscream,
I hope this letter finds you well. Actually, let us not put up false pretenses; I don’t at all hope it finds you well, and further, I know that it will not.
Word has reached me of the terrible tragedy you have recently suffered, concerning the loss of your dear mother Lakkara. I believe I have some information concerning her loss that will be of interest to you. Indeed, you may even take some solace in this knowledge – you see, my good Garrosh, you have not truly lost her at all. That would require you to have ever truly had her back.
Allow me to share with you a most curious tale.
After my recent, shall we say, difficulties with many of my Grimtotem kin, I decided to retire temporarily through the Dark Portal to Outland – a remarkable spectacle at first sight, I must say. I do so love what your fellow orcs have done with the place. My handful of followers and I found the region of Nagrand by far the most hospitable – I will thank you for forgoing any obvious remarks concerning the ready availability of grass – and so we took up temporary residence in its outlying territories, near to your Mag’har kin’s Ancestral Grounds.
It was there that a most interesting thing took place. While foraging in the nearby hills, my associates happened upon a small, secluded cave in the mountainside. Inside, they found the body of an orcish woman who appeared to have died some years prior. Ever a student of spiritual custom, I found myself curious as to how the woman had come to be there, and why the Mag’har, usually so diligent in matters of honoring their dead, would have left her remains to go unburied in some remote cave. And so, I and my colleagues undertook some cautious investigations.
I will not trouble you with the details of our methods; suffice to say, in short order, we found to our amazement that we had discovered the remains of Lakkara, mate of the great Grommash Hellscream, last victim of the pernicious red pox that once ravaged the orcs.
Ordinarily, I would be loathe to disturb the fallen ancestors of any people. But, as I am sure you will understand, I am equally loathe to pass up a glowing opportunity.
You may recall, several weeks ago, investigating a Twilight’s Hammer cabal in Hyjal, resulting in some rather troubling visions courtesy of a conveniently placed shadebind totem. In a stroke of good fortune for me, and short-sightedness for you (both of which, I must say, I was rather counting on), you neglected in your rattled state to collect the offending totem. This made it possible for one of my associates to do so shortly thereafter – the totem, by this point, having attuned itself to you, my good Warchief, for purposes of binding to itself a few select spirits intimately linked to your soul. One crucial one in particular.
From there, it was a simple matter to summon forth Lakkara’s spirit and prepare her for her “return.” With the spiritbinding of her dear son to draw upon, and her actual body on hand, the other necessary manipulations were laborious but hardly difficult. A few selective blurrings of memories…the instilling of a few small additional ones…minor tinkering around the edges of the shadow of her mind: all trivial undertakings, really, once the real work of invocation was done. All the more trivial given how readily she took to them – only too happy to imagine that she had watched her son’s growth in life rather than from the beyond.
The entire process she would perceive – with some subtle nudging – as our careful ministration of her illness. (Not entirely an untruth, I might add.) And the fact of her past contagion would ensure that she would not allow anyone close enough to touch her, and thus discover her noncorporeal state.
And so, with that, it was simply a matter of placing a few totems to summon her into sustained phantasmal being and set her on her way to Garadar. Greatmother Geyah was, of course, the real test, but I hardly had any doubts that my Lakkara would pass inspection – my Lakkara was, after all, the real Lakkara. Or what remained of her spirit, more or less.
It was only a matter of time before she would seek out her dear boy.
Of course, your time together would, as you already know, be short-lived. The elder crone giveth, and the elder crone taketh away. In this case, the instrument of her removal would likewise come via shadebind – in this case, your former underling Gerbo, who, you may be surprised to learn, was from time to time of assistance to me in his days in Stonetalon. For a price, of course, but he was, quite frankly, something of a bargain as such matters go. At any rate, given our previous…association, and his own lingering distaste for his former Warchief, he was only too amenable to lending his aid one last time in death.
It takes a ghost to slay a ghost, after all.
You might well ask, at this point, why I would take the trouble to construct so elaborate a charade. Why would I invest such time and effort to conjure up the illusion of Lakkara, only to dispel it once again, all for no apparent, tangible gain.
You might well ask, but I suspect you need not. For illusory though she may have been, to you, dear Garrosh, she was real. And there is no agony quite so sharp as that of rescinded hope, is there, Warchief?
I will admit, my earlier efforts against you in the Bastion of Twilight were misguided. Then, I had sought to take my revenge by killing you. A foolish, short-sighted goal, I realize now. A terrible mistake whose failure, though grating at the time, has proven to be a blessing in disguise.
You see, I no longer have any desire to kill you. I’ve hurt you. And I intend to go on hurting you.
Enjoy your empty nest, dear Warchief. You will hear from me again.
–Magatha Grimtotem
…
Excuse me. I…think I need to step away from the computer for a minute.
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…
…
Okay.
So.
I know a lot of you have been reading this blog for a while, and you probably already have an idea what to expect at this point. So you’re probably going to be a little surprised here.
See, ordinarily this would be the point where I start yelling, and going into all caps, and screaming bloody murder, and ranting on and on about how brutally I’m going to murder Magatha, and on and on, and filling up a couple paragraphs with how Magatha’s going to die, she’s going to die, oh holy crap she is so. Totally. Going. To die.
I’m not going to do that now.
See how calm I’m staying? Keeping it together, no yelling, not raising my voice even a little.
Want to know why?
You know that level of anger where it’s not burning up inside you, not even because it’s burned itself out – because that would imply it’s run its course and is done with – but because it’s gone so far beyond that burning, fiery, jump-up-and-down, stomp-your-feet kind of angry? That anger where the screaming and venting is just wasted energy, and you’re not going to waste any of that energy that you could save up to erase whoever or whatever it was that pushed you that far? You know that kind of angry?
I am so utterly beyond that right now.
So all I’m going to say is this.
You don’t have to worry about my rage, Magatha. I usually make a pretty big show of using up my rage. But rage is just anger that’s burned up and channeled into something else, expended as quickly as it comes. Rage is nothing. But anger that’s contained, even cultivated? That’s like a wine. It grows deeper, and richer, and ferments into something greater. It grows more potent. It grows creative.
Anger is the mother of invention. And it has an infinite, indelible memory.
So don’t worry about me ranting on and on and how you’re going to die, Magatha. I know it’s what you’re expecting from me, but not this time. That’s a promise.
You’re not going to die, Magatha.
You’re going to beg to.
And when you do, I’m going to be completely, utterly, hideously…calm.
Polyphonic pro moronic
After my trip up to Hyjal a few weeks ago – the Twilight’s Hammer crackdown part, not the grabby dryad part – things have quieted down some up there, but there’ve still been a few random Twilight flare-ups here and there. Mostly they seem to have gotten fewer and farther between, but every so often I’ve been getting reports of them turning up again. Usually the reports end with them promptly getting smacked down by our people.
I just got another heads-up from Stonetalon. First the basic information itself: Dontrag and Utvoch (of course) were making a scouting sweep around Battlescar Valley, doing a little followup on the skirmishes we’ve had there with Alliance forces, when they ran into another one of the faceless ones we’d found down around Thal’darah Grove. It must have been the runt of the faceless litter, because D&U were able to smack it down pretty easily, but they decided to have an extra look around the area. A rare non-retarded move by those two, I know. It happens.
Turns out, this was creepily close to the makeshift graveyard that we’d set up in the valley after everything that had gone down there some months back. They found a few signs that someone had been poking around there, but the main disturbing news item was that one of the graves had been dug up – specifically, former General Grebo. (Okay, I’m not sure why I felt the need to call him “former General” – I mean yeah, he ended up dying in disgrace and relinquished his rank as a result, but, I mean, he’s dead. He’s pretty much “former” everything.) Someone had dug up Grebo’s grave. It was empty. I’m not sure I want to think about what they want with his remains, but when your best case scenario is that someone decided to Calder Gray it up, that can’t be a happy thing. I may get Krog up there to do some checking around.
Anyway, that’s the basic information itself, which obviously isn’t fun. But on top of it, the news came to me from D&U themselves, which tells you right there that just GETTING the update was even LESS fun. Because I think I’ve just discovered ANOTHER down side to the whole Earth Online situation – the two of them decided to deliver this little tidbit to me IN TELLS while I was ON THE GAME. Which, first of all, that’s supposed to be my down time, to relax. Second of all, there are actually OFFICIAL CHANNELS they could use to report things, which would not involve intruding on the aforementioned down time, and, you know, distracting me with WTF news while I’m trying not to die to an elite. And then, just to finish off, the pickle on the crap sandwich of the whole situation if you will, the TWO of them decided they were going to deliver the news by BOTH getting into whispers with me, INDIVIDUALLY, at the SAME TIME.
Read that again. Once more. Now think about that. Are your ears bleeding yet? No? Read it one more time then. Now think about it some more.
See?
Do you have ANY IDEA how frustrating it is to try to drag a story out of TWO mental defectives SIMULTANEOUSLY, on the same topic, while trying to keep straight which idiot has told you what, and half the time it’s all you can do to keep straight which one of them is which? It’s like fucking moron stereo with extra reverb, turned up to eleven.
I think I need to roll an alt.
Visiting Dreadmaul Hold
So the other day I asked for suggestions for inspection stops in the Eastern Kingdoms. The suggestions pretty much clustered – a lot of recommendations for the northern regions like Hillsbrad, Tirisfal, and the Plaguelands, and then some others for our southern outposts in the Blasted Lands and the Swamp of Sorrows. For the time being I’m going to table the northern settlements. For one thing, hitting all the outposts will definitely take more time than I can spare in one chunk, and also, more importantly, after this past week’s mailbag, I have some business I need to go check on in Outland, so I figure it would just make more sense to deal with the southern outposts on my way to and from the Dark Portal.
I took a mage portal down to the Dark Portal and flew up to Dreadmaul Hold. Things are fairly well under control there, still some skirmishes with the Dreadmaul ogres but nowhere near as much as there had been when we first retook the outpost and kicked the ogres out. But you were right, Fletcher, Warmatron Okrilla is getting a little carried away down there, first and foremost with the ogres. Look, everybody knows I’m not exactly warm and fuzzy, and I’m not one to back away from a good war when somebody wants to go at it with me. But that doesn’t mean you don’t try to maintain SOME sense of honor while you’re fighting your war. And this? Taking Dreadmaul ogres captive and forcing them to be your slave labor? That’s just not cool. That’s the kind of shit that the Scourge did up in Northrend, or the Twilights in all the places they cropped up in like roaches. You don’t do that with your prisoners, with maybe the possible exception of Alliance prisoners if you happen to need a food taster…and even THAT’S not hard labor, unless maybe the food is really badly undercooked, I guess. (And in that case the cook knows he’s going to be taken out by the rear gate and beaten around some, so we know THAT problem won’t be coming up again, will it now, Marogg?)
What’s more, I was also getting reports that Okrilla wasn’t allowing non-orcs into the outpost at all. Turns out that was kind of an exaggeration, other Horde races are free to go there, but from what I saw when I was there, any tauren or trolls or whatever that happen by definitely get a lot cooler reception than orcs. And so…again…I’m all for orc pride. Totally down with that. And yeah, I might have gotten a complaint or two about my decision to restrict Orgrimmar’s main residential areas to orcs and tauren, but here’s the difference. That was a tactical decision about the defense of the city. Yeah, bitch all you want about the undead or blood elves not having their own houses there anymore or whatever, but I’m still not trying to stop them from COMING to the fucking city. Some blood elf wants to come in and do some business, see a trainer, use the portals, pick up a few assignments for jobs in the outlying zones, just hang out with some friends, whatever, great, have at it. Unless he’s Johnny Awesome. Then, fuck him. But anyway.
So I ended up sitting Okrilla down and giving her a talking to about all this. Like I said, I totally get the orc pride, and on a related note even being a little territorial about Dreadmaul Hold. After all, it WAS our city back when it was founded as Rockard. But I laid it out in no uncertain terms that I don’t want to be hearing about any more racial problems, because at the rate she was going it was just a matter of time before she started giving orcs and non-orcs separate vendors and flight masters and whatever else. And as for the ogres, she wants to take prisoners, fine, take prisoners and hold them, or use them as bargaining chips to get the rest of the Dreadmaul to back down, or interrogate them for information, do what you need to do, but we’re not going to be doing any more slavery. Hell, we orcs were kept as slave labor by the humans at one point, so if you’re going to get hung up on orc pride, then it should be a point of that pride to fucking be better than that shit. Besides, we have ogres working with us, and the last thing I need is Draz’Zilb getting all bitchy with me.
So, there you go, that’s my day. Freed the slaves and cut off separate-but-equal at the pass. Go me.
I’m heading back down to the Dark Portal (and I am TOTALLY going to check on the naga and murlocs that ACC mentioned while I’m down that way). I’ll write more from Outland once I get there.
Now as I was saying…
Okay, first of all, HA HA HA, Sylvanas, very funny. April fools, blah blah. It took freaking FOREVER to get the blog fixed back to the way it’s supposed to look (well, it took SPAZZLE forever, from what he tells me…but I had to WAIT like forever for him to get finished, so YOU tell ME what’s worse). That and re-lock-down blog security.
I think we’ve got it fixed now, though. Might have been partly my fault, to be honest. Spazzle tells me it actually might not have been the wisest decision for me to make the blog admin password “garrosh.” Go figure. Still, I’d like to know where Sylvanas learned to become this uber master hacker apparently.
Okay, anyway, moving on.
So as I was about to say before little miss Banshee Queen went all smartass on us, I still needed to update everyone on what was going on in Mount Hyjal. You know, after I managed to get away from the grabby huggy dryad. Who, let me just say one last time, what the fuck. Anyhow.
So when last we left Garrosh, before everybody in the universe decided they were going to jump on the Let’s Piss Off Garrosh Bandwagon, I was checking on reports of a Twilight’s Hammer enclave still milling around making trouble in Hyjal. I flew down to Darkwhisper Gorge, where the reports were coming from, and sure enough, I found a batch of Twilights gathered at what’s left of Doom’s Vigil. When I arrived, there were about a dozen of them gathered in a circle, all channeling some sort of spell. Needless to say I put a quick end to that…for the sake of saving space I’m going to skip past the blood and death and severed limbs and all that stuff, which let’s be honest only took up a couple minutes anyway, and by this point I’m sure you can all use your imagination for this kind of thing anyway. Bottom line is “bunch of Twilights” got a quick revision into “pile of corpses,” which is kind of fitting, since once I had the chance to have a better look at the place, I noticed a bunch of other bodies laying around the area – a couple orcs, a couple trolls, a bunch of tauren, a human or two, I think, but who really cares about them?
At this point I was getting ready to take off, when I thought I saw something moving among the rocks in the mountainside nearby. I went to check on it, and found a cave – pretty easily accessible from the camp, but easy to miss with the way the surrounding rock was laid out. There was another body, a night elf this time, on the ground right outside, and there seemed to be some light flickering inside. So, in I went. That is, after I got Mortimer calmed down some – like I said, I was just about to leave, so I had actually just strapped Gorehowl to the saddle, and I don’t know what was getting Mortimer so spooked but he damn near took off with the axe before I even had the chance to get it back again.
Anyway, I finally got Gorehowl and went in. The light was coming from a basic campfire someone had left there, and the light from the flames combined with the rock formations inside the save made for a lot of shadows that made it kind of hard to get your bearings in what was really a pretty small chamber. Or room. Or…I don’t know, whatever you call the inside of a cave.
I was so busy situating myself that I didn’t even notice right away that there was a figure moving on the far side of the campfire – it was obscured by the shadows at first, but once my eyes had adjusted to the light, and it moved again, I could see the figure was an orc. And then when it moved, and turned toward me, it didn’t take any doing to recognize those features.
Krom’gar.
And so yeah, first thought? I KNEW I should have had D&U go back and make sure his body was accounted for at Cliffwalker Post! Doesn’t ANYBODY stay dead anymore? But before you start freaking out like I was, hang on for my SECOND thought, which was pretty much “Boy, good thing I’ve still got this AXE with me,” and jumped across the campfire, and whipped Gorehowl around for a swing that went right through Krom’gar, like WHEW right through him like he wasn’t even there, so that Gorehowl ended up ricocheting off the rock wall and jarring itself out of my grip, so the handle flew up and clanged me right in the head, and OWW.
And meanwhile there’s Krom’gar still there staring at me, not a scratch on him. It took me a second to piece together, but basically for those of you who haven’t already done the math, Gorehowl went flying through him like he wasn’t even there because, well, he wasn’t. It wasn’t Krom’gar back from the dead. It was Krom’gar, dead. A spirit, or something like it.
Here’s where I actually wish I had Mokvar with me this time, because for the couple minutes I managed to talk to the ghost, it would have been nice to have someone there getting some of this stuff written down. But, here’s the gist of it. The spirit-formerly-known-as-Krom’gar was really mostly interested in being cryptic and otherwise telling me I knew how he was going to tackle things in Stonetalon, and I had gone soft and had put him in charge to do the things I knew I couldn’t, and a whole bunch of other utter bullshit like that. As if I would ever have been okay with….bah, forget it. Anyway, I finally managed to get an answer from him on why his ghost would be in some random cave in Hyjal – it was because I was there, basically. He was there because I was there.
See, when the dead move on to the spirit realm, they leave echoes behind. A piece of them stays with whoever is left living who had been important to them, or who they were important to. We all have these echoes of spirits that we carry around with us, the people who were close to us, or helped make us who we are for good or ill, or who cared about us, or whatever. They just go through the world with us, invisible, never making a sound, never interfering, just…tagging along because they’re part of us. I’m not even going to get into the reasons why I would be carrying Krom’gar around with me. If you’ve been following along with me, you already understand, and if you don’t, it would probably take a lot more doing to explain than I’ve got the mental energy to deal with right now.
While he was semi-kinda-spelling this much out, it didn’t actually occur to me right off to ask why one of those echoes would all of a sudden become VISIBLE to me like this, but stay tuned. That’ll make more sense in a second.
So I don’t want to make it sound like this was just some expositiony fireside chat between me and ex-Krom’gar, because like I said he was mostly interested in being vague and cryptic and generally getting under my skin. Which, you know, really set him apart from so many other people from among the LIVING. But I managed to drag that much of an explanation out of him in bits in pieces, and then after a few minutes he hit me with his cryptic big finish – check this one out: “From within it consumes, Warchief,” like, yeah, the fuck – and then flickered away into the shadows.
And it was at that point that I finally noticed something else in the shadows against the back wall of the cave: a totem. Different design than the typical elemental totems that shaman use, but unmistakably a totem. It looked familiar, actually, and after wracking my brain a couple minutes I remembered: it matched the description I’d heard from some of the elders back in Garadar of this thing called a “shadebind” totem, which was this very rare variety that could be used to draw some of those baggage spirits off of someone and make them appear in the mortal world. Usually they were only ever used in rare cases where an important elder was having some kind of spiritual crisis, and even then it didn’t always work. Just creating one required a pretty rare level of knowledge and shamanistic power, much less getting the rituals right.
I was pretty much marveling over where one of these things even could have come from, when I noticed one more detail. The markings along the side of the totem – mostly random shaman-type stuff that I don’t know enough to make sense of, but then, mixed in with them in a couple places, there were a couple specific tribal markings, ones I’ve already seen more than I’d care to.
Tribal markings of the Grimtotem.
So, five points to anybody else whose best guess here matches mine, as far as who might be a clever enough shaman to pull off one of these doohickeys, plus have occasion to be hanging around a Twilight camp. Yep.
As for what Magatha might be after, your guess is as good as mine. For all I know, she didn’t have any reason to think I’d even be turning up in Hyjal, so it’s not like I can even assume she’d planted it there for me specifically. She could be after something else entirely and I just happened to be the one to come along and trigger the damn thing. Who knows. All this really tells us for sure is she’s on the loose back in Kalimdor, and she’s up to something. Which really isn’t anything we shouldn’t have guessed anyway.
So…that’s as much as I’ve got for right now. At this point I’m not even sure there’s anything else to be done as followup, so we’ll just have to see.
And I swear, though, if that ghost thought I actually WANTED him to…never mind. I’m only going to make myself angry. More soon.
Old God mop-up duty
Scouting reports have finally come in from around Kalimdor, after the business with the Old Gods’ spawn in Thal’darah Grove last week. The Twilight’s Hammer is definitely weakened and scattered in the aftermath of Deathwing’s defeat, but they’re still out there licking their wounds. As for the Old Gods and their minions themselves, that’s a little tricker. We don’t really know very much about the Old Gods proper – in the late stages of the war with Deathwing we kept hearing references to an Old God named N’Zoth, but we don’t have much idea where he’s hiding, or how many Old Gods are still out there, if any, or where they are.
That’s the thing about the Old Gods – however many of them are left, they’re hidden away somewhere, buried deep in the bowels of the earth or at the bottom of the sea. With the ones we’ve fought so far, C’thun and Yogg-Saron, we actually had a pretty easy time of it, since in both those cases they were contained in one location, and even then it’s hard to tell just how deeply and broadly they’d managed to take root in the surrounding area.
But for the ones still on the loose, it’s a whole other problem. All we really know is that there’s at least one more of them (strictly speaking, there’s probably at least TWO more of them, seeing as how the Twilights keep talking about the Old GODS rather than the Old GOD, or just plain That Dude N’Zoth), and that they’re located, well, DOWN THERE somewhere. Hell, one of them could be tucked away somewhere under Orgrimmar for all we know. I guess the Titans supposedly imprisoned them all underground, although, first of all, Titans, nice job letting the rest of us know where they ARE so we could maybe help keep an eye on them, or at least not go digging around too close and maybe accidentally let them loose delving too greedily and too deep, and second of all, bang-up job keeping the three we know about contained all air-tight like they have been. Hell, one of those three is STILL contained as far as we know, and it hasn’t stopped him (her? it? they? do we need to invent a whole new pronoun for these things?) from stirring up all kinds of trouble with Deathwing and Ragnaros and the Twilights.
And that’s not even getting into their fucking SPAWN, whatever the fuck that even means, like the faceless ones and the tendrils and whatever else. I mean, look at what happened in Dragonblight and you’ll see my point. Apparently these Old Gods have like a zillion of these creepy-ass offspring or minions or whatever the fuck, all burrowing around underground where they can just roll up on Wyrmrest Temple and pop out of the ground with those fucking gigantic living-mouths-with-tentacles, which by the way, what’s even the POINT of keeping the Old Gods “imprisoned” if they can apparently just shit out THOSE things at will and send them wherever they want?
So anyway, yeah. Old Gods suck.
Point being, the Old Gods are the real problem, but they’re also damn hard to pin down, so most of the time the best we can do is try to stay on top of the Twilight cult and hope that keeping them under wraps will help us put a damper on the Old Gods indirectly. Which brings us back to the scouting reports. We’re still seeing some pockets of Twilight activity in a few areas. In particular I’m getting some reports on a remaining enclave up in Mount Hyjal. I may make a trip up there to have a look myself. Not to mention it might be good to check in and get a little face time with Hamuul Runetotem, seeing as I never got around to sending him a “Get Well Soon” card after…well, you know. Although he’s seemed kind of uncomfortable around me ever since the first couple months I was Warchief. Not sure what’s up with that. Anyway, I’ll probably have a chance to talk to him soon.
Monday mailbag
Before I get to the mail, I just wanted to mention the results are in for this latest round of You Choose the Next EPIC VERSE. I’m working on the latest masterpiece now and I’m going to try to have it posted this week, so stay tuned!
Now for the letters. Just a semi-quick mailbag this week, but a couple doozies…
About a month ago A Concerned Citizen wrote in to complain about the mistreatment of a Hippogryph he had received by post. Unfortunately, I don’t think this was an isolated incident — in fact, there may be a serious problem. Last week I received a similar crate in the mail. There were postmarks from at least 20 different places and it must have been in transit for weeks. The crate was emitting a terrible stench, but I braced myself and pryed it open anyway. As I feared, the poor wyvern was long deceased, its corpse in an advanced state of decay. It was the most appalling and enraging thing I have ever had the misfortune to see first hand. I cannot imagine the suffering of that poor creature as it was shunted from one place to another.
I stood stunned for a moment in shock and horror, (and was seriously considering joining DEHTA myself), when suddenly the most amazing thing happened — I felt something nuzzle my hand. I nearly jumped out of my skin! It was then that I realised there WAS something in that crate! A ghostly wyvern stood in the box, so translucent to be nearly invisible. Thing is, despite being incorporeal he can still interact with the physical world to some extent, so he can be petted, confined to a padlock, and even ridden just like a normal wyvern! I’m not sure how this is possible, but I think it might be because the poor beast doesn’t realise he’s dead. (For instance, he still likes me to feed him wyvern chow. He doesn’t actually consume it, but he makes eating motions around it and seems satisfied afterward. To save on gold I found a bunch of kibble-shaped rocks and put those in his dish and he doesn’t seem to have noticed the difference.) It’s taking a while to get used to flying around on a mount that is, for all practical intents and purposes, invisible. However, it sure is fun to watch all the jaws dropping as I fly by!
But the reason I write you, Warchief, is that I don’t think this is an isolated incident. Over the past week I’ve seen other people seemingly flying around without a mount. It’s hard to tell for sure, but I think people all over Azeroth are receiving deceased mounts in the mail. I even think I caught a glimpse of a spectral gryphon flying past me yesterday! I’m not sure what’s going on, but if members of both the Horde and the Alliance are getting dead mounts delivered to them, perhaps there has been a severe breakdown in our postal service worldwide! I know that wyverns have a place in your heart, so I thought you might want to look into this matter and perhaps prevent the further suffering of these noble creatures.
Respectfully yours,
–Kashina.
PS: I’m attaching a photo of my poor deceased wyvern. I hope he shows up well enough on that background.
This…just…wow. I mean I know I was never on particularly good terms with old Antlers McBeardyface, but even for him, this is just…yeah, that’s just sick.
What’s just as bad is that APPARENTLY our old friend Lather-on-us up in DEHTA-land couldn’t be bothered to do anything about this, even after ACC’s original letter last month, but spirits forbid I make a passing reference to browsing in a store for a leather jacket, cause then I get a dozen granola-crunchy druids picketing outside Grommash Hold and starting letter-writing campaigns and throwing buckets of fucking blood at me.
But yeah, enough is enough with this shit. I still can’t figure out how these people got it into their heads that sending mounts in the mail was any kind of good idea, but whatever. It’s time to start cracking down. So for starters, effective immediately, I’m going to start tightening up security in all our wyvern breeding grounds. Overlord Cliffwalker’s been doing a good job clamping down on the Grimtotem up in Stonetalon, so I’ll see about him assigning some more patrols for the wyverns nests there, and I’m pretty sure we can shift some troops over to Highperch in Thousand Needles now that the Twilight’s Hammer isn’t nearly so active down there.
Meanwhile, obviously if we mean business doing something about some brainstorm sending dead wyverns and gryphons C.O.D., I figure we’re going to need a point person to coordinate things. So, consider yourself volunteered, Kashina. I’m appointing you Commissioner of Stop Being a Complete Douche-Tard. Grats. And yes, Antlers, we’re talking to you.
Recently I was doing some errands for the Violet Eye – sweeping ghosts out of the ruins of Karazhan and suchlike – when I killed a big ol’ demon and discovered he had your axe in his pockets. Do you want it back? What’s Prince Malchezaar doing with Gorehowl anyway?
Regards,
–Elder Ciaroscuro (not a Lunar Festival Elder)
Hoo boy. Here we go again.
Yeah, if you could send that back here, Ciaroscuro (and by the way that was a BASTARD to type), that would be great. There’s been some really weird magical bullshit going on with that axe for a while. I’ll try to explain what I can.
So after my father Grom killed Mannoroth, and lost his own life in the process, the explosion that burst out of Mannoroth’s body sent the axe flying and embedded the blade into the nearby rocks. It got flung into the rocks with so much force that even Mr. OMG I’M SO AWESOME LOOK AT ME Thrall apparently couldn’t pull it out, either that or it didn’t even occur to him to look around for it, either then OR when he went back to put up Grom’s memorial, because I can’t think of a third option as to why Thrall would ever FUCKING EVER come back without Grom’s axe.
Some point later, Malchezaar came to Azeroth and turned up in Demon Fall Canyon. None of the other lesser demons there had ever been able to yank to axe out of the rocks, and they generally kept their distance, seeing as having the axe that killed their head honcho right there was probably kind of creepy. But, Malchezaar figured it would be a pretty good trophy for him to pick up for that very reason, and so after some doing he managed to yank it out of the stone. Apparently, by the way, he made a big deal about the fact that he was the one that managed to pull the axe out, and how that was an omen that he was destined for greatness and to be king of the demons and what-have-you, and by the way THAT’S when he started calling himself PRINCE Malchezaar, pretentious fucker.
So anyway, he heads off to Karazhan to take up shop. Only that top level of Karazhan where he hung out was in some weird kind of pocket dimension thingy, like the very top of the tower was poking into someplace called Netherspace, sort of dipping into the Twisted Nether but not quite, or some weird shit like that. I’m not too clear on the nuts and bolts of it. But, point is, it’s this strange little pocket of time and space where…well…time and space don’t quite work the normal way. And that’s where we get into the deal with Gorehowl.
So, Malchezaar had Gorehowl, right? And at some point some Horde adventurers went in there and handed him his ass, and got Gorehowl from his body, and somehow or other it found its way back to Thrall, who gave it to me. So far so good. But every so often, the freaky bizarro zone up there kicks in, and sets off some kind of a time loop. So all of a sudden, Mechazzar is up and kicking again, and he’s got Gorehowl back on him, and what do you know, poof, wherever Gorehowl WAS, it’s not there anymore. Because it got time-loop-reset back up to Prince Fancypants up there in Karazhan.
I once tried to ask Nozdormu how this whole time loopy thing could even be possible, and he rambled on at like 90 miles an hour, and just shrugged and said “wibbly wobbly, timey whimy” and looked at me like I just asked why water was wet. So no help there.
So anyway…yeah. Every so often, the axe goes poof on me, and I end up having to send a group up to Karazhan to get it back again. Which, let me tell you, is a huge pain in the ass. I’m just dreading the day when Malchezaar’s little time loop thingy resets while I’m actually in the MIDDLE of battle somewhere, and have my damn axe vanish on me mid-swing. I have to remember to start bringing a backup, actually.
On a completely separate note, I just got my first application for the new Earth Online guild, <Warchief>. Let’s have a look at our new aspiring member…
Character Name:
£õk†årøgâr
Class and Level:
Stock Broker
Talent Spec (please discuss any unusual talent choices):
0/0/41 Execution/Advisory/Discretionary Was execution but fuck that shit u gots no power and kill nothing. vry misleading name, discertionary do it all
What do you enjoy most about your class?
money money money buy the best toys and other class beg 4 help n buffs
Previous guilds and why you left:
Scum of the Earth, guild leader give his girl all the phat lootz n she like cant play so drama killed that one
Something Wicked, kicked from this one dunno why
High Finance, cant take a fkn joke. long story.
Previous raiding experience:
yes
Any time restrictions that might affect your raid availability:
i haveto be in bed by 11
Um…okay.
Actually, no, not okay.
First of all, I’m going to try not to dwell on the crazy letters in his name, but…yeah. Look, dude, you’re really overestimating how hard I’m willing to work to contact you in-game or send you a guild invite. If I can’t just fucking TYPE your name, then the odds of me sending you a whisper or an invite or whatever drops way, way down. I don’t speak alt-code.
Also…um…
You know what, I’m not even going to try to go through point for point and break down the problems with this guy. Not even the retard leet-speak. Reading it once had made my head hurt enough as it is. So I’m just going to make an executive decision and say, oops, sorry, turns out our raids all START at 11:00, so I guess that rules us out. Good luck in your search…um…Guy Whose Asshat Name I’m Not Even Going to Try to Transliterate.
Krom’gar’s shadows
I still don’t put a lot of stock in superstitious stories about things that go bump in the night. Turns out, there wasn’t some mysterious spooky stuff going on in Thal’darah Grove like the men were talking about with the whole “Krom’gar’s shadow” thing. I knew there had to be something reasonable and real behind it all, and hey, check it out, hold on to your ass for the surprise incoming – Garrosh was right again. I knew there had to be some kind of sensible explanation. Real as ghosts and goblins.
I just wish it was something other than what it was. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
So I went down to the grove yesterday afternoon to have a look around. Took a hell of an effort to get Mortimer to land there at all – I’m not sure if he just remembered the last time he was there and didn’t want to get too close again, or if something else was spooking him. Either way, he put up a fight before we finally managed to land, and even then, he was pretty antsy the whole time there.
The grove is just eerie to walk around in now. I’m not sure if that’s just based on my own memories of the place… It’s probably hard not to be creeped out by a place where you know you damn near got killed. (Then again, if that’s all it is, I’d probably better figure out a way to get over it, otherwise I’m on pace to run out of places where I WON’T feel creeped out. Thal’darah Grove? Check. Ring of Honor? Check. Twilight Highlands? Double check.) I don’t think it’s just me, though. Most of the debris from Krom’gar bomb has been cleared out, but the land still looks scarred from the explosion. Even with the work that’s been done to re-level the soil for replanting, the terrain just looks skewed, almost as it the ground itself is still trying to pull away from the impact point. At the very center of the impact, the ground still looks scorched.
And then there’s the smell. I don’t even know how to describe it, but it hangs in the air. How many months ago now? And you can still smell it. That stink of burning trees and charred flesh and sulfur and a hint of blood. I can’t think of any time ever in my life when a smell was PALPABLE – you can actually FEEL it on its way into your nose.
Most of all, though, the grove is just hauntingly still. I don’t mean quiet, or tranquil, or uneventful even. I mean STILL. Like the whole place was just frozen. Like the land itself decided it couldn’t bear what we’d allowed to happen here, and time decided it wasn’t going on another step. Nothing moves. Nothing makes a sound. Just endless stillness in an empty landscape under dank, ruined air.
Or maybe I’m letting my imagination run away with me. Who knows.
I looked around the grove for I don’t know how long, and didn’t really find anything noteworthy, other than tons and tons of nothing. I saw some of the attempts at construction D&U had mentioned, that had just crumbled apart, and walked through some of the failed attempts at fields. Nothing really telling, just mode fodder for the eerie heap. But I knew “it’s kinda spooky” really wasn’t any kind of an answer, so I just stayed around and kept watching, wandering in circles, looking around until dusk fell.
Then it started making more sense.
As the grove grew darker, I started spotting dark figures moving in the distance. I wasn’t even sure at first how many – it could have just been one weaving in and out of sight, or many, I wasn’t sure. Like I said, I’m not superstitious, but I’ve got to admit I couldn’t help but think of the name the men had given the weirdness here, and wonder if I was about to run into yet another dead Horde officer come back to haunt me. But the shapes I was seeing were much too big to be an orc, even hopped up from shadow-necro-whatchamafuckery, so I pulled myself together pretty quick and starting making double time around the grove to find out what they were. They were huge and lumbering, moving around slowly, actually lurking more than moving, but in the growing darkness I wasn’t able to get a clear look until I was almost on top of them.
Faceless ones. About a dozen or so, skulking around the place.
I don’t have to tell you I’ve already had way, way, WAY more than enough of all this Twilight Old God tentacle-beasty bullshit, so once I knew what I was dealing with I didn’t waste much time putting Gorehowl to work. As I was cutting through the first couple of those ugly fuckers, I started noticing more movement scattered around the grove. I kept making my way around, hunting down the faceless ones, and I was able to pin down the new shapes that were moving – tentacles, sprouting from the ground, budding out of the earth gradually, a few at a time, like some sick mockery of the fields we’d been trying to plant.
At least we know why the soil had turned bad on us, I suppose. And what had gone wrong with construction, too – while I was making my rounds I spotted a few of the tentacles lashing randomly at some of the half-finished scaffolding in the area. It’s really these tentacles that concern me a lot more than the faceless ones. I hacked down as many of them as I could, but who knows how much good it’ll do. It’s like when you have weeds in your garden – you can go around yanking out the stems all night, but who knows how deep the roots go.
I’d gotten reports of an infestation like this at Stonetalon Peak, tendrils sprouting from some sort of Old God spawn…apparently the infestation runs through more of the mountains than we thought. Granted, these particular beasties seem to be pretty small potatoes – the tentacles died fast enough, and even the faceless ones were a lot weaker than others I’ve run across before. Maybe the Old Gods are weakened some after what happened with Deathwing. Maybe not. Hard to say. Either way, though, I don’t much like the look of this, not least of all because if we have more of these tendrilly freakshows cropping up, it’s not much of a stretch to think there might still be some Twilights up to something too.
I’m going to have to send out some more recon teams to check up on this. Old Gods, Twilights, whatever, I don’t want any of them getting a chance to come up for air. Especially that damned cult. I kind of have an axe to grind with them. And by “grind,” I mean “cleave as deep as possible into each and every one of their skulls.”
An open guild application
You probably remember how a couple mailbags ago, I got the terrific piece of news that my Earth Online guild had kicked me out while I was busy fighting for my life against the Twilight’s Hammer. Fucking pricks. Especially that dumbass guild leader Manageurdeath, although like I’ve said before, “dumbass guild leader” might be a little redundant. How come it always seems like it’s the full-of-themselves morons and assholes who always ends up being put in charge of things?
Anyway, I’m getting off track. Point is, I’m in the market for a new Earth Online guild, and since I’m guessing I’m going to be a hot commodity, and a lot of these guilds seem to ask the same things on their OMGwhyisthissofuckinglong applications, I figured I’d save everybody a lot of time and put up my answers to a bunch of the most common questions here.
Character Name: Omgipwnedurface, Goldwater-Kalimdor server
Class and Level: 50 Teacher
Talent Spec (please discuss any unusual talent choices): 19/12/10 Humanities / Social Sciences / Sciences. I know my talents are spread around a little more than normal for my class, but I decided to go with a variation of the “Liberal Arts” cookie-cutter spec for added versatility.
What do you enjoy most about your class? Honestly? The minions. I love having minions. I usually try to queue for the classrooms in the sketchier zones, specifically so I can spawn classes with a lot of Delinquents – if I play it right and get them on my side, they can be all kinds of fun to use. Also I just finished the class questline for a Student Teacher companion, so that’s a whole new type of minion I get to start using.
Previous guild(s) and why you left: <West Coast Avengers> — disagreement over whether it was acceptable to miss raids due to kidnapping and near murder by psychotic apocalyptic cult; also subsequent disagreement over estimated proportion of poop in guild leader’s head.
Previous raiding experience: I’m still new to the game, so not much so far. At least in the game. In real life…ever hear of Icecrown Citadel? Dead Lich King? Yeah, I was all over that. Also, Tirion Fordring’s idiotic coliseum thing? That whole Horde vs. Alliance battle, where we squared off against each other rather than sparring with Tirion’s flunkies? Yeah, that had my fingerprints all over it, too. Also, I didn’t actually get involved with Ulduar, but I did trade a few punches with Varian that kept him from getting HIS grubby paws on it, either. Basically, whenever there’s been a situation where the Horde and Alliance have been at risk of being distracted by a common enemy, you can count on me to keep our attention focused on ripping each other’s throats out where it belongs rather than wasting our time on the pansy Tirion/Rhonin “We must all work together” song and dance. I fucking hate carebears.
Any time restrictions that might affect your raid availability: I’m the Warchief of the Horde. Draw your own conclusions. Also, being this awesome is a full-time job in itself.
