Tag Archives: twilight’s hammer
Camel Horde-r
Writing this from the Steam Pools. The settlement by the pools is actually a resort run by goblins out of Gadgetzan…pretty pricey, actually, although you’d be surprised the deals you can get when you beat three or four members of the staff within an inch of their lives. (And by an inch of their lives, by the way, I mean a total sum of an inch between the lot of them.) Best deals anywhere indeed!
On the way up here I actually thought I might have stumbled onto another lead with the whole Twilight thing. As I was flying over the pools, I spotted an oversized ettin wandering around, and since I know the Twilight’s Hammer people have ettins working for them, I went in to check on it. Turns out this particular ettin – huge one too – was pretty irritable, and started giving me some incoherent-grunting lip, so I had to smack him down a couple times. Or three. Or nine. Or, well, however many it was until he stopped breathing. Moral of story, people need to stop being so hostile when I’m in the neighborhood. I mean, if you take the first swing, I’m GOING to take the last swing. Granted, if I take the first swing, I’m going to take the last swing, too…but looking at it that way, pretty much the only way you’re even going to have a CHANCE at ending up body-bag-free if to hold back, cross your fingers, and hope I’m not looking to start something. It’s really just about the math.
Anyway, punch line is, the ettin dude was carrying around some gray camel on his back (yeah, I know, I TOLD you he was big), so when I dropped him, he dropped the camel, which then took a shine to me and started following me around. So I had to lead it on back to the resort and stable it there. The thing still seems pretty attached, so I might end up taking it back to Orgrimmar later on, but damned if I know what to feed a fucking camel.
I’m checked in now at the inn. Garona should be here soon to compare notes. Updates to follow.
Gordunni leads
I’ll give these Stonemaul ogres credit, they’re plenty loyal since the Horde’s been helping them. Not too much going on upstairs, but hey. Thank goodness we have orcs like Orhan Ogreblade here at Stonemaul Hold, though, or spirits know what kind of a mess these ogres would make of the place. At least the ogres out at Brackenwall have that brainstorm Draz’Zilb to help stay on top of things. Even if he IS fucking evil. Again, like I’ve said before, at least he gets shit done.
I stopped briefly at Stonemaul Hold and checked in with Orhan and the others. The Grimtotem have still been at it, with most of their activity seeming to be around Dire Maul now. The ogre camps to the south still needed checking on from our end, though, so I flew down there and got to looking around the ruins of Isildien. The ruins are still…well…ruiny, because of course when ogres move into a place, it never occurs to them to fix it up at all. Then again, I guess it’s hard to focus in on home improvement when you’ve got tauren raiding parties running in and smacking you around.
It was pretty obvious that the Grimtotem had attacked the ogres there, even if they’ve started focusing more on the ogres up north. There were a few scattered bodies of Grimtotem raiders around the ruins. Gotta admit, the sight gave me a happy. A few ogre corpses, too, but not all that many. I’m not sure if that’s because the Grimtotem took heavier casualties from the attacks, or because the ogres just make a point of tending to their dead. What do ogres even do with their dead, anyway? I don’t really see them as the memorial service type. Not really up on ogre customs in general, though, much less Gordunni ones.
I kept trying to talk to the ogres to see if I could get some information out of them, but as it turns out, this particular bunch of them is pretty pissy, so instead of talking they mostly wanted to swing clubs at me. Which meant they DID end up doing some talking, only what they were saying was mostly “Ouch” and “I wonder if there really IS an Ogri’la.” So, fun, but not very productive.
While I was flying over the area I did spot this cave in the side of the mountains, and it looked like there were ogre corpses around the outside – a lot more than I’d seen anywhere else around the ruins – so I went in to check. The cave didn’t run very deep, and I could see some light coming from the inside, and some humanoid looking shadows as I made my way toward the back. I tried being stealthy and sneaking in to check it out, but I think I might have blown the sneaky thing when I ran around the corner and yelled “WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU PEOPLE” and charged the first dude I saw. Oh well. Gotta be me. Anyway, turns out it was a pack of three humans, a troll, and a dwarf, all chilling around a campfire, and based on what’s been going on lately and the dark purple and red robes they all had on, you can probably guess out who they were working for. So the charging turned out to be a good call anyway. I killed two of the humans right off (gotta tell you, it never gets old), but the dwarf dropped a smoke bomb and the other three high-tailed it out of the cave. I managed to jump back onto them and hamstring the last human, but I wasn’t able to get to the dwarf or troll before they took off into the hills.
The human, though… He was useful while he lasted. Unlike the Grimtotem raider in Dustwallow, this one didn’t need a whole lot of persuading to talk. Then again, humans do tend to be less resistant to a good beating. If anything, I had to be careful not to kill him (right away).
As it turns out, his little band had been dispatched by the Twilight’s Hammer – no shock there – to look into the Gordunni settlement in Isildien, then make contact with their point man in the area, an ogre named Skarr who had been one of Cho’gall’s people when he was lining up his original ogre gathering in the Maul. Whatever they found, they were supposed to check in with him at an abandoned gnoll camp in the eastern part of the woods, tucked away in the hills. Anything they could find out about the phylactery, they were supposed to report to Skarr, so I’m figuring he’s the one we need to pin down if we want to head off this whole Twilight plan. Beyond that, the human didn’t seem to know a whole lot more – for all the dead ogres around their hiding place, they didn’t seem to find any actual information – and I don’t think he was just holding out on me, since I’m pretty sure that would have called for sterner stuff than these humans are made of. So, you know, dead human. I’ve got work to do, and a nonessential captive is only going to slow me down.
Next move is to try to track down Skarr in the eastern hills, but first I’m going to check in with Garona to see what she’s found. As it happens, there’s a small settlement – if you want to call it that – by the Steam Pools just south of here, only a teensy side trip on the way to the Lower Wilds, so we’re going to meet up there to compare notes. I’ll write more once we’ve had a chance to get settled.
[Header image provided by Rioriel from Postcards From Azeroth, reproduced here with permission and many thanks. Click here to see the souped-up Postcard version!]
So here’s the plan
Or the beginning of it, anyway. We know that the Grimtotem are hunting down ogres in Dustwallow Marsh and Feralas to try to find the phylactery of Cho’gall. Obviously, we have to make sure they don’t get it.
Since we pretty much know that the Stonemaul ogres don’t have it (see, it helps when half the equation is on your payroll!), we’re going to focus on Feralas. Hopefully the fact that we can eliminate half the possible locations of the phylactery will help us get a jump on the Grimtotem and the Twilight’s Hammer in finding it. Anyway, Garona is heading up to Dire Maul as we speak to scour the place and see if she can find any leads. Meanwhile, I’m going to be flying down to the southern Gordunni ogre camps to see what I can find there.
While all this is going on, I’m keeping Krog and Dontrag and Utvoch working in Dustwallow on a decoy project. Right now, as far as we know, the Grimtotem still think that the Stonemaul ogres might have the phylactery, and the longer we keep them wasting time and energy barking up that tree, the better for all of us. So I’m having the gang at Brackenwall putting up the appearance that our ogres really might have the thingamajig. Apparently Draz’Zilb has some kind of hocus-pocus he can do to help along those lines. I didn’t ask him for details, because honestly, dude is a scary motherfucker, so yeah.
For the time being we’re going to try to keep this job limited to the inner circle who are already in the know, so we can keep a limit on how quickly word of all this gets around. Last thing we need is for the Grimtotem or Twilight’s Hammer to be tipped off to what we’re doing.
Come to think of it, though, if I really wanted to keep a lid on all this, I probably shouldn’t have been blogging about it at length all this time. Including this installment right here. Oops. Oh well. Hey there, water, the bridge says hi and bye from above.
Mortimer’s ready to go. More updates soon.
Magatha
Garona’s on her way from Twilight Highlands to be briefed on the whole situation with the ogres and the Grimtotem and the Twilight’s Hammer and the WTF. From what I’m told all she really needed to hear was “Cho’gall” and she was already packing. Gotta say, if we do nip this Cho’gall thing in the bud, I really hope she doesn’t go all Maiev-post-mortem-Illidan on us. She’s high-maintenance enough as it is, let me tell you. Anyway, she should be here soon, so we can get to work on the Cho’gall problem, assuming we keep enough mood-balancing potions on hand. (Seriously, you have no idea.)
Thing is, though, I’ve been thinking about what the Grimtotem told us in Brackenwall. And I just realized – he said that the Dustwallow Grimtotem were put on the ogres by Isha Gloomaxe, and the Feralas Grimtotem were being directed by Arnak Grimtotem…and we know they’re two of the highest-ranking members of the whole Grimtotem tribe. Which means, if there’s some scheme in the works, and the two of them are out coordinating, smart money says there’s only one place the overall plan could have come from.
Magatha.
And yeah, don’t get me started.
You know what? Never mind. I’m already started.
Look, I know people say I can be pretty cranky at times. And I’m not going to deny I’ve got a temper. There are lots of things that irritate me and a lot of people that piss me off. I’ve got no use for gnomes, and I think we’ve established how I feel about humans. Doubly so for a lot of specific humans – I’m looking right at you, Varian (also: fuck you), and I’m not too crazy about Tirion or Rhonin, either. Even closer to home, Vol’jin annoys the living shit out of me, and I still say Sylvanas desperately needs someone to take her down a peg or two to knock her off her snooty pedestal. But for all of my ranting, the list of people I really, truly, profoundly HATE is actually a pretty short one.
I hate Magatha Grimtotem.
It’s not just that she played me for a fool and basically turned me into a weapon to use against Cairne. It’s not even just her betrayal of her own people, plotting against her chieftain and throwing the entire tauren civilization into turmoil. It’s partly those things, but even those are small potatoes.
It’s that she robbed us. Cheated us. All of us – of so many things, on so many levels. She robbed us in ways that are so complicated, and overlap so much, I’m not even sure I can untangle them all. But here we go…Eitrigg told me forever ago that this blog might be helpful for hashing things like this, so it’s time to see if he was right.
She robbed the tauren of one of their greatest leaders. Hell, she robbed the HORDE of one of its greatest leaders. She robbed Baine of a father. She cheated all of us out of whatever time we would otherwise have had with him by our side.
Not to mention that she robbed me of my honor. My mak’gora duel with Cairne was meant to be honorable combat, two evenly matched warriors, armed with a single weapon and nothing else. By poisoning my blade, she put a shadow over me and forced me to spend the rest of my days hearing questions whispered behind my back about treachery and deceit and dishonor. Cairne’s death will haunt me for as long as I live. I wrote this to Magatha herself once when she called on me for aid: I deserved to fight Cairne honorably, to win or lose on my own merits. If I died, so be it. An honorable death is far better than a tainted victory. But this? What glory is there in defeating an opponent through trickery? In standing over a weakened, dying body that should still be battling strongly?
Because here’s the part that will never stop eating at me. You guys are all friends, so I guess I may as well come out and say it, because it’s not like it isn’t something you already know if you were there for the duel.
Before the poison took effect, Cairne was beating me. And I mean badly. I’m not going to try to dance around it at all – that old tauren was absolutely handing me my ass. I was just barely keeping it together when I landed the glancing blow that poisoned him. And then the venom kicked in. And that was it. There’s no two ways about it: if something hadn’t weakened him, there’s absolutely no way I was going to pull a comeback.
I should be dead. And Cairne should be Warchief.
And right there is the worst of the ways that she robbed us. She didn’t just deprive the Horde of one of its wisest voices. She robbed us of our rightful leader. The point of the mak’gora is “victory to the strongest”…and she managed to turn that on its head. (Hell, it’s like if someone rigged one of those Earth Online competitions for faction leader so that one guy won the contest, but the other guy got to be leader on a technicality or something.) And so now, every crisis we come to, we’re forced to face it without the leadership that Cairne would have provided. It’s one reason why, to be totally honest with you, many times when I’ve been faced with a decision, I try to think of what Cairne would have done in my place. (Not often enough, if I’m really honest.) Because on a really basic level, I feel like I’m serving as Warchief in his stead – serving out HIS term.
And all of this because of Magatha. And now she’s finding new and better ways to betray us all.
She duped me into killing one of the greatest among us, a man I admired and didn’t even want to fight in the first place. She stood right there and watched me do it, then had the gall to think I should be grateful to her for it. And if I ever find her, she’s going to have a front-row seat for what happens when I get my hands on someone I utterly, violently DESPISE.
And on the off chance you’re reading this, Magatha, this is the part where you run. Keep running. Don’t ever stop.
[Header image provided by Rioriel from Postcards From Azeroth, reproduced here with permission and many thanks. Click here to see the souped-up Postcard version!]
They couldn’t have just been bored and jerkish…
Okay, so now I’m getting worried.
I’ve spent the day in Brackenwall Village with Krog, Dontrag and Utvoch, and the ogre seer Draz’Zilb, all working on getting some information from the Grimtotem prisoner. Things really weren’t going anywhere for the longest time…I’ll give this Grimtotem credit, he had a really strong will, and even after I was giving him a pretty sound beating, he wouldn’t make so much as a peep. Or a moo, I guess.
This was another one of those cases where I don’t want to lose any details, so I had Mokvar come with me to Brackenwall so he can keep a transcript of the interrogation. Glad I had him go train up inscription, gotta say. So, here’s the record of the session, at least after the first couple hours of me smacking the fucker around without much gain…
GARROSH: Okay, so you know, as much as I’m enjoying beating on this guy, I don’t think it’s really getting us anywhere.
KROG: Maybe we just need more knives? I’m pretty fond of knives myself.
GARROSH: Better than a good sound barefisted thrashing?
KROG: Oh yeah, a good clean stab can be way satisfying. Knives and daggers, either way.
GARROSH: Well yeah, but you’re a rogue. That doesn’t help us with this.
KROG: What do you mean?
GARROSH: You’ll just end up stun-locking him. It doesn’t do us any good at all if we’re just keeping him silenced.
DONTRAG: Rest assured, great Warchief, we shall find ways to make him talk!
UTVOCH: Or a great inconceivable agony will await him!
DONTRAG: Far greater than his worst imaginings!
GARROSH: THESE two, on the other hand…
UTVOCH: What about us, Warchief?
GARROSH: Never mind.
KROG: <chortle>
DONTRAG: No, really.
UTVOCH: Maybe just let it go, Dontrag?
DONTRAG: I just want to understand what the Warchief is talking about.
GARROSH: Yeah, good luck there.
KROG: <snort>
DONTRAG: As you say, sir…
KROG: Seriously, where did you find these two?
GARROSH: Stuck in a mine in Stonetalon.
UTVOCH: Where we carried out our duty for the Horde most proudly!
DONTRAG: For the glory of the Horde! For the glory of Hellscream!
KROG: Yeah, I’m sure.
GARROSH: Well they were helpful at the time. Kind of.
KROG: Yeah, thanks for getting them involved with this.
GARROSH: Would you rather be working on this with just a bunch of ogres helping you?
DRAZ’ZILB: Um…
GARROSH: No offense, Draz’Zilb.
KROG: Actually, I’m not sure I’m seeing the improvement.
GARROSH: Oh come on. OGRES?
DRAZ’ZILB: Um, I’m standing RIGHT HERE.
GARROSH: Did you miss the “no offense” part?
DONTRAG: I did not, Warchief!
UTVOCH: Indeed and verily, nor did I, oh great—
GARROSH: Not YOU, for FUCK’S sake.
KROG: See what I mean?
GARROSH: Yeah, fine, whatever.
DRAZ’ZILB: Chief Hellscream, not to interrupt, but I believe I may have a method that may facilitate the extrication of vital intelligence from our captive.
GARROSH: Look, he’s being uncooperative enough, there’s no point in making him stupid too so he can’t even understand what I’m asking him.
DRAZ’ZILB: Um…no. What I mean, great Chief, is I may have a spell I can use to force the information from him, willingly or not.
GARROSH: Well why didn’t you say so? Hell, for that matter, why didn’t you guys do this before I had to fly all the way down here?
DRAZ’ZILB: The incantation required a number of reagents, Chief. Some helpful adventurers only just delivered them a short while ago.
GARROSH: Good, so— wait, you actually needed that shit? Like the “go get seven of these and nine of those” that we always send those noobs around to collect? You mean you actually sent the volunteer errand boys out to do something that was really important?
DRAZ’ZILB: Why…would I occupy others’ valuable time on tasks that were not of some genuine vital interest to us, great Chief?
GARROSH: <blink> …Shit, you ogres have a lot to learn.
UTVOCH: I know a good place they could go for extension courses, if they—
GARROSH: SHUT UP, YOU.
UTVOCH: Yes sir.
DONTRAG: Stop interrupting the Warchief, for goodness’ sake!
GARROSH: The same goes for you!
DONTRAG: Yes sir.
UTVOCH: Apologies, sir.
DONTRAG: Yes, sir, much ap—
GARROSH: Okay, SERIOUSLY, BOTH of you, the next word of our either of your mouths had better be NOTHING, because otherwise, the SECOND word out of your mouths is going to be “OUCH, MY HEAD!” You understand?!
DONTRAG: …
UTVOCH: …
KROG: <chortle> This is awesome.
GARROSH: <pummel>
KROG: OUCH, MY HEAD!!
DRAZ’ZILB: Begging your pardon, Chief Hellscream, but is this…a typical day for you and your lieutenants?
GARROSH: <looks down> <long pause> Yes.
DRAZ’ZILB: I…see.
GARROSH: …Yeah.
DRAZ’ZILB: Shall I resume my elaboration, Chief, or does the moment dictate a further prolonging of the awkward lull?
GARROSH: Okay, I’m fairly sure I recognized SOME of the words in there.
UTVOCH: The extension course DOES include a very excellent vocabulary building unit, if it please the Warchief, begging your pardon, sir, and hoping I might be spared a harsh inconceivable pummeling of—
DONTRAG: <shakes head>
GARROSH: <pummel>
UTVOCH: OWW!! Yes sir, re-shutting up…
KROG: <chortle>
GARROSH: <glare>
KROG: <hand clamps on mouth>
GARROSH: Draz’Zilb, would you please finish what you were saying before I have to fucking kill everyone in the room?
DRAZ’ZILB: Of course, Chief. As I was saying, I know of a very potent incantation, the reagents for which have just presently come into my possession. With it, I suspect we might loosen the reluctant lips of our Grimtotem prisoner.
GARROSH: Is it some kind of truth serum or something?
DRAZ’ZILB: Not at all, nothing quite so invasive. At least not in such a manner. No, good Chief, the spell I speak of executes a separation of the subject’s spirit from his body, leaving him highly susceptible to…coercion.
GARROSH: Well, that sounds okay, but he’s been pretty resistant to “coercion” so far, and it’s not like I’m a rookie when it comes to beating an answer out of someone.
DRAZ’ZILB: True, he’s proven to be remarkably strong-willed. But this is a different matter altogether. One can steel oneself against the pains of the body, great Chief; the body is fleeting and corporeal, and a strong mind can divest itself of the fear for its well-being. But the spirit…touch upon it directly, play upon the proper strings, and no mind can resist indefinitely. Eventually…one reaches a point of necessity. There is, for each of us, a breaking point, a fear so fundamental to our souls that if faced with it, we MUST escape it, regardless the cost. It is no longer a matter of strength or courage or power of will; it is a matter of need.
GARROSH: That’s…just evil.
KROG: I’m liking this guy.
DRAZ’ZILB: Shall I proceed, great Chief?
GARROSH: So we’re going to be seeing this guy’s deepest fear, is that it?
DRAZ’ZILB: Nothing quite so crude, Chief Hellscream, nor quite as dramatic. It is a process of the mind, and as such, it will be perceived solely by his mind. All we will witness is the shadow of his spirit as it is…extracted.
GARROSH: Well get extracting, then.
DRAZ’ZILB: As you wish, Chief.
Draz’Zilb begins the incantation, and the Grimtotem raider’s body goes stiff and freezes in place. A shadowy outline of the tauren floats up from his body and hovers in the air nearby.
KROG: Kinda like one of those shadow priest body double thingies.
DONTRAG: Should we stun him before he has a chance to hit dispers— OUCH!!
GARROSH: SHUT. UP.
DRAZ’ZILB: Now then, here we are… As you can see, my Grimtotem friend, your situation grows a bit more, shall we say, tenuous.
The Grimtotem shade floats higher in the air and appears to look around apprehensively, limbs reaching in different directions as if trying to control its movement.
DRAZ’ZILB: Please, do try all you wish to remove yourself from your current position. It merely expends mental energy while I secure my hold on you. If anything, I thank you for your aid.
GARROSH: Is it working?
DRAZ’ZILB: Quite. Now then, something simple to start. What is your name, Grimtotem?
The shade glares at Draz’Zilb silently.
GARROSH: You’re sure about that, dude?
DRAZ’ZILB: <chuckles> Oh good. Even after hearing us discussing matters, he still needs to be…persuaded. I was hoping he would.
Draz’Zilb waves his staff, and shadowy tendrils of magic force swirl around the Grimtotem spirit. The shade lurches back and forth, looking about frantically, limbs flailing with greater urgency.
DRAZ’ZILB: There…that seems to be helping. But….just to be sure…
Draz’Zilb reaches for additional reagents and tosses them about his staff. He gestures toward the Grimtotem again, whose movements become more jerky and exaggerated, then grow slower as the shade’s form shrinks back.
DRAZ’ZILB: Now then…your name.
The shade’s mouth opens. After a long pause, it speaks in an echoing, timid voice.
GRIMTOTEM: Karthag… My name is Karthag Stonehoof.
DRAZ’ZILB: Much better. And you are one of the Grimtotem operating out of Blackhoof Village, is that correct?
GRIMTOTEM: Y…yes.
DRAZ’ZILB: You see, Chief, he can be reasonable. <chuckle>
GARROSH: Dude, you’re enjoying this way too much.
KROG: Think maybe we could bring him in for some of our Alliance prisoners?
GARROSH: Later.
KROG: Just sayin’.
GARROSH: Okay, let’s get back to the point. Let’s find out what he knows about the attacks.
DRAZ’ZILB: Indeed. What was the purpose of your raid on our village, Karthag?
The shade shudders in place, then cowers with a pained moan.
DRAZ’ZILB: Oh, this IS a strong one. Here, then…
Draz’Zilb sprinkles some dust around the Grimtotem’s body, then waves his staff again. The shadow cries out in terror, then cowers silently, trembling.
DRAZ’ZILB: Shall we try that again? The objective of your attack?
GRIMTOTEM: We…we are looking for an ogre relic…
DONTRAG: Ogre relic?
UTVOCH: Zounds!
KROG: What?
GARROSH: PEANUT GALLERY, SHUT IT.
DRAZ’ZILB: An ogre relic? Strange that I wouldn’t know of any such thing, being as I am an ogre myself. What is this relic you’re seeking? What do you want with it?
GRIMTOTEM: It isn’t us that want something with it. It’s…it’s the Twilight’s Hammer.
GARROSH: The FUCK he says?
DRAZ’ZILB: Yes, the fuck you sa— erm, that is, what do you mean? Why would the Twilight’s Hammer have an interest in an ogre artifact?
GRIMTOTEM: We…our leaders learned that the Twilight’s Hammer are seeking the relic, and we think it’s most likely in the hands of one of the ogre clans.
DRAZ’ZILB: According to whom? Where is this coming from?
GRIMTOTEM: Isha Gloomaxe arrived in Blackhoof Village with the news. She said we needed to hunt down as many of the ogres as we can, until we find the relic or confirm it’s not in Dustwallow.
DRAZ’ZILB: Is this what’s happening in Feralas as well? The reason behind the attacks there on the Gordunni?
GRIMTOTEM: Y…yes… Arnak Grimtotem himself was dispatched to oversee the search there, at least that’s what Isha told us…
GARROSH: I’m not liking the sound of this.
DRAZ’ZILB: But why? What is it for? What IS this relic?
GRIMTOTEM: It’s…a magic vessel… Some…some months ago, Cho’gall held a gathering of ogres in Dire Maul. The Twilight’s Hammer believe he had the relic forged while he was there.
GARROSH: Yeah, I’m liking this even less.
GRIMTOTEM: The relic is a phylactery…the phylactery of Cho’gall. They believe…he bound a portion of his spirit to it. They want to use it to resurrect Cho’gall.
KROG: Oh fuck.
GARROSH: Hang on, what the fuck. That’s all well and shitty by itself, but what the hell do the fucking GRIMTOTEM want with it?
DRAZ’ZILB: A fine question, good Chief. A fine answer to follow, I’m sure. Well, Karthag? What interest DO the Grimtotem have in such a thing?
DONTRAG: Maybe they’re trying to stop the Twilight’s Hammer?
UTVOCH: Maybe they think they can use it to preserve their own leaders?
KROG: Maybe you guys should shut the fuck up?
DRAZ’ZILB: Maybe we should let the spirit answer the question before I run out of reagents here?
GRIMTOTEM: We…don’t have a use for it. Bringing back Cho’gall doesn’t matter to us. But…we know that the Twilight Hammer wants it…and so if we can find it first…
GARROSH: You can cut a deal with them.
DRAZ’ZILB: Surely you don’t think they can be trusted. They want to destroy the world!
GRIMTOTEM: Our world…is already destroyed. We’ve become outcasts of the Horde…our attempts to forge a truce with the Alliance have crumbled… We have precious few allies to turn to anymore. And the hope is, if we can give the Twilight’s Hammer Cho’gall, they may help us regain some of what we’ve lost.
GARROSH: You’re insane. I seriously don’t know which of you is more crazy, the Grimtotem or the Twilights.
DRAZ’ZILB: What’s the next move for you? Where are your people striking next?
GRIMTOTEM: I don’t know…very few of us ever knew more than our next mission… I just know what we’re looking for, but beyond that…
KROG: Is he lying? To cover for them?
DRAZ’ZILB: Unlikely. His spirit is broken enough at this point…I don’t think he has anything else for us.
GARROSH: It was enough.
DRAZ’ZILB: Indeed.
Draz’Zilb chuckles and waves his staff again. The shade shudders violently, then dissipates into the air in a burst of shadow magic. Karthag’s body seizes up, then collapses limply to the ground, lifeless.
GARROSH: The FUCK, dude?!
DRAZ’ZILB: Oh, I’m sorry, did I not tell you about that part? My apologies. The procedure does come, eventually, at the expense of the subject’s life. Spirits are so terribly hard to reintegrate into bodies once they’ve been extracted, after all…
KROG: Seriously, Alliance prisoners. Really, really look into it.
I can’t even tell you how pissed off I am about this. How is this going on, and the GRIMTOTEM are able to put it together before WE do? What am I paying my undercover agents for, anyway?! Isn’t this EXACTLY the kind of shit that they’re supposed to be digging up for me?
Obviously this is bad news in a major way. I like to bust Thrall’s balls, but he actually has been breaking his ass trying to come up with a way to get the Deathwing situation under control, and the LAST thing we need is a wild card like Cho’gall to get thrown back into the mix this late in the game. I’ve got to get this shit under control. And fast.
Stay tuned for updates. Meanwhile, I’m dispatching messengers to Twilight Highlands tonight. Sorry if it upsets you, Wega – I’m calling in Garona.
“Could you keep it down, please? I’m trying to be unsettlingly evil in here.”
The Hour (and fifty-seven minutes) of Twilight
One of my comments from the other day mentioned some of the machinima that gets made for Earth Online. Now obviously there are a lot of fan-made videos, and some of those are pretty impressive. Music parodies, for instance, kind of inspired by real-world artists like EmberIsolte or GreyFoo or whoever. (Yeah, yeah, I know they’re Alliance, but hey, art cuts across all boundaries, right? When the Alliance finally crumbles before the might of the Horde, I’ll probably let the handful of them live so they can perform at Trollapalooza down in Sen’jin.)
But another one of the impressive things about Earth Online is how much work they put into incorporating machinima into the game as part of the world culture. The game has a HUGE amount of cut scenes built into it, and while some of them are directly connected to questlines and other gameplay, there’s also a ton of them that are just there to help flesh out the game world – basically the idea is that the videos are supposed to be what the in-game citizens of Earth watch for entertainment. You go to various viewing centers in the world, and click on something to start the movie, and it’ll just run on your screen while your character is “watching” it in-game. Thing is, it’s really pretty amazing that they put as much effort as they did into making these things, seeing as the ones that are there for the world culture really don’t serve much practical gaming purpose, other than maybe drop a clue or two about some of the quests you might go on at some point. But they still put in the time and effort to create them just to add more depth to the world. They must really be raking in the gold on subscription fees if they can afford to pay people to crank these things out, let me tell you.
The other cool thing about these built-in videos is the way they’ve based so many of them on things in the real world. Earth Online is packed full of little in-jokes like that, but these machinima especially. For example, there’s a series of pretty lengthy films obviously based on the actual adventures of Harrison Jones. (For anyone new to Earth Online, by the way – totally check out the first three if you can find them, they’re really well done. But the fourth one, seriously, don’t even bother. I have no idea what they were thinking. I mean really, ETHEREALS?) Or, they have another series of machinima about these giant mechanicals, where the main villain is obviously supposed to be a reference to Negatron out in Netherstorm.
But here’s the one I get the biggest kick out of, really. There’s this series of horror-ish videos about this really bizarre (and kinda lame) (without the “kinda” part) love triangle between a human woman, this San’layn dude, and a worgen. They don’t actually call them San’layn or worgen in the movie, but that’s obviously what they are. But that’s not even the important part, because by itself that’s not really all that interesting, but they manage to add this one more layer of reference to it that actually makes it kind of genius. See, these horrory love-triangle-ish videos are actually really…well…they’re just awful. Like just horrifyingly bad. Like bad on the level that it gives you THAT feeling – you know the one, The Feeling you get when you see something so shitty that you’re embarrassed not just for yourself for actually watching it, not even just for everyone who was involved in making it because they have to have their names on such a piece of shit forever, but you actually feel embarrassed on behalf of your entire civilization for having collectively allowed it to come into existence. You know, THAT level of bad? The kind of bad that actually makes you hope for the end of the world, just because any world that could allow something like this to happen just DESERVES to come to an end.
So, you’re probably wondering, how does that make these videos a GOOD thing? Sounds pretty awful, right? Well here’s the thing. It’s the in-joke that makes them awesome. Because get this – they’re all called “Twilight” something-or-other. Think about that a second. These horrifying, nightmarishly bad movies that just make you want to root for the end of the world…are all named after the insane cult that’s actually trying to bring ABOUT the end of the world, and restore the Old Gods in some horrifying nightmare apocalypse. Really, let that sink in for a minute.
Seriously, how is that NOT fucking beautiful?
