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Post by Natasha Ebonlocke on Sept 9, 2021 16:27:25 GMT
September the Ninth Nat finished with breakfast with Celeste at their completely set-up dinner table next to their wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling window overlooking the ocean south of Pandaria, feeling excited. So many firsts! Their first night in an unpacked, set-up room that wasn’t cluttered with stacks of boxes was last night. Their first dinner at that same table in a clean, completely set-up dining room. Their first time cooking together in a brand-new, completely unpacked kitchen. And now, for the first time in what seemed like ages, and certainly for the first time in this house… Nat was going to use her writing desk!
Set up in the office built just for her, first door on the left on the ground floor as one comes in the front door, Nat’s office has a sliding glass door on the east wall, and a window on the north. Under this window sits a great creature comfort for Nat; a writing desk and chair identical to the one she has in her Darkshire home, and identical bookshelves as well. From one such shelf, set up on the left wall as one enters the room, Nat pulled her diary. Reaching into a very familiar-feeling desk drawer, she took out her ravenfeather quill case and her inkwell of purple ink. Placing these on the desk, she looked out the window. At home in Darkshire, this would have been the window that overlooks Darkshire’s town square and fountain, just down the hill from Nat’s house. Now, here in Turtle Bay, Nat’s window overlooks another one of her favorite places in the world: Turtle Beach. Sighing happily at comfort and familiarity old and new all around her and outside, she sat idly for a moment, reliving some of the seemingly endless memories of Darkshire and Turtle Beach alike.
Celeste’s voice brought Nat out of her reminiscence after a long moment. She was somewhere in the sitting room, by the sounds of things, and she was calling Dordy to her, a mischievous tone in her voice. Nat grinned at whatever doom must surely await Dordy this time, giggling faintly and opening her quill case and her inkwell. Dipping her ravenfeather quill in her purple ink, she began to write.
Dear diary,
Hooooollllyyyyy smoooooookes what a week it has been! So much has happened! LOTS of things! It’s been a non-stop ride, and I feel like it could be summed up by this past Friday’s visit to Stormwind after work for an hour before bed, in which my bestie Nah found me eating dinner on a cliffside bench in Lion’s Rest, watching the sunset and trying to unwind after a busy day at work, and got her harp out for me and started playing for me to help me relax while I ate dinner, and she told me a funny story about a snobbish noblewoman who was saying mean things about Lady Whitewind, so she broke into her house all Nah-like and snooped around and found lots of scandalous dirt on her, as well as doing what she called a “panty raid.” What a troublemaker! Hah! But yeah, this week has been like that! Busy busy busy, but with so very much awesome comfort and company from amazing friends!
Sunday, all the huge windows and inside doors and the railings for the balconies and stuff were flown in by a gnomish transporting company that brought them all in on flying machines. Shen and Marzai helped us get them in Tuesday morning (Celeste and I were in Darkshire from Sunday evening to Monday evening), with the big one on the back of the house that overlooks the ocean being put into place with the help of the flying gnomes. When the gnomes left, we got all the other windows put in. The second-floor ones were easy enough, with that wrap-around outer balcony and twin decks and stuff. A sliding glass door for both bedrooms and one more for my office also went in. We finished up mid-Tuesday. Then the railings on the inner and outer balconies were started Tuesday after lunch, and we got them all finished up early yesterday evening before I went to Stormwind for Deathrolls!
And, with that… CONSTRUCTION ON THE HOUSE IS FINALLY FINISHED! YAY! All the trim work and other finish work is also already done. The house looks amazing! And Celeste and I were able to unpack any time Shen and Marzai weren’t helping us build railings or put windows in, so there are no more boxes stacked all over the house either! YAY! Everything is now finally right where we want it, unpacked and ready to use. The plumbing, icebox, stove, ceiling lanterns, candles, everything is in place and ready to turn on and off or use as needed as well. I am considering looking for some sort of never-melting ice to use in the icebox for keeping food cold or frozen for storage, so I don’t have to keep refreshing my frost spells on it once in a while. I’ll have to research into such things!
Last night, before Deathrolls, Celeste and I had a big dinner to celebrate, and we cooked for Shen and Marzai for all their help, too! It was a Pandaren seafood dinner, with jumbo mantis shrimp and stir-fried veggies and a sort of Pandaren noodle dish that Celeste picked up the first time she was here. Add in some sort of knock-your-socks-off Pandaren brew from the Stormstout Brewery that we picked up just for this occasion, and it was an amazing dinner! Even Shen and Marzai got full! Then we hung out on the back balcony, overlooking the ocean, drinking a bit more and relaxing and digesting a bit before Shen and Marzai finally had to leave. Celeste really likes that balcony. It faces an ocean on the opposite side of Pandaria from the Eastern Kingdoms, looking about as far away from that place as one can, with an entire continent and then another ocean in between her and it. She doesn’t talk about it, but I get the feeling that is (understandably) a big thing for her. Besides, after a dinner that big, and so much Pandaren brew, she was ready for some quiet time anyway, and went to bed after Shen and Marzai left, and I was about to head to Deathrolls. She’s so happy, though. The celebratory dinner had her as animated as ever, and she told some of her (and my!) favorite stories of funny things she’d done as a kid, or misadventures with me. It was a great celebration all around!
I spent the weekend evenings with Nah the one evening, and then Maya and Cari a bit, just kind of hanging out. That was good! And Narcoss was even there one night with a birthday present of his own, as he’d been out of town when I had my partied. Candied brightbark! Apparently tree bark is edible, and really good when you candy it? It was weird, but tasty! I like it!
Then Sunday, Celeste came to me with a bag packed for the two of us to stay at my house in Darkshire so that I could spent some birthday time with my father and Madame Eva and all my other friends in Darkshire! Celeste seemed anxious the whole time, which I sort of expected, being that close to some of those she never wanted to see again. But she gave her best effort to have fun, which she still seemed to, on edge or not, so I followed her lead. Father, observant as he was of not only Celeste's low-key tensions, but also of his daughter's watchful, low-key concerned gaze and extra doting on Celeste, had taken extra, though subtle, care to see to Celeste's comforts and entertainment, including an elaborate feast of steak and salmon and fresh vegetables with Dwarven ale and mead. When she cheered up a bit near the moment of our departure from Darkshire the next day, Monday, he seemed to understand, remembering fully the recounting of events from things I told him, and brought Celeste a parting gift: an engineering/fishing multi-tool with the seal of his own house on it. The multi-tool featured fold-out blades, both serrated and not, pliers for fishhook removal and other things, a corkscrew, and a few different sorts of screwdrivers. The seal on either side of the handle is a raven, but both sides also feature a symbolic of addition to the family for Celeste; a nightfin fish (which she used to fish for when she’d visit me as I work) spaced equidistant from the ends as the raven, both being a couple inches from each other and from the ends. It was a very touching moment between the two, and it made me so happy to see! She was really looking a lot better after that!
Then we had a portal home from Celeste, while my father and a hooded Dwarf I hadn’t seen before were coming along as though about to follow us through the portal or something. But when we got to the other side, it was just Celeste and Cloud Dancer, her Cloud Serpent dragon mount! Celeste had her previously-teased birthday plans set in motion! All over the saddle were what seemed like all the notes I’d ever written to Celeste, all etched into the leather, and there was a modification for me to sit on it with her, sidesaddle as usual, and she had me hop on and ride with her! It was nice, sitting there flying with Celeste on that saddle that she’d etched her heart and feelings for me into. We flew south from the Shrine of the Seven Stars, and, off in the distance, I could see our house coming. Only this time… it looked different! There were lots of those pretty rice paper lanterns the Pandaren use decoratively, like on the house and the landing pad and stuff. And, also on the landing pad, was a Pandaren hot air balloon! Celeste had me hop into the balloon, and she went around releasing all the ropes holding it down. Then, before it could float away, she Blinked right into the balloon! She steered it down the rock spire from our house, where even more rice paper lanterns lit the path down to Angler’s Wharf. I looked over the edge, taking in the beautiful sight, and Angler’s Wharf had also been all decked out in rice paper balloons! It looked even more beautiful than usual! But I also noticed all the people were gone. I didn’t know if Celeste had reserved the entire stilt village for us, or what. It was weird! Then she landed the balloon and got it tied down again, and led me down to our favorite platform, the one that sits right on the water itself, with little waves splashing on it and sometimes over it. It was oddly quiet, with no sound but the gentle waves splashing against the stilts and docks, the soft flicker of the narrow little torches on little poles helping lanterns light the place, and the soft warbling of various night birds on occasion.
A single table with two chairs was placed in the middle of that platform, not far from Nat Pagle's fishing boat. On it sat a single small paper lantern. Like all the others, it glowed softly, invitingly. Two covered plates were placed at each setting along with an empty wine glass. Celeste pulled out my chair for me, helping me to sit by pushing it in when I moved to take it. She then sat across from me and looked like she was waiting for something. Then she just sort of looked at me in a way that took my attention immediately. She gazed across the paper lantern at me, and there was a look in her eyes that was unfamiliar to me. She seemed a bit nervous, and her hands, hidden in her lap, seemed to be unable to hold still. Before I could ask about it, the door to the nearest wharf house opened and a familiar man in a large wide-brimmed hat came out. Nat Pagle, “Other Nat” as I call him, was (mostly) dressed properly in a clean suit, and even his hat had suffered an attempt at being cleaned. Other Nat carried an opened bottle of wine and stopped next to me. "Wine for the lady," he said, doing his best to appear dignified though it came out a bit comical and made me giggle. Other Nat poured some wine into my glass then leaned down to kiss my cheek. That made me blush! Then he whispered, "Happy birthday dear," to her and raised the cover over my plate. the lemony fresh scent of perfectly buttered and seasoned fish drifted up. The fish had been cut into one-inch strips and piled one on top of another. Next to it was a salad of fresh vegetables and various seafoods. It was, by far, one of the more visually attractive plates I have ever seen! Other Nat poured some wine for Celeste too, and then bowed and retreated back to where he had been hiding, leaving Celeste and I alone, and Celeste was like, "I hope you like it. It took me a while to get that recipe right and then teach Other Nat to make it for us." Celeste grinned at where our friend had gone then smiled at me. "It's fish, again. I know but... it's something that united us and it pleased Other Nat to no end that he could catch something and cook it for you." She’d taught Other Nat to cook this dish for us! I couldn’t believe it! He’d done such an amazing job cooking it, and she’d done such an amazing job teaching him!
Celeste kept great conversation going through dinner, with funny stories about teaching Other Nat to cook, and telling me fascinating things about the different inventions and gadgets she’s cobbling together in the workshop, and was still talking when we finished, though she looked a number of times at the door Other Nat had gone through as though waiting for something. Eventually, he did come back out, and he told Celeste, “They’re ready.” I had no idea what he meant, but it seemed to be what Celeste was waiting for. Then Other Nat took off his prized fishing hat, near and dear to him, and left it with us on the table before untying his little fishing boat and paddling quickly off to Turtle Beach. I was really surprised he left us his hat! Then Celeste took it in one hand and my hand in her other, and conjured that iceberg we’ve fished from who knows how many times. Another familiar sight that I love so much! We stepped on, and started floating across Turtle Bay, Other Nat already having reached the shore and disappeared into the jungle. At that hour, even!
Just as we stepped off the wharf and onto the iceberg, though, a lantern lit up on shore. Then, a moment later, two more lit up, though they were higher up in the air. As we approached, I recognized the hulking form of dear ol’ Nosebleed standing placidly on the beach. Next to it was Celeste's old friend Suyin. She held a lantern and the other two were hooked to the back of the large saddle on Nosebleed's back. Suyin moved to help me step off the ice, and Celeste hopped off easily. Suyin was like, "You are most welcome," in that slow, relaxed, hospitable tone so typical of Pandaren, as if she hadn't the slightest worry in the world. She bowed deeply and handed me a small pouch that gave off an aromatic scent. Celeste opened a basket tied low against Nosebleed's side. She placed Nat Pagle's hat in it then waited for Nat to inspect the bag of herbs before gently taking it from her and placing it in the basket as well, and she was like, "You'll understand soon," with a wink and a smile, and, "We're expected, let me help you up." Celeste stood next to the saddle, ready to help me climb onto Nosebleed's back. Poor ol’ Nosebleed looked so silly, yet so adorable! Such a big direhorn to be all festooned with ribbons along those deadly horns, and colorful swirls were painted on his scales.
Raising her lantern aloft, Suyin moved away from the beach and towards the jungle. Nosebleed was gently prodded forward by Celeste who rode behind me, one hand on the reins and the other holding on to me tightly. Our small group moved towards one of the many large paths that snake into the jungle, the very one, in fact, we’d taken the very first time we’d gone adventuring in here, during that silly little treasure hunt we had. Nosebleed kept a slow pace, allowing us to enjoy the warm night air, the perfume of night-blooming flowers, and the soulful calls of nocturnal birds and beasts. Up ahead, a lantern sprang to glowing life and, further down the path, another. More lit up as they moved forward, dots of light showing them the path ahead like small islands of solace in the evening gloom. Each lantern was held aloft by one of our Angler friends. So that’s where they’d all gone, and that’s what Other Nat had meant when he said, “They’re ready!” My heart swelled with affection for each of them, these neighbors who eventually became more like family. Each time we passed one of them, we received a smile, and then that person would place a token into the basket on Nosebleed's side. Every time it was some form of token that clearly represented the owner. There were a lot of fishing things, of course, but other odd trinkets like jewelry or a favorite seashell. Each one placed the token with great care into the basket, bowed and then turned to follow Nosebleed at a short distance. Celeste rested her chin on my shoulder and said not a word. I wanted to cry and bounce around excitedly in the saddle and giggle all at once. It was all so, so very nice!
Eventually, we could hear the flowing roar of a waterfall, one of our favorites in the area. The trail there leads to a small lake and the large waterfall that drops down from the plains of the Valley of the Four Winds high above into it. There, Celeste stopped Nosebleed next to a makeshift elevator made mostly from bamboo and ropes and attached to the clifftop above. That wasn’t there before! And then Celeste was like, "We're here." That nervousness in her voice again, though her smile was warm and steady. She hopped off Nosebleed and stood below, ready to help and catch me as she slid off from that great height herself. Nearby, our friends and their lanterns start moving around the lake until they made a glowing circle of light around it. The mood seemed quite cheerful, and many of our friends were clearly eager for what apparently comes next. Celeste lead me to the elevator, and Suyin joined us. Celeste tugged a small rope that makes a bell jingle somewhere up top. A moment later the platform jolted very slightly, but started rising up steadily. Breaking the nighttime chorus of wildlife in the jungle, though, was the excited yips and barks of a familiar and very much loved pup that had been conspicuously absent until now coming from above them. Our little Dordy was up there!
We eventually reached the top, and excitable little Dordy was the first to make an appearance. He was standing at the edge of the cliff, looking down at his two favorite people in the world and barking non-stop at us until we reached high enough that he simply jumped down onto me! That was scary! But, to my surprise, I actually caught him! That was good; I don’t want him to fall off an elevator! Then the lift finally stopped. On top of the cliff were yet more surprises! There were several more lanterns up here, lighting the night so everyone can see each other. Then the near-need for tears hit me again: there, standing side-by-side, were Celeste's Uncle Rugnar, dressed in as clean an outfit as I’ve ever seen him. Like Celeste, even his clean suit had extra pockets for a few gadgets or tools. His beard was neatly trimmed and braided, decorated with ribbons the same color as those Nosebleed had. Next to him, taking me entirely by surprise and looking elegant in his finery, was my father! He was standing tall, looking at me with love and pride. It was so surprising, yet so amazing! Celeste waited a moment for me to take it all in, to say hello, as she knew me well enough to know I’d need to do. She moved to stand near the edge of the cliff, not far from the waterfall, and waited silently. Dordy squirmed in my arms. He never likes to be stuck in one place for any long length of time! Suyin joined Celeste, and it was clear that I was to join them once I was ready. Once I’d gotten in a good, long hug for Father and Uncle Rugnar, I did. As I did, Celeste took hold of both my hands and turned to face Suyin, who smiled at us both, and began to tell a story.
"A time, long ago, in Pandaria, there existed two lovers," Suyin began, speaking softly even for her. "Such greatness was their love that they were admired by most many," Suyin continued, in her peculiar accent. "They knew but joy and could not be made apart for any reason. So they came to the attention of a wicked Sha. The Sha of Jealousy. Dwelt it did in the hearts of those who had not found love of such greatness. There it festered, and strong it grew. So the Sha of Jealousy was able to curse the lovers. Separated they would be forever. Unable to see each other again, gone their love! Only by leaping to the very stars would they escape the curse! The Sha, cunning it was. Hopeless and impossible did it make the cursing." Celeste gazed at me and squeezed her hands. She had that nervous smile again, though there she was, squeezing my hands reassuringly, knowing I’d know the reference to our lives the story held, and showing me how she was still there even so. Suyin continued: "The lovers, using their own ways, sought to escape the curse. To free of its bonds. Always the Sha of Jealousy watched and they were stopped! Friends, their love had and so friends they knew to get aid of. Each of them, a token then gave. Something dear to them, important. Freely given to show that Jealousy did not hold their hearts.” I felt my eyes tearing up at that part, remembering how all our friends had put something into the basket as we came down the path. What a sweet set-up this all was! I’ve never even HEARD of such an amazingly romantic plan! I listened more, as Suyin was still telling the story of the lovers’ friends giving gifts to them freely to help them. “…Freely given to show that Jealousy could not feed from them. Better to lose something precious than to see that strong love blown away by Jealousy. However, though good it surely did, the curse remained. How could one but bring stars down to be among them? Such was not a feat simple mortals could do. Stars, were the domain of the Celestial Spirits. To Chi-Ji, the Red Crane they spoke and Niuzao, the Black Ox in his mountain domain. Xuen, the White Tiger surrounded by ice and Yu'lon, the wise Jade Serpent. Jealousy, once starved, has no power, the August Celestials have spoken to the lovers. The love was strong, only a small effort would break the curse."
"The lovers were perplexed by this. How could bringing stars down be a small effort? Simple, it turned out to be. Their friends each lit a lantern and floating they made them upon still waters. Come, come see." Suyin bowed and gestured to the edge of the cliff. Below them, all our Angler’s Wharf friends had placed their lanterns on small rafts, and each was pushed over the water until they stopped and gently bobbed in place on the little lake’s surface. The lanterns transformed the dark waters of the lake into a blanket of black lit by pinpoints of light. A night sky, just below us, and entirely within reach! I couldn’t believe what I was seeing! What an amazing, awe-inspiring, deeply romantic plan! An incredibly romantic story coming to life right before my eyes! Celeste is the BEST!
Celeste wrapped her arms around my waist as we peered down, then gently turned me so that we faced each other. "Mother and Father were never exactly married. Not by any traditional terms," Celeste said. "Mother used an ancient ritual to very briefly merge both of their souls together. For an instant, they knew the other's heart and mind perfectly. Had they not been thoroughly in love, that union would have destroyed them. Their bond was so strong, so pure, they came out loving each other even more. I'm no druid, Natasha. I wish I could try, but that's beyond me." She looked to her right, to the cliff's edge and the lake below, alight with our friends’ stars. "There are other ways to show how much I trust you, how much I love you. Like the lovers in Suyin's legend, I'm ready to take that leap of faith. To jump into the very stars our friends created. It's symbolic, but no less powerful, I hope. First though, there's a few last gifts to accept..." She turned to face Father and Rugnar. Father spoke first. "I give my daughter, as precious to me as nothing else can be, freely,” he said, his voice strong and clear. Rugnar was next. "Aye I give the lass that be more family than anythin' I ever had. A fine young woman yer mother made ye into, and right proud I am." Rugnar's gravelly voice was tinged by a slight tremor and the old dwarf raised a finger to his eye, muttering something about dust. Then as if realizing it was his cue, Dordy moved closer and dropped his favorite throwing wrench at the feet of Nat and Celeste, looking up at them expectantly. He probably was hoping to get it thrown back but it was cute, nonetheless, and, at that last gift, I couldn’t hold the tears back any longer. Dordy was so adorable, and, though I never saw it coming, my father had just given me away to Celeste, and Rugnar had just given away Celeste to me! OHMIGOSH!!!!! And then Celeste was like, "So, what do you say?" and turned back to me, looking nervous again. "Would you, Natasha Ebonlocke, take that leap of faith with me? Show the world that our love for each other can conquer any trials? Can withstand anything?"
I lost it then. My mouth disengaged and I babbled like a doofus for a while. I just sort of launched into the trials we’d faced already, of being so surprised when Celeste had declared feelings for me for the first time ever, that day in Boralus at the open-air tavern in Upton Borough, eating lunch at that table for two while we made the candleflames dance in the air and turn colors for us, not knowing what to say back, being reluctant to pursue romance again after a bad abandonment in my past in a previous relationship that had gotten serious. A couple weeks later, when she’d come to try on several new outfits at my house in Darkshire, and we’d had another trial in which she thought I’d never like her and had burst into tears, and how I’d realized then that I never wanted to lose her, which made me realize I DID have those feelings for her. The trial of not being able to repeat back to her that I loved her, the first time she did for me, solved one Winter Veil morning during a gift exchange among friends when words and gifts and speech of deeds brought me to the realization that I did, after having given her a PAIR of earrings, instead of just one. The trial of forced separation by the first literal manifestation of the Sha of Jealousy, in her brother. Other trials from literal manifestations of the Sha of Jealousy. At one point I was like, "Celeste, there is no one, no group, no Sha, no jealousy, no malice, no hatred, no petty bully that can stand against our love. And, unlike previous instances, there is no hesitance in my heart. I know fully by now that this is right. That this is not a scary thing. I know fully what the right answer is this time, and I know that I can reply and fully mean it!”
I grasped Celeste's hands in mine tightly, as if to attempt to help my love surge out of me toward Celeste by means of physical contact. I stifled more tears, straightening up and standing tall and proud, like my father. With him looking on, as well as Rugnar, Suyin, and, still at our feet, sitting as he looked up at us, but with molten tail wagging, Dordy, our little love, I answered Celeste's question at last.
"Yes, Celeste, Catch of my Life and Sun of my World," I answers, nodding a bit and smiling through my tears. "I will. I will take that leap of faith with you. I will continue to show the world that our love can conquer any trial and withstand anything that would try and rise against it. I want to leap into the stars with you, and remain there, with you, always."
I squeezed Celeste's hands a bit more tightly at that, smiling at her and gazing into her eyes, feeling as warm inside as I did outside, there on the edge of the plateau on the Valley of the Four Winds with a molten pup at my feet and warm Pandaren night air blowing gently through my hair. I awaited Celeste's response with a measure of calm that surprised me, as excited and gushy as I felt as I looked into my soulmate's eyes, our hearts entwined more than ever.
Celeste’s own eyes were filled with relieved tears as she smiled dazzlingly at mt. She took a moment to nod a silent thanks to Suyin, Rugnar, and my father, a gesture I repeated sincerely myself. Then, without any more warning, she gripped my hand tightly and jumped right off the cliff!
I gave an embarrassing squeak when she coiled to spring, startled at the dawning realization that Celeste wanted to make that jump in a literal fashion as well. Fright flashed through my mind before another realization enters her head: it's water below, not solid ground, and, much, MUCH more important than that, I’m with the person I trust with my life more than anyone else in the world! I made the leap with Celeste into the stars literally as well as figuratively, badly wanting that myself as well! I felt a moment of consternation as my dress tangled up in my limbs, but, with a grab at tangled hems with my free hand, I was able to get my feet out to kick to the surface of this water with the perfect temperature, gasping as I breached, laughing in exhilaration as our beloved friends cheered for us! Exhilaration wins out: she'd just leaped into the stars with her love, showing the world that no Sha, nor any other foe, can come close to touching what Celeste and I have together!
Though we both have various ways, both magical and mundane, to slow or redirect our fall, neither of us chose to use them. A short, exhilarating fall later, we had that moment’s immersion into the warm tropical waters below. The pair of us emerged at the same time, laughing and being cheered for by our family and all our Pandaren friends and loved ones. Excited yips warned us of the predictable moment when Dordy jumped off the cliff as well, excited to join us… That was scary for a moment! But, this time, Celeste used her magic to slow his fall. The angle of descent allowed him to clear the small lake completely and one of our friends quickly caught him. Dordy darted around all our friends to play on the shore while Celeste turned to me. “I love you, so much,” Celeste said, brushing strands of wet hair from her face. She tried to move closer to kiss me, but it ended up awkward, as they were both treading water. That gave me a giggle! But then, ever the quick-thinker, Celeste formed ice under us again, and soon they were sitting on a bobbing iceberg once more. “Let’s try this again,” she giggled, and leaned in for another attempt at a proper kiss.
"I love you, Celeste," I was finally able to answer back. "More than my own life." I leaned forward into the kiss, their cheering friends fading out for just a moment. Only Celeste, the iceberg, and the stars bobbing around the warm lake existed, and quickly even all of those but Celeste faded out as well as our lips meet, a long, passionate, loving kiss that says more than an hour-long verbal proclamation of love ever could. I poured her heart and soul into that kiss, conveying all that love as purely and wholly as I could in that most perfect of moments.
Though I blush hard to write such things, the moment was easily one of my favorite moments in my entire life. The entire night had been so ingeniously planned, a deeply romantic story brought to life before, during, and after its telling my Celeste’s ingenuity and the care of our family and so many of our friends. We eventually made it back to shore, and we made a party of it, with Father, Rugnar, and Suyin making their way down the elevator to join us. Everyone having already eaten, someone brought the rest of the Stormstout Brew, and we spent the rest of the evening and late into the night there on that lantern-lit lake of stars, everyone having a good time on their rafts while Celeste and I bobbed along on our iceberg. There were toasts to us and our health and our future and our relationship all over the place, by my father and Rugnar and Suyin and Shen and Marzai and Other Nat and all the rest. I remember thinking that Celeste had basically just proposed to me and then married me, all in one mega-romantic night. I don’t know if it’s one or the other or both or neither… Like… Is she my… Wife now? Yet, does it matter? Like, do we even need such labels? It’s enough that Celeste is my soulmate, which makes me supremely happy! Then I remember Celeste throwing herself at me for another hug as Dordy jumped into our laps, having made a trail of steam in the lake as he swam out to us. That was a great moment too! Then, not wanting to have taken everyone’s favorite little treasures from them, Celeste and I had another little ceremony in which we gave them all back, so that our friends would have them if our time of need from a Sha was genuine, and with our own proclamations that we were there for our friends and their relationships in the same way. More drinking and toasting and floating on the lake among our little stars was had, until, by twos and threes and fours, all our Angler’s Wharf friends returned home, as we were getting into the wee hours of the morning. Father and Rugnar spent the night in our brand new home, with Rugnar wanting to sleep in the workshop/hangar basement, and father having a sleep in the guest bedroom. Father having to be back at work in the morning (a mayor’s duties never end!), I woke early to give him a portal to Stormwind, and he was able to catch a gryphon flight from there. I returned to bed with Celeste after, reliving the perfect night in my head with an unending smile as I drifted back off to sleep. It was the most perfect night I’ve ever experienced, and I’ll never, ever forget it!
Nat paused for a long moment, placing her quill in her inkwell and reliving the night once more. Cloud Dancer’s saddle, with all her notes to Celeste etched into it. The ride home. The Pandaren rice paper lantern-lit house. The hot air balloon ride down the lantern-lit path down to lantern-lit, empty, quiet, peaceful Angler’s Wharf for a dinner Celeste had taught Other Nat to make, there on her favorite dock in the world. The ride across to shore, her confused but happy and excited feelings as they went along the path on poor ol’ decorated Nosebleed, as their friends put their tokens of love into the basket. The lake, all the lanterns, the ride up the elevator. The surprise family visitors that explained why Nat had seen her father seeming to come behind them to the portal from Darkshire to the Shrine of the Seven Stars with a hooded Dwarf in tow. The moment of realization during Suyin’s story that Celeste and their family and all their Pandaren friends were actually bringing the story to life all around her. The ingenuity and especially the incredibly loving and romantic idea of it all. Tears squeezed out again as she relived Celeste’s proposal of leaping into the stars with her.
Suddenly, Celeste’s maniacal cackle startled her from her reverie, bursting forth from the living room, where she was telling Dordy he looked ridiculous. Nat, remembering with a grin how Celeste had called Dordy to her earlier, rose to go see what was going on. Dordy was sitting Celeste’s lap, his aviator goggles on, with an arrangement of sticks tucked into it to make him look very much like Nosebleed. Only now, there were extra lengths of the purple ribbon Maya and Cari had given Nat for her birthday draped from Dordy’s “horns,” and more curled around his body in swirls, making him look much like Nosebleed had during that romantic night, though he looked considerably more ridiculous. Dordy made it look even worse as he darted around on the couch, his stick-horns flailing around absurdly in his aviator goggle strap. Nat had herself a good laugh at that with Celeste. She walked over behind the couch next, leaning over it to wrap up Celeste from behind in a great big hug while Dordy took advantage of Nat’s lowered face to give it several licks (and a few pokes from his wooden direhorns). Nat laughed, fending Dordy off, then giving Celeste a quick peck on top of her strawberry blonde head before returning to her office, picking up her ravenfeather quill and beginning to write once more.
It’s been a roller coaster week, too, though, albeit not with terrible lows: Tuesday was the return to the Brinebreaker investigation, and it didn’t turn out to be nearly as sad this time. We were all nervous, though, and I was scared, but we were determined to see things through. After all that’s been done not just to us over there, but the poor and downtrodden of Dampwick Ward and Hook Point as well, we wanted to see that Marcus Brinebreaker is stopped for good! So, we returned to Boralus. It was me, my bestie Nah, Maya, and Cari. Cletcher and Calleigh weren’t able to make it out this week, as they’re like, neck-deep in Kul Tiran goings-on themselves, as they’re from that country.
Anyway, as we were fresh out of leads following poor Joan’s passing, we went back to the last one I could remember… That kid Rob, with his sandy-colored hair and blue eyes that look so familiar. We didn’t find him in the place we found him last time, though we did find some other kids that know him. This kid Ethan and several of his friends told us we could find him hiding with his pickpocketing friends Billy and Bernadette, those siblings we found himself with the first time, making sure they have enough to give to the Brinebreakers and still be able to get a meal themselves. His hiding spots, Ethan said, are usually in bushes and tall grass and other brush, right outside establishments that serve food. After giving the kids what we promised them in exchange for help – food and gold and our promise that we’d free Rob and his friends of their practical enslavement to the Brinebreakers so that they could come back and play with them again – we made a couple of rounds around Dampwick Ward. We eventually came across Dampwick Tavern, a tavern that’s falling apart, but also that has a bunch of brush out next to its ramp. Cari heard children speaking in the brush, and Maya, sniffing around in her worgen form, caught their scent in there as well, and we went to talk to them.
It turned out that they recognized me from before, but were nervous about the three newcomers. However, a heavy bribe of food and coin later, and they warmed right up to us! Bernadette was even all wrapped around Maya’s leg! She has a bad habit she’ll have to break, thumb-sucking, if she doesn’t want to mess up how her teeth grow in. She also has this weird manner of communication involving that bad habit rather than speaking, which Rob and Billy seem to understand. Ethan, the kid from earlier, had been quite the potty mouth, and Rob and Billy revealed that it was somehow the unspeaking Bernadette who had taught him all those words. Anyway, they gave us leads to follow, alright! It turns out that the two underbosses we’ve taken down are being held perpetually in the Boralus stockade, avoiding any worse sentencing by, ironically enough, avoiding sharing the information they had concerning the Brinebreaker gang. As long as the Kul Tiran authorities want that information, they’ll be there in those cells. I’m thinking that maybe we can question them ourselves and see if they’ll share something that’ll break the case open on Marcus Brinebreaker. We’ll have to hurry to convince them of this, before the Kul Tirans offer them a deal of freedom and immunity from prosecution in exchange for Brinebreaker information!
Another lead is the Collector. Apparently, a massive Brinebreaker bruiser come around and collects from all the pickpocket orphans early every morning, demanding the pickings from the day before. If one of the prisoners, or another lead Rob gave us, can give us his location in the evenings, we can get him and have another prisoner to pry information from!
Lastly is another underboss that seems to be high up the pecking order, as he’s got enough money to dress up fancy and attend Lincoln J. Lemptheby’s auctions on the nicer side of Hook Point, by the water. The man was described by Bernadette, through Rob’s translations (though he said he wouldn’t repeat some of the language Bern was using), as being a very skinny man with a small black ponytail. We thanked them, gave them more food and gold, and went to the auction while Maya went to scout out the prison. We did find a man fitting the description of the underboss there at the auction. He bought a painting, and then drove up the price of the next item, an archaeologist’s map leading to ancient ruins, all the way to the buyout price by topping bids by a single copper penny at a time. Once the panicking Boralus citizen gave up and shouted out that he’d pay the full buyout price, the skinny man didn’t even seem upset that he’d lost the bid. Indeed, he seemed pretty pleased with himself. Was it just petty mischief to make the man overpay, or was he in league with Lemptheby to drive up bids? And is he the underboss? We plan to follow him next week if he’s there again! As it is, we saw him leave the auction and go to the nearby food court, and, if that’s a habitual route to take out of there, then following him next time should be pretty easy! We’re pretty eager to get back there next week and give it a shot!
Before that return to Boralus, as well as yesterday before Deathrolls, as I said, was finishing the house and unpacking everything. With that done, Celeste went down to her workshop to have fun with her engineering, while I went to Stormwind for game night! It was great fun! It’s the second-to-last game of the Summer Picnic Theme Deathrolls before the great big ending event next week, which I have a special surprise in wait for! All people know is, bring a swimsuit! Hehehe… Anyway, last night was a blast! We went to this cliff in Stranglethorn Vale with a huge rock jutting out over a lagoon. It overlooks the lagoon, tons of waterfalls, the beach, and the ocean! It’s beautiful there! It was me, bestie Nah, Cari, Maya, Zarshal, and Rio, and boy, did we have a blast! There were a lot more spicy Truths revealed (which Rio seems to be really good at coming up with questions for!), and I Dared Cari to open her Voyager communicator to the full broadcast channel to everyone, and, without warning or context, just say into it, “WHISTLE! ODDMENT! TWANG! PEACEBLOOM! HUKKA-HUKKA-BLAMMO!” She did, and she, Maya, and Rio all laughed a moment later, as they’re all in the Voyagers together – no one had known what to say back to that, and one had even switched her communicator right off! HAH! The cliffdiving bug seems to still be biting, too, as pretty much everyone got Dared to jump off the cliff and into the lagoon more than once. That was great fun! Zarshal even had one Dare to cliffdive with Maya on his back, as they both had rolled ones that round! Before they did, though, I, being the one to have gotten soaking wet first, was Dared a few times to switch places with people, so the dry people would have to sit in my puddle on the rock. That was funny, too, but the BIGGEST thing I ended up doing that night was when Maya got Dared to go into her bear form by Cari, pull the nearby palm tree all the way down, and catapult me into the ocean with it! I was excited after all the cliffdiving over the last couple weeks – especially after that leap into the stars with Celeeste! – and got in eagerly, but, once I did, with the prospect of being absolutely LAUNCHED sky-high now in front of me, it got scary quick! Maya let the tree go in the next instant, and my heart launched into my throat even as I launched seemingly into the clouds. I ended up way past the lagoon, way past the beach, and way past the shallow part of the seashore. That was going to be a LONG swim back! But then Maya was there in her own form, and I was able to climb on and fly back! That saved Onyx having to come get me, though he wouldn’t have minded. He never does! He’s a great friend to have! Oh, and the opening Dare of the night was Rio to me. She Dared me to make a face and hold it for the entire round, and I did. I puffed out my cheeks as far as I could, crossed my eyes, and pulled my ears out so far that I had them out through my hair! Then the next round started, and the rolling didn’t even make it halfway around the circle before Cari rolled a one, which of course made me bust out laughing at her. It was awful, I soon realized, because, though I was laughing too hard to keep my cheeks puffed out like I was supposed to, I was still cackling at Cari HARD with my eyes crossed and my ears pulled out. I looked and sounded like a PSYCHO! I couldn’t talk very well like that either, which got me a lot of confused looks. It was great fun! Nah and I had a Dare in which we had to act out a scene in which Nah was supposed to read to me from a Steamy Romance Novel (they love trying to make me blush!), but it sort of evolved into Nah and I being a heroic pair of murloc-slayer friends! There was a lot more fun had, and the game went clear to midnight almost! It was so so so good!
Then, last night, I got home from Deathrolls, and, for the first time ever, Celeste and I finally slept in a fully-completed, fully-unpacked house! The work is finally OVER! YAY! Now all that is left is to relax and enjoy our lives together, taking life slowly and savoring each moment, just as our Pandaren friends advise. Life is going to be GREAT with Celeste down here! We’ll just live out each slow day together, relaxing and enjoying life, fishing, swimming, playing with Dordy, riding Nosebleed and Onyx and Cloud Dancer, visiting Suyin and Angler’s Wharf and Halfhill friends, hiking, adventuring. Life will be slow and leisurely and perfect, and no longer full of the strife that used to accompany it. It will be Pandaren life at its finest, and it will be with CELESTE!
Nat sighed happily at that thought as she looked out the window and down at Turtle Beach, where Cloud Dancer was curled up into a spiral and sunning himself in the sand. A few elder seadragon turtles were grazing on the beach along the edge of the jungle. The waves were slowly lapping up with tiny splashes along that shore so far below. Nat smiled as she tapped the excess ink off of her quill and into her inkwell. She capped the pot of purple ink and replaced her ravenfeather quill in its case. These items went not back into pack, but rather, finally, back into her fully set-up writing desk in her fully unpacked office! Happy at the thought, she stood up and looked around. A trio of identical bookshelves lined the wall on the left. One more flanked the window on either side of it. Another trio lined the wall directly behind her. The sliding glass door in the east wall, to her right, was now finally cast in shadow as the sun had risen higher from the horizon. The beach extended to the horizon in that direction, the jungle of the Krasarang Wilds following alongside it. The woven bamboo mat floor felt smooth and soft under her toes, and the hardwood ceiling above gave her a faint feeling of her hardwood home in Darkshire. Sighing happily again, she went to her diary, closing it now that the ink on the pages was dry and returning it not to her pack, but, just as she’d been finally able to return her quill case and inkwell to her desk drawer as she always had back when she used to write in her Darkshire home, so now did she return her diary to the bookshelf left of her writing desk. It’s the little things in life!
She beamed happily as she exited her office to look for Celeste. She heard her voice and Dordy’s yip-yipping upstairs. Celeste, having been waiting for Nat, was ready to engage in another first… the first-ever game of fetch with Dordy, now free of his Decorated Nosebleed costume, in a yard that was no longer strewn with construction materials and more furniture and boxes to move! Nat grinned happily, moving to change into a pair of her somewhat seldom-used black pants instead of her light sundress, as well as her white blouse she kept unbuttoned and tied up at the bottom instead when the weather was warm. Heading outside with her loves, she laughed with glee as Celeste gave Dordy’s favorite toy – Celeste’s oldest, most worn-out wrench – a toss across the yard and clear down to the landing pad. Dordy shot off down the front slope of the rock spire as the wrench clattered noisily along the landing pad. The invisible arcane barriers still up around the edge of the spire, they had no need to worry about Dordy or even the wrench falling off the peak of the spire. A moment later, Dordy was back with the wrench, dropping it at Nat’s feet for her to have a turn. Minutes later, the game was Keep Away, with Dordy darting excitedly between Celeste and Nat, who sometimes let it drop for Dordy, and sometimes kept him running back and forth. Dordy loved every second of it, and so did Nat, and, clearly, so did the laughing, radiant Celeste. Nat would love every second of spending forever here in Paradise with her soulmate, too.
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Post by Natasha Ebonlocke on Sept 16, 2021 16:16:56 GMT
September the Sixteenth The sun was lightening the eastern sky when Nat, cradling a steaming mug of coffee in both hands, entered her office in her home atop the tallest rock spire in Pandaria. It was mostly dark still, with the stars still visible clear to the horizon, but those would start disappearing soon. She crossed to the sliding glass door that looked out at that horizon, quietly sliding it open and stepping outside. Dordy scooted out behind her, immediately zipping around the short grass and marking all his favorite spots. Nat smiled softly at her beloved molten corgi she shared with Celeste, who had awakened before her and had already been working in her workshop for a while when Nat had went down to visit and hang out with her for a while. She smiled as she thought of the early morning with her love again and padded across the patio, still just in her sleepwear for now, stepping out onto the grass with her bare feet. Taking a careful, dainty sip of hot coffee, she looked out over the blackness of the nighttime jungle that surrounded Turtle Beach, then eastward at that lightening horizon, enjoying the feel of the last vestiges of night air blowing across any exposed skin and through her hair. She stood there a long moment, just enjoying the silence of the moment, hearing only the waves far below, the wind in the grass, and the occasional call of distant jungle night life.
Once Dordy finished his business up outside, he returned to Nat, sniffing around her feet patiently as he waited to go back inside. After another short moment, they did, with Nat taking one last happy look around at her amazing new home before turning back to step onto the patio, cross to the sliding glass door, and reenter her office. A quick visit to the kitchen later, and Dordy was enjoying his breakfast, though, as Nat had found a breakfast waiting for her on the table after waking, it was likely Dordy’s second, as Celeste had already fed him both his food and some of her own. Nat returned to her office, placing her steaming mug on the desk and moving left with a soft smile to the bookcase that held her diary. Pulling it off the shelf instead of out of her pack was still such a nice change, much as she had enjoyed the extended-stay camping trip on Turtle Beach while she and Celeste had build their dream home together. Another couple of things not coming from her pack were her ravenfeather quill case and her inkwell of purple ink, drawn from a desk drawer on the right side of her writing desk. She opened these up, noting that she’d have to pick up more ink when she went in to Stormwind today. Her smile returned; she could hear the whanging and clanging of tools from the workshop downstairs, as well as Celeste half-humming, half-singing as she worked. Smiling still, she dipped her ravenfeather quill into it for some purple ink, then, just as she was about to write, Dordy came stampeding back into the office, squirming past Nat’s writing chair to squeeze under the desk and curl up into a ball to sleep off his full belly. Nat giggled a bit, smiling, welcoming the warmth that, even with the fire protection spells placed upon the molten pupper, still felt great on her feet this early on a September morning. Even more happily now, Nat took one more dainty sip of coffee, and began to write.
Dear diary,
It’s been such a good week! No more roller coasters! I’ve been seeing friends coming back that I haven’t seen in a while, the Brinebreaker investigation expedition this week, for once, wasn’t bittersweet, and the final Summer Picnic Themed Deathrolls game last night was a huge blowout! No sads this week!
Work was pretty busy, but not swamped, so the time went by really fast every day. Then, in the evenings, I got to hang out with people in Stormwind. I’ve been eating dinner sometimes at the edge of the cliff overlooking the ocean in Lion’s Rest to unwind before bed, and my bestie Nah joins me sometimes, chatting with me and playing her harp, which is always relaxing, especially as we watch the sun set!
Another thing that happened this weekend is that now, with the house built and the unpacking done, Celeste has been able to do a lot more fishing and a lot more engineering! The big project in the workshop now is that goblin shredder. No longer does it have that big ghastly goblin grin on the front of it! All things goblin, be it appearance or unnecessary risk of sudden explosion, have been completely removed. She stripped all that down, exposing a lot of the chassis. She took the inspiration from that utility tool Father gave her, the pocketknife with all those different retractable tools in it. She has now added like a bazillion different tools to each of the shredder arms, as well as in different compartments around its chassis. Like her new knife, each one can extend and retract with the press of a button or the shifting of a lever on her control panel when you need a different one. She keeps getting new ideas to add this or that, as if determined that this thing will be ready for any conceivable situation. This thing has EVERYthing! There’s a drill, hammers in three sizes (sledgehammer, nail hammer, tiny rock hammer), a welding torch, saw blades of different sorts (circular or straight, with blades for metal or wood cutting), an impact driver, the list goes on and on, and I still haven’t seen it all yet, nor has she even finished adding stuff! She kept jet pack for flying and the grabby hands at the end of the main arms, but even those now have fine fingers per hand now, instead of three, and those join together to form a shovel at need, and have wrenches and screwdrivers and stuff that extend from the palms at the press of a button. Then, it has storage compartments for Celeste’s pack, her fishing tackle box, and her toolbox. It’s truly awe-inspiring what this woman does when the ideas start flowing!
Even her name for the shredder has “Celeste” and “Engineer” written all over it: She has christened it the “M.U.T.T.” or Mobile Utility Transport Tool. HA! It’s so great, so engineery, and so Celeste! Not to mention apt. This M.U.T.T really IS a mutt, with so many different parts of different things in it! She is going to call it Mutt as a name, too! She’s so funny! She hasn’t painted it yet, like she did the Flying Nosebleed, so it’s still just a cockpit on legs with arms and all the compartments for all the different tools in a gunmetal grey, but I bet she’s going to come up with something really awesome for it! She also gave me some other fun news concerning Mutt – she’s taking us on an archaeology trip! YAY! She hopes to use Mutt on the archaeology work. I can’t wait to see her put it through its paces on that trip, and I can’t wait to make that trip with her!
Next she was talking about a concern she has. She’s so sweet and caring and loving! She was worried about storms. I teleport to Stormwind for work on workend mornings, then fly down to Darkshire on Onyx. After work, I teleport to Stormwind for a bit to see friends, then teleport to the Shrine of the Seven Stars in Pandaria, and then fly south from there to return home. Stormwind gets its name from the storms that blow in off the ocean that it sits on, and Pandaria gets sudden tropical storms sometimes. At first, we were talking about figuring out a way to make secure anchor portals back and forth between home and Darkshire that she and I could use but random other people couldn’t, but we weren’t sure how. Then something much simpler occurred to me – I have a home in Darkshire, and a home here in Pandaria. We could simply get an additional hearthstone, as we both have three already (one to the Broken Isles, in Dalaran, one to Pandaria, and one normal one from when we both first set out from home), and set one to our home in Darkshire, and the other to our home here in Pandaria. Problem solved, and no more storms! I’m going to get one more for both of us and attune them today when I go back to Stormwind! In the meantime, I’m curious about how the Mutt’s going to look after she paints it!
Speaking of painting, I got a strong start this week, starting with all day and all evening on Monday, on painting her workshop up! It’s been a lot of fun! All the coral reefs and fish and sea turtles and anemones and stuff she carved to protrude from the rock as she and Rugnar excavated the workshop space into the rock spire under the house is going to take a lot of time, but it’ll be a FUN time! I’ve started at the bottom of the spiral staircase, where it descends from that door just off the dining area in the main part of the house, so that she can see a pretty underwater scene immediately as she starts down the stairs, and I’m expanding from there along the wall to the left. Reaching the bottom of the stairs, you see the huge remote-controlled hangar bay door on the right, which is the south side that faces the ocean, though it’s camouflaged on the outside so that local residents don’t just see a big ugly metal slab in an otherwise pretty rock spire. I’ll paint the inside of that a slightly deeper ocean blue, since there isn’t anything carved into that (and that was is the deeper ocean outside anyway), maybe with some slightly larger fish there. But not too dark with the water, or with huge scary stuff or anything, though I get the feeling that’d just be me thinking it’s a scary image rather than Celeste! I’ll have to remember to ask her. Maybe she’d like that, with some distant sharks and stuff, as she sure didn’t mind fishing up that twelve-foot hammerhead shark last month! For now, I’ve been painting along the left side, painting in all those images she carved. I have light blue water and brightly colored coral reefs about a third of the way along the wall on the west side, where the staircase is, heading north along the wall, towards Turtle Beach and Turtle Bay. I’m thinking of where we built the wall to cover up the big gap made by the excavation efforts (on the north, where it faces Turtle Beach), painting it to look like peering up from underwater at the sandy Turtle Beach and the waves lapping up onto it, but seeing bits of it from between coral reef and other sea life, from down here in the underwater scene. I’ll ask Celeste what’ll make her happiest!
Nat paused in her writing then, thinking of the beach scene. An idea was occurring to her. She smiled, thinking of a new adventure for her and Celeste to take on, maybe after Celeste’s archaeology trip. She put her quill back into her inkwell, placing her right elbow on the desk and staring dreamily out the window her desk was under, idly looking out and over the overlook to Turtle Bay and Turtle Beach, where the sky had lightened as the sun had come up. Looking right, she winced a bit; the sun was now up peeping a bit over the horizon. She rose to shut the blinds, though she stopped to sip at her coffee and watch the majestic sunrise over the jungle, beach, and ocean for a bit while she still could before it got too bright. The idea in her head was growing rapidly. She daydreamed of the adventure for a while, adding in new bits, subtracting some she thought were rather lackluster, all the while watching the glorious sunrise, but seeing her adventure idea in her mind instead. She considered writing about it next, but, as she’d told Celeste nearly a year ago that she could read her diary any time she wanted, if she might be interested in Nat’s silly life outside home. As such, she decided against writing about her adventure idea just yet, not wanting to spoil it. She daydreamed for a good while longer, eventually getting jarred out of it by Dordy, who had emerged from the desk to sniff around at her feet, as though to ask her what she was doing and why she had left him alone under the desk. Grinning at her little guy, she closed the curtain to block out the soon-to-be-too-bright-sunlight and returned with him to the desk, where he returned as well, curling up once more, and dropping back off to sleep. Giving Dordy a smile under her desk, where he’d illuminated the usually shadowy area with his fiery glow, she picked up her quill and returned to writing.
Tuesday, I went to Boralus for the Whitewind Company weekly contract expedition as we continued our investigation into the Brinebreaker gang. Nah and Cletcher weren’t able to make it, as they had work of their own that had tied them down, but Maya and Cari were there with me, and, I must say, the three of us put our heads together to make some fantastic progress with the two leads available to us! One lead was the pair of underboss prisoners in the Boralus stockade on the far side of Hook Point. The other was the underboss Rob said frequented Lemptheby’s auctions. We’re pretty sure we found the right guy when we went to Lemptheby’s auctions last week!
Anyway, this week, we opted to visit the prisoners, as we were worried they might get sent to the gallows or something before we could, if we didn’t do it soon. But, as it turns out, the prisoners were safe from such for the nonce. The prison warden wanted to hold off on all that until they’d gotten all the useful information out of them that they could. But that idea backfired – the prisoners, knowing they were safe as long as they kept themselves potentially useful by still possessing information that the Kul Tiran authorities wanted, kept quiet, thus preventing themselves from any sentencing being carried out. So it was that we reached the first prisoner, the guy who’d taken a sniper shot at us on our first night in, as well as having allegedly killed poor Joan and pinned it on our Company to try and put us off the case. I remembered that he, in an attack of conscience from seeing the noose around my neck as well as to save himself from an even worse end, he said, from whatever the Company might do to him, had fessed up at the gallows, and gotten me free. He was writing something really long when we found him. A letter of confession of other things, perhaps? I haven’t any idea, but he really seemed to want to redeem himself, in his own eyes if he couldn’t redeem himself in anyone else’s. The guy genuinely seemed remorseful!
When we talked to the guy, though, Maya and Cari were trying to intimidate him into talking. But the underboss, not wanting to give up the information that was his shield from a noose, remained tight-lipped. I tried a different tack. I approached more gently, appealing to that softer side of him that had traded places with me as the chief murder suspect in Joan’s death, telling him that he could redeem himself further by sharing information that would stop Marcus Brinebreaker and the rest of his gang from so severely oppressing those poor, innocent people in the Boralus slums, and that I, in return, would not give anything he tells me to the Kul Tiran authorities, but rather, the Company and I would use that information to stop those people ourselves. When I do, I plan to tell them how he’d cooperated, had shown remorse, and had helped to stop the entire Brinebreaker oppression and violence in the slums. That should get his sentencing changed, after his information becomes useless from us acting on it and stopping them ourselves. The sentence would still likely be life behind bars, strict as the Kul Tirans are, but at least he wouldn’t be hanged. The man agreed, and he opened himself up to our questioning.
It took a bit of time, still, to get him to answer properly, but he opened up after a bit. He answered Cari’s question about the Collector, the really huge guy that the orphan Rob had told us goes around Dampwick Ward collecting Brinebreaker cuts from their pickpocketing that he has bullied them into doing, telling us he didn’t know where the Collector lived, but that he does know that he frequents a restaurant in Mariner’s Row called That’s A Moray. He answered my question about how many underbosses there were. He said there were four, and that we already got two of them. The others are the Collector, of course, and that other underboss Rob had told us about, the skinny one with the small black ponytail that frequents Lemptheby’s auctions. He answered Maya’s question about where Marcus Brinebreaker is, though not well. He didn’t know where Marcus Brinebreaker lived, either, but he did know that Marcus frequented parties, so he could likely be found at one somewhere. With our questions for him answered, and no one thinking up any other questions, we left to visit the other prisoner, with my word to him, again, that we wouldn’t share this information with the prison warden or his guards.
The other prisoner… Ohmigosh! He was the complete opposite of the first guy! This was the one that was in charge of extortion and racketeering efforts and stuff for the Brinebreakers that we’d arrested on our first night in, the one that was extorting that open-air tavern in Hook Point, as well as so many of the slums’ citizens. He’s so VIOLENT! The moment he saw us, he recognized us, and was just SLAMMING himself against the bars of his cell, snarling and roaring and trying to rip the bars out to get at us. Nothing we did or said could calm him down! At least… not until Maya had had enough and shifted into her bear form. That got him! He recognized the huge beast that had trampled and mauled him and his cohorts on that boardwalk that night, and immediately stopped roaring and being violent and burst into tears, retreating to the back of his cell. It was actually really pitiful, to see him like that, but I had to stay strong and let Maya be stern with him! As it turns out, he was much less useful, as we’d already gotten our questions answered by the first guy. We did ask him where Marcus Brinebreaker was, but he didn’t know either. He just said that Marcus Brinebreaker never leaves Hook Point. So, I suppose that narrows it down a bit. Now all we gotta do, when we’re looking for him, is to find a huge party going on somewhere in Hook Point!
After that, we decided to set off to That’s A Moray to find the Collector. Cari, thinking of how we might be finding the Collector in a restaurant, had a surprisingly mischievous plan occur to her. Something my bestie Nah might do, if she were there. She wanted to find an apothecary to brew a potion that would make the imbiber have explosive bowel movements… which is SO. GROSS. Yet, I had to admit, it would certainly throw the Collector for a loop, if we were able to get it into his dinner! We did eventually find one, Green’s Alchemy and Potions, right behind the back row of seats at Lemptheby’s Auctions. Cari got the stuff from the proprietor of that shop at the marketplace there along the nicer strip of Hook Point, and the guy laughed, knowing what the ingredients Cari was asking for would do. I gotta remember to get with Lady Whitewind to reimburse Cari for her purchase – one gold, forty-two copper – as it was for a Company project! We went further on down the nicer road skirting the canal side of the Hook Point slums, passing the marketplace and some other nicer little shops as it passed Hook Point and started passing Dampwick Ward, both of which were blocked from view from the nicer side by the buildings that line that side. As we got to the exit from Dampwick Ward to the canals alongside the huge sea wall, we could see why the Collector chose That’s A Moray as a restaurant to frequent: Mariner’s Row is reached by a ferry that comes right to the end of his collecting route, just where the exit of Dampwick Ward is, and the restaurant is right inside the much nicer Mariner’s Row district from the ferry’s dock at the other side of the canal there. A short, pleasant ferry ride later, and we were walking right up to its front door!
When we got inside That’s A Moray, the first thing we noticed was that the paintings in there are all SO CREEPY! They’re just horrifying! Cari and Maya thought they were funny, like the woman holding a pig for a baby, and especially the one that looks just like Mordale, except possessed. I just tried hard not to look at them at all! The second thing I noticed was this drunk woman staggering around the bar, and the third… the biggest, meanest-looking Kul Tiran I’d ever seen, eating a whole mountain of food, in the far right corner. He fit the description. This had to be the Collector! But, we had no proof, so we went ahead with our plan.
Maya shined once again, after the bear form trick with the second prisoner. I found myself wishing Nah was there, as both Cari and I knew we couldn’t slip the guy a potion sneakily enough, but Maya really had a great plan. She opened up her shirt a bit, and started acting drunk, like the other woman in the bar. She walked right up to the guy we believed to be the Collector. He never had eyes for any part of Maya but what she’d opened up a bit, which really made me blush, and, between that and the paintings, I was averting my eyes so much I could only stare at the floor! Anyway, Maya flirted really hard with him, then grabbed his huge tankard to go get him a refill. She got herself one as well, though she just nursed hers. She slipped the potion into the tankard of ale for the guy before bringing it back to him, and the guy downed it all in one! Wanted to show Maya how much of a man he was, I guess, but really, he’d just doomed himself to a night on the can!
Sure enough, forty minutes of embarrassing flirtations between the two later, and the guy was suddenly leaping to his feet with a screech and running to the bathroom. It was occupied, so the guy went screeching right out of the restaurant! I had to go back and pay for Maya’s drink later that night, though I’m guessing the Collector won’t be back to pay for his. Anyway, we tore off after him, and he led us on quite a chase! Thanks to Maya’s birthday gift to me, the Fall Assistance Device, I was able to chase the other two while they chased the Collector. The guy didn’t even wait for the ferry – he just jumped right into the canal! I had to blink across, while Maya went owl and gave Cari a ride across. We chased him right into Dampwick Ward, with him panicking about needing to go so bad that he didn’t even notice us coming along behind him. The guy went into the heart of Dampwick Ward, up the ramp to Dampwick Tavern, around the outside, along a series of overhead boardwalks that went up a couple more floors into the air over the streets, including one scary moment where we had to jump over a huge hole in it, and then finally into a safe house like four floors up that was only accessible from this outside boardwalk. Inside, he went up yet ANOTHER floor, then careened into his bathroom and slammed the door. I won’t even talk about the screeching and ringing, echoing porcelain that was coming from in there nonstop… And there went our leverage, too, preventing him from being able to go until he talked! But, then Cari came up with another idea, right there on the spot. She ransacked his room… and found PROOF! This was the Collector, alright! And we had enough to take to the Kul Tiran guards! It was a ledger of every single orphan he’d bullied into pickpocketing, with Rob Braxton’s name right on top, as well as their assigned areas for pickpocketing, and petty theft, how much they’d stolen, and how much he’d taken from them to give to Marcus Brinebreaker – incriminating Marcus Brinebreaker in the process – as well as what looks like him skimming off quite a bit off the top for himself, which explains how he’s able to frequent nice restaurants like That’s A Moray! Anyway, with this proof in hand, we were able to leave the guy there howling in the bathroom, with his screeches and other nasty noises audible even outside in the streets. We got the list to Kul Tiran authorities, who promptly raided his house, made the arrest, and carted him off to jail. What began as a night of that guy thinking he was going to take Maya home with him went pretty horribly wrong! But, that’s what he gets for bullying orphans into a life of crime!
Next week, our last remaining leads will be to question the Collector and follow the skinny underboss at Lemptheby’s auctions. We’re getting close to Marcus Brinebreaker now! I can FEEL it!
I’m really getting worried about this whole funny language thing, though. Apparently, I’m still speaking the odd bit of what one of our friends in Stormwind, Nyr Stormraven, a Kaldorei guy, says is Shath’Yar, a void language, once in a great while, and I don’t even know I’m doing it! If someone else tries to say something to me in it, I don’t even understand them! It makes no sense! Nyr says I must have a bit of a void touch in me somehow, though I don’t know who or what could or would have done that to me! It’s a big mystery… I just hope it doesn’t grow at some point and start whispering to me and drive me nuts like I hear happens to some people! If it doesn’t go away, which Nyr says a tiny void touch like this might, then I’ll have to go to the Cathedral or something and see about finding a cure! Or maybe Nyr might know something. I’m not sure. But I’ll need to think of something! I don’t want to go crazy, or to hurt people around me!
Nat placed her quill back in her inkwell again, looking out over Turtle Beach from the window her desk was under this time. Shaded by the outside wrap-around balcony along the second floor, she had an easy view of the beach as she contemplated her condition. How could she have picked it up? She didn’t hang out with any void elves. Even Nyr, who had his own void condition, was widely acknowledged to be quite in control of it, and he had no motive to infect her with it besides. So where could she have picked it up at? With no answers coming, no light bulbs going off, she frowned, and picked up her quill again. A moment later, she was smiling again, writing about happier thoughts.
Last night was DEATHROLLS! It being the final night of Summer Picnic Themed Deathrolls, I had a Swimming Deathrolls game! I knew normal-sized dice wouldn’t be too good on Lake Everstill, the lake in Redridge Mountains where Lakeshire is, so I had new dice made. I got some pumice, a sort of volcanic rock that actually floats, shaped to look like my black D20 dice with the big, bold, deep purple numbers engraved into them. They’re about eight or nine inches wide, and weighted to where only the faces of the dice will float upwards, and not the corners. I also had the points and corners rounded off so they won’t be too sharp or anything. I also brought burgers, hot dogs, ale, mead, and a few kinds of tea! Anyway, though Maya was unable to make it due to a sudden emergency, we still had me, my bestie Nah, Cari, Zarshal, an old Draenei friend of mine I hadn’t seen in a long time named Xiraami, or just Xira for short, and a friend of Zarshal’s named Gann, this hilarious Dark Iron Dwarf that isn’t nearly as ragey as lots of them can get. And then, later on, someone else that we hadn’t seen in a while came back… Rylee! YAY!
The Swimming Deathrolls game was lots of fun! Though I did have one hugely embarrassing moment… On one Dare, I had to swim to the bottom of the lake and bring up the first thing I find. I found something chunky and slimy and slippery and brought it up. When I resurfaced, I proclaimed that I'd found a genuine Titan relic, just for the fun of it! Whatever it was, it was super slippery, some sort of cloth absolutely caked in mud and wrapped around something else. Everyone wanted to know what it REALLY was, so I dunked it under the water and started scrubbing the mud off of the cloth with other bits of cloth. The water got muddy as I did, and I couldn't see what it was I was cleaning, but I lifted it up high over my head when I was done, and I was like, “BEHOLD MY TITAN RELIC!” Everyone burst out laughing at me when they saw what it was... Oh gosh… I looked up to see what I had… It was a pair of blue lace panties, wrapped around an empty whiskey jug... When I looked up and saw what it was, my first impulse was to withdraw my hands from it quickly, as though I had just touched a giant slug or something. ...Unfortunately for me, I did that while it was right overhead, and I was looking directly up at it. That meant that the empty whiskey jug fell right down on my forehead, which left me with a huge knot and bruise on my forehead! And then the panties dropped right onto my face, covering them up! It was SO GROSS! Who knows who those even belonged to?! And I was like, “ACK! GROSS! YUCKYPHOOEY!” and flailing to get them off my face, which made everyone crack up harder, and then, when they came off my face, they drifted along the little waves toward Nah. And of COURSE Nah picks them up, smirking at me and thanking me for gifting her free panties! That made things even WORSE, and everyone was laughing so hard!
Then there were the usual spicy, revealing Truths, as well as some more mundane but interesting ones, and lots more funny Dares. I Dared Rylee, after she came along later and didn’t know about my Dare, to go get the rest of the stuff that was down there. When she brought it up, it was a blue lace bra, a pair of men’s underwear, and some sort of gnomish tech about eight inches or so long and an inch and a half or so wide that still somehow worked, even after being in lake water for who knows how long. It hummed really loudly and sort of vibrated a whole bunch when Rylee pushed the button. Rylee sort of smirked and kept it. I guess she likes gnomish tech or something! Then other Dares were like, Rylee painting Nah’s exposed back (everyone being in swimsuits and all) with mud. She painted a pretty good Elune moon symbol there for Nah! Then Nah had to go sit in Zarshal’s lap on a Whisper Dare and baby talk to him like he was a baby while using her hands to manipulate his face into making funny faces. That was good! And Zarshal on a Whisper Dare got everyone REALLY confused by just randomly going to shore, sitting in the mud, making mudpies, and telling a story of how he’d been robbed by a shin-kicking gnome who non-stop blew bubbles with bubblegum. It was so random, everyone was just like, “Huh?!” Ha! There were a few Dares that ended up being people suddenly swimming under other people and tickling them to make them think something in the lake had gotten them. I got Dared to stand on a log sticking out into the lake and talk like a queen addressing her subjects, except it was a lesson on how to massage a frog. It was hard to do that and keep a straight face! Nah and Cari, after both rolling ones in the same round (including Truth or Dare rolls), had a Dare to swim-race to the nearest dock and back, but with a catch: they both had to do so while yelling out the most absurdly random words they could think of! That was GREAT entertainment! There was one point where I went to excuse myself to the food a bit, and, when I came back, Nah and Cari already had Dares. Nah had to dance on the log in her almost-nothing bikini for me while Cari came over and randomly plopped a lily pad onto my head for a crown and proclaim me the Lily Queen! I was so confused, all the more so because I was both laughing at her and blushing at Nah’s sultry dancing on that log. Gosh! Rylee had a Dare once to go on a mad poke-fest. Nah showed off a new druidic form she’d mastered in her druid lessons, the dolphin, which promptly earned her the nickname “Nahlphin” from Rylee. Nah and Zarshal got Dared to pretend to be each other for a while, and they did a surprisingly good job of it, too! Gann had to give wet Dwarf hugs, complete with wet Dwarf beard, to everyone else there over the course of a few days. That was weird! Xira went straight Truths each time as she got used to Deathrolls again for the first time in a year, though I imagine she’ll be back to Dares next week, as she said she’d like to attend these regularly. There were a lot of other funny moments as well, and the food and drinks were really good! Great night all around!
There have been lots of great times in the last week or so. Waking up this morning with that bruise and knot from the whiskey jug falling on my head already gone, replaced with what looked like some sort of Pandaren poultice Celeste had put there. She’s so amazing! Visiting her and hanging out with her this morning when I brought her coffee in the workshop. Having a laugh with her over the game last night. Last week, with Mags, a hair appointment with her and her girlfriend Elsa, which, coincidently enough, also was at Lake Everstill, right on the end of a dock, though we didn’t swim. Mags lives there in Lakeshire on the Grey Estate she and her family owns, so it was a convenient location for us to do the hair appointment. She trimmed everything to an even length, though I mainly kept it the same style and length. Just a touch-up, really, but the haircare products she used on it afterward make it super sleek and shiny and silky-smooth! She’s so good at this! And having your hair brushed and your scalp massaged just feels amazing anyway! The three of us just sort of hung out there on the dock and enjoyed the scenery and some good conversation. Then Mags wouldn’t let me pay for the appointment, calling it part of my birthday present. She and Elsa are such awesome people! And then just other hangouts in general. Life is so pleasant with such amazing, nice friends, and with the perfect soulmate! I can’t wait to see what wonders life will hold for us all next!
Nat smiles broadly at that thought, leaving that to wrap up her entry with as she taps off the excess ink from her quill and replaces it in her quill case. She caps her inkwell, then leans back in her chair, smiling and daydreaming a bit with Dordy warming her feet, her coffee warming her inside, and thoughts of Celeste and all their friends in Stormwind and Pandaria warming her heart. At length, she finishes her coffee, sitting up straight again with her smile still in place. Her ink dry on her diary now, she closes it up, standing to take it to the bookshelf after replacing her quill case and her inkwell back in their place in their desk drawer. Dordy, with Nat up, instantly awakens to trot off after her. Nat returns to the workshop, grabbing Celeste’s mug and taking both mugs to the kitchen for one more coffee refill, then heads back downstairs to hang out with Celeste, helping out a bit however she can (mostly bringing Celeste stuff she needs from the workbench or toolbox), and enjoying pleasant conversation. Nat sighed happily. This was her life now, and life couldn’t get any better than this!
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Post by Natasha Ebonlocke on Sept 23, 2021 15:31:22 GMT
September the Twenty-Third
Life outside, just like life inside, went on, despite whatever happened from one day to the next. The cranes soared through the sky, Nosebleed stumped about through the jungle happily stuffing his face, the breeze blew gently, waves lapped up along the shore of Turtle Beach in their endless march from sea to land. Nothing that happened inside the beautiful two-story house atop the tallest rock spire in Turtle Bay would ever change the ceaseless march of life, and, Nat knew, life goes on inside the house as well, despite the sadness that could strike seemingly without warning.
Nat sat at her writing desk with her diary, quill case, and inkwell open before her, though her thoughtful gaze was cast outside through the window over her desk instead. She sat sipping at coffee, her belly full of a delicious breakfast as she sat and thought about the ups and downs of life, reflecting on the fact that life was not always sunshine and daisies. One could make it mostly be so, however, if one had an optimistic outlook on life, and didn’t give up on life during the hard times. There are sometimes storms that one must weather. Sometimes you get knocked down. But, as the old saying goes, it’s not about whether you get knocked down. It’s about whether you get back up again!
She and Celeste were certainly doing that, despite the upcoming two-year anniversary of a tragedy that Celeste experienced that few people have to. The manner in which she’d lost her mother was something almost no one could relate to. Nat had lost her own mother in her childhood, dragged off into Duskwood by feral worgen, never to be seen again. Yet even that wasn’t quite on the level with the manner in which Celeste had lost her mother. She didn’t wish such a thing on her worst enemy, and it tore at her heart that her favorite person in the world had had to go through that.
Watching a flock of birds soar through the mid-morning sky, Nat sipped a bit more at her coffee, wondering morbidly what went through their minds if Cloud Dancer or Onyx or an eagle or hawk descended upon their number to pick off a meal. Nature was cruel, too, she reflected. Cruel, but beautiful. Nature often had life being ripped savagely away without warning. True, it was instinct rather than twisted minds, but it was no less cruel.
Nat shook that thought off. It was unlike her to think this way. Yet, she knew by now how the world worked, how savage it was. There was no point in pretending this aspect of the world didn’t exist. Still, she decided to dwell on it no further. What was going on with Celeste was something they could weather together, or even apart. Such was their strength, their faith in each other: together or apart, they could still lean on each other in their hearts. Nat sipped a bit more at her coffee, then sighed. She placed the mug on her desk, trading it for the ravenfeather quill that sat perched in her inkwell. Tapping off a bit of excess ink, she stared at her pages for another long moment, lost in thought, but then began to write, her entry sure to continue on a bit more of her morning’s, her week’s, roller coaster of emotion.
Dear diary,
It’s been another up-and-down week, though it’s mostly been up! Things are progressing well in all facets of life, and friends that have been gone for a little while continue to make surprise returns to Stormwind!
The down is that I’m sort of sad for Celeste. She was in her workshop early this week, humming happily away, and I could hear tools whanging and clanging and whizzing and whirring and clicking, as per her usual, but then it all stopped. Shortly after, I could hear Dordy whining in the silence. That was sort of alarming! I went downstairs to the workshop to go and check on her, and she was sitting at her workbench and staring at lots of old drawings that looked like a child had drawn them, scattered all over her workbench. She had brought in several old crates and stuff to unpack, and she found old pictures she’d drawn as a child of her and her twin with her adoptive parents. They made her cry. It was a really mixed-up sort of sad moment, where she was looking at the drawings and sometimes smiling as she remembered a fond old memory, but still really really sad because they’re all gone now, lost forever. The one she had directly in front of her showed her love for them all pretty clearly, with all of them facing up at the viewer and holding hands and smiling. It was so sad! I’m really glad that she had that life for a time, as is she, but how it all ended was just so horrible… Celeste is so strong though. She’s weathered so many storms. I’ll do what I can to help her weather this one too!
Even though that means letting her go for a little bit to be alone…
At first, Celeste said she’s planning to go away for a short time, though there was a quite a change of plans this morning, which I’ll get to in a bit. She’s still going to be gone for the same amount of time, though. Maybe a week? I dunno. She’s going to take the Flying Nosebleed for a while and get through this alone, she said at first, though she also says she’ll feel much better knowing that Dordy and I are here waiting for her when she gets back. And we totally will be! I love being with Celeste, but when we’re apart, we’re still fine. Celeste enjoys her peace and quiet, so she doesn’t mind it much when I’m at work or out adventuring with friends or whatever. We’ll miss each other, but it won’t be terrible; we know we’ll be waiting for each other on the other side. So it’s okay! I just hope she feels better soon. This one will be hard on her, because she found those pictures just as the two-year anniversary of her mother’s passing, and all the tragic events that that entailed, is looming in the coming month. It’s a typhoon of emotion! I will do whatever I can to help, even help her pack and go be alone for a while. Dordy and I will be here to give her a warm welcome home when she returns!
Nat sighed again, wiping a few tears away. Her heart broke for Celeste. She knew Celeste was strong and would get through it just fine, but it still hurt to see Celeste hurt in the meantime. She thought for a bit, considering the things she might do for Celeste before and after Celeste’s trip, then went back to her writing, determined to be strong like Celeste, and keep the smiles on her face that Celeste still managed to. She returned to her writing.
In the meantime, there have been ups as well! More and more friends have been coming back to Stormwind, and some nights are busier than others. I spent the weekend evenings and Monday evening hanging out with them around Stormwind, and even attended a couple of concerts in Lion’s Rest with Lex and Ellie! I met a new friend named Mordecai as well. He’s nice, and he’s friends with Ellie and Lex as well, and, as it turns out, he was there with me on the Broken Shore, the first time I set out to help the Alliance in the field! He fought valiantly, but he was gravely wounded, and I hadn’t seen him against since. It was so good to see him alive and well after all! He really loves oranges though… He had seven in his bag, he said, and he was just eating orange slices the entire time the four of us spoke! Other returning friends, like Rylee last week, are still hanging around, so that’s been good. Starlear and Tinian still hang out from time to time. They’re both the quiet sort, Tinian more so than Starlear, rather than being all rambunctious like most of the rest of us, but they still make the most fascinating conversations! Nyr Stormraven does too! He’s always been around, though conversations with him haven’t been long or in-depth until… Monday afternoon, I think it was? We – as well as Zarshal, who was also there, interested to learn these things too – had a nice long discussion on magic, and how the six schools all interact. It was the most fascinating thing! He drew them all in a circle on a piece of paper, with opposites – or, more accurately, he says, mirrors – all across from each other. It all sounded just like the stuff Aedie taught me when she was teaching me about the schools of magic and how they all relate to each other. In his picture, Nyr had Light, Fel, Death, Shadow, Arcane, and Nature. Light was directly across from Shadow, Fel from Arcane, and Death from Nature, or Life magic. There was a long discussion on why each one is beside the one next to it, and why the interplay and similarities of different schools of magic had them in between the two that each were. It would take eons to write it all down, but maybe I will sometime when I have more time. I found it interesting to see that an archmage, Aedie, and a guy who is something of a rogue that the Kirin Tor write angry letters to, Nyr, both researched this and both came to the same conclusions. Fascinating stuff! I am glad to have found so many different really cool and fun friends!
Also, we’re making great headway on this Brinebreaker case, finally! We – Nah, Cletcher, Maya, Cari, and I – went back Tuesday, to go after the fourth and final underboss! Our plan was to follow the suspected underboss, the skinny guy with the small black ponytail that is allegedly their black market guy, from Lemptheby’s auctions for a while, and see if he does anything that would lead us to proof. When we got there to shadow him, though, we found none other than our old friend Skylie Hassell, of all people, there with him! She was drunkenly hurling insults at the skinny guy for trying to sell her a fake replica of what was supposed to be a high-dollar battleaxe, and she was really angry! Short as she is, when she’s all covered head to toe in blood-red plate armor with battleaxe blades all welded onto it, having her angry at you is quite a bit more frightening than having some random guy or gal at the Recluse or something angry at you, that’s for sure! She was giving the guy fits, though, Skylie being Skylie, her mood changed as rapidly as ever when she saw us. We were so surprised to see her there with him, and she us, that we had some happy greetings all around as the skinny guy slinked off to his auction seat in defeat. I invited Skylie to come along with us, and filled her in on the entire investigation from the first night as Lemptheby did his auctions and we waited on our suspect to do something or leave.
He did eventually leave, though not before doing his mischievous bit to drive up auction prices a few times, including on an axe that Cari and especially Skylie were bidding against him for. Cari, seeing that Skylie was showing genuine interest, and not wanting to take the win from her, stopped bidding after a bit. When it was down to just him and Skylie, the skinny guy, seeming not to actually want the axe either, but rather, to mischievously drive up prices on people, didn’t seem to want to risk getting stuck with the axe if Skylie stopped bidding on him, and he stopped first. Skylie won the axe, and the skinny guy left after another ear-scorching series of drunkenly-slurred insults at the guy after he called her “axehead.”
What followed was a confused state of affairs in which Skylie threw fully six hundred and ten gold pieces at poor old Lemptheby, Nah pounced on opportunity by grinning mischievously and offering to “help” Lemptheby pick them all up, which had him so distracted at eyeing her as she “helped” to make sure she didn’t pocket part of it (she didn’t) that he didn’t even notice her pick his pockets. Meanwhile, Skylie was scarring up Lemptheby’s wood floor by dragging her axe along it as she drunkenly staggered out, costing Lemptheby even more money. Then there was me, approaching Lemptheby with a small bag of gold after Skylie and Nah left, handing it to him and hoping he was coming out on top after the pickpocketing and the damaged floor, with what I gave him. By the time all the confusion was over, the skinny guy was already to his usual next stop, the food court.
We followed him from there, with Skylie tipping the guy’s waitress after he left her almost nothing, up to Scrolls and Noble, where I doggone near fainted… A famous author was there! Noah Scribeson, author of those embarrassing Steamy Romance Novels that Evan made me read last year and write book reports on, was there with a crowd lined up in front of him, signing copies of his books! The skinny guy had gone inside the bookstore, so, JUST to cover the fact that we were waiting on him to come back out, I sort of got in line to get one that I still had signed. Next thing I know, all my friends are there buying a copy to get signed, even Cletcher! Ha! It was almost bad though… The skinny guy had left out a back door and was heading up the road, and I almost didn’t see him! He went around Bo’s Crab Shack and out of sight. The rest of us, done already with Mister Scribeson, went up after him, but we didn’t see him at the tables there on the deck overlooking the water… But then, we DID see him getting into a boat with a childish-looking skull and crossbones carved onto it, as though the guy was trying to make it look like a pirate ship or something, and rowing off away from the dock below the deck! We hurried back out to the road and around the other side of the building to the stairs downward and talked to another guy with a boat for a ferry across the water, but, by the time the guy was pushing off from the dock, the skinny guy was GONE!
Fortunately for us, Skylie seemed to already know where he was going! At her (absolutely plastered) guidance, the boat’s owner steered off toward the Boralus seawall and under a somewhat ornate bridge that arched over the water on the right and headed into the nicest part of the city, Upton Borough. We passed a small seafaring ship next, then bent around the corner to find a bustle of docks and one boathouse. Pulling up to the boathouse, we saw the guy’s boat, absurd skull and crossbones and all, already tied off, and the guy was gone! Still, Skylie knew what to do! She had apparently followed him around earlier in the day, first to a post office and then to a cartographer, those people that make maps, after noting he was behaving really suspiciously. I wondered if Skylie knew what she was doing at first, because she led us all around Crosswind Commons in a circle and even stopped to greet a mule once, and stopped again to climb a pile of crates and, quite seriously, pretend to look around with a sailor’s spyglass before getting down and leading us into a dead end at a ship. Eventually, having come full circle, we were at the ship AGAIN, though this time, she went around the boardwalk to the right instead of left like before, and we found ourselves at the post office!
Nah, enjoying her keen elven eyesight now that she’s been purged of her inner demon and is no longer an Illidari, spotted an envelope with a red wax seal that had the big, angry-looking red B of the Brinebreaker gang on it. In typical Nah fashion, she smirked, strode right over to it, swiped it as smoothly as ever with her deft slight of hand, and brought it back to us to read it aloud. It was from a guy named Biff, which, we guess, is the name of the skinny guy, to Marcus Brinebreaker himself! It said that some map was being made as ordered, with markings on it being made as ordered as well. That explains what he was doing in the map shop! And, if this was left by the skinny guy, and it’s to Marcus Brinebreaker, then it confirms he’s the scrawny underboss with the small black ponytail that Rob Braxton described to us!
And, speaking of Rob Braxton, we had a realization last night. Rolfe Braxton, lost with the Kul Tiran fleet a few years ago when it was lost, coming back to find his wife and son missing. Joan, poor Joanessa Seaslums, whatever she was mixed up in, had lost her husband a couple years ago to a mysterious disappearance at sea, and had also somehow gotten separated from her son. Rob, who said his parents’ names were Rolfe and Janine Braxton, who’d lost his father at sea and gotten separated from his mother somehow. Rob Braxton. Joan, who was pictured in Rolfe’s locket that he said had a picture of his wife in it. Rob, who, with the sandy hair and brilliantly blue eyes he and Joan share… They’re all a family! I don’t know what Joan was mixed up in before she was killed, or why she had changed her name from Janine Braxton to Joanessa Seaslums, or how she had gotten separated and lost to Rob, or how they never found each other again, but they’re all a family! We need to reunite Rob with Rolfe, though I don’t know how to break the news to them about Joan. Or… Janine? Gosh, what a novella!
Anyway… After the post office, Skylie staggered around some more, STILL drinking, leading us around in another circle, and eventually got us to the cartography shop. There were maps all over the place! It was a mess! One was of Upton Borough, though, and had the Brinebreaker B top center! It was having marks made on it by a woman holding a letter with another red Brinebreaker B at the top center of it, which seemed to just be a list of coordinates when I stole a peek at it. Nah eventually succeeded in swindling the map from the woman by using a blue collar Kul Tiran accent and showing her the letter with the Brinebreaker B on it from the post office and pretending she was with that organization, though the woman, running a business after all, still wanted it paid for. Skylie forked over the gold. Lady Whitewind has Cari and Skylie to reimburse now. But she’s generous with that! Anyway, we got the map and headed outside.
That’s where it all came to a head… The skinny guy was there, Biff, I guess, and he had two more scrawny little toadies with him! He looked like he was going in to the cartography shop to pick up the map! Nah stopped him before he could, taunting him a whole bunch and stuff, and he recognized us from a couple nights at Lemptheby’s! So, instead of going in and finding out that the map had been taken and alerting Marcus, he came at us instead, wanting to get Nah for the things she was saying, and also Maya too, who had also joined in the insults! The skinny guy was really mad, and had rolled up his sleeves to fight, revealing the Brinebreaker B branded onto his forearm, and confirming him as the final Brinebreaker underboss! Nah had a plan, however, and wasn’t ONLY doing it to be mischievous and have fun. She’d asked me to freeze the water when the guys were in it, which I didn’t know why they’d be down in the water, and had whispered something to Cletcher as well. But, sure enough, when the guys came across these little planks and stuff that were a bridge to the spot we were standing on the boardwalk, she nodded at Cletcher, who unslung his hammer from his back and smashed the bridge to smithereens with one swing! The guys fell into the water, and Cari rushed forward to help me freeze them in place when she saw what I was doing, freezing them up to their thighs and rooting them in place. Then Maya went all bear form on them again! Between the prospect of either being left there to freeze or being mauled by Maya, the guys were suddenly very open to questioning! It turns out that they didn’t know where Marcus Brinebreaker was, though they did know that he loved going “clubbing,” attending party clubs and stuff, though, given the nature of the gang, I’d assume the parties Marcus attended were rather more rough than the midsummer gala Lex and Ellie threw a few months back! He also let slip that the marks on the map were places the Brinebreakers intended to have things hidden, though he didn’t say who would be doing the hiding. The Kul Tiran guards came next, and, spying the Brinebreaker brand on the forearm of the guy in the water, immediately took over the scene to make the arrest. That meant that one last underboss remained that we hadn’t questioned yet: the Collector!
Long since over his awful explosive restroom problems from last week, the Collector sat, huge and hulking, in his cell, looking morose. When we got there, he seemed to put two and two together, and was suddenly all angry at Maya for seducing and baiting him as she had. But then Maya went all cat form on him, and started clawing at the bars of the guy’s cell in a frenzy. When he jumped backward in fright, Maya was like, “Awww, what, am I not pretty anymore?” Ha! Then he was so intimidated that he gave us the information we were looking for. Well, not about Marcus Brinebreaker, only that the place he could be found most, from what he’d heard, had a lot of kelp growing around it or something. But the information we were looking for that was most jarring? It turns out that he knew the plans for Upton Borough… And the markings on the map were all for BOMBS! One week from that night, this coming Tuesday, they’re going to sneak bombs, AZERITE bombs, into Upton Borough, and blow it to bits! What the hecking fudge?! Why?!
When it was clear he had no other useful information for us, we went to confer amongst ourselves. We definitely needed to come up with a plan to stop the bombs! Nah and I did come up with a plan yesterday; I reminded her of those Mechagnomes that we helped, who helped us get to the roof to track the hitman/enforcer underboss a few weeks ago, and told her they’d likely know how to diffuse bombs, and were probably equipped to do so with their own prosthetics, even. Nah got ahold of Calleigh Silversong, who has lots of influence as a ranking Kul Tiran herself, and she’s going to make the request of the Mechagnomes for us. I hope they’re able to help us! We also discussed the option of alerting Kul Tiran authorities to the bomb danger, but, even if they do believe us, we were worried about a sudden heavy presence of Kul Tiran guards scaring off those planting the bombs, causing them to changes the plans of the attack to someplace else, or to a different time, or both, and we’d lose the opportunity to stop them before they can do it altogether!
The other thing we talked about were the clues we had from the four Brinebreaker underbosses. He never leaves Hook Point, he loves to party and be surrounded by women, he frequents clubs, and something about lots and lots of kelp… We were stumped for a bit, but then, Cari put it all together for us! The Kelp Club, the infamous, raucous club in Hook Point, where Don Adams of the old Scrimshaw gang used to hang out before adventurers got him! First, we need to deal with the bombs next week, but the next mission after that? Take out Marcus Brinebreaker at the Kelp Club in Hook Point! It is so ON!
Nat paused, placing her quill in her inkwell. She flexed her hands and fingers, then reached for her coffee. Despite the impending danger of the bombs and the fight with the leader of a dangerous gang, her thoughts strayed to the Braxton family. Rolfe and Rob, like Celeste, were going through their own hard times. She smiled suddenly. Rolfe and Rob, like Celeste, were powering through anyway, still making the most of life no matter how much life threw at them. The smile passed. She rued the coming task of telling them that Joan – Janine, that is, evidently – had recently been murdered. She rued telling them she didn’t know why she’d changed her name and abandoned the Braxton name, or why, though she’d lived close to Rob these last few years, she hadn’t found him and taken him back in again. But still, despite all that, there was reason for celebration: father and son would at last be reunited! Nat smiled, her roller coaster of emotions continuing as she reached for her coffee for another sip. Placing it back upon the desk after, she took up her quill again and returned to journaling her week.
But, until then, life goes on, and the seasons change… This means that, with fall now arriving, the Summer Picnic Theme Deathrolls games are now over, and we’re back to taverns! Last night, for Deathrolls, in honor of this, and of Brewfest’s arrival, we went to the Beer Garden in Dalaran to play! It was me, my bestie Nah, Cari, Maya, Zarshal, Ganny, that funny Dark Iron Dwarf from last week, and my old friend Rio! Spicy Truths went on aplenty, with Cari, in the opening round, getting to Truth ALL of us, as all but Maya had rolled ones during the Truth or Dare rolls! I made an executive decision, as hostess of the games, that Maya shouldn’t be the only one left out of the opening round of Deathrolls, so she had to do it to, hehe. Then Cari’s question was what our biggest insecurities were. Well, that was my size, for me! I don’t know if I’ll ever get the coordination and stop being all awkward and stuff to be able to learn how to do all those athletic excercises and stuff to be all slim and petite like Celeste or Cari, or all athletic and stuff like Maya or Skylie! Another Truth had Rio revealing a lot of things about her past with the Syndicate when she lived in Alterac, and a lot of that was sad or horrifying. Nah had a sad Truth too, one that I remember helping her through last December. It was about meeting her long-deceased parents in Ardenweald and reliving their disappointment in her for becoming Illidari, which led to her purging, which is what her Truth was; why she’s not Illidari anymore. But she and Rio were actively doing their best not to buzzkill the game, and we followed their lead on that, so we still had lots of fun! There were lots of funny Dares, too. Rio, specializing in frost magic like Cari and I do, made lots of ice cubes and Dared me to put them all in different places inside my dress and hold them there. Gosh, that made me squirm for so long! Brrr! Then I had a Whisper Dare for her when Zarshal came back, who had gotten up to leave for a few to get some food in the inn or something. Without any warning or context at all, just randomly go over to the trees in the planters near the wall and find a couple of deer antler-shaped twigs, take some twine that I handed her from my pack (always be prepared!), and just randomly walk up to Zarshal and tie them to his head and tell him what a handsome stag he is! When Zarshal came back, we all ended up joining in, telling Zarshal what a great-looking stag he was. He was really confused by all that happening to him, but he wore the antlers for the rest of the night! HA! There was another Dare where Zarshal Dared Rylee to spend two turns on the table, acting like a monkey. She did that with gusto! She scampered all over the table the whole two rounds, acting like a monkey and making lots of monkey noises and even stopping to pretend to groom Zarshal for bugs! And then she kept saying Hozen things like, “Ook in the dooker!” Then Cari built upon the Dare with her Dare for Rio and Zarshal, who, after Zarshal rolled a one in the Truth or Dare rolls, also had to join in… Zarshal had to be the alpha prime gorilla, and Rio had to be the narrator of a nature documentary! She did quite well, too, taking on an accent and commenting on all the silly grooming and other antics of Rylee, and Zarshal pounding the table or his chest like an alpha prime while his subordinate monkey attended him. It was so funny! There was another where Zarshal Dared me to pull out a book from my pack, as I always have one with me, and read it out loud. That was HORRIFYING, because the one I had in my pack was the one from the night before, that we got signed by Noah Scribeson! I had to read a Steamy Romance Novel out loud to the group! I was stammering and trembling all over and blushing so madly as I went through it, I’m surprised I even made any sense! Nah got Dared next, and she had to critique the story and my reading of it and stuff, which made it far worse! But everyone got a big kick out of it, so I guess it was worth it! Rylee did a kegstand, standing on her hands with her legs up in the air and dipping her head into a keg, in honor of Brewfest, to drink as heavily as she could. I got Dared to dance, which, short version, ended with me kicking my own ankle, stomping my own toes, pulling my own hair, getting my right hand caught in my hair, my whole left arm somehow all the way up the sleeve and inside my robes, and somehow bouncing face-first off a wall and falling over flat on my back! That was so embarrassing! Maya and Cari got off so easy, being the ones giving the Dares out and not really landing many ones and getting any Dares themselves. Lucky! Great night of fun, though!
Nat paused again. A loud racket was coming from upstairs. A Dwarven voice mingled with Celeste’s as they shouted over the roar of what sounded like the Mutt, the goblin shredder they’d rented, and that she’d eventually purchased from the goblin for Celeste after seeing how much she seemed to enjoy working with it, seemed to have been turned on downstairs in the workshop. Nat giggled, remembering breakfast that morning fondly, and the bittersweet… mostly sweet… conversation that they’d had with their guest during a memorable outdoor breakfast. She leaned back over her diary and returned to writing, eager to wrap things up and rejoin Celeste and their guest downstairs in the workshop and help out however she could with her comparably miniscule engineering knowledge.
This morning, I woke up with just Dordy all snuggled up next to me, and Celeste was gone somewhere. I heard her get up in the night and head out the door, too. She hasn’t been sleeping well since she found the pictures and got to thinking about the two-year anniversary of her mother’s passing coming up, and so sometimes she wanders a bit at night to think in the quiet. But this morning, when I woke up, I smelled a DELICIOUS breakfast wafting in from downstairs, and heard voices… Rugnar was here! He’d helped Celeste cook breakfast, his signature breakfast roll of crisp-fried fish, bacon, egg, lettuce, and tomato, still held hot by a cover for the dish it was on, and, I expect, Celeste’s fire magic. On the volatile fire-heated stove was hot coffee! Celeste and Rugnar were outside on the back deck, where it overlooks the ocean to the south, and Celeste was beckoning me outside to join them. I sat at her other side after a hug for Rugnar and a thanks for breakfast, and just sort of dug in to breakfast for a while, listening them reminisce about Celeste’s parents and stuff for a while, including how Rugnar met Eow for the first time… lost, separated from his Explorer’s League friends, he’d stumbled across her fishing at a hidden pond. She’d fed him, then switched into her bird form and helped him find his crew… and then fed them too! What a golden heart! I mostly just sort of sat and listened as they reminisced on old stories, filling me in where context was needed. Celeste looks like she’s staying strong through the heartbreak from earlier this week. She was shedding tears once in a while even as she smiled and laughed and told stories she was fond of, and even stole the last bit of fish from my sandwich with a mischievous look when I sat my plate down to have a bit more coffee. Between her and Dordy, I don’t know who steals food more often, but I just think it’s so endearing a habit for both of them, and it really warmed my heart to see Celeste smiling despite the sadness, still powering through and living life to its fullest even so!
It turns out that Rugnar is going with Celeste on her trip away tomorrow morning! That’s so good! They’ll be good for each other as they come up on this anniversary. Rugnar says it’s just to make sure Celeste gets through it okay, but we can tell he needs it too. Anyway, there was now a change of plans: Rugnar is taking his flying machine, while Celeste takes the Mutt, instead of the Flying Nosebleed. She’s made lots of new tweaks to it this week, and added lots more new tools, and so she wants to make sure it’s fully operational and all the bugs worked out before we go on our archaeology trip in a couple weeks (the location of which she STILL won’t let slip!), so she’s leaving the Flying Nosebleed here. Then she offered to show me how to work it this evening! That’ll be fun! She says I can fly it around some if I want while she’s gone! YAY! But, far more importantly, Celeste will be going fishing with Rugnar at some of Eow’s old favorite fishing spots, with them having happy moments together as well as being there for the sad moments, so it isn’t just a trip away, alone, with a bleak, hopeless despair. This will be so good for them! I really want to go, too, to be there for her, as well as do what I can for her uncle, but really, I know they’ll be fine without me. They always are, when we’re apart. Well, I’m almost never around Rugnar as it is, but Celeste and I always do just fine when we’re apart. And just the two of them, being two of the ones that knew Eow best, is probably what’s needed most anyway, as they get through this in privacy. I can respect that! Plus I have obligations to the Whitewind Company the Darkshire town hall and Stormwind friends to think of. It’s fine; I’ll be here for Celeste when she comes back home! In the meantime, I’m going to hop on up now and enjoy this last day they’re here before the week away!
Tapping the excess ink off of her quill, Nat replaced it in its case, capping her inkwell and putting both items in the desk drawer. Picking up her coffee mug, she sipped at it a bit, trying to think of anything she might have missed at the Pandaren markets that Celeste and Rugnar would need, or anything around the house. Celeste, engineer that she is, had been pretty thorough, and seemed to have everything taken care of now. With that in mind, finishing off her coffee, she closed the now-dried pages of her diary, replacing it on the bookshelf and returning to the kitchen to wash dishes. When the chore was done, she headed downstairs, where Rugnar sat in the cockpit of the Mutt, working levers when Celeste gave the word, while Celeste was soldering something inside the torso of the machine. It seemed she was working out a kink in which the grabbing claws of the right hand didn’t revolve back into the arm to trade out with the buzz saw, and she was fixing it. Nat smiled as she watched, sitting on the bottom stair and relaxing with Dordy as Celeste fixed the bug in the Mutt while telling Nat about their plans to fish the Krasarang streams and lakes with Nat for their last day here before the trip. As with the Mutt, sometimes life gives you unexpected problems. But, as with the Mutt, with the help of loved ones, those problems can always be fixed!
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Post by Natasha Ebonlocke on Sept 30, 2021 16:09:36 GMT
September the Thirtieth
A chilly rain poured outside the house atop the rock spire in Turtle Bay during a pitch-black early morning. Visibility was further limited by the thick, cool mists floating around Pandaria was known for, even this high up. The yard was hammered by large raindrops and rivulets of water ran in an intricate, muddy web that spanned the peak before the heavy rainfall eventually found the ledge and cascaded down to join seawater hundreds of feet below, where Angler’s Wharf was also getting hammered. The storms Pandaria is known for easily kept its two-legged inhabitants indoors, relentlessly cascading in a torrential downpour that no one would want to be caught in.
For all that, it was a beautiful sight to behold.
Nat sat at her writing desk, her diary open in front of her, yet her chair was faced to the right as she gazed out the sliding glass door, keeping warm (though she was still lightly clad in only her sleepwear) with a steamy cup of Pandaren coffee with liquid hazelnut creamer. The lightning flashes and the rolling of the thunder were mesmerizing and calming to her, even as violent as thunderstorms could get. She smiled at that thought. Violent storms. The ingenuity of her love, Celeste, and the construction knowledge of their Pandaren friends Shen and Marzai had combined to create a strong, sturdy home that was standing up even to typhoons, just the way the Angler’s Wharf stout stilt village did, down in the water on the edge of Turtle Bay. Nat continued watching. The torrential downpour that had driven a steaming Dordy to do his business and immediately hurry back inside was dripping through the boards of the outside balcony and onto the patio. Beyond that, there was nothing to see through the mists until the occasional lightning flash lit them up, and Nat could see palm trees blowing wildly and tall waves crashing to shore. The storms seemed to be a wild, fun ride for Cloud Dancer and Onyx, however; the two were living it up out there, their massive forms silhouetted impressively in the air each time the lightning flashed, unperturbed by the rain as they danced high in the sky. Cloud Dancer’s undulating mass and Onyx’s widespread wings showed up as enormous black shapes in the mists each time the lightning flashed, and its repeated flashes caused them to seem to move as the pictures do in a child’s flipbook, or perhaps the eerie way things seem to move when illuminated by a gnomish strobe light.
Nat wondered about Nosebleed and Ebonhoof in all this. She supposed they were alright, keeping each other company under heavy tree cover in the Krasarang Wilds, grazing idly. Nosebleed had always seemed so docile, like nothing ever bothered him, and Ebonhoof had the countenance of a warhorse: strong, proud, and fearless, the way he always was when carrying Nat down the dark roads of Duskwood. Too, the pair were of species that lived outdoors rain or shine anyway. She knew they were okay under the thick jungle canopy.
Nat watched the storm for a little while longer, her thoughts straying next to Celeste. She was going through her own storm at the moment, though Nat knew her seemingly unbreakable love would weather this one like she had all others. It was one of the many things she loved about her. Nat knew a number of trying times would be ahead as the anniversaries of certain atrocities rolled around, though the one that was coming was potentially the worst. Nat sipped her coffee again, watching a strobe-lit image of Onyx’s silhouette dive hundreds of feet in a dive she recognized as him spotting a sea creature and fancying a morsel. Storms like this one would come and go. Life here in Pandaria, in Turtle Bay, with their family of dragons and pets and their friends in Angler’s Wharf, was beautiful. It was nothing short of amazing, and beyond her wildest dreams. Yet she knew it wouldn’t always be sunshine and daisies. Trials would come like a storm. Tribulations would crash in from nowhere like a powerful typhoon-driven wave. The uncertainty of testing moments would cloud all like the mists of Pandaria. But, Nat knew, building on a strong foundation allows one to weather such storms, and, just like their home, she and Celeste had built their life together on a strong foundation of love and friendship. They need only to hold strong on their foundation and weather the storm, and the sun would return to shine the clearer.
The storm raged on in the meantime, however. As the dragons played outside and Dordy huddled under her writing desk, Nat continued to watch until her coffee was gone. Rising for another cup, Dordy at her heels, she returned to her desk and placed her mug down on the desk next to the ink pot, opening her quill case for her ravenfeather quill and withdrawing it to dip into her already-opened inkwell. She brought her purple ink to the pages and began to write.
Dear diary,
It’s been a trying week. One of the hardest I’ve endured in several months, in fact. It isn’t just that Celeste is gone, though I’ve certainly missed her deeply. Life is certainly a bazillion times better with her around, but we’ve weathered this storm before, and for far, far longer, so I’m totally fine with these sorts of trips away when she needs them. Few people have been through the things some people have put her through. I know she will be okay. In the meantime, I hope her healing is going well as she goes on this fishing trip with her uncle Rugnar. I know she’ll be back tomorrow, though, and I’m getting things prepared for that. I have things I’m going to do today to set up for her return tomorrow. I hope she likes her welcome home!
The real trials have come with work, and, even worse… My bestie Nah is missing! I don’t know where she is, how she is, or what’s going on… I just know she’s in trouble! It all started early last week. I was hanging out with her, just relaxing and stuff while she was cracking her usual jokes, when all of a sudden, Richard Riggermotor showed his face for the first time in a few months! I’m pretty sure I’ve written about him before. He’s that gnomish warlock from earlier this summer that helped us purge Nah of her inner demon when she wanted to turn away from the Illidari path. He used a soulstone to pinpoint Nah’s inner Sayaad, lock onto it, and use that complex ritual he did to rip it from Nah’s inner being while he had Nah in chronostasis with that gnomish gizmo of his. It worked, though it was super scary for a while – Nah’s own soul tried to pass on to the afterlife in the process! We were able to save her, but the ritual was so hard on her body that she remained unconscious after Richard brought her out of chronostasis. In the meantime, since we were doing the ritual at the Moonwell of Cleansing in Ashenvale Forest, we moved ahead with the next phase of the plan. We got her into the Moonwell, and we succeeded in eventually getting all the residual fel cleansed out of her being. Next we took her to the Moonwell of Purification, also in Ashenvale, for good measure. She seemed way more wholesome after that! The fel glow from behind her blindfolds disappeared, and so did her tattoos! Then the Moonwell’s healing properties healed up her mutilated eyes, removed the scars from her body from her conversion to Illidari, as well as some others, and she eventually woke up! It took her some time to get used to seeing again, with normal sight instead of auras and stuff with spectral sight, and it took a lot of hiking around Ashenvale and Stormwind and various different-looking places for her to get her fill. It was such a good moment!
The catch, though – Richard Riggermotor is the brother of another gnomish warlock, Rick Riggermotor! Nah’s arch nemesis from last year! Her being an Illidari with a powerful fel aura and stuff, he attacked her time and time again, all year long! It finally came to a head when he got her near the lakes north of Stormwind. He nearly killed her! But, she had killed him! I was able to get to her after she contacted all who were active at the time on the Blackflag Imports comms to let us know what had happened. If she hadn’t gotten ahold of someone, she could have died! We got her to the hospital clinic in the Cathedral District, and she healed up there for like two or three days. But yeah, Richard Riggermotor is that guy’s brother!
When he came along while Nah was expressing her desire to turn from the Illidari path and regain her normal self and was offering to help, I was instantly suspicious. If we were to discover a way to purge an Illidari of their inner demon, and HE was to help with that, when Nah was the one to kill his brother, she’d be vulnerable to him taking his revenge on her! As such, I watched him like a HAWK throughout the ritual, ready to intervene if he should try anything. I even expressed my reservations to both of them ahead of time, but he insisted that he wasn’t upset about Nah killing his brother, claiming instead that Rick had it coming for dragging the family name (silly as that surname is!) through the mud.
He didn’t do anything bad during the ritual, however, so I let him be. I remained, and still remain, skeptical, however.
Back to the present. Richard Riggermotor showed up once again during the time early last week when I was hanging out with Nah. He said that there was a second Nah running around Stormwind, and that he had no clue what was going on, only that there was an imposter loose. Nah said she’d investigate, and reassured me it was likely just some prankster or something, maybe just using illusion magic. I nodded assent, figuring it was nothing.
Boy, were we wrong!
I haven’t seen Nah since then, except once the other night on a distant rooftop (which I’ll write about in a sec), and no one else seems to have, either! What I did discover, over the weekend after work hanging out in Stormwind, was that the imposter was really a loose Sayaad! I ran into Richard talking to Nah’s adoptive father Zandrion, a very old Kaldorei, and Richard got irritable with me and insisted I stay out of it. But that’s my bestie! This was right as my friends were calling me away to the big Brewfest Benefit Market that was going on with a massive crowd outside Ironforge (which I’ll also write about soon), though, so Zandrion told me to join my friends, and that he’d speak with me later. The next day, I found Zandrion again, and his wife Nickol, Nah’s adoptive mother who is a Kaldorei priestess of Elune. I got the full story, or at least, as much information is currently available, from them. They had it from Richard that the imposter is a Sayaad; not only that, but it’s NAH’S old Sayaad! The one we’d purged from her during that ritual! Apparently, a young novice warlock was trying to summon a succubus for the first time, got THAT succubus by chance, and, in her rage at Nah for what she did to her to devour her to gain her Illidari powers, SLEW the novice warlock, AND the master warlock that was training him! Then she got loose in the city, and I don’t know how many more she’s killed while she’s been loose, but she’s disguised as Nah, but seems to be incorporating Illidari agility and fighting style. That’s so scary! I want to help, but I have not been able to find EITHER Nah! My plan, though, is to first use my old demonology mastery to determine which is the real Nah, and then use that power to slay the Sayaad. Demon deaths outside the Twisting Nether aren’t permanent, however, according to my uncle, so I’ll need to send Mek-barash and maybe other minions after her in the Twisting Nether to deliver the True Death. My backup in case she’s disguised herself too well for me to determine a fel aura is to have an Illidari with me for spectral sight. Plan C is to ask the Nahs about something only the real Nah would know. Something from AFTER Nah was purged, so the Sayaad, who, of course, was present for everything Nah did while they were bonded, wouldn’t know the answer. My actual plan of action will take place after that!
The problem, as I’ve written already, is that I haven’t even SEEN either Nah since the time we hung out, except for on that rooftop. It was after this week’s mission to Boralus for the Brinebreaker investigation, so it was late at night. I was talking to Narcoss and Skylie, and I spotted the two Nahs up on that super narrow rooftop that’s just on the opposite side of the Mage Tower from where the mailbox at the foot of the tower is. The two were fighting hard and fast, and, before I could get Onyx down from the skies and mount up and get there, and before Narcoss or Skylie could get there, one of the Nahs had thrown the other one from the rooftop, off the opposite side! And then, when we DID get there, BOTH Nahs had already disappeared! I have no clue which Nah one, whether one has abducted or destroyed the other, or anything! And the Sayaad’s murderous rage and presence in the city and likelihood to lash out at all close to Nah – Sayaads being passionate about torture as they are, she’d likely relish breaking Nah’s heart – has had me watching the shadows and looking over my shoulder all week long. I’ve been so frazzled!
Nat sat back in frustration after thrusting her ravenfeather quill into her inkwell of purple ink. Where WAS Nah?! She turned in her seat a bit, taking up her coffee and curling up her legs into her chair, leaning on the back of the chair on her right shoulder to sip coffee and watch the occasional strobe-light-esque silhouettes of Cloud Dancer and Onyx still frolicking on the turbulent winds of the storm. As eerie and turbulent as it was, there was something soothing, calming, about the show, even if visibility was mostly limited to within a few feet beyond the outer balcony of the house when the lightning wasn’t flashing.
BOOM-BLAM!
A powerful blast of thunder, closer than the rest of the thunder has sounded so far this morning, startled Dordy up into Nat’s lap. Cuddling the molten pupper for her own comfort as much as Dordy’s, she wondered where Nah was, if she was okay, what she was doing. She wondered about Celeste, too, and Rugnar. Celeste had said she wanted to visit all her mother’s old favorite fishing holes with Rugnar. Had they visited the top of the Twin Colossi in Feralas yet? Her favorite fishing hole, where Eowithiel McCullough had been laid to rest for the final time? Had they fished there as they paid homage to her grave? Nat wiped her eyes, trying to shake loose the morbid thoughts. Celeste deserved her privacy, whatever she was doing, whether in Feralas or not. Mourning times should have their privacy. She wiped her eyes once more, releasing Dordy, who was now wriggling to get free again now that the thunderclaps seemed to be somewhat more distant again.
She rose to her feet, her coffee mug now empty. Dordy followed behind, never liking to be left alone when there was Celeste or Nat to go flop down next to or play with, all the more so now with the storm raging outside. Nat walked out of her office, through the sitting room area under its vault ceiling, through the area that shifted from sitting room to dining area in the same vault spot down the middle of the house, and through the doorless doorframe in the back right of the house into the kitchen. Celeste’s ingenious volatile fire stove was still cranking out the perfect levels of heat with Celeste’s ingenious dial to raise or lower the heat, and so the coffee was still hot without boiling. Pouring herself another steaming mug and adding her usual liquid hazelnut creamer, she turned and padded back through the house to her office, sitting once again at her writing desk, her thoughts full of her best friend and her girlfriend throughout. She sat watching the storm for another long moment, sipping daintily from her mug, then sat the mug down with a sigh, trading it for her ravenfeather quill again. Tapping off the excess ink as she withdrew it from the inkwell, she returned to her writing.
The absence of two of my three favorite people (my father is still safe and sound in Darkshire, living his life as usual) isn’t the only thing that’s had me frazzled. Tuesday night was our return to Boralus to stop that bomb plot we discovered last week! The expedition started off well enough. It was actually something of a relief to escape the sad, depressive, filthy slums and get back to beautiful Upton Borough, even if it was for something so dangerous as Azerite explosives. We were so sure that, with the map, the bomb planting schedule, and a pair of Mechagnomes that Calleigh Silversong had contracted into doing the bomb disarming for us, that nothing could go wrong. That we had this in the bag. And, for the most part, we were right…
It was Calleigh Silversong, Cletcher Tidebringer, Maya Maxwell, Carilina Halverson, and I. We landed our flying mounts at the flight master and walked down to the gate from Mariner’s Row, as this was the only land route into Upton Borough besides the way in from Hook Point across the canal. We were certain that the Brinebreakers were likely too poor to ferry in an entire load of bombs, or fly them in, and they definitely wouldn’t be coming in from Hook Point, as that would lead them right through Proudmoore Keep grounds, which would get them discovered for sure. So, certain they were coming through the gatehouse from Mariner’s Row, we watched that gate.
The gatehouse stakeout was pretty uneventful for the most part. We watched some really neat-looking, gung-ho, spotlessly uniformed guards come through on horses, then a really nice-looking Kul Tiran noblewoman with eight (!!!) children all dressed like princes and princesses, then a Kul Tiran Naval Officer who was dictating a letter to one aide while the other was carrying the officer’s baggage, and then, causing a stir for the first time all night, a trio of young ruffians that weren’t quite so well dressed as the rest of the district, with rapiers at their belts and talk of visiting Pinky’s for drinks and, from what I could tell, to find women. Those guys saw us, though, and stopped! Maya, Cari, and I were all dressed in the best dresses we could find, wanting to blend in to Upton Borough, and Calleigh herself was dressed in impeccable Kul Tiran attire with her country’s tabard on. Cletcher, being a guy, was the only one safe from their stares. They were saying the LEWDEST things to us! It was so bad and embarrassing! Finally Maya had enough and shifted into her worgen form and started snarling at them. That got ‘em! HA! The ruffians were screeching and fleeing in the next instant, suddenly not so tough! I thought at first we’d scared our Brinebreaker bombers away, but then we were taking note of how none of them were carrying a thing in through the gatehouse, so we figured that must not have been them.
Then came the Tidesages.
A Seacaller and his acolyte came through the gate next, riding this expensive-looking horse-drawn cart trimmed with Stormsilver, covered by a large blanket, and pulled by the dapple grey horses the sea priests favor, and boy, did we luck out on the conversation we overheard as they did! It just blew the entire case wide open! The younger one was expressing doubts about some kinda thing they were doing, and the older one was reassuring him about the wisdom of the Tidemother being absolute, even when you don’t see the whole picture, and then the young man let it slip… He was expressing doubts because they were there to BOMB Upton Borough! This was it! It wasn’t Brinebreakers at all! The Tidesages, at least, those who seemed to be tied to this mysterious woman known as THE Tidesage, were the ones truly behind the bombing plot, and, it seems, totally controlling the Brinebreaker gang! GOSH! As Lady Whitewind said in her original posting of this contract early this summer… There’s always a bigger fish!
Sure enough, when they passed us and got to this weird abandoned cart that was conveniently in the spot that the X on our mapped marked as being number one, the younger guy got out of the cart, went around behind it, lowered the tailgate, and reached under the blanket for something that looked heavy and was all wrapped up in paper. Then he climbed up into the abandoned cart and put it in the front-left corner. After that, he got back into the cart, and the conversation there was the big case-blow-opener-bit!
The two were still talking about this bombing, and the young man was questioning it still, and the older one said in a way that seemed like reminding the young man that the bombing was supposed to destroy Upton Borough and turn it into a slum, which would open the way for the Brinebreakers to take over the territory, giving THE Tidesage a foothold right at the front gate of Proudmoore Keep! Then the Tidesage was going to strike from there, attack the keep, kill Lady Katherine Proudmoore while Lady Jaina was missing, and claim the Kul Tiran throne for herself! From there, she’d have an entire Kul Tiran military, both army and navy, to defend her new throne if the Lord Admiral ever returned! It was all a hostile takeover of the Kul Tiran government from THE Tidesage, who wanted to convert the nation into servants of the “Old One!” OHMIGOSH!
I never dreamed a simple investigation into a run-of-the-mill organized crime gang would turn up a whole revolt! We were bound and determined now. Cletcher climbed into the cart to get the paper-wrapped package and brought it back. Opening it up, sure enough, it was a cluster of what looked like dynamite sticks, but we knew to be Azerite explosives, with fuses all tied together in one bundle, and wiring from the pocket watch timer the fuse bundle fed into, intricately wrapped all down the fuses to the blasting caps, and down into the explosives themselves. I knew instantly this was far beyond my level of engineering. I felt certain Celeste could figure it out for sure, but, for now, we needed our Mechagnome friends from several weeks ago that had helped us reach the roof that that sniper/hitman underboss had taken a potshot at us from to investigate that area. The little Mechagnomes could surely handle this!
From there, we proceeded on by the numbers on the map, which meant the fountain was next, which the Tidesages had already stopped at and then went on up the road, around a corner, and out of sight from. Sure enough, Maya found another paper-wrapped package in an open barrel. Number three was up the hill and through an alley on the left, where we had a bit of trouble. The X was at the flower garden, but none of us could find a bomb anywhere! We looked outside the little enclosure next, where Calleigh found a cellar door. We went down there to check, and Cletcher found another! He was rummaging about in a haystack, shoulder-deep, cheek pressed against the haystack, and, sure enough, he pulled out another paper-wrapped bomb! Then number four was at the Cupola Café, an open-air café with this haughty host and a bored-looking young bartender girl. Our dapper attire, as well as Calleigh’s presence as an influential Kul Tiran, got us past the haughty host, who was sniffling snobbishly and complaining of a pair of Tidesages that had barged in a short time before. Calleigh went to talk to the bartender girl after that. Apparently they were friends, and the young woman loved to gossip, which, apparently, Calleigh does too. Next thing I know, the bartender is hitting on Cletcher, passing him a bottle of expensive alcohol and her comms info on a piece of parchment, pointedly looking away while Calleigh searched for the bomb, living up to her apparent word given to the Tidesages that had paid her not to tell where the package was. Calleigh found it under the bar where it meets the shelf on one end, and we proceeded outside again. Well, outside the already-outside café, I mean. We were halfway done!
Number five was Pinky’s Groggery! No way! The place I have so many memories! Deathrolls games with BFI, as well as many games with the current crew over the last year. The cute little corner table by the waterfront where Celeste and I had made candleflames dance through the air and turn colors with our magic, eating lunch while we waited for Frank the Fae to be crafted by the plushie crafter Bangle Wobblebonk, who ran Tucker’s Toys. That day, for the first time ever, Celeste had revealed to me her feelings for me. One of the most magical moments ever, and the Tidesage wanted to blow it up?! Not on my watch! Calleigh, again using her influence in the area, spoke with Nicolas the bartender, who told us that the Tidesages had indeed come, and that they’d paid him to keep quite about a package left there as well. Cari, meanwhile, had a mana crystal out that she’d attuned to Azerite, and followed it to a pair of open sacks of barley behind Nic, and found the bomb in the sack that had this suspicious dip in the middle, like someone had stuffed something down into it. Five down! We were in Dock One Exports next, the next building in front of Pinky’s Groggery, and again ran into the problem of not finding the bomb anywhere. But, as before, it turns out that it was on a different floor! Calleigh was gossiping once again, this time with the store manager, while the rest of us, with the manager distracted, went upstairs. I was blushing pretty hard when I got up there – it turns out that his was the room Cari, my bestie Nah, and I had all passed out drunk again a few months before after Deathrolls, mistaking it for an inn room. Oops… heh… But then, a rather sobering thought occurred to me. What if the Tidesages had struck a few months earlier? We’d have been sleeping on a bomb! Goodness gracious… Anyway… Next was number seven. It was marked off in a corner of the district, up against a low wall that went around much of Upton Borough. It was the huge bonfire pit, where people sit and have cakes and coffees and wines and stuff, the place with the plush couch and all the giant pillows, where people have fancy parties! The place I wanted to have a mass date night sort of thing or other sort of gathering, where, after it gets pitch-black dark, we could sit around the fire while people take turns standing at the bonfire in front of everyone and tell stories. A nice quiet time, and another places the Tidesages wanted to blow up! They didn’t hide this bomb well, either; they just stuffed it behind one of the giant pillows. It was obvious, from the pillow that was ajar, where it was. Dumb move, really; it would likely have been discovered by an Upton Borough resident, and cause a huge panic!
We rushed that bomb out of there as fast as we could, then went through the alley out front of that place’s store, which was called Fireside Anchors, and found ourselves right next to number eight. Goldman’s Café, the bakery and coffee shop that has the big tower with floors for customers to go sit on fancy furniture and stuff, a place I’ve hung out with everyone from Mags to lots of Deathrolls crews. No way! Calleigh used her influence once more, and a busy guy in a chef’s hat told her the Tidesages had wanted to be left alone on the top floor. We went up there, and, sure enough, Calleigh found the bomb in the only place big enough to hide one – behind the couch. These guys were getting lazy! But, we had all eight bombs! We went out on the balcony after that, looking across the canal to Hook Point where the Mechagnomes were waiting for us. But, before we could take off, we heard the Tidesages again! Apparently, there was a secret, unscheduled ninth bomb, and, apparently, a “Clockwork Rocket Bot that is far more Rocket than any toy should ever be.” Cletcher guessed the clue there – toy, the older man had said. Tucker’s Toys! We rushed around the corner to the toy store, where Bangle told us that the Tidesages had, in fact, been there, had toyed with a Clockwork Rocket Bot without asking, and then had left without even paying for it! She had it upstairs, she said, awaiting repairs, as it was making an additional ticking noise that it hadn’t made before. Cletcher went upstairs and looked, returning soon with a bomb he said had been in a compartment in the robot’s torso. With an incredible amount of luck, we now had all NINE Azerite bombs!
Time was running out on the pocket watch timers, though, so we really had to wing it fast to the Mechagnomes! We landed on their boardwalk spot a minute later, where one of the two, Serafim Springwheel, immediately set to work. It was actually really neat to watch, despite the nerve-wracking circumstances. A laser beam scan from a mechanized eye, a palm that opens little doors for little tools to extend out, and two fingers that can flatten out into wire snips were just the mechanizations that we saw. I can’t even imagine how much else she has going on! It was like watching Celeste’s Mutt, only as a living being!
Anyway, Serafim had FOUR screwdrivers coming out of her palm, unscrewing all four screws on the back of the pocket watch timer at once, exposing the back. She then began scanning again, and, though she mostly just looked and thought, she also clipped the occasional wire and popped out the occasional sprocket or cog. This didn’t go so well… She went from twenty-two minutes remaining on the timer to like five with one wire snip, then down to THIRTY SECONDS after popping out a couple cogs. But then she said she realized what it was, and started talking about a bomb timer that this one reminded her of that her grandmother had designed a long time ago. Meanwhile, precious seconds were ticking away. Finally Calleigh glared at her, and she went back to it… with TEN SECONDS LEFT TO DETONATION! But then she popped out a couple more cogwheels, and the rest of the wiring and fuses fell right out of the timer with like TWO SECONDS LEFT! Then she started SCREAMING at the top of her lungs! That made ME scream, and Serafim KEPT ON screaming, and then started dancing in celebration. That was IT for me! I found myself screaming a word I never thought I’d scream while rushing over to Cletcher, who was dealing with the nerve-wracking situation by drinking the alcohol that young bartender from Cupola had given him and giving it a huge chug myself! THAT WAS SO SCARY! I thought from Serafim’s screaming that she’d failed, and we were all about to get blown to bits! I’m so glad it was just celebration, but still, that little Mechagnome scared the POO out of me!
After that, Cari and Maya had had quite enough. Their nerves shot to heck, they bid their hasty goodbyes and got out of there. I stayed with Calleigh and Cletcher, escorting them back through the slums as they carried the Azerite explosives back to Cyrus Crestfall, the harbor master, so he could pass them on to the Kul Tiran government for safe disposal or storage or whatever they were going to do with it. After that, I headed back to Stormwind, and that’s the part where I saw the two Nahs fighting on that rooftop, and one get thrown off of it by the other. WHAT A SCARY WEEK!
Nat thrust her quill back into the inkwell, rubbing her temples with her knuckles and heaving a deep sigh. She looked outside again. Another clap of thunder followed another lightning flash in which Cloud Dancer and Onyx were revealed to be wrestling about on the winds now, dashing at each other and grappling and falling a bit before releasing each other and jousting some more. It was an eerie dance in the strobe light sort of lightning flashes, watching their silhouettes do that in the dark mists. The sun was coming up now, however, and visibility had extended itself out another ten to fifteen feet and turned the mists from a cloudy purple to a cloudy dark grey. Nat watched the seemingly tireless dragons at their play outside before rising for another cup of coffee. Along the way, reflected on the fact that, in spite of all the things that had had her on edge all week long, she had still managed to have fun and enjoy herself a bit on a number of occasions. Thinking hard on these moments now, she was able to bring a smile to herself on her way back to her home office. Sitting back in her seat with Dordy at her feet, she took another dainty sip of steaming-hot hazelnut coffee and returned to her writing, this time a bit more eagerly.
It’s been a rough week, but it’s had its moments anyway. With the house to myself, I finally finished painting Celeste’s workshop/aircraft hangar in the basement! It is now a scene that extends from the painting of Turtle Beach on the north wall, down the east and west walls through a coral reef in light-colored, shallow water that has lots of different brightly-colored fish, sea anemones, sea turtles, and even a few hidden seahorses secreted away in some obscure bits of coral. Beyond that, along the mechanical door on the south wall that faces the ocean outside, the coral reef is depicted as coming to an end along the bottom, with further-away coral and fish depicted as such by being painted smaller, as the water deepens. With a somewhat darker bit of water beyond that, I have a sunken ship with gold-filled treasure chests in it on that mechanical door, with various sorts of sharks, including a huge hammerhead that looks like the one Celeste and I fished up once, swimming in and out of it, and, near the top, lighter water to show sunshine, and a fishing boat with a small sail and a fishing net cast over one side. Then I also cleaned up and organized her workshop, putting all the stuff that goes with each project she has working on all together, her tools back on the shelves or in the toolboxes she likes them to be in, and a small icebox for drinks and stuff that I purchased from Tinkertown in Ironforge to surprise her with. I really really hope Celeste likes her painting, and her nice clean workshop when she gets back!
Also, it’s BREWFEST! Friday night, after work… well, after that scary conversation where Richard Riggermotor wanted to keep me away from finding Nah, which I STILL find suspicious… Rylee, Maya, Cari, and I all got into our cold weather gear and went to Brewfest! They were able to cheer me up while I was there, and we even ran into Elinore Rae! I haven’t seen her around the city nearly as often, but I’m sure she’s just been super busy with her boyfriend Lex. I still think it’s so funny that all that long, pretty black hair of his is actually being rumored to be a hairpiece by some of those in the Voyagers guild he runs! Anyway, we got there a bit early, before the Brewfest Benefit Market thingy started, so Rylee was all about making a snowman. That sounded fun, so we all jumped in to help! I was going to roll up a snowball for the head by rolling a snowball down the small hill that Maya and Rylee were rolling theirs down for the bottom and middle, except I sort of rolled myself down the hill by accident instead, right in front of everyone! Oops! How embarrassing! But I made the most of it, having fun making a snow angel! That was good! Then I went off and found sticks with twigs like fingers for the arms. Soon enough, we had a giant like, eight-foot snowman right next to some Kaldorei’s stall, who seemed quite happy about the fact when she got to there, and it had a top hat, the arm sticks I had, buttons all down its front that were stones that someone had found, and a stone-made smiley face!
After that, the festivities were about to start, but, as it was a worknight for me, I had to go to bed. Lame rotten early work mornings! The following evening was the scary conversation with Nah’s parents in which the whole Sayaad thing was revealed, but after that, Sunday night, I went back with the crew. This time, Mags was there with her Lakeshire Soap Company stall! Yay! I got the usual bottle of all the things in the lavender and goldthorn scents, and then another bottle apiece of all the things in an apple spice pie scent that Mags was doing for the fall season. It smells SO GREAT! And I’m definitely going to love having her new hair serum that she demonstrated for me during our hair appointment! Then I visited another stall, and that one had some things that reminded me of Celeste and Dordy, so I purchased those as well. I can’t wait to surprise her with them when she gets back! I had a nice snow hike at one point by myself, too, just to unwind from work and the stress from my missing bestie, but I also visited some other stalls and hung out with my friends some more. I left early again, though; Sunday nights, after three fourteen-hour work shifts, are difficult to stay up late on. I still had loads of fun with them, though, while I was there! Brewfest is so great!
Monday evening was just basically a hangout evening around Stormwind, in which, at one point, I even found myself in a circle at the top of the stairs at the Mage Quarter end of Lion’s Rest, in which we were all cracking ourselves up making puns about cheese relentlessly. But I also ran into Richard again that night, as well as an Illidari whose name I don’t know, and Thalia, Nah’s “sister,” who had snarled at me quite a bit, but who is also, as it turns out, on the fake Nah’s trail, so that was reassuring, at least. The other Illidari and Richard and I were all talking quite a bit about the Nah thing, and Richard still holds to his claim of innocence. The other Illidari is also going to help! And then there was this older woman I met that’s a warrior that will be keeping an eye out instead. Narcoss and Zarshal are also keeping an eye out. There are a lot of people looking for my bestie! Outside of that, though, yeah, just a hangout night in Stormwind Monday night!
Then last night was Deathrolls! Maya and Cari have their own reasons for being frazzled, as they were on a mission for the Voyagers with one other of their crew in the lost city of Tol’vir in Uldum, where a fight with some bandits went horribly wrong and very nearly killed Maya, and in which a certain level of gore left Cari’s nerves on edge ever since. So, GAME NIGHT last night was a MUST! The venue I selected for the night, to help Maya and Cari sort of settle back down and cheer them up as they’d cheered me up, was the Salty Sailor tavern in Booty Bay, where Maya and Cari first… well, not first met, as they’d talked some in passing before then, but like… where they’d first started developing a relationship for real. Funnily enough, it started out by them, through a series of Dares, ending up mostly stripped and sitting in a mostly-stripped Gommaan’s lap. Gommaan was quite happy with how his evening was going, but it was really the beginning of Cari’s and Maya’s relationship.
So, to the Salty Sailor we went for Deathrolls! It was sorely needed, and my nerves had been strained to the breaking point by a trio of people, only one of which I knew, had kept popping up and scaring me with things they did or said, which drove me to leave the Recluse, where we all were, and sit there being dumb and crying on the beach at the foot of the Lion’s Rest cliff. Maya and Rylee came after me a bit later and cheered me up, and then it was Deathrolls time, finally! We ALL needed this so much after such a week! We dressed for the warmer weather, and down we flew.
The game was Mordale, Zarshal, Maya, Cari, and I, as well as a new acquaintance and recent hire in the Whitewind Company, a Quel’dorei woman named Syndelia that had been one of the people who had been popping up and scaring me in various ways. She didn’t know the week I was having, so her pranks had quite a different effect from what she’d hoped, so she was feeling bad about that too. I said we started off on the wrong foot after Maya and Rylee brought me back, and invited her along. Soon enough, we were all seated in the Salty Sailor tavern, with things FINALLY looking up again!
Plenty of spicy Truths ensued, including most embarrassing moments, a few bits of Screw, Marry, Kill, and one in which two people had to take women from the Whitewind Company and combine their traits together and describe what would be the hottest woman they could build from that. That was… interesting, to say the least! The Dares were fun, too! I got Rylee and Syndelia in the same round once, so I gave them a Whisper Dare. Maya had her hair up in two buns at the side of her head, Pandaren style, so the Whisper Dare was to wait a couple rounds, then, when she least expects it, without warning or context, both just simply get up at the same time, stand behind her chair, and thrust their fingers into the hole in the center of Maya’s buns, each one taking one bun to themselves, and vigorously thrust them in and out. When Maya asks what they heck they were doing, they were both to respond, “Fingering out your bunholes!” HA! What the heck has gotten INTO me?! Another Whisper Dare for Mordale was to wait a couple rounds, then suddenly crawl across the table to Syndelia and announce that she had just won five minutes of uninterrupted eye contact with him, then, pressing his forehead to hers, stare into her eyes for five minutes. Syndelia was so confused! It was great! And he really stayed there, too, for a whole round, even! Rylee had some great ones too. She gave everyone new titles that they were to keep the rest of the game, and she landed a Dare for everyone present as the game went along, too, so everyone got one! I was Queen of Sauce, after which Mordale Dared me to get out a real gold crown with jewels in it he made with his jewelcrafting a month or two ago and wear it the rest of the game. Syndelia was the Sorceress of Sass. Cari, Dalaran mage that she is, became the Librarian, which was hilarious because she kept shushing people if they got too loud and reminded them that this was a library, Mordale was the Paprika Prince, after which I told him that, with the way people shorten people’s names so much, that meant his name was Pap… STILL don’t know what’s gotten into me! HA! There was lots of drinking going on, too, so I don’t remember, by this point in the game, what Zarshal and Maya ended up with… Gosh… I’ll have to ask again and write that down next week, I suppose… Oops… But yeah, also, there were a few lap-sitting Dares, a Whisper Dare from Mordale to Maya to take a greasy napkin and “clean” Cari’s face with it, and another Whisper Dare from Syndelia to Cari and I, as we were all three mages, to use illusion magic to turn into Cari (except for Cari herself, obviously, who already WAS Cari), then everyone cast Mirror Images, and tell Maya she has to pick out the real Cari. It was CHAOS! There were like a dozen of Cari in the tavern after that, all walking around in a crowd! The real Cari, however, went straight back to her Junglevine Wine that the Salty Sailor serves, and that was the giveaway! Out of the dozen copies of Cari, Maya picked the right one out of the crowd that fast! She knows her love well! Zarshal had a pretty deep Truth late in the game about regrets, and he mentioned wishing he had done more to save those that had passed on that he’d known. It was sort of a sobering moment, but he was cool about it and had us back on track with the game and laughs and stuff right after! We had a few Million-Die Rolls, too, in which a new rule was implemented for Cari, who so badly wants to one day roll a One in the opening roll out of a million: each time the rolls come around to her, she rolls twice. The first is out of one million. If she gets the One, she has to do a Truth or Dare given to her by EVERYone present! If she rolls a million out of a million, she gets to Truth or Dare EVERYone else, including choosing Truth or Dare FOR them! Ha! And then the second roll is just to roll out of whatever the person before her rolls as usual. Oh, and there was also a funny Dare Mordale had to do in which he leaped off the boardwalk outside to bellyflop into the bay. That muffled shouting from down there… Oh gosh! Haha… All in all, a great night to Deathrolls, and everyone agreed at the end of the game that this was JUST what we ALL needed… One night of relaxing, fun, NORMALCY! And we got exactly that! We all felt much better after!
By this point in the night, though, I’d had entirely too much mead, as well as some bourbon coffee off of a Mordale Dare. The two of us weren’t going to bed just yet, so we returned to Stormwind after three or four rounds of two-person Deathrolls, the final Dare of which was me Daring him to return to Stormwind with me through a portal I’d cast, and, upon arrival, without warning or context, he had to shout at the top of his lungs one funny thing he’d done that night. The plan didn’t work right, at first, as I couldn’t remember the precise incantation for Stormwind’s portal, so I had cast like seven or eight portals before I got the right one. The problem was, they were all in exactly the same spot, so it turned out to be sort of a game of Portal Roulette! He ended up in the old Dalaran that was in Northrend, and I ended up in Ironforge, though, at the time, I was drunk enough to drunk-call Mord on the comms and tell him that someone had stuffed Stormwind into a cave. Oops… Eventually, I made my way to him in Northrend’s Dalaran, and the magical aura there helped me concentrate enough to get us both to Stormwind. Then, when we got there and outside the Mage Tower, Mord started yelling at the top of his lungs about the five minutes of uninterrupted eye contact he had granted to an elf lady that night. Ha! People all over the Mage Quarter were so confused! It was great! Beyond that, I don’t remember a whole heck of a lot. It was Mord, this new guy… Bailey, I think? …who was just as dapper and well-dressed and well-mustached as Mord, and they were going back and forth about how dapper the other looked. Then Mord gave him one of those neat mugs that he’d given many other friends of his, the one with the picture of him smiling at the viewer and giving a thumbs up. Inspiring! Then there was Sir Aldo, and, soon after, his wife Lady Oracula, as well as Mysushi and Zarshal, who had come back after a bit of wandering. I don’t remember much of that interaction, as plastered as I was, though I vaguely remember them hanging out with me for an hour or so before dragging me to the inn in the Trade District and Lady Oracula taking me into a room and putting me to bed. That was so nice of them to do! I vaguely remember, though... Lady Oracula wants me to come and talk to her privately at some point. I am wondering if it's because of the void stuff that's been going on with me. She's seemed worried every time people tell me I've done something voidy again, whether it be speaking in Shath'Yar for a sentence or three and not even knowing it, or the void shadows they tell me sometimes flash across my face. She is Ren'dorei herself, though, so maybe that's another besides Nyr Stormraven that could help me with it? Gosh... Just one more thing that has had me frazzled. Anyway, it was still super nice when they all walked me to the inn and Lady Oracula helped me to my room and got me to bed! I must have woke up in the night and come home, though, because I woke up in my own bed here at the house this morning. Oh, and I gotta remember to pay Mysushi back! I think Sir Aldo, Mysushi’s ranking officer, had ordered him to get the room paid for, so I gotta bring him some coin! Man, though… Some of the very best Deathrolls games have ended up with various ones of us waking up in some inn that we didn’t even play the game at. Ha! What a night, and sorely needed! Happiness can be found even in the darkest of places, if one only remembers to turn on the light!
I’m getting hungry, though. I must be getting used to the games in which people get me to drinking and stuff. Is that good or bad? Heh. Anyway, yeah, must be getting used to it, because I don’t feel too hung over for breakfast. Dordy likely feels its around breakfast time too, especially as the sun is now finally risen. Time for noms! Today, with the painting done, I think I’ll take the day off and loaf around the house and read. Maybe have a nice swim and a nice little fishing trip before heading to Stormwind to find friends to hang out with. That sounds nice. Normalcy. One need only remember, life can be super good, even when it isn’t. It’s all about getting back up if you get knocked down! Time to enjoy this gift while we have it!
Nat tapped off the excess ink from her quill with a smile, the purple droplets returning to the inkwell to rejoin the rest as the ravenfeather quill went back into its case with its surprisingly nifty-looking purple stains inside that, despite giving off no particular pattern, still looked artistic inside the lightly-colored hardwood box. The cap went onto the inkwell next as Nat rose to head to the kitchen to turn up the heat on the stove for breakfast, pull out some eggs and bacon, and refill her coffee. As the stove heated, Nat returned to her office. The pages dry on her diary, she closed it and returned it to its place on the bookshelf, then put the inkwell and quill case back in her desk drawer where they go. That done, she headed back to the kitchen, thinking also of what meal she might surprise Celeste with when she returned. Keeping her thoughts positive despite the week she’d had, especially as so much good had also happened, and would happen, tomorrow, with Celeste’s return, she hummed softly and smiled her way through cooking, still in her sleepwear for her last day of minication, which, she determined, was going to be a lazy day of loafing around the house before setting up for Celeste’s return. Soon after, she and Dordy were chomping away at breakfast, Dordy devouring his food far quicker with the eggs and bacon stirred into it, Nat eating much slower as she started on her reading, still in her sleepwear, reading at the table a novel that involved a magical man and woman’s adventures into danger and romance alike, back in the time of the kingdom of Arathor. Immersed, Nat began her lazy day, pausing only to wash her dishes, and stretching the lazy day through relaxing on the couch in front of the fireplace, which, in the storm, was stoked up with a fire for the first time that season, warming the house enough to remain in her light sleepwear with a blanket and more coffee. Dordy wiggled under the blanket at her feet, keeping her feet warm, and, quite some time later that morning, Nat woke up without realizing she was falling asleep, her cheek on the page she had been reading. She bookmarked her page, drifting back off to sleep with a smile. Sometimes life throws you lemons, she thought as she faded back out. But that’s okay. Lemonade is tasty!
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Post by Natasha Ebonlocke on Oct 7, 2021 18:04:01 GMT
October the Seventh The scene in the sitting room of the house atop Turtle Bay’s tallest rock spire was a ridiculous one. A corgi, made of molten lava, was squirming and wriggling around rather a lot, miraculously not setting anything on fire. The reason for the pup’s squirming was obvious – the pupper had been put into a strange sort of half dog harness, half vest, enchanted for fire resistance in addition to the fire protection spells on Dordy himself. It was covered in empty pockets and loops and sheathes had been placed upon its back, with sleeves for his front legs to emerge from, and the pup was trying to free himself of it. One petite young woman with medium-length strawberry-blonde hair and hazel eyes was trying to train the pup to get used to the vest and keep it on, and another young woman, rather more round with somewhat long jet-black hair and strange, deep purple eyes was laughing at the pup and his confused wriggling.
Celeste McCullough and Natasha Ebonlocke had been training Dor’dieb McCullough-Ebonlocke to fetch tools and to learn other useful commands over the last week, to hilariously varying degrees of success. Once trained in a new command, Dordy seemed to be enjoying himself quite a bit, proudly executing commands to the general praise of the two women that spoiled him so. The training itself, however, seemed to confuse Dordy to no end, though he was beginning to equate training with him learning something new that would garner more attention, praise, and treats, and was slowly but surely beginning to acclimate to such practices.
The new training with the vest, which was intended to make Dordy into a sort of walking toolbox, was later to be expanded upon in Celeste’s workshop to adopt mechanized arms that, upon voice-activated commands, would grab certain tools and pass them up to Celeste. The plan was to get Dordy used to wearing a vest at all before adding the weight of tools and the hopefully lightweight mechanical arms, then get him used to having the arms on his back actually move about without startling him. It was the biggest project they’d ever undertaken with Dordy, though Celeste seemed pretty confident that it would work.
In the meantime, after much fuss, Dordy finally seemed to be resigned to his fate. Hopping up onto the sitting room’s couch, he curled up in a corner, breathed a loud, exasperated sigh, and curled up into a fiery ball to nap. Celeste and Nat cheered, pleased that Dordy was finally beginning to acclimate to the vest. Celeste next sat down next to Dordy, peering down at her blueprints for the vest’s mechanization that lay sprawled across the coffee table. Recognizing the look Celeste gets when she’s completely in the zone and will be concentrating quietly for a while, Nat smiled and rose to her feet. She had her own project to get to now. Crossing the sitting room and stooping to plant a kiss atop Celeste’s head as Celeste mouthed words silently at the blueprints, she walked to her office on the east side of the sitting room and went the bookshelf left of her writing desk. Pulling out her diary, she placed it on the desk, withdrawing the case containing her ravenfeather quill and her inkwell of purple ink from a desk drawer. Opening all three items and finding the next blank diary page, she withdrew her quill from its case, dipped it in a bit of ink, tapped off the excess, and began to write.
Dear diary,
What a great week! The storms, literal and metaphorical, are over! Celeste is back and happy as ever, I found my Bestie (though she’s not quite out of the woods yet!), I got to see Cari’s apartment for the first time ever, and we’ve had a massive win in the Brinebreaker case!
Celeste’s return was a happy one. She came back looking relaxed and at ease, completely back to her old self again! She came back while I was at work, so I missed the actual first steps through the door to welcome her back, and she, instead, ended up surprising me by welcoming ME back from work! She had dinner cooked, even! She did this all three nights, putting her tools down and coming to take care of me. I had planned to do it the other way around, but, me being at work, she always beat me to it!
We’ve taken on a new project together – Dordy Training! We’re trying to get him to learn to fetch tools in order to help Celeste out around the workshop. At first, all we could manage to get him to fetch was a wrench… but, it’s Celeste’s oldest wrench, which happens to be his favorite toy for some reason, and, once he fetches it, he just runs away, playing Keep-Away with us instead of giving it to Celeste! It’s hilarious fun, but it’s not quite the intended result of the command. He’s made some progress… Now he knows “screwdriver,” and will fetch that out of the box, though he still plays Keep-Away. We’ll get him trained, though! Just gotta keep grinding!
She’s been in the workshop quite a bit, too. Apparently the M.U.T.T., the old goblin shredder she rebuilt (she took out the big goblin face in the front and installed more tools than I even knew existed into it, inspired by the utility multi-tool my father gave her weeks ago, tools that emerge and retract when Celeste uses her control panel she rebuilt in the cockpit) and renamed to the Mobile Utility Transport Tool, or just Mutt for short, isn’t quite prepared for the delicate touch required in archaeology work; Celeste said she’d upended what had seemed like half the forest floor with a four-inch trowel in her first attempt to delicately dig up a stone from the dirt as practice! So lately she’s just been making lots of adjustments and tweaks to the Mutt, testing it out on polishing silverware. It’s resulted in a lot of dented cups and twisted forks, but she’s making visible progress with each tweak, so that’s good! She says it now only crushes one thing out of every ten or so… ha! She’s been completely immersed in her project, too; she hasn’t even touched her fishing stuff all week!
Also, she really seemed to love my finished work on her workshop! She says that “working in an underwater world so high up in the sky is just so many levels of awesome!” The cleaned-up and organized tools and workbench and everything, along with the mini-icebox to store cool drinks and stuff in so she doesn’t have to climb the spiral staircase and go all the way across the house each time, also made her super happy! YAY!
This week has seen triumphs, though it’s also had a couple dampers put on it. Once such triumph came this past Thursday night during a visit to Stormwind. I ran into a coworker in the Whitewind Company, a Draenei paladin named Cordala that I hadn’t seen in a bit. Cordie and I talked for a bit, and I updated her on Nah being missing and in danger. She suggested we walk Stormwind for a bit and look for her, on the off chance that we might find her and help her. We walked all over, eventually ending up at the gazebo behind the Cathedral. I thought I had heard her snicker a couple times in the Cathedral District, though every time I looked, she wasn’t there, though there was a figure the height and build of a Kaldorei woman wearing bright golden armor and a matching helm. I thought this might be her, as I know she’d masqueraded as a paladin just for the fun of it in the Cathedral District at least once before, but, with the helm on, I couldn’t be sure. Then, at the gazebo, I saw the weird elf-paladin again! When I got close to speak to the armor-clad elf and speak to her, it turned out to be Nah after all! Or, at least, her voice… She pretended not to know me, which was confusing, then suggested I search for this “Nah” person I’m talking about in the Stormwind Graveyard. That, after the incredibly hard week I’d had, after all the worry over her and Celeste, after all the scares, was just too much for me. I sort of burst into tears on the spot, refusing to believe that Nah could be dead, trying to get this elf I knew MUST be Nah to speak to me normally. But then she just faded away, like a ghost! She didn’t even poof, Nah-style, just… faded! It seemed pretty ghost-like, making it seem like it really was Nah’s ghost talking to me or something! I was so confused! But then Cordie, who is, of course, far older and wiser, told me that it could be code-speak, and that I really should go to the Stormwind Graveyard and see. So, we went.
I knew I was just being silly with all the tears and stuff, but I was just that frazzled! I was at the end of my rope that week! So I tried to dry up my wet face as we made our way down the path between all the gravestones, looking for Nah everywhere around the place. Sure enough, another ghostly image was up at the tomb of Queen Tiffin Wrynn, and this one was Nah, and not in armor! I was ready to cry again, but I knew that Nah had a lot of tricks up her sleeve, and this might be one of them. Cordie stopped at the entrance to Queen Tiffin’s tomb, and the Nah-image led me around back. It turned out to really be Nah, but only partially shadowmelded, making her just LOOK like a ghost! She was alive and okay! YAY!
Nah told me all about what she’d been up to. It turns out that that fight that I had witnessed on that rooftop involved her being seriously wounded with the stab of a sword from a blade that the Sayaad that had been purged from her – turns out the Sayaad’s name is Ganadrayda – before she’d been flung off the rooftop. Nah said she’s okay now, thanks to much work from healing potions, but still, that’s so awful! And she couldn’t even hide out at her house; Ganadrayda, who now shares all Nah’s memories up to the point of the purging, had continued pretending to be Nah for unknown reasons, and had taken up residence in Nah’s house. She’s still going around pretending to be Nah, except that she never actually socializes, but instead, seems to be hunting something. Nah doesn’t seem to know what that is, and she’s worried about it being her friends or her adopted parents. Sayaad are, after all, known to enjoy inflicting pain and agony, and the torment of killing Nah’s loved ones would certainly qualify as such. So, until such a time as Ganadrayda is stopped, it’s possible that we’re all in danger from her! I’ve been on my guard at all times, but it’s kept me frazzled since! In the meantime, Nah plans to hide out at the inn on the west coast of Stormsong Valley that we’ve played Deathrolls at a few times. I’m glad there are wards that completely prevent physical and magical intrusion on our homes here and in Darkshire and Ironforge, as well as our tent. I don’t need Ganadrayda finding her way in here and reading this to find out about Nah!
I don’t know what we’ll do once we catch the Sayaad. Personally, my plan would be to revert to my master demonology and banish Ganadrayda to the Twisting Nether once more, as demons can only truly die there, or on Argus. If killed here, they simply return later. Then, once banished, I’ll send Mek-barash and Myrlia and maybe some other fel minions after her to deliver the True Death. What a fight that must look like, a Wrathguard, a Sayaad, maybe others, all battling a Greater Sayaad in the Twisting Nether or on Argus itself! I don’t know if that will be the case, though. There are other complications, like Richard Riggermotor still believing that Nah had made him promise to keep me from helping, which Nah told me there at the tomb must have been Ganadrayda posing as her, because she had made him promise no such thing. Then, there is Telrissa Felweaver. She was the one to first give Nah the idea, and hope, of being free of her inner demon and returning to normal. She had first come to the Whitewind Company with a request for company researchers to find a way to restore her to normal, and, after deep research into the topic, I formulated a rather elaborate plan involving the Moonwell of Cleansing in Ashenvale, the Caverns of Time to visit the Well of Eternity to make quick use of the Dragon Soul while it was exposed over the Well before the Well exploded like ten thousand years ago, and a spell to use the magic of the Demon Soul and the Well of Eternity to pinpoint, isolate, and extract the Greater Sayaad from Telrissa’s soul. Richard, of course, had skipped most of that, simply using a soulstone for that final bit. Much less power, and great risk to Nah’s life as such, but it had worked! Anyway, this was the research I posted for Telrissa to be purged. At the time, Telrissa looked like most Illidari do – long hair, icy expression, no sense of humor. But now, Telrissa has short, sassy hair like Nah’s, with the hair leaves that Nah has, and Nah’s sense of humor and mannerisms. I’m worried that Ganadrayda’s new Illidari abilities come from her having somehow possessed Telrissa! There are so many unknowns, and I don’t know when or how to proceed with my plan! I keep waiting on Nah to give the word that we’re ready to enact SOME sort of a plan, but she doesn’t know yet either! When will we act?!
Nat dipped her quill into her inkwell for more ink, then, on second thought, left it there and sat back. She was anxious to get Ganadrayda dealt with as soon as possible, but it had been a couple weeks now, and there had still not been the slightest hint of the opportunity to take the fight to her. The feeling of anxiety and dread crept over her once again. She was worried about Nah, not to mention everyone Nah cared about. There was no telling what Ganadrayda’s plan was, and, until they knew, they must proceed as though everyone was in mortal peril!
A sudden shout burst into Nat’s thoughts, increasing her anxiety. Celeste! Nat darted out of the office, looking into the sitting room, then breathed a sigh of relief. It was merely Celeste, snapping out of her fixation on her blueprints, to grab Dordy and fix his vest back on. Dordy, feigning sleep, had eased his front right leg out of the vest from within his curled-up sleeping ball position, and Celeste was trying to get the squirming pup back into it. Dordy, enjoying the game, was barking and wagging his tail, continually pulling his leg out of reach. Nat laughed, still feeling immensely relieved that Ganadrayda hadn’t done the impossible and breached their wards. She crossed the sitting room to help, holding Dordy’s leg still so that Celeste could work the vest back on. Once Dordy was situated again, Celeste scooped him up, announcing that she’d be resuming her nearly non-stop work on the Mutt. She stopped for a quick kiss for Nat, who smiled bashfully and blushed, then headed toward the doorway to the spiral staircase in the back left corner of the house under the wrap-around balcony. Nat smiled, knowing Celeste would be happy working downstairs, and bent to roll up the blueprints for Dordy’s vest. Figuring to take them downstairs with her when she goes to hang out with Celeste and Dordy after her diary entry, she took it with her into her office, placed it on her desk, sat down, and returned to her writing. Quill now loaded with fresh ink, the events of other days appeared on her page.
The rest of the weekend passed without much going on, aside from Celeste insisting upon spoiling me with dinners to come home to after work and nice, relaxing evenings afterward before I go to bed for lame early work mornings after. Monday night was much the same, just sort of hanging out and relaxing, though I did spot Telrissa and another contact of Lady Whitewind’s, Lucina Moonfeather, a hired blade that was known to gun for whichever side pays her more in a given instant, talking to Telrissa. Telrissa was saying something about a gnome named Richard, seeming very much to be describing Richard Riggermotor, as though she was looking for him. Lucina, too, seemed to be keeping an eye out for him for some reason, also on Lady Whitewind’s orders. Lucina responded coldly, even a bit hostile, to Telrissa, seeming to loathe her for her use of fel powers as an Illidari. Telrissa’s stance switched from friendly to cold and almost hostile herself as a result, and said something about “Lucina’s secret not remaining so for long,” after being unable to get Lucina to talk in exchange for a bit of coin. So now I guess Nah and I need to find Lucina and get her to talk about what’s up. More intrigue! Other than that short conversation, though, yeah, nothing happened the rest of the weekend or Monday other than relaxing and having a nice time with friends, including me possibly joining Rylee and Maya at Cari’s house for some sort of book studies they were doing in to all the schools of magic. I don’t know too much about it at this point, except that Cari figured I might be useful in helping with the shadow and fel parts. I’ll do what I can to help!
Then Tuesday night was the weekly Whitewind Company expedition to Boralus… This time, to take down Marcus Brinebreaker himself! Cletcher and I went with our friends Cari and Maya to Hook Point to infiltrate the Kelp Club, where Cari believes the Brinebreaker Kingpin himself, according to clues surrendered by the underbosses we busted, is hiding out. Nah showed up right when we were about to go from Bo’s Crab Shack and into the alley, and joined us, much to the surprise of those who didn’t know she’d been found again. I promised to explain later, and in we went!
The club had a fancy double-door entrance of mahogany, matching furniture, and a very long line of people waiting behind a velvet rope to be let in by the bouncer. It all smelled of mildew a little bit, which figured, as this stuff out here was only covered from the storms the area sees so frequently by the overhead boardwalk, and the ground was just all mud through there.
We all decided to dress in such a way to get us into such a low-brow club, which pleased the bouncer a bajillion years later when we finally got to the front of the line, and that velvet rope. But he didn’t want to let in Cletcher! We, like nearly everyone in the line ahead of us (causing the long wait to get this far), argued with the Brinebreaker Bouncer with his heavily tattooed arms and Brinebreaker brand. The man eventually relented, eyeing Cletcher’s covered forearm and then his size as though contemplating Cletcher being brought into their ranks. He made a deal: if Cletcher could beat him at an arm-wrestling match, he could enter with the rest of the group. If not, the group would go in without him. Cletcher accepted the challenge. It was tense at first; the bouncer, with his bulging arm muscles, seemed like he might win! He was pushing Cletcher’s hand down! But then, Cletcher made a big comeback! A minute later, the bouncer’s hand thumped down onto the fancy host podium the bouncer had out there! Cletcher had WON! The bouncer didn’t seem to upset, looking again at Cletcher’s right forearm, then clapping him on the back and telling him he was welcome there. We went inside, and everyone, including people in line behind us and those inside near the door, cheered for Cletcher, disliking the bouncer.
The inside was so embarrassing! A huge stage with dancing women that wore little and were wearing less and less as they danced dominated the scene, as did a massive bar brawl in the opposite corner. It seemed that nobles and the middle-class snuck into the slums to come to this club too, as well as some of the young women of the slums. There were excessive amounts of food and drink everywhere, while people all around this place starved. We did our best to keep straight faces, though, and milled about and tried to overhear useful things that might point us to which of these people could be Marcus Brinebreaker, though none really looked prominent enough to be him. Nah and Cari, after a couple women on stage suddenly got into a big fight themselves, eavesdropped on their argument as they hit each other. It seemed both of them were accusing the other of turning Biff in to the Kul Tiran authorities. Biff was that scrawny guy with the little black ponytail that we busted after following him from Lemptheby’s auctions! It seemed that they didn’t know that we were the ones on their trail after all… Good news for us, as we were surrounded by their gang…
We did some more eavesdropping. Nah and Rylee were hovering near a couple of guys sitting in chairs near the fireplace at the far end of the club. These two guys had women draped all over them like scarves or something. It was embarrassing to see! Nah and Rylee came back after a bit, and it turned out that the men were talking discreetly and vaguely, not wanting the women all around them to understand, about what seemed to be a second plot to bomb Upton Borough being in the works, awaiting only confirmation of orders to be issued by Marcus Brinebreaker himself. Upton Borough was in trouble again!
I did some eavesdropping myself, and overheard a couple women talking about taking dinner to “the Boss.” And, from their giggles and grins, they seemed to be describing themselves as dessert! GOSH! I left at that point, telling the group about it. We ended up following the women at a distance, and they went down some dark stairs in a far corner that looked like they led underneath the club. But then we got stopped at the top of the stairs by a pair of Brinebreaker guards and turned away! So we talked again, and came up with another plan – go get more food, which we swindled from the cook by pretending that “the Boss” wanted more, then head back to the guards and tell us we were taking it downstairs, and that we were more “dessert.” How embarrassing! It worked, though, and Cletcher even got downstairs with us by being the muscle taking the most and heaviest platters.
When we got downstairs, passing the women as they came back up (they seemed to be miffed at not being wanted for “dessert” after all), we saw way more food in an extremely lavish office, with a huge man nearly the Collector’s size on a desk. The food was heavily made up of crabs and lobsters; it seemed that the Brinebreakers had moved in on poor Joan’s crab traps! What a bunch of pooheads! And this office itself… oh my gosh! Fancy, expensive furniture and paintings, massive loads of expensive-looking food, an enormous bag of gold coins, two more piles of gold coins and one more of silver coins, a big treasure chest, and a bearskin rug. This guy, whoever he was, sitting on this desk… He HAD to be Marcus Brinebreaker himself! Who else would be in here living like a king right in the center of an area surrounded by poor, starving people?
Nah seemed to have the same thought, getting him to confirm his identity. A bit of flirtation and flattery later, and she had the big man’s chest puffed out, proclaiming himself to be Marcus Brinebreaker, leader of the Brinebreaker Gang… and personal envoy of the Tidesage! WOW! Nah’s so good at this stuff!
After that it was a matter of more flirting and flattery – everyone else was good at it, but I couldn’t much more than blush all over the place and trip over myself – and we were able to make our next move, while Cletcher kept a keen eye on things upstairs and down from his position on the staircase. Cari was the first one to think of something masterful next. She snuck out her wand, and froze Marcus Brinebreaker in place with a chronomancy spell! The Kingpin was frozen in time! After that, Nah and Rylee ransacked the place. Nah got a list of names, from Marcus Brinebreaker at the top to the newest recruits down at the bottom, of every single person in the gang, with an annotation as to which names had to be forced into joining. That’s gonna keep the Kul Tiran authorities busy for a while! She also found a letter to an unnamed underboss to retry the Upton Borough bombing, confirming what was overheard upstairs! Rylee found another list of names. It was titled as being a list of names being considered for the underboss positions, as their underbosses were missing. Putting two and two together, it seemed that the only thing delaying Marcus Brinebreaker from okaying the next bombing was the lack of an underboss to send the letter too!
Cletcher, meanwhile, was giving the frozen Kingpin a beating for him to feel when he got unfrozen. I almost felt bad for the guy, but then I remembered all the poor, starving people, the people of Upton Borough, and especially those orphans bullied into pickpocketing for the gang, and I didn’t feel so bad about it after all. Rylee, meanwhile, had given the Kingpin a few punches of her own for good measure as she searched him for the keys to the treasure chest, which she’d dragged to the middle of the floor. Cari’s next move was to open a portal to Boralus’ Tradewinds Market, which would get us out of the club with Marcus Brinebreaker, his treasure chest, and all the evidence without us having to fight our way out of the club full of Brinebreaker gangsters, and then all the way out of Hook Point, their main territory.
Through the portal we went, Rylee with the treasure chest, Cletcher dragging Marcus Brinebreaker along. We ended up at the Boralus Stockade past Hook Point and on the other side of the garrison there, where, upon learning the frozen man’s identity, a Proudmoore Officer led us not to the cells, but rather, down into a cellar. Through several dark tunnels we went, coming to what she called the “black cells.” Here, we were granted permission to question Marcus Brinebreaker before their interrogator could, as we’d been the ones to bring pretty much the entire gang down. While Marcus was coming out of the chronomancy spell, Rylee was unlocking the treasure chest. Oh my gosh… it was full of women’s smallclothes! Marcus Brinebreaker had evidently kept a souvenir of every woman to throw herself at him! GOSH! Top bits and flying bits got dumped out onto a table by a frowning Rylee, and, there, buried under the smallclothes, were tons of letters! It seemed to be correspondence with various gang members. It contained a massive list of criminal wrongdoings, further incriminating the Kingpin!
Rylee, unsatisfied that she’d found everything, pressured Brinebreaker into revealing to her that the chest had a false bottom. She tried to find it, but couldn’t, so she chucked it against a wall and shattered it! The false bottom also popped loose, and even more letters came spilling out! These were all be from someone calling themselves The Tidesage. It seemed to be the woman referring to herself as just The Tidesage that we had heard rumors of all along! Reading through them, we got more confirmation that she was controlling Marcus Brinebreaker and his gang. There were pages and pages of orders to him to do this or that, or have this or that done, and nearly all of it was illegal. The most incriminating letter of all was one that confirmed what the two Tidesages last week had said when they were planting bombs in Upton Borough: plant bombs, destroy Upton Borough, turn it to a slum everyone abandons, which frees it up for the Brinebreaker Gang to move in and claim it. This gives the Tidesage and her followers a foothold at the front of Proudmoore Keep, and, with the Lord Admiral Jaina Proudmoore still missing, the keep should easily fall, especially with the Tidesages wreaking havoc upon any naval support the keep might receive. The Tidesage would kill Lady Katherine Proudmoore, claim the throne for herself, and, according to this letter, she’d convert all citizens of Kul Tiras to the Old Ones, paving the way for the return of the Black Empire to Azeroth! That’s such terrible news!
This confirmed something foreshadowed by Lady Cellica Whitewind on her original post months ago when she posted this job listing: There’s always a bigger fish!
Having to go after a far more powerful target next really sort of put a damper on celebrations of finally accomplishing the goal of taking down the Brinebreaker Gang once and for all, even with the huge payout this contract is going to net us. On top of that, some of these letters from the Tidesage were apparently written in Shath’Yar, from what was described to me by the others (Rylee had even handed me one, stating that I was the only one here that spoke “Babblespeak”), though I saw it all as what appeared to be Common. It seems this Void infection might be growing…
We took our leave after that, leaving Marcus Brinebreaker to the mercy of the Kul Tiran authorities and the Proudmoore Interrogator. It seems his days of living it up at the expense of the misery and even lives of so many others were over!
I went back to Stormwind to try to unwind after that. I found Skylie there, and I gave her something I’d been meaning to give her for a while. It was this huge hunk of jagged metal on a long wooden stick with a pair of blood-red leather straps wrapped around it for grips. Skylie called it a “halberd,” and seemed to be really pleased with it. That made me feel better! We hung out for a bit, and then Lady Oracula and her husband, Aldo, came along. They still wanted to talk to me, like they’d said last week. We went to Lion’s Rest, to the bench at the edge of the cliff where I eat dinner and watch the sunset and hang out with my bestie to unwind after workdays. They cut to the chase pretty quickly. They, too, had seen Void shadows flicker across my face and heard me speak Shath’Yar without knowing it. Lady Oracula, being Ren’dorei herself, was deeply concerned, and was trying to get to the bottom of it. I answered her questions as best as I could, but I don’t know where I picked up the Void infection, or from whom, or when. Best “when” I could pinpoint was just a couple weeks into the Brinebreaker investigation, though I hadn’t had any contact with Void users there. She warned me to get the Void infection dealt with while it was still relatively minor, before it could grow to the point where it could never be cleansed, and I’d just have to try and manage it for the rest of my life as best I could. There is one small ray of hope… She said she’d contact the other Ren’dorei she used to run with under the command of Alleria Windrunner, and see if they can help expunge the Void from me somehow. That sounds really scary, but I know I gotta do it! She’s going to get back to me as soon as she can with their response. Hopefully they agree to help!
Nat deposited her quill once again into her inkwell, leaning back in her hair, her hair dangling behind it. She rubbed her face with her hands, covering it, trying to clear her head of wild thoughts and stress. This had been, after all, a mostly triumphant week. The return of Celeste and Nah, the apprehension of Marcus Brinebreaker, and the collection of far more evidence than necessary to arrest every single member of the gang, including who to show lenience to because of being forced into service, should be enough of a series of triumphs to keep anyone happy. But, the Void infection in her, Ganadrayda still being on the loose and forcing Nah to remain in hiding, and the Tidesage still having dark plans for Boralus, Kul Tiras, and, from what was said in the letter, all of Azeroth, was equally enough to rain on anyone’s parade. She sat back up, her face set into a look of determination next. One problem at a time. Deal with each one as it presented itself. Everything would be okay! She made herself smile, then thought of the previous night’s game night, which turned the smile genuine. Reaching for her quill, she returned to her writing.
Last night was Deathrolls! We’d been meaning to take Cari up on an offer to play a game at her apartment one of these nights… Last night we did! Cari’s apartment is awesome! It’s in Dalaran, so it’s actually pretty spacious and fancy, with really high vault ceilings, super-wide rooms, a huge sitting room with bookshelves, a huge dining room and kitchen, and these cool stairs, like four of five of them, that span the back of the middle portion of the room and lead up to the bedchamber. She’s got this huge wardrobe! I’m jelly! Heh. Her bed is awesome too; a king-size four-poster that could fit like ten of her tiny self in it! Very old mage paintings and busts and stuff were all around the room. It looked every bit the part of an apartment of a Kirin Tor mage!
Maya cooked tons of food and made tons of sandwiches. There was lots of different wines made by Cari’s family, who owned lots of vineyards, and Maya’s cooking also included salads, ravioli, and cheese sticks! The game was me, Cari, Maya, Rylee, and Zarshal. Mags was able to make it a bit later too! The food and drinks were awesome, and we had ourselves a grand little feast!
There were almost no Truths this time around. It was mostly a Dare game night! Mags had one in which Cari and I had both rolled ones over the course of the round’s different sorts of rolls, and, as we were seated at opposite ends of the table, she Dared us to throw raviolis to each other for us to try to catch in our mouths. I’m a bad throw AND a bad catch, so I thought this would go on forever. Sure enough, I missed Cari’s first throw, and it plopped right into my forehead! My throw went a bit too high, and Cari, leaping up after it, ended up toppling over backward in her chair! She was okay, but I still felt bad! Her next throw, though, was a high arc instead of a straight shot, and, somehow, it landed right in my mouth as I had my head tilted back! I almost choked, though; it fell all the way to the back of my throat! There was another Dare in which Rylee had to wear a candle on her head for three turns and defend against it being taken. She had to be a kobold! She earned the nickname “Rybold” from that! Zarshal had a Whisper Dare for Mags to throw a cheese stick and try to knock the candle off the top of Rylee’s head. It was a near miss, and Rybold ended up keeping the candle on her head all three rounds, all the while making everyone laugh by talking like a kobold. Ha! Then I had a Whisper Dare for Cari. Go over to Zarshal a few rounds later when no one expects it, pretend to whisper stuff to him, giggling and blushing, all the while pointing at Maya. Then, when Maya inevitably reacts and asks what she’s whispering about her, she was to dart over to Maya’s chair, pinch her cheeks, and jump up and down excitedly, announcing that she’d found all Maya’s frogs. That had Maya SO confused! HA! It was so hilarious! Cari’s still on her quest to roll a one in a million on the Million-Die Rolls, but no joy yet! But on the last roll of the game, which was another Million-Die Roll, I figured everyone should be in on whomever wins’ Truth or Dare. Cari ended up winning that one, and she Dared the three of us remaining (Maya and Mags were gone a little while before, with early workdays ahead of them) to make the latest version of one of Rylee’s favorite Dares – the Human Pyramid! Only this time, it was the Leaning Tower of Human! I had to get up on Zarshal’s shoulders, and Rylee had to get up on mine, and we had to pass a glass of wine from top to bottom, everyone taking a sip, without spilling it or us falling over. It was all I could do to keep ahold of Zarshal with all that extra weight on my back! I was sooooo worried that I’d dump Rylee right off of me and onto that hard stone floor! But, I did it! And, when Rylee passed the glass down to me, I was even able to slowly sort of leg go of the Deathgrip I had on Zarshal’s worgen fur to take the glass and take a sip, though, when I passed the glass down to Zarshal, I slapped that hand right back into his fur like SO quick. And we did it! Dare complete! I was so relieved to get down, even as fun and funny as that had been! We all left after that, Cari being a mage and able to clean up the feast’s remains with a spell before she went to bed there in her apartment. There were many, many more hilarious Dares, too! I had so much fun! What an apartment! What a feast! What a game night!
Now I just wanna go hang out with Celeste in the workshop and maybe help with the Mutt as best I can, and with Dordy and his vest. I can hear her humming and clanging and whanging on things down there. She sounds so happy! I’m so happy she’s happy! It’s almost lunchtime, though. I’m gonna bring her something from Angler’s Wharf as a surprise. Maybe we can split that that giant mantid shrimp platter with all the sauces that they’ve got on special down there today, and some Dwarven mead… Good times! And, no matter what dampers get put on a given week, there are always more good times ahead too! WOO!
Nat smiled broadly at that as she tapped the excess ink from her ravenfeather quill tip and replaced it in her quill case. She capped the inkwell, and put both items in her desk drawer. Sneaking upstairs, not wanting to spoil the surprise, she slipped on her shoes, collected her coin purse and counted out enough coins for the platter and a good tip, then tiptoed back downstairs and out the front door. Spying Onyx sunning himself on the beach at the edge of the waves, she beckoned him up. Always happy to spread his wings and ferry his friend, Onyx darted up to the top of the rock spire in seconds. Nat mounted up, flew down the spire to Angler’s Wharf, purchased a platter, and was back home minutes later. Freeing Onyx back to sunning himself on the beach, she tiptoed back into the house with the platter, stopping at her office to close her diary, the ink now dry on the pages, and replace it on her bookshelf. A moment later, she was emerging at the bottom of the wrought-iron spiral staircase with the enormous platter of giant mantid shrimp and all the dipping sauces balanced on one hand, and the handles of two steins of Dwarven mead in the other. Placing everything on one clear end of Celeste’s workbench, she tiptoed over to Celeste, who was leaning into the torso of the Mutt to wire something up. She closed her hands around Celeste’s eyes, who giggled and made lots of silly guesses to who it could be. Dordy, Suyin, and Cloud dancer were among named names. When she finally turned around to give Nat a kiss, she spied the succulent platter on the workbench. Gleefully surprised, she joined Nat for a bit of lunch, not minding having such a fancy lunch all grease-stained in a workshop/hangar setting – the setting fit just fine, shrimp in the painted underwater world, amidst loads of sea creatures in a coral reef with a shark-infested pirate ship in the distance under a fishing boat. It wasn’t a fancy restaurant, yet, like so much of their life, weird as it was, everything was oddly perfect.
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Post by Natasha Ebonlocke on Oct 14, 2021 16:17:54 GMT
October the Fourteenth Onyx’s heavy wings stirred up wisps of dark nether as he flapped once, twice, and then soared off the top of the tallest spire of rock in Turtle Bay. Nat rode down on his back, sitting side-saddle as usual, following Celeste, who was piloting the Flying Nosebleed. The well-loved and well-used flying machine painted to look a bit like Celeste’s Direhorn, Nosebleed, was laden with a cargo net full of supplies that dangled beneath it as it took off from Celeste’s landing pad close to the pinnacle of the spire. Onyx spiraled down lazily after the Flying Nosebleed, being reluctant to land until the Flying Nosebleed’s engines were cut and the sand of Turtle Beach wasn’t flying in every direction. Once the Flying Nosebleed went silent, he landed several feet away. Nat slid from his back, hurrying over to help Celeste unload the supplies from one cargo net into another – this time into the nets that sometimes hung from Nosebleed’s sides when the two were preparing for an extended-stay trip. Dordy was there as well, his aviator goggles modified to seal around the eyes a bit better to avoid getting sand in them in the desert. The sand kicked up by the Flying Nosebleed on the beach here was certainly a test for them!
Celeste and Nat stopped for a picnic lunch next. A simple affair, as it was a busy morning. Lunchmeats and a side of strawberries from a farm near Halfhill, along with moonberry juice made for an enjoyable meal on the beach near the waves on Nat’s picnic blanket. Lunch was an enjoyable affair, with the two talking excitedly about the trips they had planned for the other while each tried not to provide anything in the way of spoilers for the other’s surprise, and Dordy, free of his aviator goggles for now, sneaking in to steal strawberries or sniff hopefully at the lunchmeat. The spoiled-rotten molten corgi was given each generously, him not seeming to be prone to the usual woes of table-scrap-fed normal pooches. When the two – three, really, including Dordy – finished their meals, Celeste went up the beach to talk soothingly to Nosebleed, making sure, as usual, that he was okay with his load. Nosebleed took it all stoically as he ever did, just loafing around at the edge of the Krasarang jungle munching on plants, not even noticing when Dordy scared up a crab and began chasing it all over the beach. Nat watched with a giggle as Dordy played with the crab. The crabs here seemed strangely aware that the molten pupper was playing rather than preying, and seemed to play back, turning to chase, or hiding in the sand, only to pop up and wave their claws around as Dordy, playfully startled, would leap a foot in the air and then take off in the other direction, only for the crab to have it’s turn to chase again. After a time, Nat removed the last few things she’d packed on Onyx. Nat’s diary, quill case, and inkwell came out, as Nat had decided to write on the beach for the first time in a good while. Spreading the items out on her picnic blanket, Nat withdrew her ravenfeather quill from its case, uncapped her inkwell, dipped her quill, and opened her diary to the next blank page. Reflecting a moment on her unusually quiet week first, she then dipped her quill and began to write.
Dear diary,
It’s been a super quiet week this week. Not much has gone on. I’ve mostly just been at home preparing for a couple of trips I’ll be taking with Celeste. There wasn’t even an expedition to go start looking for the Tidesage this week, due to people’s schedules. I suppose a break is warranted after taking down the Brinebreaker Gang once and for all anyway!
Anyway, the first of the aforementioned trips is going to be an archaeology trip to Tanaris that Celeste has been talking about here and there for months! I’m really excited! Usually, I avoid deserts and hot, dry, dead, dusty places like deserts as much as possible, but Celeste actually made a new invention for me that should keep me nice and cool! The Mutt, as Celeste said during her trip with her uncle, turned out to be quite adept at digging massive holes, even if that wasn’t what she’d been trying to do with it. So, she’s going to use it to make a small tunnel near the archaeology site, rig up a turbo fan she made that’s powered by an internal combustion engine, and position it to bring up cool air from under the ground. This will work, as sand, unlike soil, reflects heat instead of soaking it in, so the underground air should feel pretty good! We’ll just have to figure up some sort of a screening rig to keep it from blasting us with sand. Celeste had the thing running yesterday morning, blowing in the cool morning air from the ocean into the hangar/workshop from out over the ocean, and it worked really well! It’s super noisy, but that’s okay; we won’t need to sleep with it on, as, as I wrote before, sand doesn’t hold heat in, which makes deserts nice and cool at night. We’ll also have to make sure to defend against trolls, desert bandits, and wild things like scorpids and maybe even the odd straying silithid.
Celeste has been making trips back and forth to Tanaris all week as she prepares the campsite. If it weren’t supposed to be a surprise, I’d have been out helping her on that side too, instead of just this side, where I’ve been helping take stuff out to the Flying Nosebleed or the real Nosebleed to be loaded up. Celeste’s trips always end with her coming back all covered in sand, though she looks really happy and excited every time. So far she’s taken the turbo fan and the Mutt over and left them wherever she’s hidden them. This morning she went to visit her friend Suyin the Pandaren to catch up on other news around the continent (my news is usually from the Eastern Kingdoms), and came back with her hair cut short again! I haven’t seen that in a while! Looks like she’s really back to her old adventuring self! I’m really looking forward to this trip so much! We haven’t been on an archaeology expedition together since the one to Winterspring several months ago! This is gonna be so much fun! YAY!
The other trip I’m preparing for is a surprise for Celeste. I can’t write about it quite yet, as I told Celeste last year that she can read my diary any time she wants, but the plans for the trip are nearly finalized! I hope she enjoys it!
Then there was the weekend, and Monday evening. Those, unlike the week, were quite eventful! There was one night where I actually met Calleigh Silversong’s brother! Calleigh, the influential Kul Tiran woman that has helped us out so much with the Brinebreaker for her own reasons, finally seems to have had her reasons revealed. Her brother, Sterling Silversong, turns out to be IN the Brinebreakers! Showed me his brand and everything! Calleigh later confirmed his story, saying that Sterling was, indeed, her brother, and that his backstory is, indeed, truthful. His story seems to basically be that, during the mysterious absence of the Kul Tiran Navy, when Kul Tirans were falling on such hard times, many were in dire straits. To his mind at the time, the only two options that remained to him were the Brinebreakers or the Ashvane Company. He chose what he thought to be the lesser of two evils, only to watch as their leader, Marcus Brinebreaker, was rumored more and more to be closeted with Tidesages, while the Tidesages, more and more, were being rumored to be dealing with the Black Empire. Wanting nothing to do with that depth of evil, he abandoned the Brinebreakers, fleeing to the mainland, which explains what he was doing in Stormwind City.
Meanwhile, Thalia Felbloom, Nah’s “sister” in the Illidari for a long time, seems to be after me! She noticed the void corruption people tell me I have a couple weeks ago, and has apparently been after my blood since! She came upon Sterling and I talking that night, and Sterling, even though I was still unsure at the time of the truthfulness of who he claimed to be after he showed me that brand, stood up for me! I was going to just teleport out of there from within a frost barrier, unless Thalia forced me to fight and use one school of magic or another on her, but then Sterling was there, telling Thalia to stop! The two got into a fight, and, next thing I know, Sterling kicked Thalia over the cliff so fast, she didn’t even have time to react and spread her wings! This was all at the cliffside benches in Lion’s Rest, so Thalia ended up at the bottom of the cliff in a crumpled mass and it didn’t look good for her at all! I remembered that Nah sort of has an on-and-off kind of friendship with Thalia, so I went for a healer as quickly as I could. I found a paladin named Artoria that I’d talked to a few times in passing at the Blue Recluse, and she came to heal Thalia. She wasn’t able to do much – the Light doesn’t react all that well with fel magics – but she at least kept Thalia alive! Thalia didn’t seem appreciative at all. She just sort of harrumphed at me and promised to get me next time. I hope I don’t run into her again before this void corruption is gone! I hope the void corruption is gone for good soon! I’m still waiting to hear back from Lady Oracula on her Ren’dorei friends about cleansing!
Speaking of void stuffs, Cari and Maya have been helping Rylee quite a bit with some sort of research project on weekends and stuff while I’ve been at work. Well, Monday night, they asked me for help! I was happy to help my friends, of course, so we went to Cari’s apartment in Dalaran, where the books they’re studying are stored. With my knowledge of fel magics, and weird ability to apparently suddenly know Shath’Yar, they wanted me along for help with those schools of magic. The books they’re researching seem to be something Rylee’s mother had created. There are three of them, and, somehow, there seems to be a sentient manifestation of all six schools of magic in them, and all six seem to possess all three books at once! Everyone sees something different in the books as the books try to communicate with us. It was super spooky! Fel, Void, and Death, of course, were scary, but, surprisingly enough, Arcane was too! I remember what Nyr Stormraven said before: Fel is organized chaos, and Arcane is forced order. Arcane, upon reflection, really is a sort of chaotic magic itself, though it isn’t Chaos magic. It’s just tumultuous, explosive energy. Well, the Arcane entity in the book was certainly chaotic enough! It was haughty, demanding, and explosively violent. Nature, being Life magic, had apparently whispered things to Maya before. I was expecting to try and commune with Fel and Void, but instead, I got Life too! The only one I didn’t see for absolute certain that night was Light. Life, though, was timid and miserable, stating that the others were all scaring it and hurting it constantly. It wanted me to teach it all about happiness. I felt so bad for it! I agreed, but, just then, Death took over, because someone had mentioned Rylee’s mother’s death, and all three books went all violent and started shuddering and flailing about, and snapped shut! It took me a while to get Life to come back. At that point, it was making requests of me. It wanted me to BURN the books, as this was the only way to free it from its torment from the others! I suppose this means even the Light torments it? Either way, I told it that I wasn’t sure that such a decision would ever be left up to me. Then it requested that I stop speaking “the shadow tongue.” I told it I couldn’t grant that request either, as I don’t know that I’m doing it when I speak it, and I don’t consciously know how to speak it or write it on purpose anyway. It just sort of happens when I least expect it, and I don’t even know that it’s happening when I do! I told it that I could still teach it about happiness, but that was all that was within my power to do. It seemed to take some solace in that, but then, one of the other, more violent ones took over again, and the books went all violent and then snapped shut once more, and almost slammed closed on my fingers! By this time in the night, it was getting late, and people were ready to give it a go another time. But then, Cari suddenly got up and started walking around her apartment as though following someone. Apparently, she’d seem a withered old woman walking around her apartment! I thought Dalaran homes were warded against magical intrusion, but, then again, Cari had brought these books and their entities into her home willingly, so I suppose they are in there free now! I suggested she do a full dispel of her apartment and store the chest with the books in a Dalaran bank vault, with all the wards that go on those, instead of keeping them in her home. She agreed, and I escorted Rylee to the Dalaran bank to deposit it for the night when everyone was going to bed. What a spooky night that was!
Anyway, that’s all that happened this week. I’ve done nothing else since except relax at home and make trip preparations since leaving Cari’s house. I continued the break I took from Tuesday night’s cancellation through game night last night, so no Deathrolls this week for me. I’ll likely be back in the saddle next week though! I still gotta find Ganadrayda and put a stop to her for Nah, and the archaeology trip will be happening next week too, aside from evening Stormwind trips to see friends, so next week should be busier! In the meantime, I’m just enjoying the home life with Celeste!
Nat tapped the excess ink off her ravenfeather quill with a smile, returning it to its cherrywood case and capping her inkwell. She watched the calm waves roll lazily in from Turtle Bay, lapping gently up the beach, while absently nibbling on a few more strawberries. Dordy’s crab had disappeared off somewhere on business of its own, and Dordy was on Celeste’s spot on the picnic blanket, sprawled out on his side and snoozing. Celeste was frowning from under the brim of her fishing hat – she was in her work clothes – at a piece of tech in her hands, twiddling a dial and repeatedly pushing a button on the side. Still standing next to Nosebleed, she was a bit distant to see what the tech was, but eventually, she heard Celeste cheer. Apparently she’d fixed whatever it was. Putting it back in the a leather case in Nosebleed’s cargo nets, she turned to head back to Nat. Nat smiled, closing her diary, the pages now dry, and replacing it, her ravenfeather quill case, and her inkwell to her pack, standing to her feet to pack the picnic blanket and everything on it back up. Ready to get back to work after that, she turns back to Onyx sidesaddle as Celeste scooped up a squirming Dordy, put his sand goggles back on, and took him to her flying machine. She climbed back into the cockpit of the Flying Nosebleed and started flipping switches, turning dials, and pushing buttons, muttering to herself as she went through her pre-flight checklist. Onyx, eager to get airborne before the dust kicked up, took off quickly. A moment later, Nat was sliding off his back once again as the Flying Nosebleed roared up the spire, with the aviator-goggled Dordy at its front, safely harnessed into the Dordy Bucket, his front paws up on the side and tongue lolling lengthily out from his open, smiling mouth as he enjoyed the flight. Nat headed back inside to bring out whatever other supplies from around the house were going to be called for next, smiling in anticipation. This week had been slow, mostly relaxing, and fun, aside from the weekend scare with Thalia and Sterling, but next week promised to be loaded chock-full of adventure with Celeste and Stormwind friends alike!
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Post by Natasha Ebonlocke on Oct 21, 2021 18:17:41 GMT
October the Twenty-First A sandwich of chilly cold cuts and crisp, cool vegetables makes a great lunch when one is out in the desert. The chilly cold cuts and cool, crisp fresh vegetables on soft, cooled, thick, fluffy white bread go together with a sort of creamy sauce that has a mild zing to it to match the mildly spicy salami, Elwynn Forest ham, and crispy slices of bacon. Pepperjack cheese matches well too, so on went two slices on each in a sort of star pattern. Crispy, cool leaves of lettuce with water droplets here and there went along with slices of cold cucumbers. Slices of cold, juicy tomato and thin, crispy rings of white onions completed the two sandwiches before they were closed.
To go with the heavy sandwiches, a nice wine was selected. It was a slightly sweet white wine that Nat hoped would go well with slightly spicy sandwiches, but she doesn't have Cari around for her wine knowledge to know for sure. She brings Celeste her lunch, hoping she has pieced together something really awesome for her love.
Along with the plates and glasses came Nat’s Diary. Celeste was wiring up a new static shock rig to keep small critters from climbing into the MUTT. There was too little voltage to hurt, but it would be uncomfortable enough that small critters would decide to go elsewhere. As the pair ate their lunch, Nat opened her diary, her ravenfeather quill case, and her inkwell, dipping in her quill to write with one hand while munching away at her sandwich in the other on the cool, shaded floor of the tunnel dug under the desert sand dunes of Tanaris. The excavation of an enormous animal’s skeleton was going on, one that was larger than their entire camp! Nat, in between handing tools to Celeste from the toolbox she was sitting next to as she and Celeste chatted a bit, dipped her quill tip into her inkwell of purple ink and began to write.
Dear diary,
Rest time over! This has been one heck of a busy week! Celeste took me to Tanaris for an extended-stay camping trip for archaeology! Only it was a surprise as to what the heck we were actually after… I thought we’d be in some old Farakki ruins somewhere or something, digging up old troll artifacts, like that moving statue Celeste found last time she was there that Dordy chases around sometimes. Instead, we ended up at a huge skeleton! Some kind of creature’s ribs are sticking up out of the sands, and we’re doing some paleontology! The cooling fan from that turbo engine that Celeste rigged up for me is working great, too! The cool air from below ground that it pulls up and fans at us keeps us fairly cool, and the nights are cool enough that we can turn it off and kill the noise. There has been a lizard sound out in the dunes that provided extra comfort noise at night, in an odd sort of way. We’ve found some cool stuff so far! Claws and things that are just enormous! Celeste believes she’s found the skull down one tunnel, and is working to unearth it. She says she thinks she knows what it might be, but it saving the surprise for me!
The only problem is, there have been strange occurrences there. First, Celeste had outfitted the MUTT with a system she called the MAD system – the MUTT Automated Defense system. Gnomish tracking and targeting systems, an automatic rapid-speed cannon that extends and retracts from one arm, and, at night, a flare canister launcher that lights up the night to show intruders. Well, the first night, we were talking after our first day of digging, just sitting at the campfire, when all of a sudden, the MUTT’s MAD system went off! The MUTT shot off a flare canister and started firing out from the camp in a wide arc in front of it for a good while. Then it finally just suddenly STOPPED! It went back to guard mode, just sort of swiveling around and scanning in place. Celeste and I went out to go and see what it was… NOTHING! No trolls or desert bandits or scorpids or vultures or anything! There weren’t even so much as bullet impacts in the sand! Then, later at night, when we were asleep, it did it again! Then, three more times that night! Celeste finally just got up and shut the MUTT down and figured she’d just fix it in the morning.
The next day, after extensive troubleshooting and diagnostics, Celeste found there was nothing wrong with the MUTT at all. We couldn’t figure out if there really was something out there, and the MUTT simply missed it with like a hundred shots, or if it was just a weird malfunction! So Celeste just left it powered down while we went into the tunnel to dig. Celeste and I were brushing away sand from a huge, long bone she’d recently discovered, and we wanted to see what part of the creature it was. But then, from outside, we heard a muffled thud and several loud clicks. Next thing we know, there is a blockage of light coming into the tunnel, and we look up, and the MUTT, though still powered down, is standing there at the tunnel entrance and facing us! How SPOOKY! Celeste was absolutely flummoxed, and she spent more time trying to figure the thing out.
Then, the following day… MORE spooks! Celeste had the MUTT down in the tunnel after having done extensive troubleshooting and diagnostics, and was so eager that she’d skipped breakfast, so I made some and took it down to her. She climbed out of the MUTT’s cockpit to eat with me, and we had breakfast there on the tunnel floor. But then we noticed something odd… Dordy, lover of human food and feaster of untended noms… was paying not a bit of attention to our breakfast! He was sniffing around animatedly along the tunnel floor instead. Something had his attention even more than the food did! Then, this smell somehow pervaded the area… like, rotting flesh and loamy earth… Celeste scooped up Dordy and she had me Blink out of the tunnel as fast as possible, and she was Blinking out right behind me. She sounded really scared! I totally was too! Once we were outside though, she seemed more angry than scared, and was declaring that she refused to believe that an ancient creature’s spirit was trying to scare us away from our digsite!
I told Celeste then… The previous night she was saying her brother’s name. Tomlin. I told her I was worried that his spirit had gotten loose somehow and had come back to fulfill his life’s final quest… to separate us, no matter how badly he has to hurt us or others, no matter how many he has to hurt. Celeste’s face went through a series of emotions at that, each one come and gone as quickly as the next: disbelief, fear, anger, and then cold determination. She was like, “Tom's soul was just a husk, filled with echoes of who he once was. He has no power anymore and no power over us." She reached out to hug me next, and then she was like, "Listen, whatever is going on, it has a basis in reality. I'm sure it's something we can figure out. How about we sleep on it? What we need is a good night's sleep, away from here. Let's go home. We can come back and finish this tomorrow. I could use a good night's rest and I'm sure you could too. We're both frazzled.” So we went home, and I cooked her some dinner before my usual evening visit to Stormwind to see friends. When I got back in the night and we went to sleep, I had a lot of dreams I only barely remember, and one that I remember quite vividly, though I’ll get into that later, as it isn’t because of the digsite. I just hope I didn’t talk in my sleep and wake Celeste up!
Anyway, that was last night, and when I woke up this morning, Celeste had already been up, found some of her mother’s old notes and journal and stuff, and had me at the dining room table eating a shrimp omelet, bacon, and toast and drinking coffee while she read to me. Apparently, this has happened before, during her childhood, which means it can’t have been Tomlin’s spirit after all! She was reading to me about a dig with her mother, brother, and uncle Rugnar out of a journal with a flowing, stylish sort of handwriting, several talented-looking sketches, and some childlike doodles, including one that made me laugh of a flying machine with arms chasing a cartoon dwarf. She read her mother’s entry about how Rugnar’s flying machine had changed direction several times during his flight to Gadgetzan for supplies, and her “curious Little Flower” – that’s Celeste – was climbing all over the cockpit looking for “evil spirits.” It was then that the flying machine began emanating a strong stench of decay, and Celeste had been scared away from the machine after that. What an entry! It’s so awesome that Celeste is bringing me along to one of her childhood digs! Or at least, one like it; she said this one had been closer to Un’goro Crater. Celeste told me that her mother had figured out what was going on, and that she’s certain this is the same thing. Then she wouldn’t tell me what it was! I had to hurry and finish my breakfast so that we could return to the digsite for her to SHOW me!
When we got there this morning, we went into the tunnel, and Celeste, feeling a confidence I certainly didn’t share about the MUTT, actually climbed into it, and turned it on! She didn’t turn on the MAD system, though, which was a relief. She told me to watch, and, sure enough, after a while, with Celeste’s hands raised into the air to show she wasn’t touching the controls, the MUTT twitched, took a step back, rotated its torso and changed hand tools a few times. Celeste was cheering about this for some reason, but then she said why: she knew what was going on! Then she did something even scarier… she said she was going to turn on the MAD system! But she was smart about it… all the bullets in the magazine box and all the flare canisters were removed first. Then she turned it on. Sure enough, after a moment, compressed air was firing out of the flare canister cannon and the cannon came out and was trying to rapid fire a whole bunch, though it was just a whole bunch of clicking, as it had no ammunition. Celeste was happy about this for some reason, then had me come in closer and chill the MUTT down as much as I could, starting from the legs and making my way up slowly over time. I approached with a frost barrier up, letting gaps form in it so I could enclose the feet with it, then, with a steady stream of cone of cold and other light frost magic spells, I rose slowly up the legs as Celeste guided me up. Eventually, she exclaimed happily, and said she’d found what she was looking for, and was telling something to get back here. Then she pulled out a lizard! It was small, barely as long as her palm. Its body was flat, mottled brown, and sand-colored, and had rows of tiny spines along its legs and neck. It smelled horribly of rotting flesh! Celeste moved closer to show me, and the stench became almost overpowering the closer she got. Then she was like, “Nat, I present to you the common desert swift, or sand-grave as it’s nicknamed. Actually a baby, in this case.” I figured that must have been that lizard sound that we’ve been hearing all week at night. But then Celeste explained the whole thing to me.
Celeste shook her head but smiled at me. She seemed pretty proud as she looked at me! Then she was like, “Good catch but no. That must’ve been its mother, looking for this hatchling.” She kneeled down and opened her hand, letting the lizard go. Dordy moved to play with it but Celeste ordered him to stay. He did so with a disappointed whine. Poor Dordy! Heh. Then Celeste was like, “It’s actually the graveyard stench that finally clued me in. This is exactly what happened to Uncle Rugnar. See, the lizard crawled into the MUTT looking for heat at night. Since the MUTT was in MAD mode, it used energy, and the lizard, naturally, was drawn to it.” She moved to the MUTT and peered into a panel near the top of its chest, pulling out a complex assembly of lenses then showed it to me and started explaining more. “The MAD’s detection system uses an overlay of lenses. Each one superimposes a different type of detector over the other. Motion, heat among others. See here? There’s a small gap between two lenses. I must’ve chipped off a piece when tightening it. It crawled in here where the heat given off by the sensor assembly must’ve felt like two nice, warm rocks pressed together. The sensor likely saw a giant creature. The small lizard looking gigantic directly on the lens. That’s why it shot high and everywhere and why it kept shooting flare canisters to see more than a shadow. Except the lizard was inside so the light didn’t reveal it. Then, when the MAD was powered off, it didn’t budge, but it moved closer to the core when the MUTT’s engine was turned on. I guess it broke or chewed through a few wires trying to get there and every time it moved through or jostled them it created a short circuit that caused the MUTT to move seemingly on its own.” Then she started explaining the spooky death smell! She was like, “Sand-graves are nicknamed that way because of the ghastly smell they give off when endangered. That’s what happened when Dordy probably smelled it and startled it when he tried to claw his way into the MUTT.”
I was so impressed at Celeste’s engineering ingenuity! All those sensor systems, all the self-corrections the MUTT made when the lizard was magnified in the inner lenses, all the extra flare canisters it fired off to try and find the thing better… Celeste is so very highly intelligent! She really turned this old goblin shredder into a modern technological MARVEL!
Then she told me that the skeleton we’ve been digging up is a whole devilsaur! Apparently, Tanaris wasn’t always a desert, so I was sort of right with my initial hypothesis that the giant bones could have been, for all we knew, a sea creature like a giant whale or something from when all this was ocean, before the Sundering blew the one big continent into lots of smaller ones ten thousand years ago… I was right in saying that this might not always have been desert! A devilsaur trod this ground, eons ago! Celeste said we don’t have a way to get a skull this size home, though, let alone the entire skeleton, but that the Ironforge Dwarves in the Explorer’s League might like another Devilsaur skeleton for their museum, so I’m thinking of asking Cari if her old Dwarf friends might it. If so, she and I and the rest of the Stormwind gang might make an adventure of coming over her and collecting it all sometime! FUN! In the meantime, what with the lizard delay, Celeste and I are going to stay on site a few more days and finish unearthing the thing! YAY!
Nat paused after that, placing her quill into the inkwell to stand to her feet and help Celeste with something. She needed to hold a bunch of wires together so they could be tied together in a neat bundle, then hold open a flap so that Celeste could reach in with both hands and splice together a few wires that had been damaged in another compartment. As she worked, she saw even more of the ingenuity Celeste had put into the machine. She could practically feel her own engineering skill grow just from watching Celeste work and explain what things in here did, and how things worked with other things to give off a desired effect, and which cogs and sensors and wires did what and where and why and how. Nat’s mind spun as she helped Celeste work and, by the time Celeste was done working on things Nat was holding up, Nat felt Celeste should be named an honorary Gnome. Nat returned to her diary as Celeste went to a box of spare parts to sort a few more things out, completely in awe of Celeste and the MUTT. It took a moment to get her mind to writing work and remember what she was going to write next. When she got there at last, she pulled her quill out of her inkwell, tapped off a bit of excess, and started scratching away again.
A few hours out of a couple of the evenings this week have been spent making trips to Stormwind to see old friends there, which have led to events that were spooky enough in their own right. How fitting that all the spooky things happen during Hallow’s End…
Tuesday was the first trip (I didn’t go Monday, as Celeste and I were really going hard on this opening day’s dig. That’s when the first MUTT thing happened). I went to go find everyone for the return to Boralus. It was Nah, her adoptive mother Nickol, who is a priestess of Elune, Maya, Cari, and Rylee. That’s when the first freaky thing outside of the digsite that happened. We got to Boralus, crossed to the Naval Academy docks, and boarded the LAS Derek’s Vigilance. This ship was just the patrol boat we needed to get around the bay to follow up on that lead we found, the one with the letter that everyone says was in Shath’Yar but I read in common that we found in Marcus Brinebreaker’s treasure chest at the Boralus stockade. It had said to find a small, fortified lookout bunker near the shore that guarded a bridge over a river, then look from there to find a rowboat. Following that rowboat would set us on the right path. So we did. We found the right bunker, after ruling out several others through a simple process of elimination. After that, we looked from the bunker and found the rowboat in question almost right off the bat, which was almost sort of weird, really. We went back to the boat, then the sailors (two guys from the big ship that had been lowered down into the water with us to row and steer and stuff for us) got us going pretty quickly toward the other boat.
That’s when the weird spooky happened.
The boat we were following just… disappeared! Meanwhile, everyone’s freaking out over some sort of new lead Nickol’s suddenly talking about: a trick door in a house that opens up into a cave on a snowy mountain somewhere in a nearby region, and Rylee’s talking about timing a dive. No one was making any sense at all! Then they wanted to stop, when we’d only just started the expedition, and go back to the ship and be done for the night! What the heck?!
Then, everyone wanted me to go and see Nyr Stormraven. Apparently more shadowy things had happened? Nyr took me with him on a walk, and Nah was there, shaken up from the weird trip for some reason, and walking with us in her cat form, not even bothering to hide herself from Gandrayda anymore! Nyr took us to his bakery and unlocked it and let us in, and he had me sit down. Then he did this weird thing… His right eye sort of shrank away, and his left eye seemed to expand to fill the whole top of his head. He took his glove and wrappings off his left arm, and the void stuff he had going on in it was showing! It was so weird and spooky! Then he touched the fingertips of his middle and ring finger on that hand to my forehead, and I felt lots of my memories stir up. In particular, it seemed that Nyr was searching for any sort of spooky memory that might be void-related that would reveal where the void corruption I got came from. There was a lot of stuff from the digsite in Tanaris, but that was a different sort of spooky, so he stopped digging into those. Eventually, we had to stop. As I have no memory of taking on any kind of void corruption consciously, and I don’t remember any sort of contact with anyone with void stuffs that would have done this to me, there wasn’t a memory for him to find. I don’t know what the heck happened, but this void stuff is weird!
In the meantime, over the next twenty-four hours, I started picking up more stuff from people about what had happened. It’s all very mixed up and confusing. Apparently, they had all experienced the same illusion at the same time. Some kind of underwater tavern club place had popped up after everything went dark, and apparently I was dancing, except dancing super well, which already pretty much proves that that wasn’t the real me. Then I was singing and reciting weird rhymes and I’d said that someone, a “she,” was calling to me, to us, and that we’d have fun, and we wouldn’t even need BODIES! How creepy! And I was sending people on silly tasks and stuff… Then I went to some cave, and was sitting in a fire with fiery kraken tentacles or something, and some other unseen person was whispering to everyone, and lots of creepy stuff! Then they said they were back in the boat with the sailors and I, and that we had apparently missed the illusion, and they’d had like two hours’ worth of illusion in like a fraction of a second! What is going on even?! It doesn’t make any sense!
Then the next day, yesterday, Nah was in Stormwind again, and not even hiding herself from Gandrayda! I wandered into the Recluse, and there they BOTH were! They were arguing, and Nah seemed ready to attack Gandrayda, and Gandrayda, still using her Nah illusion, was saying lots of bad things to Nah to stir up old memories. Apparently she was stirring up bad memories of things that hurt Nah to think about. I wasn’t about to let that go on, and I was even ready to attack Gandrayda and send her back to the Twisting Nether where Legion minions like her belong, or maybe even destroy her for good with my plan of sending lots of my own minions back through the Twisting Nether after banishing her there to deliver the true death (as they can only die for good in the Twisting Nether). But, before I could, she like, RUSHED out of the tavern the way an Illidari does. Nah and I chased after her, but when we got out to the porch, she was gone! Then Nah was out there, still feeling hurt from all the stuff Gandrayda had said to her and stirred up, so I stayed there with her since we had no clue how to look for Gandrayda. I spent some time cheering her back up, and I think I made a pretty good start. Then the conversation shifted back to the void stuffs, and we were talking about all that, and then, she told me of this dream she’d had…
Nah said she dreamed of being in this rich person’s house, gleefully clearing it out of all valuables, kleptomaniac that she is. But she said the house felt cold, and bereft of all life. Also, when she got to the back of the house, she said she heard some sort of whispering going on from a bunch of people behind an ancient bookshelf that seemed to be in an ancient language. Not the whispers of the void language that had been coming from me or from some voiceless thought sort of thing when she’s around me, but rather, some other, different ancient language. She said it was different from a normal dream in that it was so very vivid and realistic. It matched a dream I had the previous night as well, the one I alluded to near the beginning of this entry. I was cold, standing near a nice-looking house that also seemed bereft of life. It was on a snowy mountain, which explains why it was so cold there. It was up against a cliff that rose high behind it. I was searching for someone, though I didn’t know who it was that I was searching for, and all I knew was that I had to go into that nice house against the cliff if I was going to find them. The house didn’t look like anyone was in there. That matches Nah’s dream about a cold house with no one in it!
Then Nah was talking about going home and trying to get some sleep. Cari showed up just as Nah was heading out, and, before long, Cari was telling me of a dream she’d had as well! She, too, was on a snowy mountain, and she, like Nah, had experienced something that seemed ancient. Apparently, she was on one of her archaeology digs on this mountain, digging through the snow to see some sort of ancient ruins at the peak. All of a sudden, there were lots of primitive-looking people there, formed up into straight lines as though they were a military, only they had some kind of dark magic that controlled nature and made golems out of stones and trees and earth. These were suddenly attacked! The attackers, she said, wore ancient Gilnean uniforms, like, just after the fall of Arathor, back in that era. Third Kingdom stuff on their flags and everything. These attacked the primitives with their magic golems, and Cari found herself right in the middle of a gigantic battle!
Maya came by not long after and found Cari and I in the Recluse, where we were eating dinner. Broccoli cheddar soup, buttered bread, and mead. I love fall food! I got the same thing Cari got because it sounded so good! Anyway, we were hanging out, and Cari, after we’d talked about three of us having similar dreams that were super vivid, decided to ask Maya if she’d had any strange, but super vivid dreams last night. Maya said she had, and talked about riding through a forest of small trees along a path that went through the woods to the foot of a snowy mountain, where it turned up the snowy mountain to run towards the peak. Along the forested part of the path, though, there were all these wicker men and wicker bears, just like the ones she’d fought during the Brinebreaker investigation at the Ashvane Company Yard fighting pit that one night!
This all matches up with what Nickol had been saying about the next lead being a trick door leading into a cave on a snowy mountain! This can’t be a coincidence! I need to see if Nickol and Rylee had dreams too, though I forgot to ask Rylee last night when she came by for Deathrolls, as we were all busy on a completely different topic at the time. Doh! Anyway, so far… Ancient whispers of an ancient language coming from behind a bookshelf… Ancient battle in which ancient Gilneans attacked primitive druidic/shamanic-kinda people on the peak of a snowy mountain… Maya riding through wicker men and wicker bears through a forest of small trees that lead to a snowy mountain… All four of us dreaming of a snowy mountain and two of us dreaming of a cold house… This must be related to whatever lead Nickol was on about! And from the wicker men and the battle Cari described, I think we’re looking for a solitary house against a cliff on a snowy mountain in Drustvar for our next lead! We must be getting close to The Tidesage! We gotta stop her before she blows up cities and commits regicide and makes people convert to the Black Empire stuffs!
Nat paused once more as Celeste beckoned her back over. She put her quill in the inkwell, peering into the open panel on the bottom of the MUTT’s torso. There were a few piles of droppings, a tiny loose brown scale, and, in one spot, a chewed bit of wire insulation. Somewhere, there was an exposed wire, and Celeste needed to find it and rewrap it so it didn’t touch another wire and short it out. The two combed over the wiring, crammed into the torso together. Nat, finding more messes, ended up getting distracted cleaning those up, removing the tiny bits of scale and droppings with one of her lunch napkins. Meanwhile, Celeste had found the wire and was already quickly wrapping it back up. Their task complete, Nat blushed her way through a quick peck on the cheek and a word of thanks from Celeste and went back to her writing again.
Anyway, there were good points besides having Celeste read old family memories to me, and having fun at the digsite with Celeste and making so much progress in spite of the spooky stuffs. Deathrolls was last night! And, as it’s Hallow’s End… Hallow’s End-themed Deathrolls! Get your costumes! YAY! It was Mags, Rylee, Cari, Maya, Zarshal, and I (though Zarshal came late and made it in right around the time Maya had to head to bed early for work in the morning). I used an illusion spell to be a ghost! I was all transparent and everything, and, if you didn’t look for me hard enough, you’d just see stuff like, Hallow’s End candy and bobbing apples and cups and dice and stuff floating around on their own as I ate or drank or used things! HA! Maya was a big green bug with animated bug wings that flapped really fast and made a buzzing noise, as well as these HUGE spiky green antennae! It was super gross! Great costume! Cari dressed up as a troll princess. It was really well done! She looked like a Zandalari princess! Rylee was a part butterfly, part stag druid that was stuck between forms. It sounds grotesque to say, but it was actually really cool! Mags wore all purple with a purple cape and a purple turban with purple face wrappings. She was a genie, and she’d even painted this huge wooden cup bright gold and said it was her wish chalice, and she had just poofed out of it! So awesome! Zarshal’s costume made me laugh. He was just his usual worgen self, wearing these weird bright yellow studded leather pants and leather straps over his bare torso. He had come as a werewolf! HA!
There were like, almost no Truths this time around, and mostly Dares. Mags Dared Maya to hide in the huge candy bucket – we were playing in the Lakeshire inn’s common room, where the giant jack-o’-lantern candy bucket and tub of water to bob for apples were – and scare the first person to come up for it for candy! Unfortunately, it turned out to be a small boy that had wandered in for a treat. Maya grabbed reached up through the surface of the candy with one hand, grabbed his hand, and started dragging him down into the candy bucket. That poor kid! He screamed and yelled and pulled free and ran screaming from the inn! Awww! Then there was another time where I rolled a one, and then EVERYone else but Mags also rolled a one! So she had us all bob for apples in a race! Of course, Maya, as athletic as she is, won by a mile. Of course, I, as unathletic as I am, lost by a mile. Everyone else got theirs first. I was chasing mine around like a plow in a field! And it was embarrassing, because I realized I was making noises as I went, like, “Aaaawwwwwwawawawwaaaawwwwaaaaaaaaawwwaaaaa… awawawawa… aaaaaaaaaawawaaaaa…” as I was trying to chase down the apple and grab it with my mouth. Oh gosh! Eventually… I fell right the heck in! I was flopping around, trying to get out, but I couldn’t see my own hands well enough because of my ghost illusion to see the edge of the tub I was trying to grab! Rylee eventually pulled me up, but not before I’d faceplanted in the tub again and got something lodged in my mouth somehow. When I stood up… mission accomplished, if accidentally… I had an apple in my mouth! WOO! There were other Dares in which Rylee was daring people to eat candy she pulled from the bucket, except she’d get one more of the same for herself, then take them to the kitchen first, then bring them back and have the person choose one. Each time, the person would have a fifty-fifty chance of getting something covered in fish paste, salt, buzz buttons, or something else weird. I got one that was G.N.E.R.D.S. with spicy peppers and black peppercorns mixed in, which I didn’t mind so much, as I have always loved spicy stuff! The final time she did it, Rylee herself got a box of G.N.E.R.D.S. covered in salt! HA! Impaled on her own sword! Then Mags rolled a one hundred out of one hundred, which meant she got to pick any person at the table, AND choose Truth or Dare FOR them, so she got me with this one Dare to fill up her “wish chalice” full to the absolute top of G.N.E.R.D.S. and chug them down! My goodness, I was so hyperactive after all that, I couldn’t sit still in my chair anymore! I spent the rest of the night talking super fast and bouncing around and randomly drumming on the table, slapping it with my hands at hummingbird flapping speed! Then there was another Dare, this one from Cari, that turned out to be a Duck Duck Goose game. Rylee got Maya as the Goose, then the chase erupted right out of the inn, and all over the darkened, nighttime Lakeshire! It was beautiful, with the moon and stars out, and the fall leaves on the trees all over the lovely Redridge Mountains, and all the jack-o’-lanterns glowing with all their silly faces, and the lanterns lit, and all these different lights reflecting off of Lake Everstill. The peace was broken, however, by two druids chasing each other all over the town! Mags’ genie costume came into play quite a bit, after a Dare in which she had to go around the table Trick-or-Treating at each of us. Rylee had to go rub her wish chalice and make a wish of Mags on one Dare, at which point Rylee was wishing for a crocolisk plushie she could name Charliegator. It was funny because she was trying to get Mags to poof out of the wish chalice, and Mags was protesting that she’d already poofed out of it, and couldn’t poof out of it again, as she was already out, yet Rylee kept trying. Ha! There was the wish chalice of G.N.E.R.D.S. that I had, of course. Then there was another in which I Whisper Dared her to get ahold of Rylee and Cari’s noses when they came back inside (they’d gone outside with Maya to walk her out when Maya had to leave) and cast a genie spell on them. HA! They were so confused! Mags was standing between them, their noses gripped in her fingertips, and she was dancing around and chanting a make-believe genie spell over them. When she was done, she declared them magically immune to weird candy Dares that Rylee had been doing. It worked, too! Neither of them ended up picking the wrong candy the rest of the night! It was weird! The night actually ended on that Duck Duck Goose game, in which the loser had to get dunked in the apple bobbing tub. Rylee ended up being the one going in. She was like, “GET DUNKED ON!” and leaped into the tub, and splashed water out EVERYwhere! I stayed and helped the innkeeper clean up the water and other messes and refill the tub after everyone else went home and paid up for food and drinks and stuff, as I was hostess and had brought them all. Anyway, we all went home wet, tired, and happy, having had a great night for Hallow’s End-themed Deathrolls! YAY!
Then this morning, with the discovery of that lizard that had gotten into the MUTT and was messing around with the controls, just the whole enormous sense of relief and discovery and stuff really helped with the costumed holiday game night last night to really help settle me back down and get back to a sense of calm and normalcy. I just hope it lasts, with this shadow stuff going on… In the meantime, I’m going to make some lunch for Celeste, Dordy, and I, and enjoy the last bit of my minication! No matter how hard or scary or life gets, there’s always so much life and light and joy on the other side of the tunnel! That’s what we live for!
Nat smiles happily at that encouraging thought, tapping the excess ink off of her ravenfeather quill. She replaces it in its cherrywood case, then puts it into her pack. Following it goes the now-capped inkwell. Standing to her feet, she heads to the traveling icebox she keeps chilled with her frost spells and pulls out some lunchmeat, bread, and veggies for sandwiches. Cold cuts and chilled, crisp veggies make for a great, cool lunch on the desert’s sand dunes, and she, Celeste, and Dordy eat their fill. Nat looks around at a setting that was previously spooky. Things were okay now, and she had her family here, and her closest friends were a portal away. No matter what happens, life remains good!(( A note to the reader: the gap in the story in which Nat didn't experience what her friends did during the Whitewind Company expedition on Tuesday can be filled in by reading the guild campaign summary. Just click HERE! Then scroll to the October 19th entry! ))
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Post by Natasha Ebonlocke on Oct 29, 2021 0:21:06 GMT
(( Heads up to any reader that isn't a fan of dark themes -- this one has them a little bit! RP for the current holiday season was done this week for the guild campaign night part of this entry. If you'd rather skip it and hear a short synopsis of storyline instead, let me know in the OOC forums or ingame or something, and I'll happily oblige! )) October the Twenty-Eighth A chilly wind whispered gently through the brilliantly yellow, orange, and red autumnal leaves of the forest, which reflected the light of sunbeams that shone in spots on the forest floor. The crisp, clean, frigid air of the mountainside forest scene was delicious. Largely drowning out the wind in this particular spot was the rushing mountain stream, which currently abounded with salmon making their annual salmon run. Grizzly bears dotted the shore along the length of this frigid, rushing creek, which ran in a T-shape in the region. The grizzlies were visiting the stream with the knowledge that it currently teemed with salmon. Their roars could be heard on occasion, but mostly, it was this pleasantly noisy creek, the occasional pop of a rifle somewhere in the distance, and the pleasant sound of a fiddle playing a peaceful, slow, happy melody that drifted over the beautiful landscape of the Grizzly Hills.
Accompanying these sounds was the sound of a roaring, crackling, snapping, popping campfire, a bit larger than usual to keep the northern chill at bay and radiate warmth out over the campsite. Nearby was a smaller fire, enclosed in what appeared to be a teepee, enclosed by thickly, interwoven pine boughs. At this site, joining the smells of the crisp, clean, chilly mountain air and the earthy smell of the forest and creek were the smells of wood fire and smoking salmon. The teepee held the salmon. If one were to remove one triangular concaved panel from the teepee, one would spot two racks build with greenwood sticks inside, one of them one third of the way up, the other two thirds of the way up, and upon each were strewn several large salmon. Below these were a much smaller fire, using young greenwood to throw off lots of smoke, which the teepee held in place around the fish. The salmon were being smoked to preserve the fish, in addition to making the salmon steaks taste great.
Near these also was erected a large tent, large enough to stand upright in, and spacious enough to be able to walk a few steps from one end to the other. The tent was made of a thick, heavy canvas that kept the heat in and the wind out. The bed is easily fit for two, a canvas stretched out over a frame and covered in soft sheets and furs to make it exceptionally comfortable and warm. The rest of the tent holds a large chest containing supplies, a cork board on a stand with maps and sketches of the salmon smoker design, and a round table with two camp chairs for eating and working.
Warming the bed, and the rest of the tent, was an ingenious display of engineering: a power cell from Mechagon sustaining a thermal cell was rigged up underneath the bed, keeping the bed from freezing and free of humidity. A brazier on the far end of the tent from the entrance brought additional warmth to the homestead away from home, making cold weather camping like this comfortable and exceptionally enjoyable.
Another feat of engineering stood guard at the edge of camp opposite of this bend in the stream. A converted goblin shredder, no longer bearing the face of a goblin on its front and armed with a myriad of extendable and retractable tools, was swiveling on occasion as its guard mode had it keeping a watchful eye on things. The MUTT was in MAD mode.
Overhead wheeled a much more out-of-place figure, though one would have to squint to see him. A black Netherdrake, wisps of nether floating away with each occasional flap of his wings, was enjoying himself riding the powerful winds of the higher altitudes. Onyx usually liked to spend most of his time resting on air, hanging around with wings spread as the wind held him up.
The last presences of note in the campsite were a pair of camp chairs, the ones usually sitting inside at the table, that were now outside and next to the creek. In one sat a petite, athletic young woman dressed in what looked like work clothes and a wide-brimmed fishing hat adorned with fish hooks and lures. More of the same, as well as a very old wrench, emerged from a shirt pocket. Short strawberry-blonde hair came from under the hat, and hazel eyes locked onto a fishing bobber in the creek. The bobber was at the end of a fishing line that ran up to a very strange fishing pole. This fishing pole appeared to be made along the spine of a murloc, with, indeed, the rest of the murloc skeleton dangling from the front. Three short spiky bones emerged from halfway up the spine, curving back slightly with a green murloc fin stretched between them. A handle grip with leather strips wrapped around it extended from behind the reel of ultra-strong eternium fishing line. Emerging from the murloc’s skull was the rest of the fishing pole, an extension of spine that ran the length of the usual angler’s rod. Celeste McCullough, a master of fishing, engineering, and archaeology, was completely in the zone, dragging out fish after fish after fish over the course of the trip.
In the other camping chair sat another young woman, this one far less athletic and much more curvy. A stout bamboo fishing rod lay next to her. In her hands, instead, were a ravenfeather quill and a thermos of hot, steamy hazelnut coffee. Bellies were full of fish steaks and eggs and bacon this late morning, and the coffee went great with full bellies and chilly weather. A diary lay in the young woman’s lap, and her pitch-black hair dangled forward of her shoulders as her round, deeply purple eyes peered down at the pages, flipping through them to find the next blank page. Natasha Ebonlocke, avid student of fishing, engineering, and archaeology, was giving her hands and arms a break and taking the opportunity to make this week’s diary entry.
Between the two women stood a small folding camp table, about eighteen inches squared. Upon this rested a cherrywood quill case, an inkwell of purple ink, Celeste’s coffee thermos, and, taking up the entire back end, Celeste’s tackle box. Beneath the table lay curled an odd-looking sight… a corgi made up entirely of molten lava, though everything Dor’dieb McCullough-Ebonlocke touched was safe from burning due to the application of protective spells derived from fire and frost by the beloved pup’s two owners. Dordy, whose belly was also full, was sleeping off his usual food coma while the camp was quiet.
And quiet it was indeed. The rushing stream, the crackling fire just behind the two women, the quieter one inside the smoker, and the peaceful fiddler playing somewhere in the hills were the only sounds beneath the beautiful yellow, orange, and red leaves, punctuated from time to time only by the odd splash of another salmon, a bite and a fight with Celeste’s rod, and the occasional grizzly bear somewhere along the stream.
Happy beyond description in this setting, with what was basically her household family around her in one of her favorite and most beautiful places in the world, with lovely chilly weather and autumnal leaves and the fiddler and the smells and the warm, cozy campfire, full belly, and coffee, Nat heaved a happy sigh, placed her thermos on the table, dipped her quill in her inkwell, and began to write.
Dear diary,
What a wild and spooky week! And the timing of it all… Hallow’s End this year has been spooktastic and crazy from day one! The weird Void-like illusions the Whitewind expedition went through last week, and especially that seemingly haunted digsite in Tanaris with Celeste, and now this week, camping here in Grizzly Hills, one of my favorite places in the entire world… There’s a crazy giant undead GRIZZLY BEAR stomping around and scaring campers that have come to do some autumn camping under the lovely leaves and fish the annual salmon spawning run in the streams! And that’s on top of that horrifying trip into that Drust cave with all the death magic in it Tuesday night! GEEZ! Oh well… At least Hallow’s End-themed Deathrolls at inns with giant jack-o’-lantern candy buckets and huge tubs of water for bobbing for apples have turned out to be a hit! Especially at last night’s game, which turned out to be a heavily-populated Hallow’s End BLOWOUT that didn’t end until like two in the morning!
I’m here with Celeste at our Grizzly Hills campsite, though. She’s rigged up the same cold-weather camping gear and engineering tech that she did in Winterspring, so the frigid autumn air here is actually made quite cozy! The brilliantly colored autumn leaves on the giant redwoods and other, smaller trees, like these cedars and aspens and tall oaks, are like watching nature’s own fireworks display! Celeste and I dug into her mother’s old notes to find out how to build a smoker for fish with just stuff you find out in the forest. It’s been working so well! Eowithiel McCullough was such a wise woman! I wish like crazy I had gotten the chance to get to know her! Her designs are so great, and it’s working on all this salmon we’re catching perfectly! We’re going to catch way more than we’ll ever use, though, so we’re smoking it to preserve the fish and take it back to orphanages around the world. Maybe we’ll even get the chance to cook it at the orphanages! In the meantime, we’ve been fishing up a storm here, and getting soooo much relaxing done!
The only damper on the trip was that bear. It was a giant, rotting, undead grizzly bear, like more than twice the size of even a large grizzly bear! Its flesh was absolutely putrid, though the weird thing was, it didn’t seem to smell that bad. We first saw it when the MUTT’s new wild animal-repelling features went off, flashing lights and loud bangs and stuff. We caught a flash of a glimpse of the bear during all that, and when the MUTT finally stopped, it wasn’t there anymore. The footprints it left were huge, though, and that was another weird thing about it… The bear never came down on its front feet, ever. It just walked around on its hind legs the entire time!
The next day, after lunch, Celeste and I decided to visit the goblins of Venture Bay, where this stream broadens out into a river delta. The goblin town of Venture Bay is right there. Celeste decided to go the intimidation route, as she suspected the goblins had designed a mechanical bear to scare competition away from the creeks. We figured it was this, as the men of Amberpine Lodge told us that the Vrykul in their village of Voldrune that sits near Venture Bay were borderline at war with the goblins due to the goblins blocking every water route through the delta with broad fishing nets to capture the entire salmon spawning run for profit. The Vrykul had been sending raiding parties to cut all their nets down once or twice a day, so we didn’t put it past the goblins to use scare tactics to rid themselves of competition, either, even though their compound sits at the mouth of the river to get first chance at the salmon.
Celeste’s intimidation tactic was to go screaming in out of nowhere on Nosebleed’s back. The goblins, already stressed out due to raiding parties of Vrykul that were many times their size, all freaked out pretty hard as Celeste with her rifle came splashing through the delta’s waterways on Nosebleed! She even steered Nosebleed right into one goblin’s shredder and sent it flying, then let Nosebleed turn around and smash it to pieces with his spiky tail! The goblin that owned it started screaming about something called “insurance premiums,” and then the BOSS goblin came out! I could tell, from Onyx’s back where Celeste was having me provide overwatch with frost spells and keep an eye out for the undead grizzly, as it might be a goblin machine, that this was the boss. He was impeccable dressed in an expensive suit and had this shiny black top hat on, and carried this shiny black cane with a massive diamond on the top end! He came out yelling at Celeste over the goblin, and property damage done, and got really mad when Celeste accused him of scaring off campers and anglers with an undead bear machine. He acted all affronted, as though neither he nor the Venture Company would EVER do anything dishonest (which, of course, we took with a grain of salt), and started yelling at Celeste that she’d hear from one of Venture Company’s attorneys about the property damage done to the place and the shredder if she didn’t pay up. Celeste gave him a fake name to go after, and we left.
On the way to and from camp, however, there was this weird human guy (I could tell he was human only by height and build) at Amberpine Lodge dressed in thin black robes and a huge black hood that hid his features. He didn’t seem to be cold, even though he was so lightly dressed. The rest of the people at Amberpine Lodge avoided him, making wide circles around him, and he never spoke or waved or anything. He was spooky!
Then, last night, we saw the bear again, hours after dark, heading off a good ways away toward what seemed to be the glow of another campfire in the distance. Celeste and I decided to follow. We gave Dordy a heavy meal, which usually puts him to sleep, since we wanted to be stealthy, and Dordy would bark if he came with and also bark if he were left behind. Once Dordy went all food coma, we headed out after the thing.
As we got closer, there were screams from the other campsite! A Kaldorei man and woman, neither of which seemed to be the type to wield steel or magic or a bow, were fleeing into the night, leaving all their fish and all their camping supplies behind. The bear was standing still after the Kaldorei left, completely motionless, still not dropping to its front legs. It just seemed to be guarding the campsite. Then, up the hill off to the left, I saw the creepy black-robed guy again! He still had his hood up, so I couldn’t see a face. I nudged Celeste a bit and pointed up at him, at which point he just… vanished! Gone! Wasn’t there anymore! Then Celeste was debating on checking out that bear or going back to make sure Dordy was okay, as she didn’t like that the guy saw us, and Dordy was all alone. We decided to just take a quick look at the bear, then rush back to Dordy and the camp, as we didn’t know anything about the spooky guy, and the bear was a clue.
As we got close, however, the bear started moving again! It turned around and roared at us again, and it was super loud! The odd thing was, though, that this bear didn’t give off a bit of a rotting flesh smell. Usually undead thingies do! There wasn’t much time to think about that, though, as the thing was coming right at me! It had a huge paw up the size of a trash can lid, eight-inch fangs in a maw of jagged teeth, and its claws were like small sickles! Celeste fired a warning shot past it, but it didn’t seem to notice. It was about to hit me, but I Blinked away to the left, dodging the strike and hoping to draw it away from Celeste. Then the hooded man could be seen again, this time across the creek from us, still just watching! Celeste fired another warning shot, this time at him, and demanded that he call the thing off, or the next shot wouldn’t be an intentional miss! Celeste’s fire was licking up and down her arms again, which I haven’t seen in some time! The man didn’t say or do anything after that, and I was firing flurries of ice shards at the bear (which, despite being roundly perforated, the bear never stopped coming at me or even seemed to notice!), so I couldn’t help Celeste with him. But it turned out not to matter… a few seconds after the warning shot, the guy simply vanished again! Then Celeste had me freeze the bear solid, which took a huge effort to make a big enough ice block. We got outta there after that, with the giant rotting undead grizzly bear left behind, still on its hind legs, looking like one of those taxidermist-posed stuffed bears posed in the stance of rearing and roaring.
We beat it back to camp after that, and found Dordy all sprawled out next to the fire, snoozing. He got up and shook himself out after that, trotting over to us and seeming to notice that not all was well. We barely had time to reassure the pup that all was well when he darted past us and started going nuts at the end of camp again, yip-yip-yipping and rearing up on the invisible arcane barrier and stuff. We turned to look… and it was that black-robed hooded guy again!
Celeste had her rifle on him in a second, but he held up his hands. He just wanted to talk! Celeste lowered her rifle, but didn’t put it away. She seemed ready to raise and fire at a moment’s notice still. She demanded to know who the guy was, and he said his name was Attrius, and that he belongs to a secret sect of the Kirin Tor that finds necromancy to be less “distasteful.” I don’t know why wizards never seem to learn, but there always seem to be a few that dabble in that mess! Anyway, he said that he did NOT create or control the undead bear, but instead, he’d been sent here to investigate rumors of an undead beast terrorizing campers and anglers and scaring them away from the streams. He also said that he didn’t detect a single bit of necromantic aura, or any other sort of magic aura, on the beast, which had him perplexed, and he’d now come to us for help, figuring that two women who he’d seen use magical powers might be able to help with speculation on the beast’s nature.
Celeste and I talked the situation out with him for a moment, eventually deciding to go back to the site with him and check things out, maybe even try shooting it, just to see what happens. When we got there, though, there were these two figures down there the size of partially-grown bear cubs or something, but it was too dark this time of night to see them well, and they fled at our approach anyway. Attrius got there right after we did, and was looking at the thing like he was studying it. Then he started looking at it all around, like walking around it in a circle, and then suddenly stopped, exclaiming almost excitedly, and calling us back there to look. There were tracks in the dirt here, some belonging to the Kaldorei that had fled the bear. But were also two very small sets of boot prints, and a mining pick. Ice shards lay around the area, and quite a bit of the ice had been chipped out. Those two small figures that ran away must have been goblins, and they seemed to be chipping the bear free of the ice! But why? Attrius said he found it interesting that the goblins would be trying to free the thing as though they did not fear it, and actually WANTED it loose. That made me think that Celeste might have been right straight off the bat when she thought it was Venture Company goblins setting it loose on people! Did that mean that they had a goblin necromancer with them? But if so, why was there no aura of necromancy or any other kind of magic on the undead bear? The plot thickens!
Attrius asked Celeste her opinion, and Celeste said that it was the goblins trying to get their property back; bears don’t walk on two legs! Then she was talking about carrying it off to study it instead of killing it to study it. So she readied the MUTT’s harpoon gun and fired it forward, right into the chest area of the ice. That made the ice crack, both around the harpoon, and the chipped-out area. The ice kept cracking, spider web fractures forming all around both spots until they grew enough to meet in the middle. Then it got to the point ice chunks were falling off, and next thing we know, the bear’s free! It roared its funny-sounding roar once and went swiping at Attrius a few times before running off. Celeste got her harpoon back in while Attrius and I cast at it. Attrius did a shadowbolt and I did a frostbolt at it. The shadowbolt got it in the back, and my frostbolt got the shoulder. The ice penetrating it and slicing in deep sent out a bunch of sparks from the undead bear’s shoulder, and something shiny flipped out of it and landed in the grass. Noting the sparks and the shiny thing, we went down hill to see what had fallen out.
It was a huge cobalt bolt, as big as a man’s finger! Just like Celeste said, straight from the beginning of the mystery, it was the goblins all along! Celeste thought up an answer as we got back to camp. She lashed together a raft from a bunch of poles, unpacked some stranglekelp and gunpowder, and put it all in a box with a lid with “Free salmon inside!” painted on it and a big red arrow erected overtop of it on a large spring, with the big red arrow pointing down to the box. Celeste explained that the gunpowder won’t explode if it’s ignited outside of things like guns, but it would ignite quickly, and that stranglekelp stinks like a stinkbomb when burned. She rigged a flare in the box to go off to ignite the gunpowder when opened, and a flashbang to give us a noise and a flash back at camp as a notice that it had been opened. Then she named the raft like people name ships, dubbing it the “Stinky Susan” and sent it off downstream!
We didn’t have to wait long. The night lit up sometime later, which was confusing, as their was no big kaboom from the flashbang. I was just commenting on it when we heard the huge bang a short time later. I forgot sound travels slower than light does! We were just sitting there making jokes about what the scene must look like down there and what the gobbos must be doing when Attrius appeared again. He was suggested we come down and take a look at something.
We went down, intrigued, and we found the Vrykul lining the little cliff along the west side of their village, laughing scornfully at the goblins’ misfortunes. On the far side of the goblin compound, though, we could see Attrius, pointing into the orange-green cloud over the place. We went and hovered near him, not wanting to land and get too near the stink, and we saw the bear! It was running around erratically around Venture Bay, and when it got near us, we could hear it arguing with itself! The bear was talking about going to find stuff to build bellows with one voice, and another voice was arguing with the first, telling it that it was getting the bear all stinky, leaving it outside like this, and also called the first voice an idiot, and said that the bear stood for Bear Expulsion Apparatus Retrofit, and then started screaming that it wasn’t retrofitted with opposable thumbs to build a bellows with! It was so funny; obviously the reason the bear’s roar sounded so odd was because it was these two goblins roaring over a microphone, with a speaker or something rigged up in the bear machine!
I decided then to do something about this dastardly creation once and for all. I cast a frozen orb spell at it, right inside the mechanical torso compartment, and let it and its swirling spirals of ice shards take the machine apart. It quite literally came apart at the seams, and the hide, which turned out to be the hides of a few grizzlies stitched together and left to rot on the machine to make it look like an undead bear, was shredded. That took care of that, and Celeste’s stinkbomb raft had taken care of the entirety of Venture Bay!
Then the top hat goblin with the diamond-topped cane came out screaming at us. We argued with the guy for a bit, and he was screaming about property damage and insurance premiums again, as well as defumigation, but then we got him back with talk of Amberpine Lodge trade sanctions. That got ‘em! They won’t be messing around with salmon runs again!
I was worried when we got back to camp that this whole thing had put a damper on our peaceful fishing trip in this gorgeous location, but Celeste still seemed pretty relaxed, and even wants to come back next year to mess with them again so they don’t mess with another salmon run, so I suppose all is well! Gosh, what a silly adventure! What an amazing, relaxing, perfect trip this has otherwise been!
Nat dipped her ravenfeather quill in her inkwell again, leaving it there for a moment to think. A page flapped in the chilly northern autumnal wind. Nat absently moved her cherrywood quill case to place it horizontally across the pages so she wouldn’t lose her spot, then took up her coffee thermos for a dainty sip of the strong, seemingly soul-touching liquid. The slight hazelnut creamer addition fit the beautiful autumn scene well, and she sipped again.
Just then, Celeste darted upright in her chair, seated with her back straight, eyes fixated on her bobber. Nat leaned forward, elbows on her knees, watching with both hands curled around her thermos. The bobber was dancing around against the current that usually carried it along a set path. Celeste had yet another nibble! The salmon run was producing such a huge yield this trip!
Next, Celeste’s rod tip suddenly bent double, the tip being dragged off upstream along the fish’s salmon run route. Celeste whooped, darting her feet, and the fight began! Celeste set her feet firmly, leaning back slightly as she fought the fish. Nat knew what she must have done. Sighting a salmon, she would have been tugging her line near eddies in the current she knew well by now after several trips here. This tactic usually worked! The eddies were from a large rock below the water’s surface. A salmon, resting a bit where the current is partially blocked by the rock, had taken the bait, and now the murloc bones were clattering noisily as Celeste tugged back, the fish thoroughly hooked. The battle was intense now. Celeste gave just enough line to tire the fish out while preventing the tension from straining her line. Dordy, long since discovered to be a fishing fan, darted around Celeste excitedly, barking like mad. He was ready to bark at the fish when it landed, though a fish’s flopping around usually startled him and made him retreat a short distance to bark from there. Nat was cheering as well, elbows on her knees as she leaned forward to peer into the water, both hands still wrapped around her warm coffee mug as she took the odd dainty sip. She was leaning forward to watch the bright pink flashes of the salmon in the crystal-clear, icy-cold mountain stream, cheering Celeste on as she fought the fish, which looked to be a real monster!
The battle raged on. Celeste hissed in frustration as the salmon darted around behind the other side of the rock. Celeste being a hardcore angler, however, she only accepts the top-quality lines and gear in her fishing, and knows her high-test eternium line will not break. Eventually, the salmon tired, and Celeste was able to reel it to shore. It does, indeed, turn out to be a monster, a real whopper of a fish, at least forty pounds! She hoisted it up by the gills, beaming proudly at her catch. She suggested to Nat that they string it up from a branch and get a S.E.L.F.I.E., to which Nat excitedly agrees. Shortly thereafter, Celeste has her camera out, free hand holding the fish’s tail, and Nat has Dordy, with Onyx curled up in the background. Nosebleed had been returned home with Ebonhoof, where they usually grazed freely at the edge of the jungle, and Cloud Dancer usually stayed there too, but the four members of the family present made for an impressive S.E.L.F.I.E with the enormous salmon!
Once Celeste got several good shots, she put her camera away and set to cleaning the fish to go on the smoking rack with the rest. Nat helped Celeste for a moment, bringing her all the necessary tools, then returned to her seat and picked up her diary and quill. After watching Celeste for a bit, she went back to writing.
There have been other spooky things this week, too. Monday, I got into Stormwind from camp in the Grizzly Hills and was almost immediately found by this hooded Kaldorei woman who didn’t seem to want to reveal her identity. She said that my bestie Nah wasn’t feeling well, and had fled to Winterspring. I was like, what the heck? Who flees a sickness by going somewhere else? That won’t help them stop being sick! I was going to try to get more out of the woman, but she poofed!
Worried about my bestie, I flew over to the portal to Mount Hyjal that’s up at that island of portals in Stormwind Lake and flew northeast to Starfall Village. That’s a Kaldorei village in Winterspring, so I figured Nah would make that her destination. She wasn’t there, but I did find both her adoptive parents! Apparently, they’d gotten the same tip from the same strange woman! Zandrion, Nah’s old, blind father, and Nickol, her priestess mother, were talking about it when I got there. We started thinking of places Nah might go if she hadn’t come here. The hot springs where Celeste and I had camped once came to mind. We decided to go look over there, and there were a couple more people camped there already, but no Nah! We asked this dwarf lady if she’d seen them, and she said she’d seen LOTS of folk that day, not fifteen minutes before, in fact! And what she saw was even worse… Quel’dorei warlocks, controlling Sayaad, and one of them was the guy I saw a few weeks ago that was trying to scare me with his! The other turned out to be his sister, it seemed, though she seemed to be reluctant to use this magic and wanting a different school, and he was pressuring her into it. That worried me quite a bit – a reluctant warlock instead of a dominant one can really lose control of a minion pretty easily and get killed by it, releasing the thing to wreak havoc all over the place! Even worse, one of the ones the dwarf lady described was Gandrayda, and she still didn’t seem to be under ANYone’s control! The dwarf lady said that the group had set off along the east road, talking about turning north to Frostsaber Rock. We thanked the woman and set off after the group.
As we traveled back the way we came, Zandrion and Nickol were debating where to go next. Nickol wanted to go straight to Frostsaber Rock, as Gandrayda likely had a lead on Nah and was chasing her there. Zandrion, however, was insisting that Nah would have gone to the Hidden Grove to hide. We ended up going to Frostsaber Rock first, as that was our more solid lead. When we got there, we saw the two elves from our hiding spot in the trees… but only one Sayaad! The brother, in his arrogance and indulgent nature, was actually having it give him a back massage! The sister seemed revolted and reluctant still. Nickol found something a short while later… an aura that seemed to shimmer and sparkle slightly around a bush. She suggested I shatter it, so I cast an ice lance in an arc to look like an icicle falling off a tree branch onto the bush. It worked! The fragile illusion shattered, and the other Sayaad was revealed, hidden away, presumably, by the reluctant sister. We couldn’t hear what the two were saying, but it was clear that neither Nah nor Ganadrayda was here. Zandrion wanted to check the Hidden Grove even more now, regretting the time lost here. I wasn’t so sure the time was altogether lost – if we’d gone to Hidden Grove first, and ONLY found Nah or Gandrayda or both, we’d have been looking over our shoulders for the missing elves and their minions! Zandrion acknowledged the logic in this, and we moved on, flying east to the Hidden Grove with all haste.
When we got to the cave that leads to the only route (by land) into the enclosed snowy grove, we proceeded forward carefully. What we found on the other side startled us! Shreds of leathers that looks like the ones Nah wears, and Kaldorei blood! The biggest tree there in the center of the grove had cuts all over it as well, as though errant blows had struck it. Nah had been attacked here, and she was hurt, and I didn’t know where she’d gone! We turned to leave so we could go and look for her, but we were cut off as we went through the tunnel… There, in the middle of the cave, was Gandrayda herself!
The fight broke out immediately. I blinked through her and cut off her escape, while placing her in the position of basically being surrounded, with an enemy at her back no matter which way she chose. She seemed to want to talk as much as fight, and, in true Sayaad fashion, she mostly just wanted to torment us. She accused Nickol of hiding things from her daughter, being a priestess. This, according to Gandrayda, made her a practitioner of Void magics, which she, as the Greater Sayaad accused, had hidden from Nah all her life. Then she was accusing me, as we all fought, of infecting Nah with the Void corruption that had gotten into me, and accused Nickol as well, saying she’d corrupted Nah. We knew better; none of us present would ever corrupt Nah with the Void, yet I had to acknowledge that the odd taciturn nature Nah had displayed over the last several times I’d seen her was very much unlike her. I wasn’t going to admit that to Gandrayda, but it did make me think, even as I was deflecting warglaives with frost barriers, or blinking through them. Gandrayda was trying hard to torment us the entire time she fought us. Zandrion, old as he was, tired quickly, and his water elemental fought for him in his place. Nickol, meanwhile, had given up on demanding to know where her daughter was and what Gandrayda had done to her, and was trying to get the answer by way of a priest’s mind vision spell. She never was able to break past Gandrayda’s mental barriers, however, and she eventually exhausted herself into collapsing. I’d landed a good few hard hits on her with frost spells, however. I guess all the ice shards in her had her hurting pretty bad, because next thing I knew, she was fel rushing past me to escape! She disappeared into the blizzard raging outside, but not before using a fel barrage to start a cave-in! I could have chased her, but that would have meant leaving Nah’s parents to die in the cave-in, which was definitely not an option! I ran back to them instead, opening a portal to the nearest city, which was Darnassus, albeit through a Timeway to before the banshee hag’s attack. We escaped the cave-in only just in time, Zandrion holding Nickol across his arms; we even had the initial bits of cave-in rock falling off of us as we came out of the portal into the Temple of the Moon in Darnassus!
We got healing on the spot from a priestess of Elune, then headed back to Stormwind City. Nah’s parents were talking about going into hiding, now that it seemed that Gandrayda was after them as well. I went to Stormwind, where there were still plenty of people around. I doubted Gandrayda would do anything there! Once it seemed the coast was clear, I went back to camp here in the Grizzly Hills.
Then Tuesday was the expedition to Kul Tiras again. That was even scarier! It was Maya, Cari, Rylee, and I. We were trying to find our next lead using clues we’d gotten: last week, everyone that went to Boralus had a dream. A very vivid dream, all surrounding the same general theme: a snowy mountain that seemed to be in Drustvar. Nah had dreamed of going through a cold house swiping stuff, and hearing voices in an ancient language that didn’t sound like the Shath’Yar people tell me I speak sometimes without knowing it. Rylee dreamed of a house on a snowy mountain against a cliff that had a path leading up to it lined by violently active human skeletons and yeti. I dreamed of that same house, looking around for someone and trying to find them, only not knowing who I was looking for. Nickol dreamed of this house from a bird’s eye view at night, being startled by the house turning into a goat skull that turned its eyes up toward her and looked directly into her own. Maya dreamed of a forest infested with wicker men and wicker bears with goat skulls for heads. She was riding on a horse-drawn cart through the forest on a road that eventually turned up out of the forest and onto the side of that snowy mountain. Cari dreamed of being on an archaeology did in old ruins on a snowy mountaintop, only to suddenly find herself faced by an army of primitive-looking people who were using death magic to enslave the earth itself and make golems and runic elementals. Then she turned around, and there was this army of Gilneans wearing vastly outdated armor and uniforms. It seemed to be the ones that had explored and found Kul Tiras to settle it, and had conquered and wiped out the Drust! Sure enough, Cari found herself in the middle of a huge battle raging all around her!
Piecing together the clues, we did decide to visit Drustvar, keeping in mind the lead Nickol had mentioned on that weird trip last week that we only spent about five minutes doing. Some lead about a trick door or something. We found a town on a snowy peak there, remembering Arom’s Stand. From there, we looked around for the house some of us had dreamed of. One of the things we found when we scouted was the exact same ruins Cari had dreamed of! We were on the right track!
Soon after, we found the right path with the yeti and skeletons on it! The path led to the right house, too! We decided to hide behind a cart while Maya used her cat form to prowl stealthily up to the windows and have a peek inside. She came back shortly after and said that there was years of dust all over everything, and no one was there! So we went up to the door, and Maya tried to pick it with a claw, though she only ended up breaking her claw. Then she tried to kick the door. It rattled pretty hard, but held! Then Cari tried. She froze the hinges with frost magic, then superheated them with fire instantly, and they shattered! She pushed the door, and it fell inward with a loud crash! We were in! I felt horrible, breaking into someone’s house and causing that kind of damage to their door, not to mention the damage the house would take from snow blowing in and animals nesting all over the inside of it, but we had to get in there… the Tidesage had to be stopped!
Once inside, we looked around. We found clues alright… The whispers of an ancient language were coming from behind the bookcase in the back of the house! Just like Nah said, they weren’t in the funny language I’d been speaking, but they did sound ancient. Cari extrapolated from the data we had to determine that the language was ancient Drust. How spooky! The Drust whispers never stopped while we looked around. Rylee was looking around that bookcase. She had taken one book on Drust spells already, and was now noticing that another book on the shelf had far less dust on it than the others. Curious, she pulled it out, or tried to; the bottom of it was affixed in place somehow! Then we had our next surprise: the door slid off to the right, revealing itself to be a trick door, just like Nickol had said! The door opened up into a cave that went right into the side of the mountain!
We went into the cave, and still more surprises: torches that burst into flame to provide light as we passed, the Drust whispers rising in volume to conversational tones, and, most decidedly unwelcome, the appearance of two wicker men and a wicker dog! Rylee and Maya, in their worgen forms, smashed them to pieces within moments, and we moved on. The cave was sloping downward quite a bit, but then leveled out into a wide cavern. The middle of it had a big puddle of water, and what looked to be a Drust ruin’s gateway arch standing there in the back of it for some reason. Curious, we looked into the puddle. The still water, in the light of the torches and Cari’s lit wand that she was holding aloft, reflected our faces perfectly in its motionless surface. But then Rylee and Maya gasped and jumped away! Maya was snarling, and Rylee was talking about a soaking wet, pale drowned boy leaping up to grab their faces, but there was nothing there! The water was still motionless! That was super spooky, so we left the water, and went into the next tunnel, which sloped downward on our left. Twice along the way, one or all of us heard a man’s voice in modern-day Common whispering at us and telling us to come behind a boulder. Both times, when we looked behind it… nothing, and the whispers would stop! Things were getting really scary by this point! Then there was another puddle, and this one spread across the entire tunnel. We had no choice but to touch the water this time. We got about halfway through it when there was a loud SPLASH behind us, and we looked back, and there was this extremely emaciated woman with stringy hair, a tattered gown, and bulging ice-blue eyes that looked like she’d been drowned, and she’d grabbed Cari’s left forearm! She was pleading with Cari not to leave her there alone, that she didn’t want to be alone anymore, and wanted Cari to join her forever! She was sinking into the water as she spoke, and, when Cari was trying to pull away, the woman started screaming and pleading at the top of her lungs, still pulling Cari in, who was now bent double! Maya, Rylee, and I darted forward to grab Cari and help her pull free, and it took all our strength to get her free of the drowned screaming woman’s grasp. That was so HORRIFYING! We booked it out of the water as fast as we could after that, and, when we looked back, the woman wasn’t there, and there was no evidence in the completely smooth, motionless waters that she ever had been!
Then we were about to round this bend in the tunnel that sloped up to our right, when this howling blast of icy-cold wind whipped through the tunnel, and with it, this maniacal psycho laugh! When the wind stopped, the laugh stopped with it, but the fear aura that had settled on the group was nearly palpable! Maya and Rylee were tense and looking around REALLY hard, Cari and I were in tears, and Cari was borderline hyperventilating!
Then we heard this weird sound like a pot of boiling, bubbling water. We got around that bend that sloped up to the right, only to find this young girl in a super old-fashioned nightgown on all fours, her head bent over this pot of the bubbling water we heard. It was like a moderately-sized cauldron, basically, and the screwy part of it was, her hair was growing at the pace of a waterfall tumbling, and it was all going into the boiling water! The hair was obscuring her face, but she had these rotten, gooey, decaying corpse hands coming out of her sleeves, and she was like, playfully saying in a sing-song voice, “My HAIR is BOILing! My HAIR is CHURNing!” while her hair grew out of her head and was, indeed, churning and boiling in that cauldron. It was so… I don’t even know what to call it, but it made Cari and I even more terrified, though Rylee seemed to want to laugh, and Maya didn’t know what to make of it. Rylee ended up offering to help the girl, but she looked up at Rylee, her hair parting around her face, which was just as rotten and decayed and gooey as her hands! She was like, “Would YOU like to boil TOO?” all playful like, and that was super scary too! Then Maya was all like, “Come at me, ghoul!” and the ghoul took it as an invitation to play. She got to her feet, but with her hair still growing out of her head as fast as it was, she was staggering a bit. Her rotten ghoul face was smiling up at Maya as it staggered toward her, arms outstretched, fingers wriggling excitedly like worms. Maya swiped at one of its hands, but her swipe simply went right through it! Then Rylee pulled the book out she’d taken earlier, and started speaking a command to the ghoul she found on one page, commanding the thing to go back to Thros, the Blighted Lands. The ghoul, hair, cauldron and all, simply vanished on the spot! There was no poof, or fading away, or flash of light, or loud bang, or anything… She just simply… was there, coming for Maya, and then she and her cauldron simply… weren’t there anymore in the very next instant! It was all so SCARY!
After that, the fear aura intensified, and the whole place was suddenly SWARMING with spiders the size of toy marbles! They were translucent red orange things, swarming all over the floors, walls, ceiling, and even US! It was so nasty and scary and I couldn’t get them all off me and keep them off! The only way we could think of to get past them all was to keep going!
Then we finished rounding the bend, finding ourselves in an outer cavern wit ha Drust ruin arch leading to an inner chamber with furniture in it that we couldn’t quite make out in the dark. We were about to go rush in and have a look around and find something to get rid of the spiders with, when suddenly, the torches on either side of the arch burst into flame, and every huge boulder in the cavern flew through the air and formed a gigantic like, twenty-foot-tall boulder golem, guarding the entrance! The thing darted forward and immediately tried to smash be over the head with its boulder fists! I got my frost barrier up in time to prevent being killed, but it still got me pretty good, just good enough to leave a bleeding knot on my head. That hurt! Maya darted between it and myself, and I don’t remember much of what else happened after that; it was all a blur of fighting, and my head was woozy. Maya was bonking it and Cari blew up the top part and knocked its arms off with an ice lance and Rylee was like Moonfiring it or something. Then the thing stomped and knocked Rylee and I down with the shockwave, and I hit my head again, and we both fell down right in the spider swarms! Someone hit it another time, and its legs came off, and the boulder torso, what was left of it, was rolling around. Then Maya hit it with a Starsurge spell and finished it off! It was just the spider swarm left!
That’s when the fear aura intensified even more, plus, the drowned woman that tried to get Cari earlier was there again, screaming at us and pleading and staggering up around the sloping bend!
We approached the arch after that, with Maya carrying Cari, who had hyperventilated enough to pass out from the fight and the fear and the screaming drowned woman and the spiders all making her panic too much. Rylee went ahead with them, and they all three tried to go through at once, and it ZAPPED them all at once! There was a barrier in the way! To make matters worse, the fear aura intensified AGAIN, and now, there was lots of screaming coming from the walls that sounded like people being tortured, and the maniacal cackling laugh was back, and it sounded it was the torturer of those people!
Then this weird solid gold brazier with a polished silver knife in it. Cari, who had jolted awake from the pain of the shock, saw blood flecks on it. Maya put two and two together and went to the knife… and CUT herself with it! She slashed it across her palm, squeezing blood into the brazier. We didn’t know if it worked, and no one wanted to get zapped, so I lifted a rock that blew off the golem and chucked it through. It went right in! So we tried ourselves to go in while Rylee stayed behind to fend off the screaming drowned woman, who was right on top of us. The weird thing about that woman was, the spiders didn’t seem to know she was there, and they never swarmed her! The weirder thing was, as soon as we got through the arch, the spiders all retreated and went back outside! We were spider-free! We called out to Rylee to join us, figuring it was a safe space, and she turned and darted inside with us. Sure enough, the spiders, the screaming voices, the laughing maniacal voice, the screaming drowned woman, and the spiders all disappeared, just like the weird hair-growing ghoul had! Just instantly! All was quiet, and even the fear aura disappeared completely. For the first time since we got in that chamber, all felt calm and okay!
We looked around. A table and three book cases were in one corner, and two torches, both of which had flared to life as we got Rylee in there with us. Rylee and Maya instantly started talking about smelling the scent of a familiar-smelling human woman, as they were in their worgen forms, and Maya found a sketch of a Tidesage, wearing their robes and all, on one of the bookshelves. As she held the sketch, she could see that the woman in the picture was standing in the same room they were. But then the picture MOVED! The woman in the sketch moved over to take the torch that was beside the bookcase. When she did, the real torch beside the real bookcase flared up and flickered and stuff! Maya and Rylee were trying to figure out why they smelled a familiar human woman’s scent, and the sketch and real torch thing happened again! Maya, noticing, went over to pick up that torch. When she did, a human woman in Tidesage robes appeared in the far corner from us!
I don’t remember what happened after she started talking, but from what my friends tell me, I had been hypnotized on the spot, and the Tidesage seemed to be talking to me, or perhaps even all of us, praising us for getting this far and apologizing for the scares here and also some sort of scare in a weird underwater tavern? It must be the same one my friends were telling me about that happened last week that I never experienced. The woman said she had to put us through that in order to test our “mental and emotional fortitude,” so she could determine if we would be strong enough to do the deeds she wanted us to do to get the Black Empire back. But we didn’t want it to come back!
She kept speaking, though, not even noticing our protests or demands of this or that sort. Then she said something like, “Well done, Marcus Brinebreaker,” and we realized, this was a magical recording, left here for when Marcus Brinebreaker had followed that letter we found in Shath’Yar that told how to find her in person for the first time!
When the message concluded, with the Tidesage saying that she’d visit our “unconscious minds” again, she disappeared, and then the walls started rumbling really loud! Dust clouds and bits of rock were falling from the ceiling! Mentally and emotionally exhausted as we all were, no one thought of a portal, so next thing I know, Maya’s scooped me up and yelling to Rylee to get Cari, and then we were sprinting out of the tunnel at worgen speed! We barely made it out on time, back to that weird old dusty house, with the last of the rocks falling right behind us! Next weird thing was, when the dust settled and we looked back behind us… There didn’t seem to have been a cave-in at all! Everything was as it was before! It was so weird!
Still somehow not thinking of a portal, we flew back to Boralus, then took the Stormwind portal in the Sanctum of the Sages back to familiar territory. Everyone was ready to pass out in their own beds after that night, and I was definitely ready to get back to Celeste at camp, so that’s where I went after everyone said their goodnights.
Nat replaced her quill in the inkwell, working out her hands and stretching a bit. Reliving the memory of the caves with Gandrayda and Nah’s parents, and the Drust magic with her other friends, made her shudder, but all was well now, though she wished she could find Nah and Gandrayda. The latter needed to be sent back to the Twisting Nether and ended, and the former would likely prefer to make it back home to Stormwind and get things back to normal.
Nat looked to her left, watching Celeste work around the smoker. She had cleaned the salmon she’d caught, and was now placing the meat in the smoker with the rest, pulling out a few that were done to put them away for transportation to orphanages. Nat rose from her seat, taking the meat Celeste was pulling out to wrap and store it in the small icebox they’d brought along that Nat almost felt she didn’t even need to chill with her frost spells in this climate. With Nat carrying off the meat, Celeste had room to put the new fish in. Nat closed up the ice chest as Celeste was closing up the smoker, and the two returned to their camping chairs, smiling lazily as Celeste went for her rod, and Nat, her diary. Sighing a happy, contented sigh, she returned to her writing, her mood back to happy thoughts now.
Not all of Hallow’s End’s spooky times have been hard and scary, though! Last night’s Hallow’s End-themed Deathrolls game, for example, turned out to be a whole huge BLOWOUT, like I wrote earlier! SO many cool people came! It was the usual crowd, of course, cool people like Cari, Rylee, Maya, and Zarshal, but Narcoss and Skylie came too! Narcoss came as a geist, Cari was a super heroine named Stormgirl, with an outfit and mask that were just amazing, Maya was a blood cultist with this really scary veil like those people have, Zarshal was some sort of candle-laden dude that we decided was Stormgirl’s sidekick, Candle Lad, and Rylee was dressed all dapper with pale makeup and stripes and stuff and called herself “Ryleejuice.” Xiraami was there, dressed as an Eredar, which I found surprising, as Xiraami is a Draenei woman, though her costume was one of the most well-done costumes there! My old friend Valindra joined us later in the evening. She and I were both dressed as witches! There was even a death knight that stopped in to look at us, though he seemed surprised to see us there, and left soon after. Skylie was dressed up as her twin sister Suzzy, wearing her paladin armor and all, which she seemed to be taking good care of for Suzzy. Her friend Morgirt was there dressed as a blood cultist just like Maya. There was a new Mags, not my old friend, but a different one, that was dressed up like a Firelands firelord. I was hoping my old friend Mags would make it again, but she couldn’t this week, and Nah is still in hiding. Then lots more people I have only ever seen around before but never really talked to, or else had never met at all, came in, and we had like twenty-plus people in costumes all in the Darkshire inn near the fireplace and candy bucket and apple-bobbing tub over the course of the night, and the inn was just PACKED! Bartender Hann was running himself ragged with drink orders, and the game was just LOADED with laughs!
My bestie would have enjoyed the Truths at the table; several of them were Screw, Marry, Kill questions that really made me blush with the answers given around the table, especially by all the guys that were there! The Dares were fun too! Zarshal Dared Cari, who was really committed to the bit as far as acting out Stormgirl, greet each new person that came to the game by calling them what Cari had been calling others: “ne’er-do-wells!” Then she was to continue her thing she’d been doing, giving them the Left Hook of Truth and the Right Hook of Justice, which were usually just nose boops that I called the Justice Boop. She sure confused people a whole bunch as they came in! HA! There were acting skit Dares, like the one where Elinore, dressed as a battlemage, pretended to beat up Rylee with her staff, and another where Zarshal was supposed to be my geist dog, and Narcoss was trying to leash him and steal him. I was trying to end that one by calling Zarshal back to me and having him drag Narcoss around, which he did… Narcoss got dragged down inn stairs near the door and everything! But when I tried to get Zarshal to drag him into the apple-bobbing tub, he let go! ARGH! Hehe… I had one of the new people I didn’t know do a Whisper Dare in which, a couple rounds later, he’d just randomly get up and go get apples from the apple bobbing tub and bring them back and just randomly start placing them all over Skylie’s pumpkin head, which she and I were both wearing on a Dare. Rylee got me with another one of her Hallow’s End treat dares, giving me ice cream that looked like it had dark chocolate cookies pieces in it that were actually charcoal, and it was all covered in salt! EW! I got Xiraami when she first arrived, with a Dare from Zarshal to pretend to be a real witch and cast a spell on her. I used a toy Hallow’s End wand when she got in, and said a bunch of magical-sounding mumbo jumbo, and used the wand to turn her into a nasty-looking abomination! She seemed pleased with it though; she kept it and played for a while with that on. Weird! Maya passed her Dare rolls to others, as she was mega tired. She was there just for laughs and rolling and watching, mostly. I had a Dare in which I had to get a straw and try to blow Narcoss’s geist hood off, though all I managed to do was inflate it, which got a few laughs. There was a startling one in which Narcoss had to pretend to be a mana bandit and do a stick-up in which I had to give him all my mana. I dunno how to do that, but I did get bottlebapped by him, so just laid down in the floor and pretended to be vanquished, my mana free for the taking! Other Mags had a Dare in which she had to drink as much as she could from Skylie’s Bottomless Flask. She did, too, got quite plastered! And then, toward the end of the night, as everyone was opting for bed (at two in the morning!), Skylie and I both had pumpkins on our heads. Jack-o’-lanterns. Skylie’s somehow disintegrated, which gave me an idea on how to doff mine as I left. I got up on the stone hearth, put my hands on the stone structure, and counted off… one… two… THREE! Then I headbutted the wall really hard, and smashed my pumpkin! Skylie loved it! Heh. There were so very many more funny Truths and Dares, but mostly, the night was just a big party! In between all the rolling and all the antics was conversation, meeting new people, getting to know acquaintances better, really having a lot of laughs with Skylie in particular, which had us talking about hanging out more after the party and getting to know each other better and building the friendship up more, which I’m really looking forward to doing! She’s such a great friend to have! But yeah, camaraderie, drinking, antics and funny stunts, lots of cracking jokes and laughing, and so very many people in so very many cool costumes… This was a party people will talk about for a long, long time!
Today is more fishing with Celeste, now that the campsite is secure of “undead bears,” and then a brief stop in Westfall this evening for a girls’ night that Elinore is hosting, in which we’ll be telling spooky stories around a bonfire after dark. I’m really looking forward to that one, even though I’ll have to leave early because of lame early work mornings! In the meantime… I’ve written a bazillion words, and I now wanna fish! YAY! Life is good! Live well! And live it up!
Nat smiled, tapping the excess ink from her quill back into her inkwell and replacing it in her cherrywood quill case. She caps her inkwell, taking both items back to her pack to stow away. Celeste had already caught another much smaller salmon and was working on freeing it from the hook to throw back, as it was female, still not wanting to prevent eggs from reaching their spawning grounds and hurt the salmon population. Nat returned for her diary, closing it now that the ink on the pages was dry, and took that to her pack as well. Returning to her Pandaren bamboo fishing rod, she cast a line with Celeste, and the two relaxed in their camping chairs, enjoying the frigid mountainside’s autumn beauty, wild, cold smells, the fishing, and each other’s company as Dordy snoozed between them on the ground. Life was, indeed, good, and company like this, and of many close friends, makes it exponentially better!
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Post by Natasha Ebonlocke on Nov 4, 2021 16:11:56 GMT
November the Fourth
Nothing beats the creature comforts of home. The friendly confines, the security, the familiarity. The feeling of being in a place in the world that is just one’s own. Writing at one’s own writing desk, in one’s own chair. Views out the window that aren’t foreign. All one’s own belongings and own rooms and the comfort of family therein.
Sometimes, especially with young people, someone might leave home and venture into the wide, wild world to find their place in it. Then they return home to find it.
Nat sat at her own writing desk in her own office in her own home, drinking coffee from a large coffee mug instead of a camping or traveling thermos. The weeks in the desert and in the northern mountain had both been quite fun, but she and Celeste were ready to be home now. Nat looked out the window at the familiar view of Turtle Beach, far below and across the bay, spotting Nosebleed and Ebonhoof at the jungle’s edge, grazing away at foliage that grew so rapidly to the edge of the sand, the pair never seemed to really beat it back. The familiar dragon turtles and viseclaw crabs were scuttling about here and there. Onyx was flying far above it all, wheeling and darting at Cloud Dancer as the two friends played in the skies for the first time in a couple weeks. Seagulls flitted around, looking for a nibble of something, usually stealing tidbits from Angler’s Wharf. Nat Pagle was out in his little boat on the calm waters of Turtle Bay, casting a few lines. Once, a boisterous Pandaren’s laugh made it up to the top of the spire and in through Nat’s opened, though screened, window. More familiar sounds came from downstairs as the odd whanging, clanging, drilling, or mechanical clicking noise came from upstairs, once in a while drowned out by the roar of an engine starting up, idling, and powering down, as Celeste returned to her own familiarities, the engineering fun she’d also likely missed. The mechanical noises and sounds of Celeste humming songs happily and Dordy barking at something she’d made move on its own were also familiar and comforting to the purple-eyed young woman at the writing desk.
Nat sat sipping at her morning coffee daintily and relaxing the way one only truly can at home. She’d been having a blast, but she missed all this familiarity. Smiling happily at being home, she set her mug down on her comfortable writing desk and picked up her ravenfeather quill, dipping it in her inkwell of purple ink and tapping off the excess. She was ready to write.
Dear diary,
What a week of triumphs it has been! But to have triumphs, you need challenges, and in this world, challenges can often be really dangerous!
One huge milestone of a triumph was Monday! Celeste and I woke up at camp and I made us a HUGE breakfast. Omelets and hash browns and toast and coffee next to the Grizzly Hills stream, in all the morning mist, which only made the brilliantly yellow and orange and red leaves of the autumn forest on that chilly, beautiful northern mountainside that much more beautiful, in an eerie, dark sort of way. I had told Celeste the previous night that I had a surprise for her, though I also said it had to wait until the following day, for a very important reason. Then, the next morning, there in the morning fog at the campfire with that huge breakfast, I told her that we needed clearer sunlight to make the moment just right. She spent the day playfully trying to get me to tell her what the surprise was, but I held on and waited! Then, the moment came!
I led Celeste by the hand to the creek, but without a fishing rod this time. I had her close her eyes, facing the creek, right on the top of the little bank. Then I ran inside the tent and got changed as quickly as I could, bonking my noggin on the canvas bed’s nearest post in the process. Oops! Then, once I was changed, I got something out of my magically expanded back and took it outside. I called to Celeste to tell her no peeking just yet, then got on the thing I’d pulled out of my pack and rode it in front of her. I came to a stop and hovered, then I told her it was now time to peek!
There I was, sitting side-saddle on my broomstick, wearing the black dress with the silver trim and my pointed witch’s hat, which was my Hallow’s End costume last year. I was hovering over a creek about the same width and depth as the Stormwind Canals, and I was holding my Tarot deck, with her standing on the side facing me. It was exactly like this that we met one year ago that day, November first! I told her that, on this day one year ago, November first, I made my way anxiously to do a Tarot reading for someone who didn't want it. I was sure I was going to be cut off and ditched before I got far into it, potentially even clashed with and called a charlatan and maybe even worse before I got five minutes into it. What I was NOT expecting was to find a charming, funny, engaging, fun young woman who would go on to be an inseparable friend. What I REALLY didn't expect to find was to find the love of my life, my soulmate, the Sun of My World and the Catch of My Life. Happy Anniversary of our meeting date, Celeste McCullough! May there be many more! I'm so VERY glad to have found you, and so VERY glad you thought me worth spending time with, instead of just a ridiculous woman on a pathetic broomstick! I value each and every moment with you, and I can't wait to see what our future holds for us! I love you, Celeste!
Then I gave her a copy of the poem I wrote in my first diary shortly after she and I became an item. I know I’m not much of a poet, so it isn’t all that great, but what I had, I gave her. It reads thus:
Two bobbers in the gentle waves, connecting to two rods held in gentle hands Two happy voices in conversation, laughter, or silence One teaches one, one learns from one Techniques of the master angler bedazzling the eyes of the novice Two pairs of eyes exchange glances, prompting two smiles of equal fondness
Two pairs of cheeks heat up as they flush An iceberg ride away, a new spot on the beach The master angler ferries the novice along as she guides Two hearts beat in one rhythm, a dance of souls amidst the waves of life
Two lines cast with hopes of catching the prize Inner beauty as the bait, inner fire fuels the wait The novice’s heart is helplessly hooked by the master of anglers I still remember what Celeste said back to me. She gasped, bringing her free hand to her mouth in surprise at she saw my costume, the memories clearly rushing back. “Yeah, I didn’t put much stock in Tarot readings but I DO have an open mind. I figured I might just make a quirky friend if nothing else, so I was actually looking forward to that a bit. I didn’t expect to adore you quite so much right then and there, but I guess it really was fated! Stars, is it one year already? Feels like years ago. We’ve been through so much!” She let Dordy go as the pup, curious about my costume, was starting to squirm to be let go. He proceeded to bounce around the side of the river, yipping excitedly at me on my broom. “You always look so beautiful in anything you wear. I actually felt a bit self-conscious since I tend to dress to blend in. I couldn’t believe that someone as amazing as you wanted me…” She read the poem, shedding a few tears which she wiped away when she was done reading. “I think I remember this, but I’m happy to have read it again. You’re just… Stars, I love you so much!” Celeste reaches forward to pull me and my broom into a hug, and… well… mushy stuff, heh… which was interrupted halfway by Dordy, wanting to be let in on all the affection.
"I didn't expect a whole heck of a lot either," I replied quietly, though she spoke passionately from the heart. "Certainly I didn't expect to find my soulmate. Usually a Tarot reading, mostly just done to pass the time in a thoughtful and hopefully stimulating sort of way, just sort of ends and the two separate, though the odd friend has come from doing it. But I never expected to find YOU! I always admired your work clothes and fishing outfits and stuff, actually, so the shoe was on the other foot here: I thought I'd be too dressy and girly for you to find me an interesting enough friend to hang out with... let alone a surprise romantic interest! And yes, on one hand, it's hard to believe it's already been a year. On the other hand, it's hard to believe it's ONLY been a year, after all we've been through... But we did get through it, and here we are together, celebrating one year of acquaintance and more! I'm glad you like the poem, too! I'm not really great at poetry, so I know it's not really great, but what I can do, I did do, as I thought of you."
The moment was really mushy, but actually super tender and happy. We spent the rest of the day happily hanging out, our moods unbreakable, and we just fished and chatted the day away, enjoying the crisp, clean, chilly mountain air, the cold staved off by the warm campfire us. We fished up a storm, with thrilling fights with huge salmon under the brilliantly-colored autumn leaves and the satisfaction of adding even more orphanage-bound salmon to the smoker. The company of a soulmate as you engage in activities you’re both passionate about, in such an indescribably wonderful, beautiful setting, is absolutely unbeatable!
Nat dipped her quill for more ink, then just left it there, sitting back in her chair with her coffee mug instead. Smiling as she sipped daintily at the hot, strong black liquid, she recalled the past couple weeks. The only thing marring the trip had been that goblin tomfoolery, and even that had set up an adventure and more laughs instead of being truly Hallow’s End horrifying with some kind of fear of mortal peril. The fishing had been fine and bountiful, full of intense fights, near-misses, and many triumphs. Nat treasured her time at the gorgeous campsite with her love. One of her favorite physical feelings was to work or play outside in cold weather, bundled up all cozy-like, get really chilly, then head inside with the satisfaction of a job well done or having had a blast playing, and get all warm and toasty with a hot meal and then hot coffee or hot chocolate after. At the Grizzly Hills creek banks, with the campfire in the cold weather as she fished with Celeste, she’d gotten both feelings at once! The camp was so well-prepared that it was like a homestead! One of her favorite emotional feelings was engaging in an activity she and her love were both passionate about, and fishing out in a beautiful nature setting in awesome weather, side-by-side with the Catch of Her Life, certainly counted as such! Nat had felt throughout each day of fishing that she couldn’t be happier!
Sighing happily, Nat took a last dainty sip of her steamy hazelnut coffee, placing the large mug on her desk and taking up her quill once more. She still had the rest of the week’s events to write about!
Later that evening, once we’d enjoyed our meeting anniversary day, it was time for me to go back to work with the Whitewind Company. Celeste was ready to retire for the evening with Dordy and the MUTT, and I was ready for my evening with my friends… and to deal with an emergency! It was there that I encountered my next triumph of the week.
Well, first, backing up a bit, there was the Gandrayda sighting Sunday night, on the primary night of Hallow’s End! It started off mundane enough, with me just kinda hanging out at my usual after-work dinner spot, watching the sunset on the bench at the cliff’s edge in Lion’s Rest while enjoying a hot, tasty broccoli cheddar soup with fluffy bread and a nice Dwarven mead. What I didn’t anticipate was Gandrayda showing up out of nowhere! She was talking quite a bit, like she always did, and then she ATTACKED me! I had a frost barrier up quick as blinking, and her opening glaive toss chipped at it pretty good, but I was still okay. I had had a hard enough time with her last week even with Zandrion and Nickol helping, though, so I knew I had to radio for help quickly. I found Skylie Hassel’s frequency active, and gave her a call and let her know a fight was brewing. Skylie, who is always up for a good scrap, was eager to come and assist. But while she was traveling, Gandrayda was pressing the attack pretty hard, and I was worried… But then, out of nowhere, my bestie NAH showed up, in her cat form! Between the two of us, we were able to turn the tables on Gandrayda and push her back some, with Nah fighting with her claws and me getting an ice lance lodged in Gandrayda’s left shoulder, though she deflected one that got me in the left thigh, which had me down. That really hurt! But then Skylie arrived, and Gandrayda retreated down the cliff! Nah leapt down after her, bouncing quickly down from rock to rock, and was there on the little sandy beach nearly as fast as Gandrayda was. Skylie arrived, asked me if I wanted fight or flight, and I said FIGHT! I couldn’t abandon my bestie like that! So she scooped me up and leaped down the cliff herself, all heroic-style like warriors do. That was scary! We landed on a ledge most of the way down, where she set me down before jumping the rest of the way down to the beach.
From here, the two were pressing the attack in cramped quarters, so I didn’t wanna start firing off ice shards all over the place and risk hitting them, so I summoned an arcane familiar to mimic Nah and fight. It leapt off the ledge I was on and crashed right into Gandrayda, pinning her to the beach! Nah leapt in and started smooshing her as well, and Skylie got Gandrayda’s other shoulder really horribly with the axe. It was really in there deep! Gandrayda screamed, and then did a chaos nova that failed to knock Nah or my familiar off of her, though the polar opposites of fel and arcane cancelled each other out, just like Aedie and Nyr said they do, and the familiar was weakened. Then she tried to smash again, and Nah was thrown off, and my familiar was destroyed. I tried an illusion magic spell of stampeding murlocs, which distracted her as she dodged around them, and that allowed my bestie Nah, going back to her Kaldorei form, to draw her blades and plunge one right through Gandrayda’s heart! She froze on the spot sort of, looking down at the steel in her chest, then dropped like a rock. Then Nah had me soulstone her quick, before she could reform with it back in the Twisting Nether. I got her quickly. She won’t be getting summoned back to Azeroth by any haphazard warlocks again!
With Gandrayda defeated, Nah and I were trying to figure out what to do with Gandrayda, whom Skylie offered to take and dispose of (she enjoys hiding dead bodies for some reason… not even gonna ask how many times she’s done this!) and the soulstone. We thanked Skylie as she carried Gandrayda’s body off, then thought about how to dispose of the rest of the Legion minion. We know that demons don’t die if slain here. They’re always yelling about returning sometime when you do that. But we also knew that if a demon dies in the Twisting Nether, or on a Legion-controlled world like Argus, then they die permanently! We totally didn’t want Gandrayda to come back as another ill-fated warlock summon, after she killed the last two that tried, and I didn’t want to hang on to Gandrayda in a soulstone forever, so we took it to the Hellfire Peninsula in the Outlands, over to the Void area called the Warp Fields or something, where the region jutting out into the Twisting Nether, not to mention previously being a Legion-controlled world, might make for a close enough area to permanently kill a Legion minion. I really think we should have gone to Argus, but this one was quicker, and we wanted this thing gone like YESTERDAY. So, we got it there, and I got my biggest minion summoned to crush the soulstone like a glass ball. The thing smashed to smithereens, and the bit of Gandrayda inside was devastated and withered away into the wisps, disappearing on the Nether winds. I really hope that worked!
Nah, who was still pretty down, like she has been for some weeks now, seemed to be even more down after that. I can’t imagine how she must feel. Logically, she must know that Gandrayda had to go. Emotionally, though, the power that Gandrayda gave her when they were bonded, the length of time they were together, the turmoil of the separation, all that history and connection on levels I’ll never personally understand fully, likely made her feel like she lost something. Nah was even worse off after that!
But the action didn’t stop there… before we even left the site where we busted up Gandrayda for good, we hear an emergency broadcast over the Whitewind Company communicators – Lady Whitewind was hurt and in trouble, and the Whitewind’s Grace was under attack! I got us a portal back to Stormwind going immediately, and we flew like the wind to the Whitewind’s Grace!
When we got to the ship, Lady Cellica Whitewind, the best boss I’ve ever worked for my far, was wounded and on the floor, and Zandrion, Nah’s adoptive father, had been TAKEN by none other than Lucina Moonfeather! It seemed she’d been paid to betray us and attack us once again, even after the big payoff Lady Whitewind gave her for the Pyrewood Village job this summer, where we took down Ashnard Reynard of the Cult of the Darned for kidnapping Aedie! We needed to find her quick, but there were too many wounded, and I myself was exhausted still from my fight with Gandrayda and all the traveling to destroy her soulstone, so we rested up – rest is a weapon, I’ve heard soldiers say – and were set on going back the next day to hunt Lucina down.
And hunt her down we did! Riven and I went back to the ship the next day, when I got to Stormwind after my magical anniversary of meeting day with Celeste, and First Mate Nathaniel was there, going over a letter he’d gotten and looking grim. It turns out to have been a ransom letter, signed, “We who slither in the dark.” We all agreed there was something very human about the wording and the handwriting of the letter, and that led us to believe the Cult of the Darned was at it again! First Mate Nathaniel said that the two places he’d be if he were in such a cult would be either the Cathedral crypts, which have been infiltrated by the Twilight’s Hammer before already, or the Slaughtered Lamb’s crypts. We weren’t sure which, or either, or even if it WAS the Cult of the Darned, but we had to investigate all leads, so we started off checking out the scene of the crime. There was nothing left behind by Lucina… except her scent! Riven used her wolf Malanore to pick up Lucina’s scent trail. From there, we followed it all the way up out of the Stormwind Harbor, along that high ledge there, then left through that alley that goes to the Stormwind Graveyard on the left and my old friend Nea’s house on the right. Lucina took the back way around to the Cathedral, which was smart, and seemed to have gotten her captive inside some way. Did she pretend she was taking him to a healer in there? Did she bribe someone? Did she knock someone out, or worse, and hide their body? I don’t know, but the scent led right in and, just as First Mate Nathaniel had guessed, right to the crypts!
Riven and I had the advantage of stealth as we went down. Sure enough, about halfway down the deeper side of the crypts, we ran across a foul-smelling ghoul, seeming to patrol the staircases! Riven quickly and quietly dispatched it with an arrow to the head, and we proceeded on. The next was a skeleton. Riven fired a bit too quickly or something at that one, but I was right behind her with an ice lance, aiming at the base of the skull from behind it as it turned away to investigate the sound of Riven’s arrow hitting the far wall behind it. The base of the skull, where the spinal cord meets the brain, is an instant-kill zone according to my old master-at-arms that tried to teach me to fight growing up, though that thought had always horrified me! On a skeleton, though, I had no problem casting an ice lance right through it, and the skull popped right off and the vertebrae of its neck flew like dice across the room.
From there, we snuck onward, around another corner, down more stairs. That’s when we heard voices! There were four distinctly separate voices, and all were speaking Darnassian as three human-sounding voices seemed to be taunting an elderly Kaldorei man who seemed unperturbed by his predicament. Zandrion! One of them started talking about killing him and raising him instead of completing the mission. Another mentioned having gotten Telrissa to force Lucina to betray us with this abduction, and failing to get the ransom for trading him back alive would mean failing the mission. The third mentioned the kidnapping and ransom being revenge for Ashnard Reynard’s capture and imprisonment. Riven and I had worried that Gandrayda had somehow immediately come back, if it weren’t a Cult of the Darned thing, but it turns out that it really was a completely separate entity coming to attack us, right on the heels of Gandrayda being finished!
Riven and I crept to the top of the final set of stairs, peering over the top at the room. We got our next big surprise then! It turns out that the two death knights that were guarding Pyrewood Village, Ashnard’s old hideout, Marcellus and Adriana, were here with a third cultist, and this one, oddly enough, was a Kul Tiran! They sent the new guy, who they called Grahadin (not a Kul Tiran name to my knowledge… Do Cult of the Darned members usually get new names upon joining or something?) up the stairs on patrol to see how the undead patrollers were doing. I turned him into a sheep as soon as he got out of sight of the death knights, and I left him there to wander about on the spot, refreshing my spell as needed. It was now two on two!
Riven and I came up with a plan then. I’d take the one on the right, she’d take the one on the left. She threw a frost trap at the one on the left, and I, as I couldn’t polymorph more than one target at a time, cast a flurry of ice shards at the one on the right. The ice shards took the death knight full in the face, burying his face in snow and frost and perforating it with the razor-sharp shards. He went down like a sack of bricks, though I knew he’d rise sooner rather than later. Meanwhile, Riven’s frost trap had worked on the one on the left. Then I froze a link on the chains binding Zandrion to a chair and shattered it with a carefully-aimed ice lance. We got him free, and started going up the stairs, back up toward the Cathedral proper again.
It was there that we got our next surprise. There, we ran into none other than Lucina Moonfeather herself, and she was blocking our escape! A fight ensued on the spot, as Lucina was not to be bribed with gold to switch sides this time. Whatever Telrissa had on her, it must have been good, to force her to go against the side paying more! She fought tooth and nail, too! With a blade in each hand, she rushed at me, slashing and hacking at my frost barrier while I got her a few times with ice spells, including one blizzard spell once she was beaten back by a good few shots from Riven and I. Eventually, she was getting overwhelmed. I cast a frozen orb then. The swirling orb and its spiraling shards of ice pinned her to the wall, and we were able to escape! The scary part was, though, that I hadn’t refreshed that polymorph spell for a while, the frost trap seemed to have worn off of Riven’s death knight, and mine had apparently come to from the heavy ice hit! They were all after us! Even scarier was the fact that I can’t run twenty steps before I fall down, let alone up lots of flights of stairs, and Riven is certainly too small to go yoinking me up like my bestie would have, or like Maya did last week in that awful, horrible cave, so I had to just speed-walk and use blink spells a whole bunch to get up all the stairs. Once outside, I got Zandrion onto Onyx with me, Riven got her flying mount on the ground to mount, and we headed back to the safety of the Whitewind’s Grace.
Once there, we went up to the poop deck, looking out the aft section of the ship and watching the death knights give up. They sure didn’t want to take on an entire ship and its crew! They went back the way they came. Victory was ours! Though I doubt we’ve seen the last of them!
Lady Whitewind was on her feet and well again by then, and she debriefed us on the fight in the crypts and the investigation that led up to it, and commended us on getting Zandrion back safe and sound. We both get bonuses on our paychecks! YAY! She also said that Nah was still super down, and even Nickol and Zandrion seemed rather subdued, and that the family was going to take some quiet time away for a bit. That’s really sad, but I understand the need. They’ve really been through a lot, and Nah most of all, what with Gandrayda’s taunts and peeling off old scabs from deep wounds by bringing up really painful stuff in her past, and everything else scary that’s gone on.
Riven and I took our leave then. We went off to sit at the usual spot my friends and I all sit at on the Recluse porch, with this sort of elated sense of victory had us giddy over the win of the evening. Nah being heartsick is really sad, and I was sad for her, but in that moment, the victory was still a victory. We celebrated on the Recluse porch, joined soon by Nyr and the GOOD tidesage, Lahil Ahi, that runs with the Voyagers as their ship’s tidesage. We gotta get one of those!
There were lots of others hanging out with us, and a couple more hanging out with just each other. One of the people hanging out with us was a new Mechagnome guy I’ve never seen before. He was asking about our ship the Whitewind Company and the missions and stuff, though he was mostly interested in the ship and its voyages and adventures. He wants to come on one with us! If I see him again on a Tuesday, I’ll definitely be inviting him along!
Nat sat back in her chair at that, trading her quill for her coffee once more as she gazed absently out the window at Kun Lai Summit, far in the distance and just barely discernable through the distant mountain mists of Pandaria. Thinking of Tuesday’s mission had brought back to mind another of her worries. Her condition with the Void corruption was worsening. She was anxious about it; she didn’t want to lose her mind entirely and begin attacking people, not her friends, especially her close friends in Stormwind and at work, and most especially not her father or her bestie or her soulmate and the little family she shared with her! She frowned as she sipped at her coffee again, then replaced the mug on the desk, sat up straight, and reached for her quill. She wanted to commit her thoughts to paper, beginning with Tuesday’s mission.
Tuesday morning was another grand morning of fun, productive fishing and great conversation and relaxation with Celeste, though I had to end the evening once more by returning to work for the Whitewind Company. It was time for our weekly trip to Kul Tiras. The Tidesage must be stopped before she hurts more people and can succeed in committing high treason!
We were shorthanded for the trip at first. It was just Cari and Maya and I that went to Boralus. We were going to talk about our dreams we’d had again, the remarkably vivid dreams that, like last week, probably had eerie similarities to each others’ dreams concerning what our next clue in finally meeting the Tidesage in person would be. We didn’t wanna do it right there in Boralus, though, just talking aloud about somewhat shared dreams where everyone could hear us. We’d get a bunch of funny looks, at best, and at worst, people would might even want to attack us, thinking us ALL corrupted by the Void! So we flew north out of the city, just outside Boralus proper a short distance, landing on the peak of one of the foothills of the mountains there. Once free of other people within hearing range, we discussed our dreams.
I had dreamed of a rich family's house. The inside was filled with piles of gold and silver and expensive-looking art. But the weird thing was, the house had no roof! The home was in shambles, with the piles of gold and art all over the floor along edges, leaning against the wall. The art was waterstained and the silver was tarnished. In one corner, a blunderbuss rested upon a tripod, aimed at the skull of a human skeleton sitting in a chair. The skull had a hole in its forehead and in the rear of the cranium. It's pretty obvious what happened there, but... where was the roof?
Cari dreamed of a stone wall. At first, the wall had made her think of old Gurubashi ruins in Stranglethorn Vale, as the light of the sun shone brilliantly off of the green leaves of thick vines that grow all over the wall. But then she noticed that the wall is Kul Tiran in design, and, to top it all off, the stone busts of what looks like a well-to-do Kul Tiran family were lying in a pile at the base of this wall.
Maya’s dream had been of a mountain rising on a peninsula that she said somehow reminded her of a favored beach somewhere on the continent. From the depths of the water surrounding the peninsula, however, an enormous kraken, bigger even than the one she’d helped save the Whitewind's Grace from, suddenly burst forth and climbed the mountain. Nearly equal to the mountain's size, the kraken obscured the mountain almost completely from view!
Maya figured the kraken likely meant it the next task was somewhere in Stormsong Valley, as the kraken is a Stormsong sigil. Then I remembered that the house on a snowy mountain in our dreams the week before had turned out to be quite literal, and our task actually started there, so I figured maybe there was a rock or something that looked sort of like a kraken that we should find to start off with. It turned out, however, that the kraken dream was a lot more close to literal than even that! We all fanned out over Stormsong Valley, and Cari contacted me soon after, having found a whole massive mountain that had been carved into a kraken on one side of it – the Shrine of the Storms! I changed direction and flew that way, surprisingly in contact with my bestie Nah! She was saying she wanted to join us tonight, as she’d had a vivid dream too, of a roofless house herself loaded with shinies that she was swiping, though it was raining inside the house on her because of that roof being gone. She, too, had dreamed of the skeleton in the chair with the tripod-held blunderbuss pointing at its head! I told Nah where we were, and that Cari had spotted a shape like a big manor home in the distance, and that we were heading there, and she agreed to come meet us at the spot.
Once again, the dreams turned out to be quite literal. This house had no roof, it had vines growing down one side with the busts of a well-to-do family lying at its base, and piles of gold and silver and gemstones and expensive-looking artwork all piled all around the base of the walls, with the artwork all propped up against those walls. The art was likely significantly reduced in value, though, due to waterstaining from the perpetual storm that seemed to be going on here and that had blown the trees to a permanently bent and windblown-looking position.
One other weird thing was that the Day of the Dead, where the spirits of the dead can sometimes penetrate the veil and come back to our world, was going on full force here. Spirits were appearing and walking around and disappearing, men and women of different walks of life strolling quietly through the house and completely ignoring us. It was spooky, but it wasn’t anything like that horrifying cave last week!
Nah seems to be getting back to normal. She had a few snickers at this and that, but I found it odd that she didn’t try to swipe a single bit of all that gold and gemstones and silver and stuff. Hopefully time brings more healing!
We found the skeleton from mine and Nah’s dreams a moment later. Just as in our dreams, the skeleton sat in a chair with a blunderbuss on a tripod pointed at its head. There was a small hole in front and a rather larger one in the back of the cranium. A strong cord ran from the trigger to a pulley wheel behind the trigger, then forward from that to the skeleton’s right forefinger. The skeleton was seated at a desk with a model of a banquet hall, one of those kinds where the Lord and Lady’s table is along the back wall and raised up a bit higher, and two more tables line the side walls, with all the chairs on the wall side of the tables and none on the other side, so that all present were facing the middle of the hall where the evening’s entertainment would be taking place. A fine-looking Lord and Lady sat at the main table. The front of the model was labeled, “Lord and Lady Stormsong, Luthor and Breanna.” To the side of the model lay seven figurines of younger men and women, also dressed finely, and each was named. There were Sir Jack the Brill, Lady Michelle Darling, Lady Jill Fontana, Lady Shaela Dawnspring, Sir Darvy Greymist, Sir Malcom Mooring, and Lady Mellindra Wayne.
Sticking out from underneath the model sat what appeared to be a suicide note. The man that wrote it appeared to be the late owner of the skeleton in the chair, a man named, according to the signature at the bottom of the note, Mortimer von Lewunhoek. Apparently, he’d been poisoned by one or more of the young people who seemed to squabble constantly amongst themselves, which made it difficult for him to know where to seat them at banquets in a way that would make them all happy, and their displeasure with it was enough to make at least one of them want the poor man dead! The note also said he wished they were all as apathetic about the seating arrangements as Lady Mellindra Wayne, who never seemed to care where she sat. That right there gave us the first clue for what seemed to be our task, according to the Tidesage’s message she left us last week about this week’s step in how to meet her in person being a logic test!
We spread out around the house to look for more clues then. I found one torn-out journal entry that said that Lady Michelle Darling was famed far and wide for her incredible beauty, and constantly used it to get her way, including always claiming the fifth seat down the line from Lord and Lady Stormsong. That gave us the first definitive clue! Then Nah found a chest and picked it, smirking as she did so. Miss Troublemaker is making her comeback! She found a letter in there from Lord Luthor Stormsong to poor old Mortimer, stating that the knights Sir Malcom Mooring and Sir Darvy Greymist were incredibly inconsistent, always following up a heroic victory with another deed that was rather less so, and that he wanted Mortimer to always sit whomever had had the latest victory closer to himself, and the one that had done something embarrassing to be seated furthest from him. So, those guys go on the ends! I made a table on a piece of parchment of my own, listing the seats down the side and the names across the top, and started putting checks in boxes where people would sit, and Xs where they wouldn’t. Maya and Cari also found clues. Cari experienced this magical illusion of Sir Malcom and Sir Jack the Brill as being best buddies for life, and said that it was obvious that they’d been friends since very early childhood and were absolutely inseparable. I started writing clues down after that, below the table, so we could reference them when we were ready to figure out who goes where, then listened to Maya’s clue in which she’d found an illusion by smell, an illusionary smell that actually stank. It was revolting – she’d found a large cauldron filled with boiling blood and human flesh and bone, and a note from Lady Shaela Dawnspring that seemed to be written to Sir Darvy AFTER she’d murdered him, who seemed to be a previous lover in a relationship that went bad, gloating to her slain victim about the fact that she’d killed him and taunting him that she’d be feeding him to Lady Jill, who fancied him after he’d single-handledly speared the boar they’d be having at banquet that night, and who Lady Shaela loathed for her petty jealousy of Lady Michelle. She also said in her letter that she was tired of having to demand that she not be seated next to Lady Jill and witness her jealousy firsthand, and that she wanted a minimum of TWO people seated between her and Sir Darvy.
That was it for discovering clues! We could have searched for more of them, but we felt we had enough to be getting on with. Lady Michelle was in the fifth seat, because she demanded it and used her beauty to get her way. Sirs Malcom and Darvy were always either first or last, depending on who’d done something good or bad. Cari explained that an average Joe, one who isn’t a big powerfully magical or tough fighter and Hero of Azeroth, going and spearing a boar to death single-handedly was “big male genatalia energy,” which of course made me blush a whole bunch, and that such a feat would place him at the head of the table this time, and Sir Malcom at the other end, according to Maya’s reminder that he takes the opposite end of Sir Darvy each time. I wrote these in on my table. Then Nah remembered that Lady Jill fancies him for that same feat, so I wrote her in at the second seat. Maya pointed out Cari’s illusion clue, remembering that Sir Jack the Brill was Sir Malcom’s bestie, so I wrote him in at number six. Five was already taken by Lady Michelle according to my clue, Cari said, and then Nah said that that left four as the only seat Lady Shaela could take, as she wanted a minimum of two people between her and Sir Darvy in seat number one. Nah and Cari both stated who the final seat goes to at the same time: Lady Mellindra Wayne, who didn’t care where she sat at all. The table I drew up on my parchment was now complete! Below that, I copied down a list of names in order from seat one to seat seven, then placed it next to the model.
Both my bestie Nah and my good friend Maya wanted to go and arrange the figurines off to the side in their seats on the model, but, as Maya is currently suffering from a poisoning from her sister – oh gosh, she’d been so lethargic and sleepy for so long, and just last week, I’d found the source as we were talking about it! There was a red spot on her neck with a needleprick hole and the initials VM in it, and Maya said those were her sister’s initials, who specialized in slow poisons and had wanted her dead for a long time! We gotta find the antidote as soon as possible! So yeah, until then, given that poor old Mortimer had been poisoned for failing so many times, and people suspecting that the same could happen to us if we didn’t solve this correctly the first time, it ended up getting decided that Maya shouldn’t risk taking on a second form of poison, and Nah went ahead and set up the figurines according to the positioning we’d come up with. We waited for a bit after she did… but nothing happened!
Then I spotted something! There was a candlelight glow coming from down the cellar, the doors of which had been open this whole time! We went down there to investigate, but, just like last week, I don’t remember anything that happened! Apparently the Tidesage’s magical recorded message illusion had come again, and it was her that held the candle. Again, they said, her voice was eerily familiar, and that her face was obscured by her hood and the shadows caused by the candle held next to it. They said she was commending us on proving ourselves up to the task of solving things intelligently, using our logic instead of our fists to work out a problem. She stated that she’d need us to do this often in the future, for the dark tasks she’d be setting us. Nah, who wasn’t there with us in the cave last week, thought the Tidesage was speaking to us knowingly, just like we thought last week, but, just like last week, the Tidesage had apparently mentioned Marcus Brinebreaker’s name again in such a way that made it seem she’d been talking to him all this time. Definitely another recording, and definitely the next step on the way to finding her to meet her in person, just like she’d said in the Shath’Yar letter we found in his treasure chest after we busted him and took him to the Boralus stockades and searched the chest right down through the false bottom! We are getting closer to finding her ourselves, too, for sure!
What happened next was worrisome, though. They started talking about Joan as if she were alive again! They seem to think that JOAN is the Tidesage! They were talking about all the times I went to her house to hang out and stuff, just the two of us, and saying that that was when she must have messed with my head and given me this Void corruption! But that doesn’t make any sense! How could a Tidesage powerful enough to do all these things we’ve been seeing be killed by a mere Brinebreaker thug with a knife? I mean, we SAW Joan’s body, lying there in the streets! There’s no way it could be her! I’m beginning to worry about my friends and the things they’re starting to believe…
The next worrisome thing was that Maya suddenly SNARLED at me in her worgen form, teeth bared and everything, like she was going to attack me or something! She said my face went shadowy and spooky again, and that I looked like I was going to bite her head off! I just wish I knew what the heck was going on with me! I want this Void taint GONE!
With that in mind, we all went back to Stormwind so everyone could get their exhausted selves to bed. I stayed up with Nickol, though, as her priestess stuff gives her some knowledge of shadow magic, and the Void. She first led me through the city with my eyes closed, trying to get me to focus on the real things and not the illusions from the Void. Follow her footsteps as I walk, she said, listen to them with my eyes closed, hear this sound and that sound and all the sounds. When I opened my eyes, I was at the shore of Stormwind Lake! Nickol was next telling me things about the Void, and was asking me if she looked differently. I didn’t see anything different, so she kept asking me kinda, and I still didn’t! Then she said she was in shadow form! I couldn’t see the shadow! Then she went into that Void cloud thing that shadow priests can do, or so she said, but all I saw was a ball of Light floating around! It’s all very mixed up and confusing! Nickol had to head home after that and think out what this all could mean and how severe the Void corruption within me is. I went back to camp at that point. It’s all so worrying!
The next day at camp, though, which was yesterday, everything was just plain fine and dandy! Celeste never seems to experience these things that the others do. We just fished and hung out all day, though Celeste was starting to feel ready for home. We talked about when to leave and what to do over lunch – more awesome fish! We started the day out right though… I woke up before the sun rose, and an idea came to my mind, and I decided to act on it! I got dressed in hiking pants and shirt and boots, got Dordy, and we hiked down the mountain, following the creek to Amberpine Lodge. When we got there, I got two big, hearty steaks, and lots of seasonings for a dry rub! Then Dordy and I hiked back to camp, and by now, the sun was coming up in the east. I figured Celeste would be up soon, so I got to work! I hung out with Dordy, who was a good boy and didn’t try to steal the steaks, though he was there very close and staring hard. He hung out with me as I put the dry rubs on, then let them sit with the seasonings on them settling into the meat. Then I got eggs and bacon and coffee going, and those smells did their job, getting Celeste up out of bed. She came out just on time for me to put the steaks on, and I made them medium rare, the way we both like, then dished up our plates. It was flurrying really lightly, just the odd little snowflake coming down here and there, and none of it was sticking, but the big campfire kept us plenty warm in the beautiful northern mountain autumn forest. The fiddler started again somewhere, which was amazing and peaceful and relaxing. Steak and eggs is a great meal for breakfast! Celeste taught me something she’d picked up from her twin a long time ago… put the fried egg on your steak, then cut it all up with the knife. The steak and eggs taste great together, and the egg yolk runs over the meat to give it a smooth, creamy sauce. I did the same with mine, and it was absolutely amazing! We were completely stuffed afterward! We just sort of sat there and digested happily, slouching in our chairs and hanging out. Then, after a bit, we got our fishing rods again. Celeste’s murloc skeleton fishing rod and my Pandaren bamboo one were soon dangling more bait for more fishing fun, and that’s pretty much what we did until lunch, and then yeah, Celeste was talking about being ready for our home again.
So, we decided to pack up, figuring we’d leave after I got back from Deathrolls. The day before, we’d been out with the MUTT to get materials for a crate for the fish. Celeste had found good, strong, straight trees to mill into planks with the MUTT. Then she started building the crate while she suggested I take a turn on the MUTT next! That was fun! I piloted the MUTT around to get us some pine boughs to pack in with the fish, giving them a cushy layer, keeping the fishy smell down a bit, and helping to keep them fresher. When I had enough, I brought them all back and hopped down and unloaded them from the MUTT’s cargo hold, then helped Celeste build the crate. Then we packed in the veritable mountain of smoked fish, making a layer of pine boughs between each wax paper-wrapped piece of meat. Then we put the lid on, but we didn’t screw it on completely… I had one more idea left! Before we leave our lovely campsite, a few last fun casts to cap our trip off, this time for unsmoked salmon to take back home to our Angler’s Wharf friends to try! With the salmon run still going strong, we had enough for the entire little village pretty soon, even after accounting for their large Pandaren appetites! We got those into the top of the crate, secured the lid, packed up, and headed home via a portal to the Shrine of the Seven Stars.
We dumped most of our load in the hangar when we got there, figuring we’d go greet all our friends that had waved at us as we flew over Angler’s Wharf and unpack later. We got our catch of the evening transferred from the crate to the MUTT’s hangar bay, then flew down – I had Onyx – to the Wharf. Everyone was gathered in groups close together on the different tiers of the Wharf to welcome us back home. Drinks were prepared and wild tales were told, Celeste really hamming it up with her fish stories again, though we also told them the funny story of what started off as a Hallow’s End spooky time and ended in us foiling the goblins’ plans and Celeste stinkbombing them in return. Dordy’s Nosebleed costume made an appearance, much to everyone’s delight. Celeste set up shop on the sandbank just in front of the wharf, preparing a large fire (by hand rather than her fire magic) and setting up rocks in the embers to warm up (non-river variety, so they don’t explode). She prepared the salmon with fresh lemons, lots of butter, a hint of dill, and a spicy onion chutney. When the fire died down to glowing coals, she stuffed the salmon with the ingredients, tied them shut with string, and covered them in wraps of palm leaves. She laid the wrapped fish out on the hot rocks to cook slowly. Throughout, she was being this amazingly sweet awesomesauce person and keeping my glass filled with whatever drinks our friends offered, all of which was good. She had me sitting in her umbrella fishing chair on the low tier near Other Nat’s rowboat. Celeste easily Blinked back and forth from the wharf to the sandbank as she made her continuous rounds.
The fish turned out perfectly cooked! The meat was savory and easily fluffed with a fork. It was so good, no one even spoke while we ate, too busy enjoying the northern glacial salmon so rarely seen here in Pandaria. Celeste sat on the wharf next to me as I sat in her chair, eating salmon and feeding some to Dordy in her lap. The party lasted long into the night! Celeste and Other Nat end up challenging each other to a fishing contest with a friendly bet involved. Iceberg and rowboat set out over the moonlit bay. The first to catch one of the elusive Mimic Octopus wins! Everyone encouraged the two fishing pros equally, most unable to take sides (I’m fond of Other Nat as a good buddy, but I’ll always root for Celeste!). Other Nat in his boat kept trying to distract Celeste with jokes and banter, but Celeste remained quiet and focused, totally in the zone the way she gets when she’s concentrating hard on her fishing. Other Nat fished an octopus first, though, and started furiously rowing back. Celeste caught one a few moments later and concentrated on heating the water behind her, pushing the iceberg forward as fast as she can. Everyone on the pier was quiet with anticipation as the race was on! Celeste, just at the edge of her Blinking, range jumped forward and Blinked mid-air to step just on the edge of the pier, beating Nat Pagle! Other Nat conceded defeat, but Celeste graciously admitted that he did catch one first. The two grinned at each other, then turned around at the same time and shouted, also in unison, “Celeste McCullough is the BEST fisherman in the world!” or “Nat Pagle is the BEST fisherman in the world!”. It was so funny! Everyone cheered the pair and the party took off again, long into the night. It was long past midnight when we left Angler’s Wharf and flew back home again.
In between the last bit of fishing and the trip home for the party was another party – DEATHROLLS! We ended up playing at a place of Nah’s choosing this week, at the upstairs table at Bruuk’s Corner in Ironforge! We haven’t played there in forever! It was a far smaller group than the big, huge holiday party we had last week for Hallow’s End, with the bazillion people in their bazillion Hallow’s End costumes. This time, it was just the usual crew – me, Maya, Cari, Rylee, Zarshal, and, starting to perk up even more now, my bestie Nah! Nickol came with too. She didn’t want to play, but she did want to observe and enjoy a funny show, though I think she was also there to keep an eye on her adoptive daughter and make sure she was okay She did seem to enjoy the game, though, laughing at the funny Truths and Dares. The game, oddly enough, seemed to be far more Truths than Dares this time, somehow. That’s rare for our games! The Truths were silly, though, like who would look best in a fur coat, what animal Nah would most want to be if she were one for real, instead of just having a shapeshift cat form like the one she spent most of the game in last night (one Dare had her in my lap for three rounds to pretend to be a lapkitty, though it was a bit different than that – four hundred pounds of killing fury does not a lapkitty make!). Zarshal got Dared by Cari to dress up as a Dwarven barmaid and give the barmaid there a break. Zarshal went down to the tailoring shop and came back in a dress! It was so funny! Then he got drinks for us, including for Rylee and Maya, whom I had Dared to order drinks and argue over who gets served first as a raging Dwarf and a haughty Quel’dorei, respectively. Maya ended up playing the flirty Quel’dorei instead, pretending to hit on Zarshal and talk like an elf while Rylee did a GREAT Dwarven accent and raged at the “barmaid” and the “elf” alike. When Zarshal went to go serve the flirty elf first, Rylee started raging about how that elf likely had a “twig” in her pants instead. That was funny, but it made me blush too! Then we ended the night on like three or four Million-Die Rolls, which resulted in more Truths, for the most part, though the final one was our exit Dare, in which Cari got to Dare Rylee and I both to carry her out like a queen in her chair and place her on the balcony. I can’t lift that much, though! Not even tiny little Cari! So I ended up being the herald instead, and I made the announcement of her coming out to the balcony in her carried throne as silly as I could, yelling my head off on the balcony. That was fun! Then we tipped the barmaid and paid Bruuk for our drinks and headed out. It was time to get back to camp to help Celeste pack up and return home! Little did I know that other party was going to get kicked off, the second one in a row that night! What fun!
This morning, Celeste and I got to go see her Pandaren friend Suyin in Halfhill! We hung out a good while and caught up on things, and then got some giant vegetables from the local farmers there before coming home. Now Celeste is downstairs tinkering with her engineering projects, which she has probably missed in the last few weeks of traveling. I can hear her tinkering and drilling and hammering and sometimes starting an engine to idle and then turn off, humming songs all the while. She sounds so happy! I just wanna go and join her, hearing her so happy, so I’m gonna wrap this up. What an amazing few weeks, even with all the spooky things that happened across three different doggone continents! No matter what gets thrown our way, we’re too strong to get knocked down and stay down! Plus it’s all mostly filled with awesome, happy living anyway! Life is so great! I love it!
Nat tapped the excess ink from her ravenfeather quill’s tip into the purple inkwell, humming happily herself now, as she recognized Celeste’s current song. She caps the inkwell and replaces her quill in its case, putting the items where they go in one of her writing desk’s drawers. She leans back, finishing off her late-morning coffee. She and Celeste and Dordy had gotten to see their Angler’s Wharf friends last night, Suyin and the Halfhill friends this morning, and now it was time to sit back and enjoy being home long-term in weeks! Unpacking would hold for later. For now, it was time to unwind. Nat finished off her coffee, heading downstairs to the workshop to hang out with Celeste and help with the projects she currently had going on, improving her own engineering skills and knowledge in the process. How strange that life could have so many scary moments, yet be so perfect!
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Post by Natasha Ebonlocke on Nov 11, 2021 15:43:39 GMT
November the Eleventh A diary, an inkwell of purple ink, and a ravenfeather quill in a case all plopped down onto an oddly clear workbench in the usually cluttered workshop. Nat sat down with her back to it for the nonce, watching as Dordy the molten corgi ran around in a sort of bulletproof glass ball like a hamster, cheering him on with Celeste as he had his fun rolling around the place. The sphere had odd attachments: a pair of fins and a square hole trimmed in brass and rubber. Nat and Celeste watched Dordy and chatted in between laughing and cheering at Dordy as he played.
Celeste was explaining to Nat how the ball worked, and what it was going to look like as soon as she figured out how to implement certain features, and Nat was listening, as every day had brought new ideas for the sphere, and she wanted to write about them in her diary.
Eventually, Celeste let Dordy out of the sphere so he could rest a bit, which basically meant chewing on his favorite toy: Celeste’s oldest, most worn-out, tarnished wrench. Celeste sat in the floor concentrating hard on the sphere, likely puzzling out the engineering of the thing and how to accomplish what she wanted to with it. Nat watched her turn a few parts over a few times, looking at different parts of the sphere, then turned around, her own imagination active as she pictured how it might look herself, and how Dordy would like using it for its intended purpose. As she turned around, she picked up her quill and began to jot down her thoughts.
Dear Diary,
Cool things are afoot! Celeste is currently working on a sort of bulletproof glass ball for Dordy that works like a hamster ball, where Dordy can zoom around inside it running on the interior walls. It’s going to be a swimming sphere! This Dordy ball will allow him to go diving with us! And, as Celeste never makes things for no good reason, I suspect she has an underwater adventure for us in mind next… and Dordy gets to come too! So far, it’s mostly just the sphere with fins, and what looks like a square-shaped port to attach maybe some kind of oxygen tank to or something. We’ve just got to puzzle out how to make it be something Dordy can steer left and right and go up and down in the water, and how to make it structurally sound enough that he can go to certain depths without the sphere beginning to leak, or worse, shatter. It’s going to be an interesting project for sure! Other than that, Celeste surprised me by cleaning up all the clutter in her workshop. I never saw that one coming! It’s so neat down here now! Usually it’s full of Celeste’s ingenious mind cooking up one idea after another, resulting in half-finished projects lying around everywhere, or MUTT parts lying around the MUTT or dangling off it or something. Now it just looks great in here, and she even did the rest of the house while I was at work this weekend, too! She’s so great! I’m going to make sure I’m the one that gets the house done next, though, so she can rest!
It’s been a less eventful week this week, but there have still been hairy moments! I spent the weekend evenings after work having dinner at my favorite weekend evening dinner spot, the cliffside bench on the cliff overlooking the ocean and the harbor in Lion’s Rest. Usually one friend or another comes and hangs out with me there, and it’s relaxing, but Friday evening, Riven radioed me over the comms and said she’d tracked Lucina to a house in Elwynn Forest! I offered to help investigate on a night when I didn’t have to go to bed soon, and she agreed. Two nights later, Sunday, when I got to Stormwind, I was on the comms with Riven again, and she’d been followed to Stormwind after another investigation into Elwynn by Lucina! I found her in the alleyway behind Essential Components in the Mage Quarter, in the uphill end of it, down in the corner and covered in injuries and… tar?! She was all black with tar, and Lucina was just standing there, even though Riven looked one hit away from being finished for good! There was a confusing back-and-forth between Lucina and I as I tried to figure out how to get past her and get to Riven in which I offered her more bribes to get her back to our side, which usually works. This time, same as last time in this case, she refused! It’s so weird! She’s either crushing on someone hard that wants her to attack the Whitewind Company, is being blackmailed with something REALLY bad, or either her or someone she cares about is under threat of death by someone making her do these things. I can’t help her with the first possibility, but we can offer her or a person she cares about protection or uncover a blackmail case for her. But she refused on all counts! Riven was still hurting a lot, though, so I just straight-up told her I was going to use a frost barrier and walk past her to help Riven, and if she did anything to stop me, she’d find herself roundly perforated by ice shards. She didn’t seem to be intimidated in the least, but neither did she try to stop me as I moved past. Riven was shivering from the frost barrier, especially when I extended it to get her into it with me as I helped her to her feet. We got her to the Cathedral for healing, and then we got her out of there so she could go get cleaned up. We ended up at the waterfall in Lion’s Rest near where I eat dinner on weekends before going home to Celeste, with her washing her armor off in the falls.
The next day, Monday, I was heading to the Recluse to see who might be hanging out, and who did I see but the two warlocks that were in Winterspring with Gandrayda the night she attacked Nah’s parents and I in that cave! Kieffer Darkblade, and his sister, Celeiria Darkblade, a pair of Quel’dorei siblings, were on the front porch at a table and speaking in Thalassian. I know Alliance languages from my education growing up as the daughter of an Alliance official, and I was able to understand them as I sat unnoticed at a nearby table. I’m not usually one to eavesdrops, but these two were with Gandrayda the night she attacked Nah right before she attacked her parents and I, and now, here they were… talking about Nah AGAIN!
There was mention of her being corrupted by the Void or something, and Celeiria, who has always seemed sort of meek and forced into fel magic instead of her preferred frost by her brother, was trying to convince Kieffer to offer to Nah to heal her. Kieffer dismissed her pleas out of hand, citing that he’d rather not just go and heal people unsolicited, and didn’t seem to care about Nah’s plight at all! Then he started suddenly talking about getting Celeiria some juice, which I thought was odd, especially as he said he would be wandering all over Stormwind City to find it, so I followed him. I stayed behind a good distance, and, any time he looked back, I pretended to be reading a newspaper I’d picked up along the way. But, he doubled back too many times, and I was certain he’d noticed me. Whatever he was going to do, IF he was going to do something bad or see someone about something illicit or something, he didn’t do. I’ve either bungled the chance to catch him at something incriminating, or I’ve stopped something really bad from happening. I may never know which! Anyway, when he got back to the table, he and his sister got up and left, even though he’d only just returned with her juice. I was going to try following again, this time assuming a disguise, but they flew off instead of walked. I was joined shortly thereafter by Riven, who looked much recovered then, and I told her the whole story. I told it again to Nah later on that night, too. Then the rest of the evening was just hanging out with the usual Stormwind crew as they all started trickling in over the course of the late afternoon and early evening.
Tuesday was pretty quiet. We didn’t have most of our crew available for the weekly trip into Kul Tiras to continue the hunt for the Tidesage, but, as our leads seem to just be us triggering magically recorded messages and sharing similar dreams that were originally left for Marcus Brinebreaker over a year ago, I’m sure that the magic will still be around next week to follow! In the meantime, I got to hang out with Mags for a bit! We chatted for a while and set up a manicure appointment! YAY! I love hair and nail appointments! They’re always so relaxing! Latelatelate at night, a whole bunch of us were still awake after just hanging out all day, so Cari invited us back to her apartment for this cool game with D20 dice where we roleplay different characters. It was me, Cari, Rylee, Elinore, Lex, some kinda talking magical thing, and this new friend I made in Lex’s Voyagers company named Zoe! Everyone brought food, and Maya had prepared crackers and spinach artichoke dip for the occasion, though this being a weeknight, she had to go to bed early. There was also wine and mead and stuff! Anyway, this being the first game in what seems to be a series, Cari spent much of the time setting it up and getting people’s character names and statistics and backstories and whatnot, then set up the world, telling us that we’d awakened in a strange, brightly-lit places with metal and concrete structure all around us, and people were gawping at us as though we were weirdos or something, even though they were the ones in funny clothes! I don’t understand it yet, but I thought it was cool how Cari was talking to us from behind a series of folders she was hiding behind at the head of the table and using different voices for different characters and stuff! People had talked about costumes and stuff, so I was in my horsehead costume, so I decided to be a Centaur Barbarian named Koda Karak! Elinore had bread loaf baguettes she’d fashioned into different play weapons, so I had a big axe! It was neat! Elinore and Lex decided to roleplay as Elinore’s guards, Bobby and Stan, which Stan thought was hilarious and Bobby didn’t seem to notice from his spot by the front door. Zoe was a rogue that spoke only in funny rhymes. Rylee had opted to just spectate, and so did the talking magical thing. We were just being herded out of the building by people Cari had described as basically being guards, and I was roleplaying thinking the guards looked all heroic and stuff and had fallen into step behind them, waving my axe around and shooing others out of the building, which the guards didn’t like and seemed ready to attack my character for! It took a good while to get set up, though, and we’d started really late besides, so we ended up not getting too much further than that, though Elinore and I hung out with Cari and did moisturizing face masks while having a girls’ night. That was fun! We ended up quite tipsy by the end of it, and Cari in particular had had a pretty heavy dose of wine. We ended up staying up until the wee hours of the morning, just hanging out and doing face and nails, or at least, faces, as we’d somehow forgotten about doing our nails when the drinks were flowing, heh. It was a really relaxing Tuesday night for once!
Then last night was Deathrolls! Two game nights in a row! WOO! And, unlike last week, this one was way more lively! The group, consisting of me, my bestie Nah, our new friend Zoe from the previous night’s game night, Maya, Cari, and Rylee, and, for a short time, Mags, were all excited about Binan Village in Kun Lai Summit in Pandaria, so we went there and sat at the gaming table in the inn! And, right off the bat, Rylee rolled a one, Maya rolled a one on the Truth or Dare rolls, and I won the Truth or Dare roll! My Dare ended up being me going to the innkeeper and bringing them back sushi to eat… Only this sushi was seasoned heavily with Pandaren ghost pepper powder, and with spicy noodles to boot! I was lenient, though, and brought them yak milk to help with the burn! Then Cari got revenge for them by Daring me to eat a whole Pandaren onion! Then I got to Dare Cari back… boiled silkworm pupa, noodles, peach pie, and a fish, all stirred into one big icky muck! I was lenient again, and said that a few bites of that plus a couple silkworms that burst in her mouth when she bit into them had us square now for me having to eat that entire onion, which had taken a couple rounds and filled our corner of the inn with tear-jerking onion fumes. Cari, who still somehow seemed hung over from all the drinking Tuesday night (or, more accurately, Wednesday morning!), seemed to be pretty much holding all that back from coming back up again. There was another Dare in which Cari had Rylee take one of my wool socks from my foot and use it as a teabag for tealeaves and then actually drink the tea! That one, with one of my hairs that was somehow on my sock, plus the thought of dirty sock and a few wool fibers, got Rylee sprinting for the back deck to blow chunks! The final food Dare of the night was Rylee getting me back, Daring me to drink a weird concoction she made that turned out to be moonshine and fish paste. ICK! By this time, everyone was feeling pretty squeamish. Mags ended up leaving before she could get made to eat something gross, and Nah and Zoe somehow lucked out and didn’t have to eat anything bad at all, but, after my moonshine and fish paste, I was outside on the back deck overlooking the little lake and blowing chunks in between different times that Maya and Rylee had done so. I’m sure glad I keep travel stuff with me! I had a toothbrush and toothpaste! Then, with Rylee rolling a one, and Zoe and Cari rolling ones during the Truth or Dare rolls, I ended up granting Rylee her wish for her favorite Dare, which, for some reason, is to make a human pyramid, which she refers to as the “flesh pyramid.” She was really happy she got to do that! I had them make it upside down, too; Rylee was the bottom layer, and Cari and Zoe were the top layer. She ended up going worgen form and getting them both on her shoulders, then standing right up in the air with them! Then she did a little twirl, and that was the last straw for poor ol’ Cari! She scrambled down like SO quick, ran outside to the back deck, and became the fourth one to puke that night! I puked, Maya puked, Rylee puked, Cari puked, everyone puked and had a great time!
Gosh, this has got to be my grossest entry of all time… EWW… But! There were other Dares that were more normal and silly! Rylee had to spend pretty much the back half of the game ending everything she said in onomatopoeia, Zoe had a Truth in which she struck this heroic pose on the table with her sword raised on high and told a story in which she was convinced in her childhood to sniff ladybugs for wizard powers, I had to spend a few times with my finger in my bestie Nah’s ear, and the game was finished off at the end of the night by me getting to Dare Nah and Cari, the final two players remaining after the rest had filtered out over the course of a nice, long game, to go stand out on the back deck and spend a full minute screaming out animal noises. The Sha of Anger had been reforming from time to time in the zone, and we were hearing him shout all night, which means there had to have been other people within earshot the whole night to hear all the animal noises. I bet they were pretty confused! HA! It was a nice long game! So much fun!
This morning has just been relaxing with Celeste and Dordy as they work on his swimming sphere, with me throwing in the odd idea as much as I can. I do need to get up and get breakfast going, though. Steak and eggs again? Could just portal out for those and be back soon! It may be the last day of minication, but we’ll sure wrap it up in comfort and style!
Nat smiles, informing Celeste of her plans and letting her know she’ll be back in about ten minutes with breakfast. Shortly after, her diary, inkwell, and ravenfeather quill are all packed away in their places in her office, and Nat has disappeared and reappeared with lighter pockets and heavier bags. It isn’t too long later that another steak and eggs breakfast is going for a late morning meal, the smells of the meal wafting through the warm home and making mouths water. As she, Celeste, and Dordy set to, Nat smiled at her little family. Now this is living!
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