|
Post by Natasha Ebonlocke on Nov 18, 2021 15:02:54 GMT
November the Eighteenth A familiar book opened on a familiar desk. A familiar cherrywood quill case and inkwell opened next to the book. A familiar chair was pulled out, and the familiar comfort of chair and writing desk enveloped Natasha Ebonlocke in warmth and happiness as she sat, though her head swam and pounded from the overabundance of Azuremyst peppermint bourbon she’d drank the previous night. A mug of coffee and a tall glass of water were on hand to help remedy this, though Celeste had done her best to help speed Nat's recovery already. The smells of coffee and Celeste's breakfast (Nat, looking quite green, had skipped the morning meal) pervaded the warm house in Turtle Beach, Pandaria.The house was quiet, with Celeste downstairs somewhere quietly working on her biggest project of the past week. Dordy was down there with her somewhere. Angler's Wharf was only just starting to wake up, lending an extra bit of quiet to a house in which the only sound was the steady crashing of the waves against the rock spire from the ocean's surface far below.
Nat sat blinking for a good bit, trying to focus her vision on the pages in front of her so she could write. It had been a crazy week, and she had trouble getting the events of the week into chronological order in her mind. She blinked a few more times, then opened up her cherrywood quill case, withdrew her ravenfeather quill, opened up her inkwell of purple ink to dip her quill into, and began to write.
Dear diary,
Back to adventuring I go!
First, I spent Monday hanging out with Celeste trying to perfect the Dordy bubble. It’s a sphere Celeste designed to take Dordy underwater with us. It’s got all these contraptions and fins and air tanks and an airlock and pedals and stuff, and Dordy will be able to go inside it and go diving underwater with us! Celeste is going to train Dordy in its use by hooking it up on the spiral staircase that goes down to her workshop. The pedals will first be rigged to activate a winch that will raise and lower him when he uses them, and we’re gonna sit at opposite ends of the stairs and use his constant desire to be with one or both of us, as well as maybe some treats, to get him to learn to work the pedals more after Celeste trains him to recognize and use them. It’s a really cool design, and I even got to help figure out some of its engineering! I was at work this past weekend, and I came up with a sort of air tank ballast idea where taking in water into the ballast tanks will cause it to dive, and forcing the water back out and air into the ballasts will make it rise again. Kinda like how Gnomish submarines work. The medals will work the ballasts, and Dordy will be able to swim and dive with us! I can’t wait to get it completed and see it in action!
I’m still really super worried about Nah, though. She’s still been really down more often than she’s been her usual perky, mischievous self. I think the Void corruption is really getting to her! I don’t know what to do, but there seems to be a warlock who does…
I saw that warlock again yesterday afternoon in Lion’s Rest. It was Kieffer Darkblade, and his sister Celeiria again, those two Quel’dorei that had been with Gandrayda that day in Winterspring, walking with her and working with her! I hid nearby and listened to them talking. Like last time, Celeiria was pleading with Kieffer to do something to help a Void-corrupted Kaldorei woman – which had to have been Nah – out, and Kieffer was still holding his position that he wasn’t going to just randomly go up to someone and force his experimental magical healings on them. Eventually, however, she convinced him this time! He agreed, and she left to go do something she had to do. I watched for a bit longer, and my friend and coworker Cletcher Tidebringer, who’d been along with us on several Brinebreaker missions, had come along. They walked together, and I followed. Cletcher was super suspicious of the warlock, having already heard that he’d been with Gandrayda, though he heard him out anyway. Kieffer wanted Cletcher to knock Nah out and bring her to him so he could do his experimental dark magic healing on her! Rightfully, Cletcher didn’t trust him, so Kieffer advised him to talk to Aedalia and Riven, who he seemed to know and had apparently already talked to about this. Gosh! Was the whole Whitewind Company crazy now, talking to this guy? Or was his claims during this conversation with Cletcher to only have been with Gandrayda in order to “do what Riggermotor had not been able to do, and get in close enough with Gandrayda to imprison her within a soul gem” actually sincere? I don’t know, but Cletcher went out to look for Riven and Aedie, and found Riven in the Recluse. They left, and I couldn’t follow, because Cari had just arrived, and had found me and was excited for Deathrolls, so it would look suspicious if I left right before the game to go follow them. I hated not knowing what was going on with my bestie! And that’s on top of STILL not having found Telrissa and Lucina and stopped their plot against the Whitewind Company that they’ve apparently been blackmailed into or something! GOSH!
So those were two adventures already. The next was the Whitewind Company excursion to Kul Tiras to resume our search for the Tidesage, which meant the intensity of the week was just ramping right up! As always, our leads were dreams some of us had had. Nah had dreamed she was swindling other swindlers in a pub on a hill overlooking a bustling port town, with the word “swindle” repeating itself occasionally in her dream. I had dreamed I’d stowed away on a ship out of a hidden cove near the Proudmoore Naval Academy, with the word “stowaway” repeating itself through my dream. I’d also dreamed I was back in the Boralus slums, attempting to join the Scrimshaw Gang, with the intent of finding out who and where the leader is, so they could be taken down. The word “infiltrate” had been repeated in that dream. Maya had dreamed she was fighting in an arena, with the words “fight dirty” repeating itself in her dream, as well as another dream in which she had been aboard a ship as a special agent of SI:7, Kul Tiran Theatre, with a mission to scuttle this boat and four others like it. The word “sabotage” had repeated itself from time to time in this dream.
We went to the Proudmoore Naval Academy to get started. It was me, Nah, Maya, our friend Narcoss, and his friend Sir Garandor, and Cari joined us later in the evening, once we got to our destination. Once we got to the academy, we looked around for this hidden cove, and, sure enough, just like with all the dreams in the previous weeks, we found it. It was down some stairs and through the left fork in the boardwalk that zigzagged all over. Once at the end of the boardwalk, by the bay, we found a small boat with a shady-looking guy who accepted a bit of gold to help us stow away. Narcoss made it really super easy with his ability to expand his stealth shadows to give all of us a bit of stealth, so, when we pulled up alongside the small ship we were going to stow away on, we were able to get in easily. Then we just hid among the cargo for the duration of the ride.
As we sailed, we pondered the meaning of the other dreams. What bustling port in Tiragarde Sound might we sail to that swindling, criminal crews, sabotage, and fighting dirty might be prevalent themes? We had just come to the obvious conclusion when we rounded a bend around a cliff and saw that we’d guessed right.
Freehold.
We slipped out under another stealth aura while the crew was offloading all manner of contraband goods into Freehold, and saw three more ships just like this one. It looked like the sabotage task was up next! Maya tried first, with some ironvine seeds planted to try to grow through the hull and break it, but the vines didn’t quite grow enough from the bottom of the bay floor up through the water and into the ship. I tried to freeze the water in between any pitch-filled gaps between planks in the hull, but the hull was too strong, and was probably Tidesage-blessed anyway. Then Cari, having just arrived, tried her own idea: a portal, one end under the water, and the other end inside the hull of the ship. She flooded the hull, and the ship sank, right there at the pier! Masts were sticking out and everything! She tried it with the other three ships… same result! Scuttled!
In all the commotion of all these ships suddenly sinking without explanation, we made our way up the hill of Freehold proper, which led us to remember the dream about the tavern high on a hill. We finished the climb to the top, and, sure enough, there was a tavern up here! We went in, and found it full of people and cigar smoke and noise. But what we needed was a swindler to swindle. It didn’t take long; we found an obvious cardshark and his silent friend at one table, trying to get people to come and gamble, and no one was biting. The man was claiming to be new to cards, and wanted someone to come and help him learn, with a bit of gold as the stakes to motivate him to learn how to play faster. Nah and Narcoss, being the best at shady dealings of the group, went over to sit with him and his silent friend, the latter of whom got up and moved to stand in the corner behind Nah and Narcoss. The game started off honest enough, but quickly became sketchy. The man behind Nah and Narcoss was looking at Narcoss’ hand and making subtle signals to the more boisterous cardshark. Nah was holding her cards much closer to the vest, however, and he wasn’t able to see hers. Cari, wanting to even the score, casually made her way up onto the balcony, leaning in a relaxing pose on the rail and checking out the cardshark’s hand.
The cardshark’s next sketchy move was to “accidentally” drop a few of his cards. When he collected his cards from the floor and sat back up again, Cari immediately got Maya on the comms, who was sitting next to me by the fire. As it turns out, Narcoss’ three Jacks would have won the hand, but the man had apparently replaced his “dropped” cards with three that gave him a Royal Straight! I communicated what Maya told me over to Nah, but we didn’t have a way to tell Narcoss, and there wasn’t any obvious sort of way to swindle the swindler, so I thought hard, then came up with an idea! I got up and walked casually over to Nah, asking her what she was doing. She said she was playing cards, and I looked at her hand, trying to look all naïve and innocent. She didn’t have much; I think she just had a pair of something? But then I sort of sighed happily, smiling at her cards, and I was like, “Awww, a Royal Flush Straight of Hearts looks SO beautiful together…” The cardshark and Narcoss instantly folded, and I giggled and walked away, still looking all innocent-like, and I was like, “Too bad you don’t have them.” The cardshark was quite indignant at that! But, the swindler was already swindled! Nah scooped in her winnings, and the cardshark started angrily blurting out how we might win at cards, but we’d never win in the arena fight that night over at the Ring of Booty. We were surprised at that… just like that, our swindled cardshark had just given us our next lead!
So from there we made our way across town, which was still in a bit of a commotion over the ships, but, as most of the town had nothing aboard any of those four ships, the commotion was growing to be more and more about some sort of special fight event that was supposed to go on that night. But, when we got to the Ring of Booty, there were no fighters there! Then this guy at the gate told us that the fight was elsewhere, which was weird! He said go through the Ring of Booty, exiting the far side on the boardwalk that leads out to the cliffs. So we did, and we found the fight, alright… Two ships, lined up side-by-side next to the shore, had drawn a crowd of spectators all up and down the hillside… and, atop the masts, on the crossbeams high above the decks, one pair of fighters per ship were basically tightrope walking on those crossbeams and fighting each other! We got a little closer, all the way to the end of our boardwalk along the cliff, and saw that all four fighters were men. The fighting was fierce, and, on both ships, the fight was won when one guy through down his opponent off the mast! That crashing to the deck stuff looked like it really HURT!
The crowd was cheering and jeering throughout, and then this fight promoter guy started yelling for the fighters for the Freehold Women’s Mast Walk to come forward! Two immediately appeared, a Kul Tiran woman and a Quel’dorei woman, and both shimmied up the masts. Cari and I can’t fistfight worth beans, and Narcoss and Sir Garandor had to leave after the card game plus are men anyways, but Nah and Maya are great fighters, and were ready to give it a shot! They climbed up after the other women, and the fight was on! It was time for Maya’s “fight dirty” dream task to be fulfilled!
And a dirty fight it was! Pockets of sand were thrown into eyes. Other items were withdrawn from pockets and chucked at opposing heads, attempting to knock them off the mast. The Kul Tiran woman pulled off her tricorn and attempted to slap Nah over the head with it while simultaneously trying to obscure her vision with it over her head, landing a stab of her blunted, dull tournament rapier into Nat’s abdomen. Nah took a hard hit from the rapier to the gut, but managed to block the tricorn and rip it out of the woman’s hands. I saw something shadowy glowing under the hat, and I could tell that Nah had used some sort of shadowy taint she seemed to be affected with in her punch to the woman’s gut. There was also the flash of some sort of shadowy blunt metal object in Nah’s clenched fist. The fight was dirty throughout, just like Maya and the Quel’dorei, dueling on the other ship’s mast, where Maya was tossing a few more ironwood seedlings to snare one of the Quel’dorei fighter’s feet to the crossbeam after having taken a handful of sand to the face from the elf.
The fights drew on at length. As the sun set, the Quel’dorei woman succeeding in kicking Maya into the vertical beam of the mast behind her, while Nah had leaped over the Kul Tiran with a flip and came down with a kick to her rear, sending her sprawling onto the crossbeam to hang on for dear life with all four limbs. Maya’s response to the kick had been more pocket sand, which caused the elf to stagger wildly on the mast and fall! The vines she was tangled in snapped, and the elf was only just able to hang on by catching a rigging of rope on the mast as she fell. Both reigning champions were now clinging to the masts in desperation! The Kul Tiran woman, obviously having spent quite some time in Freehold, withdrew a mousetrap, of all things, from within the front of her shirt and threw it at Nah in desperation. Maya, meanwhile, clawed ferociously with her worgen claws at the rope rigging the Quel’dorei was clinging to, severing it and sending her opponent falling hard to the deck, way far down below! On the other ship, Nah dodged had the mousetrap, stomping hard on the mast and shaking the Kul Tiran woman loose from her own deathgrip on the crossbeam, sending her falling hard to the deck of ship below with a resounding, echoing crash! The fight was won! Maya and Nah were now the reigning champions of the Freehold Women’s Mast Walk!
The crowd was all yelling and cheering again, and Nah and Maya made their way back down to thunderous applause. The fight promoter was suggesting that Maya and Nah join the crew of Captain “Big” Willie Johnson, which they pretended to be interested in. They collected their winnings, and we made our way back up the hill into Freehold proper again, with a new lead – this Captain Johnson fellow.
We had one task left: infiltration. We had to pretend to actually be pirates ourselves, looking to join the crew of Captain Johnson. We changed into pirate attire, though Cari opted to stir up more trouble than that by dressing up all fancy and proclaiming herself to be a “pyromancer queen of the seas,” and that she was here to take over as ruler of Freehold, and that she’d burn all who opposed her! It sure made for a band of pirates looking to pillage and plunder! Though it also meant we wouldn’t be infiltrating Captain Johnson’s crew the quiet way.
We made our way into a tavern across town called the Dead Man’s Tale, where we met this guy Venrik, who was like instantly crushing pretty hard on Nah, who was dressed up as the flashiest pirate out of all of us! Venrik was super confused, feeding Rylee, who fed Maya, who was in her cat form, while doting on Nah, mostly ignoring me, and cringing away from Cari, who had assumed a queen’s rather commanding presence and was demanding to know where Captain Johnson was. Venrik said he didn’t know where any of the captains were, though he did know that Captain Johnson liked to stay near his pile of gold instead of sitting inside all day at taverns. That led us to believe it was a giant pile of gold outside, so we left the tavern (much to Venrik’s relief, though his eyes followed Nah out the door pretty hard) and made our way up some stairs that went onto a nearby rooftop and had a look around.
We saw it right away: a humungous pile of gold spilling from the hull of a ship that was somehow atop the next hill over from us, which had a bridge leading right to it! We got down off the roof, and started heading toward it, with Cari “borrowing” a horse along the way to ride in our midst as we walked, the better to make herself look like a real queen. Then we heard Captain Johnson’s voice yelling from somewhere, telling us to halt, and get off his bridge. Of course we did no such thing, and kept crossing, so he sent across three of his hugest men to stop us! We met in the middle, and there was arguing, and Cari was still being a queen and talking about the men risking the wrath of the phoenix, which confused their leader. He said he’d already paid Phoebe for the night, and that she’d moved on to Booty Bay, which didn’t make any sense to me, because Cari was clearly talking about a phoenix, a fire bird! Anyway, the tensions mounted, and a fight broke out! They all charged Maya, who was in her bear form now, and Nah took advantage of the distraction to cut a handrail rope thingy and grab it and leap right off the bridge! That startled everyone out of their fight, and the three Kul Tirans went and kneeled over the side of the bridge, trying to see where Nah had fallen. But she hadn’t fallen; she was swinging up from under the other side of the bridge, arcing up into view like the rising sun, slapping her rear once and firing a bullet into the leader’s knee. Good ol’ Bestie Nah, always in it for the style points… Anywho, Nah landed on the far side of them, and we had them surrounded. They stood no chance against the five of us, especially with their leader wounded badly and them being dumb enough to try and fistfight a huge bear. Ice spells, blades, flintlock pistols, and a roaring bear overwhelmed them, and they soon dropped like a bag of potatoes. Cari even tried to ride one down, and THAT one dived out of the way… sending himself right off the bridge! We heard him yelling as he cartwheeled wildly into the mud pits below the bridge, and we could hear him moaning loudly in pain after he crash-landed. The fight was won!
But all this fighting and horsemanship and such was just too much for the bridge… The whole darn thing just SNAPPED! At first it was just ropes stretching thinner and thinner, fraying and stuff, and a few planks dropping through the bridge, but it was starting to go faster and faster, so we BOOKED it off the bridge, trying to get to the other side in time. Maya had her owl form to fly, Nah used her grappling hook, and Cari rode her borrowed horse as fast as she could, and all three made it. Rylee, who was the rear guard, was stuck behind me, and I can’t run worth beans! Onyx can’t fit on the bridge, and would likely have broke it even faster anyway, so, when the bridge finally snapped, Rylee and I had to dive for the deck, grabbing onto ropes and planks and stuff that hadn’t broke and swung with this huge crash right into the cliff! We had to climb the bridge like a ladder to get to the clifftop, where we were helped up by the others. That was SUCH a close call!
From there, we could see the gold pile close up… and Captain “Big” Willie Johnson standing on the deck of that broken ship up there! He had this woman with him, who turned out to be “Big” Willie’s First Mate, Rosie Palms. She was down on her knees in front of him, kneeling over to count his gold, and wasn’t paying us any attention, but Captain Johnson was posturing and blustering at us as hard as he could, trying to scare us away. We didn’t get scared away, though; we all just went right up that hill of gold and jewelry and giant gemstones and golden statues, including this one life-size golden statue of a Kaldorei woman, through the hole in the ship’s hull, up his stairs, and we climbed right onto “Big” Willie’s huge deck! This was clearly the opposite of the result he had expected, so he was trying to scare us off even more, and it didn’t work at all! Next thing I know, we’re right back to fighting, the third time that evening! Maya and I dropped Rosie Palms pretty quickly, ice spells and huge bear paws and claws immediately proving to be too much for her to handle. Meanwhile, Nah, Rylee, and Cari are taking Captain Johnson as hard as they can, with Rylee even fishing through all the gold thingies up there and chucking them all at his head. Nah fired a flintlock pistol shot right through his thigh, and then her next shot was one that they were basically saying was aimed at removing the reason for his moniker? It was all very mixed up and confusing, and, next thing I know, he’s down for the count, Rylee’s trying to heal him to reattach stuff and stop the bleeding so we can turn him into Kul Tiran authorities for the bounty, and then, while we're stuffing our pockets with gold and then sending lots and lots more through portals to our respective companies' bank vaults (Maya, Cari, and Rylee sending theirs to Waypoint, where the Voyagers are based), they’re all telling me the golden Kaldorei woman statue had been the Tidesage, and that it spoke to them! I never saw that happen, but they all were suddenly talking about it at once, so I suppose that thing happened where I apparently freeze up and don’t witness what they witness. It’s all so very mixed up and confusing!
Anyway, the Tidesage’s message was another one congratulating us – or, rather, Marcus Brinebreaker, really – in successfully completing another task. Then she had apparently talked about the next task testing our wits and abilities while under much pressure… as if the previous few weeks hadn’t been doing that quite a bit already! This one, apparently, is going to be puzzles to solve and other tasks for us, the failures of which might well prove to be fatal. I don’t like the sound of that! I’m still waiting to see what my dream will be this time, which, surely, is going to be our method of gaining a lead once again!
Nat sat back, rubbing her eyes, forgetting to put her quill down in her inkpot and getting some ink on her right cheekbone in the process. Scrunching up her face, she now did put her quill in the inkpot, reaching for something to wipe it off quickly before it dried and finding tissues for the purpose. As she scrubbed her cheek, she reflected on the whole journey through the Brinebreaker investigation. A simple inquisition into allegations of criminal activity had backfired into a murder investigation in which she was one of the prime suspects, a number of close brushes with death, witnessing a shadowy tentacle suddenly whipping up out of the bay in the Ashvane Company Yards to grab a guy and drag him in, orphans forced into pickpocketing, and finally, a satisfying number of busts of underbosses, leading to the arrest of Marcus Brinebreaker himself. The bust had led to a search through his letters, among other things, between himself and the Tidesage. Nat had apparently been seen briefly displaying Void shadows herself and sometimes speaking in Shath’Yar, the Black Empire language of ancient Void beings, since near to the beginning of the investigation. She had been able to read a letter to Marcus Brinebreaker from the Tidesage that appeared to her to be written in Common, though everyone else had informed her that it was actually written in an ancient-looking script that flashed with Void shadows, leading them to believe it was written Shath’Yar.
Nat reached for another tissue, scrubbing still. The letter had led to dreams that had them searching Drustvar for the first of several tasks that the Tidesage had set them in dreams, though these appeared to be dreams and events that had been left behind for Marcus Brinebreaker to discover, and they had been triggering them themselves. The Tidesage had apparently appeared to everyone but her, and was speaking in an eerily familiar woman’s voice, according to them. This led her friends to believe it was Nat’s late friend Joanessa Seaslums, who Nat had hung out with quite a bit, one on one, in the early stages of the investigation, outside of investigation hours. Nat still thought this was silly, as Joan had been brutally murdered, which had lead to the murder investigation against her, among others, that she had been thinking about moments ago. There’s no way it could be Joan! They’d seen her bloody body in the streets near her home in the Boralus slums! Yet it was quite suspicious that a man they'd met, Rolfe Braxton, had asked the group to find his locket, his only remaining memento and picture of his wife, both of whom he'd returned from an extended voyage at sea to find missing... and it had turned out to be Joan's picture in the locket when they'd found it! Then she'd turned up dead when they went to ask her about it! What a big pile of murky, uncertain POO!
Nat pulled the tissue away from her face, noting, finally, no more ink. Satisfied she’d cleaned her face, she put away sad thoughts of her late friend, opting to think more of the happier events of the previous night at game night with her friends, as well as happy events all week with Celeste at home. She threw her tissues away, picked up her quill out of the inkwell, and went back to her writing.
Then last night was DEATHROLLS! Always an adventure of its own kind! Most of the first several Dares were drinking Dares of some sort, so everyone got really super tipsy really early! We were in the World's End Tavern in Shattrath City in Outland, playing while watching live shows from a rock band and a stand-up comic. Everyone got everyone else to drink lots and lots! Then I Whisper Dared Cari to wait a couple of rounds, and then, when everyone least expects it, without warning, without context, take a couple of candlesticks from the candelabra on the table and start pretending to be a drummer for a metal band, and even sing a metal song, if she wanted to, and that she should pretend to use Maya's and Rylee's heads as a couple of her drums, as they were sitting on the other side of her. No one knew that I had Dared her to do that, so later, when she did, and was making up this hardcore metal song called I Am Murloc and singing it, and was drumming with burning drumsticks, people got SO confused, and thought Cari had drank too much already! HA! And then next thing I know, Cari's Daring Zarshal to go and grab a cherry pie and GOOSH me in the face with it! From there, I don't remember much, but I think there were lots of dancing Dares? And a Human Pyramid Dare where the Tauren Chieftains were playing up on the stage, and I had to dance in a fancy dress. And my friend and coworker Syndelia, a Quel'dorei, had passed out drunk, so I hid behind Syn's chair each time it was her turn to roll, trying to speak in her voice and put dice in her hand and move her hand to make her appear to be tossing dice. That was silly and fun! There was another Dare in which Cari and Rylee had to go stand at the entrance to the World's End Tavern, with a market event going on within earshot of yells that we had been hearing all night, and pretend to have a lover's quarrel at the top of their voices... except they had to yell entirely in Murloc! It was great! Other people were yelling back, suggesting Cari and Rylee don’t eat anyone! HA! Then there was a Truth in which another friend and coworker, Cletcher, had to tell all about the bartender girl that had hit on him during the Upton Borough visit in which we had to diffuse bombs, and whether they were still seeing each other or not, and all the embarrassing details! Then there was another Dare in which Maya and I had to dance onstage with the Tauren Chieftains performing their rock concert, and I, as of course can’t dance, ending up just getting mosh pitted around by the band members instead. As much as they’d had me drink, that wasn’t too good… and I’m embarrassed to think of how I must have been up there with the band with pie still all over my face! Beyond that, I don’t remember much, but I’m sure the hilarity continued on! I LOVE Deathrolls nights!
This morning, Celeste found me downstairs, smelling like Azuremyst peppermint bourbon and cherry pie, face covered with pie, pie in my hair, and pie down my front, wearing a different dress than I’d worn out. It was one of my fancy summer dresses! I must have been Dared to dance again, this time in something snazzy, or something… She helped me recover a bit from that awful hangover, and I filled her in on the crazy game night. Now we’re just sort of hanging out around the house all quiet-like, so my head can stop pounding. Oh well… it was worth it! I love my life! I love Celeste and my family and friends! They’re all the BEST!
Nat smiles, giggling quietly at the happy memories of the night before as she taps the excess ink off of her ravenfeather quill, replacing it in its cherrywood case, the name of which reminds her of the pie, which makes her giggle again. She caps her inkwell, replacing both items in their place in her desk drawer, then gets up to top off her coffee. When she returns, she closes her diary, the ink on the pages now dry, and replaces it on the shelf.
Celeste is downstairs, working on the Dordy ball. Nat decided to check her progress, bringing Celeste more coffee along the way, wanting to see if she was ready to call Dordy up and down the stairs in the Dordy bubble yet. Nat reflected quietly that she was surprised Celeste hadn’t given it an acronym yet, though “Dordy bubble” was an apt enough name itself. Her head was starting to pound less now, so she knew she’d be able to stand the noise of tools just fine. As she passed Celeste off her coffee, she sat a few stairs above where Celeste was sitting, watching Celeste make continual adjustments to different bits of the Dordy bubble and continually testing the pedals to see how each adjustment affected them. Nat observed in fascination, learning a few things about engineering herself along the way, as she did when she observed. The morning passed pleasantly. Just another day in a life that, occasionally sad or dangerous or not, was still an amazingly happy one overall!
|
|
|
Post by Natasha Ebonlocke on Nov 25, 2021 16:07:42 GMT
November the Twenty-Fifth This morning, the sun shone brightly on Turtle Bay. Celeste and Nat were up not so early, taking the time to sleep in late. No project today, work or otherwise, for either of them. Coffee was made, the beloved molten corgi Dordy had been fed, and was now sleeping in a patch of sunlight streaming through a window. Humming merrily, Celeste was busy making fresh sandwiches and gathering foods for a beach-side picnic. She was already in her colorful bikini, a pareo around her waist and a jeweled flower hairpin on each temple, keeping her short hair back from her face. Nat was in her black bikini with the dark purple trim, sometimes talking to Celeste (who had big plans for a new project for the house), sometimes just listening to her merry humming, always cutting up a bit of this or assembling a bit of that.
Eventually, preparations were complete! The two wrapped things up, and now all that remained was to wait until a time a bit more appropriate for lunch. Celeste was at the table murmuring over a sheet of paper for supplies needed for her big project for the house, and Nat retired to her office to kill time until picnic time with her weekly diary entry. Still in her bikini, she took down her diary from the shelf, opened it to the next blank page, and then opened her desk. Out came her inkwell of purple ink and cherrywood quill case. Nat unstoppered her inkwell, pulled out her ravenfeather quill from its case, dipped it in the inkwell for a bit of her favorite color, and began to write.
Dear diary,
It’s been a week of progression and victory! First, there was my bestie Nah! I ran into my friend Alexis Galewind, and we were talking about Nah, and we decided, as bad as the Void corruption has gotten in Nah, we’d better get her cleansed of it quick! So we split up and went around the city looking for her, and I came across Celeiria Darkblade again… she was CHASING Nah! I didn’t see Nah herself, but I did hear Celeiria yelling for Nah to stop as she ran! I waved Onyx down from the sky and gave chase from the air, as there was definitely no way I was going to be able to keep up with the elf running. I can’t even run twenty steps before falling down! I kept out of sight, overhead, and flew behind the Darkblade warlock from Lion’s Rest all the way to the gazebo, around the Dwarven District, and all the way to Old Town, where she finally cornered Nah in the little alleyway in the center there. I landed on a roof, ready to do battle if I needed to. There was no way I was going to let her abduct Nah and drag her back to her brother Kieffer Darkblade for dark experimentation!
Sure enough, a fight broke out! It was really short, and then Celeiria was on the cobble, knocked out cold! It happened so fast, I don’t even remember if it was me or Nah that got her. Then Nah started arguing with me, or rather, the Void in her did so! She had so many voices and whispers going on, and was all dark and shadowy, like a shadow priest in shadow form! The Void didn’t want her to come with me to the Moonwell of Cleansing, which is where I wanted to take her to get cleansed as it worked during the Illidari purge to get Gandrayda out of her, but eventually, I broke through to Nah herself! Nah wanted to hurry and get there, though most of the time, it was the Void taking over and saying that I wasn’t really her friend, and I wanted to strip her of all this power she’d gained, and all that kinda nonsense. All I wanted was my bestie back, and not insane!
While I had Nah back to the surface of the voices, I got her to come with me to the Mount Hyjal portal at the portal lake in Stormwind. We flew down from there to Ashenvale, where I got her to the Moonwell of Cleansing. Right when we were landing, however, I lost Nah to the voices again! She was arguing again, not wanting to get in the Moonwell of Cleansing, and then these two shadowy apparitions appeared, facing Nah and pretending to be me! One of them was trying to convince Nah that I was the fake Nat, and she shouldn’t listen to me. The other was trying to convince Nah to keep the power, that it would be all the power she could ever hope for, and that she could do anything with it! I was trying to get through to Nah myself, bringing up all our fondest memories together and stuff, like Deathrolls games and adventures we’d shared and happy times in Stormwind and everything. Well, that seemed to be working, so the two shadowy apparitions quickly had their fill of that! They ATTACKED me!
I had a frost barrier going as soon as they attacked me, but the void bolts coming from the two of them were quickly getting overwhelming, and they were evading my frost attacks by disappearing and reappearing somewhere else. I thought I was going to get really hurt, but then Nah found enough control to leap past the two… right into the Moonwell of Cleansing! There were these two HORRIFIC screams from the shadowy apparitions, and then, POOF! They were both gone!
Nah lay in the Moonwell a good, long while. I got in with her and held her head up out of the water, just like I had before, during the Illidari purge. Nah was coming back little by little, more and more, as we stayed in there. Nah made a faint joke about déjà vu, with the way we were in there with me holding her head up, as this was exactly how it had been last time. As we talked, Nah got more and more of her strength back, and I was eventually able to get her up. The Void was completely gone from her! YAY! I wanted to make sure, though, so our next stop was the Moonwell of Purification elsewhere in the forest. We spent a while talking in there, with Nah’s old perky self returning more and more as she regained her strength. After that was one final moonwell, just a standard healing one located at Raynewood Retreat, at their tower there. The healing properties really helped to restore us from the ordeal, as well as healing me up from all the voidbolts that were going on. It also helped me, as I had been sick over the weekend with a respiratory bug, and had missed work. It got me all healed up! Once we felt up to traveling back to the Eastern Kingdoms, I got us a portal going, and we went home for bed. I’m so glad to have my bestie back!
Nat smiled happily, letting loose a sigh of relief. She'd been so worried about her best friend! Now, Nah was back to her perky, spunky self, pranking her already by having snuck up on her a couple of times since then, and even nicking her Kaldorei pocket watch she'd gotten as a birthday gift the previous year from a void elf named Solriel, before, of course, returning it to her with a snicker. It was so good to have her back! Now, if only the mystery of Lucina and Telrissa could be solved...
Nat bit her lip for a moment, wondering, still, what sort of blackmail the Kaldorei rogue mercenary and the Kaldorei Illidari could be facing to have turned on the Whitewind Company as they had. With nothing new to write on that pair, however, Nat dipped her quill for more purple ink and returned to writing, this time about a completely different adventure.
Tuesday was the return to Kul Tiras, and the Tidesage hunt! I met up with Nah, Maya, and Cari on the Recluse porch, and our friend Zoe, another Voyager, was there as well, and offering to come along! We were discussing dreams, trying to figure out where we were supposed to be this time. I had a dream about a muddy island in a thunderstorm. Maya and Cari had dreamed they were a ship’s lookout and captain, respectively, trying to guide a ship through a storm to an island fortress with a lighthouse guiding them in, and Nah had dreamed she was there at the muddy island fortress, trying to find a way to break in. We put it all together, and Nah’s guess was Tol Dagor! Everyone agreed, so we went there! The island was super stormy off in the distance, just like in our dreams, and when we got to it on the ship we took, we were soaked to the bone! Then we searched around for a way to get into the abandoned building, because the front doors were huge and too heavy for us to get through. We found the sewer entrance, which was SUPER stinky! It was locked, so Nah got us through with her lockpicking set. It’s so great to have her back to normal! She got the thing unlocked with her signature smirk and snicker, and we went in. UGH, the nasty muck we had to wade through! We were pretty much sick by the time we got through there. Then we found ourselves in a dungeon with human skeletons lying around in it. Tol Dagor’s worst inmates must have been the ones to end up down here, freezing, away from fireplaces and down on the damp sea level. Some were even chained to the pillars, as evidenced by the skeletal arms dangling from shackles attached to the pillars. How awful!
We were just trying to figure out how to get off that floor, as the locked door had no visible lock for Nah to pick, when we heard a massive rush of water in the pipes! The whole dungeon level was being FLOODED! Fortunately for us, this was right when Maya and Cari discovered the compass in the floor wasn’t pointing the right way, and was movable. Maya moved it into position, guided by Cari, with her foot, and the door unlocked! Right on time, too; the sudden flush was already rushing up to chest level! We bolted through the door, half-wading, half-swimming, and got up the staircase quickly! Crisis averted!
Then that floor had another locked door to the next upward-bound staircase. We found a note from one inmate to another talking about stuff hidden away to basically blow up the door with during an upcoming planned riot, and that it was in a hidden room behind a cell. It turns out the stuff to blow it with was down a pipe filled mostly with poison gas controlled by these air tanks of poison gas and clean air. It took some juggling, but we were able to juggle with segments of pipe had poison gas and which had clean air, and we got Zoe and Maya down the pipe and back by removing poison gas to move it back and forth between different segments and clear the way for them. When they came back out, they had a small keg apiece of Azerite explosive! They put it by the door, we took cover, and Nah shot one with her flintlock pistol! The door got blown to pieces! We were able to ascend another level!
Next there was another detention block, this one with one single route open to us, funneling us right over this steel grate over a hole. It turned out to be booby-trapped with pressure plates! Step on the wrong section of grate, and a crossbow fires! I almost got hit by one myself! There was a note near, with letters A through E and numbers one through five that basically turned out to be labeling the grid, and was the written guide to getting across safely. We went one at a time, curling through the thing like one big snake as our group crossed, but we got through safely! The next door was already open, as they crossbow needed a clear shot, so no more unlocking! Zoe, wearing all plate, went through first, just in case, but nothing else happened, so we were clear to get through!
Next floor was the Officer’s Quarters, and it was way, way nicer than the previous floors! Very lavish! Maya smelled seafood dinner, and, once we got onto the floor, we were able to smell it too. It smelled delicious! The only thing was, it was across a bridge, which was also made of a storm grate! It turned out not to be booby trapped, but it was also in a state of disrepair, so Zoe led us off again, stomping on sections and finding out which ones weren’t strong enough to hold people up. Those segments fell right through the bridge and into the water of the flooded level below! That would have been bad for Zoe especially, in all that plate! But we made it across safely! Then we got to the far corner of the floor, where the dining area and bar was. The seafood dinner was there, tons of different fancy dishes, all steaming hot and ready to eat… which was very fishy, as we had expected the place to be abandoned. Turns out we were right to be suspicious… the whole thing turned out to be a ruse to try and distract us from a cannon in the corner that was turning all by itself to fire at us! We took cover only just in time! The main buffet table, and the painting hanging over top of it, was destroyed, and we darted through the door to safety!
Out of the frying pan and into the fire, though! This next hallway was opened up to the balcony outside, which was totally lined with cannons, and they were turning to aim right into the doorway where we were in the little hallway! We had to sprint out of there, and we only just made it out when the hallway was filled with fire and debris from the cannon shots! Then Zoe got a bright idea… She made a big, shiny, elevated target out of herself by leaping up onto the nearest cannon. She made the other cannons destroy that one, with this big heroic leap at the end only just in time to avoid being blown up! She kept that up all the way around the outer balcony, like halfway around the fortress, blowing up cannon after cannon after cannon by standing on them and bouncing around being a target, while the rest of us were darting around screaming our heads off and dodging other cannon fire! Zoe’s luck did eventually run out, though… on the final cannon she tried it on, she was only just too slow, and got blown off the thing as it exploded, slammed into a staircase up to the roof, and broke her arm! She’s still got it in a sling, as of when I saw her last night at the Slaughtered Lamb!
Then we made it up onto the roof. There, we got our biggest shock of the night. Standing at at least twenty feet tall, a shadowy apparition of the previous warden of Tol Dagor, Overseer Korgus, was pointing around at cannons, which would somehow load themselves up, move, and fire where he pointed! And he was about to have them fire at us! Nah and I started attacking the apparition, which was nearly solid with congealed Void, to the point where it could take physical attacks. Flintlock pistol and ice shards did the trick, while the others, including Rylee who had join us right before we gained the roof, were working on destroying cannons. Eventually Zoe turned and put a big hit on Korgus, heroically leaping through the air, bringing her big two-hander sword down in a forward arc and splitting the thing in two! Its two halves were sagging almost to the floor on either side of it, which just looked silly… and then Cari finished it off with a Dispel cast that finished ripping it in half, and it disincorporated and vanished!
Then the weird thing happened again. I was talking to them after the apparition vanished, when suddenly, they were no longer in front of me and along my left. They were suddenly all standing on my right! It happened again, I know it did – the Tidesage had appeared in the blink of an eye and had talked to them for several minutes in another recorded message, just like in previous weeks, with me missing the whole entire thing! I wish I knew why the heck that stuff kept happening! BUT! It was a good message; it turns out that was the last task she had set for us (or, rather, for Marcus Brinebreaker), and she was ready to meet in person! She was talking about grand plans to restore the Black Empire, which she’d reveal to us once we met in person. That sounds really scary! But, next week, after our next dreams, we’ll finally meet her face to face and put an end to all this madness! Finally! It’s been several MONTHS!
After that was a discussion on who the Tidesage must be. Cari is still convinced it’s Joanessa Seaslums, my old friend that was murdered, and that these old recorded messages were going to lead us to a place someone USED to be, before they were killed. I refuse to believe it was Joan! She was always so nice to me when we’d go and hang out, and she always sent free food into the slums for the poor people there! Though I have to admit, her face turning out to be in Rolfe Braxton’s locket that he said had his wife’s picture in it, and little Rob Braxton turning out to look just like her, all that stuff was pretty suspicious… Why did she change her name from Janine Braxton to Joanessa Seaslums? Why, as much as she knew about all things going on in Dampwick Ward and Hook Point, did she never reunite herself with her family, allowing both of them to believe the other two were dead? Why was she murdered? Why did her body, and the blood on the murder weapon, not carry her scent when Maya sniffed around them in her worgen form? It’s all very mixed up and confusing, but either way, I just can’t believe someone that nice would be the Tidesage!
Nat frowned mightily at the mystery, replacing her quill in the inkwell of purple ink and sitting back, crossing her arms as she stared out the window toward Turtle Beach, far below. A few gulls were swinging into view, darting always down and to the left, apparently driving the Pandaren of Angler’s Wharf up a wall again. Nat’s thoughts, however, were on Joan.
Her friend had invited her over to her Dampwick Ward-bordering home in Boralus on many occasions, and they’d had long, happy, usually funny discussions while dining on crab legs and lobster tails that Joan tended to catch with her poor, late husband’s crab traps. Only, he wasn’t so late, was he? Did she know, all that time, that Rolfe was now sailing a small fishing skiff around the wharfs of Boralus’s slums? Or was she genuinely oblivious? Why didn’t she keep his name? Trying to move on? Or trying to hide? How could she not know that her son still lived? Rolfe had disappeared with the Kul Tiran fleet a few years before, when the Tidesages hid the fleet in the mist for a while, and it would be easy to understand someone presuming one of those sailors dead. But Rob? Her son? How had they gotten separated? Why had Joan never mentioned him by name? How could she not know he was living in the streets now, picking pockets? If she knew, how could she not care? Was this all just a long series of coincidences, or had she not quite been so innocent after all? Could Cari have been right about Joan all along?
Nat sighed, pursing her lips and frowning again. One more week. Five days, now, really. Then she would see. Then she would know! In the meantime, however, there was nothing for it but to focus on happy thoughts and live life to the fullest. Her frown turned upside down. Not only was the picnic coming, but last night had been a blast! She reached for her quill, smiling more now, and returned to writing.
Then last night was Deathrolls! Pilgrim’s Bounty-Themed Deathrolls! We went outside the front gates of Stormwind to the Pilgrim’s Bounty feast that was going on there, got the table furthest from the main part of it so we wouldn’t disturb too many people, and we played there while feasting! It was me, my bestie Nah, Maya, Cari, Zarshal, and an old Forsaken friend who still remained loyal to the Alliance, Apirah, who also goes by the nickname Spooks. Mags joined us for the last few rounds at the end of the night, too! It turned out to largely be a night of extremely embarrassing Truth questions, which were getting spicier and steamier as the night went on, and I found myself mostly just hiding low in my chair and trying to eat my way through my Pilgrim’s Bounty feast, but I ended up having to answer a few myself. I can’t even write down some of the stuff that was said! Geez Louise! There was one good Truth, though, in which Cari asked me the most romantic thing I’d ever experienced. I told them all the story of what Celeste did for me back during my birthday this year, with the gathering all my friends and our family and a romantic dinner, then bringing an ancient romantic Pandaren legend to life by leaping into the stars with me. I still love that memory so much! There were funny Dares too! I had to dance on the table, always a favorite, as they like to watch me flail around until I fall off the table or something. I got Maya to do a Food Dance on the table, in which she dances while she feasts. Zarshal had Cari go over and give head pats to my Bestie Nah and tell her what a good girl she was, which confused Nah for a moment, but then had her snickering and smirking as usual. So good to have her back! I think my favorite Dare, though, was from Spooks. I had rolled a one, and Cari had rolled a one during the Truth or Dare rolls and had to join in, and so she Dared Cari to climb onto my back and for me to carry her around the place piggy-back, while Cari sang a song. Cari started belting out some kinda hilarious nonsense song about how she wished she was a Mechatorquenmier Wiener at the top of her lungs while riding my back all around the whole place. Everyone was busting out laughing and cackling. It was so funny and fun! A great night of Deathrolls all around!
Now, this morning, I’ve just been prepping this picnic down on Turtle Beach with Celeste, after we both slept in really late. Celeste has been taking a break from the workshop today, and looks simply BEAUTIFUL in her colorful blue bikini with the sea turtles and fish and all all brightly colored on it. She has this really pretty pareo on, and flower hairpins on either side of her head, holding her short hair back. She looks like a tropical island paradise beauty! We’ve been preparing food and other stuff to take down to Turtle Beach for a picnic, though that practical head of hers never does stop going! She’s talking about adding an additional sub-level in the rock spire, and using it for housing a few chickens, as well as a number of planters for herbs and veggies. In particular, as neither of us is a healer, she’s wanting herbs for alchemy. Her mother, she says, used to whip up healing potions when they were sick, and she had nothing like that for me over the weekend, when I was sick and didn’t go to work. Now, when she has this stuff all set up, she’ll be able to follow along with her mother’s notebooks and make us potions and stuff! I’ll have to take up a little alchemy myself, so I can help, especially if she were to get sick herself at some point!
In the meantime, I think we’re just about ready to go on this picnic, so I’m excited! Gonna go do that now! YAY!
Nat tapped off the excess ink from her ravenfeather quill into her inkwell. She capped the inkwell and replaced her quill in its cherrywood case. Placing these back where they go in her desk, she turned to her diary next. The pages were dry enough to close it, so she did so, replacing her diary where it goes next to her first one on her bookshelf. The smiled. The new diary was already filling up with fun, happy memories as the first one, and with less in the way of sad ones involving bullies. Happy at the thought of continued chronicles of more happy times sure to come with Celeste and all her friends, she hummed softly and strode from her office, rejoining Celeste, who was, herself, also returning to the picnic supplies. Together, they loaded everything up and headed down to the beach.
The waves were gentle in Turtle Bay, scenic little miniature whitecaps that frothed and curled up serenely before splashing lightly on the beach. Nat’s picnic blanket came out, the dark purple one that had all the Celeste additions of brightly colored fish and sea turtles and nightcrawler-laden fishhooks, with one patch having been ripped off that had been shaped like a skull. The blanket was quickly covered in sandwiches and fingerfoods of other kinds, like dipping vegetables of the celery, carrot, and broccoli floret varieties, and a fine wine to go with it. The sun was warm as the two enjoyed each other’s company. The salt sea and earthy jungle smelled pleasant. Nosebleed and Ebonhoof grazed along the treeline. Cloud Dancer and Onyx played on the thermals high above. Dordy, the ever-present, beloved Dordy, sat on the picnic blanket as well, his own dish long since empty as he watched the two young women eat carefully, catching scraps that were tossed his way and gleefully gobbling them down. Life might not be perfect, Nat reflected, but moments like these sure were!
|
|
|
Post by Natasha Ebonlocke on Dec 2, 2021 17:06:00 GMT
December the Second Nat finished off breakfast with Celeste at the dining room table, a simple affair of eggs and toast and hash browns with a few sausage links. She refilled Celeste’s coffee and her own as Celeste proceeded downstairs to her workshop to continue drafting plans for the excavation of the sub-level in the rock spire their home was built upon, a sub-level below the basement workshop-hangar that was already in place. Nat wondered idly how they might paint the walls of that one as she padded her way to her office, her steaming cup of hazelnut coffee warm in her palms. The workshop-hangar had been carved to show sea turtles and fish and coral reefs and such, and Nat had brought it further to life by painting it all to look like actually being in the water, diving among the sea life in a coral reef. The sub-level below that, which Celeste wanted to use for a chicken coop and to have planters for their own crop of veggies and for alchemical potion use, would also need a bit of decorating. They’d also need to extend the wrought-iron spiral staircase down to it as well. But what to paint it with? She thought a bit, eventually deciding to bring it up with Celeste at some point. They’d both frequent the room, so something they both mutually enjoyed… which left a wide variety of possible topics, as they both enjoyed many of the same things!
Nat wandered into her office, pulling her diary off the shelf and opening it to the next blank pages. Perhaps pictures of their family? Nat, Celeste, Dordy, Cloud Dancer, Onyx, Nosebleed, and Ebonhoof, all arrayed around the whole room? Or would that be too cheesy? Maybe a Grizzly Hills scene, with the chicken coop on one side of the creek they camped at, with the creek going through the middle of the room, and then the planters on the banks of the other side, painted to look like they were growing up from the bank of the Grizzly Hills creek itself? So many ideas to share with Celeste! In the meantime, though… writing time!
Nat smiled broadly as she sat down to her diary, opening up the desk drawer that held her inkwell of purple ink and the cherrywood case that housed her ravenfeather quill. She opened her case, pulling out her quill, and uncapped her inkwell. Dipping her quill into the purple ink, she took another sip of steamy hazelnut coffee, then began to write!
Dear diary,
It’s been a really relaxing week this week! The most relaxing I can remember having in a really long time! The week was mostly loafing around with Celeste and Dordy and the rest of the family, including a big Pilgrim’s Bounty feast on the primary day of Pilgrim’s Bounty this past Thursday! YAY! And the next relaxing thing was when I went hiking with Mags! That was so great! Then there was a job Tuesday that Nah found for us, and even the job wasn’t that far from home! I was even able to go home and get something I needed, right in the middle of the job! Last night was Deathrolls, and then the rest of the week was just relaxing at home and not doing much. I needed this sort of week more than I realized!
The picnic on the beach with Angler’s Wharf and Halfhill friends and Suyin was so great! There were so many people there, all our friends! We were all in our swimsuits and had a huge Pilgrim’s Bounty Feast, and Dordy was there feasting as well, getting lots of noms from lots of Angler’s Wharf friends, and Cloud Dancer and Onyx were enjoying an ocean’s bounty themselves, feasting on a massive school of tuna that had drifted in on a current. Even Nosebleed and Ebonhoof were feasting, getting a break from jungle foliage to devour lots of giant veggies brought to them by some Halfhill friends that also came! Suyin was there too! Celeste did her usual round of storytelling, standing high up on the picnic table one of the Halfhill Pandaren had brought and embellishing on the Tanaris dig story, making it way, way spookier, and then retelling the shark fishing story to our Halfhill friends. The Angler’s Wharf Pandaren were chuckling a bit, as the story had grown a little since they’d heard it the night of the shark fishing, but they clapped and applauded at the end all the same. They’re such great friends! I’m glad they all came to Pilgrim’s Bounty feast with us and our family! It was a great time!
Later, I’d gone to Stormwind to see other friends for the holiday while Celeste and Dordy were sleeping off their food comas. There was no one there! It was, after all, the primary day of Pilgrim’s Bounty, so I suppose most were with their families… But then I found Mags! She was standing in her usual spot she stands at when she’s making herself available to sell soaps and set up hair and nail appointments, and we got to talking. We decided, since everyone else was gone, we’d fill in the time by going on a hike! Usually, when we hike, it’s from her soaps spot to her place in Lakeshire, or my place in Darkshire. This time, however, she wanted to go to Westfall! She hadn’t been there since the big market event that was held there this summer, the night of Lex and Elinore’s Midsummer Gala. That’s a long time! So we hiked and talked! Mags was talking about her cat Jones, who was staying with her girlfriend Elsa right now, and then about how everyone from Westfall talks like a “bumpkin.” We made our way out of the Mage Quarter, talking and crossing the canal bridge into the Trade District, then turning toward the front gate, now talking about how we’d need hats, because Westfall people are blonde, and Mags said they’d kick us out with our black hair! Ha! She’s so silly! Then we got out of Stormwind, making our way to Goldshire, then turning west from there. We got to talking about who might be from Westfall, and we realized, we know where all our friends are from except for Rylee! Mags wondered if Rylee was from Westfall, but I doubt it; she doesn’t have the accent. I could be wrong though! Then Mags was retelling the story of how she was born in Stormwind City, but then later went to Gilneas to attend Gilneas Academy, where her grandfather was a teacher. But then the worgen thing had happened, and they had to escape! Then she moved back with her dad to Lakeshire, where he’d started up the Quicksilver Company and was quickly getting richer and richer as his company found quick success. That’s a good happy ending!
We were approaching the Westbrook Garrison by this point. I was talking about my own history, being born in Darkshire when it was still Grand Hamlet, and Duskwood had been Brightwood and looked just like Elwynn Forest north of the river, which it was pretty much just an extension off, with a river going through the middle of the one big forest. But then Medivh had gotten killed by his friends after his Sargeras corruption had turned him far too evil to save, and the darkness exploded out of him and blasted Deadwind Pass and darkened Brightwood into Duskwood. Then the worgen and undead things had happened to make it all worse. But, it’s my home, and my heritage, and I love it anyway!
We reached the Westbrook bridge by this point, and Mags was bouncing over the bridge in a sort of Hopscotch-looking game in which she was avoiding all the lines between the individual planks. It was refreshingly adorable to watch, though I had no illusions about trying the game myself. Gosh, I’m so awkward and uncoordinated, I’d have just flown right over the railing and right into the creek!
Shortly after that was the stone bridge with the stone arch that marks the border of Elwynn Forest and Westfall. We crossed into Westfall, and the difference was like night and day. The sun was out and bright with no trees to block it, it was a good bit warmer, and everything was plains and farmland, as far as the eye could see! Well, except the partially-built walls of Sentinel Hill in the distance, of course. Anyway, we walked along for a while, then leaned on a railing on the right to look at these vagabonds in a farm. They started arguing over something they found, then started brawling! Gosh! Mags was like, “Wow! Robberies!” We left then! We went west and then south at the fork instead, with Mags quieting and pointing shamelessly at people, as though completely entertained by the idea that they were farmers, which was a bit embarrassing. Then we started seeing wild animals. Coyotes and vultures and really big pigs! It was a lot of wildlife! Mags was still talking about farms, talking about how her uncle had been a farmer, until his cows were stolen, and then he ran off after the guys and fought them, which got him in trouble with the law too, and it was either the Stockades or enlist. He’d chosen enlistment, and rose all the way up really quickly! He made his own pile of gold in Pandaria, sailing in as one of the earliest Alliance members to visit the continent when the Alliance had first discovered it. He was fighting icky horde poo-heads and had eventually won lots of treasure from them. He was like the first or second ship back to the Eastern Kingdoms, Mags said, bringing in his treasure and helping to enrich House Grey, which Mags is a part of. Margaux Grey!
We reached the north gates of Sentinel Hill at this point. We were allowed through without incident, though there were vagabonds that looked like they might bring disease and stuff with them that the guards were keeping out. I was wishing they’d be allowed in, but I understand the guards’ point of view. People who begged instead of worked would do nothing but bring lots and lots of unproductive mouths to feed, trash and damage the fort in different little ways, steal, and spread disease. I found myself wanting to help them all find jobs and make money again, or even just settle on an abandoned farm and learn to work the soil and be prosperous, but they were all preoccupied with yelling at the guards to feed them and talking about how the king was bad and demanding to be let in, so we hurried past the conflict. I need to figure out a way to help those poor people get better lives!
Once we got into the fort, the vagabonds were starting to throw stuff at the guards. Whatever the goop was they were throwing, it had bugs swarming all over it and buzzing around! Mags was like, “Ew, they got fleas!” So we hurried on even more, and got into the cleaner part of the fort. Mags was smiling now, commenting on how nice it looked with a few homes and walls around it. Then she stopped in front of a few people, and was like, shamelessly looking them over. They stared back awkwardly, and that was really making me feel awkward. Then Mags turned around and declared, loud enough for them to hear, that “They all got red hair and green eyes.” I couldn’t think of anything to do but giggle a bit and fidget awkwardly. Then she started talking to one of them, this guy that was by an oven that had a lot of bread baked. She didn’t seem to mind being an awkward person, and the people quickly warmed up to her; it was clear that she had no malice in her, and Mags was always pretty well-liked by those who meet her anyway! We talked to the guy about the situation of Westfall for a while. He said that the situation with the vagabonds saddened him, but that Sentinel Hill lacked the means to care for them all, and that conditions in Sentinel Hill would only deteriorate if they entered anyway. We agreed, and were all wishing something could be done to help them find good lives. Then we were browsing the sorts of bread the guy had on offer. I bought us a loaf of banana nut bread and broke it in half, giving Mags one. Mags asked where the bananas came from, as she knew they likely didn’t grow here. It’s so cute; she calls them “banans” instead of “bananas.” The guy said they came upriver from Stranglethorn Vale, where he had a contact that would ship them to him. It was good stuff, too! Very sweet and tasty, and the nuts really rounded it off nicely! We thanked the guy and moved on, nibbling at our tasty bread as we hiked.
We turned around, finding ourselves facing what looked like a small military camp. Mags said she didn’t think we’d be allowed near here, and I agreed, so we moved on. We found a sign that pointed to my home forest, Duskwood, with another pointing the other way, toward Moonbrook. We found some tree stumps, as well, and Mags pointed out that they’d killed their trees. Then we found a huge lumber mill, though it didn’t have trees around to mill. Past that was an inn. We nibbled our bread as we walked in and looked around. There were a bunch of armed people standing near small beds with footlockers at the foot of each one. Mags pointed out that most inns have a kitchen table and a fireplace and a bar and stuff, and this one didn’t. She didn’t want to hang out here, so we turned around and left. We walked back the way we came, heading toward the south gate, and Mags was like, “Wow! So they have bread and small houses and no trees.” It was interesting to be there with a person exploring it for the first time! New perspective and stuff! We exited the south gate, hiding our bread, which made me feel kinda bad, and rushing past the vagabonds flinging bug-swarmed goop at the guards. Then Mags was like, “Gosh they were flinging turds! No wonder they have fleas.” She’s so awkward sometimes, but it cracks me up! Mags seemed to agree with thoughts I had, though. She was saying that instead of “shoving at the walls,” they could settle on an abandoned farm and grow their own food. I really want to teach them this, but would they be receptive?
The land outside Sentinel Hill and to the south was the wildest yet. Huge vultures and huge wild pigs and lots of weeds overran the farms down here, and there were gnolls down past the end of the road, where it came to a T. We found more road signs here, with one pointing east into Duskwood. We ventured down that way, being careful not to draw attention from the gnolls to ourselves, and uncovered our bread to return to nibbling at it. We saw one of the Sentinel Hill patrollers and I waved, and she waved back. Beyond that, there were no more people. Only gnolls and wildlife and plains. We were nibbling at the bread, and I asked Mags what she thought of Westfall now that she’d seen more than just the market area she’d had a stall in before. She said it was a little boring, a little old-fashioned, but she seemed happy to have made the hike through anyway. We did see a REALLY big pig come by, and she was like, “Wow! That was really scary. It looked like what the Draenei-goats ride.” I giggled at that; it did look like a somewhat smaller, furrier elekk with no trunk! Then she was like, “Yeah, the farms are fine, just like Elwynn I guess.” That was true, they were set up the same way, though these farms got a lot more sun. Then she pointed at the looming forest, asking if that was my home across the water. It was! Duskwood was there, on the other side of the river, through an old covered bridge!
We went through the bridge, and Mags was like, “What a neat bridge! Like a house with two sides missing.” That made me giggle again. She always has such a unique perspective on things! Then I was explaining how my hometown’s people did trade across this bridge, going into Westfall to visit what farms still did work to trade for crops and boar meat and pelts and stuff with our own fare, pumpkins and pelts of wolves and bears and what Chef Graul in the Darkshire inn calls “dusky crab meat” that is actually giant spider meat. It sounds so gross, but it’s really good, and the Westfall people like it, even though they know it’s spider, so that works for us!
Mags made a left when we got to Raven Hill, and didn’t really find it to her liking. She pointed out the cages and the guillotine the Gilneans had set up here, and she was like, “Wow! Cages and head removers!” We didn’t stay long there!
We left and continued on east. We found a road sign here, one pointing back toward Westfall, one east on to Duskwood, and one that pointed south, labeled Stranglethorn Vale. Mags was surprised to find that one could get to Stranglethorn Vale from here, but I showed her the road south that goes there as we passed it. Mags didn’t want to see pirates, what she calls “P-words,” so we continued eastward instead of taking the south road. Mags’ family’s company, the Quicksilver Company, is heavily involved in shipping and stuff, so they HATE pirates! Mags hurried us eastward, and we hiked a bit more.
Mags made me blush as she started talking about all the things she’d heard of Booty Bay being known for. She mentioned “boobie magazines” and P-words and bars and taverns and booze and stuff. She said she’d heard all this from her short time in the military working as a healer, with the nurses mentioning that they never have to pay for their drinks there if they dressed certain ways. Gosh! She thought for a moment, then said it sounded like a place Nah would love. HA! That was great! And true enough; Nah does like her more… stimulating environments. More chances for fun and mischief!
The Booty Bay conversation continued all the way to the outskirts of Darkshire. When we approached my hometown, Mags smiled. She’d been here plenty of times before, she said, which I knew, as this was a neighboring town to her own Lakeshire, and we’d talked about it a few times before. She pointed out the pumpkins, the last ones of the season for the pumpkin farm on the edge of town. Then we got to the fountain and hung out by the fountain, and I told her about an old friend I used to know, nicknamed Carrot for her read hair, that I’d first met at this fountain, giving her chicken a bath, which surprised me at the time. But then I got to know Carrot, and I learned that such oddities were common to her, and that she was a really funny person! I’m just glad the chicken was just fine after the bath! Then Mags said that Darkshire probably had it better than Westfall, as “people were not tossing turds.” We talked about swimming in the fountain here, like, what if we did, and I told her I had played it in as a little girl, when it was still Grand Hamlet and sunny here. Then we talked about how we should play in the fountain in the Trade District or the one in Lion’s Rest, and Mags laughed and said that’d be a bad idea, as people would get mad… so we should just let Nah do it! That reminded me of the time Nah stole those Quel’dorei’s clothes that one early morning when they were skinnydipping in the lake north of Stormwind that had all the portals, and so I told Mags that one. Mags was aghast at the story! I agreed with Mags that Nah was weird for an elf, but I also said that I loved Nah dearly, and wouldn’t have my bestie be any other sort of way, and that she was a ton of fun to have as a best friend! I told Mags about how Nah visits me sometimes when I go to Lion’s Rest after work to relax for a bit and have dinner at that bench on the cliff’s edge, watching the sun set and the boats come and go, and just relaxing. Nah would show up with her harp, and make relaxing music as we hung out, and I’d be even more relaxed! Then I’d be able to fall asleep in an instant! Mags said she liked that spot, that it was a good one, and mentioned another one that I should try. She said that, down by the docks, there was a Pandaren lady that sold dumplings, and even had some she made just for her that were vegetarian, since Mags doesn’t eat meat! The conversation flowed a bit more, and then Mags said she had to get back to Jones, her cat, and pick her up from Elsa’s. We hiked up toward the gryphon master, and I had her stop just one sec… I wanted to get something from the house and give it to her! I darted up the path across the street from the gryphon master to my house, went inside, and brought her back… The one and only thing she drinks! Lemonade! I like to keep some on hand for when Mags comes around! We had some lemonade there on the road, washing down the last of our “banan bread,” heh. Then Mags handed me back my cup, and I shook the last few drops out of our cups so I could stow them in my bag to take inside later to wash out. Then we flew back to Stormwind on the gryphons after a goodbye hug, and thanks for hanging out and hiking and stuff, and talking about how much fun it was. Mags zoomed off after we landed, running really fast, which I can’t do, so that she could hurry on to Elsa’s to pick up Jones, after I wished her and Jones and Elsa a happy Pilgrim’s Bounty, and she wished me and mine the same. I went back home to Celeste after that. It was such a great day, with the Turtle Beach picnic with Celeste and Dordy and all our Halfhill and Angler’s Wharf friends for Pilgrim’s Bounty, and then the hike with Mags! AWEsome holiday! YAY!
Nat sat back in her hair, remembering the two-part holiday and sighing happily, listening idly to Celeste's happy humming coming faintly upstairs from the workshop-hangar. Only just the previous week had been Pilgrim’s Bounty-Themed Deathrolls, at the Pilgrim’s Bounty feast going on right outside Stormwind’s front gates. Then this! It had been such a wonderful time for friends and family in this last week! She was as happy as could be, leaning back in her chair and remembering basically celebrating Pilgrim’s Bounty three separate times. What a great holiday it had been! She giggled a bit, remembering these funny times, then sat back up straight again, sipping some steaming-hot hazelnut coffee before reaching for her quill again. It was time to move on in the week to other topics!
The next relaxing event was, oddly enough, Tuesday, which is usually Whitewind Company Workday. The job Nah had found for us that day turned out to be a mostly relaxing hike in Pandaria, which came after we realized no dreams had come for us to get a new lead on the Tidesage. I guess the dreams are on a magically timed delay or something, for the big reveal? The Tidesage has been nothing if not dramatic!
Anyway, it was me, Maya, Nah, and, with Rylee in the hospital from a backfiring spell and Cari having been too shaken from that to come along, Cari’s dad James Halverson, a retired privateer, came along to help instead! I did get to see Cari for a bit beforehand. She didn’t look very happy. I felt really bad for her! I hung out with her for as long as she wanted, and so did Maya, and Sir Garandor and Captain Stouthammer of the 73rd, a regiment of the 7th Legion, until she headed out while we got ready to go on the Pandaren job that Nah had found us. So, in the absence of another Tidesage dream to follow, Nah found us a Jinyu guy named Ryu Soakimoto wanting to contract us out to escort a shipment of supplies of various sorts on a yak from Halfhill in the Valley of the Four Winds to Paw’don Village in the Jade Forest. The pay was in gold and… Paw’don plums? I’ve never been paid in fruit before! We agreed, and Nah got up on the yak, which had a grummle on either side of it, on side-mounted saddles. They kept saying weird things, like, “I feel like I lost an eight of something,” and, “A minute is all I’ll need. Wait, that came out wrong…” and, when Nah first started driving the yak forward, “I think yak has started to move.” They were so silly, and Nah was really getting a kick out of them! We left the village of Halfhill headed east, stopping at a bridge near the village to test it for strength. It was just this little bamboo bridge over a little creek that wasn’t that far below it, but we wanted to test it anyway; part of our mandate was to allow no harm to befall the yak! Maya went across in her bear form, and then more of us were on the bridge. It still held! Nah urged the yak forward over the bridge, and then we were fine!
Then the thing we were worried about happened… Just as the Jinyu said, there was suddenly a Hozen ambush! They were the reason he wanted an escort for his yak, and now, three of them were coming out of nowhere to attack! Cari’s Dad started yelling them in Hozen, something about jib-jabber wicket ook-dooker or something, and one of them got scared off and ran! That one running made another one run away, and then, the third, without his buddies to back him up, reluctantly turned and bounced away as well. We were free!
A good part of the road passed without incident after that, though we got some decidedly unwelcome news from Nah as we hiked along and she drove the yak… Lady Cellica Whitewind is now missing! This leaves Nah essentially running the Whitewind Company as the next-highest-ranking officer, basically acting CEO of the company, until we can find Lady Whitewind again! I have absolute faith in my bestie Nah, but I’m worried about Lady Whitewind! We gotta find her! I am worried that this has something to do with Lucina and Telrissa being blackmailed into turning on us! We really gotta hunt those two down and get to the bottom of this! QUICKLY!
That news was sobering, but we soon refocused on the task at hand. We had a yak and supplies to deliver, all under contract with Lady Whitewind’s good name, so we had her reputation to uphold still! We continued traveling east along the road, which eventually rose through some hills as it neared the Jade Forest. Up in these little hills, the road passed between two high points, and a tiny Pandaren hut, where there was a wizened old Pandaren lady sweeping away some leaves. She warned us of Hozen mischief ahead, including a particularly fierce-looking pack that had recently headed off into the Jade Forest ahead of us. We thanked her, waving goodbye, and she wished us good luck, that the Jade Serpent watch over us. Such a nice lady!
No sooner had we rounded the bend and started around the next hill, however, than another trio of Hozen attacked us! GOSH! They were on three sides of us, surrounding us, and the yak was starting to look a little nervous. But, as before, Cari’s Dad saved the day! He pulled out a spare brass button, one of the extras his wife makes him keep on him in case he loses one off his uniforms and outfits, and chucked it at one of the Hozen. The other two converged on that Hozen, and that one began bickering and arguing with his brethren over who should get the button. With loot in hand, they left, completely forgetting about the laden yak, and all of us with our own packs on! Ookin’ dookers! HA!
We went further down the road, and, around another little hill, we found the Jade Forest ahead! It was across a long, high, Pandaren bamboo bridge. As before, we were gonna test it, but then there was this nearby Pandaren sitting in the shade. He warned us that a fierce-looking pack of Hozen had been trying to destroy it, though their dull blades did not accomplish the task. They had, however, hacked away at the bridge with all the gusto they could muster, and the bridge might need a looking over before trying to go across it, especially with a yak. That meant I was up! As a blossoming engineer, especially right after building a house with Celeste, Shen, and Marzai largely of this strong Pandaren bamboo, I knew just the sorts of things to look for! I went under the bridge, careful not to get too close to the edge of the canyon and fall. Sure enough, there were cuts and hacks and whacks all up and down the supports! Remembering Celeste building the house partially with the use of the MUTT, and her training me to use it as well, I told the group to hang on, and I’d be right back! The MUTT was just a plain and a jungle away!
I zoomed off on Onyx to my nearby home, and found Celeste lounging around on the landing pad, sitting down and leaning against Cloud Dancer, reading him a story. Dordy was lying nearby too. He got up as I landed, though, and started running around in circles and yip-yipping away. I love that cute little guy! Anyway, I asked Celeste if I could borrow the MUTT, explaining the situation to her. She was happy to lend it to me, and wanted to hear all about how it went. I promised her I’d tell her all about it, which I later did! She went back to reading her storybook to Cloud Dancer, who seemed to be enjoying it quite a bit. I’m so glad she was able to have some fun too! Maybe one day she’ll come out of retirement and go on an adventure or two with us. Who knows? We’ll see!
The next minute, I was zooming back to the group on the MUTT! The controls were a little slower than usual; turns out Celeste had modified it for her sub-level excavation for her planter and chickens she mentioned last week, and had slowed down the controls a little for some more precise excavation work. It took a moment or two to get used to, but, as all I had planned was some precise work of my own on this bridge, it actually worked out to be better this way! I zoomed back to the group, told them I was ready to get started, then zoomed off over the bridge and flew into the Jade Forest. There was bamboo everywhere, just like when Celeste had harvested it early this summer to build the house. It was encroaching quickly on farmland again! So, I hacked a whole bunch down, getting the MUTT’s sawblades extended for work, and using the claw-hands to carry a whole huge bundle of it. Then I flew back with my load.
The group was surprised to see me back with such a huge bundle of bamboo already. It really made me proud of Celeste’s engineering work! I got started under the bridge, shoring up damaged supports with additional huge stands of bamboo. I worked top to bottom on the near side, then on the far side, using the claw hands to attach and tie in additional supports to the hacked-up ones. The bridge now looked way, way stronger! I flew back up to the bridge, figuring to experiment with the MUTT’s weight first, since, if the bridge broke, I could just fly instead of fall. I walked all the way to the group on the far side of the canyon without incident, so I told them we were ready to try it!
We were crossing the bridge, but then the yak stepped wrong with its back right hoof. It didn’t step over one of the tiny little gaps between a couple of bamboo planks, and its hoof went right through and got caught, with the bamboo squeezing either side of its ankle! Poor thing! It was all in a panic, roaring and thrashing about. I didn’t want it to fall off the bridge, or throw Nah or even the supplies off and into the canyon far below, so I hovered the MUTT off the right side of the bridge, reached the left claw hand in between the two slats that the yak’s ankle was caught between, and opened the claw hands. That pushed the two slats apart wider, which allowed Cari’s Dad to go over and help pull the yak’s hoof out. He succeeded in getting it out as I held the slats open, but he yelled about hurting his back after. Oh gosh, oops! But it was okay! Maya knows how to heal minor to moderate injuries!
What was worse was the yak, once freed, flying into a panic! It tore off the rest of the way across the bridge, sprinting all the way into the Jade Forest before Nah managed to rein it in! It was still frightened and in a panic, and it wasn’t until Cari’s Dad got out one of his famous, award-winning jars of jelly (which he was looking forward to making more of when these Paw’don plums!) and held it up to the yak that it calmed back down again. The yak stuck out this huge anaconda of a tongue, dipped it right into the jar, and licked it clean in one go! It was actually weirdly cool to watch! Plus, the yak was calm again! YAY!
Now we were in a rather darker segment of road. The bamboo grew tall and strong all around us, shutting out the bright light of the evening sun we’d previously been hiking under. The going was not slowed by this, however, so we kept on. There were lots of forks in this forest, but luckily, Celeste had taught me what bit of Pandaren she knows, and I was able to read all the road signs we encountered. That was helpful, plus I lived near this area and knew it fairly well already anyway. I navigated us through the Jade Forest confidently.
That’s when we found the fierce, armed band of Hozen we’d been warned about by two old Pandaren now! The ones that had damaged the bridge as they’d crossed it!
As before, these came in a group of three. But, unlike before, these were armed! Two had old, dull swords, and a third, one that came at us from behind, had a big heavy mace. I was surprised it could even lift it; Hozen arms are so puny! They caught us at a crossroad, reading one of the signposts. One came from behind, like I said, the one with the mace, and found itself face to face with Maya’s bear form. One came down a road that branched off to the left, coming right at me in the MUTT and waving its sword around. The third found Cari’s Dad out front of the Yak. Nah had the yak and its load safe between all of us, and was able to fire her pistol from up top.
Intimidation and bribery did not work this time. The fight quickly broke out! The Hozen nearest me came and jumped up and whacked the front of the MUTT with the butt-end of its sword, but that didn’t do anything to the heavy metal machine. I tried to use the MUTT to pick up the Hozen and throw it, but, as mentioned before, the MUTT was slowed down for excavation work, and trying to lift a quickly-moving Hozen was quite different than trying to lift stationary bamboo! I missed! Maya, meanwhile, had assumed her moonkin form, as her bear form hadn’t done anything to intimidate the armed Hozen this time. She took a mace right to the tummy! OOF! Nah got that one in the head with her flintlock pistol, and Cari’s Dad took a blunt sword to the unarmored chest, which can’t have felt good, but he got it in the throat with his cutlass. I was not expecting such a messy fight, with loss of life! I had to look away, back toward my own Hozen. I backed the MUTT up, then flew it forward with the left foot outstretched, hitting it with a literal flying kick and sending it careening down the path. It had had enough after that! It ran off, and we were not attacked by Hozen again.
The hike from there was mostly uneventful. We were hiking and chatting and enjoying the amazing scenery of bamboo forest and the Jade Temple and rock spires with buildings on top, just like mine and Celeste’s house! There were pretty little creeks and stuff everywhere, and the wildlife was plentiful, and everything was warm and green, even though it was fall in the Eastern Kingdoms. I guided through more forks in the roads, taking this turn and that turn and using what bit of Pandaren I have to read road signs, though I was still in familiar territory, and had knowledge that comes from living near here to fall back on as well. We went past the Jade Temple, which is absolutely beautiful, across lots of ornate white stone bridges, alongside creekside paths, and, once, even though an orange tree orchard, with white flowers and big, full oranges on the trees!
We did, however, come across a Mogu attack! They’d lit a bit of a spot on fire, and the yak was about to panic, and the fight between the Pandaren and Mogu here was much too big for our little group of four, plus the fires and the fighting was about to send the yak into another panic, so we doubled back and went back the way we came, circling around a different road that made a wide loop around to where we needed to go in the south, Paw’don Village.
Along the way, we came across another Mogu, this one by himself, just standing on the peak of the arch on another ornate white stone bridge. This one was demanding, with sword drawn, that we hand over the yak and all its supplies. That yak was entrusted to us by a Whitewind Company client, and we couldn’t just give it away! We were about to have a very unfair fight, four of us against just one mogu, though the mogu didn’t see it that way. He said he’d been in many battles, often ten to one, and had survived every one. But, he hadn’t fought a group with a druid, a VERY seasoned privateer, a frost mage, and a yak-mounted rogue who is amazing with blades and pistols alike before! So, rather than gang up on him, Maya attempted to bribe him with a fish she’d caught. It had brilliantly colorful scales that sparkled brightly in the sunbeams coming through the bamboo forest canopy, and it really seemed to mesmerize the mogu. The Mogu accepted the fish, seeming to be completely oblivious to how its scales had distracted him from the yak and all its valuables, not to mention the two grumbles riding along that it could have enslaved. What a weird Mogu! I can’t believe that worked! HA!
We crossed the bridge without further incident from the mogu, who still seemed mesmerized by the bright, colorful fish, heading through more gorgeous Pandaren bamboo forest scenery. The forest got denser as we got further and further from the Jade Forest and that orange orchard, and things got darker. I worried that this might be a prime spot for another Hozen or Mogu ambush, but nothing of the sort happened!
The last incident we had along the way was this old, wizened-looking Pandaren man, standing, as the Mogu had before, on the pinnacle of the bridge. He stopped us, and told us that we each had to pass his test to be allowed across. I thought another fight was on our hands, this time with a likely dangerous Pandaren monk, but it turns out to be just him asking us simple questions! One at a time, three questions apiece. Our name, our favorite color, stuff like that… Though my third question was what the air velocity of an unladen swallow was. I thought for a minute, trying to figure out what it might be, then realized there are more than one species of swallow in the world. I asked him, “Elwynn, or Un’goran?” and he was like, “I don’t know that!” and then he moved away, saying he’d have to meditate on this. We did it! We were allowed to cross! YAY!
The rest of the trip passed without incident. We were talking calmly, having laughs here and there, and talking to Cari’s Dad about getting some of the jelly he wanted to make from his Paw’don plums that he’d get from this trip. I bet when it’s done, it’ll be really expensive stuff! But, I think it’ll be worth it! I can’t wait to try it out!
Anyway, we crossed over one last ornate stone arch bridge… And boy, was it beautiful! It went high, high over a river, far below us, with the waterfall to it tumbling from just overhead, on our right! It was really a pair of waterfalls that merged together into one from two streams running near each other, feeding into a wider river that ran to a delta we could see off to our left, which ran out to the ocean. It was so beautiful there! That bridge led us to the one that goes into Paw’don Village. We’d done it! We’d gotten the yak, the grummles, and the supplies to Paw’don Village from Halfhill, just like Ryu Soakimoto the Jinyu merchant had contracted us out to do! He was there when we got there, standing near a cart. He paid us our gold and Paw’don plums, there in the shade of all the trees with the beautiful plum-colored leaves that fell around us, and also gave Nah a surprise… The yak was hers to keep! The grummles would go along with it, as they loved the yak and loved to care for it, and would help Nah with repairs and do small bits of trade with her and stuff in exchange for remaining with the yak and its stable. That was a big surprise! I thought Ryu would want his yak back! But, as it turns out, it wasn’t his to begin with, and no one wanted to ask where he’d gotten it, if it weren’t his. But, it was now Nah’s yak, and the funny grummles were now her employees! The yak seemed upset from the trip still, though, because when Ryu passed behind it to go and get his stuff off, the yak KICKED him! It knocked him right out, and he went flying and crumpled to a heap a short ways off. Cari’s Dad, always the career, if retired, privateer, saw the incident happen and decided that was a good time to go. Friendly down in friendly territory and all that. Maya was ready to head home as well, as it was about her bedtime. That left Nah and I to deal with the Jinyu. Nah figured she’d wait with him until he woke up so she could apologize and work out which of the supplies were his, and which were the grummles’ things, so she could offload the right stuff for him. In the meantime, we discussed the immediate fate of the Whitewind Company. Nah eventually agreed to take over as Acting CEO, and we agreed we needed to find Lady Whitewind, as well as Lucina and Telrissa, whether or not they were involved in Lady Whitewind’s disappearance. With that discussion handled, we agreed to make plans sometime in the near future. I was tired by this point too, and needed to refuel the MUTT and get it back to the hangar as well, as I’d hiked it all the way from the bamboo bridge outside of the Jade Forest, so I called it a night as well. I gave my bestie a hug and a farewell wave, said goodnight, and flew the MUTT home.
Celeste was back from her flight with Dordy on Cloud Dancer already, and was asleep. I got a quick bath and went to bed, then woke up the next morning to go fishing for giant mantis shrimp. I made breakfast in bed for Celeste to wake her up with, a shrimp omelet with toast and hash browns and coffee. She loved it! We had breakfast, feeding Dordy scraps even though he’d had plenty as I cooked, plus his own breakfast besides. That little guy’s stomach is a bottomless pit! Celeste wanted to hear all about the MUTT’s use the previous night, interested in the engineering work on the bridge in particular. She was happy that the MUTT had acquitted itself well! We enjoyed the rest of our breakfast in peace, then just sort of hung out the rest of the day.
Nat dipped her ravenfeather quill into her inkwell of purple ink again, sitting back once more with a happy sigh. It had been a welcome change to hike through such very pretty scenery in Pandaria on a job for once, instead of doing dangerous, scary things in harsh conditions in Boralus or elsewhere in Kul Tiras for once. Hopefully more jobs like this one would come up! What a relaxing week! Even the dangers of the workday had been mostly dwarfed by the relaxing hike, just talking with friends! And there was the awesome holiday the previous Thursday, and a relaxing weekend and Monday at home, and then the quiet fishing the previous morning, followed by breakfast in bed with the Sun of her World, and the Catch of her Life, Celeste! YAY! Nat smiled broadly, marveling at the wonderful week. It was rare to have so much peace and happiness all in one week! She smiled, reaching out for her quill again to write about how the previous day had progressed into last night.
Then last night was Deathrolls! We went back to Pandaria again, and this time, Cari was able to come! YAY! She was feeling a bit better, and knew that game night was always a good night to recover from things. So, it was me, her, my bestie Nah, Maya, Rylee, and my very old buddies, Mags and Zarshal! We went to Angler’s Wharf to play, which meant we were able to wave up at Celeste as we zoomed by the house and then down to the docks to play! That was fun! And Celeste got to see everyone, too! Dordy had his aviator goggles on when we flew by, and was running all around in circles, yip-yipping at everyone flying through the air. Celeste was about to take Cloud Dancer out for a ride when we came by, which is why Dordy has his aviators on. She took off soon after we landed on the docks. She’s still recovering from Eastern Kingdoms stuff herself, so she’s not quite recovered to the point of hanging out with Eastern Kingdoms regulars herself, though this particular bunch she actually likes and is fond of from a distance, from hearing me talk about them so much. Maybe one day soon she’ll join us for a game we hold in Pandaria!
Anyway, we all landed on the docks, and everyone had their swimsuits on, which I’d mentioned we’d all need in the week’s invitations. Mags showed up fully dressed, however, and wearing these really fancy bright yellow sunglasses with bright beads in them that looked like gemstones. They were really cool! She didn’t want to swim, though, saying, “No dunk, only sprinkle.” She’s so funny! We all got circled up, and I mentioned to the group that this was the first place Rylee ever met us, being invited her by an old friend that used to play with us to play Deathrolls that night. I think Rylee had had to eat a worm that night? I can’t remember. Either way, we got started playing right away! We opened it up with Cari, for once, not being one of the first ones involved. It turned out to be me daring Maya! I Dared her to swim over to the nearby sandbar island, choose a shore crab, and bring it back with her. Zarshal had went for a restroom break, so I Dared her to give it to him as a surprise gift when he got back. She did, but Zarshal didn’t get pinched! He sat it in his lap, and it just sort of rested there. It seemed to really like the arrangement! How odd! Then, just as expected, lots more people ended up being Dared into the water. Zarshal had to swim around and find something shiny to bring up for a Dare that was actually part Screw, Marry, Kill Truth. He had to give the shiny person to the person he chose to marry! He ended up killing me, because I’d killed him in the same Truth question earlier, which he’d given me himself. I chose him for that for putting me on the spot, and because he had been chosen for Marry or Screw twice already when other people got that question! He said he’d marry Nah and screw Rylee. Gosh, this one got used so much! And his marriage proposal to Nah turned out to just be an invitation to go have coffee with him when he gave her the ring. It was so funny! Zarshal is always so silly at games! He smelled like wet dog after diving to go find the ring, which was really just a fishhook he’d found under Angler’s Wharf’s docks and bent into a ring for Nah! Then there was a funny round where Mags started it off with a roll of ninety-five, and then I immediately got a one! Wow! What a horrible roll! So I got Dared, along with Cari, who also rolled a one during the Truth or Dare rolls, to go dive into the water as well, bringing up sticks for Maya’s murloc baby, Gil, to go and have fun building a murloc hut with. Gil usually spends time in his eggshell basket on Maya’s back, or else in Rylee’s or Cari’s lap. They’re all a family with an adopted murloc son at this point! It’s weird, but it’s so adorable! Anyway, Gil got his driftwood pieces Cari and I found and brought back, and dashed off to the sandbar island nearby to begin crafting a small murloc hut. It was so cute to watch him work! I just hope he doesn’t end up attracting a whole murloc colony to the Wharf, or anywhere else in Turtle Bay! It’s too peaceful to have a murloc invasion going on and messing it up! Then Nah gave Mags a steamy romance novel to read, which she had to do while sitting in Zarshal’s lap. She held one side of the book open, which the crab grabbed in its pincher and seemed to be helping her hold and read to Zarshal. The bit was really steamy and provocative, and it really made me blush a whole bunch! But, Mags wasn’t able to get off the part of the book she’d opened up to, because the crab wouldn’t let go of the book! So that was the end of that Dare! Later, Zarshal was talking about farting and it smelling like cheese, which made Mags rescind her earlier vote for him for marriage in a Screw, Marry, Kill Truth. Oops! HA! There were a lot more funny Truths and Dares, and everyone but Mags ended up getting wet, though one dive from Zarshal did splash her a little bit. She didn’t seem to mind a few drops, though, so it was okay! Then as the night got late, and the sun set and went down, and the stars came out, the Truths started getting really spicy. Like, adult happy fun bedroom time things that would make me blush far too much to write about! Basically just people being asked about favorite things to do during such times. Two weeks in a row things got spicy for Truths late at night! Gosh! It was so embarrassing! But so funny and interesting to hear people’s takes on! Eventually, people started going home. Celeste had already flown back in on Cloud Dancer, and I heard Dordy barking a bit, all the way down at the Wharf. He always loves flying so much, and gets so excited! So, with Celeste home, and people going to bed from Deathrolls, I ended up calling it a night myself. Cari and Rylee were the only ones left after that, and they left to go finish the night on some adventure of their own. I went home a bit wet in my bikini, so I had to change back when I got up on the spire, before I went inside, so I wouldn’t track water all through the house. It was such a great night of Deathrolls though! I love all my friends, Pandaren and Stormwind friends alike! They’re all so great! I can’t wait to see what we get into next! YAY!
Nat giggled at the memory of the events the previous night, shivering a bit and blushing at some of the more embarrassing moments. It had really been a great night! She smiled broadly as she tapped the excess purple ink off the tip of her ravenfeather quill into her inkwell, then replaced the quill back into its cherrywood case. She capped her inkwell of purple ink and replaced it as well. She sat back after that, allowing the ink to dry on her diary pages as she gazed out the window at Turtle Beach, seeing snapdragon turtles moseying around, only just visible through the fading morning mist. Sipping at her coffee, she reflected on the previous week. Very light in adventure and excitement, perhaps, yet, deeply memorable in the relaxing events that had occurred since her last diary entry. The Turtle Beach Pilgrim’s Bounty picnic with Pandaren friends she and Celeste had invited from Angler’s Wharf and Halfhill, including Other Nat and Suyin. The funny little memorable hike with her good friend Mags. The mostly relaxing adventure through Pandaria in which she got to put the MUTT to good use and fulfill a Whitewind Company contract. Early morning fishing in the peace and quiet, alone, in beautiful Turtle Bay to surprise Celeste with breakfast in bed to thank her for her loaning out the MUTT the previous night. Deathrolls on the dock that sits flat on the water in Angler’s Wharf. The absence of extreme danger was noticeable, but so too was the impact on her mental state of having such a great, relaxing week. It had been so great, and so memorable! She hoped for more such weeks in the future! She knew the potential showdown with the Tidesage loomed in the very near future, but she had a great week with friends prior to it! Lucina and Telrissa must be stopped, and Lady Whitewind located, but she knew the Whitewind Company and their friends were up to all such tasks! In the meantime, she thought, as she closed her diary now that the pages were dry and returned it to its place on her bookshelf… Time to enjoy more relaxation before returning to work tomorrow! Life was amazing, and she couldn’t wait to see what would happen next! YAY!
|
|
|
Post by Natasha Ebonlocke on Dec 9, 2021 21:10:48 GMT
December the Ninth The smell of a lemon pepper rotisserie chicken and baking bread pervaded the house on the rock spire in Turtle Bay, with an underlying, faint hint of hazelnut coffee that didn’t quite match the lunch smells, though it was too faint to take away from their dominant aromas. The house was quiet as the food cooked. No yip-yipping molten corgis were running around the place. No mechanical noises issued forth from the workshop downstairs. No happy humming drifted up the spiral staircase either. The only sounds were the wind and the gulls outside the open screened windows, the sound of sizzling chicken, and the sound of a quill scratching on parchment.
In the kitchen, the stove Celeste had built, the one in which she’d placed a Volatile Fire from the lava around the old Firelands portal for a sustained fire source to avoid constantly carrying wood across Turtle Bay and all the way up the rock spire, held a four-pound chicken slowly rotating on a mechanized spit. Two tablespoons of olive oil, one tablespoon of fresh-chopped oregano, one lemon, one teaspoon of salt, a quarter teaspoon of pepper, and one tablespoon of lemon pepper spice had gone onto the chicken, and now it was a matter of waiting.
The smell of baking bread issued forth from a small gnomish bread-baking oven. Within was a tray of dinner rolls, with a tub of butter waiting on it in the enchanted icebox. Nat hoped to have a happy surprise waiting on Celeste when she returned, to sort of help ease the mood back around to a happy setting again. It had been a trying past few days.
Nat, alone in the house this morning, was writing in her diary at the kitchen table instead of her desk in her office on the opposite corner of the house, the better to keep an eye on the lunch she was preparing. In the meantime, however, now that the chicken and bread were started, she sat at the table, her diary, inkwell of purple ink, and cherrywood quill case open in front of her. Her ravenfeather quill twirled rapidly in her hand as she chronicled her latest week in her latest diary entry, sipping occasionally from her large mug of hazelnut coffee..
Dear diary,
Goodness gracious, what a week it’s been… Ups and downs, victory and loss, cheer and sadness, excellent health followed by pain, remedial potions, and bed rest.
The days from my last entry up to Tuesday were pretty mundane. No news on Lady Whitewind, Telrissa, or Lucina. I wish we could find some leads so we could put a stop to all that mess! Tuesday itself, however, was a whole different story.
I spent most of the day hanging out with Celeste and Dordy. The day started off well enough; the Wanderer’s Festival, the one that usually just happens on Sunday nights to celebrate Liu Lang’s journey on the back of a sea turtle from Pandaria to go and explore the world, was going on as an all-day holiday! Celeste and I see it every Sunday evening, of course, as they hold the festivities right across the Turtle Bay from us on Turtle Beach, but this time, the novelty of celebrating on a non-Sunday, as a whole mini-holiday on a Tuesday all day instead, kind of appealed to us. I rushed to tell Celeste when I first saw them down there, and she instantly left the workshop, which apparently has a surprise she’s working on for me that had blown up that very morning (she wasn’t hurt, though Dordy was a bit shaken up from the sudden noise and chaos) to go get her bikini and pareo, and we went down to the beach.
There was the usual lantern-lighting, where you can go get a lantern from where they keep them around Liu Lang’s statue, and light it and place it on the water in Turtle Bay to light the bay for his return. Of course, Liu Lang was a super long time ago in Pandaren history and isn’t literally coming back, but it’s a great celebration thing. Celeste had the idea to light the lantern for not only celebration of the Pandaren holiday, but also as a heartfelt gesture to loved ones, that they might always be safe and always find their way home. I found this to be inspirational, and dedicated my lantern to the same wishes for my loved ones as well as we rode Celeste’s magically-conjured iceberg out onto the gently rolling waves to place our lanterns in the lantern-filled bay.
It was a really great moment, and, when we got back, the celebration was still continuing. People were coming and going after lighting their lanterns and placing them somewhere up or down the beach, near or far from the shore, and soon the entire bay was sparkling from lanterns all over it! Others lit their lanterns and stayed to hang out with us. There were even Tortollen there! They were near the statue, and Celeste and I hung out with them, talking about our respective cultures, listening to each other’s stories, and eating the delicious food that had been set out all over the statue. It was a super nice time!
Those were the “ups” of Tuesday, besides a victory that evening. But that victory was also marred by a number of other things...
That was the night that we finally found The Tidesage.
Nat sighed (which hurt a bit, in her condition), placing her quill in the inkwell and remembering the night. The sigh brought more pain, though it was a manageable pain. The last time she’d been injured in the chest like this, she’d nearly died, been saved, then nearly been killed again by a Shadowmend spell that had backfired. To think that penetrating injuries to the chest should happen two years in a row, two DECEMBERS in a row…
Nat rose from her chair slowly, toddling into the kitchen, struggling to control her breathing. She wanted to breathe normally, instead of in pained gasps. She checked the chicken first. It was darkening nicely, and the spit was still going. She breathed deeply of the heavenly aroma, though that one hurt too. The roasting meat and the spice blend flooded the kitchen enough to make anyone’s mouth water. She closed the stove, looking next through the thick little window of the bread maker. The bread was rising nicely as well. Both would need a good bit more time before they were ready. Like her. She’d need time…
Nat sighed again, biting her lip against the pain of doing so. She toddled slowly back to her diary, steeling herself to write of one of the most difficult and trying victories she had ever experienced, even though she’d been unconscious from her wounds for the most turbulent part of it. She collected her quill from her inkwell and returned to her writing.
I went with my bestie Nah and our Voyager friends, Maya, Cari, and, joining us not too long after we got to Boralus, Rylee, to go follow the leads our latest Tidesage-given dreams had presented us with. I had dreamed that I was standing at the ferry dock in the Tradewinds Market in Boralus, and I was supposed to ride a ferry almost directly south in order to find the Tidesage somewhere down there. Nah dreamed she was on a ferry, going right through the middle of Boralus, through slums and upscale areas alike before reaching a dock only just outside the city. Near the end of the ferry ride, however, she passed a spot that gave her an extremely dark chill. Once she passed it and disembarked from the ferry, the dark, chilling feeling was gone. Maya dreamed she rode a ferry from Boralus to a small dock just outside the city. When she disembarked, she looked to her left and saw a large rock, big enough to hold a large keep, jutting up out of the water, plateauing off at about twenty feet. A dark stormcloud was gathered overtop of just this rock, and the thunderstorm pounding the rock seemed to be something dark and sinister. Cari dreamed she was standing on a small pier only just outside of Boralus, and she was looking back at the city. The nearest section of the city seemed even more dark and sinister than the worst part of the slums, yet it was to this section she somehow knew she must go. She somehow floated across the water to the dark, sinister section, making landfall on the southwest corner of the section and climbing a moderately steep slope to enter this part of the city. Rylee dreamed she was standing on the southwestern corner of a small island portion of Boralus. She entered a compound built upon it from here, and she was dressed for swimming.
It took us a moment, once we got to the city, to piece our dreams together in that chronological order, but when we did, we were able to connect the dots on a path from Will Melbourne, the Tradewinds Market ferry master in Boralus, to Eastpoint Station, to the ferry dock there, which is only just outside the city limits. The ride was pretty and peaceful; the city strewn across the waters of a bay with waterways all through it was rather awe-inspiring from the vantage point of the ferry. Not just the upscale places; even the slums looked like one of those seafood restaurants elsewhere in the world trussed up to look like a pier, with boardwalks lined by fat wooden posts with thick bull ropes linking them as though they were a sort of low-hanging railing. We were ferried through the slums, the upscale sections, and even past a few ships along the way, eventually disembarking from the ferry at Eastpoint Station, which, just as in the others’ dreams, was only just outside the city limits. One could almost throw a rock from there right into the city!
It was there that we made a startling discovery… Turning left, as per Maya’s dream, we saw the rock island. The one Maya had dreamed had a dark, sinister storm pounding it. The one Cari said was darker than even the slums of Boralus. And, being so close to the end of the ferry ride, that would explain the dark chill Nah had had toward the end of her own dream.
This rock island was none other than Stormsong Monastery.
Could it be? Had the Tidesage been this close, right under everyone’s noses, hanging out in the most obvious of places, the entire time? Was she really so bold, so brazen, so brash? And yet, there is actually a certain level of genius to the idea… hiding in plain sight, in a place so obvious that people would never think to look for, and surrounded by more tidesages to blend in with besides, would certainly explain how she never got caught. Heck, even her home was a short rowboat ride from here!
Steeling ourselves, we crossed the water. Maya assumed her enormous snowy white owl form, which Cari hopped up onto the back of. My ever-present lifelong friend Onyx came down after I waved up to him, and Nah rode with me. We made the short hop from Eastpoint station, maneuvering left around the island to make landfall at the southwestern corner, as per Cari’s dream.
The slope up into the compound of the tidesages was moderately steep, just as Cari had said, but there was a worn place between rocks to walk up through and in between an arch. We made our way up there, but from here, we had no clue what to do. The tidesages and their guards within seemed to be ignoring our sudden presence. But where to go from here? I looked around for another clue, but saw only stone walls, aside from a murky, seaweed-strewn pool with a table on a raised platform on the near end. The table had a long blue oval cloth laid across it, making it look like some sort of altar over the pool. I had no idea what that was for, and I didn’t really think it would be another clue, so, as a wild stab in the dark, I pulled out my communicator and called Rylee Mhorrigan, putting it on speaker.
I asked Rylee over the comms if she’d had a dream, and she said she had! She hastened to join us, making the trip to Boralus, then to the ferry to Eastpoint Station, then to the southwest entrance, telling us of her dream of basically being in here with a swimsuit on over the speaker on the comms unit as she traveled. That was decidedly unwelcome news. Swimming in that dirty, seaweed-strewn, murky pool, in this chilly weather? There were snow flurries blowing around! But, we knew the danger the Tidesage posed, so, reluctantly, we found places to change into something to swim in, using the magically protected depths of our expanded packs to store our clothes in so we could change back into something dry after we swam.
Just as we thought, though, that water was FRIGID! It was so frozen and cold, we were immediately shivering, our teeth chattering, and it felt like frozen, icy fingers digging into our bodies with an iron grip. It was almost painful! Nah, ever the athletic one, dived straight down, while Rylee and Maya, protected from the cold in their druidic seal forms, explored around the edges of the pool. Nah broke the surface of the water a short time later, reporting that she’d found a cave entrance hidden deep down below us!
We braced ourselves for the worst after I went back to an old spell from my fel summoning days, an underwater breathing spell that also granted a faster swimming speed, following Nah back down and making the dive. We found the cave entrance, hidden as Nah had said under an outcropping of rock, eventually visible as we dived through the dark, murky water, littered with seaweed, populated by small fish and bits of corral. We turned to swim up through the cave entrance, which sloped up until we broke the surface of the water and found a cavern with a round floor that expanded across most of the cavern, though a trench of water surrounded that. Nah, Cari, and I were absolutely freezing when we got down there. Nah remained in her bikini for some reason, but Cari and I immediately got our dry stuff back on. I’m just glad I got this new mithril charm bracelet enchanted for fast outfit changes earlier this year!
We started looking around us at the cavern as soon as we got onto the dry land, peering around as we changed clothes. The setting was immediately ominous. Stalactites and stalagmites were normal enough, though these were pretty huge. What was ominous was the various paraphernalia of tidesage magic. Near the water’s edge, where we swam up, a pair of braziers rested on either side, wrought to appear to be held up by the tentacles of a kraken, with still more tentacles rising through the centers of their bowls, casting ominous, flickering shadows from the small flames burning within. In the back middle, a towering obelisk, an ominous-looking altar of some sort, rose from the cave floor, carved to look like a kraken were climbing it. On either side of it, candelabras wrought in the images of kraken stood on tall poles, and all eight tentacles of both held lit candles. It was clear we’d intruded upon some secret, deeply important sanctuary or ritualistic place of the tidesages!
The worst, however, was the bones of a human being lying near the altar. Someone had been killed! Were they killed here? Maybe as some sort of sacrifice? Or were they killed elsewhere, and then hidden down here? It was hard to say!
We were musing over all this when suddenly, and eerily familiar human woman’s voice rang throughout the cavern. Like, REALLY familiar! She was demanding to know who dared intrude upon her sanctuary and stuff, and seemed really angry, and everyone was making snide comments back, but, when she heard me speak, her tone changed, like, a lot! She sounded super worried and bummed at the same time, and she said I wasn’t supposed to find her yet, and was calling me “sister” and stuff. It made me think of my sister Thea, killed after being controlled by the Legion during their last invasion. Had we somehow found another rift between this world and the life? Is that why Thea had said I wasn’t supposed to find her yet, because she didn’t want me to be dead yet? Of course, this was all ridiculous thinking, and the logical part of my mind caught up with my wild imagination, and I knew it couldn’t be Thea. I had already blurted out the name, though, so that was embarrassing and, much more, sad. That was the first low point of the night!
It wasn’t long before the Tidesage showed herself. It was merely her walking out from behind the big stone obelisk with the kraken carving along it. She looked just like people described, a human female in a tidesage’s robes with the hood pulled down too low to see her face. Yet Cari, still convinced it was Joan, called her by name, which caused her to show herself in the first place, as she wanted to know how Cari knew who she was… confirming her identity for us in the process! It was true all along! The Tidesage was really Joanessa Seaslums!
I couldn’t believe it! I was blown away! Here I had thought, all this time, that she was dead, murdered in the streets behind her home in the slums of Boralus, and all this time, she was alive! I could barely do more than just stare and gawp and listen to the questions Nah and Cari were pelting her with, while Maya and Rylee were in cat and bear forms, respectively, sniffing around the cave, and eventually checking over the bones.
Cari asked Joan, since Joan still seemed so fond of me, why she had murdered an innocent and framed me for it. Joan said I was never supposed to have been framed for it, that she wanted to frame what she called the “goat woman” for it, getting rid of someone she fought with constantly and freeing the way to take the woman’s mate for herself. Instead, she escaped, and I got caught up for it, and Joan never meant for me to take the fall for it. She had only meant to fake her death and get rid of a rival in the same throw of a stone, feeling the need to escape after we learned she had given us a false name when we discovered the picture of her in Rolfe Braxton’s locket that we found that he’d told us had belonged to his wife.
Coincidently, it was then that Maya came back with the report of what she’d scented on the old bones. With the reminder that, when Maya had sniffed around the bloody corpse of what we thought to be Joan lying in the streets, she hadn’t been familiar with the scent of the body, nor with that of the blood on the knife, she reported that this was that same corpse! Joan had apparently had a young woman of the same height and build killed while wearing her own clothes, tossed into the streets, and illusions or something placed to make the victim look like herself, then, apparently, had hidden the body down here!
Though it all, Joan was basically just apologizing all over herself to me, seemingly genuinely seen me as a friend the entire time she was lying to me and committing the most unspeakable crimes. She seemed to really want me to accept her as a friend, even after all this! She said she never meant any of this to hurt me, or the blame for the murder to fall to me, and that she had always only ever seen me as a friend dearer to her than a sister. But no way! I can’t be friends with her! Not after all this stuff! She’s a mass murderer, a criminal that wants to assassinate Lady Katherine Proudmoore and take the Kul Tiran throne for her own, all just to usher in the return of the Black Empire! There’s no way I could ever be friends with her! Just no way!
Then the longest conversation was everyone trying to figure out why I was all Void-corrupted. Everyone was convinced that Joan had done that to me, all the times we were hanging out one on one, just the two of us, at Joan’s house. Joan was insisting that she hadn’t, that she loved me as dearly as she’d love a sister, and that she’d never do anything to hurt me, or anything to corrupt me with any kind of bad magic, and that she had put all sorts of protective spells against that stuff on me without my knowing, just to keep me safe. As much as she was practically pleading with me to stay with her and be her friend, I was inclined to believe her, in spite of all else she’d done. Maybe she’d just done it by accident and hadn’t known?
But eventually, we got to the bottom of it, and Joan figured out what had happened… that letter! That letter she sent to Marcus Brinebreaker! I think the first blips of Void corruption came from too much exposure to her in her house, just inadvertently, with the Void slipping in in just a small way. But what really accelerated it was that letter Rylee found in the secret compartment on the bottom of Marcus Brinebreaker’s locked chest, when she’d searched it and smashed it apart to find the secret stash of letters hidden in the false bottom! The one that everyone said was written in Shath’Yar, the Void language, that I had read and thought was written in Common! Apparently, it really was written in Common the whole time, instead of Shath’Yar! The letter was enchanted to have a Void corruption spread among those present when it was read, and I, just like Marcus Brinebreaker, according to the Tidesage, had protective spells placed over me, so I didn’t get the Void illusion of it being in Shath’Yar like the others did. That’s why I was able to read it in plain Common, even though everyone else had me completely convinced that I had just read something written in Shath’Yar! It also explains why I keep speaking in Common, and people hear it as Shath’Yar once in a while!
Nah was first to come to the realization, toward the beginning of that conversation. Joan had said the letter was enchanted not only to magically give Marcus Brinebreaker the means of finding her (though it didn’t mention the many trials required), but also to impress those around him into thinking he was powerful with Void magic, making them more certain to follow him. Nah realized, then, that it was not me that was corrupted with Void magic…
Each and every one of THEM, instead, were the ones corrupted.
I was so shocked! The others too! We were all blown away! What a twist! This led to a whole huge argument, and tempers started flaring. We were all so angry with Joan, with her murdering and manipulating and lying and ditching her family and the plot we discovered and stopped a few months ago where she was wanting to blow up Upton Borough to turn it into a slum, which would leave it largely abandoned so that the Brinebreakers could move in, giving her a foothold that was basically right at Proudmoore Keep’s front door, so she could assassinate Lady Proudmoore while Jaina was missing, take the throne, and use her new power to bring back the Dark Empire. Joan was getting angry too, and the argument suddenly escalated when Rylee went roaring in and bit Joan’s lower left leg, bending it wrong and breaking it! Maya did her thing with the ironvine seeds, encompassing and twisting and breaking Joan’s right arm as she bound her arm to herself and yanked it far out to Joan’s right. Nah pulled out her pistol and shot Joan in her uninjured leg, and, just like that, she was down to just one remaining good limb, which she was using to hold herself up while down on her knees. It was really bloody and messy and bad! Very scary!
Joan was REALLY pleading hard with me then, which sort of broke my heart, because we’d been such close friends before I found out all the bad things she was doing. She wanted me to save her and stuff, and I kept telling her no, which was making me cry. Then she and Nah were yelling at each other, and I stepped between them and told Joan not to yell at my bestie, and then eventually I just turned my back on her and walked away, refusing to save her from the others. She finally got mad at me, which had taken forever, considering the way I was talking to her. She cast a spell at me in Shath’Yar, and I could suddenly FEEL the Void presence in the room… She had undone the protective spells she had put on me when we hung out at her house! I still refused to help her, keeping my back turned on her. But then, from there…
I don’t remember a thing!
I woke up in sickbay on the Whitewind’s Grace later that same night, after which I was moved to a hospital in Dalaran. I learned what had happened from there. Joan had MIND CONTROLLED me! That’s why I didn’t remember anything! Apparently, instead of using the frost spells that I use these days, she’d gone back to my time as a fel summoner, making me summon an entire small army of fel minions, and forced me to attack my friends! It broke my heart to hear she’d made me do that! Luckily, though, nothing happened besides a whack with the flat of Mek-Barash’s axe – that’s my old Wrathguard – on Maya’s head, which is what he does when he wants to stun a foe and make it easier to kill. But then Cari and Rylee saved the day! Cari cast a Mages’s Silencing spell on me, which apparently stopped me from commanding my minions to do anything else. And then Rylee did this sort of ear-busting roar called the Incapacitating Roar that Druids can do from their bear forms, which stuns or somehow basically just incapacitates all who hear it. Apparently Joan was in so much pain that a mere roar didn’t affect her, but my fel minions and I were completely incapacitated, making it easy to take them out. Nah was also acting, though she was so distraught from her secret phobia of the Void, and especially from me having turned on her, even if just Mind Controlled, that she did not, for once, have good aim. She tried to shoot Joan again, but missed, as messed up as her head was at the time and as shaky as her hand was, and hit me instead, since I’d gone to Joan and stood next to her as my first Mind Controlled act. She hit me right in the tummy! Then she threw her pistol away in anguish at what she’d done, and it went off, and that shot got me right in the chest! They say I collapsed after that one, though I stood tall and stoic after the first one, not reacting at all, even to just put my hand over my tummy, which just sounds so spooky to me! But after I collapsed, Rylee went nuts, and beat Joan up while she was injured and one arm bound in vines and knocked her out cold after a few bear paw bashes. Joan had retaliated against Nah for the gunshots by blasting her with a hydromancy spell that was basically a jet of water as big around as the Stormwind Canals’ waterways, blasting her across the cave and pinning her against the wall before dissipating and dropping her into the water, but she was already coming back out as Rylee attacked and beat her senseless. Maya was still trying really hard to heal me and keep a hold on Joan’s arm at the same time, which had apparently worn her out, and Nah, distraught, fearful, and in a towering fury, had strode across the cave and kicked Joan’s head so hard she snapped her neck and KILLED her!
I couldn’t believe it when I heard about the fight, about how it went, and Nah’s accident, and Joan being killed! I’m still trying to process it… I know Nah’s accident was just that, an accident, and I don’t hold it against her at all. She’s still my bestie, and always will be! But Joan… somehow I’m still processing that. Joan, that I had thought all this time to be a dear friend, that I’d thought all this time to be dead, had faked her death, committed and endless list of heinous crimes, was alive all this time, and, just when I’d found out she was alive, she was killed for real! It really makes me sad – we were such close friends before! It hurts to lose her again, even though I’ve thought her dead all this time… but then I remember who Joan REALLY is, and I know, this had to happen, and that I’d never want to be Joan’s friend, as it turns out Joan’s the most evil person I’ve ever known! So it’s all just very mixed up and confusing. Like, I know Joan’s end was necessary, and that it’s a good thing, that Nah had basically saved Azeroth by doing that. Joan in a cell she could break, or with jailers she could corrupt into freeing her, is a Joan that could get right back into hiding and resume her past misdeeds. Yet it still hurts, because of how I used to think we were such close friends. It’s just difficult to articulate! But the important thing is, that threat has been dealt with, and now we can move on from this investigation and manhunt! To think, it all started as a simple investigation into crime in the slums. Marcus Brinebreaker’s gang. But, as Lady Whitewind wrote in her job posting for this contract on the Whitewind Company bulletin board, there’s always a bigger fish. Janine Braxton, AKA Joanessa Seaslums, the Tidesage controlling Marcus Brinebreaker and his gang. And even now, there’s always a bigger fish… Whatever Old One from the Black Empire had corrupted Joan!
So that’s another low after a high. We achieved victory, but it was a heartbreaking thing, and I was nearly killed.
Another low was Celeste and I having our first real argument ever. Our first fight, or lover’s quarrel, or whatever it might be called. It came after having to break the news to Celeste that I was in critical but stable condition in a Dalaran hospital. She immediately teleported to Dalaran when she got the letter, and she was VERY upset with me! The others had already gone home by this point in time. She was upset that I was off “playing soldier” and had almost gotten myself killed. She was also upset that the others would be coming back the next day to play Deathrolls, when I should be resting. And she was REALLY upset with Nah, for not only shooting into a melee, but also, shooting when she was not sure of her aim and not sure of a steady hand. Then she made me open one of my Winter Veil gifts early! It was this gizmo that attaches to a belt that generates an anti-magnetic field! Basically, incoming blades or bullets, if this is on, would be antimagnetically repulsed away from me, keeping me safe! Used in conjunction with my Frost Barrier spell, I'd be really safe in the future! It's a super amazing gift, though it was also there to ensure my safety. I saw the worry in her eyes behind her being upset. I tried to reason. I was trying to explain that I didn’t want to, as she put it, “play soldier.” The contract my friends and I had undertaken was important! It encompassed everything from saving the poor, starving people of the Boralus slums, to saving all of Azeroth from the return of the Black Empire! I was also trying to explain that every time we get together and do something as normal and peaceful and heartening and fun as Deathrolls after something really bad or scary or traumatic happens, it brings us healing to our hearts and minds. We needed that healing. It’s a reminder that no matter what happens, it’s not the end of the world. Life goes on. We can go on. We can still continue to have a normal life. We pretty much needed this! And I didn’t want her to be upset with Nah, either. It was an accident, and Nah would never do anything at all to hurt me on purpose. Sometimes accidents just happen! Nah would learn from it, as would everyone else present, and besides, she personally ended one of the biggest threats to Azeroth it has during this rare time of general peace around the world!
Celeste didn’t agree with me at all on any points, and eventually just sort of mumbled “goodnight” and teleported back home. Her leaving me so abruptly while angry with me only broke my heart more, though it was reassuring when she leaned over for a kiss first before she went. It showed me that, though she was upset with me for risking my life, and for risking aggravating my injuries in a Deathrolls game, she still loved me very much – which was also shown in her being upset over whether I was doing safe things or not, really! But, it still was sad that she was upset with me. And I was upset with myself for having to upset her.
Nat thrust her ravenfeather quill back into her inkwell of purple ink, wiping her wet eyes. She stood slowly, painfully, toddling to the kitchen. She opened the oven, and the work of her hands, the work she was preparing for Celeste, blasted its aroma through the kitchen once more. The chicken still needed time, but the meat was darkening, the spices were cooking into the bird, and the smells were absolutely wonderful. Nat closed the stove, checking the setting for the heat from the Volatile Fire. It was still good. She moved on to the rolls. The little Gnomish countertop oven was doing its job well. The rolls were rising still, and would soon be fluffing out over the top.
She moved back into the dining room, taking her time, leaning on walls and doorframes and chairs for support along the way. She sat down, checking her pocket watch for the time. It was a lovely pocket watch, gifted to her on her birthday last year by a void elf guy. Oddly, the Ren’dorei had used Kaldorei decorative metalwork, a design of vines with leaves and flowers beloved by the Night Elves. Nat admired the exquisite work, then opened it to check the time with a glance at a nearby potion. It was time. She had brought this one down with her, knowing it was approaching the time to take one of her remedial potions the Dalaran hospital had sent home with her. She took the prescribed two swallows of the potion, then capped it and went back to her writing.
In the meantime, I’ve got all these yucky-tasting potions I have to take! Healing potions and hydrating potions of basically sugar water and, just now, this one meant to mend flesh and also serve as an antibiotic – the latter of which the doctors said was a necessary precaution after Nah had apparently pulled the flintlock pistol ball out of my tummy with an unsterilized dagger right out of her sheathe. Druidic healing magic and pushed the other up and out of my chest already when my bestie did the one in my tummy, but, as neither Maya nor Rylee specialized in restoration magic, they’d exhausted themselves, leaving Nah as the next healer up. In all that time she’d spent last year laid up in the Stormwind hospital after all those clashes with Rick Riggermotor, she’d picked up a lot of medical knowledge, enough to have some extent of field medic knowledge. She got the bullet out, used her crimson vial healing potion stuff that rogues use, pouring that into the hole in my tummy a little bit, as well as some sort of green potion that was a healing and anti-coagulant, and then had bandaged me up. Rylee had spent the last of her healing energy closing my internal and external wounds after Nah got the bullet out of my tummy, and Nah bandaged me up pretty good. They’d apparently got me to the Whitewind’s Grace’s sickbay after that, where Nah made the full report to First Mate Nathaniel, including being sure that he included in his report that she’d misfired and hit me twice as well. She may be a troublemaker, my bestie, but she knows when it’s time to be completely honest!
Anyway, last night was DEATHROLLS! So many people came to visit me in the hospital and play with me, too! YAY! It was me, my bestie Nah, Mags, Maya, Cari, Rylee, Zarshal, and Zoe! We had so much fun! And Cari had basically badgered me into letting Maya bring me a whole meal in so I wouldn’t have to eat conjured hospital food! She had me let her know what sounded good, and I said spaghetti! Spaghetti with spicy sausage bits as the meat and lots and lots of crushed red pepper on the side. Mmmmm! It was so yummy and tasty! I knew Mags was coming, and a couple others like Nah like having veggie options, so Maya made a smaller pot of vegetarian spaghetti as well. Maya said there she prepped enough to feed fifteen! Wow!
So there we were, gathered around the center of the floor of my hospital room in Dalaran – I was on the corner of my bed, as I had bed rest orders, so I wanted to stay in bed for that – eating spaghetti, drinking milk Maya brought, or else the hospital’s juice boxes, and playing Deathrolls with lots of super fun friends! There were like almost no Truths this time, and LOTS of Dares! The Truths involved people trying to figure out what others wanted for Winter Veil, or what they’d do in certain situations, so those were pretty tame. The Dares were noticeably calmer than usual as well, just like I’d promised Celeste before she left, though people were joking about doing a “bed catapult” Dare on me to watch me go flying. They’d never really do that, of course, and I’d never agree to it; I need to finish healing as quickly as possible, and besides, Celeste would hit the ROOF to hear of such a thing! Heh. But it was a funny joke! Mags Dared Rylee to spend a few rounds acting like Greatfather Winter, and Rylee, ever the exuberant personality, did so with all the gusto she could muster! Then the next round, I rolled a one, and Mags rolled a one on the Truth or Dare rolls, which meant she had to do whatever I had to do… And we got Dared by Maya to be Greatfather Winter’s helpers… and we were Goblins! So Maya and I were in character with Rylee, and we were thinking up silly gold scams and stuff, like Goblins would do. That was fun, and lots of laughs! Zarshal had to go get this one devilsaur plushie off one of the beds, which looked like it was just left there by the hospital for whomever might want a companion. It was a Mags Dare, so of course Z-Man has to go get a plushie! Heh. He had to sit it on his lap and pretend it was his son, and sometimes take him for walks around the room and stuff. It was adorable, and really funny! The chaos increased when Zoe Dared Cari to stick her finger in Rylee’s ear while Rylee was trying to be Greatfather Winter, and keep it there for a couple rounds no matter how out-of-hand Rylee got. That was awkward! Rylee really took Cari for a ride! Then Nah Dared me to read one of her Steamy Romance Novels aloud in as sultry voice as I could, which only worked for as long as I was reading normal stuff, and I’d get all squeaky and blush too much and stammer and stuff when I got to… other parts. People were laughing SO hard at me the entire time! It was so awkward, but I was also really happy I got to make them laugh! There were also funny acting Dares. Rylee and Zoe both rolled twenties when Mags and Cari rolled ones, Rylee and Zoe got together and whispered for a bit, before deciding that Mags was a Naga and Cari was a Tauren, and they were a couple, and they had to have a lover’s quarrel on who gets how much bed and how many pillows. That one was great! Mags was hissing a lot, like every time a word had the letter S, so she was saying stuff like, “Cowssssss sssssssleep outssssssside!” HA! And Cari was stomping around, using her shoes on the floor to sound like hooves, and mooing a lot and saying that Nagas sleep in ponds! So funny! It went on for a good little bit, and it was so funny to watch! Spaghetti dinner and a comedy show! There were other acting Dares too, and the odd Truth, and one where I had to sing everything I said for a couple rounds, which Nah added to the next round when I rolled a second consecutive roll of one by saying that I had to repeat everything she said for the rest of my sing-everything Dare, which REALLY got embarrassing with the things she was saying! And yummy, spicy spaghetti and milk throughout! What an awesome night! YAY!
Writing of food, and now cheered up from writing so lengthily about happy times, Nat rose with a smile from her chair to check the food again. It was still slow going, but she was now smiling more, and that made the lemon pepper rotisserie chicken and bread, both nearing completion, smell that much better. She felt much more prepared to receive Celeste home how, and she was anxious to see Dordy again as well. She toddled slowly back to her seat at the dining room table, returning to her writing once again.
Anyway, with the tremendous head start on healing I got from Maya, Rylee, and Nah, I was actually able to be released and come home today! YAY! That head start, instead of a pair of near-death experiences with a dagger in the heart, a paladin's close shave of barely saving me, followed by the other near-death experience of shadowmending gone wrong, and the resulting week-long fever and sickness and delayed healing, has me recovering far more quickly this year than last year! Though I still find it odd that I've had a penetrating injury to the chest two years in a row, two DECEMBERS in a row... But yeah, the doctors loaded me up with all kinds of different healing potions, as I wrote earlier, and a VERY strict schedule for taking each one, but that’s okay. I’m good with schedules and stuff! I assured them I’d get lots of bed rest and stay on schedule with the potions, got my things and the leftover spaghetti, what bit I didn’t send home with everyone else that came to visit me last night, and carefully teleported home. Onyx came through with me, of course, and he gave me the gentlest, smoothest flight home I think I’ve had since I was a little girl, and the smoothest landing, though that meant taking a really long time to fly from the Shrine of the Seven Stars in the Vale of Eternal Blossoms down here to the house. I got inside, really wanting to see Celeste, but instead, there was a beautiful bouquet of fresh flowers and a note on the table from her. She said she’d gone to spend the night at her uncle Rugnar’s house in Ironforge with Dordy, with a happy little bit about how Dordy would be thrilled to run around on the lava vents again. It was reassuring to see that little happy bit about Dordy in the note, and the lovely new flowers, because I was worried that her not being here might mean she was still upset with me. But I think she really just didn’t want to be alone on such a difficult night, when she’d been so upset. That’s totally understandable! I can’t wait for her to get home, and Dordy too – I haven’t seen the little guy since the day before yesterday, playing with him in the house after the Wanderer’s Festival before going back to Stormwind to meet everyone for the Tidesage hunt! So now, to welcome them home, and to sort of try and help make amends with Celeste, I’m cooking a lemon pepper rotisserie chicken with dinner rolls with butter and some wine for a welcome-home lunch! I hope she likes it!
Just then, as though right on cue, there was a commotion outside! The beating of heavy wings matched the approach of the swishing sound Cloud Dancer makes when he flies. Celeste was back! And Dordy too! YAY! Nat wanted more than anything to bolt from her chair and dart outside, but her injuries prevented it. She’d barely made it halfway to the front of the house when Celeste came through the door, already yelling at Dordy to stop, as he was instantly jumping on Nat, sending her staggering into the back of the couch to hold on. Celeste scooped up the wriggling molten pupper, then turned to Nat. She seemed beyond overjoyed that Nat was home, a complete one-eighty from the previous night, and was giddy and fussing over her a bit before sternly sitting her down in the comfiest chair in the front room and bringing her her coffee, diary, quill, quill case, and inkwell and cap. She was happy about the potion spotted on the table, seeing that Nat was keeping up with that, but she wanted Nat to rest. She also seemed quite happy at her welcome home lunch, though she insisted on taking over the cooking while Nat rested. Nat smiled happily, overjoyed herself that things were returned mostly to normal, that Celeste was no longer upset with her, and that things were happy and good again. The familiar sounds of happy humming filled the house once again, and Dordy, eventually getting shooed from the kitchen after being underfoot begging for scraps too many times, came to squash in next to Nat on the chair, curling up in the tight space between her right hip and the cushy right armrest, sighing indignantly at getting shooed from food and closing his eyes to lightly snooze away the time until it was time to eat. Nat giggled at the indignant lava corgi, giving him a few soothing pets and pats before returning to her writing. All that was left was to wrap up the entry!
And now, Celeste just got home! She does like the food! She fussed over me a bit and made sure I was taking my potions and made me rest in the comfiest armchair while she took over the rest of the cooking… awww, and now she’s bringing me even more hazelnut coffee, a refill! I suppose, as I’m all caught up now, I can wrap up this entry and just snuggle Dordy for pets and talk to Celeste now. She was talking about how much fun he had running along the lava vents all around Ironforge, and how she’d had a nice dinner with her uncle Rugnar and got all caught up on how each other were and what was going on in their lives. She says Uncle Rugnar sent me get-well-soon wishes, and that he says hi. That’s so nice of him! I say hi back! Anywho, Celeste is right; I feel the need for rest. Here’s hoping that next week goes as victoriously and happily as this week did, except without so many super-sad, scary, and anxious moments! I’m sure it will; life is usually so great! YAY!
Nat tapped off the excess ink from her quill into her inkwell with a broad, happy smile, then returned it to its cherrywood case. She snapped it shut, placing it on the end table next to the chair. Joining it a few seconds later was her capped inkwell of purple ink. She’d need to get more next time she was in Stormwind; it was getting a little low. She placed her diary with it, pages open until the ink dried so she wouldn’t smear it all over the pages. She took a few dainty sips of hot hazelnut coffee, then placed that on the end table as well, returning to petting Dordy and telling him how much she’d missed him over the last couple days. Dordy perked back up, and Nat spoke soothingly to him, a quiet, low, slow voice working to calm him back down to a slower, gentler mood so he wouldn’t hurt her by bouncing all over her while she was still recovering from her pistol wounds. Soon he was asleep on her lap, and she was resting from her busy morning, head leaned back on the cushy chair, her free hand holding her coffee as she took the odd dainty sip. Celeste kept coming by to fuss over her and top off her coffee, which inevitably woke the lightly-snoozing Dordy, who sniffed hopefully at the air, excited at the aromas swirling around the house. Knowing he was shooed, however, he would curl back up into Nat’s lap with a huff each time Celeste went back to the kitchen. Nat giggled at the little guy again, cheering up with more attention and pats and soft words as she sipped daintily at her coffee. Nat marveled at how things were largely back to normal now, and at the strength of her relationship with Celeste. No matter what happened, they were always able to get back to this: happy, calm life, Celeste’s happy humming, the adorable feaster of untended noms curled up in her lap, and the quiet, happy, slow-paced days that came with residing in Pandaria. It’s a wonderful life!
|
|
|
Post by Natasha Ebonlocke on Dec 16, 2021 21:42:55 GMT
December the Sixteenth There was an underlying chill in most caves and caverns, and that was especially true of one so vast and wide and open as this one, especially as its wide-open gates allowed in the frigid blasts of air from the perpetually snow-covered mountains and valleys outside. The occasional gust of wind made it around the angular entry into the spacious cavern despite the angles around the broad windbreak designed to keep as much of that cold air out as possible. Inside the cavern, however, there radiated an immense, cozy heat. This heat came from the veritable lake of molten metal that formed the very center of the caverns and all its circular-running connecting caves. The heat from this, the lava vents running through many of the circular-running caves, and lit braziers everywhere made for a cozy warmth, the warmth that one feels when coming inside from a long time of working or playing outside in the snow. The heavy warmth with the underlying, mostly-negated chill was a mainstay feature of these cavernous halls, as was the warmth of (most of) the dwarves that had carved these caverns out and turned it into a glorious dwarven city. The hustle and bustle was increased this morning in the cavernous dwarven city of Ironforge, with machinery-operating gnomes and cart-hauling beasts to be seen everywhere. The commotion was a cheery one, as towering pine trees were being brought in from outside, and Winter Veil decorations were being hauled out from storage in carts to the location each one was to be erected. One particularly tall dwarf with a very long white beard and matching hair was dressing up as Greatfather Winter, attended to by goblins from the Smokywood Pastures company, which specialized in Winter Veil-themed treats of all kinds. The city’s snow globe, the magical one as big as a building that people can walk into and get temporarily turned into flying Winter Veil Gnomes around a Winter Veil setting, was also in place, the ring set, the decorations up, and the magical barrier containing it being set into place so the magic that would fill it can be conjured next. The city would so be a glorious tribute to Winter Veil, and all the heart-warming magic that comes with it! Seated on one end of the Auction House stairs watching it all go up were Nat, her wife Celeste, and Celeste’s Uncle Rugnar. Dordy could be heard yip-yip-yipping below somewhere, as the beloved molten corgi sprinted back and forth gleefully along the lava vents, frolicking in the fiery warmth along the hot iron grates with boundless energy. Tall, full thermoses of coffee were clutched in Celeste’s and Rugnar’s hands, and Nat’s was next to her, as her hands were full of her diary things. The diary lay open on her lap, her ravenfeather quill was in her hand, and her inkwell of purple ink lay open next to her coffee, both of which were to her right as she sat at the far right end of the stairs with Celeste to her left. Nat dipped her quill in her inkwell happily as Celeste and Rugnar chatted about the decorations. She looked up frequently as more festive decorations were pointed out by the other two with a gasp and a smile. She doodled a few Winter Veil trees along the top of her entry, with a picture of her, Celeste, Uncle Rugnar, and Dordy doodled in as stick figures, before scooting down the page a little and beginning to write. Dear diary,
IT’S WINTER VEIL!!!
Right now, I’m sitting on the right end of the Ironforge Auction House stairs, Celeste is to my left, her uncle Rugnar beyond her, and Dordy is having himself a good old time running around in the lava vents in front of us. We’re watching the Winter Veil decorations go up! Rams pulling carts and gnomes hauling stuff with traveling machinery are setting up trees and bringing in Winter Veil stuff from storage, and the snow globe Celeste and I played in last year is going up too! We have coffee this morning, and a belly full of biscuits and gravy and heaps of scrambled eggs and bacon, and we’re sitting next to this warm brazier besides the stairs. It’s so nice! What a great end to the week! What a way to kick off my final week of vacation for the year! YAY!
It was a much easier week this week than last week, too! Well, Celeste and I DID work pretty hard yesterday, but it wasn’t so sad or scary at times this time, so that’s good!
The weekend after the injuries I suffered in the underwater cave at the Stormsong Monastery was super simple. I got to work from home, because of that, which meant even though I made sure to be responsible and get up as early as I usually do for work, I still got to take my breakfast and lunch breaks with Celeste all day! I also got to listen to her happy humming coming from the workshop while I worked from under a blanket in my sleepwear on the couch with Dordy warming my feet, so that was nice! Good thing this is a vacation weekend for me, or I’d be going from being spoiled all weekend by Celeste while I worked, straight back into working while stuck in an office all weekend again!
And during the week, Celeste has been working on some kind of surprise for me for Winter Veil! Part of it involves her in her workshop, making something super secret, and part of it involved her bringing these super pretty little flowering shrubs up to the house from the Krasarang jungle and making planters for them to grow along the balconies outside the house. I can't wait to see what it's for!
I've been working on a surprise for her, as well, using the MUTT to craft something! I can't wait to finish it and give it to her! I'm so excited for Winter Veil Day this year!
And what capped off that weekend? Elinore’s BIRTHDAY PARTY! We went to her and Lex’s beach house in Stormsong Valley for that, which is always fun. It’s so pretty and calm and peaceful there! It was me, my bestie Nah, and lots of Voyagers, including Maya, Cari, Rylee, Mordale, and this young guy named Jayce. Zarshal was there too, as well as Skylie and Narcoss! Lex gave us all bubble wands, had us all hide behind the house, where the picnic table next to the beach is, and then went to go get Ellie. He wanted us to shout, “Surprise!” and blow a whole bubble shower at her! Hehe. We did, and boy was she surprised! She never knew so many people were waiting on her! All she knew was that Lex had a birthday surprise for her at the beach! Now it’s a whole party! Lex had us bring a dessert apiece, so I brought cupcakes! There were other cakes and pies and ice cream and stuff too, from other people! We did gifts first as we ate dinner, which was mostly really yummy seafood stuffs. I had lots of shrimp in particular! It was so good! My gift to Ellie was this big body pillow with a beach scene on it, as Ellie loves beach stuff. Other people gave her lots of beach stuff too, like beach-themed seashell jewelry, as well as normal jewelry. By the time she was done opening presents, the entire picnic table was covered in them, and she was covered in jewelry! She loved it all, so that was good! Lex took it all inside for her, and then it was birthday cake and Happy Birthday singing time! That was fun, and Elinore looked really happy! Then the birthday celebration drinking started. This meant GAMES! Drinking games! WOO! There was Pin the ‘Stache on the Mord first, with a picture of Mordale painted with no fancy, fluffy mustache pinned to the tree near the picnic table. He looked so funny in the picture without his ‘stache! Birthday Girl went first, getting spun around blindfolded by Lex and then staggering on to the tree, and she got the mustache RIGHT where it was supposed to be! Then the rest of us went. Cari ended up giving Mordale a unibrow with hers! HA! I was on dirt when I got spun, and I knew the tree was in the grass, so I tried to make a beeline between where I was and the tree was where I felt grass. From there, I found the picture with my hands, and pinned my ‘stache on. I got Mord right in the right eyeball! Oops! Skylie got spun by Lex, and then ramped it up, twirling around super fast like she does when she does a Bladestorm attack! WOW! And then she got a stache right on top of Elinore’s, like perfectly! When it was all said and done, Mord had mustaches in one eye, a unibrow, cheekstaches, another right over his forehead, and my bestie Nah had even more decorative leaves and stuff in her hair from missing the picture entirely and faceplanting right in the bush! HA! It was so fun! Then there was a card game that Mordale, AKA “Spice Dice,” a name Ellie and I had come up with for him several months ago, called 21! Ever the consummate gambler, Mord taught us how to play, though thankfully we didn’t play for gold. That was a fun game too! After that, people were starting to get sleepy, as the party had gone for HOURS at this point. People started trickling off one or two at a time, and Lex and Ellie went for a long, quiet birthday walk on the beach together before retiring to bed themselves. I went home too, feeling like I had partied quite thoroughly. The hangover the next morning confirmed it… Oops! But what a great party! Happy Birthday again to Elinore! YAY!
Nat smiled happily at the memory, looking up suddenly as she dipped her quill for more ink. Rugnar had just pointed out a rope he’d spotted on the tallest Winter Veil tree, the one going beside Greatfather Winter, that had just gotten tossed up to a window opening above the Vault of Ironforge. A crew of dwarves was up there, pulling the tree upright! Another crew of dwarves was next to Greatfather Winter’s chair, heaving the trunk into its stand, filling it with water, and turning the massive screws surrounding the trunk to drive them into the tree a bit to secure it. The Winter Veil tree was now UP! A cart pulled by another ram, driven by another dwarf, pulled up alongside it, and crates were opened. A rather old, wizened gnome wearing a jetpack pulled a strand of lights from one crate, and another gnome, much younger than the jetpack gnome, was standing next to the crate, feeding the strand of lights along out of the crate hand-over-hand as the old jetpack-wearing gnome spiraled neatly around the tree, bedecking it in lights. Once it was done, the gnome in the cart, as well as its driver, began unpacking ornaments of various sorts, all beautiful, and handing them to the jetpack gnome each time he returned. Finally, atop the massive, towering Winter Veil tree… THE WINTER VEIL STAR! Amidst cheers and applause from people of all Alliance races, the old, stately-looking jetpack gnome proudly flew up to the top of the tree, turned to face the crowd, raised the star high above his head to more cheering, and then secured the star atop the tree. The crowd erupted; the city’s primary Winter Veil tree was now complete! Celeste, Rugnar, and Nat cheered along with the rest, and even Dordy came out of the lava vents to see what was going on. Leaping into Celeste’s lap, he got a bite of different Smokywood Pastures treats from all three seated there, then went across the bridge to sniff around at the new tree that he hadn’t seen there before he went into the lava vents. An idea occurred to the young molten pupper, and he walked alongside the tree, raising his leg to mark it… Fortunately, the dwarf in the Greatfather Winter suit happened along, and stopped him just on time, lifting him from where he was and moving him away. Celeste had already been sprinting off across the bridge after him, and Nat saw her sheepishly uttering a word of apology to the old dwarf before carrying Dordy back to the auction house stairs and placating him with more treats until Dordy went back to play in the lava vents again. Laughing and smiling happily at the happy moment with the tree’s completion, and at Dordy’s antics, Nat lifted her ravenfeather quill from her inkwell and returned to her writing. The next day, Monday, was something of a resting day, especially with a bit of a hangover from Elinore’s birthday party. But I did go to the Whitewind’s Grace’s dock in the Stormwind Harbor to meet with Nah and the ship’s first mate, Nathanial Seabreeze, a (GOOD!) Kul Tiran Tidesage, who had blessed the ship before it came across the sea, where Lady Whitewind had brought it over as its maiden voyage. We were looking at what contract to undertake next, as the Brinebreaker/Tidesage contract was now, finally, fulfilled.
We decided on two projects to take up next: One was a time-sensitive delivery to a private residence in Ironforge that must be completed by midnight, twelve am Wednesday, which meant switching adventure night to Tuesday to get it there in time. The delivery would come up to Menethil Harbor from Stormwind Harbor by ship, the Whitewind’s Grace in specific, to hide it from prying eyes, as apparently it was some sort of top-secret cargo, though I got the impression it was just a private delivery of something the elves that ordered it didn’t want others to know they were ordering. Nah assured me it was something of an embarrassing and personal nature, rather than illicit contraband, with that smirk that told me precisely the sort of things it must be, which made me blush like SO much! All I knew was that she said it was “Winter Veil pleasures, dainties, and delights,” but said in that tone and with that smirk that makes me think we were making a weird delivery to some weird elves!
The other is a contract Nah has wanted to tackle for a long time. Some kinda dark knight or black knight has been haunting some tower he took from orcs or something in the Redridge Mountains? I already talked to Mags about the contract like a long time ago, even, as that’s her group’s stomping grounds. The Quicksilver Company, I mean. She said go for it! So, that’ll likely be after this week’s adventure, this escort mission.
Nah wanted to go ahead and scout that one out, too, so we flew to Lakeshire and then snuck in. I used my mage invisibility spell while Nah did her rogue stealthy thing. We snuck up the road from Lakeshire, over a hill, down into a valley, then up another small mountain, where this broken-down old keep with a tower near it is. We found a skeleton standing there with a crossbow! The tower was empty, though, so Nah said Riven could stand there, since she’s a Quel’dorei archer, and provide overwatch during the mission when we go in and bust the Black Knight. We slipped in, still stealthy and invisible, and looked at the keep’s broken doors. There was a swordsman to either side of the doors, standing there holding a sword and shield apiece, though the shields were not identical. Probably the shields two different region’s men held in life at some point. Past that was a broken bridge, heavily guarded by a troop of skeletal swordsmen, as though the Black Knight figured the least-likely entrance was the most likely to be infiltrated through or something. Like maybe with fliers? I dunno. Anyway, we didn’t want to risk going inside and bumping into people in close quarters in there, so phase two, infiltration of the keep, will be done with less recon. We’ll have to be stealthy in taking out the skeletons!
That was it for that recon. We stealthed our way back outta there and back to Lakeshire, then flew on home from there, and that ended the day’s work.
Tuesday morning was recon for the escort mission. We went to Menethil Harbor by air. The place is still a shambles from Deathwing’s attack all those years ago. I dunno why they don’t fix it! Before we headed off from Menethil, one of the people there warned us of a mysterious group of strangers that had been spotted camping around the Wetlands and didn’t open up much to visitors. Very strange, and something to keep an eye on for sure… Anyway, the yard in the keep is still heavily flooded. The shallowest part, the part with the most grass, goes left from the docks around the main keep, though it gets narrow as it gets around the front corner. From there, splash through more shallow water, then out the gate, and to the partially-broken bridge. We’d have to pass by murlocs and even Dark Iron Dwarves on our way through to the tunnels that lead up to Loch Modan and eventually Dun Morogh from there, though murlocs are primitive and an easy foe if you aren’t heavily outnumbered and swarmed, and we’d dealt with Dark Irons before already, in that Uldaman cave in the Badlands on our very first mission as the Whitewind Company, so we were confident in that.
What we did NOT see coming was the bomb.
Some mysterious tents, not belonging to Dark Irons, were around in the Wetlands, and I thought of those when we went through the tunnels and spotted a bunch of wires in one of them that ran to something that looked quite out of place on the ceiling at either end of the tunnel. That blue powder… it was Azerite explosives! Good thing I’ve been learning so much engineering stuff from Celeste… I found a gnomish motion-activated sensor, spotted the signal wire and the power wire coming from it, as well as a failsafe mechanism that would likely set off the device if the wires were simply cut. I found its power source and snipped the wire to that, then the power wire to the motion sensor, then the signal wire from it to the Azerite. With nothing to trigger its detonation, the bomb was now relatively safe to remove from the ceiling. I cut the wires into the Azerite package, then handed that off to Nah.
We repeated the process at the other end of the tunnel. We didn’t know who rigged that up, or why, or whether the aforementioned mysterious group was behind it or not, but we knew one thing… No bombs would be caving in a tunnel around us during our escort mission now!
We finished the scouting mission, going up the tunnels into Dun Morogh. There was an all-out blizzard going on, and it didn’t show a single sign of letting up soon. We rode to Ironforge as quickly as we could from there, scouting the trail and finding evidence of troggs and Dark Irons about, though no threats seemed imminent. We were shivering like mad when we got through Ironforge’s gates, though! From there, we went turned left through the gate and went through the Commons to the very last house on the right before the Mystic Ward. This was evidently where the elves were living, though they didn’t seem to be home. I found it odd that elves would choose rocky, barren Ironforge for a home, but then, their delivery was apparently odd as well, so yeah…
We formed up on the Recluse porch to go back again the next night, Wednesday. Cari, Maya, and Rylee were all gone that night, but we did spot Zarshal, and this Wildhammer dwarf woman named Mairead, or Mairy for short, that I’d met a month or more prior inside the Recluse. Zarshal had agreed over the communicator earlier that day to come with us to help, and Mairy said she had to get to Ironforge that night anyway, and may as well come along and make some gold as she makes the trip up, so it was the four of us that night.
I teleported us off the porch and into Ironforge after that, where we flew the rest of the way to Menethil. I had the MUTT with me to make it safer for me than last week. We waited there on the Menethil docks for First Mate Nate to arrive with the yak carrying the cargo on the Whitewind’s Grace, which had departed the Stormwind Harbor that morning with him, the yak, and the cargo. When the ship pulled up, Nate disembarked, driving the nervous-looking yak from the ship onto the docks. We made sure Yak was okay, and then headed across the shallow remnants of the floodwaters, around the left side of the keep as planned, and then out through the gates and across the bridge.
It didn’t take long after getting out of the city to run into our first problem! A trio of Dark Irons had since barricaded the way across the bridge, and they wanted to rob us! Mairy, fiery Wildhammer dwarf that she is, skipped any attempts at diplomacy or intimidation and simply flew her gryphon RIGHT at them! I started helping her out, casting frost spells from a distance in the MUTT, and together, she and I, with Nah, Nate, and Zarshal’s help, quickly over whelmed the dwarfs and scattered them, shattered their barricade, and made our way across. A second ambush hit us as we neared the tunnels on the other end of the marsh, and these meant business! There were as many of them as there were of us, and they surrounded us, too! Mairy flew at them again, quickly dispatching a few, though her reckless abandon got her hurt with flame spells along the way. Bad night to pick to be barefoot! Zarshal got into a shootout with another and ended up taking a couple hits to the shoulder, though he was okay. Nah, Nate, and I were blasting from a distance, and soon, that fight was over as well, with one of them even getting so afraid of Mairy that he begged her for his life! She granted it to him, dragging him off by the ear, tossing him into the marsh, and telling him to get his “flaming b*lls” out of here and never try to rob anyone again! By the way he was fleeing, I bet he really might not, ever again!
It was when we got to the bottom of the first tunnel up into the mountains that we met the mysterious group the Menethil local had told us about. It was a group of Kaldorei, asking what our business was with them. I told them we didn’t have any with them, that we were merely traveling on the road, and wanted to get up the tunnels now. They allowed us through, though Zarshal was saying that his worgen snout was detecting something VERY fishy about them. Shadow magic and hostility seemed to be the underlying sense there. But, they let us through, and we got up into the tunnels without a problem.
But then, when we got to the tunnel where I disarmed those two bombs, there was a voice shouting from outside to activate the trigger or something! Nothing happened, of course, as the bombs were already disarmed and disposed off, so we increased our pace and got the heck outta there! Later, though, we found more of that mysterious group of Kaldorei, and they were blocking the way, trying to rob us! Another fight broke out, and we quickly overwhelmed them and rode through! It was a good thing we did do it quickly, too, because the group from earlier, I think, was charging up the tunnels behind us, and more and more reinforcements were coming from behind those! When we got to the last tunnel, Nate rode the yak RIGHT over the last guy, busting us out of the tunnels and into Dun Morogh… and that blizzard was still going! We were absolutely freezing our tails off, so another pair of ambushes didn’t help matters any. I was safe and highly mobile in the MUTT, so I was doing just fine, but the MUTT wasn’t about to stop the whole group from freezing! We ended up using Zarshal’s bow, Nah’s blades and flintlock pistol, and Mairy’s fiery Wildhammer ferocity to bash weirdo elves left and right, constantly fleeing the ever-growing chase behind us each time we got slowed up by an ambush, until we finally made it to the base of the road to Ironforge. From there, we were safe with a veritable army of Ironforge Mountaineers who witnessed the fights and flights and had come out to cover our escape up the road. Once we got there, we were free! All we had to do now was get to the elves’ house and make the delivery!
We reached the place without further incident, being in a heavily protected city and all. The yak, which had lagged behind all our mounts the entire time from being so heavily bogged down and making us double back and stop to wait on it during peaceful stretches of road, was now finally standing in front of our costumers’ home. An elf guy came out, a real flamboyant type, brushing his hair and smoothing down his fancy robes. He took delivery of the parcels, made his payment, and gave an extra sack of gold apiece to Mairy and Zarshal for their injuries. From his cheerful demeanor, I began to suspect that Nah was pulling my leg when she was hinting at the cargo being something weird, and that this really was literally Winter Veil decorations that were supposed to go up the next day when the Winter Veil holiday first started.
After that, Mairy invited us all to her pub, the Cask ‘n’ Anvil, and started bringing us out free drinks! The pub, which is right across from the flight master in the Great Forge, was warm and cozy, and a great place to unwind from the night’s work. One of our Company’s healers, Annasana, a Worgen druid, came to fix the group up, though she declined the drinks afterward. She had some super good stuff, including Greatfather Winter’s Ale, which was a really good ale choice, as it turns out, and in keeping with the holiday, too!
So, it was, for the second time this week, I found myself with friends (though Nate had returned to duty at the Whitewind’s Grace) drinking and playing drinking games. There was some kinda game dwarves play where you stand in a row, and she says, “DRINK!” and everyone has to drink, and the last one left that doesn’t eventually fall over out of the line wins! Zarshal ended up winning that one handily, though I did beat my bestie Nah… though that’s probably just because she drinks alcohol so seldom, preferring teas and such, in keeping with her Kaldorei ways. Then after that was Carpball! We went around the corner from the pub to the Hall of Explorers, where Mairy brought out a fake carp and threw it in the floor, and she and I were teamed up against Nah and Zarshal (The Shorties versus The Tallies!) to try to kick the carp into each other’s goals. Somehow, because of being all wound up, or because of so much mead and ale, or both, I managed to run for a while without falling down! We kicked the living daylights outta that fake carp for a good long while, though Mairy and I got dunked on like a bazillion times. Eventually, we were too worn out to continue, as it was late at night, so we stopped and stood around talking for a little bit before saying our goodnights and going home. What a thrilling adventure, and what a great time afterward!
Nat gasped suddenly, looking up across the lava vents as the air crackled with powerful arcane energy. A soft white light had suddenly erupted over there and to her left a bit. Oh! The snow globe! It was active, the arcane dome roughly forty feet high and at least as wide, with a colorful, festive Winter Veil gnome statue that realistically waves to people, a snowman in a scarf and top hat with coal for buttons up its front and a very long carrot note swiveling around as it peered at its surroundings, and a tall Winter Veil tree erected and decorated in between the two! Snow covered the interior of the globe, with more gently falling from the dome. The Globe Yeti was there too, running around in circles around the decorations, drawing another guffaw from Uncle Rugnar and another rueful grin from Celeste. Dordy, meanwhile, back in Celeste’s lap again, had perked up upon spotting the mechanical creature, stiff as a board, his hackles raised, a low growl coming from his throat. The next instant, he leaped off Celeste’s lap, tore across the bridge, and darted into the snow globe after the yeti! The snow globe’s magic only partially worked on him the way it did humanoids – rather than turn into a gnome, Dordy was still a molten corgi, but now he had on a Winter Veil hat, a female gnome’s Greatfather Winter’s suit, and a blue scarf like the globe’s snowman’s that flapped behind him as he ran. Seemingly oblivious to his ridiculous outfit, he yip-yip-yip-yip-yipped incessantly after the Globe Yeti, which only increased its speed as it orbited the central decorations, much to the entertainment of everyone else in the Commons. Dordy chased and yipped, yipped and chased, finally running out of steam before slowing to a slow trot, giving the yeti up with a disgruntled huff as he exited the globe. The outfit disappeared with him as he did, and he trotted back to Celeste, exhausted and grumpy, plopping back up into her lap and curling up into a ball to snooze off his efforts. It was a good thing he wasn’t looking up, because the gnome controlling the yeti with her remote control was now giggling from a nearby porch railing, having the Globe Yeti stand on Dordy’s side of the globe, turned around, shaking his rear at him. Everyone laughed again, and Dordy was soothed and spoiled and cheered up by much attention and pats and plentiful Smokywood Pastures treats. Nat, admiring the next decoration to be erected as the Globe Yeti resumed its job running around the decorations, smiled and reached for her quill again, returning to her writing. Yesterday morning was neat, too! Celeste and I had been talking about buying this plot of land for sale in Halfhill that used to be a farm before it got all overgrown and stuff, and yesterday, we finally did! We went over there and I handled the paperwork while Celeste hung out with Suyin, since paperwork is more my sort of gig, and then, like an hour or two later, when I got the final contract worked out and agreed upon, I went up to go get Celeste. We went down to the farm to go start work on clearing it up. It was such a mess! One quadrant had these big huge boulders strewn across it, one was overgrown with weeds, one had a broken-down old cart sitting on it with a bunch of weeds growing up around it, and one has this massive flat rock the size of a bedroom floor on it, with moss growing all over the top!
Our plan was, Celeste would use the MUTT to work on the tasks in each quadrant, and I’d use Nosebleed and his cargo nets on his sides to carry off all the things and stuff we clear out of the garden. The rocks went first. Celeste used the MUTT’s huge drill to break the boulders apart, then the MUTT’s claw hands to lift them and place each peace in Nosebleed’s cargo nets. Then we went to the nearby Yan Zhe River, to a muddy stretch of riverbank, to dump the rocks. We didn’t just flop them out in a big pile, though. We wanted it to look natural and beautiful still, so we placed each chunk in a random spot. It’s sure to make a great new house for bugs and worms and grubs and salamanders and stuff!
After the boulders were the weeds, preceded by a visit from none other than Haohan Mudclaw himself, the leader of the Tiller’s Union! He checked out our progress, impressed that two outsiders had come in and bought the farm and then shown the work ethic to immediately get started on working it, even though the farm was in such a sorry state. He wished us good luck with it, and even sent his friend Gan Lai by, who had a weed-killing concoction he’d designed, to take care of all the weeds. Gan sprayed our weeds for us, showing us how the veggies love the spideroot plant that he used in his spray, but the weeds shriveled up at its touch. Now we had something to use on weeds! YAY!
Next was the cart, preceded by a visit from Gina Mudclaw, another Tiller’s Union council member! She complimented us and wished us good luck as well! That was so nice of her to do! Then she left, and Suyin told us where to find wood to rebuild the cart with. A whole huge load of Kyparite tree wood had been lost in the lake north of the Heartland, so we got our swimsuits and dived down after it, and Celeste dried it out with her fire magic! No more waterlogged wood! We rebuilt the cart and got it moved off the farm plot, deciding to keep it to harness Nosebleed up to so we could increase his hauling capacity. More weed spray handled the weeds that had grown up around it, and Celeste used the MUTT to clear all the weeds out of the plots.
Each time we had cleared a quadrant of the plot up, we had tilled the soil and planted seeds. Lots of different veggies were growing now! Only thing was, each veggie came with its own problems! Some were parched and needed watering. Suyin gifted us one of her old watering cans, which was super nice of her! We filled it up in the water reservoir on the property and got the parched plants watered. Others were infested with vines or bugs, and one hadn’t grown out of the soil properly. Celeste gave that one a yoink with the MUTT, and we yoinked vines off of veggies and sprayed bug repellent on veggies and I even had a wrestling match with one giant vine that had gone completely and totally nuts, swinging around trying to whip at people and other veggies. I don’t know what came over me when that happened, but I felt as adventurous as ever, and I JUMPED onto the vine, swinging around on it and biting it in half as it whipped me around this way and that, yelling crazy things like “YEEEEEHAAAAWWWW!” and “RIDE ‘EM, COWGIRL!” which made Celeste and Suyin laugh. But I beat that vine though! Celeste got the MUTT and found a good spot in the Krasarang jungle to dump them, a place where there was already plenty of natural compost. She flew there and back in the MUTT in pretty much no time! By then, we were getting pretty tired from all the hard work, so we figured that giant bedroom-sized flat rock with all the moss growing over it could be dealt with a bit later in the week or something. In the meantime, we had three quarters of the plot planted and rapidly growing veggies so quick in the Valley of the Four Wind’s wonderfully fertile soil that they were likely to be ready the very next day!
Then Tuesday night was DEATHROLLS! We got to play in the Brawlpub again this time! YAY! It was me, my bestie Nah, First Mate Nate for his first game ever, Maya, Cari, Zarshal, Narcoss, and his friend Ella that I had seen around a few times before but had never met. There was another friend of Narcoss’ named Ingrid that happened along toward the end of the night too, but unfortunately, everyone was already saying their goodnights by that point and were sleepily staggering their way out, so she only got like a round or three in. We’ll have to make sure to invite her early next time, if we see her!
Anyway, it was a fun night! There was a funny series of Dares where, as Narcoss had had to run out for a minute – restroom break or something – people were getting Dared to do things when he came back, like pat him on the back, tell him what a great guy he is, tell him one thing he’s better at than they are, and, in Zarshal’s and Nate’s case, hoist him up on their shoulders and carry him around while complimenting him and telling him how great he is. Narcoss came back eventually to an absolute shower of praise and adoration out of nowhere that he hadn’t expected! Eventually it dawned on him that this was all a bunch of Dares, but he didn’t care; he was digging all the love and attention anyway. Typical Narcoss! HA! Another part of this was me having to be his butler for three rounds. I was standing behind him, waiting on him hand and foot basically, talking to him in a white collar Kul Tiran accent and getting him drinks and stuff. Zarshal called me the “Natler,” and that name stuck for a while. It was silly! Narcoss had brought his cat, too, Commander Precious, who was stuffed into his fancy jacket and poking his head out to watch the goings-on around the Brawlpub table. But then Narcoss’s big thanks to me for that one was to Dare me to do something I had once been Dared to do several months ago in a game in Upton Borough… lick an armpit! I was spared Zarshal’s armpit this time, being Dared to lick his friend Ella’s armpits instead, but that was still super gross, even if she is a really clean sort! UGH! I’m just glad I have my travel toothbrush and stuff with me when I leave the house! Then they were all trying to get me to drink, remembering how Addi and Nea used to try to get me drunk enough to get me to say the F-word. But it didn’t work this time! I nursed my drinks! HA! Maya gave me a Whisper Dare, too, to wait a couple rounds and then, when he least expects it, without warning or context, take a turnip and flick it at Nate! The kind of turnip she had in mind was this weird mushy orange kid that I usually use to toss at Zarshal to banter when I see him coming at a distance. It sure took ol’ First Mate Nate by surprise when I suddenly flicked it across the table at him without a word later! He turned all orange, and he was so surprised, he fell out of his chair! It was funny! Narcoss had a simple truth in which he had to tell whose food he’d overspice as a prank, but he had a funny answer! Mordale, the coffee fiend with a tendency to overstress to the point of panic as often enough, which Narcoss found amusing and enjoyed constantly triggering. Maya had to table dance, which Nate found to be a hard thing to tear his eyes from, though I was blushing like mad and not looking up at all. Cari gave more fun to Nate for his first time at a Deathrolls game, giving Narcoss’s friend Ella a Steamy Romance Novel to read to Nate in a sultry voice while sitting in his lap, and all this while Maya was still dancing in front of him on the table! GOSH! Nah was giving out spicy Truths left and right while making me blush as much as she could, making sure plenty of people answered the Screw, Marry, Kill Truth. There were more hilarious Dares and embarrassing Truths, and it was an all-around awesome game night! I love Deathrolls!
This morning was a much more peaceful morning. We ended up spending the night in Ironforge last night, Celeste and I did, staying over at her uncle Rugnar’s, since I was there already and quite tipsy from the post-mission drinks at Mairy’s pub. We wanted to stay over because the WINTER VEIL DECORATIONS ARE GOING UP TODAY! We figured we’d have a big, hearty breakfast with her uncle Rugnar, then watch the decorations going on from the Auction House steps, which is what they’re doing now! Greatfather Winter’s rope maze and chair are all set up, Greatfather Winter is bustling about getting things ready, the Smokywood Pastures cart just got finished unpacking by the goblins that run that company, Greatfather Pepe is perched on top, the big primary Winter Veil tree is up, decorated by a really awesome gnome in a jetpack, and the snow globe is up! OH! And here comes Greatfather Winter’s magical sleigh through the Commons, coming up to give rides around Ironforge! Dordy has enjoyed it all too, running amok in the lava vents in the trenches around the Commons before discovering the new Winter Veil tree and trying and failing to mark it as his territory, then exhausting himself chasing around the Globe Yeti that Celeste was trying so hard to catch last year in pet battles before she finally got one. Dordy chased it around so fast for so long he wore himself out, and now he’s sleeping in Celeste’s lap! HA! I love this little guy! Anyway, I think that’s it for the Commons decorations! The Commons look AMAZING now! Colorful, festive Winter Veil lights are going up all over people’s front porches everywhere I look too, and I see dwarves in ram-pulled carts and gnomes in mobile mechs hauling more Winter Veil trees and crates full of decorations all over to other parts of the city as well! It’s all so very heartwarming and happy and exciting to watch! I love this time of year! YAY!
Now it’s time I get my nose out of this book and go have some Winter Veil fun with Celeste Rugnar and Dordy! First order of business: SLEIGH RIDE! I don’t think we have Dordy’s aviator goggles with us, but it’s a comparatively slow ride and not very high or windy, so I think he’ll be just fine without them. He’ll get to see the Winter Veil sleigh ride sights unimpeded! After that, more fun and games and treats and snow globe fun! It’s gonna be so awesome! WHEEEEE!
Nat smiled excitedly as she tapped the excess ink off of her ravenfeather quill and into her inkwell of purple ink. She replaced her quill in its open cherrywood case, closing it and replacing it in her pack before capping her inkwell and replacing it in her pack as well. She snacks on some Smokywood Pastures Spicy Beefstick for a while as her pages dry, thinking of offering some more of it to Dordy if he wakes soon, as he seems to really enjoy it. Dordy snoozes on for the moment, however, so Nat shrugs and nibbles her way daintily through it, now more fully involved in the conversation with Celeste and Rugnar than ever that morning as they gasp and ooh and aah at this and that, their faces alive with the Winter Veil lights and their own smiles. Nat’s face is much the same as she points out a new pet battle initiated between a Kaldorei male and the Globe Yeti. Celeste grins as this elf has every bit as hard a time as she had had with it. The three laugh, waking Dordy finally. Nat feeds him the last of her spicy beefstick, then closes her diary, the ink now dry. She packs this away as well. Next, as the other two (and Dordy) finish off the last of their Smokywood Pastures lunch, they rise from the steps at last, heading over to where the Greatfather Winter sleigh stops for passengers to get in and out. They find the whole sleigh to themselves as a human couple gets out, the man helping the woman step out as they laugh gleefully and proceed on to check out the snow globe next. Celeste, holding a squirming Dordy in her arms, Blinks into the sleigh, then helps Nat in. Rugnar comes in behind her, and again, Celeste is in the middle with her love on her right and her dear uncle on her left. Dordy is let loose as he sleigh magically whooshes into the air, standing with his back paws on Celeste’s lap and his front paws on the front wall of the sleigh, yip-yip-yipping at the human couple, now a pair of flying Winter Veil gnomes in the snow globe, laugh gleefully as they zip by each other in the air. Dordy dashes back and forth, propping himself up left, right, and center as the sleigh zooms through the warm Ironforge air, looking particularly excited at the lava of the Great Forge. Everywhere they look, Winter Veil trees and lights and other decorations are going up, and the sleigh and its nine tiny reindeer, a glowing red nose on the front-most reindeer, zooms leisurely through it all. Nat giggles happily with the others as she rides, and, each time she spots a group of merrymakers, she leans over the sleigh, wishing a Merry Winter Veil to all, and to all a good night!
|
|
|
Post by Natasha Ebonlocke on Dec 23, 2021 19:58:48 GMT
December the Twenty-Third!! MERRY WINTER VEIL!!! The house atop the rock spire in Turtle Bay was as bedecked with Winter Veil cheer as its inhabitants could make it. Outside the house, the first and second floor outer balconies were hung with artistically drooping garland, rising up to meet each large post that marked each segment of railing. Spiraling along the railings themselves were spiraling strands of colorful, twinkling Winter Veil lights that the Angler’s Wharf residents below joked were enough a shining beacon that it served as the local lighthouse. The upper floor railing, on all four sides, were hung in the center with an enormous Winter Veil wreathe apiece.
Inside the house, much the same was done for the inside balcony, with garland, lights, and a wreathe, though, since all four sides were visible at once, there was only one wreathe hung. It was artistically centered on the back balcony railing, with the floor to ceiling, wall to wall window looking out at the south sea serving as its backdrop. The spiral staircase leading from the upstairs to the ground floor, and then from there to Celeste’s workshop and hangar bay below also sported garland and lights, though it made handrail usage a bit inconvenient. Fortunately for the residents, however, they had their youth, and only habitually used the railing grasp by grasp, in between the spiraling lights and garland, instead of needing a hand on the railing all the way up and down the full length of it.
The large stone fireplace was also hung with garland, but no lights, as a fireplace seemed like an odd place to hang lights to Celeste and Nat. It did, however, have several stockings hung, one for each of their little family. Celeste, Nat, Dordy, Nosebleed, Cloud Dancer, Onyx, and Ebonhoof were all represented here with Winter Veil stockings decorated with stitched designs to show Winter Veil stars or trees or Greatfather Winter himself, and each had the owner’s name stitched in their folded-down tops.
In the sitting room, right in the center of the vault ceiling center of the room, stood a tree selected to be tall enough to stand high and nearly reach the ceiling two floors up. Colorful lights twinkled all over it, a Winter Veil star shone warmly from the top, and the tree was hung on all sides with age-old symbols of Winter Veil. Softly shining, colorful orbs, both opaque and transparent. Tiny reindeer and a few little Greatfather Winters. Elvish spiraling horns and little drums. Candy canes and little faux gingerbread houses. Colorful little pine cone and icicles. More delicate, shimmering orbs, but these decorated with gold or silver glitter, or faux frost, in scenes of Greatfather Winter flying his sleigh with his nine tiny reindeer, their leader’s nose glowing red, or a scene of a little wintry cabin, laden with snow, with little candles in the windows and smoke furling from the chimney, or else a snowy, barren, quiet forest with a stag, a doe, and a couple of brilliant red cardinals in barren trees.
But there were also ornaments with meaning to the house’s residents. Various fish from around the world were duplicated in little carved, painted stones, or else in glass, a few duskroses made from the same, a few fishing poles, a few little quills and books, another of a happy little fellow in a fishing boat with a rod and line dangling off one side, and many others. More specific to the residents of the house on the rock spire were ornaments crafted to look like Dordy the molten corgi, Cloud Dancer the Pandaren wind serpent, Nosebleed the direhorn, Onyx the black netherwing drake, and Ebonhoof the black stallion, complete with the intricate little saddle with the square wooden post on back that dangled a little lantern on a little rope, which really swings if nudged. Even the Flying Nosebleed and the MUTT were here, the former with a propeller that could be nudged to move, the latter with adjustable arms and legs. Dordy’s ornament in particular shone like lava and felt warm to the touch, a mixture of Nat’s illusion magic and Celeste’s fire magic. Nosebleed had his stoic expression on his face with a movable head that gave that lazy look he gave people in life. Cloud Dancer could be made to undulate. Onyx’s wings could be spread and folded.
All in all, it was clear that much love and care had gone into decorating this home. Celeste and Nat were spending their first Winter Veil in a home they built, owned, and lived in together, and no stone had been left unturned in their quest to display their happiness for this fact. The tree had many gifts under it, not only for each other and their little family, but also for Nat’s father and Darkshire neighbors, Celeste’s uncle Rugnar, and more Stormwind friends that Nat was waiting to give to others that hadn’t been able to make it to the Winter Veil-Themed Deathrolls game for gift exchanges. The stockings, except for Celeste’s and Nat’s quite yet, had been stuffed. Dordy was going to have another food coma with all the treats in his, and Nosebleed and Ebonhoof’s were stuffed with lush grasses and leaves from around the world that had been enchanted by a druid to stay fresh and lush for at least another week, as well as little saddle decorations to make them prettier, though of course neither would notice. Large pieces of jerky, bare nibbles to Cloud Dancer and Onyx, filled their stockings in addition to more ornate pieces for their saddles, something these intelligent beings would note and appreciate more than their land-walking herbivore counterparts.
It was between this ornate Winter Veil tree and this warm – in more ways than one – fireplace Nat sat with her feet up on the right side of the couch, diary propped up against a lap that rose to her raised knees, her legs covered in a warm blanket. She wore a gaudy Winter Veil sweater and a Greatfather Winter hat, and a broad smile as she listened to the sounds of welding coming from the workshop a floor below, Celeste’s happy humming as she welded, the crackling fireplace Dordy was snoozing in front of, and the waves and seagulls outside. She was just settling in to write her diary entry, with a steaming mug of hazelnut coffee, a small Smokywood Pastures tray of cheese, crackers, and little squares of various meats, a cherrywood quill case, and an inkwell of purple ink on the end table to her right. Her ravenfeather quill was in her hand, and she was munching away on a little square of cheddar as she began writing her entry for the week.
Dear diary,
MERRY WINTER VEIL!
I’m so excited! The house is all decorated inside and out, the Winter Veil tree stands to the second-floor ceiling almost and is decorated with the things we love, and I still have so many gifts to give Celeste and my family and friends! Winter Veil is in the air everywhere I go, and most of the rest of Azeroth looks much like the house here… Decorated top to bottom, practically, in Winter Veil cheer! It all makes me so happy to look at!
It’s been a very Winter Veil week, too! Even the trouble we ran into as far as the Whitewind Company goes has had its gifts, after a fashion, though I would rather have skipped the bad things that happened and just accepted the gifts. But, this is the real world we’re talking here, so it’s always going to be a thing that good things are there counteracting bad things that have happened. But, enough of that rambling!
The Winter Veil week started after my last entry, when we spent a few days at Celeste’s uncle Rugnar’s house in Ironforge to watch the Winter Veil decorations go up and do Winter Veil things like play in the snowglobe, ride Greatfather Winter’s sleigh, have gingerbread cookies and milk, and going on long walks around the city to see the rest of the Winter Veil decorations too!
After Celeste and her uncle Rugnar and I watched the Winter Veil decorations go up in Ironforge from the auction house steps there in the Commons, we had lunch at Rugnar’s house. They eventually decided to take a nap, and I was still all giddy, so I went to Stormwind to see if any friends were around.
I found Zoe there, and we decided to go for a hike and hang out! We hiked out of the gates of Stormwind, heading toward Goldshire, which was also totally decked out for Winter Veil, and she was telling me about some woman that had told her some sort of secret, then put a curse on her so she couldn’t repeat it! GOSH! And if she tries, she has this big, throat-burning coughing fit! Being a mage, I offered to try a curse dispel, though I wasn’t sure it would work, as I didn’t know the properties of this curse, enough to know what to target and how to cast the dispel. Naturally, knowing nothing of this sort of curse, it didn’t work. We decided to just let it be for now, and Zoe would just see where that whole story takes her. In the meantime, we got to talking about just different normal life stuff, catching up and having pleasant conversation. Zoe mentioned something to do with this woman who did fortune telling with cards, though they were different from Tarot cards. She said she’d never had a reading before. So, as we had reached the Three Corners area of the road just inside the Redridge Mountains, we decided to turn toward Darkshire and do a reading at the inn there. We figured it would be a suitable setting for Tarot reading, tempered, though, by the presence of still MORE Winter Veil decorations! Zoe’s reading turned out to be a sort of personal one, however, so, as I let Celeste and maybe anyone else super close to be read these, I’d better refrain from gushing on about it. Not that I don’t trust those closest to me, because I do; it’s just that it isn’t my personal stuff to share. It’s someone else’s! Anyway, Zoe seemed to be pretty thrilled with her reading, and seemed to be surprised by its accuracy, so I suppose I haven’t lost my touch in all the time it’s been since I’ve sat and done one for someone! WOO!
After that, she was due to meet another couple of people in Stormwind, so we walked up to the flight path from the inn and flew back to the city. She invited me along with, and I met her friends in front of the Lamb, and there were so many people there I can’t even remember all their names!
Nat smiled at the incredibly happy day. Celeste and Rugnar, Zoe and other Stormwind friends, it had made for quite a happy way to kick off Winter Veil! It was one of the best days she'd had in a while, and that was saying something, as she usually had some pretty awesome days!
But then, there were scary or rough days that always seemed to come once in a while to temper so many good days in a row. Nat calmed down a bit, frowning a little and remembering what had happened the day after the amazing one. She steeled herself and continued writing.
The next day, Friday (my final vacation week from work for the year!), Riven found me in Stormwind. She told me the first bad news of the week – the Whitewind’s Grace had been attacked! Finally, after all this time, Lucina and Telrissa had shown their faces again… and it was to attack the Company’s ship! Apparently Lucina had smuggled a bomb aboard and detonated it as the big stunner to open the surprise attack, and her and Telrissa had done their best to try to scuttle the Grace! Nah had been present, but had been blasted off the ship with the bomb and critically injured. My bestie is now recovering in the Dalaran hospital. I’m so glad she’s okay! But there was an early Winter Veil gift with this attack, too… Lucina was captured! Telrissa escaped, but Lucina was being held captive aboard the ship. She’d been disarmed and bound. Riven was wanting to interrogate her, and needed help!
Interrogating prisoners is definitely not my forte, so I called up an old contact of mine to help in my place, this worgen named Dom, offering him gold to do it, and double the price if he can get the information we needed from her. Apparently really Dom put the fear of Gilneas in her, from what Riven told me. She’d given up what we suspected… that she, Lucina, who normally switched sides with no cause other than the other side offering her more gold, but this time had vociferously refused all gold offers, was motivated this time by blackmail. Evidently there’s a death knight – one of the same ones that worked for Ashnard Reynard, even! – that got Telrissa to blackmail her! Either the death knight or Telrissa found out she had once gone back on one of her contracts, which was to slay a Nightborn elf. She had fallen in love with the guy instead, and had left him alive, having him flee and I think faking his death? If word ever got out that she’d done this, not only would her professional reputation be wrecked to the point of her not getting any more contracts, but the one that had hired her to kill him would send more assassins after him after learning he’s alive. So, for love, she had risked everything, and now she was blackmailed, forced to turn on the Whitewind Company, and even captured and imprisoned in an attack! It’s all very sweet and romantic, but it’s also super unfortunate not only for her, but for us. What we really need to do is promise to find and hide the guy, offering to her to protect him and her, which would, as she has already proven, be worth more to her than gold, which in turn would ensure she never turns on us again… and would help reunite them and continue their love, to boot!
She also revealed that Telrissa, the one who was blackmailing her into turning on the Company, was hiding somewhere in Suramar, likely in the Court of the Stars, or else in the Nighthold. Riven has spent the past week drawing up plans to scout the city and scour both of those locations to find Telrissa. When we find her, we gotta figure out from here where the death knight is that’s pulling HER strings… so much intrigue! What a yarn this is turning out to be! I can’t wait to see what happens next… I hope we find her and save her if she needs saving from the death knight, or else are able to make the arrest if she’s doing this because she’s sided with him!
Nat placed her quill in her inkwell on the end table to her right, placing her open diary on the couch to her left. Lost in thought, she lifted her hazelnut coffee for a few dainty, fortifying sips. She was thinking of the whole story, going back to the first news of Lucina and Telrissa first turning on the Whitewind Company. They’d abducted Nah’s adoptive father, Zandrion, and Nat had gone with Nah to track him down. They’d discovered the pair were hiding with Ashnard Reynard’s two death knights in the Stormwind Cathedral’s crypts in the Cathedral’s sublevels!
Nat went back further in the story in her head, figuring to think on the Cathedral incident in a moment. Reynard had been that Cult of the Darned guy hiding out in Pyrewood Village, just outside of Gilneas’ broken gates, that had abducted their friend, Nat’s frost magic teacher, Archmage Aedalia Songbird, this summer. Nat had gone with Nah to free her, and the adventure turned out to include Lucina Moonfeather, a Kaldorei rogue that had once been hired to go after Nah, though the contract had been bought out by Lady Whitewind. Once again, in this encounter, it seemed she was on someone else’s payroll and, once again, just when Reynard was expecting her to finish Nah for good, she’d turned and fired at Reynard to help them escape with a now-bound and cuffed Reynard… she’d been, once again, on Lady Whitewind’s coin after all, her contract bought out once more!
Nat could see why the death knights would be after her. If Ashnard Reynard was somehow still in contact with the death knights in his employ from his prison cell in the Stormwind Stockades, Lucina’s turning would have enraged them. With the information they’d gotten on her concerning her contract she claimed to have fulfilled but had really let go out of love, they’d have a brilliant revenge plan on her: under threat of revealing not only her professional failure and cover-up, but also the love of her life still being alive, force her to turn on the Whitewind Company and refuse all gold offers, fighting the Company to the death if need be. In the process, the death knights, and Reynard ultimately, get their revenge not only on Lucina, but on the Whitewind Company as well for incarcerating Reynard.
That’s why they had Nah’s father in the crypts. An elderly Kaldorei would be an easy one to break, they assumed, as well as being one heck of a piece of leverage to use against the company. It was their own bad luck that Nah and Nat made such a great team for puzzle-solving and adventuring. They’d been discovered, Zandrion had been freed, they’d gone down in the fight, and even Lucina had fallen victim to a frozen orb Nat had cast to barrage her into a corner so they could escape before the death knights they’d knocked out woke up. It was Nah and Nat’s own bad luck that they valued life enough not to kill to prevent even worse retribution, though Nah and Nat would do it the same way a thousand times more rather than kill them, even knowing the ones they’d beaten wouldn’t take that lying down.
After that, Lucina and Telrissa had lain low for a month or two, and nothing had been seen or heard of the death knights either. Reynard certainly wasn’t talking, down there in his prison cell.
Then one day about a month ago, Lady Whitewind had turned up missing, and hadn’t been seen since. Lucina and Telrissa’s involvement were heavily suspected, and Nah had found herself thrust into the role of acting CEO of the Whitewind Company.
And now this attack had happened on the Whitewind’s Grace this weekend, Lucina had been captured, interrogated successfully, and given up a lead to Telrissa’s whereabouts. This whole saga was leading up to Lady Whitewind’s location and recovery, hopefully…
Nat mused a bit more, knowing the bits and pieces of this whole story she’d just mused through could be found in her diary if she flipped back to find and assemble them all. She thought through the sequence of events a few more times, hoping to find something that would point to Lady Whitewind’s whereabouts, but no lightbulbs went off in her head. She’d just have to trust to the collective strength and wit of the Company to come up with a lead… and hopefully soon.
Nat took another sip of coffee, then munched on a little square of Smokywood Pastures ham and Alterac Swiss cheese stacked on a cracker, deciding to move on in her head now, as any more thinking on the subject would just be diminishing returns. She thought about what had happened next… and it was a happy thought! Smiling once more, she straightened her Winter Vale Hat, plopped her diary back into her lap, lifted her quill out of the inkwell and tapped the excess ink off, and resumed her writing.
The day after that, Nah snuck out of the Dalaran hospital. I dunno how she did it, or what the heck kinda painkillers she must have taken to be able to make it all the way to Ironforge to meet me, but apparently the plans we’d made earlier in the week to go and do Ironforge’s Winter Veil activities were not going to be broken, not even by getting blasted off of a ship in a surprise bomb attack!
So it was that I found myself with my bestie in Ironforge Saturday afternoon, me in my gaudy Winter Veil sweater and Greatfather Winter Hat, and Nah, typical Nah, dressed had dressed up in a skimpy-looking Greatfather Winter suit and hat. We went to see Greatfather Winter first, and he looked worn out! He said some gingerbread cookies and milk would sure hit the spot, so we decided to get him some! I know how to bake gingerbread cookies, and the local inn right there in the Commons has the milk, so I went to the Smokywood Pastures goblin to buy the holiday spices required, and we were just about to go to the auction house to buy small eggs for the recipe, when the goblin stopped us. He was in a bad way, and he needed the Whitewind Company’s help!
The goblin guy said there was this abominable greench, along with lots of little leper gnome helpers, up in the Alterac Mountains that one of Greatfather Winter’s reindeer, Metzen, as well as lots and lots of Smokywood Pastures’ goods stolen and hidden away in its lair! I figured, alright, we’ll get it all back – I’ll just make the cookies and stick them in the oven right quick in the inn, we’ll make the trip up, then be back to the inn in time for cookies to be done and purchase the milk while we’re there!
The plan turned out to be a good one. I teleported Nah and I to the old Dalaran crater, as there’s still an old city teleport anchor there… though, since Dalaran got uprooted, the floor where the anchor was is now like a couple hundred feet in the air! Knowing this, mages usually cast slow fall spells on themselves and others before taking the portal, so I did that first. Nah and I found ourselves in the Hillsbrad Foothills next, falling softly through the air like a couple of Winter Veil snowflakes or something. It was good it was so gentle, with Nah’s injuries, which she seemed to be hiding quite well. I still suspect strong painkiller usage there! Anyway, we had led our flying mounts through the portal as well, so we were able to fly on Onyx and Azure up into the mountains to find the abominable greench’s lair.
Sure enough, there he was, snoozing in the entrance to his lair, and all the Greatfather Winter suit-wearing leper gnomes were there as well! Metzen was locked in a pen that seemed to magically block him from flying or leaping out, and all the Smokywood Pastures goods were stuffed into the cave behind the greench. Winter Veil trees and crates and sacks abounded, all guarded by the giant, ferocious-looking yeti.
The good news was, others were also gathered there. It seemed news of this dastardly deed had spread far and wide pretty quickly! This group of people I didn’t recognize charged in and opened the attack. I attacked from a hilltop with frost spells. Nah stealthed in behind to help with her daggers. It didn’t take long to subdue the yeti! We knocked it out! Now Metzen could be freed, and all these people could help us take all these Smokywood Pastures goods back to Ironforge to be delivered to good little children everywhere! YAY!
I conjured a portal for us back to Ironforge, and boy, were those goblins happy! They gave us some of their super tasty goods as reward, even! Greatfather Winter gave us early gifts for being good after that, too! It was more Smokywood Pastures stuff! We were gonna eat good that night! Heh. After that we went back to the inn to check the oven. The cookies were juuuuust right! We bought some milk as well, then took the treats back to Greatfather Winter. He was super happy about that too, and gave us even MORE Smokywood Pastures treats!
After that, it was all play and no work! We played in the snowglobe and took S.E.L.F.I.E.s, and Nah captured the Globe Yeti in a pet battle, and rode Greatfather Winter’s sleigh, and even got Greatfather Pepe, with his adorable little hat and beard and jacket, to perch on our heads throughout the whole thing! It was so much fun, and so heartwarming throughout! I’ve done this with Celeste the last two Winter Veils, and Rugnar this year, and now I’ve gotten to do these events with my best friend, too! YAY!
And there was MORE Winter Veil happiness, too, the next day! My gift to Celeste and myself both last week was to buy that little plot of land for a farm in Halfhill. Well, we’ve made more progress on it this week! We went out the other day with the MUTT and the Flying Nosebleed to go and clear off that final giant rock covering the final quadrant of the plot! When we got there, though, Gina Mudclaw came to visit us, one of the Tiller’s Union council members! She was being super nice, telling us how great the farm looked, how impressed she was with our crops, how good they were when we gave her some, and how impressed she was with how much work we’d put into turning it from a weed and boulder field with a wrecked cart in it into a tidy, productive little farm. She was so happy with how this part of Halfhill looked now that she went to go get help for us to get that last boulder off the field! How nice of her!
What I didn’t expect was for her to bring back the entire Tiller’s Union council! They were offering membership into their friendly co-op, and all that’s required in that union is friendliness, peace, and the odd helping hand! We agreed, and they voted us in unanimously! It was so great! And Haohan even brought along his thunder lizard, which they call mushan, to help. Ironically enough, the mushan’s name was Thunder! Hehe. We came up with a plan in which all of us would help. Celeste would get in the MUTT and break the giant boulder to into more manageable pieces with the MUTT’s giant drill tips in the arms. I’d pilot the Flying Nosebleed, operating the winch to lift the pieces into our newly-rebuilt cart, which Mung-Mung the Hozen (they are so peaceful and inclusive that even a few Hozen are in the Tiller’s Union! Great news for us humans!) would hop around between the cart and the boulder pieces, attaching and unattaching the winch and its wrapping chains to the boulder chunks as Celeste broke them off the main boulder. Haohan would lead Thunder, who was harnessed to the cart, back and forth between the farm and the river, with Mung-Mung riding in the cart and me flying with overhead, so we could unload the boulders with the winch into suitable places for riverbank critters in the Yan Zhe river. Then we’d ride back to load up Celeste’s latest chunks! Farmer Fung and Gina Mudclaw, meanwhile, were going to rake all the tinier pieces out of the soil! Teamwork!
With all of us working together, it didn’t take long! We had the plot cleared in no time! We thanked our Tiller’s Union friends profusely, inviting them to stay a while for lunch on us. It was a nice little lunch party, and everyone got to know each other a bit more and had a nice time. The Tillers eventually headed out one by one with full bellies and broad smiles, and Celeste and I went back to work.
The bad comes with the good sometimes, though, as I wrote earlier. We got all four quadrants of the plot fully planted with all kinds of things, and with it came all the dry soil, runty plants, vermin, birds, bugs, weeds, and entangling vines! There was SO much work to do all of a sudden, with this instant crop soil, that it was immediately overwhelming! I remembered some cool stuff I saw back at the market, though, so we went back to go and find some more complex farm implements! We found out Pandaren marketing can be kind of humorous and amusing, too! There was a sprinkler system with this outrageous Jinyu water princess on the package, a sonic insect-repelling system that featured a roaring Mogu Thunder King on the package, and a state-of-the-art plow that featured a powerfully built Pandaren male with bulging muscles and two Pandaren cubs hanging off his arms and a lovely Pandaren wife kicking a vermin in the face. Celeste instantly wanted to integrate the plow into the MUTT’s systems! We got the sprinkler system and sonic insect repeller installed as well, and then we got back to work.
Again, it didn’t take long! The dry soil was watered with a flip of the Jinyu Princess sprinkler system, the Thunder King sonic insect repeller had the bugs cleared off the farm within seconds, and before all that, the Earth Slasher Master Plow had been used to till the soil for planting on the entire farm in less than one minute! Great stuff! Celeste got the vines and weeds yoinked out with the MUTT, as well as the runty plants pulled up above the soil a little bit higher, and boom, just like that, our seeds we’d planted less than an hour before were already growing enormous crops! Celeste wants to not only install the Earth Slasher Master Plow into the MUTT’s systems, but also that sonic insect repeller was giving her more non-lethal ideas for the MUTT’s defense systems, too! She’s gonna have her hands full in the workshop for a while now! In the meantime, we have a really awesome farm to grow our own food on! I’ve taken up Pandaren cuisine as a hobby, too, so I’ve made Pandaren breakfasts, lunches, and dinners on different days for Celeste and I and Dordy! It’s been so yummy! Cloud Dancer and Onyx prefer hunting their own food, but now Nosebleed and Ebonhoof can now have giant carrots that we bring to them, too! Noms for the whole family! YAY!
There’s also been another project I’ve been working on for a few weeks that Celeste knows about, but doesn’t know what it is yet. I’ve been taking the MUTT out to work on a project for her, sometimes even working on it on the way to or from the farm with the MUTT! One more day, like probably today, and I’ll have this project finished and ready for Celeste too! WOO! I can’t wait to give it to her!
Nat paused at the happy thought to grab a few more cheese and meat cracker stacks. She munched away with a close-lipped smile and sipped at her coffee daintily as she thought about how splendidly this Winter Veil week was going. Winter Veil with Nah was all kinds of fun and even a little adventure. Winter Veil week at home with Celeste and Dordy and the family was ongoing. Winter Veil with her father and Darkshire neighbors, as well as with Celeste’s uncle Rugnar in Ironforge, would be this Saturday, on the primary day of Winter Veil, after an early morning of gift exchanges atop the rock spire, sitting around the tree with Celeste and Dordy before visits to their outdoor family members.
Nat’s thoughts strayed to Tuesday evening. A heartwarming evening with Stormwind friends had been held on Tuesday evening. Nat smiled, popping one last cheese and meat cracker stack into her mouth before returning to her writing, munching away as she happily recorded the event for posterity.
Then Tuesday night was DEATHROLLS! Only, it wasn’t a normal Deathrolls game. We had Winter Veil-Themed Deathrolls! Everyone brought their gifts they’d gotten for everyone else along with them to Ironforge, where we scoped out decorations around the city as we looked for a good spot to play. Right by Greatfather Winter, under that tree, by the Smokywood Pastures cart seemed like a good place to play, with the snow globe and the reindeer and sleigh there, but we didn’t want to make a bunch of noise and be in the way of others, so we looked at the tree in the Mystic Ward. It was sort of dark in there, lit mainly by the towering Winter Veil tree in there, and it looked sort of like when you wake up as a kid early on the primary day of Winter Veil to open presents, or else late in the evening when only the tree lights are on in your sitting room during the month of December. Then we looked at the towering Winter Veil tree in the Hall of Explorers, and everyone decided this was the one. Out of people’s way, lots of room to sit under the tree with the huge pile of presents all colorfully wrapped up under the tree, and the area was brightly lit with warm braziers as well as the tree. Everyone seemed happy with this spot, so that’s where we played!
Bruuk’s Corner was right on the other side of the little gnomish spot next to us, New Tinkertown, so I made a quick dash over there, returning with more Smokywood Pastures goodies, as well as enough hot chocolate for everyone to have plenty of refills! I spread out my picnic blanket to give a bit of cushion and warmth over the cold stone floor, and people seemed pretty comfy on that. It was me, First Mate Nate from the Whitewind’s Grace, Maya, Cari, Zarshal, Zoe, and, having snuck out of the Dalaran hospital again, my bestie NAH! Everyone gave everyone super nice presents! I had a blow hairbow with a sapphire clasp for Zoe, who’s always changing her hairdo on the spot and loves blue, an authentic ten-piece Pandaren Wok set for Maya, who could basically be pretty much a head chef at any restaurant, a massive book for Cari that held the history of the Highborn elves (which she’s made a big research project of for much of the year) that holds the collective works of many elves and archmages on the subject, as well as a pair of fold-out maps in the center that has old Zin-Azshari on one map, and a map of Suramar on the one in front of it. The map came with an incantation that can make it a transparent overlay of Suramar on top of Zin-Azshari, to show differences between then and now. Helpful if there was to be an ancient artifact to be found there somewhere! I got First Mate Nate this fancy white compass with gold trim, gold hands, and gold numbers, like actual real gold. I did a bit of engineering work and crafted Zarshal, a career scout, this spyglass that not only extends like a spyglass, but also can be worked into angles to make a periscope, just like on gnomish submarines! Now he can scout from cover! He even got to use it last night during an adventure he came along with us on! It was neat!
For my bestie Nah, I got this charm bracelet and had two charms made for it by this mechagnome metalsmith I know who can do really delicate work. He’s helped me make gifts, holiday or birthday or otherwise, for me in the past. The charms are one Kaldorei crescent moon and one duskrose. They represent my bestie and I! When the charms are linked together, it’s enchanted by a druid to just faintly make a sound like my giggle on the breeze, as well as to perform a minor rejuvenation spell that will work on most minor to moderate bumps and bruises and scrapes and cuts. It works the same as the Kaldorei crescent moon trinket she got me that plays her signature snicker and does a rejuvenation spell for me!
I was sort of worried about originality in wanting to do the same thing for her that she did for me, with the emotional healing of a familiar snicker or giggle and a minor healing spell, but it turned out to be a cool thing… because she’d gotten two matching rings made of silver with a pale Kaldorei crescent moon in the setting made, so we could be what she calls, “twinsies,” so having “twinsies” charms made for each other simply fit the theme!
We each got the other a more practical gift as well: she got me this new swimsuit of Shal’dorei silk that’s enchanted to carry the scent of Ashenvale, as a sort of happy reminder of my bestie, and I got her this super cushy, comfy, durable hammock that has self-tapping bolts for trees or wood posts and compacts to a small size and weighs almost nothing, so that she can take it with her in her travels and enjoy luxurious lazy moments in like Booty Bay or something, sipping on little drinks with little colorful umbrellas in them! The thought of my best friend living large so simply makes me happy!
Everyone else had super awesome gifts too! Maya gave me this robot called S.C.A.T.T.E.R., which stands for Self-Controlled Auxillary Trivializer of Terrestrial Everyday Routines, which is a robot that does pretty much anything you want it to, especially house chores! This will really save a lot of time around the house! It’s awesome! Maya says it will even play with Dordy! It was making us hot chocolate and getting us more food off the Smokywood Pastures platter all week! Cari gave me this enchanted ribbon that boosts my spellcasting and a bottle of this lotion from Mags’ Lakeshire Soap Company that makes my skin shine a bit! Both are really thoughtful and useful gifts! Zarshal gave me this journal and a silver pen, which I already know I’m gonna pack with me everywhere for easy note-taking during adventures and whatever else! Everything from mysteries to engineering and fishing notes are going into this! Zoe gave me this new deck of cards that, at first, I thought was a second Tarot deck from the mystical designs on them, but actually turned out to be really cool gaming cards! Like a regular card deck! I’m gonna use these a LOT in Stormwind and at home for games and fun! They’re so cool-looking! First Mate Nate was mainly there to pass out Nah’s gifts, as she was injured and stuff, and hadn’t known that this would be a gift-giving thing, so he didn’t have anything himself to give out. Which was totally fine, we were here to celebrate Winter Veil and our friendships, not loot each other senseless! Hehe! Everyone’s gifts to everyone else were super thoughtful and absolutely brilliant! I’d jot them all down, but listing every single person’s gift to every single other person there would take half the rest of this diary! But yeah, it was a super incredible night, and everyone there had such a great time! Definitely doing this again next year! It was so awesome! YAY!
Nat smiled again, reaching for her nearly-empty teacup. Before she got to the handle again, however, she found it being topped off! Celeste had come upstairs! She looked she’d spent the morning in the workshop, alright, with the grease smudge on her left cheek and another one on her nose. Her fingertips were faintly blackened with oil, she had wrenches and screwdrivers and such sticking out of her pockets, and she was barefoot. Tomboyish as Celeste was, her pretty, lightly-freckled face, lovely hazel eyes, cute, short strawberry blonde hair, tucked as ever behind her ears, and welding mask raised up over the top of her head, could not possibly look bad with even ten times so many grease smudges. Nat thanked Celeste with a happy smile, got a quick kiss in, and shared some of her Smokywood Pastures tray with Celeste before Celeste returned downstairs with her own mug of coffee to get back to welding and happily humming. Smiling fondly again, Nat returned to her writing, the thought of work bringing her mind to the previous evening.
Last night, though, it was back to work! It was me, Lady Riven Summersong, a Quel’dorei and our Lead Freelancer in the Whitewind Company, Sparkles Cogswiggle, the Mechagnome that had invented the S.C.A.T.T.E.R. robot and others of Maya’s gifts last night, Mairead Brewbeak, the Wildhammer Dwarf that had come with us on last week’s adventure from the Wetlands to Ironforge, and my old buddy Zarshal! We met on the Recluse porch, all except for Riven. Sparkles and Mairy were already there when I was meeting up with First Mate Nate to discuss logistics, and our friends Sparkles and Mairy heard us. Then Zarshal came along a few minutes later, and he heard us talking as well, and pretty soon all three were offering to come along with. Maya was with Cari this week for Winter Veil, and violence isn’t doing Cari’s stress levels any favors, especially as Cari is such a pacifist to begin with, so I sort of suspect that, while they stayed home, they sent these two, who are also in the Voyagers guild with them, along in their stead to help us. Either way, I was grateful for their company!
When I got the word over the Whitewind Company comms from Riven that she was in place and ready to begin, I took the crew over. We met her at the Lakeshire end of the bridge, on the side of the road, and she briefed us on the mission. We were now going after the Black Knight in the broken-down old keep that Nah and I had scouted out two weeks prior! Riven was hoping for a stealth infiltration and confrontation with the Black Knight, but she realized quickly there was zero chance of that happening, with a screaming Wildhammer dwarf ready for “thumpin’” and a mechagnome who was stoked about the opportunity to put bombs on everything she laid eyes on.
What we did have, however, was a Quel’dorei sniper, a Wildhammer brawler, a Mechagnome demolitions expert, a stealthy Worgen scout, and a Human frost mage. It wasn’t a stealthy team, but it was a fairly complete team, though the absence of a healer was a glaring hole in the roster. Still, we felt confident in our chances to knock out a few skeletons and one knight, so we started up the hill toward the keep.
The side road to the keep from the main road was blocked with a nasty little infestation of orcs, and, though most just watched us warily, what with the peace treaty in place, a few came out and confronted us. I would have dearly loved to simply help clear them all out and made them all go away to join the rest of the horde in Orgrimmar or something, but with the peace treaty in place, the Alliance had to leave them alone. Still, the ones that came out and tried to stop us from going down our own road to deal with our own faction’s problem up in that keep looked like a sufficient enough reason to have to defend ourselves from their own breach of the treaty, and we dealt with it accordingly. The one big orc caused a bit of a problem, as did the orc shaman, but the hunter orc was a pushover, as were the two orc sentries we’d dispatched further up the road from them. Also, they were outwitted and outnumbered, and soon broke ranks and fled despite all their words of blood and honor and whatnot. Just a bump in the road to our true objective!
When we got to the keep, however, the way it was guarded had totally changed from our recon mission Nah and I did! There were no skeleton guards outside anywhere! There were none on the grounds, or up on the walls, or in the tower, or anything! So we made our way inside the outer walls and went up to the main entrance to the keep. This time, the portcullis was lowered, the entrance blocked!
Sparkles seemed happy enough to see this. She went up to the gate and rigged up one of her bombs. It was then she realized she’d forgotten her fuses… but that didn’t bother her a bit! She opted to detonate it by… throwing her spear at it? Mechagnomes are crazy! We took cover, and then she threw her spear and detonated it! The blast was massive! When the dust settled, though, we looked at the portcullis… and it was still there! It was all bent and twisted, but it still pretty much covered the opening, and had a good bit of rubble around the bottom of it to boot. I would have tried Blinking past it to find the mechanism to raise it, but it would be dangerous locked in there by myself for any length of time with an unknown number of undead roaming the halls, and besides, the mechanism likely couldn’t raise the portcullis anymore anyway, as bent out of shape as it was!
Mairy tried next. Turns out she’s a shaman! She beseeched the spirits of earth to move the rubble and metal out of the way, and they did so! The way was open! Good thing Mairy was there!
We went inside cautiously. No one was sighted at first… We went right, as the way left was all boarded up for some reason. Then we were about to hang a left, but just as we looked around the corner, we saw our first skeleton! The thing had a crossbow and fired at us! We jumped back just in time, and then, while it was reloading, I put out one of my Mirror Images to distract it and cast frostbolts at it. While that was out, our certifiably insane duo of Sparkles and Mairy had come up with a plan. Mairy was going to THROW Sparkles at the crossbow skeleton! It worked, too, oddly enough. Sparkles, who’s pretty much a Mechagnome warrior with plate armor and sword and spiky shield, flew through the air like a cannonball at Mairy’s throw and shattered the skeleton into a pile of broken bones! It was awesome!
We went around the corner again, and saw TWO more skeletons! One looked like one of those skeleton mages, with flames at its hands, and one more with a sword. We took cover again, ducking back behind the corner once more.
Zarshal wanted these ones. He stealthed around the corner, and what he did next surprised everyone… he poofed in out of nowhere behind the skeleton mage, wrecked it with his blades in one shot, Shadowstepped to the other skeleton and wrecked it in one shot as well, and then a third Shadowstep resulted in him up on the balcony above, wrecking a third skeleton that we didn’t even know was up there, also in one shot! He disappeared from view, reappearing next to us a moment later and looking quite satisfied with himself. I would be too; that was one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen a rogue do!
With the balcony apparently clear now, we climbed the stairs to go find the command room of the keep. As below, one way off the balcony was boarded up, but the other was free. We went that way, finding, again, one doorway blocked, and the other open. This was the ramp up to the command room, luckily enough. Unluckily enough… there was another skeleton warrior up at the top of it!
Another fight broke out! This one was a tough one, too! Frost spells weren’t doing much to it, and neither was anyone else. The fight went on for a good several minutes, and it wasn’t until Sparkles went up to it and stuffed a little bomb up the inside of its ribcage and blew it into a million pieces that we were able to get by!
At the top of the ramp was the doorway into the command room. It was here Zarshal got to make the aforementioned use of his spyglass I crafted for him for Winter Veil. He folded it into periscope shape, peering around the corner with it this time rather than us all poking our heads around. He darted back in a hurry, though! He said there was a huge, hulking death knight in there, all clad in scary black armor, with a huge flaming sword! How were we gonna beat this guy?!
Our insane duo were at it again, however! Mairy was going to throw Sparkles into the room! I thought she was going to use a bit of geometry to throw Sparkles at an angle where she’d bounce off the wall and ricochet right into the Black Knight, but then it turned out that the plan was to throw her across the room, and Sparkles, mid-flight, would throw her spear again, going for a surprise attack on the Black Knight! Only problem was, between the orc infestation, the skeletons all over the castle, and Sparkles’ bombs on the portcullis and right out in the hallway on the skeleton, the Black Knight already knew there were intruders in the keep a long time ago!
The fight was intense! I was casting frost spells at a distance, careful to keep Celeste’s antimagnetic metal-repulsing shield (the one she got me for Winter Veil while I was in that Dalaran hospital bed that I wrote about a couple weeks ago) active, as well as my frost barrier, even with the distance from the Black Knight. Riven was firing normal and trick arrows. Zarshal was using a rogue ability that ignores armor and penetrates through to the body with his daggers, though as stoic as this Black Knight stayed, it was unclear how much damage, if any, Zarshal was causing, or anyone else, for that matter. Sparkles got knocked out near a wall somehow, and Riven got smacked out of the room and landed in a pile on a barrel before storming back into the fray. The Black Knight kept stoically changing targets and stumping calmly after different targets, which meant a lot of Blinking was done if he ever set his sights on me!
Then, just when I was SO SURE we almost had him, the Black Knight conjured a Deathgate, confirming suspicions that he was a death knight, and escaped! That was such poo! I knew just a bit more pressing the attack would have him down, and the Redridge Mountains free of his crimes forever! Now we have no clue where he’ll go and set up shop next!
We looked around the command room next. There was a really morbid bodybag wrapped in chains up on the upper podium where a command table usually goes, and, in the corner, on a trashed command table, there were two chests. One had several hundred gold coins in it, and another was loaded up with everything from small swords and daggers to books and potions and stuff. It was a weird mix! There was also a note, though it was smudged now and not entirely legible. It was something about getting a hostage out of Alliance territory immediately, then a smudge, then the last three letters of a word, “rde,” which looks like “horde,” in the second half of a sentence about “-rde adventurers” would love the chance to do… something with the hostage. There was another few words starting a sentence that was about ensuring White, with White capitalized, though the rest of it was smudged, though it was followed shortly thereafter with “until someone arrives to pick,” and the rest of it was totally illegible. From what I was seeing, though, it looked like Lady Whitewind might be the hostage mentioned in the first sentence, judging from the rest of it! Whomever it was wanted to keep a hostage out of horde adventurer hands, as they’d be glad to do something bad to a Stormwind noble, and something about ensuring the Whitewind Company – due to the capitalized White – is held of long enough for someone to arrive and take off with the hostage. I bet that that someone came and got the hostage, likely Lady Whitewind, while we were fighting the Black Knight, and that he was there to keep us distracted until the hostage was moved, and that was done by someone coming and going while we were fighting him!
Not wanting this note, these chests, or this chained-up bodybag to get into nasty orc hands, or to be here for the Black Knight to use if he came back, we took everything back to the Whitewind’s Grace through a Stormwind portal I conjured up.
When we got to the Whitewind’s Grace, we divvied up the chests’ contents, and Riven went to write up the report of the excursion. The bodybag was sent belowdecks to be put into an icebox for Whitewind Company analysis the next day. I don’t envy anyone that task! I just hope Lady Whitewind is okay!
Nat paused again, frowning once more. She reached for her coffee, forgoing snacks for now, and thought back over the adventure she’d reviewed in her head earlier. Could her supposition be correct? Could this Black Knight be in league with Reynard, his other death knights, and Telrissa? Could they also be coming back for another attack on the Whitewind’s Grace to liberate Lucina and force her into service again? The intrigue was mounting, and still, Lady Whitewind remained missing. Nat really hoped she wasn’t the hostage mentioned in the letter, yet, from the other subtle clues in the smudged-up note, she couldn’t put the pieces together in a way that didn’t point to Lady Whitewind being the hostage they’d apparently just missed.
Nat put her coffee down, looking around the room. She hated that Lady Whitewind might well miss Winter Veil this year, though in her situation, if she really was a hostage right now, missing the holiday would be the least of her worries. Still, she knew Lady Whitewind well enough to know that she wouldn’t want Nat to miss the holiday due to brooding right through the holidays, and that she’d want her and the rest of the Company to enjoy it as much as they could once they’d done everything in their power to help her and had no other immediate options or leads open at the moment.
With that in mind, Nat forced a smile onto her face. Troublesome potential hostage situation or not, she was under Lady Whitewind’s unspoken orders to enjoy the holiday. She also didn’t want to mess it up with Celeste!
Her eyes wandered next to the fireplace. Dordy was there, lying on his side, apparently dreaming. Soft little yips were coming from him, and his face was looking serious. His legs were moving slightly as though running. Nat smiled more genuinely now. Their little love was having himself a grand chase of something only he could see, and with Dordy, at least, the world was perfect. Heaving a sigh, Nat kept her smile on and went back to her writing, knowing her boss and everyone else in her life would want her to enjoy this holiday regardless of what might be going on in the world. Her ravenfeather quill again scratched along the pages, just a bit more.
Whatever situation is going on in one place in the world or another, though, Lady Whitewind would want me to keep living my life, and enjoy it, and so would my poor bestie, laid up in a Dalaran hospital right now. So that’s what I’ll do, even as I follow every lead to get to the bottom of this case! In the meantime, it’s been an otherwise super amazing week, this Winter Veil week! Happiness and love and friendship and family has abounded this week in measures unseen in most other weeks of the year! Winter Veil cheer, gifts given and received, happy smiles and laughs shared, thrilling adventures and games, decorations and holiday activities all over, this is a week of abundant cheer every year! Though this year, just exactly like this week last year, may have had intense moments, it’s been awesome and memorable and full of love and warmth! I’ll treasure the moments I’ve had with my loved ones this week! It’s been such an amazing time! What a great life we live on Azeroth! YAY!
Nat’s smile was broad and full of love and Winter Veil cheer now. She tapped the excess ink from her quill into inkwell, waking Dordy, whose dream had ended and was snoozing more lightly again. Dordy came from the fireplace to hop up on the couch as Nat was replacing her ravenfeather quill into its cherrywood quill case and capping her inkwell. She swapped her open diary for the Smokywood Pastures snack tray, and she and Dordy snacked on those while the ink on her pages dried. The snack quickly disappeared as the fire crackled and, downstairs, welding sounds had become ratchet sounds, though the happy humming of Winter Veil carols remained. Nat wiggled with excitement. She had no idea what Celeste was working on down there, but, given that she had not been permitted to see just yet, she suspected Celeste might be crafting her a gift. She couldn’t wait to see what it was!
The snack tray emptied out then. Nat swapped it back for her diary, laying it on the end table to close her diary and collect her quill case and inkwell. The latter two she returned to their drawer in her writing desk, the former, to its proper spot on her bookshelf to the left of the desk.
CLANG!
A small, metallic clatter, too quiet to be heard all the way downstairs over Winter Veil carol humming and engineering noises, probably, came from the living room. Nat darted back out to find Dordy there on the floor with the snack tray, licking it clean. She’d forgotten to pick it up! Nat laughed; the food had already been eaten, so they’d lost nothing, and Dordy was enjoying what crumbs were left on the platter besides. Nat let the spoiled-rotten molten corgi pup finish up, then took it and her again-empty coffee mug to the kitchen sink for washing. Standing at the top of the spiral staircase next, she called downstairs for another trip out with the MUTT. She still had one last Winter Veil gift to finish off, and one more trip out with the MUTT, she knew, would finish it off!
A moment later, Nat was flying over Angler’s Wharf in the MUTT, Dordy now hanging out with Celeste in the workshop. She called out the same thing to waving Pandaren friends there that she had in the workshop before she flew out of the hangar bay door as she flew to a hidden spot in the Krasarang Wilds jungle to finish crafting Celeste’s biggest gift:
“MERRRRRRY WIIIIIIINTERRRR VEEEEEEEEEEIIIIILLLLL!”
|
|
|
Post by Natasha Ebonlocke on Dec 30, 2021 16:10:47 GMT
December the Thirtieth A cool breeze blew through the open screened windows of the house atop the rock spire. The sun was high in a blue sky and shining brilliantly, but in December in the jungles of the Krasarang Wilds, it didn’t beat down too hotly upon Turtle Beach and Turtle Bay, leaving the lovely stilt village of Angler’s Wharf and the rock spire home next to it with as close to perfect weather as one could ask. The open screened windows let in a good bit of sound, as sound carries so well across water, and even at this height one might hear sea gulls, gently rolling ocean waves, the distant murmur of Pandaren chatter, and, on this particular morning, the occasional sound of what seemed to be gnomish power tools, though anyone familiar to the area knew it was no gnome using them.
Nat sat at a desk in front of one such window, with her office door open, and the sliding glass door off to her right that opened to the west. Sounds came in from every direction with all the open windows, as did the lovely, refreshing ocean breeze. Nat smiled to hear Dordy’s yip-yipping, likely chasing a seagull or a crab along one of the boardwalks or a sandbar. She smiled to hear a drill and the faint puff of a welding torch. She didn’t know precisely what Celeste was doing, but, as it seemed to be another surprise for her, she was plenty excited!
For now, however, with Celeste doing something “top secret” down at the wharf, she decided to kill the time waiting to see what it might be by writing her weekly diary post. Her diary was open before her, as were her cherrywood quill case and her inkwell of purple ink. Steaming in a mug just beyond her diary was her usual coffee with liquid hazelnut creamer. With her ravenfeather quill in hand, she dipped it in her inkwell and began to write.
Dear diary,
It’s been a pretty relaxing and uneventful week, for once! I’ve been spending the final Winter Veil week mostly with Celeste instead of trekking all over creation. I’ve been out a couple of times, but mostly it’s just been spending quality time with Celeste. As such, this is likely to be a pretty short entry, as I’ve done almost nothing this week!
I did have an awesome day on the primary day of Winter Veil this past Saturday! As it was Winter Veil Day, I had the day off from work, too! And what a Winter Veil Day it was, too!
I think I felt Celeste maybe get out of bed really early in the morning, but I don’t think it woke me up enough to respond, and I think I was immediately asleep again after I felt her stir. But then I woke up later to Dordy licking my face and bouncing on me, and I looked around, and she had clothes in a pile on her side of the bed that were all dirty and covered in twigs and stuff, like she’d been in the jungle all morning! I didn’t have any idea what that was about, but she seemed to want to sleep more. She was groaning at Dordy to be quiet and let her sleep. He didn’t, so Celeste and I just kind of laid there and wished each other a Merry Winter Veil and talked for a few, and then, as I felt pretty woke up, I decided to go ahead and make a start on Winter Veil Day breakfast while Celeste went back to sleep. Dordy in particular seemed to really want to lead me somewhere!
When I got out of the room, though, I felt kind of confused… Some of the colored lights that were strung along the railing of the outside balconies seemed to be… moving? And the moving lights were a bit larger than the others, and there were new colors among them, too! I moved to get closer and see what was going on. Then I saw them… There, in the planters with the colorful flowering shrubs Celeste had brought up from the jungle, were suncrawlers! They’re these little beetles with colorfully glowing abdomens that live in the Krasarang jungle and hang out on giant tree roots glowing at each other. They’re super pretty! I was so surprised to see them up here in the planters that I didn’t even hear Celeste get out of bed!
She surprised me, talking to me from behind, and I didn’t even know she was there! She started telling me about how they won’t glow in the morning after a few days. She said she had used a pheromone spray that her mother had in her notebooks to make them do that this morning for the surprise. That’s so sweet and thoughtful! No wonder she was all dirty and twiggy this morning! She said after the pheromone spray wears off, they’ll glow in the evening like normal. So long as those bushes are kept alive and whole, they’ll stay up here and glow for me every night, so I’ll see my home from afar as you come back to her after my adventures… It was the sweetest gift I’d had since her butterfly hairpin with all the amethysts and the engraving of, “Thanks for all the butterflies. – Celeste” on the back last Winter Veil! She made our home a beacon for my returns! Of course, it’ll be a beacon for her, too, as she works so much around Pandaria sometimes! That makes it twice as much of an awesome gift, knowing that she’ll get to have the same beacon welcoming her home, too!
After that, we went downstairs to the workshop, where I covered my eyes to wait for Celeste to get ready. She told me I’d need my hands for this, though, so I kept my eyes closed and held out my hands, and I felt the familiar feeling of a remote control plopping into my hands. She introduced the R.O.P.H.E, or, Remote Operated Personal HElper, then explained how it works. It’s built off of a few different other inventions, like tonks and the MUTT design. Then she had me press a button with a smiling face on it. There was the sound of gears whirring and clicking, and a robot with the lower body built like a tonk, while the upper body is humanoid, rolled out from behind a workbench. It comes up to my waist, it’s so tall! Celeste said it has preprogrammed tasks, like letting Dordy out and back in, fetching coffee or tea, and sweeping the floor. It has tasks to help clean our eventual chicken coop but that’s not tested yet. It’ll warn if someone approaches if ever I’m here alone at night. She wrote a list for me that I could look at later. She had it come up to me next… and then it SPOKE to me! It was all, “Hello there, beautiful lady!” using a pre-recorded message Celeste had made. It seems Celeste had tried to mimic a robot voice while recording messages into the ROPHE, and the results have turned out to be rather comical! HA! I love this girl so much! And I was not able to get over how cool the ROPHE is for a good while!
I helped Celeste carry it up the stairs, me having the head, which was the lighter end, and Celeste carrying the other end, the treads, as she’s much stronger than I am. I had fun putting it to work right away, letting Dordy out, getting us coffee, zooming around the house in general. This is going to pair wonderfully with Maya’s S.C.A.T.T.E.R. bot she had Sparkles the Gnome make! I love it so much!
Next it was my turn to give Celeste her gifts!
With coffee in hand from the ROPHE, who had also just let Dordy back in, we sat down on the floor in front of the Winter Veil tree. Dordy wedged himself in between us, wagging his tail. I placated him with his gift first, a box of different flavorful jerky from around the world. He started gnawing on one huge piece happily, and I put the box out of reach with the lid back on. No need to go through the entire thing in one sitting! Then I dug around in all the gifts under the tree to give Celeste hers. It was a shiny truesilver heart-shaped locket with a beautiful, delicate little chain. Inside is a picture of Celeste and I the previous year, riding in Greatfather Winter's sleigh with Greatfather Pepe perched on either of our heads. We seem to be riding past Greatfather Winter, his tree, the Smokywood Pastures Cart, and the snow globe. The picture being as small as it is, not much of the background can be seen with deep clarity, but a close look would reveal that that's where they are. She and I are clearly having a blast, laughing and squealing as the sleigh zooms, with Celeste pretending to steer with the reins. I helped Celeste put it on, and we had a really deep, quiet, loving moment there for a while. It was one of those moments you always remember and cherish!
Eventually, though, I wanted to give Celeste her other gift as well. I gave her another gift box, which contained nothing more than a simple key. She was a bit confused, which made me grin. This present was supposed to be a tease at first! This one was also outside, so I had to get us upstairs to get dressed, as we were just in our sleepwear. She still looked super pretty even in just her sleepwear and the shiny truesilver heart-shaped locket, and she beamed as she looked down at it, which made me so happy! We got ready to go outside, then went out the front door, where I had her join me on Onyx, with Dordy harnessed in and wearing his aviator goggles as well. We flew down to Angler’s Wharf.
Angler’s Wharf was pretty much bereft of life this Winter Veil morning, with everyone inside with their families for their own Winter Veil Day gift exchanges. Celeste likes to tease in these sorts of moments, so I decided to tease a little myself. We landed on the dock sitting flat on the water where Other Nat parks his boat, and I lifted up my arms and spread them wide, and I was like, “Merry Winter Veil, Celeste! Do you like your gift?” Celeste kept making joke guesses, like I had maybe bought us a vacation home, or this part of the wharf being closed off and locked just for her. But then I pointed behind me, on the opposite side of the wharf from Other Nat’s boat, at… another boat! Boats are always tied to the wharf, so I knew it would just blend right in and hide in plain sight! HA!
Anyway, I pointed her toward the boat with a grin. It's a simple little thing, unpainted, and it has some sort of small, simple internal combustion engine on the back, like the MUTT's or the Flying Nosebleed's, but much smaller and simpler in design. The motor has a propeller down below water level. The boat was clearly very newly built; there was even a small spot of sawdust I missed in the bow – oops! There is room enough to seat two, though it looks like it might comfortably squeeze in four in a pinch. The two chairs are simple in nature to start, just a pair of folding chairs that also fold in to either inner wall of the boat. I explained that this is what I've been taking the MUTT out to craft all this month! Then I explained its construction, and why the boat was so simplistically crafted. I had made it from a kyparite tree, the kind of tree in western Pandaria with all the heavy loads of sap that harden into metal-hard amber, so the wood is super strong! The MUTT's carefully-set excavation controls helped me hollow it out and carve it to this shape, and the kyparite sap has hardened the wood even more! It had taken all my restraint not to paint the HECK outta this thing, not to mention install as many cool little engineering gadgets as I could. I know how Celeste loves to tinker with things, and how she likes to doodle on herr work and stuff, so I figured, I could let leave it as blank, unpainted wood, so that she could paint it how she likes, and I started with this simple, small motor as a starting point for her to build upon. Now she can swap it out for a larger motor if you wants to build or buy one, or add other cool gadgets and gizmos back there or elsewhere in the boat, or whatever she wants! It's a tinkering angler's boat! She can build it from this to be her dream fishing boat! She had the key to the engine in her hand already! I figured, if she’s going to be out on the water fishing for a particularly lengthy bit of time, she might want to relax comfortably instead of standing on her conjured iceberg, which would still be super useful during fishing trips that aren't like, all day or something, and this boat could be taken out for the longer trips! I also installed a teleportation anchor both on this side of the dock, and on the boat itself. She can now teleport the boat to and from this spot, if she is wanting to make a fishing trip to a fishing hole elsewhere in the world!
And, as I had dearly hoped… she loved it! She said it was awesome! YAY! She immediately sprang into excitedly making engineering plans for it, talking about how it’ll be much easier to fish the big fish now. Sharks and even whales! Oh gosh! Though she said she thinks we’ll just stick to sharks, as she said she wouldn’t know what to do with a whale. Then she mentioned a bigger motor, as I knew she would when I put the basic little starter motor in. Something to store and keep drinks cool was her next idea. Maybe a retractable roof to keep the sun off of us… the ideas kept pouring out! And I also told her, as she’s captain of this boat, she gets to name it, too!
Eventually, we went back home, smiles plastered broadly across our faces at this incredible Winter Veil Day morning. I had the ROPHE pour us another mug of coffee while they go lounge under a blanket together, cuddled up on the couch, and I settled in to sip at my coffee and listen happily to some of Celeste's favorite Winter Veil stories for a while, and share some of my own. We just enjoyed each other’s company for the rest of the morning, and Dordy’s. Then we went down later to the beach to give Nosebleed and Ebonhoof their Winter Veil gifts, a nice treat of heaps of giant veggies grown right at our own Halfhill farm! They loved that! That was the happiest I’d seen them munch-munching maybe ever! Cloud Dancer and Onyx got nice little ornate decorations for their saddles of various sorts, which they seemed happy to sport on themselves. Then the rest of the day, Celeste and I just relaxed at home and enjoyed each other’s company some more, with Dordy wedging himself between us. It was the most incredible and relaxing Winter Veil Day! YAY!
Nat smiled happily, placing her ravenfeather quill in her inkwell to reflect upon the Winter Veil season. Visiting with Celeste’s uncle Rugnar for a few days to watch all the Winter Veil decorations being put up, going and doing all the Winter Veil activities with them, then again another day with Nah, gift exchange Deathrolls, so many more gifts yet to give friends she still wants to see, and then this incredible Winter Veil Day she’d had with Celeste and their little family. It had all been so very wonderful and memorable! Nat sighed happily, beaming out the window at a small passing cloud without really seeing it, her mind’s eye fixed on all the many and varied events of the Winter Veil season. She hoped next year would be just as awesome!
Still smiling happily, Nat reached for her quill. She wanted to write about another tidbit of Winter Veil, and there was still the incident last night at the Cask ‘n’ Anvil in Ironforge last night to write about…
I got to see a few other friends I don’t bump into as much in Stormwind! Sir Garandor, of the Seventy-Third regiment of the Seventh Legion, and a couple of his crew, like a paladin named Suzzy Kiracalie, who is one of two twins of my friend Skylie Hassel! The other was this Jinyu guy named Mysushi, one of those rare Jinyu to travel out of the Jade Forest that didn’t go to Nazjatar with the Jinyu hunting party there. Maya and Cari were there too! We all hung out, just standing around on the Recluse porch for a while, and Sir Garandor had a gift for me! It was a flask of an elixir he uses, a stamina flask, which he said would fortify me in another adventure I might go out on if I needed to. That was so thoughtful! I gave him a spare copy of a book I had in my pack, but then blushed when I realized what I had handed him. I didn’t mean to pull that out! It was a Steamy Romance Novel called Of Elven Bondage, which, instead of keeping quiet about it, he pontificated over the title and described the illustration on the cover in detail, out loud, for all to hear, and then even read a few excerpts of it! That was so embarrassing! People were laughing so much! And, to make matters worse, there was already this Kaldorei male and female just down from the porch, seated on the other side of the bush from us, being very flagrant and blunt in what they wanted to do with each other. We all thought they were going to start doing the wild thing right there! Fortunately, they eventually left to go do that elsewhere! WHEW!
After that we just kind of hung out for a while longer as different people came and went. I even saw Xiraami for a few minutes on my way through Stormwind later on, when I wanted to take a relaxing walk! Other than that, nothing really happened this week until the Cask ‘n’ Anvil last night, as I had to miss Deathrolls Tuesday to help my father out that night with some stuff.
Nat giggled a bit at the memory of the previous night. She blinked away a few pangs of headache from the last vestiges of a hangover, pausing to sip at a bit of coffee before writing about the night at the Dwarven bar in Ironforge with her friend Mairy the Wildhammer Dwarf. She dipped her quill into her inkwell for a bit more purple ink, then began writing about that bit of fun.
I totally missed Deathrolls this week, as I had to help my father with some stuff that night, and the Whitewind Company didn’t have an adventure planned either, what with Nah recovering in the hospital and Riven on the trail of Telrissa the treacherous Illidari, but I did find Mairead the Wildhammer Dwarf and Sparkles the Gnome at the Recluse porch! We hung out for a few, and then Zarshal came along, too! Mairy was all excited about this new brew she’d just come out with at her bar in Ironforge, the Cask ‘n’ Anvil, and invited us all along for a taste test and a nice, hot gumbo dinner! It sounded so fun and so tasty, so we agreed, and off we went!
She started us off at her bar with an Algaz tripel, which is some kind of old Dwarven brew from Dun Algaz up in Loch Modan. It was super tasty, and a good way to sort of ease into drinking! The gumbo her brother Tiernan was cooking up smelled absolutely amazing too!
But then disaster struck…
Mairy went for the grand reveal, going over to fill up a mug of her new Winter Veil brew, the Dragon’s Nutcracker (some kind of red ale with an extra bit of nutty flavor for the Winter Veil season, and Mairy had described the ale as being very “full-bodied”). But, when she got there… nothing came out!
She tried other casks of it as well, and nothing came out of any of the spigots! We all got up to look around and help. Zarshal, with his worgen nose, smelled some sort of critter loose, as well as lots of spilled ale. Sparkles had her infrared goggles on, and found warm little spots where a small critter’s footprints had been. I was looking at the casks themselves, and found some tiny critter-sized claw marks around holes that had been poked into the casks. Then Sparkles peered into one in the opposite corner… and something bit her nose! OUCH! Zarshal looked more carefully, using that spyglass I got him for Winter Veil that can fold into a periscope too, and all he saw in there was empty cask!
This told Mairy all she needed to know… and boy, was she swearing up a storm! IT WAS A WOLPERTINGER!
Mairy explained to those that didn’t know that a wolpertinger was a creature that looked like a bunny with deer antlers and stuff, and was invisible until you got drunk enough to see it, and it was infamous for wrecking casks and drinking all the brew! Unfortunately for us, that meant that the only way to catch it and get it out of Mairy’s bar was… getting absolutely SMASHED!
Resigned to my fate, I gulped nervously – Mairy was going for her “emergency stash” that she had locked behind a stout iron door in the back corner of the bar. What she brought out made me even feel even more trepidation… she had SULFURON SLAMMER stuffs! She had one bottle of liquor with a picture of a bearded skull, and another bottle of liquor with a picture of a dwarf kicking another dwarf right in the… well, right between the legs, anyway… Gosh! Heh. Then she poured four shots of the two mixed liquors, sprinkled GUNPOWDER in each, then lit a match and set them all on fire! You have to drink this all in one gulp and close your mouth right after you slam it back, too! It burned SO much, and not just because of the flaming gunpowder, either! I’ve been hoarse all morning! I steeled myself by doing something I’ve seen Dwarves do before drinking these… I threw back my head, and yelled, “SLAMMERS!” at the top of my lungs, then threw it back quick! ACK! I couldn’t stop coughing and yakking! It was so bad!
Eventually, we all got super drunk, though somehow all the running around trying to find the wolpertinger was also sobering us up a whole bunch, so we’d have to drink even MORE Sulfuron Slammers! It was the worst! But, I’ll do almost anything to help a friend, especially to save their business, so slam them I did!
Anyway, yeah, we all got super plastered, then kept drinking periodically to make sure we STAYED super plastered, and then we were able to see it… the wolpertinger!
It was absolute CHAOS! I dived after it and ended up bellyflopping onto a chair, which didn’t feel too great, and made Sparkles cackle at me maniacally. Mairy broke one of her own windows trying to catch it when it zipped over to a wall, though she did daze it by accidentally stepping on it in the process. I tried to freeze it in place with a frost nova so we could capture it, but I missed. Wolpertingers are so fast, and they zip around bars like a ricocheting bullet! There was one moment where it had latched onto Sparkles the Gnome and was biting her arm, and she couldn’t dislodge it, so I had her hold very, very still, and staggered up to her drunkenly with a chair. This terrified her more than the wolpertinger, seeing me facing her and raising up a chair, knowing how bad I am with weapons and how bad my aim is, not to mention how drunk I was, but then… it turns out my aim while drunk is spot-on! Either that or I – or, more likely, Sparkles – got very, very lucky! Anyway, I whacked the wolpertinger right off her arm! Sparkles threw her giant wrench she also uses as a weapon at it, but missed and shattered a lamp instead. Luckily nothing caught fire from that! Then she tried to do this Heroic Leap thing that warriors do to squash it, but ended up smacking her face on the low ceiling. Oops! That’ll leave a mark! . Zarshal, who, being so much bigger than the rest of us, took WAY more slammers to get drunk, eventually doinked it with a thrown bottle. That one stunned it! It was just lying there, ready for capture! Mairy got Tiernan to give her a pot and a lid, and that was that! Captured wolpertinger! WHEW!
There was talking of squishing it, and Mairy wanted to punt it off a cliff for all the damage it had done to her casks and for drinking all her ale, but I just couldn’t bear to see the adorable little critter suffer such fates. It hadn’t meant any harm! It was just acting according to its own instincts! So I came up with another plan – take it to the ice trolls, and set it loose on THEIR brews! Trolls won’t ever be smart enough to realize what is drinking all their brew, let alone learn that they have to get drunk to even see the thing in the first place, so the wolpertinger would be safe, and have all the alcohol it could ever hope for! So, we took it to the ice trolls of Dun Morogh, southwest of the Ironforge city gate, and set it loose! Sure enough, it zipped right to a cask… though it looked like a stolen Dwarf cask! Serves those nasty trolls right for stealing Dwarves’ hard work! And now the wolpertinger can linger! It can live and have fun and go on adventures! YAY!
After we snuck to and from the ice troll camp, we went back to the Cask. Mairy served us all the gumbo that Tiernan had just finished, and I offered for the spicy variety, of course. It was soooo tasty! And… finally… we got to try the one emergency stash cask of Dragon’s Nutcracker! Winter Veil brew and spicy gumbo in a cold mountain warmed naturally by its own magma! What a perfect way to wrap up the Winter Veil season! We were there for a couple more hours before bed, just eating gumbo and telling drunken jokes that Dwarves made, and talking about Wildhammer stuff, and generally just enjoying each other’s company. There was also a new Mechagnome that walked in late in the evening to join us, named Tiff. She was funny! So, cold, snowy mountain, heated up with its own magma inside, gumbo, Winter Veil brew, and time with loved ones and new friends alike. What else is Winter Veil even about!
Nat smiled again, rubbing her slightly throbbing head. She sipped a bit at more coffee, giggling to remember what bits and pieces she could of the previous night through the drunken haze. The wolpertinger had been such an adorable little critter, odd as it looked with deer antlers growing out of a bunny’s head. She was really happy to have been able to save it. Her heart had gone out to the poor stunned little critter, but heck, it was alive, and besides, Mairy’s business had to be saved! She was just glad she could set it loose for more adventures among those who would never find it! And the Winter Veil time spent with friends old and new afterward had been fun, too!
Nat sighed happily again. She sipped daintily from her coffee mug, then went back to writing just a bit more to wrap up her entry.
This morning, Celeste is down working on her tinkering angler’s boat I made her for Winter Veil! She’s got something secret in mind, talking about “Nat’s spot,” so I am hanging out up here at the house, just sitting here at my desk writing while she works on that. Dordy is with her as well. She made him a sort of miniature “crow’s nest” in the boat, where she says he can hang out in his Dordy bubble that she made him for diving underwater with us. She’s still pretty excited about that adventure, and I am too! I can’t wait to see what that surprise is going to be! I do love going diving!
For now, though, I think I’m gonna make a bit of lunch, chips and sandwiches or something, then teleport some down to the teleportation anchor I put at Celeste’s dock at the Wharf. Boy, will she be surprised! I’ll have to make double, just in case Dordy gets to it first. He’ll want some anyway. This will be fun! Heh. Just another Winter Veil season gift! I love giving Celeste surprises! And I love Winter Veil! What a great time of year! I can’t wait to see what happens next! YAY!
Nat tapped off the excess ink from her ravenfeather quill into her inkwell of purple ink, smiling as she put it into its cherrywood case. She closed up her inkwell, capping it and placing it and the quill case into their side drawer on her writing desk in her office. She left her diary open in front of the window for the pages to dry, with a paperweight on either side so the lovely, cool breeze coming through the window didn’t blow the pages over and smudge the ink before it could dry.
She padded off to the kitchen next, making sandwiches. Thin-sliced smoked turkey, leftover from Winter Veil dinner they’d had with her father, with Alterac Swiss cheese for Celeste and Dordy, and spicy Pepperjack cheese for her own. Stone-ground mustard and a cool, creamy Pandaren style of mayonnaise went onto the bread under the meat and cheese, and slices of tomato and onion went on either side of a hearty slice of lettuce, all grown at their own farm in Halfhill. Fresh-made potato chips went onto the three plates holding each sandwich, and a small cask of Pandaren ale and a stein, as well as a bowl of salt-free water (out of their own desalinated water system Celeste had engineered in the house when they’d built it) for Dordy were also gathered. Nat teleported Celeste’s and Dordy’s lunch down to them, then took her own back to her office.
The ink now dry on her pages, she removed the paperweights from her diary and closed it, returning it to its spot on her bookshelf along the wall to the left of her writing desk. She sat back down to her desk. Her coffee gone now, she had brought her own Pandaren ale with her, and was soon munching and sipping away as the wheels in her mind turned. A new adventure of her own was already forming… her close-lipped smile (she was still munching) grew as her plan for this adventure grew. Soon, she and Celeste would have a new outing to go on, and it would be perfect for their whole family! It would be one final gift to Celeste as Winter Veil drew to a close. Nat looked forward to it already. As she’d written in her diary, she couldn’t wait to see what happens next!
|
|
|
Post by Natasha Ebonlocke on Jan 6, 2022 16:26:49 GMT
January the Sixth The usual Thursday morning scene unfolded in Nat’s office in her home atop the tallest rock spire in Pandaria. A steaming cup of coffee with a bit of Nat’s favorite liquid hazelnut creamer sat at the far right corner of her diary, opened now to the next blank page. The cherrywood quill case was open, with the ravenfeather quill in Nat’s right hand. The inkwell of purple ink was open as well, the cap upside-down next to it. The usual noises of Celeste’s engineering projects was also audible, though this time the sounds came up from Angler’s Wharf instead of from Celeste’s workshop.
The difference this week… was a map.
This map was open to the left of Nat’s diary, spread across the rest of her writing desk and showing the entirety of Azeroth, with all its regions and major cities labeled in their proper places. Nat grinned any time she looked at this map, a conspiratorial look on her face. She sat now grinning at it, muttering about different possibilities, and different supplies they’d need.
After a long moment pontificating on the possibilities open to her and Celeste, she smiled broadly again, turning back to her diary. She dipped her quill in her inkwell of purple ink, tapping off a bit of excess and beginning to write.
Dear diary,
I’m planning a new adventure for Celeste and I! And Dordy as well, of course! It’s something of a surprise that I’ve been thinking on for a while, but now that Winter Veil and the New Year are done, I have time to really dig into it! I’ve got to think of where I want to do this at, and I have a map of Azeroth so I can figure it out. Then I need to make sure I think of all the supplies we’ll need for when we’re ready to make this trip. As I have told Celeste my diary is always open to her to read whenever she wants – I have no secrets from the Sun of My Life! – I can’t write it down yet and spoil the surprise, but still, I’m really excited about going!
Celeste really seems to like the boat I built for her for Winter Veil for her to tinker with and make engineering modifications to! It’s already gotten a number of surprise modifications! The bottom of the boat has been replaced with a thick layer of shatterproof glass, which gives an absolutely beautiful view to the underwater terrain and all its amazing wildlife! Also, Dordy now has his own crow’s nest mast in the back, and it’s big enough to hold the Dordy Bubble (the shatterproof glass ball with pedals to work fins we want to train Dordy to use to maneuver and dive underwater with us that Celeste designed!), and it’ll give him a great view over the water when he’s harnessed into the crow’s nest! She also raised the decking in front, and made a super comfy seat there for me, which will give me a great view over the water as well! Her current project is adding pontoons to the boat for added lift over the water and add stability to the small craft. She’s outside working on that right now! Then we’ll be able to make fishing trips all over the world with it! This boat is gonna be so much fun! YAY!
Also, speaking of trips away, I saw Lex Tuesday morning for the first time since Elinore’s birthday party, like a month ago almost! He’d been scarce for some time, and Maya has been running the Voyagers in his absence. But yeah, I saw him as I was walking up to the Blue Recluse in Stormwind Tuesday morning, with an umbrella out because of the rain that morning. Lex was there, also carrying an umbrella, except for some reason, he was sitting outside in the rain, sitting in a soaking-wet chair, trying to eat breakfast in the rain! I knew even then that something was off. Then I got closer, and saw he was super thin and gaunt, with lots of big circles under his eyes. Wherever he’d been, it had been super unpleasant for him, that’s for sure!
We spoke briefly when we saw each other, and said it was good to see each other and stuff, and then I got him to go inside out of the rain. He carried his rain-soaked breakfast inside with me, seeming to be out of it so much that he didn’t seem to realize the rain had made his food soggy!
We got inside and ordered a new breakfast. I had my usual heavily-loaded omelet and hash browns, both doused in salsa, as well as a few pieces of toast and some coffee. Lex ordered eggs, bacon, and toast, and coffee as well. We got our coffee quickly while we waited on our food, and we started to get caught up on what’s been going on in our lives.
I told Lex about Telrissa and Lucina turning on the Whitewind Company, and how they’d blown up the top deck of the Whitewind’s Grace with a bomb Lucina smuggled aboard, and how we’d captured Lucina and gotten her to give up Telrissa’s location in Suramar somewhere, and how Nah was aboard and gotten blown up and put in the hospital in Dalaran, and how Riven and I were going to trek to Suramar to find Telrissa and then her benefactors, and put a stop to the whole thing, and hopefully find Lady Whitewind and get her back from her abductors. Lex seemed surprised that so much had gone on in the month he was gone!
Meanwhile, Lex had been in Revendreth for the past month, though he said what he was there to do was super personal and he told very, very few people about such things, so I probably shouldn’t put it here. It isn’t my secret to tell! Suffice to say, though, that it was super intense, and I’m just glad he’s back in one piece! It was certainly a riveting story, and it kept us going right through our delicious breakfasts as he told it! I just hope he continues eating as well as he did that morning, and gets lots of sleep, so he can get back to his usual size and self!
Besides that, I had spent a lot of time at home with Celeste and Dordy, as well as two days with my father in Darkshire, so not a whole heck of a lot else went on this week.
One thing that did happen, however, was DEATHROLLS! Tuesday evening, we all went and played Deathrolls at the hot springs resort in Feralas! SWIMMING IN JANUARY! It was great fun! Even my bestie Nah snuck out of the hospital in Dalaran again for this, with First Mate Nate assisting her! YAY! Besides her, it was me, Maya (who had to leave early in the game, but Sparkles did come to take her place!), Cari, Rylee, Mags, and Zarshal, as well as this guy I’d met from the Voyagers a few times, Lahil, and a brand-new member of the Voyagers named Mathias, who is an aspiring paladin with the odd nickname of… Pea? Heh. A sort of light-hearted hazing went on with the freshest fish in the Voyagers, and he ended up with a nickname that grew and grew as the night went on. By the end of the night, he was Sir Matty Ice, the Knight of Peas! HA!
First things first – Mags and Rylee had missed Winter Veil Deathrolls, but there were still gifts to give out! Mags had the most thoughtful plushies for everyone, of course, being such a plushie fanatic herself, like a plushie of Gil and Nelson, the two pets in Maya, Cari, and Rylee’s family! The one she gave me was really more of a super comfy pillow, with the one side looking like the back of a Tarot card, and the other side being the Star! The Star is a super happy Tarot card, and I like night better than day, too, so that was a really great gift! Then I had a pair of plushies for her as well, custom-made at Tucker’s Toys in Upton Borough in Boralus, of course. This fulfilled a Dare from the Deathrolls game we had when I was in the Dalaran hospital myself, to get her a plushie for Winter Veil, though that was likely to have been my gift already anyway! The plushies I had made were relevant to that night as well. There was this cat that walked around the hospital that Mags always petted when it came by, and also, she was happily talking at one point in the night about how seals can stretch really long and thin when they want, or else smoosh themselves up into a big fat ball! So, I had a cat plushie made, as she doesn’t have one of a cat yet, with adjustable limbs, head, and tail, so it can be positioned in any pose, and a seal plushie that can be stretched long and thing, or smooshed into a big fat ball, and will stay however you stretch or smoosh it! She loved them, so that was good!
For Rylee (with advice from Maya), I had some plain, blank twenty-sided dice made from shed dear antlers. To go with it, I got some paint that Maya’s mother, who is an alchemist, that was made to change colors at the artist’s will. Rylee being a big fan of painting and of Deathrolls, and basically a fanatic for any sort of fun, I figured she might like custom-painting her own dice for Deathrolls games! From Maya and Cari, she also got a silver circlet with a sapphire gem in it. She loved it, and it looks really great on her!
Anyway, Deathrolls at the hot springs was super fun! Everyone brought their swimsuits, except Mags, who repeated her stance on swimming: “No dunk, only sprinkle.” She’s so funny! Like two thirds of the group sat in the hot, steamy water, and the rest were on my picnic blanket on the shore. There were some really deep Truths shared, like Mathias sharing who his greatest inspirations were (Uther and other renowned paladins), and some spicy ones too, and surprisingly, not a single Screw, Marry, Kill Truth was given! Mags got the opening roll, and had Nah and Rylee, who both rolled ones that round (including the Truth or Dare rolls), had to go over to the geysers – which Mags called “spray-spooters,” heh – and leap on it and get launched into the air! It was super cool to watch! They both went like sky-high, and Rylee came back like, “Ow, my butt nearly became my face!” Gosh! Mags was like, “Wow, you guys are crazy! That was tall as the cathedral tall!” It really was crazy! Though I’m glad Nah landed in the water; she’s still recovering from being blown up! Then I had a Whisper Dare for Nah for her to, every time Rylee rolls the dice, to say, “Rylee rolled really rad rubies,” until Rylee finally questions Nah on why the heck she keeps saying that. Heh. Then Cari Dared Lahil to go grab one of the giant crabs and ride it into the hot springs. That didn’t work out too well; Lahil got pinched really hard! Oops! The biggest Dare came when FOUR of us rolled ones at once, including the Truth or Dare rolls, so the extra three had to join in! Cari got the Dare, so she dared me, Rylee, Mathias, and my bestie Nah had to do a famous play of our choice. I suggested Romulo and Julianne, Westfall Story, and the Wizard of Og, but Rylee had the most entertaining one. She suggested Shronk, a story of a Dustwallow Marsh ogre who was friends with a donkey and had to free a princess named Fiona from Lord Quadrofart. I grinned over at “Pea,” Mathias that is, and said the princess should be named Peaona. Cari’s last stipulation for the skit? We all had to act it out… as HOZEN! So there we were, blurting out “ook-dooks” and “slicky streams” and “sticky wickets” and whatnot while acting out probably the most absurd version of Shronk ever witnessed! HA! Cari got Dared by Matty Ice to say, “And boom goes the dynamite” after everything she said until she rolled another roll of one, which, with Sparkles the explosion-loving gnome present, was causing Sparkles to twitch more and more and talk about her bombs as though she’d dearly love to detonate a few right there at the hot springs! Sparkles Dared me to try and take a nut from her robotic squirrel, which just resulted in me getting chased into the water as I had to flee from it, heh. Nah finally granted Sparkles’ deepest desires that night too… She asked her if she had any depth charges among her bombs, and that was all it took… Sparkles gleefully fulfilled her Dare, setting off a depth charge in the bottom of the hot springs that sent a warm tidal wave over everyone! Mags had had to leave just a bit early, lucky for her! No dunk! Only sprinkle! HA! There were lots more hilarious Truths and Dares. It was really a super fun night, swimming in January!
Nat grinned as she traded her quill for her coffee mug, sipping daintily at the strong, steaming liquid while her quill rested in her inkwell. She peered out the window, seeing Turtle Beach, another site Deathrolls had been played a few times, though the lowest pier of Angler’s Wharf, the one that sat flat on the water, had been the site for more games than Turtle Beach had. Nat thought idly of hosting a game on Turtle Beach again sometime. There was certainly a lot more room, and no Pandaren running around the docks with fishing poles all over.
Nat lost herself in thought, staring idly at a giant snapdragon turtle roaming the beach, meandering around a viseclaw crab. She could see Nosebleed and Ebonhoof at the back of the beach, munching away at the foliage, grazing to their heart’s content. The trees of the jungle swayed slightly in the breeze, and the waves, audible from up here despite being gentle rolls, were splashing lazily upon the shore. As she watched the idyllic scene, her mind wandered. This time last year, her dearest ambition had been to join a group all her friends had hinted warnings against. She’d done so anyway, and it worked out as badly as her friends had been hinting. But then, it wasn’t a complete disaster; if she hadn’t begun hanging out with the one single person that made the group bad, she wouldn’t have met Celeste, and that one meeting had made her life a million times happier than she had dreamed it could be when she first met the bully in the old group. She was a million times happier this year than she had been at this time last year, and this house here, on this rock spire, overlooking the idyllic, beautiful scene below, was all possible because of her mistake last year, so she certainly had no regrets!
With this in mind, the previous night’s events stirred in her memory. She took one more dainty sip of coffee, then traded it back out for her quill again. Last night had been a focus on just those memories, and a truly unique experience had unfolded. Nat returned to her diary, refocusing to jot down the memories of last night’s trip out with her friends.
Last night was a truly unforgettable experience, in a really weird, but really deep, sort of way. With no leads on Telrissa’s precise whereabouts in Suramar to follow up on just yet, Nah still in the hospital, and Riven still out of town investigating for leads in Suramar, we didn’t do a Whitewind Company contract job last night. Just like last week with Mairy at the Cask ‘n’ Anvil in Ironforge, we went out with a friend to go on an adventure instead. This time, Rylee led us out! She wanted to take us to Val’sharah in the Broken Isles, up to the northern coast to sit at the edge of the ocean and watch the sun set. When we got there, she revealed her idea to us. She had brought along a duffel bag, and in it were several blank canvases, paint brushes, and lots of different colors of paint! Rylee said we would be “soulpainting” this week! I had no idea what that meant, but it turned out two be a twofold experience. First, she’d give us a theme, and, following the theme, we’d meditate for five minutes on that theme, allowing what’s in the deepest recesses of our hearts to rise to the surface. The theme? The new year! “New Year New You,” she called it, and that brought to mind how different this new year was from the new year last year. My dearest ambitions had been to join a group everyone I knew had hinted warnings against, which they had been right about. While most of the group had been awesome people, there was one among them that ran the crew that was a bully and a poser. So, my painting – without names, as I didn’t want to villainize anyone, of course – was of a vague representation of the bully, the grotesque crest, the rest of the members still in it (who are awesome people!), and a sea of unfamiliar faces burning the crew’s tabards in the distance in a huge bonfire, all bearing disappointed (likely disappointed with the poser, who never lived up to any of the grandiose fronts she’d put up, and just bullied people and threw temper tantrums all the time instead) and repulsed facial expressions. Celeste and I were holding hands in the distance, without tabards, walking away from the bully, our backs turned to her. The group’s grotesque crest was in the center of the canvas, which I had painted black before painting anything else, and that crest took up about a fifth of the canvas or so where it was in the center. The rest of the group, which included Maya, Cari, Rylee, and Zarshal, also had intense paintings. Maya and Zarshal also painted of their pasts, with Maya painting a three-part scene including her original pack of feral worgen, her return to sanity and her growth as a druid while being troubled by an Illidari woman she used to be close to, and then her modern-day happiness in her polyamorous relationship with Cari and Rylee in the third division of her canvas. Zarshal had a gargantuan feral worgen, looking ferocious in a background of nature, and the worst part? This worgen had TWO heads, both of which had blood around their maws. Cari painted more of an inward feeling, a small pillar of light with a giant shadow in the shape of a boot hovering over it.
The second part of “soulpainting” Rylee had planned was to use this enchanted paintbrush she had to sweep figures off of the canvases and bring them to life as arcane familiars! That was so weird! But it helped deal with the past! Maya went first. The many figures of her canvas were swept into the center of our group, growing to life size. It was really intense – Maya instantly burst into her worgen form, diving right into the group of feral worgen she’d been a part of, long ago. As her friends, we helped her deal with it, diving into the fray with steel and spells. I kept up a frost barrier and supported from a distance, keeping a promise to Celeste to be safe as possible after my last hospital visit. Her Winter Veil gift with the electromagnetic barrier was also with me if I needed it! The rest were fighting as hard as they could, too! But then, the Illidari woman arcane familiar leaped at Maya while she was tearing through the feral worgen familiars! We had her back, though! We beat back the Illidari woman, and Maya ripped through the feral worgen, all five of them! Then she got ahold of the Illidari woman and finished her off! It was so intense!
Cari’s painting, the pillar of light about to be smooshed by a giant boot, turned out to be a representation of her trying to be happy and live her life, but she feels there are always giants of a metaphorical nature out there, hovering, watching, waiting for her to mess up, then smoosh her! Archmages in Dalaran teaching her to be a mage, dangerous adventures, difficult classes, Azeroth being in danger from something new every couple of years, the works! The pillar of light and the shadow, as with Maya’s painting, were swept off the canvas by Rylee’s enchanted paint brush, brought to life as life-size arcane familiars in our midst. There was no fighting this time. I felt deeply compelled to express to my dear friend that, though life does indeed have its giants to watch out for, there are other pillars of light as well, also wanting to shine with happiness. Who are these other pillars of light? Us! Though life has its giants, she has us for support and care and assistance in time of need! The rest of the group expressed the same sentiments, and the whole thing ended up with a group hug of the pillar of light arcane familiar. The light responded, growing and growing, getting so bright I had to shut my eyes, and the shadow of the giant boot shrank and shrank until it was no more! SUCCESS!
Zarshal was next. His gargantuan two-headed worgen, with their bloody maws, was swept off the canvas and into our midst! Zarshal looked at this mutated figure from his own past, talking about how he knew this one from before he was worgen himself. I wanted to ask if this was the worgen that had infected him, but I didn’t want to pry into things he wasn’t volunteering, but I think it must be! Anyway, this one’s heads were fighting amongst themselves, and there were lots of scars and dead skin parts where they’d bitten each other. They didn’t seem to be entirely feral, however; they seemed to be listening and responding to things we had been saying about the natural behavior of wolves and dogs! Maya came up with the first plan. She took out her dinner from her pack, a container holding a large meat pie. She cut through it, dividing it in half. I told her about how I feed two dogs at once: when they’re standing next to each other, staring up at you as you hold the food bowls, then they’re more likely to get into each other’s food and potentially cause a fight, or, if one is much more dominant, he’ll block the other from eating the other’s food and steal it all, then turn to his own food and eat all that as well. So, when feeding two dogs at once, if I can’t separate them (like, I don’t have a spare room to shut one away in for feeding, or, in this case, two heads on one body), then what I do is, approach with the food bowls side-by-side, then, as I lower them, spread my arms out wide as I can. The dogs, each following the bowl on their own side with eyes and muzzle, naturally get swept apart from each other, out of reach of each other’s bowls, and they can eat in peace. With the exception of one intensely dominant dog and one deeply submissive dog, I’ve found this to work pretty much every time.
But it didn’t work this time! The two-headed worgen seemed so used to fighting each other that, even though their heads moved as far from each other as they could under the circumstances, their natural inclination to fight each other still resulted in them trying to snap and snarl and eat each other’s food!
My next plan was, noticing how they seemed to respond to our Common language and respond with ears and tail and such when discussing canine behavior, I decided to appeal directly to them. I told them they’d hurt each other far less, and BOTH get to eat a lot more, if they worked together instead of fighting each other. If they both worked to get enough food for both of them to eat well, and allowed each other to eat in peace, then they’d have full bellies and unbroken flesh from bites far more often! They seemed to see reason in that, and then they ate their own halves of Maya’s meat pie in peace before vanishing. SUCCESS!
Though we’d tamed the worgen, Zarshal seemed to not quite be satisfied. He wanted revenge on this two-headed worgen from his own pre-worgen past, which sort of reaffirmed my belief that this one must have been the one to have bitten and turned him. Rylee promised that, when we had time again (we had just reached the time in which Maya usually has to go to bed), she’d use her enchanted brush to make another arcane familiar for him to fight, with his friends at his back to support, of course!
But yeah, we were out of time, so that was that. Whatever we do with my painting, it’ll wait for another day. I’m not worried about it. It’s ancient history, and I’ve been over it for several months. The only reason it came back to memory again is because of Rylee’s “New Year New You” theme having made me reflect on where I am this year versus where I was at precisely this time last year. Ancient history can wait; it certainly isn’t going anywhere! I don’t mind at all, because this year, where I’m at now is amazing! I have the Catch of My Life, the Sun of My World, Celeste! And we live in the most amazing house on the beach, a rock spire summit dream house built just the way we wanted it, an adorable little beloved molten corgi, Dordy, along with Nosebleed, Ebonhoof, Cloud Dancer, and Onyx to round out our family, a lovely, highly efficient little farm in Halfhill, and we’re living life Pandaren style: “Slow down, life is to be savored!” And I do dearly love this life! YAY!
Nat smiled broadly at the thought of the direction her life was going. There was nothing she could think of that could possibly make it even happier than it already was. Sure, it wasn’t perfect. She had her best friend currently in the hospital, sometimes dark things happened, like with the Tidesage encounter in the underwater cave under the Stormsong Monastery in Boralus, or the blackmail Telrissa and Lucina had faced to betray the Whitewind Company, and Lady Whitewind was still missing. But whose life was free from all darkness of any conceivable kind? The important thing was that you have those bright pillars of light in your life to join with you and chase away the shadows of the giants whose boots seem to hover overhead! And boy, did Nat ever have that! This happy dream life with Celeste in their dream home in their dream land, with their little dream family was exactly that!
With that satisfying thought, Nat tapped off the excess ink from her ravenfeather quill into her inkwell before returning it to its cherrywood quill case. She capped her inkwell next, returning it and her quill case to their side drawer in her writing desk. She leaned back in her chair next, taking her hot coffee mug into her dainty hands to take dainty sips. She thought of Riven, off to hunt down Telrissa. That’d likely be the next Whitewind Company adventure, as Riven, being a Quel’dorei ranger, was an absolutely outstanding tracker. They’d have Telrissa, her blackmailers and their leaders, all rounded up soon, she was certain, and Lady Whitewind rescued and returned home, to boot!
Nat pondered this for a while, then returned to her map, still sprawled across the table. Celeste’s surprise adventure was still there to be planned! Nat smiled hugely at that. It was going to be so much fun! She placed the coffee mug back on the table, then closed her diary, the ink now dry on the pages. She got up to return the book to its spot on her book shelf to on the wall to the left of her writing desk, then exited her office with her coffee to go and see Celeste. There was a tide coming in to Turtle Bay that would be carrying in various larger fish from the deeper seas beyond the bay, and this would be a good chance to see what Celeste’s tinkering angler’s boat could do with its modifications so far! It was sure to be an awesome day!
|
|
|
Post by Natasha Ebonlocke on Jan 13, 2022 16:26:06 GMT
January the Thirteenth Nat sat with a cup of coffee at her writing desk under the window overlooking Turtle Bay. It was a typical Thursday morning, one of those in which she wrote her weekly diary post while the sounds of engineering work and Celeste’s happy humming drifted up from downstairs while the sounds of ocean waves, seagulls, and a busy Angler’s Wharf drifted up to the open screened window in front of her from outside.
Nat reflected on her week for a while as she sipped daintily at the steaming mug of hazelnut creamer coffee. It had been an intense week at one point, but even then, there was a quite hopeful victory at the end of that night! The rest of the week had been great, full of either hilarious fun or else pleasant relaxation, with a bit of work being done at the farm as well. There was not quite as much as usual to write about this week, but what did happen, she wanted to commit to words on paper. With that in mind, she reached for her ravenfeather quill, dipping it into her inkwell of purple ink – something she wished she could use at work instead of boring ol’ black ink, but couldn’t – and began letting her feelings and memories flow into the pages.
Dear diary,
VICTORY! Finally!
We found Lady Whitewind! …We think. We hope!
Wednesday evening, we got a lead on a horde caravan that was likely carrying Lady Whitewind that was moving toward the Burning Steppes on the way back to Blackrock Mountain. Apparently it had gotten held up somewhere and had been delayed in getting back, but now it was heading back to the volcanic mountain!
Lady Whitewind’s sister, Carilia Whitewind, met me at the Recluse porch, where we usually meet before missions for the Whitewind Company. There was also Mairy (who was coming in Cari’s place), Zarshal, and an old friend we hadn’t seen in a long time, Sujin Slumberdrift (AKA Suji, who was coming in Maya’s place with her trusty wolf pet), a Pandaren that came with us last summer to the mission to Fuselight-By-The-Sea, where we got back the Prototype Blastbanger Long-Range Radio-Wave Electronic Blasting Cap XT-9000 from the Dark Irons that stole it, when we wanted to purchase it from the Steemwheedle Cartel goblins in the little seaside town that invented it with their company, Quality Asplosions. Lady Whitewind briefed us in on the situation, and then we flew to an ambush spot she had picked out… right at the bottom of the ramp going up to Blackrock Mountain!
When we got there, Lady Carilia got us set up for the ambush. I was to snipe from the top of a rock up the ramp a bit with my frost spells. I had my other branch of magic in reserve if needed… more on that in a bit! She had Suji, who is a hunter specializing in survival, set up a series of traps along the road, which had to be non-lethal, as we didn’t want to harm Lady Cellica if she really was on the caravan. Mairy, being a Wildhammer dwarf, was to provide air support with her Stormhammer from gryphonback. Carilia was going to flank the caravan from across the road from me, coming in from a hiding spot behind a big ashen knoll. Zarshal was to stealth in from behind the caravan once Suji set off her traps.
Using a spyglass crafted from engineering stuffs, I watched for the caravan, which was supposed to be approaching from the east, where the road from the Redridge Mountains comes into the Burning Steps and bends west to make for Blackrock Mountain. Suji was setting up her traps and everyone else was just sort of waiting for the caravan to arrive, and, sure enough, it did!
The “caravan” turned out to just be one single cart with just three orcs in it… including that cowardly orc warrior that fled from the combat in the Redridge Mountains when we went after the Black Knight a few weeks ago! I knew he was camped close to the Black Knight’s keep, but I didn’t know they were in cahoots! The other two orcs looked to be a shaman and a hunter. They were outnumbered, laden with a cart piled high with cargo, with only one kodo pulling it. This was going to be easy!
…Or so we thought!
I was telling the group the numbers and disposition of the “caravan when I saw it in the distance, and we got into position. Suji herself decided to stay out on the road, to hold them up and provide a distraction before springing the traps. As some of the Pandaren joined the horde for some reason, even though the horde tore up their land, the orcs weren’t sure what to make of Suji just sort of standing there smiling and waving at them at first. They talked a bit, or so it seemed. orcs speaking Common sounds nearly as silly as ogres trying to speak it. If I concentrated, though, I could tell the orcs were speaking a coherent language. They wanted to know if Suji was one of theirs or not, and Suji was just sort of lulling them into a false sense of security with small talk. When they seemed to have dropped their guard, she was even successful in getting the orc hunter to get off the caravan and come over, alone, to look at her wolf, which, she claimed, had been limping. Once the hunter was separated from the other two, Suji sprang her traps!
BLAMMO!
Non-lethal traps of nets sprang over the kodo and trapped it, halting the orcs from being able to flee! Even more startling, tons and tons of fireworks had been set off, lighting up the evening sky and setting all the Burning Steppes to echoing like crazy!
We set off our ambush then!
Cari came charging in on her charger – she’s a paladin! – and Zarshal snuck in behind them. I started raining down frost spells from my rock spire up the ramp, and Mairy came swooping in on her gryphon, grabbing the orc warrior from last time up off the cart and lifting him up into the air with her while she fought with her Stormhammer! Suji was fighting blow for blow with the hunter, who was at a distinct disadvantage, having had all those fireworks blow up right in his face! The shaman went for Zarshal after Zarshal popped into view, and was trying to fight steel with spells!
But that’s when we realized our ambush wasn’t perfect…
An orc monk popped out of the back of the cart, where he’d been sitting out of sight, and he came straight for me! Even worse, ANOTHER orc popped out of stealth right behind me! A rogue! It’s a good thing I have a stout frost barrier, as well as Celeste’s gift, the electromagnetic repulsion shield! The rogue couldn’t touch me, though the monk got one strike in. But, with the splitting ice spell, I was able to sidestep to get them both in front of me, stop them both after a few casts, and get back to sniping to help the others!
Everyone worked hard to subdue the orcs, as they’d broken the armistice with this abduction and fighting and stuff, and we wanted to take them to the Stockades for war crime trials or whatever they’d face. Between the lot of us, we soon had them down to the shaman and the warrior leader, though, for the second time, the warrior orc FLED! So much for “blood and honor!” Lady Carilia and Mairy chased him down before he could get far, though, and it wasn’t long before the orcs were all bound and gagged and tossed into the back of the cart, wherever there was room! VICTORY!
Zarshal and I searched the cart next. It took a bit, but sure enough, we found a body bag, just like the one at the broken-down old keep, where the Black Knight had been! That one, it turned out, had been Lady Carilia, who had also been abducted, and we’d found her before we knew she was missing! But, also like that body bag, this one was sealed up with everything from magical runes to mundane chains and locks, with its occupant in some sort of stasis. Once we get the locks picked and the runes disenchanted, we’ll see if we really found Lady Whitewind or not! I really really hope we did! She’s been gone for so long, and I really miss my friend!
After that, it was a long ride back home. The cart was full of other things Lady Carilia wanted to confiscate, just supplies in general, and stopping the supplies reaching the horde would leave them at a disadvantage besides, so we took the kodo, the cart, the supplies, and the person in the body bag and made our slow way back east along the road, south through the mountain pass into the Redridge Mountains, west into and through Elwynn Forest, and then up into the Stormwind City gates, talking all the while and getting to know each other better. Leave it to our group to make small talk during such an intense time!
Upon reaching Stormwind, we went to the Stockades first, and the guards there took our war crime orcs off our hands for us. Then we went to the Whitewind’s Grace to offload the rest of the cargo and figure out what to do with the kodo, which Mairy actually wanted to keep. We unwound with some drinks for a while before heading home to bed. I really hope we get the body bag disenchanted and unlocked and get whoever’s in there out of stasis, and I really hope we’ve found Lady Cellica Whitewind, and that she’s okay, and that this will lead us to Telrissa and her blackmailer, so we can resolve this entire conflict once and for all!
Nat placed her quill in her inkwell and rose to head to the kitchen for a coffee top-off. She thought about the situation, wondering whether it really would lead to Ashnard Reynard’s cult and whichever one of them had blackmailed Telrissa into blackmailing Lucina into helping her betray and attack the Whitewind Company. The abduction of Aedalia Songbird, the Company’s archmage, had seemed like such an isolated incident the previous summer, but the aftereffects were still reverberating to this day. Nat returned to her office, sipping daintily at her coffee with her favorite liquid hazelnut creamer, reflecting on how the darkest sorts of people were always so bent on vengeance, when they wouldn’t need vengeance if they hadn’t decided to be so evil in the first place instead of being a normal, respectable citizen of the Alliance. It’s not like they’re horde or something! Nat returned to her desk, taking one last, light sip of her coffee before reaching for her quill, wanting to write of happier things now.
Aside from that intense event and victory, and the likelihood of having found Lady Whitewind, the week’s been full of fun! Celeste did more work on the boat I gave her to tinker with! It now has a purple parasol, which is, of course, my favorite color, over the part where I sit! She painted the boat white, with a painting of a Wind Serpent, like her Pandaren dragon Cloud Dancer, along the sides, and finally gave it a name! Just like Nosebleed has the Flying Nosebleed as a namesake, Cloud Dancer now has a boat with his namesake: The Wave Dancer! It’s so cool! She also added pontoons for stability, especially for fishing for huge fish, as well as fishing nets covering the entire open space between the boat and the pontoons, increasing the usable area of the boat! She put waterproof cushions on my chair, too, so it’s super comfy! The aft section of the boat has several fishing rod holders on it, so we can let lines dangle behind us while we drift around! Even the Dordy bubble is now attached to the front of the boat and half-submerged, so Dordy could see under the water! Celeste says the boat is now ready to try out in the long-awaited submersible adventure! YAY!
Other fun was had, too! It’s odd to call farming work fun, but it’s fun when done with Celeste and the rest of our little family! Ebonhoof pulled the cart with farming supplies and tools and stuff for us. Nosebleed handled the plowing work, which also including plowing down deeper for underground pipes Celeste wanted to install, with little holes in the sides to deliver water directly to the plants’ roots instead of just showering the surface with water and turning it to mud. She’s so smart! And all he and Ebonhoof want for their work is a giant carrot or two that we grow in like a day anyway. And even Dordy got to help, chasing off the vermin that gets into the farm sometimes! Teamwork!
And of course, DEATHROLLS fun! We were going to play on the Vynthera’s Vengeance, the ship the Voyagers own and do their adventures on. We got started, but so very many of the crew wandered in and were just kind of hanging out that the game got drowned out like crazy. As much as we love those guys, we still wanted to have a game, so we went ahead and moved to the Salty Sailor in Booty Bay. It was me and my bestie Nah, who is looking MUCH better now that she’s had time to recover, and is out of the hospital now, though she still has a bit more healing to do. There was also Mags, Zarshal, Cari, and Maya, which is always a recipe for shenanigans! There were silly Truths and embarrassing Truths and serious Truths, and Dares involving me pretending to be Lex (and failing spectacularly, much to the crew’s amusement) each time a Voyager came into the cabin where we were playing before we moved off the ship, and people being dared to jump off the boardwalk outside the Salty Sailor and into the waterfall (which turned out to be a mistake – there is actually so much garbage and flotsam and jetsam in the water under the Salty Sailor! Ickyyyy!), and people drinking hard liquor and wheezing as their throats burned, including one where Nah had to drink a Sulfuron Slammer shot while it was still on fire, but without using her hands, and even a spicy bit where I Dared Zarshal to dress Nah back up, without Nah’s help, after she’d changed to take one of the aforementioned dives into Booty Bay, heh. He seemed so awkward, and of course, Nah basically thrived on how awkward Z was! Mags told us about one Dare her group, the Quicksilver Company, did in one Deathrolls game where they drew hair onto a bald guy’s head, and it wouldn’t wash off for weeks! HA! Maya had a Dare from Cari to slip Lex a note about why a murloc ate his dinner. I wish I could see Lex’s face when he finds it! Teehee! Anyway, it was a really fun and relaxing night of Deathrolls!
It’s been a great week overall, and I can’t wait to see what happens next! I know a bit of what’s in the forecast… Celeste’s underwater adventure! And the one I have planned for her either before or after that, whichever she prefers! I gotta check and see!
The other thing in the forecast for the immediate future is my magic… I’ve been using frost magic instead of the fel summoning I’ve been doing all my life… and it just hasn’t… I dunno… It just hasn’t been all that effective! And I’m not really into it as much besides. I dusted off the ol’ fel summoning for some contract work in the Shadowlands, and it felt FAR more powerful and satisfying… Using greater strength against itself, and using such incredibly potent magic… I want to get back to using this in Company meetings as well… I just hope that our current crew isn’t averse to my using such magics. If so, I have to keep to the more socially acceptable frost magic. Oh well. Time will tell!
In the meantime, I’m going to hang out with Celeste and see if I can con the details of the underwater adventure out of her. She’ll likely drop teasers to make the anticipation worse instead of easing it up some, knowing her! Heh. Oh well… the anticipation will just make it better! I can’t WAIT to go diving with her and Dordy! I’m so excited! It’s going to be so much fun! And I’ll love writing about it when it’s done! YAY!
Nat smiled excitedly as she tapped the excess ink off into the inkwell. She replaced the quill into its cherrywood quill case and got her inkwell capped. Both items went back into her desk drawer. She sat with her coffee cup in her hands next, Dordy at her feet, keeping them warm as the coffee mug kept her hands warm. She reflected upon life on Azeroth. It could be intense. It could be dangerous. It could be downright scary sometimes. But, with the RIGHT friends, and with true love, it could also be a dream come true!
With that thought, Nat smiled again, finishing off her coffee and setting the mug down before closing her diary now that the ink on the pages was dry. She returned the diary to her bookshelf and gave her mug to the ROPHE to go wash in the kitchen. That and the SCATTER bot Maya had coincidentally given her this Winter Veil had combined for housekeeping capabilities that left her free to do the things that she loved. As one of those things was visiting Celeste and helping her in her workshop while learning even more engineering stuff, she decided to go and do that next. It was sure to be a fun final day of minication!
|
|
|
Post by Natasha Ebonlocke on Jan 20, 2022 14:33:44 GMT
January the Twentieth The sun shone down on a new boat bobbing gently in Turtle Bay. Painted white, with Pandaren wind serpent dragons painted down the sides, the boat featured a bulletproof glass bottom that allowed those sitting inside to look down and see the colorful wildlife among the coral reefs in the water. The boat also sported a crow’s nest with a large bulletproof glass orb with mechanical fins sitting in it, a purple parasol over an elevated chair with purple water-resistant cushions, and several brackets along the back that were made to hold fishing rods. In the middle of those rods was a small outboard motor, though there was space enough to upgrade the motor. On either side of the boat were pontoons, there to add stability to the boat for high-speed maneuverability and for stability when fishing for big fish. In the boat were two human women and one corgi made of molten magma. Fire resistance spells on the corgi prevented him from burning or melting everything he touched, which the two human women were grateful they knew how to perform. The two women themselves were dressed for a day on the water in the sun. Black-haired Natasha Ebonlocke’s rather curvy form sported a black bikini with purple trim, and the more lithe, athletic, strawberry blonde Celeste McCullough wore a tiny blue bikini with a tube top, both pieces sporting colorful fish and sea turtles. Celeste sat in a chair with a fishing rod dangling over the side, her face in deep concentration as she was wont to do when fishing or tinkering. She was completely in the zone, watching her bobber bob gently in the water, waiting for the moment when her bait might catch the attention of one of the large fish that the tides this time of day often brought into Turtle Bay. Dordy was lying on his belly on the floor, fascinated with the underwater world below him through the bulletproof glass, sometimes pawing at the floor when a colorful specimen would pass closely enough for him to want to play with. Nat sat in her chair with the waterproof cushions under the parasol, legs crossed, diary in her lap, her face thoughtful as she took a break from fishing to write her weekly post to record her thoughts and memories. Her mind leaped out of the boat, flew over the waves, and roamed Pandaria and the Eastern Kingdoms, a small smile coming to her face as she dipped her ravenfeather quill into her inkwell of purple ink and began to put quill tip to diary page. Dear diary,
It’s been a really nice week, and an even more victorious week than last week! My best friend is now almost completely healed up from being blown up, fun with friends has been awesome, Celeste has really been spoiling me rotten (I gotta spoil her next!), and the Whitewind Company has accomplished something it’s wanted to accomplish for months!
The week started off really pleasant since my last entry. Celeste visited me at work for lunch on Friday and brought me this really spicy shrimp that Other Nat caught and cooked up, as well as some buttered shrimp for herself, and we had steamed veggies and great brews from the Scarlet Raven! It was SUCH a great surprise to kick off the workend (as my bestie Nah calls my three-day work weekend)! And it didn’t stop there… There was a huge storm in Pandaria when I took the portal back from Stormwind to the Shrine of the Seven Stars to fly Onyx back home. That was SO NOT FUN to fly in! But Celeste had all the lights on in the house, as well as Pandaren rice paper lanterns hanging in every window, and, with the house sitting on top of the tallest rock spire in the bay, it looked like a warm, welcoming lighthouse through the storm! It was so nice of her! Then, when I got inside and started to dry off, I instantly smelled a super warm and tasty stew bubbling on the stove. It was perfect to warm up with, as was the warm cider! Celeste is so great! She did some fishing over the weekend in the Wave Dancer, which is what she’s named the boat I got her for Winter Veil to tinker with to her heart’s content. She painted Pandaren wind serpents, like her own that she named Cloud Dancer, along either side, and named it Wave Dancer, which is really cool! Anyway, she was fishing over the weekend and caught us even more tasty meals to spoil me with! Definitely gotta spoil her back this week!
More fun was also had with Stormwind friends, like DEATHROLLS! It was a somewhat different crew Tuesday. Cari is on vacation on an island after three months of intense stress that included everything from mage studies and extremely difficult finals, to being basically haunted for three months, to witnessing a rather gory and brutal triple murder with Maya in the Lost City of Tol’vir in Uldum. So now she’s lying around in a hammock, probably, kicking back in a bikini or something with a colorful margarita in a glass with a colorful little umbrella on it, recuperating before the next semester of mage classes start. And it’s well-deserved! Maya’s taking care of things for Lex for the Voyagers, and had to leave before we went to the Deathrolls game. So, Mairy, the Wildhammer dwarf that’s come along on the last few Whitewind Company missions, came in Cari’s place, and Sparkles the bomb-crazy gnome came in place of Maya. Then there was our old pal Zarshal. My bestie Nah and Mags couldn’t make it this week. Maybe next week though! They’re both super fun to have at games!
Anyway, we were thinking up a good venue to go and play at, and Mairy the Wildhammer Dwarf suggested the council hall of Kirthaven, which is a village all the Wildhammer clans hold sacred and never “thump,” as Mairy calls it, each other. Everything from serious meetings among the clans to the inevitably subsequent drinking and revelry occurs in that council hall, so Mairy thought it fitting that she play her first game with us there, and I had to say, I agree! I’ve only played there once before. That was the time that the final Dare of the evening, as my bestie Nah and I were heading home for the night after everyone else left, was Nah daring me to travel home to Celeste in Ironforge in just my bikini. That meant flying through the cold night in just a bikini, dodging a harsh winter storm in Dun Morogh by flying even MORE to Stormwind City to take the tram to Ironforge instead, and dodging the huge crowd of people that were hanging out in the Golden Keg next to the tram entrance so they didn’t see me streaking through in my bikini, dodging guards, riding the tram dressed that way, then bolting from cover to cover in Ironforge while Nah distracted gnomes and dwarves alike with everything from small talk to telling two dwarves they’d left their windows down in their steam tonk in that winter storm, to setting off explosive decoy sheep and sabotaging a tonk in the Military Quarter building that has four of them, all just to get me home without too much embarrassment. HAH! Memories! Good times! Oh gosh…
Similarly, Deathrolls with Sparkles and Mairy is… chaotic, at best! They’re both extremely high-energy. Mairy loves drinking and revelry and brawling, and Sparkles is always chaotically hyperactive and ready to make unprecedented amounts of noise and mess! Sparkles is always calling Mairy “stumpy,” even though Sparkles is even shorter and stumpier than Mairy. Mairy is always ready to “thump” Sparkles for her antics. The banter that continually happens between the two is priceless!
Anyway, first thing that happened was Mairy, not even more than just tipsy yet (she’d broken out the Wildhammer brews as we’d come in to sit down and got everyone drinks, career bartender that she is!), was up on the table and dancing a traditional Wildhammer dwarf dance! Next, Sparkles was to get a Truth from me. Sparkles and Mairy are both BIG fans of the astoundingly handsome (but eternally bashful) First Mate of the Whitewind’s Grace, Nathaniel Seabreeze. So, I started to ask Sparkles what her ideal date night with Nate would be, so I was like, “Let’s say First Mate Nate is here,” but before I could continue, Sparkles was like, “Bone down.” GOSH! So I was like, “Well, I suppose that answers that question before it’s asked!” And then Sparkles was like, “BONE. DOWN.” So I started blushing really hard, and then Mairy was like, “Wot? ‘e’s cute!” and Sparkles was like, “Eh, some water and some therapy after I get done with him and he’ll be just fine, what’s the big deal?” and Mairy was like, “And maybe some ice.” OHMIGOSH! Sparkles had another Truth from someone else in which she started talking about doing something in a bathroom with someone else that I had to tune out entirely. Then next thing I know, Sparkles is doing a Dare from Mairy… to get FIRED OUT OF A CATAPULT! We went outside, and there were these Wildhammer catapults out there, and Mairy was on Twitchtail, her gryphon, and they were going to RACE! Gryphon versus catapulted Gnome! CHAOS! Mairy ended up winning; she’s got a lifelong connection with Twitchtail, and flew straight and fast. Sparkles just sort of took this long, slow arc through the air with lots of hangtime, and then turned on her gnomish jetpack at the last minute to avoid splattering all over the rocks of the Twilight Highlands. I never expected to see anything like that! I had a Dare for Mairy in which she had to take a huge swallow of her ale (which was no problem, as the brew-loving Wildhammer was already doing just that), but DON’T swallow. She had to keep it all in while each one of us told her a joke. If she coughed any up, she had to eat a mudpie made by Sparkles! Zarshal’s joke was about what sort of exercise lazy people do: diddly-squats! Ha! Sparkles went lewd. What does an out-of-business brothel tell people that come to the door? Beat it; we’re closed! GOSH! But then, I found myself telling a lewd one myself, much to my own surprise. Who is the most popular guy at the nude beach? Answer: the guy who can go out on a coffee run, come back with a coffee in each hand, and still be able to bring back a baker’s dozen of donuts on his person! Somehow, Mairy was able to able to not cough any ale up each time, though mine kind of made her inadvertently gargle it a bit! Zarshal had some good Truths for the group that had people telling old stories. There were more Dares that cracked everyone up. Sparkles and Mairy were pure chaos incarnate throughout. Eventually, it was just Mairy and I left, and we decided to just play two-person Deathrolls for a bit after the others went to bed. Mairy got me super drunk, then had me shoot a Wildhammer blunderbuss, wanting to see if I could shoot it off the table while plastered. I can’t even shoot a blunderbuss SOBER! But that was the Dare, so I had to try! I don’t remember much of this part of the night, but I vaguely remember thinking that there was an orc loose that I was supposed to shoot? Instead I ended up shooting a torch out of its bracket on the wall, missing by bottle by like a good fifteen feet, and then the kickback from the blunderbuss knocked me down! I was too drunk to stand again after that, so the game ended up drawing to a close then. What a fun night!
A sudden series of loud yip-yips from Dordy snapped Nat out of it and brought her back to the present. Nat looked over to her shoulder and saw Celeste’s line bending double. She was already on her feet, one foot up on the railing as she braced herself for a fight. She reeled and tugged and tugged and reeled, fighting the fish hard. The line ran this way and that, the bobber going as nuts as Dordy was going as he bounced around with his feet up on the railing to watch the fight. Celeste fought the fish hard, until finally, a silvery-pink flash caught the sun not too far below the surface. Celeste drew it close, and then, finally, there was a tremendous SPLASH on the surface, and out of the water came a brilliant red snapper that was almost the size of Celeste’s torso! Celeste continued fighting the splashing fish until she drew it alongside, then scooped it up with a fishing net on a pole and hoisted it aboard with a grunt of effort. Celeste looked over at Nat with a proud grin at her still-flopping catch, and the two exclaimed over the huge fish that would easily make a meal for the two of them (and Dordy) by itself. Nat looked away as Celeste did what she had to do to her catch and put it in the boat’s enchanted icebox, then looked back again to watch Celeste, already back in the zone and concentrating on her craft, expertly bait her hook with live pilchard from a tank of saltwater on the boat that Celeste and Nat had caught a few of before they went deeper into the bay. The pilchard is a sort of larger sardine that was too big for the mouths of smaller fish, thus ensuring the red snappers and other larger fish of the bay would be the ones to chase it. With her bobber now bobbing gently on the slight waves of the mostly-enclosed Turtle Bay, Celeste settled back into her seat and returned to concentrating on the bobber, and Nat returned to her diary. The intensity of the fish fight had reminded her of the intensity of the night before, during her weekly mission with the Whitewind Company. Nat’s face, though she didn’t know it, took on the same expression of concentration as Celeste’s, and she dipped her quill for more ink and continued scrawling along the pages. Wednesday was also a great night, though it got hairy and intense at one point. But the primary victory of the night came before the intense part started, instead of after, which was an interesting twist! The victory was… unlocking that bodybag that we found on that orc cart last week in the Burning Steppes! The one with the person inside that was in some sort of stasis to keep them alive, but all locked up with lots of mundane chains and padlocks as well as magical runes.
I was sitting on the porch of the Blue Recluse with Mairy and Zarshal when Nah called on the Company comms and asked me to come to the Whitewind’s Grace. Mairy and Zarshal consented to come as well, which turned out to be handy. Sparkles was somehow already there when we got there, and that was even more handy! Nah was wanting to make an attempt on unlocking the bodybag, as the crew of the Grace had been unable to do so to this point, and it was urgent now, as the stasis spell had just worn off. We now had a limited time to get the person – who we still hoped was a finally-reclaimed Lady Whitewind – out of the bodybag!
We set to work quickly. Zarshal, Mairy, and Sparkles were going to work on the mundane locks, while Nah, who has a bit of druid magic training and can do basic druid spells, was going to work with me on the magical runes, and pick mundane locks if the other three needed a hand as well. Sparkles had a robot along that she named J.E.F.F. (Jovial Explosive Freedom Fighter). She used JEFF to scan the chains and mundane locks for booby traps while I scanned for magical ones. Neither of us found anything untoward about the rigging, which I guess makes sense, as those who had abducted the (hopefully) Lady Whitewind would have had the locks and runes set up for themselves, not outsiders, and didn’t think they’d lose her to a sudden ambush in transit. Then Zarshal got out his key ring, which he keeps on hand as a roguish scout to try on locks before attempting to pick them. Mairy was going to pry or smash locks with her Stormhammer, which was sort of risky with a person inside the bag, but we trusted her aim, as she’d practiced wielding these things all her long life, ever since she was old enough to lift one. Sparkles was going to use JEFF’s several features to try and pick locks or smash them or break them open or saw them apart.
Meanwhile, I was doing some arcane scrying over the magical runes to work out how they might be undone. I noted there were several of the runes in place. Unsurprisingly, there were Death Knight runes here, which makes sense, given the Death Knights involved in the plot against the Whitewind Company. Blood, frost, and unholy were there. Fire, shadow, and fel were present also. The fel runes looked like those Nah used to have before she purged her inner demons, the sort of fel runes a few of her Illidari tattoos had that were designed to lock her inner demon in. The same type was present here, presumably to lock the person in, should the mundane locks and chains be defeated. The scrying I did also showed that the runes had a specific order to them, and unlocking them in the wrong order would simply reset them into place.
Zarshal, Sparkles, and Mairy were having a moderate amount of success in their work, aided and abetted by Nah’s lockpicking skill from time to time when Nah wasn’t using druidic stuffs to help me. Locks were picked and pried and smashed and sawed, and few were even opened by Zarshal simply trying each key in each lock! Nah and I were working out the magical puzzle. Nah used nature to handle the blood (restorative nature spells countering the spilled runes of spilled blood) and unholy (nature magic, or life magic, is the counter to unholy, or death, magic). I was able to use a mage’s frost spells to counter fire runes, and fire to shatter frost runes, and then underlying arcane base of the wards were broken using a touch of fel… which just makes me want to return to my roots as a fel summoner even more, similar to what I wrote last week. Frost and fire have been so unsatisfying ever since I shelved the fel summoning just to be more socially acceptable! Heck that! Anyway, I also ended up having to use spells in Eredun to break the shadow and fel runes, which sort of spooked the group slightly, though they didn’t seem to be all that worried about it like many people are. That was their first hint that I am a warlock. I’m so glad they didn’t seem to mind, beyond the initial startled effect it gave them! I might really be able to return to using it! Anyway, we worked hard at it for like an hour or more, and eventually… SUCCESS! The locks were all opened, the runes were all gone, and all that remained were chains lying over a wriggling bodybag!
Next was dragging the chains off the thing. I tried, but they were too heavy for me. Then Zarshal and Mairy teamed up on it. Worgen and Wildhammer prevailed! The chains were all dragged off the bag, and I unzipped it… and out popped LADY WHITEWIND! YAY!
Predictably enough, she was quite disoriented, and she required quite a bit of filling in on the events since her abduction. She filled us in as well, saying she’d been captured by orcs while in the northern Tirisfal Glades with Lady Aedalia Songbird, mine and Nah’s old friend, the Quel’dorei archmage that had taught me all my mage stuffs. I really hope she wasn’t captured as well! I just figured she’s been on one of her long hiatuses to Dalaran to sit with her books and learn more magic all this time! Anyway, Lady Whitewind said she’d been captured by this orc warrior, which, according to her description, is the same one we fought twice! Once in Redridge during the Black Knight hunt, and again last week during the Burning Steppes ambush on that orc caravan! There’s still no direct indication of correlation between this attack and abduction and the other Death Knights that were with Ashnard Reynard that wanted to attack the Whitewind Company for us defeated and imprisoning their boss, but there is just too much coincidence between this orc group being after the Whitewind Company and their Death Knight, and the ones that were with Reynard that also blackmailed Lucina and Telrissa to betray the Company, especially with the orcs abducting Aedie AGAIN!
Anyway, after we freed Lady Whitewind from the bodybag and both sides filled the other in, we decided to go investigate the Stockades, where Nah said the orcs we captured last week had broken out of their cells. The guards and the warden (the latter of whom was out of his mind with fury and was swearing up a storm of foul language that would have peeled paint, if there was any to be found down in the Stockades) were telling us of a couple of riots started, one of which the orc warrior and the other orcs with him used as a cover to fight their way out and escape! It seems the warden knows some of the orcish language from when ol’ Saurfang was imprisoned in there during the Fourth War, and he had heard the orc warrior say “Hillsbrad Foothills” and “Tarren” while he was breaking out. We figured he meant Tarren Mill, the former human town in the Hillsbrad Foothills that the Forsaken had sacked and infested. We thanked the warden (who likely didn’t hear us, as he’d returned to his awful swearing), and headed out to recon Tarren Mill to see if he was there, and set up a plan for a raid. We didn’t have time to recon, plan, AND raid, after everything else we did last night, what with getting the bodybag opened and then talking to the Stockade guards and warden, but we could at least do the initial recon! So we got on our flying mounts and took off for the Twilight Highlands portal in the portal lake north of Stormwind and flew with all speed for Tarren Mill.
North and west of Tarren Mill are five hills that stick out like fingers (called “naizes” by the locals who were there before the icky horde) from the Alterac Mountains north of those. Darrow Hill juts out southward and extends along the western edge of Tarren Mill, which gave us a great vantage point to go and scout the town. Zarshal used his spyglass I got for him for Winter Veil to recon the area, and I wanted to help as well, but it would mean posing a question to Zarshal, Mairy, and Sparkles (Nah already knew and didn’t mind a bit, given her own previous life as an Illidari). I had to inform them that I was, indeed, a warlock, and ask if they were okay with me using such spells. They agreed that as long as the minions were completely under control and that I wasn’t going to use it for evil, they didn’t care a whit. That was a relief! Now I was able to use my Eye of Gul’dan minion to fly over the town and check things out. Zarshal was counting up Forsaken and orc forces, and I was checking out the town for the layout and any useful tidbits. I found a large pile of goblin munitions (which are notoriously unstable) dump at the tower nearest us, and routes of infiltration and exfiltration.
It was all going swimmingly, until a Forsaken commander spotted my Eye of Gul’dan. Mairy, who had been spoiling for a fight since she got her, instantly hopped aboard her gryphon Twitchtail and shot out over the city like a cannonball before anyone could stop her, distracting the Forsaken forces from the eye and shouting insults at them like a maniac. To cover her, and to mislead the Forsaken forces into thinking the nearby Aerie Peak (Hinterlands) Wildhammer dwarves were raiding the town (so that they wouldn’t have any reason to suspect the Whitewind Company and our friends), I used one of my arcane illusion spells on Onyx to make him look like an ebonfeather gryphon and flew off after Mairy, shouting insults as well, trying to mimic Mairy’s accent.
To my surprise, it actually WORKED! The Forsaken commander was marshaling his troops to ward off airborne dwarves, when really, the threat was on the ground, where the bomb-happy Sparkles was gleefully sprinting to the goblin munitions dump with explosives of her own in hand and cackling like a maniac. I didn’t see how, but after she planted her bombs, she ended up on top of that tower that the goblin munitions were near. Mairy and I were dodging arrows and spells, both of us lifelong fliers on our respective mounts, bonded to the point where each of us were as one single organism with our mounts in the level of control and maneuverability that we had. Loop-de-loops, barrel rolls, and other evasive maneuvers kept us out of harm’s way pretty easily, except for one arrow that struck Twitchtail’s right flank and didn’t go in very deep.
Next thing I knew, there was a huge KAAAABOOOOOOOOOOOM! Sparkles had blown the goblin munitions dump to kingdom come, and was on top of the tower flailing her arms and legs around wildly and cackling like mad. She was either VERY happy to have gotten to blow stuff up, or she had finally lost it completely! The problem was, the Forsaken forces had bitten on Sparkles’ distraction idea, which she wanted to do to help the group escape the Hillsbrad Foothills in one piece, and both they and the brilliant flames from the explosion were closing in on her position atop the tower! Mairy flew threw arrows, smoke, and spells, directly toward her tiny tormentor, and Twitchtail plucked the still flailing, cackling Sparkles from the top of the tower while I drew their fire on Onyx, who still had his gryphon illusion going. We all made it back to Nah and Zarshal, who were keeping a keen eye on things and planning the raid. From there, we backed up along the top of Darrow Hill, out of sight of the Forsaken, who were about to run into the military detachment of Bronzebeard dwarves that make there and likely meet a brutal end if they tried to attack the dwarven warriors. Meanwhile, we dived between Darrow Hill and Gavin’s Naize, flying low in between them to hide our escape route. We smoked out low from there, flying low to the ground and through trees and low hills for cover, heading southward but veering hard to the left to avoid being sighted by the Forsaken who had sacked and infested Southshore. East we flew, until we found more trees and low hills, then turned right, heading south once more. We flew across the beach and out into the fog over Baradin Bay, crossing the bay at top speed until we reached the north side of Ironforge Mountain as we passed Menethil Harbor in the Wetlands. Quite well out of sight of the Hillsbrad Forsaken now, we finally flew upward, gaining the altitude we needed to get over Ironforge Mountain and fly back to the Whitewind’s Grace to reconvene. The recon mission, while we’d been spotted and caused QUITE a stir, had been somewhat successful: though we hadn’t spotted the orcs we were there to look for, we HAD gotten the layout of the town as the Forsaken have it now, as well as numbers and disposition of forces. We’d taken out a stockpile of goblin munitions, likely gotten some of the Forsaken killed if they really had attacked the Bronzebeard dwarves of Darrow Hill, and gotten the recon we needed to perform another raid on the town next week. Though we’d been spotted, didn’t find the orcs we wanted, and had stirred the hornets’ nest, it was still an overall successful recon mission! I can’t wait to finish what we started next week! What a thrilling adventure, and what a chance to make the Whitewind Company safe again! Plus we got Lady Whitewind back, finally, after all these months! WOO!
And now it’s time to rest up before the next mission. I’m sitting out here underneath my purple parasol on the Wave Dancer, fishing with Celeste. I helped fish up all the bait fish early this morning, and now it’s time to get back to fishing up the BIG stuff! Dordy is here to “help” get the fish in, which is sweet, hehe. Celeste is all full of concentration on her craft, as usual. Now it’s time for me to help. I love fishing! What a great way to end the minication! YAY!
Nat smiled as she tapped the excess ink from her quill. She replaced her ravenfeather quill into her cherrywood quill case, stowing it in her pack. She capped her inkwell of purple ink, stowing that away as well. She went to the other enchanted icebox, the one the snacks and drinks were in, not the one with the captured fish. From within, she withdrew a jug of orange juice, always a great drink of choice during the morning hours after the coffee has been drank. She poured herself and Celeste a cup, placing the break-proof metal travel cups into their cupholders and accepting a quick hug and kiss of thanks from Celeste, who was back to concentrating so fast she barely even seemed to notice she was drinking the juice before replacing it and reeling her line in a bit to bring back the live bait to where she wanted it. Nat returned to her diary, closing it now that he ink was dry on the pages and stowing that in her pack as well. She picked up her Pandaren-style bamboo fishing rod next, which was a stark contrast to Celeste’s murloc skeleton rod. Using lessons taught to her over the course of the last year by Celeste, she baited her live pilchard well, casting it off the opposite side of the boat from Celeste so as not to tangle their lines together. She then sat back in her comfy cushioned chair, enjoying the warmth of the morning and sitting, as Celeste had knowingly anticipated, out of the too-bright sun under her parasol, enjoying the cool sea breeze and the lazy, relaxing action of controlling rod and bait to tempt large fish into biting. She’d get a bite before long, she knew, in this wonderful, fat, lazy land where hard work produced magnificent results, whether on farms or on water. She sighed happily, settling in, her two greatest loves sitting in the boat with her, ready to just enjoy her day. What a wonderful life it was!
|
|