The fine art of persuasion

So brace yourselves for this one – Lor’themotherfucker’s blood elves, who insisted I give them the chance to interrogate that mogu Shan Kien about the Divine Bell?  Guess what they turned up for us?  ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.

I know.  I’ll give you a minute to sit down and recover from the shock.

Recovered yet?  Okay.  Moving on.

Anyway, after I’d given the elves time to establish yet again how completely and utterly USELESS they are, I sent orders for them to deliver Shan Kien over to the Kor’kron up in Kun-Lai summit.  By this point, Regent-Lord Eyepatch was back in Silvermoon on his prolonged post-sha-box crying jag, so I had the good fortune not to have to deal with a whole lot of complaining and protesting from his people when I sent the order.  I had Malkorok go up with his Kor’kron to receive the mogu at Garrosh’ar Advance – a small base we’d set up a ways north of Eastwind Rest – and wait for my arrival.

When I got there, by the way, Malkorok managed to get himself into another one of his cranky moods.  He was eating his lunch at the table we’d set up at the camp, and when I arrived he turned away from it to order the Kor’kron to bring Shan Kien out for me…whereupon Mortimer wandered over and, yep, you guessed it, polished off Malkorok’s food.  Mortimer seemed only too delighted — then again, who can blame him, seeing as I think that sandwich had bacon on it — although Malkorok was not pleased.  But I think he kept himself reined in since he could see what a kick I got out of the whole thing.

Of course, as I was getting ready to leave the Sanctum of Two Moons with Blademaster Ishi, Baine overheard where I was going and decided to tag along to keep an eye on things.  Because…well…I don’t know, I guess he thinks that when you’re dealing with an agent of a malevolent enemy bent on world domination, it’s really super important that you be nice to him.  Or something.

I’ll grant, though, Baine did turn out to be handy.  I put in a little time trying my own brand of charm and persuasion on Shan Kien, but after a while my knuckles were getting sore, and that was when Baine suggested we use some Pandaren concoction called Memory Wine that would let us peek into Shan Kien’s memories and see where the Divine Bell had been hidden.  Which, by the way, um, WHY DIDN’T HE MENTION ANYTHING ABOUT THIS STUFF BEFORE YOU KNOW I BET THAT SHIT WOULD HAVE BEEN HANDY DON’T YOU THINK GUYS?

Ugh.

So, we got a volunteer to try out the Memory Wine, and got a peek of Shan Kien sealing up the Divine Bell in a mogu tomb somewhere along a mountainside.  The whole thing went surprisingly smoothly, other than the fact that while we were using the Memory Wine, it seemed like every couple minutes we had problems with the yaks we had with us suddenly running around all spooked.  Which started getting on my nerves after a while.  Anyway, since Gurtash is sort of our resident artist, I’m having him flown up to work up some sketches of the place to help guide the search parties.  I’m having Ishi stay up here to organize the scouts and coordinate.  Meanwhile, I’m going to check in at Domination Point and maybe look into a contingency plan or two.

Shadow boxing

Well, this just goes to show what I know.

After our whole SNAFU with the sha claw, Regent-Lord Eyepatch went back to Silvermoon to personally supervise his people’s study of that sha box we recovered.  Before he left I tried to impress on him the importance of that project (I believe my exact words were “This is actually important, unlike everything else you’ve ever done in your life, so try not to make a giant fucking mess this one time, Lori”), and after leaving him to his devices a couple days, I sent some people up to Silvermoon to check on him and try to prod things along.

I just received a report back from Eyepatch.  And so, remember last time, how uneasy I was about having to rely on the blood elves for all these important jobs?  All the angsting I was doing over whether they could pull this off, rather than defaulting back to their standard “giant fucking mess” M.O.?  Well, after all that handwringing I was doing, you would probably expect Ponytail’s blood elves to find a way to pull off some spectacular new level of fail.

AND YOU WOULD BE RIGHT.

Let’s even set aside the fact that Ponytail started out crying about how anyone who tried to probe the box magically ended up being affected by powerful, negative emotions, because hey, it’s totally fair for him not to think of that possibility what with him being RIGHT HERE WITNESSING THAT VERY SAME THING HAPPENING WITH THE KOR’KRON NOT THREE DAYS AGO.  But then, we’ve long established that these blood elves aren’t exactly world-beaters when it comes to seeing things coming (DRINK).  So, moving on, witness fuckuppery the next: even AFTER having these problems with the crazy outbursts, Ponytail’s peeps kept plugging away, and ended up releasing some kind of sha creature that had been sealed in the box.  In a room with a couple of his mages and a handful of guards.  And nobody else.

So okay, let’s recap that for those of you keeping score at home.

AFTER traveling around some of the sha and mogu sites in Pandaria…and AFTER being on hand for our failed Kor’kron experiments with the claw… Eyepatch brought the box back home to Silvermoon…so he could stick it in a basement with minimal guard and a grand total of two magic-users on hand to work on it.  And then released a beastie that proceeded to kick the snot out of his generously snotty elves.  To the point that if some of MY people hadn’t been on hand to save the day, that sha thing might still be running roughshod over Silvermoon and we’d be having to get Sylvanas to send a task force over to bail them out.  (And by the way, don’t think for a minute that THAT wouldn’t make half the blood elf population drop a brick in its collective panties – HEY LOOK GUYS THERE’S AN ARMY OF UNDEAD HEADED THIS WAY OH SHIT NOT AGAIN.)

I mean, there are at least half a dozen reasons why that’s just a spectacular steaming heap of fail, but the winner right off the top of my head, I think is… WHY DID YOU EVEN BOTHER BRINGING THE DAMN BOX BACK TO YOUR HOME CITY if you weren’t going to positively SURROUND it with an entire fucking LEGION of your very best troops?  You go to all that trouble for like five guards?  Hey, guess what, Eyepatch, we could have put our sha junk under the watch of five random assholes right here in Pandaria.

LIKE HEY HOW ABOUT THESE GUYS EVEN, REMEMBER THEM?

So yeah, this is what Lori is crying about this week.  Well, today.  The week is still young.  Meanwhile, he’s already sent me four messengers, with each of the last three delivering an extra addendum to his written bitch-and-moan fest.  They’ve been arriving every couple hours, so I’m just imagining him sitting around in whatever palace he has up there (I’m guessing pink features heavily in the décor), sending off a letter, and then as soon as the messenger leaves, grabbing another parchment like “AND HERE’S ONE MORE THING!”

I did send him a response back to the first one.  Although…just to amuse myself, I addressed it to “That guy in Silvermoon, you know, the one with the poofy hair.”  I’m not sure which thought amuses me more: the amount of time it’s going to take them to narrow it down to Ponytail, or the look he’s going to get on his face when he sees it.

I know, I know.  I’m a stinker.

More soon.

“‘Lori’? Seriously?”

Krasarang reunions

Construction is coming along quickly here at Domination Point.  That’s what we’re calling the new outpost, by the way – pretty badass, right?  Thought of it myself.  Anyway, we’re making good progress getting the place built.  Warlord Zaela sent some of her Dragonmaw construction crew with us, and as any of you who were there will remember, a couple years ago when the Dragonmaw joined the Horde, they got Dragonmaw Port rebuilt FAST.  As opposed to, say, the goblin contractors who STILL haven’t quite finished the job in Orgrimmar.  Which is really pretty ridiculous at this point.  I mean, can you imagine how embarrassing it’s going to be if Orgrimmar comes under siege, and we STILL haven’t finished fixing the place from the LAST major problem?

So that’s coming along.  While we work on getting the base built and securing the area, I’ve also been keeping Gurtash and the rest of the DPS busy gathering food.  Turns out there’s an island close by that’s practically swarming with these huge cranes that have enough breast meat on them to feed half a regiment.  They’re a little big for the kids, but it’s been good practice for them working as a team.  Also, as part of the Pandaria landing team, I’d brought three of the Mag’har’s best blademasters from Nagrand: Ishi, Burzum, and Krimpatul.  So I’ve been having the three of them take turns going out with the DPS when they go hunting, just to keep an eye on them.  The kids seem to be hitting it off with Krimp especially.  He’s got the gruff lovable mentor thing going for him.  Kind of like me.

In other news, General Nazgrim and his team arrived here today.  Which was a good thing – one, because Nazgrim is always good in a fight, but two, because that gave me a chance to ask some pointed questions based on Krog’s reports on a certain former captive of theirs.

Case in point: How exactly Nazgrim and his crew managed to turn this:

…into this:

The extent of Nazgrim’s response pretty much consisted of “Oh, so, um, you heard about that, huh?”

One other part of Nazgrim’s arrival, though – along with his regular crew like Kiryn and Shokia, he also brought one of those monkey people he’d recruited back in the Jade Forest, a hozen named Tak-Tak who’s going to be helping our flightmaster Kromthar.  And here’s the thing.  This was the first time I’d met a hozen…only it wasn’t.  Some of you might remember – a few months ago, when time was going all wonky and I was flashing into that alternate reality, I met a monkey-like creature, name of Zhi-Zhi.  Who’d been found washed ashore after the destruction of his home in the southern islands.  It was the first time I’d ever seen a creature like him…but he seemed to know a thing or two about me.

And so THAT was the first time I ever met a hozen – only now, those events never happened.  Except I still remember them.  FUCKING TIME TRAVEL.  Head hurts.

So after Nazgrim introduced me to Tak-Tak, I pulled Monkey Boy aside and tried picking his tiny little brain some.  He said most of the mountain hozen up north were pretty hostile, same for the hozen on the islands to the east of here.  According to him, the only hozen who’ve managed to shill at all – and from what I can tell, “chill” would be a VERY relative term – would be the forest hozen where he’d come from.  Most of those, he says, have stayed in villages like Grookin Hill, but some individuals have gone off to live with the pandaren in one place or another.  He rattled off a few places some of them had gone, and most of the names blurred together, but then one stuck out – a place in the Jade Forest called the Tian Monastery.  That one rang a tiny little bell.  When we get a little breathing room, I may need to pay them a visit over that way.

Anyhow, back to work.  I’ll keep you posted on news as it happens, assuming my internet stays up.