It’s not easy being hexed

So credit where it’s due.  Mokvar came up with a winner of an idea to kill two birds with one stone.  Check this out: the reason he wanted The Noz and Chromie and what’s-her-face to enhance his hex spell is so he could use it on the YOUNG version of Faranell!  Now I know what you’re thinking – what the hell good does THAT do?  Well stay with me.

Liadrin stayed downstairs in the common room to watch for the Faranell brothers.  While she was there she got into a little small talk with Kelly, did a little smoothing over after our…um…incident.  You know, checking on how he was feeling since he seemed tired and delusional and shit, and reassuring him he didn’t have to worry about any livestock issues with us.  Our Faranell remembered that he and his brother had been out walking earlier in the day, and he gave us a ballpark figure on when they would be getting back.  More importantly, he remembered a window we would have to make our move.

Edwin and Patrick – the Faranells of this time period – came wandering into the inn right on schedule, and as they were making their way to the stairs, Kelly called to Patrick that a letter had been delivered for him.  Patrick went over to the counter to pick it up, and while he was reading the letter, Edwin stood around waiting for him at the base of the stairs.

That was our chance.  Mokvar had been waiting at the top of the stairs, and once Edwin was in position, Mokvar ran down to the first landing.  While Patrick was too busy going over his letter to pay attention to anything else, Mokvar got off his hex on Edwin, and POOF, frog.

As soon as the hex was cast, OUR Edwin ran down the stairs to step in where his younger self had been standing.  Mokvar and I both scrambled around like idiots trying to catch frog-Edwin, but after a few seconds, Patrick finished with his letter and looked back over our way, so Mokvar and Faranell started making like they were having a conversation at the base of the stairs, while I grabbed the frog and ran upstairs.

All of this was pretty much according to plan.  Mokvar had a brainstorm on a couple of levels with this scheme: first of all, if we keep younger Edwin hexed, and sub in our Edwin, that makes the problem of him accidentally crossing paths with himself way easier to keep under control.  And since older Edwin remembers everything he was supposed to have done and said right now – what with his supposed super-memory – he can just fill in for himself.  In the process, we free ourselves up a LOT to come and go as we need to, without worrying about running into Kel’Thuzad or Helcular on the one side or the Faranell brothers on the other.  And so we decided right off the top that once we made the switch, Edwin would introduce Mokvar to his brother as an old friend from Brill, just like he did with Kel’Thuzad, so we don’t have to be looking over our shoulders or juggling multiple cover stories.  Granted, Patrick had already met Mokvar once by this point, but that’s easy enough to play off as coincidence.

So as soon as Patrick spotted Mokvar “chatting” with his brother, they had their “oh hey, you know this guy too?” exchange, they all got to talking, and Mokvar “recognized” Liadrin and brought her in, so now everybody knows everybody mostly and we can stop fucking tiptoeing around like a teenager getting home three hours past curfew and sneaking a rebellious draenei girl into his room past his lightly sleeping Greatmother parents.  I mean who hasn’t been there, amirite?

So stop staring at me like that and just read the damn transcript.

 

LIADRIN:  So…Edwin – Edwin, isn’t it? – where did you say you were from?  Andorhal?

EDWIN:  No, that was Patrick.  I mean, Patrick’s the one from Andorhal, but yes, I’m Edwin.  I live up in Dalaran.

LIADRIN:  Ahh, it must be beautiful there.

PATRICK:  Have you ever been?

LIADRIN:  Not for quite some time.

PATRICK:  It’s definitely worth a visit if you get the chance.

LIADRIN:  So what brings you two down here?  I would think you’d have much more interesting things to do in Dalaran.

EDWIN:  Well, it’s nice to have a change of pace sometimes…

PATRICK:  In my case, I wanted to come visit Edwin for a bit before I head off to study in Silvermoon.

MOKVAR:  Ah okay.

LIADRIN:  I see.  What are you going to be studying?

PATRICK:  Alchemy, same as Edwin here.

EDWIN:  Well, except for how you’ve always been much better at it.

PATRICK:  Mostly alchemy, at least.  I’d like to work some more on the sciences in general.

Kelly brings several plates of food to the table.  Edwin starts in eating immediately, looking at a few bites thoughtfully while still holding them on his fork.

LIADRIN:  Thank you, Mr. Kelly.

MOKVAR:  Thanks.

EDWIN:  So, Patrick…

PATRICK:  Mmhmm?

Edwin stares at his food a moment before continuing haltingly.

EDWIN:  Who was…well…what was that letter you got?

PATRICK:  Oh, that?  Just an update from Emily.  Good news.  She just arrived and she’s getting settled in.

LIADRIN:  Emily?

EDWIN:  <gesturing to Liadrin matter-of-factly without looking up>  Patrick’s wife.

LIADRIN:  Oh, I didn’t know you were married.

MOKVAR:  Condolences.

LIADRIN:  Mokv—Movarius.

PATRICK:  <nodding>  Almost two years now.

LIADRIN:  You said she’s getting settled in – I assume she’s gone on ahead to Silvermoon?

Edwin shakes his head while poking at his food.

PATRICK:  Oh, no, she isn’t coming to Silvermoon too.  It’s just me going there.

LIADRIN:  Oh?  Why is that?

PATRICK:  Well, housing in Silvermoon isn’t cheap, especially for outsiders, and graduate students aren’t exactly rolling in money.

MOKVAR:  You’re going to be getting a doctorate, right?

PATRICK:  Cross fingers.

EDWIN:  You know you’ll be running the place within a semester, professor.

PATRICK:  <chuckles>  Whatever you say, uncle.  At any rate… Financially the easiest thing will be for me to stay in student housing while I’m there, and that’s not exactly luxurious.  So Emily’s going to stay with family while I’m studying.

EDWIN:  In Stratholme.

MOKVAR:  Stra— Oh.  It’s…nice there.

LIADRIN:  Yes… I, um, I suppose it’s close enough that you could still visit each other…

EDWIN:  I keep telling you, it’s silly to live apart for that long.  It’s not like you’re talking about just a couple months.

PATRICK:  Yes, yes, I know, how many times to we have to go through this?

LIADRIN:  I suppose it’s a fair point.  It does mean you’ll be apart for a few years at least.

PATRICK:  <shrugs>  I’m trying to think of it that this way – I’ll have that much more incentive to stay focused on my work and get finished quickly.  No outside distractions, just me and my research, and maybe in the process I can get done faster and start get established.

EDWIN:  Fine, don’t listen.

PATRICK:  I’d think you’d like the prospect of us stepping up the schedule, uncle.

MOKVAR:  Say…maybe I’m missing something, but why do you keep calling him that?  He’s your brother, isn’t he?

PATRICK:  Well, that’s what our mother keeps saying.  I don’t know if I’m convinced.  <smirks at Edwin for a moment>  Oh come on, smile a little.

EDWIN:  <still not looking up>  “Uncle” is just this little nickname Patrick’s had for me the last couple years.

PATRICK:  Basically as long as Emily and I have been talking about having a family.  My dear, morose brother here, kid-hater though he is, seems to like the prospect of being an uncle.

EDWIN:  I don’t hate kids.  <glances toward the upstairs>  Well, I don’t hate most kids.

LIADRIN:  Ah… So you were—are planning to have children, then, Patrick…

PATRICK:  <nods>  Hopefully.  Between you, me, and the walls, I’d rather like to have a couple sons.  <chuckles, then to Edwin>  Don’t let Emily hear that, I think she’d really like a little girl.  But I remember how much Dad seemed to enjoy himself with us.  Then again, he liked children.

EDWIN:  I like children perfectly well.  Just other people’s children.  I can play with them and be the cool uncle and all of that, and then give them back and be done without having to deal with the crying and the soiling themselves and the stabbing me in my sleep when they’re sixteen.

PATRICK:  Hence why you should be happy about me getting done with my degree sooner rather than later, uncle.

MOKVAR:  So you’re wanting to hold off on the family until after you’re done with your degree.

PATRICK:  It would be kind of crazy to do otherwise, really.  If we start having kids while I’m still working, either I’ll end up having a whole slew of new distractions from finishing with school, or I’d end up sticking poor Emily with all the work of taking care of them.  That would probably be the death of me.

Edwin cringes a little at the last sentence, which Liadrin seems to notice with concern.

LIADRIN:  Well then…I’m sure you know what’s best for you and your wife, Patrick…

PATRICK:  It’ll all work out in the end, I’m sure.  Anyway, I should write her a quick note back.  Shouldn’t you be going to see your Kirin Tor friend anyway, Edwin?

EDWIN:  My who?

PATRICK:  That fellow from Dalaran you’ve been taking those walks with.  Didn’t you say he wanted to talk with you about something else today?

EDWIN:  Did he?  That doesn’t… I mean, yes, yes I suppose so…

PATRICK:  I’ll be upstairs.  <stands up>  Movarius, good seeing you again… Lia, nice to meet you.

LIADRIN:  You as well, Patrick.

MOKVAR:  Take it easy, Patrick.

Patrick gives everyone a nod and wanders back up the stairs.

LIADRIN:  I’m sorry, Faranell.  I know this can’t be easy for you.

EDWIN:  Yeah, well…

MOKVAR:  I guess we should let you go do whatever you need to do with Kel’Thuzad…

EDWIN:  That’s the thing.  I shouldn’t be doing anything with him.

LIADRIN:  What do you mean?

EDWIN:  I remembered talking to Patrick about Emily moving to Stratholme when the letter arrived for him.  I remember pretty much every other conversation I had with him the rest of the way.  But I don’t remember seeing Kel’Thuzad again from this point.

MOKVAR:  Is that just another one of those things you seem to forget about?

EDWIN:  No, you’re not getting it.  It’s not that I might have seen him and I’ve forgotten.  I can remember every single thing I did the rest of the day today, and tomorrow, and the rest of this week.  I didn’t go to see Kel’Thuzad.  Yesterday was the last time I saw him for…well for weeks, actually.  There wasn’t any business about him wanting to see me again.

LIADRIN:  That’s…rather troubling.

EDWIN:  Nozdormu was right this morning.  Something’s going wrong with the timeline.  Somehow, something’s already changed because of us being here.

 

Because my life isn’t delightful enough right now, right?

Meanwhile, while all this happy news was happening, I was bringing frog-Edwin upstairs for the other part of Mokvar’s plan.  Here’s where the dude really got thinking outside the box.  He had figured, while we have this version of Faranell all frogged up, we can use him to kill two birds with one stone, because what better way to distract a snot-nosed kid from a shiny magic crystal that just sits there looking glowy, than with a real life hoppy potential pet?  Not that the little punk is going to KEEP Faranell forever, obviously, but if we give him the frog, Mokvar figures that should keep him distracted long enough for us to find where he has the chameleon shard, or maybe do a trade or something.  Anyway, it’s a possible way in without, you know, having to beat up a little kid.  Which I still say Chromie seemed a little creepy eager to do, gotta tell you.

So anyway, I brought the frog upstairs to see if we could do the switch, only Taelan was actually off in one of the rooms with Tirion.  So no opening to make the move there.  We’ll have to keep an eye out and try to jump in when we get the chance.  Probably will assign Mokvar to this job, since he can refresh the hex every so often if he needs to.  In the meantime, Faranell and Liadrin and I can be getting set for Isilien tonight.  With any luck things will start falling in our direction.  Not that we’ve had much luck so far, but at this point you have to figure the law of averages is starting to owe us.

Past imperfect

So we finally have things in motion to find out just what Isilien and Doan wind up doing with the light crystal.  We’re hoping we can stay close to whatever we’re doing, and then get a read on whatever kind of magic they end up using the create the anti-plague effect.  To that end, we brought a special magic component – something called a chameleon shard.  When it’s put in close proximity to a magically-charged object or field, it attunes itself to it and basically recreates the magic properties inside its own…crystalline…matrix, I think it is?  Anyway, point is, it sucks up a carbon copy of the magic close to it and locks it up so we can take it with us without it going kablooey, and once we have THAT done at the original, untriggered source of this thing, we should be able to use it to create a counter-effect.

Which leads us to the latest meeting of the minds from this morning…

 

MOKVAR:  So what’s the game plan for tonight?

GARROSH:  Isilien said we should pay him a visit after dark tonight.  By that point, with any luck, he’ll have finished whatever he’s been working on with Doan, and we can get a look at the end results.

MOKVAR:  What if it’s still a work in progress?

GARROSH:  Well, then I guess we get to follow the ongoing work.

FARANELL:  That could end up being helpful in itself.  Depending on just what they’re doing, watching them actually formulating it might make it easier to determine a way to counter it.

MOKVAR:  One thing, though.  If you’re there, and they’re still working on it, won’t they want you guys to help them with it?

GARROSH:  Probably.

MOKVAR:  Won’t that be a problem?  I mean, I’m guessing we weren’t supposed to create the problem we came back in time to try to solve.

LIADRIN:  Maybe.  Maybe not.  For all we know, we were always part of the creation of this thing.

GARROSH:  Either way, we can try to keep our help to a minimum, at least.

LIADRIN:  It shouldn’t be terribly difficult to create the appearance of helping without interfering too much.  Just listen to what they’re already thinking, then nudge them further in that direction without really feeding them any ideas they wouldn’t have come to regardless.

GARROSH:  Also, Mokvar, I’m going to have you stay back for this one.  You and Utvoch wait here in the room, or hang out downstairs if it looks clear, but I’m just going to go with Liadrin and Faranell, since they’re the ones who really need to check on this thing up close.

MOKVAR:  Whatever you say, chief.

LIADRIN:  Is there anything else we need to have in place before we go?

GARROSH:  The only other thing is having the chameleon shard ready, in case they manage to get their little doohickey completely done tonight.

FARANELL:  You’ve been holding it, haven’t you, Utvoch?  I should probably give it a few arcane charges before we go, to have it warmed up just in case.

UTVOCH:  Yeah, I’ve got it here.

Utvoch sets down his pack and starts digging through it.

MOKVAR:  Say, Garrosh, I just realized, are you sure you don’t want me coming tonight to take notes?

GARROSH:  <shakes head>  Isilien was already less than thrilled about bringing in more people, and Doan didn’t seem like he’s going to be very friendly.  I don’t want to push my luck inviting more people than necessary to the party, much less setting off any bells by having someone hanging around writing down everything everyone says.

MOKVAR:  Yeah, true.  I was just thinking this might be the part of the trip where we’d especially like to keep a record of things.

LIADRIN:  I can always write it up after we’re done, as well.  I do agree it’s to our benefit to record as much of this as possible, especially in case we need to keep our stories straight for timeline purposes.

FARANELL:  I can help with that when you’re working on it.  I have an eidetic memory, so I should be able to cover most of what ends up being said.

UTVOCH:  <still rifling around in his pack>  Wait, you dead what?

FARANELL:  No, eidetic.

LIADRIN:  It means a photographic memory.

UTVOCH:  Oh.  What’s photographic?

GARROSH:  Hold on.  You have an eidetic memory?

FARANELL:  Yeah.  I was tested for it as a kid and everything.  <chuckles>  Only reason Patrick didn’t wind up three grades ahead of me.

GARROSH:  So can I ask you something?

FARANELL:  Yes?

GARROSH:  If you’re supposed to have this uber-memory, how come you’re always forgetting shit?

MOKVAR:  You do seem pretty forgetful sometimes.

FARANELL:  I don’t know why people keep saying that.

GARROSH:  Because it’s true?

FARANELL:  I’ll have you know, I can recite back to you every book I’ve read in the last five years.

LIADRIN:  Well, it might just be that he has excellent recall of specific sights and sounds, or language?  But broader events slip his memory sometimes?

FARANELL:  “Our first day went as well as one can expect first days to go.  Most of our time was preoccupied with making the necessary arrangements to establish a base camp.  I located an ideal setting by a freshwater river inlet.  Judging by the old, abandoned docks nearby, this site was inhabited sometime ago.  As for the original inhabitants, only time can tell that tale.”  Just saying.

GARROSH:  Okay, fine, you have a perfect memory except for when you don’t.  Go ahead and help Liadrin with the recordkeeping if it makes you happy.

UTVOCH:  So, um, guys?  I think we have a problem.

MOKVAR:  Oh no.

FARANELL:  Here we go.

GARROSH:  What is it?

UTVOCH:  Well, um…I don’t think the shard is here.

LIADRIN:  That’s kind of bad.

GARROSH:  What.  Do you mean.  The shard.  Isn’t HERE?

UTVOCH:  I don’t know, I was keeping it in my pack, only it’s not here now…

FARANELL:  Let me see that.

Faranell grabs the pack from Utvoch and starts sifting through its contents, tossing assorted pieces of junk onto the floor.

GARROSH:  Fucking hell, Utvoch, you had ONE FUCKING JOB on this trip…

FARANELL:  Nope…nope… No – for goodness’ sake, man, how many comic books do you need?

LIADRIN:  Could someone have gotten to it while you were away from the room or some such?

UTVOCH:  No, it’s been in that pack since we got here, and I’ve kept the pack with me the entire time.

MOKVAR:  You’re sure you didn’t leave it alone around someone?

UTVOCH:  Of course I didn’t, what do you think I’m stupid or something?

Everyone looks around at each other for a moment.

GARROSH:  You know what?  Any other time that would have been really funny, but right now I’m not in the fucking mood.

FARANELL:  <handing the pack brusquely back to Utvoch>  Well, that settles it.  It’s definitely not here.

UTVOCH:  <looking through pack again>  Hey, I had a Nutterbar in here that’s gone, too.

MOKVAR:  Utvoch, nobody cares about your stupid candy bar.

GARROSH:  Hang on.

LIADRIN:  Oh no.

GARROSH:  Utvoch, you’re SURE you’ve kept that pack with you the whole time we’ve been in Southshore?

UTVOCH:  Positive.

GARROSH:  <rubbing his head>  Yeah… So…

FARANELL:  Oh…no.

GARROSH:  Shiny, gimmicky-looking crystal, AND a candy bar missing, AND he’s been spending almost all his time doing what…?

LIADRIN:  <sighs>  By the Light, Utvoch…

UTVOCH:  Spending all my time…?  Oh CRAP, you think the kid took it?

GARROSH:  Tirion’s brat is the only person you’ve been around for any length of time since we’ve been here.  Unless you think THRALL made off with it?

UTVOCH:  Do you think Thrall would have taken—OWW!

MOKVAR:  Hey, um, why is there all this smoke in here all of sudden?

GARROSH:  Of COURSE Thrall wouldn’t have taken it!

LIADRIN:  There isn’t something burning, is there?

FARANELL:  No, this isn’t ffrroomm aa ffiirree.

MOKVAR:  Wwhhyy aarree yyoouu ttaallkkiinngg ssoo ssllooww—oohh, nneevveerr mmiinndd…

GARROSH:  OOhh bbooyyy.  HHHeeerrreee wwweee gggooo aaagggaaaiiinnn….

The smoke thickens as Soridormi and Chromie teleport into the room, flanking the door.  A few seconds later, Nozdormu strolls pimps [Word choice revised at the Warchief’s insistence. –Mkvr., ed.] into the room in slow motion.

NOZDORMU:  Greetings, Warchief.

CHROMIE:  Hiya, guys!

GARROSH:  Hey—  <waves his hand around in front of his face for a moment to see if it’s moving at normal speed>  Okay, that’s better.  Hey Noz.

MOKVAR:  Is that really necessary?

NOZDORMU:  Is what really necessary?

Soridormi, standing behind Nozdormu, shakes her head vigorously while waving one hand side to side.

MOKVAR:  Never mind.

CHROMIE:  <giggles>

GARROSH:  So I’m guessing this isn’t just a social call.

NOZDORMU:  Indeed, Warchief.

SORIDORMI:  We’re concerned that something may be amiss with your mission.

FARANELL:  Oh, you have no idea.

NOZDORMU:  I’ve detected a disturbance in the timeline, located roughly around this point.  At this stage it’s difficult for me to pinpoint its origin exactly; whatever the key events are, I suspect they’re still in their early stages of unfolding, and without my Aspect powers I find my ability to see through the cracks in the timeline more limited than they were.  Nevertheless, something in the proper progression of these events has been disrupted.

MOKVAR:  Yeah, um…

GARROSH:  About that.

FARANELL:  Really?  So we traveled back ten years, got a bunch of Alliance from the future killed in the past, there’s two copies of me running around within like ten yards of each other, we’ve dropped a highly sensitive and powerful magical attunement device into the hands of a kid who’s going to grow up to be a xenophobic nutjob—

CHROMIE:  You really want to get that back pronto, by the way.

FARANELL:  —and  now you’re telling us that something has been disrupted in the timeline?  Imagine my astonishment.

NOZDORMU:  You know, it’s not too late for me to skip back about thirty years and arrange for a certain someone never to have been born.

GARROSH:  At the rate this is going, could you get me too on the way back?

MOKVAR:  Wouldn’t it be better just to erase Utvoch?

GARROSH:  You know what?  Good call.  Let’s go with that instead.

UTVOCH:  Wait, what?  He’s going to do what to me?

GARROSH:  Shouldn’t you be busy right now THINKING ABOUT WHAT YOU’VE DONE?

UTVOCH:  Sorry, sir.

NOZDORMU:  At…any rate.

SORIDORMI:  I wish we could give you more specific information, but unfortunately…

NOZDORMU:  All I can really tell you is that something is amiss, but still very much in flux.  You need to take extreme care not to cause any further disturbances in the events of this time, and get back to your own time as quickly as possible.

FARANELL:  So, in other words, don’t mess up.  Thanks, that helps a lot.

NOZDORMU:  Or I could fast-forward you up to the day of your death.  That could work too, you know.

FARANELL:  Already been there, actually.

NOZDORMU:  Would you like a return trip?

SORIDORMI:  <giving Nozdormu a gentle tug on the shoulder>  We…know this is a hectic and confusing time for you all.  We simply mean to impress upon you the importance of the utmost caution.

GARROSH:  Believe me, nobody wants to find the source of that anti-plague thing and get out of here without a fuss more than me.

LIADRIN:  And by the looks of it, I’d say we’re not far off.

UTVOCH:  Can I ask a stupid question?

GARROSH:  Like nobody I’ve ever met.

UTVOCH:  Huh?

GARROSH:  Never mind.  Ask.

UTVOCH:  Well okay, you guys are going to try to see what caused that thing that’s killing the undead, right?

GARROSH:  Only a week in and you’ve already pieced that together, huh?  You’re getting sharp on me.

FARANELL:  In other words, yes.

UTVOCH:  Well then, begging your pardon, Warchief, not to question your great and imperious judgment, but while we’re here, couldn’t we just stop those guys from doing it in the first place?

LIADRIN, NOZDORMU, and SORIDORMI:  <overlapping>  No.

UTVOCH:  Oh.  Why not?

LIADRIN:  Paradoxes.

UTVOCH:  Wait, parrot oxes?  You mean we’ll create some weird new animal or something?

CHROMIE:  Oi, this one’s a shitake mushroom for brains…

UTVOCH:  Actually, you know, parrot oxes could be kind of cool…

LIADRIN:  No.  Paradoxes.  If we prevent the anti-plague from being created in the past, when we get to the future, the anti-plague won’t exist, but then there won’t be a reason for us to come to the past anymore, so we won’t, so then the anti-plague will be created, and so forth, in an endless self-canceling loop.

CHROMIE:  See, see, I told you I liked her!

UTVOCH:  …So you could have the parrot oxes plowing the fields, but while they’re doing that they could talk, and that would probably make the work go faster since I bet working in the fields for hours gets pretty boring, and—

Utvoch finds himself unable to finish his sentence, as his train of thought is interrupted by his unplanned transformation into a sheep.

FARANELL:  Okay.  That’s enough from him.

LIADRIN:  Ha!  You polymorphed him?

GARROSH:  Dude, that’s…that’s just…I don’t even have a word for how much awesome that is.

UTVOCH:  <bleats>

MOKVAR:  Hmm, you know, that’s giving me an idea…

NOZDORMU:  At this point I suppose we should leave you to your work…

CHROMIE:  You definitely want to work on getting that shard thingy back fast.

LIADRIN:  I would imagine Tirion would be a fairly strict father.  I suppose if we told him we think his son might have stolen something, he would—

GARROSH:  Maybe make the kid give it back, yeah, and maybe ask “Oh, so what is this thing my kid swiped?  Oh, a magical shard, what for?”  And maybe ask Doan about it, who almost definitely is going to know his chameleon shards.  And maybe Tirion gets curious about what these people hanging out with Isilien have one of THOSE for…

LIADRIN:  Hmm, true, probably too risky, I suppose…

CHROMIE:  Oh feldercarb, you people need to stop dancing around it!  Just grab the kid and steal it back!  What’s he going to do, stop you?  He’s a kid!

UTVOCH:  <bleats>

FARANELL:  Well, to be fair, he could call his fairly powerful, well-connected paladin dad, who we absolutely can’t harm while we’re here, so…

CHROMIE:  Fine, fine, so you just keep him incapacitated while you steal it!  You can…well jiminy, Faranell could sheep him just like Utvoch…

UTVOCH:  <bleats>

CHROMIE:  Or you could hex him, or, I don’t care, Throwdown or Repentance, or… flipping flux capacitor, you’ve got a room full of crowd control here, do you really need me drawing a diagram for you guys?

GARROSH:  Wow, you’ve REALLY got a yen for us to mug this kid, don’t you?

CHROMIE:  Hey, do you want your thingymabob back or not?

MOKVAR:  Actually, along those lines, I was thinking… Since you all have powers over time, would it be possible for you to give one of us…well, a buff, I suppose.  To prolong the duration of a spell like polymorph?

CHROMIE:  Huh… What do you think, skipper?

NOZDORMU:  It would be simple enough, though such an enhancement would have to have a very limited number of charges…

FARANELL:  You’re thinking you’d want me to hit Taelan with a super-polymorph?

MOKVAR:  Actually I was thinking more of my hex.  What I had in mind—

The door to the room swings open and Kelly the innkeeper barges in.

KELLY:  Hey, what’s going on up here?  I’m hearing all kinds of noise down in the… <looks down at Utvoch the sheep> …lobby…

GARROSH:  Oh, hey, um…

LIADRIN:  There’s…a very simple explanation for that.

FARANELL:  Yes, there is, although regrettably it reflects rather poorly on all of us…

UTVOCH:  <bleats>

KELLY:  What the blazes are you people doing with a sheep up here?  We don’t…  <glances over and notices Nozdormu and Soridormi>  …High elves?  Gracious, we haven’t seen high elves in Southshore in I don’t know how long.  I didn’t think you went slumming far beyond Dalaran…

SORIDORMI:  Yes, well…

GARROSH:  Um, yeah, I can explain them, too.

NOZDORMU:  You can?

SORIDORMI:  He can.

NOZDORMU:  I hope so.

KELLY:  I’m listening.

GARROSH:  Look… Mr. Kelly… I’m going to level with you.  Clearly you, um, you’re an observant guy, so you must be aware that there’s a lot of strange business going on around here these days.

KELLY:  Mostly since you lot turned up, yes.

GARROSH:  Right.  Well.  Um, yes, that’s why we’re here, you see.  My people and I are…um…special investigators sent by the king.  We have a…a number of leads concerning some suspicious activities leading us to Southshore, and me and my fellow royal investigators are here to…um…investigate.  Royally.

FARANELL:  <aside to Garrosh>  Smooth.

KELLY:  The king sent… Wait, which king?

GARROSH:  Which king?  Oh, well…  <aside to Liadrin> Who’s the king now?

LIADRIN:  <aside>  Of which kingdom?

GARROSH:  <aside, hissing>  Just GIVE ME A FUCKING NAME!

LIADRIN:  Terenas!

GARROSH:  Terenas!  Yes, yes, good old King Terenas!

KELLY:  Ahh, all right, so you’re sent from here in Lordaeron.  For a minute, as strange as you were acting, I thought you might have been sent from Stormwind or some such damn thing.

GARROSH:  Oh no, no, we’re definitely looking out for dear old Lordaeron.

KELLY:  A good thing, too, as I was going to have words for you if you said you’d been sent by that hot-headed damn brat of a king they have down there!

GARROSH:  Wait, brat…?  You mean Varian?

KELLY:  Yessir!  Fuck that Varian, if you ladies will pardon my language!

GARROSH:  Oh HELL yes!  I KNEW I liked you, Kelly!  I’ll be sure to give a fine report on you to good old Tyranus.

LIADRIN:  Terenas.

GARROSH:  Whoever the fuck he is!

KELLY:  Well hold on now.

GARROSH:  Hmm?

KELLY:  First of all, you say you’re royal investigators, and that sounds all well and good, but how do I know you’re telling the truth?

GARROSH:  I…have an honest face?

KELLY:  Lots of liars do!  If you’re really sent by the king, you surely must have sort of papers to prove you are who you say you are.

GARROSH:  Oh.  Right.  Where did I put those…um…

Nozdormu and Soridormi exchange a look, Soridormi nods, and Nozdormu sighs briefly.

NOZDORMU:  Did you forget…Inspector?  You asked me to hold your royal orders.

GARROSH:  I did?

NOZDORMU:  <glaring>  I don’t know, did you?

GARROSH:  OH RIGHT.  I did.  Yes.  You have the documents on you, then?

NOZDORMU:  <handing Garrosh some papers>  Here you are, Inspector.

GARROSH:  Uh, but these are blank—

SORIDORMI:  I’m sure, Inspector, if you let good Mr. Kelly here review the documents, he’ll find everything is in order…

GARROSH:  Right, right, sure…

Garrosh hands the papers to Kelly, who flips through them for a moment.

KELLY:  Well, you’re right…I would know Terenas’ seal anywhere… I suppose you are who you say…

GARROSH:  Hell yes!  Now if you’ll excuse us, Mr. Kelly—

KELLY:  <turning to face Nozdormu, Soridormi, and Chromie>  I’m still curious what business high elves have with this investigation of yours, though, Inspector.  And…a gnome?

CHROMIE:  Hiya!

GARROSH:  Ah.  Right, well, you see, Mr. Kelly, these are special undercover agents, on loan from Silvermoon and…someplace where there are gnomes.  Regrettably.  Anyway, these are my top operatives – The Legs, The Noz, and Mrs. Robbin’-Son.

CHROMIE:  I hate you.

GARROSH:  No you don’t.

KELLY:  Huh.  I see.  Well I suppose that explains that—

Behind Kelly’s back, Utvoch’s polymorph wears off and he poofs back into his human appearance.

UTVOCH:  The hell was—

Liadrin slaps a hand over Utvoch’s mouth, and she and Faranell pull him back to stand with them.

LIADRIN:  Ssshhh!!

KELLY:  —but you still haven’t accounted for having a damned sheep in your room!

LIADRIN:  What sheep?

FARANELL:  I don’t see a sheep.

UTVOCH:  Did you guys not see—OWW!!

KELLY:  <looking around>  It was right here when I first came in.

GARROSH:  Are you sure?

MOKVAR:  I don’t remember there being a sheep in here.

FARANELL:  I’m pretty sure I would have noticed if there were a sheep in my room.

GARROSH:  I wouldn’t be much of an inspector if I’d missed something like that.

LIADRIN:  Certainly not one of the king’s select agents.

GARROSH:  Yep yep.  Right hand man of King Terribad, that’s me.

LIADRIN:  Actually, it’s Tere—

GARROSH:  It’s what his friends call him.

LIADRIN:  Of course.

KELLY:  Hmm… Well… It must be gone now.  Though I haven’t a notion of where it could have gone.  I know there was something up here making noises!

LIADRIN:  Mr. Kelly, perhaps you should get some rest.  I’m concerned that you may be working too hard and starting to imagine things.

KELLY:  I’m not imagining things, missy.  I’m sure I heard a sheep up in this—

Kelly finds himself unable to finish his sentence, as his assertion is interrupted by his transformation into a sheep.

GARROSH:  Well I’ll be damned.  He’s right.

LIADRIN:  Faranell!

FARANELL:  Did you have a way in mind to get him to leave?  That didn’t also involve gallons of delightful irony?

GARROSH:  Okay, okay, Utvoch, you herd the innkeeper on downstairs real quick, and then we can get back to business.

UTVOCH:  Yes, sir.

NOZDORMU:  And, for my part, I believe the time has come for me to make my exit.  Before I’m forced to witness any more absurdity that I can never unwitness.

GARROSH:  Later, Noz.

SORIDORMI:  <aside>  I don’t know why it surprises you, of all people.

NOZDORMU:  <aside>  It’s not that it surprises me, it’s just… Ugh, that one in particular.

SORIDORMI:  <aside>  Well don’t blame me.  I didn’t have to find a nice Mag’har girl to get to coincidentally cross paths with Grom…

NOZDORMU:  <aside>  I know, I know, I thought it would calm him down a bit.

SORIDORMI:  <aside>  And how did that work out?

 

So anyway…as much as I’d like to invest some more time in beating some sense (or unconsciousness) into Utvoch, that’s going to have to wait for now.  Mokvar seems to have some kind of brainstorm for something we can do, and we’re starting to run short on time, so we’ve got to get things rolling.  More soon.

 

“Why do I have a sudden craving for dandelions?”

Knights of the Silver (withered) Hand

Extra followup from Mokvar after he’d gotten back from his dinner break.  Faranell’s brother apparently had just met Tirion and the rest last night – he was eating alone at the next table over, so Tirion invited him to come join him, Isilien, and Abbendis.  Probably so he could have one more person to yammer on to.  Anyway, Mokvar says Tirion and Isilien both seemed to take a liking to Faranell the Younger…erm…Younger and Other… Okay fuck it, hang on.

Okay.  Just checked with Fara— OUR Faranell.  So the brother’s name is Patrick.  Whereas HIS name is Edwin.  Yeah, I know, right?  I would be a last-name guy too.  Anyway, though, that should make this easier.

So as I was saying, Tirion and Isilien seemed to hit it off well with Patrick, especially Isilien.  Abbendis seemed a lot more standoffish, with Patrick AND with Mokvar, who ended up sitting with them for a few minutes while they were finishing eating.  Related side note – thank GOODNESS Utvoch mostly kept his distance at the bar.  A rare moment of sense.

Although…he didn’t waste too much time returning to character once he an Mokvar came back upstairs…

 

MOKVAR:  Hey, did you all know that that guy downstairs is Faranell’s brother?

GARROSH:  Yeah, it’s his younger brother, sort of a boy genius in alchemy.

LIADRIN:  He’s paying the Faranell of this time a call on his way to study in Silvermoon, where he’s fated to meet his end during the Scourge invasion.

MOKVAR:  So…I missed a meeting.

UTVOCH:  Holy crap, Faranell, did you know about this too?

MOKVAR:  Sorry, Faranell, about how long…wait.  <stares at Utvoch>

FARANELL:  …

GARROSH:  …

LIADRIN:  That’s…remarkable.

FARANELL:  Um, Utvoch…

UTVOCH:  Yeah?

FARANELL:  Let me make sure I’m following you correctly here.

UTVOCH:  Okay.

GARROSH:  Personally I think you’re just pulling the bandage off slowly now, but it’s your call…

FARANELL:  You’re asking me if I knew that the man downstairs, who is my brother, is my brother?

UTVOCH:  Um, yeah, I guess.

FARANELL:  <blinks>

GARROSH:  They weren’t frigging separated at birth, fuckwit.

LIADRIN:  Utvoch?

UTVOCH:  Yeah?

LIADRIN:  Go play with the child.

UTVOCH:  Oh, okay.  <thinks>  Wait, it’s pretty late, he’s probably asleep—

LIADRIN:  Go check for him.

UTVOCH:  Um, okay.  What if he’s not th—

LIADRIN:  Then check some more.

UTVOCH:  Yes ma’am.

Utvoch leaves.

FARANELL:  See, you’re starting to fit right in.

 

She’s actually really good at dealing with stupidity.  I might have to see if can lure her away from Silvermoon to come work with me more often.  Maybe offer her a promotion or something, although I don’t know how much she would groove on a job other than being head honcho of the paladins up there.  Pansy-ass fuckers though they are.  Eh.  Still might be worth a try.

So anyway, that was last night.

Today, Liadrin and I spent most of the afternoon camping out downstairs watching for the Silver Hand people to do their thing.  Finally as we were getting late into the afternoon, the full cast of characters turned up and gathered around one table near the fireplace.  Liadrin and I watched as closely as we could without being too obvious about it, but from where we were standing we couldn’t hear much that they were saying, other than a few words here and there.  Luckily we already knew from future-Tirion the basics of the meeting.

Mograine was pretty clearly running the show most of the way, and after a bit, while the rest of the group tried to huddle around to conceal what was going on (successfully? not so much), he did the big unveiling and brought out the dark crystal that Tirion had told us about.  I couldn’t see it clearly the whole time, but every time I was able to get a clear line on it, there was just something… uneasy about even looking at it.  Liadrin seemed even more disturbed by it than I was – or maybe just intrigued.  Either way, at that point she wasn’t making much of an effort to hide the fact that she was staring at the thing.

At one point, Mograin took off one of his gloves and showed the others his hand – it was withered and skeletal, exactly like the undead look, only in his case it was just his hand rather than his whole body.  Tirion mentioned Mograine being “scarred” by touching the crystal once, and I’ve seen plenty of disfiguring injuries, but this seemed much more creepy.

Eventually the bunch of them started pouring their holy spells in the crystal, and it started to glow and even hum a little, and then finally it transformed from dark to light, just like Tirion had described.  By this point, Liadrin was already in full perked-up mode, but I think her eyes lit up a little extra at that.  Mograine touched the crystal, it healed his withered hand with a soft yellow glow, and they all went round and round in whispers – so that’s how it started.  The Ashbringer wasn’t made yet, but the idea for it was invented, and in a way that was more important.  After they were done, Mograine sealed the crystal in its chest again, then seemed to have a pretty intense discussion about something with Isilien and Doan.

At that point the Faranell brothers wandered into the inn, passed by the Silver Hand bunch, and headed upstairs.  Having had a chance to get a closer look at them now, I’m not sure why I didn’t realize on my own that they were related – they’ve definitely got a major family resemblance going, especially around the nose, and, hell, they’ve even got matching cloaks going style-wise, blue for Patrick and gray for Edwin.

Anyway, they were only around for a minute, but I was distracted enough by them being there that I didn’t realize that Liadrin had gone over to the Silver Hand boys and was talking to Isilien, Tirion, and Doan now.  I was planning to do any talking we needed to do, but whatever.  There goes us getting anywhere through charm.  Still, it looked like she ended up winning them over by rolling out a few of those flashy paladin spells – Holy Light or Divine Shield, or Holy Hand of Divinity, or Holy Shock, or Holy Shield, or Shock of Divine Light, or Shield of Divinity, or Holy Hell I’m Shocked You’re Holy or the Holy fucking Hand Grenade or WHATEVER the hell those paladin spells are called.  Like seriously, take “holy,” “divine,” “light,” and any other two words you can think of, throw them in a hat, and pull out two, and that’s the name of some ability of theirs.  And you wonder why everyone gets so sick of them.

Where was I?

Oh yeah, Liadrin was talking to the Silver Hands.  Tirion excused himself and went upstairs, so I decided it was safe for me to go join the discussion.  Because honestly, I’ve been trapped in enough tedious conversations with Tirion in my own time, I don’t need to treat myself to any prequels.  Anyway, Liadrin and Isilien were hitting it off fairly well by this point, although Doan seemed sort of standoffish, and eventually he excused himself too and left Isilien to talk to us by himself.

The long and the short of it is this.  Liadrin was able to convince Isilien the she was a kindred spirit as a paladin, and got him to bring her into the know.  Isilien, for his part, is all on board with Mograine’s idea to use the light crystal to create the Ashbringer, but he’s also thinking that the crystal might be a source of power that they could draw on to help defend against the undead in other ways.  He’s persuaded Mograine to let him and Doan study it for a day or two – just like the Tirion from our time said – and see if there’s any potential there.

For our part, Lidrain’s convinced Isilien that she and some of her friends, myself included, might be interested in the endeavor.  He was wary about bringing too many more people into this, but considering he’s working with limited time, he figures he’s not in a position to turn away help.  He’s going to spend the day tomorrow working through some ideas with Doan, but then, tomorrow night, he’s invited us to stop by his room here at the inn to put our heads together.  So here we go.  Coming down to crunch time.  More soon.

 

 

[Header image provided by Rioriel from Postcards From Azeroth, reproduced here with permission and many thanks.  Click here to see the souped-up Postcard version!]

All roads lead to Southshore

So Tirion’s sugar-high kid, Taelan, has been bouncing around non-stop since he got here with Tirion and the rest of his people, but I can’t help but get a kick out of how things are playing out with him.  Utvoch ran into him in this little lounge room they’ve got upstairs, and they got to talking a little, and now the two of them have been hanging out up there playing checkers and just generally hanging out and shit.  Which come to think of it, sort of kills two headaches with one stone.  I can kind of see why Utvoch would gravitate toward the kid – what with him being here with me, Liadrin, Faranell, and Mokvar, he probably misses having someone like Dontrag to hang with.  You know, around his own mental level.  A little kid might still be overshooting the mark a little, but it’s probably still a pretty major improvement to him.

So he’s been spending most of his time in the lounge, and that’s mostly been keeping the kid quiet(er) while Tirion’s off going about his own business.  All we really have to watch for is Utvoch not having any more run-ins with Kel’Thuzad, but I’m not so worried about that as long as he stays upstairs.  Kel’Thuzad’s still been bopping around town, but he and Helcular have mostly just been popping into the inn for meals and the occasional drink, and then going about their business.  Faranell tells me that Helcular used to live here in Southshore, so odds are KT is staying with him.

Speaking of Kel’Thuzad, and Helcular…and Tirion…and…well, okay, let’s just say speaking of everyone I mentioned in that last paragraph.  Last night, Then-Faranell met Kel’Thuzad and Helcular outside the inn and went wandering off for most of the night.  Meanwhile, the guy who had come to Southshore with Then-Faranell spent most of the evening hanging out in the common room downstairs, which somehow or other led to him joining Tirion and his group for dinner and generally acting like buddies.  All of this led to THIS little informational exchange with OUR Faranell while I was looking out the window to look for KT and company:

 

GARROSH:  Looks like Kel’Thuzad and the rest are still out by the main road.

FARANELL:  They’ll be out there a while.  We ended up walking around the outskirts for much of the night.  You don’t have to worry about us – well, them – turning up until you see them had out toward the river first.

GARROSH:  You’re sure?

FARANELL:  Yeah, I remember it.

GARROSH:  That’s nice and all, but I still have to check on these things.  It’s not like you don’t have a track record of forgetting things, like, oh, I don’t know, say, the fact that you WERE HERE IN SOUTHSHORE IN THE FIRST PLACE.

FARANELL:  <rubbing his face with one hand>  I’d forgotten a lot of things, yeah…

GARROSH:  Well, if we’ve got some time before they’re back in town…  Hey, Mokvar?

MOKVAR:  Yeah, chief?

GARROSH:  You’ve got a window to swing downstairs for some grub and a few drinks if you want.  Maybe grab Utvoch on your way, might as well feed him while we’re at it.

MOKVAR:  He still with the kid?

GARROSH:  Hell if I know.  Either there or his room, I guess.

MOKVAR:  You sure you don’t need for any more note-taking for now?

LIADRIN:  I can take over while you eat.

MOKVAR:  You sure?

FARANELL:  You’re a scribe?

LIADRIN:  I’ve been writing a history of the Sunwell for some months now.  There’s been a fair bit of research, interviews with people like Lor’themar Theron…

GARROSH:  Who?

LIADRIN:  …and so I ended up picking up shorthand pretty quickly to be able to keep notes on it all.  I’ve noticed Garrosh likes you to keep a record of everything – surprisingly sensible, all things considered – so I don’t really mind helping give you a breather here and there.

MOKVAR:  Yeah, thanks.  Have to admit, I’ve been starting to get writer’s cramp something fierce this trip.

LIADRIN:  It’s fine.  Go take a break.

MOKVAR:  Thanks.  I’ll see if I can find Utvoch on the way down.

GARROSH:  See if you can get a look at what Tirion and the rest are up to while you’re down there.

Mokvar leaves.

GARROSH:  Speaking of which… Faranell, who IS that guy who showed up with you?  Some friend of yours I’m guessing?

FARANELL:  I suppose you could say that.

GARROSH:  Well who then?  Anybody we should be worried about?  Please tell me he’s not another recruit for Kel’Thuzad.

FARANELL:  No, nothing like that…  He’s my brother.

GARROSH:  Seriously?  I didn’t know you had a brother.

FARANELL:  I don’t anymore.

GARROSH:  Oh… What happened?

FARANELL:  He died.

GARROSH:  Well, yeah.  Then again, so did you.

FARANELL:  In my case it didn’t take.

LIADRIN:  I’m sorry, Faranell.  Do you mind if I ask what happened?

FARANELL:  I suppose it doesn’t really matter at this point.  He studied alchemy like me – honestly, he was quite a bit better at it, certainly much more inventive.  Three years younger, but years ahead of me as a scientist.  He went to study under the high elves in Silvermoon.

LIADRIN:  Oh…  Oh no.

FARANELL:  You know the funny thing?  He always did so well in school that he ended up skipping a few grades and getting a head start on his advanced studies.  So if he hadn’t been so smart, he probably wouldn’t even have been in Silvermoon when the Scourge came.

LIADRIN:  I’m so sorry, Faranell.

FARANELL:  That’s why he’s here now.  He’s about to begin his studies, and he’s taking a few days to visit me before he goes.  He figured he wouldn’t see very much of me over the next couple of years.  Always nose to the grindstone with him.

GARROSH:  Do I even want to ask?

FARANELL:  I don’t know it at the time, obviously, but this weekend is the last time I ever saw him.

GARROSH:  Yeah, there it is… Sorry, man.  Look, if this is all hitting too close to home, I totally get it if you feel like you need to tuck away in your room till we’re done here.

FARANELL:  No, it’s okay.  I came here to a job, so let’s get it done.  Make the future safe for the undead.

 

This just in – Alexandros Mograine finally turned up today, with Doan and Fairbanks in tow.  They disappeared to their rooms right off – gotta say, to look at this inn from the outside, you wouldn’t think it had so much guest space up there – and while they’re probably going to be taking some time to settle in and rest from their trip and such, them being here means Liadrin and I are going to be on full-time watch downstairs.  Updates to follow.

Back to the future

Okay, so we’re finally back, more or less, and thank the spirits for that, because I was getting really sick of looking human, not to mention not even knowing what verb tenses to use, and plus this whole time travel thing causes way more headaches than it’s worth.  Mostly the human-looking thing, though.  Although, listen to…hang on.

 

Huh.

Okay, that’s weird.  A bunch of my posts aren’t on the blog.  They’re all the last bunch of them, so I guess…they just haven’t posted yet?  Crap, one MORE complication from the time-travel bullshit, I guess they came out a little further into…well, the future, I guess…than they were supposed to.  I suppose that makes sense.  The Noz did mention something about there being a time disruption, somewhere right around…you know what, never mind.  The rest of the posts should come up on their own soon enough and you’ll see for yourself.  Looks like we’re just coming up on the fun part.  You know, without there being any actual fun.

This might actually be a good thing, because while the rest of the updates load, that buys me time to deal with some followup on this end, because check out THIS head-scratcher we had waiting for us when we…um…never mind again.  Spoilers.

So yeah.  Let me shut up and go try to make some sense of…this…thing you don’t need to worry about.  And…you sit back and…um…wait to see what the hell I’m talking about, I guess.  Or not talking about.

Ugh.  I really hate the guy who says shit like that when I’m reading something.  Sorry.

A bad comedy waiting to happen

Pieces are starting to come together here.  Maybe a few too many for comfort.

Tirion Fordring – the younger, not-quite-so-old-and-gray version – arrived here late last night, with his buddies Isilien and Abbendis in tow.  We overheard Tirion talking with Kelly the innkeeper (lucky for us, young Tirion isn’t much more concise than old Tirion, so it wasn’t hard to keep up with his end of the conversation), and from what he was saying it sounds like Mograine and his people could be arriving any time today.  So we’re coming up on go time for the mission here.  And just when I thought things were lining up conveniently for us for once, what with us having just enough lead time to get ourselves positioned perfectly, of course the other shoe has to drop.

Let me explain.  The original plan was to have Liadrin and Faranell camp out in the inn common room to see what they can gather when the Silver Hand people are all assembled – those two made the most sense for the job, seeing as they’re sort of the experts, Faranell on all matters plaguey, Liadrin on the possible light crystal angle.  Meanwhile, I was keeping Mokvar and Utvoch out of sight in the rooms upstairs…what with Kel’Thuzad still being on the loose, and having seen those two, I wanted to keep them out of view as much as possible, just in case.  And I know what you’re thinking, shouldn’t I be just as concerned about Faranell being in plain sight in the common room?  Yeah, yeah, I know, it’s not ideal, but I wanted him down there as an expert witness and shit.  I was going to keep myself stationed outside, so if Kel’Thuzad turned up, I could high-tail it inside and give Faranell the signal to make himself scarce.

And yeah, how about that?  After all these years, promoted all the way up to fucking Warchief, and what job am I stuck doing out of necessity?  Fucking lookout.  The things I do for the sake of the mission…

Anyway, it wasn’t a perfect plan, I know, but it was the best option available.  That is, until Fuckyall, the pissy god of Not So Fast Garrosh, decided to throw us another plot twist, because guess who else picked tonight to turn up in Southshore?  Yeah, you guessed it, Faranell the Younger.  Or Faranell v1.0.  Whatever you want to call him.  He came sauntering into town this morning with some other dude I don’t recognize, which sent me right on into the inn – in every bit the happy mood you would imagine – to rush our Faranell on out of sight.  Ain’t that just a bitch?

So now, I’m going to be helping Liadrin watch over things in the common room, while…well…absolutely everybody else stays hidden away upstairs.  Oh, and for one extra little sprinkle of joy over all of this, Tirion also happened to bring along his little snot-nosed kid, who must have eaten EVERY LAST PIECE OF CANDY IN ANDORHAL on the way down, if his foot-stomping wall-bouncing little-kid-screeching sugar high is any indication.  The kid’s mostly been hanging around upstairs, so on top of being sequestered, the rest of the guys also get to be stuck right underneath the little walking noise machine.  Which…you know, come to think of it, that’s actually kind of funny.  Especially the part where Utvoch’s one of the ones stuck there.

Anyhow, with any luck things will start happening here quickly.  I’ll keep you all updated.

Durnholde Keep

After Mokvar and Faranell dropped their respective timeline bombs on us, we hashed out how best to juggle things to keep the risks to a minimum.  In the middle of things, Chromie popped in just to…I don’t know…go “gee willickers” a couple times and remind us that Mokvar and Faranell absolutely must not interfere with their former selves, like we didn’t already get that.  And then she blathered on about all the crap that could go wrong with the timestream if they do, and most of it pretty much just came off as “WORDS WORDS WORDS WORDS WORDS WORDS WORDS WORDS WORDS WORDS WORDS WORDS WORDS WORDS WORDS WORDS BAD.”

So yeah, we’ve got to be careful about this, but the way around it seemed pretty obvious.  Mokvar couldn’t run into himself at Durnholde Keep, so okay, he just wouldn’t go.  He stayed back at the inn in Southshore and kept an eye out for Tirion’s people arriving while we went to Durnholde to take care of Thrall.  Meanwhile, Faranell can’t interfere with his old human self, so he came with the rest of us to Durnholde – get him away from Southshore for a little while, minimize the chance for a random run in, and plus this way he could be traveling with the bunch of us at all times so we can all be giving a sort of buffer zone in case Faranell v1.0 turns up.  Liadrin also had a pretty sharp idea, to have a sign/countersign for Faranell, just in case he’s ever separated from us or if anything happens where we need to make sure we’re dealing with the right Faranell.  The way things tend to go for us, it’s probably a good idea not to leave anything to chance.

Side note, I’m not sure if Faranell is worried about running into his younger self, or if seeing Kel’Thuzad and Helcular just threw him or something, but he’s been acting kind of strange since he and Mokvar got back.  A couple times now I’ve caught him just staring at himself in the mirror, touching his face, just seeming all kinds of distracted.  Not sure what to make of that.  Hopefully he’ll be able to keep his head in the game until we finish what we came for.

So anyway, I finally headed out with Faranell, Liadrin, and Utvoch, and we made our way over to Durnholde.  And I’ve got to say, I don’t know WHAT was going on with that defunct Alliance group that was supposed to handle this, that they thought they needed five people to handle this job.  The Noz might have been erring on the side of safety, or maybe those Alliance scrubs really do suck, but no joke, I can’t possibly exaggerate how easily we rolled over those Durnholde guards.  We had to clear out the lower barracks first, where some of the orcs were being held.  And then I guess one of the officers came running in, some dude named Drake, at least that’s what Liadrin tells me.  I wouldn’t have thought there was anything special about the guy myself, what with how he dropped like a rock after one good chop from Gorehowl.

Anyway…at that point we were set to head into the keep proper and get Thrall.  It took a few minutes to hack up the handful of guards on the way in, and then, lo and behold, there was our Warchief-to-be chilling in the basement cell.  And you know, I’ve got to say, you always figure the whole time travel business is pretty straightforward as far as the do’s and don’ts, but you don’t realize how hard it can be to bite your tongue until you’re standing there with a younger version of someone you know.  I had to keep stopping myself from saying things to him, not that half of what I would have to say would make any sense to him coming from my fake-ass human face.

Here’s the other thing, though.  I wasn’t expecting him to be so young.  I mean, I knew how old he was, it’s not hard to take now-Thrall and roll him back ten years in my head.  But even beyond the ten years…he was just so YOUNG.  You could see it.  Even locked in a jail cell, he just seemed so…unburdened.  His eyes looked so much less tired.  I never even realized how much Thrall seems like he’s carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders now, until I saw what he used to be like.  Anyway.

One thing that was still the same, though – past or present, credit where it’s due, Thrall’s kind of a badass any way you cut it.  In fact, I think I liked past-Thrall a little more, just because he seemed a lot more unapologetic about it.  Like for instance, we broke him out of his cell, and he ran up to the keep’s armory to grab some armor and a weapon for himself.  And there was this armorer guy standing watch there, and he started screaming bloody murder when he saw Thrall roll in, and before you could say “open-hand bitch-slap,” well…see for yourselves.

THRALL KEEPS THE PIMP HAND STRONG.

“That’s enough from him” is right, Thrall.  Roll with it, man.  Hell, bottle some of that shit up and send it to yourself ten years from now, you could use it.  True story.

Anyway, the stupid humans sent a bunch more guards to try to stop us on the way out, and we made hilariously short work of them, and then I guess there was some captain that we polished off without me even realizing he was supposed to be someone important because OMG SPLAT.  At that point, Thrall had the bright idea that he wanted to use the captain guy’s horse to high-tail it out of there…even though the horse was barely moving faster than we were on foot.  I mean, seriously, were these the best mounts the humans had available back in the day?  Really?  And meanwhile Thrall was looking absolutely ridiculous sitting on top of this thing, PLUS if he was moving any slower he’d be going backwards, and for real, dude, have you just not learned ghost wolf form yet?  Because even that would have been faster than this reject horse.

Anyhow, you don’t need every last painful detail.  We got Thrall to Tarren Mill, and killed some more humans – always a plus – and then some of those Infinite Dragonflight guys showed up, and we handed them their asses easily enough.  And then out of nowhere this fog rolled in, and – you guessed it – The Noz came pimping in to check on things, and confirmed that the timeline has been secured against the Infinite Dragonflight’s interference, and that’s nice and all, dude, but how about you leave a memo for yourself not to be a frigging douche-tard down the road so we don’t have to waste time stopping your future chronies (SEE WHAT I DID THERE?) from screwing around with things?

Oh and also?  Just have to say – Thrall’s human friend Taretha?  SPITTING IMAGE of Jaina.  Seriously.  Crossbow to my head, I could not tell those two apart.  And you know what?  Draw your own conclusions about her.  I don’t even want to know.

We’re back at the Southshore inn now, and we just need to hold tight until Tirion and Alexandros Mograine and all those people show up.  I’ll keep you posted on what happens.  Or, you know, you can consult the nearest history book.

 

 

[Header image provided by Rioriel from Postcards From Azeroth, reproduced here with permission and many thanks.  Click here to see the souped-up Postcard version!]

All my troubles seemed so far away

Okay, so remember what I was saying about not wanting any more complications?  Yeah, I should probably know better by now than to say shit like that.  Mokvar, Faranell, and Utvoch just got back from burying the bodies of those Alliance adventurers.  At least THAT much went off without a hitch.  After they got back, though, Mokvar hit me with the first wrinkle in this whole plan – apparently, back in the day, HE was one of the orcs being held in Durnholde Keep along with Thrall, which could cause the tiny little problem that if he goes there, he runs the risk of…like…running into himself, and…I don’t even know what that would do to the timeline.  Liadrin could probably explain it, seeing as she actually seems to understand this timey-whimey crap, but who has the patience, right?  Bottom line is, we have Mokvar troubles.

Oh, but the Mokvar business isn’t even the biggest fucking-up-the-timeline issue we have to deal with.  Oh no, we’ve got ANOTHER wrinkle to deal with that will make you wish you could go back to the happy-go-lucky headaches of the Mokvar thing.  Because check THIS out – it turns out our buddy Faranell has his OWN issues here.  And in HIS case, they’re not even as straightforward as Mokvar’s crap.  Because check out what the guys got blindsided by on their way back to town, keeping in mind that right now our boy Faranell looks just like he did back in his pre-undead human days…

 

Faranell, Mokvar, and Utvoch walk down the main street in Southshore, heading toward the inn.

UTVOCH:  Wow, you really get EVERYTHING written down in that notebook of yours, huh?

MOKVAR:  It’s actually not as hard as you would figure, once you work out a good shorthand system.

UTVOCH:  You’ll have to show me sometime, that could come in pretty handy with the next class I take.

MOKVAR:  Are you still working on those?

UTVOCH:  Yeah, I have to repeat the last one what with them failing me when me and Dontrag handed in the same term paper.

MOKVAR:  Wait, Dontrag?

UTVOCH:  Yeah, I talked him into taking one of the classes with me, but then he got sick of the homework, and we tried to save time by splitting it up, and…

FARANELL:  Wait, you mean it didn’t occur to you that they would notice if you both handed in the same paper for the same class?

UTVOCH:  Well yeah, who’d figure they’d remember something like that?

FARANELL:  I never thought I’d say this, but I’m starting to think Garrosh is heroically well-mannered…

MOKVAR:  Heh, you should see when—

VOICE:  <calling from behind the trio>  Faranell!

Faranell, Mokvar, and Utvoch exchange quick puzzled looks before starting to turn.

MOKVAR:  That can’t be good…

UTVOCH:  What the…?

FARANELL:  Crap, I think I know… <turning>  Oh…um… Hey, Kel’Thuzad.

Kel’Thuzad of Dalaran, accompanied by Helcular, approach the group.

KEL’THUZAD:  I thought I recognized you.  Good to see you as always, Faranell, it’s been too long.

FARANELL:  Um…yes, yes it has, Kel’Thuazd.  Just…busy with research, you know how it is.

KEL’THUZAD:  <nodding>  All too well.  I’ve been spending a fair bit of time away from Dalaran myself of late.

Faranell nods nervously while Mokvar and Utvoch edge a step behind him.

FARANELL:  Right…so…

KEL’THUZAD:  You’ve met Helcular?

HELCULAR:  I don’t think so, as I remember.

UTVOCH:  Isn’t he the guy that—

Mokvar elbows Utvoch, who (miraculously) shuts up.

FARANELL:  No, um, we are meeting now for the first time.  Yes…ahem…good to meet you, Helc—erm, that is…Hecklevar, you said your name was?  Sorry, I, um, I’m not very good with names that I have never heard before today.

HELCULAR:  Helcular.

FARANELL:  Ah, okay, Hel-cu-lar.  Got it.  But, um, yes, nice to meet you.

KEL’THUZAD:  And your friends here…?

FARANELL:  Oh… Oh, yes… <looks back to Mokvar and Utvoch, then back to Kel’Thuzad>  Introductions, yes… Um, well, Kel’Thuzad, this is… Movarius, and…Utley… Old friends of mine from Brill.  Fellows, this is Kel’Thuzad, archmage of the Kirin Tor…

KEL’THUZAD:  <nodding to them>  Gentlemen.

UTVOCH:  Hey.

MOKVAR:  Archmage.

KEL’THUZAD:  Are they also…students, Faranell?  Were you bringing them for our meeting?

UTVOCH:  Well no, not until next semest—OWW!

MOKVAR:  I don’t.  Think that’s.  What he was talking about.  Utley.

FARANELL:  Our meeting…oh.  Oh!  <rubbing his chin nervously>  Oh…crap…

KEL’THUZAD:  Faranell?

FARANELL:  Oh… Um, no, no, Kel’Thuzad, I just…um…

KEL’THUZAD:  You seem upset.  Is something wrong, my friend?

FARANELL:  I…  No, I… They’re not here for the meeting, Kel’Thuzad.  I just happen to… Well, you see, we try to come to Southshore for a fishing trip every so often, just an old custom going back to when we were kids, you know…

KEL’THUZAD:  I see.  Why were you so distraught there for a moment, then?

FARANELL:  Distraught?

KEL’THUZAD:  Yes.

FARANELL:  Was I distraught?

KEL’THUZAD:  You seemed it.

HELCULAR:  You said “Oh crap” for some reason.

FARANELL:  Oh.  Did I?

HELCULAR:  Yes, you did.

KEL’THUZAD:  That’s what I heard as well.

MOKVAR:  <skimming notes>  I have you down for “Oh crap” too, yeah.

FARANELL:  Not.  Helping.

KEL’THUZAD:  Is something wrong?

FARANELL:  Oh… Well, no, I guess I just said “Oh crap” because…well…I’d actually forgotten about our meeting.  Was that…today?  What’s the date today anyway?

HELCULAR:  It’s the fourteenth.

FARANELL:  <eyes go wide a moment>  Oh no…the fourteenth… How did I not remember that was the day…

KEL’THUZAD:  You did receive my letter, did you not?

FARANELL:  Oh yes…I did… It was just…some time ago, and it slipped my mind entirely…

KEL’THUZAD:  <chuckles>  You’re as forgetful as always, my friend.

FARANELL:  Well, yes.  I haven’t been sleeping very well lately.

KEL’THUZAD:  You should try to rest more.  We can’t have you falling ill.

HELCULAR:  What is you friend writing, by the way?

FARANELL:  Pardon?

HELCULAR:  Your friend’s been writing something down all this time.

FARANELL:  Oh.

Faranell turns to Mokvar, who’s still jotting things down in his notepad.

KEL’THUZAD:  That is rather curious.

FARANELL:  Oh…well…you see… Hmm.  What are you writing, Movarius?

MOKVAR:  Oh.  Me?

HELCULAR:  You haven’t stopped writing for more than a few seconds at a time.

FARANELL:  Yes, that is rather peculiar behavior for someone who isn’t doing anything conspicuous or out of the ordinary at all.

MOKVAR:  Oh… Well…um…well, I’m a writer, you see.

KEL’THUZAD:  Oh?

MOKVAR:  Yes… Well, a poet, actually.

UTVOCH:  You are—?  OWW!!  I mean, um, you are.

MOKVAR:  Right.  And so, well, I’m just…always jotting down ideas.  Thoughts, images, turns of phrase…you know the creative process, can’t pick and choose when inspiration will strike, right?

HELCULAR:  So you’re working on something now?

FARANELL:  Oh, he’s…he’s always working on something.  That’s my old friend Movarius, always toiling over a new masterpiece…

KEL’THUZAD:  You know, my cousin is a writer as well.  I always admired his talent.  It’s one of those skills I’ve never really mastered myself.

MOKVAR:  Um, thanks… It’s really nothing…

KEL’THUZAD:  Oh, don’t be modest.

HELCULAR:  I’d be curious to hear what you’re working on.

MOKVAR:  I…what?

KEL’THUZAD:  Indeed!  Would you mind sharing a bit?

FARANELL:  Oh, um, I’m sure Movarius wouldn’t want to eat up everyone’s valuable time…

MOKVAR:  Yeah, definitely, I’m sure you both have much more important things to be doing…

KEL’THUZAD:  Nonsense!  One needs to take the time to enjoy these sorts of pleasures.

HELCULAR:  I find I don’t do nearly as much pleasure reading as I would like, so it would be fascinating to hear from an actual working poet, honestly.

MOKVAR:  Oh…okay…well then…  <flips through a few pages in his notepad>  Well, okay, how about this one…  There once was an elf named Sylvanas / Who cried—you know what, um, I’m really not comfortable reading this while it’s still just a draft.

HELCULAR:  Oh.

FARANELL:  It’s all right, Movarius, don’t distress yourself… <patting Mokvar on the back reassuringly, while looking to Kel’Thuzad and Helcular>  He tends to get very anxious and protective about his work, you see…

KEL’THUZAD:  Ah, I understand.  So sorry, Movarius, I didn’t mean to put undue pressure on you.

HELCULAR:  <muttering>  Temperamental artists…

KEL’THUZAD:  I’m sure when you’re satisfied with it, it will be an epic work indeed.  You’ll have to send a copy to me when it’s done.

MOKVAR:  Sure, sure…might take a while, but sure.

FARANELL:  At…um…at any rate, Kel’Thuzad, I should probably see my friends to the inn, but I’ll speak with you about our…business…soon.

KEL’THUZAD:  <nods>  Of course, Faranell.  In the meantime, I may go ahead and begin discussing matters with Helcular.

FARANELL:  By all means.  I’ll… Um, I’ll talk to you shortly.

KEL’THUZAD:  Until then, my friend.

UTVOCH:  Nice meeting you, Kel’Thu—oh HEY, is that the guy who—OWW!

Kel’Thuzad starts to walk off with Helcular.

KEL’THUZAD:  Keep your voice down, Helcular.  Strangers abound…

HELCULAR:  So you can teach me this…this…

KEL’THUZAD:  Necromancy.  It is called necromancy…

Kel’Thuzad and Helcular walk out of earshot while Faranell, Mokvar, and Utvoch make their way toward the inn.

FARANELL:  We…really need to get inside before things take a bad turn here.

MOKVAR:  You mean when Kel’Thuzad comes looking for you again?

FARANELL:  No, I mean when I arrive in Southshore.

 

Yeah, how do you like THEM apples?  For those of you not keeping score at home, our buddy Faranell totally forgot that we just happen to be snooping around Southshore right around the same time HE was traveling to Southshore, as in his old human pre-undead self.  Which means that at any point, a duplicate human Faranell could show up right on top of us, which might make things just a TINY bit more complicated as far as making sure none of us cross our own timelines or whatever that shit was that Chromie was blathering on about.

I’ll write more in a little while.  Right now I think I need to run downstairs and see if the innkeeper’s got any aspirin, because this whole stinking mess is giving me a frigging headache.  I wish this whole damn thing was over.  Only it IS.  Only it’s NOT.  AAAAAAAHHHH I hate this fucking time travel bullshit…

So it goes

So check this out!  I’m writing to you FROM THE PAST!  How freaky is that?

Okay, so, Mokvar just pointed out that ANY writing I’ve done would have to be from the past, seeing as I would have to write it, and then at some point AFTER that you would read it, and so I would ALWAYS be writing from the past, and yeah, thank you, Mokvar, way to piss on my excitement and muddy up what should have been a cool moment.  Fuck.

 

Okay, I had to be smack him around a few times for a minute there.  I’m back now.

Anyway, though, the point is, I’m not writing to you from the plain-ol’-regular past right now, where I write a blog post and a couple hours later you see it.  No, no, I’m writing to you from TEN YEARS AGO.  Because GUESS WHERE WE ARE, bitches!  Um, I mean, WHEN we are.  Although that doesn’t roll off the tongue quite as well.  Anyhow.

That’s right, right this minute I’m writing to you from old Hillsbrad.  Well, right this minute, to me.  To you it’s still ten years ago…okay, you know what, you guys know what I mean, so I’m going to stop trying to keep my verb tenses straight, I’m just going to give myself a headache if I try to keep this shit up.

Anyway, I know what you’re wondering – how the hell can I be connecting to the internet and accessing the here-and-now blog from Hillsbrad ten years ago?  I mean, hell, they were still using fucking dial-up back then, right?  Well here’s the thing: I had the foresight to bring my laptop on this trip, complete with the why-fly doohickey Spazzle hooked me up with, and so I’m still able to get online using Nozdormu’s wireless network.  And I know what you’re going to say next – “but, but, ten years ago!”  Well here’s the thing, part two.  The Noz’s wireless network is fucking AMAZING.  Everything he does is all time-warpy, and his network is no exception.  Hell, ten years is nothing – you can connect to that thing from fucking CENTURIES ago.  Not to mention, his built-in spam filter?  Not only does it BLOCK all the spam and pop-ups and all that crap, but it locates their source and sends a fucking bronze dragon to roflstomp it and pretty much wipe it clean out of the timestream before it even has the chance to exist.  I think he calls the feature iPwn.

So, let me catch you all up on the situation.  I traveled through the portal to old Hillsbrad with the rest of my team: me, Mokvar, Faranell, Lady Liadrin, and Utvoch.  Dontrag ended up staying out.  The Noz made a fuss about six of us going on the trip…for some reason, sending five of us back was no problem, but six, oh boy, sending six was going to be all kinds of logistical headaches.  Apparently the time portal takes a huge amount of power to maintain – 1.21 gigawatts, if I remember him right – and trying to squeeze an extra person in was just going to make them blow a fuse or something.  At first I tried arguing with him, and made the case that really, Dontrag and Utvoch should only count as one person between them, because seriously, you’ve met them, right?  But oh no, he wouldn’t budge, so I just had the two of them do their coin-toss game to see who got to go.  Utvoch won – which broke Dontrag’s 89-toss win streak, by the way – and so here he is.

I got the last laugh on the Noz, by the way.  Since he wasn’t going to let Dontrag come with us, I told Dontrag to wait for us with Nozdormu and keep him company.  BET YOU DIDN’T SEE THAT ONE COMING, did you, Noz?  HAH!

I was having a good chuckle over that while we took the portal, but apparently karma really is a bitch, because Utvoch didn’t waste much time making me think maybe I should have brought the other one.  Or neither.  Come to think of it, neither’s starting to sound pretty good.

So anyway…we go through the portal, and the bunch of us are getting ourselves situated and checking out each other’s new fugly human looks.  Mine’s not a disaster, although I don’t know WHAT’S going on with this beard.  Oh and Faranell, check this out, HIS human form?  It’s not even a fake human form — he looks like his old self, like what he looked like as a human before he died and got turned undead.  Crazy, huh?

Anyhow, we’re all checking this stuff out, when I look up and see Utvoch is already getting mixed up with something.  He’s wandered a little ways off to the nearby hillside, and he’s managed to piss off some giant moth that’s buffeting him around with its wings.  By the time I can tell “The hell are you doing, fuckwit?” he’s already got the moth dead, but still, we’re supposed to avoid messing around with anything that isn’t necessary while we’re back here.  Still, I don’t think too much of it, because what are the odds of any kind of fallout from killing a moth, right?

Yeah.  Hold that thought.

So, we take the scenic route so as not to be noticed, sneaking past the outskirts of Tarren Mill past the south road.  We make our way south just past the watchtower, and we’re about to make the turn down to Southshore, when what do we spot in the field just off the road?  A giant fucking yeti, totally owning a pack of five humans.  And like, seriously, this wasn’t one of your garden variety yeti, this was the super-gigantic wendigo variety with the big curving horns and shit, the kind I thought you only saw up in Northrend.  And this motherfucker is no joke, because he’s totally laying waste to these people even though they seem to be adventurer types, like with a healer and a volunteer meat shield (although seriously, who the fuck volunteers for that job?).  Although by the time we see what’s going on, the meat shield guy is a lot less shield and a lot more meat, mostly of the dead variety, and so now the yeti is running around smacking the rest of them down, and within another minute or so they’re all dead.

At that point, Mr. No Fucking Around Giant Yeti Guy spots us and attacks.  Naturally I charge in to intercept him before he starts eating someone squishy like Faranell, and I mostly manage to keep him focused on me while everyone else helps burn him down.  Even though, come on, who do you think really did most of the work on that one?  Anyway, we get the yeti dead without too much trouble, and we go to have a look at the pile of dead humans, when who should pop in on us but the Noz’s pipsqueak buddy Chromie, and…well, here:

 

Chromie teleports in amid the group.

FARANELL:  <jumps>  AAH!  Don’t…don’t do that!

CHROMIE:  Hiya guys!  How’s it—

She looks around at the pile of bodies.

Oh fudge crackers.  No, no, no…

UTVOCH:  That sounds kind of good, do you have s—

GARROSH:  <smacks Utvoch>  I’m expanding your ban to all words.

UTVOCH:  Sorry, sir.

GARROSH:  <pummel>  Those were words.

Chromie rubs her forehead, then looks around again.

CHROMIE:  Really, guys, you haven’t even been here an hour yet.  Gramps is not gonna be happy about this…

LIADRIN:  What’s wrong?

CHROMIE:  <sigh>  Remember how we’d sent some adventurers back here on a mission a few years ago?

LIADRIN:  Oh no…

MOKVAR:  Crap.

CHROMIE:  Yeah.  So…  <looks around the bodies>  That’s them.

FARANELL:  I don’t get it, though – we haven’t done anything since we’ve been here, have…?

Faranell trails off as the rest of the group turns to look at Utvoch one by one.

GARROSH:  You.  Fucking.  Idiot.

UTVOCH:  Yes sir.  <pause>  Um, but why, sir?

GARROSH:  <pummel>

UTVOCH:  OWW!  Sorry, sir…

MOKVAR:  Not to be the secondary idiot here, but I’m a little confused, to be honest.  I get that it has to have something to do with the moth, but how did that end up getting these people killed?

GARROSH:  Please tell me they were Alliance, at least.

CHROMIE:  Yup, they were.

GARROSH:  Okay, silver lining, then.

CHROMIE:  And as for the moth…  <sighs and rubs her head again>  The big guy here was a wendigo named Yettimus, and—

LIADRIN:  Really?  “Yettimus”?  People call him that?

FARANELL:  Not anymore.

MOKVAR:  It is a little on the nose.

LIADRIN:  Should I start calling Mokvar or Utvoch “Orcinator” or some such?

UTVOCH:  Oh hey, that would be kinda coo—

GARROSH:  <pummel>

UTVOCH:  OWW!!

GARROSH:  Word ban.

UTVOCH:  <starts to open mouth, then nods>

CHROMIE:  Sooooooo… Yettimus here used to stay pretty secluded up in the hills until fairly recently – by your time, that is – and he mostly kept himself entertained chasing butterflies.

FARANELL:  Simple minds, I guess.

GARROSH:  Maybe I need to get a butterfly net for you-know-who.

CHROMIE:  But, when you guys arrived, Utvoch wound up killing that moth, and in the original timeline that was supposed to happen, that moth was the one that kept Yettimus occupied for most of the afternoon… And when it wasn’t there to keep him busy, he got bored and went wandering around the fields here, and, well…  <sigh>

GARROSH:  Ugh… Okay, so, what now?  Can we maybe pop back out to our own time, and then come back a few minutes earlier and straighten this out?

LIADRIN:  I would imagine not…

CHROMIE:  Nope.

GARROSH:  How come?

CHROMIE:  You can’t double back on your own timeline.  Once you get mixed up in a certain set of events, you commit to that timestream, and can’t interfere with your own past.

LIADRIN:  Otherwise, you create paradoxes and other like anomalies, correct?

FARANELL:  When did you become an expert on this?

CHROMIE:  No, she’s dead-on right.

LIADRIN:  I’m a student of the philosophies of the Light.  I happen to enjoy theoretical discussions.

CHROMIE:  And don’t even get me started on the beehive you can get into if you cross your own timeline and interact with yourself.  Not even gramps can do that without causing all kinds of problems.

GARROSH:  Okay, so we can’t get a do-over on the moth…and I’m guessing you can’t just yank these people back out to avoid getting curbstomped by the yeti…

CHROMIE:  Nopers.

GARROSH:  Okay, so…what do we do now?

CHROMIE:  Well, the you part of the “we” just got a new job while you’re here.  And while you do that, the me part of the “we” gets to go update Nozdormu on what’s happening here, which he’s not going to like at all…

MOKVAR:  So now we need to go make sure Thrall escapes from Durnholde like he’s supposed to?

LIADRIN:  It would make sense, to correct the disruption in the timeline…

CHROMIE:  I like her!  She’s smart.

GARROSH:  Not something I get to hear about my minions often…

FARANELL:  You know we’re all standing right here, right?

LIADRIN:  Wait, “minion”?

MOKVAR:  I’m really not liking this business of having to go into Durnholde…

CHROMIE:  Well maybe you should have thought of that before you let your ADD squirrel-chasing puppy friend go running around without a leash!  Jeepers!

GARROSH:  Okay, okay, fine… We’ll go take care of Thrall, just have to juggle that with the original mission, and…ugh…do we at least have time to check on things in Southshore to make sure we’re not already screwed?

CHROMIE:  You’ve got a little time before Thrall absolutely has to be in Tarren Mill, so yup.  Just be sure to make good time getting in and out of Durnholde when you get there!  I’ll check in again later — have fun!

Chromie teleports away again.

 

So, we’re at the inn in Southshore now.  One stroke of luck – none of the Silver Hand people have gotten here.  Liadrin talked to Kelly the innkeeper and made a little show of some of her paladinny holy crap to make it seem like she was one of Tirion’s people, and found out he’s not expecting his other paladin guests till tomorrow sometime.  So we’ve got a little time to work with if we move fast.

While we were getting settled here at the inn, I sent Mokvar and Utvoch to round up the bodies and bury them somewhere.  Faranell volunteered to go up with them, too, to help speed up the process.  That left Liadrin and I to get us a couple rooms here at the inn, although Kelly gave us a look when I told him she and I each wanted a separate room.  Like, dude, really, grow up.  Then I mentioned how we had some other people who would be joining us, so we’d need space for more than one in each room, and OH BOY the look from the innkeeper got an upgrade.  Like SERIOUSLY, dude, GROW the fuck UP.  You run an inn, stop acting like a fourteen-year-old.  Or who knows, maybe these humans are easily shocked or something.  None of the innkeepers in Silvermoon would bat an eyelash at any of this shit.

Anyway…once the gravediggers’ commission get back, we’ll get rolling on the whole Durnholde thing.  Hopefully we can make quick work of that, because the last thing we need is more complications.

 

 

[Header image provided by Rioriel from Postcards From Azeroth, reproduced here with permission and many thanks.  Click here to see the souped-up Postcard version!]

Wibbly wobbly, timey whimey

We arrived at the Caverns of Time just a short while ago.  Soridormi greeted us on arrival, and I let her take the rest of the group on the tour of the place while I made a lemon squares delivery.  Like I mentioned, the big guy really loves his pastry, to the point that he actually has a couple of personal bakers right here in-house.  Turns out Nozdormu was still off somewhere busy, so I dropped by the bakery to leave the goodies with his bakers, and figured while I was there, what the hell, I might as well leave them a copy of the recipe.  Maybe win a few bonus points that way.  I wound up hanging out with them there while I waited for everyone to get back.  Not sure what to make of those two.  I mean, they seemed happy enough to take the recipe, and one of them, Tom, seemed really cool.  Awesome guy.  Can totally see him being the kind of dude that everybody loves.  Colin, though…I don’t know, he just seemed like kind of a dick.

Anyway, after everyone was done having a look around the place, Nozdormu came out to see us.  Eventually.  I’ve heard that’s kind of his pattern.  Even after the tour, he took his sweet time showing up.  So we were just stuck sitting there a while, me and Mokvar going through his notes to catch Liadrin up, and meanwhile Dontrag and Utvoch (yes, I brought them, it never hurts to have a couple low-grade flunkies around for the heavy lifting) managed to kill some time flipping coins.  In which, by the way, it looked like Utvoch really took Dontrag to the cleaners.  Or maybe the other way around.  I still have trouble keeping them straight sometimes.

Anyway, eventually Nozdormu got his scaly ass out to see us.  You should have seen the way he breezed on in.  First of all, I swear somebody started cranking out smoke right before he showed up, and then, when he finally came strolling on in through the fog, he did some kind of time distortion thing that made everything seem like it had slowed down to half speed.  And so here he comes, pimping on in through the smoke, in slow motion.  Gotta admit, it was pretty fucking cool.

Anyway, Thrall had already given Nozdormu – or, as I like to call him, The Noz – a brief rundown of the situation, and Faranell and I filled in some more of the details for him.  He mostly just nodded knowingly in that way he always does, kind of floating somewhere halfway between really cool and really annoying.  Eventually he said he could probably help us out, provided we could stick to a few rules.  I told him that shouldn’t be problem, because if there’s one thing yours truly is all about, it’s discipline and self-control.  He just kind of stared at me a little when I said that.  Not sure what the deal was there.  But yeah, so he filled out the picture for us, and…you know what, why am I yammering away paraphrasing this?  Mokvar was there.  Here, I’ll have him hook us up:

 

NOZDORMU:  As it happens, we have a time portal already established to Hillsbrad in the era you’re speaking of, so it shouldn’t be hard at all to send you there.

GARROSH:  Well that’s convenient I guess.  Would you not be able to open a new portal if you didn’t have one running already?

NOZDORMU:  That would be…more problematic.  We of the bronze dragonflight still have dominion over the timeways, and can travel along the pathways of time, but since the defeat of Deathwing, my ability to manipulate those timeways enough to open new time portals is…limited.

GARROSH:  I was wondering about that, actually.  Like how does that work with you guys?  I would have figured losing your Aspect powers would have put this place out of business.

NOZDORMU:  Not quite so simple.  It’s true, we former Aspects expended our ancient power in order to charge the Dragon Soul, and we are now diminished, as compared to what we were.  Mortal now, most notably…

GARROSH:  Actually, if Deathwing and, you know, Malygos were any indication, you guys were sort of always mortal…

NOZDORMU:  Well that’s different.

GARROSH:  How is it different?

NOZDORMU:  Malygos and Neltharion were killed in battle.  Without the intervention of their slayers they would have carried on as immortals for eternity.

GARROSH:  So, they were immortal as long as somebody didn’t kill them.  Gotta say, that’s a pretty loose definition of “immortal.”

NOZDORMU:  Did you really come here to argue semantics with a millennia-old, Titan-appointed caretaker of reality, just before asking him to do you a favor?

GARROSH:  I know, I know.  Just sayin’.

NOZDORMU:  Where did that expression come from, incidentally?  “Just sayin’.”  If you say something insulting or presumptuous, how does tacking “Just sayin’” on the end of it make it any less insulting?

GARROSH:  Okay, okay, you’re immortal, fine.  Well, were.

NOZDORMU:  Nevertheless, each of the flights holds dominion over one of the primal forces of the world, and even without our Aspect empowerment, the flights maintain those bonds.  Ysera and the green dragonflight, for instance, continue their attunement to the Emerald Dream, just as the red dragonflight maintain their stewardship of life.  Likewise, we bronze dragons are able to travel through time, and I personally retain my heightened perception of temporality.

GARROSH:  What about Kalecgos?

NOZDORMU:  What about him?

GARROSH:  Well, he was the Aspect of Magic, right?

NOZDORMU:  For about a week.

GARROSH:  Well, still.

NOZDORMU:  I don’t know.  I guess he can still…well… He probably still knows a few card tricks, I guess.

GARROSH:  Oh.

NOZDORMU:  I’m not sure, though.

GARROSH:  Ah, okay.

NOZDORMU:  Yeah.

Garrosh, Faranell, and Liadrin exchange awkward looks.

GARROSH:  So about the Hillsbrad thing.

NOZDORMU:  Oh yes, that.  As I was saying.  We have a portal already established to Hillsbrad circa a decade ago, so it would be simple enough to send you through.  I can further assign Chronormu—

Chromie, a bronze dragon assuming the form of a female gnome, teleports in and bounces happily next to Nozdormu.

CHROMIE:  Hiya!

NOZDORMU:  —to check in on you on occasion, to be sure there aren’t any unforeseen complications.

GARROSH:  Wait, she’s a dragon?  And what do you mean, complications?

CHROMIE:  Yup, that’s me!

NOZDORMU:  Yes, she’s one of the bronze flight.  I suppose you haven’t met—

CHROMIE:  Oh sure we ha—

NOZDORMU:  I mean he.  Hasn’t met you.

CHROMIE:  Ohhhh, right, skipper.  <making a zipping motion across her mouth>  Sshhh!

GARROSH:  Should…I be worried about something here?

FARANELL:  I probably would have been worried long before this, but that’s just me.

CHROMIE:  Ohhh don’t you fret over little ol’ me.  I don’t bite.  At least not in this form!  <giggles>

GARROSH:  Speaking of which, do you really have to be a gnome?

CHROMIE:  Why?  What’s wrong with gnomes?

Mokvar, Faranell, Dontrag, and Utvoch all utter overlapping groans.

MOKVAR:  Oh boy, here we go.

DONTRAG:  What’s wrong with gnomes, she says…

FARANELL:  Even I know better than to…yeah…

UTVOCH:  We’re going to be here a while, aren’t we?

MOKVAR:  Every day with the gnomes…

LIADRIN:  <to Faranell>  Um, what did Lor’themar drag me into?

FARANELL:  Give it a little time, really.  It seems weird at first, but after a little while it actually becomes kind of fun.

DONTRAG:  If he’s going to start in on the gnomes, you want to toss a few more coins?

UTVOCH:  Yeah, no thanks, eighty-nine straight losses is enough for me in one day.

GARROSH:  Okay, okay, will you people SHUT UP?

NOZDORMU:  If one of my progeny taking the guise of a gnome is really that distasteful to you, I suppose I could appoint someone else, although I must say Chromie is one of my very best operatives, and…

CHROMIE:  Thanks, gramps!

GARROSH:  Yeah, okay, it’s fine.  I’m not thrilled about the gnome thing, but whatever, I’m a professional.  I’ll rise above it.

UTVOCH:  Most inconceivable of you, sir—

GARROSH:  <smacks Utvoch>  We’ve been through this before about you and that word.

UTVOCH:  Sorry, sir…

GARROSH:  Okay, so fine, your little pipsqueak friend can be our contact.

CHROMIE:  Woot!

GARROSH:  But what was that thing about complications?

NOZDORMU:  Well, Warchief, time is, after all, a rather complex and delicate thing, and one must be rather cautious when traversing its pathways.  A certain, shall we say, delicacy and finesse is called for.

GARROSH:  Dude, I am all about the fucking finesse.  Right, guys?

Crickets.

NOZDORMU:  At…any rate.  You must simply take care not to interfere with past events more than is absolutely necessary.  Speaking generally, you should not underestimate the potential impact of seemingly minor actions.  You cannot imagine the magnitude of the consequences that can unfold from even a minor alteration in the timeline.  More specifically, you will be traveling to a time and place that witnessed certain crucial events that cannot be disrupted…

GARROSH:  Yeah, okay, that shouldn’t be a problem, this is 90% a fact-finding mission anyway, so…

NOZDORMU:  So you say, and I do not doubt your intentions.  But you must take care not to do anything that might interfere with certain key events playing out as they were meant to.  Specifically, for one, the forging of the Ashbringer.  You will be witnessing the fulcrum of an intricate convergence of events, which cannot be disturbed.  The crystal carried by the eldest Mograine represents the spark which sets in motion events that must occur; this cannot be undermined.

GARROSH:  Okay, check.  No smashy-smashy on the crystal.  Anything else?

NOZDORMU:  One other matter.  The reason, in fact, that this particular time portal was opened in the first place.  You will be arriving at the moment in history when a young Thrall escapes from his human captors in Durnholde Keep.  It is the singular event without which the Horde as it now exists…would not.

GARROSH:  Wait, I get why that’s an event we can’t fuck around with, but why would you have opened a portal there if it’s so important that nobody interfere with it?

NOZDORMU:  Because someone already did.

GARROSH:  The what you say?

MOKVAR:  I swear these time loop stories make my head hurt.

NOZDORMU:  Agents of the Infinite Dragonflight had attempted to prevent Thrall’s escape, in order to…well, suffice to say, they sought to alter the timeline to ill effect.  Some time ago, the bronze flight in my absence elicited the aid of a group of adventurers to travel back to this point in history and ensure that events played out as they should.

GARROSH:  Okay…but, in that case, you already have people there keeping tabs on things, right?  And they succeeded.  We’re all here, and the Horde’s still here, so Thrall escaped and the world didn’t go kablooey or whatever, so your people did their job there and it’s a done deal, isn’t it?

NOZDORMU:  It won’t be when you’re there.  Those events are past to us, yes.  And they have happened – now.  But when you step through the portal, they will be as real and present to you as this conversation is now.

MOKVAR:  Yeah, see, I really should have brought some aspirin.

GARROSH:  I mean, yeah, I get that we’ll be seeing things happening live and in person.  But if we’re sitting here having this conversation, that means whatever we end up doing there DOESN’T change anything, right?  I mean, say you send me to the past.  It’s still the past.  So if I DID accidentally change things, wouldn’t we already know?

NOZDORMU:  Except the actions you take in old Hillsbrad aren’t only the past.  They are also, from our point of view in this moment, your future.  Those events remain unchanged, until you actually change them.  And only then do the ripples spread to the present.

LIADRIN:  This is actually kind of fascinating.

NOZDORMU:  Have you ever experienced déjà vu, Garrosh?  Or had a memory that was so vivid and real to you, even though you knew, objectively knew for a fact, that the events didn’t happen the way you so clearly remember them?

GARROSH:  Well, yeah, I guess…

NOZDORMU:  That’s time rewriting itself.  It happens all around us, constantly, in countless tiny ways we never notice except the cracks that flicker in the corners of our eyes.  Well, you don’t notice.  It’s all I ever see.

CHROMIE:  Here we go, skipper, time for your favorite speech!

NOZDORMU:  It’s what all of my flight sees, really; I simply have the most sensitive perception.  When I look at you, Garrosh, I don’t just see you as you are now.  I see everything you’ve done, everything you might do, everything you must do.  They’re all written in your face, every minute, and with every choice you make, some of the endless possibilities reshape themselves, others melt away… Every single one of you here, accompanied constantly by an army of past and possible selves.  Almost as if there were a thousand of you standing right here before me, Garrosh.

MOKVAR:  Don’t let Garona hear that, can you imagine—

GARROSH:  If you finish that sentence, I will END you.

LIADRIN:  I’m…missing a lot of context for you people, aren’t I?

FARANELL:  Don’t worry about it too much.  I’m still pretty new, too.  You catch up fast.

DONTRAG:  Ohhh, I get it, you mean about how Garona’s been trying to—

UTVOCH:  SHUT IT, nobody cares about her rolling an alt.

FARANELL:  For instance, they’re idiots.

LIADRIN:  Well yes, I gathered that much.

GARROSH:  ANYWAY.

DONTRAG:  No, not her alt, I mean—

GARROSH:  <pummel>

DONTRAG:  OWW!!

GARROSH:  So okay, I think I get it.  Past events can always change, time revises itself right out from under us when they do, but some events have to stay put.  So say, like with what you were saying about looking at me and seeing my past and future… Like say next Tuesday I’m going to slip on a banana peel, but me falling on my ass sets off some other events that are really important, so even if you want to, you can’t be like “Hey Garrosh, watch out for the banana peel.”  Because there’s some stuff in my future that HAS to happen.

Nozdormu stares at Garrosh somberly for a moment.

NOZDORMU:   I think you grasp the basic idea, yes.

GARROSH:  Oh so hey, is that why everybody’s just accepting how eventually you HAVE to go Murozond on us and cause all that trouble with the Infinite Dragonflight yourself?

NOZDORMU:  Hey, listen, if you want to start poring over people’s misguided futures, I can—

CHROMIE:  Whoa, whoa, cool down a little, boss!  Ix-nay on the iege-say, right?

NOZDORMU:  Ahem.  Yes, yes, of course.

GARROSH:  Umm, the hell was that shit about?

NOZDORMU:  Hmm.  One moment.

Nozdormu closes his eyes and takes on an expression of intense focus.

.tnemom enO  .mmH  :UMRODZON

?tuoba tihs taht saw lleh eht ,mmU  :HSORRAG

.esruoc fo ,sey ,seY  .mehA  :UMRODZON

?thgir ,yas-egei eht no yan-xI  !ssob ,elttil a nwod looc ,aohw, aohW  :EIMORHC

—nac I ,serutuf dediugsim s’elpoep revo gnirop trats ot tnaw uoy fi ,netsil ,yeH  :UMRODZON

?flesruoy thgilfnogarD etinifnI eht htiw elbuort lla esuac dna su no dnozoruM og ot EVAH uoy yllautneve woh gnitpecca tsuj s’ydobyreve yhw taht si ,yeh os hO  :HSORRAG

GARROSH:  Oh so hey, is that why everybody’s just accepting how eventually you HAVE to go Murozond on us and cause all that trouble with the Infinite Dragonflight yourself?

NOZDORMU:  Yes, basically.

CHROMIE:  Whew.  That’s better.

NOZDORMU:  Much.

CHROMIE:  Why dodge a bullet when you can wind it back into the chamber, right?

NOZDORMU:  Indeed.

GARROSH:  Uh, what are you two babbling about?

NOZDORMU:  Oh, nothing you need concern yourself with.  Shall we start making preparations for you to begin your mission?  There are a few small specifics we’ll need to go over.

GARROSH:  Yeah, sure…  Hey, actually, did I ask you that thing about Murozond before?

NOZDORMU:  No, I don’t think so.

GARROSH:  Huh, weird.  Déjà vu.

 

We’re getting ourselves set to take the trip shortly.  Mostly making sure we have any supplies we might need, getting a general briefing on what we’re allowed to “know” and “not know” if we talk to anyone in the other timeframe, all that fun stuff.  Also, to make sure we blend in, The Noz says when we go through the portal we’ll be affected by a glamour that will make us look like we’re human.  Not exactly a pleasant thought, but I can see why it’s necessary.  Still, I hope whatever human form I get ends up being a LITTLE palatable.  I don’t want to go literally strolling down memory lane looking like an asshole.