The fall of Theramore

Victory from the jaws of defeat.

Or, no, that’s not quite accurate.  Defeat was never really in the picture.  This was more victory from under the guide of defeat.

That much sweeter, in a way.  Let the humans think they’d won, right up to the moment that their doom became inescapable.  The moment they realized it was upon them, and had nothing left to do but stand there helplessly and watch it come.

Today was a good day.

 

After we left Northwatch Hold, we marched south and made short work of Fort Triumph.  I couldn’t help chuckling at the irony of the name while we annihilated what passed for its defenses.  I think our soldiers were so eager for battle after the long wait at Northwatch that they threw themselves with ever great ferocity into the fight once it finally came.

The long wait at Northwatch.  To them – what? – six days?

They’ll never know how long their Warchief had been waiting for this moment.

We continued on our way into Dustwallow Marsh and divided our forces at the fork in the road.  Half of our troops traveled north with me, while half went east with Malkorok.  We would meet at Theramore and strike both its gates at the same time.  As my half of the army made its way north, we added reinforcements from Brackenwall Village – Krog and Draz’Zilb among them – then continued on our way toward Theramore.

My contingent was the first to reach the city.  Jaina had recruited aid from the Kirin Tor to help strengthen the city’s defenses against our battering rams and siege engines.  It was a wise decision on her part.  Pity I’d been counting on it.  Me and…what’s his name, the blood elf guy.  I can never remember.  I should probably work on that, seeing as he really stepped up to the plate with more than one part of this plan.

See, Jaina had called in mages from the Kirin Tor to help hold the Theramore gates against our attack.  A powerful mage could reinforce a gate for a good long time against our siege.  As it happened, though, one of those crucial, city-saving mages was a guy by the name of Thalen Songweaver.

A blood elf.

See if you can guess who writes his checks.

Down came the gates, and in came the Horde.

Malkorok’s forces joined ours in the midst of it all, and Captain Drok and the rest of the Horde fleet hit the harbor.  Our troops flooded into Theramore, laying waste to its defenders.  Jaina and her wizard friends did a decent job of chipping away at our numbers from above, but on the ground, none of the Theramore soldiers could hold their own against our assault.

Everything was going perfectly until Jaina’s new blue dragon friend turned up and started dropping boulders and trees over the broken gate.  Kalecgos… I remember meeting him, once, just after Deathwing’s defeat.  Apparently mortality’s left him pretty damn bored these days, because now he had nothing better to do than meddle in battles that were none of his concern.  Problem was – as Baine and Vol’jin were only too quick to point out – at the rate the big lizard was going, he would shore up the opening right quick, and seal us all inside.  At that point, closed in without any further reinforcements from outside, it would just be a matter of time before the mages picked us off.

So, I ordered our forces to fall back.  We cleared out of the city and retreated to the north and west.  We all regrouped just west of the bridge over Dustwallow Bay, overlooking Theramore.  Baine was less than thrilled about how things had gone.  Can’t really blame him, though, considering he wasn’t seeing the big picture.  The foolish tauren thought the siege was all there was to this attack.  For all he could see, this was a loss.

But see, here’s the thing.  When you fight me, there’s never just one piece to the plan I throw at you.  Sure, it would have been nice if the siege had gone perfectly.  But that’s the beauty of it all.  It didn’t have to.

Welcome to fighting Garrosh Hellscream, Theramore.  Evern when I lose, I win.

Sure, you fought off the attack on your gates…  And kept yourselves busy while Drok slipped into the harbor and dropped off a small, elite strike team, who crippled your aerial defenses and recovered our agent Thalen Songweaver.

And sure, you managed to secure that north gate again…  And sealed yourselves in, within the city walls.  With some of the Alliance’s greatest generals, who’d come to aid in the defense.  Closed in together.  Nice and compact.  All in one place.

Boy, it sure would suck for you if I had, say, a giant bomb I could drop on you right now.

Oh, wait.  I do.

Goblin sky galleon.  Blood elf mana bomb.  And the immeasurable power of a handy little relic called the Focusing Iris.

Goodbye, Theramore.

The troops cheered around me as I pointed to our victory and the sky glowed white and purple with the aftershocks of the mana explosion.  Louder and louder, raucous voices all around me.  Some stared in shock, confusion, maybe even…misguided disapproval.  No matter.  Give them time.  They’ll come around.  Eventually, victory wins everyone over.  And we won.

I turned and looked over the bay, holding Gorehowl over my head, taking in the sight of our triumph, of the mark we had left on this world, never to be forgotten.

Deep down, in some tiny, hollow corner, I knew it still wasn’t quite enough.

But it would do.  For a start.

Not quite Monday, not quite mailbag

(Or, for the math nerds out there, NotQuite(Monday + Mailbag).  I don’t really understand what that means.  Spazzle said it would go over like gangbusters, though.)

The Grimtotem warrior that Nazgrim was holding in Brackenwall Village was delivered to Orgrimmar.  As it turns out, she was a messenger.  She had wanted to be brought to Orgrimmar in order to deliver a letter – to me personally.

On a side note, just before she arrived here, some of our soldiers captured a SECOND Grimtotem sneaking around the Dranosh’ar Blockade.  This one’s being pretty tight-lipped about what he was doing there, so I’m guessing that one wasn’t another messenger.  So I’m not sure what to make of that.

For now, though, it’s that first one that’s the bigger deal, because the message she was delivering…well, here, see for yourself.

 

Dearest Warchief Hellscream,

I hope this letter finds you well.  Actually, let us not put up false pretenses; I don’t at all hope it finds you well, and further, I know that it will not.

Word has reached me of the terrible tragedy you have recently suffered, concerning the loss of your dear mother Lakkara.  I believe I have some information concerning her loss that will be of interest to you.  Indeed, you may even take some solace in this knowledge – you see, my good Garrosh, you have not truly lost her at all.  That would require you to have ever truly had her back.

Allow me to share with you a most curious tale.

After my recent, shall we say, difficulties with many of my Grimtotem kin, I decided to retire temporarily through the Dark Portal to Outland – a remarkable spectacle at first sight, I must say.  I do so love what your fellow orcs have done with the place.  My handful of followers and I found the region of Nagrand by far the most hospitable – I will thank you for forgoing any obvious remarks concerning the ready availability of grass – and so we took up temporary residence in its outlying territories, near to your Mag’har kin’s Ancestral Grounds.

It was there that a most interesting thing took place.  While foraging in the nearby hills, my associates happened upon a small, secluded cave in the mountainside.  Inside, they found the body of an orcish woman who appeared to have died some years prior.  Ever a student of spiritual custom, I found myself curious as to how the woman had come to be there, and why the Mag’har, usually so diligent in matters of honoring their dead, would have left her remains to go unburied in some remote cave.  And so, I and my colleagues undertook some cautious investigations.

I will not trouble you with the details of our methods; suffice to say, in short order, we found to our amazement that we had discovered the remains of Lakkara, mate of the great Grommash Hellscream, last victim of the pernicious red pox that once ravaged the orcs.

Ordinarily, I would be loathe to disturb the fallen ancestors of any people.  But, as I am sure you will understand, I am equally loathe to pass up a glowing opportunity.

You may recall, several weeks ago, investigating a Twilight’s Hammer cabal in Hyjal, resulting in some rather troubling visions courtesy of a conveniently placed shadebind totem.  In a stroke of good fortune for me, and short-sightedness for you (both of which, I must say, I was rather counting on), you neglected in your rattled state to collect the offending totem.  This made it possible for one of my associates to do so shortly thereafter – the totem, by this point, having attuned itself to you, my good Warchief, for purposes of binding to itself a few select spirits intimately linked to your soul.  One crucial one in particular.

From there, it was a simple matter to summon forth Lakkara’s spirit and prepare her for her “return.”  With the spiritbinding of her dear son to draw upon, and her actual body on hand, the other necessary manipulations were laborious but hardly difficult.  A few selective blurrings of memories…the instilling of a few small additional ones…minor tinkering around the edges of the shadow of her mind: all trivial undertakings, really, once the real work of invocation was done.  All the more trivial given how readily she took to them – only too happy to imagine that she had watched her son’s growth in life rather than from the beyond.

The entire process she would perceive – with some subtle nudging – as our careful ministration of her illness.  (Not entirely an untruth, I might add.)  And the fact of her past contagion would ensure that she would not allow anyone close enough to touch her, and thus discover her noncorporeal state.

And so, with that, it was simply a matter of placing a few totems to summon her into sustained phantasmal being and set her on her way to Garadar.  Greatmother Geyah was, of course, the real test, but I hardly had any doubts that my Lakkara would pass inspection – my Lakkara was, after all, the real Lakkara.  Or what remained of her spirit, more or less.

It was only a matter of time before she would seek out her dear boy.

Of course, your time together would, as you already know, be short-lived.  The elder crone giveth, and the elder crone taketh away.  In this case, the instrument of her removal would likewise come via shadebind – in this case, your former underling Gerbo, who, you may be surprised to learn, was from time to time of assistance to me in his days in Stonetalon.  For a price, of course, but he was, quite frankly, something of a bargain as such matters go.  At any rate, given our previous…association, and his own lingering distaste for his former Warchief, he was only too amenable to lending his aid one last time in death.

It takes a ghost to slay a ghost, after all.

You might well ask, at this point, why I would take the trouble to construct so elaborate a charade.  Why would I invest such time and effort to conjure up the illusion of Lakkara, only to dispel it once again, all for no apparent, tangible gain.

You might well ask, but I suspect you need not.  For illusory though she may have been, to you, dear Garrosh, she was real.  And there is no agony quite so sharp as that of rescinded hope, is there, Warchief?

I will admit, my earlier efforts against you in the Bastion of Twilight were misguided.  Then, I had sought to take my revenge by killing you.  A foolish, short-sighted goal, I realize now.  A terrible mistake whose failure, though grating at the time, has proven to be a blessing in disguise.

You see, I no longer have any desire to kill you.  I’ve hurt you.  And I intend to go on hurting you.

Enjoy your empty nest, dear Warchief.  You will hear from me again.

–Magatha Grimtotem

 

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Excuse me.  I…think I need to step away from the computer for a minute.

…

…

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Okay.

So.

I know a lot of you have been reading this blog for a while, and you probably already have an idea what to expect at this point.  So you’re probably going to be a little surprised here.

See, ordinarily this would be the point where I start yelling, and going into all caps, and screaming bloody murder, and ranting on and on about how brutally I’m going to murder Magatha, and on and on, and filling up a couple paragraphs with how Magatha’s going to die, she’s going to die, oh holy crap she is so.  Totally.  Going.  To die.

I’m not going to do that now.

See how calm I’m staying?  Keeping it together, no yelling, not raising my voice even a little.

Want to know why?

You know that level of anger where it’s not burning up inside you, not even because it’s burned itself out – because that would imply it’s run its course and is done with – but because it’s gone so far beyond that burning, fiery, jump-up-and-down, stomp-your-feet kind of angry?  That anger where the screaming and venting is just wasted energy, and you’re not going to waste any of that energy that you could save up to erase whoever or whatever it was that pushed you that far?  You know that kind of angry?

I am so utterly beyond that right now.

So all I’m going to say is this.

You don’t have to worry about my rage, Magatha.  I usually make a pretty big show of using up my rage.  But rage is just anger that’s burned up and channeled into something else, expended as quickly as it comes.  Rage is nothing.  But anger that’s contained, even cultivated?  That’s like a wine.  It grows deeper, and richer, and ferments into something greater.  It grows more potent.  It grows creative.

Anger is the mother of invention.  And it has an infinite, indelible memory.

So don’t worry about me ranting on and on and how you’re going to die, Magatha.  I know it’s what you’re expecting from me, but not this time.  That’s a promise.

You’re not going to die, Magatha.

You’re going to beg to.

And when you do, I’m going to be completely, utterly, hideously…calm.

News from two fronts

Everything is going on schedule – maybe better – with the ogres and their move from Brackenwall Village to Alcaz Island.  General Nazgrim has gone to Dustwallow Marsh to personally oversee everything, and set up base in Brackenwall with everyone who’ll be going with him on the initial strike on Theramore.  The remaining ogres have been moving to Alcaz in small groups, with infantry escorts scouting the terrain around their travel path to make sure they’re not being observed.

One interesting development in the midst of all this: one of the relocation groups have reported that while just making their way out of Brackenwall Village, they had a run-in with a Grimtotem warrior.  “Run-in” in the sense that the tauren was making a bee line to Brackenwall, and just happened to run up on the travel party on the way.  Either way, she didn’t much care about being intercepted, and only seemed concerned about finding Horde personnel, essentially to turn herself in.  When they took her into custody, she insisted she needed to be brought to Orgrimmar.  Nazgrim is going to question her in the village and then see about sending her along this way, depending on whether he sees something fishy in the works.  We ARE talking about a Grimtotem, after all, but then again, Magatha’s been largely on the outs with her own tribe ever seince he last little scheme, so who knows.

Meanwhile, we’ve got news from the investigations in Stonetalon, and the bottom line could be good or not depending on how you want to look at it.  Dontrag and Utvoch didn’t have much luck finding a whole lot of anything, other than tripping into one of those huge sludge pools at the Sludgewerks and finding themselves a giant sludge monster that hit them with some kind of sludge breath and sludge sludge sludge if I have to hear either one of them say “sludge” one more time I might have to behead them.  Which I’m right on the edge of doing half the time anyway.

Krog, on the other hand, managed to have better luck.  He was stealthing around near Farwatcher’s Glen, on the outskirts of their graveyard – where he found our old friend Grebo.  Or what was left of him.  According to Krog, the body was in pretty bad shape, had obviously been hacked up pretty badly by someone, or probably multiple someones.  So safe to say Grebo didn’t meet a good end.  Shiny.  I only wish I could have been there to have been a part of it.  Still, we don’t know WHO did us the favor of offing him, or why they decided to chuck the body off into the bushes to rot.

Still…as much as I’d like to let him KEEP rotting, at this point I’m not leaving anything else to chance.  I’m having the body transported to Malaka’jin, where it’ll be burned on a funeral pyre.  Normally I would send something like this to Cliffwalker Post, but that’s only going to dredge up painful memories for Overlord Cliffwalker.  Odds are he and I would draw even in the Who Hates Grebo More competition, so I figure I’ll spare him having to deal with this one.

Burn well, Grebo.  I’m sure, wherever you are now, you already are.

I am become death

If you’ve been paying attention lately, you might have noticed I’ve been having a lot of contact with some of our people down in Brackenwall Village – Krog about the goings-on in Stonetalon, Draz’Zilb about his potential uber-corruption spell.  It hasn’t been a coincidence.

No surprise to anyone that I’ve been on a pretty steady boil ever since I realized that Varian and Jaina were in the guild and must have heard me talking about where I was going with my mother last week.  I don’t know why I should be shocked by anything these humans do at this point.  Thing is, though, Varian I can at least see.  I mean, make no mistake, I hate that motherfucker, but at least it makes sense for him to have it in for me as well, and he’s not one to make any pretenses about it.  We’ve had bad blood going back to the Violet Citadel, probably further, not to mention he’s a hateful dimwitted warmongering orc-hating bigot, so of course he would grab any opportunity to strike at me.  And if an innocent has to die in the process, all the better.  It’s Varian.  I get it.

But Jaina?  THAT sticks in my craw.  Let’s even set aside all the joking around and clowning I do on her and all the cracks about her being a slut which granted they’re totally true but not really germane to the conversation right now.  But this is the woman who tried to play herself off as Little Miss Peacemaker.  Always playing the diplomat, coming off like she’s the level-headed human willing to yank Varian back when he’s being an asshole (which, admittedly, probably kept her pretty busy).  Always hiding behind her incomprehensible friendship with Thrall, like that made her better and nobler than the rest of her kind.  Like she just wants to be our friend too.

And she was a part of this.  Even if she wasn’t taking action herself, she knew.  She was there.  And all the while she probably kept on wearing her “Oh dear me, why can’t we all work together?” fake smile.

So guess what our first target is going to be.

I’ve been meeting with General Nazgrim to work out the logistics for our first strike on Theramore.  We’re planning two waves.  The first will be a ground strike launched out of Brackenwall, hitting the main gate of the city with several infantry detachments with artillery support.  That initial wave will serve two purposes: one, to break down the city’s outer defenses and allow our troops to make their way inside, and two, to keep Theramore’s defenses focused on the main gate, while the second wave comes in by sea and hits the harbor.

The second wave will be the key one, and deceptively small.  We’ll be bringing quite a few ships, but very few troops aside from the actual crews necessary to navigate the vessels.  The real purpose of the naval strike will be to hit the harbor, land, and get a single squadron to deliver the real centerpiece of the attack: Draz’Zilb, bearer of the new experimental chain corruption spell.

Remember how I mentioned Draz’Zilb’s spell sounded promising, but needed to be tested until controlled conditions?  Well Theramore is going to be our field test.  Our troops are going to get Draz’Zilb into the city long enough for him to find a decent-size cluster of humans, cast the spell, and then get back to the harbor while the chain reaction begins.  Once the spell is deployed, our incursion group will fire off a signal to let all our troops know it’s underway.  At that point, EVERYONE will head to the ships – the ground troops near the front gate can be making their way around the outer walls toward the shore – and then get out of there by sea.  Hence bringing so many ships when we didn’t have that many troops in the naval group.

It works out perfectly, really.  Theramore makes the ideal test target: a solitary human colony, densely populated but easy enough to isolate.  As much as Dustwallow Marsh is swarming with life, it’s mostly spiders, crocolisks…nothing that isn’t expendable.  Black dragonkin, the last leftovers of Onyxia’s brood?  Good riddance.  Yeah, a couple Grimtotem settlements, but do you think I’m going to shed any tears over them?  The whole marsh is separated from the rest of Kalimdor by mountains and sea, perfectly enclosed.  No spreading of the chain corruption beyond that one zone, however it plays out.

I love when things work out neatly like that.

Nazgrim and I are getting the last details sorted out.  I even got a couple of the goblins from the Gob Squad to come in and put together a scale model of Theramore and its environs for us here in the war room, to help plan out troop and ship placement.

The only small wrinkle is the ogres in Brackenwall, seeing as we don’t want to end up wiping them all out with the corruption.  Would be kind of rude, what with it being Draz’Zilb’s spell and all.  So I’m having most of the ogre population – the ones who won’t be going on the actual attack – relocated temporarily to Alcaz Island.  They’ll be safely isolated there until everything blows over, plus we can even use the island as a staging ground for the naval strike.

Preparations are already underway.  I’ve had the ogres moving in small numbers for the last couple of days, so we can do it gradually enough not to draw attention.  A couple more days and they should be safely situated on the island, and then we’ll be ready to start.  And if things go according to plan, pretty soon Sylvanas’ plague will have some competition over on the other continent.

 

 

[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!]

March of the dead

Word just in from Ashenvale – Captain Tarkan’s scouts have found the surviving human from the attack in Demon Fall Canyon.  Or, what’s left of him.  His remains were found in Talondeep Vale.  From the looks of it he was making a run for the Talondeep Pass and just didn’t make it before his injuries caught up with him.

The body had nothing with it other than some minimal survival gear.  In other words…the human body was the only body they found.  No sign of Lakkara.  So…either the human passed her body off to someone else sometime before he died, or…I don’t know what.  I’d rather not think about any more possibilities, honestly.

The human was probably trying to make it through the pass into Stonetalon Mountains.  I suppose he COULD have been heading for Stardust Spire, but if his goal was to get to a friendly Alliance outpost, considering his injuries, it would have made a lot more sense for him to make a run for Raynewood Retreat or Forest Song, both of which would have been a lot closer.  So we have to figure he was headed for Stonetalon.

I’m not sure why, though.  I don’t know why Stonetalon rather that somewhere else, especially while he was carrying Lakkara’s remains.  But I’m more than a little troubled by the fact that that’s where the business with Grebo got started as well.  Somehow or other Stonetalon is in the middle of this.

I’m reassigning Krog from Brackenwall Village to Cliffwalker Post, and sending word to Overlord Cliffwalker that I want Dontrag and Utvoch sent out to do some additional scouting.  I want Krog’s detective skills up there – his abilities as an inspector will be a lot more helpful there than with the current goings-on in Dustwallow Marsh – but otherwise I’d rather keep the search efforts limited to those already in the know.

Updates as they become available.

Seed of corruption

I mentioned the other day that I’ve been talking to Draz’Zilb down in Brackenwall Village.  Granted, he can be creepy as hell sometimes, but dude knows how to get shit done, and he can be pretty damn handy as times as long as you don’t have to stay in the same room as him for too long.  I think this is one of those times.  He has something he’s been working on that might turn out to be pretty useful right now.

Odds are, most of you have heard of this spell that warlocks use called Seed of Corruption.  Basically it seeds a target with a kind of shadow detonation that hurts the original target and anyone else that’s nearby.  Warlocks that are really on top of their game can even cast the spell with an extra wrinkle, so that all those nearby targets caught in the detonation are afflicted with extra shadow damage that rots away at them over time.

Draz’Zilb tells me he’s worked up a way to take this to the nth degree.  He believes he’s augmented the spell so that after that initial detonation, those surrounding targets that are afflicted with the additional ticking corruption?  Well, after it finishes ticking, THEY detonate too.  So, bonus A, the damage from that additional detonation, combined with the initial kaboom and the ticking corruption, would be enough to kill anybody short of a no-kidding-around badass.  And more important, bonus B, it creates a potentially unlimited chain.

Think of it: Victim #1 takes the initial seed and goes boom, and the initial burst of damage also hits nearby Victims #2, 3, and 4.  Victims #2-4 get whittled down by the additional ticking corruption, then THEY all detonate as well with a second shadow burst.  And now…THAT explosion hits nearby Victims #5, 6, 7, 8, and 9.  Who also get afflicted with corruption and take a time-bomb seed of their own.  Repeat.  Repeat.  Keep repeating until there’s no one else around to spread the corruption chain to.

Obviously, if you don’t mind waiting a little, this makes for a potentially awesome one-step method for wiping out groups of enemies on a massive scale.  I’m looking right at you, Stormwind.

That’s assuming it works, of course.  First we have to test it out to make sure Draz’Zilb is right.  So we need to give it a test run in a somewhat controlled setting.  Then, it’s game on.

Lifetime piling up

I killed her.  Me and my big mouth.

Not literally.  But I might as well have.  It was enough that she died because I left myself vulnerable when Grebo attacked.  But Grebo just BEING there was my fault.

I had to go yammering on in guild chat about where I was going with her.  Not even thinking about who might be there listening in.  How many times do I have to run into people pretending to be something they’re not on the internet before I get it through my thick skull?  And so, there they were, Varian Wrynn and Jaina Proudmoore, right there in my own guild, soaking it all in.  I might as well have sent them fucking invitations and enclosed a poisoned blade.  And lo and behold, a pack of humans turn up out of nowhere.

It’s the only thing that makes sense.  That’s the only time I talked to anyone about where we were going, other than my mother herself and a few of the guards we passed leaving Orgrimmar and traveling through Ashenvale.

I know what you’re thinking – how to account for Grebo.  He’s still an orc, right?  So why would he be working with humans if that’s who’s behind this?  And see, that’s where you’re just looking at the surface.  Grebo WAS an orc.  That thing that attacked me in Demon Fall Canyon?  That was Grebo’s reanimated corpse.  I’ve been talking to Draz’Zilb out of Brackenwall Village – he’s no stranger to necromancy, and he tells me that when someone is resurrected, there’s a whole range of possibilities as far as how much of the actual person is still there.  Maybe it’s the entire being come back whole.  Maybe it’s an empty shell, walking around wearing the original person’s face.  Maybe it’s any of a million points in between, any combination of memories, motivations, personality, will…anyway, he tells me it wouldn’t be much of a stretch at all to rig things so whoever you’re raising is going to be perfectly cooperative, whoever you happen to be.

No shock to anyone, I’ve been going over and over this in my head all day.  I ended up needing to get out of my war room and get some air, so I took Mortimer for a ride around Durotar.  I was planning just to fly around some and hopefully clear my head, but on one loop around we passed over Tiragarde Keep.  And I happened to look down.

Humans.

So I landed.  An hour later and I was still there.  Not even rushing around, just taking my time, wandering through the keep, cutting down any humans I could find.

Usually we’ve been content to leave this human outpost alone – it doesn’t pose any real threat, and the humans there are weak even by human standards, and in a way they’re handy to have around as a training exercise for some of our up-and-comers out of Razor Hill.  Send the young blood over, have them take out some easy human pickings, we keep the cockroach population under control and the kids feel like they’ve accomplished something.  Everybody wins.

Not today.  Today I’m in no mood to humor them.  Today I’m done tolerating their presence, these pathetic vermin daring – PRESUMING – to claim a foothold in our lands.  These two-legged rats from Theramore (THERAMORE), sitting here almost within eyeshot of Orgrimmar… I’m done with them.  They’re like animals – every action I’ve ever known them to take shows it.  WORSE than animals, even – at least a dog understands loyalty, and a wyvern has some instinctive sense of honor.  Like animals, but less.  So I slaughtered them like animals.

It was a good afternoon.  While it lasted.

A long time ago I swore I’d make the humans regret the crimes they’ve committed against our people.  Somehow I let those words become just that: words.  Got lazy, grew complacent, contented myself with sitting around on a throne made out of the skull of an enemy I didn’t even kill myself and puffing out my chest like I’d done enough.

No more.

Legionnaire Nazgrim finally returned home to Orgrimmar last week after extended duty in Vashj’ir.  I’m promoting him to General and putting him in charge of the initial stages of what comes next.  I’ll be laying out our military plans in the next few days, but I don’t plan on wasting much time before we get to work.  I’ve already wasted enough.  It’s time I got to work doing what I should have done long ago.

Kill them all.

Going Rogue

Citizens of the Horde,

A peculiar turn of events has taken place in Ahn’Qiraj.  I have just received word from Krug Skullsplit that the impulsive rogue Garona Halforcen has left him in sole charge of our Twilight captives and departed from Silithus.  According to Commander Skullsplit, Garona completed the interrogation of the last of the prisoners – the majority of whom, to her credit, have survived the process – then took off suddenly without explanation, save a rushed indication that she would be in contact with further updates shortly.  As Garona has proven in the past to be a valuable operative, it is my hope that this erratic behavior is well justified and that she will take pains to explain herself soon.

Meanwhile, on the topic of Horde operatives whose work has proven valuable, the prestidigitous ogre Draz’Zilb appealed to me earlier today for permission to undertake his own questioning of our Grimtotem captives, given his expressed prior success in extracting information from members of the tribe.  His suggestion was that he could likely verify the repeated Grimtotem claim that they were uninvolved in and unaware of the aggressions that occurred at Bladefist Bay and, more importantly, Alcaz Island.  I agreed to the ogre’s request, with, as it turns out, mixed results.

On the positive side, we now have fairly reliable confirmation of our original Grimtotem testimony.  None of the Grimtotem tribesmen had any awareness of any of the aforementioned Twilight’s Hammer activity; and the extent of their involvement in the events on Alcaz Island was the sending of a scouting party to the island well before catastrophe struck – scouts who, furthermore, have not been heard from since.  Draz’Zilb’s methods leave me highly…dubious…that this final testimony would be false.  It is, however, these very methods that leave me less than entirely satisfied with this entire undertaking.  Prior to today, I was only aware of the fact of the ogre’s assistance in previous interrogations, and, absent any further, troubling information, I was content to let him proceed with his proposal.  However, upon arriving to observe the questioning in person, I was most thoroughly disturbed by the spectacle that greeted me; by this point, three Grimtotem captives had already died to Draz’Zilb’s particular interrogation “techniques,” and I was quite uninterested in having a fourth life placed indirectly on my conscience.  Let me make no mistake: that we will kill during times of conflict is a matter of necessity; how we will kill is a matter of choice.  And I will not permit such unscrupulous undertakings to tain the honor of the Horde.  No matter how dire the battle, we must never forsake it.

As such, I have relieved Draz’Zilb of his support duties and dispatched him back to Brackenwall Village, where, I am sure, the venerable ogre chief Tharg will tend to him appropriately.  Meanwhile, in light of this confirmation of Grimtotem innocence – a term I use here in its more relative and situationally specific sense – I have begun to make plans to release many of our prisoners, provided a number of containment measures around their various settlements to ensure their ongoing good citizenship.

Once again the old adage proves true, friends: never trust an ogre not to be two-faced when he has two heads.  Honor go with us all.

 

-Saurfang

Flown the Coop, as the Saying Goes

Citizens of the Horde,

Interrogation of our various captives carries on, and begins to yield fruit, albeit gradually.  Just this morning, the perspicacious rogue Krog reported to me personally to provide updates on his ongoing questioning of those Grimtotem who were apprehended during out recent operations out of Brackenwall Village.  A good man, that Krog, and thorough.

His questioning confirms what we already knew of the Grimtotem situation – that they had, under the direction of Magatha Grimtotem through her lieutenants Arnak Grimtotem and Isha Gloomaxe, begun to search for the now-infamous phylactery of Cho’gall, so as to strike a bargain with the Twilight’s Hammer cult – while further indicating that thus far, no agreements or alliances had been forged between the two groups.  Indeed, shortly after the nefarious tauren clan began their hunt, the Twilight’s Hammer stepped up their activities in Thousand Needles, resulting in the Twilight capture of several Grimtotem, most notably Magatha…who, as you are already well aware, was subsequently freed through unwitting (nay, witless) Horde assistance.

Nevertheless, I find the timing of these events to be hardly coincidental, and I suspect that the Twilight cult undertook a pointed effort to capture Magatha upon discovering that she and her kin were endeavoring to complicate the cult’s efforts to resurrect the odious ogre Cho’gall.

That relations between the Grimtotem and the Twilight’s Hammer are, to say the least, unfriendly is confirmed by early reports from Garona Halforcen in Silithus.  While Garona finds herself still early in her interrogation of our Twilight prisoners (a process which, I hope, will not be slowed too greatly by the temptation to relish the process), she has been able to confirm a reciprocal disdain for the Grimtotem on behalf of the Twilight’s Hammer cultists.

Meanwhile, I have recruited the aid of the resourceful ogre seer Draz’Zilb of Brackenwall Village, who has already been of assistance in these events to both Krog and to Warchief Hellscream, in the hopes that we might glean some additional information through more mystical means.  Draz’Zilb has theorized that, given the powerful magics involved in the phylactery containment of Cho’gall’s spirit, as well as in its possible release, it may be possible to conduct a divination of sorts through any living beings who were in close proximity to the ogre Skarr when, or if, these necromantic powers were tapped.  This afternoon Draz’Zilb joined me in Orgrimmar to attempt such a divination, to see if any traces of recent spellcasting or magical aftershocks might be discerned through the three entities we know to have been present with Skarr on Alcaz Island (excepting, of course, Warchief Hellscream): the externally monologuing soldiers Dontrag and Utvoch, and the Warchief’s personal wyvern.

Draz’Zilb began his divination with the wyvern, which has finally recovered from its injuries on the island.  (I will hasten to note for those D.E.H.T.A.-friendly among you, incidentally, that I was assured that no harm would come to the wyvern as a result of these magics; I am moreover informed that the Warchief had developed quite a fondness for the animal, and having enjoyed the compansionship of numerous pet worgs in my youth, I am not unsympathetic.)  Draz’Zilb detected signs from the wyvern’s residual magic aura that it had indeed been exposed to a magic outburst of some sort; however, the wyvern appeared uneasy throughout the divination process, and while it was still in its early stages, the process was interrupted by the arrival of Dontrag and Utvoch, which served only to further agitate the animal.  Before our handlers could calm the increasingly emotional beast, it managed to slip from its restraints and fly off.

I have sent a scouting detail to patrol Durotar and its surrounding areas to locate the wyvern, but its whereabouts are currently unknown.  I must admit, given our current situation I cannot say that the recovery of the animal can afford to rank as a high priority, though it would indeed pain me upon the Warchief’s return to have to report that we had lost it in his absence.

I shall continue to keep you updated as events continue to unfold, friends.  Honor go with us all.

 

-Saurfang

Pertaining to Incursions against the Twilight’s Hammer and Grimtotem

Citizens of the Horde,

It is a well-known aphorism that it is unwise to fight a war on two fronts.  While I generally hold to the wisdom of this proverb, we find ourselves in a situation now where conflict has been forced upon us from multiple directions, and appropriate response on multiple fronts is indeed called for.  I am reluctant to overextend our forces in such a tumultuous time as now, but circumstance dictates quick and decisive action in a number of directions.

Our forces have successfully mobilized in Silithus and have surrounded all points of entry to the Temple of Ahn’Qiraj.  Garona Halforcen has returned to the zone and is coordinating the positioning of our troops with aid from the arenaceous field commander Krug Skullsplit.  In the process of moving our forces into position, several of our battalions passed through regions marked by various Twilight encampments; these nefarious outposts are now, one might say, severely understaffed.  Now that we can be confident that no Twilight forces will be able to escape Silithus, we have begun laying plans to send forces into the temple to put an end to the Twilight threat altogether.

Meanwhile, we have the Grimtotem to deal with.  While Magatha Grimtotem has not been seen since her flight from Thousand Needles – an escape facilitated, I am told, by the ignominious blood elf Johnny Awesome – the testimony of Dontrag and Utvoch confirms the Grimtotem presence on Alcaz Island just prior to Warchief Hellscream’s disappearance.  We are therefore undertaking a systematic sweep of all known Grimtotem settlements, both to investigate for further possible clues to the Warchief’s whereabouts, and also to demonstrate through appropriate force the severity of the actions that have been taken by their tribe against the people of the Horde.

I have sent the adumbral investigator Krog back to Brackenwall Village in Dustwallow Marsh, where, together with Nazeer Bloodpike and the ogre chieftain Tharg, he will arrange a series of strikes against the Grimtotem of Blackhoof Village and Direhorn Post.  Meanwhile, I have authorized Overlord Chieftain Cliffwalker of Stonetalon Mountains to escalate his already highly effective activity against the Grimtotem in that region.  Our actual military activities will focus on these areas while Horde forces in Feralas and Thousand Needles begin to make preparations to begin strikes there as well; as the outlying regions are secured, we will redirect forces to further support the newer operations in neighboring zones.

To any Grimtotem who might see this – I know not how adept the Grimtotem as a people may be in the ways of the internet – I would offer this counsel: surrender and offer full cooperation to Horde forces when they arrive.  It will save all of us time; it will save you, most certainly, a great deal of suffering.

It has been suggested to me that it may be unwise for me to speak directly to the Grimtotem in such a fashion here, or, indeed, to lay out our plans where hostile eyes might see them.  Foreknowledge of our activities, so the reasoning goes, will only enable the Grimtotem to prepare and counter our actions.  To this I would respond from the experience of many battles: foreknowledge of a threat only affects the outcome where the threat itself was marginal to begin with.  If you look out your window and see a fiery meteor the size of Coldarra hurtling down toward you, rest assured that your knowledge of its coming will not in any way empower you to prevent your house from shortly being replaced by a burning crater.

I will continue to keep you abreast of developing news, friends.  Honor go with us all.

 

-Saurfang

 

 

[Header image provided by Angelya from Revive and Rejuvenate, used here with permission and many thanks.]