5/24 Morning
I woke up entangled with an athletic redhead with glowing blue eyes on one side and my prime consort on the other. I heartily recommend beta testing for the company if you can get the gig. I checked the lower value packages, they still seem like a solid deal, assuming you're in a world with a reasonable number of safe places and pretty girls (or guys. Either or). So probably say no if they offer you the Ishimura in Dead Space; other than places like that you're golden. Even then, if you can get them to promise you a more comfortable gig after that testing Pokémon or Harry Potter, fucking do it; wizard Hitler in power or not.
Anyway, I extracted myself, told my elven paramour a very abbreviated explanation (she could ask Caledra for details if she wanted), and got up to go to work. Xylinnia informed me that the army was ready to attack, so I in turn told my dragons to be ready, and sent some stealthy chaps to fly to a reasonable staging area. I probably wasn't going to be participating directly in any of that; I had a busy day planned and I haven't been the biggest contributor to any of these fights recently. Officially, Ysondre was the leader of the group of green dragons defending the normal world from the nightmare. The plan, according to Xylinnia, was to make the assault tonight if Tyrande arrived; the name "night elf" wasn't just a reference to their darker skin tone. They were a nocturnal species with several minor magical abilities that only worked at night, up to and including a minor healing factor.
I checked on Valeera, and found that she was in the middle of planning out the raid with her team. Hopefully the extra information she contributes will lead to a lower body count. Valeera, as we had planned, was not flaunting her necklace either. Officially, she'd flushed the fel magic out of her body and then replaced it with nice, clean arcane energy, then bummed a ride via teleportation to get here. Broll clearly didn't like the explanation, but he seemed more inclined to let his objections wait until they were somewhere safe. It ran counter to his understanding of blood elf mana addiction, probably due to everything I told her being utter bullshit.
Importantly, with Valeera embedded in the team I could redeploy my Nightmare Skitterer. It couldn't teleport without my help but it was insanely fast, so I just told it to go to a cliff overlooking the Scarlet Monastery and hide. It was moving so fast that I could easily see it creeping along on my world map; I'd give it a few hours to arrive.
While I was doing that, I overheard something through the open line that made me choke on my breakfast. "It's like Aegwynn said, you need me."
Now, I don't know if you all know about Magna Aegwynn, but I legitimately thought she was dead at this point. Finding out that she's alive and has had contact with someone in the process of joining my retinue made me shit bricks. This was one of the most powerful mages in history; she had thrown hands with an avatar of the Dark Titan Sargeras and come out on top. One of the only individual humans who could rival her power was her own son, Medihv, whom she had essentially groomed from birth for that explicit purpose. She has personally crafted at least one major artifact because the one she already had, A'tiesh, wasn't good enough for her. I didn't want her anywhere near any of my necklaces in any way other than it being around her neck.
Of course, in addition to shitting bricks, I also very much wanted to capture her for all of the same reasons she scared me. If I get her into my retinue, Ysera will possibly not be the most powerful individual I've encountered. The Green Aspect was plenty powerful, but at least some of her tier 8 ranking comes from the legion of giant acid spitting lizards under her command. Aegwynn fought a god in a Denny's parking lot and forced him to play dirty if he wanted anything better than a crushing defeat.
On a positive note, as far as I knew she was single, had preserved her youth and beauty for at least a few centuries, and has had a child (which opens up stud service working on her). Maybe if I'm very lucky I'll be able to seduce her with a cringeworthy but Company provided pickup line and slip an amulet onto her in the afterglow. With someone this powerful I don't even know if I want to risk trying to charm her until she's already in a vulnerable state.
That's a problem for later though. If she's magically monitoring Valeera for some reason I'm probably fucked anyway. I took a deep breath, and got back to my to do list for today. I confirmed that I had the resources for an Altar of Elders. I'd gotten around 250 energy and 40 essence at midnight, resulting in a total of 317 energy and 105 essence. The altar cost 150/60, so I could build it no problem. I would be losing essence income when I started converting wisps into ancients and didn't want to be floating too much gold, so I also put in a work order for two more wisps. That brought me down to 37/55, but I'd be able to afford an Ancient of War or a Hunter's Hall tomorrow as long as I kept the majority of the elves here.
It seems that my retinue members produce income as long as they are living in and exclusively working for this community. Leaving to fight a battle for me would detach them, but leaving to hunt spiders to clear the area, chop down trees for new construction, and gather mushrooms to eat? Totally acceptable, apparently. The rangers and some of the more outdoorsy civilians had done just that, were still dedicated, and had contributed energy just like everyone who stayed home. I'd need to see if things like trading with Darkshire still counted, and even more importantly if hunting Worgen counted. A lot of rules were, unfortunately, still pretty fuzzy.
While I finished up my breakfast, I went through my missions to see if there was any movement. Sha'ni had apparently been "mysteriously resurrected" and woke up her husband for some passionate lovemaking in the middle of the night. Good for them, now I just needed to start capturing the people at Kargath. That could wait, though. Nothing too urgent there. It meant I had another Censer of dreams, which pretty much guaranteed that I'd capture Moira with one unless she was extremely cooperative.
Apparently Imriss had been flying over the Stonetalon Mountains when sweet sweet troll lovin was going on, because my next target was at Stonetalon Peak.
Burn. Her. House.
Destroy the house of Illyane, the clothier of Stonetalon Peak
Rewards: Tailoring Skill chip, Keeper Albagorm will have an immediately positive reaction to any members of the retinue he meets, company stamp, paralytic poison
Why? First Bloodlust, and now this? I mean. I'm going to do it, burning down a house is way less egregious than being a serial cop killer, but what the hell? Probably going to just send in a squad of dragonspawn to do it and leave, but only after kidnapping her and robbing her blind. Yes, once again kidnapping has been rationalized as the good guy thing to do. Probably with the old possession trick; I've missed it so. Well, that'll be on my to do list at some point today when I'm low on mana. It doesn't seem like it will be too terribly hard with possession/fade and a ghost, so I should be able to rebuild my mana while I do it.
Speaking of, I needed to go and spend some mana.
••••••••••
Magglish snuck through the Wailing Caverns silently. I'd needed to push him a bit for this, but he was the best sneak I had available, at least for spelunking. He was actively avoiding any kind of combat. I'd been thinking about something for a while; did Fading Dream Mushrooms have any special interactions with people who were in the catalog?
I'd decided to test it on Lady Anacondra, one of the earliest bosses of this dungeon. She was, unfortunately for her, pretty replaceable in a way that most of the people in the catalog weren't. She had almost no lore associated with her, no political or social connections outside of the Druids of the Fang, and her powers were very modest. If nothing special happened, I'd have removed a dangerous impediment on the way to Naralex and would have a pretty silver haired girl to train as an archer or infiltrator later. If it did work, I'd have another powerful druidess and would know the benefits and drawbacks of serving magic mushrooms.
Magglish just needed to lay eyes on a specific woman and stow a mushroom somewhere in the cave where it won't be snatched up by a scavenger. I'd mind control her into going and eating it, then Magglish could teleport her out. Easy.
Unfortunately we failed at the second hurdle. When I managed to push Anacondra into the small alcove where Magglish had hidden the shroom, we found a raptor happily chowing down. On the one hand, shit, on the other hand I suppose this is a legitimate use of shrooms too, because that raptor rapidly bulked up and looked at Anacondra questioningly, sensing my presence.
"Come, beast! You shall accompany me to the surface!" She shouted at the raptor imperiously, which essentially shrugged and fell in line. My directive had been to tell it to follow her while she left the caverns, which she did, so I couldn't complain. The two of them could fight through most things on their way out quite effectively, though it was a somewhat brutal and slow egress. I could feel my mana fading as she fought her way out, and I was just hoping that Dremuus and the gang would know what I wanted when I had her make her way to the camp.
That part worked out fine. I just about passed out from the strain, but as my vision was starting to go dark I saw his big blue hands wrap a necklace around Anacondra's neck like a garrote. I pulled out and gave her a paralysis order. She could eat a mushroom tomorrow. I needed a nap in a dark room right now.
5/24 late morning
I wasn't actually up for too much when I forced myself to get up, but a bit of conjured water from Kriss and an hour long nap by all rights should be enough rest. According to my profile I was at almost 60% mana, I was just being a baby about it because I had a headache. Once I decided to power through it, stress defense stepped in and made it easier for me.
Lividia was still flying towards Stonetalon Peak, so I teleported out to join her. Flying just for the sake of it, especially alongside someone I loved, had a certain excitement and joy that still hadn't faded. When we arrived, I transformed us each into random night elves on the path leading to the settlement. Some of the native dryads came to speak to us, but it was nothing terribly aggressive. We hadn't done anything to make them suspicious yet and we were physically normal elves right now. Even if they had been able to sense dragons, there was nothing to sense.
We exchanged pleasantries, and slowly made our way to one of the few buildings, a little cottage that was our target. The dryads wandered off once they lost interest, being somewhat flighty unless they had a mission to pursue, and we didn't draw too much attention to ourselves. It was a small and remote town, but visitors weren't so strange as to draw a crowd.
Illyane wasn't home, as it turned out, so there was no need to kidnap her after all. Unfortunately her home was also locked and had no windows big enough even for Lividia's dragon form, so no opportunity for burglary either. After looking it over, Lividia and I turned back into black dragons and pelted it with burning liquid all over until the dryads rushed in to stop us. At that point we flew off, job completed. Imriss had gotten to Darnassus some time today, so that's where the new minor mission was set.
Priestly vows
Capture Priestess Alathea of Darnassus by love confession
Reward: rabbit insignia
Rabbit Insignia: this stamp sets the target's sex drive and views on sex to roughly those of an inexperienced nymphomaniac teenager. This removes most sexual hangups and sex related trauma and places the desire for sexual pleasure, with or without a partner, fairly high on their list of priorities. This is an instantaneous change, and will fade or intensify naturally over months or years depending on future sexual experiences or lack thereof.
Capture a priestess and get a stamp that makes someone super horny? I could get behind that. Unfortunately the juice didn't seem worth the squeeze. A priestess in Darnassus was likely to be in the temple of Elune, and Aelthalyste had gotten me very nervous about high level priest trainers. I wasn't inclined to assign myself or Talaada to the task right now, so as I flew through the skies of Tirisfal Glades I dismissed it.
Get Rich Quick
Convince Sylvanna Forestmoon and Lotherias, both of Darnassus, to cooperate on a joint project of some sort.
Rewards: A Price on Love, Imriss gains the ability to cast the spell "invisibility" on himself at will
A Price on Love: you may select any individual and receive a bonus mission relevant to the target (fulfilling one of their goals, defeating one of their enemies, etc) with their capture as an extra reward. The difficulty of this mission will scale based on the power level of the target, with tier 1-2 being minor missions, tier 3-4 being moderate missions, 5-6 being major missions, and 7+ being increasingly extreme grand missions. Should they be captured in the process of completing the mission, an additional reward of equivalent value will be added.
Jackpot. That's the ticket. Even if I have to literally kidnap and capture these two and have them set up shop in Twilight Grove, I'm doing this one. It didn't seem like an awfully efficient way of capturing someone, given how easily I could capture most people of tier 4 or lower at this point, but being able to create an extra major or grand mission for myself that is extra lucrative definitely appealed to me.
I, broadly speaking, knew what many major characters wanted. If I used this on Gelbin Mekkatorque, I'd probably get a mission to retake Gnomeregan. If I used it on Sylvanas, I'd get something related to fighting the Scourge or building up the power base of the Forsaken. If I used it on Ysera, I'd probably be expected to fight the Emerald Nightmare.
If the word "extra" meant what I thought it did, these would be major or grand missions that would have rewards on the same level as other major and grand missions, plus a bonus worth 50-100 credits. I had plenty of missions, but most of them were random side quests. This would be an investment. Or, hey, I could do something absurdly ambitious like targeting Elune or Eonar; you know. Actual goddesses. Just to see what they wanted, and if I could provide it.
I landed next to the Skitterer, gave it its marching orders, and followed it as best I could; faded, stealthed, constantly pausing to use Mind Vision, and headed into enemy territory.
••••••••••
The trainees, as usual, looked up at her when High Inquisitor Whitemane went to inspect their weapons drills. A glance was good. It showed awareness. Stopping to look at her for a moment was acceptable; it was good to be aware of what a beautiful woman looked like so they would not be distracted by the rotting corpses that masqueraded as such. Gawking for any longer than that was not acceptable; it showed a lack of discipline. Those trainees, mostly men, were marked for additional training. If the mind was weak, the body must compensate. Her attendants saw to the bleeding and broken, so that they could return to the training field.
https://imgur.com/a/hspFmj2
These new warriors, shipped in from Scarlet fortresses like Tyr's Hand through a hidden mountain pass, were the backbone of what this monastery was for. The might of the Crusade could not be allowed to flag for even an instant, and that meant constantly replacing the lost. That meant harsh training, often fatal. That was why Sally was High Inquisitor here.
Her next stop was the Chamber of Atonement, where James was at work with the very newest recruits. The screams would haunt her at night, if far worse things did not occupy her midnight hours. She had been informed that there was one ready for promotion set aside for her. She looked at the girl's broken and burnt corpse, and felt fierce pride. She had passed the first and most vital test, not renouncing the light or losing coherence even to the end.
"Arise, Elona. Valor such as yours is needed." She placed a hand on the dead girl's chest, and light flowed through her. The wounds closed, new skin covered the burns, and exposed bone snapped back into place. Her eyes fluttered open, and the first thing she saw was a rare smile from the austere inquisitor. "You have proven yourself worthy; you shall be properly trained to channel the light. I will follow your growth with interest."
The girl sat up in a daze, processing the end of her trial, and was presented with a tabard and sandals. New clothing would be presented to her when she reached the barracks. As either a Paladin trained by Renault or a priestess trained under Sally herself, the girl would be a leader among their order. After all, only one who had proven themselves willing to die before compromising could be trusted with such authority.
As always, there was a certain melancholy to resurrecting her comrade. If she had been able to do this during the Scourging of Lorderon, her parents would still be alive. Her brother, her little sister. Instead, she had to smite the creatures that had been made of their corpses. She had been a trainee, hardly beyond the stage of cleaning bandages, but the sheer wrongness she had seen in their twisted faces had brought clarity. Those were not her family anymore. If any vestige remained, it would have been a mercy to destroy the mockery. The lights wrath had practically come unbidden.
That the Scourge would dare to playact at some form of rebellion among their ranks was absurd. If it was so simple for one of the dead to resist, to become free and reclaim humanity, why hadn't her father stopped himself? Or her mother? The "Forsaken" wanted her to believe that her family had simply been too weak willed, or perhaps that they would have suddenly come to their senses if she had run instead of fighting. To spit upon their graves like that was enough reason to snuff them out, all on its own. No, the Banshee Queen was just another undead harlot looking to entice the weak minded; if a bit more sophisticated.
Alas, Grand Crusader Dathrohan believed it best to allow the farce to continue. They would frequently assist the Argent Dawn or squabble with their fellow Scourge in order to preserve the illusion. So long as they didn't show their hand, she was to keep contact with them limited to training exercises and defending their few strongholds in the area.
The rest, those who had broken to some degree but had not betrayed the light, were gathered in the next room. She raised them all as a group, and would let one of Herod's sergeants handle their processing. Some of the more clever among them would be trained as mages, those with physical aptitude would become warriors, a few would tend to the hounds, and the rest would see to the upkeep of the monastery so that the real trainees could focus on their duties. None were worth an extra second of her time.
She next went to the chapel gardens, where those who had been killed while training in the field were gathered by their comrades, watched over to ensure that none were undead in disguise. This was the most difficult part of Whitemane's day: raising the fallen en masse. She needed to do it within the day or the spirit was lost, but the monastery had surprisingly few true losses thanks to her unique abilities.
After the mass resurrection, she was drained. Empty. She maintained her posture, even though she wanted nothing more than to collapse. She needed to be a good example; something to aspire to for the women, and an idol of perfection for the men. She made her way to her cloister, a private prayer room in the rear of the cathedral, where she would be able to meditate and restore her spirit in private. Renault would guard the door while he trained his squires; she would not be disturbed.
Once the door closed, she fell to her knees and let herself relax. Perhaps this would be one of the days where she allowed herself a nap on the small bedroll she kept tucked in the corner. She sometimes worried she relied too much on this place for naps, but she had precious little time to herself. As she went to retrieve the bedroll and a small bottle of juice, the squires began clapping for sister Elona as she went through initiation. Over the clapping, nobody heard the high inquisitor struggle with the strange creature that had been clinging to the ceiling when she entered.
También te puede interesar
Comentario de párrafo
¡La función de comentarios de párrafo ya está en la Web! Mueva el mouse sobre cualquier párrafo y haga clic en el icono para agregar su comentario.
Además, siempre puedes desactivarlo en Ajustes.
ENTIENDO