章 83: Good Morning, Defias
5/12 morning
I woke up in the morning with Lividia cuddled up against me. Good start. We went down to the main room and had a simple stew along with the Lions. I saw Keeshan sitting next to Tessa, chatting. He was an older man, for a soldier. I remembered something about him being a veteran of the first, second, and third wars, which would put him somewhere in his mid to late forties, at least. I stopped over and told him that if he had any interest, he'd be welcome in the Lions. Straight to an officer position. He seemed flattered, but was loyal to the Stormwind army. He wouldn't even take an amulet as a gift. Irritating, but in the end the Stormwind army would be under my sway anyway.
••••••••••
We went to meet with Talaada after breakfast. I decided to approach with Lividia in tow, hanging onto my Draenei form's arm. It would hopefully start to ease them into the idea that this was not a purely Draenei organization.
The other interested visitor from yesterday had been collected by her friend, and was ready to be blessed with health and beauty. For effect, I added a kiss to the forehead as she was restored. The rest of the slowly growing community cheered. I looked around and saw a little complex was being built around the reed hut. They seemed to want to stick together now; Draenei were just as social as humans, and these ones had the basic stamp binding pushing them towards one another.
"Lividia, see what you can do about teaching these people the basics of the visage ritual. Anyone that does particularly well with the words and intent can go through the initiation first." Talaada was taking a while, but I wasn't sure if someone who had been trained in magic before would be able to do it more quickly. If so, I definitely wanted them to be put in charge of teaching the rest so I could stop doing it myself.
Lividia grumbled something about having to spend time in a grimy swamp with non-humans, but I firmly told her to stop disparaging her fellow followers. For good measure, I attached a mild sense of shame to the act. Human supremacy was all well and good, but I wanted her to be more positive about it. I smiled as I left with Talaada for her personal training.
It became clear as we worked that she was ready; she could cast the spell perfectly, but she wanted to see more humans before she chose a face. That seemed reasonable to me, but very inconvenient. She had work to do, and I wanted her to get to it. I returned her to her natural Draenei form and disguised her as a human. Her "default" human form was a skinny blue eyed girl with mousy brown hair. She looked like a girl who had been born and raised in a swamp fairly successfully, hunting and fishing to survive. She was cute, but not exactly sexy.
I fiddled with her settings, letting make changes to her appearance, and taking pictures she could compare against. As she made changes, it was clear she was taking cues from Lividia's human form, which I wholeheartedly approved of. The world is never made worse by the addition of a tall, leggy woman with impressive breasts. She kept her hair color, though at my suggestion it was shined up and given a bit more volume. I took her briefly to see Annetta and learn how human priestesses dress, in a cleavage exposing dress that cinches in at the waist with a belt. Sure it wasn't what all priestesses wore, but it was apparently within acceptable parameters.
https://imgur.com/a/zZ6krrM
With that help provided, she was ready. She took a deep breath, turned back into a dragon, looked at the stored image, and became the brown haired, green eyed beauty she had chosen. I rewarded her with a kiss, which she seemed to appreciate. She yielded to my touch eagerly, so I was fairly sure she would be a happy participant in the ritual tonight.
"You will be my first apostle. This is your chosen face, but now that you have it we shall see if you can wear others." It would be important; if her visage could be disguised, she'd be vastly more helpful to me. First step was the most important: I disguised her as a Draenei. It was only a skin deep transformation, but it would convince her family that the Brotherhood of Love and Beauty was able to fulfill its promises. It worked flawlessly, with one exception: her horns felt more like tightly woven braids than any kind of real horns. That seemed workable to me.
Her orcish form also seemed fine, but imperfect. She looked soft for an orc, which was a bit amusing given her lifestyle. I fiddled with the disguise, giving her visible muscle definition that would match her draconic strength and hunter gatherer background.
I hoped that she would be able to get along with Scout Mosu, and directed her to go and walk along the road indicated by my map, and talk to anyone she meets. Maybe go hunting, or try to sell something. The one thing she should absolutely not do is be on that road as a human. Having given her marching orders, I moved on with my day.
••••••••••
I sincerely regretted that I couldn't split up my use of bottled consent anymore. If I could, I could use some of it for the ritual, some of it to get Bartleby to stop drinking, and some of it to help convince Kam to dedicate himself to architecture. Naturally, I was going to do the one with the biggest payoff.
That meant either Kam or Onyxia, but two extra points of resonance seemed unlikely to be worth more than ten credits and an apartment. Kam had gotten out last night and was currently in the Defias camp, so that's where I went.
It seemed that my plan to send Em had worked out well. The island was overpopulated now, but apparently she had been able to work through the night picking people up and sending them to Tony. Being a nine foot tall brute with a body fully optimized for strength apparently made it pretty easy to lift underfed half-naked men. She was sitting quite happily with Hamhock; I was a bit weirded out to realize that they seemed to be flirting. I guess Em had become a very attractive and physically fit ogress? That's how body optimization seemed to work most of the time on humans, so it checked out. Good for them.
Kam was sitting near the edge of camp; if he knew anything about the situation, he was probably stumped. Blackrock mountain, his clan's home, was currently pretty inaccessible to him. He'd need to either climb over massive mountains, get past a small army of orcs in Redridge, or circle around through Stormwind and Ironforge, two cities where he was probably a wanted man. I was really his only way out.
He grunted when I sat next to him in my Otto persona. "Alright. So, I've got a way to get you through to Loch Modan. But I'm not talking about it in mixed company. Come down to the shore with me, and we can hash things out."
He seemed like the silent type, and just followed me warily. I turned to him with a smile. "Alright. Now, I'm going to need to disguise you. So I'm going to need you to show me a bit of trust and drink this mysterious potion." The look on his face was hilarious.
I took out the vial with the concoction inside and showed it to him. He looked at it for a second before reaching out hesitantly. I handed it to him. He sniffed it and drank it down.
"Alright. Before anything else, here's the deal. I get you back to Blackrock Mountain, and you do everything you can for the rest of your life to fix the broken bridge in the Thandol Span."
Emotions warred in his face for a moment. "No, no we destroyed it for a reason. To stick it to the Bronzebeards and cut em off from their allies. Even if I could, I'm not going to just undo my work."
"Ok but if you build a new, better bridge that'll really show them who the best architects are." I was really banking on the bottled consent turning his brain to mush.
He frowned, then nodded slowly. I made sure to have a smile plastered across my face as I said, "You're going to be fine."
As I walked away, my smile just got wider. I'd done it. I'd finished another major mission. Which meant a sweet new pad and ten credits in the bank.
•••••••••
Spark was being difficult. In most demons, a strong will was a good thing. It made them powerful and self assured, better servants of the Burning legion. In felsteeds, well…
"Stay still!" Spark danced away as she attempted to grab his reins. Zorba stood off to the side with his arms full of equipment. Spark was a bit slow, not quite up to legion standards, but he had some good qualities like his intelligence and endurance. Zorba had suggested enhancing some of the slower steeds with mechanical augments, and it had gone well with Flicker. Unfortunately Spark had been close enough to hear the cries of agony, and he was having none of it.
It was only Zalena's repeated domination of the felsteed since his birth that was keeping him from outright attempting an escape. She'd tried bribing him, but not even spiced imp arms would get him into the stables when Zorba was around.
As she ran around after the stupid horse, commanding the rest of the herd to corner him so she could get him properly augmented, she did not fantasize. She did not wonder what it would be like to have no responsibilities beyond simple, direct orders. She did not think about how long it had been since she had gotten laid. She did not wonder if a mortal warlock would find her appealing enough to ravish. She didn't think about any of these things because she had a horse to catch. But that was the only reason she didn't.
••••••••••
Darcell deeply, truly wished that she could go back to Redridge. Or to the Defias camp in Elwynn. She hasn't seen Tony in a few weeks, or any of her other friends. She'd also like a new mission, or really anything other than sitting around with Eliza, Abby, and Stitches. Learning some basic alchemy recipes was great, but apparently Abby found her pestering annoying, so that came in fits and starts.
Eliza was creepy. She was too quiet, tending to silently survey the room or out the window as Abby chattered away about complicated magic shit. It was obvious she understood; occasionally she'd chime in with some observation or question, but they made absolutely no allowances for Darcell. No explanations. She wanted to know but they didn't want to tell her, especially after they'd tried and even their basic explanation had been too goddamn complicated for her.
Stitches was the opposite problem. He was as dense as a sack of bricks; possibly physically as well as mentally. The titanic ogre was twice as wide as any Darcell had seen before, and slightly taller. She didn't know where he'd come from, but it was obvious what he brought to the team. Sheer, raw muscle.
Of course there was also the prisoner, but she didn't even speak common and was being kept in that horrible charnel house downstairs. The whole situation was basically a minor hell for Darcell, as she was made to feel stupid, understimulated, disgusted, and irritated by stupidity depending on where she looked. She found herself sneaking through the town assassinating lone undead, just to havesomething to do. She really hoped Erich would let her go elsewhere soon. She could be useful, she knew it.
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