6/1 afternoon
The assault on the Sunken Temple had been intended as a somewhat deep probe; unlike the Wailing Caverns, the Atal'ai were cornered. They had a finite population and no extraplanar sugar daddy providing them with an infinite supply of corrupted plants and animals. If this weren't somewhat time sensitive I'd have happily ground them down into dust with repeated waves of demons, day after day, but I had better places for those demons to suicidally charge right now.
I might have done a full scale wave assault like I did in the Wailing Caverns anyway, but I wanted to try something a bit more experimental to start. I only had eight shadow priests that could cast and maintain mind vision. Coincidentally, that was enough people to keep permanent tabs on my entire squad of heavies plus two extra people. As such, an assault force consisting of Gina, Broll, Valeera, Aegwynn, Nathanos, Mary, Abby, Ysondre, and myself would be making the assault, supported by my full compliment of demons. Each would be carefully monitored the whole time through mind vision, and pulled out if they needed it. Well, I wouldn't, but between hero resurrection and blink I felt pretty good about getting out of there if I needed to.
Valeera was the first person in; the entrance was obviously the most guarded part of the complex, and she was uniquely capable of sneaking past the defenders. Especially the violent wild animals and oozes that were less guarding than occupying the upper reaches of the temple; they might be corrupted by the nightmare, but they were still mostly just animals. She scouted around for a nice, isolated location to start summoning in my assault team. Eventually she found a spot that was essentially a supply closet; extra stone ceremonial knives and robes were all stored together. There wasn't a lot of space, but there was enough for Valeera, Gina, and Mary to start the assault together as the rest of us were ported in.
It was a slaughter initially, before the trolls properly raised an alarm. The temple was built like a stack of rings with extra rooms built off to the side and staircases serving as choke points. We placed teams of Satyr backed by Eredar healers around the stairs to hold off attacks from below; the temple was designed for a siege, so it wasn't too terribly hard to hold a staircase from above.
I did start to realize a small hole in the team composition at this point: we had a front line but we did not have a tank. Gina was adopting the fury combat style; she was great when it came to dismantling a single person at a time, but she didn't have any particular tools to stop someone from getting past her other than the admittedly potent desire to not turn one's back on her. Broll was inconsistent; he was good at mass destruction with magic and he was good at turning into a bear and bashing people's faces in, so he swapped between the two at his whim. This would be useful in a small team where everyone was great in melee combat, but I'd just added Calia, Abby, Aegwyn, and a humanoid Ysondre to the mix.
My spirit of vengeance, Nathanos, and I ended up running interference and acting as bodyguards to my clothies. More so they could focus than because they were in dramatic amounts of danger, honestly. I got some practice with venomstrike at first, but stopped bothering and focused on teleporting out our fallen enemies for processing after a couple minutes. Aegwynn was busily showing off how she got the title of Magna.
Bolts of violet energy lanced out and trivially blasted the heads off of a dozen trolls before I could shout at her that we wanted to take as many of them as possible alive. She rolled her eyes and started turning them into sheep at an only slightly reduced speed and a much higher mana cost. That created some confusion, but a panicked sheep was absolutely less of a threat to us than an angry troll fanatic. It seemed to be both a physical and mental change, because they showed absolutely no tactical sense or any other indication of intelligence; these were just sheep now. Thanks to wild talent, I was able to calm them down and teleport them to Raven Hill for processing along with the ones who were dead or bleeding out. They would make excellent additions to my own little Burning Maniple.
Abby was doing her best, but dominating undead is difficult in the middle of combat and she was alone. We picked up half a dozen or so zombie and ghost trolls before she tagged out and Eliza came in to take up the position, but far more of them went down to blades, arrows, and Mary's magic than were poached for the cause.
Speaking of Mary, it appears Calia was a discipline priest. Meaning that her best healing came in two main forms: the finest goddamn shield spells I've ever seen, and pulses of healing energy released whenever she smites fools. Her smites looked a bit different than I was used to, acting more like bolts of light than the fire crackers I've seen before, but where I'd been expecting a pure defensive healer, I had gotten a magical artillery piece that healed and protected her allies in the process. Ysondre, for her part, decided to save her mana and focused on helping me capture our downed and transformed foes in between innervation spells for Aegwynn and rejuvenation, her equivalent to renew, for Gina and Broll.
The easy ride was not to last. We started to run into their champions, who were finally rallying a proper defense. Of course, the first team that really gave us trouble were also a buffet: six powerful ghosts who formed a powerful team. I called in a slightly rested Abby and Tara to help Eliza dominate them, and Ursula to break down their mental defenses.
They had a full team, and more importantly they had their living allies backing them up, so they outnumbered us three to one. Ysondre and I had to start taking our jobs seriously, as berserkers began charging our backline and Gina didn't have the luxury of picking one enemy at a time to duel. In all honesty, prioritizing the capture of the ghostly champions was probably a bad tactical move, but I defend it as a strategic decision. Ghostly recruits with varied and powerful skillsets can only be good.
Once they were eliminated, the lion's share of the troll's warriors were taken out. All that was left was high command and getting to Eranikus… who was unfortunately guarded by quite a large number of green dragons and dragonspawn, according to Valeera's scouting report. Further, I was informed that many of our Satyr were being unsummoned: the enemy was breaking through.
I think we got enough data from this experiment, don't you? We called in our half trained succubi to screen for Lividia and hold off the people from downstairs for a little bit longer, and pulled in the B team, Varian, and his Royal guards to help us make the last big push.
It was a good call; once the green dragons saw who was attacking, they went from passively standing guard to throwing themselves at us in a frenzy. In addition, when I said dragons I did not mean whelps. Four drakes, supported by almost thirty dragonspawn, charged out of the hall where I presume Eranikus was being kept with every intention of killing every person wearing one of my necklaces.
I called for backup, and my undead were marshaled and started warping in, starting with Stitches in his full armor. Almost immediately, one of the dragons was yanked out of the air by Stitches's hook. For obvious reasons, our first priority after general survival was to take out the dragons and put necklaces on them. Aegwynn burnt through the last of her mana placing the dragons in temporal stasis for around thirty seconds each; enough for me to collar them. Without the support of their masters, the dragonspawn were forced to fight on equal footing with my own. They didn't stand a chance, especially with some of them trying to break off and finish the drakes.
We tried to go for Eranikus then, but his chamber was locked behind a magical barrier. We didn't have time to figure out how to breach it, so we changed tack and got back to hunting the Prophet with our tracker. He was hidden in what I can best describe as a bunker crossed with a cathedral, filled with powerful magic users and insane zealots. My best guess were that these were the high clergy and their personal bodyguards, hoping to ride out the assault without risking their own skin, or interrupt their rituals.
Obviously we couldn't allow that, and we couldn't rely on Aegwynn anymore. She was recovering her mana as quickly as she could, but she had let herself get carried away on sheeping the chaff. I heard the deafening musical tone of Lividia blowing herself up in the distance. We had a few minutes until the unwashed masses got here, and I wanted to succeed on at least one of our missions.
"Take the cathedral, we can hold it if we do!"
My spirit of vengeance would be our last disposable blockade. We had deliberately kept the body count low when possible, so the vengeful spirits were a bit anemic. It would have to do.
The Atal'ai had blockaded the door; busting through wouldn't be easy, and anyone the high priests could see through the doorway would only last a few seconds with a shield. Without one, they'd be torn apart no matter how tough they were. Broll had tried to break through the circle of axe wielding warriors just inside and while he killed three with one mighty sweep of his claw, their spirits had leapt out at him and torn him apart as their more lightly injured comrades cycled out to be healed and shadow bolts burnt through his thick hide. Now we really had to take the chapel; I was not losing Broll's body.
I regretted that we didn't have any of Doan's students ready to go; a shielded blast wave would be just the thing to bust through this blockade. Instead, I did something stupid; if this surprises you, hello, you can call me Erich. I gave a few orders, and then teleported into a spot just behind the line of high priests with a shield up. The priests were very distracted by a storm of daggers being flung into their collective backs. I did my best to dodge their panic fire and lay out a bit of damage over the course of around five seconds; they were distinctly startled, but they were disciplined enough that their shock only lasted a short time. I only managed to kill one, but while they were healing themselves and trying to kill me, they weren't watching the doors. Gina and Darcell could last much longer if they weren't worried about a barrage of dark blasts, and Ysondre could line up her chain lightning spell. With just a few seconds of safe casting, half of their warriors were toasted or skewered and my champions faded back out the door.
The prophet managed to tie me down with ropes of shadow that sprang up around me; if I hadn't blinked away from that, I would have likely been incinerated by the huge pillar of fire he called down. I left a surprise behind me, skulking in the shadows. Once the Atal'ai reoriented themselves back to the task of supporting their guardians, leaving just a few trolls as lookouts, Valeera made her move.
The prophet's bodyguard suddenly fell asleep right as the blonde elf lunged at Jammal'an. He was stabbed in the chest, but responded in a very unexpected way: he laughed. "Come sister! Join us! Drink in true power!" As he said this, he grabbed her wrists and Valeera seemed to change. Her skin darkened and she grew tall and muscular, her eyes went hazy, and then to Jammal'an's clear disappointment, she fell to the ground clutching at her head. She had somehow been transformed into a troll, undoing millennia of mana addiction and mutation even as it flooded her body with dark power. I found out later that it was only the combined efforts of mind defense, corruption defense, and Kathra'Natir that stopped her from pledging her soul to Hakkar and trying to kill all of us right there to prove her devotion.
Jammal'an turned away in disgust and began casting a flame strike to punish my retinue for trying to get through the door, still clutching at his wound but relying on his regeneration to pull through it. He was very shocked when Valeera, thanks to a magic purging spell from Mary dipping in with a shield of her own, leapt to her feet and plunged her blade through his entire chest, with the magnified strength he had just given her, her entire fist coming out of his back. He died almost instantly.
Around half of the priests tried to turn and take her apart, but she dropped a smoke bomb and vanished; it's extremely hard to target someone you can't see with magic. In the confusion I popped back in and let out another flurry of knives. I idly thought that I needed to teach some more of my warriors how to blink. It's an arcane spell; I'm sure I saw Aegwynn use it while she was showing off.
Eight of my royal guards charged out of the smoke, and the fight was pretty much over at that point. The high priests were deadly if they had space, but with their guards all dead they went down to my warriors blades easily enough. The only question now was whether we push to the end… and that was hardly a question at all at this point.
"Hold the door." I turned to my amulet and gave Aelthalyste her orders. "Bring in the available Farstriders, the Deathguard, and Whitemane. We need reinforcements. Check on Aegwynn, too. We need her again if she's ready."
The Atal'ai Rabble weren't a trivial threat, but compared to everything else we'd faced a bunch of tired trolls fighting fresh troops in a fortified position was barely worth noting. Sally was able to resurrect our troops, Broll included, though it tired her out… which didn't matter offensively. In Heroes of the Storm, only one of Sally's abilities actually cost mana. She was able to participate quite nicely in the rest of the battle. Her healing was a bit anemic, but Mary and Ysondre had it covered.
Once the assault was over, we were able to make our way over to Eranikus. Hopefully all the trouble was resolved now. I'm usually that lucky, right?
6/1 evening
Aegwynn was still tired, but she'd recovered enough that I could use another time-stop trick on Eranikus. Apparently it was much, much harder to pull on someone his strength, but she managed. I, on the other hand, didn't. Eranikus was not physically here, exactly. We tried to restrain him; Ysondre was able to take her full sized form in the great vaulted room he was being kept in, and she could overpower this shadow of Eranikus easily enough. No wonder the time stop had been relatively easy.
I'd known that he wasn't entirely present from my prior knowledge, but I'd hoped that I could collar him with ghost hair. I could get it around his neck, but he was only a projection; a living nightmare like the ones Sadie can manifest. The only physical part of Eranikus left here was a giant emerald the size of my fist; I shifted to green before touching it. When I picked it up, I heard a deep rumbling voice in my ears. "Brother? Little brother? You are unknown to me, but I need your help. In Ysera's name, put this gem in the essence font I brought with me. I sense it nearby."
"Yes sir." I started to look around until I saw some kind of brazier full of green fire. "Ysondre, can you look this over? Eranikus wants to go into something called an essence font and I don't want to just blindly throw him in in case it's corrupted."
"What? Ysondre is there? Give my essence to her! She will be much more able to assist." I shrugged and did as he asked. I tried wrapping a necklace around him first, but it seems that a neck is one hundred percent non-negotiable. Ysondre took the essence gem and looked over the brazier before shaking her head.
"I'm sorry father. It's been here for too long. If we placed you in here, it would only corrupt you. Don't worry. We have developed several methods of purification; you are one of the first who was defeated by this new enemy." She looked at me hopefully. I shrugged.
"I'll figure something out. Hopefully a stamp will work; if it doesn't, we are going to need to rely on Tyrande, or maybe Talaada could charm him. If that doesn't work… eh, I guess we are brainstorming. I'll definitely be asking Ysera, but most of the Green Dragonflight's tools seem ineffective against the nightmare, so maybe the Cenarian Circle?" She nodded, and rephrased my explanation to the gemstone in her hand. I finally found something that communication talent was not giving me any insight on, but at least he was just as unaware in the other direction.
"Alright everyone. Do a sweep, take anything that seems useful or valuable, and we can clear out. No need for to drag this out." My deathguard and dragonspawn did a sweep through the temple, and the Atal'ai did indeed have some wonderful toys. Most of it would need to be tailored in order to be usable for someone without the lanky build of a troll, but I had tailors now. Looking it over, I could probably donate or sell the weapons, armor, gems, and precious metals as-is for around 400 gold before we even get into the magical equipment, and there was quite a bit of used cloth and leather that could probably be cleaned up and turn into something more useful with an afternoon's worth of effort, as well. Bandages if nothing else.
While the temple was being ransacked, Ysondre gave me an explanation of eactly what the gemstone was. Apparently some green dragons can stow a fragment of their soul inside of a gemstone, typically when they are about to go through a particularly trippy part of the dream. Something that could disconnect them from reality. Using an essence font, they could reassert control over their dreamself. It sounded like a kind of mental savestate to me, not that she'd use those words. It was the kind of thing you normally took a few days in advance to do, so the fact that Eranikus seems to have improvised it was very impressive.
More importantly, it didn't actually work on the nightmare. Ysondre had prepared one, and as far as she could remember when she tried to fix herself the backup psyche had just reset the process of corruption, which didn't do more than slow it down. If we captured little Eranikus, hopefully the process will go differently with someone sporting corruption resistance. He also knew where he had the Green Fragment stowed; actually getting him back into the fray was an excellent bonus objective, but not as vital as it might have been. We could send all of our green dragons to the small dream sanctum he had in the mountains near Moonglade for a smash and grab tonight. Naturally, he'd stowed it in the dream, but as long as Xavius didn't know we needed the scepter or where it was, we wouldn't have too much trouble.
Hopefully, this part of the job was in the bag. Wait a second. "Ysondre, didn't I send you to Wyrmrest to ask about Vaelen?"
"Yes. I put in a request and have one of our drakonids waiting for a response. They have an amulet; you shouldn't worry so much."
Thank the Light for competent minions.
••••••••••
I received a note from Xylinnia; apparently the assault on the portal would be happening early tomorrow morning. She'd been informed that the Horde was coming to support them in force, and when I checked where Sylvanas was now, it made sense. She was moving north through Azshara, and when I checked in with her she was coming with a star studded team. Varok Saurfang, Vol'jin of the Darkspear tribe, and the Warchief, orc Moses himself, Thrall son of Durotan.
I almost regretted using all these amulets on dragons today. Almost. Definitely knew where tomorrow's budget was going, though.
••••••••••
There was no movement in the Wyrmrest temple, yet, and I think Azuregos was laying low while there was an army in the area, so I decided it was time to play with my new toys. Specifically, Hybrid Runes. I gave the description a once over.
You can now alter the Tempest-wearing members of your retinue into hybrid races (human, kitsune, vulcan, etc.), limited by the natural examples of such races that you have in your retinue. There is no theoretical limit on how many races you can hybridize into one individual. However, the result having all of the strengths of both sides and none of their weaknesses is only guaranteed when there are only two donor races present. More complex combinations are increasingly unreliable. The effects of party-wide Heritage perks such as Dragon Thrall do not count against this limit.
It seemed pretty cut and dry, honestly, and I could already think of several uses for it. Troll regeneration, gnomish intelligence, tauren mass, and demonic immortality all seemed like they would be incredibly powerful if applied properly, and in theory they could all stack. I could play with Lego genetics and I was going to make full use of it.
The most obvious place for experimentation would be on the demons; even if larger combos proved unstable, giving my new Satyr the physiques of tauren would let them fight in the manner they were accustomed to as ogres. The Succubi could pick up the powers of imps, perhaps? Unfortunately, literally all of my demons were quite dead for the moment. The Atal'ai we'd taken prisoner would be joining them soon, I suppose; I can't really think of a better use for a bunch of fanatical murder trolls than turning them into demons to fight and die in my name on repeat forever.
I didn't have time to do an in depth analysis, so I called in a group I had been largely neglecting. I had about 20 gnomes, rescued from the outskirts of Gnomeregan one at a time by a team of ghosts passing around a pair of necklaces. They were a random collection of gnomes who had been teleported to Tinkertown in Ironforge after essentially being cured of a radioactive zombie plague. Their friends and families were, of course, thrilled to see them, and happy to accept the story that a wandering priest from the Brotherhood of Love had found them and healed them of their affliction. Gotta get that branding in somewhere; soon the High Tinker might be contacting me to ask about my methods.
Anyway. Gnomes have a far better grasp than most in Azeroth of how to study and test a phenomenon, and these twenty weren't doing anything too important. Picking up the pieces of their shattered lives after a tragedy which killed or mutated 90% of the population of their capital city. Etc etc. Nothing major. So I could give them a task once I gathered them together. It wasn't too hard; Tinkertown is a dense neighborhood and my gnomes were clinging to one another just as hard as anyone they knew from before the fall of Gnomeregan.
"Alright. I have a task for you all." I pulled out my necklace. "I need you to study the newest function on this."
The group of pint sized, brightly colored men and women waited for a moment before one, a girl with pink pigtails, spoke up. "Uh. Sir. Of course. But what exactly do you want us to do? We can't disassemble the amulets. We've tried."
"I have other people working on that. What I need from you is to try every combination of species that this amulet is capable of transforming someone into and tell me which ones work well. The strengths and weaknesses. Which ones pair well, which ones have negative synergies, and what the impacts of stacking multiple genomes on top of one another are. Take extensive notes; I'm pretty sure this is going to have quite a few knock on effects."
The gnomes looked at one another and nodded gravely. "We can't dedicate every moment to it. We have been trying to start new jobs. But we will do what we can."
"Excellent. Oh. By the way. If you can get any kind of job in the area of manufacturing things that would be useful in a war, do those. I am pretty sure demand is about to skyrocket, what with the war that's about to start."
Beat. "May we ask about the process of how you get these missions? Who assigns them? How do they know about these world shaking events in advance?"
"If you figure it out, let me know. Ta ta for now." I walked out, and the gnomes dutifully shrugged and started working.
"Oh!" I poked my head back in. "Avoid Nathrezim. It appears to be too extreme a change at the moment. Seems fatal."
I had a few more things to do before bed; it was good to have that much taken care of.