章 224: Core Competencies
6/3 The Assault
All told it went remarkably well, with a few exceptions. My troops were nearly all fully immune to fire; whatever someone's preferred body was, they were splashing in black dragon today. Boss's orders. The Magma Giants were a problem, sure, but I had my backline, especially Aegwynn and Jaina, specifically target them. The flamewakers, guys with humanoid torsos with snakelike lower bodies, were second priority because they had weapons and some of them knew how to cast non-fire spells. We've been over this; target priority and overwhelming ranged DPS matters.
We weren't focused on captures; many things here didn't have necks that were easily accessible, and were strong enough to require substantial mana expenditure on Natalie or Aegwynn's part if we wanted to stow them for later. I kept an eye out for particularly powerful Flamewakers; they had necks and power, the perfect combination. I also had a dozen of the Royal Guards on looting duty. If they smelled anything powerful and the spellcasters weren't currently threatened, they were to grab the loot and send it home.
Valeera was ordered to try to focus on securing kills from stealth when possible, preferably against beings that hadn't seen her before. I had looked at the number of green dragons that died when I instantly captured all of them: I was in no particular danger of running out of people to resurrect at a rate of one per two days, so I wanted her to kill lots of fire elementals that would respawn on their own in the Firelands.
Our first real obstacle came with a Flamewaker that had apparently studied arcane magic extensively, who just so happened to be right next to the biggest fire elemental I'd seen thus far. The little asshole would teleport into a spot where my retinue was most vulnerable, unleash a blast of arcane energy, and then teleport away, only to do it again a few moments later. What kind of irritating, cowardly… wait. No. I'm not finishing that sentence.
He was mostly a problem because of the rest of my retinue needing to focus on the being that I'm pretty sure was named Baron Geddon. My troops were being set ablaze, and while that wasn't seriously harming any of us, the Baron was also peppering in explosions and could somehow ignite mana. That last bit royally fucked up the mages of Team Stormwind.
Eventually, Natalie was able to dominate the blinking menace; not enough to get a confession out of him, but enough for me to collar him and throw him into my apartment, completely neutered. Natalie was down for the count after that as well, so I sent her to drink from a moonwell until she was topped off. I wanted a repeat of that trick if at all possible.
Team Stormwind needed a rest after that; between mana burn and some serious injuries from explosions of arcane energy, I brought in the demon hit squad to buy time. I'd decided to turn the Flameborn into Lividia's personal entourage because of their ability to drain mana, and thankfully they were mostly able to cast spells other than fire bolts at this point. Smite, shadow bolt, arcane missiles, frostbolt; it didn't matter to me as long as they had a bit of diversity, and most of them had managed to pick up something in preparation for this attack.
While the Brutes and Dommes rushed in to die with their unimpressive fire resistance, Lividia did her best to keep them alive. She did a better job than I expected; Mary had been training her today in discipline style healing. Between shields and venting holy energy as she attacked, Lividia could keep them up pretty effectively. It let her vent out the energy effectively, and the Flameborn could siphon off the excess. I think she might be at the point where exploding is something that will only happen on purpose, as long as she has her entourage. Almost a hundred demons out of two hundred fourty were left, predominantly spellscales and Flameborn, when I had them pull out. No need to have them die off to a man; they could do that against some Silithid later, or spend their evening training.
Once the demons were out of the way, I continued with the mostly refreshed team Darnassus. The archdruids formed a relatively cohesive fighting force; most of them had fought together during their thousand year lifespans and they knew each other's capabilities. The fact that almost everyone present was a switch hitter, reasonably capable in melee or at range, just made Team Darnassus more deadly.
I also finally figured out why Tony hadn't been shining: he was a druid *player character.* To grow in power as an archdruid, he needed to kill. Getting boosted through Molten Core after using a flying mount to gather herbs in Stranglethorn is what we in the business call an unconventional way of leveling, but I saw him getting stronger in real time as the elementals died around him. He had orders to back off and return to camp early if he got hurt, but as the raid continued it became progressively less necessary to do so.
There were two members of team Darnassus that were strictly ranged… but they were Aegwynn and Jaina. Not exactly weak links. Jaina wasn't quite as powerful as the Guardian of Tirisfal, but when she fully came into the height of her power she'd be close enough to compare. Thanks to the Company, she'd get there without Theramore getting nuked.
Our last serious threat was mounted by a team of five flamewaker priests leading what was left of the defenders, including the largest magma giant I'd seen so far. It struck me as odd that they didn't have more healers than this, and that they clumped them all together; it made this last push drastically harder. I figured that this was as good a time as any to have Aegwynn burn a bit more of her resources, and managed to collar two of the flamewaker priests before she was too low on mama time stop anyone else. She wasn't lying about stronger creatures taking more mana. Natalie obliged me with that repeat performance I mentioned, and we were down to two priests.
The raid ended with a slow, grinding death for the harbinger of Ragnaros, the leader of his Magma giants, and their minions. They lasted for almost an hour before their mana and troops gave out, but in the end, they were dead and my own forces were mostly intact. I'd lost a few people here and there, but nothing that would even strain Sally's reserves. Of course, the problem remained: where the fuck was Ragnaros?
According to my mission log, I'd successfully liberated the Dark Irons. Apparently enough of Rag's forces had been banished that he wouldn't be able to project power onto the surface for a while, but I sure as hell wasn't going to just have faith in that. If I remembered right you had to do some elaborate ritual with magical elemental water in order to draw Ragnaros out, but I'd never done raiding in classic. I wanted that giant guy made of fire in my retinue, so I did what any sane person would. I fed a snake man a truly remarkable amount of drugs.
Once mister arcane snake man (apparently named Shazzrah) was so out of his gourd that Aelthalyste could possess him, he spilled the beans. Ragnaros was deep underneath us in the lake of lava, where no one in my retinue, not even Onyxia, had any business going. There was nothing that would be likely to draw him to the surface except for the destruction of the magic runes that channeled the power of the volcano to him. Even then, he'd probably send his majordomo to see to the issue before he'd even consider coming himself. He honestly might not even know that the Molten Core was under attack.
We had time. I had Aegwynn and Jaina study the runes, and they thought they could probably disrupt them, but we didn't need to do that today. Today, I would enjoy the spoils. Tomorrow, with a fresh batch of amulets, I would come back and finish Ragnaros off. In the meantime, the A team and the Royal Guard would patrol the place and make sure that it was properly cleared out.
I looked over my loot and distributed a few pieces that caught my eye. I took a substantially more powerful bow for myself, and gave a ring that helped focus spell power to my prime consort along with some magical bracers attuned to holy energy. She did like shiny things and anything that made her more powerful. Kathra'Natir all but demanded the huge obsidian Greatsword after having been forced to fight with his bare claws. Apparently he preferred being armed; who knew? A large, particularly heavy spear infused with both life draining shadow magic and electricity went to one of my Dommes that had been trained as a Druid of the Claw; hopefully their inventory slots were immutable and they wouldn't drop Shadowstrike next time they died. Actually, fuck it. I killed them to test the theory, and they got to keep their spear. I'd give them a credit on their rewards card when they got resummoned.
There were quite a few valuable materials that the Dark Irons could use. Magically condensed fire, a ton of raw dark iron ore, plenty of gemstones and crystals (both magically charged and mundane), and the thick leather of core hounds all could be used to build far nicer toys with higher resale value. A surprisingly large number of pairs of extremely magical boots and pants were found given the composition of those inhabiting the Molten Core, but I wasn't going to complain; they had a high resale value and would be useful kit for anyone that got them. All told, we were able to loot around two thousand gold worth of raw materials and equipment, most of which would be sold to the newest members of the Horde.
That just left the most exciting things: the biggest treasures. One was a pair of charms infused with powerful air magic. I didn't know details, but I knew the bindings of the Windseeker when I saw them. Thunderfury was probably the most iconic legendary weapon in classic Wow. Sadly, I would not be using The Blessed Blade of the Windseeker. It was a great weapon but it was also only fully functional while it had an elemental prince of air trapped within. I wanted Thunderaan himself so much more than I wanted a swanky sword.
In addition to the normal loot, I had the more esoteric loot. The Pen of Written Ownership, a reward for liberating the Dark Irons. Quite easily the most powerful bit of company swag I've ever been offered.
The Pen of Written Ownership
Anyone who sees your name written on any object with this pen will believe and accept wholeheartedly that you are the rightful and nontransferable owner of that object, even if that object is a person (or part of a person). Social conventions, economic realities, and the laws of the land hold no sway on your right to own anything with your name on it, so long as it is written with this pen by your own hand. The pen can be used in this way ten times, and cannot be refilled.
I'll need to think about what to use that on. But for now, I had a new grand mission to look at. Oh, and a new regional mission.
Hail to the King
Have a single High King accepted by all three main dwarven clans, ruling a unified dwarven nation. The new ruler must be one of the following: Dagran Thaurissan, Falstad Wildhammer, or Magni Bronzebeard.
Reward: 1,000,000,000 gp
Holy shit that's a lot of gold. Holy shit that's a massive job. This was essentially the same task as with the centaur, but so much larger in scope. Accepted probably means it can't just be a formal affair, either. I'm going to need mass appeal for whoever I put in place… also, shit. I just had the Dark Irons join the Horde. If they just back out of that to form a pan-dwarven Alliance they will look really flaky.
On the other hand, this would give me enough gold to just about instantly finish two steps of the War of the Shifting Sands quest if I was okay with crashing the gold market. Might be necessary. My investments were starting to build up steam; my contribution to the Horde today was almost double what it was yesterday, but I was still at only about 3% of my way to the goal in total. I'll need to keep looking for ways to sustainably make more money, and even then this might be the last objective I manage. I will admit, there would be a certain humor in killing off C'Thun and then pouring infinite money into some kind of manufactured Alliance war in Felwood or something.
Burning Steppes: Defeat Dal'Rend Blackhand
Reward: Aggressive Initiations
Huh. Not bad, not bad. Rend is the leader of the Dark Horde, and I was planning on taking them down soon anyway. Aggressive Initiations allowed me to accelerate the capture of someone by putting them in a submissive role while having sex with someone in my retinue. Femdom isn't really my thing, honestly, but I DID have a growing cadre of Succubi/human hybrids and a need to subjugate three major world powers to get an economy warping amount of gold. I should probably have some male priests mixed in there too. Talaada has largely done her job at the Scarlet Monastery; it's time to move her. The plan had been Silvermoon City, but I think she needed to go somewhere a bit more dwarven.
Wait a second. I already had a regional mission for the Burning Steppes. Against someone in the same faction, no less. I checked the app and found nothing to reassure me. What the hell happened to the mission to take down Nefarian?
I found my answer on a new tab: PvP.
••••••••••
Loot:
Cenarian Boots, flamewaker legplates, deep earth spaulders, Strikers Mark (bow), Giantstalker's boots, salamander scale pants x2, (wind seeker bindings), Cenarian Helm, Magma Tempered Boots, giantstalker's gloves, Felheart Shoulder Pads, Magma Tempered Boots, earthfury Vestments, obsidian Edged Blade, Giantstalker's Epaulettes, ring of spell power, Lightbringer belt, arcanist's belt, night layer belt, Vambraces of Prophecy, shadowstrike
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