6/8 late morning
The three blonde women strode into Demon Fall Ridge. The Burning Legion outpost was significant, but their defenses were mostly at the ground level. The rain of icicles the size of a man's head injured many of the demons, killing a few. While Jaina maintained it, Anveena navigated and Aegwynn obliterated anyone that dared to approach them. Not that they were exposed; a dozen water elementals were in formation around the mages, summoned by the Lady of Theramore.
The women were here with two missions. First, they were going to kill the Nathrezim in charge of this coven. If their mana reserves held up, only a concern for Aegwynn and Jaina, they would also be picking up the corpse of Grommash Hellscream, which was interred here before the area was retaken by demons. The hope was that they'd be able to finish both objectives before Jaina ran out of steam.
The infernals were the biggest problem, requiring a few moments of focused effort from the two arcane mages to take down, but they were able to track down the leader of the coven without too much trouble with Anveena using the target tracker. "Um. I think he's in that hill somehow? We walked around it twice and it keeps pointing there. There's probably a cave."
Aegwynn shrugged. "I'll take care of it. Cover my back." The other two women did just that, standing to either side of their substantially older companion as she etched a rather elaborate rune into the ground. It took nearly a minute to finish, and would only be useful in a war scenario where she was sufficiently guarded that she could reasonably expect time to focus. Of course, if such conditions could be arranged…
Aegwynn oriented herself using the tracking app before unleashing a torrent of arcane energy, a searingly bright blue-white wave that irradiated every living thing in a cone before her. The demons they could see crumbled into crystalline dust. The ones they couldn't presumably did the same. Aegwynn slumped over, leaning on her conjured wooden spear for support. "Yep. That got him. The tome is in storage."
Jaina hardly reacted to the destruction, dismissing it as irrelevant now that her primary mission was complete. "Alright. Let's get moving. I want to be done and ready for Nefarian."
Unfortunately, the enemy was rallying to get them while Aegwynn was tired. As a Dryad she was able to fight with her spear at range or in melee, but that was a far cry from the firepower she had demonstrated up to this point. Anveena couldn't handle more than one infernal at a time without substantial assistance, and there were certainly more things trying to kill them than an internal or two. As the water elementals were overwhelmed, the team's spotters pulled the trio out. Grom could wait for another day; he'd been dead for years already.
••••••••••
Highlord Taelen Fordring greeted Inquisitor Whitemane with a smile as the caravan of new recruits made their way into his city of Hearthglen. Sally clinically noted that he was a decent looking man, though she couldn't feel any particular desire for him. She didn't often come to Hearthglen, but Highlord Fordring had always been kind in his letters. Maybe a bit soft, meant for happier times. Hopefully he'd live long enough to rule in a purified Lordaeron. He wasn't her target, but as the Lord of Hearthglen he would still be useful. It might be good for her to inject him with her sting; if nothing else he was a damn fine Paladin. A shame she didn't actually have her sting.
Sally wasn't actually Sally, unfortunately. Her core self's name was Doris; the real Sally Whitemane was far too valuable to deploy on a mission like this. Doris had all of her memories uploaded through mind runes, and had been training with Anduin in the light for a week. She could play the part flawlessly, save the resurrection. She'd need to call the real version in for that.
She didn't need to pretend to be someone anymore, as she had when Vanessa first reforged her. For most purposes, so long as she adopted this persona, she was High Inquisitor Sally Whitemane. Everything from her painful memories of the third war to her new relationship with Tony felt perfectly real, completely natural. She was here for one purpose above all others: to capture Grand Inquisitor Isillien. The reward was great, and the capture of Isillien would be one step closer to the purification of the Scarlet Crusade, so she was proud to carry out the task.
As Sally spoke to Highlord Taelin, mixing in the very faintest hint of flirtation to fluster the younger man, she considered how to isolate the Grand Inquisitor. A shame he wasn't a lech. This would be so much easier if she could just seduce him.
••••••••••
"You need to focus, Archaedes. Erich Bismark is not our enemy. The shadow looms over this world, and the enemy will react to it if we do not. Waiting is not enough!" She could tell from his stony expression that he didn't believe her. He thought that she was influenced by the shadow. What an irony, when she could never be threatened by such corruption again. She may have been stolen from the titans, but they were dead by Sargeras's hand, and thus incapable of bringing order to the universe. Her new prime designate had informed her of such, and she had no reason to doubt him. "You'll see in time. I hope before it is too late."
Archaedes had far more advanced mental defenses than Ironaya, which was unfortunate in this case. If this delay cost the cause of Order dearly, Archaedes would be devastated once he'd been set straight. She considered what might work, what approach might convince him. She logged her thoughts for Miss Natalie, so as to not distract herself while working on the disks.
Ironaya was no expert with the Disks of Norgannon, but she would do her best. She had a rough starting point, the battle with that red dragon yesterday, so hopefully they would be able to track down the target. It would take time, however.
••••••••••
Faerlina clicked her tongue and made kissing noises as she held out the smoked fish. Mr. Bigglesworth was smarter than the average cat, capable of communicating with his master as a familiar, but he was still a cat. Free food was an enticing prospect.
The Siamese looked at her with his glowing blue eyes, weighing the benefits and detriments of taking her proffered gift. On the one hand, it did smell good in a way that little he encountered did these days. The cult of the damned didn't have very high quality food on hand, being a bunch of fanatics. His partner tried, but Kel'Thuzad didn't even have a tongue anymore; he frequently forgot that Bigglesworth needed to eat without reminders. Of course, eating the food would require standing and padding over to the red haired woman, nearly two feet away. He was sitting on a very nice, warm patch of stone and she might be convinced to come closer if he kept staring, so that was what he'd do.
The red haired human knelt down in front of him, which was appropriate for one of his stature, and placed the fish next to him. She'd placed it so that merely craning his head wouldn't give him a very good angle, but the smell was mouthwatering. Incompetent human; he hissed his disapproval, but she just sat there expectantly. Glaring at her, he stood up and began eating.
A few moments later, while he was distracted, the human grabbed him and wrapped a chain around his neck. Then, to add insult to injury, she cut off his collar even as the chain melted and reformed into a leather collar much like it. She dropped him, dropped him, and started fiddling with her amulet. Naturally, he ran straightaway to his partner. If Kel'Thuzad couldn't keep his subordinates in line, they might need to rethink this whole Scourge business. When he reached his partner's temporary quarters in the mayor's office, however, the thought didn't come. He could not project the message he wished to, the justification for his fury simply could not be communicated.
"One moment, Mr. Bigglesworth. Yes, master. As it turns out the dark citadel was not in fact ours. Yes. Yes. No. I don't know how else to explain it. It belongs to a man named Erich Bismark, apparently. No. No, I don't believe I've been mentally compromised. You may of course inspect my mind at your leisure. I'll focus on the relevant memories. Yes, I'm glad you understand. So clearly we couldn't stay. Yes I understand a new Necropolis may take time, but this was really an unforeseeable situation."
Well, Faerlina, just you wait. Mr. Bigglesworth didn't know exactly how she was preventing his speech, so he would just need to sit on his partner's things, anything he happened to be working on, until he noticed what was wrong and dealt with it. Kel'Thuzad could be smart occasionally. He'd figure it out.
••••••••••
"Hello, sir. I'm here to sell a few more." I laid them all out on the table. It was a different person behind the desk this time; instead of a gnome in a snazzy hat, it was a man in black robes and a blue hood.
"Ah. Hey, would you mind telling me why you're selling this one? Any suggestions how to make them more useful?" He held up the tiny replica of a mercenary camp that could easily become the real thing.
"I mean. The last one was kinda disappointing, you know? Now that I think about it, I'm not really sure where I'd use one of those. Like, maybe if I didn't have a tech tree to work on? But then I wouldn't even have any energy or essence to spend, right?"
"Alright." He wrote down some notes. "And the temptress bells? I noticed that you managed to use one on Faerlina quite effectively. I'm surprised to see you selling them off."
"I just don't have that many hot, powerful, isolated women trying to kill me at all costs. The credits are a lot more flexible."
"Right, right," more scribbling in his book. "Do you happen to have any other things you have concerns with?"
"Uh. The prices on the Nerubian tech tree seem a little low?"
"Do go on."
6/8 Noon
"But yeah, honestly regional upgrades have been one of the most disruptive things. Like, I don't get the impression you're going to remove them during this test, but the whole thing was really unintuitive at first, and once I figured it out it just incentivized me to invest more in girls that are already really powerful so I can get bigger boosts. The regional missions are fine, I guess, if you want to encourage exploration or whatever, but the upgrades are just way too good for something that I'd usually be at least sorta interested in doing anyway? Like, half of them would fit better as a major mission reward!"
He wrote a few more notes. "Alright. Thank you. Here is a bonus minor mission reward for your time." He handed me a dead fish.
Savory Deviate Delight (test) - provides the user with the outfit and skillset of a pirate or ninja at random, functioning as template stacking
"Uh. Can I sell this back to you?"
"You may not. If you don't want it, you may give it back instead." He held out his hand.
I pulled the fish close to my chest. "No. No, I'll keep it. Thanks." If I could have gotten a credit for it, I certainly would have preferred to do that, but it wasn't useless. The older version I'd seen and passed on before certainly would be at this point. It had functioned as power swap, and I just finished explaining to the shop keep that I had way too many high value power swaps per day already. As a template stacking type buff, it was all additive.
It would probably save me a few hours of training one of my girls; I was thinking Anveena. If I got lucky she'd get ninja, which would probably help her with subverting Silvermoon once she finished her training with Doan. If I didn't get the high roll, giving her some phantom combat experience and a stronger body certainly wouldn't hurt. I'd learned the hard way that Doan's Students had power, but not much sense for how to protect themselves in combat.
••••••••••
I did some basic management on my way to the Caverns of Time. Buying Paradox defense, obviously. I sent Drusilla the Tome of Inferno once I noticed it; I wanted infernals and I trusted her to manage it. I read through the options for regional upgrades, but decided to hold off on it until I could focus more.
Aelthalyste briefed me on some operations updates. With the extra amulets I'd been able to give her over the last few days, she assigned a small team to the task of tracking any changes in the app. New missions of course, but also new captures, the movements of any targets, the list of dead, and the budget for base management. They were also managing the distribution of equipment and consumables, including the moderate pool of necklaces that were not currently assigned to any one member of the retinue. Add to that their duty of updating the retinue about current events and procedures, and I was thinking I needed a few more recruits diverted into the ops team to keep up. I authorized Aelthalyste to poach and reformat a few green recruits after Sylvanas's next recruitment drive.
Irma's business ventures were ticking along quite nicely; she requested that Madame Eva be transferred to her department. Apparently Irma's strategy had been focused on safe short term investing, but she believed that with precognition she should be able to make a few riskier plays. I signed off on it immediately, with the caveat that Eva would be deployed just like any of Doan's other students in the event of a large scale conflict.
The Centaur were not yet included in my income, so base management wasn't quite as silly as it would be tomorrow. I bit the bullet and grabbed a bunch of upgrades, using a ton of essence while my energy was used to hand out skintight armored chitin bodysuits for all. Maxed out weapons and armor for my night elf units, top tier armor upgrades for my Nerubians to make them the most durable disposable chaff possible, and an upgrade specifically for Zagara to make her a lot tougher. I erred on the side of focusing on one unit, and put in an order for 42 queens and an offensive upgrade for my ranged Nerubian units. After that, I did a little math and. figured out what I could afford in terms of essence. I settled on 14 huntresses and the standard escape items from the ancient of wonders, leaving behind a bit of essence for tomorrow.
I didn't have an obvious person to put in charge of training the queens other than Zagara. Hopefully her abilities could be transferred through training, or at least her skills could. If not, I'd need to figure something else out. The spiderlings could probably go with Gina; fury stance seemed like the best fighting style for them, even if it would need to be adapted for use with claws. The whole idea was to rush down one person each and overwhelm them, which seemed like a good fit. The other option was Darcell; as a demon hunter she also relied on overwhelming ferocity, but she had to dodge a lot more. I doubted that spiderling chitin was all that heavy, even with the upgrades. I just sent both; they could each teach half and we could compare results later.
I arrived at the Caverns of Time obelisk and started trying things. First up was the "so easy I'll be disappointed if it works" solution. I summoned five of my fairy dragons; they were immune to magic and we all had paradox defense, this was magic that messed with time so I should have someresistance. Alas, magic immunity seemed to be more specifically an immunity to targeted spells, and paradox defense took a while to build up. Once the first fairy dragon was a few feet into the field, I saw her constantly teleporting backwards in a loop.
Two of them together, using each other as a reference point, didn't work either. The one in the lead would always be in the lead, but they would teleport backwards a few feet together. Observing from outside with mage training was helping me get a basic idea of how it worked, and I was sure I could bypass it somehow. I tried using apportation to teleport to them and then blink further in, which just like last time only got me about a third of the way. My blink cooldown refused to progress and the ten seconds to use apportation never ended. I had to walk back out.
The breakthrough came when I tried coordinating two fairy dragons with amulets remotely. Each one would walk a few feet forward, and before they teleported for another loop I'd tell them to stop. Then I'd recall the one in the back to me, send them back, and have them walk a few steps forward. In this way, I was able to inch forward a few feet per minute. After about ten minutes of that, I realized I was an idiot.
After a quick planning session, I recalled one of the fairy dragons then teleported to the other. I blinked forward, and waited for about thirty seconds. Mila teleported in next to me, on the assumption she'd be more useful than a fairy dragon if something attacked me. I was pulled back out, next to the obelisk, and my blink cooldown ended in a few seconds. I teleported back to Mila, blinked forward again, and was joined by the Scarlet Crusade mage after around thirty seconds. In just a few minutes, we were in.
Well, I say in, but we still needed to get through the actual front door. I'll be honest; I just punched a hole through. It was a slab of very strong stone, but a consistent, narrow stream of arcane energy cut a small peephole through, which I could blink through.
"I'm requesting Natalie personally attend me on this one, and send Selena along to possess me." After around a minute, the ghostly replica of Natalie Seline settled in the back of my head and the real thing was observing through my eyes. I was as ready as I'd ever be. I faded and used stealth, leaving Mila on standby outside and doing my very best to not be seen. I didn't want to bother anyone or cause a fuss; I was just here to get a bronze dragon. Anyone would do to start with.
The caverns started looking a bit like a natural cave, but they gave up that illusion pretty quickly. Cracks in the ceiling showed an alien night sky, bright purple and with more stars than you can see from anywhere on Azeroth. The walls had entire buildings embedded in them, and figures stood frozen in midstep. One of the buildings was unique in that it had people that were actually mobile. I approached quietly, listening at the door. It was, of all things, a tavern. I sniffed around with my dragon nose and didn't smell any bronzes, so instead I quietly signed the wall. It was impulsive and possibly wasteful, but it also meant that I had a place within the caverns that the Bronze Dragonflight probably wouldn't deny me access to if I got caught.
I continued until I found a formation of frozen human soldiers, which would be unremarkable at this point if there weren't a single blonde elf examining them. An elf who, when I got closer, had the slightly salty smell of a bronze dragon. I was about to jump her when my hand moved involuntarily to my necklace. I checked my notes, figuring that was the most likely thing that Selena wanted me to do.
S: Let Vanessa handle it. We have a procedure.
I hadn't seen my shadow operatives at work, so I figured it couldn't hurt to settle in and wait. Vanessa must have been fully faded, because the first sign I saw of her presence was when she wrapped an amulet around the blonde's neck like a garrote and jabbed a needle into her exposed throat. Selena left my body and flowed into the now glassy eyed Bronze Dragon, causing her to stand up and brush off the sand.
https://imgur.com/a/Wa4Wcng
"Hmm. This one is relatively young. Still pliable." She turned to look at me. "Lord Bismark, I think I should have her ready in about an hour. Would you like to fuck her while you wait?" She looked very hopeful as she continued, "She's not expecting anyone else to be in this area for at least a few hours, and accelerating her submission may help me work faster, if that influences your decision."