Remember Kam?

5/18 morning

I woke up to a loud thump and a confused cry. I scrambled out of the bed along with Lividia and stumbled down the hall. I only vaguely noticed that I was running without pain, and the lights came on at my will. In the common room I found a rather plain looking naked girl. She was rail thin, with mousy brown hair. She seemed stunned, and the only clothing on her was a necklace: Lillibeth’s.

“Master?” She croaked out.

“Who are you?” I didn’t think I was in danger, probably, but someone I didn’t recognize was in my space. I was a bit on edge.

“Lillibeth?” She looked up at me with confusion, a bit hurt. Yeah, she believed it. I decided to check the character page for her name. Quick and easy. That’s when I saw the popup.

Penalty mission for capturing Kam DeepfuryGood for them:Mary and Lillibeth are resurrected. They will revert to their living selves, though still captured.Mission: Raise both to Tier 4 by the standards of The CompanyReward: Ghostcaller scroll: allows for the resurrection of a single target as a ghostly waifu of the same tier.

Well, it could be worse I suppose. Lillibeth would probably be happy once she situated herself; she was already doing a lot of touching things with a look of mild wonder. She would also be almost useless to me until I powered her up somehow. I’m pretty sure she was just a random village girl. Same story with Mary; she was just a vain, beautiful farm girl. The mission and reward were practically passive; I was going to probably try to power them up somehow either way. I just needed to give them some kind of job in the meantime, and experiment with ways of powering them up. Warlock training? Dragons? Dragonspawn, maybe? Make one of them an archdruid?

“Ah. I see now. Good news, you’re alive now and that’s not going to change. You’ll need a new position, but that might not pan out until we’ve finished with the current situation. Are you ok to stay here for now?”

“Yes. Of course, master. May I… eat something?”

“Absolutely. And you still have my permission to do as you please with your appearance.”

Trying to recapture my good mood, I dismissed my newly near-impossible minor mission; I should have had Talaada capture the ogres while I had the chance, just for the sake of completeness. Come on Tirisfal Glades minor mission. Be something both useful and good!

Assist Herbalist Faruza in Brill with collecting Doomweed safelyReward: Herbalism Skill

Alright. I was pretty sure Tony was up for that; he’s a big rough and tumble guy, and I’m pretty sure turning into an orc made him a bit bigger and tougher. Brill was the Forsaken equivalent to Goldshire; it wasn’t too dangerous an area as long as you stayed away from the Scarlet Monastery. Assuming this was something that Faruza did sometimes anyway, it would probably be no trouble.

I took a look at the image of Faruza in the app; I wanted to see what a Forsaken woman might look like. She was pale, with a faint greenish cast to her skin except for a stark white X on her face, including pure white eyes, and plump lips the color of olives. She was beautiful despite the odd coloration, and all I could see of her outfit was a green halter top that covered her generous chest and not much else.

Well, Tony can do what he pleases with that information; he’s mostly just a living teleport beacon right now. I fully support him living his best life as much as possible while he’s there. If it turns out that there are many opportunities for a man with a working penis in Brill, where the women can have and enjoy sex but the men mostly can’t, more power to him. I sent him an update on his mission, and orders to summon Nadira if he was going to do anything particularly dangerous. Hopefully nobody in Brill would be able to tell the difference between an Orgrimmar or Blackrock orc, should it come to that.

••••••••••

I was waiting in the Stormwind palace armory, sending Mary an update, when Varian was brought in by Lady Katrana Prestor. He seemed like he’d only recently woken up, but was in good spirits. He had on a blue doublet and white pants, his hair was hanging loose, and he had a sword strapped to his waist. I could tell that he was curious, but completely at ease.

“So, this is the guy? Head of this organization you want me to support? I can’t say I approve of necromancy, but it did seem pretty effective.” Oh right. I’d brought him in on the tower fight and he’d ended up just watching Stitches barrel through. Note: check the upgrades for Stitches.

“Yes. That’s me. Erich Bismark. A pleasure to meet you, your majesty. I hope you’re willing to assist me; I’m a quick study but I imagine your son could probably best me in a sparring match at the moment.”

Varian laughed at that. “Anduin has a long way to go. He’s a smart lad, but he doesn’t have much passion for the blade. I’m sure you’d do fine. Maybe I could bring him along, though? If I’m going to be setting aside an hour in the morning it would be nice to spend it with him too.”

I thought about it. Varian looked so damn earnest, and I didn’t see any harm in it as long as I got enough training to grow. Plus almost any interaction with Anduin would probably drive down his ETE. “Sure. As long as you prioritize my training. I don’t begrudge you a bit of time with your son but I desperately need to improve with the sword. Also, Katrana. I left a note for you. If you would be so kind, I’d appreciate it if you could handle something for me. Discretion is important of course; you may want to try the green dress.”

She brushed a finger across her amulet and checked her notes. “Of course lord Bismark. It would be a pleasure.” She had a predatory grin as she left. Those poor bastards. I wanted every advantage I could get, and Onyxia could probably take down the whole Frostmane Tribe in an hour once she gets there. Then I’ll have an upgrade for my biggest weapon when we start the next dragon fight.

Varian shrugged, showing not the slightest curiosity about our exchange. “Alright. So. What styles do you know?”

What followed was a general overview of exactly how little I knew, as you should have probably expected. We worked on my extreme fundamentals like maintaining a basic stance and how to hold the weapon, and Varian explained the concept of cultivating rage. The short version is that I could use the tension and stress of battle to push my body past its normal limits. Because of course warriors in a high magic setting like this one could do that. Hopefully stress defense wouldn’t interfere.

I didn’t make too much progress in terms of becoming a great warrior that first day, but he did say my stance had improved tremendously. We also discussed what my options were for training, and Varian seemed to really enjoy teaching. Naturally I would be drilling the fundamentals, the core weaponry skills that basically anyone who picks up a weapon learns like edge alignment, blocking, keeping my balance, and general combat awareness, but Varian knew more advanced techniques as well. They loosely fell into three styles, and he strongly suggested I focus on only one to start with.

Protection style was intended for operating in a group environment; it was what most Stormwind soldiers, Tessa included, were trained in. It focused on keeping you in the fight for as long as possible, both by using a shield to deflect blows, and by taking advantage of any attempts to ignore you. Many warriors using this style would frequently use a bit of minor magic which worked like an inversion of Stealth, making the user seem more threatening and drawing attention. Its biggest weakness was a lack of proactive offensive power; you were usually slowly grinding away at an enemy and playing for time while your allies took advantage.

Fury was built around momentum. It was probably the best style for dueling a single person, as its unrelenting rain of attacks made it very hard for someone to retaliate. Of course, it relied on that logic quite a lot, placing very little emphasis on defense. If you got overwhelmed it would be shut down quickly, so it relied on shock tactics, having someone to watch your back, or having passive defenses like armor or magic shields strong enough to shrug off harm.

Arms was the most complex and reactive of the three styles, as well as the most balanced and suited to fighting alone. While the other two focused on honing a single strength, an arms warrior tended to use the reach from a large two handed weapon to hold their opponent at bay and think a bit more tactically, relying on big single hits aimed at weak points. They weren’t as good at overwhelming an enemy as a fury warrior and they couldn’t endure sustained attacks as well as a protection warrior, but they could fulfill both roles adequately and had no glaring weaknesses. It was a bit of a jack of all trades.

I didn’t need to commit to any one of them just yet, and both me and the king had shit to do today. Despite the restless energy I’d built up while bedridden, I didn’t have the time or inclination to do a three day long training montage with Varian. I’m too busy. I needed to get to Feathermoon Stronghold before my lessons with Sadie.

•••••••••

Onyxia, or whatever her name should be in this green persona, flew invisibly over the snowy realm of the dwarves. A simple invisibility spell wasn’t too hard; she used them when she wanted to get around without causing a stir. It was far from foolproof, especially for a being of her size, but as long as she didn’t get too close to one of their patrolling gyrocopters and their cursed “radar” she would have little difficulty.

The village was small and primitive. Trolls truly had fallen far. Once, Onyxia would have never been so confident bearing down on the capital of even a small troll nation. She’d have needed to be careful, to plan, to know which Loa they served and if any would be a threat to her.

None of that today; she was stronger and they were weaker. Instead the trolls, big and small, died in droves to her caustic breath, and their champion was crushed under her bulk. The whole errand took a few hours to arrive at the hold from her starting point where the Elerian Girl and her bodyguard were walking along the road to Loch Modan, followed by perhaps ten minutes of carnage. Onyxia… Emeraldia? No, that was stupid. Esmeralda! That was a green dragon name. Esmerelda abruptly stopped killing and left once she saw the popup; there was no real reason to keep going except for a rather shallow sense of fun. She was busy.