Staying on Task

5/18 Late morning

Keryn and Darcell were somewhat at a loss. This murloc was absolutely unwilling to go to lash out. They had done anything they could to put him at odds with his neighbors, but he refused to take the bait. Just yesterday they had escalated to burning down his hut while wearing the faces of members of the nearby Waverunner clan, and he’d gone to his chief and had a level and rational conversation about the fact that he believed someone was trying to spark a war.

He was on to them. Somehow, this fish man living in a grass hut had figured out that he was being goaded. He had too much faith in his community; he refused to accept that his fellow murlocs were turning on him. Most would at least start throwing around accusations and demanding answers, but this fucking murloc refused to be unreasonable.

The first time, when they’d damaged his fishing nets, he’d gone so far as to apologize to the murloc they had tried to implicate. For placing his net in a poor position. Why did they have to get the most even tempered murloc possible?

It was after the meeting with the chief that Darcell had surprised Keryn with a plan. Why not play on this suspicion then? The murlocs have some legitimate enemies and potential enemies. They had decided on the green dragons at that point; a war with the Horde at Stonard would almost certainly wipe them out, whereas the dream-trapped green dragons were already attacking the murlocs on sight. It was hard to see the murlocs as nothing but pests to exterminate when you can understand their speech.

They had needed to turn into black dragons and then disguise themselves, as when they had become green they had felt so, so sleepy. The plan was to let themselves be seen by a murloc while they damaged the fish men’s store of salted fish, and it worked like a charm. At long last Urgmrg’ll had been given an explanation for his woes he was willing to accept at face value. The drums of war were beating. The mission should be completed by the end of the day.

••••••••••

The first thing I did after training was go to Ysondre. Saying it was on the way would be inaccurate, but I wouldn’t lose much time. I settled down near the huge dragon and checked the timer. It was about twenty minutes until she’d wake up, so I waved hello to the Brotherhood and looked around. There were five new recruits among the Draenei, four of which were uncorrupted; two male, two female, and one rather large broken male.

One was obviously Mary; she had apparently reacted to being resurrected by immediately adopting the culture she’d recently immersed herself into. She was wearing the draenei face she’d made for herself as a ghost and was styling one of the male recruits’ hair for him. I looked them over and realized who they were: those three prisoners I’d sent over here. A bit odd, but apparently they’d wanted to fit in. Or maybe it was just the fringe benefit of being almost as tall as an ogre? Whatever works for them; I didn’t care enough to investigate as long as they seemed happy.

The big broken took me a moment. He was easily the largest I’d seen; 5’10” was absolutely massive on a broken draenei. Then I remembered him arguing with Dremuus the day I’d come to the swamp. The big fighter guy. Um. Shit, I had to check my app to find his name. Noburu. Well, hopefully being a badass was a family trait; I’d like another Dremuus. I’ll take your whole stock, in fact.

I was letting Talaada act as my representative here, so I didn’t go over and check on them. Recruitment had been stalling already, but now I’d be really banking on the community standing on its own merits. No ghosts means that someone has to really buy in to get captured here, not just buy in enough to say some ritual platitudes. I needed more ghosts; specifically I needed ghosts that were a bit far gone and disconnected from reality. Abby could definitely control ghosts, if I pointed her at a few. I also still had plenty of ghost hair, so I could absolutely collar anyone that she caught. Only questions were who and where.

I went to jot down some notes and possibilities when I remembered that I had a reward for Stitches. I just about bust a gut laughing at Master of disguise, which would allow him to be perceived as anything he was dressed up as, no matter how badly, but pretty quickly dismissed it. He didn’t have the brains necessary to use that to its full extent, and if I really wanted to I could just disguise him normally. Less effective, but still functional.

Playmates made me perk up when I saw that it allowed for instant capture, but it had so many limitations on it that it just didn’t seem worth the trouble. It only worked on friendly nonintelligent undead. Did I really need an army of idiots forming around Stitches? Was there enough benefit to having a captured and dimly intelligent undead instead of a noncaptured undead under Abby’s control? Probably not.

I didn’t really have much interest in a giant caustic fart cloud; I didn’t trust it to not smell utterly foul even if it didn’t actually hurt me. That meant the two front runners were Smash and Back for more. Both would double down on him being a giant brute, but the question was if I wanted him to be a nearly invulnerable giant brute or an offensively potent giant brute that added a few extra tactical options?

The deciding factor was Livin the Emerald Dream. I was going to be in a very good position to be able to resurrect anyone in my retinue I wanted anyway. I was sure that I’d get reckless and it would turn into an endless queue within a week, let’s be realistic, but immortality among my team was a good bit less valuable to me with that in mind. I’d played enough MOBAs to know the value of a good hook though, and I was hoping that “supernatural skill” with his weapons of choice would avoid a shit show like we’d seen with the Mok’Gora.

I killed the last couple minutes fiddling with Ysondre’s settings. Anything that might speed this process up, you know?

Doubting moments of lucidity: momentary amnesiaThinking of Erich Bismark in a positive light: euphoriaListening to Erich Bismark’s voice: negative emotion reduction

Hopefully turning me into a source of light and comfort in the nightmare would help. I turned into Erius on the off chance she’d be able to tell the difference. When the moment arrived, I watched Talaada press the medallion into Ysondre’s palm and the dragon’s eyes snapped open.

I stroked her nose like you would a horse, whispering to her and trying to will alluring whisper to go into full effect. “It’s ok, it’s ok. You’re safe here with me. I’ll take care of you until you’re well.” She stared at me, and communication talent told me she was relaxing. Can’t say I knew how communication talent knew, but I trusted it. Maybe the way her pupil was dilating?

I stayed with her until she fell back into her nightmarish slumber, and immediately checked her progress. Six hours. A full six hours had been knocked off by that tiny interaction. Not sure if that was my voice, the commands, or the fact that I was her own species, but she’d liked something about that interaction. I wasn’t going to be here for every wake-up call she got, too busy, but I would definitely be coming back here any time I could.

••••••••••

Doris was waiting on the western shore of Feralas, which made it relatively easy for me to use her as a jumping off point to Feathermoon Stronghold. I handed her a necklace and ordered her to make her way to camp Mojache and give it to Hahrana. No sense having a retinue member with no connection to the rest of the team, and having a teleport waypoint in Mojache wouldn’t hurt.

I wasn’t certain who I’d be passing out necklaces to today. If there was an enchanter on the island, I didn’t want to risk tossing necklaces around. I needed to figure out some way to justify asking about that.

I made absolutely no attempt to disguise my approach. The green dragonflight and the night elves were staunch allies, but they had a lot of shared cultural touchstones. Enough that I doubted I’d be hurt. For that reason, I chose one of their empty docks as my landing point; it’s a traditional place for someone to enter from.

I tucked my amulet under my shirt, and waited for them to send someone out to meet me. I was a bit surprised to see that the leader of the small unit of soldiers that came to have a chat was a man. Night elves always had a bit of an odd culture when it comes to gender, probably due to repeated retcons. Most night elf Sentinels and priestesses, almost their entire military, were women. Almost all druids were men. NPC designers largely ignored that bit of lore, though, so going by the named characters you’d never know. In practice the only real nod to it you ever found was that all of the town guards were women in chainmail bikinis. As Elune intended.

“Welcome, dragon. I am Latronicus Moonspear. Please, state your business.” He was civil, but I noted that he’d come armed and backed by a team of archers. They weren’t planning on attacking me, but if I started something they intended to end it.Dragons had a tendency to make decisions without consulting anyone else and back up those decisions with force. Relations get better during the Wrath of the Lich King expansion, but that was still a couple years in the future. At this point in the timeline even the Red dragonflight, the goodest of boys, had places where they would repel intruders with lethal force and no questions asked. A bit of nervousness was reasonable.

“I come with grave news, I’m afraid. There is a dark force in the Emerald Dream. Some among my flight, even my queen’s own lieutenants, have succumbed to its influence. I come begging for aid; we have few forces left in this world who might be able to do what must be done. I believe it may be affecting your people too; keeping druids trapped in fitful sleep. Some may even be rising and lashing out.”

I was actively trying to overwhelm him with information, but I wasn’t bullshitting. The night elves really were running into the problems I was describing, and as far as I knew they really were all from the nightmare. Why lie when the truth will get you what you want?

Latronicus was a bit taken aback. I don’t know what he had been expecting, but it wasn’t this. Plus I don’t think he was a high ranking officer; I suspect he was just someone available. “Ah. Yes. I believe General Feathermoon will want to hear about this.”

I let myself smile a little and injected some dark humor. “I suspected that would do the trick.”