Bedtime Bookkeeping

5/18

“I don’t know. I’d like to try being alive for a little while longer before committing to something like that. Is that okay?” Lillibeth was a lot more quiet and withdrawn as her own self than she was as a spirit. She also seemed a lot less confident. I took her hand in mine.

“Sure. Whatever you like. I’ll give you a list you can try out and you can experiment with them all you want. Where would you like to spend the next few days? I don’t imagine you want to stay cooped up here longer than you need to.”

“Maybe with Auffrey and Prudence? I feel like I know them but they’ve never met me.”

“That’s a great idea. I think they’ve gotten to Thelsamar. Take this, and you all give it to someone there.” I handed her an amulet. “If you can’t find anyone tonight, Prudence can wear it.”

She took it and smiled shyly. “Thank you. I’ll get back to you with my answer when I can.” She teleported away after a few moments. For my part, I went and checked on Ysondre. I knocked off another hour with a thirty second exchange; I might be getting diminishing returns but it was still worth visiting her when I could.

I came back to the apartment and got in bed with Lividia: it was time to go over my inventory and make some plans. First was, of course, missions. Tony had done his job, and I had a shiny new herbalism skill chip. A botanical reference book that can be uploaded into the brain of anyone in the retinue would be useful at some point. Probably. I set it to be available for anyone in the retinue to access if they thought they needed it and forgot about it. At minimum Abby might appreciate the herbs being sent to her being properly harvested. So, on to the more important bits: the new minor mission and regional mission for Tirisfal.

Slipping AwayStop the mental decline of Gretchen Dedmar.Reward: Innkeeper Renee Lauer will turn her prisoners over to your care, censer of dreams

Censer of Dreams: releases a pleasant smelling smoke which will, over about a minute of exposure, put anyone smelling it into a dreaming state. While in this dreaming state, they will be mostly unaware of their surroundings and their mental guard will be down. Members of the retinue are immune to the effects of this smoke.

Ah shit. I wanted to do this one, and it would be so much easier to do if I had a goddamn ghost to possess the mentally compromised person. Stress defense and everlasting talent could undo just about any mental degeneration. I wanted to do this one for moral reasons, setting aside the reward; the idea of slowly losing my mind terrified me and I could prevent it for someone else.

The reward was… probably good? The censer would almost certainly end up coming in handy, in combat or out. I could lure a group of people into a room and then capture all of them, potentially. At least collar them. Alternatively, in a long drawn out fight it would make a light smoke screen that would incapacitate my enemies without harming my allies.

The prisoners, if this was the inn I was thinking of, were a dwarf and a scarlet crusader. The dwarf I could tip my hat to and pull an Otto of Westfall, acting as a heroic stranger doing a daring rescue. I’d put the odds of that crusader being allowed back into the monastery without being interrogated and subjected to some kind of purification ritual as very low. At worst he’d be assumed to be some kind of trick and killed by an over enthusiastic officer. They’d be right, of course; I’d capture him first, so he’d absolutely be a double agent no matter how zealous he was. I’d probably be using mind vision to spy through his eyes, too. No way I’d send him back with one of my precious jewels.

I might be able to do that mission quickly with Abby, but I can’t think of anything that would piss off the Forsaken as a culture more than mind control. Freedom from the Lich King and a shared history as slaves is kinda their entire uniting narrative. I’ll figure it out tomorrow. Either way, I was shifting my minor mission to follow Imriss. Might as well get my missions lined up in the Hinterlands.

Tirisfal Glades: Defeat Sally Whitemane, High Inquisitor of the Scarlet CrusadeReward: Light’s Wrath

The hell is Light’s Wrath? I looked at its tooltip and it slowly dawned on me. It was from a later expansion I’d never played, but I’d seen a video about this exact staff. It was a bootleg artifact created by the Scarlet Crusade in an attempt to recreate the Ashbringer, a sword built around the heart of a Naaru. It worked. Sorta. It was fantastically powerful, allowing its user to channel tremendous amounts of holy energy. There was one critical drawback, however: you were riding a tiger.

I didn’t know the details, especially not the in universe ones, but it tended to explode. Maybe because the user ran out of mana, maybe because the wielder was killed, maybe it just overheats. Giant, searing explosions of holy light that would indiscriminately kill everything nearby. Didn’t damage the staff, naturally. Plus, it sanctified the area for a while, so the Crusade tended to see this as an absolute win. An otherwise hopeless battle could end in a draw. Then they’d scurry out and grab the staff while the area was too consecrated for undead to enter, and soon some other fanatic would be certain that they were the chosen one that could use it safely. Eventually, during the Legion expansion, someone managed it. The Discipline priest player character.

I probably qualified for that title as a priest who used both holy and shadow magic and had a particular fondness for bubbles, but was I insane enough to use this thing? Look me in the eyes and tell me you thought the answer was no.

To be clear, I’d put in every precaution and probably have someone else use it for me while I am nowhere nearby. Inquisitor Whitemane herself perhaps, protected with a soulstone and with orders to mass resurrect when she stands up? That might work if I’m fantastically lucky. Only if I was desperate though, or after I have a Warranty Plan and fatality resistance so people in my retinue no longer die when they are killed.

It was a fun idea, and one that I thankfully wouldn’t need to worry about for a while yet. I had dragons to deal with, and the Monastery would probably be at least somewhat tough a nut to crack. Especially if I didn’t prioritize it.

I sent out some orders to my troops, and gave Zelena another necklace. I intended to have a chat with Nozara whenever I could pencil her in, and without her having a jewel somewhere on her person, the logistics of meeting her were a bit complicated. I also wanted more demons captured; once Ysondre was on the payroll, I’d have two rebates on corruption defense. A third one, offered by almost any demon in the catalog, would let me get it for free. Those druids creeped me out a bit, enough that I didn’t want to bring them to any kind of fight against the nightmare just in case they might turn into a liability.Next, I sent out marching orders to my rogues. They were dangerous in small scale encounters, but a mass battle was not the place for them.

I sent Keryn and Darcell together to the Burning Steppes. I wanted them to get Kam Deepfury back to Blackrock Mountain and his people. From there, I’d try to establish contact with Thaurissan through him. Once he was in place, the power couple would make their way to Krom’Grul and fuck him up. Keryn was my engineered drama girl; between her and Darcell I was sure they could do enough character assassination to get an ogre magi killed by his friends.

Doris would have a different job; now that Hahrana was patched into the network and had the situation explained, I could send VanCleef north. She would go to the Horde town of The Crossroads and drop off a team consisting of Dremuus, Lividia disguised as a troll, and Nadira. Together, they could find the Wailing Caverns while Doris made her way up to Ashenvale to prep for Lethon.

The Wailing Caverns was a low level dungeon, the result of an archdruid by the name of Naralex tripping over a landmine in the Emerald Dream. He and his disciples, the Druidic order of the Fang, had been attempting to terraform the local dry savannah into something a bit more livable. They managed to create several supernaturally vibrant oases, but then something vague but Nightmare related happened and they had ended up in a similar state to the green dragons around the Sunken Temple.

The resulting network of caverns was populated by twisted and empowered wildlife commanded by mid tier druids with snake puns for names. I’m not sure if the theme naming was part of the corruption, or if the Druids of the Fang just rolled like that. Setting that aside, I knew about a network of caves full of people who at least partially relied on poison and which had an imprisoned archdruid at the bottom.

Naralex would be worth capturing just because he was a powerful spellcaster, but he was also fairly high ranked in the Cenarian Circle and thus an excellent asset to pick up for Livin the Emerald Dream. He was sleeping on a rock at the moment, doing everything he could to hold off complete corruption, well out of sight of anyone that I needed to play PR games with. Oh so ripe for collaring. So yeah, I was going to send an orc, a dragon, and a disguised broken draenei to look for a skull shaped cave mouth on the side of a mountain next to an oasis. If I was lucky, one of the bosses in the caverns would qualify as the region boss and finding it would get that much easier.

That was long term. Short term, I had an idea from my chat with Lillibeth. I wanted to test turning a mortal into a demon before I tried it on her; lucky me, tomorrow morning I will have a few volunteers. Those poor bastards who tried to perform a coup.

Speaking of captures, Althea Blacklock, Monze Smokebreath, and someone named Tansy Puddlefizz had been captured today. Tansy was a gnome in Ironforge; good to have someone on hand there but I didn’t think she had any particularly valuable skills; I gave her an obedience to hide the necklace and proceeded to add that mandate to most of my retinue. Althea was the commander of the Night Watch. I was pretty sure I’d need her once I was able to relax for a moment and focus on my own territory, but for now she could just enjoy the physical and mental tune up.

To my pleasant surprise, Xylinnia was relatively vulnerable. She’d be captured in only four days. I was relatively safe, then. Tyrande was supposedly going to arrive in about five days at the very earliest. I could just let that situation sit. Once the enchantress was awake, I could reclaim the necklace. Whenever Tyrande was safely away and Xylinnia was the only enchanter in the stronghold, I could use her like I had Eva: a trusted face who could hand a necklace to someone and expect them to put it on. I didn’t find Shandris particularly attractive, at least no more than any of her soldiers, but I rather enjoyed the mental image of bending her over after my treatment today.

I wasn’t going to go into exhaustive detail, but I mocked up a quick to-do list for tomorrow.

5/19Matthias Shaw, Gretchen?, Lord Ebonlocke, VanessaTrain with VarianYsondreGretchen?Evacuate Quel’LithienSend scouts to the portalTrain with SadieMeet with Nozara to strategize

Yeah. That might work.