A Bit of Minor Bookkeeping

5/21 Noon

Lo’Gosh could be a problem. I doubted he’d be a real threat physically, not unless I did something incredibly stupid like get within thirty feet of him while he sees me as a threat. Unfortunately, he presented a far harder to avoid political threat. I knew, for a fact, that eventually his travels would result in him getting his memory back and going to confront Onyxia. If she was still primarily engaged in the sabotage and destruction of Stormwind, that would be a good thing. As things stood, he’d be barging into the middle of my operations and fucking with me. Can’t have that.

Add to that the value of capturing him and his team; Varian was definitely my best fighter that could fit through a door, and I currently only had the himbo variant. I don’t know much about Broll, but he seemed to be a very strong druid according to Onyxia’s reports. I wanted as many of those as I could get; Druids brought versatility to the table, and were at least decent at basically everything. Having one that wasn’t a deranged psychopathic ghost could only be an improvement.

Valeera was another rogue, and based on her high profile as Hearthstone’s iconic rogue and the fact that she was even relevant in a group containing Varian, she was probably an even better rogue than Doris. I don’t think I’ll ever say no to another top tier sneak. Further, she was a high profile attractive woman who had appeared in multiple books and video games, so naturally she had made it into the Catalog. She had rebates on half a dozen defenses too; I was going to make or save almost 20 credits off of capturing her. As far as appearance? “Slim blonde elf with nice tits” wasn’t exactly a unique look, I literally had 2 already, but you can’t argue with a classic. The fact that she’d bring along a whole slew of magically resizing outfits, some of which might even be practical, was just gravy.

I tried to use Varian as a conduit to cast Mind Vision on Varian. Unfortunately when I tried, my magic targeted Varian instead of Varian. That probably shouldn’t have surprised me, but I thought that since the two men were genetically and spiritually the same person split down the middle, I should be able to use one to see through the eyes of the other. No dice. Same with Anduin; when I tried to use him as a conduit I just got my own Varian again.

In that case, I needed to head him off; for that, I needed to play nice with Magni, the last person I knew to have seen him. Luckily, I already had something to offer. I had an agent in Blackrock Depths looking into the situation with his daughter. Apparently Onyxia had snubbed him in the past, but Varian was socially adept enough to deliver some good news that didn’t require confrontation. After explaining how he’s put some of his best men on the job and asking that he be informed of any developments so they can coordinate, Varian could slip in that there’s a man who looks eerily like him that he’d very much like to meet.

I’m not sure how that meeting will go, but I’ll definitely be there, and I’ll make sure it’s in private. If I can get them on remotely good terms by whatever means necessary, I might even be able to use the relationship shift to turn them into brothers instead of split clones.

With that plan made and sent down the pipeline to Onyxia and Varian, I started to wonder where Sadie was. Normally she’d be here by now. Using my new favorite spell, I shifted my point of view to hers. As it turned out, she had been deployed in an assault team, probably on short notice so she couldn’t tell me. She was currently in the act of supporting a half dozen men and women in modest plate armor while they attempted to clear out a lumber mill.

I figured that if I wasn’t going to get a full hour of training with her, I might as well practice instead. I tried to use my magic through the mind vision, but nothing physical would go through. Healing was possible but incredibly inefficient, and summoning mind fiends went off without a hitch; thankfully I could direct their aggression against the undead, or it would have been rather counterproductive. Shadow words only seemed to work if they were primarily mental, like fear, but Mind control seemed pretty functional outside of one problem. When I got into their heads, it was extremely hard to wrest away controls from the Lich King. That said, forcing one of Sadie’s enemies to stand there in conflicted indecision definitely swung the battle slightly in her direction.

After getting that poor ghoul’s head split in half, my own head felt very similarly as I snapped back to my body. Being able to help my allies remotely with mental magic was definitely in my tool kit, but the mana drain was intense. I needed a break for the pounding in my head to recede.

I checked in with Talaada, but she was apparently waist deep in the most effective recruitment drive I have seen so far, so I wasn’t about to interrupt. Melisara had captured two troll women before flying off to the southwest, making her way towards Tirisfal, presumably. I wasn’t about to interrupt her either. I did think to shift my mission tracker to Dremuus in the barrens; if the regional mission target wasn’t someone in the Wailing Caverns, I’d eat my hat.

I still wanted to set this time aside for self improvement, so once my headache died down I sparred with Galiena a bit. Two versus one; Galiena versus me and Lividia. I figured that getting her some practice and formal training with fighting in her visage would be good for my prime consort; she operated on almost pure intuition, which would only take her so far. Plus, I’d probably be fighting alongside Lividia more than any other member of my retinue thanks to Together Forever.

Lividia didn’t take well to being the worst fighter in the room, that’s for sure. She could quickly shapeshift between her human and dragon forms, and that let her dodge and attack from unexpected angles, but Galiena adapted quickly. It also, unfortunately, left her without a weapon. Super strength or no, she didn’t actually know how to throw a proper punch when we started the sparring, so the session turned into a whole lot of teaching Lividia extremely basic fundamentals of unarmed combat. Given that my biggest strength lay in spellcasting and that her chosen visage didn’t have enough mass to be particularly good at wrestling, I handed her my hammer. It sharpened her claws when she was a dragon and shifted with her; she’d get a lot more use out of it.

When we finished, she demanded that Galiena grovel before her, kissing her feet. It didn’t seem to bother the dragonspawn in the slightest to do so, if anything she seemed thrilled, so I let it slide.

“Just remember this is only ok for the particularly submissive ones. Don’t be abusive.”

“As you say my king. Now, pet, strip your armor off and fix us something to eat. If possible, give us a show while you do.

••••••••••

I was pleased to find an update to my regional missions after my meal. Emeriss and the Druidesses, which I acknowledge sounds like the name for a band, had finally killed Morbent Fel. I quickly assigned Abby and Eliza to go ransack his house, which presumably had at least some nice things in it. Once that was done, I settled in to take a look at the rewards.

The Shroud was a shimmering, nearly transparent cape. At least at first. With just a thought, I was able to turn it into a black robe, a suit of armor, a silk dress, and very importantly it did a pretty good impression of Sadie’s Confessor Paletress outfit. It could almost perfectly mimic any article of clothing, assuming I could picture it clearly. It also maintained the last shape I gave it when I put it down. Given that it could capture even a deity in a day or less if worn, that seemed extremely relevant.

I sent it in the form of a simple black dress to Eva for analysis, and she could identify its properties very quickly once she knew that she needed to look. On the other hand, if she hadn’t been told it was a magical item, it didn’t give off any obvious indications. The implications of that left me a bit giddy. Most people don’t check if their jacket has been replaced with a perfect copy enchanted to warp their mind into devoted service. It just doesn’t come up that often.

Setting that aside whilst going over a list of potential targets in my head, I moved on to Emeriss’s new upgrade. Agility and intelligence were discarded quickly. I like my potions as much as the next guy, and having an invisible predator on the payroll would be great, but they just didn’t stack up.

From a single spore was nifty, but anything that could kill Emeriss was probably best avoided for the moment anyway. Master of Corruption would have given her an extremely powerful niche for as long as Xavius was causing problems, but that won’t last forever.

Really though, those were all just justifications, formed in retrospect. The moment I saw Ancient of Life I basically tossed the rest out the window. I like minions. I like resources. I like growth. I was being offered the power to play an RTS in real life on the side. Really the only reason I even paused was that I worried that I’d need to pay more than a hundred gold to hire a single archer, but even that was worth the risk. It just would have meant that I needed to restart my efforts to make money again.

I pressed the button, and a new segment appeared in my app: base. I opened it up and found that I, apparently, had 500 energy and 150 essence. Ok. Yeah, I know what’s gonna eat up a chunk of my afternoon now.