There is so much to do…

5/25 evening

I let Ysondre handle Tyrande for now. I’d be making contact again, but only once I had necklaces to share. For now, Ysondre genuinely knew as much as I did about the nightmare outpost in Ashenvale, and I could make my way to Darnassus at any time through Imriss. Nathanos could wait for now, and checking in with Gretchen mostly amounted to asking if she wanted to be pulled out, and if she needed any more books. No and yes; she definitely wanted something less dense than a treatise on the Troll Voodoo religion. Dena had a few novels in her home, and sent one along. She also asked if she could have some supplies for knitting, which I had purchased and sent along without complaint.

I went back to the Twilight Grove, intending to close out my night with some training. In particular, I wanted to see if Melaar could teach me how to assume a visage again. If I remembered right, it didn’t take too long to learn, but the boost to my strength and endurance was pretty sweet.

I was a bit surprised to find Melaar was actually in the process of teaching a small class of green and black dragons already, ranging in age from full drakes to a few as small as Lividia.

“What’s going on here?”

Melaar turned to me with a smile, “Greetings Prophet Bismark! It is a pleasure to see you. These initiates were sent here by Talaada, and showed interest in the second initiation.”

I could have kicked myself. Of course! I would definitely still convert some of them with the base, but I could probably save a lot of energy and essence by turning them into dragons. Hell, I should probably convert the ones I transformed, too. A night elf archer that is also a dragon would almost certainly be better than a normal night elf archer; the ability to jump in and out of a flying form would be worth the trouble alone.

If the reliance on a weapon became a problem, I suppose I’d end up with a lot of higher tier units; dryads could summon javelins based off of the animations, and everything else used magic or their bare hands. They’d be a bit more niche, but I could get behind niches like “is entirely immune to magic” and “can summon tornadoes.”

“Good idea Melaar. I’m glad you thought of it. In fact, if you could organize classes on a larger scale I’d really appreciate it.” Dragons were higher tier than elf civilians, even if they had no combat training. That meant more energy, and greater combat readiness if they ever got attacked. More physical strength for manual labor too, and fewer mana cravings.

I attended the class, and because of how simple the process was I was able to master it again in only an hour. Thank the Light. I won’t pretend that today was all bad, I’d had some unprecedented wins, but I was really worried that everything unrelated to being a warden would be a bitch and a half to relearn.

••••••••••

In better spirits and wearing my newly reclaimed visage, I settled in for a bit of bookkeeping. The first thing I did was go over my options for the reward from capturing Sally. Unfortunately it wasn’t a set of five upgrades for me; apparently fucking a woman who was magically overwhelmed with lust did not qualify me for the rewards card.

There were some very random but useful rewards on offer. Letting Lillibeth be semi-ghostly seemed like it would be nice, but the caveat about her still being detectable by magical senses took the shine off. Big personal buffs for Drusilla or Sarah Ladimore just weren’t impactful enough to make the cut, as much as I wanted them. That left me with two options, both of which offered me new recruits.

Family Connections would have been the choice short term. It would probably capture quite a few people; instant capture with five degrees of separation from Councillor Millstipe is a lot. It also probably included at least some of the ghostly guests at Kharazan; powerful spirits of Darkshire nobility that were trapped in an eternal dinner party. Then again, I wasn’t sure how I’d get any such spirits out of Kharazan, and most of the rest would just be helping me consolidate power over a town where I already owned the Lord Mayor and the chief of police.

The inquisitor’s sting for Whitemane herself just seemed like the obvious choice in the end. More captures. Always more captures. It would let her get an early start on subverting the monastery, and while it could be countered with poison healing magic, a poison that could capture someone over a few weeks at the longest was more subtle than necklaces. Flexible too; she could capture someone in 2 days by pumping them full of her venom, or churn out 3 a day if she wasn’t bothered by the two week delay. I’d need to see if necklaces and venom overlapped…

••••••••••

The encounter with Melaar had me thinking. I really was running this whole organization a bit slapdash, wasn’t I? I probably should have thought of that myself, but there were over a hundred people in my retinue now and I didn’t actually know the names of a lot of them. There’s a point in a startup business’s life cycle where the founder has to let go and delegate.

Oh sure, I was delegating a bit already. Tessa and Sarah were handling the Rampant Lions, and as far as I knew the three way war with the gnolls and orcs had become a relatively Cold War with just the Blackrock orcs due to my tendency to test random combat applications of things on the gnolls. I’m pretty sure Ursula alone has killed over a hundred of them just getting soul shards for big fights. Recruitment has continued, more than half of the organization were former Defias at this point, and I had almost 80 people on my payroll over there. Overseen exclusively by those who have actually been captured, naturally.

Delegation worked better with some formality and categorization, so I decided to start by listing off all the things I did.Fight, Recruit, Talk, Plan. I threw in logistics too. I didn’t really do that much myself, but it was important anyway. So who did I have that was best at thinking about each of these?

Recruit was easy. Talaada took capturing people very seriously, like a sacred duty, and was very good at it. Talk would probably go to Onyxia or Vanessa; when I considered it, I decided that they were different enough in practice to bring both. Fighting, in terms of tactics, was something that Varian was trained in, so hopefully he’d still be a decent general. If not, I’d give Marshal Windsor a shot. Or Shandris, once I’ve captured her. Logistics would probably go to Irma; she was efficient enough that if I gave her a reasonably predictable task, I could generally assume I’d never hear about it again. I sent each of them a theoretically broad mandate and asked what they, or someone else with similar training, would need to be provided to maximize effectiveness in that role. I’d need to choose someone to serve as a top administrator, as well. All of the people I really wanted in that role weren’t actually in my retinue yet, though. Sylvanas was probably up to the task; once captured she’d be perfectly trustworthy.

Varian was asked how to maximize the effectiveness of our troops, both the captured and uncaptured, and make the best use of the magic available to us through The Company. I pointed out all of our strategic targets, both mission related and general enemies of the good people of Azeroth.

Onyxia was asked how we might use diplomacy to normalize relationships, with the long term goal of world domination through universal capture of world leaders. I gave her a list of nations that we could conceivably ally with, including all the factions of the Horde and Alliance as well as neutral groups like the Argent Dawn and “enemy” factions like the Gurubashi trolls and Dark Iron Dwarves. Vanessa got the exact same list, but with an eye towards infiltration and manipulation from the bottom up instead of top down.

Talaada received a list of all known methods and permutations of capture we had; possession, Jewelry (with an explanation of Jewels of Discord), love confessions and all of the things that can be used to induce them, company swag, and Sally’s new venom. I noted that I was most interested in methods that didn’t rely on items that were in severely limited supply, though she should still consider everything. I wanted her to consider how to effectively capture people whether they were friendlies, enemies, neutral, prisoners, or subordinates.

Irma was asked how to ensure that everyone in my retinue was properly fed, equipped, and provisioned with consumables. I also pointed out that we had a large campsite that was probably going to develop into a permanent base of operations, and that it would be best to develop it into a state of self sufficiency and profitability. Despite being the least sexy task, I expected that she would be the one with the highest budget requirements by far.

I was building a proper command staff, and I’d be handing out actual titles eventually. I was not smart enough to make proper use of all the resources at my disposal, and to be perfectly honest the idea of investing the amount of time and energy necessary to do so didn’t appeal to me. I’d much rather go out and personally work on difficult or interesting jobs and then come back to my team and have them handle the minutiae. I’d have a staff meeting tomorrow, where I’d listen to their ideas and start to organize my retinue upon more official lines. I looked at the character sheet with dread. I was probably going to need to put everyone into at least a loose hierarchy too.

On top of that, once I had everything organized effectively? Then it would be time to start making strides towards the Next Big Thing. I was spending a few days on tying off loose ends, but I needed to be a bit more proactive. I also needed to plan out how I was going to counter Xavius and the Nightmare. As much as capturing Ysera and then just letting her keep sleeping didn’t appeal, I knew that sending some or even most green dragons and druids back into the Emerald Dream was probably the best option available to me on that front.

I finished out my day by attending a class on the basics of the light with Lividia, as taught by Talaada. By the end of it, we were both able to cast lesser heal on ourselves. Talaada, the psycho, just stabbed us each in the thigh and told us to heal it. Multiple times if our healing was sufficiently anemic. Her logic was that we needed to know we could do it first, and we would naturally reject the idea that we should be in pain for no reason. I mean. It worked. But I can definitely see why Annetta didn’t try that. And did Talaada have to look so happy and serene while she did it?