Gnomish Think Tank Pays Off

6/2 evening

I checked in with my gnomes to get some intel on hybrids. While they prepared a presentation on the subject, I did some basic bookkeeping. Mission review, resource allocation, base management. That kind of thing. Naturally, I started with the day’s minor mission.

This Place is HellConvince the Cenarian Hold Quartermaster Calandrath to leave the Cenarian Hold forever.Rewards: instant capture of Calandrath

This… was not worth it. Let’s be honest, if I felt like doing this one I’d probably go with overkill and capture her to do the mission. But the reward was capture of Calandrath. If I got this after swiping left I’d probably give it a shot out of morbid curiosity of what the Company would give me if I already had someone they offered, but since I could just trade it out I did.

Oh LordyCapture a Hive’Regal Hive Lord.Reward: Red Chains of Fate

Red Chains of Fate: Lure, allows user to detect people who would be most receptive to binding. In this account’s case, anyone who would take the minimum amount of time to capture if equipped with a tempest jewel.

That could be useful. Nowhere near as useful as it would be if I could pass it on to a full time recruiter, or if I’d gotten this a month ago, but still. Ok, I’ll be honest, this is probably redundant. The only way I could see it being useful would be if things ever calm down enough for me to spend time setting up for an infiltration mission. Sneaking around Scholomance and handing necklaces to anyone that seemed receptive would be such fun.

If I could share or transfer my lures, I could probably turn Talaada into even more of a super recruiter than she already is. Or, more efficiently, create a team of promising and empowered evangelists each with a different lure. As it stood, I was forced to be depressed about the fact that I had super seductive powers that I was mostly wasting. Alas, convincing someone to suck my cock was rarely the most efficient use of my time, even if doing so cuts down on their ETE.

Alright. Enough self pity over having too many awesome powers that let me make women want to sleep with me. Was I going to do the mission? It’s a maybe. A 5 credit reward on a minor mission should be a slam dunk instant yes, and normally it would be. Unfortunately my best sneak was busy murdering religious leaders speaking out against a tyrannical monarch. That may sound bad, but remember they are bad religious leaders. The task itself seems like one that could be useful in its own right, but not that great. Yeah. This one wasn’t happening unless Valeera actively wanted to do it.

Southern Stranglethorn Vale: Defeat King MuklaReward: Instant Capture of Princess Poobah, Paralytic Poison

Someone really hates gorrilas today, eh? I was expecting the admiral of the Bloodsail Buccaneers, but this works too I guess. Mukla is a reference to King Kong, or maybe Donkey Kong. He was really unlikely to be a serious threat to anyone I send above a certain weight class. As for Poobah? She’s a tauren, according to the head shot in the mission log. No clue what tribe but I assume she’s actually a legitimate princess, for whatever that is worth in tauren society. Probably worth saving for the political brownie points and non-company related rewards if I can spare an hour or two. Plus, obviously, fishing for good regional upgrades. Seriously, those are powerful enough to warp my whole time here in Azeroth.

My Base management was pretty simple: I turned one of Sylvanas’s new gnoll recruits into a Druid of the Claw. They were meh melee fighters for their cost, but the first ability an unupgraded Druid of the Claw got was called roar; it was a 25% damage boost for all allies within 500 yards for 45 seconds. It wouldn’t be up all the time with only one Druid, but that was one hell of a group buff for an initial charge of the Valhalla squad.

The rest went into three new moonwells. One in the Cenarian Hold and two in the corner of the Twilight Grove I was starting to think of as the med bay, where Anduin was teaching anyone who was interested how to use his unique Heroes of the Storm holy magic alongside more conventional priest spells.

In terms of classes, his was probably the only one I was pushing more than Doan’s. Really good priests were hard to come by, and because I wasn’t going to deploy a child soldier I could have him working as a mentor and staff healer full time. I’d experimentally brought in a few of the less ambitious centaur girls to work with him, and they were taking to the Light remarkably well. Apparently fully internalizing the role of a servant for others helped a lot, though they needed to work on their self confidence if they were going to get anywhere near Lividia’s level.

••••••••••

The gnomes, finally, finished their preparations and began the presentation. The many different combinations of species all had their pros and cons, with more cons as they tried to stack on top of one another. Generally the weaknesses would start out very mild. For example, Mila’s gnome/Eredar body was shorter and physically weaker than the average draenei, though not so much that she would stand out; the pink hair and big eyes would do that. They were only showing me options that had absolutely no measurable drawbacks, though they noted that some suboptimal combinations may be useful in limited circumstances.

The example they gave, which I would probably end up using for Doan’s classes, was a draenei/gnome/high elf hybrid that had an awkward gait and was far too skinny for its height, but which seemed able to see (and to a limited degree manipulate) ambient arcane energy without any formal training. That form, which I titled the Savant, might serve as a decent set of training wheels for new mages, jump starting their training. If it didn’t, oh well.

Obviously I wanted a strong general use form that could serve as a kind of standard issue transformation for the normal members of my retinue, and the gnomes had that ready for me right at the beginning of the deal. A three way combination of High Elf, Troll, and Green Dragon.

The small blonde gnome girl who seemed just a little bit too into being transformed, grew to a height of nearly 12 feet and bulked up tremendously. Wings sprouted from her back, and when she began walking around the room I could barely hear her footsteps. She did a few basic weapon drills with a staff, and from what I could remember she was doing every step precisely correct. Aesthetically, she didn’t look half bad either. Being hot was apparently a trait that the amulet’s auto-balancing considered worth preserving, even though I don’t think I had much interest in sleeping with this giant woman. Not my kink.

https://imgur.com/a/vprAI60

“As you can see, Nefti here retains the physical strength of a dragon, while gaining the grace of an elf and the advantages of a humanoid form, such as the use of weapons. We have also verified that she has the accelerated regenerative capabilities of a troll, and though she is only a novice with arcane magic Nefti has reported a greater ease of use with channeling mana. Psychologically, how do you feel?”

The giant dragon girl took a moment to formulate her answer. “I noticed that a lot of the alternate forms make everything feel a bit drab; it makes it easier to focus on things that don’t excite me, but I think that has more to do with not being a gnome than actively being in this form specifically. Compared to some of the other forms we have been testing, I feel kind of relaxed? Meditative.”

I nodded. “Alright. Can you take a visage in this form?” Nefti immediately shrank down to a slightly taller gnome with a fancy dress and her hair done up in elaborate braids. “I’ll take that as a yes. Have you found any drawbacks to this form?”

“Based on some preliminary testing, tauren, orcs, centaur, and ogres are all proportionately stronger, which we believe to be due to tradeoffs intended to allow for flight, but form C37’s proportional strength is still above that of draenei, humans, or gnomes. Similar to that of dwarves, though with a substantially larger frame. Not a weakness, per se, but still a notable drawback compared to some forms more optimized for ground combat that we will get to later in the presentation.”

“I’ll take it. So. What about the next one?” While they moved on I labeled that form as “Drakonid” as a preset. Inaccurate since draconids are a type of humanoid dragonspawn that didn’t have wings, but close enough for me to know what it was referring to. Hell. This one would probably be the form I took myself; my warden armor and moonblade should scale to my big dragon-man form.

“Form D25 is a combination of the two strains of dragon we have available, with human traits added in for balance. We noted that two dragons put together become more feral and tend towards hyperfocus for unknown reasons; as such, the human aspects allow for a more well rounded mind. Humans in general seem to have a strong tendency towards adaptability and are not specialized towards any specific niche, allowing them to frequently serve as an additive to balance out other combinations.”

Nefti had become a dark green dragon the size of a border collie. “D25 has physical abilities in keeping with expected draconic capabilities. Due to the speed of testing we don’t have exact numbers yet. The primary documented advantage we have found is a near immunity to fire, electricity, and most corrosive substances, both in her visage and without it. The breath weapon is a sticky substance with strong corrosive properties, which ignites upon exposure to the air.” The little dragon spat into a tray full of sand, and the brightly burning globule sat there for almost ten seconds before burning away to ash.

“Marginally better dragons, probably the best choice for invading the Molten Core. Got it.” I marked the preset down as “dark green dragons” because I am very creative. I suspected Lividia would appreciate that one. An actual genetic combination of human and black dragon, along with acid proofing? Inspired.

Night elves and High elves, if fused, could create powder blue or lavender colored elves that, if I remembered correctly, looked quite a lot like the ancient night elves known as the Highborne. Close enough for me to call them that in my presets, anyway. They were far better mages than the drakonids, just as good at shaping magic as a savant, but without the intelligence boost to make them better at learning. As cute as the draenei gnomes were, I was pretty sure my non-demonic mages would mostly end up as Highborne.

https://imgur.com/a/51pEZ17

I had my specialized mages, my general purpose infantry, and my specialized fireproof dragons. We started to move into demonic hybrids. Succubus and human combined just made an unusually sexy human with bright blue eyes and a talent for shadow magic. They had tiny horns that could be hidden under their thick hair, and instead of hooves they had thick black toenails. Well, they could; sliders on the amulet would allow for big beautiful horns and cloven hooves if desired, but those wouldn’t be useful most of the time. They would serve well as recruiters; they had a heightened level of empathy and could use Charm more or less instinctively.

Apparently human/succubus also paired well with Tauren to create giant muscle mommies moderately stronger than draconids, who retained the shadow magic affinity, grace, pretty face, and ability to be bound as demons. Their horns were much harder to hide and hooves became non-negotiable, so it was easier to have them pass as tauren than humans at that point, if you set their faces to be appropriately bovine and grew out the fur… if I cared about them passing as mortals, that is. Given how many of my succubi were former ogres, making them big would put them back in their combat comfort zone. Satyr/human/tauren worked just as well, so I had slots for more than four hundred big demonic front liners. I labeled them as Dommes and Brutes, respectively.

https://imgur.com/a/yTL8w48

Man’ari could pair well with black dragons, and would do so when I needed fire resistance, but the real winners came when they were combined with high elves and green dragons simultaneously. The three way combo doubled down on their magical prowess while also making them tougher and nearly immune to acid. They looked like thinner, shorter drakonids with pronounced horns in their natural form, and more importantly they could assume a visage, which entirely hid their demonic nature. I labeled them as spellscales.

Imps, hilariously enough, paired remarkably well with both green dragons and Highborne simultaneously. Spellscales were probably slightly better specialized mages, but they would have competition from fiery elves that were also dragons. Flameborn seemed like a good title for them; the Imp part of the combo would see to it that they would learn how to throw fireballs promptly, the Highborne part would help them develop that past basic fire bolts, and the green dragon would allow them to take a hit and claw the shit out of people.

https://imgur.com/a/KiWk7fe

I put out orders for everyone to pick their forms. I quietly pushed the forms I told you about here; the gnomes went over others, but I am a simple soul. Making everyone humanoid super-dragons with enhanced magical talents was more than enough for me, and I had a small army to deploy against the Silithid. We have a quota, people!