So basically I’m saying this was a net win for me.

6/6 early morning

Stamina: Three Phase Boss fight: if you would be killed, captured, or totally disabled, you may instead take a partial loss, change tactics, and either be fully healed or escape the immediate situation. This ability has three charges, which recover at a rate of 1/week.

••••••••••

Nefarian sat in his secondary lair to the east of Grim Batol, licking his wounds and staring at the app. His companions, having taken their visages for his pleasure, were some small comfort. After all, he’d had them abandon his labs to pursue another mission and they had come back successful. Proudmoore hadn’t been present, but defeat included “driving them out of the region” and with Theramore slaughtered, looted, and full of shadowflame created undead? She had nothing to return to.

After flying around all day, Nefarian needed some rest and relaxation. Chromaggus, thankfully transformed into a full chromatic dragon in order to serve as a proper consort, had taken on her visage and was doing a fairly good job of helping him to relax. The two headed beast turned two headed dragon turned elven twins wasn’t smart enough to do much without his direct oversight, but she was very powerful.

https://imgur.com/a/kMwMy7A

Alas, Nefarian’s brilliant mind wouldn’t rest just because his body was occupied. He analyzed what he had lost and gained tonight. Of course, his consorts destroying Theramore had provided him with Information Defense, so he would now be fairly safe against anyone but Netorarian’s forces. He’d also gained an upgrade, which he’d given to Chromaggus.

Given that she had already been his most powerful complete creation thus far, the further refinement was very welcome. They would likely be more than a match for his physically enhanced sister, especially working together. They could also likely use their very special abilities to help build up a new force for him.

He had his full compliment of major missions from the completion of Graw and Tabetha’s tasks, so there were avenues for growth. He’d really only lost a tower full of replaceable brutes and failed experiments, practically speaking. What he’d gained in knowledge vastly outshone such trifles. It seemed there were drawbacks to his perfect escape. Penalties to ensure that he “take a partial loss and change tactics” when defeated. Very irritating, but he could work around them. It was good to know.

Partial loss: non-captured members of the Dark Horde clan have your mental influence purged and reject the authority of members of your retinue.

Change of Tactics: you are unable to engage an enemy yourself as a delaying tactic until 6/14

The distressingly overwhelming force that his nemesis could bring to bear was quite disturbing. Nefarian would need to build up his own forces and avoid direct confrontation as much as possible. He’d already known that, but now Nefarian was aware of how large a disadvantage he was operating at. His mind tingled as he committed more fully to his plan. He needed powerful entities to assist him, and that meant saving credits. Twenty. He only needed twenty to truly begin.

Tabetha walked into his sitting room in a daze, staring at the orb M’Kaloc held before her. She had only reached her first breakpoint thus far, so she would be an ideal test subject. He pushed off the purple haired twins as he stood up, and opened the small wooden box that contained his injectors. Tabetha weakly recoiled from the needle, but Graw held her in place as Nefarian administered the drug.

“You love me. Tell me so.”

She looked at him slack jawed for a few moments before nodding. “I do, I love you more than anything.”

••••••••••

Strength: Prism- the two halves of Chromaggus may split and recombine freely, exchanging their volatile powers between themselves and gaining full control over them in the process. They maintain a psychic link and single identity, and if one side dies the other may resurrect them through several hours of focused effort.

For the Blood GodAlly with the Blood God Hakkar as an equal partner. You may not capture him until the mission is complete or you will be Penalized.Reward: 10 Credits, VR Helmet, instant capture of Hakkar the Soulflayer

Viva la RevolutionConvince the Shen’Dralar of Dire Maul to depose and kill their leader, Prince Tortheldrin. You will be penalized if he dies before at least 50% of the Shen’Dralar reject his leadership.Reward: 30 credits, 1 demonic Skitterer

••••••••••

The reports rolled in, and things were honestly looking pretty good. The orcs had started rioting in the streets after Nefarian left, but Lividia of all people had started walking around making an offer: fight every day for the rest of eternity, growing in strength and wisdom with each repetition, crushing new foes with each new day.

To a normal, well adjusted person, this sounded fucking insane. Indeed, even among the Dark Horde 80% of people rejected this deal. The 400 orcs, trolls, ogres, and gnolls who did take that offer, however, were the crazies that lived for bloodshed in the first place. They were a destabilizing force, conveniently sectioned off in Valhalla now. The relatively sane majority included pragmatists, craftsmen, spouses, intellectuals, slaves, the very young, and the very old.

Talaada’s priestesses and Vanessa’s shadow operatives were brought in to act as ambassadors to negotiate with the leaders of the various forming factions, bringing each into the fold piecemeal. A few people may have died to Valeera’s blades. No big deal.

I might not have managed to kill Nefarian, but I did manage to drive him out of his lair. In the process I’d largely secured the backing of the general Dark Iron populace, recruited a few hundred new warriors for Valhalla, and got a whole new population under my thumb.

I hadn’t lost much in return, either. Most of my fallen troops were demons, to be resummoned tomorrow, and the Dark Iron soldiers were mostly back up already thanks to my resurrection specialists. With the Nathrezim trick, I didn’t even have a time limit on resurrection anymore. Tara could bring someone back as a Forsaken, and I could fix them from there. They could go home the next day with no one the wiser. Even my enemies were resurrectable now. I could, if I felt like it, murder and resurrect anyone I wanted. Valeera made it easier, but Tara was quite literally standing next to a giant pile of corpses, reanimating new people for my necromancers to subdue all day every day.

I’d need to be careful about potential double agents, of course. Nefarian’s retinue wouldn’t break no matter what I did with them. Right now, Natalie had one of her shadow priests doing spot checks on any members of the Dark Horde we reanimated. So far the only person who’d been a problem had been Rend, though his dragon mount, Gyth, had been receptive enough.

Gyth had been one of those brain damaged premature whelps, like the ones we caught en masse in the rookery. She didn’t have many opinions of her own, but an intelligence boost and some implanted memories of a decent education based on Tyrygosa’s had cleared that up well enough. Alas, she hadn’t comprehended any of the very important meetings she’d gotten to sit in on, or she’d have probably been a wellspring of useful information. I wasn’t worried; she was a reasonably strong Drake and a genetic sample for hybrid runes.

I let myself relax for a moment, though the situation was still pretty dire. I of all people know how quickly a beta tester could amass power. I had a couple titanic constructs in the oven that could give me effective satellite imaging once they were captured, but for the moment I had very little way of hunting Nefarian down. Onyxia had given me the locations of some of his backup lairs that she knew about, but he knew that she knew about them. They were probably trapped if there was anything in there at all. I’d already sent some teams from Valhalla to scout them out, but I wasn’t very hopeful.

The next few days I’d be keeping an eye out for Nefarian, but it seemed much more important to focus on training up my forces. I had mass martial talent and mass soul talent, but most of my troops were running around too much to properly use those edges. I’d organized, but most of my troops were still a disorganized rabble.

I was too weak to beat Nefarian right now without a bunch of buffs, so I needed some training too. I’d hit the ceiling where I couldn’t just rely on being a max level Warden to let me overpower all my problems anymore. I needed to pump myself up, and the fastest method I could think of was attending Doan’s lessons. At least tomorrow, while my limbs were still regrowing.

Speaking of Doan’s lessons, Aegwynn came by and was more than a little disappointed to find that I wasn’t up for her scheduled impregnation. So was I. It wasn’t until the next morning that I found out about Theramore.

••••••••••

Shifting sands update

Silithid Extermination7617/20,000 (38%)

Alliance War Effort6/5 +70 (hearthstone) + 98 Molten Core spoils + 1843 (freight at cost) + 247 agitating to retake Gnomeregan + 634 (charm sales) + 192 (normal business of captured individuals) + 687 (Food and medicine) + 566 (Blackrock Spire loot) = 7012 (1.2%)

Horde war effort400 (lumber) + 280 (fel iron equipment) + 220 (Scorpid Armor) + 35 Wands + 700 mining the molten core + 350 Dark Iron weaponcrafting + 204 Charm sales + 58 medkit sales + 993 Trade with Dark Irons + 5304 (freight investment) + 210 normal recruitment + 80 seaforium budget + 1306 Undercity Cottage Industry + 440 (scrolls/staves from ancient of wonder) + 11,200 (reclaimed shadowforge infrastructure) + 350,000 (Naxxramas) = 394,783 (78.9%)