I Hit the Ground Running

5/9

“He’s dangerous, but I think we can use him.” Hope Saldean said, gesturing at my seemingly unconscious form. “It may sound odd, but I think we should ban any neck jewelry among our personnel for at least a while.”

“You’re sure we can control him?” Edwin asked skeptically. “We can’t afford liabilities.”

“Sneed hooked up some dynamite to a timer, and Irma set up some runes that block most forms of teleportation.” Vanessa answered with an evil little laugh. “If he sets a foot out of line and we don’t input the code to reset the timer or let him out, his cell will explode after 6 hours. I’d prefer getting him addicted to something, but he seems highly resistant to everything I’ve tried.”

Body defense decided that was the point where I didn’t need to know any more, and let me fall back to sleep under the effects of enough tranquilizers to kill an elekk.

I woke up in a cell a few hours later, naturally, and purely thanks to stress defense I didn’t have a panic attack. I’d been ambushed a few days after I’d fled Duskwood with my girls; Lividia had finally gotten herself killed, and I don’t think Talaada was in much better shape. Abby was made of much tougher stuff, what with reinforcing her body with death magic, but she’d also been the Silk Masks’ primary target.

As usual, I checked my mission log when I woke up. It didn’t always have anything new to work on, but it did often enough to be worth checking. Staying mostly still with my eyes closed seemed like the safe bet; if they hadn’t seen me glance around my room, I could hopefully plan undisturbed for a while.

Minor

Steal Keryn Silvius’s supply of Swiftthistle.

Reward: Resurrection of Lividia

Moderate

Blasted Kobolds

Drive the Kobolds out of Fargodeep Mine. Penalty if the mine is rendered unusuable in the process.

Reward: Upgrade Ticket (gather 20 for one random lure, talent, defense, or other perk)

Star Crossed Lovers

Help Tommy-Joe Stonefield and Maybel MacLure have a romantic evening together without their feuding families interfering. Bonus if both have the blessing of at least one of their parents.

Reward: Capture of both Maybel and Tommy Joe

Bonus: 6 potions of invisibility

Hunting for Booty

Find Captain Sander’s Hidden Treasure. His log can be retrieved from his footlocker, buried under a rusty anchor near Gold Coast Quarry.

Reward: Instant Capture and resurrection of Captain Sander and restoration of his ship and its contents.

Major

The Weathered Grave

Put to rest the soul of Morgan Ladimore in Duskwood. This must be done without relying upon company assets. Receive a bonus if you never directly interact with his current form in the process.

Rewards: Martial Talent, Archeus, instant capture of Watcher Ladimore (or one random Night Watcher)

Bonus: White Knight Lure (when you “save” a target you find attractive from some unwanted fate, they will be permanently more positively inclined towards you. More effective if you have a preexisting reputation, if they see you personally doing impressive things during the rescue, and if their expected fate was particularly immediate and dire.)

Morbent Fel

Defeat the Necromancer Morbent Fel in Duskwood. You will be penalized if you do so in a way that results in the deaths of 3 or more sapient individuals not affiliated with Fel or your Retinue.

Reward: Soul Talent Sharing

Wanted: Hogger

Reduce the threat of the Riverpaw Gnolls by eliminating their chief. You will be penalized if he is replaced with a clear successor within 7 days.

Reward: Wild Talent, Hogger Skin

I sent text messages to Auffrey, confirming that the Rampant Lions were still operating at full capacity in Goldshire. Thankfully, they hadn’t been bothered by the Defias any more than normal. That hopefully meant that my connection to them was unknown, and they could keep doing missions in Elwynn to build up my power base there. More importantly, they could apparently resurrect Lividia. Practically speaking she was a fairly low tier novice priest, but she’d been one of the first friendly faces I’d seen when I arrived. I’d gotten attached to both her and Talaada quickly.

Abby and Talaada were alive but not in a happy place. Each were being kept in their own cells, small dark spaces with straw mats to sleep on and buckets to shit in, not unlike my own. Talaada’s spear had been taken from her, and Abby was cuffed with mana dampening chains. I could escape with them at any time, thanks to apportation, but I was on the fence. I’d be tipping my hand quite a lot if I just warped out with my whole entourage. I needed to be sneaky.

5/10

Vanessa looked through the one way mirror, confirming for the eighth time that Bismark wasn’t there. Or, at least, that he didn’t appear to be there, and his servants had also vanished. He could supposedly teleport, though the runes embedded in the walls should have prevented that. Invisibility seemed more likely, but if so why did he leave his precious necklace on the pillow?

“Prudence, cover the door with me. He might try to slip past if we give him a chance.” Vanessa ordered in a whisper, “Irma, get in there and take a look at the necklace. Be ready to get out of there if it’s a trap. You two, cover her.”

The Silk Masks were each assigned to their positions, and executed a flawless and ultimately pointless dynamic entry. If Bismark had been in there and physically tangible, he’d have been found. Irma lifted his necklace in a pair of tongs, and was justifiably on edge when it began speaking to her.

“Master control unit has been dormant for 2 hours.” A deep baritone voice emanated from the gem, “be advised that attunement will be rendered null and void if contact is not resumed within 10 hours.”

“Well well well.” Vanessa said thoughtfully. “What have we here?”

“Emergency evacuation protocol was activated.” The voice boomed. “Attuned user has been relocated to a safe location.”

“Leaving the ‘master control unit’ behind?” Vanessa scoffed. “That’s an obvious trap. Irma, do you think you can figure it out.”

“I’m willing to try, but it’s quite a complex item.” Irma warned. “We might need to bring in an expert.”

“Do your best.” Vanessa ordered, “I really doubt daddy dearest wants to share something like this with Lady Prestor just yet.”

“Master control unit is powering down.” The voice spoke, and the light from the embedded gem faded.

••••••••••

Lady Prestor, huh? I thought, I’ll need to look into her.

Being dropped into a setting I knew nothing about was more than a little bit disorienting, even with two free devoted girlfriends and a set of magic necklaces. It had some weird quirks, like the inexplicably sexed up undead, but I wasn’t complaining.

I put down the necklace and looked around the basement I’d teleported to. It was a shame Hope didn’t immediately take the bait, but I still had hope. If I could scam the Defias into using the necklaces for their own purposes, I’d win in the end. I was pretty sure that Hope Saldean’s boss would have more reach and more ambition when it came to targets than I did, and getting a few “free” politically relevant targets while throwing the Defias off my trail seemed like a great use of that necklace. If they didn’t use it somehow, it probably wasn’t the worst thing ever.

I’d need to be more careful about how I used my necklaces, or possibly just leave the kingdom of Stormwind altogether. The Defias Brotherhood was a big deal, but they were a local problem. From what Auffrey told me, I could probably move up north to the dwarven lands and be fairly safe from the Defias, and by extension I could start over fresh. If I wanted to be extra sure I was safe, I could even hop on a ship and visit the Night Elves in Kalimdor.

Of course, setting up shop somewhere else would mean splitting both my missions and my focus. Having a safe fallback position on another continent had a certain appeal, of course, but I was building up quite a power base in Elwynn. I could always just disguise myself and the girls that had been identified, but I might slip up. I decided to head north, taking the tram to Ironforge, and leave Tony with a script to manage the necklace situation from the basement.

I’d come back for big fights like Hogger or the Mines, or if the situation with the Defias stabilized in my favor. I really wanted to take out Morbent Fel for Soul Talent Sharing, but that was a pretty big ask. Hogger first; I really wanted to know what the hell a “Hogger Skin” was.

••••••••••

It was a very different, yet strangely similar, life I led. I never got my hands on other bindings, or absurd regional upgrades, or RTS mode. I grew in power far more slowly, and I had drastically fewer edges from prior knowledge. On a positive note, I also didn’t draw unhealthy attention anywhere near as quickly. Onyxia’s allies weren’t keen to share the necklaces with her, and she certainly wasn’t keen to share them with her brother. The Dragons of Nightmare and AQ events were gated at 3 and 6 months, set to trigger early if I grew in power too quickly.

Looking back it felt… well, good. I wasn’t an absurd juggernaut. I took a few losses, but they were never because of random bullshit or GM fiat. I just didn’t know what I didn’t know, or I’d get cocky, and that bit me in the ass sometimes. I still won more often than I didn’t; I had some seriously unfair advantages even post-nerf, but I had to be resourceful more often. I didn’t just have a whole drawer full of silver bullets.

I spent my last few credits after dying to Deathwing in a freak accident during the Cataclysm. Comparing and contrasting my two adventures in Azeroth, I decided to spend several credits on things that would make my life more fun, instead of easier. I liked having sexy undead. It was dumb but fun, and despite how unsettling the feral and mindless pin up models had been, they were still more pleasant to look at than rotting corpses.

In a similar vein, I requested that all furries and bestial species be redesigned to look… well, more like humans. Maybe I’m boring, but if I found myself in Equestria, I’d prefer to find a bunch of multicolored human women over interacting with fucking ponies. I really hoped that my request had been broad enough to cover literal talking horses, but if even one population of people in my next world became sexually compatible with me, I’d be happy. Soul well spent.

All that being said, I did spend a credit on a stack of ten animal souls. Two tier one companions had been a massive boon right at the start, so having 12, even if 10 of them had terrible scaling, was extremely appealing. To make sure that actually happened, I also dropped a credit on Origin Discount, ensuring I could “buy” T1 bodies and skillsets for them all for the very reasonable price of zero credits each. That required that I take a drawback, and I settled on No Homo.

Not being able to use any kind of bindings on people and things I didn’t at least kinda want to sleep with was problematic, but not as much as actively restricting my actions or putting me in a preset role. My standards are not excessive so most moderately young and healthy women qualify, and I’d made sure that one of the most common unsexy (to me) humanoids (beastfolk) wouldn’t be an automatic pass. Plus, there are very few things that women literally can’t do. I might need to look a bit harder to recruit qualified women, but corporations trying to pretend they care about diversity seem to get along ok.

Not to mention the very real possibility that I could end up without any binding in the first place. I was pretty sure that a polycule consisting of me, Lividia, and Talaada would be perfectly sufficient if I literally couldn’t expand my harem, at least in terms of satisfying my sexual appetites. Even more so if either of them ended up looking remotely like their preferred body types. If I find myself in a situation where I can only capture people with a love confession, I’m probably just going to write off the whole system and try for an honest playthrough.

I guess there’s also the question of non-standard captures like when I bound a bunch of demons, but… eh, corner cases. Oh no, if I want to capture creatures with soul pacts or whatever I’m restricted to moderately attractive female ones. Just about every setting has its own version of a succubus, the option will probably be there if I care enough to look. When I’d finally dabbled into necromancy I’d found out that permanently raising an intelligent undead and binding them to my will also counted as capture, so… yay for synergies?

My life got a little repetitive after that; you can probably guess the rest and you wouldn’t be too far off. Or check the logs; kind of a long debriefing but I just really felt like talking ever since you put me in this chair. So, when am I moving on to the next test? I hope the delay isn’t too long.

••••••••••

-1 permanent purchase: Lividia

-1 permanent purchase: Talaada

-1 Letter of Recommendation: Netorarian, Artemis, Vivienne, Tony, Sally

-2 Meeting Place: Gain a permanent, generally quite small, Demiplane where you can meet with fellow employees of the Company you know. Within this demiplane you may relax for up to one hour per day and extend invitations to friends, allies, or enemies to meet, gamble, and trade resources. Acceptable trades and wagers will be overseen by the Testing Coordinators of each visitor’s world.

-1 Animal folk become more human looking, generally looking like basically attractive humans with pronounced animalistic traits.

-1 Female undead are always aesthetically pleasing and capable of having sex. Generally speaking they are also interested in having sex, though they are no less aggressive and only slightly less deadly despite that.

-1 PvP is never incentivized. Should two testers come into conflict it will be on entirely personal grounds. Drawbacks involving PvP can override this; you knew what you were signing up for.

(Gift) Care package- You will start any test with a collection of useful but unremarkable items priced at the local equivalent of 500 US dollars. Depending on your starting environment’s needs this may include rations, a weapon, armor, medicine, a cell phone, fashionable clothes, durable shoes, or a small amount spending money. In addition you will start with one minor company asset. (Thanks for the extra test data. I’m taking credit for it. If anyone asks, it was my idea to do a budget version of your test with your suggested revisions. -Auriel)