This Looks Like a Job for Bookkeeping

5/5 afternoon.

“So that’s the long and short of it. He’s mixed in with the rest of them, so it’ll be hard to single your father out. We can keep working on it, but as things stand we can’t really deal with this directly. I’m thinking I’ll get you back to Darkshire for now; we can get you out here again once we have a solid plan to get him in place for you.”

Watcher Ladimore seemed a bit put out by the suggestion. “And how long is that likely to take?”

“Can’t say. Might be before next week, might be we all die in an attempt at positioning. We will let you know as soon as we know, alright? Your father was a good man, we want him taken care of. He deserves his rest.”

I’d sent Lividia back to Darkshire to serve as a teleportation destination. From my map, she seemed to be around halfway back. I wanted Ladimore out of my hair now, since she made everything just a little bit harder to discuss frankly.

“So my first thought is to try to get the ogres or worgen into a war with the undead, then in the confusion we can slip in and destroy Mor’Ladim. Then we get to the grave and bring Miss Ladimore in to seal the deal with his spirit. Getting them to do that might be a bit hard, but I’m sure we can figure something out. Any ideas on how to make that happen?”

“Don’t,” Ladimore objected, “They’d need to pass the roads to get here; we don’t want a war along our trade route.” I sigh and nod, pretending to take her under consideration. If I could get two enemies to fight each other, I was absolutely going to do it. Maybe not the worgen, but the ogres would be passing only the part of the road heading into Westfall. Basically nobody used that road these days.

My next thought was asking if Lillibeth could do something, maybe influencing him into leaving to visit Eliza? Apparently they were friends somehow, and Eliza’s grave was fairly securely in Abby’s slice of turf. I had to ask in text; our official narrative was that the strange ghost that had helped us was an enigma we’d encountered a few times before. Having a spirit on the payroll would sound a bit too necromantic to most people in the Alliance, but a mysterious protector that we implied might be one of Abby’s ancestors? It had a nice ring to it.

*Lillibeth Very dangerous. The graveyard has old friends, but they don’t know me anymore. Would attack me as an intruder, try to drag me away.* Fuck that. I’d decided that I rather liked having a personal ghost girl, and I had no intention of losing her. Some risk might be acceptable, however. *Can they see you when you’re wearing another body?*

She wasn’t sure, so we decided to have her take over a skeleton and wander in the graveyard a bit, away from anywhere she knew to be one of her old friends' new haunts. A skeleton had been chosen primarily because they could, inexplicably, speak with little difficulty. If she happened upon Mor’Ladim, she could deliver a message to him requesting that he meet Eliza at her grave. If he had any honor or civility left at all, he’d come speak to one of his few neighbors. After all, what else was he doing with his evenings? If she drew the wrong kind of attention, apportation took 10 seconds. Even if she couldn’t stand around focusing for that long, she could just call Abby, whom I’d given orders to pull her out.

I checked my mission log to confirm that the Weathered Grave hadn’t so much as updated. The Hermit had 4 days left on it, but now that was basically just running down the timer. Eliza was neatly tied up in her own grave, and she’d been the only person that routinely spoke to Abercrombie. She’d be captured for a few hours before The Hermit was finished, the same few hours that she’d spent with Abercrombie for the last time as himself. Speaking of Eliza, she had space for another disobedience.

Voicing dissatisfaction with Erich’s power over the retinue: shame

I suspected that she might have some choice words she’d like to say about her own imprisonment, and I’d be faintly disappointed if she just accepted Abby’s situation without comment. I’d considered the old emotional numbness paired with expressing discontent trick, but I didn’t want to train her to hide her dissatisfaction. I wanted her to internalize that it was my absolute right to mold her and her former husband, now bestie and lover, to my whims.

Tessa was around halfway back to Goldshire, and was just over 24 hours away from being formally inducted into the harem, a couple hours shy of getting her last obedience slot. Her last disobedience, though? I could do that now.

Being away from Erich: mild emotional numbness

Giving her a mild but noticeable hollow feeling whenever she wasn’t properly positioned in my presence would push her to come back, even if I didn’t call her back myself.

Blind Mary was going to be a bit odd. She was going to be captured in three days, but I didn’t know what to instill in her. I didn’t really have any plans for her exactly; Lillibeth was already filling my ghost quota nicely. Plus, all I really knew about her is that she was so vain that she ripped her own eyes out when she lost her beauty, and Eva had believed that Abercrombie would remember her vanity before anything else. She was a bit one note, really, recruiting her had mostly been with the intention of harvesting her hair for Eva. I’d figure something out.

Eva was fine as she was. I was pretty secure with the idea of using her as a magic item maker and identifier, and my first permanent waypoint, letting me return to Darkshire whenever I wanted. I was also fairly sure she had an appropriate job and social standing to be able to talk people into wearing strange necklaces. If I could get the commander of the Night Watch and the mayor under my thumb, Darkshire would basically be mine. They were a pretty independent bunch; if their leaders aligned with me instead of Stormwind, the people would probably roll with it unless I started openly advocating child murder or necromancy. Not much of a conquest, but I was currently in the process of removing some of the biggest threats in Duskwood. Darkshire might have a resurgence under my glorious, mostly absent, leadership.

The last person on the docket that I might shift around the settings on was Lillibeth. Based on that ghoul yesterday, anyone she possessed would be wearing her necklace while she did so. That might be a bit of a tell, but if it wasn’t just a cosmetic effect that meant I should set the effects of the necklace with her victims in mind. The first thing to spring to mind was how I captured Lillibeth in the first place.

Expressing love or affection for Erich: affirmation (max)

If this worked as well as I was hoping, Lillibeth would be an intelligent mobile binding. Possessing someone and getting them to chant their love for me wasn’t subtle, but it was muchfaster. Getting people into the headspace where she could hijack them was not easy… except for nearly mindless undead apparently. If she didn’t have any luck with Ladimore, I’d have to check if she could capture that skeleton she was currently driving around using this method. It certainly wasn’t my priority but if I could get them for free… Wait, could I make small frost wyrms by turning random skeletons into dragons? This demanded testing, later.

Tony had gotten his mission done, so it was time to reap the rewards. I checked Herb Tracker. It gave me a list of herbs that were in my general vicinity and an option to select them. I chose briarthorn and bruiseweed, and when I checked my map small dots had appeared around me. The range for detection appeared to be around a mile, and they didn’t differentiate beyond telling me that an herb from my list was there, but that seemed more than enough now that I had an alchemist.

“Abby. What is briarthorn used for?” I asked, basically out of nowhere from the point of view of observers.

“Healing potions, mostly. Why do you ask?” She was clearly antsy as well, not wanting to return to working on stitches with Ladimore here and instead mending the hem of a grey robe.

“I think I saw a patch. You want me to go get some? I’ll bring Ladimore along for safety and you can catch up with Dru.”

“Oh! Yes, that would be so helpful.”

“Drusilla, if you wouldn’t mind could you help Abby out with anything she needs while we are gone? As long as it’s reasonable, of course.”

Ladimore seemed to want to move around as much as I did, so it wasn’t any trouble getting her to come along. She followed my lead without any trouble. While we walked, I checked the new minor mission just in case.

Working the LoopCapture Antonio Perelli, traveling salesman.1 credit

I don’t think I’m going to bother. I think I might be able to capture people more efficiently with Lillibeth, but not only is that going to be very experimental, I also have her working on something more important right now. Oh yes, and he’s a guy; I believe I’ve mentioned my heterosexuality in the past? Having a dude declaring his love and adoration for me would just feel awkward. I would like to do more of these one credit missions, but they never seem to line up with my plans.

We found the briarthorn pretty easily with it marked on a map, and I put on those night watcher gauntlets I’d been given for spider murder. With the thick enchanted gloves, it wasn’t any trouble to gather up the thorny plant.

By the time we had gathered four good clumps of it and deposited them in my newly spacious inventory, Lividia was on the outskirts of Darkshire. Keryn and Darcell were in Goldshire as well, I noted. I sent Ladimore first, then as quickly as I could I changed over to Abercrombie and followed.

“Ah, Miss Ladimore. I trust it went well?” I was behind her. Hopefully she wouldn’t think too much of my sudden appearance.

She swung around, drawing her sword, before she saw me. Then she sighed. “Not particularly. We didn’t lose anyone but we didn’t accomplish much either.”

“Ah yes. That sounds like my nephew. He can be a bit erratic, but he almost always does what he sets out to do. Just give him a bit of patience.” Lividia’s hackles raised a bit; even hearing me badmouth myself in the slightest seemed to be irritating her.

Ladimore nodded glumly. “I’ll do my best. It’s just a bit frustrating.”

“I understand, but trust me. He grows on you. By the time you two have put your father to rest, you’ll wonder how you could have ever been so frustrated with him. I’ll contact you when he has more information, eh?” We parted ways, her alone and me with Lividia. I pulled out my amulet and called Darcell.“Headed back to Goldshire?”

“Yeah, Keryn says we need to sleep somewhere safe.” She sounded absolutely ragged, so I suppose she must be right.

“Well I’m going to see about sending someone to meet you two. Give him a few coins and point him towards Stormwind.”I then called Annetta and told her to send Jitters along to the spies. I assume she did so, she seemed eager enough to assist. “As far as you know, will you two be able to go on the raid?”

“Oh yes. All the Rampant Lions have been hired on to join. We can slip you and Drusilla in easily.” Rampant Lions? Must be what Auffrey was calling her little militia squad.

I’d have really liked to bring more people along, but Tony was isolated, both Keryn and Darcell were apparently taking the day off to rest, Lividia was obviously not a human when she fought, and even if she wasn’t likely to scare people, I had no idea how useful Lillibeth would be against a group of disciplined warriors. I just couldn’t bring any of them with me for an assault where we’d be cooperating with outsiders.

I arrived at Madame Eva’s house. She was already looking much better; she had lost her hunch completely, and her skin’s wrinkles had cleared up a bit. She still looked like an overly made up 60 year old woman, but one who was hale and hearty. “Abercrombie my friend. You are a wonder worker. The kids hardly recognize me from day to day, not to mention the people in town.” She laughed. “I might need to take you up on your deal; all my trade secrets hardly compare to this.”

“I’m happy to help. You asked to speak with me, according to Tessa. Did you have anything in mind or were you just lonely?”

“Come in for tea, then, we can discuss it there.” Lividia and I followed her into her home and I was surprised to see a young boy and a teenage girl at the table, poring over some books. “Tobias, Alyssa, you two put away your schoolwork and get to your rooms. Mister Abercrombie is here to visit, and we are going to speak of heavy topics. Shoo.”

The little boy dropped the book and ran off, not needing to be told twice. The girl, maybe 15, bowed to me before she left. “Thank you for the gift you gave grandmother. She’s been much happier the last few days.”

Eva smiled after her as she left, grabbing a book off of a shelf on the way into her own room. “Sweet girl.” I agreed. I sure as hell wasn’t that respectful of my elders at that age, magical de-aging or not.

Eva started puttering around, pulling out a few slices of bread and jam, and pouring two cups of tea. “I don’t remember you being such a ladies man, Abercrombie. It seems these days you are surrounded by beautiful young women. How many of them are secretly old biddies like me? It would make more sense if you were cheating that way.”

“Blame Otto, most of them came to me with him. Dashing explorers can have that effect on women.” Lividia took a cup of tea, but generally looked around the room, sniffing at things that looked magical to me. “Don’t mind Lividia, she is as young as she looks, and just here for my protection.”

“Well, I suppose Otto is the one I really need, but I only knew how to contact you. Danger seems to be pressing in on my family from all sides. I still cannot countenance a visit to Mary, so that danger remains, and another far more vile threat is coming for Alyssa. I consulted the cards, and her death is all but assured within a few weeks. Anything I could think to do to protect her seemed only to call her doom more quickly when I asked the cards. Anything but contacting you.”

Well that seemed bad, but also made sense that I’d be the most qualified to deal with it. Worst case scenario, I could just send her to Goldshire or Redridge and that would probably at least buy some time. “What can I do?”

“Your adventurous nephew might be able to protect her? I’m afraid all I can give you is a name, one which came to me in the dark of the night. Stalvan.” Oh. That was simple then.Stalvan Mistmantle was one of the most awful minor characters in Warcraft lore. He was an old schoolteacher who murdered a teenage girl for not being into him, and then came back as an intelligent undead afterwards. Apparently to kill other pretty, studious young girls.. Luckily, I remembered the bit of information that in game normally required a giant cross country quest chain. His last name.

“Do you know where the Mistmantle Estate is? I’ll just clear this up quickly.” I didn’t really have any interest in Alyssa; she was pretty but she was a pretty teenager. I didn’t need to start robbing cradles for a date; I had more game than that even in my old life. On the other hand, Stalvan wasn’t all that dangerous when he was against people that could fight back