Blowing Off Steam and Preparing for War

5/5 Evening

The Mistmantle Estate was not hard to find. The road leading to it was in bad condition and no longer patrolled, but Manor Mistmantle was the only building of its size due north of Darkshire. Lividia and I landed on top of the building, where we saw a large number of ghouls capering around the fallow field.

Abby would be pleased if we grabbed some ribs; she’d had difficulty containing her annoyance when I’d told her that we’d killed six ghouls and she didn’t have anything to show for it. I wasn’t sure where Stalvan was, but apparently he could raise undead minions for himself? I assumed he wasn’t affiliated with Morbent Fel, anyway. He really did seem to be such a massive dick that in an area infused with dark magic he naturally just stood up after death and started stalking teenagers.

I summoned Mezzo, and we started harassing the ghouls, hoping to draw out Stalvan himself. Lividia showed me how to breathe fire, but honestly I preferred to smite and immolate them from a distance. Fire breath required I be fairly close, and I wasn’t really up to trick flying. My companions were just slightly too into it, to be perfectly honest. Mezzo was laughing maniacally while raining fire from on high, and Lividia settled into a pattern of dive bombing the ghouls that were trying to climb the sides of the house, her own peals of psychotic laughter ringing out with every impact.

They were fairly basic ghouls, and had no options for ranged attacks. Except for jumping, but they weren’t hard to dodge if I just flew a bit higher. It felt so goddamn good to just wreak one sided havoc on a group of enemies. When Stalvan came out of his home, recognizable primarily because he was wearing clothing and was not a ghoul, we jumped him and he went down from a bombardment of immolation, smites, firebolts, and swooping attacks.

That’s when I faced my only reprisal for the night; he pointed his blade at me and I felt an overwhelming feeling of dirtiness and weakness all over my draconic body. It was unpleasant, impossible to ignore, and generally just very distracting.

He was dead though, and soon I was gathering his minions rib cages, along with anything remotely valuable on his person or in his house. There were a lot of modestly valuable looking nicknacks, but I don’t think much of it was particularly magical or useful. I gathered it up anyway. I had a notification on my app when I opened it to go to Auffrey’s room, quite pleased with myself.

Achievement Unlocked: I’ll do it for fuckin free.Do something of equivalent difficulty to a moderate mission with no expectation of reward.Reward: mission reward tooltips

I snorted at that. It was nice to get the recognition and I had very much been wanting the reward. I wondered if it was personalized for me? If not this was an absolutely awful place to put such a vital UI upgrade. I ordered Lividia to go back to the shack and follow Abby’s orders until I got back; hell, if she wanted to learn intro to necromancy I’d be down for it. Then again, I’m pretty sure nobody learns any form of magic in one day without soul talent.

I looked through the tool tips on the missions I currently had. The Medallion of the Alliance was almost exactly what I remembered from WoW, a medal that would free the wearer from most forms of physical or magical restraints. Basically anything that would rob the wearer of their autonomy. Archeus, Morgan Ladimore’s sword in life, was a very powerful magical greatsword that could blast anything it hit with arcane power, which was enough to shatter stone; bluntly useful, assuming I had anyone that knew how to use giant swords effectively. A bit confusing though; did that mean he wasn’t buried with it? Was I getting a copy of it, or was the Company just saving me the trouble of tracking it down or digging it up?

The shroud of shadows for killing Morbent Fel was the shroud binding, including an upgrade to the elemental “burial shroud” which gave it a large number of additional bonuses and powers, except that it could only bind to one member of my retinue. I could also use it to capture someone, to whom it would bind in the process, but it was such a powerhouse of an upgrade I wasn’t sure if I wanted to give it to someone I wasn’t already attached to. Maybe I’d even take it for myself.

Auffrey was alone when I teleported into her tent, brushing her long red hair, so I let fade drop. “Hey Auffrey. The assault is tomorrow, right?” She kept brushing, but reoriented her mirror so she could see me.

“Why yes, Erich. Were you planning on assisting or did you intend to drop another vagrant in our laps?” She seemed a bit testy at that.

“Drusilla and I will be joining the fight, if at all possible. What’s the trouble? You sound irritated.”

“Anetta was a nightmare for the last few days. You gave her a task, caring for that Jitters man. Getting her to do anything else at all required that we go to every length imaginable to see to his comfort while she was away.” Oops.

“My mistake. Sorry, I just have a limited number of personnel and it seemed like an easy job.”

“It was. Unfortunately, you gave it to someone who appears to see service in your name as the highest calling. Further, that someone was the only healer I have at my disposal.”

“Maybe contact me about this kind of thing in the future? You don’t have to sit around waiting for me to come to you.”

She blushed. “I didn’t want to be a bother.”

“Alright, mistakes all around. Let’s call it a wash. Anything I need to know about the situation?”

She stopped blushing at that, switching to business mode as she stood up and pulled out a map. “We have three objectives in the assault. The death of Tharil’zun, who leads their raiding bands, Gath’Ilzogg, who is the warlord in command of the orcs, and retaking Stonewatch Keep itself. Ideally we will do all three, but the Magistrate believes that if we weaken their defenses by killing their leaders, the gnolls may come to see the orcs as a softer target than us. That would let us regroup and try again, or refocus our efforts on securing the mines.

“Okay. So that is the objective, what’s the plan? I assume we aren’t just all grouping up and hitting things until they die.”

“Ah. Well, the Rampant Lions have been hired to assault from the south while the local forces assault from the north. We aren’t as elite or numerous a force, so they had us make the attack from the less guarded direction. We will be timing it to happen at approximately the same time from both sides.” She pulled out a glass rod that had a glowing bead moving almost imperceptibly from one end to the other. “This will chime at roughly dawn, and that is when we attack.”

“Simple, but it sounds like it could work. Also, Rampant Lions?”

“It’s a reference to the Lions of Stormwind. I made a speech comparing us to lions that had woken up and were on the hunt, and apparently the only part of it the men really latched onto was when I called us rampant lions. They rallied around the name so I didn’t have the heart to change it.”

“Oh yeah you started hiring people; how many of us will be in the assault group?”

She looked smug as she informed me that our assault team would be twelve people, including Drusilla and myself. Not bad; my girls were tough but we weren’t so much stronger than the normal militia that having 8 extra bodies in the field would be unwelcome. I’d need to keep those guys alive; a blood bath would be very bad for morale. Once again I cursed that I couldn’t bring more of my people along. Even Keryn and Darcell would have been extremely welcome additions to the team, but if I could have gotten away with it I’d have been thrilled to bring all of my weird and esoteric girlfriends along to the party.

I checked Tessa’s timestamp and confirmed that she wouldn’t be captured until the afternoon. Unless this was a very long battle, unlikely for a combat where a group of 12 people was the entire flanking force, Tessa wasn’t going to be here for any of it. Fuckin timers.

“There’s one last thing. I need a specific orc alive at the end of the assault.” I explained to her the parameters for Blackrock and Roll. “If we can keep him alive, by any means, then our forces will be one orc stronger and I’ll have just a bit more credit with the source of my necklaces.”

She gave an exasperated sigh. “I suppose I can give the men orders to allow the orcs to flee, and to take prisoners where possible.” Her comment about prisoners gave me an idea.

“If we all stick together, Drusilla and I can grab anyone who is downed and neutralize them. Then I can turn them over for questioning or execution or what have you.” Exceptions for any of them that I was impressed by, or any remotely attractive women, of course. The militia had been one thing, but now I had an actual authentic necromancer’s basement to shove prisoners into. Blackrock soldiers would probably be a bit more valuable than modestly equipped militia. Don’t look at me like that, I’ll totally follow through this time.

“Are you going to bed soon? Care for some company? I didn’t bring my own.” She gave me an amused look.

“I suppose I should, I’m just a bit antsy. I’ve never led a team to battle before.” I led her to her sleeping mat, and I helped her relax as well as I could.

••••••••••

Vanessa was irritated as she went to bed at the farmstead. Her scouts had gone to Raven Hill to look into Otto’s whereabouts, and found relatively little. They suspected the old hermit on the north edge of town might know something, but apparently someone had kicked the hornets' nest.

A goblin alchemist they had occasionally traded with had been killed when a troop of skeletons had gone door to door, thoroughly searching each building. She’d marked his house to be looted; no need for his materials and research to be lost as well as his life. It was fairly likely the hermit was dead too; by all accounts he was an old man that survived by keeping a low profile, but Vanessa intended to look into his well-being personally. Professional courtesy; she’d heard he was an alchemist. Packs of ghouls were roaming the forest at this point, killing anything living they encountered. She’d lost two scouts, and pulled back anyone left who couldn’t use Stealth proficiently.

If she’d run the length and breadth of the kingdom only to find that this jackass had gotten himself killed by a mass of undead that mostly kept to themselves, Vanessa was going to be very cross with Mr. Westfall.