Swamp Time
5/12 afternoon
To my shock and delight, Lillibeth and Mary had a far more successful hunt today. They had found a family unit of five, two male and three female, that was curious; apparently one of yesterday’s captures had friends. Mary had waxed poetic about the healing power of love and beauty; apparently she was really buying into the Brotherhood line. Lillibeth on the other hand identified that the father was just about feral, and quietly influenced his vulnerable mind.
When I returned to the hut, I found the five new recruits being eagerly welcomed with gifts of food and drink, generally getting love bombed like a proper batch of cult initiates. I hadn’t had to instruct the Draenei to do that; it was just a natural outgrowth of the almost universal niceness you found among Draenei. Culturally they valued kindness and they lived a very long time, so even the most unpleasant Draenei would at least try to be polite and friendly on a surface level. Combined with an absolute certainty that joining up would be nothing but beneficial to these five, they were doing absolutely everything they could to keep them around. I went through an initiation ceremony with the two parents, graciously accepting their love (and eternal submission). While my ghosts recovered, I spent a couple hours with the draenei, getting a feel for what was rapidly becoming the largest faction I had under my control.
I was quite amused to see one of the girls from yesterday sitting very close to the son of the new family, flirting for all she was worth. She wasn’t much to my eyes, but he was clearly extremely flustered and excited. Whenever his eyes strayed to Mary, it was clear that he found her far more beautiful, but she was a beautiful spirit of light that he had no chance with. Kid, take that girl up on her offer and soon she will look just like that. Or she’d look like a different species; the younger generation seemed much less attached to their identity as Draenei. Still almost certainly going to be hot as hell.
The differences between the generations became incredibly clear once everlasting talent kicked in. Everlasting talent protected you from the fog of ages, which apparently meant dredging up every skill you have ever cultivated and putting you back at your peak. The elders had decades, sometimes centuries of experience to draw upon. Dremuus, a former member of the Rangari scouts, moved like a hunting cat and brought back enough prey to feed the whole group of ten alone, with a bit to spare. Norin had been the closest thing to a housewife one could find among the draenei, but with hundreds of years of life experience that meant that she had cultivated dozens of special interests and practiced dozens of odd jobs. She wasn’t a master at anything, but she seemed proficient at cooking, tailoring, leatherworking, fletching, farming, arcane magic, glassmaking, and masonry at least; she had some big plans for the commune already. Personally, I thought they might want to move out of the swamp and onto more stable ground like the Harborage had, but I wasn’t going to micromanage. I just tossed out the suggestion.
The youths were like Talaada. They were competent at hunting, they understood the swamp intimately, and their newly expanded minds were hungry to learn, but they were completely uneducated and tended to be bad at expressing themselves or anything remotely intellectual. Their skillsets were narrowly focused on survival, and most seemed only vaguely aware that there was anything outside of the swamp. Lividia seemed to like these ones more, amusingly. They had a hunger for knowledge and growth that she called “very human.”
••••••••••
Long term I wanted to get in good with the green dragonflight. Of the five major colors of dragon, they were one of the more proactive and their leader’s chosen mortal form was a smoking hot night elf; unfortunately they were dealing with a fairly dangerous bit of dark magic fuckery called the Emerald Nightmare, which I very importantly didn’t know much about.Oh sure, I knew the name of the guy ultimately responsible; Xavius, the first Satyr. I knew that it was some kind of wiggity dark corruptive magic in the Emerald Dream, the pure nature dimension where green dragons and druids got their power. That’s basically it, though; total broad strokes. I think that storyline got resolved eventually, but only some time after I stopped playing.
If I tried to endear myself to the green dragons and the Cenarian Circle by working to counter the Nightmare, I’d be picking a fight with something I have essentially no foreknowledge of. That terrified me in a way that Abercrombie or Onyxia, characters I knew quite a lot about, never could. That being said, I could at least start chipping away at it in small ways without making myself a target, right?
The green Dragons were usually pretty chill and benevolent when they were in their right minds, so as a rule of thumb any green dragon that tries to kill you on sight is corrupted by the Nightmare. That gives me a moral imperative to capture them, right? I knew you’d agree with me. I’m saving lives here, maybe even souls.
I summoned Keryn, and explained the plan. She would scout ahead, and when she saw a dragon, we’d all be able to jump it and get a necklace around its neck. We would try to find a small one. She gave me a skeptical look and suggested that I give her a necklace; she would handle it.
I figured it couldn’t hurt, and just handed her one of today’s necklaces; a silver chain with a ruby pendant. The other option was an outright collar, also silver and ruby, and seemed like it would be harder to snap around someone’s neck quickly.
We went stalking through the muck to the western bank of the Pool of Tears. Lividia and I flitted from tree to tree, and I tried to keep track of Keryn as she used stealth. It seemed like a similar effect to when I used fade; while she was sneaking very well, she also actually became supernaturally harder to notice for anyone who didn’t already know where she was. It definitely seemed more practical, what with not blinding her in the process.
We did find a whelp eventually, hovering through the air on flapping wings. Some instinctive part of my dragon brain had a quick consultation with communication talent and confirmed it was a male, several years older than Lividia; closer to my age and size. Strangely, his eyes were completely closed. His body was covered in dried, caked on gore and muck, and he seemed only loosely aware of his surroundings. He was sleepwalking; well, sleep flapping.
Keryn snuck up behind him, holding the necklace like a garrote. I realized what she was doing, and opened up my retinue page. Once the necklace was around its neck, I’d input a punishment trigger that would paralyze him.
It was not to be. He was clearly not relying on eyesight, and Keryn was not used to sneaking in swampy environments. Even with stealth, a misstep into some mud made a barely audible squelching sound. The whelp, apparently on a hair trigger, turned on her and immediately let fly with a spray of bright green acid breath. I managed to absorb some of it with a Shield word, but I heard a muted grunt of pain. Lividia had been anticipating this moment with supreme excitement and dove for the emerald dragon twice her size.
He was caught off guard, so she got in the first blow and smashed him into the ground. He immediately responded with a mad flurry of claws. There was no self preservation or thought to it, just wild slashing at his assailant. I jumped in; Lividia and I both assumed our visages and we were able to pin him down with our greater weight; face down so he couldn’t spray at us. Keryn stepped up and wrapped the necklace around his neck, and I took one hand off of him long enough to input “attacking a sentient being” with paralysis.
He went limp, and we hauled him off. I opened a door into my new apartment and tossed him into an empty closet; I locked him in. The moment I closed and locked the door, I heard a thumping noise from the other side, but I figured it wouldn’t be anything worse than a bit annoying. Even if someone let him out, he’d be paralyzed if he tried to hurt anyone. I let out a deep breath and went to take a bath. That was enough swamp time for the day, I thought.