Bookkeeping 2: The Bookening

5/14 morning

I woke up in my apartment with Lividia. Onyxia and her maids were all well and good, but I had a prime consort already. I went to the common room in Lakeshire for breakfast, called in Irma to take notes, and got to planning out my week. I’d get 21 necklaces over the course of the next week, so that was my budget for capture. Maybe I’d be a bit more efficient if I planned out where those went in advance.

Before I properly got into the list, I selected Talaada’s Spirit upgrade. Having another priest was just too good to pass up, and even if she remained mono-focused on holy, rather than discipline or shadow magic she will be a huge force multiplier.

Don’t Draw Nefarian’s attention

Nefarian, a powerful dragon who moonlights as a mad scientist, was definitely one of the more dangerous antagonists currently active in the world. He’d be overshadowed by old gods and liches in flying death fortresses before too long, but I definitely didn’t want to get into a fight with him before I was ready. Of course, I just fucked his sister, so a conflict is inevitable.

Nefarian was stronger than Onyxia in a straight fight, and an Omnidisciplinary scientist and mage. He has enough knowledge of every known form of magic to counter them and twist them to his own purposes; his signature mechanic in the game was to counter everyone of a given class once every thirty seconds or so. Forcing shapeshifting druids into a suboptimal form, aggressively one upping warlocks by summoning powerful demons, subverting the light so that it hurts instead of healing. On some level I was a bit scared that if he got his hands on one of my necklaces he’d be able to counter or subvert them somehow.

I needed to keep plausible deniability for anything I had Onyxia do, for now. So I couldn’t employ her in any conflict that might get back to Nefarian that she can’t explain away. I might be able to get away with having her fight in Duskwood, where she’d just be destroying tons of mindless zombies under cover of fog, but Redridge was a flat no. Even if I disguised her as a different dragon from one of the other dragonflights, that mysterious new dragon would probably draw far too much of his attention. Onyxia’s main job would be to keep her brother blissfully ignorant until I was ready for his attention, with a distant second being to covertly fix all of the problems she has caused.

Capture rich people

I had Dena now, and I was planning on capturing the Carevins. A few necklaces could go here. Enough for the Carevins and some nobles from Stormwind. That should ease up my money problems for a bit.

Capture the VIPs of Stormwind By this I meant Highlord Bolvar Fordragon, spymaster Matthias Shaw, Archbishop Benedictus, King Varian, and probably Anduin just for the sake of completion. All were badasses, though Varian and Anduin had qualifiers next to that descriptor.When Lo’Gosh, the strong willed half of Varian, showed up I would need to deal with him and my best plan there was to welcome him with open arms and a complementary necklace while quietly shuffling Onyxia and the weak willed Varian out of the way for a bit. Best to have everyone locked down well before then. These guys get at least one necklace per day.

Send some people to Lorderon for the Scarlet Crusade, Undercity, and High elves

Come to think of it, this isn’t a video game. I’m in a major port city. I could just charter a ship or ask around about where people are going. If I can just send people out on different ships to every port in Azeroth, I’d be golden. But who could I spare? It would need to be someone with a necklace or I’d just have someone thrown to the four winds and isolated from the rest of the retinue. Right now I think Tony, Tessa, Auffrey, and Yanca are the people in my retinue that are kinda just sitting around cooling their heels. I was thinking I could send Tony to Southshore, the nearest Alliance port to the Plaguelands, if there was a ship available. I only really needed to send one at a time; Tony could go with Caledra and I could send more people when he arrived, who could split off and go everywhere that they needed to. I could safely kick this can down the road a few days that way.

BartlebyI should probably be able to take care of him personally tonight. If I can’t, I’ll just wait for him to be captured and roll with that.

Murloc Trolling

I’d send Keryn; she had instigated a civil war with the gnolls so this should be totally within her skillset. Darcell has covert talent now, so sending her too would be an educational experience for her. She’d like that.

Martial Training

I might be able to get Varian to train me; if so, I’ll get to see if he retained all the technical skills as a warrior. If he is as badass as Varian should be and the only difference is his personality, maybe Onyxia could split more people in the future… no. No. Not getting distracted with what-ifs right now.

Magical Training with the light

I needed a Paladin or a priest to teach me. The Carevin patriarch could teach me the basics of being a Paladin; Onyxia might be able to get a necklace onto Archbishop Benedictus, and could definitely collar someone from the church stronger than Annetta. I could also ask around with the draenei to see if any of them were priests or paladins before. If so, that guy gets fast tracked into the first and second rank of initiation. Even if they aren’t interested in joining initially.

Magical training with warlock club

I’m 80% to 90% sure Drusilla has collared a higher ranking warlock for this purpose. She should be captured tomorrow morning; I can have a meeting with her then and start some intensive studies and experimentation.

Meet and figure out what the hell to do with Zelena

She was going to be captured at around noon today. I’d want to at least call her and have a chat. Once that’s done, I’ll need to figure out where to go from there. I might want to wait until I have Ursula around to actually bind Zelena to me. I’m gonna just set aside a few necklaces and a stamp for her. I don’t know what her day to day life is like, but the stamp is strictly for the highest ranked demon she gets to talk to with any frequency. If I could get a dreadlord or something, I’d be a happy camper.

Capture/experiment on the inventory waifus

Not going to let these people keep clogging up my inventory. I have two orc warriors and four elite Defias warriors in my pocket and I really need to get them out. If nothing else, I can put more people in at some point. Hopefully not for as long. Ok. New rule. If I have people in my inventory then the first thing I do in the morning is collar one of them. Starting tomorrow.

Experiment with demonology

Gonna just fold this one in with learning how to be a better warlock. Probably the first thing to do once I have Ursula as a resource will be to start asking weird theoretical questions like “what happens if a demon turns into another kind of demon while under my control,” “how many demons could I command if I had the ability to ensure their honest personal loyalty to me?” and of course “so what actually happens when a demon under my control dies?” I’d need to buy a couple rats or chickens or something, too.

Build up the Brotherhood of Love and Beauty

They were mostly autonomous at this point, though I was about to send them on their first real mission: Hunting for Kaarsh. If the mages did their jobs, I’d have a whole community of dragons that look like draenei before long. After that, recruitment could pick up. Either voluntarily or through abduction of the more paranoid among the lost ones, for their own good you see. If I have time I’ll look into that. I’ll be keeping at least Mary with them, as long as they are still getting new recruits. She seems happy there. I’ll just have to pop in every day or two for a quick pep talk and to accept new oaths of love.

Crush Morbent Fel

I don’t know what Morbent Fel’s plans are for the long term. I don’t really want to know. He’s raising armies of undead which have a kill on sight order for intruders, he drops some pretty good loot in the form of a ghostly mantle, and nobody is likely to care if he dies. He seems unambiguously bad and the only reason I haven’t killed him yet is that I didn’t have anything on my payroll that had a plausible chance of ripping apart an entire army of skeletons. Onyxia can most likely take him down even with his shield distributing harm throughout his entire army, given a bit of support.

He will go at the end of the week I think; any extra time I happen to have can go towards prepping for this assault. I’ll draw up a full plan and implement it when I can. I suspect the next few days will be pretty busy. I could probably get the ogres in on that, the Raven Hill girls should be part of the plan, with Stitches in tow, and I might bring the nether dragons along to screen for Onyxia.

Redridge

The Rampant Lions are the biggest slaves to PR I have working for me. They are a pretty normal mercenary band with a few mages mixed in, and are directly fighting the Blackrock Orcs, who are Nefarian’s pawns. Of course, they also have the most legitimacy of anyone save the Stormwind army, which is stretched thin and I only have a very loose handle on.

I’ll probably keep Annetta, Tessa, Irma, and Drusilla there any time I don’t have other uses for them. Talaada would be joining in and spreading the Cult of Love among the Lions while becoming just as good a priest as Annetta.

Maybe I could have some of the nether dragons target the gnolls occasionally? Or the rogues, once they finish with the murloc. I needed to actually plan out a campaign there, whether or not I’m the one who implements it. I got the feeling that Irma would be able to handle it if I explained the plan. If nothing else I kinda wanted to finish the amulet collection mission.

Consolidate power in Westfall

I may have Edwin as of this morning, but I needed to see what was going on in the Deadmines and give Vanessa more necklaces. At minimum I probably needed people like Captain Greenskin, Sneed, and Mr. Smite to be captured. I’d toss Vanessa one necklace per day for as long as she thought she needed them. She was a smart girl; she could make it work with a budget like that.

In addition, I wanted to see who The Company considered a worthy target without Edwin leading the Defias, and what they would pay me to capture or kill them.

Capturing Worgen

I had an extremely powerful necromancer and her two greatest masterpieces basically hanging out on a haunted farm making me healing potions and generally just being sexy graveyard bisexuals. This is all well and good, but I needed to start capturing worgen and experimenting on them in horrible ways for science. These two nerds were the only people I had in the area with a background in alchemy and a basement full of iron cages.

Networking in Eastern Kingdoms

I could probably send someone to Ironforge by tram to plant a necklace on someone. Anyone would do, really. After that, she could go to that town in Dun Morogh… Kharanos, according to my map. Put a necklace on someone there, and then either she or someone else in the retinue could tag in and go to Loch Modan. I could let Kam Deepfury loose, and he’d make his way back to Blackrock Mountain eventually. Plus, once I had a few people in dwarf territory I could do a few minor missions and see if any soft targets popped up.

I was thinking Auffrey, accompanied by Prudence. If Lillibeth possessed her for a few days, the real Prudence would be healed and returned to active duty. Definitely worth the loss of Lillibeth for a few days, if those days are still productive on her part.

Networking in Kalimdor

Onyxia regularly goes back to her lair, which is relatively close to several settlements in Kalimdor. I can almost certainly have her drop off a few people either at her lair or at the edge of the swamp. Yanca, or just me.

So, my preliminary schedule would be…

5/14Go check in with the Defias, as Edwin should be fully captured as of this morningCollar Varian and one of my prisoners. Last necklace goes to Vanessa.Investigate ships, get Tony on one that’s headed north.Send Auffrey and Lillibeth to Ironforge and Khaz ModanSend the Draenei out to hunt dragonsChat with Zelena if there is timeFinish the Bartleby jobDispatch Keryn to the swamp with Darcell as backup

5/15Carevin, prisoner, IronforgeBinding Zelena with Ursula’s helpExperimenting with turning Mezzo into a satyrGiving Zelena the stampHelping to hunt the dragonspawn if he’s not caught yet, otherwise Warlock 102Checking in with the Raven Hill girls once stitches is capturedSee if I can book Varian for some combat training

5/16Shaw, theramore, VanessaTrain with UrsulaCheck in with the Brotherhood of LoveStrategize for Morbent FelExperiment with accelerating capture of prisonersTransfer ownership of dragonspawnVisit theramore and collar someone.Train with Varian

5/17Rich noble, prisoner, KharanosTrain with UrsulaPrepare for Morbent felStatus check in Westfall.Train with Varian

5/18Bolvar, demons, VanessaTrain with UrsulaTake down Morbent FelAssess situation, plan for next goal.

5/19Powerful Priest, prisoner, VanessaStart capturing Worgen to experiment on

Ok. That’s… workable. Should cover the next few days productively, and the second half of the week has some wiggle room. I doubt it’ll all go exactly as planned, but at least now I have a default I can deviate from.