Menrim’s Journal – Hiji

After finally sailing away from the Isle of Giants, I knew I was finally swimming away from Pandaria. Accordingly with all the maps I had of the area, I was entering a wide expanse of water with very few possible stops – no large islands, no significant naval trade routes. This particular corner of the South Seas lied completely on the fringe of civilization. My people have never sailed so far east. The Pandaren very rarely ventured beyond their mists. Humans were mostly frightened of this distant, empty sea, being told from childhood stories about islands full of giants and monsters and about mystical, distant lands full of forgotten warlocks who will share their magic with you for the price of your soul. Some of those stories can be quite captivating, in the hands of the right person, but ultimately they are all fiction. Although there are tiny islands with forgotten treasures and mysteries, they are very rare, and in the different part of the sea.

After long hours on the empty sea with a wind just strong enough to keep pushing me towards the Eastern Kingdoms, I noticed an island on the horizon. Judging from its size and relative location, it must have been what was described in our records as “Hiji”, an island reputedly populated by a particularly vicious breed of trolls who constantly war with a race of aquatic creatures. However, as humans visiting Uldum reported, the trolls are almost extinct and the aquatic creatures, the murlocs, are hunted down by a multi-racial faction called “Bloodsail Buccaneers”. Our visitors assured us the Bloodsail Buccaneers are as vicious, or more, as the trolls that lived there before, but we dismissed it as simply demonizing their enemy.

Upon being blown closer to the island, I was immediately spotted by three small ships which corrected their course towards me. The group of people consisted mostly of humans, but a few were trolls, orcs and goblins and there was even one ogre and one murloc. They were most perplexed by my existence, one of the humans citing that he only read about in books about creatures like me – but most of them were completely uneducated and thought I escaped from “the Island of Doctor Lapidis”, wherever that is. I thought I would be taken captive, or worse, by these people but then the most unlikely person rescued me. A couple of salvos landed in the water nearby and I noticed an ogre juggernaut. The smaller ships immediately fled and the juggernaut swam closer. To my surprise, there was only a lone ogre on board, and he wasn’t a pirate.

The lone ogre was named Lunk and was quite a friendly sort, unlike most ogres I met or heard about before. He shared food and stories with me, but as much as I would have loved his company, I had to insist on leaving as my new employer was expecting me. If the day wasn’t surprising enough, it turned out the ogre was an employee of the same arakkoa and at my demand sent a message to Verroak Krasha through an odd device, telling him about my whereabouts. Departing on good terms, I decided to quickly dock at a distant part of Hiji to gather some tropical fruits and game for further voyage. I am now again on my way towards the Eastern Kingdoms and hopefully will reach my destination soon.

To be continued