Finding his place

Well, well, I haven’t written on this myself for a while now. Partially because there wasn’t much happening. Actually, now that I think of it, there were things happening. Not all of them I can recall at moment’s notice, such is my memory at my age, but most recently I decided I needed to exert some more direct control over this rift. I mean, I now have some interest in the Draenor I could find on the other side and the exit suddenly drifting away from it would be most unfortunate. So against my better judgment, I decided to use the services of an ethereal I knew, Shazaad, to find a way to control the rift better.

I cannot complain about Shazaad’s knowledge. I can complain about his recklessness and the kind of people he has already consorted with using the knowledge he gathered here, but that’s not the topic here. He re-purposed a Naaru device that controls their interdimensional drive to connect it to my rift. With that device, I was finally able to control exactly where the rift’s exit is placed. The ethereal claims I can even relocate it to other dimensions, but I haven’t tried that, not wanting to risk losing contact with the alternate Draenor.

What I did try, was finding new places on that other Draenor and sending some people to reclaim some goods I might need. For example, when I was recently recovering some debts from Shattrath, my people ran into Sal’salabim’s people and I had to send Yu Gwai to… convince Sal’salabim to let it go. Gornn put a bet that Sal’salabim would win and lost a “shiny rock”. As it turned out, the rock was a key to an Apexis vault.

As soon as I could, I sent Yu Gwai, Riktal and two of my Greenheart goons to Gorgrond to look for one such vault – one I knew should be there. The other Draenor is different, but not that different. The first mission was a success, although one of the Greenhearts brought back a goren egg I had to dispose of quickly – goren are the last thing we would want on Azeroth. As if murlocs and virmen weren’t enough. Thanks to their success, I was able to equip my Apexis golems with real, authentic Apexis power cores. Now they work like an Apexis golem should.

It’s the second mission that was a bigger problem. I might have made a wrong team composition, as I sent Menrim (not a combatant, at all), Hwarne (a squishy rogue) and two other Greenhearts. Menrim is normally rather… combat agnostic, and here I had to disguise him as a saberon. He just couldn’t make it, walking on two legs and had to use a cane. With the cane and his ceremonial robe he didn’t make a very convincing saberon. If that wasn’t enough, they stumbled upon the forces of Dionor, a genesaur I heard of some time ago, Dionor podlings unfortunately overwhelmed the group I sent and they came running back to the rift.

Everything seemed to calm down since then, but one of the Greenhearts started behaving oddly. He became aggressive, I mean more aggressive than a regular ex-Defias, and finally started convulsing and yelling in the language of the Primals. I called Mehrzad to heal him, but he couldn’t do anything. (Oh yeah, Mehrzad, the djinn I hired as a healer… should have mentioned him before) Then we decided to call on Aeresham. We weren’t convinced he would even help us, but he did try to separate the Fara infection from the human. For the whole night he worked and although at one point the human looked like he was healed, everything changed in the morning.

Suddenly vines and bark exploded all over the human and he became a full on Fara… or just an infested, these Fara keep confusing me. He broke down the door and ran straight to the exit of the grove. I was afraid he would start spreading his disease across Azeroth, but Aeresham stood in his way. The infected Greenheart accused him of being a traitor and all that, but Aeresham tried to convince the Fara otherwise – that Draenor and the Primals are gone, that they have to realize that and find a new way. Well, the Fara refused and they began to fight. I’m not good at describing fights, so I’ll just say Aeresham destroyed the other Primal.

I decided he finally proved his new loyalty and gave him back the freedom to move around. He still mostly doesn’t leave the herb garden, which I suppose isn’t all that surprising considering he’s a plant. I saw Menrim talk to him earlier and I think they like each other. He still doesn’t like Gornn, the whole Primals and Breakers thing probably. And I think he likes Mehrzad, after the latter summoned a rain on the herb garden. Yu Gwai is still bitter about that noodle incident he preferred to forget. Hwarne, or Tak-Tak, or my mages… they’re avoiding him so far. And they may have good reasons. But I’ll trust him now… to a degree.