Back in my element

For the longest time, I’ve been stuck on this groundling world with no way out, nor any way to meet more of my kind. All I had were these unfamiliar, strange people and too often I had to even pretend I’m something different. And now I’m in luck, because Krasha managed to open a portal to another world, one more familiar to me. I mean, it was just gnomes at first, and I don’t really like them (who does?) but it was the Gnadra Confederacy. Finally, I was back in a familiar territory. I would run back to my homeworld using this opportunity but I actually managed to get a well-paying job here, with the opportunity to use the knowledge that would have been useless on Wawhira, but to my present employer it’s gold. I’m back out of “miraculous trader” and into “interstellar guide”!

It’s been some time since we returned from that mission to the “pie” planet – only gnomes would name a world something so dumb. After a while boss tells us we need to help them with an evacuation. You see, when a planet orbits a red dwarf at a distance allow for humanoid habitation, the planet gets tidally locked, meaning one side will be always facing the sun, and the other will be bathed in unending night. That also means that half the planet is infernally hot, and the other half is cold and dark. Life is only possible on the “terminator”, a thin line separating the two halves. And the Gnadra gnomes had their outpost on that terminator. The danger that comes with living on that planet is the dark side becoming host to various nasty creatures and occasional “void storms” – fronts of dark energy blowing through the terminator. That’s what was happening on T3H-P1E at the time – a nasty, huge void storm which prompted them to evacuate all the grav miners to the ship.

When I, Menrim, Ballough and Gornn turned up at the site, the situation was far worse than we expected. I mean, the storm still wasn’t there yet, but I could tell from the clouds it was going to be bad. So, you know, this gnome pops up and says he will lead us into the mine to rescue a trapped grav foreman. Apparently unable to lesser the rocks’ weight on his own, we had to go in and bury him out of the collapsed mine shafts. Why were they collapsed? Well, you see, what the good captain failed to mention was that there were still creatures from the previous void storm down there, which started interfering with the operation when the new storm started brewing. And we, of course, had to fight them.

It wasn’t too problematic. Just your usual angry void creature that keeps leaving on the ground highly visible signs of where it’s going to lay a devastating attack. Although it killed the redshirt and could sink quite a lot of spells and stabs from my daggers, it finally landed a hit on Gornn (go figure that mass of mindless flesh wouldn’t avoid an attack like that) which prompted the gronn to go nuts. He started slapping the ground, which somehow made spikes come out of it and attack everything on their path, which included the void wraith, as well as (nearly) Ballough’s foot and the back of my shoe. Anyway, it was destroyed and we went deeper, finding a collapsed wall, from under which we heard groans.

Without much problem, Gornn dug the grav foreman up and we helped him out of the mine shaft. Of course, he had to run off once or twice to help his miners with fleshfiends. I hate escort quests. Unfortunately, by the time we left the mine, the void storm has already reached the area. It’s quite a picture, you know. These bolts of shadow energy fall down from the clouds and wherever they land, they either do damage, or spawn nasty void creatures. In some places, shadowy tentacles began appearing from under the ground due to all the shadow energy in the area. So we had to run. And I’m far from the best person at running. The grav cast his magic that made him jump like he was on a moon, Menrim ran like hell on his four legs, and I was left to waddle behind everyone. I sometimes wish my legs were a bit longer.

As soon as we got on board, the ship began firing up the engines to leave. With us on board, you know. So the others started freaking out, that they wanted to go home, that they wanted to take part in some stupid beer holiday, that they wanted to be big again (Gornn was using some gnomish gadget to shrink down)… I was willing to wait a while – after all, I was more at home here than I ever was there. But then, get it, this Sprocket guy tells us there’s a squawking Void God down there and the shadow energy levels became lethal, so we had no chance to leave the ship. The captain quickly ordered the Nether engines to engage, and we went off into open space.

For quite some time, we were cut off from Krasha, because those “gnomecorders” we’re using to communicate with him do not work in the Twisting Nether. But as soon as we got a safe distance away, we dropped out of the Nether to make some repairs from the damage the Venture suffered in the void storm. In that time, Menrim informed the boss about the situation and we just stayed aboard. Ballough was getting crazy because they wouldn’t let him drink beer on board and I was allowed to eat a bunch of apples, but otherwise everything went smoothly. Soon afterwards, the ship was back in flight to Darfell.

Before long, we reached Darfell. It’s an interesting world. I’ve never been there, really, I always lived in a different corner of the Galaxy, but I heard a lot about it. It’s a neutral trading world situated between major stellar empires. There’s a race of humanoids with some orca-like features native to the planet, called darfellans, and though they technically rule the planet, they allow traders of other races come and go. When the ship got in orbit, we teleported down to the planet right into one of those large markets. Almost immediately, a slave trader named Big Ahuora wanted to buy Gornn (I guess they never saw anything like him out there), and Ballough went gallavanting off looking for a bar. Well, I went with him, because I needed some sugar.

We found a rather seedy looking bar. I wouldn’t have went into that, but Ballough insisted, so we did. Get this, the owner and barkeep is a nathrezim called “Pope” and his waitress is a succubus. I never asked for a backstory on them getting there, but the dwarf of course had to order “their strongest ale”. So they gave him the Blood of Sargeras. No, not an actual blood of actual Sargeras. It’s just a green ale allegedly from some distant world near the Legion sector. However, it is famed for having quite the kick – even the hardest drinking people can get knocked out from drinking one full mug of it. Ballough just took a few gulps and was immediately completely smashed. I tried to get him out of there as soon as I could to avoid embarrassments, but it took some time. If that wasn’t enough, as we left three giffs attempted to mug us, but luckily Gornn dealt with them.

We returned to find Sprocket, so that he could make a portal back to Azeroth for us. Somehow his people killed a nerubian in that time, but we didn’t ask for explanations. We just went into his portal with gratitude and information on both how to contact them, and the coordinates for Darfell for future contact with this world. We turned up at the former site of Theramore and Ballough of course started being riotous from all that alcohol and the local mayor had to apprehend us personally. We quickly left with a portal from Podric and went back home. I hear though that Krasha made some contacts on Darfell already. Hopefully he will soon have use of my expertise again.