Fake dragons and brains on legs

Usually when you call someone a dragon, it means they’re a large, flying, fire-breathing lizard. And when you call someone brain on legs it’s quite the opposite – you do not imagine an actual brain on actual legs. What my people found on Ivarind was of course the opposites of what they expected. I knew things about Ivarind ever since I contacted that Bolivia on Darfell. She sent me some information about her world, but so far it was only words on paper for me. When I had the Aperusei business dealt with, I started scouting Ivarind to see more of it on my own, or rather through the Eye of Terokk. And you know, Ivarind is a world that has never had contact with demons, so they were freaked out when they saw a floating eye on the streets. After some of that scouting I decided it’s time to send my nephew on a mission. Oh yeah, the nephew. I never wrote about him.

So really, I do not have a nephew. Rukhotak and Isha died before they could have any children, and Tarakan like me never had any. For different reasons, though – although I tried with four different wives, he never really did. I don’t even know if he really spent a night with anyone in his life. But, in a different timeline, he did and the female he was with laid three eggs after a one-night stand. Two of the eggs never hatched, but one did. That alternate Tarakan returned to the child’s mother and named his son Orkan, after our father. Unfortunately, he died soon afterwards by the hands of some felguard, leaving little Orkan as the last Krasha of his timeline. After a discussion between the Timewalkers, my Tarakan offered to get that Orkan to our timeline, to save him from unavoidable death in an Azeroth that was shattered into pieces by Gul’dan. Having already allowed at least two other temporal refugees, they allowed Tarakan to bring that Orkan to our timeline. Of course, he sent him to me. At first I thought, what am I, a babysitter? But turns out the boy is already 21, so all I have to do is show him how to do business.

I’m sending him to do all kinds of stuff. Running errands, selling things, accounting, chemistry – tutoring is tutoring. If he’s staying here, one day he will be the last hope of our family to propagate. He’s probably as clever as any Krasha, but I think he’s lazy. Sometimes I have to call out to him for ours to get him to do his job. I waited more than half an hour when I sent him yesterday on his first off-world mission – the aforementioned mission to Ivarind. I sent with him Yu Gwai, Aeresham, ‘Gath and the hedge wizard, whatever his… her name is. But of course, the rift exit parameters have a slight variation if you don’t know the numbers to the one thousandth part of a unit, so instead of near the castle, they landed in a field.

When they left the field, they found its owner, a peasant who was surprised to see them. Before he could make a show from the strange visitors, he noticed Aeresham and took him for some “woodling” – maybe that’s what the botani are called on Ivarind, as I heard they do live there. The peasant panicked and my people quickly left before he could cause trouble. After some time looking through the countryside, they found a sign pointing to the town they were meant to land in and finally went there. Luckily, the local duke’s bannermen realized who they were and invited them to the castle.

Oh yeah, I should have said I talked with the duke before through the rift. He’s called Carcon Aemiro, 7th Duke of the Eastern Marches, lord of… some places I forgot. He’s a van… no, not the car, one of those silver-haired elves from Ivarind that are actually descended from dragons. Here’s the funny thing: van royalty considers themselves dragons, even though they’re mostly humanoid, and definitely don’t look like a dragon. And it came up when my people opened up the chest from me, for the exchange, and showed the duke a Vial of Sands. They told him, he would turn into a dragon if he drank it, which offended him – he’s already a dragon, he insisted. But he took the potion anyway, because he could actually be a dragon now. He offered some herbs and ores in exchange, but before they could complete the deal, some strange creature showed up.

At first, it was a man, I hear. A creepy, bald man in a long, concealing cloak. He and ‘Gath immediately recognized each other as more than met the eye. The man insisted that ‘Gath feed with him, but my Faceless mook kept refusing. The creature couldn’t understand, and began its… hatching. The man’s head started pulsating and cracking, until it cracked completely open and the brain walked out of the skull. Yes, walked out of it. It had four, reptilian legs and a serpentine tongue. Naturally, the first thing it did was to jump at the duke and stick a tongue up his nose. How disgusting is that?

So my people started fighting. I hear that ‘Gath dispelled his disguise to fight better, Aeresham started throwing seeds and whatnot, Yu Gwai started fiddling with that giant, unwieldy cannon of his and Orkan transformed into a vrock – probably what an arakkoa’s metamorphosis form looks like. Frlngath grabbed the thing and took it off the duke and threw it across the hall, but it almost immediately regained balance. I hear that thing was fast as fel, and started running at them. I hear it tried to climb onto Aeresham, but quickly left because it realized it’s incompatible with a creature that doesn’t have a brain. Then it apparently looked at my demon-looking nephew and ran at him, calling him telepathically “the most glorious host”. But Yu Gwai thankfully finally aimed his bloody cannon and shot the thing to kingdom come. Of course, that wasn’t enough and it came to life again, jumping at Frlngath and calling him a traitor, but the Faceless One fed on the intellect devourer, finally killing it.

The duke was apparently very happy about my people’s fighting skills. He tried to convince them to help him with his “Cult of the Star Gods” trouble (as in, the source of that creature), and when they wanted to wait until they can talk to me, he threatened to cancel the deal! Thankfully, Yu Gwai told him he had already accepted the deal and left with the traded goods. Unfortunately, they parted on less than stellar circumstances and I was kind of hoping for a more permanent agreement between the duke and myself. I will have to try to convince my people to assist the duke with his problem, one way or another.