Raelia’s Penance

It was an early evening on the Lehba Island. Sun has already set thanks to Anzulekk’s twin world, hanging in the sky right on the horizon. Despite that, it still wasn’t too dark. With his office awash in the twilight, Menrim was preparing to leave for his quarters when the doors opened. It was Raelia Sunspear, his felblood elf assistant. She was still calm and somewhat happy, not knowing what Verroak would soon want of her.

“Raelia,” Menrim said to welcome her, “I see you’re back from the mainland.” She spent most of the day commanding the Ivarindian peasants who were building the village where they would live together with the refugees Anzulekk would invite to flee from Azeroth’s certain and urgent doom.

“Yes. If you do not mind, I will just leave the documents and go back to my quarters.” She calmly walked to her desk, but before she could do what she planned, Menrim interrupted her.

“Actually,” he said, “boss wanted to talk to you.”

She sneered snidely. “What does the old coot want this time? Ran out of bird seed?”

Menrim wasn’t laughing at her jokes. He does not often joke, and he got tired of the bird jokes as well. “You’ll have to talk to him.”

“Fine,” she said putting down her paper stack, “I’ll go to his study right away.”

“Not his study,” Menrim said, pointing through the window. “He’s waiting for you at the world tree. Come.” He came out from behind the desk and grabbed his bag, putting it across his shoulder.

She chuckled. “You’ll be escorting me? My knight in shining armor. Only without the armor…” She looked across Menrim’s leonine centauric lower body. “But you got the horse parts alright.” They exchanged concerned looks after that last remark. “Not what I meant.”

“I know,” the tol’vir responded and came over to the door, waving to the felblood. “Come.”

Planet Aman’thul

Our boss’s latest project caused some consternation. After Jhuuton announced he found a way to the Titan Pantheon, we thought it would be something best to remain far away from. Alas, Verroak had to insist on actually going through it. He was giddy with anticipation of the things he could learn from the Titans. He was sure nothing could go wrong – that even if the Titans would prove hostile to us, we could just get away quickly and close the gate behind us and pray – his exact word – they do not follow. He was always possessed with the idea of gaining more knowledge but many of us thought knocking directly on the Pantheon’s doorstep was too dangerous. As it would turn out, all of us – those expecting the Titans to be hostile and those expecting them to be friendly – were proven wrong.

Character Profiles: Ughul the Cancer

Name: Ughul of Ihgaluk, known as the Cancer
Race: Saurok
Gender: male
Age: 51
Class: Shaman (elemental)
Professions: flesh-shaping
Religion: none, philosophical nihilist
Alignment (per D&D): Neutral Evil
Traits (per CK2): genius, scholar, diligent, patient, proud, deceitful, ambitious, arbitrary, cynical, leper, scarred

Map of the Warcraft Galaxy – Update (NGC 6384)

The Belore System – Azeroth’s Solar System

Belore – The Sun

Most Azerothians know very little about their sun. To a grand majority, it’s only an object of worship, or a source of light, without putting much thought to what it actually is, at best coming up with “magic”. Contrary to that belief, there is very little magic involved with the Sun. It’s a typical yellow dwarf star in the middle of its life, differing little from most stars with life-bearing planets. Like most stars, it is in truth a ball of super-heaten hydrogen and helium, underoing thermonuclear reactions due to the pressure its own mass exacts on it. Some cultures believe the Sun to be a god, similar to Elune, but as most of those cultures also believe the Sun was born of Azeroth (and not the reverse, as it was in truth) few astronomers pay it any heed.

Azeroth’s Sun has no formal scientific name. Azerothians call it just “the Sun”. Astronomers on Azeroth have taken to using the elven name “Belore” which fittingly means still just “the Sun”.

Map of the Warcraft Galaxy (NGC 6384)

A Titanic Task

Who says only Titans can move and shape lands? Well, people who don’t know much, or who are dogmatically following some silly beliefs. For your information, ethereals can move lands. As I learned some time ago, they sometimes locate worlds shattered by the Burning Legion (or Old Gods, or other nasties – yes, there are more) and take whole chunks of those worlds, snap some magic technology to them and relocate those chunks elsewhere for easy harvest by their ethereal and grav crews. A lot of the minerals or items you may have purchased or otherwise acquired from ethereals come from these. So when I learned about an ethereal in deep debt who was willing to part with his land-moving devices, I was quick to jump on the occasion.

Worlds of the Nether: Svarloka

I am Karphat Preung, and I have the pleasure of introducing you to my world, Svarloka. I am very excited to represent Svarloka among a new group of arrivals. Since your people started appearing here a few months ago, many stories started crossing the Nether. Some say your world is “the First Ordering”. Some say it’s “the Last Light”, the final bastion standing against the Burning Legion. Well, when it comes to the latter legend, either that isn’t happening for centuries or someone failed to notice all of us here. And I wouldn’t be surprised if they did – if we can hide from the Burning Legion that well, we can hide from others. But do not fear, I see many opportunities for both our worlds – and for others as well. We are not as far apart as you might imagine.

Green Sun

One would expect that when someone says “impossible”, it would send a pretty clear message – something that’s impossible cannot happen, ever. Unfortunately, people have come to use the word rather frivolously, and therefore there is a plenty of things that are apparently impossible, but still happen quite frequently. For instance, it’s impossible to grab a glass by just wishing it happened… but we have magic for that. On a more further out range of “impossible”, it’s impossible to kill an Old God – but it appears the Titans actually did kill at least one. Frequently, the real meaning of “impossible” is “it cannot happen, unless you throw enough magic at it”. And even that has limits – because some feats require such incredibly large amounts of magic constantly defying a persistent force of nature that it appears truly impossible. No one would have that kind of power, and if he did he would have more important things to do with it. One such truly impossible feat is what one of our Eyes of Terokk discovered – a ruined, uninhabitable world with a green sun.

Broadening the Horizons

We had a bit of a lull in our off-world activity. I mean, at least when it comes to actively going out and looking for stuff. We’re still selling off-world a lot and maintaining all our contacts out there, but ever since my crew got busy with their research they stopped going out. I never thought I’d complain about my employees actually working, but here I am. Well, it’s not bad. It’s good that they’re doing their actual occupation, it’s just that they never seem to do it when I want them to. I’m getting away from the topic I wanted to talk about. What I wanted to say is, after they’ve been here most of the time I realized how much I only heard about from them and never seen in person. So I decided to change it. I went for a trip to see some of those worlds.