Guild Stories: The Infiltrators

Hello, my still faithful (I hope) blog readers. Since we’ve started the guild, I’ve been writing up summaries of our stories there on the guild Discord, but I never published them out to the public. I figured people would be interested in hearing what happened to Krasha since, so I’m sharing the Discord summaries here.

OOC

Krasha arrived in the base one day to inform us somebody has stolen from him. It must have been an expert thief, since they managed to slot in right between security shift changes and remained unseen by anyone, including some of the expert security personnel, such as aldrachi warriors Krasha employs. The group arrived on Krasha home base and immediately went after a strange human who was isolated in the mess hall. The human had an odd appearance, his face twitching and moving in various unnatural ways, and he smelled oddly, like a reptile of some kind. After a thorough interrogation, he was proven to be a shapeshifting saurok of some kind, rapidly regenerating its health and breaking out of polymorphism by tearing its flesh apart.

As the Krasha officers would later explain, all threads pointed to “the Cancer”. A former officer of Krasha’s who left after buying his own freedom. A saurok who has taken control of a mogu flesh-shaping device, a corporius, he has apparently created a new breed of sauroks, shapeshifters who rapidly regenerate all wounds. This “Cancer” must be tracked down and dealt with, but Krasha wants him alive.

After tracking down all the strange “humans” in his home base, Krasha ordered us to infiltrate them in turn and sent us a fungarian to help us with it. The fungarian charged in at a lone saurok scout and once both have been slain, the cloud of spores from the fungarian’s body possessed the saurok and used it to infiltrate the saurok base in the old troll ruins.

However, what we found at the troll ruins was stranger than we all anticipated. The sauroks are conspiring with Bwonsamdi and another troll loa, Lehba, who used to own Krasha’s island base and wants it back. However, after we killed the ubersaurok priest, Bwonsamdi says the sauroks failed and washes his hands off of his involvement and leaves us to our own devices.

One of the biggest mysteries was how is the Cancer creating new sauroks when his original machine is still in Krasha’s possession and remains untampered with. Balerok found a mention of what appeared to be another corporius inside a small Titan facility in the Storm Peaks and sent us on a mission to retrieve it or learn what happened to it. After freeing a small arcane entity called a factotum (dubbed Rosie by Teann), we learned the Cancer was there. After an ambush by another Lesser Evil, Blood-Thane Utarefson, we opened the pulpit for the corporius only to find it gone. Rosie joined us to recover the device.

Now knowing everything that happened, we await more trails that could lead us to the Cancer, as he remains still at large at this moment.

After an evening of scouting, we found out the sauroks were planning on replacing a “human king” with a puppet of their own. Although we did not have the numbers to deal with them at the time, we learned a few things and retreated.
We also met a curious troll, Ati’bon, who claimed to be older than Medivh and to have always lived in the Black Morass. Ati’bon was nowhere to be found the next week.

The week after that, we finally left to dispatch the sauroks. Our attempts at subterfuge have failed as the guards changed their password, and later Teann couldn’t pull herself into the shape of the old troll. After a few clashes, we defeated the small detachment of sauroks left at the tree and arrived within it to find the Cancer himself, hard at work at creating new life. He quickly deduced we work for Krasha and hard negotiations began.

It took some convincing, but we met an understanding where the Cancer made a demand: he must be made Krasha’s equal in the Lesser Evils, not his subordinate, and in exchange, he will share the blood of Anzu he somehow acquired to make Krasha part-demigod. Although we had to wake the boss up (with Balerok’s help) Krasha agreed and we led Ughul to Krasha’s home base for further negotiations.

In the end, we spared the life of one terrible person so that he can make another terrible person into a god. All around, a “success”.

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.”

Binding a Gelugon – RP Thread

Binding a Gelugon – Thread on the RP forum

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.

Infinite Azeroths 2: Home

The outskirts of Stormwind were filled with rickety, provisional homes, draped in multi-colored cloths and filled with ringing and clanking bells and windchimes. Despite what someone from Azeroth Prime would say, it was not a goblin camp. It was a shanty-town built by the vishkanyas when they arrived on Azeroth in this timeline. Azeroth-7, or as some know it, the Illidari timeline. Maiev failed to stop Illidan from cracking Northrend apart. The Lich King died, and the Scourge was wiped out. While some would feel that was a positive change, no one expected what followed. Not only the tidal waves from the melting glaciers destroyed numerous cities and broke ancient dams, Illidan went on to become an unchallenged Lord of Outland. And with this power, he took fight to the Legion and fought them across the stars. Numerous innocent worlds found themselves in the crossfire, including the vishkanya world. A small percentage of their people successfully escaped to Azeroth through one of Illidan’s portals.

Now, they live here, in the outskirts of Azerothian civilization. Cast out, abandoned, unwanted. Although King Varian accepted them and let them stay, most of the humans feel they have enough problems with orcs and draenei “squatting” on Azeroth, some feel the vishkanya are the final nail in the coffin of humanity’s power.

Agam was careful to cover her face when she was crossing the streets of Stormwind. For about ten years she lived in this city and knew what the people on both sides were capable of. Does the perception filter even work when she’s in her own timeline? It does, after all, filter out only the extraordinary and on Azeroth-7 her eyes are not something completely out of place. No, they are just something that could get you in trouble. Luckily, Llore was at her side, showing his face without a care in the world, drawing attention away from her hooded face. Together, they walked right out of the Dwarven District and continued down the path to the outskirts.

Once there, she could finally take off the hood and look at all the lights and bells, and take in the smells of the familiar cuisine. She could finally once again hear the familiar noise of her native language, even if it was the crooked merchants hawking their wares and old women yelling at disobedient brats. For all its issues, this was home.

“Agam,” she heard from behind. She quickly turned around and saw what appeared to be a large, muscular human with a bronzed skin… but with eyes just as serpentine as hers. Llore looked up at the man who was showing a rather forbidding visage.

“Is he trouble?” Llore asked her.

“No,” Agam responded, smiling. Suddenly, the mustachioed man smiled back. “He’s my brother.”

Meanwhile, a human guard was leaning on the walls of one of the houses and looking at the two vishkanyas, and then frowning at the sight of Llore – a human, unusual in this district. He snarled and looked back to another guard, sitting nearby and sipping wine someone left over at his porch.

“You seen him?” The first guard asked.

“Whom?” The second answered, for a moment getting the bottle out of his face.

“That one,” The first guard continued, pointing at Llore. “Looks like we got ourselves a snake-fucker.”

Chain pain

They don’t send me on these away missions often. As the main healer of our humble establishment, they prefer to keep in backup. So I sit there in my room and spend most of my day reading and occasionally treating a minor bruise or a cough someone caught and is then convinced he’s dying (I’m looking at you, Hwarnë). Sometimes, something interesting happens. I remember when we got attacked by that Iron Horde task force and the darfellan guest stepped right into a patch of poison Aeresham dropped, so I had to work my non-existent ass off to treat an alien poison on an alien individual. I’m not complaining, I like a good challenge. It’s different when I get to go on a mission. The field healing magic may not be exact and leave some ailments untreated, but it’s an interesting change of pace.

Character Profiles: Balerok

Name: Balerok
Race: Dragonman
Gender: Male
Age: 21
Class: Alchemist
Religion: Balerok doesn’t follow any religion. Balerok’s creator tried to get him into that old god craziness, but Balerok refused.
Alignment (per D&D): Chaotic Neutral
Traits (per CK2): Genius, Diligent, Proud, Deceitful, Ambitious, Arbitrary, Paranoid, Lunatic

One step closer to the full ‘Dex

I have a certain respect for the mo’arg. The engineer dudes, not the beefy mooks. They’re smart, they’re dangerous and their appearance incites terror. When you see a mo’arg going at you, you know you’re in trouble. Sure, they’re going a little extreme with the whole “replacing body parts with machines” thing, but everyone has got their own little obsession. I must admit, mine is probably collecting. Not pixelated monsters in a tiny hand-held device, not cards or teddy bears – collecting people. The more varied and stranger their races, the better. Just seeing all kinds of creatures working together fills a certain, warped sense of collectorship in my mind. And I always wanted to have one of these – the mo’arg. I worked with, and fought, Sal’salabim so I know what they’re capable of. But only recently I got the chance to get one of them in my employ.

A peek at the Dream

Not many people get to see the Emerald Dream. Or at least, not with their waking eyes or with a capacity to truly remember it. I remember reading that a few adventurers were briefly sent into it to retrieve some items for powerful entities like Keeper Remulos but most of us, underpowered mortals can only dream of seeing it, no pun intended. So when I got the chance to take a peek at its true form I jumped at the occasion, even though I knew I was getting into a combat situation. The fabled Emerald Dream is one of the legendary places that you hear stories about. There are even various theories about its true purpose. Some say it’s a Titanic blueprint, and even that one causes certain confusion. Is it a blueprint to be used in case of reorigination, or is it just an old plan that is no longer relevant with the world’s original ordering completed?

Mesonyx Attacks!

In most places, if you talked about inhabitants of Mesonyx, the fourth planet from our sun, people wouldn’t treat you very seriously. This isn’t most places. We’ve been sending people to a parallel past Draenor and taking ingredients from there. We have fought an invasion of Infinite Dragonflight. We finally opened a rift to a completely alien planet, met space gnomes, killed an evil undead alien god, and we regularly trade with two distant worlds. We have employees from other planets – and not just the common Draenor, but we have a darfellan and a shivarra. So naturally, an alien from Mesonyx doesn’t raise too many eyebrows. It does however answer some questions and doubts Azerothians had about the world. For example, the canals must be real and there are actually native races up there. Or rather down there, considering what we’ve learned. Anyway, let’s explain this in a proper order.