Karnak’s Fate

Karnak angered me one last time, and this time he hit something I personally cared about. His child. No, it’s not a fatherly care, or any creepier sort of old man caring about a small child. Anyone following me should know that child of his, Nef, is special. Because he spent his entire life in the Nexus and couldn’t have children there, his biology was saturated with Nexus energies. So when finally had a child in this dimension, all these energies transferred and she spawned with unusual magical energy tied to her even before birth. We call instances like these “planetouched”. Being touched by the plane of such power as the Nexus… that gave her truly enormous power. She would teleport across space, time and universes at will, with nary a thought. I had to have that power. And that little pissant warrior decided to run away with his family because I was getting snarky with people.

Worlds of the Nether: Irden Reichs

The Irden are today one of the greatest powers in our sector of the galaxy, but every great power must begin somewhere. It may be hard to imagine their beginnings seeing their influence, but once, a long time ago, the dwarves that became the leaders of the Irden Reichs did not even dominate their homeworld of Zvargoff. Over 3500 years ago, it was a world of giants. All of the dominant races were various kinds of giants, from fleshy hill giants, through mountain and stone giants, through the sea giants dominating the seas, through ogres and ettins stalking the valleys, through fire giants dwelling underground and coming up to gather more slaves, up to the rare cloud giants. That last race was in that ancient era the definite overlords of Zvargoff, then known as Tyrinsal.

Worlds of the Nether: Tellus

My name is Baka Mizarus Erdogium, and I am the dracon represenatitve to the Gnadra Accords. Today it will be my pleasure to tell you about the history of the Dracon Imperium, and our homeworld, Tellus. It is a great honor, for we are relatively new among the interstellar community and yet we were rewarded with the lucrative position of a senior partner under the Accords. Nobody can deny our influence in certain sectors of space, and our military power. Many a pirate was lulled into a false sense of security when they found a lone dracon settlement and expected a few backwards farmers but instead found a society where every member had military training, and everyone knew what really mattered when it comes to building a society: discipline. We may still be few in number or not have many conquered or assimilated worlds, but every dracon is worth ten of other races. Statistically, of course.

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.

Captain’s Log, Space Date 2456915

Character: Captain Matus T. Manks of the Venture, boldly going where no gnome has gone before
The day began very usually. We read through the “nightly” shift’s mining reports and prepared for our work the following day. I must say living on a world tidally-locked to its sun can wreck one’s sense of time quite well. This red dwarf is stuck in eternal sunset and no matter when you wake up or when you go to sleep, you will always see the same amount of light, and our bodies are set to identify how tired they are by the amount of light in the environment. After spending a month on the duty of protecting the grav miners here, I find myself lying awake in bed for the whole time designated as “night” on our timetables, and then feeling completely tired for the whole “day”. But that was by far the least odd thing that happened to me yesterday.

Revenge of Appendix Three: Giant Nether Hamsters

Continuing with more filler posts until the WoD alpha gets rolling again! This time we have another of my old “Revenge of Appendix Three” posts reposted here. I particularly enjoyed writing this one. The original text after the jump.

I’m a squawking wonder-worker!

Let me tell you, I am never appreciated! Both under Maginor Dumas and Verroak Krasha I have done nothing short of a miracle. I’m a squawking wonder-worker, that’s what I am! I got the crazy old… vulture-parrot-owl thing terocones. Terocones! In Stormwind! Nobody sells the seeds these days! Do you have any ideas how much haggling it took to get someone to concede some cones? Do you know what I had to trade in? Gold. Okay, that wasn’t particularly odd, but terocones! And before Krasha placed the order, I didn’t even know what a terocone is. No spelljammer has ever reached this planet, we know literally nothing about this place, so we never heard of terocones.

Recently, after Krasha broke that harpy out of her cage and he had to evacuate to his own tower, I decided to follow him. Yes, he’s crazy and never appreciates me either, but at least he pays well. Because the cook he got at first was some dumb vegetarian ogre, they couldn’t eat any meat in the tower. So who do they go to? To ME, of course. And I bought a whole crate full of fresh Tel Abim Bananas. I had to WRESTLE a goblin for them. You think they’re short and weak? Well, not only they’re barely shorter than me, not only I have hollow, avian bones, the goblin was also packing heat (by which I mean some crazy fire-suit contraption worthy of a tinker gnome). He didn’t want to sell for my gold, so I wrestled him down, took apart the suit and THEN he sold the fruits. I also borrowed some apples.

That’s just two examples! I keep getting him some really rare things that I often have to go out of my way to purchase. Sometimes I even strike something lucky by complete accident – I thought I bought a crate of Ragveil and it turned out to be some “Chamaeleon Lotus” that is very, very rare and even considered extinct on this world. I mean, don’t get me wrong. I love doing all those crazy and rare business deals. That’s what I was made for. But I could use some respect and appreciation for my efforts. Maybe one day, I’ll earn enough gold to build my own spelljammer and escape this world back to Kwanhi, the dohwar homeworld. But until that day, I’ll keep on working.

Addendum: I took to using the word “squawk” as a substitution for expletives, as Verroak Krasha tends to do. I must admit, there is something to the sound of it that I seem to like.

Addendum 2: Apparently there are tinker gnomes in this world, as well as mechagnomes, so maybe a spelljammer did reach this world a long time but perhaps it crashed and no one reported back – but it seeded some things.

Orcs and Humans

When the Warcraft setting first started, it was merely a thinly veiled fantasy version of early medieval England. The human faction openly referenced God, and used a calendar which seemed to place it in the 6th century AD. The obviously most striking departure from medieval England was the invasion of hellish monsters called Orcs, suggested to come from “underworld”. Some people, who started their interest in the franchise all the way back then, are very nostalgic about this ancient time. However, we can’t hide that there was very little to the setting back then. A couple of place names, an orcish invasion from hell, and names for characters which had very little personality.