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.

Maiden Voyage of the ASJ Apexis

There it was, at long last, our first ship completed. I know people doubted my reasons for building it. Like, yeah, I know we have rifts that transport us to planets in an instant, but transport is only one thing a ship can be used for. One thing is defense. Pirates did not find us yet, but when they do, having a ship throwing arcane fire at them will be invaluable. Also, transport. Yes, I know what I just said, but our orders can sometimes be pretty big, and other than using half of my porters to push a giant box, we can now use the ship to move the whole thing more easily. Sure, it costs quite a bit, but I figure the opportunities it gives us outweigh the costs. For the past few weeks, we’ve been building the ship and preparing everything it needed.

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”.

Signing of the Gnadra Accords – RP Thread

Signing of the Gnadra Accords – Thread on the RP forum

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.

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.

Character Profiles: Ballough Hammerkeg

Name: Ballough Hammerkeg
Race: Dwarf
Gender: Male
Age: 96
Class: Warrior (fury)
Religion: Holy Light
Alignment (Per D&D): Lawful Neutral
Traits (per CK2): strong, honest, gregarious, trusting, content, duelist

Infinite Azeroths 2: Time and Again, part II

PREVIOUSLY: Time and Again, part I

Tarakan was tied up to a chair in a dark room. When he woke up there, his first instinct was to timewalk away but not only were his legs tied to the chair, his gear was gone as well and as a hunter he had no magical powers of his own. Through the few beams of light coming from a hatch in the door he managed to spot a strange, red stone lining the walls. Red stone… he heard about it before. Tarakan’s brother encountered it. A stone that negates all magic where it’s around so no one can enter the room magically, including the arcane serpent being unable to phase through the walls. Most people would have no idea how much time has passed. But he was not most people – he was a Timewalker. Time was his domain.

Suddenly, the door opened and a lot of light burst into the room – something especially painful for a cursed arakkoa. But in that burst of light emanating from the door frame he saw a human-shaped shadow. The shadow stepped in and the door closed behind him, as a faint lamp turned on near the roof. The shadow was no other but Khadgar. But not our Khadgar. It was a parallel Khadgar from this timeline, one that grew up to be a very different man. He was smiling and scratching his goatee, contemplating his captive.

“We meet again, Timewalker,” Khadgar said. “I must admit, I expected you to already turn into a dragon and attempt escape by now.”

Tarakan sighed. “I’m not a dragon. I’m a Timewalker. I am a mortal servant of the bronze dragonflight.”

Khadgar chuckled. “Mortals willingly serving dragons? Do you think we had no dragons over here? The capricious, gluttonous things wouldn’t be able to stop themselves from eating mortals standing around nearby.” Either dragons were very different in this timeline, or Khadgar was lying. “Especially ones that look like they would taste like chicken.”

Tarakan frowned. Cannibalistic jokes never amused him, and especially the numerous ‘do you taste like chicken’ lines from orcs who thought they were oh-so-clever. “You don’t know the first thing about us. And I’m not going to help you find it out.”

“We’ll see,” Khadgar said, “We’ll see how much pain and hunger a… not-dragon can withstand.”