Enter the Nexus

You may have recently noticed the whole alternate timeline mess I’ve been in. If you’re a busy adventurer who keeps raiding people’s tombs for loot all day you may have missed large parts of what I was doing and then wondered what the fel I’m talking about. Well, I thought I could explain a couple of things in a form not limited to 140 characters. I’ll try to be as clear as possible with this bogus adventure.

It began a couple of weeks ago, when I suddenly got a visit from none other than Lorewalker Cho himself. He arrived with another Pandaren who kept nosing around stuff he shouldn’t be taking interest in. I noticed right from the start that something’s amiss with this Fat Long-Fat, but couldn’t quite pinpoint it. Nevertheless, while they went to sleep in another room, I continued my work on the theory behind the whole rift. Oh yeah, the rift. It’s a really long story. In short, this is an extra-dimensional rift leading to a place called the Nexus, some bizarre multiverse where people from all kinds of universes converge. You’ll learn more about it in a moment.

So I was busy on my theoretical work, when I suddenly heard a lot of noise. Cho started yelling that Chi-Ji went through the rift. Yes, Chi-Ji, the crane god from Pandaria. Before long, it turned out Fat Long-Fat is in fact Chi-Ji in humanoid disguise and when he came to our tower, he was purposefully looking for my rift. What he wanted with it, I still don’t know but when he went through, Lorewalker started panicking and demanding me to go look for his stupid god. I tried to tell him it’s not my fault, but he wouldn’t listen. He officially agreed to go through himself in search of Chi-Ji, but as he was about to go, he pulled me in with him.

There I was, on a rock in the middle of a bay, on the wrong side of my rift. We swam through the water into what appeared to be large wooden pier, only to realize we were in the middle of some kind of battle. Angels, demons and tanks started converging all around us, with a large ship additionally shooting at one of the military bases there with giant cannons. This was the place in the Nexus known as Blackheart Bay, named so after a pirate who turned out to be an undead Azerothian – a former Lordaeronian ship captain who got pulled through while defending his kingdom from Kul Tiras in an ancient war. This was the first time I realized my rift wasn’t the first, and things were getting pulled in for centuries.

After the battle, I got to talk to some of the people who call themselves “heroes” in this Nexus. A human named Bama Kowalski, a.k.a. Sergeant Hammer, explained that people from many planets have been pulled in here for a long time now, and all were conscripted to fight by the Arbiters, rulers of that realm. They fought in regular battles in officially sanctioned battlegrounds for no real reason – they simply fought, got killed, came back to life, and continued to fight simply to curry favor with these Arbiters. That is a bit messed up. What is way more messed up is that there are all kinds of people there. Soldiers from a futuristic place called “Koprulu Sector”, angels, humans and demons from a world called “Sanctuary”, and people from all over Azeroth and Draenor. And what people – multiple versions of Arthas, including various Lich Kings, some giant demon lord called Diablo, Uther the Lightbringer, some random fearie dragon, Tyrande (one version of whom is somehow a blood elf), a giant abomination in a bikini, even Chen’s little niece Li Li. They just fight, for no reason.

It seemed odd to me, but everything made more sense when we went to look for these Arbiters with Lorewalker Cho, hoping they can help us find Chi-Ji and get out of this place together. Unfortunately, Lorewalker came out of the meeting with them changed. You know Lorewalker Cho. Jovial, friendly, talkative. After he talked to the Arbiters, he was suddenly eager to fight in these endless battles, telling me his first battle will be his “evaluation”, and offering me an evaluation too. I quickly connected the dots and realized these Arbiters had some kind of mind control they did to people to make them fight for them. I refused to see these Arbiters, lest I fall under their spell too, and dragged Cho with me to look for Chi-Ji in the Cursed Hollow, a place apparently ruled by Raven Lords (whose presence explains the mysterious disappearance of the famous Lost Sons of Anzu).

On our way there, we have encountered a group of three heroes going for another battle. As they were going for the Cursed Hollow, we pretended we’re the other two heroes for their battle. The unfriendly Emperor James Raynor fellow wasn’t buying it, aptly noticing that I’m nowhere near his or Diablo’s level of power, but Lorewalker Cho smoothed it a bit, and Prince Arthas finally convinced him that we’re the real deal. So me, Lorewalker Cho, Emperor Raynor, Prince Arthas and Valla (a demon hunter – not that kind of demon hunter) went for the Cursed Hollow. As soon as the battle was about to begin, me and the Lorewalker immediately ran off, looking for the Raven Lords.

Those three heroes didn’t take to our desertion too well. Emperor Raynor started shouting something about “his mid quitting” – that may have been about me, as I agreed to do something called “mid lane”. Nevertheless, we made it to the Raven Lords’ lair quickly and to our surprise, we found Chi-Ji right there. After Lorewalker Cho had some “insightful” discussion with all the bird gods, we left the area, getting back to the rift. That’s when Emperor Raynor found himself a new group, this time with the task of punishing us “scrubs” for ruining his game. So we ran, followed by Emperor Raynor, Stitches in bikini and Demon Tyrael.

As we reached the Blackheart Bay again, we thought we lost the three so-called heroes, but they came back with one of these Arbiters. Ugly things – no face, just a smooth, circular head and a giant suit of armor. This “Lord Order” started making some strange gestures and ordering us to stop, or we will face consequences. That’s when Lorewalker Cho copied one of my spells, Sunfire if I recall correctly, and fired it off at the Arbiter. To my surprise, he crumbled like wet noodles. They may have great mental powers to mind control even demon lords, but they’re very weak in a fight. Perhaps that is their whole plan – to mind control powerful heroes, make them fight each other until they become unstoppable behemoths, and then use them to conquer the entire multiverse.

Whatever their plan was, Cho and Chi-Ji used that chance to quickly jump through the rift and as I would later learn, they safely returned to the right dimension. Unfortunately, as I was about to cross, Lord Order gathered his strength and cast something at the rift. I jumped in without looking back at him and got sent through to what appeared to be the right place. It was still Stormwind, it was still the basement of Maginor Dumas’s tower, but there was no rift, no equipment and no crew.

I went up the stairs, silently, looking for any clues about what exactly happened. Through the windows, I noticed the Park was all right – it wasn’t a smoking crater, the district was intact! That was when I knew something really wrong was going on and looked through the papers. Luckily, I didn’t wake up anyone, but I found a newspaper. The date was right, so I didn’t travel in time. At least, not vertically. As it turned out, all kinds of details were wrong in the paper. No mention of Horde, or orcs, and Queen Tiffin Ellerian was still mentioned as alive. The conclusion was obvious – Lord Order sent me in revenge to an alternate timeline, one where the Dark Portal was never opened and Stormwind never felt the horrors of an orcish invasion.

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