This was for the most recent writing prompt on the fanfic forums. Don't ask where #4 is; I haven't decided if I have something for it yet.
The warrior asked entirely too many questions.
Elaine had wanted to go explore the Crypt of Forgotten Kings - “It’s an ancient crypt; there’s probably something useful in it!” - and now we were there, and it was dark, and there were floor tiles marked with random magic runes that hurt if you didn’t see one and walked across it.
Did I mention that they hurt?
So after the third unexpected attempt by the floor to electrocute us, Elaine had pulled out the lantern she’s been carrying around since - ugh, since that job for the dwarves in the Wetlands.
And what does the warrior - I don’t even recall his name, it was something like Philip. He was drinking at one of those Grummle bars in Kun-Lai on our way up there, and Elaine said he looked good enough for what we needed. Anyway, what does he ask?
“So how does the candle stay lit in your bag?”
Oh, Philip, I thought, you really don’t want to know...
3/14/14
Still waiting for...
There's a lot of cool stuff coming in the expansion, which I'm guessing is 6-8 months off. Some of the things I've wanted for a while now don't seem to be included, which isn't surprising, since it's just random stuff. This is some of it, though.
Emerald drake mounts. You get to sample them in Oculus, but there's no option to commit.
Built-in UI customization, a la SWotR. I'll admit I was a bit surprised the first time I flipped that toggle over there. Still not really playing because of the zoom distance and such, but being able to move your stuff around out of the box is nice.
Only Tol'vir sites.Seriously, I'm still farming this stupid drake recipe. Okay, okay, I finally got the Sandstone drake recipe, but 21 canopic jars. That's like, five complete mummies. Being able to focus on one kind of archaeology would be much less TINY OASIS MOSAIC frustration inducing. If my rogue could tile the bathroom in her garrison, she's already acquired enough to do it.
Gnome hunters. Based on the recent racial changes for Warlords of Draenor excluding focus from the list of what Expansive Mind will affect, gnomes are still not hunters.
Emerald drake mounts. You get to sample them in Oculus, but there's no option to commit.
 |
| Such a lovely green. |
Built-in UI customization, a la SWotR. I'll admit I was a bit surprised the first time I flipped that toggle over there. Still not really playing because of the zoom distance and such, but being able to move your stuff around out of the box is nice.
Only Tol'vir sites.
 |
| You can totally tell I only leveled archaeology on Kalimdor. |
Gnome hunters. Based on the recent racial changes for Warlords of Draenor excluding focus from the list of what Expansive Mind will affect, gnomes are still not hunters.
 |
| A Burning Crusade-era transporter malfunction... as close as we get. |
3/10/14
Flying in Azeroth & Beyond
Is flying good or bad in WoW?
The short answer, really, is both. The lists of reasons for both sides is similarly short:
Positive aspects:
There are some places that I absolutely prefer the change in access flight has made: anything in Blackrock Mountain, for example. Those chains! I used to parachute into the lava rather than run the chains.
I used to farm ore for extended periods on a ground mount, usually in Un'goro Crater, where I could go more or less in a circle and hit all the nodes up in the nooks in the cliff wall. I went back to Un'goro recently and discovered that a lot of those nooks... are gone. Closed up. That seemed weird, now that we have flying and getting into them wasn't even tricky.
The problem of flying making zone travel trivial is easily negated. You remember the forge camps in Blade's Edge? The cannons that would shoot at you as soon as you mounted up? Or the frostwyrms in Icecrown that made flying in front of the citadel dicey (even if there were a couple good ore nodes there). The air can be made dangerous. Imagine roving zeppelins of pirates that would shoot you out of the sky the same way a whale shark would just eat you. There are options for that. (I... kind of want roving zeppelins of pirates now, with ships that can be captured and/or defeated like world bosses. The Dread Ship Vazuvius takes flight!)
The real downside is when flight masks otherwise cumbersome zone design. I hadn't thought much about this until last night, when I was thinking about why losing flight would be bad. Really, no flight in a new space isn't bad - that space will be designed with no flight in mind. (As long as it doesn't have bridges with stunning mobs that my healer can't kill, a la the Timeless Isle, probably not a big deal.) The problem is when zones for levels without flying are designed with flight in mind.
The short answer, really, is both. The lists of reasons for both sides is similarly short:
Positive aspects:
- Allows for three-dimensional zone structure (think the floating islands in Nagrand, or Vashj'ir, which was a flying zone disguised by water)
- Allows for non-linear/random patterned activities (such as travel between archaeology zones, which are not directly correlated to flight paths)
- Flying is fun, especially on a druid or with a Sky Golem
- Masks otherwise cumbersome zone design
- Makes some zone challenges (generally, the mobs) trivial
There are some places that I absolutely prefer the change in access flight has made: anything in Blackrock Mountain, for example. Those chains! I used to parachute into the lava rather than run the chains.
I used to farm ore for extended periods on a ground mount, usually in Un'goro Crater, where I could go more or less in a circle and hit all the nodes up in the nooks in the cliff wall. I went back to Un'goro recently and discovered that a lot of those nooks... are gone. Closed up. That seemed weird, now that we have flying and getting into them wasn't even tricky.
The problem of flying making zone travel trivial is easily negated. You remember the forge camps in Blade's Edge? The cannons that would shoot at you as soon as you mounted up? Or the frostwyrms in Icecrown that made flying in front of the citadel dicey (even if there were a couple good ore nodes there). The air can be made dangerous. Imagine roving zeppelins of pirates that would shoot you out of the sky the same way a whale shark would just eat you. There are options for that. (I... kind of want roving zeppelins of pirates now, with ships that can be captured and/or defeated like world bosses. The Dread Ship Vazuvius takes flight!)
The real downside is when flight masks otherwise cumbersome zone design. I hadn't thought much about this until last night, when I was thinking about why losing flight would be bad. Really, no flight in a new space isn't bad - that space will be designed with no flight in mind. (As long as it doesn't have bridges with stunning mobs that my healer can't kill, a la the Timeless Isle, probably not a big deal.) The problem is when zones for levels without flying are designed with flight in mind.
3/1/14
Weapon Models: Top 5 Bows
Okay, I lied. I've actually got a top six bows.
6. Skyfire Hawkbow: This one drops off O'mrogg in Shattered Halls; I'm not sure I ever actually saw it drop, but I've always liked the look. A good one for my Blood Elf if I ever feel like farming it up on her.
5. Lohn'goron, Bow of the Torn-Heart: This was the quest bow to get at the end of the Burning Crusade, from a long quest chain in Shadowmoon Valley. This one I used for quite a while, and it's among my... um, I have more than four bows banked. I have a lot of bows banked.
4. High Warlord's Recurve: I've never had this bow; given that you can't use it for transmogrifying, I'm not sure I'll bother at this point, but it's still one of the coolest bow models you can get (Horde-side, anyway).
3. Ironfeather Longbow: When it originally came out, this was a tank bow: it had strength on it. I was using it on my forsaken hunter anyway, just because it was the best thing she'd run across for damage otherwise. It's a lovely bow, and it's no wonder Tyrande has it.
2. Arathar, the Eye of Flame: This is my favorite of the Cataclysm raid bows; I think I have three of them banked, actually. It's got the cleanest lines, and I like the green highlights.
1. Golden Bow of Quel'Thalas: I didn't actually know about this bow until they announced they were putting pets into the Burning Crusade raids. I didn't know if the Sunwell raid was going to be included, and I didn't know if I could solo it. (The results: no, and yes.) This dropped during the test run, and I've been transmogging into it since. It's huge. It's like the Wolfslayer Sniper Rifle of bows, and it really doesn't go badly with the Saurok set I'm transmogged into.
Yeah, I'm gonna be using this one for a while.
Bonus list: Other bows I have banked still:
6. Skyfire Hawkbow: This one drops off O'mrogg in Shattered Halls; I'm not sure I ever actually saw it drop, but I've always liked the look. A good one for my Blood Elf if I ever feel like farming it up on her.
5. Lohn'goron, Bow of the Torn-Heart: This was the quest bow to get at the end of the Burning Crusade, from a long quest chain in Shadowmoon Valley. This one I used for quite a while, and it's among my... um, I have more than four bows banked. I have a lot of bows banked.
4. High Warlord's Recurve: I've never had this bow; given that you can't use it for transmogrifying, I'm not sure I'll bother at this point, but it's still one of the coolest bow models you can get (Horde-side, anyway).
3. Ironfeather Longbow: When it originally came out, this was a tank bow: it had strength on it. I was using it on my forsaken hunter anyway, just because it was the best thing she'd run across for damage otherwise. It's a lovely bow, and it's no wonder Tyrande has it.
2. Arathar, the Eye of Flame: This is my favorite of the Cataclysm raid bows; I think I have three of them banked, actually. It's got the cleanest lines, and I like the green highlights.
1. Golden Bow of Quel'Thalas: I didn't actually know about this bow until they announced they were putting pets into the Burning Crusade raids. I didn't know if the Sunwell raid was going to be included, and I didn't know if I could solo it. (The results: no, and yes.) This dropped during the test run, and I've been transmogging into it since. It's huge. It's like the Wolfslayer Sniper Rifle of bows, and it really doesn't go badly with the Saurok set I'm transmogged into.
Yeah, I'm gonna be using this one for a while.
Bonus list: Other bows I have banked still:
2/27/14
Tactics #1: Kiting
So this is the first in hopefully a series of posts about a specific skill in WoW; not a class ability, per se, but a standard method of applying various class skills to achieve a particular tactic for, usually, a boss fight.
I'm beginning with kiting for two reasons: my non-WoW-playing D&D group members didn't know what the term meant, and I learned how to do it way back in vanilla WoW, in Upper Blackrock Spire.
So, to start, what is kiting? Kiting is getting a mob's attention, and then moving away from it to control its actions, generally to move it.
Why would you want to kite something? Different mobs are kited for different reasons:
The first two are the most frequently occurring reasons; for example, the original kiting fight I learned involved kiting General Drakkisath from his room to, usually, the Beast's room, although when you got better at it, you could often get him all the way to Rend's room before he'd run back. Normally this was done by a ranged class, usually a hunter. This tactic let the two tanks in the group pick up Drakkisath's two minions and let the raid kill them before having to deal with the general himself. At the time the strategy wasn't complicated: distracting shot, concussive shot, run. It occasionally got interesting if you fell off one of the bridges into Lower Blackrock Spire. (Ahem.)
This kind of kiting can be used to effectively lock down a mob that can't otherwise be crowd controlled through traditional methods like trapping or sheeping. Many classes have a slowing effect - concussive shot, the Slow spell, hamstring, crippling poison, frost shock, frost bolt, and so forth. If a group you're in asks you to kite something, it's probably either because you can handle the damage it's going to do to you, or because you can effectively slow it down and run away. So find your slowing abilities if you're not familiar with them and get ready to run!
Another reason you might find yourself kiting something you can't sheep or trap is because your tank died. Maybe you're just kiting long enough to get a battle resurrection for the tank; maybe you're kiting to finish off the fight. In this case, keeping your distance from the mob while maintaining threat is often the most important part. You might not be able to slow it, so if you have anything that can increase your speed (sprint, blink, rocket boots), they're your new best friend.
If a mob needs to be kited to regularly move it out of bad stuff, this is probably being done by the tank who's tanking it, or maybe via a tank swap in a larger group. This version of kiting is often done by backing slowly around the fight area, in order to get the mob out of a puddle of poison, fire, or some other deadly substance so that melee players can actually hit it. Or, the puddle may provide a buff to the mob, so moving it out of the area will weaken it. This is something to watch out for more if you're tanking.
Occasionally you'll want to kite something to keep it from casting or using an ability. An example of this is Garnia, a rare-spawn elemental on the Timeless Isle. Garnia's ruby bolt hits hard, so it's best to keep her from casting it when possible. Besides interrupting it, if you can keep her moving, she won't do it. You may or may not need to slow a mob in this situation, but you definitely need to do whatever your class needs to in order to do damage on the move.
The last common reason for kiting (that I can think of right now) is because a mob periodically focuses on and chases one of the people fighting it. Generally when this happens, your group with have a designated place for running to; in some cases this may simply be "don't run it through the raid," or you may need to get the mob to a specific spot in the room. Thok the Bloodthirsty is the most recent example of a boss who will try to chase you down and eat you, but there are others.
Sometimes if you're kiting something that has focused you, it may not be a mob, but a beam of fire, a moving line of spikes, or some other ability which is linear/trail based. In this case, you need to keep moving, but you don't have to worry about killing the thing chasing you; you just have to keep it from hitting your group or perhaps avoid dragging it across a puddle of something on the floor (don't set the oil on fire!).
Successful kiting can take some practice; you have to be comfortable hitting your slowing ability on demand when needed and then run before you get smooshed. Other kinds of it can be picked up fairly quickly - running away from your group with a beam of fire and such. If a group needs a kiter and you're new to it, just make sure you know where to take the mob and if you need to do anything special to it while you've got its attention, and it will probably be okay!
I'm beginning with kiting for two reasons: my non-WoW-playing D&D group members didn't know what the term meant, and I learned how to do it way back in vanilla WoW, in Upper Blackrock Spire.
So, to start, what is kiting? Kiting is getting a mob's attention, and then moving away from it to control its actions, generally to move it.
Why would you want to kite something? Different mobs are kited for different reasons:
- As a form of crowd control, by drawing its attention to keep it from hitting other players
- To move it out of bad stuff (poison/fire/etc.)
- To prevent it from using an ability or spell it only does while not moving
- Because it periodically fixates on someone
Kiting as Crowd Control
The first two are the most frequently occurring reasons; for example, the original kiting fight I learned involved kiting General Drakkisath from his room to, usually, the Beast's room, although when you got better at it, you could often get him all the way to Rend's room before he'd run back. Normally this was done by a ranged class, usually a hunter. This tactic let the two tanks in the group pick up Drakkisath's two minions and let the raid kill them before having to deal with the general himself. At the time the strategy wasn't complicated: distracting shot, concussive shot, run. It occasionally got interesting if you fell off one of the bridges into Lower Blackrock Spire. (Ahem.)
This kind of kiting can be used to effectively lock down a mob that can't otherwise be crowd controlled through traditional methods like trapping or sheeping. Many classes have a slowing effect - concussive shot, the Slow spell, hamstring, crippling poison, frost shock, frost bolt, and so forth. If a group you're in asks you to kite something, it's probably either because you can handle the damage it's going to do to you, or because you can effectively slow it down and run away. So find your slowing abilities if you're not familiar with them and get ready to run!
Another reason you might find yourself kiting something you can't sheep or trap is because your tank died. Maybe you're just kiting long enough to get a battle resurrection for the tank; maybe you're kiting to finish off the fight. In this case, keeping your distance from the mob while maintaining threat is often the most important part. You might not be able to slow it, so if you have anything that can increase your speed (sprint, blink, rocket boots), they're your new best friend.
Kiting for positioning
If a mob needs to be kited to regularly move it out of bad stuff, this is probably being done by the tank who's tanking it, or maybe via a tank swap in a larger group. This version of kiting is often done by backing slowly around the fight area, in order to get the mob out of a puddle of poison, fire, or some other deadly substance so that melee players can actually hit it. Or, the puddle may provide a buff to the mob, so moving it out of the area will weaken it. This is something to watch out for more if you're tanking.
Kiting as an interrupt
Occasionally you'll want to kite something to keep it from casting or using an ability. An example of this is Garnia, a rare-spawn elemental on the Timeless Isle. Garnia's ruby bolt hits hard, so it's best to keep her from casting it when possible. Besides interrupting it, if you can keep her moving, she won't do it. You may or may not need to slow a mob in this situation, but you definitely need to do whatever your class needs to in order to do damage on the move.
Kiting as a mob's focused target
The last common reason for kiting (that I can think of right now) is because a mob periodically focuses on and chases one of the people fighting it. Generally when this happens, your group with have a designated place for running to; in some cases this may simply be "don't run it through the raid," or you may need to get the mob to a specific spot in the room. Thok the Bloodthirsty is the most recent example of a boss who will try to chase you down and eat you, but there are others.
Sometimes if you're kiting something that has focused you, it may not be a mob, but a beam of fire, a moving line of spikes, or some other ability which is linear/trail based. In this case, you need to keep moving, but you don't have to worry about killing the thing chasing you; you just have to keep it from hitting your group or perhaps avoid dragging it across a puddle of something on the floor (don't set the oil on fire!).
Successful kiting can take some practice; you have to be comfortable hitting your slowing ability on demand when needed and then run before you get smooshed. Other kinds of it can be picked up fairly quickly - running away from your group with a beam of fire and such. If a group needs a kiter and you're new to it, just make sure you know where to take the mob and if you need to do anything special to it while you've got its attention, and it will probably be okay!
2/24/14
Fan-fiction #3 (w/bonus scene!)
Here's the most recent fan-fiction challenge from the forums for reference: ~linky~
GO FORTH! sayeth the Mother Goddess
Go forth, Ermintrude, queen of all chickens!
You alone can protect my daughter!
You alone can save Azeroth!
I, Ermintrude, queen of all chickens, must go forth
I must leave my brood
I must leave Westfall
I must leave the Mother Goddess's protective gaze
I must save Azeroth
I, Ermintrude, queen of all chickens, designate an heir
This egg shall hatch a worthy heir
This egg shall hatch a mighty hen
This egg shall hatch a new queen
This egg shall be Westfall's new guardian
I, Ermintrude, queen of all chickens, prepare for my journey
Long are the roads out of Westfall
Long are the days under the scorching sun
Long are nights of darkness and danger
I eat the last of the grain from the Mother Goddess
I, Ermintrude, queen of all chickens, join my traveling companions
Daughter of the Mother Goddess, tall and fair
Pet of the Daughter, furry and uncouth
Defender of the queen, stout and metallic
And I, Ermintrude, queen of all chickens
I, Ermintrude, queen of all chickens, leave my home
Across the dust-caked roads of Westfall
Over the fields of okra and hops
Through the meadows of uncut hay
Westfall falls behind us
I, Ermintrude, queen of all chickens, brave the forest of Elwynn
Brave to cross the bridge of oak and stone
Brave to enter the shadows of the behemoth trees
Brave to pass the shrieking of the gnolls
Elwynn holds my first challenge
I, Ermintrude, queen of all chickens, defend the daughter of the Mother Goddess
Lo, but the vile squirrel swept down from the trees
The vile squirrel rushed at the daughter of the Mother Goddess
The vile squirrel did pelt us with the oaks' bounty
I defeat him with a swift strike from my beak
I, Ermintrude, queen of all chickens, am rewarded for my bravery
The daughter of the Mother Goddess leads us to a tavern
Her pet, a worthless beast, receives but a bone
My guardian requires no repast
But I! I have never tasted such grain!
Elaine was supposed to meet me at the Lion's Pride Inn in Goldshire, and after a couple days of walking from Westfall, I finally got there. She raised a brow when she saw the menagerie I was trailing.
"Okay," she said, "I can get the dog--"
"Coyote," I said.
"Yeah, whatever. That makes sense, since you always seemed like you might follow the hunter's path. But what's with the chicken?"
"What, Ermintrude?" I asked. "Ma insisted I bring her so I wouldn't have to buy eggs."
GO FORTH! sayeth the Mother Goddess
Go forth, Ermintrude, queen of all chickens!
You alone can protect my daughter!
You alone can save Azeroth!
I, Ermintrude, queen of all chickens, must go forth
I must leave my brood
I must leave Westfall
I must leave the Mother Goddess's protective gaze
I must save Azeroth
I, Ermintrude, queen of all chickens, designate an heir
This egg shall hatch a worthy heir
This egg shall hatch a mighty hen
This egg shall hatch a new queen
This egg shall be Westfall's new guardian
I, Ermintrude, queen of all chickens, prepare for my journey
Long are the roads out of Westfall
Long are the days under the scorching sun
Long are nights of darkness and danger
I eat the last of the grain from the Mother Goddess
I, Ermintrude, queen of all chickens, join my traveling companions
Daughter of the Mother Goddess, tall and fair
Pet of the Daughter, furry and uncouth
Defender of the queen, stout and metallic
And I, Ermintrude, queen of all chickens
I, Ermintrude, queen of all chickens, leave my home
Across the dust-caked roads of Westfall
Over the fields of okra and hops
Through the meadows of uncut hay
Westfall falls behind us
I, Ermintrude, queen of all chickens, brave the forest of Elwynn
Brave to cross the bridge of oak and stone
Brave to enter the shadows of the behemoth trees
Brave to pass the shrieking of the gnolls
Elwynn holds my first challenge
I, Ermintrude, queen of all chickens, defend the daughter of the Mother Goddess
Lo, but the vile squirrel swept down from the trees
The vile squirrel rushed at the daughter of the Mother Goddess
The vile squirrel did pelt us with the oaks' bounty
I defeat him with a swift strike from my beak
I, Ermintrude, queen of all chickens, am rewarded for my bravery
The daughter of the Mother Goddess leads us to a tavern
Her pet, a worthless beast, receives but a bone
My guardian requires no repast
But I! I have never tasted such grain!
Elaine was supposed to meet me at the Lion's Pride Inn in Goldshire, and after a couple days of walking from Westfall, I finally got there. She raised a brow when she saw the menagerie I was trailing.
"Okay," she said, "I can get the dog--"
"Coyote," I said.
"Yeah, whatever. That makes sense, since you always seemed like you might follow the hunter's path. But what's with the chicken?"
"What, Ermintrude?" I asked. "Ma insisted I bring her so I wouldn't have to buy eggs."
2/20/14
Fan-fiction #2
This was for the second writing prompt in the fan-fiction forum.
As much as I hate the desert of Hellfire Peninsula, the awful mushroom infestations you find in your luggage after a couple weeks in the Zangarmarsh, and fel stench of Shadowmoon Valley, Outland does have one thing going for it.
No, no, besides the ethereals with their dreamboat voices.
Outland has no murlocs.
See, I grew up in Westfall, and, Light save you, you can't go fishing in Westfall without running into a crowd of them. Those ichthyoid tribes are more or less why I left in the first place.
I've always been a tinkerer. Harvest reapers don't fix themselves, after all, and when they go haywire, well, you've really got to be quick on your feet. Better yet, you knock 'em over from a distance, and you don't get shredded while you're trying to turn them off. Sometimes it's faster just to lob a stick of dynamite at them; you're going to have to tear them apart to fix them anyway.
Yeah, so if the hazards of daily farm mechanics weren't bad enough, then the murlocs got into my ma's chickens. Normally they just eat fish, or turtles, or whatever random sea creature has washed up out of the depths, but the settlement closest to our farm somehow got a taste for chicken. Ma is pretty proud of her chickens - she swears up and down Saldean's have got nothing on hers - so she was incensed when half a dozen of hers went missing, with a trail of blood and feathers leading down towards the murloc huts on the beach below the bluff.
The beach had been off limits forever because of the murlocs, which meant my friend Elaine and I snuck down there every time my ma turned her back. We avoided the murlocs, though, because if you catch one's attention, you have the attention of all of them, and Ma would have heard them a mile away if we'd had to run back home with a pack of them coming after. We just picked up shells and made sand forts and pretended like we knew how to swim.
But hey, I was seventeen now, and I'd gotten not bad at knocking over harvest reapers with my cobbled-together shotgun, so I figured if they came back, maybe I could at least scare them off. This would, of course, require a stake out.
I set up just inside the barn, where I could see the chicken coop clearly in the moonlight, with my shotgun and a harvest reaper "heart" to work on while I was waiting. I sat there all night, got the heart fixed, and had just decided that the murlocs weren't showing up, when an absolutely riotous clatter broke out across the farm, behind the house. I could hear my ma yelling up a storm by the time I got disentangled from the blanket I'd been dozing in, and she was throwing stones after a critter disappearing into the brush at the edge of the yard.
"Not a murloc, I take it," I said, and she turned to glare at me.
"No, it's that stupid coyote you've been feeding," she said, then gestured to the scattered buckets around the kitchen yard. "Look at it. He's been into scraps now. Those are supposed to feed the hogs."
"Maybe tomorrow night, then," I said. Ma pursed her lips, looking me up and down once.
"You know, I haven't made Westfall stew since your father left for the war," she said. "I think you'd just about fit my old armor now..."
I'm not sure just how incredulously my brow had knitted as she disappeared back into the house, but she rolled her eyes at me when she came back out with a bundle.
"Murlocs really aren't that dangerous," she said. "Not if you're armed and you're bigger than they are. Besides, they really won't chase you beyond sight of their huts if you do get in over your head."
"What do murlocs have to do with Westfall stew?" I asked.
"Don't you remember? The little round bits that just sort of... pop when you bite into them?" she said, gesturing vaguely with one hand. "Those are murloc eyes."
"Eyes?" I gasped. "But those were the best part!"
"And that's why the murlocs normally stay down on the beach rather than coming up and harassing our chickens, too," Ma said firmly. "So why don't we see if this armor fits, and you can go get us a dozen or so eyes, and we'll have stew for supper."
I was speechless as she helped me into the armor - a bit horrified, really. Sure, they were basically walking fish, and they'd definitely kill you if you got too close - but eating their eyes?
"There," Ma said when the last buckle had been adjusted. The armor was mostly leather, with a few metal accents, and by the smell, it had been in a chest with mothballs for quite some time. There was going to be absolutely no surprising the murlocs dressed in that.
Once my ma was satisfied with the armor, I headed back over to the barn to retrieve my shotgun and some shells, then stopped in the shed where I had my workbench to collect a half dozen of the little copper bombs I'd been making to pick off haywire reapers. I hadn't really gotten over the squickiness of eating eyes yet, but I had heard of occasional forays against the coastal murlocs to keep their numbers down. I'd been maybe six or seven the last time I'd heard of one happening, though. No wonder they were going after the chickens.
Once I'd gathered up my supplies, I headed for the bluff. Presumably if Ma wanted the eyes, I was going to have to kill some murlocs, but I really had no idea how to do that without having a dozen of them in my face. Once at the bottom of the bluff, I stopped in its shadow to scope out the murloc settlement. Elaine had gone off to Northshire Abbey a while back to study for the priesthood, and I hadn't been down there in a while.
It had grown, pretty substantially really. Where once there were three little huts, now there were almost a dozen. Some of the murlocs were armed with bows or spears, and these were generally patrolling further out from the huts. I figured these were probably the best bet for getting some eyes for Ma's stew, since they'd be further from the huts - and the other murlocs - so running was more feasible if it came down to it.
Once I'd picked out one of the patrolling murlocs to start with, I got a bead on it through the scope on my gun, taking my time with the shot in order to hit a vital spot and hopefully drop it cleanly. After a few seconds to get a bead on the murloc's chest, I pulled the trigger.
It actually wasn't that bad a shot; the murloc was bleeding profusely as it ran. Unfortunately, it wasn't running towards me, as I'd expected, but back towards all its buddies, yelling all the way.
Honestly, my first instinct was to just book it back up the bluff. I'd just provoked an entire village of murlocs, and I really wasn't that bad a runner. Besides, they were a good forty to sixty yards from me. I could probably be back up the bluff...
I hadn't expected the howl. Despite living my whole life in Westfall, a coyote howl still gave me goosebumps. It is, quite possibly, the eeriest sound I've ever heard, high-pitched and lonely.
There up the bluff was the coyote my ma had been chasing away from the scraps that morning. He sprinted down the slope at the murloc I'd wounded, distracting them, and I quickly fixed my sights back on it as it was turning towards the coyote.
The second shot did drop it, and I took aim at another as the coyote moved towards the group that was now running towards it. With the coyote's help, I was quickly able to drop half a dozen - I didn't even have to resort to the copper bombs I'd brought with me. He sat, madly wagging his tail, and watched me while I gingerly removed the dead murlocs' eyes from the sockets. And to think I had liked Westfall stew when I was little...
Ma wasn't really happy to see the coyote following me back, so I just handed her the sack full of eyes and headed over to the pump to clean off all the ick.
"Elaine's mother said she's just about finished her studies at the abbey," Ma said, still watching the coyote.
"Yeah. And?"
"You didn't want to go see her?"
"Who's going to get the reapers working?" I asked.
"I can fix a harvest reaper, you know," she said, raising a brow at me. "Although now that you can handle the murlocs yourself, we could have stew probably every week--"
"Fine, fine, I'll go see Elaine," I said.
I didn't really mind that idea, but my dad had left for the war twelve years before, and that was the last I had seen him. I didn't like the idea of Ma being alone on the farm. But if it meant I wasn't going to be picking murloc eyes out of their sockets anytime soon...
Outland did have some things going for it, for sure.
As much as I hate the desert of Hellfire Peninsula, the awful mushroom infestations you find in your luggage after a couple weeks in the Zangarmarsh, and fel stench of Shadowmoon Valley, Outland does have one thing going for it.
No, no, besides the ethereals with their dreamboat voices.
Outland has no murlocs.
See, I grew up in Westfall, and, Light save you, you can't go fishing in Westfall without running into a crowd of them. Those ichthyoid tribes are more or less why I left in the first place.
I've always been a tinkerer. Harvest reapers don't fix themselves, after all, and when they go haywire, well, you've really got to be quick on your feet. Better yet, you knock 'em over from a distance, and you don't get shredded while you're trying to turn them off. Sometimes it's faster just to lob a stick of dynamite at them; you're going to have to tear them apart to fix them anyway.
Yeah, so if the hazards of daily farm mechanics weren't bad enough, then the murlocs got into my ma's chickens. Normally they just eat fish, or turtles, or whatever random sea creature has washed up out of the depths, but the settlement closest to our farm somehow got a taste for chicken. Ma is pretty proud of her chickens - she swears up and down Saldean's have got nothing on hers - so she was incensed when half a dozen of hers went missing, with a trail of blood and feathers leading down towards the murloc huts on the beach below the bluff.
The beach had been off limits forever because of the murlocs, which meant my friend Elaine and I snuck down there every time my ma turned her back. We avoided the murlocs, though, because if you catch one's attention, you have the attention of all of them, and Ma would have heard them a mile away if we'd had to run back home with a pack of them coming after. We just picked up shells and made sand forts and pretended like we knew how to swim.
But hey, I was seventeen now, and I'd gotten not bad at knocking over harvest reapers with my cobbled-together shotgun, so I figured if they came back, maybe I could at least scare them off. This would, of course, require a stake out.
I set up just inside the barn, where I could see the chicken coop clearly in the moonlight, with my shotgun and a harvest reaper "heart" to work on while I was waiting. I sat there all night, got the heart fixed, and had just decided that the murlocs weren't showing up, when an absolutely riotous clatter broke out across the farm, behind the house. I could hear my ma yelling up a storm by the time I got disentangled from the blanket I'd been dozing in, and she was throwing stones after a critter disappearing into the brush at the edge of the yard.
"Not a murloc, I take it," I said, and she turned to glare at me.
"No, it's that stupid coyote you've been feeding," she said, then gestured to the scattered buckets around the kitchen yard. "Look at it. He's been into scraps now. Those are supposed to feed the hogs."
"Maybe tomorrow night, then," I said. Ma pursed her lips, looking me up and down once.
"You know, I haven't made Westfall stew since your father left for the war," she said. "I think you'd just about fit my old armor now..."
I'm not sure just how incredulously my brow had knitted as she disappeared back into the house, but she rolled her eyes at me when she came back out with a bundle.
"Murlocs really aren't that dangerous," she said. "Not if you're armed and you're bigger than they are. Besides, they really won't chase you beyond sight of their huts if you do get in over your head."
"What do murlocs have to do with Westfall stew?" I asked.
"Don't you remember? The little round bits that just sort of... pop when you bite into them?" she said, gesturing vaguely with one hand. "Those are murloc eyes."
"Eyes?" I gasped. "But those were the best part!"
"And that's why the murlocs normally stay down on the beach rather than coming up and harassing our chickens, too," Ma said firmly. "So why don't we see if this armor fits, and you can go get us a dozen or so eyes, and we'll have stew for supper."
I was speechless as she helped me into the armor - a bit horrified, really. Sure, they were basically walking fish, and they'd definitely kill you if you got too close - but eating their eyes?
"There," Ma said when the last buckle had been adjusted. The armor was mostly leather, with a few metal accents, and by the smell, it had been in a chest with mothballs for quite some time. There was going to be absolutely no surprising the murlocs dressed in that.
Once my ma was satisfied with the armor, I headed back over to the barn to retrieve my shotgun and some shells, then stopped in the shed where I had my workbench to collect a half dozen of the little copper bombs I'd been making to pick off haywire reapers. I hadn't really gotten over the squickiness of eating eyes yet, but I had heard of occasional forays against the coastal murlocs to keep their numbers down. I'd been maybe six or seven the last time I'd heard of one happening, though. No wonder they were going after the chickens.
Once I'd gathered up my supplies, I headed for the bluff. Presumably if Ma wanted the eyes, I was going to have to kill some murlocs, but I really had no idea how to do that without having a dozen of them in my face. Once at the bottom of the bluff, I stopped in its shadow to scope out the murloc settlement. Elaine had gone off to Northshire Abbey a while back to study for the priesthood, and I hadn't been down there in a while.
It had grown, pretty substantially really. Where once there were three little huts, now there were almost a dozen. Some of the murlocs were armed with bows or spears, and these were generally patrolling further out from the huts. I figured these were probably the best bet for getting some eyes for Ma's stew, since they'd be further from the huts - and the other murlocs - so running was more feasible if it came down to it.
Once I'd picked out one of the patrolling murlocs to start with, I got a bead on it through the scope on my gun, taking my time with the shot in order to hit a vital spot and hopefully drop it cleanly. After a few seconds to get a bead on the murloc's chest, I pulled the trigger.
It actually wasn't that bad a shot; the murloc was bleeding profusely as it ran. Unfortunately, it wasn't running towards me, as I'd expected, but back towards all its buddies, yelling all the way.
Honestly, my first instinct was to just book it back up the bluff. I'd just provoked an entire village of murlocs, and I really wasn't that bad a runner. Besides, they were a good forty to sixty yards from me. I could probably be back up the bluff...
I hadn't expected the howl. Despite living my whole life in Westfall, a coyote howl still gave me goosebumps. It is, quite possibly, the eeriest sound I've ever heard, high-pitched and lonely.
There up the bluff was the coyote my ma had been chasing away from the scraps that morning. He sprinted down the slope at the murloc I'd wounded, distracting them, and I quickly fixed my sights back on it as it was turning towards the coyote.
The second shot did drop it, and I took aim at another as the coyote moved towards the group that was now running towards it. With the coyote's help, I was quickly able to drop half a dozen - I didn't even have to resort to the copper bombs I'd brought with me. He sat, madly wagging his tail, and watched me while I gingerly removed the dead murlocs' eyes from the sockets. And to think I had liked Westfall stew when I was little...
Ma wasn't really happy to see the coyote following me back, so I just handed her the sack full of eyes and headed over to the pump to clean off all the ick.
"Elaine's mother said she's just about finished her studies at the abbey," Ma said, still watching the coyote.
"Yeah. And?"
"You didn't want to go see her?"
"Who's going to get the reapers working?" I asked.
"I can fix a harvest reaper, you know," she said, raising a brow at me. "Although now that you can handle the murlocs yourself, we could have stew probably every week--"
"Fine, fine, I'll go see Elaine," I said.
I didn't really mind that idea, but my dad had left for the war twelve years before, and that was the last I had seen him. I didn't like the idea of Ma being alone on the farm. But if it meant I wasn't going to be picking murloc eyes out of their sockets anytime soon...
Outland did have some things going for it, for sure.
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