Pook's Book

I stopped by the tavern last night for the first time in quite a while. The Shu'halo Paladin was there with some female hanging from his arm, smug as ever, and an Elf was in my place on the balcony of the house that overlooks the area. It was not a good start to the evening. The Elf relocated herself soon enough, however, and I reclaimed the location only to have the deader show up. He started needling me about Ravenfeather in front of the Pridehoof girl, and then requested the stone he gave me back. He crushed it and declared that we were enemies, then rode off to the Grimtotem camp to decimate it, or so he claimed. I hope that he actually did go. Ever since the Scourge attacks the braves have been in top form, and our ranks are still full of reinforcements from the Pinnacle. I suppose the narrow bridges proved easy to shake plagued people off of.

Lapu himself arrived during all of that, and we had a bit of fun with Snow that ended in him getting a bit battered. He sulked for a while that he always loses when I'm around, and then we returned to the house that he uses in town which was strangely full of passers-by and traffic. We turned away a dead cultist and the most vile dead Troll I've ever seen, and he asked me to join his tribe a few times. I asked him to join mine a few times.

And then his woman appeared out of nowhere and slapped him, several times. I had thought that they had parted ways, but apparently I was mistaken. It was fairly amusing until the parts when he said that it was my fault, and that all he wanted was simple company from more or less anyone. I don't know how it is that he can get so irritated at my harassment of the Paladin which is completely based in mutual distaste and yet he can openly tell two women at the same time that he hopes to be with them both without consequence. At least he had the decency to deny it when he was asked if he intended it to be both at the same time. He still laughed though. I stayed long enough to make sure that the Earthmother Herself had left and then left myself. It didn't matter that I didn't stay, so long as she didn't either.

Ancestors help me, why do I find him so charming anyway?

So, first things first, we lost Junior Magistrix Emberdawn. She was always talking anyway, I couldn't stand her, and really the nitwit didn't have the sense to be a Magister. A deceased Red Dragon fell from the sky onto her head and really, if you're going to have that little situational awareness? You don't deserve to live.

We all know how she got her apprenticeship anyway.

Rilien says that the city has been quiet enough of late that he thinks that he could possibly petition to be a personal escort to the team, what with us dropping like flies and all, and while I worry about the practicality of it I hope that he manages to talk them into it. I miss him, terribly.

Meanwhile, I received a disturbing letter from Tanthos that said that he was worried about me and thanked me, and so I knew right away that something was seriously wrong, and also said that Atalante was missing. Taken. I went to find him and he just looked awful, worse than before. I honestly don't know what's to become of him. He said that Atalante was taken by two people with potions, an Elf of some sort (he was vague on the details other than that they "glowed" but spoke Common) and a Tauren. Honestly at this point I'm convinced that they must have been Blue Dragons in disguise, but I have no idea why they'd bother such a ruse just to capture Atalante. He was powerful, certainly, or at least Earen Sunstrike was a Magister of some note, but of all the powerful mages in Dalaran why him?

I told him that I'd take him to the boxes on the Tundra. I was worrie thought that he might run off ahead with no assistance and so I reminded him that he didn't really know the way and I did. I'll likely leave the rest of the team behind, they're a hindrance and a nuisance to actually getting things done.

[Blah blah letter for Cirban and Emberdawn's superiors informing them of the death and the team's progress blah blah]

I think that Lapu may have fallen on his head during his time to the north. Possibly multiple times.

I must say, in my naive girlish dreams of having a man ask to take me on as a lifemate, back when I still thought such a thing was possible, I never quite pictured it as receiving a letter that said, more or less, "Well?" with a second enclosed letter of my brother's disdain for the notion when he was asked if someone could ask for my hand or whatever silly, senseless Human notion the man has gotten into his head.

I will not say that the notion is not appealing. It is. That is exactly the problem. I would not have the same expectations of a mate as I do of a man who occasionally turns up expecting food and sex. I don't think I would be able to find his romancing of the women to the North (and the South, and the East and the West) nearly as impishly charming.

Also, he doesn't bring me flowers. I am fairly certain that flowers are supposed to be involved, somewhere.

Still...I did not tell him no, exactly. There is no doubt that of all the men I've encountered, I could imagine being his lifemate the most easily. Getting along with him is...easy. For lack of a better word, perhaps just because I do not expect anything from him. But then there is my tribe, which he still has the silly notion that he's going to "rescue" me from. If he would just try it out, I still think that he would find that he is positively Grimtotem to the core.

And then he asked if the girl who would be sent to kill me were I to leave the tribe, likely silly Atsi trying so hard to be the next Snow, would be attractive. See, this is exactly the sort of thing I don't think that I am supposed to tolerate.

I'm pretty sure that anyone who would want to know already knows, but what the hey >D

Give me a character from any fandom or original work of mine, and I will talk about what he or she or it is like in bed.

We have lost the second member of our team. We narrowly avoided scrapes with our investigation of the area known as the Borean Tundra after encounters with huge animals known as Shoveltusks and Mammoths, the adult males of each species as it turns out are quite aggressive. There were huge creatures known as Magnataurs in a cave being controlled by butterflies, as far as we could tell, and rabid hunters loosed by that Nesingwary dwarf. Perhaps the oddest was a camp of mechanical gnomes whose souls needed to be loosed from their constructs, and, of course, more undead bugs.

The most relevant area, however, held what looked like runic circles filled with boxes, guarded by blue dragons and oddly-marked humans that appear to be mages. The Kirin Tor sent us in as part of an investigation, and as far as we can tell the dragons are capturing people and putting them in the boxes for who even knows what reason. Junior Magisters Sunstar and Firestrike had to be rescued from them and their dogs.

Proceeding on from the Tundra to an area they call Dragonblight, it was to those dragon hunters that we lost Firestrike again, who had wandered off from the group in an area they call Moonrest and really, if you're going to be that stupid I cannot possibly be bothered to keep you alive. We assume that he's dead at any rate. Or in a box somewhere. At this point I really could care less which. He was a complainer anyway.


( A report sent to Cirban and copy to Atalante )

Well, that didn't take long. There are nine members of the team left, down from ten, when Junior Magister Dawnglow was carried off by a giant bug more or less the moment we set foot out of this fortress and onto the wretched tundra. They've been searching the wriggling cocoons in the area for him or his remains, but nobody is hopeful.

Gathering information out here seems to consist of running menial tasks for the Orcs out here. There is a group of surly Cenarions who knew little to nothing about anything but stopping the hunting groups, and giant walrus men who seem to be having some problems with being enslaved by a curious group that is of concern to the Kirin Tor. There are also, as I had previously heard rumor of, hostile Blue Dragons...we all agree that this does not bode well.

I showed Rilien around Dalaran, and wasn't that just a fun basket of memories? "Oh look, this spire used to be blue, before it was crushed by a giant demon. Over here are the prisons where they held all of the Quel'dorei captive." I took him up to the lounge, though, and the view was quite nice.

Shathin continues to write, still under the delusion that we are or ever will be friends. I'm beginning to think that he won't believe it until I've reduced him to a pile of ash. And perhaps not even then.


Formal Report (copies sent to Cirban and Atalante)

The magical fluctuations appear to be more intensely felt up here. Spells are off, creatures are visibly changing, entire areas seem to have been affected by the relocation of Dalaran. The Blue Dragonflight apparently poses a worrying problem, we will look into this more in particular.

Junior Magister Dawnglow was lost in an undead insect attack on Warsong Hold. Please relay our condolences to his family and his co-workers.

Stupid big open inn rooms open to the whole stupid room.

Hammocks.

Mages.

Dragons.

Not seeing the children.

That stupid island full of Elves.

No privacy anywhere ever.

A city full of stupid people.

Stupid plans.

Backing out of stupid plans.

Stupid people who feel like they have to make rude comments about an Elf with a Tauren husband.

MAGES.

DRAGONS.

NO. PRIVACY.

I am NOT going ALL the way to a STUPID island full of Elves who might have who even KNOWS what friends too and might not even BE mages and might be all wrong TOO when there's a STUPID mage right HERE just because No's hooves are cold or whatever the STUPID saying is. Well I hope he was cold sleeping in his STUPID hammock by himself. I'm doing it, and I don't care if he helps or not. I'll take the Mage AND his stupid Wretched friend by MYSELF if I have to.

Somehow.

And I'm going back to the Inn in the middle of the city too, where at least there's a STUPID door that can be closed, not that it even MATTERS.

I don't like this one bit.

No and I got up to this Northrend place, which is very large and, No assures me every few minutes, very cold. It's full of bugs, and Scourge, and Scourged bugs, and the fortress we arrived at smells like Ironforge and too many people. There are Tauren here with squished faces called Taunka, and nobody knew the way to Coldara, not even the Elf that we asked.

We found a tower full of mages who had us try and find out what was happening by torturing a man they had us capture. As it turns out, it's much, much worse than we thought it could be. Ephe was already up here and she came out to hear it for herself.

I don't know if everyone will do it. No says Xa'ru will, but nobody is sure about Sihu, and I don't remember who else was involved who's still alive. Fortunately they said that we wouldn't all be punished if some people didn't go through with it. All I know is, we have to get back to the children. I'll do what they ask if it means that they'll let our debt be settled and we can get back to the ship and the children as soon as possible.

I've been a minion to worse than them before.

( Shaali goes on at length, about Death Knights, reappeared friends and her new assignment )

Thank the ever-benevolent sun, Athane Blacksun is back.

He said he was assigned to a mission of some kind outside the city. I could care less. He's back. Back, and has resumed his command. Not eager to be demoted myself, we went to the Overseer to work out the circumstances of the transfer of the unit, and I presented my case for joining the Magisterium. The unit has long needed a Magistrate for the judgment, arbitration and sentencing of the prisoners that we arrest, and I laid out my suitability for the job.

Despite Blacksun like the unmitigated bastard that he is trying to cut down my ability to do his job in his absence - and that, by the way, was priceless. Oh, no, you're welcome for making certain that you had a job to return to, for building and growing the unit, recruiting capable people, securing our alliances and going through piles of unimaginable shit to maintain the public image of the unit all while never breathing a single negative word about you and your disappearance. It's just lovely to be spat upon after going through all that for your sake covering the job that you didn't even think to have seen to while you were flitting about the SUN even knows where doing the Nether knows what, having your wife looked after, protecting the city from the single worst disaster to befall it since the original invasion and seeing us through to the restoration of the Sunwell and not even expecting a single "Thank you, Shaali, for all that you've done, good job" but at the very least not wanting to be cut down in front of our superior when I sought to defend my work and better my position. And where some people would have clawed and clung to power and made you fight for your Command back, I was actually willing to have a peaceful transfer of power back to your hands even after all that time and all I'd done but no, somehow that was just awful of me

...yes. That was annoying. At any rate, despite all that Cirban grudgingly admitted that they had an available position in the Magisterium and that I could indeed see to the duties of the unit's Magistrate and become his personal apprentice.

I was grateful enough for the opportunity to gain a foothold into better things that even that didn't sound too bad at the time. I'm quite certain that it will be awful, but there is no way that it could possibly be more awful than the job I was doing. No more patrols, no more standing in my foot-ruts in the Exchange and bearing whatever insults the passers-by care to toss. I will dearly miss spending as much time at Rilien's side, but at the same time it's an immense relief to not be his direct superior anymore. I can't help but think that he will make a better Lieutenant for Blacksun than he did for me, just due to the lack of a conflict of interest. And he can come and visit me in the Spire, and no doubt the Overseer has a desk somewhere, and we can break it in after-hours.

Also, there's a giant hole where Dalaran used to be and the area is filled with magical residue. If I had to guess from the remaining runes and resonances I'd say that they teleported it somewhere, and the missing land mass underneath leads me to believe that it must either be in the sky or in the ocean. But where?