World of Warcraft - Interbellum (IC Thread)

[Plaids]

Jakk'ari enjoys the small celebrations occurring between the caravan members after a swift fight without casualties and ample healing remaining.
After providing his compliments to the Oscar's and helping a dazed elf he approaches Zachary.

"You've done well. Striking with the ferocity of a scorpid. Will you join me in informing our our captain?" Offering him a chance to join him to speak with brother Bright.
"Otherwise we'll still have more to discuss regarding our spying guardian." Referring to the horde scout they had only found traces of.
"But before that I have a payment to prepare." Taking a small knife to the nearest fresh raptor's skull to cut the optical nerves. While wondering what could happen with a blight caller in their midst.

[MrAbdiel]

In the aftermath, once everyone is counted and no one has been seriously injured, the atmosphere is quite triumphant. The drivers pull the horses out of their defensive circle, reward their stoicism with old carrots and oats, and chat with one another. The tenor of that discussion is mostly positive and related to the size of the raptors, the value of the hurricane winds keeping them at bay for so long, and how Oscar and other-Oscar had, mostly, killed one in coodination with the Jakk'ari's winds, and Isaera's volleys. Occasionally, their chatter lowers suddenly and dramatically in volume, and is accompanied by glances over the shoulder toward Marion. Oscar, other-Oscar, and Carlo are clearly a little disturbed by the revelation of the dark haired spellstress's power set. Torian, out of the four, looks more deeply conflicted, and ranges between silence in those moments, to dominating the conversation.

Spoiler: The Theramore Driver Boys

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...Look like this, typically.

Spoiler: Insight DC 8; or Perception DC 12 to eavesdrop without being noticed.

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It's obvious that Torian fancies Marion; that much was made plain with his fumbling offer to make tea during the storm the night before. But now he's experiencing a crisis within himself: a natural desire to disapprove of the warlock is predictable and socially compelled here, but doing so would critically endanger the scenario he has built up in his head, in which he wins her affection presumably in some critical moment of sacrifice and valor. The other drivers are recounting the manifold reasons to be suspicious of Fel casters - the demons, the Dark Portal, the frequency with which they are hoist by the green flame of their dark petards - and Torian is playing (almost literal) devil's advocate, talking about how even Lady Proudmoore has her confidante Redia Vaunt, whose dark study is an open secret in Theramore.
He is making some ground, but the others remain unconvinced.

The surgeon, Gustaf, joins Jakk'ari over near the cluster of three raptors that have been slain without the touch of fel magic. As the troll eye-balls them, the surgeon looks over their injuries and, taking a small, sharp knife of his own, begins opening them up and field dressing them to preserve their best cuts for the night's meal. He doesn't strike up conversation with troll; just works alongside him for the moment.

Spoiler: Gustaf Van Houzen

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Spoiler: Insight DC 8

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Gustaf is an older man, perhaps in his fifties; and as head surgeon in Theramore, he's probably been stitching up soldiers and watching them die in at least the last two wars, and long before it. Such a man has more reason to distrust trolls than almost anyone here, since he has likely seen the damage the Amani forest trolls inflict in their berserker hatchet-hurling frenzies. The nuances of the distinction between Jakk'ari's Farraki heritage against the forest trolls Amani descent isn't the kind of thing people tend to appreciate; but it seems like the gesture of just working nearby him with, both plying their careful blades to the slain raptors, is about as close as such a man can come to expressing direct appreciation. He will probably never not look at a troll or orc without instinctive guardedness, but he is recognizing and restraining that reflex as not applicable to the Sandfury shaman-diplomat.

Meanwhile the two medics do what they are here to do, and split off to the suffering parties. Helaina, the slightly younger of the pair with with blonde hair, calming brown eyes and a fearless professionalism when it's 'game time' and the sutures come out, takes the task of looking over Mor'Lag. "Wow. It's barely a scratch on you girls, but it might have opened up anyone else without much trouble. Definitely had the lacerating force to cut through a typical abdominal wall, but..." She places a hand either side of the eight inch gash on Mor'Lag's abdomen, and inspects the wound as she presses it to make the edged match up nicely with only a minimal oozing of blood. "On you, it's just a flesh wound. I can restore it easy enough, with a heal spell; or if you don't care for a divine solution, or you want to keep the scar, I could sew it." She steps back, looking back and forth between Mor and Lag, going through the ritual everyone must go through with a two headed ogre and coming to the decision of which head to look at, and how often to change it up. "I'll admit I don't know much about ogre spiritualism and culture. Do you like picking up scars, like orcs and trolls seem to?"

Spoiler: Medic Helaina

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Tamberlyn, closer to her mid twenties with darker hair, mischievous green eyes and a Westfall twang to her voice, comes to Isaera's aid. "Alright, honey; you've done just fine today, but let's get you sat down and have a look at you..." She hassles Carlo and Oscar to hoist a provision crate down from one of the wagons for Isaera to sit on, and gives the elf an arm and a shoulder as necessary to bring her over to it. They, too, appear to benefit from the 'honey' designation; another Westfaller habit, it seems. The medic takes the temperature of the mage's forehead with the back of her hand, gazes intently at her eyes to scan for irregular dilation in one or the other; but ultimately finds her diagnosis in the string of four mosquito bites on her left inner arm - four of many, on the poor elf. "Oh, honey; you're alright. It's just the skeeter-fever, from all the damn swamp skeeters. It builds in your system, but takes a toll on you when your blood is up. You'll probably be feeling better by bed time tonight." She steps back a little and, now that she's looking for them, begins to spy the constellation of little bites over Isaera's variously bared planes of elven skin. "They sure like you. You got that sugar-blood."

Spoiler: Medic Tamberlyn

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[WindStruck]

Isaera just manages to groan grudgingly. 'Just the skeeter fever'? Her legs felt like jelly and the world felt like it was tilting sideways! But still, she supposed there wasn't much anyone could do about it...

Maybe some of that tea would be a good idea. Or that ointment or whatever Jakk'ari was talking about, though she didn't really fancy the idea of putting mud on herself.

Or maybe she should have tried to quickly scrounge for some more clothing at her home that covered more skin? Of course, then she would be sweating like a pig! Not that she wasn't already now, but it would be way more uncomfortable. ... traveling through this swamp sucked.

Despite her suffering, Isaera still manages to be rather attentive to the various things going around, though trying to keep the bugs off her is a big distraction. "By the gods, I can't wait for this trip to be over!"

[MrAbdiel]

Tamberlyn laughs, uncruelly. "Honey, you sing it. But honestly..." She lowers her voice to a stage whisper, as she conveys conspiratorial girl-talk. "If I had a dress like that and the figure to pull it off, I'd brave the skeeters too. Beauty is pain, they say." She laughs at her own commentary a little, then takes out a slate and chalk to make a note for herself. "I'll see if we can't mix up something so those bites don't itch like hell tomorrow. But bad as it is out here, thank you for answering the call.
There's worse out here than the skeeters, and even the raptors; and the lost boys out there'll be scared and hungry and happy as hell to see you, when you find them."

Spoiler: Isaera's Dream, Continued

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You hear a tsk, and a quiet flutter of laughter from him as you deflect the compliment. Your father, who has spent most of your life saturating you and your siblings with compliments and encouragement, is not strongly incentivized to dissuade you from a moment of humility. Without articulating it directly, that little scoff communicates both that he thinks you’re underselling your contribution in this crisis, but that he will honor your desire to downplay it.

But he doesn’t laugh when you invoke that exchange between him and his mother; infact, his attention settles on you quiet intensely, and his composed demeanor flashes through a moment of paternal horror in which he considers that this question may have been tormenting his daughter from the moment the exchange happened, until now. He doesn’t waste a heartbeat’s time in putting it to rest.

“When I met your mother, I was… a little obnoxiously flippant, I think; and a braggart, and a bundle of other petty vices fit the memory also. And she was acid-tongued, and vain, and extremely good at manipulating men’s hearts. And fate arrayed us such that we would collide with one another; and she would wear down my flaws, and I wore down hers. Our courtship filled with…” He smiles in memory, shaking his head a little as if to dislodge some cluster of recollections from a vault of experiences so choked with things worth smiling about that they needed force to be separated. “With smug dismissal, and catty threats, and accusations, and apologies, and big, romantic stunts to restore her favor. I used to pretend to forget her parent’s names, just to make her angry, long past the point when I was good friends with them. And she used to remind me that she could replace me with a younger lover with a snap of her fingers, just to cut me down to size when I took her for granted. I think she meant it, a very long time ago; and she absolutely could replace me in a heartbeat, because she’s the most beautiful woman in the world. But she doesn’t mean that she would. That’s just… It’s part of a cipher she and I have. It means she loves me, in the language of our time spent together. This is nothing.” He touches the little crescent scar with one finger, and smiles with one corner of his mouth. “If anything, I think she likes it. So don’t worry about it Little Sunbean; I’m not going anywhere.”

Little Sunbean, expressed in Common - an affectionate sobriquet for you he sometimes employs, harkening back to days earlier than your memory. The way he tells the story, you were two years old and beginning to learn the human Common tongue along side your Thalassian; and advanced as you were, you struggled to parse the differences in your dental morphemes. ‘Sunbeam’ became ‘Sunbean’ in a faulty pronunciation, and it made your father laugh, so you kept saying it. Your mother swears the story is apocryphal, but your father stakes his sacred honor on its veracity.

“You’ll develop your own little couple-rituals when I marry you off to prince Kael’Thas.”

This is almost certainly a joke. But he is… frightfully good at keeping a straight face, when tormenting his children with fabrications. It is another fatherly quality in which he excels.

[BananaPhone]

Marion Mordis


Once Marion had recovered, she went about re-collecting herself and her things. She ensured her pack was still secured on the wagon before casting a glance here and there to see if anyone needed assistance that she could offer.

She was a slight distance from the quiet circle of testimony that involved her character and intentions, and so Marion had nothing to say on the matter, either in her defense or encouragement to her lone advocator.

[Feathersnow]

Mor and Lag look at Helaina. They consider her first a moment, then come to a conclusion.
"We have no great love of your Light" Says Lag
"But Ogres take no pride in failure." Continue Mor, a little wistfully
"And we thank you for your respect for our ways."
"Please, though, use your magic, whatever its source."

[MrAbdiel]

While folks are tending wounds and fevers, discussing cultural change, and gutting velociraptors for Kalimdor gumbo, Brother Bright is checking over the horses and preparing the wagons to move again. He seems to be fussing over the foremost cart, which sits a little skewed on the road.

Spoiler: Marion's Technology Skill {Routine Success}

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It seems like Brother Bright is trying to figure out which axle is bent, but the problem is actually one of the swingles; specifically, the one lashed to the evener in front of the horse left of the wagon’s shaft. It seems like in the haste to circle the wagons earlier, the short length of chain on the swingle got looped around the swingle proper, meaning the leftmost horse is pulling at a differential to the rightmost, rather than parallel. The result is that the wagon is skewing right. It’s just a matter of untangling that bit of chain, but it’s the kind of problem that someone without a modicum of technical skill - everyone except Marion and the drivers, for example - wouldn’t even know to look for. She could easily fix his problem, or show him how.

Spoiler: Marion's Dream Continued.

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You can draw up the mana into yourself. That part has come to you like breathing. But forcing it into forms, with the practised movements of your young hands, and using words whose phonemes are ancient and classical and outside of your spoken language… that part isn’t easy. Tutor Laerdan has been teaching you to make frostbolts for over a year now. With her constant correction and eye for detailed caster work, you’ve become pretty alright at it with supervision. But it’s complex, and not internally interesting, and as you curl your fingers and try your best to incant, you can feel your palms getting exceedingly cold exceedingly fast. That, you know, means you are on your way to fouling the spell. The first phrase is to produce motion within the mana, as the elves call it; the second phrase is supposed to always be a containment phrase: the element of the spell that allows the caster to hold it like a physical thing as it builds, and is then dissolved in a fashion and at the time of their choosing to release that energy into the world. You’re already at your fourth phrase in the casting - the flow, and trying to think back to what you said or forgot to say back in the second phrase that collapsed the containment. You double back, repeating the second phrase to try to create containment after the fact; but the flow is already happening, and mana is sublimating out of your will into icy shards growing directly on your hands. It’s all you can do not to cry now, aborting the casting with a premature trough phrase to return the unmanaged flow back to its dormant state, and you brush your hands together to dislodge the accreting ice.

Randal, who is also suffering from the cold but only because he isn’t used to the alpine conditions like you are, watches your fumble without comment; though you notice his eyebrows move with … What? Amusement, perhaps at your expense?

“Don’t look at him. Look at the feather. Try again.”

You feel her hands squeezing your shoulders. You can feel… not precisely disapproval in her voice, but certainly an awareness of the imperfection that has transpired. It’s hard to see the feather now, black against the black of the sky; but you track its motion by the way it blots the stars it passes in front of. Resolving, you try again, and hear Laerdan’s voice in your head, cycling the seven words you have heard so, so many times in the last three years.

Motion. Containment. Frame. Flow. Vector. Breach. Trough.

You cite the opening phrase, and feel the mana stir in you again. And then your attention is drawn away by a gunshot from far below, in the streets.

No, not a gunshot in the streets - just a clap, hard enough to sound like a gunshot for an instant to your ears; and not below in the streets, but below on the terrace. Your eyes cannot help but jag their attention downward, and they capture in your mind a memorable tableaux. Randal’s father, this armored nobleman from another nation, has his right arm across his body, palm open, body slightly twisted at the hips with the preceding motion. Staggering back, not quite falling but unbalanced, is your father. He has been slapped with such force that he has nearly fallen over. With the sound of the blow, your mother’s hands tighten instinctively on your shoulders to the point of bruising; as if the blow has been transmitted in part to her through the bond of matrimony, and she is earthing the charge of it directly into you, by touch.


The feather catches an updraft and begins to spiral higher, and further; too far for you to hit it now, even if you were a very practiced mage. But you won’t flounder the same way twice, and you recite your containment phrase. This time, you feel the scintillation in your fingertips that you expected. Yet you cannot help but glance down, again; and the scene is arguably worse. Now your father is standing upright again, and the two of them continue to speak as if the blow had not happened. As if your father had not been struck in the face in the heights of his own tower in the view of his wife and daughter. You are too young to understand the politics that made it this way; but you are not too young to understand the incredible, galling audacity of such an exchange. The sickening disparity of authority that impresses on you unmistakably that as powerful as your family is, and as your nation is, there is a power possessed by other thrones that could reach in and wipe your world from the face of history.

You feel something welling up in you that you mistake for a desire to be sick - but it’s something else - the mana inside you, sympathetically roiling with motion at your emotional state, too fierce and hostile as a force to be boxed in the containment measure you’ve constructed. But it’s coming up, and out, and with a surge of instinct that races up your spine, down your arms and curls your fingers into locked claws, you look up to the sky and focus your outrage on that vanishing black feather in the night sky.

Ice does not leap from your hands; but a gout of flame originating around the feather itself blooms into being with growl of conflagration and ten foot detonation before it is dispersed enough to wisp away in the air. Now Randal is looking at you with surprise; maybe even fear. That was not like a bolt spell. It needed no containment to protect you, no frame to describe its form to the cosmos. It was all flowing mana, and the intention to destroy. And unlike the intimidating formalism of the magic you have learned… it felt good.

“I think…” Your mother begins, loosening her grip on your shoulders, gazing up at the sky, “We might arrange a more formal scholarship for you, in Dalaran. You have, perhaps, exceeded what lone tutor can offer you, my Marion.”

Below, gazing up at you, are the faces of the men on the terrace. Your father seems at ease, having seen the familiar form of you and your mother and knowing at once that you are not startled by the burst in the sky. But the nobleman, Randal’s father, looks bewildered; hand on the hilt of his sword, his two guards moving in to his sides as they puzzle out what they fear to have been the sound of some assassination attempt.

[MrAbdiel]

Mor and Lag look at Helaina. They consider her first a moment, then come to a conclusion.
"We have no great love of your Light" Says Lag
"But Ogres take no pride in failure." Continue Mor, a little wistfully
"And we thank you for your respect for our ways."
"Please, though, use your magic, whatever its source."

Helaina nods a few times, smiling benignly. She doesn’t understand the ogress’s rejection of the Light; but she understands that she understands; and that’s probably enough. She passes a hand over the wound, speaking words that provoke an ethereal repetition with warm choral melody. The wound seals, leaving a faint white line that will fade to Mor’Lag’s skin tone in a few days.

Spoiler: OOC

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Mor’Lag is healed!

[hand ax ranger]

Zachary looked to the warlock and shrugged. He didn't seem to hold hostilities and got the impression they did not wish to draw a great deal of attention to the root of their powers. Though she didn't realize it he understood fully.....

"Alright then, let's get this all moving again. We've got a wounded man out in those woods still and even more to find." He begun reloading his long-rifle as he spoke to them. "Have your three figured out anything while me an Jakk'ari were scouting ahead?"

[WindStruck]

Isaera gives Zachary a look. "Figured out anything? Like what??"

She shakes her head and adds, "I'm afraid you know far more than we do."

Looking around wearily she asks, "Is everyone alright?"

[hand ax ranger]

He shrugs at her question. "Well I don't know....hence my asking. you'd be surprised how often important information comes from the least likely source. As for my health I am fine."

[BananaPhone]

Marion Mordis

Marion spotted the problem with the wheels, her eyes widened a little and her grin arching.

"We won't be getting far along through the swamp with you holding us back, will we?"

The warlock swung her legs over the edge of the wagon and descended back onto the ground. Of note was the way Marion moved, as a girl brought up on a more rustic frontier may have simply hopped off, while the Alteraci revealed her higher born roots by careful descending and accepting help from any passing male that offered her a hand with a polite "Thank you!"

Down onto the ground again, Marion moved about to where she spotted the growing fault with the chains and wheels. Once in position, she peered and inspected, her perusal simply confirming what she had spotted from above as she nodded in satisfaction to herself.

"Yes, quite..." she said to no-one in particular. Looking around, craning her head, the Alteraci spotted the fellow attempting to fix the wagon and directed her voice at him.

"Brother Bright?" her voice smooth and polite.

"In our haste to form defensive posturing's, we wrapped one of the chains fully around the swingle," she pointed directly to the problem. Marion deliberately used collective language in a diplomatic effort to eschew any one person from fault or blame.

"The horses, poor dears, will be traveling at different speeds with a right-most skew. It will cause a bit of bother under normal circumstances, and will render retreat under duress a perilous affair."

[WindStruck]

Wait, something was wrong with the wagons?

"Huh?" Isaera asks confused. "Can't you just unwrap the chain?"

She slowly walks over to see what they were talking about.

[BananaPhone]

Marion Mordis

"That is precisely how to remedy the problem."

[MrAbdiel]

Naturally, it’s Torian who notices Marion swinging her legs over the edge of the wagon. He and other-Oscar are unlimbering a freshly assembled stretcher from a rear wagon, but Torian sees his moment, drops the stretcher, and blurs over to offer Marion an assisted descent at the speed of chivalry.

Brother Bright looks up at the young noblewoman’s approach and listens to her commentary with a blank expression. His eyes track to the offending wagon, then back to her. He’s about to ask what the heck a swingle is, when Isaera, too, adds her elven grace to the Council of Unlikely Wagonwrights. He takes another look at the snarled chain, and slowly the engineering problem dissolved in his book-smart mind into the comprehensible solution already offered. But before he can act on that, other-Oscar calls over:

“Yeah, just unwrap the chain, Brother. It’s not goblin science.”

First, Marion and Isaera homed in on the solution - both spellweaving women of class and grace from whom he had not expected technical commentary (and certainly not Marion’s detailed tour of the problem); but other-Oscar scoring some points back off him is the icing on the cake. The Brother looks briefly confounded, and perhaps even frustrated - but it’s a brief thing, and he does what most good humoured men do when they are revealed to be as prone to folly as any other. He jokes his way out of the embarrassment.

“Well, I’m sorry, I slept through the day we covered ‘Anointed Wagon Repair’ in seminary. Don’t just stand there, other-Oscar, Torian; get over here and dingle this swingle.”

The lads go to the embarrassingly simple repair with shared snickering, and Brother Bright feigns a kick to Torian’s backside as he goes, further burying his moment of failure in clownish pantomime. But he circles back to own up, to the ladies.

“Yes, you’re both quite right. Mechanisms aren’t quite my element; I suppose when you know what to look for, it’s right obvious. Forgive my ignorance. I hadn’t taken either you for tradesfolk.”

The fact that Isaera’s contribution was less tradecraft and more simple deduction from an attentive mind is lost on the Brother, who is now assuming he can assume nothing about either of them. “Just so I know when to call on you, besides the magic, what other skills does your group possess?”

[MrAbdiel]

There's a little exchange that proceeds, with the group and Brother Bright. When the group was dispatched, the orders were pretty directly to not entangle the groups too much. They are, after all, an explicitly Alliance medical delegation and a deniable non-affiliated asset to safely move through Horde territory. But that seems to have fallen away a little now; the reality of being in the dangerous swamp, Horde or not, encourages a little more sharing. The Theramore escort seem to have processed Marion's dark powerset just as they processed the more exotic Jakk'ari and Mor'Lag: for there are few experiences that can bond people like fighting off a wave of velociraptors side by side.

Other-Oscar and Torian head off with Jakk'ari and Zachery on a retrieval mission, reuniting with the wagon train a little further up the road during a pitstop to eat the last of the raptor-based-stew Jakk'ari had prepared before it has a chance to go bad. Jakk'ari delivers the raptor eyeballs to Jarl, who is tickled pink to receive them, and happy to be relieved of his moral burden over the injured young man in his care.

The recovered cadet's name is Aeden. He doesn't get to introduce himself; he is fighting fever from his wounds, the infections on which would certainly have killed him but for the rudimentary medicine applied to him by the swamp hermit. It seems that whenever this cadet split off from his fellows, he was travelling back toward Theramore, deviated off the road, and was mauled badly by raptors before collapsing near enough to Jarl's hut to benefit from his ministrations.

Spoiler: Treatment, Expertise: Medicine, or similar, DC 25.

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Upon closer inspection, and with some difficulty because of the severity of the wounds, it seems unlikely that raptors were the sole culprit. Intermingled with the piercing teethmarks are the puncturing chevrons that suggest a beaked attacker, as well.

Apart from that recovery mission, there are no interruptions to the journey; and just as well, because the one delay slowed the wagons enough that they have to travel through the night for a couple of hours to reach Northwatch Tower. A host of tower guards help unload the wagons, take Aeden inside to recover in a modicum of comfort, and provide new rations and some meat from the tower's local hunting teams. They have a predictable unease with Mor'Lag and Jakk'ari, but these guards are Theramoran themselves, and have at least seen them around the city once or twice sufficient to not overreact.

Another night of camping, this time in the comforting safety of the Alliance position; a morning routine, breakfast and resupply, and day three begins for the eclectic party with departure from the wagons, and the escort. Brother Bright has the crew rig up an oversized travel pack containing a pair of stretchers, a medical kit, and enough camping gear for the group. Bulky as it is, it's a trivial carry for Mor'Lag. After that, there's nothing for the Theramorans to do but bid the team good luck.

"We'll be here, of course", Brother Bright promises, "ready to look after the lads you find. West of here is Brackenwall village. The settlement leader, last we knew, is Nazeer Bloodpike; an orc sent from Orgrimmar to establish a counterweight settlement here in Dustwallow Marsh. But since Lady Proudmoore's worked so hard to keep relations peaceable, they've never really needed to escalate to a more robust settlement with watchtowers of their own. Seems like a dead-end assignment to me, but hell if I know if that's a great honor for an orc or not. Hopefully, you'll pick up the trail of the other three cadets before you have to consider speaking to them directly."

Helaina and Tamberlyn offer their farewells early, and head back to the tower to watch over Aeden and attend some of the tower guard's routine injuries. The drivers offer handshakes and aphoristic encouragements as they peel off one at a time to take up their shift guarding the tower and relieve soldiers there to return to Theramore. Torian, perhaps disappointing himself in a later reflection, does not summon sufficient courage to attempt another fumbling flirtation toward Marion; just a professional handshake, and a hasty retreat.

Spoiler: Professions, OOC

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With your stay at the tower, there's time and resources to attempt one use of a profession. A crafting profession to make its expected product, or a gathering profession to produce resources to lower the DC of someone else's crafting profession check now or later! After that, it's time to go get these cadets, though you might feel free to discuss plans IC, if you have them.

[BananaPhone]

Marion Mordis

Marion offered a pleasant smile to Torian as he darted over to offer her a hand of assistance in descending the side of the wagon. It was a sweet gesture that she appreciated, and Tarion was rewarded with his efforts with a warm smile and a genuine "Thank you, goodman Torian."

"I know a few things about mining..." Marion admitted, her right hand strokign her jaw as she gazed upwards in idle thought, "but that runs in the family. Or it used to, anyway..."

"I served an engineering apprenticeship at Dalaran while also enrolled as a regular student. That is how I spotted our initial problem," she crooked her right index finger to point towards the wrapped-around chain.

oOo

During the temporary residence at the watchtower, Marion noticed something.

She was watching how the elf and ogre took rather poorly to the humid, fetid and insect-choked environment of the swamp, their constitutions ill-prepared to see off the myriad dangers that sought to lay them low with infirmity. Marion herself had fared much better, and though she may enjoy the idea that her mountainous upbringing had installed within her a heartier fortitude, it was quite a tale to say that one was tougher than an ogre. Thus, the engineer considered the differences between herself, Isaera and Mor'Lag, and the warlock quickly discerned that of the three only she was dressed properly for their surroundings. She wore no thick raiments, but rather she was almost entirely covered. The elf, meanwhile, had paraded herself around in a way that the noble-born Alteraci kept to herself, while the ogre, naturally born and raised within a backwards and savage culture, bedecked herself with only the crudest forms of linen (in Marions opinion anyway).

Why would this matter?

Well, Marion knew well of how a carcass left upon the earth would soon attract a swarm of flies. Likewise, she had seen the mosquitos and other repulsive insects buzzing around their camp, hour after hour, their needles, stingers and injectors helping themselves to their exposed skin where they could.

Naturally, Marion considered just telling the two to wrap up and wear something decent, Isaera in particular, like a traveling lady should and that their illness was the universes way of suggesting that they dress with a better sense of propriety. But between a who-knows-how-old-elf and enormous ogre, Marion did not fancy her chances of getting them to change their minds. So perhaps they needed something else that would keep the insects away?

For a good long while Marion pondered this puzzle on her own, merely seated in a corner with a small bit of food and a writing pad and pen, taking notes, jotting down thoughts and observing the world around her.

Then she spotted the beastly Troll working his primitive alchemy, and an idea suddenly ignited within Marions brain. A 'Eureka!' smile splitting her features, she buried her attention into the note-book before her and started to feverishly write, draw and compute.


ooc:

Marion is using her 'Inventor' advantage to create the following:

Power: Immunity 1: Disease.

Inventing: (1D20+6)[24] vs TN DC 11.

She's making a Warcraft Bug Repellent.

[Plaids]

There were still three recruits out there. Potentially four battered young soldiers.
The Isaera and Mor'Lag were thankfully recovering quickly thanks to the Theramore medics. After spending some time with Mor'Lag in the tavern Jakk'ari knew the two had withstood their fair share of stress and tragedy.

But the others were a mystery.
Zachary being ex-military was likely hardened by combat and hardship. But Jakk'ari knew how grief could still overwhelm even experienced men. He knew with pain that every timeafter the first time to truly tear a hole in someone would be lesser, more easily managed, and quicker to heal but it would still hurt and tear.

Isaera is young and Jakk'ari's first sighting of here was in the tavern flaunting a fabulous gift for of arcane power. She is likely the most vulnerable and would need to cautiously observed for distress.

Marion was the hardest to decipher. She presented a commanding presence in the tavern and wielded a grim power stoically but her untarnished face and lack of insignias suggested her to be a civilian secluded from combat. Marion is the biggest unknown. Hopefully she was was strong.

Either way the stress and pain could be assuaged with preparation. Failing to see a gardener Jakk'ari headed off to the side of tower to forage for some herbs.

[MrAbdiel]

After availing themselves of the tower's supplies and equipment, the group packs up their kit and gets moving west, and a little south; off the roads the Alliance patrols at all and, passing a shield daubed with a red familiar glyph denoting Horde presence to all those that would pass that point. But pass that point the cadets certainly did. A little ways from that sign, the remnants of a campfire is found. It's washed out, but that means that it's at least as old as the thunderstorm two nights ago. Jakk'ari takes a moment to consult with the earth spirits in the area about the last time they saw a flame spirit and, though it can be hard to decipher strict meaning from an unmanifested spirit's milky concept of the passage of time, it seems that the spirits confirm the investigator's suspicions that this campfire was burning more than five days ago. Additionally, there are three large rocks arranged around the fire, and some drag marks suggest that there were a pair of short logs here that have probably been dragged off by a local peon. Before that reclamation, three rocks and two logs makes for five seats around a campfire: the first night of five young cadets exorcising their spirits of risk and adventure by camping in Horde territory before they would become full Theramore guards and subject to more rigid expectations of behaviour. After this long series of deductions by the team, Isaera manages even to spot with her legendarilly keen elven senses that the boys have helpfully carved their marks into a narrow swamp tree - the letters A, F, G, L, and X in common script scarring its gnarled bark. A for Aeden who they found at Jarl's hut; L for Lidus who made his desperate sprint back to Theramore to raise the alarm and fell into an exhausted coma. The other three letters correspond to the names of the other cadets, as conveyed by Brother Bright during the off-the-record candid exchange of information: Gawin, Felix, and Xander.

From there, Zachary leads the party south off the road and into the scrub and brush. Horde patrols, he reasons, have little incentive to strike out off the roads in numbers for more distance than they need to investigate sounds or motions. Horde scouts might well plunge deep off the roads and just about anywhere in the wild area. But a path beaten through the scrub, with enough broken reeds, crushed nests, and the odd half-print of a boot to suggest a small group of individuals surging off the roads for a long trek? That sounds like the cadets, who would want to avoid the roads at this point and the chance of encountering Horde patrols. What isn't clear is why they chose to strike south instead of heading back to the tower after their little stunt. But it's Marion who is able to supply an answer to this, as the day of searching rounds down and the party is forced to camp for the night. They camp using the stone circled firepit made by the cadets when they pass through, and Mor'Lag spots a glint of silver amidst the ashes as the new campfire is kindled there - three eyes being better than two, it seems. It's a small loop, an ear ring, that might have belonged to one of the cadets; except that Marion knows it could not have. This little ring isn't pure silver at all, but felsteel - and it likely came from the ear of a small demon type known as an imp. As a reasonable conjecture, this imp appeared from within the campfire, and then took a great blow from one of the cadets sufficient to knock the ring free. Once the scenario of a fight happening around the campfire is raised, and the party knows to example this area with a deliberate eye, they are able to assemble a likely scenario.

The cadets had intended to prove their bravery by camping in Horde territory, and did so; but the next morning, before they could turn back, something caught their attention sufficiently that they spent a day diverting south at a careful pace into the brush. When it became dark, they stopped to camp again - then they came under attack. An enemy, with atleast one fel magician sufficient to summon an imp, fell upon the cadets as they were bedding down. It seems that they scattered, at that point; tracks sufficient for one or two strike east; probably Lidus and Aeden who made it all and halfway back to Theramore respectively. One broken branch with a fleck of skin and blood on it suggests a blind rush north east, in the perhaps coincidental direction of Brackenwall. And two don't go very far at all - perhaps they stood and fought, or perhaps they surrendered. But the fact that the leave neither tracks nor bodies and so little combat sign raises suspicions in the group's collection of keen minds. Jakk'ari is disturbed to find the earth spirits in this place disoriented, and sluggish; the air whispers to him that they have been poisoned, and made to forget. And so, the crown on the hypothesis: whoever attacked used some kind of masking magic to cover up their tracks after the conflict, leaving only the tracks of the cadets who escaped east and north. The trackless directions, broadly speaking, are west - leading to the border with the Barrens, and the beginning of the Horde heartland - and south, into the thickest part of Dustwallow's swampy regions called the Quagmire. Thus, the party is left with reason to believe that one of the cadets went in a blind panic towards the nearby Horde settlement, a day's travel north west. And whoever attacked them, using fel magic in their arsenal and with other tricks to bamboozle the earth spirits into hiding the signs of their passage, must have departed with their captives or kills to the Barrens, or the Quagmire. As they spend their third night in the wild, and any living cadets spend their seventh, the party must decide amongst themselves which direction they ought to investigate on the following day.

[Feathersnow]

Mor'Lag fingers the tiny ring a relic from another world, lost in the great war between the Legion and the Old Gods!! A symbol of power! they flip a coin.
Mor sticks it through the cartilage of her nose. A little blood drops out.
Keen eyes might have seen a green spark...
Lag wills it not to catch, and it is extinguished.

Later, Mor and Lag consider the cadets.

"One went to the Horde."
"Trouble "
"The others..."
"Already dead"
"And won't spark a war if they aren't"

[WindStruck]

"We can't say for certain if they are dead yet.." Isaera says. If she wasn't simply being hopeful, she was just being contrary.

"The identity of the attacker is still unknown, but if they are some type of warlock themselves.. Marion, do you think you may have a way to detect a fel presence, should they try to sneak up on us?"

"My best guess is..and my hope, is that whoever fled to Brackenwall village may be safe for now. If they behaved as cold-blooded savages and merely killed the cadet, they would have done so days ago. We can head to Brackenwall last. As for the other two, it seems hard to say what happened. If magic was used to obscure tracks, that still doesn't mean they didn't get far..."

She suggests, "Perhaps, if we were to head a ways south, we may find evidence of passage again? I think this magic would only have a limited time or scope."

[Plaids]

Jakk'ari considers words carefully. Reasoning he would likely need a unified party to survive the marsh and return to Theramore with any more cadets.

I agree. The horde are fierce but have members who can be reasoned with. I believe that our cadet is safe and I can appeal to their honor to return any cadet held in Bracken Wall. Supporting Isaera.
Don't forget our payment comes even with the return of dead cadets. Attempting to appeal to Mor'Lag.

Addressing everyone he mentions. There is a malevolent agent who has been here. One that the horde shamans will be glad to have been defeated.
Attempting to rouse the party he provides his final address for the moment. I've seen what our group has done. I see ambition and power enough to scale mountains and rout rivers. We can find the scouts taken further into the wilderness.

[BananaPhone]

Marion Mordis

Marion held up the small, silver ring with an scrutinising hazel eye.

"It is certainly exquisite, isn't it?" she asked no-one-in-particular, her familiarity with metals informing her that this was metal not of this world. That it would end up decorating the nostrils of the ogre didn't seem to bother the warlock, at least until she was asked if she could do anything about it.

Pursing her lips in though, Marion, for the first time, withdrew a leather-wrapped tome from within her backpack and opened it. The parchment within was inscribed with hack-and-slash symbols, patterns of geometry and a myriad of notes, gylphs and drawings that one would best keep from the weak and the timid, but Marion flipped through the pages non-chalantly until stopping upon a section that had sprung up in her memory.

"Aha!" she exlcaimed, nodding her head once before looking up at Mor'Lag.

Considering her auctions with a silent 'Hmmm...', the human stood up, reached up and moved to pluck the silver ring from the ogre's nose.

"May I?" she asked.

If permitted, Marion retrieved the object and placed it upon the ground. With the point of her right index finger, and book splayed open with her left from which she took directions, the warlock started to draw a series of runes into the dirt and chant softly to herself...

ooc:

Spoiler

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Marion is using Ritualist to create a ritual.


"Demon Scrying" (Multiple Effects) (3pp)
Senses 8: Detect (Demon), Acute, Accurate, Ranged (sight), Extended 3, Activation, Limited (Requires object belonging to target), Unreliable (5 uses)
Enhanced Trait 5: Perception +10, Concentration, Custom (Requires object belonging to thing being perceived), Increased Action, Sense-dependent (Detect Demon), Unreliable (5 uses).

She'll Take 10 on her Expertise (Magic) roll if she can, otherwise:

Expertise (Magic): (1D20+10)[26] vs TN 13

Edit: I've just realised that the Senses will also need Counters Concealment (All) and Penetrates Concealment. That will make the total ritual 6pp instead, which she still passes, but I wanted to bring awareness to my adding this here rather than looking shifty and just capitalising upon a great roll to add extra stuff.

[Feathersnow]

Mor and Lag look on, stunned.

"That was a relic of a dead world"
"Collateral damage in the Legion's crusade against the abominations"
"But you made it live again "
"We wish we could be like you"

Lag pulls a glass vial out of a surprisingly clean leather satchel.

"Take this. A tincture of herbs to increase intellect."

Mor sounds sad as she says. "It is little use to us"

[MrAbdiel]

Spoiler: {Fluff} Marion's Ritual - Untwisting the Nether

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So far, the search for the cadets has relied on mortal senses. Not just the traditional tracking senses, like the keen eyes and ears of the high elf but also the skilled and ingrained wilderness sense of the human huntsman. In these things, Marion can assist, but cannot leverage her full expertise. But there are other senses than even these, for those with the strength in their convictions and steel behind their eyes; senses that reveal things not strictly that are, but instead things that should not be and yet are. It is such illicit sensory power that Marion is forced to draw on now.

Well; perhaps not forced. Afforded, maybe.

The other members of the party watch as Marion gazes down into the ring resting in the palm of her hand. She incants the strange words in the wicked language that causes all who hear it to taste ash in their mouths. The runes she has scratched in the dirt pool up with sourceless smoke, and then a glimmering smoulder of green flame. And the ring in her palm stirs, shifts, stands upright on its edge, and begins spinning. Lazilly at first, then faster and faster until it seems to be a whirling silver ball in the warlock's hand. Her eyes, too, have taken on the same silver sheen, and they flutter and track left and right as they orient to a whole new world of perceptions.

To Marion's eyes, her ritual works, and she partially penetrates the veil of worlds to see an overlay of how the Twisting Nether comes close to Azeroth. Varghast is there, in some splash of a scene on another world drawn close enough to your vision by, you must assume, nothing more than your affinity for that particular demon. In a dark crystal sphere the size of a moon, he swarms in shapeless oneness with millions of others of his kind. The nature of this union is incomprehensible to you; and you force your attention away, and back to the task at hand - targeting not the demon you have bound to your service, but the one to whom this little trinket belonged. Your gaze tracks across distorted miles of the Netherscape, and you cannot find the imp you are looking for. He is gone far away, or perhaps, he is unsummoned in some other Netherplace to which your senses cannot reach with your power. But what you do see is enough to make a difference. The places where the overlay of the Nether you are perceiving and the 'real' world intersect light up the path of this imp's passage in this world as clearly as if it were a story you already knew by heart; an only slightly uncomfortable sense of coming to know that is imparted upon you without a strict understanding of how this information is sluicing into your mind in this phantasmagorical pseudo-sight. It was summoned into being near the road from which you departed a dark before; moving a little south before being unsummoned again only to be resummoned further down the same path. In and out of the world, in and out, like a sewing needle penetrating the fates of these young men and stitching up their graveclothes, the imp was conjured likely to be glimpsed by the young soldiers to lure them further and further from the road. These cadets are too young to have fought in the third war, so they cannot have known the cunning of the legion; but they know the songs of valor and tales of sacrifice in which their fathers and grandfathers die to spurn the conquest sought by these demons. It's not hard ti imagine them being easily enticed by a chance to stomp out even a minor creature of the Fel.

Once they got to this campsite and gave up their chase, the imp was summoned again - this time in the midst of the fire - and immediately was struck with something flat and hard. A cooking skillet, you speculate; enough to nearly kill it and to draw the victorious focus of the cadets while some greater ambush was sprung upon them. In the ensuring combat, the imp was killed and rendered unmanifest; but it has been summoned back into the world just one more time before its trail vanishes from your supernatural sight - far to the south, close to the ogre mound and encampment known as Stonemaul village. If the binder of this imp has taken any of these cadets as prisoner or trophy, they have taken them there.

[BananaPhone]

Marion Mordis


A smile crossed Marions features as she stood upright and rolled her shoulders. Lifting her right hand and pointing in the direction of the Stonemaul compound, she announced to the group, "the answers we seek are in that direction. Surrounded by ogres."

[Feathersnow]

Mor'Lag
The Ogres look uncomfortable.

"We must confess"
"We aren't a real Ogre"

"Our Fathers fought in the Second War..."
"They were a great warlock"

"But they died. Without leave."
"Every one of The People was required to take ten enemy before they had permission to die"

"Our Fathers were struck by lightning with only 8 kills "
"He was a deserter."

"His marriage was annulled"
"I became illegitimate. Clanless"

"Do not expect me to be welcomed by these kidnappers "

The Ogres look dejected at admitting their secret. Lag moreso. For she had a darker sin than her shameful parentage. She hated magic.
Power was the only true virtue, and magic was the purest form of power. But she wished not to harness it, but only To make it go away

[MrAbdiel]

Spoiler: #JustOgreThings

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Mor'Lag, by virtue of being an interestingly well informed ogress, would know a little about the Stonemaul.

The Stonemaul were one of the largest clans to come through the portal; enough that even after losing the second war, their tribe was large enough to split into two elements with self-sufficient numbers. Half of the clan established themselves in the mountains near Dalaran, and were caught up in a conflict between Sylvannas' early Forsaken and the Scourge splinter force commanded by the Dreadlord Varimathras. The Stonemaul leader, Mug'Thol, was fierce and independant with intentions to profiteer off the battle by hiring forces to each side; but then mysteriously threw in his allegiance entirely with Sylvannas and her forces. This inexplicable spurt of allegiance was not to be longlived, as those ogres eventually travelled into ruins of Alterac and became the tribe known now as the Crushridge.

The other half of the Stonemaul fled the failed war across the sea with the ogre 'survivor armada', and settled in Dustwallow Marsh. After courting the Horde for aide during internal strife then betraying the Horde at the earliest opportunity, the Dustwallow Stonemaul endured a leadership challenge. The Mok'Nathal champion of the Horde Rexxar, along with his companions, slew the corrupt chieftain Kor'gall and took his rightfully won place as leader of the clan. Three years of formal Horde affiliation followed after which Rexxar abdicated leadership to the up and coming leader Mok'Morokk, who began reducing the formal ties to the Horde and carefully steering the remains of the Stonemaul tribe towards independence out from underneath the red banner. The ogres at Stonemaul Village, therefor, might be expected to be somewhat pro-Horde, but not formally integrated.

[WindStruck]

"Ogres? How do you know there are.. oh nevermind..." she sighs.

"Great. That fact alone reduces the chance of the cadet being alive tremendously... Can only hope the ogres didn't find him, or else he'd be stew already..."

"Well, I don't suppose they might be bargained to part with what amounts to used soup bones?" she asks, her attention drifting hopefully toward Mor'Lag, up until she also admits that she, well, probably would not be well-received either.

Another - this time - more long, drawn out, utterly-exasperated sigh.

"I don't know. Just make up some distant clan but also have some believable reason to be along with us or something. Or just don't say you were disowned! Better yet, we may just want to avoid them. I don't mind venturing south, just to be sure, but.. I think it would be a terrible idea to get too close."

[MrAbdiel]

“It’s not promising, I’ll admit.” Zachary chimes in, rubbing his beard pensively. “How about this: we take the bird in the hand before going for the two in the bush? If one cadet has fled up to Brackenwall, we ought to try to recover him sooner since he’s an enemy agent to the Horde, and not just a… well, unfortunate prisoner like one might be with the ogres. I’m nervous about Brackenwall - a good orc spymaster will pick me for alliance military, retired or not. But the rest of you can pass just fine; even Marion’s not exactly got the cut of a soldier.”

“Let me do what I do best. I’ll head south toward Stonemaul Village, leaving ranger sign that the elf’s eyes won’t miss so you can avoid the worst of the terrain on the longer journey. The rest of you head up to Brackenwall. Jakk’ari’s a diplomat. He’ll get you in. Heck, if they do have one of the boys, Jakk’ari might even convince the Horde to keep him safe so we don’t have to run him back to the tower before we regroup to check out the Stonemaul lead when you’re done.”