(no subject)
I was hunting wild carrots last night, lost in a drunken haze and quiet contemplation of why it seemed to be that every single carrot in the whole damn forest was guarded by a giant bloodthirsty wolf. They're carrots, for fucks sake; shouldn't they be guarded by vicious bunny rabbits with huge pointy teeth? I could totally get on board with the bunny rabbit scenario, because the wolves were giving me no end of trouble, they did not have cute fluffy little tails, and their Level 78 Teeth were dripping with Plague and Rabies. Yes. Bunnies would have been much better, pointy teeth be damned.
Stupid elf in her stupid kitchen safely sequestered in her stupid floating city miles above me. It's no wonder she sent me down here to fetch her carrots. The bint obviously knew about the Wolf Situation and couldn't be arsed to put her skinny little elf butt in a position of getting gnawed on, so she sent me instead, with promises of a bag of Special Salt and one measly Cooking Token as my reward.
It was at that moment - in the midst of dwelling on my pathetic level of gullibility and pitiable need to learn yet another useless recipe for rhinoceros meat - when I suddenly remembered that I was supposed to meet that dude in the place about the thing, and he was probably really pissed that I was late.
I pulled out my Epic White Steed, Brinkley, from the depths of my travelers backpack (even at level 75 I still haven't figured out the particulars of how a horse fits into a bag, but...whatever; he's in there and he doesn't seem to mind it overmuch) and sped off to Dragonblight, hoping that I had read the directions correctly because I'm not known for my stellar navigational abilities.
After fifteen minutes of pausing repeatedly to recheck the map, reread the directions, and backtracking several times, I finally made it to the snowy ledge upon which the dude was waiting for me. He was impatiently flailing his arms around, cursing and carrying on about the Scourge, and berating the stupidity of some chick named Dahila who had gone missing. This dude seemed way too stressed and temperamental for my tastes. Seriously, I had just spent a harrowing time traversing endless snow drifts and fleeing from giant purple worms, all so that I could be snarked at by this uptight military flunky with a superiority complex? Hell no, I don't think so.
I turned around and started to ride off, thinking that I had wasted this whole time in the damn snow when I could have just stayed in the nice warm forest and collected all my carrots with rabid wolves chewing on my person, when I heard him proclaim from behind me: "Wait! I'll give you 5 Gold and 60 Silver if you help me!"
Damn straight you will, you poncy git.
I turned Brinkley around and headed back to the dude and waited for him to stop flailing and cussing - which he never did. He did manage to calm down enough to inform me that I should seek out Captain Drayzen who was leading a group of "my kind" in stemming the flow of the Scourge out of the valley below. My kind? Apparently not only was this dude a big ball of stress and agitation, he was also quite racist. No wonder Captain Drayzen enlisted him to stand up on a desolate ledge away from the rest of the troops; this guy was a total jackoff. I considered offering him one of my Underbelly Elixirs just to see if he would turn into a walrus (at least that's what the guy in the sewers informed me would happen) but I decided that I almost certainly wouldn't get my 5 Gold and 60 Silver if he were an Odobenus rosmarus, and his attitude would probably remain just as snotty, if not more so.
He proffered a piece of paper, I snatched it out of his gnarly sausage-like fingers, and I headed down the ravine which led into the strange green valley. I looked over the piece of paper which apparently had my objective scratched on it (not only was he snotty, racist, and confrontational, but his penmanship was total crap) and vague directions to the approximate location where I would find Captain D and the rest of "my kind" who were heading up this operation.
Objective: Kill 12 Frigid Ghouls, 8 Frigid Geists, and 1 Frigid Abomination.
Oh man, this was going to be some easy money.
I reached the bottom of the ravine and looked around for Captain D and the rest of the peeps who were going to help me kick some undead Scourge ass. As it turned out, there was one solitary guy standing about forty feet away from me, clutching his bow and looking rather like he knew he was about to die. He also looked like he wished that he had told Mr. Snotty Pants to stick this mission right up his frosty racist ass. I decided that this guy was most assuredly not Captain D, nor was he someone I really trusted to protect me should things get ugly and out of hand.
I headed further into the valley, keeping a wary eye out for undead things and also for Captain D. I made it all the way into the green grassy center of the valley without a single sign of the mighty Scourge-annihilating forces which Mr. Racist Face had alluded to. I was beginning to suspect that he had set me up and I was preparing to head right back up to that snowy ledge (dragging Poor Terrified Crossbow Schlep with me) and give that nasty berk a taste of my Shadow Word Pain: Rank 11, when I saw a gnome hauling ass towards me from behind the corpse of a big red dragon. The little gnome mage was almost dead and had no mana left. He looked a bit desperate - and yet strangely chipper, the way all gnomes manage to be, even when they're about to die - and so I hit him with a couple Flash Heals, a Power Word Fortitude, and a Power Word Spirit - because I'm classy that way - and backed up a few paces to see what he was running away from.
Turns out that he was running away from a lot of things. Big, nasty, Elite Things, and they were deadest on making the little gnome a right tasty snack. I turned to look over my shoulder and saw that the gnome had made it all the way back up to where Poor Terrified Crossbow Schlep was still standing. However, Crossbow Schlep and the gnome were not the only ones there; they were surrounded by about fifteen troops, and in the middle of the throng was Captain D.
I was pissed.
Not only did I not receive even a single word of thanks from the gnome for saving his nearly corpsefied arse, but Captain D was obviously completely untrustworthy since he was supposed to be in the valley fighting the Scourge, not mulling about up here where the biggest threat was that Poor Terrified Crossbow Schlep would snap and accidently shoot one of us in the ass with his bow.
I considered the possibility that I might be better off doing this whole thing on my own, and I pulled out the piece of paper with my objective scrawled on it so that I could do a quick review of the numbers. It was in doing so that I realized that the Elite Things which the gnome had been fleeing from were what I needed to kill, and there was no way I could do it on my own. I resigned myself to the fact that I was going to have to suffer the company of flighty and unreliable Captain D. I stuck the paper back in my robes, looked up, looked around, and realized that I was completely alone.
The hell did everyone go?!
Rat. Bastards. Sonsabitches.
Out of the corner of my eye I caught a glimpse of a tiny figure disappearing over the ridge to my left. Stupid gnome. Go on! Run away, you tiny little coward! See if I care!
But, I did care. I cared, because honestly, I needed that gnome and his Blizzard spell. I knew that area of effect spells were the only way to get this job done in a timely fashion, and as a Discipline priest I just don't have that many AOE spells available to me. So I pulled out Brinkley, mounted up, and rode after the gnome.
It should be noted that I was quite drunk by this point, so navigating the various cliffs and ridges and snow banks was not exactly the vision of grace and elegance which you would expect from a priest on an epic white horse. No, it was more a vision of embarrassing ineptitude punctuated by lots of cursing and several inelegant attempts to dislodge Brinkley from various nooks and unaccommodating tree roots.
I managed to catch up to the gnome and Captain D just as they were finishing off the last of the Frigid Geists, and I was awarded credit for a total of three kills. Not my best victory ever, to be sure. Within a drunken blink of an eye, the group was gone again, and I was left alone, surrounded by the corpses of all the creatures I still need to kill before I could receive my 5 Gold and 60 Silver. I admitted to myself that this whole thing could really be going better, and that maybe I should cut my losses and head back to the carrots and wolves.
I ended up following the gnome and Captain D around for another fifteen minutes, healing the gnome (for which I still received not a single word of thanks) and falling off cliffs while drunkenly trying to keep up with the group when they would pick up and run to the other side of the valley.
Suffice it to say that when it was all said and done I left Dragonblight with an extra 5 Gold and 60 Silver in my pocket, a seething hatred for that stupid gnome, and only two of the four carrots which I needed to bring back to the elf chick in the floating city. But fuck it; I don't need another useless recipe for rhinoceros meat anyway. =\