Sometimes Lists Are Scary

I’m a bit of a list maker. I like to know what I need or want to do. This has become a bit more of a habit since I have started to have a bad memory for these things. Getting older sucks.  But sometimes… lists, they are scary. Sometimes having it all written down makes it hard to see what to do next. Sometimes it’s too much.

Case in point. I just made a list of everything I would do in WoW every day if I had no other responsibilities.  It looks like this:

Sveala

• Inscription Research x2
• Living Steel Cooldown

Gurdrid

• Farm

Oquae

• Silk Cooldown
• DE collected greens

Shoryl

• JC Research
• Argent Tournament Dailies

Breige

• Magnificence Cooldown
• Klaxxi Dailies
• August Celestial Dailies
• Farm
• Scenario
• Instance
• LFR
• Farm Leather as needed

Mavgren

• Auctions

Kerridwen

• Farm Herbs/Ore as needed for cooldowns

Muirri

• Quest

And none of that includes Wednesday night Guild Randomness, or Thursday night Dwarven Dungeon Crawls.   To be fair, I raid on most Tuesdays and frequently on weekends, and I can usually get more than one in on those days. Since Blizz has not implemented bonus Valor for raids at this point, it doesn’t matter so much when I do them at all.  For Scenarios and Dungeons, though, getting bonus Valor definitely has its advantages.  So if I could, I’d do at least one of those each day.

But a whole lot of those things, you say, take only a few minutes. (And really, all those profession things – most people don’t have all those professions). And that’s very true, the list in and of itself isn’t that bad. But the length of the list is what is daunting.

And here’s another thing that intrigues me. How many other games that people play do they make lists for? Really, playing a game is about fun.  So, to make myself feel better about my list, which looks a vaguely like work, I thought I’d talk a little bit about why I do these things:

Inscription and JC Research: I don’t like paying for my glyphs and gems off the AH. Auction House purchases can keep you in the poor house, and I have things I’d like to purchase with my gold, like mounts! Also, the random process adds something to it: What will I learn today?

Silk and Magnificence Cooldowns: I find it fascinating to learn what I’ll discover, and also whether I get  a silkworm.  The items from the patterns have also been selling well.

Living Steel Cooldown: This is mostly for money, or, at the moment, for guildies. It’s also fun to see if I’m going to proc a second bar, though I have terrible luck with that when I’m trying to make it to do something with.

Farms: Gurdrid is currently farming motes, but will go back to farming for rep when she’s done making a couple of pieces of gear. Breige is strictly farming for rep right now.  I find farming amusing and relaxing to do, so as an added method of getting things I want, it’s quite worthwhile.

Argent Tournament Dailies: This is literally a means to an end for me. I want the mounts from the Argent Tournament – some for the mounts themselves, but mostly because they’re an easy way for me to get to the next mount achievement, and the KITE!

The rest of Breige’s activities: Breige doesn’t strictly have to do the dailies. She could head over to the Isle of Thunder and jump in there. She’s got good enough gear to get into the next raid I haven’t seen yet, and really, the point of the gear is to get to the next raid for me, not the gear itself. But, I want the achievements that go with the dailies, so I’m doing the dailies.

Scenarios and dungeons are another thing that are a mix between fun and profit. I like doing them, and bonus valor and rep are always a plus. So I try to get them in on days that I want to do group content. I will always opt to do these with guildies first, given the choice. (And will often do many scenarios in a row with guildies, but only one or two with strangers)

Raiding is something I’ve missed for a long time. I haven’t raided since vanilla, and I wasn’t going to raid on a tank, so Gurdrid was out of the question.  I decided on Breige to try and see if I’d like playing her because of Bear’s comments about his hunter, mostly. And I’m finding that I like ranged DPS more than I ever expected.  Even more surprising is that having a pet doesn’t completely suck all the time.  I have no idea whether I’m a good  hunter or not, but I try, and I try to get better. And I like doing it.

Farming Leather, Ore, and Herbs as needed: This is really a support clause. If I want to do other things, I need these resources, and it’s generally cheaper to farm than it is to buy. So I opt for farming, mostly.

Auctions: I think this goes without saying. You make more money selling things on the AH than vendoring them, so Auctions it is.

Muirri: My little monk is closing in on 85 quickly. The monk playstyle isn’t one I would want to use as a main, but I am enjoying it. She’ll likely become my bank toon and hang out in Stormwind doing fishing and cooking dailies once she reaches 85 and nets the guild their achievement.   But I almost always have one toon I’m actively questing on, for when endgame gets boring. It’s a great breakup of activities.

The nice thing that this list does, though, is reminds me why I do what I do. Why is important, particularly for the things that I don’t like doing in and of themselves (mostly, that’s the Argent Tournament dailies.)

 

 

To Have or Not To Have

Some of my fellow bloggers have posted about the sha touched weapon (or weapons in general this expansion). In particular, hunters, and the utter lack of weapons available to us as upgrades from the blue 463 ilvl drops. I’ll admit I haven’t looked much into any other class than hunter, but I will say that across 5 LFRs, there are what feels like a dozen options to get a belt, but only two weapons, and an equally abysmal opportunity for rings and trinkets.  

Can we have a little balance here, Blizz?  I have but one waist. Yet two hands and two… ears? (I’m not sure what that empty slot image is supposed to represent.) Certainly, I have more need of options for trinkets and rings than I do for belts. Really now.

But anyway…

Breige got 5 belts running LFR over the last two resets (an average of nearly one per queue). And one trinket. No rings. To be fair, she did also get two tier pieces, and her sha touched weapon. I find it interesting that my first seven extra rolls all yielded cash. My 8th provided me with the weapon, and the 9th the trinket.  And I’ve gotten several other new pieces of gear, even when I was only rolling for slots that were seriously lacking.

I’m at ilvl 476 already, but still need to gem, enchant, and balanced all the gear (And figured out which darned belt I actually want to use, I have three to choose from) again. Raiding is expensive. Especially since I don’t like listening to guns, so even if I mog nothing else, I gotsta be carrying a bow.

I also find it interesting that I have a total of 7 of the 20 required sigils to move on in the legendary quest line. I’m not particularly worked up about that, though, as it means I’ll have to PvP, and potentially get good at it.  I’m sure the folks who PvP a whole lot aren’t all that excited about those raiders who are just after their legendary in the queues. Unless, of course, they’re on the opposing faction. Although, from what Navi says, winning a hair-raising battleground seems to be much more enjoyable than face-rolling the opponent. But again, I digress…

In a big way, I’m relieved that I got the weapon; but at the same time, I realize that I’m missing out on a certain amount of excitement that comes from finally getting something after weeks of attempting it without fruition. On the other hand, Attumen still owes me a pony, darn it.

And looking at my profile on the armory, I realize that the very first thing I’m going to do when I get home tonight is move my trinket to the other slot, so I can have myself not one but three achievements.

Not Dead… Just Busy

Really, I promise, I’m not dead. I actually even waited until today to post (as opposed to yesterday, which seemed a bad day for that particular title.)

Mounts

I’m up to 136 mounts owned, having collected the Netherwing Drakes. I’ve puttered around with more Argent Tournament, but haven’t gotten to 100 seals yet. Like most things, I tend to go for the most expensive item first, then the lesser items because it makes me feel like it goes faster the longer I do it.

Muirri

Muirri is level 80. I did a headlong run last weekend to finish off that milestone, and headed her right over to Mt Hyjal after completing her level quest. That was the hardest one thus far. I didn’t play for long, though, so she’s sitting carefully on her two hour buff.  I play her mostly on weekends.

Scenarios and LFR

Breige went on a scenario spree! I love scenarios. Short queue times, relatively relaxed environment. The bad apples seem to be few and far between, there, which pleases me. I picked up a few pieces of gear over a couple of evenings of scenarios, the first of which occurred because we had three on for a Wednesday night guild night.

This evening, Breige also ventured into LFR Mogu’Shan Vaults. My first LFR experience. Unfortunately, I got tossed into an already-started group, so missed out on the Stone Guard the first pass through. A second pass put me in at the start,  so I was able to pick them up to finish the front half. I also picked up two pieces of gear. Not wanting to reforge and then potentially have to do it again later, I just waited to put on the new gear, and hopped into the back half of MSV.

Sadly, that didn’t go nearly as well as the front half. I got locked out of the Spirit Kings, though my pet didn’t, so I diligently pushed pet skill buttons while I stood outside the swirling mists. And.. I got pants! Yay, no more PvP Pants! On Elegon I fell the first time the floor disappeared. How embarrassing. But I wasn’t the only one. Other people complained about lag. I can’t claim that was my problem, I wasn’t trying to move, having not realized how the mechanic works. I didn’t use an extra roll on Elegon because I already have slightly better shoulders.  I lived through Will, though. And got my Helm, but not my Bow. So we’ll see if I’m going to be in the bow or no bow school.

I certainly can’t complain about my first week through, though. 4 pieces of gear. 469 ilvl once I switched into the new gear. And, of course, Valor. But not enough of the really good reps to get something awesome. I did pick up the Operation: Shieldwall ring, though, which put me over the edge to 471, so if I really wanted to, I can now do Heart of Fear. I may do that this weekend if we end up having some time. Not sure, though.

Of course, now I have the pants for her planned mog. I guess that means I need to go bug Kael for a certain chestpiece, and figure out how to solo Chess so I can get the bow I plan to use.

Guild Stuff

Since we’ve been doing more as a guild, my guildies have been on more, which meant an evening of running scenarios, as I said, with Jackoby and Yawondergirl, as well as another evening with Phinkbunny. When Phink and I were running, we picked up Danea for a couple, which was fun!   Also, while I was out of town (in Texas, which tried to kill me – not the people, the state) Jack, Yaw and Phink were all on on a Saturday for several hours running Scenaturday, and giving the guild the Scenario Roundup Achievement, and Scenaturday for themselves.

Coincidentally, we’re also now at 89/100 guild challenges. See, this is what it means to be a Tiny guild. We’re level 25, sure. But getting 3 people into a Scenario is easier than getting three of us into an instance!  Also, we have a mere 785 Acheivement points. Why? Because cooking, fishing, and killing critters are the only count-related things we’ve really finished. See, most of us would rather be questing in some capacity than farming. And 100,000 ore is a whole lot, even if every single guild member has an active toon who mines.

 

The Great UI Overhaul, Unit Frames (Part 3)

Where we left off

Unit Frames, or What Is that Mob Up To?

Until recently, I’d always used a large addon like Perl Unit Frames to do this work, but I always found them to be slightly buggy in some way or another, so I went for something that’s both been around the block and has good reviews. You know, or used what Sona selected after she did the research. We play to our strengths, right?  So I selected Shadowed Unit Frames.

As I mentioned before, I like having my character on the left of my bars and my target on the right. Focus and Focus Target just above, and target-of-Target under my target.  Since I’m also dealing with my own pet, I chose to put Sionnach underneath Breige.  Setting those up was easy, I just placed them where I wanted to, selected how I want to see buffs and debuffs, and away we went.  SUF has a few settings worth playing with, like what you want to hide from Blizzard’s UI (say, your cast bar and buffs) and what to show on each frame’s info panel. The nice thing about SUF is that you can use global settings to set up a whole bunch of things the same way, then tweek them individually later.

The next thing to tackle in SUF is party and raid frames. I wanted both to take up the same space on my hunter, since generally I’m not doing any healing, so 25 small frames work just fine for me.  A few selections, and then some sizing was all it took. Be sure, of course, to select when to show or hide each type of frame so that you don’t get overlap. That wouldn’t be helpful.

There were a bunch of additional frames available to me, as well, like tanks and bosses. I wasn’t sure how I wanted that to go at first, so I decided to put them on the left over my chat window. I’ll see how often I need them, and suppress them later if they become a problem.

Shadowed Unit Frames with one Party Member

Once SUF was done, I took a look at Vuhdo, since on my shaman and priest, I use Vuhdo for my party and raid frames for the click functions.  One of the big advantages of SUF is that you can use profiles. I did the bulk of my work in the default profile, but moving over to Sruith, I started a new profile by copying from default. Then I supressed party and raid frames, and set up Vuhdo very similarly. And, of course, set up my spell clicks!

From what I’ve learned over the last 8 years of WoW playing, those two things are the meat and potatoes of my interface. Buffs, maps, and functionality addons come and go depending on my interests and their dependability.

In the next segment, we’ll talk about a few of those functional things, including maps and chat.

 

The Great UI Overhaul, Bars (Part 2)

How often do we see this UI?

Yes, that is a lion. We dinged 25 after Sona noticed we were within a million points of achieving max guild level!  But, back to the task at hand.

Creating Something From Nothing

Someone commented on a Youtube video (that was linked by someone else, and now I cannot find it!) that it is generally easier to build up from nothing than to chisel away at default settings. So very true. And so, here you have it, folks, the default UI.  The first addon I installed was Bartender4. As I mentioned in my last post, Bartender has been with me for some time, probably since shortly after I stopped using one of the larger addons (Perl Unit Frames and similar predecessors).

Bartender has some wonderful functionality, but it’s primary purpose for me is moving and resizing my bars.  Sona uses a two bar approach to her actions. Those bars are placed directly under her feet, making them easily accessible.  I decided I’d try that method, though Breige gets three bars – the top bar is actually a combination of two bars: The pet bar and a 4-button bar that has pet commands that come from my resources.

I was suddenly a little sad when I realized a very useful ferocity pet talent didn’t make it onto the action bar, and to be only functional, I would need to remove the play command. Being able to have a dancing pet is too much fun, so instead I removed the defensive status button that I never use. (I would have removed the attack button, but, well, I actually use that one!)  So I urge all you pet wranglers to take a look at your pet’s spellbook to be sure they have the right abilities out on their bars!

I have additional bars out, which run the bottom of my screen. These contain the buttons that I use when I’m not in combat, like professions, my hearthstone mount and pet summoning, and so on.   I current have my XP and Reputation bars stacked on top of them to make a nice smooth break, but I may be moving my XP bar to just below my two action bars (clearly, much smaller!) as I only reference it lightly.

Yay! Pretty Bars!

Next up, Unit Frames!

Reflecting on a full day of WoW

I took the day off of work today to play WoW.  Now, let’s not get hasty in our thoughts that I might be addicted (I might be, but that’s not what’s at play here.)  You see, I took a vacation day, which I planned a few months ago, because Sona is a Wheel of Time fan. And she is currently gasping about something in the last book of a 14 book series.  She took the day off to enjoy this monumental work of fiction all in one day. Yes, she reads that fast. To keep our vacation time in sync, we tend to take these days together. So, since she wanted to read her book, I planned a day of WoW.

The Plan Was an Unmitigated Success

I had one goal for today. Breige was about 15% into level 89 when I got up this morning. I wanted to get her to 90. Nothing else was on my plate. Just get Breige to 90. She did that at about 3:45.

I knew what the next step of my plan for Breige was, but I wasn’t really prepared to implement it.  Next up was getting her i-level up to 425 435. Tyledres was on, and I asked her if she would like to do some heroics when I got my item level sorted out. She thought that was a grand plan, and I went about trying to do so. I was struggling. I didn’t want to just grab PvP gear. I wanted to do it right.  While I was thinking I only needed to get to 425, I went and picked up some 408 gear to replace my 399 gear. And I went ahead and grabbed the PvP gloves, giving me 426. That’s when I realized I had failed my reading check. So I needed 9 more points. Perusal of the guild bank yielded a Long-Ranged Trillium Rifle and a Ghost Iron Dragonling.

Frustrated, I went to the Auction House and saw the Quick Strike Cloak, realized I could buy the pattern, but hadn’t yet, and made it myself. Still not enough, so back to the AH I went, looking for rings and necks, this time thinking I’d find something I could make on Shoryl. Sure enough, I came away with the knowledge to make some 450 items there. Still shy, I broke down and made the PvP pants, and that pushed me a couple of points over.

Gems and enchants followed – the best I could come up with from my toons, which meant I didn’t have *every* item enchanted that I should have, but I wasn’t running completely empty.

My First Mists Heroics

Then Tyledres and I headed into heroics. Three heroics down, with a noob moment or two on my part (though now I need to remember to turn growl back on on Sionnach before I start doing dailies).  I saw the Pulled Grenade Pin drop in the Gate of the Setting Sun, but the rogue won that. I did, however, come away with a couple of quest upgrades and a couple of drops, so I’m quite happy.

Gate of the Setting Sun was interesting. Tyledres accidentally started the first boss fight while the healer, the gnome (mage?) and I were still outside the room.  While the fight was really long with just a rogue and the tank inside, I could tell we had a good group. When he did Sabotage to one of the three of us outside the room, we would space ourselves so that only one of us took damage, and then the healer healed us back up to full. I suspect some of the success there was I got hit with Sabotage probably eight times in the fight.  The healer keeping all three of us alive meant that those inside didn’t have to worry as much about that damage.  After that everything went smoothly, though (as is typical for me) I died to junk on the ground trying to keep up with the group.

Our healer stuck around for the next dungeon, which turned out to be Scarlet Halls. We had a wipe on our first attempt on Armsmaster Harlan. I died to the first whirlwind, which probably contributed, what with dirt naps causiong a 100% reduction in DPS. I picked up an upgrade via quest reward here.

The final dungeon we did was Siege of Niuzau Temple.  This one was by far the trickiest for me. I died a couple of times, and had to follow other people’s examples to figure out what I was supposed to do on General Pa’valak. When we were finished, I hadn’t realized that I’d not finished the quest Somewhere Inside. So Tyledres and I tromped around the area to find the imprisoned Shado-Pan, which included a bit of killing things. Who needs a healer anyway? (Well, for trash… I sure do on bosses!)  Niuzau was definitely the richest for me, with two upgrades from the bosses and one from a quest.

After I turned in the quest, we sat around and showed off our rarer mounts, and I grabbed a quick screenshot of the two of us on our Winterspring Frostsabers.

Nice Kitty

Achievements

I (obviously) picked up the achievements for completing all three dungeons, but I also picked up a couple more, which were exciting. We got Bomberman in Gate of the Setting Sun; and in Siege of Niuzau Temple, we picked up both Where’s My Air Support and Return to Sender. Those tell me that we just had awesome groups for those runs.  Personally, I also picked up Looking For More; Cataclysmically Superior and Superior. Not bad for a toon who never really got much dungeon love.

Also Coming Back – LBDs!

I’ll be going back to running the Laid Back Dungeons on Wednesdays starting tomorrow!  As we have done in the past, we’ll pick something fun that has a little bit of use for at least one person. It may even be Pandaria Heroics or Scenarios if that’s what the group is interested in. We’ll start at 6:00 Central Time with whomever happens to be on, no need to be there for the whole thing, you can pick up or drop whenever you’d like. We won’t run past 8:30, so I can do silly things like get the dishes done.

Short and Sweet

OMG Pandaria is PRETTY!!! 

Shoryl went out with Sona right out of the gate, and it says a great deal that we both played for the majority of Tuesday. We had anticipated we’d get started, Sona would want to get away from her computer, and I would move on to Gurdrid, who would then blow ahead.  Not so much. Sona wanted to play, so we played together. I’m very pleased.

When Sona was taking breif breaks, I hopped on Breige to check out pet battling. While I’d been interested in the pet capturing aspect of it, I wasn’t so keen on the battles prior to trying them. It’s so very 8-bit! (Just listen).  I love it!

Laid Back Dungeons will not be happening tonight. I have real life things to do that didn’t get done during the WoWathon yesterday.  We’ll be back at it soon, though, I promise!

The Mogolympics has begun!

If you’ve been following the Mogolympics, then you’ve already seen the Opening Ceremonies and the Cycling competition.  If not, you should go take a look, and start following it.   I’m a contestant, and after each event is completed, I’m going to be posting my submission here, with some thoughts I had while creating it, and also pictures and a gear list. I’m up against some tough competitors, and I’m very new to the mogging scene, so I honestly don’t expect to take any gold home. Heck, I’ll be happy with just one bronze!

But the medals are not the spirit of the games, it’s the competition. Giving your best. I didn’t enter all 9 events, because I didn’t want to just slap things together. Each of my sets was thought through and futzed over.  But, without further adieu, here is my standard bearer:

Representing the Stormpike

Here’s Breige. I chose Breige over Gurdrid as the standard bearer because her hair went with the outfit better. Also, I wanted to do a hunter, because I wanted to use a polearm for the weapon, and since this will be the last of her non-bow weapon chances, she was really up for it. Besides, she doesn’t get out of Stormwind much this days, spending so much time in the Auction House.

The required piece for this was the Stormpike Battle Tabard. I wanted to play heavily on the red and yellow, and I used the golden hues, as well as the black and white to accentuate the outfit.  I particularly like the way the polearm echoes the Stormpike arms.  To show their honor, I chose not to show the cloak, and a low-profile gauntlet would be used under the larger gloves to hide them as well.

Coral-Barbed Shoulderpads

Chestguard of Rampant Fury

Stormpike Battle Tabard

Masterwork Gauntlets

Glimmering Mail Girdle

Emerald Scale Greaves

Masterwork Boots

Ranseur of Hatred

not shown: Nesingwary Longrifle

Conveniently, Breige already owns the Longrifle, and much of the gear is from soloable content. Since she won’t be able to wield the ranseur in Mists, there’s no worry about farming that out of Firelands.

You can see my entry into the Cycling event tomorrow!

A Toon for All Occasions

So, on one of the blogs I read (and now I can’t find it!), someone mentioned trying to play a bit differently than the “typical” mindset of hurry-up-and-level so you can get to where the game begins.  And, if you’ve been following me on twitter, (or been reading my comments) you know that I’ve been racing two of my guildmates to level 85. 

I want to give you a little bit of the history of my playstyle, so you can see that this is actually some pretty serious outside-the-box playing for me.  Like many other bloggers, I’m an altoholic.  I have four level 85 toons:

• Shoryl, who is cohort to Sonaira, and my face for Azeroth. 
• Breige, a hunter, who I thought I might like to spend time dungeoning with, but who ultimately I find too fiddly to learn to play. She is my bank/AH toon. 
• Kerridwen, my druid, who was my first toon to level through the new 1-60 zones. She got each of the Loremaster achievements in order (Kalimdor, EK, Outland, Northrend, then Cata) and stayed in the areas to complete them before moving on to the next. Because she overleveled most of the content, I failed to learn to play her well. I was intending for her to be my solo achievement hound. But now she sits, does her transmute when I can remember to do it, and farms herbs when I need them for Sruith’s inscription. 
• Taoiseach, my first max level toon, Shoryl mark I, and now a blood elf.  She’s intended for me to see the Horde content. Someday she might actually get to it.

I have a full stable of lower level toons I actually intend to play.

• Oquae has my Zhevra. She was supposed to be my next max level character… before Breige and Kerridwen… For that matter, before the move to Ysera. She’s the only toon besides Taoiseach that made the move.
• Margueryn is my baby warlock. I was inspired to start a new lock by Poneira of Fel Concentration. I plan to level her when I want to level again after this big push I’ve been on with Gurdrid, using Pon’s advice. (I also plan to level her on the TV, so Sonaira can watch while she’s doing other things)
• Sruith is a part of the dwarven dungeon crawl – there’s a great out-of-the-box levelling method!
• Sveala is a shaman I was working on leveling for the purpose of giving our guild healer, Suthine, a break. But she’s rather stalled at level 50, due to other projects.
• Vijin is one of many attempts at a horde toon – one that may never make it, but we’ll see.
• Gurdrid. My third paladin. Who is in a race to level 85 with her two guild mates.

As you can see, I generally created my toons to fill specific needs of either the guild or my playstyle. I didn’t create Gurdrid to race Jack and Yaw to 85, it sort of ended up happening.  I created Gurdrid because I love me my pallies; and Shoryl is tied to Sonaira, because we’ve learned if we play them separately much, we don’t connect well.    I decided to spec her prot so I could dungeon some… you see, I’m impatient, so I don’t do dungeons on my dpsers unless I can team up with a healer or tank.

So I started playing my baby paladin on December 19 (based on when she got her Collector’s Edition feats of strength).  Less than two months later, I’m going to have a level 85 prot paladin. This is the fastest I have ever gotten a toon to max level, even when that was what I was going for on Taoiseach in her Shoryl days.    I’ll admit that part of it is because I’ve already got two toons with the Loremaster title (Shoryl got EK and Kalimdor before the Sundering; and Kerridwen has the new version of the achievement)

I’ve even been contemplating taking Gurdrid on a path towards Raid Finder; which would get me back into raiding at all for the first time since BC.  But, I’m still undecided about that part. Gurdrid will be my new achievement chaser – particularly since a few achievements (namely the pet and mount achievements) will likely be easier with a tank that PuGs.  I also intend to use Gurdrid to help guildies get in dungeons for either power leveling or just to have fun getting some gear.  While I encourage people to take the time to do dungeons with at level groups, sometimes that doesn’t fit into their playstyle for various reasons. And I like blowing up low level dungeons anyway.

How do you play outside the box; or even outside your box?

The Dwarves Meet

Let me introduce myself. My name is Sruith.  My older sister, Breige, is a member in good standing of a guild called Higher Authority. Breige provided me with an introduction letter, since she’s currently retired and living in Shattrath city. She says it’s become much more peaceful there, and she enjoys jaunts out to Nagrand to exercise her pets.

I met with Sonaira, who is the second in command of Higher Authority, and she invited me to join the guild. She also told me that there had been several new recruits, surprisingly all dwarves, and all of about the same age. She suggested that Shoryl – the human paladin that started the guild – might appreciate it if the six of us could work on scouring the hidden dens of trouble around Azeroth.  I agreed to at least meet these other dwarves.

The first that I met was Kaide. I’d actually seen her around when I was just getting started, though we didn’t talk much then. She told me that she had aspired to be a healer, and had been a little frustrated with the expectation that she go out and kill trolls, boars and troggs for the Council.  I don’t think either of us was particularly sad about having to arrest the Dark Iron Emissary, though.

We had a pint or three before Prada arrived. Prada’s given name is Iwearprada, but we all agreed, over our fourth pint, that Prada was a much more sophisticated nickname. Prada is a paladin, so I’m sure she’ll fit right in with the guild, as there seem to be a lot of them hanging around. Prada mentioned that she’s protective of her friends, but doesn’t think she’d make a very good healer. I suggested that she could lead this merry band – for the three of us were indeed quite merry, having had another round.

Shortly after, Cordagan arrived at the inn. I eyed him carefully, for he was wearing the same type of robes I had acquired. But watching him move, he was no priest – and certainly not as well versed in the darker side of the Light as I am, however meager my talent might actually be.  He pulled a chair up among us and ordered another round for the table.  It turned out he was a mage, and though he didn’t tell us much about himself, he was quite relaxed even before he got to his second drink, which counted as my seventh.

Another round or two later, and another dwarf wandered in wearing the guild’s tabard. Since he looked to be about the right age, I hailed him. Sure enough, it was Violetviper.  We immediately took to calling him Vi or Violet.  He didn’t seem as friendly as the others at first, but a drink or two in him and he was muttering away, sometimes to himself, sometimes to all of us.   Vi left after a little while, though, and Crimsoncobra, Vi’s brother, arrived. The two were like twins, though Cob was a rogue where his brother had taken the more direct path of the warrior.

And so, we had a great deal of ale, and a group willing to go forth together. For some reason, Vi and Cob never did show up anywhere together, but such can be the way of brothers.   We decided that we would let the Light be our guide as to where we would go, and resolved to meet in two weeks’ time. I decided to take that time to rest well in Ironforge, and maybe get in the good graces of the gnomes, since I’m not all that keen on Moira Bronzebeard’s ‘politics’.