Slain by Elf

Having saved the town from the murderous threat of the marrowbreakers we are summoned to appear before the king. An honour indeed! It’s a little peculiar that fifteen guards come to Dexter’s home in the middle of the night to summon us on personal orders from the king, but one does not question the king.

‘You are to come immediately on orders from the king. Get dressed. You are to bring no armour and no weapons.’

Tal doesn’t like the sound of this, ‘I’m not comfortable being entirely unarmed,’ he mumbles and puts on his belt with a ceremonial dagger hanging off it.

‘You, no weapons. Take it off’, one of the supervising guards tells him.

‘Hrm, okay. I’m sure a rope and grappling hook is okay though.’

‘No weapons.’

‘Just a net, then.’

‘No weapons.‘

As Tal goes through most of his personal possessions and anything lying around in his room to see what he can and, mostly, cannot take, someone else mumbles ‘maybe we should classify Tal as an offensive weapon and declare that we can’t take him.’ Eventually, Tal runs out of pointy items, heavy metallic items, and everything explicitly listed on the weapon charts to try to take with him, and we are led to the keep.

Naturally, we were misled slightly. The ‘orders of the king’ were not quite what we expected and instead of receiving a personal blessing from the king for saving his people from vicious monsters we were instead thrown in to cells and told to wait for the torturer. Maybe it was wrong to mention the giant metal tyrant that we inadvertently let loose who wants to enslave all of humanity.

The situation didn’t look too bleak, though. When the torturer turned up we were greeted with an evil-looking fellow covered in scars.

‘Wait a minute. Why is the torturer covered in scars? How does he torture people? ‘Tell me what I need to know or I’ll make this very painful!’ <snick> ‘Argh. Yes, you don’t like the sight of blood do you? Answer my questions or I’ll cut off one of my fingers! Bwa-ha-ha-ooh, I’m feeling a bit woozy…’ I don’t think he’s doing it right.’

Unperturbed by this mocking, the torturer takes Ann-See from her cell, but not without Ann-See knocking out three guards first as they try to manacle her, and leads her off to his chamber. A couple of hours pass, and a few screams are heard, before Ann-See is brought back. Two guards have to physically drag her from the chamber back to the cell, where she slumps on the ground. Once the cell door closes we switch from the common tongue to a language the guards will not understand and ask Ann-See if she’s okay.

‘They didn’t even ask me any questions’, she forces out in a frail voice. ‘Naw, I’m just kidding, I’m fine. He scratched me a bit compared to all the fights we’ve had with the marrowbreakers recently, it’s no big deal. He wanted to know if I was a member of the Red Hand Gang, that’s all.’

The plot thicks.

In an fine example of group-self-sacrifice as much as obvious masochism we wake up the final two Marrowbreakers we’ve uncovered, so that anyone stumbling in to the temple in the future won’t wake them up to terrorise the city. With the first reanimated from its statue form we retreat to a room that offers us better advantages for the coming combat. The Marrowbreaker follows us and prepares to attack. Whose marrow will it feed on first? ‘Shall we do this democratically?’, asks the DM.

‘Do you actually mean ‘randomly’ or do you really want us to take a vote on this?’ and seizing on the opportunity I quickly add, ‘who votes for Tal to get attacked?’

As a couple of hands fly up in the air the DM picks up a D10 and clarifies ‘No, this is not a democracy. Okay, on a 1 to 9 the Marrowbreaker attacks Melody…’

‘10 is reroll’, Ann-See interjects.

Knifey’s been taking it easy recently. The differing time-zones make teaming up with the rest of my party difficult and, after learning the lesson the hard way before, I don’t want to get ahead of my friends so that we can’t team up. There is also a certain ennui settling over me when playing solo, and with over 3,000 gold in the bank World of Auctioncraft isn’t as necessary or fulfilling any more. So despite the levels flying past whenever playing, with everyone in the group gaining a level from running a handful of quests in the Western Plaguelands in about ninety minutes for example, there has not been too much advancement overall. But that level gained in the Western Plaguelands got me to 57, and that’s just one level away from being able to pass through the Blasted Lands’ Dark Portal to the Outlands.

I set myself the small target of reaching level 58, so that I could pop my head in to the Outlands and visit the Master profession trainers. This didn’t take me too long to achieve with the large number of quests available in both the Plaguelands and Burning Steppes, without even needing to head to Winterspring or Silithus. I’m quite glad, to be honest. After I gained the significant 58th level and Knifey took his first steps in to the Outlands I was reminded of how big, full, and interesting the Outlands still is. I’ve spent too long in Azeroth, time I’ve already spent there in the past, and the new world opened before me may well be the reinvigorating push I need to get past this ennui and feel more excited about exploration and questing again. It shouldn’t take long for the others to get to 58 and then the opportunities to explore Hellfire Citadel open up. When that happens the World of Warcraft can feel like a place of adventure again and not somewhere to pass the time.

There was another reason I made myself the goal of reaching level 58 ahead of time. My recollection was that the green drops from Outlands required at least level 58 before characters could equip the items, and that, for reasons I don’t entirely agree with, are vastly more powerful than items found in Azeroth. I checked the auction house often, separate from my profiteering, for swords and dagger just out of my reach. Sure enough, there were some being offered for sale that were from the Outlands and having outrageous DPS values for their level, although I was wrong that they started becoming available at level 58, as some were showing up for my current level of 57.

I bought a level 57-required dagger to use immediately and found a level 58-required sword for the next level, both green quality, for around 20 gold for the pair. I swapped out my old weapons, both bind-on-pickup blue quality weapons dropped by boss mobs in dungeons, and only a couple of DPS below what I could reasonably get for my level. The old weapons were both giving about 35 DPS. The new weapons from the Outlands were both rated at 45 DPS. Maybe the stats on the new weapons weren’t optimal for a rogue, but I didn’t care. A boost of 10 DPS on the base damage of a weapon is an enormous boost to damage output, almost 30% more, and superior to anything I could find in Azeroth without killing a boss that requires a raid to defeat. This is the real reason why I aimed to reach 58 sooner rather than later, because now I am a killing machine that inhabitants of Azeroth can only fear.

Two Marrowbreakers have been killed, two more have been released. Two Marrowbreakers are on the loose and ready to kill. So far, our mission to prevent the murders in the city has not being going so well, with at least one fresh kill each night despite our best efforts. Our current plan is to let whatever happens tonight happen and hope that the creature we trapped outside of its lair tries to return, for we have now removed the obstruction preventing it from getting back in in the hopes that we will be able to find it inside come the morning.

Before we rest for the night we feel some sense of obligation to report the awakening and release of the metal demi-god to the commanding officer. When we do so there is some concern that any spread of this news amongst the general populace will cause panic and are told not to tell anyone about this. The slight problem with this request is that we had to tell the guards more-or-less what had happened simply to get an audience with the commander in the middle of the night, and those guards were busy being guard-like and telling all their chums. Nevertheless, we won’t tell anyone else, we promise.

Getting back to Chez Dexter finds Dexter’s butler ready to offer him a change of clothes from the sewery mess that his current set has become, and asks if there is any truth to the rumour that an ancient iron giant is coming to destroy the city. ‘Oh, no, that’s just silly hearsay, he’s only coming to enslave everyone’, replies Dexter, before realising that that wasn’t much of a denial. Never mind, a quick bath, as good a night’s rest as we can manage in a few hours, and a change of clothes and we’ll be back in the stinking water looking for Marrowbreakers.

Come the morning and we head back in to the watery tunnel to the monsters’ lair, which turns out to be empty when we get there. Undaunted, we head back in to the temple to seek them out. We note that the iron lord is no longer around, and whilst we note that two Marrowbreakers sneak up on us and attack. With some experience under our belts, some lucky rolls, and no one dying, we manage to defeat the pair of Marrowbreakers! This seems to be too much like actual progress considering all the time we’ve spent killing one only to awaken another. Such is the level of confusion we started wondering if we needed to release the final two Marrowbreakers from their statuesque slumber. I think we decided not to in the end, but it may be a matter for more debate once the metal giant has been defeated. Back to the surface!

Attacking with a melee weapon in to a grapple is more a matter of luck than skill, as there is an equal chance of hitting each grappling combatant. When we were attacking the grapple-happy Marrowbreakers we had to check to see if we hadn’t hit an ally by mistake. With Tal in a grapple the DM had many occasion to ask us to ‘Roll to see if you hit the Marrowbreaker or Tal.’

‘Okay, if I roll high I hit it’, or, ‘if I roll high I hit the monster’, came the reply.

In each case we had to clarify ‘Who do you mean, Tal or the Marrowbreaker?’ and there was much rejoicing. This probably irked Tal a bit, and if it didn’t we must have pushed him over the edge when the second Marrowbreaker grappled with Dexter.

‘Roll to see if you hit the Marrowbreaker or Dexter.’

‘Okay, if I roll high I hit it.’ <rolls die>

‘… Wait, aren’t you going to ask who he means?’ asks Tal.

‘Nope, it’s pretty clear he means the Marrowbreaker to me.’

We entered town shortly after the murders started and were tasked to investigate and stop them. Our investigations found a pair of creatures were killing citizens, so we set out to kill or subdue the creatures. We set one loose and killed the other, but almost immediately afterwards we released a third in to the wild after we entered an ages-old temple. Feeling a pang of responsibility about this, as well as investigating the possible plot to end all life on the planet by a cult, we task ourselves to explore the temple fully, at which point we awaken what appears to be a demi-god. Everything we’ve touched has turned to gold so far.

The demi-god is placated for now, allowing us safe passage through the temple to look for the marrowbreaker and some clues as to the cult’s plans. We find what we work out to be the charred and quite dead body of a cultist, leading in to a room that is missing what can only be a vital text or two. This means we are lagging behind the Red Hand Gang in their efforts to raise the Blood Angel and must gain pace quickly if we are to interrupt their ceremonies. We also find the released marrowbreaker, not entirely by surprise, and manage to defeat it. This is good news, as it brings the total of loose marrowbreakers back down to one!

With some more searching some clues are uncovered as to the purpose of the temple and how the acolytes were free to interact within it. Tal the tattooed volunteers his body to receive an extra piece of skin art to test a theory, which pays off when he is able to pick up the book without encurring the wrath of the demi-god. This book gives us some interesting and most useful information regarding the ritual of summoning we suspect is close at hand, and what is required to interrupt it. The tattoo also allows Tal to enter rooms we found that have even more statues of marrowbreakers. We test whether another member of the party, acting as an untattooed companion of Tal’s, also has immunity, but this turns out not to be the case and ends up causing another marrowbreaker to be freed.

We started with two marrowbreakers terrorising the city. We killed one, found another, killed the other, and found yet another. With two marrowbreakers killed from the initial two at large we’ve reached the enviable position of having two marrowbreakers loose and aching to crunch in to bones. As we are pondering this position the demi-god declares that we are weak and will be enslaved, and by ‘we’ I mean ‘all humans’. When he asks us to lead him to the outside world so that he can begin to subdue humanity we take the popular view of scarpering out the way we came, down passages and tunnels that the construct can’t squeeze through. All except Tal, who feels some responsibility to his new-found metal friend and helpfully gives it directions on how to find and slaughter us after we escape.

It is a mixture of luck and judgement that two other marrowbreaker statues encountered in the temple remain as statues, but even so we will have some explaining to do to the authorities who hired us, particularly with a demi-god on a rampage, who we may well have helped find his way to the surface. With any luck the Red Hand Gang will cause the end of the world before we are asked to give the next status report.