Slain by Elf

Wandering through the countryside, having killed the commander of the Boratian army and our main contact, nowhere near any sites that have offered clues about the Red Hand Gang, and stumbling towards a town that was vaguely mentioned, we are quite sure we've lost the plot. This is not a good position to be in when we are supposed to be preventing the summoning of the Blood Angel that will destroy all life in the world, so we do the only thing gamers can do: make a search check.

The D20 search check for the plot lands on a natural 1, which sums up our current position perfectly.

Being somewhat lost during such a crucial time in the world's history leaves us in quite a dilemma. Should we fail in preventing the Blood Angel from being summoned, bearing in mind that only the only people who can subsequently dismiss it are those who summoned it and they'll likely be dead from performing the summoning ritual, would that mean we can no longer play Iron Heroes? Any new character would surely only last as long as it took for the Blood Angel to visit his village.

Unless, of course, legend told of a man born unto the world with the power to defeat the all-conquering Blood Angel. Maybe he could vanquish the evil threat to all life with the help of an ancient, magical ring.

Keys are for honest people, and Knifey has been happy to bypass as much security as possible. I've been helped by relieving suckers of their locked containers, found by picking their pockets, and unlocking them to raise my skill level. But there are only so many pockets to pick and locked containers to find, so it's handy that my class trainer knows where there are some lockboxes scattered around the world where I can practice my lockpicking skills.

At first, the lockboxes are easy to find and practice on. Starting in Redridge Mountains with only the threat of an occasional passing spider I was able to stand within reach of four lockboxes and, like a trained monkey, unlocked each of them such that the first had respawned by the time I got to the third. Easy lockpicking skill improvements! From there I was able to get locked containers from suckers often enough to improve, and there were some lockboxes in The Cauldron in Searing Forge that were straightforward enough to get to.

It was when I got closer to level 60 that my trainer started to annoy me. Go to the seas of Azshara or Tyr's Hand, he says, for there are lockboxes there that you can practice on. Great, I can spend my time swimming, risking the occasional elite giant, or I can take on the might of the Scarlet Crusade elite guards in Tyr's Hand, just to practice lockpicking. After one fateful trip to Tyr's Hand I decided that Azshara was probably a safer location, and whilst it certainly is safer it is also almost bereft of lockboxes. I can spend half-an-hour swimming without finding one, which is a pretty pointless use of my time, and that's without having to get to one of the most remote corners of Azeroth first. I decided that I would rely on looting containers from mobs for the time being.

My mind was changed when my friends and I decided to head in to Blackrock Depths. We got our group together and headed down in to the, uh, depths of Blackrock Mountain, pausing only to say hello to Overmaster Pyron with our swords. Rather than trudge through the dozens of mobs I wanted to get to the heart of the dungeon, so headed to the door to the left of the entrance. The locked door, which requires the Shadowforge key to open. Of course, no one had the Shadowforge key yet, not having completed the quest to get it, so the Shadowforge was closed to us and the doors could not be opened. But they could be picked, and I had the skill to do it.

I picked the lock on the first door, and that leads to the second door, which I also picked. There may have been a third door to pick, I'm not sure, as I was a bit dizzy from all the excitement of seeing my lockpicking skill improve faster than it had in the past month, but I know that after all the doors I then had the lock on the Shadowforge itself to pick. More lockpicking skill improvement! I felt a bit dumb that I hadn't considered this before, nor remembered about these locked doors. I know they are there now, and I'll be going back to improve my lockpicking skills further once I gain a new level. I'll pop in to Dire Maul's library soon too, as I have a neat book to show them.

Someone found Slain by Elf after searching for 'gelatinous cube mount', and finding the party's adventure with a Corner of DQQM.

But wait, a gelatinous cube mount? Apart from the obvious issues this raises, wouldn't it be quicker to walk?

The noise outside the barn that wakes us up in the morning after our day's rest was Amelia, commander of the guard in Borat. Amelia breaks the stillness of the morning by calling out, 'Dexter! I know you're in there!'

'And I know you're out there', shouts back Dexter, behind the pulled slightly ajar barn door so he can assess our situation. Amelia is flanked by a skilled-looking woodsman, which is probably how she found us, and the king's elite guards are encircling the barn.

'Come out one at a time!' orders Amelia.

'... uh...'

'... I know you're in there, along with the rest of your little band', she clarifies. 'Come out one at a time!'

'Oh, right, that makes more sense.' But we were ordered to leave the barn unarmoured and unarmed, and that was not a compromise we were willing to make. After all, the last time we were asked to do something similar we ended up being thrown in gaol and tortured, and with Amelia telling us that we were under arrest and needed to face trial it didn't seem like this situation would end any better. We exited armoured and armed, to which Amelia took exception and ordered the guards to capture us.

We fought valiantly and cooperatively, deciding that if we could not reason with Amelia we would be best served by defeating her and hopefully routing the guards. Dexter vowed to kill her, and he did. After a short skirmish Amelia fell, and Dexter made sure she wasn't getting up by planting with his mighty weapon a firm strike on her head as she lay already bleeding on the ground. Even if the guards weren't ready to rout, Tal's piercing howl struck fear in to each of them and they scattered to the four winds, allowing us time to regroup and quickly work out our next move.

Despite his glorious victory over Amelia, Dexter had taken some big hits during the fight, and he wasn't the only one. 'I could really use a day's rest now.'

'Sure, what could go wrong with that?' I ask. 'After all, the first time we rested we ended up being taken to separate cells, Ann-See was tortured, and we had to fight our way out of the castle's keep to become fugitives in our home city; the next time we planned a day to ourselves some undead cats hunted us down and did their best to drain us of our very life-force; and we wait in this barn a day and we get tracked and assaulted before breakfast.'

Maybe we should move on before the ground beneath the barn opens in to a hell gate.

'Make a listen check please.'

<rolls a D20, adding his Listen skill modifier> '27.'

'Morning's coming...'

'Blimey, that was a good listen check.'

'...and you hear a noise outside.'

'Hark, fellow adventurers, I think I hear the sun rising!'

Not keen on being tortured any more we burst in to action like a well-oiled machine! Despite a dozen guards and all being behind locked cell doors, we break out and defeat our captors. Of course, our captors are the town guards with whom we were working not five hours previously, but they are now working on the belief that we are the enemy so we don't pull our punches. Lacking weapons and armour we have to improvise as best we can, which soon results in picking up dropped weapons. Tal's beserker physique has different ideas about what can be used as an improvised weapon, though. After breaking his cell door off its hinges he picks it up and manages to impale a guard with it.

We fight our way out of the gaol and in to the courtyard where we decide to flee the city after making a heroic but futile stand to try to find out why we have been falsely accused of being the enemy. Stopping by Chez Dexter only to pick up equipment and horses we ride to take the north gate out of the city, sadly without Dexter's full-plate armour, managing to bluster our way past some guards with the use of my colonel alter-ego and disguise.

The road north is followed briefly before we head cross-country, Dexter covering our trail that took us off the road, and we double-back to head west. Our aim is to reach the town the torturer mentioned when he let slip who had turned us in as being members of the Red Hand Gang. A more tenuous lead we have not followed, but it is precisely because it is our only lead that we are following it.

After riding through the trees for a couple of miles we head back out to the road for swifter progress, reasoning that anyone ahead of us on the road will not be aware of our newly-acquired 'wanted' status, and that turns out to be just the case. Two patrols stop us on our travels asking for our papers, and seeing that they are in order bid us a good day, and before the end of the day we find ourselves at one of the main river crossings. Again, after an examination of our papers we are waved on, and I even use my colonel's rank to get us fresh horses for the ride ahead.

Rather than riding through the night a farm spotted from the road is selected as being a good place to rest, away from any patrols or wandering creatures that might pose a threat. Wandering creatures don't normally pose a threat, but as we have had our bones crunched upon by Marrowbreakers, abilities drained, and many hit and reserve points drained in the past few days some of us find ourselves to be at the mercy of the mighty squirrel and its overpowering bite. We need to rest.

Settling down for the evening we discuss our options for recovery. We could try to regain as much health as possible, for we still need to defeat the Red Hand Gang and disrupt their Blood Angel summoning ritual, which may have a few dozen acolytes present. On the other hand, we don't know when the summoning ritual will be started and once it has we have limited time to stop it. Time could very well be of the essence, not allowing us the luxury of rest. With the sun firmly below the horizon we decide to get a good night's sleep and see how rested we feel in the morning before we make a decision on when to press on.

During the night we are woken up by five ghostly, undead cats, each one intent on hunting down one member of the party, each one almost impervious to our weapons, and each one biting negative level damage in to us. The undead hunters are defeated relatively quickly, reduced to nothing more than a vapour, but at the expense of a handful of negative levels sprinkled around the party.

We go back to sleep, only to wake more drained than the previous evening. On the positive side, this pretty much assures the unanimous vote for a full day of rest in the barn instead of riding to the next town, and allows us to reinvigorate our health even if we can't get quite as healthy as expected, because of the negative levels. Next time, I'd prefer to read tea leaves to prophesy our future path rather than be sent more undead harbingers of bed rest.

'Has anyone seen my little, pink D6s?'

'What do they look like?'

'Umm, they are little, pink, and D6s.'

Knifey has been trying to get exalted with Ironforge so he can get a swift riding ram. This is to replace his horse, for which he had to get exalted with Stormwind, because the swift horses aren't as appealing. All this so I don't have to ride a mechanostrider. I had run through all the low-level quests long after they were giving experience, and although it was piling up the faction's reputation it was tedious to have no challenge in wading through mobs and no personal progress. Coupled with the number of quests offering Ironforge reputation available becoming sparse I put the reputation gain on hold for a while. This hasn't been a problem because there is no access to swift mounts before level 60 anyway, but with Knifey at level 58 the opportunity to ride a swift mount is quickly approaching. It is time to get those last few thousand reputation points.

I knew the last chunk of reputation might come at a price, though. It seems that faction reputation for the main races is mostly only available up to around level 40, after which new factions become important, like the Argent Dawn and Cenarion Circle, and the central factions are no longer represented. Having found almost no new quests offering Ironforge Reputation for almost twenty levels I had a worrying suspicion that Knifey would have to enter the dreaded Uldaman dungeon to complete his rise to exalted status. Uldaman is dreaded not because it meant being part of a group, as I could probably do most of it solo by now in much the same way I took on the Stockades for Stormwind reputation, but because the tunnels can be intricate and confusing, and it contains a whole load of horribly annoying mobs, either because of combat abilities or just sheer numbers. I have never completed Uldaman with any character, despite many attempts and in part because the final boss cannot be reached without three people in a group, which Tiger, my night-elf warrior, found out on her way to getting a ram. Tiger ended up handing in stacks of runecloth to become exalted, but that was mostly because the new reputation system had not been in effect. I was hoping Knifey could avoid that.

I completed the last few quests I had left in the Wetlands, clearing out the excavation site of raptors for the archeologists, and burning the Dragonmaw catapults and killing the orc leader. I still had a couple of thousand reputation I had to gain, so I gritted my teeth, headed back to Ironforge, and picked up the Uldaman quests available there. Flying over to Loch Modan I remembered to pick up the quest offered by the alchemy trainer, Uldaman Reagent Run, before heading south to the Badlands. I stopped off at Hammertoe's Digsite and picked up the crumpled map lying under one of the tents. This sent me on a little quest chain to find Hammertoe and return his amulet. Along with the Reclaimed Treasure quest from Ironforge and Solution to Doom from the dwarf in southern Badlands I headed in to Uldaman in search of the lacking reputation.

The Uldaman Reagent Run required picking mushrooms, and is a much easier quest at high level because each picked mushroom has a chance of dropping what I assume to be an annoying debuff on the character. I assume it to be annoying because I resisted the debuff each time, which is what makes the quest easier. Wandering through the tunnels led me to Hammertoe, who after being found asked me to get him his amulet back from someone wandering nearby. Having done this I wandered a bit further, in to Trogg territory, and found the Reclaimed Treasure almost by accident, which was lucky. I had the feeling I was missing another collection quest but it didn't look like it would matter. I had some quests to turn in and with them being important-sounding quests they might offer more than the usual reputation gain, so I headed back out to show people what I had gathered for them.

The Hammertoe quests led to a bit of running around, but with each step offering a small chunk of reputation it seemed worth it. And it was worth it, as the few quests I had completed were enough to gain me exalted status with Ironforge! I could ignore the Solution to Doom quest, and it didn't then bother me that the quest resulting from examining a Shattered Necklace that dropped from a mob didn't give any reputation, my goal had been reached. The best part was that I hadn't even needed to step foot inside the Uldaman instance, as all the quests were in the tunnels leading up to the instance entrance. This also meant that I didn't have to fight any elite mobs, with all mobs outside the instance having been downgraded, making it much less of a chore than it could have been. All this and I didn't have to hand in any runecloth to the quartermaster. It certainly looks like gaining exalted reputation with Ironforge can be achieved before the riding ram is available at level 40, with just a bit of caution needed outside of Uldaman and completing quests from Dun Morogh, Loch Modan, and Wetlands.

I can now bide my time for the next couple of levels, content with only having to think about what colour barding I'd like my swift riding ram to be fitted with.

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.