We <3 Sergeant Gorth
We return to Howling Fjord, to quest in Valgarde! And other assorted places.
(And again, apologies on the delay.)
As one would expect, most of the quests in Valgarde send players to deal with the Vrykul presence in the zone, since the town is under constant siege. I can't help but feel like that's what they get for building their town right in front of an evil war fortress. I have no sympathy for you people.
However, you give me quests, so sympathy can be feigned. One of the first quests asks me to go look for missing scouts. As it turns out, of the 15 or 20 scouts they sent to check out Utgarde Keep, every single one of them was caught and impaled by the Vrykul barely 100 feet from the gates of Valgarde.
That, my friends, is complete, abject failure on an absolutely unprecedented level.
Upon being un-impaled by a player, the scouts invariably croak out one last "meaningful" phrase before keeling over.
I have healing spells, guys. I can heal you. Really, it's not that bad. You'll be fine.
You want a Lifebloom? I can give you Lifebloom. I'm not even specced for it!
Wait, no. Don't - why are you just dying like that, guys?! If I can heal a tank repeatedly getting mangled by a giant oversized lizard, I can heal you from a wimpy puncture wound.
For crying out loud, Impale does like 600 damage a tick!
Fine, you want a rez? I have an out-of-combat rez now!
...
...
...I swear, these Alliance NPCs can be so melodramatic.
Another quest sends me to rescue some more Alliance soldiers, who managed to fail slightly less - they made it all the way to the Vrykul town before being caught, and they only ended up captured! Upon freeing them from their cages, they will stick around for a short period of time fighting at your side (I saw Warriors, Mages, and Priests, but there might have been more classes), resulting in a little mini-party of NPCs. It was kinda fun.
While tracking down some (dead) Dwarves of the Explorer's League, I'm sent to the catacombs below Utgarde, where one of their (not so dead) compatriots greets me and gives me a quest to go collect ancient tablet fragments or whatever the hell those Dwarves are always doing. Some of these fragments can be found beneath beds in what I'd imagine is a Vrykul barracks of some sort ... kind of like archaeological dust bunnies, in a way.
The catacombs have a very creepy atmosphere to them, with the ghostly Val'kyr Battlemaidens flying around overhead. I don't think they attack you, but I could be wrong. At the end of one of the hallways is an injured Paladin named Ares the Oathbound. He talks about his sacred duty and the "cleansing" of an "artifact" by the "light of dawn," though the artifact in question ended up here in the Utgarde Catacombs ... somehow. He asks me to retrieve it.
He also gives me a special bubble. No, not the usual Paladin bubble, but rather one that causes me to glow brightly - and that will burn any Undead that come in contact with it. Shiny - and for once, I mean it literally. With my time-sensitive bubble shield, I run down into the basement (of the catacombs, which means we're really far down there), which just so happens to be filled with undead. Of course, the presence of the bubble causes them to run in agony and pain, because it buuuuuurns them!
All the steam effects cause a heavy drop in FPS, but I don't care, because it's awesome. At the end of the tunnel is a sword bathed in a column of light, which I'm fairly sure is the Sacred Artifact in question. It turns out my intuition was correct, and I return upstairs to tell Ares that I've succeeded. He gives me the quest to return to Valgarde, and promptly dies. Dude, I have a rez now! ...
... oh, forget it.
