Further questing (in the non-Lich-King-inhabited Normal World, thankfully) has me sent on a mission to turn the Vrykul harpoon guns against them. No sooner am I flown up to the bluffs (on one of the new two-person flying mounts, it looks like) than the world server crashes. Taking that as a sign, once I'm able to log back in, I decide to head back to the old world and log out.
First, though, I head to Stormwind and check out the new barbershop! With barber Sween Neetod.
...I think I'll get my hair cut in Ironforge instead.
Logging back onto my Mage, I quest in Vengeance Landing, slaughtering stranded Alliance soldiers (who probably deserved it) and gathering intelligence on the Vrykul for the local Executor.
Once I complete these quests, there's a little event in which Prince Keleseth (of Utgarde Keep fame) shows up with a contingent of Vrykul bodyguards, offering Executor Anselm the chance to blow off Sylvanas and join back up with Arthas, because Arthas is cool like that. Anselm flips Keleseth the metaphorical bird, and orders his archers to open fire.
Keleseth uses a Cone of Cold, slowing the flight of the arrows in midair. Yes, it looks really cool to see the arrows moving in slow-motion. I wish my Cone of Cold could do that :(
Of course, though his Vrykul bodyguards are all dead, Kelseth does an evil soul-suck-horror thing to kill the archers, and exits stage left. He'll get you next time, Gadget! Next tiiiiime!
If you now have the Inspector Gadget theme song in your head, my apologies. You aren't alone.
While helping the local Apothecaries to perfect their plague, a test run (dive-bombing an approaching Alliance fleet) reveals that this current strain manifests itself not so much in horrible melty death, but in severe stomach pain.
Horde players questing in Vengeance Landing will grow very accustomed to seeing the lead apothecary /yell "SEVERE STOMACH PAIN?!" Trust me on this one.
I ride up to a Horde outpost outside the Vrykul town of Baleheim, where Sergeant Gorth asks me to go to the village and set everything on fire. Everything.
It's so pure I think I'm going to cry.
In the end, though, I'm not able to set everything on fire. Just... most of it. Gorth is slightly let down (you and me both, pal) but reasons that I did the best I could. So he rewards me for setting the place ablaze. I like Sergeant Gorth. He's kind of cute, in a big disgusting plague-ridden sort of way.
A short quest chain involving planning the ambush and assassination of one of the Vrykul chieftains eventually leads up to one of my personal favorite moments in the expansion thus far: yelling a crude Vrykul insult about the chieftain's mother to lure him into a trap.
Sometimes it's the little things, y'know?
Further exploration of Howling Fjord, to the West, takes me past an ancient Vrykul burial ground, where a Tuskarr asks me to investigate the cause of all the undead roaming around the area all of a sudden. Apparently, they use this place to hunt or something like that, and the presence of mindless vengeful undead monsters complicates some things. Methinks the Tuskarr need to watch more horror movies, because then they'd know absolutely no good comes from doing anything on ancient burial grounds.
However, upon inspection, it seems that all four prominent graves appear to have been tampered with ...
... by pirates. Yarrr!
To get to the bottom of this, I guess we have no choice but to check out the walrus-men over in Kamagua. But that'll come next time!
(Which won't take nearly as long to get up. I promise.)
See you soon!
-TMTCJ(z)
