NOVEL NEXT Kicking the Beehive
5/9 evening
The assault on Hive Re’Gal was an absolute slaughter. Most of my heroes were legendary warriors even before factoring in the Hero boost, and half of them were capable of some level of healing. Kathra’Natir built his entire strategy around supporting the doomstack, clogging up the tunnels to either side so that the heroes could press ever onward towards the hatchery at the heart of the hive.
The heroes, most of whom were skilled tacticians, quickly formulated a simple strategy: Katherine the Paladin scouts with divine shield, then Thrall takes point. The Warchief was functionally invulnerable against such insignificant enemies, as any scratch they managed to land on him would close near instantly. Malfurion, Lividia, and Tyrande could have kept almost anyone alive, but Thrall was a bruiser in HotS that could dish out pain as well as take it. That let him take advantage of Balnazzar’s vampiric aura to turn offense into even more defense. Every bug he squashed healed him, and any defense which posed the slightest threat to him would earn the illustrious prize of being taken seriously by the rest of the heroes. It was a rare Silithid indeed that survived such attention for more than a few seconds.
Each Silithid killed by Jaina’s frost bolts would then proceed to have all the liquids ripped from its body, refashioned into a necrotically charged water elemental ready to beat their former allies to death. These would join the spirit wolves Thrall summoned, Lillibeth and Sylvanas’s skeletal minions, and the Nerubian warriors that exploded out of the walls at Zagara’s command. All of these disposable minions pushed forward, taking advantage of the many auras to take down Silithid through sheer force of numbers.
Honestly, the greatest difficulty they encountered was taking Natalya alive; even that had amounted to having both Lillibeth and Sylvanas charm her before I popped in and dragged her through a portal to my house. I called in Valeera, and Natalya was on the side of the angels. Or at least the side of me. I must say, however, that she pulled off the evil priestess look well.
I’d started the fight with my heroes, but of all the words I ever thought I would use to describe an assault on an enemy stronghold I didn’t expect tedious to be one of them. The enemies were numerous, essentially endless, but they were interchangeable. Tens of thousands of big beetles and wasps that would claw, sting, and bite. It just wasn’t very interesting. That’s not to say that we steamrolled the entire hive; while my all-stars were dominating, the demons of Valhalla were taking heavy losses. It takes a while for over a thousand elite troops to die, but it will happen eventually when they are outnumbered thirty to one by non-trivial opponents.
Once they lost the luxury of protected flanks, my heroes ended up in a far more desperate struggle. They made their last stand in the hatchery; it was a terrible defensive location, but they could do a tremendous amount of damage there. By the time that the ops team pulled the last of them out, Re’Gal couldn’t be properly called a hive anymore. It had neither eggs to hatch, nor queens to lay them.
••••••••••
Bringing Natalya back to her husband was a heartwarming moment; he’d been seriously worried about her. Nobody had known that she’d become a high priestess of C’thun; she’d just vanished without a trace one day. From what she told me, she’d been one of several people who had been enslaved for the purpose of coordinating the Silithid. The shaky way she described her actions as the center of a hive mind implied that stress immunity was the only thing keeping her from curling up in a corner. Her new mental defenses would help her process or suppress the nightmarish experience, and if she couldn’t then mind runes were also available.
As proud as I was for doing my good deed for the day, the real reason for the assault had been the slaughter. At long last, my retinue had killed 20,000 Silithid and when I returned once more to my living room I found a brawny, shirtless orc with a single black braid and a huge battleaxe made of red-stained wood. He was sitting patiently, looking into the fire pensively. He didn’t look up as he spoke. “I died. Gloriously in battle, I died. I was among the spirits for a long time, though I can hardly remember it. Why am I back?”
“We need your strength, warrior. I’m sorry if I pulled you away from a pleasant afterlife.” Given that he died in a hellscape and the shadowlands aren’t exactly a place of warm fuzzies, I doubted it. “I’ll send you back to Orgrimmar. It has grown quite a lot in your absence.” He accepted the guidance, his deeply ingrained instincts as a soldier made his default “report to a superior officer” if he could find one. Thrall would hopefully sort him out, though I needed to figure out how to use my new unstoppable warrior.
I had several completed missions to review today, but I decided to leave those for tomorrow morning. All save the new minor mission; one focused on the Ghostlands, where the blood elves were keeping Anveena. It was a little shocking to realize that nearly everywhere in Kalimdor already had an active mission or a regional mission completed at some point. All that was left was Uldum and maybe Mount Hyjal, though from what Malfurion told me, Hyjal was a ghost town since the destruction of Nordrassil. In fact, I couldn’t really remember anything interesting happening there in Cataclysm that didn’t tie directly into the war with Ragnaros.
Luscious Elven Locks
Shave the head of Magister Darenis, found in the fortified blood elf town of Tranquillien, without his consent.
Rewards: Scrap of Nymphomantic lore
Scrap of Nymphomantic Lore: Creates an erotically charged variant of a single spell you know. This version of the spell shall be moderately more powerful or provide additional utility, but will also have an additional sexualized component which will make the spell more difficult, awkward, or embarrassing to use. The original version will remain usable.
Well Anveena. I hope you and Kalecgos are up for this. I sent her the mission, along with orders to cover things up afterwards. She was just about done with her Archmage training, so I hoped she would be able to shave one blood elf’s head without causing too much of a shitshow.
••••••••••
The Phantom Bang
Have sexual intercourse with Tsu’zee, the Shen’Dralar spirit found in Western Dire Maul
Reward: mission ticket, Memory Charm
Nefarian glared at the empty air where the mission’s text appeared to float. The worst of it was that he’d likely need to do it; he needed mission tickets if he was going to recover quickly when foiled. Not to mention the asinine “moderate” mission demanding that he make his way to Pandaria. It was not worth the effort, not when Pandaria was still shrouded in the mists, as it had been since before Nefarian’s hatching. Hmm. Perhaps he might try it actually; he didn’t know how his enemy was tracking him, but Pandaria was quite well hidden. Surely he of all people could make his way there… no, only as a fallback position. He could not trust the mists, or any forces he might find in Pandaria, to protect him.
Netorarian had robbed him of one army, and it was likely that the tuskarr would remain out of his reach as well. He’d used his one mission ticket to dismiss the eradication mission, more’s the pity. Kazakusan was having a reasonable amount of success with the Shen’dralar, which Nefarian would need to be content with. His brother was always good at working quietly, and the reclusive elves’ rebellion was being orchestrated quite efficiently. Delegation was a beautiful thing when one happens to find competent minions.
The sands ran out in his hourglass, which was enchanted to chime when it did so. The ritual was ready to begin, it seemed. Nefarian chanted as he circled the corpse, drawing upon the energy of the three braziers in the room. The rune etched Vrykul began to spasm and writhe as his soul was dragged from Helheim into the vessel Nefarian had prepared. Blood, shadow, and flame; runes to reanimate and bind a king. As Ymiron struggled to stand, a white shafted arrow appeared at Nefarian’s feet. Yes, Netorarian had robbed him of his army and the blood of the Tuskar, but not of this mission, or this servant. There was yet more work to be done.
••••••••••
Shifting sands deadline: 7/14
Kill 20,000 Silithid Warriors: complete
Alliance War Effort: 6/9 + 567 (normal Business) + 537 (gnomish war effort) + 242 (charm sales) + 760 (food and medicine) + 1460 (freight at cost) + 735 (the gnomish reclamation) + 711 Centaur pillaging and trade = 20968 total (4.2%)
Horde War Effort: 6/9 + 2135 (Undercity cottage industry) + 440 Ancient of Wonder + 400 Lumber + 280 (fel iron equipment) + 220 (Scorpid Armor) + 35 Wands + 5091 (investments) + 765 (dark iron trade) + 729 (molten core) + 999 (dark iron weapons) + 123 (medkits) + 313 (charms) + 2547 (Ratchet investments and purchases) = 445289 total (89%)
Reassemble the Scepter of the Shifting Sands: complete
Defeat Ossirian the Unscarred: 0/1
Defeat C’Thun: 0/1
Rewards: each successfully completed mission objective will grant one of the following, in order
Sweet Home: upgrade to pocket plane X
Instant Capture and retrieval: Broxigar the Red X
Instant capture: Succubus Kerrigan (HotS powerset only)
Instant capture/retrieval of Xal’atath, Blade of the Black Empire
Hypnosis App binding function added to primary amulet.
100 credits