5/9 morning
Lividia and I took flight from the eastern edge of town, and while we flew I sent out my orders to the retinue. Darcell, Drusilla, and Tessa were assigned to the Rampant Lions for now, and Auffrey was heading back to Stormwind now that the Lions had a bit more manpower. I let Eliza and Abby reunite after telling the ogres to go home; Em got today's necklace, an obsidian stone on a long leather strap, so she could round up the posse in the future if I ever needed dumb muscle. I decided to just say fuck it and trigger the full heals on any of them that lost limbs; I didn't have any plans to throw them into meat grinders again in the immediate future. Better to let them live their lives until I needed them. I'd just need to stock up on trollsblood for the future. Also an important lesson: those needed to be triggered by someone with a necklace.
Vanessa was moving back towards Moonbrook, where she could capture her father. I left her to it. She seemed to have some plans for Irma, which I was a little curious about, but like I said: this is my day off.
I was enjoying stretching my wings over Deadwind pass. I saw the tower of Kharazan in the distance. I avoided it; I don't know what kind of defenses it had, but there was almost certainly a reason that people capable of flight and teleportation needed to resort to time travel in order to get in there.
I casually dismissed For the Crusade from my missions list. I had an extra ticket, and that one was particularly out of my way and made me feel skeevy. Everything else on my to-do list was much more palatable. So, magic eight ball, what shall the Company ask of me now?
The Stones that Bind Us
Capture Candar Stouttaker, an orc warrior currently enslaved by Grol the Destroyer in the Blasted Lands. If Grol realizes that something unusual is happening before capture, you will be penalized.
Rewards: 1 credit, greater waters of Lethe
Interesting. Fucking dangerous and I had no idea where to even start, but interesting. I should have maybe teleported somewhere safer before swapping out my mission; The Company would sometimes throw out jobs that were far away and sweetened the pot when they did so, but it seemed they mostly gave me jobs that were near wherever I was. So what's the difference between lesser and greater waters of Lethe?
Greater Waters of Lethe: one who drinks or is fully submerged in these waters is stripped of all episodic and semantic memory. For 24 hours after this purge, they will be extremely open to new information, forming a new identity and personality based on their skillset, surroundings, and interactions.
Personality reset button, basically. Hell of a lot of side effects but practically speaking that's a binding with no onset time and a few hoops to jump through. Worth the effort? Maybe. I didn't like how easy the penalty condition seemed, though.
The canopy was fairly thick out here, so the four of us ended up following the river, hoping to find some of the broken Draenei. Wild talent chimed in for the first time, pointing out that a community in an environment like this would probably rely on fishing for a lot of their protein.
You may ask, "Erich, why are you looking for Broken Draenei? Aren't they ugly creepy guys with weird mouths?" You would be right to ask that question. It's a reasonable question. They are indeed ugly creepy guys with weird mouths. However, I as a man of culture am aware that they are essentially the victims of fel magic corruption.
If they can be healed of their corruption and returned to their natural forms with Body Tune Up, then it will provide me with no less than four fairly major advantages. First, I could present the process of capture as primarily a form of healing. That way, more Draenei may voluntarily go along with the procedure. Second, if mind defense restores their minds and memories then I will have a collection of people who, though they don't look like it right now, are from a race of science fantasy space wizards. No one from the top brass, sure, but that's still potentially pretty great. Third, whenever the Exodar crashes on an island off the coast of Kalimdor I will be able to make first contact with the local Draenei population in tow. Fourth and perhaps most important, blue skinned space babes with Eastern European accents make me happy.
We saw a small figure with a spear, standing waist deep in the water. It was standing very still, poised to strike, and looking down into the water. "That one," I called to my entourage, and I landed in a nearby tree. I was considering how to approach them as I landed, but apparently I wasn't as quiet as I thought I was. That, or the fisher was on alert for threats from above.
Whatever the reason, as I landed on the branch their neck snapped up and they booked it, diving into the water and coming back up downstream where they could get better footing. "Damn," I muttered. It was at this point Lividia went tearing off after our prey. "Well that's one way to get a hold of them."
Broken Draenei are small, stubby people, their skin wrinkled badly and drooping because of how much they shrank in the process of mutating. This one was easy enough for Lividia to catch; she did a strange maneuver where she turned into her human form at the moment of contact. This resulted in her plowing into the poor bastard, with both of them sprawling to the ground. Lividia was damn strong in any form, but as a human she had the mass needed to pin someone.
Now I had a struggling broken one. Not exactly the ideal conditions I was hoping for. I tried turning into a broken one myself, and started speaking the exile dialect of Eredun. "Stop friend. I don't wish to hurt you. My consort there just wanted to keep you from running. Get off of him, please, Lividia." She grudgingly did so, and the fisherman, identifiable as male by his voice while he cursed, scrambled to his feet but stayed to listen warily.
"I come with a proposal. I have a method which may heal your people. Restore you to your former glory." He spat at my feet.
"Leave us alone, dragon. We are trying to make our way here. We have no need of one such as you."
"You will apologize to King Bismark you pathetic swamp thing!" Lividia was mouthing off. I offered her my arm, which she grudgingly took and then rapidly calmed down.
"It's unfortunate you feel that way. Are there any that feel differently? The procedure works best on the willing. If you provide me with directions you won't see me again for quite some time." He thought on this, but when I offered him a bottle of wine and some dried meat he tucked them away and started talking.
"To the west of here, hidden at the base of the mountains. Some who cling to stupid dreams are found there."
"Excellent. I appreciate your assistance." I took wing and started flying north myself. Despite what I'd said, I felt like the hopeless ones would be better targets. I started moving towards the mountains, continuing to keep an eye out for small figures on the ground. I was in luck, I saw another broken. This one looked like they had just had a rather successful hunt, as they were butchering a crocolisk on the shore. For this one, I sent Lillibeth in first while Mary stood by, observing. She was more experienced at the possession process.
We exchanged texts as best we could. Lillibeth could only communicate when the gem happened to be against his skin. Another guy. Damn. I shrugged and turned my disguise into a female Draenei. I was testing right now, so I'd accept a bit of awkwardness. Dazzling him with beauty might help. Lividia looked at the new form with clear distaste, which got a chuckle from me.
*E Do you think you can get him to confess love to a pretty girl?*
*Lil Maybe. I don't think he has a strong sex drive.*
*Worth a shot* I stowed Lividia nearby; she pouted as she returned to draconic form and curled up in a tree to wait.
I was very glad that I had communication talent, because his face was far too distorted for me to read otherwise. When an unmutated draenei stepped out of the treeline he was shocked. "You're beautiful…" was a promising first reaction. I could tell that Lillibeth didn't have too much control; she couldn't do more than nudge this guy.
I put on my best Russian accent from my days as an amateur actor and relied on communication and covert talent to correct into something not offensively bad. "You could be too. I am a healer. If you speak to me and promise me your love, I will try to remedy your condition." Here was the big step. His eyes narrowed a bit in the universal signal of suspicion. What I was suggesting was impossible. Me even being here as a "pure" Eredar was impossible.
"I love you?" Lillibeth came through. She was expelled by his doubts, but initial rush of validation should have still happened.
"You need to mean it. Can you? Only the power of love can overcome this darkness that has taken hold of you, when even the light has failed." I tossed in that last bit to capitalize on his loss of faith at communication talent's suggestion.
"Yes. Yes I love you!" His body seemed to shudder and spasm, and I have good and bad news. The good news was that he was captured, and he bulked up considerably and lost many of his wrinkles, his posture improved, and his eyes seemed brighter and more focused. The bad news? None of the mutations were reverted, exactly. He didn't regrow his tentacles or hair, his teeth still looked like they were designed to serve as a tea strainer, and he was still around the height of a dwarf. He looked way better, but he wasn't back to what he would see as his natural form.
"Hmm. It is a good first step." It was definite progress, but not really what I was hoping for. I checked my app, briefly made sure that Lillibeth was ok, and found Dremuus; he was listed as an Eredar. Not a broken one, or a Lost One, or even a Draenei. Base species: Eredar. Which probably meant that the mutation into a Lost One was a transformation, like how Lillibeth and Mary were ghosts, but still human ghosts.
To undo the corruption I would probably need corruption defense, or transformation defense. Not in the budget right now. Maybe never in the budget unless I could get some steep discounts. "I will send another here to heal you further. I promise, this is not the end." I leaned down and kissed his forehead and spoke as if I was praying over him. "Mary, watch over this one." I needed to think about this, and having Mary floating around this guy, or possessing him as a passenger, would let me get back to him easily. I left Dremuus there, examining his newly improved body with wonder.
If nothing else I could turn people into Eredar now. I don't actually know if having a more advanced brain would have any effect on them, I'll definitely check with the Ogres, but Eredar are bigger than humans and on average better at channeling magical energy. Unfortunately I'd need to disguise them. Nobody on Azeroth knows that Eredar and Draenei are the same species at this point. I'm pretty sure it was a massive retcon when TBC made that declaration, and the first response to their arrival in the starting zone was not immediate open arms. The Broken were the ones that rejected demonic magic and were exposed anyway; their fully demonic cousins had a very justified bad reputation.
I wasn't letting this go, at least not until the end of my day off. I'll do something reasonable and productive tomorrow.