5/14 afternoon
Okay. Calm down Erich. You're waiting until at least tomorrow morning to spend any of these credits. Impulse buying is bad. I decided to check the tags of other characters, to see if there were any interesting developments. There were a decent number of extra tags applied for various defenses. Most notably, most demons had fatality defense tagged now, and Inquisitor Whitemane didn't anymore.
This would feature in future planning a bit, but doesn't change much right now other than that beautiful pile of credits I'd been given. I'd definitely want to set Zelena and her boss to the task of completing my demonic Pokédex, but that had already been true when it had just been corruption and soul defense on the line. For now, I was going to go to Raven Hill, and I'd figure out some kind of productive way to spend the afternoon.
••••••••••
Ham'Mok was enjoying his time back with the Splinterfist Ogres again. He'd been raised here, after the ogre mound had been established during the first war. He didn't exactly regret doing mercenary work for the Defias, but it was good to be around his own kind again.
Em had somehow gone from a rather plain girl to a real beauty since he'd been gone. Mok thought she was a bit dim, but Ham always thought with his dick. Mok usually didn't mind, honestly. He was a quiet soul, and Ham enjoyed himself enough for both of them.
Two headed ogres tend to be a bit erratic, but Mok liked to think that he and his brother Ham got along better than most. They had different interests, but there was a certain synergy to it. Ham was a bit of a dim brute; he liked fighting, eating, fucking, and clout. Mok was a meditative sort, and had a bit of talent in the art of shamanism; when he asked the spirits for help, they would usually do as he asked.
In another two headed ogre this could lead to near constant violent opposition, but the ogre that had been known as Hamhock in prison had reached an equilibrium by focusing on one thing: getting stronger. Ham liked it when the people he was fighting were struck by lightning, or when his blood sung with the power of the elements and he became stronger and faster. He liked it when his injuries faded as a flowing wave of healing energy flooded through him. In turn, he'd go along with it when Mok said that they needed to climb a mountain, or be super nice to a river. Ham'Mok had joined the Defias hoping to learn a bit more about how human magic worked, but that hadn't worked out. Arcane magic made his head hurt, and he couldn't make anything interesting happen. Just talking to the spirits was way easier; leave it to humans to overcomplicate things.
Mok called to Ham, who was busy kissing Em, and pointed out the large crowd forming around an absolutely huge ogre. For a moment Ham'Mok was terrified one of the legendary Gronn had arrived. He wasn't as far off as he might have expected.
"The Chooser Dragon brings the most special of all ogres to challenge for chiefhood!" A small dragon was perched on the shoulder of the titanic ogre, and seemed to be speaking for him. The giant was a bit of an ugly thing, but without a doubt he looked very strong. He was almost as wide as he was tall, with bulging muscles and a squat posture that made his legs seem a bit stumpy. He only had one head, notably. He was wearing very little, just a loincloth and a large pendant, and he was armed with a huge cleaver and a meat hook on a chain, wrapped around his forearm. The ogres that Ham had chosen to associate with most, the disciples of the chooser dragon and a few hangers on, stood and rallied together around Stitches immediately.
"Stitches chief!" So my savior is performing a coup? Very well. Ham'Mok stood to join his companions, grabbing his axe just in case it might be needed. It was clear that Stitches was invoking the rite of Mok'Gora, but that was an orcish custom. Zzarc'Vul didn't technically need to accept a duel to the death unless he was forced to by the sheer numbers of ogres demanding it. Mok decided to throw in his two cents, though he did so through his more eloquent and charismatic brother.
"Chooser dragon strong and smart enough to get me out of human city. Zzarc'Vul leave me to die before even trapped!" His bellow was convincing; a few of the other Magi who had been wavering broke in favor of Mok'Gora. Between the ones joining because of his scathing political castigation and the ones who just wanted to follow what the hottest women in the clan thought, almost half of the Splinterfist ogres were coming out for Stitches to get his shot.
At this point, if Zzarc'Vul didn't agree, he'd have a brawl on his hands with almost the entire clan involved. Clever, Chooser Dragon. Zzarc'Vul was selfish, but he didn't want to rule a giant pile of corpses, especially with the armies of the dead growing more and more aggressive with their recruitment these days.
They stared each other down as the rest of the ogres in the clan formed a wide ring for them. When it seemed about time, the trash talk began.
"Okay. Me smash you."
"Stitches SMASH."
"Nuh uh. Me first."
"Yeah. You smashed first. Stitches like."
"Whut?"
Damn. It was getting heated. The senior fire weaver, Kar'Ren, announced the beginning of the fight with a countdown. She just pushed herself forward and asserted that it was her job now, as she had a tendency to do, but someone had to start the fight or they'd have just started swinging on their own.
When the two ogres clashed, there was a shock among the more intelligent and experienced ogres. Stitches was surprisingly bad at this. Oh sure, he was strong, he shook the ground with his blows, but chiefs learned early that raw strength has its limits. He wasn't fighting puny humans, he was fighting a proven ogre chieftain. His strikes were obvious, sweeping things; if one of them had hit, it would have probably broken bones at minimum, but instead Zzarc'Vul would sidestep, or back off, and come back swinging his hammer.
It wasn't that the chief was used to being the smaller one in a fight, he just clearly had a lot more combat experience in general. He was adaptable, and used to using his long hammer to maintain a bit of distance from his enemy. This was looking bad for Stitches; he was very clearly tough, but no ogre is so tough that they could keep taking hits forever.
Mok had to make a decision. As the non-dominant head, he had a great deal of practice using his magic without the need for hand gestures or flashy displays. If Ham was fighting, he couldn't lend Mok the arms for that. Right now, he realized that Zzarc'Vul would likely take vengeance on him for being such a loud supporter of the duel. He had already been called a humie lover more than once since getting back. Mok could, and definitely would, cheat. He looked over at Em, her face full of concern, and closed his eyes.
In his innermost mind, he reached out to the spirits. "Oi. I need some help for a friend. Can you heal him? Maybe make him faster 'n stronger?"
"Okay but you better clean the river this week. You stopped for months."
"Humies captured me!"
"Excuses! Don't get captured!"
"Shut up!"
"Oh? Maybe I don't wanna now."
"Sorry. Sorry. I promise I'll clean the river."
"That's better."
Mok felt the river spirit's power flow through him and into Stitches, and when he opened his eyes the big ogre's wounds were closing up and he was moving faster. Zzarc'Vul, in contrast, was getting slower. Not because of any magic from Mok; it's just really tiring to swing around a hammer while jumping out of the way of a giant cleaver all the time.
As the two ogres got closer to one another in speed, Zzarc'Vul was in more danger. His first real mistake was his last. Stitches tried to hit him with a big horizontal swipe, which Zzarc'Vul dodged with a backstep. When he moved back in to take another free hit at the giant mountain of ogre flesh, Stitches just took the strike and kept swinging, spinning his whole body around and smashing his cleaver into the now-former chief before he could back off, nearly chopping him in half with the force of a wild spin. Only an ogre infused with bloodlust and without a care in the world about his own safety would ever even consider a tactic like that.
The nine chosen ogres immediately started cheering at the victory of their new ruler, the chief bestowed upon them by the chooser dragon itself. The chooser dragon seemed more relieved than anything else, and was looking around at the crowd with suspicion. He'd noticed the healing. Hopefully he wouldn't be mad. He walked up to Ham'Mok, and Mok noticed a shiny glint of metal out of the corner of his eye, around Ham's neck. Weird, but it could wait.
"Hey Hamhock. Someone will need to look after this big lug. You seem like you have a good head…s on your shoulders. Would you like to be chosen as the head shaman and look after these big lugs?"
Mok heard the words in the back of his head at around the same time he heard Ham speak them. "I love you, chooser dragon."
••••••••••
I looked on with satisfaction as Hamhock joined the retinue, as the two ghosts left his two heads and went back to their respective posts. I'd reset Prudence, but I wouldn't need both of them at once for a while. At least one of his heads had a spark of intelligence I liked, and he'd already proven willing and able to work with the Defias. When I'd seen him using magic subtly, I'd known I needed to pick this guy up. I wouldn't have known he was doing anything if he hadn't started looking tense and guilty right around when Stitches started turning the fight around.
Stitches was disappointing me so far; he probably just needed a bit more practice fighting things with a sense of self preservation, but dammit he was a disproportionately high level elite and a random quest mob had almost killed him. I expected better from him, even if it was 100% based on a game which was similar but not identical to mine. I suspected he'd plow through skeletons and zombies, and he'd probably brutalize things too big to dodge, but I found myself deeply disappointed that he wasn't formally in the catalog. I'd very much appreciate it if he would evolve into the hook and chain slinging, shockwave emitting, rapidly regenerating tank that he was in Heroes of the Storm. Alas, it was not to be, and that was going into my notes for whenever I need to give my report.
I went over to the fallen chief, and sent his body over to a certain pair of bisexual necromancers. I'd partially abandoned the idea of turning Eliza into a death knight; I'd certainly get her to learn how to fight in melee a bit, but it seemed more reasonable to just have her learn from Abbie and accumulate corpses and undead minions. I had no illusions that I'd make it through the next week, let alone this life in general, without making a lot of dead bodies, and sending corpses to those two would serve as a combination of disposal and recycling.
I had no illusions that I'd be getting another tank like Stitches any time soon, either, I knew just enough about the process of creating an abomination to know that I'd never sign off on collecting certain ingredients, like a still living brain. Similarly, I doubted that even with an elite corpse would I be able to get something anywhere near the same level as Mor'Ladim from what Abby was capable of. I was ready to be surprised, but didn't have much hope there.
On the other hand, Eliza needed practice with reanimation and if I couldn't find a use for a swarm of disposable mooks every few days I clearly wasn't trying hard enough. Sure they weren't exactly a socially acceptable type of troop, but I was planning on invading the Sunken Temple; the Atal'ai had a finite population as far as I knew, so repeated waves of shambling gnoll zombies would probably lead to a modest rate of attrition, especially if I beefed them up with magic users in the back row, ready to flee if the wall of dead flesh started crumbling. If it works for the Lich King, it'll work for me. Not as well, but still adequately.
My spies could drop a handful of zombies to make a distraction, and if I ever got to the point where I had excess personnel, I could have someone man the zombie room. If you needed disposable backup, you could call the zombie room and someone would send them to you eleven or twelve seconds later. Naturally I was just musing. We all see how well my travel network is going, even if I was at least starting to get it set up as of tomorrow.
I was pretty happy with this afternoon's work. The Splinterfist Ogres were now officially mine; they weren't exactly high priority, but they would be useful. Probably. Sometimes.
I called Marge and got a confirmation on that ship; she'd contacted Caledra and found out there was another person intending to go on the trek, one Dana Kennedy. Marge had explained to Kennedy that the Dragon Raiders had a branch in Hillsbrad, so there was no need to worry about bringing anyone for the initial trip. Caledra, naturally, just took my word that Tony was the only asset I needed in the field for this plan. I could properly capture Dena while she's on the ship as a captive audience, or when she's traveling with two members of my retinue. Today I intended to see about getting a bit of on the job training while I assessed how dangerous Doris could be.
I gave the camp one more sweep and saw three humans chained to a rock. Oh. Right. Them. I'll just pop over and deal with that now. By the light, I am just the worst.