5/29 evening
After the party I spent a few hours with Ysera. I felt that I'd earned it. I didn't push straight into physical intimacy, though she took on her gorgeous visage almost the very moment I arrived. Instead, we just chatted. Well, "chatted" might be the wrong word. We kept it light in tone and interspersed it with flirting, but we were strategizing. We had a mutual enemy, and while there was only so much we could do to coordinate, anything might help.
Space gets a little bit foggy in the Emerald Dream, but as a general rule everywhere had a specific corresponding area in the dream. There had been quite a few upheavals like the shattering, so details of geography didn't necessarily match the Pangea found in the Dream, but Ysera knew approximately how it all fit together.
Why does this matter? Because the Nightmare is not actually an endless quantum legion of monsters. It's an infection, areas of corruption spread across the surface of the planet, with theoretically finite resources. Certain places, naturally including nearly everywhere that the nightmare was peeking through, were great corrupted tumors on the other side. Organic strongholds, effectively. If I wanted to attack the Wailing Caverns, we could potentially attack it from both sides. If Ysera was going to make an attack on Vordrassil, I could theoretically start making some noise in the furbolg city of Grizzlemaw.
Unfortunately, those two examples, which happened to be our respective primary campaign objectives, were halfway around the world from one another. So this was much more of a plan for later. I offered to deliver a message to her sister, Alexstrasza, but that was shut down immediately. It would be useful to coordinate, but the Queen of the Red Dragonflight had recently (for an eons old demigoddess) gone through some pretty traumatic shit, and Ysera was not going to disturb her come hell or high water until she was ready. Especially by sending a mortal to speak with her.
I could kinda see the logic; Alexstraza had been strapped down and forced to birth hundreds of red dragons, who were then in turn artificially aged and used as child soldiers by the Dark Horde. I don't think Alexstrasza would want to be left out of Ysera's equally serious if less visceral problems just because of her own trauma, but I could tell that I definitely didn't have enough pull with the Green Aspect to push it. Yet.
Her other allies, Malygos and Nozdormu, were also unavailable. Malygos was still in his ten thousand year long depression coma, unlikely to get up for any reason other than vengeance against Deathwing for genocide. That depression coma makes way less sense with all of the old blue dragons that turned out to still be alive after their genocide, but hey. It's strongly implied Dalaran would have never gotten off the ground (figuratively or literally) if he'd been doing his job as the wizard police.
Nozdormu? Who knows where the hell he is at any given moment. It was possible he wasn't even physically in the same timeline as us right now, and his lieutenants were notoriously unreceptive to calls for aid. If the problem was bad enough, they would call you. Fuckin spacetime cops refusing to get involved in things outside of their jurisdiction.
For the sake of completion, the artist formerly known as Neltharion, the black aspect, was not an option. The warden of earth was coocoo for coco puffs, corrupted to hell and back, and I was fucking his granddaughter nightly while exposing her to the power of the Light, which he would not approve of. I wanted a necklace on that bad boy, I even had a vague plan for how to do it involving an earth elemental by the name of Myzrael, but it was very much on the back burner. It would be an involved process that I think I might be able to bait a mission for in the Arathi Highlands.
I could probably help Ysera just by giving a little more priority to the places I was already planning on taking on and freeing her allies. That's it. This week I was going to properly crush the Wailing Caverns and at least start in on the Sunken Temple. With that promise and a kiss to her hand, I headed out.
••••••••••
Kathra'Natir was captured. That came with several new rebates, since he was my first Dreadlord, and two new defenses were fully paid off in the process: Information defense and environmental defense. Two defenses that were particularly relevant to me right now.
Information defense covered mind reading, magical analysis, the works. It didn't hide where I was or what I did, just what I was and what I thought, which was more than enough. Given what little I knew about the Cult of the Damned, this might be extremely useful. If I was lucky, it would let me poach Scourge without the Lich King even noticing. Plus it would make it very difficult for someone to observe what my amulets did, when combined with Jewels of Discord.
Environmental defense wasn't as fancy. It just made it reasonably likely that I wouldn't be seriously injured by going into the Molten Core. Or space. Or the bottom of the ocean. I am so desensitized; that doesn't even seem all that cool. I'm glad I have it, but it's like getting handed a disposable plastic poncho when it's raining really hard outside. Great, but not exciting.
Regardless, it meant that I could probably mount an assault on Ragnaros once I had Shadowforge City properly locked down. It would almost certainly be even more brutal than the Wailing Caverns, but there was one huge advantage for me: there was space for Onyxia.
All of that is a problem for later, of course. Today, I had a world class rogue with a powerful demon in her head, and I needed to kill an evil doctor in necromancy Hogwarts. I let Valeera know her marching orders and allowed her to figure out how to extract herself from her party. Apparently they were helping a mage from the Kirin'Tor hunt and kill two black dragons; that was Garek, the elf they gave the sign of the earth to for the mission.
I told Gina to be sure she gave an amulet to Garek before parting ways, and mentally set one aside for tomorrow. If I could get someone into Dalaran this way, I wouldn't need to use my ticket for a free Windrunner on Vereesa. Either way, they were staying busy and their mental block on suspicion was keeping Broll from getting dangerously introspective.
Pai would contact Valeera when she had a safe moment, and between Pai and Keryn she should have enough information to get in and take care of the mission. Maybe not today, but within a few days at most.
I was spending most of the rest of the day on admin. Making sure that the harpies had properly integrated with the dragon riders. Looking over a report of all of the hundreds of new, mostly low tier, members of my retinue and ordering Irma and Sylvanas to properly allocate everyone. In particular, anyone who wasn't very useful or productive right now would be flagged to be trained.
That was partly referring to my Ancient of War, but also to my next purchase: soul talent sharing. I've waited far too long to purchase talent sharing perks; look what happened a day after I picked up social talent sharing!
I dropped 10 credits, and nothing happened. Go figure, of course nothing happened immediately. I'd need to wait at least a few days to properly see the return on investment. That also meant that I needed to adjust some procedures. I told Hawkspear, the de-facto leader of the elves at Twilight Grove, to put out an announcement.
Anyone, and I really did mean anyone, who was not otherwise engaged was to sign up for magical training. Gretchen and Claire, in particular, were to dedicate themselves to magical training full time, along with anyone who wanted to formally join my army. Which many did, and many others would pushed towards if they weren't already contributing something. The more monstrous members of my retinue, like the harpies, would not get a choice in the matter.
I had a pretty good spread; Natalie, Noboru, Kriss, Anduin, Abby, Ursula, and Harnea covered most of the possible bases. They would each choose a small number of particularly promising students. Sally would suddenly have an influx of extremely promising acolytes; all ones handpicked by Confessor Talaada from among the new recruits. Each member of the Classics would be assigned an appropriate personal trainer from among the elites of Stormwind and . Emeriss would teach some worgen how to grow plants the way she does. This would have already been a powerful advantage a month ago; now? It'll be an incredible force multiplier.