Project Lore

Maybe they’re just bitter about being killed by the plague. Or they could still be holding a grudge against the Lich King and his Scourge legions. Perhaps they just love torturing people with their creepy, oozing concoctions. Whatever it is, apothecaries and all the messed up lore surrounding them gives me the chills. Now, I’ll cheer on my Horde comrades any day, but these witch doctor guys only seem to remain allegiant out of convenience. Within the first few levels of rolling a Horde character, toons are tasked with completing numerous quests for these macabre NPCs. As a Forsaken starting out in the eerie green haze of Tirisfal Glades, you’ll be asked to turn a captured mountaineer into a ghoul, cause the flesh to rot off a Scarlet Zealot, and, of course, contribute to the spread of a new plague. How’s that for payback to those nasty humans who condemned you to undead life? And that’s all just in the starting area. At least if you roll undead, you have some good motivation for causing all this mayhem – revenge. What about the rest of us unsuspecting Horde toons? Many of us aren’t even aware of the Dark Lady’s ulterior motives to wipe out all civilization. But when members of the Royal Apothecary Society are offering sweet gear in exchange for our deeds, it’s not hard to lure us into poisoning the occasional captured human. Or two. Even when the reward is quite satisfying, I can’t help but feel tainted. So it’s not hard to see why I wasn’t sad to leave my old home of the Undercity and put some distance between my rogue blood elf, Locomomo, and Master Apothecary Faranell’s dungeon of bubbling vials and experiments gone awry. I dinged level 58 and got the hell out of there. But lo and behold, the Forsaken have brought their grudges with them to Outland, and then again to Northrend. Where will the madness end? These Royal Apothecary dingbats still weird me out. But I guess it’s the greedy, sneaky rogue in me that just can’t help but complete even the darkest of quests in exchange for upgraded gear. I’m in Howling Fjord, and working toward earning a nice Featherweight Claymore simply by contributing to a new plague specifically targeting the giant vrykuls.  I’m also helping Plaguebringer Tillinghast create a new and more sinister plague that will infect humanoids and creatures alike. I can’t wait to see how that one turns out. At least “Hacksaw” Jenny seems to understand. All this plague business has ruined her prospects for finding bones suitable for her own questionable uses. So she’s asked me to go collect some from reanimated skeletons on Shield Hill, and is paying me handsomely for it. This is the last time I'll work with these hooligans. Honest.

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Being a defiled DK is the only thing that makes this OK

It’s been about five months since I rolled my blood elf rogue, and I’m at level 68. I just made it to Northrend, and I’m starting to get anxious to level up so I can raid with my level 80 buddies. But there’s so much other fun stuff to do in-game that I keep getting distracted. So it’s slower going, but I don’t necessarily consider that a bad thing. As long as I’m having fun. Like last week, when my toon and my husband’s alt, a blood elf DK, were running around slaughtering all the Talbuk in Nagrand. Meanwhile, another Horde group in the area was working on gaining control of Halaa. We were counting down as the number of Alliance guards went from 15 to 0. So when the chat window announced that Horde was gaining control, we both cheered them on in the local defense chat. And although we were in the middle of questing, I suggested that we head to Halaa to help with the final capture of the area. So we dropped everything, and went to chat it up with the other players. Yeah, it delayed our leveling. But it also was a good time. Or another time was when I dinged level 55 and promptly rolled a troll DK as an alt. I went ahead and played through the first few levels, got all the awesome blue gear, and headed back to Orgrimmar for redemption. But, wouldn’t you know it, I got to the Valley of Wisdom and an Ally group had just raided the city. Thrall was dead, with no hope for respawn for about two hours. And I was still in disgraced status, so of course the few guards who already had respawned were throwing rotten fruit at my pretty blue face and yelling for others to get a rope. No problem, I could have switched characters back to my main and come back at a better time. Instead, I joined a group of fellow DKs who were passing the time by /dancing from Thrall’s empty throne. Silly? Yes. But fun? Abso-freakin’-lutely. And I can think of numerous times I’ve been in UC as a raid comes through. Each time I’ve been too low level to defend at all, but I head to the Royal Quarter anyways. Just to observe. And try to distract the Allies by  squawking up a headache as my hawkstrider stands right on top of Lady Sylvanas. I like to watch those Allies squirm. Am I the only one who gets caught up in all this random fun stuff? Not that I need anything else to keep me from leveling, but what are some of your favorite distractions?

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