T w e n t y S i d e d

You ever have one of those days that you wake up and find everything is broken? And the dogs tried to bite a porcupine? And the washing machine is in a different room now because it got off-balance during the spin cycle and nobody noticed? And, rightly or wrongly (probably wrongly) you feel like it’s up to you to fix everything because you haven’t had your coffee yet and your aren’t even thinking straight? It’s one of those days. Just like last week, I’m gonna say this will probably be a short one with lots of pictures.

OK, the bathroom has actually been broken for a while. A LONG time, actually. We are fortunate enough to live in a two-bathroom house. There was a skylight over one bathroom. Because of poor installation and poor maintenance, the skylight started leaking rain water several years ago. So that ruined a lot of the drywall. The skylight was removed last year by a local roofing business, and I installed a roof panel replacement with a lining and moisture barrier after that. Separately, the toilet has been…problematic…for years. I don’t know FOR SURE why, but it doesn’t work very well even after cleanings. I think the plumbing may be insufficient. The previous owners had both bathrooms and the kitchen remodeled about fifteen years ago. The “contractor” wasn’t qualified to do the plumbing and electrical work, but the owners didn’t want to deal with multiple crews and insisted he take care of it; they waived liability. The house is outside the city limits, so more lax building codes applied, but it was still “under the table.” But anyway, that bathroom needs a new toilet, all new drywall, and a new sub-floor and flooring. I’ve done SOME of it, but I’m no expert. We’ve been trying to get a well-reputed handyman in to do the things I’m not comfortable with and check for damage that I may have missed, and he suddenly is ready to start working tomorrow morning. And that means the toilet I have left installed for convenience needs to come out RIGHT NOW. And then the porcupine thing happened, too. And the washing machine.

I just finished the Blade’s Edge Mountains in Outland. Remember them? In October of last year, I wrote this about quests in this zone:

Travel to The Circle of Faffing About

Kill 30 Warp Snarflers to attract the attention of the sub-region boss, Globbot the Perturbed

Defeat him to obtain his Cherished Box of Snax

Take the Cherished Box of Snax to Bloody Ditch in Fatbottom Wash

Use the Cherished Box of Snax on Dire Snarfler Matriarchs to cause them to lay Dire Matriarch Hatchling Eggs

Collect 15 Dire Matriarch Hatchling Eggs and take them to the Lightly Blazing Inferno at the far north end of Dustbuster Hold

Place each egg near a Dustbuster GutBuster Ogre

While the Dustbuster GutBuster Ogre eats the egg, play this rare, unique Matriarch Hatchling Call flute that I’m giving you now, that has a 15 minute lifespan before it disintegrates and you have to come back to me to get one of the millions of copies I have of this rare item

This will cause a Hatched Dire Matriarch Hatchling to erupt from the egg and attack the Dustbuster GutBuster Ogre.

The Dustbuster GutBuster Ogre will panic and drop its Bowl of Disgusting Breakfast Cereal.

Pick that up. Do this 15 times. Bring the 15 Bowls of Disgusting Breakfast Cereal to me.

BUT I FINISHED IT THIS TIME. Because last time when I played through with Cinderlynn, I dinged 60 halfway through the zone, and got pulled back in the current timeline, since I was using Chromie-time. I actually found a couple things I *don’t remember* doing before, tucked away in the corners. Although I will amend: that “kill 15 mobs to gain 15 items?” Nah. This is still a lot closer to original WoW…kill EIGHTY mobs to get 15 items. Sure, not every Dustbuster GutBuster Ogre is carrying his breakfast cereal, but when the quest is to obtain THEIR EFFING SKULLS, you really start wondering why NOT EVERY Dustbuster GutBuster Ogre HAS AN EFFING SKULL.

Quick little comparison between Shattrath City as we FIRST SEE IT in Outland in 2007:

and the Warlords of Draenor version we see in 2014 (seven years, feels like it was a bigger gap than that):

The position of the camera is not precisely calculated, but should actually be pretty close. It is worth noting a couple of things about some obvious differences. Warlords of Draenor shows us the Iron Horde trying to accomplish some of the same things that the original Horde did in the prime timeline, i.e. destroy Auchindoun, the Draenei “city of the dead” (a big component of the Burning Legion’s tactics is to corrupt the “souls” of the dead and claim them for their army…it ties in to the “Scourge,” which I’ll cover some other time) and of course capture Shattrath City. The central “keep” or center of Shattrath City as seen in Outland is actually the remnants of the INTERNAL structure of the central structure. That is, something like that is INSIDE the big structure you see in the Draenor version. The big circular courtyard around the building in Outland was actually the internal hallway between the outer shell of the building and the inner structure (although you can see the entrance is actually recessed a bit, showing part of the courtyard. The inner structure would be comparable to the letter “C”). The bridge shown is NOT the same bridge in both pictures. Shattrath City in Outland has been extensively rebuilt using the rubble of the original battle. And yes, that’s the LORE reason, the primary meta reason is when you’re able to completely redesign something using newer resources and a new game engine, why WOULDN’T you? Why would you limit yourself to the rendering power of 7-years prior? I’ve always been a fan of World of Warcraft‘s aesthetic, and I think they have done a fantastic job of improving things without just CHANGING them because they can.

But now, on to Netherstorm, one of the two end-game zones in The Burning Crusade:

The two nominative big-bads of The Burning Crusade are Illidan Stormrage and Kael’thas Sunstrider. Illidan is the avatar of plot devices; the Inception of Betrayal. He’s not a double-agent, a triple-agent, or a quadruple agent: he is a Gordian knot of intention who thinks two dimensionally on a three-dimensional spaghetti bowl super-highway  super-interchange. Got it? I’ll talk about him…some other time. He is the final boss of the other ending area, Shadowmoon Valley. Yes, the same Shadowmoon Valley that Mystilatre made her garrison in, the first full zone of Alliance-side Warlords of Draenor. Remember the Temple of Karabor that we stopped the Iron Horde from taking back at the beginning of WoD? Well, in the prime timeline the orcs claimed the temple after it was abandoned by the Draenei; because in the prime timeline that whole “summon the Dark Star” thing WORKED, and all Prophet Velen could do was shield his people as they withdrew to Shattrath. The Shadowmoon Clan orcs occupied the newly renamed “Dark Temple” until the Legion claimed it directly; this was back at some point during the RTS games timeline. During the Third War (Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos) Illidan Stormrage for reasons we’re not going to talk about went to Outland and kicked out the Legion Demon occupying the Dark Temple, claiming it for himself. Until the hero comes along at the end of The Burning Crusade (um…spoilers, I guess.)

Netherstorm, as we were talking about originally, is the location of Kael’thas Sunstrider. Kael was a prince of the Sin’dorei, the Blood Elves…but that’s not quite the entire story. And I’m not going to tell the entire story right now, because it goes back around 10,000 years. TLDR; the Blood Elves were originally the Highborne, an elite cast of magic using elves. Like, these guys were GOOD at magic. The kind of good were they could do things with magic that other people might have to do by calling on a god; or doing things with magic that you REALLY DID NOT HAVE TO DO with magic. And in the end, they got ADDICTED to this. Things happened, like the Scourging led by the fallen Arthas Menethil (Wrath of the Lich King-related stuff), and their lifestyle got wrecked. This ties in to a thing called “The Sunwell,” which was basically putting the entire race’s magical eggs in one basket; and you can guess what happened. Blood Elves can still “do magic,” in fact they’re still better at it than just about anyone. For example, my Blood Elf paladin, while still using a lot of skills like “Holy Judgement” that do “Holy” damage…it’s not really. Skills like that use magic to “simulate” Holy Damage. There’s no calling on a god’s power, or sacred pacts, or anything like that; it’s just pure magic. Player-character Blood Elves are at least trying to get away from the whole “addicted to magic” thing; you will hear them say things like “Remember the Sunwell,” as a reminder to not overdo it. But then there’s the Highborne sect led by Kael’thas, who along with Illidan and The Burning Legion is trying to recreate the Sunwell and return his people to their prior glory. And you know, he’s not ENTIRELY wrong or unjustified. Sure, addiction to magic is BAD, but the Highborne were actually allied with the nominative good guys in the RTS games…they weren’t going out and trying to rule the world. But Kael’thas allying with The Burning Legion kind of ruins that. And that’s what we’re building up to in Netherstorm.

What Kael and the Highborne are up to in Netherstorm is, umm, actually the very thing that’s causing Outland to look like it does: a series of floating islands in space slowing disintegrating. Kael is running these “Mana Pumps” that are extracting magical essence from the former planet of Draenor itself, in an effort to concentrate enough magical energy to create a new super-Sunwell (and some other things, that aren’t inherently bad, tbh. Now we’re getting into “taking over the world” territory. You can see the remnants of Draenor architecture all over the zone:

The final raid against Kael’thas, Tempest Keep, consists of three wings and four main bosses. There used to be a fourth wing, call The Exodar. The Exodar was raided by the Draenei led by Prophet Velen and used to escape to Azeroth, where its wrecked structure serves as the Draenei capital of Exodar.

That’s it for this week. While writing this I also took breaks to remove the toilet and some porcupine quills. Unfortunately the German Shepherd is way too jumpy to let anyone get close to his nose. Next week I should be finished with Galactic Seasons 6 in Star Wars: The Old Republic, and should maybe have some news about some models I’ve been working on.

Paige Francis He/him