Somewhere between the goblin mine and the next assignment, the Fel Reaver passes overhead.
It is, as always, enormous. It moves with the specific indifference of something that was built for a purpose and has been executing that purpose long past the point where anyone is around to verify the results. Its joints make a sound that the internal log can only describe as structural protest — the specific groan of metal that has been moving for years without maintenance, without oil, without anyone asking whether it would prefer to stop.
Legion, the internal log notes, is suffering from lubrication shortages.
The Reaver does not notice Jezarman. Jezarman does not acknowledge the Reaver. This is the arrangement that has kept both of them operational in the same zone for twenty-two levels.
The Cenarion Post is two tents.
This is the complete inventory of the Cenarion Expedition's presence in Hellfire Peninsula: two tents, a handful of night elves and tauren, and an ideological commitment to environmental preservation in a zone where the environment has been comprehensively destroyed for approximately thirty years.
This, the internal log registers on approach, is the eco-commando.
Amythiel Mistwalker receives the report from Cenarion Refuge with the equanimity of someone accustomed to working with inadequate resources in impossible conditions. She has a quest board. She has assignments. She has, most importantly, helboar blood samples that need collecting.
Jezarman looks at the assignment. He looks at Hellfire Peninsula. He looks at the helboars visible in the middle distance, red-eyed and corrupted, identical in species to the helboars he has been killing since he arrived on this planet.
The Valley of Trials, a thought surfaces, wasn't a lesson in obedience.
It was a skills assessment. They were testing whether I could eliminate this specific species efficiently. Everything since then has been applied examination.
He takes the quest. He has, after all, passed every previous test.
The blood samples are collected. Thiah Redmane — the tauren druidess responsible for the contamination analysis, a scientist with the particular focus of someone who has decided that fel corruption is a solvable problem if you collect enough data points — has prepared an antidote formula.
Test it, she says. On the helboars.
The procedure is straightforward: kill helboar, apply antidote to corpse, observe results.
The result of the first test is that the helboar turns green.
Not healthy green. Not the-corruption-has-been-reversed green. A different green — a greener green, a green that suggests the formula has done something to the fel contamination but that something is not what was intended. The helboar is no longer red-eyed. It is now green-eyed. It is unclear whether this is an improvement.
Test concluded, the internal log records. Outcome: total failure.
Or: partial success. The color changed. Something is responding to the antidote. The antidote is wrong but the principle is not entirely wrong.
Thiah Redmane receives the results with scientific satisfaction. This is data, she says. We adjust the formula.
In the private sector, Jezarman does not say, this would be called a failed product launch. In eco-commando research, it is called a promising preliminary finding.
Both assessments are accurate. This is the nature of research.
The organizational structure of the Cenarion Expedition becomes apparent over the course of the afternoon.
Tola'thion handles elimination. He gives assignments involving the killing of things and receives the results of those assignments without requiring explanation. He does not ask why. He does not theorize. He is the operational arm: you kill what he indicates, you return proof, he marks the task complete.
When Jezarman brings him a Crimson Crystal Shard — dropped by one of the colossi that patrol the Ridge, a beautiful red crystal that hums with something that feels like compressed memory — Tola'thion examines it, acknowledges its existence, and explains that analysis is not his department.
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Go to Galandria, he says. She handles the theoretical side.
Tola'thion, the internal log categorizes, is middle management. He executes within his defined scope and routes everything outside that scope upward. In a corporate context, this is considered a professional virtue.
Earthbinder Galandria Nightbreeze is the theoretical side. She is a tauren druidess with the specific energy of a researcher who has been given an interesting problem in a terrible location and has decided this is acceptable because the problem is interesting enough. She examines the crystal with the focused attention of someone for whom the crystal is more important than everything currently happening around the crystal.
Fascinating, she says. The draenethyst resonates with the colossus frequency. I wonder what happens if we introduce it directly into the ground.
You watched, Jezarman does not say, a colossus level a significant portion of this ridge when one of these crystals fell from the sky.
You have seen, firsthand, the consequence of this resonance.
I wonder what happens, Galandria says again, and picks up the crystal, and pushes it into the earth.
What happens is Goliathon.
The ground shakes with the specific urgency of something large that has been sleeping and has been woken by a frequency it recognizes as a summons. From the Ridge, stones rearrange themselves into limbs. From the limbs, a shape emerges that is considerably larger than the colossi Jezarman has already killed — larger in the way that a king is larger than his court, not in height but in the specific gravity of something that has authority over other things of its kind.
Somewhere in the approaching mass, a holographic projection flickers into existence — something that looks like a blood elf, angular and precise, wearing the expression of an academic whose experiment is being interrupted.
Pathaleon, the Expedition files name him later. The Calculator. Kael'thas Sunstrider's technical director. Responsible for the draenethyst distribution network across Hellfire Peninsula.
He says something about interrupting his experiments. He says something about Kael'thas. He says something about the work being disrupted by—
Earth Shock.
Lightning Bolt.
Lava Burst.
Pathaleon the Calculator, the internal log notes, said several things between the piorun, the lava, and the ground shaking. The content of those things was not retained. He seemed upset. This is understandable given the circumstances.
Goliathon falls the way large things fall — not quickly, but with the sense of significant mass finding its new equilibrium at ground level. The Ridge is quiet. Galandria writes something down in her notes.
Excellent data, she says.
The debt of gratitude, Jezarman thinks, walking back through the Post with a new assignment in his pack, looked like this:
Here is more work.
You performed the last task well, which means we trust you with the next task, which is larger than the last task, which will be performed well, which will result in another task. The organization thanks you for your contribution. The contribution is: your time, your labor, your combat capability, and your willingness to stand between a Kael'thas lieutenant and whatever Earthbinder Galandria decides to put into the ground next.
The payment is reputation.
The reputation is worth something eventually. There is a hippogryph.
The internal log files this under acceptable terms. The Cenarion Expedition pays consistently, employs clear scope definitions, and produces enemies that are killable. In the context of the Hellfire Peninsula employment market, these are competitive benefits.
We will meet again, Jezarman thinks at the two tents receding behind him. The rep table says so.
Brief interlude: Zangarmarsh.
Ysiel Windsinger has the energy of someone running a catastrophe response operation with insufficient personnel, insufficient resources, and a mandate that expands faster than the organization can staff it. She is, by any metric, extremely busy.
Noted, Jezarman reports in. There are things that need doing here.
There are, Ysiel confirms. There are many things. The naga are draining the marsh. The sporelings need assistance. The bog beasts are—
I have other priorities, Jezarman says. I'll return.
He will. The rep table indicates he'll return several times. But Hellfire Peninsula has unfinished business — Naladu in the ruins, Grelag at the Spinebreaker Post, Megzeg at Thrallmar with his persistent requests for scrap metal and demolition work.
Ysiel Windsinger, the internal log notes with something that is not quite sympathy but is adjacent to it, is going to be very busy for a long time.
So is the planet she's trying to save.
?? END OF LOG — SESSION 014
- Time Played: 10h 55m 12s
- Level: 21 → 22
- Gold: 146g → 202g (+55g)
- Reputation: Cenarion Expedition — Neutral (1785) | Thrallmar — Honored (9395, unchanged) | Mag'har — Neutral (700, unchanged)
- Key Completions: Full Cenarion Post chain — helboar samples, antidote test (inconclusive/green), Thornfang Hill clear, Crimson Crystal recon, Goliathon kill, Pathaleon the Calculator interruption
- Boss Kill: Goliathon — King of Colossi. Cause of awakening: science.
- DPS Note: Earth Shock / Lightning Bolt / Lava Burst — open terrain returning ranged rotation after mine session
- Unit Status: Eco-commando relationship: professional. Zangarmarsh: visited, deprioritized. Hellfire backlog: Naladu, Grelag, Megzeg.
Next log: Naladu in the ruins of Sha'naar. Broken draenei who didn't break cleanly. More things that survived their own ending.