NOVEL SIMPLE Big Job, Huh?
6/8 morning
I woke up without Lividia appearing in the night for the first time in quite a while. Of course, I was laying next to an 18 year old archmage that currently fully believed that I was her boyfriend. Even if she didn’t go completely apeshit, it’s likely she would have responded pretty negatively to the spontaneous appearance of another hot girl in bed with us. More drama than I wanted to deal with, that’s for sure.
I shifted her back to her modern incarnation and felt Lividia pressed against my back more or less instantaneously. We discussed options, and Aegwynn decided she’d like to integrate these new memories. We didn’t want to invent some kind of time travel narrative where she earnestly believed she was ravished by me centuries ago, so instead we just made her believe that her first lover was extremely similar to me. After all, basically everyone she knew from that far back was dead anyway.
Neither girl had anywhere to go this morning, so we put off breakfast for a little bit longer than normal. I noted with a little bit of nervous energy that Aegwynn was indeed pregnant; gotta love the status screen. I guess I’d better get things squared away in the next nine months, eh?
••••••••••
Magatha was, unsurprisingly, a 168er. Who knew femme tauren Hitler didn’t have a deep seated submissive streak for us to capitalize on? I was not particularly inclined to leave that to tick down without my intervention. 5 credits would be enough for me to move forward with a few plans, and I suddenly had a lot more interest in powerful yet brutal shaman. The centaur could use trainers that fit their mindset better, after all.
Theradras was probably my best bet here. Magatha may want a thousand year tauren reich, but she was also a shaman, and shaman revered the elements. I set her disobedience trigger to flood her with shame if she second guessed Theradras, and let my new elemental princess figure it out from there. On second thought, I added Vanessa to the zoom call. Theradras has historically proven a bit socially inept, judging by her love life.
With any luck, Magatha would take the bait and go on a pilgrimage to gain power and favor from the princess of the earth. Once she was isolated, we could kidnap her and start working her over. She’d come back as scheduled: stronger, wiser, and hotter than ever. I assigned Vanessa a hit squad consisting of Aegwynn, Ysera, and Gina. All people who either had regional upgrades or who I wouldn’t mind giving one to.
The next thing on the docket, as always, was going over missions. Vanessa’s agent had finally managed to hook the hippogryph master into a threesome with an undead lady. That was enough to net me a temptress bell. On the one hand, I’d finally managed to make one of those work. On the other hand, if I sold it and my second mercenary camp I’d be able to afford paradox defense and try to start playing games with the Bronze Flight. I put a visit to the Darkmoon Faire down on my to-do list.
In further news, I had a regional mission for Moonglade. Honestly I was pretty curious what it was going to be; the region is pretty peaceful.
Moonglade: Defeat Omen
Rewards: Omen will become female and gain a humanoid visage based off of Elune’s appearance in the ttrpg.
Huh. Holiday raid boss is the best you can do? I mean he’s certainly a beefy fighter; I wouldn’t want to try my luck a month ago. Omen was a gigantic two headed white wolf, literally unkillable thanks to a hefty blessing from Elune, but if you kick his ass hard enough he will run away to recover. Generally speaking he sleeps at the bottom of the lake in Moonglade; watching over him might even be why the Druids set up shop there. Given that he literally cannot die for long, the mission basically just says “capture and purify Omen, and he will turn into a hot girl.” I’m here for it, but I’ll probably let sleeping two headed immortal dogs lie for the time being. So, what’s the new mission in Azshara?
I like that old time rock and roll.
Recruit Monnos the Elder, mountain giant of Azshara, to your faction without mentally influencing him.
Reward: Brazzy’s Gnomish Pleasure Device
Brazzy’s Gnomish Pleasure Device: this object, functionally similar to a taser, can disable most people tier 4 or lower for up to 10 seconds through an overwhelming surge of physical pleasure. Higher tier individuals are affected for half as long per additional tier. Repeated applications become less effective as the device temporarily deadens nerves throughout the body.
On the one hand, that’s a joke item. On the other hand, it’s an item that can disable Nefarian for a second. I’m pretty sure that’s going to go into my inventory and never coming out, because it could be used both in and out of combat. I’m not entirely sure who to send, though. Maybe Theradras again? So, today’s moderate mission?
Seal of Nobility
Have 10 people recognized as Alteraci Nobles in your retinue. Current 3/10
Reward: 1 credit, Luxury Goods (rings), bottled consent
So… mass capture the nobles in the Alterac mountains? And what’s this about already having three? I opened a drop down menu and found Pai Stormbringer and two more girls with the necromancer tag. Ah. Scholomance students. This might be easier than I thought. If there are 7 more nobles from Alterac at Scholomance, we might be able to knock this one out pretty quickly. Which would be nice, given that I had an empty major mission slot.
I had quite a few tasks on the docket for today. Ironaya would be attempting to get Archaedes to submit to my authority in between studying the disks to find Nefarian and instructing craftsmen on how to make a temple dedicated to capturing Arthas. I needed to have basically my entire primary hit squad on light duty training people in case Nefarian was sighted around one of the Tuskarr cities, as Alexstrasza had settled upon an ambush as the best chance to catch and take out Nefarian. I wanted Theradras to make a few attempts at finding that tunnel Brann mentioned in his letter, letting us attempt to attack the forbidden city from an unexpected angle. I intended to send someone to take down a couple of my regional mission targets, of course, and possibly the spiciest thing on the docket was my entry into the Caverns of Time. That could probably wait, but I’ll be honest: I didn’t want to delay time travel any more than I had to.
••••••••••
Recruitment Drive
Convince the Lich Gunther Arcanos to align with you. Bonus if you do not employ your binding in the process.
Rewards: 1 credit, Soul Talent
Bonus: Instant Capture of Apothecary Baxter.
Nefarian considered the mission. It would bring him into Tirisfal Glades, one of the enemy’s strongholds. Of course, a Lich would be quite useful as an addition to his army. Soul talent was practically useless to him at the moment, but even Nefarian could appreciate the opportunity to save a bit of time in the future. Apothecary Baxter… hm. He might be able to manage this one.
The guard in Theramore had been wearing his collar for a few days. If Arcanos could be captured with the collar alone, then it might not count as a binding. After all, it was an object he had created himself. That was that; he was headed to Tirisfal, though he’d need to be very careful. He left his slaves in Gjalerbron to oversee the twenty Vrykul he’d awakened in the night. One of them was Angrboda, their queen. The delay didn’t sit well with him, but the bonus reward would allow him to awaken an army of several thousand of these warriors, given time.
Speaking of armies, he needed to check in with Kazakusan and Katherine. Both of their forces were still being converted, but Nefarian desperately needed fallback positions. Plus, he’d asked his brother to look into one of the major missions. He knew little of the Shen’Dralar, but with the tools granted by the company he was sure that Kazakusan would be able to shatter their community. That would be just lovely.