Archive for the ‘Travels’ Category

 

Up, the Porkish Nation!

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“I don’t eat pork.” -High Overlord Saurfang

He must get real hungry whenever he’s home in Orgrimmar, then, because most orcs don’t seem to eat much else. To say orcs appreciate porcs — sorry, pork – is like saying fish appreciate water; I’m sure if fish could speak, they would have a whole vocabulary for water, the particulates, the temperature, the sudden thrilling warmth of realizing you are downstream from someone’s al fresco micturation…

So goes the orcish fascination with swine. Contrary to myth, pig- and boar-meat is not a substitute for human meat (at least not for orcs; eating humans is more of a troll thing, and the price of good-quality human has gone up considerably since the Old Horde lost their war). Pigs have been the food of choice for orcs since they arrived on Azeroth and discovered that:

a) pigs will eat any old crap that’s lying around, so you can farm them in the middle of a war campaign waged largely in depleted land, and

b) the infusion of demonic ichor accomplished by Nerzhul’s warlocks left the prospect of, say, a nice salad, a trifle unsatisfying.

Heroic Responsibility is for Suckers

Oh, geez. What the hell. People are going to expect me to go fight the Lich King or something.

I hate zombies. They smell!

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Well, apparently Ma Thunders is very proud.

The Real Guide to Orgrimmar

Okay, enough messing around. Let’s do this up Orc-style.

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Orgrimmar: Some Burning Emissions

Coming up in the journal we have a proper pictorial overview of Orgrimmar, but first I wanted to devote a little space to some terribly amusing people who don’t get a lot of credit in print: the Burning Blade. These guys are hilarious, although I suppose to be fair, I should say that they’re not trying to be.

They’re just adorable, though. They think they’re a secret cult that’s infiltrated the city, when in fact the other orcs are happy to have them around because it means there’s always someone whose face you can pummel on a boring Dursday night when nothing is doing.

Check out their secret hideout! It’s totally unsuspicious, right, and clearly invisible to all but the initiated.

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Orgrimmar: I’ll be Light Green ‘Til I Die

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last night the drums took my spirit up into a whirlwind and i heard a voice coming from beyond the world

“I think you are another of these desert-loving English…No Arab loves the desert. We love water and green trees, there is nothing in the desert. No man needs nothing. Or is it that you think we are something you can play with because we are a little people?” –Lawrence of Arabia

I take a sip of my beer. They keep the kegs down in the Cleft of Shadow where they stay cool; it’s so hot and the sun beats so hard up on the battlements of Orgrimmar that you can’t get through watch-duty without cool drink, and as long as its watered the warchief lets the watch have their beer.

At least I’m wearing a hat. Kavok Len, Breach-pierce clan (I do not know this family) stares out at the horizon and I don’t know how that sun hasn’t made him blind by now. At the least he must have a monster headache. I’m sitting up here with him and the rest of his men on a dog’s afternoon in Orgrimmar. Southern wall; afternoon watch. This is the time to stay out of the sun for those who are off-duty, so there isn’t much for a tourist to do. And what can I say, I’m sure you’ve noticed by now that I have a streak of masochistic curiosity!

So people, even in the Horde, say the orcs are rapacious; they take what they want when they see it. But they don’t come from a place like Durotar. I’ve never been to Nagrand but from what I can tell, Nagrand is like Mulgore but with less gravity.

And yet when the orcs found Mulgore, they gave it away.

The Bullchelor, part II: of Love and Lizards

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The Bullchelor, part I: Centaurs with MBAs

So, in between my trip to Tanaris, and leaving for Durotar on my next adventure, I stopped in at home for a few days. This turned out to be long enough for my darling mother, who is a saint and who will in no way drive all the ancestors mad when she joins them, to scout my marriage prospects and arrange a blind date with an “adventurous” young Tauren lady that she feels will match my disposition.

Having heard about the primal beauties of Maraudon, she further arranged for us to see the place together. This tragic spasmodiary is the retelling of that day.

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End of the Happy Trail, part II: The Mansquito Coast

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End of the Happy Trail, part I: Flats on Film

As you could probably guess from my entry, my memories of the Shimmering Flats aren’t the clearest. It turns out though that we had a pile of spasmoluminographs that got forgotten about until now.

We’ve reached the end of our first trip together, so to celebrate, here is the first half of a large spasmojournal! Keep safe out there, travellers.

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The Great Tickbird Caper, Part III: It Looks Like a Proto-Finish.

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So, the third reason to go to Gadgetzan, on the edge of the waste, is the Arena.

You know, if you want to fight some humans or… short humans… or whatever the Draenei are… you don’t have to go through all the trouble to come here. We always need spirited volunteers in Warsong or any of a dozen other trouble spots.

Some people, however, prefer to kill and die for less geopolitically-significant reasons, and in a place where others can picnic while watching the blood fly.

And some people want to make money off of it. Generally the arena gladiators these days are such types, basically another kind of tourist. Some collect vistas, others recipes, some collect dwarf beards, some people collect arena kills.

The Gadgetzan arena, however, was originally an artifact of the lack of any powerful authority in the wilds of Southern Kalimdor.

Bluntly, it was a prison with very short sentences and very stringent release conditions.

The goblins realized that an ingenious way to resolve disputes between visitors much larger than themselves was to throw them into a pit and make money off the resulting spectacle.

They also like to throw people in there who have been less than honest in their business dealings.

That would be me.