Archive for February, 2011
The Bull Went over the Mountain
It’s time to go north. We’ve stuck pretty close to “civilization” for a while now, and consequently we’ve been leaving behind a lot of the things that make travel so enjoyable. Silence. Reflection. Fishin’. Scenic Vistas. And more fishin’. Here you will find a spasmographical account of flying from the heartland of the Horde to the very edge of remoteness, in not-so-great a distance. Despite the machines of industry and the flames of war, Kalimdor remains a place of one hundred wildernesses, and high above its central plains the Steamwheedle Cartel has built a research station and provisioning centre, at Everlook. No one can fault their ingenuity or bravery — but let’s try, shall we?
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Blinded by Science and also by Burning Acid
It’s nice that, when we meet under a flag of truce, Alliance and Horde can now freely compare notes about the dangers of living next to very intelligent, small people. For a while the Alliance was miles ahead of us in the business of employing terrifying midgets with enormous brains. They chuckled at our rustic, backwards lack of mad, world-ending science. Well not no more.
I’m given to understand that gnomes are, if anything, more dangerous than goblins, and that at one point they lived as hobos along the Dwarven tramways, carrying their adorable little bindle-sticks and playing adorable little steam-powered harmonicas, because they’d blown up their own city and turned half their own species into flesh-craving zombies. Which is one way to make an impression on your erstwhile allies, I suppose; if I were a human monarch I would certainly be enthusiastically loading gnomes into very fast sailing ships and throwing them at the Horde in as great a number as possible, both in the hopes that they would somehow demolish my enemy’s civilization, and so they would be as far away from me as fucking possible.
The big difference, I conclude from my note-comparing, is that gnomes are chiefly dangerous by accident and because they are not paying attention, and goblins are chiefly dangerous because they think it’s funny. Yes, they do think that making super-intelligent raptors will somehow (???) lead to profit, but I suspect that’s just a rationalization they use to get funding for things they think are going to be a good time.
If you want to experience this goblin propensity for scientific tragicomedy I cannot recommend highly enough a diverting tour of the (world-famous) Secret Lab, located in Southern Azshara. […]