While I was at the Crossroads, interviewing some lame-ass night elf too cowardly to pick on someone his own size, Footman Golmor’a of the First Customs Inspection Bloodhowlers was up on Farwatch tower — I know this because he’s up there most days, staring east at the smoke and flame of the periodically-burning town on the horizon. Stamping his feet and waving his axe over his head, he screams fruitlessly “COME ON YOU FILTH! I DARE YOU TO FACE ME! ESPECIALLY IF YOU HAVE MORE THAN THE LEGALLY PERMITTED NUMBER OF FOREIGN GOODS ON OR ABOUT YOUR PERSON!”

It’s a hard life among the customs warriors of the Farwatch post. Whatever the Alliance is after in the Barrens, they’re apparently not very interested in its eastern border; mostly the Bloodhowlers sit around waiting for passing quilboar merchants they can push around, rifling through their sap-gourds for non-permitted vermin. This isn’t the kind of glory most brothers and sisters swear their oaths for.

And no matter how many times they are assured that they are performing a vital service, guarding one of the covered bridges (that are a part of our Horde’s heritage) and ensuring that no one brings more pressed-gnome liquor into Durotar than the market can sustain, the boredom magnifies a creeping suspicion among the Bloodhowlers that they’re not taken seriously.

Partly this is due to the nature of the border itself. I’ve previously mentioned that the Southfury isn’t very furious. It’s six foot deep in the middle, and it has a current that is not so much running towards the sea as knowing it has an appointment with the sea sometime today, but is still stumbling around its living room trying to remember where it left its pants the previous night. Since the Bloodhowler customs officials are forbidden from leaving their posts around the bridge, they will often have to watch as people wade across the river upstream from the customs post, in full daylight and without a care in the world.

“We keep asking them to at least issue us some crossbows,” mutters Kan Greenhorn, one of the Tauren troopers at the post. “I estimate that there are several crates of unprocessed centaur liver slipping across the border every day.”

“DAMN YOU COWARDS, STAND AND FIGHT ME!” shouts Golmor’a at no one in particular, up on his tower.

I spent a few days with the customs guards, fishing off the bridge, hassling quilboars or playing canasta. The most excitement we saw was when we asked All’eran, the resident warlock, to stew up all the various plants, animal parts and minerals we’d confiscated from passing sapients, stuff the resulting resin into a hookah, and fire it up.

I’m not totally clear what happened over the next twenty-four hours, but I vaguely remember us declaring the customs post to be the Independent Republic of the Russet Pants, with a flagpole sporting said items. Then Saurfang showed up. He didn’t hit us or anything, thank the ancestors. He didn’t have to. He just shook his head at us with his arms crossed, as if deeply disappointed. We got back to work pretty fast after that.

Excuse me sir, how many pounds of Mulgore Spice Bread are you declaring today? have a nice day, FOR THE HORDE.

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