Editor’s Note: The enormous changes wrought by Deathwing’s Appearance have placed considerable strain on the author’s mental and emotional stability, as will be explained below. However, we can assure you that, on pain of horse-whipping, he is going to get back to writing an actual travel-oriented journal RIGHT SOON and no more of this meandering nonsense. Please look forward to purchasing your copy of THE GOBFATHER: A Traveller’s Guide to Azshara and the Steamwheedle Cartel, very shortly.

So, when I heard that the leader of the Bloodhoof clan, Grandfather Cairne, had been assassinated by the same fuckers that used to push me into mud-puddles at camp, I made a face like this:

When I discovered that some gigantic-ass dragon had deformed the continent of Kalimdor, thus rendering all of my carefully-researched, personally-vetted, extremely reasonably priced travel advice obsolete, a mere curiosity, I made a face like this:

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Another windswept night of ash and rain. Thunder Bluff is built high up, exposed, no canyon’s shelter or mouldering walls here – a huge vista across all our territory. That was the way we liked it, wanted it. After so long of having nothing of our own, we drunk in the sight every morning of all that land. Not out of greed, or pride – or not just that. We felt a tremendous responsibility, just as deep as the one we owed Thrall for organizing the effort through which we took this land. A responsibility to the land.

Mulgore weather was still and sunny – when the rains came, they came straight down from ponderous, heavy anvils of cloud that marched, slow as a herd of kodo in calving season, from one end of the endless sky to the other.

Now, even between the attacks, a blistering, howling gale cuts across the exposed surface of the mesa. The rain, angling in on us, is a mass of bees.

Wet.

Bees.

Okay, I’m done with the metaphors for now. Stop hitting that bottle for a bit. Leave it alone. The metaphor coach is pulling into the last metaphorical station; all passengers exit the metaphor in an orderly manner, on the left.

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Yes, we do. So much.

So as my good friend Orduin has mentioned, things are going down the crapper pretty quickly, and the Horde is looking for deft, subtle types to investigate who might be behind the pooper-dive. Instead they got me.

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Another full issue soon, on the fun you can have infiltrating dangerous cults … on a budget! In the meantime — I am having some weird ass dreams. And why should I be baffled all by myself? Who is this dame? Humans all look the same to me.

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*boom* *BOOM* *boom*

The rafters shake in the Chop House, possibly the most unfortunately-placed business in Orgrimmar. Olvia, the cook and tablematron, runs to the door for the dozenth time this evening.

“YOU WEAK-LIVERED CURS! USE THE ROAD, GROM TAKE YOU! I WILL CUT ALL THE LIMBS OFF OF YOUR PRETTY TALBUK AND SERVE THEM TO MY GUESTS!” Then, the side of her brain that runs a business catches up with her orcish warrior blood, taps it on the shoulder, whispers a suggestion in its ear. “TRY OUR LUNCH SPECIAL, ONLY FIFTEEN BRONZE!” she adds, before letting the dirty fur door-flap fall back into place.

“You have some mixed messages happening there,” I comment politely.

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One day in Quel’thelas
I met a comely lass
with eyes as green as Lordaeron’s canals!
Her glances and perfumes
attracted would-be grooms
but one by one she found them all banal.
She said, “one must be neat;
a girl is what she eats.”
She disdained all their victual offerings.
But she consented to dine,
with a shaman friend of mine,
when she heard his totem was a Mana Spring!

OOOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH….

Chorus:
I’m an Elf Lover
(he’s an elf lover)
I fancy the long-eared
(he’s got us all quite worried)
I’m an Elf Lover
(he showers in mana potions)
I’m afraid I can’t be cured
(he grooms with sparkly lotions)

Ohhhh,
Once in Auberdine
(I was trying to go unseen)
when I stumbled on a pair of gorgeous scouts.
It was a perilous close shave,
but fortune my bacon saved–
for it happened that the two were making out!
(well done, ladies!)…

OOHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH…

[and so on, and so on, and so on, and so on, until most of the participants are horizontal and incapable of carrying the tune any longer]

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Ahoy there, folks. Real post up in a day or two (am I not terrible? I could lie and tell you I have been too busy to post, but really I am just a slacker).

In the meantime, I wish to draw your attention to the fact that Tenny’s journals are hosted on the servers of my good friend Kim Sokol, who is a freelance illustrator, and responsible for the handsome portrait of Our Protagonist you see at the top of the screen. Here is another one:

Goodness me, that was almost like foreshadowing. Tenny cannot claim to be a true travel writer, after all, if he doesn’t tell you where to get the tastiest and least-stabby tapas in Darnassus. So we’ll see how that goes.

Kim has always welcomed commissions of characters, be they D&D, WoW, or any other form of nerdery that lies close to your heart. Or other organs for that matter!

Please take a moment to visit her site, the commissions page of which can be found here: http://commissions.kimsokol.com/. Thank you very kindly.

Also, here is a flattering portrait of Tenthunders’ unlikely stalker. Much to his dread, it is doubtful you have seen the last of her in these pages…

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It’s been a while, Thunderers. I got caught up in a little bit of a war, and it’s taken me a few weeks to sort everything out, put the experience in order. I know you demand a high level of coherence and informativit– informationali– knowing stuff, from me. So I wouldn’t want to deliver an inferior product.

And this is definitely something you deserve to hear about, because what was to be my piece on Sen’jin village turned into a diary of Vol’jin’s campaign to reclaim his tribe’s homeland! There’s no great loss there — I was mainly babbling about how sick I got from the super-spicy food, and how this one guy did a faceplant trying to bust a move:

So —

When all of a sudden these big drums start up, and I notice all these trolls moving towards the beach. Right on, I say. It’s only ten in the morning but we can get started.

I really like trolls. I hear they like to eat people but I’ve never met someone who got eaten by a troll and who didn’t deserve it. In the meantime they’re just so cool. They have cool hair. They know the coolest dance moves. You go out hunting with a troll for dinner, and a crocolisk gnaws his legs off — he’ll make a drawling joke about how he’s only half as a hungry as he was an hour ago. And let me tell you, no one shoots you down with the cool disdain of a trollish lady. She’ll walk away, your heart’ll be in pieces, you’re going to go into hiding for a month, but you’ll still be like… “damn. That was cool.”

So, they’re all heading for the beach and I assume it’s going to be a party. I know something must be up because Sen’jin is… well, ordinarily a bit of a sleepy backwater. Young troll adventurers feel guilty for skipping a visit and just heading for Razor Hill, but they still do it (and of course, the locals act all cool about it, like it doesn’t hurt. natch.)

But now, good lord. Elves, mammoths, ghosts, druids, three different colours of orcs — and there was Shadow Hunter Vol’jin, who usually just hangs out with Thrall up north. And he told us we were going to take back the Isles.

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So I turned south. There was still a lot of Durotar I hadn’t yet seen, and this is the perfect time of year for it. Most of Kalimdor is insufferably hot right now, and Durotar is no exception, but it’s a dry heat and more importantly you are encouraged to suffer with everyone else. It’s part of the national character. Water tastes better because you’ve earned it. And in a few entries we’ll have hit the Echo Coast and we can cool off with a nice swim.

First though, the main-trunk road south from Orgrimmar connects us to Razor Hill, through a very tactically-dubious route along the bottom of a ravine. I suggest you actually stick to the edges because it’s hella easy for people to drop rocks on your head from the overhangs. Particularly if you, say, drove your Mekanohog into their workshop during a soaked Dursday evening out on the town.

Razor Hill. I don’t want to beat a dead horse here, but I am compelled to give a call-back to my words about orcish naming practices. Razor Hill is not on a hill, and you cannot shave with it. There, okay. It’s out of my system. phew.

In fact, there isn’t much more to say about Razor Hill — it has one virtue: it exists precisely where you would expect a town should exist, geographically. Halfway between Sen’jin and Orgrimmar, it serves little purpose other than as a kind of speed-bump for enthusiastic up-and-comers inbound from the Valley of Trials, each of them with a heap of bloodthirst and little common sense. They come into Razor Hill, say to themselves “oh, a town!” and wander around for a bit pestering people for quests. Thus the burghers of Orgrimmar are spared their chattering influx into the bars and auction houses for another few weeks.

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Okay, some odd things have happened to me since I started publishing this journal.

You may remember that I’ve held forth on my Problem with Dwarves. I may have even advocated murdering them for sport in various ways. I have nothing in principle about any of my fellow Azerothians, and frankly would rather hang out with my racially-diverse brethren in the Cenarion Circle than, say, people who are theoretically my allies but who want to exterminate all life. Yeah, okay, guys. How about we just have a beer, instead, huh? Oh, the beer’s coming right out the… let’s just… oh, geez, it’s really just running right through… ugh, and some tumours are washing off with it… look here’s a bucket, we’ll just slip it under the tabard… there — no one will notice. Just… stand still.

Nevertheless, dwarves. I wouldn’t think any of them would read my journal, let alone enjoy it. But apparently copies are circulating in Alliance towns, and I seem to have picked up a — a stalker? I guess?

I can’t complain. She buys really expensive shoulder and helmet inscriptions and mails them to me (apparently this is okay). But every so often I get weirder shit, like the following, which I have reproduced here in case any of you, dear readers, can make heads or tails of it.

I think it means she just helped kill the Lich King. I heard something about that. Beyond that, though…

And I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, but I wish she would stop stabbing me to death whenever she sees me. The rose left on my corpse really is… something, but I could do without it.

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