Back to Orgrimmar in time for the weekend. Have an interview with the Grom’s Machine, a group of Mekano-hog enthusiasts who tear up the Valley of Honour with impromptu races every few Freysdays. The interview is likely to turn into a very heavy evening of drinking and possible property destruction, with all the payoffs that implies, so I stop by the bank to pick up some money. You know, line your pockets with a few gold, break in case of emergencies.
The teller is gone for a long while, and when he comes back his face has a dark cloud over it. No one can furrow their brow at you quite like an orc, particularly one who has contact with your finances.
“The Adjuster of Bulk Accounts would like to speak with you,” he rumbles.
“Oh, that’s okay — I don’t have an appointment,” I reply.
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Real post will come up later this weekend; in the meantime, you should educate yourself about
INTERNET DRAGONS.
Because they are hella funny.
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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.
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(editors note: this might be the silliest thing yet to be posted here. :P)
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Before the introduction of the extremely efficient (and transdimensional!) Horde Postal Service, the Tauren tribes would often use smoke signals, created with green-wood fires and blankets, to communicate messages across long distances. One of the difficulties was to know when a message was completed, so you could go back to fishing or whatever else it was you were doing.
By convention, the last sentence of any given smoke-message was “And the Crossroads is Under Attack.” This, back in the earliest ages of the Earth, was a call to arms, urging all Tauren and their allies to take up the defence of one of our sacred sites which — due to its central location — was a favourite target of centaurs, quillboars, anyone who happened to be walking by.
But after this had been going on for some time, and no one could really remember why the site was so sacred in the first place (and after orcs had dumped a lot of garbage on it, like malfunctioning siege engines and some ogres), everyone started to just ignore this bit, regarding it as pure formality.
And so it continues to this day. But why is the Crossroads Under Attack? Does anyone even know? How badly do you have to screw up to be nominated as the next Crossroads Flight Master?
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A traveller to Durotar might well ask “where does the wood come from for all these palisades and delightful covered bridges (which are a part of our Horde’s heritage)? There don’t seem to be a lot of trees in Durotar.”
Well, Jimmy – let’s pretend this visitor’s name is Jimmy – well, Jimmy, the story of Durotar’s wood starts far to the north, in the forests of Ashenvale. First, a seed is planted by wind and nourished by rain. Then, for hundreds of years, the growing tree is tended by elves, dryads and other spirits of the forest, reaching high up to join the great canopy of its elders. Then an orc comes along with a big axe and cuts it down.
And do you know what that makes elves, Jimmy?
Too slow, say the orcs.
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The Southfury is the longest river in Kalimdor, and only one river surpasses it in length in all of Azeroth. It starts beneath the high plateau of Winterspring, fed in large part by meltwater as the massive drifts of snow native to that region fall through sheltered cave networks or roll down to lower altitudes. It marks the border between Azshara and Ashenvale, and over many thousands of years it has cut a deep, wooded gully to run through. If you have the misfortune of being clumsy and falling in to the Southfury close to its source, you have a very long swim ahead of you before you can climb out again.
I wouldn’t know anything about that, of course.
Well, that’s all very interesting. Let’s talk about the name, shall we?
First of all, the Southfury is entirely contained within northern Kalimdor; it ends in Rachet Bay, comfortably close to the continent’s centre of gravity. I suppose it does flow south, but I’m still irritated by this.
Second of all, there’s the fury aspect of it. You can tell it was named by orcs. I like to picture an orcish surveyor, bespectacled, calmly drawing topographical contours and marking the course of waterways, when all of a sudden the demon blood starts acting up. RAGE RIDGE OF RAGING FIERY RAGE, he scrawls across a gentle, grassy incline. FURIOUS FISSURE OF A THOUSAND SPIKED HORNS OF FURY; what Tauren would probably call “Nappin’ Pond”. The Orcish Surveyor blinks several times, his braids and beard all sticking out at funny angles, his glasses on vertically, a bit of drool on his doublet. Shaking his head, he goes back to tracing the contours of the Southern Azshara Reach, and Kalimdor is all the more interesting for his episode.
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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.
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Oh, geez. What the hell. People are going to expect me to go fight the Lich King or something.
I hate zombies. They smell!
Well, apparently Ma Thunders is very proud.
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Okay, enough messing around. Let’s do this up Orc-style.
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