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Solivar
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re: [Open RP] Northpass Tower

"You understand, there haven't been very many good stories to come out of this place -- there's been too much blood shed, too many lives lost. But every once in a while, there's at least a glimmer of light." Keldris pours himself a cup of wine and settles back against the wall. "The best of mine is this: contrary to common knowledge, there were at least a handful of survivors from Stratholme. Most of them were merchant factors abroad doing the business of their employers when the plague broke out -- one of them was a man by the name of Ricard Vartellis, who was in Kul Tiras arranging the transport of his employer's wine from Lordaeron to the noble tables of Stormwind....

"Master Vartellis was also a family man as well as a man of business. He kept a small but comfortable home in the village nowadays called Terrordale, where his wife, the local seamstress, maintained her own business and reared their daughter. When he left for Kul Tiras his wife was enormous with child -- he neither wanted to leave so close to her time, nor did he wish to risk her health in the rigors of a long journey by land and sea, but his business partner had fallen ill and he felt he had no choice but to take his place on their mission.

"His wife, Mistress Kareth Vartellis was a formidable woman in her own right, her fortunes self-made by her skill with the needle, and she assured her husband that she and their daughter, Aluet, would be fine, that the midwife would permit no harm to come to them, and that he should fulfill the duties of his contract and return as swiftly as possible. And so Master Vartellis set out, and survived where so many others had died, including, in the end, his employer. Left in possession of an unlooked for fortune in the considerable amount of gold his employer had entrusted to his care during the trade negotiations he was involved in, parlayed that amount into a second, much larger fortune, and finding no joy in it, he wrote to Commander Tyrosus and offered the entire amount in yearly supplies in exchange for one favor. He wanted the Argent Dawn to ascertain, if we could, what had become of his family."


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Solivar
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re: [Open RP] Northpass Tower

"Now, at that point in time, having a guilt-ridden, incredibly wealthy merchant offering to help keep us alive was not the sort of opportunity that anybody felt we could walk away from. And at the same time, a lot of us were convinced that it was too good to be true -- bait meant to lure us into a trap as far as we could be from any source of friendly rescue. In the end, Commander Tyrosus asked for three volunteers.

"Flora jumped at it immediately, as did Tengiz of the Frostwolves, and so did I. We all had our own reasons for wanting to go. Flora had lost family during the Culling -- an uncle and aunt, and all the cousins that had lived in the city in service to the Rivendares as metallurgists and court weapons engineers. Tengiz was a married man himself -- his mate, Tanathin, had elected to remain in Alterac with their kids when Drek'thar had called for volunteers for the Argent Dawn, and he couldn't think of anything more terrible than losing them while he was away from home. I...could sympathize with the pain of not knowing -- of probably never really knowing for sure -- but wanting to, more than anything else.

"Just getting to Terrordale was an adventure in itself. The most direct route was a gauntlet through the blighted forest outside Stratholme, where the Scourge and the Scarlets were fighting more or less constantly for possession of the one intact road, so that was pretty much right out. Instead we took the long way up through the hills where there were no Scarlets and fewer packs of mindless shamblers, but more trolls and cultists. Hey, it was a trade-off -- the cultists, at least, sometimes surrendered, especially if it was only a small group. Some of their bodyguards were Forsaken in all but name, sapient and in control of themselves but trapped by circumstance and not knowing where they could go, if they could go anywhere at all. We recovered a few like that. The quel'dorei exiles at Quel'Lithien though we were completely insane and said so in no uncertain terms, but they also sent a scout with to lead us to one of the safer paths through the mountains.

"Fortunately, we did not die at that time. I thought you might want some reassurance on that topic. Terrordale was, at that point, mostly the realm of zombie pigs and barely mobile piles of bones -- fewer than we though there would have been, given that the town was basically trapped between the mountains and Stratholme. When Arthas began calling the dead to the Capital, most of the population that could answer must have done so, though just about every town had some that just...weren't capable. Terrordale, though, was almost empty."


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Jadedinsc
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re: [Open RP] Northpass Tower

Folami devours her scone and leaves no crumbs behind. With her stew, she slows down, savoring the taste and enjoying a gradually filling belly.

She listens to Keldris's story, taking in the details and picturing the places in her head. "Must have been stressful at times," is all the commentary she gives. Stating the obvious is her forte.


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Solivar
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re: [Open RP] Northpass Tower

Keldris grins at Folami. "That's what I love about you -- you take everything in stride. Anyway...Terrordale...way more empty than we thought it'd be.

"The merchant and his family lived in a house just off the main market square, as his wife was a tradeswoman herself and had preferred to stay close to the source of her livelihood. By that point in time, part of the village had burned down, part had been demolished by the Scourge, and the whole thing was in a state of falling-down ruin, thanks to generalized necromantic corruption. The merchant's house was one of the falling-down ones.

"It had, at some point, been ransacked -- most of the villages in the Eastlands had been picked over pretty thoroughly by the Cult of the Damned and this wasn't an exception. Anything of value had been stripped out years before. The merchant, however, had told us about a secret hollow inside the flue of the main chimney where he and his wife kept a fireproof box for precious items they otherwise didn't want to risk. We found the hollow, behind a loose stone -- and very much to our surprise, the box was still in it. Inside, the merchant's wife had left a message, in which she detailed the beginnings of the plague outbreak in Terrordale and outlined her own plans to flee, bidding her husband to meet her and their children in the caves above the town.

"The Thalassian mountains are actually riddled with caves -- some of them natural, some of them excavated, by both trolls and men. The Amani, in the past, would mummify important chieftains and spirit-talkers and bury them in elaborate underground tombs. Both humans and trolls and elves mined the hills for useful ores and left behind played out shafts all over the place. The caves above Terrordale are naturally occurring caverns and actually cross completely through the mountains. They're also the favored lairs of the nerubians that came south with Arthas' forces when he returned from Northrend.

"Have I mentioned how much I hate spiders? Because I do. Hate spiders. We made it through mostly because we did a bunch of screaming and running and spilled out on the shores of the river on the other side of hills -- the Thondruril River, that runs between the eastern and western marches of Lordaeron. We traveled along the bank of the river until we came to the crossing, which was unguarded at that point, and considered our next moves. There were human bones scattered all over in the caves, most of them old, some of them very small. If the merchant's wife and children had made it there, it was very likely that they were dead. We were reluctantly coming to the conclusion that we'd have to go back to Light's Hope and report our failure when someone started shooting at us."


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Jadedinsc
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re: [Open RP] Northpass Tower

Folami snorts softly. "In public, maybe; in private I react as most others, it's only that I have learned some encounters warrant keeping the panic at bay." Her smile falters. "I still have nightmares of what happened to Silvermoon."

She shakes her head, the smile returning and she listens to the rest of Keldris's recounting.


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