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| Details |
| Author: | Athena |
| Summary: | Oranna writes Thalstan about what Blue Squad has been up to in Pandaria, with some version of explanations of how they've been helpful in establishing an Alliance presence while they search for someone Oranna can't tell Thalstan about. She reveals her possible weakness to the sha, and what she thinks might happen with the others. 2500~ words. |
| Rating: | T for Teen |
Chain: Orastan
Thal,
They tell me that the letters go through the mail system to the continent now, so I hope this does get to you through the portal bouncing. If you haven’t heard, apparently there’s been a whole other giant landmass out here in the ocean. They say it’s southwest of the Eastern Kingdoms, which now begs a question if they’ll be re-naming at any point to the Northeastern Kingdoms for accuracy. I wonder what they called the Eastern Kingdoms afore they knew they were east of something. It’d be right strange to label a whole continent ‘eastern’ if you have every reason to think you’re the only. I mean, what would you think you’re east of? I didn’t get much schooling on geography when I was a wee girl, and it never occurred to me to ask what the whole of the continent was called. My world was pretty small back then.
It’s pretty small now, too actually, just by circumstances to not upset the locals. We can’t go very far, or wander much here in Pandaria, as they call it. That’s right, I’m on the new continent that was all mist-shrouded until something happened and now we can get to it. We’ve got a couple types of people here. The ones that seem mostly in charge are the pandaren. Who you might have seen around now if they’ve been poking about in Outland at all, the big furry folk who are more like black and white bears, as opposed to the furry folk of the worgen. At this rate, some dwarves are bound to feel like their position of the furriest Alliance folk is down to third overall. Maybe we’ll see new alchemy for growing more hair on chests and beards.
I’d look very good with a beard, and I’m not just saying that out of a thought exercise, but of seeing it. It was in a prophecy from inside a jinyu’s big balls that he showed us after we got him and his friends to like us better. He got the spirits to talk to him and I ended up with a bit of pieces of the lads on the squad on me, including getting Bran’s beard all over my face, and I don’t think I’ll ever really pull off an eyepatch, but I could do a beard. My great-aunt Nettie had one, did I ever tell you? Grew one in her mid-100s.
But you’re probably wondering more what a jinyu is, and I only have a bit of a speculation and some of an explanation. They’re water-dwelling fish people who can talk and walk around on two legs, but I think they might be somehow related to murlocs, really advanced murlocs. They live here too, and they’ve been in trouble ever since the Horde arrived here in Pandaria, because there are creatures called the ‘Hozen’ who have been wreaking havoc. Hozen are a bit like monkeys, but they’re more sentient like a kobold is, and they’ve a mean streak temperament that I’m not sure how much you could train them out of at this point. They’d be a nuisance on their own, but the Horde gave them weapons, and now they’re much worse.
I can’t tell you what we’re really doing here because it’s a secret operation, but I can probably tell you that we’re looking for someone who’s been lost. It’s a specialty of mine now, so I know what I’m doing here, even if secret operations are not the easiest for someone like me. The good news is that there’s still a trail to follow. The bad news is that it’s been slow going, and we’ve had to work for the goodwill of the people here afore we can do much more.
There’s one other oddity that makes this all much more complicated, which is that there’s something in this land that’s not elsewhere that they call “sha” and it does something to you when you have certain feelings inside you. It gets in those feelings and makes those feelings go deeper, and deeper, and then strokes back them up into something else until you leak and explode with sha. I’ve seen it happen to a man for doubting – just that, doubting – and we had to clean up the goo not only he made, but that multiplied from being drawn to it. They’re like shadow goos and walking globules.
The pandaren’s method of avoiding getting like that is that they party and drink alcohol and avoid conflict, to keep away the sha. It’s worked for them, but we can’t really do the same thing (and it gets into more than people – it gets into animals too), and we especially can’t do it now because the Horde got here and they’ve been something else under that new warchief of theirs. When they couldn’t get the pandaren to cooperate the way they wanted, their leader here kidnapped their children of all things, to hold them hostage and force the village of Paw’don and its leader Sunke Khan to do what they wanted. We set it to right, of course, but it’s hard to say if they did it because of the sha, or if the Horde folk were already so close to boiling over that they just became sha-ed from it.
Rage and hatred are two of the things that call the sha. I think those are the ones I can avoid the easiest. Dane is probably struggling with it though. He’s powered by both, not in a bad way, but it's how he takes in his feelings and puts out action from them. I get the feeling that Shine’s quieter about it, shadows and calm, but underneath he’s got those two on the broil, too. Dane’s not a doubter though. He’s always real sure of what he’s doing. Shine seems like a good lad who once he commits to a course, he’s as steady as anything on it. Erixa, our draenei paladin, she seems like she's free of doubts, but I think she's carrying an old, old hatred so wound up in her that I don't know if she can kick it out. The Horde did a lot of things to Draenor, and she's lost people to them. Those kind of ghosts are hard to banish, especially when you're watching those people do things to other people now.
It’s not that I don’t get angry, because I do. I got angry about the little ones being taken, and when we learned that the hozen had been hurting and torturing captured folk with a tiger in a pit that they’d forced to fight and attack the hurt Alliance and jinyu people tossed in. But it’s not a lingering anger. It doesn’t consume me. And the hatred I’ve never been much able to feel, though I know some people think it means I apologize and forgive too easily, but hate is such a final feeling. It’s an absolute, and I really can’t hate the Horde or even the hozen all together in one big chunk of people.
It’s the doubt that I think might get me. I question stuff, and I’m no good at that military yessiring. The more I try not to doubt, the more I seem to do it. It’s like I’m doubting if I’m not doubting right, and it’s all a tangle. I keep thinking that if you were here, maybe it’d be easier to settle my head. I always feel more grounded around you. You don’t have the doubts the way I do.
Bran doesn’t either really. Of all of Blue Squad, he’s probably the least likely to get sucked on by the sha. I wish I could feel like I get more centered around him, but he’s more like a cloud than a rock to stand on. It’s comforting though to know that if the rest of us succumb, Bran will be able to get us help, and not get mired down in our sticky mess of things. If I could let things go the way he can, I might get the same result, but I’m a clinger, and I don’t know how not to be.
So far I think we’ve all done better with something to do at least to stay out of our heads. The first week we worked to settle the dispute with the Horde (like their taking of the pandaren children), and mopping up the mess from when we arrived. We came in by airship, and it was all a bit fraught. We had to parachute down, and then get our way to the Pandaria leaders. There were a lot of Alliance skyforce fighter pilots that didn’t have such a soft landing as we did, and we were able to save some, but not all of them.
The Horde had set up in this nearby temple or something like a temple, and it was strange because it was old, but the beings carved out in stone in front don’t look like pandaren. I have a lot of questions about what that’s all about. It reminded me a lot of when we went into Ulduar, and there were all these carvings of beings that weren’t quite right to modern peoples. I guess I won’t be surprised if we find out this is another Titan mess, and that they did something out here to muck with folk, and there’s been split offs.
The leader of the Horde there was called Ga’trul, a warlock, and he went all sha on us. He had this journal that maybe explained some things, and we handed it off to be translated and possibly exorcised from fel things. I get the feeling it’s just going to say what we already know, which is that he was filled with the ugly trio of emotions, either before he got here, or after, and the sha pushed in through the soft openings he left for it.
Since then, we’ve been trying to find the person that we’re looking for who I can’t tell you about, and the trail set us right through the hozen and jinyu. We rescued more of the poor skyship folk that had ships that crashed, and the hozen raided to take as prisoners to poke at with their sticks through the holes of the cages. Thanks to some very important clues that I can’t spell out, including a flag, we knew that the person we were looking for (I’ve got to come up with a short hand for this… I’m going to call this person Ian, for no reason) was still alive and hadn’t fallen into the hands of the hozen right there.
There were a lot of clashes around the village, and the jinyu needed our help getting the hozen off, so we lent our hands to the job. They didn’t have a lot of weapons ready for this kind of thing, so we got the stuff for them, and distributed it out to the fighters. They don’t have any guns here. Shine pointed out that they make their weapons with water, and guns are all powder and fire inside, and I see his point that they might not be able to do it, or even if we brought them some that they’d feel comfortable with the results and handling that sort of thing. Makes me feel a bit strange, like I’m the only one with this big fire explosion pole around a whole lot of wet people.
Well, not the only one. There’s another sniper here, a human lass of some age group between 18 and 45, name of Amber Kearnen, and she has a real magnificent weapon, and she knows how to make it sing. She’s a great eye, and steady hands with beautiful fingering techniques with discipline, pull, and control.
She’s been working with some of the people looking for Ian, but they got themselves into a world of trouble, and one of them was hurt real bad trying to follow the trail as is. So, we needed more local help. That’s why the jinyu asked the spirits about us, and after they got confirmation that we’d be good for them, they offered up an option for us to track down a lone pandaren living off in the mountains, like you do.
When we got there, we got breathing in something we shouldn’t have, and we all saw things that might actually have been happening. Like scrying, but with things in your nose rather than looking into something with your eyes. It was all disorienting and unhelpful, but Lorewalker Cho (that’s his title and name) knows of a brew of something we could try to be more direct and get enough information to act on it. It’s got things in it that put anyone’s Pantry Scrap Soup to shame for weird and unsettling ingredients.
Bran’s going to drink it.
When it’s ready, which we hope will be any day now. It’s been almost a whole week and I’m trying not to be nervous about it. I’ve been biding time fishing for Befound and talking to some of the people here about the ore and leather. The ore is strange. Ghostly, is the word really, so I’ve been asking about it from people who seem to know how to work it. While I was out getting some leather to do some repairs for my gloves (Befound’s been anxiety chewing on them), I felt something really unsettling in it. The leatherworker I found told me it was the sha. It’d gotten into the animal’s skin, and to use it, you have to cleanse it with the mists. That probably sounds batty, but it’s what things are like here.
I thought about getting something to send for you, but I’m not really sure if there’s something you’d like. Paw’don is all about apple cider, and though the Horde started chopping at their apple trees, we managed to scare some off and rescue enough cider that they’re still selling it. But I don’t know if you like it as a drink. It’s not really something I like to drink myself, since I’m mostly just a water person. Like I like to drink water, not that I'm a water person like the jinyu are water people. Although it has been raining on and off in Paw’don. But I’m mostly in the inn, not outside camping or anything. But when we’re around the jinyu village, I can breathe underwater because they’ve given us some sort of blessing.
I guess that’s everything. Sorry this is so long, probably going to crowd out your inbox a bit, but when I’m writing to you, I’m not sitting around doubting and doubting that we’ll find Ian in time, or that this brew will work, or that everyone on the Squad (and White Squad too) will stay un-sha-ed, or that the Alliance is going to go slow and steady enough for the people here.
Okay, now I am doubting all that because I just wrote it so probably I should try to drink some of this barley tea and get to sleep.
I hope you’re okay out there in Outland. I think worry and doubt are maybe different enough things so that it’s not too bad to worry. Unless I’m doubting again that – [there follows a line scratched out to be illegible].
That’s enough of that. Be safe. Don’t die. (Permanently.) Or at all.
- Oranna