Dawn of the Books

6/2 early morning

Mila kept me up late. She'd already been an enthusiastic and dedicated lover as a human, but I think the gnomish part of her new biology gave her a lot of nervous energy. Either that or she was still seriously banking on making me forget about Lividia. She was cute, but she wasn't that cute.

Mila didn't have much experience with sex, either. She couldn't suck cock very well, and fucking her was almost entirely on me to lead. She was adorable, and watching her squirm with pleasure definitely had its own charm, but it was almost a relief when my amulet struck midnight and Lividia appeared next to me. She took one moment to survey the situation and joined in.

She was quiet at first, then I heard her whisper into Mila's ear. "If you want to be a consort, you need to please him. You need to work at his pleasure. If you can't please him properly, what good are you? Let me show you." Which led to one of the most aggressively enthusiastic blowjobs I've ever received, during which Lividia hammed it up until it sounded like my dick was the source of all pleasure and joy in her life.

Mila, not do be left out, attempted to change her approach and sat next to me, kissing my lips, neck, behind my ear, and anywhere else that I'd let her. She clung to me, her generous chest pressed against me. I did not want to stop enjoying these two.

••••••••••

Alas, all things must come to an end. I only got about two hours of sleep that night, but it was deep, exhausted sleep. It would do in a pinch. Overall, I'd say I was very lucky that I had body tune up and some swiftthistle to make tea. I looked through my mission log. The centaur situation was coming along nicely, but there were a few minor problems in the report.

Our new centaur faction was very heavy on women. Women from a culture where they were expected, from birth, to serve the men of the herd meekly and submissively. A few of the mares, especially the more ambitious windchasers and the particularly abused, wanted a complete break from that culture, and anyone lucky enough to have a remotely decent husband was happy with him as often as not (those husbands, incidentally, were captured and set up as role models for later). However, my banshee were capturing any centaur, male or female, that seemed weak willed, exploitable, or emotionally vulnerable, so I also got a decent number that were perfectly happy with the current power dynamic, they just wanted mates who were less shit. I've found my reward waifus.

On the one hand, handing out girls as prizes is historically not a particularly cool thing to do. On the other hand, any man who was getting one would also get a necklace and a couple triggers to ensure a basic level of care for his new mate; partly because anyone who earns a reward like this deserves an amulet as a general rule, just so I have easy access to them. Plus, if the girl was already open to an arranged marriage and was fine with being in a quietly supportive role, that saved me the time and ethical ramifications of stepfordization. Even with mind runes, I'd prefer to preserve as much of the original person as possible. I might need to push them or alter their mindset a little to make sure they accept having only two legs, though.

Leh'Prah, the prospective khan I was backing, was asking reasonable questions. Questions like "why have more than 90 mares from my very patriarchal culture spontaneously decided to start quietly defying their fathers and husbands in order to further my goals over the last three days?" Which was both bad and good. Bad because I was going to need to provide him with an explanation and otherwise convince him like a normal person, good because he wasn't a complete idiot. He didn't object to more than two thirds of his early recruits being female, either; he just noted that it was objectively out of character for many of them.

We were starting to get recruits the old fashioned way, as well. Not with necklaces, but because some people just organically wanted to try something new. Teenage rebellion, old folks pining for a more honorable point in the clan's history, and people who just flat out hated their current Khans were all interested in this new possibility. Once someone started asking questions, they could usually be persuaded to go through a short initiation ritual by anyone in my retinue that listened to communication talent's suggestions.

I could probably accelerate the process if I dedicated more resources to the Centaur, or I could start siphoning off some of the more brutal ones to serve as demonic troops, but I decided to let it lie for now. I had ten shadow-trained banshee and ghosts equipped with amulets that were creating a revolution. I had already invested enough for now, and it would pay off eventually, but disrupting the process might cause problems later.

None of my missions seemed likely to resolve today, so I decided that I'd maintain a high turnover rate by actually using some of these mission tickets. The mission to play Scourge office politics seemed lucrative, but it was also in an area of operations I currently had on the back burner, and it had a time limit. I had immediate uses for all of the rewards with the possible exception of the pickup line, so it was getting a deluxe mission ticket. I'd save one deluxe ticket in case something really incredible popped up, but there was no point in storing multiple.

The Pickup line went onto the stack. It was a catalyst, something to accelerate a capture. I'd use it eventually, no doubt about it. Maybe on Alexstrasza for a dragon-goddess threesome with her sister. Mmmm. Ysera.

If anything I needed to be more free with my items. The power trader would go to Aegwynn and Doan. I'd have Aegwynn make sure she knew everything Doan could teach her first, but once that was sure they would trade places. She, along with his other students, would become truly magnificent by the end of the week. As much as two dozen Doans appealed to me, they paled in comparison to an equal number of Aegwynns.

The power swap: necromancer was a far more prosaic boon, but it didn't have anywhere near as much of a start up cost. I had a giant pile of corpses, mostly of sentient creatures, that I had Tara resurrecting. Eliza, Abby, and a bunch of trainees were subduing them as they were raised, binding their minds and souls with a declaration of love directed at Talaada. I wanted as much of Tara's energy as possible to be focused on reanimating sentient undead, rather than controlling them. Jammal'an had taken the support crew over an hour to bind, even working together, time which Tara had spent in a different part of the field reanimating and gently breaking the news to the night elves that had fallen due to Fandral's betrayal.

Another full necromancer would ease the burden; if I just waited I'd get Helcular soon, and Lillibeth would eventually come back with some of the best necromancers in the Eastern Kingdoms, but we have a timetable here. The undead are only slightly less disposable than demons, able to be reanimated repeatedly with skill and effort. I picked Auffrey's sister, Grace, almost entirely because she was a tier one member of the retinue with a name I recognized. I think she must have been captured at the party. She didn't have any particularly important duties or skills, so she could be given the task of subduing and reanimating the dead with hardly any opportunity cost.

The last reward was both the smallest and the most significant: a credit. The last credit I needed to purchase Martial Talent Sharing. Oh sure, I have plans for mind runes, but those aren't anywhere near as time sensitive as getting everyone up to speed on the non-magical half of warfare. Even without specifically educating them, team Valhalla will get stronger quickly with on the job training.Rewards profitably distributed, I still had a bit of bookkeeping to finish up.

Special Snowflake

Kill the albino gorilla Uhk'loc in Un'goro crater. Target tracker app has been disabled for this mission.

Rewards: 1 credit, Luxury Goods (bracelet/anklet)

Would sending one of my Farstriders to do a bit of big game hunting for very modest payoff be worth the loss of one bow for a few days? Probably. I sent the job to Caledra, and included a note to figure out if there's anything she wanted as a reward. Once the tantric ritual wore off she'd fallen out of love with me pretty fast; she'd certainly agree to a night in bed with me if I showed interest, but I don't think it would be a big enough reward to really incentivize her.

Speaking of sending blonde elves to kill things in my name, I had an upgrade for Valeera.

—————

Strength: Mana Rage- Valeera can absorb mana from willing allies to empower herself, with the upper limit being a 1000% increase to speed and strength at the cost of exhausting 200 tier 4 magic users.

Dexterity: Shadow Dance- once per minute, Valeera may become entirely undetectable to conventional senses for 6 seconds.

Stamina: Revive at the Nexus- once per day, Valeera will resurrect at the nearest base with a full recovery.

Intellect: The Uncrowned- Valeera gains substantial social affinity with those who live in the shadows. She can intuitively recognize spies, rogues, assassins, criminals, and traitors with a glance, including some information about their current intentions.

Spirit: Watch. Your. Back. If Valeera kills someone who was unaware that she was a threat within one minute of their death, the target is instantly captured. This capture persists through all forms of resurrection.

————— 

The three front runners were a resurrection ability like Lividia's, a supercharged version of social talent for anyone that would fall into the category of "rogue," and effectively another binding for anyone Valeera surprise-killed.

I went with the binding, called "Watch. Your. Back." I have plenty of methods of capture, but there are precious few situations where having more minions wouldn't be somewhat useful. Further, setting Valeera up as a full time assassin/executioner would probably do quite a lot of good. Systematically inviting everyone left in the Scarlet Monastery to one on one meetings in which they are killed by Valeera and resurrected by Sally would probably finish things up over the course of a few days, assuming Sally can manage to resurrect that many people.

From there I can start putting them to work and cycling through visitors. There would be a certain irony in turning the Scarlet Crusade into an army of very devout demon hybrids, but once I've killed enough bugs I think it'll be time to start clearing out Andorhol. If I can kill twenty thousand bugs, then I can kill thirty thousand undead, and the Scarlet Crusade definitely likes killing the undead.

I changed he channel on my amulet and checked for reports. The gnomes had already found a few relatively stable combinations and were noting the strengths thereof. The green fragment of the Scepter had been transferred to my inventory. Azuregos was currently laying low but had consented to meeting with me, if and only if I came to him at a location of his choosing. Melisara was currently in the process of getting close to the Baron and predicted mission success by lunch. Keryn and Doris hadn't found Vaelen yet, but my dragonspawn in Wyrmrest had been contacted about the mission. Good. Hopefully I'd be able to save the poor bastard. Off to Northrend, then.