"People died. We even killed a few defending ourselves from the people who had been affected by Lord Ambersun."
"People died. Because I killed them?"
"I know it doesn't make a difference, but you didn't. It did. 'Lord Ambersun' is wanted in Boralus. There was a battle between Kul'Tiras and some pirates on Vigil Hill. We tracked you down there and you and your ‘men’ had joined the fray."
"Okay. .. Okay. Anythin' else?"
"I didn't see it happen myself. It was a vision that i'm pretty sure was brought on by the same things trying to take over my head. It's not over, either. We think they got to Lucien too. Took on the personality of the Lord's daughter. A bounty hunter grabbed her and we're going to have to track him."
"...Lucien. Dwyn's boy? That Lucien?"
"We're pretty sure, yeah. The men that the Lord recruited all over went back to being themselves after getting away from you. This 'daughter' was an exception to that. And Lucien disappeared around the same time as you."
The conversation--more an interrogation than either Leon or Pin would have preferred, but they both understood the necessity--went on for hours. All the while, Leon ate, as much due to nerves as to genuine hunger. The ersatz Lord had apparently been having a rough go toward the end, and when Leon came back to himself, he’d been absolutely ravenous. And confused, realizing he was in a harbor-scented inn somewhere, with Pin, Murkey, Wes, and Ranek staring at him like they were waiting for him to strike.
It became clear that that was exactly what they were waiting for, because he’d done exactly that several times over, in the last six hours. He was a wanted man now, or at least this alternate personality wearing his face was. All this, but he hadn’t even been aware he was in Kul Tiras, let alone Boralus. Not that part of Boralus, anyway; the last thing he knew, he’d been at Inkwell, talking to Darlain about some music he’d heard from across the harbor near Upton Borough.
That, he learned, was two months ago.
When the group had captured him--captured him--and snuck him into an inn, they’d managed to chase “Lord Ambersun” out of his head. Unfortunately, in his place, he left a Leon who didn’t know how to speak Common, but understood it. Rolling through a handful of languages to no effect, they’d eventually realized he was wearing what amounted to a costume in his Kul Tiran finery.
The very moment the fine nobleman’s coat came off, a new voice took over. This time, he had been aware of it. A woman’s voice, high-bred or affecting something like it, talking to everyone as though they were children.
"Ah. This one finally broke. Pity."
Pin's eyes narrowed, unsure of what was transpiring but knowing, at last, that she was speaking to the one responsible for all this. "Who are you? What did you do?"
Leon's brows knit in confusion, but the woman chuckled mirthlessly. "Irrelevant. Xovor found the subject we needed. This one was beneficial, but ultimately, not viable. We thank you for your--hmph--collaboration."
Murkey moved back confused... this wasn't her Leon, not at all. "Who...Who are you talking about?" Her pen fluttered fast over the book floating there.
"Don't worry. We're still in alpha testing. There will be other invitations."
"What the fuck?" was about all Pin could muster, all of this... was just a test? "Get the hell out of him. Now."
Whoever this bitch was, she had the kind of laugh that made you feel like you were being patted on the head and congratulated for trying. Leon clearly did not care for the noises coming out of his mouth, but couldn't do anything to stop them. "Don't fret, little mutt. I won't hold this against you when we're ready. You'll be given the same chance as everyone else. I suggest you line up early.
"The dramatic little children are far more productive uses of our time anyway."
Ranek growled, as one predator to another. Skarre fluttered her wings and cawed. "There is more than void at work here. Other types of magic fluctuate in the air... so Skarre says. I feel the myriad of magics."
Leon's head turned toward Ranek, but his face looked as lost as ever. "Perhaps there's hope for some of you dullards, at least. Well! As stimulating as this conversation has been, I have diagnostics to run and subjects to process. Your feedback has been a gift that we shall treasure always."
Another infuriating chuckle. "If he remembers, do ask him how we did, would you? He was tricky."
"Out. Now." Pin was done with this, beyond done... she just... wanted it all back to how it was... somehow.
"'Off,' if you wish to be accurate. Toodle-oo!"
At the end of it all, all Leon wanted was to go home. He was handling it all far too calmly, and he was self-aware enough by now to realize that meant he was going to collapse in a heap and panic properly sooner or later. If he was going to do that anyway, he’d much rather be doing it in the comfort of home.
Boralus wasn’t going to be safe for him for a while, anyway. Witchcraft and mind theft were far from unheard of there, but authorities still needed proof.
Which, thanks to the draenei hunter that’d taken Lucien, they didn’t have.
“I tend tae try and play things off like i’m getting it all if i’m confused, but the longer I ‘ave tae ‘alf smile and nod, or if someone asks me questions, I tend tae just admit tae nae getting it and try tae get folks to explain it to me. Truth be told i’ve been ‘aving a little trouble with dreams lately, been trying changes in diet and even checking around my own ‘ead fer trouble and nae finding anything. Starting tae get a little paranoid the more it ‘appens.
Another day, another set of posters to hang and another list of news for the criers to shout as the city of Boralus woke up...
Amid a slowly growing group of missing persons posts on the various newsboards around town, a full-size wanted poster now displayed prominently, calling for the whereabouts of one “Lord Ambersun,” and the live capture thereof.
It seemed that the aspiring young lord had a habit of spending money freely and tipping heavily, only for that money to be missing from coffers a few days later despite every shop’s standard battery of tests, including illusion-breakers. Fast on the heels of that revelation came claims that he was the last one seen with many of the people on those missing persons’ posters, and all and sundry suggestions of what he’d done with them arose shortly after.
For some, he also bore a striking resemblance to a friendly chef from Gilneas...
Leon’s been a naughty boy and nobody who knows him is quite sure why. The Admiralty is not amused by this strange mainlander with false notions of nobility. Murmurs among shopkeeps and commoners in Boralus, across Tiragarde, and clear into Arom’s Stand in Drustvar paint a bleak picture of an absolute scoundrel of a man who enticed people to follow him like a pied piper, with apparent designs to take over some part of Kul Tiras.
As of now, Leon’s activities are approaching “angry rumor mill” levels of common knowledge in most of the major cities in Tiragarde and Drustvar, including the Thornspeakers with Ulfar. At the very least, it’s very likely your character will have heard grumblings on the street about strange dreams, extreme sleepwalkers, and disappearances, if they’ve been wandering about Kul Tiras much at all.
If you would like to become involved in the plot at play, even just as far as being aware of the extent of the crimes Leon has committed or recognizing the face on the poster, feel free to give me a poke in Tumblr or via Discord and I can provide whatever info you’d like!
After the disappearance of her husband, Pinapple Peppercog-Ambroce had searched half of Drustvar for him, chasing the only strong leads she had--visions, hallucinations, some sort of waking dream that gave her glimpses of his surroundings and some measure of his mental state. Not foolish enough to trust that these visions were benevolent in nature, but unable to find anything more concrete, she followed them all the way to the Thornspeakers’ retreat near Arom’s Stand.
There, the last Drust druid, Ulfar, informed her that her husband was indeed in some sort of dementia-like state, and that when he’d eventually left, several of Ulfar’s own acolytes left shortly after.
He could only point her east, and as the day went on, it seemed no visions would come to lead her further...
One moment, she was making her way down a mountain path and wondering if her husband would be safe from the increasingly low temperatures. The next, her hands felt warm, wet, and creaky, like she'd been going after a training bag for too long and split her knuckles.
Her vision was filled with an almost frothy redness, dissipating slowly to reveal her hand--no, his hand, there was fur and claw there--wrapped around the throat of a struggling man in the armor of the Proudmoore Admiralty. The smell of saltwater was strong, but so was the smell of blood, and the two amplified one another until it was an assault on the senses.
His voice sounded muffled, like she was hearing him (or he was hearing himself, perhaps) from underwater, but it was understandable due to sheer volume. “I find myself facing a quandary, sir, and I would think you would have little difficulty relating.” The accent seemed so alien, that of a man trained in elocution, and the tone one of bristling contempt barely contained. “You see, I woke one evening to find I had been separated from my wife and children, all of my possessions gone and replaced with some...commoner's trash, and horrifically exhausted.”
He was walking; the sky behind the man's darkening face shifted ever so softly, as did the pebbles and debris beneath his dangling feet. Leon was carrying him closer to a precipice, overlooking what seemed to be a war zone of ruined ships, roaring cannons, twisted metal and broken bodies. It was hard for Pin to tell whether the world was tinted red by the sunset or it was an effect of the connection between them.
“I finally reach my home again, only to find no one claims to recognize my authority, and no one has the slightest ounce of respect left in their bodies."
The guardsman pawed ineffectually at the worgen's hand as he realized he was no longer dangling only a foot above the ground. “This isn't--”
The red foam surged across his vision again and the world shook, as did the man in his hand, as he roared. “HAVE I NOT SUFFERED ENOUGH ALREADY?! THE LEAST YOU COULD DO IS ADDRESS ME PROPERLY!"
Without waiting for a response besides struggle and choking, Leon's hand opened, and the man disappeared from view with a rapidly descending scream.
Boralus was beautiful. Leon had made that decision within one minute, as soon as he’d sprouted feathers and done a quick circle over the city. Once the guards had had words with him over not doing that again--they weren’t accustomed to stormcrows and there was, after all, a war going on--he’d wandered down various streets and alleys. Only about half of that wandering was because he’d become lost.
Everywhere, the city embraced the sea and the bounty it provided, from its aesthetics to its cuisine, and some of the stronger accented vendors reminded him terribly of his father. There had been a pang of something like homesickness the first time he’d heard a proper Kul Tiran accent.
Inkwell was a welcome return to form. He missed taking the time to gather with friends, and he recognized a need for an excuse when he saw one. Darlain had been at least as much in love with the city as he had, and he didn’t blame her.
However, arriving at the borrowed tavern space and stepping out onto the open patio, he’d immediately felt out of sorts. It’d been ages, after all. And half the faces he saw, he’d not seen before, or hardly seen at all. For the first time in he couldn’t remember how long, Leon was afraid to join the crowd.
So he hid against the railing and looked out over the harbor, watched bits of the city continue bustling and hustling as day shifted into night. Tried not to let himself get too annoyed at the conversation about making live sharks into handheld weapons. They had to have been joking, but...Meddlers. They could very well have been serious.
It was with great relief that he picked up on a soft sound carried across the water. Music, he thought, or at least something close enough that it made no difference when it was so quiet. He found peace in the distraction. And it was quite pretty. Hard to figure out, but something to focus on while trying. He had half a mind to go looking for the source. At the very least, he was intensely curious whether he was hearing a voice or an instrument...
There was suddenly a Ren’dorei woman beside him. Asked something about the water. He hardly understood, she’d startled him so badly that all he could do was stare at her. Then a dwarven woman piped up behind her, smiling at him in such a familiar way. Her brogue was thick, he missed most of it. Something about busybodies.
He bit his tongue. Puzzled or not, it didn’t do to snap at people when they’d done nothing more than a bit of impertinent spellcasting. He tasted alcohol and sweet berries on his breath; clearly whatever he’d been drinking had gotten the better of him. Whatever he’d been up to, it was time to stop. Leon had made better and more eloquent goodbyes in his life, but felt his condition excused him from some of the more basic proprieties.
Once he’d gotten away from the hall and looked about to get his bearings, he sighed in relief. Yes, he knew where he was. Another one of his spells, apparently; he needed to speak to his physician on that again.
Why he was in Boralus, of all places, he had no idea, but at least it was a busy enough seaport that he’d be able to secure passage home.
Being with his wife and son awhile would set his mind at ease.
But first, he wanted to figure out where that music was coming from.
The lord’s sleep was fitful, there on the damp grass. Already woken twice by wandering wildlife, he’d tried to find trees or something less miserable or vulnerable to sleep in, but to no avail. He’d found sleep again with a bitter taste in his mouth, longing for the comfort of a warm bed that seemed no longer to exist, blown away by usurpers’ cannons and picked clean by the basest scavengers.
What of his wife? What of his child hatchlings children cubs spawn son daughter? What of his home? What of his people? It seemed such a complicated scheme, convincing so many to no longer acknowledge his authority, his very personhood. How much coin would a man need for that many bribes? And to what end? He did not know. He was strong and beloved, but his territory was small and his wealth modest. What benefit could it possibly serve to encourage him to disappear from hearts and minds alike?
Who the hell were the gnome and the worgen that had attacked him? Which one of them had healed him in his most dire moment? Did he finally have a real ally, not the hangers-on that had followed in his wake every time he passed through a settlement?
Entirely too many questions, and not enough answers from anywhere except his own exhausted mind.
Sometimes it seemed almost as though those answers weren’t even his. But he was tired. So tired.
Boralus. He needed to go back to Boralus. It would be risky. Whoever his enemy was, they knew he was on to them now. He was having a harder time finding safe haven, his smiles answered with suspicion rather than welcome, and his coin refused. The last innkeeper had demanded his coat for a room, and he had refused not out of pride, but out of necessity--that coat had already saved his life twice, and gods only knew when he would be able to find another room afterward. He was not a thief. He would not just take one.
Boralus held answers. He knew it, though he couldn’t have said how.
A brief flicker in his perception, not a shape, not a color, not a motion per se. Simply...an awareness of a presence, and then just as suddenly, awareness that it had passed. Or perhaps withdrawn. Hiding from him? Avoiding him? Mocking him? Preparing to pounce? The uncertainty made it all so much worse.
“There must be something... Anything.”
Feeling this time, real and perceptible. The touch of another hand caused his own hand to coalesce into being, and he clung to the fingers now trapped between his own, even as they began to lose shape to slither and melt away. Clinging gave way to clawing, and clawing gave way to flailing as he lost the one point of contact in the emptiness around him.
“GIVE ME SOMETHING! SHRIEKING HORRORS ARE BETTER THAN THIS! GRANT ME MORE THAN NOTHING!”
Silence yawned before him as would a pit in the bottom of a cave, without the courtesy of an echo to tell him that it might have an end, a limit somewhere. He whimpered. He hoped he’d whimpered. He could not hear himself anymore, enveloped as he was by the oppressive emptiness of the void.
Eternity ended. A faint light emerged. The voice called to him.
Come to us...
“TELL ME HOW! PLEASE!”
Falling...
Leon sat up in a cold sweat, gasping for breath and finding himself choking on saltwater as he became aware that he was not in the warm comfort of his bed. Trying and failing not to inhale again before his head broke the surface of the sea, he flailed almost mindlessly before his brain finally remembered the concept of “up.” He found himself staring up through raw eyes at the cloud-shrouded moon high above him.
He floated as best he could while he choked up what felt like gallons of water, and at least one hunk of seaweed. When he was able to focus enough, he took the form of the walrus, finding immediate relief for his sinuses there.
What he did not find was land.
A slow spin of his great tusked head revealed no dark masses on the horizon. No point of reference. He had no idea where he was, only that he was not dead and that he’d gone very far from home in his sleep. Slipping briefly back into human form to inspect himself in the moonlight, he found that he’d managed to dress himself in his heavy leather armor--no wonder he’d nearly drowned himself.
Too confused to be afraid, all he could do was pick a direction and start swimming. Once he’d regained more of his senses, it became flying. It took a distressingly long time before he was finally able to pick out a speck of light that wasn’t a star, and it was nearly dawn before he set foot back on solid ground in Stranglethorn.
By the time he reached Stormwind, the sun was already bright and climbing, and the fiery ache of his exhausted wings bled through his entire body once the wings disappeared, leaving him in a state comparable to being run over and dragged by the Deeprun Tram. He trudged home in what seemed to passersby to be little more than a drunken stupor, stopping only to stash his saltwater-crusted leathers in the storeroom at the Cookbook. It was easier and faster to hide the armor than wash it or explain it.
He was so desperately tired that he collapsed onto the rug in front of the fireplace, unconscious within seconds. In his exhaustion, it hadn’t occurred to him that his hair, eye patch, and clothes would reek and crust over just as badly as his leathers before long.
It was always so quiet at this time of night, just past the midpoint of dusk and dawn. It smelled crisp and clean, hinting at frost soon to come, and the sky was a glitter-flecked blanket of blue-black from horizon to horizon. On nights like this, picking out constellations was as easy as reading a star chart.
Steam curled softly up into the silence of the night, and he felt himself smile just slightly before lifting his mug to his mouth. Far below, the village that bore his standard refused to sleep, eagerly anticipating the arrival in the manor above them. Every so often, he thought he could smell sweets and pastry--preparing for the party they knew he would announce.
He couldn’t help but laugh to himself. Like a child refusing to go to bed without finishing storytime, his people. Perhaps a little hint at what he was soon to contend with? That was what he deserved for indulging them as often as he did, he supposed: A fat, happy little barony that adored him and adored his progeny well in advance. What a grievance to have.
The “miserable” reverie was broken by soft, semi-distant squalling just before sunrise, starting him awake and making him drop the (mercifully empty) mug he’d managed to keep clutched tight in spite of his accidental nap. Clearing his throat and standing up straight, he adjusted his shirt and despite the ridiculousness of it, checked to make sure nobody else had seen him. He’d have been fairly impressed if anyone had from so high up, but the impulse came before he could stop himself.
Another little huff of amusement followed as he bent down to pick up the mug, relieved to find it unbroken. Finally, he turned to head back into his rooms and greet his newborn child and undoubtedly exhausted wife.
Brushing aside the drape, he stepped forward and fell into the night. The stars flew past as he plummeted, only able to determine which way was up by the ever fading sound of an infant’s first cries. An eternity passed before the longing call of his wife’s voice joined it.
Come to us...
He nearly tripped on his way down the stairs, waking up to find his face soaking wet and eyes still streaming, though he couldn’t for the life of him remember why. He felt as though he were in mourning, inexplicable grief ripping through him and leaving him scarcely able to breathe without whimpering.
Wakes needed booze.
Leon needed more booze.
He would just have to slip out and pick something up. Pausing in front of his boots by the door, he bit his lip and glanced back up the stairs, then shook his head. He’d be back before either of his wives woke up.
